Constance by Patrick McGrath

Published by Bloomsbury USA on April 2, 2013 

Constance Schuyler wants a better father than the one she has so, with predictable consequences, she marries Sidney Klein, an older, stuffy Englishman with a son from a previous marriage. Constance is "shackled to the conviction that her father had wrecked her life." As Sidney sees it, Constance has serious self-esteem issues resulting from her failure to gain her father's approval. Sidney believes he can give her the approval she's been missing, but he also understands and sympathizes with her father, attitudes that Constance comes to view as a betrayal. Over time resentments form and their marriage becomes tumultuous, although (at least in Sidney's mind) the make-up sex makes it worthwhile -- until it stops.

The novel begins with Constance's first person point of view, then shifts to Sidney's as he dissects Constance. Point of view alternates as the story progresses. Constance and Sidney are very different people, at different stages of life, and as you might expect, they have very different views of their relationship. Standing alone, neither Sidney nor Constance is a reliable narrator. Sidney's dispassionate tale of "reeling in" Constance and his psychoanalytic descriptions of her are evidence of his manipulative personality, a trait that Sidney refuses to recognize in himself. Constance, on the other hand, has a warped view of her father and uses it to justify her self-centered bitterness. Sidney sees Constance as a lightweight while Constance regards Sidney as controlling, just as her father was. The differing viewpoints of Sidney and Constance allow the reader to piece together a more honest portrait of each character than they are capable of providing independently.

We eventually encounter a blockbuster revelation about Constance's family that makes her feel like "a drawer torn violently from a desk and turned upside down so its contents spilled out." It's the sort of thing that could be melodramatic but Patrick McGrath plays it straight, revealing the secret and then backing up, allowing Constance to explore it, to absorb it and react to it. More family drama follows and additional blockbuster events occur toward the novel's end. While there might be one too many scenes that come close to being the stuff of a cheesy soap opera -- and in the hands of a lesser author, they would be -- I give McGrath credit for combining restraint with unflinching realism. Some aspects of the final chapters aren't entirely convincing but nothing is outrageously unbelievable.

In the end, Constance is a stark portrayal of two partners in a marriage who, notwithstanding their sentimental moments, don't understand (or care) how much pain they are inflicting on each other. McGrath reveals Constance and Sidney in such detail that, on the one hand, it's easy to understand and even sympathize with them, and on the other, impossible to like them. Sidney is a condescending academic whose conservative notions of morality and personal responsibility inform his judgments, not just of the society that is collapsing around him but of Constance. Constance compares falling in love to the clinical symptoms of depression and seems quite incapable of abandoning her grievances long enough to feel love for anyone. The novel's most likable character is probably Constance's sister Iris. She has a tendency to drink too much and to fall in love with married men, but she has a big heart, a trait Constance recognizes but is unable to emulate. Constance notes that it takes courage to be warm and understanding and generous. "It's so much easier to be sour." Self-pitying sourness is a state that Constance and Sidney both know too well.

Is it possible to like a novel without liking the primary characters? I think so, but many readers want to see themselves in the books they read, or at least want to admire the characters. Constance is probably not a good choice for those readers. But for readers who want to know how two difficult characters see themselves and each other, Constance offers fascinating psychological profiles of complex individuals.

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