Songs in Ordinary Time
By Mary McGarry Morris
Viking, 742 pages, $24.95
Mary McGarry Morris’ “Songs in Ordinary Time” is an ambitious, skillfully written novel about one family, the Fermoyles, and the town they live in, Atkinson, Vt., set in the summer of 1960. The action is precipitated by the appearance of a con man and murderer, Omar Duvall, who instigates a relationship with Marie Fermoyle, the divorced mother of Alice, 17, Norm, 16, and Benjy, 12. Their father, Sam, a career alcoholic, is also on the scene, living nearby with his sister, Helen, her husband, Renie, and the matriarch. Bridget, who is senile, lives in a large crib and is cared for by Helen.
While the Fermoyles are the central characters, the narrative often shifts to other citizens of the town–the police chief, Sonny Stoner, whose wife is dying of cancer and who is having an affair with her best friend; Joey Seldon, once the police chief, now, as a result of an accident at an illegal distillery, the blind owner of a popcorn stand in the town park; Blue Mooney, the town delinquent; Robert Haddad, the town insurance man, who has become a thief to cover the expenses he incurs buying costly merchandise for his young, pretty wife. There are plenty of others. Morris writes with energy, conviction and a sure touch for detail. “Songs in Ordinary Time” is technically very accomplished, but while I admired it, I did not find it enjoyable.
The Fermoyles are a deeply unsympathetic bunch. Sam, a lifelong drunk, is aggressive and unrepentant at the beginning, weak and foolish at the end, where he makes a small step toward recovery by admitting himself to the state mental hospital (where he has been many times before). Marie terrorizes her children into silence with ranting tirades; her inner life seems to be made entirely of the overwhelming consciousness of her victimhood combined with profound dread that someone in her town will condescend to her. When Omar appears, she is his willing dupe and shows both her desperation and her moral nature by committing forgery on bank documents.
Alice, who has been cowed by her mother’s rage, can’t protect herself against any of the men who want to use her, including the priest who molests her repeatedly. Norm personifies anger–he begins the novel by getting thrown off the baseball team for fighting and fights all the way through. Benjy seems somewhat promising, if only because he is young and vulnerable, but Morris buries him and his story so completely in the multitude of other stories that he seems by the end never to have even had a chance to escape, much less to thrive.
The town of Atkinson is such a sink of iniquity as to defy belief. The way each character yields to his or her worst proclivities soon becomes predictable and tiresome. All figures of authority, from the bishop down to the curate, from the police chief to the banker, are compromised and corrupt. Omar Duvall, whose lying and cheating are so relentlessly portrayed that the reader comes to dislike him more for that than for committing murder, might have been at least a little fascinating in another novel, but here he is utterly charmless, not only morally vile but also gluttonous and physically unappealing. Marie’s readiness to make a life with him is so lengthily portrayed and then so quickly disposed of that her character is fatally tainted even after Benjy and Norm have gotten rid of him for her.
“Songs in Ordinary Time” is a long, dysfunctional family soap opera. The characters’ problems are so convincingly and unsympathetically portrayed that by the end their character issues seem simply too complex and deeply rooted ever to be resolved. They are givens, unchangeable. As an authorial vision, this darkness is, of course, perfectly acceptable, except that Morris’ style is so plain and so focused on the characters that she suggests no way of analysing or even perceiving them and their situation. The novel is, in some ways, like a religious tract that follows out the concept of sin in the lives of ordinary humans but offers no hope of redemption, grace or even understanding. This is a bitter novel. It offers insight and skill but little in the way of wisdom.
