Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
What classifies a book as noir fiction?
I wasn’t entirely sure myself, but after some research here is what I learned.
In noir fiction, the characters’ inner monologue usually tells the reader what they are thinking and feeling. Most often, the characters focus on darker emotions like fear, anger, and jealousy. They also have a tendency to be self-destructive.
The themes of noir fiction typically focus on a larger system or state of being. In the case of Woman №17 by Edan Lepucki, the theme is motherhood, and just as should be expected in noir fiction, motherhood is shown in bleaker, franker terms.
This is not a book about the divine ability to create and cherish a small human life. It is not about the incredible, soulful journey of a mother as her children grow and change. This is about how one’s own mother can cause pain that then trickles down into the way one raises their own children. It’s about how one’s mother can singlehandedly dictate how their children interact with the rest of the world. The errors of the mother can so negatively impact one’s life that they then hurt others in a vicious lose-lose cycle.
Have you started gagging yet?
Trust me, half way through this book I was feeling the same way and was ready to call it quits. But, something about this story stopped me from walking away.
At first I couldn’t put my finger on it. It wasn’t that the story got me thinking about my own mother and how I handled my rough childhood. It wasn’t that the story made me wonder how I really turned out as a person. I mean, it did all those things, but it also did something else.
It entertained me. It made me laugh. It made my jaw drop. It made me so mad that Brian was amused with my huffing and puffing and complaining.
Most of all, Lepucki master crafted a story that very nearly brought me to the point of no return before making amends by signing off with the traditional happy ending where the protagonists right their wrongs (if not in an entirely traditional way, then in a way all their own.)
This story was incredible in how it presented you with a giant mess that you want to sneer at and judge in one paragraph, then sympathize with in the next.
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so many mixed emotions towards a book and its characters. Yet the main protagonists, Lady and Esther, made me want to simultaneously strangle them and befriend them.
The parallels between these two women are quite obvious from the start, beginning with their names. Lady’s real name is actually Pearl. Lady is a nickname. I found this to be kind of sad, as being referred to Lady all the time seems very impersonal and generic, as if all of Pearl’s individuality was wiped away so that others could impress their own opinions on her.
Whereas Lady’s name was bestowed upon her, Esther takes it upon herself to wipe away her identity by calling herself S. The goal here is to distance herself from her original identity in order to create a new one. She wants to be an artist that makes meaningful work, and she feels the best way to do that is to stop projecting herself onto things and instead let others project onto her.
Of course there is an argument to be made here about the expectations of women to be less self-actualizing like Lady rather than actively defining who they are a la S.
But the similarities and duality of these two women do not end here. Both also have warped relationships with their parents. Lady’s mother was domineering and manipulative. Her mother would not let Lady’s father see her and he died before Lady could really get to know him. S’s parents are also separated. Her mother is an alcoholic which meant growing up S took care of her mother more than her mother took care of her. S spent most of her time with her father. He is loving and understanding but also a bit saccharine.
Due to these warped maternal connections, both Lady and S are wary of attachment to others, especially men. They both also exhibit the common self-esteem and boundary issues of those with problematic mothering. They seem to want relationships with others without having to commit to them fully and avoid any real discussion as to why that could be. Instead they stumble along leaving a trail of chaos behind them.
We also cannot forget the problematic father relationships in this book. While the maternal relationships are the primary driving force in Lady and S’s lives, there is still an undercurrent of paternalism at play.
Lady’s father is a bit of an unknown to her. In her eyes, her mother withheld her father from her and it was something she could not forgive her mother for. Since a relationship with her father was unattainable, Lady often finds herself in relationships with unattainable men. The man who fathered her oldest son wasn’t all that interested in her at the time. He had his own mother issues to deal with.
This damaged relationship ends when Marco leaves and never returns. Lady feels as abandoned by him as she does her own father. Lady then becomes just like her mother and withholds information about Marco from Seth so it’s like Marco never existed. This of course only perpetuates the cycle of damage as her son then grows up with his own issues and rejects his mother the same way in which Lady rejected hers.
For S, having an ever present father doesn’t exactly make things better. Her father overpraises everything she does to the point that S starts to ignore his calls. It helps explain why S sleeps with Seth, who is a mute. While her father never stops talking, Seth cannot talk at all. Her father over communicates to the point that everything he says is inane. Yet with Seth, communication takes time and effort, so it is more meaningful to S.
As I said above, there were times when it was hard to feel bad for Lady and S in their self- and other-destructive moments. It felt like they were incapable of true self-reflection and realization despite their efforts to do so through art (for Lady it was writing and for S it was painting and photography). Because I liked their humor and unique characteristics, I felt nauseated the more and more I began to see them as stunted and unable to change.
But Lepucki brought the whole thing full circle in the same way that real life does: through Murphy’s Law, or what can go wrong, will go wrong.
In life, all of our darkness eventually reaches its threshold before something must break in order to let the light in. We cannot go through life leaving devastation in our wake without confronting the one thing that can turn us in the other direction.
What’s unique about this book is that both Lady and S get a consummate event that finally bursts their self-imposed bubbles. For Lady, it’s Seth catching her with Marco after they reconnect and start an affair. Recognizing her betrayal of her son, who then moves in with his step-father, is enough to shake her. For S, it’s her parents showing up at Lady’s house and revealing her true identity as an artist trying to remake herself (despite the fact that the work she had been doing up until that point wasn’t very laudable.)
Typically, I pride myself on enjoying books that break with the status quo. But in this case I was pleased when Lady and S both rose to the occasion and bettered themselves when facing these events.
In the end we find Lady making amends with Seth and with her estranged husband Karl who, throughout the book, she was pushing away for being too available. We also find S praised for an art show that exhibited photos from her life as Esther and not someone else. Both of these women are learning to live with their particular weak spots without fully succumbing to them.
