Eros and Thanatos 2003
3
Julie Hilden
Plume/Penguin
New York
218 pp. $13.00 (US)
Julie Hilden’s debut novel, 3, delves
into the increasingly common phenomenon of young couples with open or semi-open marriages. Hilden’s
first person narrator, Maya, and her husband Ilan do not turn to this activity through accidental
introduction or long-term marriage blues; rather, they enter the somewhat seedy environs of the menage
with a sense of the inevitable. On some level, Ilan believes his wife longs for the touch of another
woman; Maya on the other hand believes that Ilan is a lovely creature incapable of fidelity. As it
turns out they are both correct. Aware of the possible pitfalls of such a relationship, they settle
the matter prior to marriage, agreeing to be open but only in the presence and with the consent of
the other. What follows is a standard though occasionally rousing (should that be a-rousing?)
descent into sensual excess, wherein Maya discovers the limits of her sexuality and Ilan keeps
upping the ante in hedonistic and eventually sadomasochistic coinage.
The characters and their
dialogue both come across as real-world and human, and the plot development works fine for the most
part, except for a nearly unpremeditated suicide and a whizz-bang conclusion that smacks of
tacked-on Hollywood cliché. Hilden’s ideas are solid for the most part but her execution of said
ideas is weak in terms of craft. The failures of 3 come at base sentence level, and the book
is rife with them. Weaknesses and missteps in grammar, punctuation, and generic construction abound—especially
in the first quarter of the book. What should have been a brisk read—the language borders on
mainstream minimalism, and the subject does carry a fair amount of dynamic attraction—ended
up a stumbling exercise, figuratively booting me out of the text hundreds of times. (I’m still
trying to figure out what the hell “unspurled” means.) I would like to say that this difficulty
was caused by my inability to read an idiosyncratic style but such is not the case. Idiosyncrasy
without continuity or rationale is simply unforgivable, and 3 shows what happens in a young
writer’s novel when editorial inattentiveness is allowed to reign.
Given that this novel was
issued by Plume, an imprint of the inimitable Penguin, this level of weakness is more than a little
disappointing and gives fodder to the common argument that the New York publishing world is a
nearsighted and insular leviathan, responsive mainly to pretty, indigenous fish of questionable
development. Don’t get me wrong: Hilden has the gleam of talent. Her strong erotic scenes carry
the story throughout most of the novel, and generally speaking, her eye for self and character homes
in with an uncompromising stare. Unfortunately, her talent resembles that of the promising
apprentice or journeyperson. In three, maybe five years, assuming she applies herself to craft and
does not rest on her laurels, she may become a writer of significance. As things stand, she and her
editor seem to have forgotten that writers must construct sentences that can be properly construed
by the intelligent reader. In 3 as in threesomes, confusion is too often the order of the
day.
Recommended for those
easily satisfied with generic erotica but not for those readers more literarily
hungry.
