Vacuum in the Dark by Jen Beagin

Published by Scribner on February 26, 2019

Mona Boyle, the beleaguered cleaning lady from Pretend I’m Dead, returns in Vacuum in the Dark. Someone is leaving hidden poops in one of the houses she cleans. That’s Mona’s life in a nutshell. Mona has an affinity for certain vacuum cleaners and an obsession with cleanliness that is probably symbolic of an unfulfilled desire to clean up her messy life.

The new imaginary companion in Mona’s head is Terry Gross, a sympathetic but honest companion, as one might expect her to be. Mona has gotten over Mr. Disgusting, more or less, but has replaced him with a new man she calls Dark. Of course, Dark is a less than perfect boyfriend, if being married and dishonest count as imperfections.

Mona believes she occupies a “very real place” between straight and gay, real because it isn’t the “fake, slutty island or amusement park” that bisexuality is often imagined to be. She has a new house to clean, owned by Hungarian artists with too many cats, and is attracted both to the wife and to the couple’s furniture, which she likes to fondle. Like her other clients, the Hungarians either want to have sex with Mona or include her in an art project.

Mona’s life continues to be isolated, despite her intimate interaction with various clients, but she finds a friend and kindred spirit in Maria Maria, another cleaner with whom she bonds. Late in the novel she meets yet another man and her life changes, as lives must. Whether the change is an improvement is unclear, as changes often are. When confronted with a choice between boring and stable or exciting and life-shattering, Mona always knows that whatever choice she makes will be wrong.

Vacuum in the Dark explores Mona’s experiences before she came to Taos. Some of those incidents are distressing, but the drama is wisely underplayed, preventing the story from becoming maudlin. At some point, Mona returns for a visit to her mother, giving the reader additional insight into Mona’s formative relationships. All the details of Mona’s past inform the reader’s understanding of the quirky person Mona has become. The reader can sympathize with Mona while appreciating her ability to cope, however shakily, with the life into which she has been thrust.

Jen Beagin has the kind of wit that sneaks up on a reader. She assembles sentences that seem to be informative until they suddenly become absurdly funny. Vacuum in the Dark is perfect for fans of dark humor. Mona’s observant nature, along with her snooping through the houses she cleans, gives her more knowledge about her clients than a cleaner should probably have, but her discoveries are a fertile source of laughter. Her self-discoveries are also amusing, but they add humanizing depth to the ongoing story of Mona’s life. It is an engaging story that could easily continue to entertain readers throughout upcoming stages of Mona’s life.

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Pretend I'm Dead by Jen Beagin

First published by TriQuarterly Press (Northwestern U.) in 2015; published by Scribner on May 15, 2018

The wry, low-key humor in Pretend I’m Dead keeps Mona’s isolation and sadness from overwhelming the reader. Mona is 24 and living in Lowell, working as a cleaning lady and volunteering in a needle exchange program because her guardian, Sheila, impressed upon her the need for service. Mona sees dirt everywhere and loves to clean, presumably a metaphor for her desire to clean up her life. Mona’s need for a guardian can be traced to less than ideal parenting, the disturbing nature of which the novel eventually reveals.

Mona fantasizes about a 44-year-old junky she secretly names Mr. Disgusting, because his clothes are dirty. When they actually go out together, after he gets out of rehab, they develop an instant rapport. He has a gentle charm and an agile, well-informed mind. Mona becomes attached to Disgusting because: “Like cancer, he had a way of trivializing the other aspects of her life.”

Following Disgusting’s pre-relapse advice, Mona moves to Taos. Much of the novel’s humor after that point centers on the people she meets. The insufferably smug couple who live in an adjoining townhouse (she thinks of them as Yoko and Yoko) want to be Mona’s mentors, to teach her how to become her best self. They are walking self-help books with a zen slant. When Mona finally finds customers who need a cleaner, they have their own peculiarities. One collects angels; she suspects another of having an incestuous relationship with his daughter. One customer seems to have an asshole fixation; another is a psychic who can’t stop confessing to evil thoughts and deeds. Mona doesn’t know how to react to the surprises she encounters, and for the most part, doesn’t — a good choice, since when she does react, her reaction is inappropriate.

Mona’s behavior might be explained by her unconventional and somewhat disturbing childhood, memories of which are occasionally triggered by people in her present. Her memories, however, tend to merge into fantasies and may not be all that reliable. The fact that she thought her dolls were spying on her suggests that Mona’s mental health issues are longstanding. On the other hand, a spiritualist whose home Mona cleans either has psychic powers or makes very good guesses about Mona’s past. Ambiguity is one of the novel’s charms; Jen Beagin lets you believe what you want.

Mona’s sense of humor is askew, maybe to the point of being warped. She isn’t the kind of person, or character, everyone would like, but readers who relish the offbeat in characters and acquaintances might fall a little in love with Mona. Her story is alternately sad and very funny. She might be maladjusted, but who isn’t? Mona doesn’t connect with a lot of people (and given the people she meets, that’s not surprising), but she has cultivated the ability to trust people, even people who would be judged untrustworthy by others. She might sometimes pretend to be dead (at least 412 times, judging from the pictures she's taken), but she’s still living, and the novel offers the hope, easily shared by the reader, that her life might one day be better. If you’re looking for a novel that’s a little strange, a little sad, often funny, and ultimately life-affirming, you might want to give Pretend I’m Dead a try.

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