Book Review: The Opposite of Love
Erica Blake - The Blade
Apr 16, 2008
THE Opposite of Love, By Julie Buxbaum. Dial Press Hardcover. 303 pages. $25.
There are times when reading a novel that I come across that perfect quote -- usually one hidden within the pages and not necessarily one that offers unique insight. But it is a sentence or phrase that embodies the story. It is the point where the reader, in my opinion, really gets it.
"... Maybe sometimes you have to do what's scariest in order to get where you need to be."
This advice is offered by Emily Haxby, the central character in Julie Buxbaum's debut novel, The Opposite of Love. The wisdom is bestowed upon a friend in the book, somewhere on page 204, but the reader, and at some level Emily herself, knows where the advice is truly being directed.
Emily is a 29-year-old attorney living in a New York studio and working for a big New York City firm. Her father is the lieutenant governor of Connecticut, she has an elderly grandfather whom she adores, and she is on the verge of being proposed to by her longtime boyfriend, who also happens to be a doctor.
But Emily doesn't believe she deserves any of it.
Instead, she thinks of herself as a "fraud," a "pretend grown-up" who doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with herself, and so cannot understand why anyone else may want to. She is someone who "simultaneously longs for and fears the commitment of remembering." Because if she remembers her past -- if she truly embraces it -- then she would be forced to live life fully in the present.
That's something she's just not capable of doing -- yet.
Buxbaum writes the story of a woman who is struggling with a life that on the surface seems nearly perfect. A former litigator turned novelist, Buxbaum said she drew on her own experiences coping with the death of her mother at a young age to create a character who so often makes bad decisions to avoid "what's scariest." So soon after the reader is introduced to Emily, she breaks up with her boyfriend and chooses to stay employed at a law firm and is forced to defend a corporate client that -- contrary to her ethical beliefs -- tries to crush the little guy. She also shies away from taking a stand against an inappropriate boss who seems to have created the guidebook for sexual harassment. She continues to allow her relationship with her father to be one of lies, one that lacks communication. And she denies the signs of Alzheimer's disease in her grandfather rather than face the inevitable.
It's a life spent running away. But although Emily is aware of her constant flight, she can't seem to figure out a way to slow down, turn around, and confront her life.
Emily eventually breaks down. And only with the help of her closest friends, a therapist, and a painful dose of reality does she discover that she never really accepted her mother's death when she was only 14. She realizes that she was left feeling void of unconditional love -- the kind of love she always believed only comes from a mother. That is, until she begins to list, actually put together a mental list, of the people she can count on.
The realization opens Emily up to a world of healing and eventual reconciliation with her father, her boyfriend, but most importantly, herself.
Buxbaum's character is lovable and the story endearing. She's a mess, we all have been at one time or another, but she works to make things right. There is no new lesson learned here, but a lesson is present nonetheless -- "sometimes you have to do what's scariest in order to get to where you need to be."
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