Lisa Klaussmann. Tigers in Red Weather. Little Brown, 2012.

Poet Wallace Stevens wrote:

        Only here and there, an old sailor
        Drunk and asleep in his boots,
        Catches tigers
        In red weather.

It is a well-known poem called “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock,” which the poet describes disappointment with those who are well off and could be doing so much more with their lives. That seems to be a theme of this novel as well.

I was drawn to this book only because of its title. With such a quotation, it must have had some literary quality and perhaps even a little connection with the poem. I am happy to say that it did.

I wrote recently that it seems a lot of American novels could be seen as postscripts to The Great Gatsby. That is true of this story.

This focuses on two female cousins who grew up very close and together inherited some wealth. Nick (apparently short for Nicole) lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her family had a large summer home on the offshore island of Martha’s Vineyard. Thanks to Senator Teddy Kennedy and Presidents Clinton and Obama, most readers know something of the Vineyard as a summer spot for well-to-do liberals. Such is this family.

Nick and her cousin Helena marry in the early 1940s and their new husbands both go off to war. Helena’s is killed in battle, but Nick’s Navy officer husband Hughes returns. Helena will marry again, this time to an aspiring Hollywood type named Avery. They move to Los Angeles, but each summer Helena returns to Martha’s Vineyard where most of the story takes place.

Like Gatsby, most of the characters are unwittingly trying to distinguish the difference between desire and love. Hughes is very attractive to women. Even when she is not sure she loves him any more, Nick still has a strong physical attraction to him. Nick herself, while not a classic beauty, has a certain style that also makes her attractive to men. She knows it, too, and can flaunt that knowledge.

Helena is a poorer cousin and seems to lack the confidence of Nick. Still, at least two male characters in the book compare her to actress Jane Russell. She also, then, is attractive though, unlike her cousin, does not seem to either know or care how to exploit it. She comes across as emotionally needy in the sense that she loves Avery because he does frequently tell her how beautiful she is.

The question about attraction comes through, though, in the next generation. Much of the story takes place in 1959 in Martha’s Vineyard. Each cousin has an only child both about twelve years old at the time. Nick’s Daisy is fresh and still on the young side. She is beginning to notice boys and has a crush on Ty, another Vineyard summer visitor whom a lot of the girls find good looking. He is about two years older and has begun to have girlfriends.

Ed, son of Helena, is more socially awkward. If he were a boy of twelve today, we would probably label him “on the spectrum.” He is trying to figure out how to relate to people by observing how other people relate to each other. Now that he is almost thirteen, he is especially interested about male-female relationships. However, his guileless staring and stealthy eavesdropping make people nervous.

For most of the story—except for the beginning chapters which are set in the forties—he is the one person who is asking the question in so many words, “What is the difference between love and desire?” He and Daisy are close. He asks her what she sees in Ty. She cannot really explain it other than good looks and confidence. When Ed tells her in so many words that Ty is a self-absorbed jerk, she acknowledges it, but says she likes him anyway. Indeed, the two younger cousins appear to be the most direct all the way through.

The element of wealth contributes a lot to the story. It seems like the wealthy can get away with things. The Great Gatsby notes, about the rich couple in that novel:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…

So it seems the same here. During the summer of 1959 a young, pretty Portuguese housemaid is brutally murdered. It becomes pretty clear who did it, but he gets away with it. (As an interesting aside, the latest chapters take place in 1969, and the story of Senator Kennedy leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown is a backdrop made without commentary, but here we see from real life the kind of thing Fitzgerald had written about.)

Ed has observed the wealthy employer and the maid carry on their affair, trying to figure out what they found attractive in each other. Later, he will be the one to discover her mutilated body. People in the family and others will attribute some of Ed’s strange behavior to this event, something that would disturb anyone. For the rich employer, murder is the easy way to get rid of someone who has become a problem.

While money might make some people get away with murder or other crimes and infidelities, it also can corrupt those who desire it. Avery, Helena’s husband, hopes he can get some of the family’s money to help bankroll his movie plans (which never bear fruit in over twenty years). He even exploits Helena’s natural beauty to get backing. At that point, though, teenaged Ed sees what is going on, and this makes his questions about love and desire even more complicated. What about people who are unattractive or no longer attractive or who demand too much? What will happen to the next generation?

Yes, many of the characters are tigers—they are predatory. Some are killers. Even those who act defensively use more strength than is necessary. It seems like everyone has wounds and, as is often said, hurt people hurt people. But sometimes the painful experience can give us insight or wisdom we otherwise would not have.

I am happy to note that the author’s indirect observations connected to the Stevens poem quoted are similar to what I teach my students when I teach the poem. I am not sure I would necessarily recommend the novel to high schoolers because of a couple of R-rated scenes, but it does have a literary quality. This is more than just a soap opera.

One other note on this book. I was happy to read the Kindle edition because the cover on the print version makes the story look like chick lit. It is not. Yes, the story is told from the points of view of the five main characters and three are women: Nick, Helena, and Daisy. But this story is for everyone. It is hard, it is real, and it perhaps is also a reminder that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man or woman enter the kingdom of God (see Mark 10:25). In most cases it is simply because they do not want to.