In a 2023 interview with Fresh Air’s Terri Gross, Judy Blume discusses a period of “very late adolescent rebellion” as she approached her 40s. This delayed adolescence, Blume supposed, was a reaction to a too-young marriage to the wrong man. A symptom of the time.
I’m reminded of the discussion of Blume’s predicament as I read MacKenna’s 26th book, a novel that follows a menopausal Julie MacDermott, as she returns from “The Mental”, a psychiatric institution to which she was committed by her husband.
Written in a series of diary entries, Julie, far from being sick, is disabled by an adolescent yearning for beauty. Attached to a man incapable of surprise, a lousy husband, a looming spectre of utter dullness, the poetry of Julie’s mind is trapped – until a chance encounter with a man who shares in her capacity for wonder.
“Along the riverbank the whitethorn has cut loose from its buds and spouted into blossom,” she effuses in one of her early entries.
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Our protagonist struggles with the disparity between a perceived “tiny life” and the “chance that there might be something more”. But this is 1950s rural Ireland. A time in which women who “stepped out of line”, who sought or saw more than motherhood in and for their lives, were frequently punished.
This concise and contained novel doesn’t quite follow traditional narrative structure, serving more as a poem or painting (the cover art is by none other than King of Loneliness Edward Hopper) to capture a feeling, a moment in time. The action is subtle, but with Julie’s gaze focused outwards, the result is meditative rather than gratuitously neurotic.
“I was thinking about the swallows on the Barrow bank, the sky gone epileptic with the madness of their joy.” MacKenna’s prose is elegiac, ornate. However, if ever overwritten, this is at the ebullient pen of our protagonist, rather than the author.
MacKenna opts for sincerity over sophistication at the novel’s conclusion. In another book, the denouement might feel saccharine or cringey. Yet here the tone feels aligned with the adolescent esprit of our protagonist. A “mad” woman, who despite everything cannot fail but see beauty and hope in every moment.
