by Tara Friedman
March 5, 2024
Tara Friedman currently resides in Eastern Pennsylvania with her husband and family. When not writing or teaching, she is happily immersed in a variety of outdoor activities. She proudly serves as English faculty at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. While she presented and published on critical thinking and writing center theory and pedagogy, her current research focuses on resilience in children and young adults, literature and the environment, and American humor.
The Woman in the Sable Coat by Elizabeth Brooks; Tin House; 352 pages; $17.95.
Elizabeth Brooks breathes new life into the genre of historical fiction through her subtle depiction of desire in The Woman in the Sable Coat, a desire not seen as fantasy or expectation but chosen through one’s own merit, shortcomings and all. While many tropes from this vast category are also present, the novel does not rest on them alone, and instead plunges readers into the dark waters of betrayal, chaos, and murder. Brooks’ fourth novel toggles between the perspectives of the naïve Nina Woodrow and unfulfilled Kate Nicholson and sweeps the reader into a murky and dangerous entanglement set between August 1934 and June 1947. Ripe with psychologically-complex characters and relentless attention to detail, Brooks’ literary success comes from pushing the genre’s boundaries, highlighting the recklessness of youth and the ultimate power of choice.
Following The House in the Orchard, The Woman in the Sable Coat further demonstrates Brooks’ vivid character development with complexity and trenchant detail. Due to the death of her mother, coupled with her careful English upbringing and quiet father Henry, Nina Woodrow is left with her head in the clouds, unaware of both the realities of life and the power of womanhood. Conversely, Nina meets Kate, Guy Nicholson’s wife, “pregnant, weary, earthbound in body and spirit,” and swears “she’ll never be like [her]." Amidst the backdrop of impending war, each woman begins to question her reality. Brooks writes, “Up until she finished school, Nina had been counting on a vaguely conceived but thrilling future: life was just around the corner, just beyond the horizon, just a question of waiting . . . What if the punchline to growing up is (wait for it) that nothing changes. Nothing that matters." Brooks’ characters initially embody the melancholic wait for something more, romance, motherhood, even the unknown hellscape of war. Brooks unapologetically complicates both women as such events unfold, and their expectation far exceeds reality. Nina ponders the repercussions of an uncertain future: following her heart or the cultural milieu for women in England as she enlists in the Royal Air Force and begins a reckless affair with an officer. Kate laments the invisibility of mothers and the replaceability of wives, their roles hiding fettered passion and demurred desire, pushing the envelope for a more nuanced and fulfilling future – the choice of more.
It is Brooks’ thematic exploration of freedom of choice – some made for us, and those we make ourselves – that cracks The Woman in the Sable Coat wide open. At times, these cracks unmask a sharpness to the novel. There is an unmistakable friction found in Brooks’ settings, conversations, and feelings, palpable anxiety that hangs in the air. In one particular scene as war is declared, Kate glances at her husband and notices, “He is leaning forwards in his chair, smiling a tiny, twitchy smile, and his eyes are very bright." Kate realizes Guy is eager to escape a dull life as husband and father and fight for his country, but his unmasked relief and denial when confronted further damages already frayed relationships between husband and wife and father and son. Brooks allows these anxieties their space, rarely smoothing over the edges, the choices each character makes and the lies they tell themselves and others at the heart of the novel. Whether describing the callousness of the British Royal Air Force, the bitter cold of the Canadian wilderness, or the destructive forces of secrets, Brooks masterfully weaves together past and present to illustrate the repercussions and rewards of freedom of choice.
The pacing and perspective of The Woman in the Sable Coat may distract the casual reader from its dynamism. Brooks’ exacting period detail will delight history aficionados; however, the novel’s measured start, in addition to shifts in points of view – Nina’s chapters told in third person while Kate narrates her own – can be disorienting at times, perhaps done to illustrate the replacement of lost innocence with hard won agency. Brooks’ authorial decision to give Kate her own narration dissolves her disillusionment of youth, and instead begins her acceptance of betrayals: unmet expectations, scorned wife, and new mother, separated from the effects of ongoing war. While Kate is traversing her own path, Nina has yet to find her footing. With these shifts, readers are stripped of the pretense all is well. Brooks reminds us that when we see harsh reality with our own eyes, often aided by time and experience, we are no longer immune to the hardships of life but instead closer to honoring our truest selves.
The conclusion of The Woman in the Sable Coat unravels quickly and places the complicated nature of relationships on full display. Brooks’ novel’s denouement is as horrific as it is healing, akin to ripping off a delicate innocence, and stepping into a second skin, less taut from a life lived, but much more powerful, more intentional. Disillusionments of romance and love, perhaps the greatest betrayals for women, are painstakingly abandoned. Brooks does not mix messages here: self-actualization can be fraught with pain and hardship. However, she also suggests that through desirable community, we can help steel ourselves and others, strengthening the bonds yet lightening the load, and barrel ahead to a future all our own. It is the unlikely connections, pairings, and moments, the freedom of choice, that make up our life.
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"Turn Around and See Me:" Recklessness and Intentionality of Choice in Elizabeth Brooks’ The Woman in the Sable Coat
FICTION REVIEW
Image by Ruvim Miksanskiy from Pexels
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