Two Women, Two Stories: The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood

Ann Hood's The Obituary Writer alternates between the stories of two women, Claire, a 1960s wife and mother in the Washington, DC suburbs, and Vivien, a single woman living in Napa, California, where she is grappling with the loss of her married lover in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, thirteen years earlier.

Pregnant Claire is struggling with the loneliness of an unhappy marriage to Peter, whom she no longer loves (or isn't sure she ever really did), and its counterpoint is her affair with a man who pays attention to what she has to say. In those pre-DNA test days, she is unsure who the baby's father may be. Despite that, Claire and her friends are caught up in the hope and promise of the impending inauguration of John F. Kennedy, even to having a betting pool on what Jackie will wear on that all-important day. Claire's life has devolved into a soap opera, with all the clichés that implies.

Vivien is the more nuanced and revolutionary woman, especially given the society and period in which she lives. Her lost lover, David, was an older man, a successful attorney who provided for her every need in a beautifully appointed townhouse they had decorated together. He had left for his office the morning the earthquake struck, and she never saw him again. She has chosen to believe that he isn't dead, but suffering amnesia from a blow to the head, and that someday he will recover, and return, so that they can be together once more.

Meanwhile, Vivien has gone to live in the small town of Napa, where she has the comfort of her closest friend, and has created a career as an obituary writer of unique talent. She is sought out for way of bringing closure to others in their losses, even as she has chosen none for herself.

These two stories twist and turn until they inevitably come together, across the country from California and eight hours north of Washington in Providence, Rhode Island.

Hood is gifted at creating verbal pictures of her settings, and she has done a fine job taking us to Denver, where an amnesiac man Vivien thinks may be David is being cared for, and driving the highway (obviously the pre-interstate US1) with Claire and Peter from Washington to Providence in a blizzard, complete with a stop at a Howard Johnson's for a rushed meal.

There is a satisfying conclusion to the novel as the stories are unspun and become intertwined.

But... what brings this novel down are its jarring editorial errors. Calling one leading character by the other's name, for example, just couldn't have been intentional, and should have been caught by the copy editor. I almost put the book down when I saw that, but since I found Vivien so interesting, I kept reading, even though the end was not really a surprise, but still provided closure for the characters and the reader.