Maggie-Now by Betty Smith (September 4-13, 2005)
Maggie-Now is a story of family life of an Irish family in Brooklyn. While named for Margaret Moore Basset, the novel varies in focus, telling the stories of many others, including her father, younger brother, and neighbors. Like her other three novels, I was engrossed in Maggie-Now and compelled by the plot and character dynamics.
The story begins in Ireland before Patrick Dennis Moore runs away to America. He’s in love with Margaret “Maggie” Rose, a lovely and poor girl. Pat’s mother is clingy, and desperate to hold onto Patty, her thirteenth and youngest child. When Margaret’s mother believes she will be ruined by her relationship with Pat, who is trying to avoid marriage, she summons her son Timmy back from Brooklyn to help her and his sister. Timmy arrives and gives Pat a public thrashing giving him the order to marry Margaret. In shame, Pat agrees but then runs away for America leaving behind his love, Margaret Rose. He arrives in Brooklyn, alone, with nothing. He gets a job, and eventually marries the boss’s daughter, Mary. Pat and Mary have a daughter, who they name for Pat’s first love, Margaret Rose. She eventually earns the nickname Maggie-Now, from the lectures her mother gives her chasing her around as a child. When Maggie is 16, her mother is pregnant again. She dies giving birth to her son Dennis “Denny” Patrick, and Maggie is left to raise her younger brother as her own son, and care for her father.
While Pat is charismatic and well-liked, he’s distant from his own children and they never have a caring relationship. Pat is a child, who plays wolf to get Maggie and Denny’s attention and the attention of his priest. He seems to have shut down, and closed himself off from his memories of Ireland, and giving up his mother and true love. Instead, he shows only a rocky exterior, full of criticism. His children meanwhile don’t have the same fire in them, or the same childishness, so they never understand one another.
Maggie misses out on all the things her peers experience. Isolated in her home, she doesn’t have any friends her own age. She grows to be a hardworking, practical and very serious woman. As she ages, she begins to crave her own life, a romance, and children of her own. Then she meets Claude, a secretive, educated, traveling salesman. She falls in love with him over and turns away men from Brooklyn who could make her a happy wife, care for her, and give her the children she craves. Maggie and Claude marry, and he moves in with Pat and Denny. While Claude makes Maggie feel like a princess, she treats her shabbily, never providing for her, manipulating her, and leaving her for three quarters of the year without reason or mention. Maggie waits for him, never asks him questions, and continues to love him. She prays she’ll have his baby.
Though the book begins with a quickly moving plot, the middle of the book
slows, as Maggie waits and the results of her poor choice in a spouse bring
her no happiness. The years go by and Claude returns each winter, only to
depart with the spring wind. Meanwhile, Maggie takes in foster children as
the years go by and she is still childless. The reader eventually learns
Claude’s secret – that he was an orphan who knows nothing of
his history. However, nothing about Claude inclines the reader to have sympathy
for him. Soon after his secret is revealed, Claude dies and Maggie is left
alone. Denny has grown into manhood, become a butcher and married. Pat has
retired and married a widow who runs a boarding home. Meanwhile, the reader
is left wondering what will become of Maggie-Now, the forgotten center of
the book. She’s given herself up for everyone in her life, and is left
alone in the end. While Betty Smith’s stories draw you in, the conclusion
of Maggie-Now left something to be desired.
