Who isn’t in need of a feelgood read these days? Katherine Heiny’s second novel is the perfect antidote to these anxious times, a comfort blanket of a book that charts the lives of ordinary folks in a wise and witty narrative. A central preoccupation is the importance of community, something that has become all the more important in the face of a global pandemic.
Early Morning Riser is pre-pandemic, and all the more comforting for it. Her community of Boyne City, Michigan is a small, self-contained town whose location in a slight hollow cuts the inhabitants off (quite literally with the lack of mobile phone coverage) from the obstructions of the outside world.
Primary school teacher Jane, in her mid-20s when we firsdt meet hert, has recently bought a house she can barely afford in this town many hours away from her childhood home. We soon learn why – Jane has a difficult relationship with her mother, a feisty and cantankerous dental receptionist whose no-nonsense approach to life (and to people) has shades of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge.
The presence of Anne Tyler also looms large in plot and pacing and sense of humour. As with the Baltimore great, Heiny describes the brutal comedy of everyday life, softly related. There is nothing in Early Morning Riser to scare the horses but it is full of insightful observations and witty one-liners that keep the reader interested.
In Jane’s on-again, off-again boyfriend Duncan – the local lothario who has slept with nearly every woman in town – there are echoes of Micah in Tyler’s latest novel, Redhead by the Side of the Road. Later, a shocking plot twist, expertly handled, recalls the central theme of Tyler’s Saint Maybe, where the repercussions of snap decisions play out over decades. Other contemporary touchstones include Lily King and Nina Stibbe, who both write about family and society in inventive, comi-tragic ways.
Heiny has form in this area: Standard Deviation, her acclaimed debut novel, charted the lives of a couple whose child has Asperger’s. Her short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Narrative and Glimmer Train, among others. She lives in Washington with her husband and children.
The big success of Early Morning Riser is pace. Heiny is excellent at the release of information at the right time. She knows how to expand and condense events. A pivotal afternoon can play out over a chapter or an entire month passes in a paragraph, as with this conversation between Jane and her friend and fellow teacher Frieda:
“‘Well, he wasn’t drunk, particularly,’ Freida said thoughtfully, stirring her drink. ‘And he wasn’t a migrant worker, though he was in town for the Cherry Festival. And when I woke up the next morning, he’d up and left with my best tuning whistle.’ And that was February, pretty much. Winters were long here. It was a fact.”
Heiny isn’t afraid of seismic time and plot shifts, though to say too much about these would spoil the story.
In Jane, the author has created an amiable everywoman, an ordinary heroine to root for, someone who longs to be “wise and cool and level-headed and regal and hopelessly alluring, like a single ball bearing gleaming on a black velvet background”, but who also has the good sense to acknowledge the chasm with reality.
Much of the book’s humour comes from the side characters, the mother in particular: “Deep down, Jane was unsure that her mother knew that the telephone was a two-way communication device and not a radio she could switch on and off at random.” Children are well-voiced in an original style that adds to the comedy.
Sometimes the ticks of the side characters can verge on caricature – Frieda’s obsessive singing, neighbour Gary’s inability to do anything without his controlling wife, Aggie – and their descriptions are often presented in a matter-of-fact way rather than being worked into the narrative with finesse.
The connections between the neighbours make for interesting dynamics, none more so than Jane’s feelings towards Aggie, Duncan’s flaxen-haired ex. The drama lies in the imaginings, the tensions just below the surface. Ultimately, though, the book is a celebration of community and love, or as Jane herself says of marriage:
“The joy is in the dailiness. The joy is having someone who will stop you from hitting the snooze button on the alarm endlessly. The joy is the smell of someone else’s cooking.”
