SEA CHANGES

Desai’s novella written in verse focuses on a romantic relationship.

As Desai’s book opens, Wayne Jones, an aspiring poet, is doing laundry at the House of Suds in Chicago (“not the place to launch a fishing / expedition”). He finds a fallen article of clothing and asks a woman at the laundromat, Elaine Jones, if it belongs to her. They remark on the fact that they have the same surname, and they strike up a relationship, beginning with the customary mixed perceptions. “Considering his less than considerable attempts to win her,” Elaine reflects, “she’s convinced he must think she sleeps with everyone.” Despite their contrasting personalities (“he bites off / more than he chews, she chews more than she bites”), their relationship progresses quickly to sex, bickering, and beyond. In over 60 pages and 10 sections, the author moves his story from their first giddy moments to their descent into acrimony (“Wayne,” Elaine says at one point, “you can’t expect me to account for myself / by yelling at me”). Desai finally catches up with them years after their relationship has ended, when Elaine’s a widow and Wayne’s a Byron scholar. “I know more about Byron / than about anyone else,” he boasts to Elaine, “and more than anyone / else about Byron.” The slim novella also features the author’s explanation that he’s written the story in a modified version of Gerard Manley Hopkins' “Sprung Rhythm” (Desai refers to it as “a happy medium between blank and free verse”). The poetic approach makes the ambitious work consistently engaging to read (and, as Desai rightly points out, to read aloud). The author offers many rich details about the two lovers and the arc of their relationship. But the story itself is unsatisfyingly thin, mainly because Wayne remains so condescending (“If you bothered,” he tells Elaine, “you might understand”) and sexist (“He knows what he knows: women / need domesticity like men need to mark the world”) that it’s never believable that poor Elaine would bother with him at all. Innovative versification can only do so much.

An intriguing but uneven love story.