Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss

nudge-book.com 9 May 2013

Author portrait © Sarah Lee

In 1960s Pasadena, fourteen-year old Rebecca is painfully aware of her family’s precarious social position. Her fortunes are transformed, however when the beautiful and enigmatic new girl at school takes an interest in her. Rebecca is soon in thrall to her droll new friend, Alex, who announces ‘“I’m perfectly tragic at arithmetic.”’ Their friendship will last until Alex’s death.

There is obvious nostalgia in Rebecca’s account of their lives: she reflects that the sky was a particular shade of blue that ‘runs the length of my childhood like some brilliant animal spine.’ There is nothing sentimental about this friendship, however, and the two women’s lives will be touched by rape, domestic violence and repressed homosexuality. In Sloss’ confident handling of these shocking themes, Autobiography of Us is strongly reminiscent of Todd Haynes’ 2002 film Far From Heaven which starred Julianne Moore as a 1950s housewife in a cripplingly bad marriage. Sloss’ first novel will also delight fans of Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything, written in 1958 but republished after advertising genius Don Draper (in the cult show Mad Men) was depicted reading the book in bed. He was, of course, reading it to discover what young women wanted.

As for what Rebecca and Alex want (to study science and to become a film star, respectively), neither seem likely to achieve their ambitions. Alex sleeps with a casting agent who tells her, ‘“Not a whole lotta panache kiddo, but you’re gonna make some man very happy.”’ There are painful intimations that both Rebecca and Alex, for all their yearnings, may end up no more fulfilled than their mothers. Rebecca even reflects that she and her friend become ‘settled in our lies’.

Sloss never quite unpicks the reasons behind Alex’s brittle charisma and she remains as unknowable to us as she does, in many ways, to Rebecca. Even during their estrangement, however, Rebecca writes letters to Alex which are all the more poignant because she does not send them. And, ultimately, the two women can be seen to be the most significant people in each other’s lives. Rebecca’s husband expresses surprise at Rebecca breezily permitting Alex to smoke in their home when he is not allowed but Alex responds by saying, ‘“I knew her first.”’ The loyalty they feel towards each other will, it transpires, dictate the shape of Rebecca’s life even after Alex’s death. This is a lovely and surprising debut, depicting the painfully narrow options of two spirited young women who were born a decade too soon.

This review originally appeared on Nudge-Book.com