OPINION:
THE GIRL WHO NEVER READ NOAM CHOMSKY
By Jana Casale
Alfred A. Knopf, $27.95, 368 pages
In the very first sentence, Leda, the girl in the title of Jana Casale’s debut novel, says “I’d like to read Noam Chomsky.” But this idea is but one impulse among the many that throng Leda’s mind “scattering like any and all moments of her life.”
We meet her as a writing student in Boston, and sit on her shoulder as she assesses guys in classes and coffee shops; has girls’ nights out on dateless Saturday evenings; suffers as her stories are picked apart in workshops; observes other passengers on public transport; calls her mom, who always assures her that she’s a great writer.
In a way, Leda doesn’t doubt it, but she spends most of her time considering her linearity — slimness being a major ambition — and confiding in her friends Anne and Elle.
Her story is packed with tiny details. She wears a scarlet coat. On a cold day she clasps a mesmerizingly warm hot chocolate, only to spill it and soak her gloves. She orders “just” a Cobb salad and “just” water when lunching with Elle only because that’s what Elle is having and she doesn’t want to fall behind in the linearity stakes.
If you are over about 23, this sort of trivial stuff can have you rolling your eyes, but it is the meat of “The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky.” All that detail, the record of a thousand minor things weaves and piles and cleaves together in a vivid image of life.
Eventually Leda meets John in a class and falls for him because she spots his kindness. When he gets a job with Google, Leda foregoes graduate school to go to California with him. Ideal! She can write all day, can’t she? It turns out she can’t. They return to Massachusetts, marry, buy a house and have a daughter.
Though Leda ages as she becomes a bride-to-be then a mom, the torrent of questions and impressions and memories never ends. Indeed, it loops around, tracking backward, fast-forwarding. For example, as a student she fantasizes about becoming a lawyer and wearing a pencil skirt.
“I’d look good in a pencil skirt,” she thought. Years later she’d order one from Nordstrom, but when she tried it on she thought it made her look hippy. It didn’t, not at all. She looked long and lean in it, and when she pulled her hair back, standing sideways looking at her reflection in the mirror, she looked maybe the most beautiful she had ever looked.
Despite her intention of sending it right back, she’d neglect to return it and would find it months later buried in a hall closet, creased in a plastic bag. She’d donate it to charity. “It’s brand new. Somebody should get some use out of it,” she’d say as she handed it over.
When did this pencil skirt thing happen? The idea was planted by a conversation with Elle when they were students, but it is a much older Leda who buys it and hands it over, unworn, to a charity. The elapse of time is not really relevant however. The pencil skirt is timeless, a permanent element in Leda’s life.
Ms. Casale’s narrator quite often zips through time in this way. The effect can be disconcerting. For example, after being praised by her writing teacher “Six months and two weeks of Leda’s life were unrecognizably calm. She found a certain focus in herself that would only be revisited the summer her granddaughter was born.”
How can the narrator know this? Leda is our contemporary. She hangs out in Boston’s students’ cafes. She catches up with people on her cell phone. So how can we know about her grandchildren? Or even about the fact that she married and had a baby? Or about several other referenced events that must occur in the 2040s and ’50s if Leda is one of today’s Boston students?
Of course, the answer is that the narrator is omniscient and can give us information about Leda’s future. The effect collapses the usual timescale of the novel that traces a character’s life. Instead of several decades, we have a constant present that emphasizes the figures in the carpet, the continuity of feeling and affect that mark lived experience.
Jana Casale has several writerly talents, among them sharp eyes for detail, sharp ears for speech and a witty turn of phrase. But her deft control of time is extraordinary, and makes her first novel exciting as well as fun. Who could not love the girl who never read Noam Chomsky, though she long owned a copy of his work, always planned to look into it, but at some point in the future chucks it out?
• Claire Hopley is a writer and editor in Amherst, Mass.
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