Fin & Lady

I just finished reading today Cathleen Schine's novel Fin & Lady. This novel is about the sadness of death and experiencing too much of it at too young an age. It is about the sadness one might feel leaving behind animals, friends, and familiarity to go live with a sister you don't know. This novel is about secrets soon discovered, a half-sister who is crazy, and shame. This novel is about what freedom truly means and what love is. Fin is a child whose mother has just died leaving him with no guardians except for his sister, Lady. "The existence of Lady was revealed to Fin in pieces ..." Lady was revealed to be his half-sister - an image he kept with him as a four-year-old. A sister cut in half and he only saw the bottom. He was left feeling that "this decapitated sister was secret, and secrets, he already understood, were generally associated with shame."

Fin was originally supposed to meet his sister for the first time at her wedding when she was 18 years old. Unfortunately Lady had abandoned her groom at the altar to run away to Europe. A trend that Lady continues in the future. Fin's early memories of Lady include him and his family chasing her through Paris to the rocky beaches of Nice and then onto Italy. This story of Fin and Lady is told through a narrator whom we do not know. It is told through the fragmented lens of a child - the tidbits of Lady that Fin has told this anonymous narrator and that the narrator has fitted together. In this early memory phase of the Fin and Lady saga we learn that Lady is unhappy with reality has had something "taken care of" in Europe. I had my own guesses about what this something was that she took care of but I will leave you to read the book and make your own predictions. 

Eventually we find out that Fin as a child used to live in New York City and not a farm but we soon discover that his father (whom Lady despises - they share a father not a mother) has died. After his father's death his mother, Lydia (whom Lady loves), was left with nothing and so she moves back to Connecticut to live with her parents (Fin's grandparents) on a farm with cows and a collie named Gus. After Fin's grandparents died so did his mother. This leaves Fin with his unstable and immature sister, Lady. 

The year is 1964 when Fin moves back to New York City with Lady. He is eleven. At first life with Lady is an adventure (albeit a tiresome one). Soon though there comes signs of something being wrong. In New York Fin is hungry. "He had never had to prompt an adult to feed him before." He eventually makes a comment that he has to feed Gus, his collie, which finally zaps Lady into the realization that Fin should probably eat too. Lady doesn't eat. Lady drinks gin and scotch and doesn't eat. She doesn't buy Fin clothes when he grows and instead hands him money when she finally notices his clothes are too small and sends him off on his own. Lady is inherently selfish ... but Fin loves her ... and she loves Fin. Lady is obsessed with freedom and often has her "gilded cage days" where she needs to get away. Soon they move to Greenwich Village which to Fin was as good as a circus. 

Soon Lady implores Fin to help her weed out the "lemons" as she becomes determined to get married before 25 ... and she's 24 at the moment. Enter in here a trio of suitors - including a man who Lady tells Fin to refer to as "Uncle Ty." Uncle Ty is a man that Fin hates. He is the man that Lady was supposed to marry that fateful day when she was 18. 

Lady is eccentric and many people love her - but she always feels trapped. Men are enchanted by her eccentricity but it is precisely her eccentricity that also pushes people away (and they inevitably come back). Many men (including sometimes Fin) accuse Lady of being heartless but one thing is always clear. She loves Fin. "But how could you have a heart when everyone wanted to tear off pieces? And everyone did, until there was nothing left, that's what she meant. Everyone tearing like wolves. Except [Fin]." People like Lady, people who are magnetic, charismatic, "enchanting," people like that ... they are sometimes devoured by those around them who just want a piece of that magic smile. One older woman at a party that Lady throws to raise money for the "negro cause," comments that "Lady is one of those people who likes a good enemy, needs one ... Yes, she really does like to bat them around a bit." This, of course, referring to the men in Lady's life. Then this woman comments that she had a cat like Lady. She then asks her daughter, "What was the name of that cat? The one who played with the mice? While they were alive? .... Yes! Latimer. We had to put him down." Lady is judged frequently in this novel by Fin, by her companions, by her suitors, by her now deceased father ... and Lady just needs to get away and Fin finds himself not just being her brother ... but being her savior. 

"Lady grew up protecting her independence, what she could find of it, cherishing every moment of freedom, fighting for it. She was not inclined simply to hand it over, not about to share it with the world at large." Lady didn't take well to the sixties whereas Fin thrived in them. Lady in the novel is a capricious character, mercurial, and proud of it. She is against the draft, against politics, against psychedelic drugs, against love ... at least against those who love her because she just simply wants to love someone else. Fin is described as being "the child she never has to have," and Lady clearly has a pervasive fear of being alone. 

Her happy place is Capri ... that place where she first met Fin as a child when her family came to claim her back after her runaway bride episode. 

This novel is largely a story about Lady, told by Fin to someone. The best part of the novel is when we find out who that someone is - who the narrator truly is and for me it came as a genuine surprise. I had never guessed the true identity of the secret narrator correctly. It was at the moment that the narrator was revealed that the book, for me, became meaningful. The end is tragically beautiful and cyclical and while this might not be one of my favorite books it is definitely worth a read. You will find your sympathy growing throughout the novel and shooting out into full grown empathy in the end. You will feel with these characters and you will try to understand them just as many characters in the novel have tried to understand the Fin and Lady dynamic since the moment they met.