Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy
A pair of privileged families from Los Angeles embark on a cruise along Central America. The two wives are cousins who grew up together but are as close as sisters. The kids, a boy and a girl for each family are all close, ranging in age from six to eleven. One husband (Benjamin) with a less powerful job than his studio executive wife (Liv), the other, an African American actor (Raymond) married to a white woman (Nora). All are enjoying a wonderful vacation until on an off-shore excursion (with another perfect family of four from Argentina) when the children disappear, they literally float away.
Sounds like the premise for a really bad Lifetime movie.
The mothers, who were with the children, while the men were off playing golf (as men do), are frantic and the close bond between cousins Liv and Nora begins to fray. Nora, who had disappeared into the forest with the unreliable tour guide, Pedro for a frisson of sexual attention, blames Liv and Camilla, for not paying attention to the children. Sensitive Benjamin chastises himself for saying yes to the golfing and abandoning his wife and kids to show his manliness.
Ok, I realize, it sounds like a bit of a mess, clearly destined for melodramatic histrionics by unsympathetic characters.
It is to the credit of writer Maile Meloy that she pulls off a page turner that juggles multiple narratives with some 20 named characters (including several children) that you keep in your head and you understand as individuals. She also manages to resist the temptation to caricature the “ugly American” syndrome as the parents work with a U.S. Embassy official and local law enforcement. She also gives a life and complexity to the children who are ultimately held by a drug trading pair of brothers who play good cop/bad cop as they find themselves in charge of a passel of lost American children.
The tension between Liv and Nora is predictable. It might have been a bolder move if these mothers, who were going through the worst thing a mother ever could, had moved closer together, if they had bonded in unity in a strange country as the search continues for their children. However, they are both consumed by their guilt, the prayers and wishes about what they would do differently if their kids come back safe, and retreat into their own heads. And, of course, there is a momentary re-evaluation of their privileged life. Liv reflects “The karmic bus had mowed her down. She was being punished for living in a false world, spongy and insulated from the reality around her. For living in a house with an alarm system, in a neighborhood where the only Latinos were gardeners and laborers. For sending her kids to a private school that was almost entirely white in a city that wasn’t.”
A bunch of kids who find themselves alone in a strange country could have quickly devolved into Lord of the Flies territory but Meloy is more subtle than that. The breakdown of their order is not extreme nihilism, it is more the catty, mean girl variety, sprinkled with some genuine anxiety that any kid would feel in a situation like this. It’s easy to forget that there is a big difference between an 11-year old and a 14-year old. The tension between the confident, no nonsense Penny, who at the tender age of 11 has always been charged with looking after her severely diabetic 8-year old brother Sebastian, and the exotic, worldly 14-year old Argentinian Isabel is palpable. Penny is desperate to show her maturity and command while Isabel views her as both a pesky little girl and a challenge to her own dominance. “Penny would have expected Isabel to be braver, with her green nail polish and her two languages. This was just like a sleepover in a new house, where you had to figure out all the rules.”
Even Isabel’s mother reflects on her preternaturally precocious daughter “She treats me like you would not believe. It is just—she is fourteen, I know. Girls need to separate from their mother. But it is so painful, when this child who has depended on you wants nothing to do with you. She thinks you know nothing. You are in her way. So you tell yourself it is a necessary stage. It will pass. And it will pass.” Her voice started to break. “Unless you never see her again. And then what you will remember is this time when she is awful. Simply awful. And you are sometimes awful back, because it is very hard not to respond. To be the adult.” As a mother of 2 girls I completely empathize with this sentiment. That bad things follow is not surprising, but Meloy manages to make us feel empathy for Isabel as we are starkly reminded of her vulnerability, of the fact that she is a child.
All the children are children of privilege, so you’re not quite sure whether they will have the resilience to manage captivity, let alone the potential for escape. The bubble wrap of their protected, rarefied lives means they now are faced with questioning the very orders that have defined their short lives, especially for Penny. Don’t talk to a stranger. Don’t take food from anyone. It’s ok to talk to a stranger if she’s a woman. Don’t ride in cars with strange people. Stay with your sibling. All of the rules of life have been upended.
At first, the tangential story of young Noemi, a local girl who is fleeing on a train with her uncle with the aim of crossing the border to the U.S. to reach her parents living in New York, seems superfluous and a digression. Eventually Meloy connects all the children and we, the readers are supposed to understand the plight of the disadvantaged. It works, just about.
Meloy is a fluid writer and she grabs you with an effortless style that you don’t see coming. Before you know it you are fifty pages in and you are going to stay along for the ride. That the story unfolds from the perspectives of both the adults and the kids is what separates this book from a cheap, thrill-a-minute melodrama. We watch how these people cope. “One aspect of human resilience, in all its marvelousness, was the ability to recalibrate, to adjust to new circumstances with astonishing speed.” Reader, you too will be engrossed in this book and it will pass with astonishing speed.
BEFORE YOU READ
Length: 342 pages
Genre: Fiction, Thriller
Themes: family, parenting, friendships, crime, survival
Commitment: An engrossing read that flies by.
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