Occasionally, parents of new babies ask my husband and me our opinion on the best time in our children’s lives. Although we married later in life, our answer is the same: When the kids were in grade school, when homework wasn’t too tough and we spent our weekends watching soccer matches and having dinner with friends. It was, as author Maribeth Fischer might say, a season of perfect happiness. But eventually the kids grew up; some of us moved away. Others got divorced or suffered life-threatening illnesses. Happiness is fleeting, and there’s nothing like the women’s fiction genre to remind us of that.
For Claire, the protagonist in Fischer’s novel, A Season of Perfect Happiness, her season is a year filled with activities around her husband, her stepchildren, their mother, and her husband’s best friend and his wife. They’re a close-knit, if unlikely, group, and Claire, who fled from Delaware to their tiny Wisconsin town, cherishes them above all else. She’s also hiding a devastating secret, one that she knows would change the way Annabelle, her stepchildren’s mother, would view her forever. But when a person from Claire’s former life comes to town, Claire knows she’s in jeopardy of losing all the people she holds dear.
Women’s fiction is about characters and relationships over plot, and Fischer is a master at creating characters. Claire, her husband Erik, and Erik’s ex-wife Annabelle come across as fully dimensional, and their flaws are as real as they are. The writing is stellar, as Fischer blends evocative description, thoughtful narration, and realistic dialogue to tell her story. Her world-building is masterful, centering around the real-life theatre museum Ten Chimneys, and creating scenarios and characters that will inevitably collide.
I was less enamored of a few narrative tricks the author employed. Claire holds onto her secret until about a quarter of the way through the book; a technique when utilized by a first-person narrator comes across as a heavy-handed way of increasing tension. Later, she makes it clear that Claire is looking back on the story rather than experiencing it with the reader. Claire’s commentary may be designed to create suspense, but for me, I concluded that everything must end up okay because of the calm voice telling the story.
More broadly, and beyond the questions of narrative technique, Fischer poses provocative questions on the nature of responsibility and forgiveness. Does one mistake—no matter how consequential—define a person for their entire life? What if the mistake is a result of mental illness? At what point in a relationship are people owed access to each other’s deepest secrets? A Season of Perfect Happiness is a great choice for book clubs who want to delve into these issues.
Even if you’re not hiding a life-changing secret from your friends, A Season of Perfect Happiness is a wistful reminder to cherish the best times in your life. Happiness may be fleeting, but so is life itself.
Thanks to Dutton for the book in exchange for an honest review.
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