Curtis Sittenfeld, she has a thing for plain. She loves plain. She writes about plain in an exciting way. She makes plain riveting. This is no small feat. It’s akin to celebrating vanilla for 300 pages and leaving readers hungry for more. The heroines of her four books — especially “Prep,” “American Wife” and her latest, “Sisterland” — are quiet, reserved people. They are unobtrusive, outwardly unremarkable. They aren’t the life of the party. They are the people you can’t remember being at the party.
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And yet Sittenfeld burns these characters into our memories. I read her best-selling debut novel, “Prep,” when it came out eight years ago, and I still remember Lee Fiora, the shy, awkward wallflower from South Bend, Ind., who finds herself at a posh Massachusetts boarding school. I still sometimes think about bookish, subdued Alice Blackwell (inspired by our bookish and subdued former First Lady Laura Bush) of “American Wife,” which came out in 2008 and was also a best-seller.
The heroine of “Sisterland,” available on Tuesday, is Kate, a woman born with an extraordinary gift (she is psychic) who wills herself into ordinariness. Her identical twin, Vi, is the more obvious stuff of novels — a loud, wisecracking, gay psychic medium who makes a prediction on the Today show that St. Louis (where she and Kate live) will be hit by a massive earthquake.
Kate is a content stay-at-home mother of two with a handsome, kind professor husband. She abandoned her “senses” long ago and is mortified by the idea of anyone finding out she ever had them. She is perfectly nice. She cares about her family. Financially, she is comfortable. She likes being a mom. She likes ice cream.
Dull, right?
And yet, Sittenfeld builds a terrific novel around decent, normal Kate. She is the heart of a novel filled with suspense. Her vibrant, attention-seeking sister is just a sideshow, a scoop of rocky road ice cream to highlight the deliciousness of vanilla.
Sittenfeld manages this by telling us the story through Kate’s point of view. It is her voice we hear in the book. And her voice is very companionable.
Here’s Kate after her skeptical husband, Jeremy, asks whether she believes in Vi’s earthquake prediction. He is supposed to be out of town on the date of the forecast disaster, and Kate wants him to skip the trip:
“How strange it was to be put on the spot by my own husband. And clearly this was the moment to tell Jeremy that I had destroyed my senses. But was it possible that all I had to do to get him to skip his conference was to agree with Vi, even if I wasn’t sure? The truth was that in recent weeks I had sometimes felt the dread of certainty and sometimes felt the opposite — the shame of Vi being laughably wrong. But being unsure wouldn’t keep Jeremy in St. Louis, and I heard myself say, ‘Yes. Yes, I do think there’ll be an earthquake on October sixteenth. I think Vi’s right.'”
Sittenfeld seats us inside Kate’s head. We know what Kate is thinking, how she thinks. We watch her work out how to react to situations that are difficult, frightening or downright strange. And this is all very comfortable and even cathartic because, after all, most of us are decent and normal and not particularly remarkable. Most of us are far more like Kate than Vi.
Here’s Kate after Vi invites Kate to join her on the Today show, on her publicist Emma’s advice:
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“‘You didn’t tell the producer I’m psychic, did you?’
“‘I described you like you are — total suburban mom, white picket fence — and the guy was like, “Even better!” Because as Emma put it — you’ll love this – you give me credibility. You’re a stand-in for Mrs. Normal American Viewer.'”
Some authors choose to construct books around people who are clearly unusual in some way. They make the unimaginable imaginable. Perhaps the main character is absurdly wealthy. Or disabled. Or sociopathic. Or a genius. Or incredibly poor or ambitious or ugly or brutal or beautiful. These books offer chances to witness lives that are extreme in some way. They shine a light on the variation in humanity, in how different our experiences can be.
Sittenfeld chose to focus on the middle. Kate is not necessarily an actual stand-in for most Americans. She is wealthier than most of us. She is white. She lives in the Midwest. She has two healthy kids and a husband. But her mind is familiar, her voice is familiar. Like most of us, she is decent and kind and not incredibly beautiful or lucky or smart or talented. She is not perfect. She makes bad choices. She has regrets. She is, as Vi put it, “Mrs. Normal American.”
About midway through the book, Vi and Kate have a terrible fight about their different approaches to life. Here’s Kate:
“‘You know nothing about being an adult — nothing about marriage or having kids or holding a real job. So the way that you constantly pass judgment on me is absurd. That’s why I bite my tongue when you do it, because it’s laughable that you have the nerve. It’s like having my manners corrected by a caveman.'”
Vi responds.
“‘You just can’t imagine that not everyone wants to spend their days changing diapers. Some of us think the world has more to offer. Can you believe it?'”
Sittenfeld’s books boil down to finding out what happens when you throw a Kate into a Vi world. Drive “Prep’s” shy teenaged Lee Fiora up to the gates of a fancy New England boarding school. Take “American Wife’s” modest Alice, have her marry a wealthy gregarious drinker who becomes president of the United States. Give “Sisterland’s” Kate a psychic twin who predicts their hometown will be hit by a natural disaster.
Lee, Alice and Kate allow Sittenfeld to write incredible and extreme plots without turning her stories into cartoonish melodrama. These characters are anchors of realism, familiar voices of normality reacting to amazing events. Because of this, Sittenfeld is able to craft stories that offer both comfort and escapism. It’s a neat trick, one made possible only by embracing the plain.
Trine Tsouderos contributes frequently to Printers Row Journal.
“Sisterland”
By Curtis Sittenfeld, Random House, 416 pages, $27