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Dana Spiotta's new novel, “Wayward,” is about a 53-year-old woman named Samantha — Sam — Raymond, who's going through menopause and becomes a little unhinged. She leaves her husband and her teenage daughter in the suburbs of Syracuse and impulsively moves into a dilapidated Arts and Crafts-style bungalow in a crumbling downtown neighborhood of that city.

If this premise sounds melodramatic, that's not the kind of writer Spiotta is. As a long-time fan, I went back and looked at the reviews I've written of Spiotta's earlier work: In every review, I've used the word "smart." Spiotta is one of the most alert, ambitious, nuanced, and, yes, smartest of our contemporary novelists.

Because “Wayward” is set in 2017, it's not "only" about one woman going internally haywire, but about the entire country roiling in the wake of the

This story opens on a restless Sam having trouble sleeping. (Who among us cannot identify?) Here's how Spiotta describes Sam's stirred-up psyche:

Idly scanning the online real estate listings, Sam finds that elusive "something to fasten on" in an Arts and Crafts bungalow, complete with leaded windows and a tiled fireplace, advertised for "intrepid buyers only." In other words, the place is a charming ruin.

After seeing it, Sam decides, in the words of feminist poet Adrienne Rich, to "div[e] into the wreck." Only after she's written out a check for the asking price of $38,000, does Sam realize that "saying yes to this version of her life would mean saying no to another version of her life."

Spiotta's novels, always rich with ideas and atmosphere, often focus on the arts: In her 2011 book, “

,” which came out in 2016, film is at the story's center. Here, architecture connects to Wayward's larger meditations about impermanence and decay — human, structural and even national.

As Sam restores her "minimally habitable" shambles of a house, she's also casting about for answers to how to construct a meaningful life in her 50s and, also, how to come to terms with the looming end of things. Meeting up with other white women her own age at political gatherings after the election, alienated Sam disdainfully looks at their carefully angled, highlighted "silvery haircuts" and "Eileen Fisher linen pants" and surrenders to what she calls "bouts of midlife misogyny." Fortunately, the Syracuse area is rich in women's history and the nearby presence of iconic women's houses — such as those of 

 — offer Sam some inspiration from the past.

Spiotta, however, complicates things by making up a faux 19th-century figure she calls "Clara Loomis." Loomis went to medical school, fought for suffrage, and, regrettably, became a proponent of eugenics. Sam uneasily works as a paid guide at the fictional Loomis House, and has to deal with the contempt of visitors who dismiss Loomis' accomplishments and flatly label her a proto Nazi. Inevitably, Sam wonders how she herself will be judged by posterity, in the form of her own daughter. On a lighter note, Sam's tour guide patter can be hysterical — in every sense of that word. Here's a snippet of one of her lectures to a high school group:

There are subplots here about Sam's ill-but-resolutely solitary mother and her sophisticated teenage daughter who's losing herself in an erotically charged affair with an older man, but it's the character of Sam herself — messy, hurtful, foundering in late midlife — who's the compelling draw. Recently, I've become aware of the term, "crossing the crimson bridge" as a fanciful way to refer to menopause; in “Wayward,” Spiotta endows that passage with all the gravitas and unpredictability it deserves by giving us a heroine who chooses to take a flying leap off "the crimson bridge" into uncharted territory.  

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Maureen Corrigan

Author

Messy and foundering in late midlife, Dana Spiotta's heroine is roiling — along with the rest of the country — amid the 2016 election and the rise of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements.

One woman takes a 'Wayward' approach to menopause in this smart new novel

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