The Shades by Evgenia Citkowitz

Published by W. W. Norton & Co. on June 19, 2018

Catherine and Michael Francis have been clinging to each other “out of fear and habit,” but the habit is no longer enough; “once the wrecking ball was in motion it was near impossible to stop.” It is difficult for a marriage to survive the death of a child, and there was “a remoteness that created a space between them” even before their daughter Rachel died in a car accident. Michael is living in London to be near his work; Catherine has moved to their country home to be near their son Rowan’s school.

Catherine has grieved the death primarily by blaming herself for bad parenting. She is trying to return to normal by losing herself in the management of the art gallery she owns. Michael is embracing a spiritual approch to coping with death. Rowan apparently repressed his feelings and ran from grief, which is why he wanted to attend a school outside of London, but his therapists agreed that he was taking charge of his emotions in a time of helplessness. Rowan believes he is the only family member who wants to remember Rachel honestly, and the only one who understands that the point of death is to reinforce the urgency of life. But Rowan also blames himself for Rachel’s death, for turning his back on the role she had assigned him as her protector.

It isn’t easy for the reader to decide whether Catherine’s sudden grievances about her husband and friends are legitimate, prompted by a closer examination of her life in the wake of a profound loss, or if Catherine has simply become dissatisfied with everything and everyone (but especially herself) as a result of that loss. Additional family drama comes from Rowan, whose choices about his future are not what Michael expects (or at least wants) them to be. Whether Rowan’s choices are good or bad is unclear, as is often the case when children make choices that their parents oppose.

The characters in The Shades are stronger than the novel's plot. Its focal point is a young woman named Kiera who comes into Catherine’s life about a year after Rachel’s death. Kiera tells Catherine that she once lived in the old house that Catherine now occupies. Catherine relishes the idea of Kiera joining her in her home, occupying the room that was once Rachel’s. Rowan and Michael are less sure that Catherine is making a wise choice. The reader is encouraged to wonder whether Kiera is being entirely candid with Catherine, and whether Catherine’s obvious desire to have Kiera act as a surrogate for Rachel is healthy.

The Shades (a term that refers to souls of the dead, at least in the opera L’Orfeo) illustrates how difficult it is for parents to be kind to each other when faced with the loss of a child, a time when love and kindness matter most. Michael’s awakening “to the holiness of existence” is a bit much, but it provides a nice contrast to the very different interior world that Catherine inhabits. The characterizations and Evgenia Citkowitz’s precision with language are more impressive than the plot, which culminates in a strange, out-of-the-blue climax that is meant to cause the reader to reinterpret some of the rest of the story. I generally like endings of that nature, but this one seemed artificial, as if Citkowitz needed to create a stopping point and hit upon a clever way to end the story. Still, The Shades succeeds as a character-driven novel, even if it doesn’t succeed on every level.

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