THE MR. AND MRS. CLUB

An episodic debut tells the very conventional story of a young woman’s coming of age as a wife and mother in the 1950s, while at the same time revealing the political and social tenor of the decade.

Whether or not it’s a roman à clef, it certainly has the tone of one as Emmet takes us through the events in the early married life of Liza and Julius Prescott. They’re newlyweds who purchase a house in the Massachusetts town of Rock Hill; he’s a lawyer, she’s an educated woman whose career ambitions seem to have melted away the moment she met Julius. Rock Hill in the mid-’50s is more rural than suburban, so newcomers Liza and Julius join the eponymous Mr. and Mrs. Club to make friends. The little clique they eventually fall into includes busybody housewives and a young mother who sublimates her frustration and her alienation (she’s from West Virginia) through cooking and baking—but the Prescotts also manage to become friendly with the town’s elite family. Liza must learn to deal with her own frustrations, to which Julius, at least from Liza’s perspective, is generally oblivious. Because the narrative jumps around so much, glimpses of the Prescott marriage are substituted for a developed plot: the narrative travels down too many paths, some of which turn out to be melodramatic dead ends. The author’s strong point, though, is characterization. The wealthy, the young men on the go, the old townsfolk, and the young mothers with too much time on their hands make up a wonderfully drawn amalgam; their dialogue, as much as anything, reveals their true natures and these in turn provide a window to what was going on behind the so-called placid screen of the 1950s.

The story might have been fleshed out a bit more, but, still, it’s a nice enough little take on a nostalgically comfortable era.