Janet Peery

Even a hundred years past the town’s founding a visitor to Amicus might guess it had been laid out by rival drunks.

This is the opening sentence of author Janet Peery’s novel The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs and a metaphor for the Campbell family, the protagonists of the novel. This is a story about a dysfunctional family trying to deal with jealousy, alcoholism, drug addiction, illness. At a family gathering, a group of middle-aged siblings plan an intervention for their youngest brother, show more Billy. They have to be careful about proceeding with the plan because Billy is their mother’s favourite and she is a classic enabler who has always protected him from any repercussions of his behaviour while their father has always been a stern disciplinarian – a bad combination when bringing up children. However, it becomes clear very quickly that Billy is not the only one with problems.

This is a beautifully written novel and I did enjoy the prose quite a bit. However, I found the family very unlikeable with the exception of the mother, Hattie who, really, I just felt sorry for. They are all self-obsessed and self-delusional and I found it hard to feel empathy. On the other hand, I could recognize that adult children can hold resentments from childhood that continue to colour their behaviours and attitudes throughout their lives. And despite all their petty jealousies and addictive behaviours, it was clear that this was a family that loved each other deeply if not always kindly. This is a mostly slow moving quiet book about one dysfunctional family over the course of a single year and, if I never learned to like the Campbells, Peery’s beautiful prose made me want to.

Thanks to Netgalley and St Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review show less

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher.*

This novel provides a poignant, and sometimes humorous, portrait of a family and its dysfunction. The aging patriarch and matriarch, Abel and Hattie, struggle to manage their own health and decline as their children squabble and their youngest son Billy descends into addition. While a novel, sometimes this book is a little too close to the truth of how we live our lives and can make for uncomfortable reading.

Janet Peery’s The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs tells the story of the sunset years of the marriage of nonagenarians Hattie and Abel and their children who even as they reach their own retirement continue to follow patterns established in childhood. Abel is a retired lawyer and judge. Hattie stayed home and raised their six children, the last one Billy a change-of-life baby who was doted on by his siblings and Hattie, though not so much by Abel.

The children have had struggles that mystify show more their parents, with drugs, alcohol, and prescription medications. They love and resent each other, all striving to be first in their parents’ affections. Billy is something of a holy fool. A gay man weakened by AIDS and drug addiction, he manages to hang onto life, constantly disappointing his family, but always happy to be alive, loving and approving of his family. He has none of the bitterness and resentment of the others and loves them for their faults as much as their finer qualities.

The story is bracketed by parties celebrating Abel’s eighty-ninth and ninety-first birthday. Billy falls asleep in the cake at the first one, setting his siblings off yet another intervention. Through the next two years, as both Abel and Billy draw on Hattie’s love, strength, and support, she feels conflicted, as though love for one robs the other.

Sibling rivalry is an ancient theme, probably because it is so real. Siblings often love without liking each other. They compete for the finite expressions of their parents’ infinite love. Peery seems to really understand how people can love and hurt each other. However, The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs is a compassionate, warm, and loving story. It is full of humanity and humor. These are people who are good on the fundamentals, no matter how bad they are at living.

I loved this story. There is so much beauty in the story. While I have never loved the vast, open prairies with wheat fields a golden blanket as far as the eye can see, Peery can make that stark landscape into something beautiful. Quietude has never been so beautiful. I fell in love with this family and maybe not in spite of, but because of, their pettiness and squabbling. The authenticity of their competition with each other gives them a humanity that is far more moving that more perfect people.

This is a story that will grasp your heart and squeeze it, but not through manipulation. There is no ennoblement by suffering. The nobility was always there, tattered, worn-down, and maybe there’s a foil-wrapped tuna can propping it up, but none of that takes away one scintilla of grace.

The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs was released this week. I received an advance copy from the publisher through Shelf Awareness.

The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs at St. Martin’s Press, a Macmillan imprint
Janet Peery interview at PEN America
Janet Peery profile at Whiting Awards
Great Men and Famous Deeds – a short story by Janet Peery at Kenyon Review

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The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs by Janet Peery is a highly recommended look at the dysfunctional, aging Campbell family.

In Amicus, Kansas, the Campbell family has long been through the actions of their patriarch, Abel. Long retired, Abel was a town lawyer and later a judge. He ruled his family, including Hattie, his wife, via his scathing comments, exacting expectations, and demanded to be the center of attention. Hattie wonders of their family, once well-regarded by the community, is now show more considered to be to total decline as all of her and Abel's children were, and some are still, plagued by alcoholism, drug addictions, divorces, and foreclosures.

Of the five surviving children, it is the youngest, Billy, who receives the brunt of his father's loathing, yet the bulk of his mother's love and ever-present enabling. The rest of the siblings know Billy's issues, even as they deal with their own. Certainly it is Billy's health and addictions that have monopolized the family discourse for years.

This is a family drama where the family members are all playing out long-held roles despite the fact that the parents are in their late 80's, heading to 90s, with children in their early 50's to mid-sixties. The roles they have played and continue to play in their family's dynamics remain predictable and consistent, as the members seem to be unchanged, or unable to change and part ways with the familial role they have consistently acted out. And Hattie, bless her heart, plays favorites with such devotion that it is amazing that that all of the rest of the adult children don't simply let go of their need for approval. Yet they all cling to their bond of birth and replay old feuds and their need for their parent's approval.

There is no doubt that The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs is a beautifully written novel, both lyrical and descriptive. Peery's adept descriptions and details about the setting and her character's fears and foibles will resonate with many people who have experienced complex family dramas of their own. The characters are finely drawn and feel like real individuals. The Campbell's come to life as a real family comprised of individuals who are hurting, each in their own way. The story itself is slow moving as it recounts these latter years in the life of the senior Campbells and their children visiting them. Hattie is the heart of the story, along with her favorite Billy, while everyone else vies for her love.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of St. Martin's Press.
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