A YOUNG BROTHER'S SUICIDE, A CLOSE-KNIT FAMILY'S DESPAIR
For those of us whose notions of what a perfect family looks like were forever shaped by the Von Trapp family in The Sound of Music, Kathleen Finneran's elegiac The Tender Land, (Houghton Mifflin Co., 304 pp. $24) will come as a revelation. As in the musical, Finneran's first novel is also the story of a large, boisterous, loving family. But there the similarity ends.
Unlike the celluloid fantasy, where every problem could be solved by the appropriate song, The Tender Land reminds us of how complicated, unique and fragile an organism the family is. Of how much worry, work and sacrifice it takes to keep that organism breathing. And how it deflates and collapses when one of its members stops participating.
In the case of the Finnerans, an Irish-Catholic family from St. Louis, the collapse is caused by the suicide of Kathleen's 15-year-old brother, Sean. The book is an extended eulogy to Sean, an exploration of the dark vacuum left by his absence, an examination of how a family manages to keep moving despite an earth-shattering event. As such, it is a book about family and faith, loss and lament, death and resurrection.
Kathleen Finneran was 24 at the time that her brother killed himself in his parent's home by overdosing on his father's heart medication. By taking a close, unsentimental look at how her own life became rudderless after Sean's death, Finneran shows how the unspeakable horror of a suicide in the family leaves the surviving members adrift. There is the inevitable search for answers, the relentless soul-searching, the endless questioning of self, the never-ending dreams of Sean at different ages. Coupled with the depression that the author has inherited from both sides of her family, Sean's death makes Finneran spend several years locked in the prison cell of her own isolation. By the end of this deeply personal book, the reader can only hope that the telling of her story has helped Finneran rid herself of some of her demons and that she can now live a less troubled and solitary life.
Written decades after Sean's death, The Tender Land has the feel and texture of a remembrance. Every contemporary interaction reminds Finneran of something else and the stories pile on thick and fast as snow. There is a stream of consciousness quality to the memoir that takes the reader on a desultory, rambling walk through the recesses of Finneran's mind. And yet, this desultory feel is deceptive because Finneran is blessed with an amazing capacity for recalling past events and her recollections are precise and sharp. Just when you think she has lost her original point, that she has made too many detours to ever get back to the main path, there it is, fresh, green and illuminated with the light of the previous story.
For instance, in describing the summer that Sean was born, Finneran remembers a chain of events that make her recall her older sister Mary's prophesy that she, Kathleen, would be the one among the five Finneran children who would inherit their mother's sadness. The foreshadowing of the depression that would follow Finneran throughout her life gives the passage a special poignancy.
But The Tender Land is about much more than the story of Sean and Kathleen. The strength of the memoir comes from how vividly each of the other members of the Finneran family is brought to life--the compassionate older sister Mary whose steadiness anchors the author's life; the impetuous, high-strung youngest sister Kelly, the older brother, Michael and the intense, mercurial Sean. Finneran also paints a candid but loving picture of her father, Thomas Finneran, whose verbal tics and antics make him a colorful if eccentric character. But the heart of the family is Finneran's mother, Lois, and she also gives the book its moral core. A deeply religious woman whose faith remains unwavering even after her son's suicide, Lois Finneran comes across as a complicated, compassionate, fully-realized human being. Wrestling her own demons of depression, she nevertheless deals with her beloved son's death with a courage and dignity that would do a Maxim Gorky character proud. And yet, as heroic a figure as she is, she is also achingly human, laughing helplessly at her daughter's politically incorrect jokes, blurting out that of all her children, Sean was not the one she would have chosen to lose.
In this era of tell-all memoirs, it is a lovely surprise to find a memoir that celebrates family rather than trashes it ; that examines a family to see what makes it work rather than what makes it fall apart; that rejoices in its function rather than bemoans its dysfunction. What is amazing--and ultimately, gratifying--is that Finneran never expresses any anger at what Sean has unleashed. There is grief, yes, and guilt and regret but never anger. The psychologists may find this unrealistic or even unhealthy. To this reader, it was inspiring to see how effortlessly Sean's family forgave him.
Despite this, The Tender Land is not a Norman Rockwell portrait. The Finneran family is not immune to any of the issues--suicide, depression, homosexuality--that characterize contemporary American life. Although she mines the easily-sentimentalized terrain of childhood, Kathleen Finneran never falls victim to romanticizing it. Her descriptions of childhood--of what it feels like to see the world with a child's curiosity, bewilderment, confusion and playfulness--are right on target. Finneran remembers things that the rest of us forget--like the first time she makes the connection that not only is she Michael's little sister, but Mary's too. It is a small detail but it shows the formation of her identity, her finding her place within the constellation of her family.
At the end of the memoir, we still do not really understand or know why a 15-year-old golden boy who was so obviously loved and admired by his family and others, would chose to end his life. Finneran shares with us Sean's suicide note, which drips with self-loathing and hopelessness. We understand that Sean has been teased in school, that he has bungled up a school basketball game. But none of his hurts seem to warrant such a final response. We do not know why a boy who has so much going for him would hate his life so much that he can't bear to live it. As readers, it is so important that we do understand, that we get the answers and the closure that the Finneran family never will. And when we don't, there is a feeling of let-down, of being cheated.
But perhaps that is the point. Sean will forever remain an enigma and his death a mystery. Like the Finneran family, we will be haunted by the question, “Why?” And the answer will not be blowing in the wind.
--Boston Globe, Sept. 3, 2000
