Quite often in a close-knit community,
the less we truly know about others the more comfortable we are.
And so when the cracks in the perfect Eden of a small town in Vermont
lead to a major chasm, the fallout affects all, but especially those
who knew (but refused to acknowledge) that anything major was amiss.
The citizens of Haverill, Vermont, are rocked by a murder-suicide which
should not, in retrospect, been altogether surprising. A long-abused
wife is murdered on the day of her baptism; her violent and paranoid
husband then turns the gun on himself. The townspeople accept
the story presentation as is, until some of the other persons involved
in the tableau (minister, daughter, and the Deputy State’s Attorney)
begin to show by their inquiries and actions a series of slow cracks
in the well-polished foundation of the story of Alice and George Hayward’s
deaths. It is only when Bohjalian presents three views of
the same story does the story become complete, and while the character’s
actions are not always surprising, their responses to the deaths and
the fall-out afterwards certainly are.
Part of the story is told by a pastor
who is well-liked if slightly diffident toward his parishioners:
they respect his privacy although they often cannot understand why he
should want any. As residents of a small town, they have little
privacy themselves, and they aren’t accustomed to a man who is more
cerebral than visceral, more analytical than empathetic. But they
have Reverend Stephen Drew in their sights as soon as they learn that
he was a man capable of feeling, loving, and having secrets that didn’t
concern them. Drew, in response, is both horrified and surprised
that his parishioners could respect him without supporting or liking
him. That knowledge, along with the deaths of George and Alice,
makes him determine that he can no longer lead people in faith,
but that he may not even believe himself. Why he has
lost his faith seems clear on the surface at first; he’s subsequently
driven to question whether anyone (himself included, the reader surmises)
can be truly good. He then acts completely out-of-character by
both deserting his parishioners and seeking spiritual solace in a best-selling
author/self-help guru who is the champion of ”angels among us”.
Catherine Benincasa has seen enough
in her career to know that everyone has secrets, and that nobody is
to be taken at face value. Just as Drew once fervently hoped for
the possibility of complete good, Benincasa hopes that the bad among
us do as little damage as possible. Her glass-empty (not half
empty; sucking-fumes empty) view has served her well, although it has
made it impossible for her to be empathetic to anyone who may have a
story to tell, or a reason for his or her actions. In that respect,
Benincasa is often unlikeable (as she should be) in the story, despite
that outside of her job Benincasa is shown as a warm and loving person.
It is Benincasa who begins to question the circumstances leading up
to and surrounding George and Alice’s deaths, and it is she who makes
the reader first question Drew and his actions as well. She is one
of the spoilers of Haverill’s Eden.
Like all teenagers, Katie Hayward has
secrets; but unlike most, Katie’s provide the keys to understanding
precisely what happened in the Hayward home. Katie’s narrative
comes last and ties the other narratives together, and despite her tender
age hers is the most explicit and raw. Katie’s relationship
with her parents and with others in town make clear that, to her, Haverill
was never an Eden and the idea that for even a short time it is possible
to know peace and happiness is a false one. As Katie spends time
with Heather Laurent, the author and believer of angels, she appears
to soften somewhat. But, like so many other faces in Haverhill,
this one, too, may be a façade. -Sheila
