Maile Meloy (yes, Colin Meloy's sister), has written two books (Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter) that were really clever in their ability to reinvent what an author can do with the tale of one family.
Liars and Saints
I devoured the first, Liars and Saints, during the last month of my pregnancy. At this time in my life (and now, really), my measure of a good book was how long I would be willing to stay awake to read it. (Or, similarly, how willing I would be to forgo a nap in order to read it.) For Liars and Saints, I was willing to do both.
It's not a remarkable story - a bit dramatic, a bit tragi-comic, and a bit romantic for my tastes - but it's really well told. It's about a family, and how that family evolves over two generations, and then loops back over on itself as a niece and her uncle fall in love, make love, and make a baby. Luckily, he's not really her uncle, but her cousin, which apparently makes it all that much better.
(For me, I'm not convinced that my personal sense of guilt and weirdness would be assuaged if I found out that I'd been procreating with my cousin and not my uncle, but when I posed the question to Kevin yesterday, he concurred with the characters - it's all that much better to get it on with your cousin rather than your uncle. As Kevin pointed out, "your uncle would be too much like your parents." And, really, it's far to generous to think that these novels have any Oedipal or Electra allusions.)
A Family Daughter
When I started this book a few days ago, I immediately was confused. Same character names, mostly same character characteristics, but some significant differences. For example, one character was tragically childless in Liars and Saints, and had two children in A Family Daughter. Question mark? Yes. I immediately suspected my 8-months-pregnant brain was responsible for my faulty memory of the the first book, even though I'd really just read it.
Then, I realized what was happening: Liars and Saints was a novel written by a character in A Family Daughter. Thus, creative differences between the two. The same insanity and drama
ensues, with some additional drama thrown in - let's hear it for Hungarian orphans purchased by Russians for prostitution who have affairs with French diplomats, who sell illegitimate offspring to wealthy Alzheimer-ailing French heiresses living in obscurity in Argentina, who is told the child is delivered to her via a European princess's interest in Romanian orphans. Whew, indeed. And that's only a small subplot!
It should be noted that in A Family Daughter, the niece and uncle who have an affair are really niece and uncle. Sorry, charlie - no hidden pregnancies which make them cousins in this tale! Luckily, no children either.
Unlike many other creative-types - Monet's million water lilies come to mind, or Pollack's splatter paintings - authors are limited in their ability to reinvent the same material. Without resorting to sequels, how can an author use a creative conceit to its fullest? I enjoyed these books because the offer one clever suggestion.
That, and they were easy to read.
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