THE NEW PEOPLE

Set in 2008, against the backdrop of Barack Obama’s election and California’s anti-same-sex marriage referendum, Uptmor’s ambitious first novel renders the dangers of divisiveness, rigidity, and lack of communication through the experiences of two married couples who could not be less alike.

Rachel, a feminist scholar, and Emma, an aspiring novelist, have recently gotten married and moved from Chicago to Riverbend, Indiana. Despite the affectionate solicitude they share, unspoken resentments and secrets simmer under the surface of their relationship. Recovering from a miscarriage, Emma hides her pain and her desire to try IVF again from Rachel. Both women tread carefully around Rachel’s career success: Not only has she received a tenure-track professorship at Boon University while Emma has been offered only a lowly adjunct teaching job; Rachel has also recently published and received great acclaim for an SF novel she knocked out as a lark, while Emma has yet to publish more than the occasional short story. Now socially adept Rachel remains politely oblivious as self-doubting introvert Emma suffers culture shock in their new neighborhood. She spars with her neighbor Patty, who’s a Republican and makes passive-aggressive remarks about same-sex marriage, when she finds her trespassing to tend lilacs planted by the former owners of Rachel and Emma’s newly purchased house. The ensuing conflicts seem familiar, even ho-hum, until suddenly the plot goes charmingly off the rails when it turns out that those former owners, Charlotte and Dirk Dennison, are living undetected in the hidden attic above the attached garage. Resentful that they were scammed into having their home foreclosed, Charlotte has no qualms about using the bathroom and kitchen while Rachel and Emma are at work and goes into poltergeist mode to make their lives uncomfortable. Moments of high comedy and real pathos ensue. Whether the issue is academia, marriage, or parenthood, no one is entirely in the wrong or in the right, neither the narrow-minded urban progressives nor the narrow-minded small-town conservatives.

Using upbeat escapism, Uptmor confounds expectations to expose the darker realities of American life.