Lying With the Dead

by Michael Mewshaw

In this novel, Greek tragedy meets a dysfunctional family from Maryland, revealing how time and place matter little when it comes to the implacable logic of the darkest human emotions.
A family matriarch—half Medea, half Clytemnestra—calls home her three children, who take turns narrating the story. Quinn, the wonder boy who has become a successful actor in London, must fly in from England, putting a new love interest and a career-boosting role in a BBC production of the Oresteia on hold. Maury, whose life is defined by his Asperger's and a terrible crime committed when he was a teenager, rides in on a bus from his quiet, impoverished life out west. Candy, the eldest at fifty-five and the only one still a devout Catholic, is already in Maryland, where she takes care of her mother and dreams of retiring to North Carolina with her boyfriend. Once the family is reassembled in the childhood home, the pieces of a dark puzzle come together over brilliant and witty exchanges. Mewshaw invites us into the heart of a family dynamic, exploding prejudices about love, religion, and murder.

Genres: Fiction, Family, Literary Fiction, Humor, Domestic, Adult, Ebooks

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Michael Mewshaw is an American author of 11 novels and 8 books of nonfiction, and works frequently as a travel writer, investigative reporter, book reviewer, and tennis reporter. His novel Year of the Gun was made into a film of the same name by John Frankenheimer in 1991. He is married with two sons.

Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio's longtime "voice of books," has called him "the best novelist in America that nobody knows."

Reviews

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lying with the Dead by Michael Mewshaw is a novel about a dysfunctional family but it is also much more than that. It is a Greek tragedy, a morality tale, a story about the conflicting and diametrically opposed emotions that grip us all, and a novel about sibling love. The novel unfolds in chapters told from the points of view of each of the children - - Quinn, Maury and Candy.

Quinn is the youngest child in the family, born as an afterthought or mistake. He has managed to escape his mother's tendrils by moving from Maryland to London where he works as a successful actor. He is a good son in that he sends money every month to support his mother, and he calls home weekly. He does like to dip into the booze more than is good for him, but then again, liquor can assuage pain and keep some of his demons at bay. Currently, he has been court-ordered to see a therapist due to anger issues. Maury has Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism. He lives in California where he helps out in a trailer park. He has been released from prison after serving twelve years for his father's murder. As the family story goes, he saw his parents fighting (again) and he couldn't take it anymore. He picked up a knife and his father just walked into it. The knife pierced his belly and killed him. Maury keeps "track of my memories in the box in my head. This box in my head is big, with dozens of drawers." He never opens the drawer that has memories of his father's murder. Candy is the parental child, the caretaker. She is a survivor of childhood polio and walks with a limp due to one shriveled leg. Forever, she has put everyone's needs ahead of her own and she is now the primary caretaker for their elderly mother. Candy has a lover now and is waiting for her mother to die, or go into assisted living, so that she and Lawrence can retire in North Carolina.

The children know that they must obey the family rules of shame, secrecy, and silence. "Dad's murder, Mom's mood swings, Maury's crime - - there were so many things I was compelled to stay mum about". "Maury and I had been raised as close-mouthed as a Mafia clan". The family is laden with secrets, and one after the other get divulged as the novel progresses. As secrets come out, Mom plays one child against the other, asking each child not to tell the other about what she's told them. What she says is often toxic and Candy states, "I don't want to hear. I clap my palms over my ears". Mom also has trouble with boundary issues. One minute she may be discussing issues of mundane daily life, and the next minute she is telling her children about her sex life with their father. "Alternately an Irish Catholic prude and an outspoken bawd, Mom has always had this cringe-making habit of sharing more information than anybody, especially her children, care to hear."

What is the best way to describe mom? A piece of work, a she-devil, a monster, an evil and manipulative bitch, a cruel and heartless woman, a struggling single mother who is doing the best she can? All of these descriptions are true but none really get at the core of her ability to do harm to her children. At one point, Quinn reads an article from the "New York Times science section that examines the maternal instincts of animals. Its conclusion: cannibalism, abuse, abandonment, and neglect are motherly coping mechanisms." He asks himself, "Is this the explanation for Mom's cruel and contradictory behavior. For the way she alternately blessed and blasted me?" From the time they were little, none of them could predict Mom's actions. She was just as likely to act fiercely loyal and defend their actions as she was to slap or beat them. Dad was an inveterate gambler who came home late or didn't come home at all. Mom's mercurial temper and unpredictability were the ruling emotions in the home. "In winter she's too cold. In summer she's too hot. If it's spring or fall, she hates the change of season." This is a woman who is always unhappy and chooses to take her emotions out on whoever is closest to her at the time. As Quinn realizes, his mother is "clinically disturbed and dangerous. I didn't know how to deal with it back then. I don't know now."

The children want to put Mom in an assisted living facility and she refuses. "Won't do a damn thing any doctor, lawyer, priest, social worker, therapist or her own children recommend. She means to die as she has lived - - strictly on her own terms. To hell with everybody else." In order to ward off or postpone Candy's efforts to place her in assisted living, Mom decides to call all her children home so that she can reveal important secrets to them. She tells them that they need to come home to hear her deathbed wishes. This is her "final request". As the children convene in Maryland, the dynamics become heated and desperate. As Quinn so aptly quotes from the Oresteia, "I know the ancient crimes that live within this house."

Michael Mewshaw states that this book "has its origin in specific childhood experience that shaped the man I became". In this sense, it is partly autobiographical. He is also interested in "murder and its ongoing effects on a family, the Greek tragic cycle of hubris, nemesis, and catharsis." In this novel, he has painted a Mother who is not only a feared matriarch, but has a personality and traits that bring to mind both Medea and Clytemnestra.

Mewshaw brings his characters to life, with all their struggles and challenges, foibles and fears. His characterizations are so realistic that the reader feels like they are present in the room, like an eavesdropper right outside the door. How each of the children deals with crimes of the heart, as they try to relate with their mother for what is possibly the last time, makes up the heart of this deep and wonderfully readable novel. Mewshaw has a great gift for describing that place between "kidding and almost crying". What at first sounds funny is often a statement of pain and cruelty. This is especially true of his descriptions of Mom, a Mom who "just keeps hacking away - - cutting you off at the ankles and the knees until you don't have a limb to stand on". Without these limbs, her children still crawl if they have to, never giving up in their efforts to connect with their Mother and each other in some intimate way. What stands out, is the strength of the human spirt and the infinite ability to cope despite all obstacles.

[Felicity · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly good read...surprising because I just picked it up in a bookstore, knowing nothing about it (other than what it said on the blurb). It's elegantly written, with the narrative shifting between the perspective of three adult siblings, Quinn, Maury, & Candy. We learn early on, for instance, that Maury probably has Asperger's, though he has never been professionally diagnosed with the condition. Mewshaw's skill lies in his ability to convey with enormous feeling the inner emotions of a person who cannot stand being physically touched, even by those close to him.

The siblings' lives have been shaped by those of their parents: a gambling, alcoholic father, and an abusive mother. Though the father is long since dead--the result of a family tragedy epic in proportion--the mother continues to rule over her children's lives, even from afar, with an iron fist. I admired, in particular, the way in which Mewshaw challenged the notion of maternal love, revealing "Mom" as a grotesque figure, seemingly incapable of love for anyone but herself. The novel's concluding revelations illuminate the extent of her desperation and fear, resolving any ambiguity about her willingness to sacrifice her children to fulfill her own desires.

[Cathe Fein Olson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was told from varying narrators--the three adult children of an abusive mother who are summoned home to Maryland to see her because she has something important to tell them. One son is a famous actor now living in London, the other son has Asperger's syndrome and has done time in prison for killing their father and is now living in a trailer park in CA. The daughter still lives nearby and takes care of the mother but wants to break away and have her own life finally.

I enjoyed this book -- moved fast, lots of secrets, good writing. Basically a good read.

[Mommalibrarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three siblings who have survived hell more intact than would be expected. The story is told from each of their point of view in turn. Quick read of no lasting import IMHO

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminds me of Garden State

This book reminds me of the film Garden State. It has a similar constant melancholic tone. It's about how people are stuck together, rooted to a place by shared history whether they like it or not. They both like it and don't simultaneously. The ending is not very well hidden, you know where we're headed but the getting there is the point. Lying With The Dead is understated and captivating. It feels as though it could be real because it is inspired by the authors own experience. It's not enthralling though. It just is what it is.

[Louise Waugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not sure this book is actually as good as it felt to me because it is set a few miles from my house and the details of place are absolutely spot on. Everything from names of neighborhoods to the name of the priest who helped one character are real, which makes the story feel real. I enjoyed this immensely.

[Carolyn Hanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up because of the final few chapters. Characters were very distinct & well drawn. Not a happy story, but plenty to ponder about cause & effect, as well as adult relationships between siblings raised by abusive parents.

[Paschalis]

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[Larry H]

Family dysfunction is a tremendously popular subject for fiction, perhaps because it takes on so many different layers. The family in Michael Mewshaw's Lying with the Dead certainly had it tough. A physically and verbally abusive mother whose guilt grows as she grows older has summoned her three children home—Candy, the polio-stricken oldest child who has stayed in Maryland to care for her mother, sacrificing her desire for her own life; Maury, who struggles with Asperger's as well as the memories of a crime he committed when he was a teenager; and Quinn, an actor who fled to London rather than deal with his family.



As you might imagine, a number of secrets are revealed in this book, old wounds are reopened, pain is inflicted and recovery seems imminent in some cases. And yet with all of that said, I didn't care all that much. I felt as if Quinn's character, perhaps because he was the most colorful, was the one Mewshaw developed the fullest, which left the other characters as sort of shadows in the background. But this left me wanting more, and not feeling particularly fulfilled by the story. Everything unfolded as I expected it to, so while the characters were surprised by certain actions, I wasn't. And while they were moved by what was happening to them, I wasn't.



I think Mewshaw writes well and had a great premise for a story. Sadly, it went the route of paint-by-numbers soap opera rather than a fully-fleshed out story.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those books that my mother likes - messed up family coming together at the end. Except here they don't really "come together", they meet briefly and then separate and I suspect they'll never meet up again.

This read like a retread of some Oprah novel, all this family strife and angst and secrets with no one left undamaged. The Big Secrets weren't such secrets (read enough of these types and you'll see the reveal coming a mile away).

What bothered me most was that the oldest, Maury, is supposed to be Asperberg's and OCD. Fine. But that doesn't always equate with dumb or slow and here it appears to. Since the book is told in the voices of the three children, it would have been nice had he been proven to not be either but perhaps that was his role in the family.

(Free ARC provided by publisher)

[Galo · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be able to tell a story from the perspective of three distinct voices is a remarkable feat. Although the plot is familiar and perhaps slightly predictable, Michael Mewshaw does an admirable and convincing job of making siblings Maury, Candy, and Quinn as real as any member of my own family. Mewshaw makes it unavoidable for the reader to sympathize and care for each character, to understand their motivations, understand how a family tragedy has profoundly shaped their troubled lives and scarred their fragile psyches, and empathize with their hidden desires to be free from the shadow of a truly wretched matriarch. It kept me going at a break-neck pace, and I'm sure you'll read it with the same appreciation and enjoyment as I have experienced.

[Kathy McC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Independent Booksellers Association recommended book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The characters are interesting and the plot is well developed. I loved the writing style. I would have given more stars, but was a little disappointed with the predictable ending.
"I'll go to the box in my head and crack open a drawer. Sometimes I visit myself as a kid. The memory drawers go back to when I was little. There's one drawer I stay away from, but there are others I break into, I'm so eager to climb inside."
"To hear a cheerful human voice, I dial the weather and listen to a recorded announcement. Intermittent snow. No accumulation. Cold."

[Adam Rust · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fine choice...if you can't find another piece of fiction about dysfunctional American family life.

The characters are just too flat. My favorite is Maury - his story is distinct enough to give his thoughts some interest. Quinn and Candy seem to be just expressions of a type.

The true test of this book is that I couldn't find time to read the last 30 pages. Its an easy read, but I kept finding myself compelled to pick up something else - like the Sun, or Bicycling Magazine, or my 401 (k) statement.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio's longtime "voice of books," has called him “the best novelist in America that nobody knows.”

I agree! Very well written novel that deals with a family member murdered by another family member. Written from the perspective of each of the three siblings, each one so very different, yet all tied together by one tragically dysfunctional mother. At times it reads like three books, but it all comes together well. I really enjoyed this book, probably will put this on my all time best list.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Employing elements of Greek tragedy and contemporary situations, this family drama hods interest so totally it is almost impossible to put down. Each of the fully grown children of the family matriarch is damaged in some way, thanks to their traumatic childhoods. Emotional and physical damage that follows them through their entire lives. Summoned to their mother's home they face their pasts and futures changed forever, High recommended.

[False · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love his writing style. I loved his current book on Gore Vidal. I loved this, set in Maryland: suburbs outside of Washington, D.C. that you never hear about (and captured perfectly) as well as the lowlands of Maryland's Eastern Shore water country. He "gets" family dynamics and how entwined they are with love and hate.

[Andrea Schwartz]

I liked all the characteres in this novel, separately, and found their back-stories very interesting. But when they all got together, my interest in the novel really dropped. I confess to being a little shocked by the ending--didn't see that coming.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books was chilling and realistic. A story of a dysfunctional family that comes back together to deal with their abusive mother.

[sjams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Heavy-handed with the Greek tragedy approach. Horrifying at times. All too real.

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was sucked in by the promise of Greek tragedy. The family in question was indeed horrifying but a litle too predictable. The writing was quite good but was not strong enough to keep me involved.

[Cinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bizarre ending--not what I wanted--but I liked this book anyway. Weird!

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good story and I enjoyed it very much. The ending was telegraphed to me much too early though. Some people will be surprised. I enjoyed the read very much.

[Liz]

Read it for a book club. Wasn't interested in any of the characters and couldn't care what happened to them. Wasn't surprised by anything, seems cliche and easy to figure out.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could see the ending coming a mile off, but this was a quick little read and I enjoyed it.