January 15, 2002

SUZANNE Berne won Britain’s prestigious Orange Prize a few years ago for her first novel. Hence much is to be expected from such an auspicious start. But I suspect she has become so mired in domesticity and the quaint towns of America’s north eastern sea board that she has lost the plot and lighted on morality instead for this, her second novel.

The story such as it revolves round Mirella and husband Howard. He’s an architect with feelings and she’s a lawyer with energy. And naturally they have far too little time to spend with their two children. The elder is endlessly demanding and the younger one backward. Then along comes nanny Randi who is too good to be true: the perfect arrangement of the title. She does all the domestic things, cleaning, cooking and most importantly child nurturing that Mirella and Howard should be doing. But this is America and they have talents which call them away from these basics of life.

And of course this being a contemporary American novel we have hilarious, pinpoint accurate accounts of the to-ings and fro-ings in this busy, busy household. We hear Mirella listing all the interminable things she has to do just to get started in the morning (makes me wince with pain at the thought). Then there are her cell phone conversations with her business partner on her long drive into work. Howard is forever ruminating on modern urban living as he designs the perfect housing estate for his local community. And Randi dreams up a lot of lies and fantasies which keeps the reader transfixed as to what horrible tragedy she is going to inflict on this hapless family.

But Randi’s efficiency and day dreams have a more unsettling effect on the family: it gives them time to think and when they do they are unable to cope. Mirella goes to bed and Howard has an affair. Then the two have a row and separate.

Suzanne Berne has inadvertently revealed the weak link in the American way of life: time is to be gobbled up in hectic activity and thinking is solely for solving short term immediate practical problems. She shows the chaos which follows when people leave this template. Most of us outside America have yet to adopt this template for life much as the Americans would like us to. It is intriguing that this prize winning novelist has revealed the faultlines.

 

A perfect arrangement

By Suzanne Berne

Viking

ISBN 1565122615

320pp. US$23.95

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