Rare Objects

Summary (from the publisher): Maeve Fanning is a first generation Irish immigrant, born and raised among the poor, industrious Italian families of Boston’s North End by her widowed mother. Clever, capable, and as headstrong as her red hair suggests, she’s determined to better herself despite the overwhelming hardships of the Great Depression.

However, Maeve also has a dangerous fondness for strange men and bootleg gin—a rebellious appetite that soon finds her spiraling downward, leading a double life. When the strain proves too much, Maeve becomes an unwilling patient in a psychiatric hospital, where she strikes up a friendship with an enigmatic young woman, who, like Maeve, is unable or unwilling to control her un-lady-like desire for freedom.

Once out, Maeve faces starting over again. Armed with a bottle of bleach and a few white lies, she lands a job at an eccentric antiques shop catering to Boston’s wealthiest and most peculiar collectors. Run by an elusive English archeologist, the shop is a haven of the obscure and incredible, providing rare artifacts as well as unique access to the world of America’s social elite. While delivering a purchase to the wealthy Van der Laar family, Maeve is introduced to beautiful socialite Diana Van der Laar—only to discover she’s the young woman from the hospital.

Reunited with the charming but increasingly unstable Diana and pursued by her attractive brother James, Mae becomes more and more entwined with the Van der Laar family—a connection that pulls her into a world of moral ambiguity and deceit, and ultimately betrayal. Bewitched by their wealth and desperate to leave her past behind, Maeve is forced to unearth her true values and discover how far she’ll to go to reinvent herself.

 

Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this novel from HarperCollins.

 

Set during the Great Depression, this novel follows Maeve Fanning, a first generation Irish immigrant who was raised in Boston by her mother. Maeve has returned to Boston after a less than successful period living in New York City and moves back in with her mother. She manages to land a job in a antiques shop catering to Boston's wealthy and makes an unlikely friend in beautiful socialite Diana Van der Laar, whom she originally met in New York. Maeve has a tendency to fall into bad habits and is skillful at reinventing herself and her background as it suits her. As her story unfolds, she discovers what she really wants from life and how far she is willing to reinvent herself to claim it.

 

From early on in the novel, it's clear that Maeve was raised in an impoverished household and one that also failed to fulfill or inspire her. For instance, early on Maeve observes her mother carefully folding an old newspaper to save. "It would be saved and used again - to line the shelves of the icebox or wash windows, maybe even to cut out patterns for clothing. I used to wonder what it felt like to waste something; as a child I couldn't imagine anything more delicious or sinful than the extravagance of throwing things away" (6). Her childhood inspires Maeve to seek more from her life than her mother had and to yearn for a freedom from the poverty and conventions of her early life.

 

Maeve is a troubled character. In New York, she leads a double life of drinking and partying that she hides from her family and friends. "My life was full of cracks, ever-widening gaps between the person I wanted to be and the person I was" (19). When she returns to Boston, she sets out to reinvent herself, but along the way is forced to face those fault lines in her personality. Just as her mother reuses the newspaper for alternative purposes, Maeve skillfully creates an alternate identity as May, dyes her red hair blonde to obscure her Irish heritage, and tells her new employers she is originally from Albany, New York. In her friend Diana, she finds an accomplice in hiding both her past and her double life and someone who is also running from her reality or as Diana says, "The secret life is the only real life. Everything else is just a disguise" (134). Maeve's mother assists with this social subterfuge, acting as an almost fairy godmother, helping her maintain her blonde hair and acting as a seamstress to transform clothes for the social events that Maeve attends with Diana.

 

Although I appreciated the time period and the complexity of Maeve's character as she sought to come to terms with who she truly is, I was disappointed in the believability of several key points in this novel. Primarily, I found it difficult to believe that even as hundreds of men were losing their jobs due to the depression that Maeve would have been able to land such a cushy job. I also found it difficult to believe that Diana would have sought her out as a friend given their very different backgrounds and the circumstances under which they met. Additionally, Maeve is out at all hours, frequently staying out late drinking and partying. I found it hard to believe that her very Catholic and strict mother would have tolerated this behavior in her daughter. Finally, I found the conclusion of Diana's story, as well as that of her broth, melodramatic and difficult to buy. In addition to all these suspect plot points, the plot seemed to drag. I felt as if I waited several hundred pages to see anything happen to Maeve in her new life in Boston.

 

I previously read The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro and was excited to read a second novel by the author. Both novels are historical fiction and follow a female lead. However, this novel failed to impress me as much as her earlier work. Although I loved the premise, setting, and themes of this novel it dragged for me and its conclusion was less than satisfactory.

 

Stars: 3