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The famous opening line of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” reads: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Like this classic, Julia Pierpont’s novel “Among the Ten Thousand Things” is fascinated by the intricate dynamics of an unhappy family. And, true to form, it is a definitively unique unhappy family—part of the genius in this novel is the smart, millennial twist on the tested family drama.
The Shanley family, residents of Manhattan, live a way of life that has been created by modern times. Deb and Jack, the matriarch and patriarch of the story, are artists by vocation: Jack works as a semi-famous sculptor and Deb, an ex-ballet dancer, now teaches dance classes.
There was a time in history where creative types would’ve lived, for the most part, Bohemian, nomadic and unconventional lifestyles. But since creative professions are increasingly more accepted, Deb and Jack live a fairly normal, urban lifestyle in their Manhattan apartment on the Upper West Side with their two children: Simon, the secretly rebellious, experimenting, angsty teen, and Kay, the 11-year-old Seinfeld fan-fiction writer.
As the novel opens, the doorman hands Kay a package with instructions that it is “for mommy;” Kay, who suspects that this may be a gift or surprise, instead opens the box to find explicit letters and emails exchanged between Jack and his mistress, with whom he maintained a long term affair.
As this affair begins to expose itself to the entire family, Pierpont explores the different and excruciating ways an event like this one affects every single Shanley.
At times funny and at times poignant – yet always clear and exacting – Pierpont’s remarkable ability to delve into the viewpoints of all of her characters is evident here. Even though Pierpont is just 28, she seems to have the wisdom of someone who was lived through middle age and seen first hand the outcome of the kinds of events she details.
The prose in “Among the Ten Thousand Things,” while not terribly layered or complex, has all the precision of someone who has been writing much longer than Pierpont.
She is straightforward without ever being blunt or gliding over any small detail. In fact, one of the only (minute) faults about this book would be the strange, intense description of seemingly random things, like meals of pizza or chicken and rice.
Pierpont also takes an incredible structural risk halfway through the novel, where she jumps forward into the future and reveals how the events of the novel eventually play out.
While some would see this as “ruining” the novel, it instead is an important and effective choice to force the reader into a new perspective on the events. Instead of reading through the novel wondering, “what happens next” (which would be easy to do with a book this fantastic) the reader is a more astute observer of the nuance of the action and emotion of the novel as it plays out.
As inviting, enthralling, and well-written as it is, “Among the Ten Thousand Things” is sure to be a don’t-miss book for this summer.
Other things not to miss—Julia Pierpont’s appearance at Square Books right here in Oxford today, today at 5 p.m.
