Fugitive's Return by Susan Glaspell

Cross posted from my reading log in Club Read Group:

After carefully bathing and dressing herself, Irma sits down to compose a suicide note and finds she is unable to sign her name: "To write one's name is an assertion of one's self. When you write your name, you know who you are."

She is interrupted by her cousin, who sets Irma on her journey of self discovery by obtaining for her a passport and ticket to Greece under a false identity. Irma's feelings of isolation are also heightened by her loss of speech. There are many mythic symbols and allusions as Irma settles in Delphi and becomes involved in the lives of the village women, and as she faces her past and regains her voice.

I loved the first half of this novel, but found its resolution somewhat unsatisfying, as Irma seems to again retreat from the world. However, I am very glad I hunted it down as part of my reading for the Project 1929 Group.

Susan Glaspell, best known for her play Trifles, was instrumental in the founding of the Provincetown Players and won a Pulizer Prize for her play Alison's House.

Has anyone else read this book?

I have not read it, nor had I even heard of it, but I am so glad you brought it to my attention, Marise! I'm going straight to the library to get a copy.

I'll be waiting to hear what you think of it, Rob!

I just finished it. Oh my gosh, it's good! Someone please reprint it! Persephone? NYRB? I have to get my thoughts together before I say anything more. What a good book!

Wow! Another one I heard about in this group that I need to get. . . :) Thanks Marise and Rob.

I've posted my review.

Great review, Rob -- now I have to get a copy!

Rob, as I said on your blog, another glorious review! I really hope someone reprints it.

Paola: An editor at New York Review Books told me that Glaspell wasn't his "cup of tea," but he passed the recommendation along to Nicola Beauman at Persephone, who has published two other of Glaspell's novels.

Meanwhile, I find an common theme running through the three 1929 novels I've read this month: Passing, Plum Bun, and Fugitive's Return. All three novels feature a conflict between restless characters and characters who desire rootedness and stability. The characters are all looking for some kind of "authenticity" in their lives—the authenticity of race, or simply a life lived in an authentic manner against all the restlessness of society at large. Glaspell says of her main character: "The restlessness around her made Irma appear more authentic."

There seems to be a quiet discovery of the value of a stable middle-class existence, perhaps against the excesses of capitalism on the one hand and socialism on the other. Sinclair Lewis, whose Dodsworth was also published in 1929, seemed to have moved in the same direction, from satire of middle American life to sympathy with it.

I've heard that in a recession, people begin to indulge in "nesting" behavior. There seems to be a lot of the nesting impulse in the novels from 1929 I've read this month!

Oh poor Glaspell. She is a gem. I have always loved Trifles also in its other form A Jury of her Peers. Now I will have to seek out the book. She is sadly neglected as well.