The Great Lenore

When I first met Lenore, she’s been dead for four days.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. She stood on the back patio with water dripping on the back patio with water dripping from her hair. She looked cold. “I feel awful for barging in like this, I hope I’m not being a bother. I couldn’t go next door, you know.”

“I know,” I said.

The Atlantic stretched out behind her like an angry black sheet. The rain chased itself into the water.

In J.M. Tohline’s novel The Great Lenore, Richard is an author staying in Nantucket during the winter for the peace and solitude, struggling for inspiration for his next book. Next door is the vacation home of the Montanas, a gaudy structure Richard calls “The Palace”. Richard has recently been introduced to Maxwell Montana and the Montana family invites Richard over for Thansgiving. The Montana family consists of a mogul father, who is a snob only interested in finance and business, the Italian mother fussing around the kitchen and three children: the married son Chas who doesn’t measure up, the daughter Cecilia, and Maxwell who drinks and does drugs with abandon. The family is accompanied by the father’s perfect employee Jez. And he is introduced to the idea of Lenore, Chaz’ wife, but not the actual person as she is in London visiting family.

Richard finds himself becoming entwined in the family, even more so when the plane Lenora is traveling on crashes with no survivors. The family goes into mourning but unbeknownst to them, Lenora left the plane before it took off. What would you do if you met a beautiful woman, one who is perfect in almost every way, alluring, personable, with an “aura of perfection”, and she asked you to do something different, to help her keep a secret, to spy for her? This is the question J.M. Tohline’s main character must answer because Lenore asks for his help so she can have closure before she starts a totally new life. Lenore wants to know how her absence affects the Montanas. She knows her husband was having an affair and she doesn’t much care for the rest of the family and wants to know if they feel the same way.

Richard readily agrees to this, not only because Lenore is so alluring, but also to satisfy his own curiosity. Earlier Richard had explored the Montana’s house when no one was home:

A family like the Montana’s – so spoiled and affluent and overflowing with the possibility of fascinating adventure – who knew what I might find? Who know what secrets they hid?…I sought no treasures. I intended no harm.

I was merely a ghost who wandered through a world in which he existed but did not belong.

Conversations rose and merged and dwindled. Words that seemed important at the time were sucked away and forgotten the moment they hit the air. The days dragged on for ages, and they disappeared in a flash.

A life compromised of nothing more than food and shelter and stories…and a desperate search for meaning inside the muck and mire of a muddy existence.

Throughout the novel Richard often references his own personality and how people use him “as if my reticence and contemplativeness provide for my social counterpart a sort of empty vessel, into which they may pour all the elements they desire me to have.” It is this personality quirk that draws Richard deeper into the Lenore’s world and the life of the Montana’s and at the same time sets Richard apart, isolated by differences in rank, occupation, as well as the secret he carries about Lenore.

This wasn’t a comfortable read – there are serious ramifications of Lenore and Richard’s actions. The reader is given a picture of people in mourning and it isn’t necessarily pretty. And I didn’t much care for any of the characters. But it turned out to be a worthwhile read not only for the atmosphere Tohline creates but also for his musings on writing and books –the writing experience, the conversation the author tries to have with the reader, and the interplay between novel and reader. For example, Tohline writes:

I think of a book.

I think of the finished product – how we hold it and feel its texture while we dive within its pages. How we sometimes read a book in a single, exhilarating sitting.

For those of us whose lives are too busy to allow for single-sitting reads I think of how a book accompanies us on the subway, or how we keep it in our car. How we sit in bed at night and burn through the pages until we’re ready to fall asleep. I think of that fortunate fraternity who is lucky enough to have found someone to love – how that someone lies beside you with their body curled and their eyes closed, saying, ‘Darling, please turn out that light. Please, I’m ready to fall asleep.’ And how you say to them, ‘Just one more section, sweetheart. Just one more chapter.’ And your love sighs, and you rest your hand on their back, and you continue to turn the pages until you can’t keep your eyes open one more minute.

I think of the manner in which we behold a book – the manner in which we behold any work of art, in fact, whether it be music or paintings or stories – how we explore, and absorb, and rejoice and enjoy, and how we so rarely stop, and so rarely think: what did it take to make this?

When I finished this novel, I truly wondered how the author made it – how did he write this book with characters that are not particularly admirable or loveable, with a story that, at times, redefines normal (even if we have fantasized about the effects of our own death, seriously who really acts like these people), and a staccato writing style with the sweeping backdrop of winter coastal New England, how does he take all these desperate items and form a cohesive whole – one that I stayed up reading saying – just one more chapter, just one more. I don’t know how the author did it – all I know is I would like seconds please.

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