The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (3 page)

Having an affair does not always destroy a long-term partnership, and if you’re the aggrieved spouse who suspects or knows that your partner is having an affair, it’s worth taking courage from Siri Hustvedt’s
The Summer Without Men
, an intriguing take on the cliché of older man leaves wife of thirty years to try a younger version on for size. When her husband, Boris, announces he wants a “pause” in their relationship, Mia feels all the things you’d expect, and which you may feel too: humiliated, betrayed, and enraged. She ends up spending time in a psychiatric unit. (For help in dealing with this phase and to avoid temporary madness yourself, see: Anger; Rage; and Broken heart.) But then she takes herself off to the backwater town in Minnesota where she grew up, and where her mother still lives in an old
folks’ home. Surrounded by various women who for one reason or another are living without men, Mia heals a vital part of herself. Sometimes, a relationship can be better for a dramatic “pause” in which grievances are aired—by both parties. And if you don’t want to return to a partner who has abandoned you, temporarily or otherwise, a summer without men (or women) may well give you the strength to forge ahead alone (see: Divorce).

The breaking of trust causes deep wounds, and for many couples recovery is just too hard. If your partner has been unfaithful, you have to be honest with each other and decide between you if your trust can be rebuilt. If you’re the one having an affair (or tempted by it), have a go at unleashing your unexpressed self within your marriage instead (to get some ideas, see: Stuck in a rut). You’ll save everyone a lot of pain and trouble if you achieve it, and it may make both of you feel better about yourselves.

See also:
Dissatisfaction
•
Guilt
•
Jump ship, desire to
•
Midlife crisis
•
Regret
•
Trust, loss of

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

MARINA LEWYCKA

A
May-to-December romance tends to worry those observing the relationship more than those actually having it. But the disapproval and suspicion of others can be undermining, and if you are on the verge of falling into the arms of someone significantly older or younger than yourself, it’s worth asking whether your relationship will be strong enough to withstand the ingrained cultural prejudice against large age gaps that persists in the West.

The first thing to establish is what you’re both in the relationship for—and whether either of you is in any sort of denial about your own or your partner’s motivation. When Nadia’s eighty-six-year-old father in
A Short History of Traitors in Ukrainian
announces his engagement to Valentina—a thirty-six-year-old Ukrainian divorcée with “superior breasts” and an ambition to escape her drab life in the East—she gets straight to the point: “I can see why you want to marry her. But have you asked yourself why she wants to marry
you
?” Papa knows, of course, that she’s just after a visa and a posh car in which to drive her fourteen-year-old son to school, but he sees no
harm in rescuing her and Stanislav in return for a little youthful affection. She will cook and clean for him, and care for him in his old age. That she’ll also clean out his meager life savings and bring them all to their knees with boil-in-the-bag cuisine is something he refuses to acknowledge, however, and it takes a good deal of teamwork between Nadia and her estranged “Big Sis” Vera to persuade him to open his rheumy eyes to the damage this “fluffy pink grenade” of a woman is doing to their family.

Yet you’d have to be a bit mean-spirited to begrudge the elderly tractor expert the new lease on life that Valentina, for all her faults, gives him. As long as both parties understand and accept each other’s motivations, a relationship between two people at opposite ends of the innocence-experience spectrum can be a wonderfully symbiotic thing. There needs to be openness on both sides, though, and no game playing. If you’ve got that, you have our blessing. Fall away—whatever the age of those arms.

Logan’s Run

WILLIAM F. NOLAN AND GEORGE CLAYTON JOHNSON

•   •   •

Jitterbug Perfume

TOM ROBBINS

I
n an age where almost every person in the public eye has ironed away their wrinkles, Botoxed their frowns, and banished gray hair forever, we can understand the impulse to flee the first signs of aging the way a rabbit would run from a fox. Growing old gracefully is a lovely idea . . . for your grandparents. But when it starts happening to you, it’s hard to see where gracefulness enters into the picture.

Several novels—generally in the realm of science fiction and fantasy—indulge the notion of banishing old age forever. In
Logan’s Run
, for instance, billed as a “terrifying novel of the twenty-third century,” the authors William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson have invented a seemingly carefree (though postapocalyptic) world in which smooth-skinned young people indulge in no-strings-attached sensual romps in between bouts of cosmetic surgery. Work, such as it is, amounts to little more than hobbies, and there are no frowning oldies to scold the slackers to behave themselves and grow up. All this may sound like delicious, escapist wish fulfillment, until it dawns upon you that, even in the fanciful world of sci-fi, avoiding old age means dying young. (You knew
there had to be a catch, right?) Yep. Youth’s stuff will not endure, and the frivolous denizens of Nolan and Johnson’s futurama are put to sleep—
permanently
—on their twenty-second birthdays. A fleet of enforcers called “Sandmen” hunt and trap the “runners” who perversely decide, as the deadline looms, that they wouldn’t mind a few crow’s-feet after all. Logan, the title character, is one of the most dedicated of these Sandman vigilantes—until his own twenty-second birthday looms. Which prompts, of course, his “run.” But where can you run to in a world without old folks’ homes? Whenever you get depressed about being physically past your peak, medicate with a dose of
Logan’s Run
and be grateful for your comparative longevity.

King Alobar, the hero of
Jitterbug Perfume
, Tom Robbins’s exploration of a similar scenario (set not in the future but a fictional eighth century of the past), has very good reason to dread the approach of senescence. It is customary for his tribe to commit regicide with a poisoned egg at the king’s first sign of middle age. Here we distill the essence of
Jitterbug Perfume
in order to give you Alobar’s recipe for eternal youth. For a fuller exposition, read the novel in its entirety.

INGREDIENTS

1 eighth-century king on the brink of middle age

1 immortal, goaty god giving off a strong stench

1 vial of perfume that has the power to seduce whole cities when released

1 measure of Jamaican jasmine, procured by the beekeeper Bingo Pajama

1 most vital part of beetroot

METHOD

Fold ingredients earnestly inside a French perfumery until combined, adding at the last moment your beetroot’s vital part. Breathe in a never-ending loop while you fold. Now ensure that the Bandaloop doctors preside over your potion while you take a hot bath. Then achieve orgasm with your sexual partner, drawing all the energy from this act up into your brain stem. Repeat daily for a thousand years.

If you have not by then achieved your aim, take Alobar’s best advice of all: lighten up.

See also:
Baldness
•
Birthday blues
•
Old age, horror of

The Corrections

JONATHAN FRANZEN

•   •   •

Family Matters

ROHINTON MISTRY

W
e wish this ailment on all of you. To have aged parents is something to celebrate, the alternative being to have faced their deaths before their time (see: Death of a loved one). However, one can’t deny that people sometimes get annoying when they get old. They become crankier, more opinionated, less tolerant, more set in their ways. And on top of it all, they become physically incapacitated and need looking after, forcing a quite disconcerting reversal of the parent-child relationship. To that end, we address aging parents as a condition requiring a salve as well as a celebration. We recommend two excellent novels with this theme at their heart, revealing the practical and psychological effects of aging parents on the caring—or uncaring—children.