Book Review : A Turbulent Marriage Made in Hell

A Born Carpenter by Thom Roberts (Weidenfeld & Nicolson: $16.95; 256 pages)

Only a tad more subtly than in “Pilgrim’s Progress,” the names of the characters in this contemporary novel indicate their salient traits. John Noble is honorable, upright, and kind; Leslie Summers is a mercurial charmer; sunshine one minute, torrential storm the next.

When the novel opens, John Noble is a middle-aged building contractor, father of two sons, contentedly married to his second wife Kay, a sensible, understanding and practically invisible personage in this drama. Though his present life is placid and even humdrum, John is tormented by daydreams and nightmares of his tempestuous early marriage to Leslie, a relationship that began when he was a young journalism major at the University of Colorado and she was the most enigmatic and desirable girl in Boulder. “Leslie changed my life the way Kennedy’s death changed America, and I want to be able to remember clearly everything that led to my change as I remember everything that led to America’s.”

The ensuing narrative represents Noble’s attempt to sort matters out once and for all, and in the process, the author whisks us back and forth across the decades in alternating chapters.

Reminded of Attempted Suicide

A chance encounter triggers the memories. Buttonholing Noble in the local bar, the village drunk reminds him of his attempted suicide 20 years before, an episode Noble had thought forgotten by the community. In his late 20s, finally married to Leslie, prospering as a builder, delighted with his baby girl, Noble had been devastated when his wife ran away with the child. Convinced he’d failed as a lover, husband and father, Noble decided to kill himself but bungled the job. Gradually he put his life in order, divorced Leslie and remarried, though he’s never forgotten the fact that he has an ex-wife and daughter somewhere.

From their very first encounter on the college campus, it’s obvious that Noble and Summers are a mismatch made in hell. He’s all innocence and decency; she’s a pathological liar who has literally invented herself, because “she couldn’t stand voids in logic.” Her inventions are not mere exaggerations or embellishments of reality, but baroque Gothic fantasies in which Noble becomes hopelessly ensnared.

Leslie begins with a tiny kernel of fact--a Puerto Rican lover--and by the time she has finished, Noble finds himself desperately searching for her all over that island; an excursion that becomes one of the most vividly realized sequences of the entire book. Leslie fabricates the quicksand fantasies, and stolid, matter-of-fact John is drawn into them. Time and time again, he interrupts his career to find Leslie and save her from some new peril, only to discover that he has been gulled once again.

Unable to Tolerate Tranquillity

Finally, after a particularly nasty and violent demonstration of her mental state, he gives up, belatedly realizing that Leslie is constitutionally unable to tolerate the tranquillity he wants for his family.

Encouraged by his present wife Kay, Noble sets about finding Leslie and the daughter he hasn’t seen since she was 3 years old. In one of her few speeches, Kay explains why the search is essential. “You’re a builder, the master builder who has constructed a wall that’s so high and solid and dark that even the most ferocious of your demons can’t contemplate escape. . . . Leslie still has the key, and if you don’t confront her, you’re doomed. You’re doomed to remain her little lab rat.”

The parallel action technique adds a modicum of suspense and tension to what would otherwise be a predictable tale of an obsessive passion. Juxtaposed and cross-cut, the separate stories of the current Noble family and the history of the turbulent relationship to Leslie benefit from each other; the calm of the present lending credibility to the bizarre past. Even assisted by this venerable literary device, “A Born Carpenter” often seems more private exorcism than fully realized novel.