Another Look at 'Carry the One' by Carol Anshaw

Still wondering what gift to take to your Winter Solstice/End of the World party on Friday? Make it Carol Anshaw's novel Carry the One [Kindle]. As we approach the darkest day, let's speak frankly. Sometimes men and straight women skip over books by lesbians. Don't. Michio Kakutani and gay gods love Carry the One. Did you notice 75% of its boosters on Thebes' survey are male? 

Because I cruelly, unfairly limit writers to 100 words of praise for their choices, I don't think anyone had space to convey the special power of this novel, which is its effortless, exacting depiction of the passage of time. In just 288 pages, Anshaw captures the ebb and flow of family life, relationships, and artistic careers over 25 years. What more do you need about the current state of masculinity than to watch an adorable boy who insists on wearing capes everywhere morph into a sullen teenager who spends all his free time working out and all his spare cash buying weight-gain protein supplements? 

Ultimately, with the lightest touch, the novel is about what happened to America from the 80s to 2008. Are you sure you can stand to miss out on a book that does this? 

“The night had been long and arduous. And pointless. She had not moved Jeff to think in a larger way about the world. She only pissed him off and put some final punctuation on an already run-on friendship. She was losing her belief in the possibility of changing people. It wasn’t so much that they were in opposition to her, or that they held their own beliefs so strongly. Rather, they appeared to have lost interest in belief itself, as though belief were tennis, or French films. And this was so discouraging Carmen had to put a lid over the abyss or risk falling in.”

Get Anshaw's three earlier novels Lucky in the Corner [Kindle], Seven Moves [Kindle], and Aquamarine. Her great story The Last Speaker of the Language is the opening piece in this year's The Best American Short Stories 2012 selected by Tom Perrotta.

Comments

[Jen_g]

I just read this and then went out and bought it for a friend--the book stayed with me, as a feeling, and buoyed me up in a way I can't quite explain.