nervous systems: a review of sandra hunter's losing touch
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| Lovely cover, lovely book. |
As a hypochondriac whose fears have, on occasion, proven
right, I was filled with dread on Arjun’s behalf. Each chapter is named for a
symptom: “Reduced Deep Tendon Reflexes” or “Weakness of the Facial and Tongue
Muscles.” Like any slow, degenerative illness, the cruelty of Arjun’s disease
is that, in some ways, he is kept alive to witness his own death. This loss of
physical self echoes the loss of cultural self he experienced when he
immigrated to England (his wife and children strive for Britishness while he
fantasizes about women in saris). And that
loss of self echoes the trauma he experienced as an abused child, although
we learn little about his early years.
He never used to consult any part of
himself when he stood or walked or picked up a squash racquet. I’m not myself today. If part of him
vanishes, then part of the intrinsic who-he-is also vanishes. Who is left? He
listens to his body. He learns how to wait.
Although Hunter is most certainly concerned with these
questions of selfhood, what makes Losing
Touch unique is the latter part of Arjun’s narrative—the listening and
waiting. Hunter alternates between Arjun’s point of view and his wife Sunila’s.
Neither is a “likeable” hero. Arjun is prone to anger, and even when he tries
to behave lovingly toward his baffling children, he comes across stern and
critical, making for some of the novel’s most heartbreaking moments and
reminding us that true love is the ability to triumph over our blundering
inability to communicate. Sunila can be rigid herself, as well as dogmatic and
materialistic.
We all hope that tragedy will bring out the best in us, and
the contrast between Arjun’s fantasy and the strained reality of his family
life will hit close to home for most readers, I imagine. “And for a moment it’s
possible to see it: they are the family with someone who falls down,” Arjun
thinks. “Then they pick him up and they all laugh about it, lovingly. And they
carry on. Everything is normal again.”
It’s hard to be “normal again” when you never were—when you
already felt out of place and broken. And yet this is not the story of Arjun’s
desperate downward spiral or his
triumph over adversity. It is not the story of a marriage lost and then found,
or just lost. Life, Hunter seems to know, is largely a matter of sticking
around to see what happens; of surrendering control because you have no other
choice, but finding fleeting wisdom, empathy and pleasure in its wake.
Hunter’s background is in short fiction, and each chapter is
simultaneously a vignette and a summary. As such, the language is spare and
carefully crafted, the epiphanies small and glimmering. The downside of this
style is a feeling of waiting for the story to start—but perhaps this is
intentional. How much of life do we fritter away worrying about the future or
reliving the past?
As I learned during my own rendezvous with illness, the “living
in the present” mantra espoused by countless gurus, self-help books and
internet memes is, in fact, the only way to avoid being crushed by anxiety and
sorrow. I always thought that if I mastered it (which is not to say that I
have), I would feel as free and joy-filled as a girl in yogurt ad, driving her
convertible and laughing and eating yogurt. But the reward for such Zen-ish triumph
is rarely soaring freedom, as Arjun in his humbled body knows. It’s simply
living.
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