A Thousand Summers by Garson Kanin

I know I must have picked up A Thousand Summers at a library sale, but I have no idea why or when. I recognized the name Garson Kanin as one I'd seen before, but I couldn't even remember who he was until I looked him up while reading the book, and saw that he was the writer and/or director of many romantic comedies in the 30s and 40s, many of which I have seen more than once.

When I read the first few pages of the book, I thought, "Nah," but a little further in I found that the characters have an interest in Japan, an interest which I share, so I thought I would see where the story went. Then, I was pretty bored with where it went, and was just going to say, "No reason to read this," but I thought the last third of the book got better, so I thought I'd write a bit.

The story is told from the point of view of a man, Freeman Osborn, who is living in a retirement home and remembering his life with Sheila Van Anda, the love of his life. One of my favorite passages in the book is the one where we first meet the aging Freeman.

. . . Remembering all this, the old man began to cry.

His porch-mate, who had been rocking in the chair beside him, rose discreetly and shuffled away to the other side of the long porch. This is the established protocol at the Falmouth Sunset House on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The privacy of misery is respected, and it has long been understood, by guests and attendants alike, that there is nothing, in any case, to be done. They know that old people weep at many things . . .

Here it has been learned that they cannot be comforted. They cry themselves out, as they did when they were infants and cried for more innocent reasons.

The book begins, however, on the day that Sheila walks into Freeman's Pharmacy in Martha's Vineyard asking if he can remove a speck from her eye. Apparently at that time, pharmacies functioned as a sort of minor medical clinic. He is overwhelmed by her beauty, and her closeness while he is taking care of her eye. Then she leaves, and he realizes he is terribly distraught because he doesn't know her name.

A few days later when her eye is better, she comes back, and they immediately kiss (See, this is the beginning of my not liking the book.), and then she tells him that she came back to see his collection of Japanese kokeshi dolls. They then discover that they are both lovers of Japanese culture: Sheila because she lived in Japan when her husband was stationed there after the war, and Freeman because he has read everything he can find about Japan, and has even bought a piece of property that looks like a Japanese landscape, and is planning to build an authentic Japanese house there. No one else knows that he has this property, not even his wife. So despite the fact that they are married, they immediately begin to plan their life together, and how they will live in the Japanese house. (I'm not thrilled about this.)

A great part of the rest of the book is about their secretly meeting in one place or another. There is, occasionally, some dialogue that sounds like it is straight out of a screwball movie, which isn't surprising since Kanin made plenty of those. I'm not crazy about it in movies, but it really doesn't work here. So, why am I writing this?

Big Spoiler Alert

.

.

.

.

.

When Freeman and Sheila, after many years, about 20 I think, are finally about to dump their spouses and build their house, Sheila has to go on a trip that has something to do with her husband's prominent position, and she has a heart attack and dies on the ship. Freeman is devastated, of course, but this is where the book begins to get better. 

As Freeman ages, his character begins to grow. He isn't just the guy having an adulterous affair anymore. He is still thinking of Sheila all the time, but he is also thinking of others, too. It is as though he has lived his whole life focused on one thing and now he is turning outward. He develops a wonderful relationship with his daughter and her husband, and their three children. He does one very noble thing which I don't want to mention here. He makes some unlikely friends. In the whole of his life, he doesn't seem to have had friends.

Eventually, he begins to get a bit disoriented--not too much at first--but he finally reaches the point where he tells his daughter that it's time for her to take over his affairs, and he moves to the retirement home. I think that Kanin has some real insight into the mind of someone who is still fairly capable, but whose memories and sense of time are becoming more and more muddled, and who can no longer do the things they once excelled at. I'm experiencing a bit of that myself. I have to confess I was a bit jealous when he just turned everything over to someone else.

I wouldn't really recommend this book, but on the other hand, if you happen to be staying in someone else's house and it's there and there isn't much else to read, you might get some enjoyment out of it.

A couple of side notes:

When Sheila said she had been in Japan before the war, I assumed it was World War II, but then came the day that they were excited about Lindbergh making a transatlantic flight. I completely changed the images that I had in my mind.

I don't know why there is a moth on the front of the book. I don't remember there being on in the book, but every time I look at that book cover it makes me think of Silence of the Lambs.

AMDG