The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy

Published by Harper on June 11, 2013

The theme of The Illusion of Separateness -- the connections among people living in different times and places, and their witting and unwitting dependence upon each other -- is telegraphed by the title. Even when we are apart from the people we know (and from people we don't know), we are not truly separated.

Martin is a handyman in a retirement center where residents pass their days "remembering the lives they once inhabited." He is the first of several characters who come into focus as the novel progresses. Their stories are so diverse that The Illusion of Separateness creates the illusion of reading several separate novels at once, yet the characters have much in common, including their ongoing attempts "to unravel the knot of their lives" and, in some cases, their understanding of what it means to be hated.

Some of the characters connect in France. Martin is the adopted son of Parisian bakers who, in 1955, make a sudden decision to move from Paris to Los Angeles. In 1942, a pilot named John takes a picture of himself on Coney Island, standing in front of a Ferris wheel with Harriet, his wife. His plane is shot down over France. In 1968, a schoolboy finds the picture of John and Harriet in the wreckage of the airplane. Years later, the photograph resurfaces in another country.

Some characters connect in England, a country that becomes important to John's story. After the war, a man with a serious head injury, stripped of voice and identity and mistaken for French, slowly recovers from his wounds in Paris. Named Victor Hugo for the book in his pocket, the man eventually relocates to Manchester, where his neighbor is a young boy named Danny.

Some characters connect in the United States. Danny moves to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a film director. The retirement center where Martin works is also in LA. John's blind granddaughter, Amelia, lives on Long Island, as did John before the war.

To say more about how the characters relate to each other would risk ruining the story's considerable charm. Some of the connections, revealed in the final chapters, are surprising, dramatic but (for the most part, at least) believable. To the extent that some seem like stretches, it's useful to remember that life is full of coincidences that are no less improbable than those that Simon Van Booy invents.

The novel's best moments are reminders of how people, with generosity and kindness and sometimes at risk to their own security, make it possible for others to go on living, or to live better lives. The most involving chapters -- certainly the most intense -- are devoted to John and his struggle during the war, although Hugo's story is probably the most moving. That, again, is a tribute to Van Booy's writing ability, since Hugo isn't the kind of character with whom most readers would instinctively sympathize.

Van Booy crafts deceptively simple sentences that conceal a depth of meaning. A few moments in the novel are so sentimental that they border on corniness -- I had the occasional sense that I was being manipulated with "feel good" stories -- but Van Booy writes with such sincerity and conviction that I was able to let those reservations slide. Some of the characters articulate the novel's messages in terms that seem too obvious and the ending is a bit abrupt, but again, those are quibbles, not serious flaws.

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