One of the best things about book series is getting to know their characters over time. Usually, in my experience, these types of series appear in the genres of fantasy, sci-fi, detective, young adult, etc. – popular with readers and historically derided by certain elites. However, I would bet that even those who only read so-called literary fiction (a genre that is difficult to define) enjoy returning to people they already know, as evidenced by the success of Elena Ferrante. Neapolitan Quartetfor example, or Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again.
While I’m a voracious, eclectic reader, I often write about fiction, and it was a pleasure to spend the past few months with the Zamarin family, Bay Area writer Sarah Stone’s 2018 contestants. Hungry Ghost Theatre and his new book, Wedding at the Seaconsisting of two linked books.
To Hungry Ghost Theatrewe are introduced to Zamarin in 1993 with their most impressive members: siblings Julia and Robert, who play with their experimental company, and their eight-year-old niece, Arielle, who is captivated by what she sees on stage. The event is Robert and Julia’s production of a fictional play about the Mesopotamian goddesses Inanna and Ereshkigal—it also refers to the Gulf War, as experimental political plays can be.
The rest of the book mostly takes place in 2004 and 2005, at times, and includes fantasy-like chapters organized as plays. Hungry Ghost Theatre follows adult Arielle’s slow and uncertain recovery from addiction with the support of her parents, Eva and Ray, and her sisters, Katya and Jenny; Julia and Robert’s conflicts within their news company, News of the World; their parents (and Eva’s) are old; and their mother’s history of mental illness. In the final third of the novel, a tragic and unplanned act of violence changes the family’s circumstances forever.
Wedding at the Sea it begins in April 2011, six years after that tragic event. Although it is not necessary to read Hungry first, I’d recommend it for a fun introduction to Stone’s latest with an understanding of what Zamarin has been through.
The first novella, Shadow Islandfocuses on Katya and Arielle, whose father Ray, recently died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving them devastated. Katya, a recovering alcoholic who is like Ray in her frustration with the sad state of the planet and its people — hunger, displacement, war, climate change — sees her spiritual vision in her living room, which gives her the opportunity to want to be the kind of person who can change, or maybe even save, the world. He does this, ironically and somewhat self-consciously, by going to Paris, to attend the Reimagining Food Justice 2011 conference at a center run by one of Ray’s activist heroes, Raine Mangot.
Arielle insists on coming, and she and Katya arrive in Paris deeply with credit card debt but they are happy: Arielle to explore the city, maybe to find some work as an actress after some disappointing reports, and Katya to be important to Raine in a way, to prove that she can do the best in the world, even if it is by directing other actions. However, instead, the sisters end up on an unexpected journey.
Arielle is slowly immersed in a dream world—or is it real, and this is a dream?—where she seems to be getting closer and closer to her dead father. Meanwhile, Katya worries about Arielle’s increasing drowsiness and the potential her sister is taking again, and it doesn’t help that she’s out of her depth at the meeting. He badly wants to be completely immersed, to understand the gloomy statistics and proposals for policy changes and aviation programs, but Katya, unlike her actress relatives, can be anything but her, and the truth is, she is lonely. Instead of finding a change at the meeting itself, she encounters something completely unexpected: She falls in love with someone who fulfills the most important role that Katya had hoped to fill for Raine. Along the way, Katya also agrees with the sad truth of being someone who cares a lot about injustice: “Regarding happiness, look, I noticed something clear, but… I didn’t feel like my happiness could be justified, but my unhappiness doesn’t give anything to the world.
The second novella (and the title) continues shortly after the end of the first, but focuses on Katya and Arielle’s aunt, Julia, and her new photographer husband as the two of them meet in Venice, Italy, where Julia has been living since escaping the brief success of Hollywood. Disabled according to the above-mentioned tragedy by Hungry Ghost TheaterJulia uses crutches and is always aware of the pain she feels in varying degrees of intensity. Readers with chronic pain will find that Stone writes about the experience with an accuracy never seen in fiction: “Still, the pain came and went. You didn’t have to be afraid of the bad times. You also had to avoid believing, in those rare times when it eased, that you would be able to know it forever.”
Julia is a pleasure to read, she knows her work in a way that helps and hinders. For example, during a period of heartbreak, “he was talking in an amazing way in history at a time that is important in the history of the world. He is considered an amazing actor by those who work with him but he also cannot help criticizing his actions as games because he believes that he has no real person to return to. But what i personally if it is not as it is wanted in the world?
Performance can be there the idea has recently been mocked and unfairly criticized onlinebut in two novels by Wedding at the SeaThe stone seems well aware of its importance and inevitability. We are always doing for others, for ourselves, and it is not easy to distinguish performance from authenticity (even more so now, when the latter has become its own kind of performance). Stone’s personal, real characters—full of idiosyncrasies, making questionable decisions—are always struggling with this problem, and it’s fun to watch. •
WEDDING ON THE SEA: COPYING NOVELSBY SARAH STONE
Ilana Masad is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and critical fiction. Masad is a novelist People and All Mother Lovers and is organizing an upcoming anthology about Bachelor franchise.
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