THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608120168
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JULEE NEWBERGER
LENGTH: 61 lines
IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT OF A WATER LANDING
A Geography of Grief
CHRISTOPHER NOEL
Times Books. 273 pp. $23.
Writing about a loved one's death is like retelling the dream you had last night - it's such an intensely personal experience that it's difficult to render it as fascinating to the reader as it is to the writer.
Christopher Noel faces this challenge in In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing, a memoir about the untimely death of his fiancee, writer Brigid Clark, as he searches through their past and his now-empty present for just the right words to capture her memory.
Referring to himself as ``The Tragedy Victim . . . never been more famous, to myself,'' Noel admits he gets so much pleasure out of reminiscing that he cannot ``put down'' the story he writes. Neither, ultimately, can we.
Never mind the unwieldy title, In the Unlikely Event succeeds as an emotional geography in which Noel serves as map maker, sometimes charting territory we have all passed through, mourning the loss of those who have, as the writer puts it, ``flavored'' our lives. Other times, however, he seems to be charting lands that only exist for him - the story becomes mired in the language of his grief. And only the most exuberant travelers may be willing to follow these occasional side-trips.
But Noel acknowledges the difficulty of his task. Words are obstacles: They simultaneously bring him closer to peace with Clark's death and block his way to her. The reader empathizes with Noel's desire to conjure her image, because he can no longer picture the exact features of her face, nor can he recall the precise feel of her body, her ``otherness'' anymore. On the aftermath of her fatal car crash, he writes, ``. . . her job was to get it all at once; mine is to take it, meted out little by little, for life.''
An inexperienced scuba diver, Noel travels to Belize on a daunting expedition in hopes of an emotional recovery. Here he reveals his own character, drinking orange Fanta sodas, reveling in the landscape, and chickening out of a treacherous dive, finally acknowledging that he has confused ``self-esteem with bravery.'' By facing his worst fears, he attempts to fill the void Clark has left behind. Ultimately, the adventure is only a brief distraction from the longing that drives the narrative - as it drives Noel's life.
An entry from Clark's journal, which Noel keeps at his side throughout his travels, reads, ``(the) effort to articulate what it is to experience my being is my chief joy in life.'' Noel articulates her being vividly, as well as his own, in the dream-like aftermath of her death. He keeps the reader engaged not so much by evoking what it is to be a grief-stricken writer, as by revealing the struggles of a grief-stricken man who tries through writing - the passion he shared with his lover - to bring her back to life.
It may take Noel a volume to capture just one fleeting moment of loss, but the reader is willing to journey with him, all the while knowing it is ultimately as futile as trying to picture precisely that lost love's face. MEMO: Julee Newberger is a writer of fiction and public affairs. She
works for the National Association for the Education of Young Children
in Bethesda, Md. by CNB