Anywhere but Here by Mona Simpson

First published: 1986

Type of plot:Bildungsroman

Time of work: Primarily the 1960’s and the 1970’s

Locale: Bay City, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles, California

Principal Characters:

• Ann, the main narrator, the youngest of the four women whose lives are the novel’s focus
• Adele, Ann’s mother, an emotionally charged person whose behavior ranges from eccentric to unstable
• Carol, Adele’s older sister, who narrates several sections of the novel
• Lillian, Carol’s mother, who shelters Ann when Adele cannot properly care for her

The Novel

Anywhere but Here is the fictionalized saga of an American family. Three generations of women take turns narrating chapters of a personal and cultural history that spans the years between the turn of the twentieth century and the beginning of the 1980’s. The novel’s nine parts do not proceed chronologically. The speakers relate events as they recall them, each adding detail and emotion to one another’s stories.

The first batch of memories is delivered by Ann, beginning with her infuriated mother’s practice of stopping the car on the roads of the family’s native Wisconsin and the highways that lead to California and forcing her daughter out of the car. After driving out of sight, Adele usually returns minutes later, often with an ice-cream cone as a peace offering. What brings Adele and Ann to a strip of desert highway near the California border, and later to the posh Bel-Air Hotel, is a trail of men that includes Ted Diamond, a skating instructor with whom Adele buys a house in a Wisconsin suburb. A secret plan to flee Wisconsin for Los Angeles, where Ann can have a career in television, a dream her mother has always encouraged, is disrupted by Adele’s marriage to Ted. When life in Wisconsin finally becomes too unpleasant, Adele and twelve-year-old Ann load up an almost-new Lincoln Continental they can ill afford and begin the journey West.

Ann pauses, and her grandmother begins to speak. Lillian narrates the events of her life, from girlhood in a large Catholic family to a sexual encounter with and marriage to Art in the early years of the twentieth century. Carol is born shortly thereafter, and Adele is born years later, at the beginning of the Great Depression. Lillian continues to describe the family tree: Carol marries Jimmy Measey, a local Bay City man, after she returns from World War II; they have two sons, Hal and Benny. Adele marries an Egyptian community-college professor named Hisham; Ann is her only child.

When Ann again takes up the narration, she is recalling the difficult first days spent with her mother in California. Ann and Adele establish a tense and lonely existence, finding themselves short of friends and money. Adele works in the Los Angeles school system, and Ann attends a lower school that will lead her to the prestigious Beverly Hills High School. At this point, Ann digresses, turning to memories of her father. She sees Hisham only twice after he leaves Adele. Returning to life in California, Ann tells of Adele’s fruitless affair with Lonnie Tishman, a shiftless, perhaps dangerous land developer. After breaking off with him, Adele begins seeing a dentist whose daughter is in Ann’s class. She deludes herself into thinking that Dr. Spritzer will be their salvation.

Carol remembers some good times when her boys and her niece were young children. She can even recall one pleasant trip she took with Adele when the sisters were girls. Yet she also tells the story of Hal’s troubled teenage years. After returning from Vietnam, Hal becomes addicted to drugs and is arrested. Lillian has her first of several strokes when she sees Hal on the news. As painful as these memories are, Carol hints, her recollections of Benny are much harder to live with.

Ann thinks back on her life in Wisconsin, particularly her attachment to Benny. She tells the story of returning to Bay City with her mother for her cousin’s funeral when Carol’s younger son is killed in a car crash. Ann then returns to the California years and a time when Adele’s life is ruled by an obsession with her therapist, Dr. Hawthorne. Hawthorne does not share Adele’s interest, and when the frustration overwhelms her, Adele attacks Ann, who decides, this time, to fight back and knocks her mother to the floor. Unable to separate from her fantasy, Adele orders a wedding gown. Left to her own devices while her mother schemes, Ann manages to land the television acting role Adele had always wanted for her. She uses the money and fame from her television career to enter Brown University; she leaves her mother and status-conscious Southern California, not expecting to return any time soon.

The women finish their stories. Carol tells of her slow recovery form Benny’s death, her mother’s death, Jimmy’s heart attack, and her own cancer. Ann describes her college years, a time of independence and emotional fulfillment. When she finally returns to California, her mother seems more stable. Adele has the last word, articulating a developing cosmic belief in the oneness of all things and looking back with pride on her decision to leave Wisconsin and rear her daughter in California.

The Characters

Ann is a skillful storyteller. Her sensitivity to minute details and sensations is the result of a life spent watching out for Adele’s volatile moods and actions. Hers is the literary voice of the novel, even though it is her mother who claims to be writing a book. Ann has a lyrical descriptive style and represents her emotions in intriguing metaphors. Her imagination has grown powerful because it is her method of escape from and defense against Adele.

Ann portrays herself as a victim of Adele’s insanity. Traumatic events such as being abandoned along the roadside and having her mother threaten suicide have conditioned Ann to fear the very thing that would relieve her—separating from Adele. This love/hate relationship twists the young Ann. She exhibits signs of sexual confusion, manipulating other children into posing for nude photographs, and of moral uncertainty, growing accustomed to dishonesty, and even theft, as a survival mechanism. Ann does survive, however, and after escaping to college in the East, she begins to straighten herself out and experience personal fulfillment. She also develops an ability to appreciate her mother’s unique and impressive traits and to forgive the mistreatment she suffered as a child.

Adele is capable of both compassion and cruelty. She is an unpredictable force that can suddenly change the lives of those around her. Her energy drives the novel. Although in her chaotic younger years Adele causes Ann to suffer humiliations and disappointments, the reader is given a different impression of Adele in the book’s last chapter. Carol tells Ann she finally gets along with Adele, and Ann, returning from years of living on her own, is able to share a tender moment with her mother. The frightening image of an enraged, malevolent bully is replaced by the serene voice of a woman who has pacified herself with ancient as well as New Age philosophies. Adele has also repaired the self-esteem she had lacked in the days when, of she and her daughter, it was she who seemed the neediest, the most like a child.

Lillian speaks only once, and the reader comes to know her more through Ann’s vision than through her own words. She provides her granddaughter with an unregulated supply of emotional and material security until Adele takes Ann to California. Ann’s memory of her grandmother is idyllic. Lillian, unlike Adele, is a stoic. She is a source of calm in the novel, having endured a life of calamity without becoming warped. Her strokes mark a new period in the family history, a time when events have become so extreme that even Lillian cannot withstand their debilitating effect.

Carol is a source of compassion and tolerance even though her own life has been full of privation and tragedy. When she refuses to have a tumor in her breast treated, she is stubbornly holding onto a symbol of the pain and loss that define her. Her monologues describe her efforts to resist martyrdom and make peace with her own memories. Carol’s moderate success contributes to the novel’s theme of recovery.

Critical Context

Portions of Anywhere but Here originally appeared in literary magazines. The novel, a bestseller, reached a wider audience. It joined a growing movement in literary and psychological writing devoted to the exploration of personality in relation to upbringing. Mona Simpson depicts what might by now be recognized as a dysfunctional family. She is also aware of the culture of healing, the self-affirmation manuals and recovery programs, to which many turn for redemption.

Domestic fiction has examined the erosion of the ideal of the nuclear family and attempted to account for the increasing number of real families headed by women living without men. In exploring such themes, Anywhere but Here is related to contemporary works such as Sue Miller’s The Good Mother (1987) and Ann Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982). Simpson’s focus on the theme of storytelling also relates to the technique of oral history, the gathering of personal narratives, which has become a prominent aspect of women’s historical writing. Simpson is also the author of a second novel, The Lost Father (1992).

Bibliography

Beevor, Antony. “Heading West.” The Times Literary Supplement, June 26, 1987, 698. This enthusiastic reading of the novel identifies Simpson as a member of the “hyper-realist” school of fiction. Beevor appreciates Simpson’s attention to detail, finding the depiction of the paradoxes of American culture fascinating. He assures the English reader that Anywhere but Here is a special, not a typical, example of the great American novel.

Flower, Dean. “Anywhere but Here.” Hudson Review 40 (Summer, 1987): 321. Flower takes the title of his review of several contemporary novels from his personal favorite. He compares Simpson’s novel to, among other works, A Summons to Memphis (1986), by Peter Taylor.

Heller, Dana A. “Shifting Gears: Transmission and Flight in Mona Simpson’s Anywhere but Here.” University of Hartford Studies in Literature 21 (1989): 37-44. The theme of escape is a concern of this study. Heller also focuses on mother-daughter relationships and on the nature of desire in the novel.

Kakutani, Michiko. Review of Anywhere but Here. The New York Times, December 24, 1986, p. C16. This review analyzes the effectiveness of Simpson’s characterization of Adele and Ann, as well as the effectiveness of Lillian and Carol’s intertwining narratives. Takes an important look at how the American family structure influences the effect of the novel.

Morse, Deborah Denenholz. “The Difficult Journey Home: Mona Simpson’s Anywhere but Here.” In Mother Puzzles: Daughters and Mothers in Contemporary American Literature, edited by Mickey Pearlman. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. Morse’s essay is an exploration of themes in the novel from a literary point of view. She discusses the mythic importance of the issue of flight and the search for home, evoking the biblical story of Eden. Morse also deals frankly with the issue of Ann’s sexual development.

Schreiber, Le Anne. “In Thrall to a Lethal Mother.” The New York Times Book Review 92 (January 11, 1987): 7. This review speculates on the reader’s reactions to the novel’s characters and narrative structure. Schreiber predicts a feeling of frustration in response to the psychological turmoil depicted.

Simpson, Mona. “Mona Simpson: The Return of the Prodigal Father.” Interview by Jonathan Bing. Publishers Weekly 243 (November 4, 1996): 50-51. Simpson discusses her probing of family dynamics and her background and acknowledges that much of her work is autobiographical.

Stone, Laurie. “Motherhood Is Powerful.” The Village Voice 32, no. 5 (February 3, 1987): 47. Examines Ann and Adele’s relationship, points out Simpson’s use of the traditional American road story, and admires Simpson’s way of making the reader listen.