Ginny is fifty-nine, divorced, unemployed, and just recovering from rock-bottom after going cold turkey on alcohol and painkillers. She starts by reconnecting with her two adult sons: Rob, living in a six-person polyamorous commune in Ohio, and Miles, living and painting with his boyfriend in Key West. Rob and Miles both have their own challenges to face, and it’s in loving and supporting them that Ginny finds space to reconnect with herself.
Set in the early ‘70s, John Thorndike’s THE PASSIONATE SISTER is a fascinating period piece of relational history. In one moment, Ginny watches her sons engage in casual physical affection, wonder-struck with the realization that she and her ex-husband never modeled this type of healthy touch. The boys must have discovered it elsewhere, for themselves. This novel is a stirring reminder that “queer” communities—be they gay men living in monogam-ish domestic arrangements, or straight swingers deliberately challenging norms of monogamy and capitalism—have long been part of the fabric of American life; and they have often done hard, exploratory emotional work that’s since trickled outward into the larger culture. Even though such countercultural arrangements are not without their own challenges, and necessarily end (just like straight, monogamous relationships) for one reason or another, THE PASSIONATE SISTER shimmers with gratitude for these pioneers in loving.
The text, however, is also about non-sexual love. There’s a thrilling, thoughtful balance between one arc (long, slow stretches in which Ginny cares for a young man dying of a degenerative disease) and another (the frenetic energy of caring for young children). Sex is still present here, but it assumes a different emotional valence. THE PASSIONATE SISTER evokes Sharon Olds at times, in the raw physical realities of caring for the dying. The mouth, the genitals, and the anus all smolder with dissipating erotic heat, sometimes still flaring up but less and less frequently. The complexities of child-rearing have a different relationship to sex, evoked less physically. Ginny is cognizant of her own divorce and the effect it had on her sons, and as she watches Rob navigate through polyamory (and a particularly difficult partnership), she’s keenly aware of how children’s development is shaped by the sexual lives of their parents. Realizations and meditations like these make THE PASSIONATE SISTER a satisfying, rewarding, deeply human reading experience.
These thematics are carefully displayed through frank, somber prose. From the early premonition that “[the] slate days of winter are coming,” the text leans into plain words and plain syntax, with an eye for beauty that never allows prettiness to overshadow clarity. That allows the prose to support the deliberate pace of the action: humans living moment to moment, struggling to understand themselves and others, to be their best selves for the brief time they have.
Slow, closely observed, and heartfelt, John Thorndike’s THE PASSIONATE SISTER conveys the profound terrors and ineffable joys of the human condition.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader