Grab the Lapels

Syd Arthur by Ellen Frankel

Ever since I discovered Pearlsong Press, I’ve been a loyal customer. The publisher focuses on fat bodies and disability, never publishing anything that humiliates or discriminates against the aforementioned groups. Because they are a (very) small operation, sometimes the covers aren’t terribly appealing, but I always overlook that for the goods inside.

Syd Arthur by Ellen Frankel opens with the story of Buddha’s origins: he was the spoiled prince Siddhartha, sheltered from difficulty and reality, until he left the palace and became the Buddha we all now know. Next, we meet a spoiled Jewish suburban house wife named Sydney Arthur. Her daughter has just left for college, and Syd finds herself aged 43, constantly shopping high-end brands and dieting, doing nothing to maintain her home because she and her husband have a maid and money. Her one chore seems to be walking the dog her daughter convinced the grandparents to get six years ago, and now that the daughter is in college, Syd is burdened by the little shit.

In the first 10% of the book, I had considered not finishing it. All the characters talk about are diets. Not only is that boring, but it starts to wear on my mental health. When they stop dieting, which means they quit eating Lean Cuisine, they’re just constantly eating pastries and candy and pasta. I don’t like the way the author suggests that fat people are one way or the other. Then, there’s the part about Syd feeding the dog half of all of her desserts, including a chocolate bar. Syd fed the dog half of all desserts to divvy up the calories, so she’s not as “bad.” I was really getting pissed off because she admits she might want his little life shortened a bit because she never wanted this dog anyway. I persisted, though, because I trust Pearlsong Press.

Finally, I kind of got what was going on when Syd calls an invisible fence company. She’s adamant that she can just toss the dog outside to do his business, and he won’t run away. The sales associate emphasizes that there is training involved, which Syd relents to when she thinks it’s just one day (and she’s pissed when it’s actually several days). I finally got a better vibe for how selfish Syd is, which is the point of the whole first part of the novel. Perhaps I hated her so much that I couldn’t see what Frankel was doing?

After two local high school seniors crash their car at night, leaving one dead and the other in a coma, Syd realizes she’s wasting her life while one boy is fighting for his in the hospital. She goes on a journey that had me laughing because it was similar to one I did. First, she starts with yoga, buying the mat, clothes, candles, etc. Next, a classmate convinces her to join an ashram (and here’s me realizing I probably joined a cult). A sucker for shopping, Syd practically cleans out the gift shop buying statues of deities, bracelets, meditation pillows, a CD player that looks like a conch shell, and a framed photo of their living leader.

I started hitting my stride with the novel, noticing patterns during which Syd fails to realize she’s still shopping as part of her identity, though now it’s meditation-related products. The meditation organization still focuses on consumerism while preaching oneness and wholeness. As Syd catches on, we watch her undergo important changes, including navigating her old friend group (there were four women, giving me Sex and the City vibes) who brunch and shop and don’t like this new Syd — vegetarian, spouting words they don’t know, concepts they can’t understand, and basically sounding like she’s in the midst of a nutty mid-life crisis. They give her a hard time for saying that the drinks they have at a high-end restaurant could feed the homeless man they passed for a long time:

“Yeah, and you know, Syd, some of those guys aren’t even homeless,” Dave tells me. “They just pretend they are so people will give them money and they don’t have to do an honest day’s work. He’s probably some actor or something

Frankel layers the characters’ complexity because Syd and her family and friends are Jewish. How can she join an ashram if she’s Jewish? How do the two work together? Is meditation and yoga healing her or taking advantage of her search for meaning? Additionally, her friends have come to expect Syd to maintain her personality, and they are confused when she doesn’t:

“You know, Syd, I love you, but I liked you better when you were superficial, you know? You were just more fun. And you know what else? I miss dieting with you. It’s bad enough to diet, but dieting without your best friend just plain sucks. Tell me again why it is that your New Year’s resolution is not to diet anymore. I don’t get it.”

In the end, I enjoyed Syd Arthur and appreciated the role mental awareness plays in food and eating compared to dieting and restriction. Some moments feel a little too sweet, but that also softens the book for those of us who aren’t looking to work incredibly hard with our reading during these challenging times.

books of fall 🍵🍂🎃

This is the last review for my Books of Fall. You’ll see the book of letters by Zora Neale Hurston still on there. I’ve been reading that collection for a while now, but it’s like 900 pages, so the reading will continue.

One comment

  1. I love the wordplay on the title that you explain at the beginning, Melanie. And I like how you took us – as you often do – on your reading journey.

    I was thinking about this, “Perhaps I hated her so much that I couldn’t see what Frankel was doing?”. I think when I read, I have the two parts – the emotional and the intellectual – going at once. So, for example, with Olive Kitteridge, my heart would be thinking, “that’s an awful thing she’s doing or saying here” but my brain is thinking “I like the writing, so what is the author doing?” It all comes down for me to the writing I think. If I like the writing then I’m likely to trust that the author is taking me somewhere interesting, but if the writing is boring, or cliched, then I’m likely to give up because the the character will sound boring or cliched and/or the author’s attitude to the character will sound boring or cliched.

    PS I should have got the pun on the name with the cover image but I didn’t!

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