“So, I followed her cue and became Guildenstern. I didn’t need to look at the lines to play the part. None of us did, except maybe Mom, who never learned the words ‘cause someone in the family had to be a spectator in the madness.”
It’s fitting that I picked up Regina Porter’s The Travelers (Hogarth 2019) when I did because Tom Stoppard just passed away on 11/29. What does Stoppard have to do with the novel? Everything. And nothing. Stoppard’s play Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead features prominently in this fragmented novel of intersecting lives of two families, becoming almost a breathing entity for the reader as much as for Eddie (and his wife and children). Stoppard’s play, if you’re not familiar, tells the story of Hamlet from the POV of two minor characters who are awaiting their deaths. The Travelers breathes main character energy into what most would consider minor characters, and I loved every minute of it.
James Samuel Vincent is an affluent big city attorney who can’t keep it in his pants. His relationship with his son, Rufus, becomes even more complicated when Rufus marries an African American woman, Claudia Christie. Claudie Christie’s mother, Agnes, married Eddie after a devastating racially charged encounter in Georgia. Eddie fought in Vietnam and has his own skeletons. Other characters include Eloise, Agnes’s first love, Agnes’s firstborn, Adele, James Samuel Vincent’s second wife, and cousins and secret sons and neighbors. The lives of these two families, including extended family members, weave in and out of each other as we travel from the mid-fifties to the first year of Obama’s first term.
Porter is a playwright, and that’s apparent in this novel. The hints of that format are what make the final product so well done. I can understand why some people would say it’s too much – too many characters, too many plots, etc – but I found it genius and one of the best books I’ve read this year.
A Girl Named Tommi 