Jack Driscoll

On the opening page of Jack Driscoll's 1998 debut novel, LUCKY MAN, LUCKY WOMAN, he gives you a pretty damn good hint of what this book is all about. His forty-ish protagonist, Perry Lafond, unable to sleep, is browsing through an old college textbook of his wife's, THE PORTABLE NIETZSCHE. A line from it that sticks with him is this: "When marrying, one should ask oneself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory ..."

Man, old Fred knew what he was talking about, ya know? Especially about that "transitory" stuff. After 47 years of marriage, I figure I can tell you that with a certain authority. And yet so many people, like Perry and Marcia (Benoit) Lafond, are in such a hurry to get through college (they met at U of M in Ann Arbor), then get married and start their 'real' lives, that they would put little stock in Nietzsche. At that age, late teens and early twenties, the sap is flowing strongly and everything seems so Urgent. And now, after nearly twenty years together, Perry and Marcia are having some troubles, some failures to communicate, as it were. At nearly forty, Marcia is desperate to be a mother, no matter what the cost. Perry is not quite so sure about being a father. He's got some 'issues' to resolve from his northern Michigan childhood: a little sister who died tragically and parents who never got over it.

And, in addition to Nietzsche's thoughts on marriage, Perry also has the thoughts of his older best friend, Wayne, a war-damaged Vietnam vet, who thinks the only common language between men and women is silence. Well, lately Perry and Marcia have been stuck in that ominous silence. Perry, a Connecticut parole and probation officer, has gotten a little too personally involved in the lives of his 'clients," and finds himself being attracted to other women. And then he has to fly back to Michigan for a family emergency, even as his marriage begins to go off the tracks.

Yes, this is a book about marriage and family in the 1990s. The locales of New London and Groton in Connecticut and Traverse City in Michigan are woven seamlessly into the story. (Driscoll is a kind of state treasure in the latter state, where he taught writing at Interlochen Arts Academy for many years.) But the characters here are just so damn good, so REAL, that I genuinely felt for them. And there is much here to "feel" - grief, sadness, tragedy. Driscoll is damn good at this writing thing. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Just READ it, okay?… (meer)