Holly LeCraw’s second novel defies ready summary. Is The Half Brother a love story? A novel about family? A novel of the south? A novel about New England? A messy mash-up of all of the above? Take your pick.
Charles Spooner Garrett, Harvard English degree newly in hand, has no particular talents, ambitions, or goals when he lands a teaching position at the Abbott School, in Abbottsford, Massachusetts. The Atlanta native is intimidated by New England’s rarified atmosphere but surprises himself by enjoying teaching. Charlie also likes young May Bankhead, daughter of Abbott chaplain Preston Bankhead.
The Half Brother’s characters are formulaic, at times startlingly so. Charlie rents his first Abbotsford home from interracial couple Angela and Booker Middleton. The Jewish Angela bears a first name whose Latin translation means “messenger of God”. This is minor misstep beside the Booker’s wince-inducing characterization: African-American, physically enormous, sternly humorless, ex-Air Force, now assistant groundskeeper at Abbott. His equally enormous son, Zack, is Abbott’s star athlete: football, hockey, a sideline in concussions. Fellow teacher Divya is a native of India, falling neatly into the confidante/gossip role. Her spouse, Win, is “a decade and a half” older than she. The couple share the finest home in Abbotsford, whose backyard labyrinth Win tenderly cultivates.
Preston Bankhead is compelling in the school chapel yet chilly personally. His southern wife, Florence, is no warmer. In addition to May they have three sons; two are avid lacrosse players, the third, Henry, is expelled from Abbot early in the novel for marijuana use.
Although Charlie is immediately besotted by May, she’s close to a decade younger than he. May graduates Abbott, then leaves for Paris. The couple begin a chaste correspondence. Her letters inexplicably stop. When Preston becomes terminally ill, his illness unbeknownst to May, she returns. The couple falls wildly in love.
Readers know from the outset the relationship is doomed. When Charlie telephones his mother, Anita, to share his joy, we learn exactly why. A heartbroken Charlie decides May must never know the truth. Without a world of explanation, he dumps her.
Fast forward a decade. Enter Nick, the half-brother of the title. Nick is a golden boy, physically beautiful, attracting both men and women, sweet, charismatic, kind. He adores his big brother.
Nick has recently returned to the United States after years abroad, doing charitable work in Haiti and Afghanistan. His beauty is undimmed, his charm palpable. Nick is also a math genius. That his grooming is lacking, that he’s distracted, that he cannot spell, only increase his charms. Adam Salter, Abbott’s Dean, is thrilled to hire him. The faculty are equally thrilled to welcome French teacher May Bankhead, who is returning to Abbottsford from Dallas, where she broke an engagement.
The Half Brother is related from Charlie’s viewpoint, and while we learn about his feelings for May, his Atlanta childhood, and his suppressed fury at his mother, always called Anita, there is little else to him. Nearing 40, he has never dated another woman. His sole occupation, apart from teaching, is restoring his large, decrepit house. May is cool—Charlie’s repeat adjective for her, so cool she verges on vacant. Her return to Abbott is explained in a single, tossed off line: “I need to be here.” She is endlessly, sweetly tolerant of a man she should despise. When Charlie all but throws Nick at her, she willingly catches him.
In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard writes: “One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it all, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or another for book: give it, give it all, give it now.”
LeCraw takes this advice too thoroughly. Once Nick arrives at Abbott, The Half Brother’s plot capsizes beneath the weight of at least six additional plot lines.
Nick longs for a real family Christmas. Charlie grudgingly complies, inviting Anita to Abbottsford. She arrives, collapses, loses a leg (smoking), moves into Charlie’s home and thus the narrative.
Abandoned by her pretty mother, her father unknown, Anita is raised her grandparents, who come straight from central casting, deep south: a preacher Grandaddy whose congregation speaks in tongues while casting the bastard granddaughter sidelong scornful glances. When Anita becomes pregnant, she slips a ring on her finger and escapes the city, becoming a nurse. She cobbles together a life for herself and young Charlie. When wealthy Hugh Satterthwaite comes along, Anita allows herself to be courted, married, saved. Hugh is a loving man, but his hopeless alcoholism means Anita is soon widowed.
In a small glimmer of reality, Nick’s golden persona is tarnished by post-traumatic-stress-disorder, acquired while working in Afghanistan. Unwilling or unable to help himself, Nick’s symptoms overwhelmed him. He begins missing classes, acting erratically in the classroom, and emulating Hugh by drinking heavily. It’s hardly enough to rescue the book.
Having recently concluded a two-decade career in academia, I found Abbott’s student body—high schoolers—eerily well-behaved, Henry Bankhead’s pot bust notwithstanding. Pot Nobody at Abbott is selling their Adderall or Ritalin during finals; methamphetamine, choice substance of honors students, doesn’t exist here. Nobody in Charlie Garrett’s courses netsurfs, texts, or plagiarizes. None bear the sense of entitlement borne of endlessly approving parents. None of those parents hover in helicopters, threatening to land in Charlie’s classroom. As for Charlie, never once do his students frustrate or annoy: they are never anything less than “beautiful”.
The Half Brother continues this crazy ride to the final page, concluding with minimal resolution, leaving the reader exhausted.
Scathing book reviews can be easy to write and even easier to read, reviewer and audience utterly oblivious of an author’s feelings, of the work invested in the novel we just happily ran through the mud.
In cases like this, when a book reviewer dislikes a book, it’s critical to remember that book reviewing is a privilege, not a right. Disliking a book isn’t a wholesale condemnation of an author or her work. The fact that LeCraw has managed to publish two novels in today’s market is admirable. hat she further managed this while raising three children speaks to the great devotion she brings to writing. Her juggling ability is incontestable, both in life and art: few of us are able to raise a family while writing, much less a novel containing multiple plot lines. If The Half Brother wasn’t to my liking, perhaps others will feel differently.