Osler's Razor

My friend IPLawGuy often lords over me all the books he is reading. "Oh," he says, arching an eyebrow while judging me, "you haven't read the Ruth Scurr biography of Maximilien Robespierre yet? Because it was excellent." At which point I mutter something under my breath while he refills his pipe with loamy tobacco. It's one reason I don't let him drive when we are on a trip.

Anyways, he's wrong. I do read books, and I have written and published three more than he has. I just read one, in fact that I really liked. It's one of those books that has certain images and themes that you just can't get out of your head.

The plot was strikingly simplistic: A mother and daughter engage in a tense battle of wills over the daughter's behavior. The mother, in turns gentle and aggressive in her urgings, implores the daughter to turn away from some of her more destructive behaviors and towards a pattern of healthy self-care. The daughter, full of the vigor of youth, will have none of it-- this is her time to live, to run, to dance. She knows that she is of a moment, a creature defined by her instincts and sensate pleasures. 

Beneath the plot is a delicate subtext: that it is in fact the daughter who controls the dialogue. What the mother wants is not something she can force on her offspring; the young one must want it herself. It is the fate of any parent, I suppose; you can no more force a child into a given action than you can push a string. And there is something even deeper, too, of course. The craving for independence in the daughter is not just resistance but in an important way is the embodiment of growth and fulfillment. The slow drama of growing up, like a glacier calving from the land into the ocean, demands that the child must leave to become truly whole. Dahl's work is subtle and elegant in shading the pain in the mother as she comes to realize this truth.

I found the story compelling, and sat in one place for the two hours it took to finish this relatively short book. It does end well. Kitty does take a nap. And then I did, too.