The book had been haunting me for months.
Every Barnes & Noble I’ve entered for the past year, it sat among the new paperbacks, seducing me with its stylish cover and vague title. Its premise drew me in: set over the course of a day in 1957, a tennis star-turned-housewife enters her apartment’s pool while her family is out and refuses to come out. If there’s one literary trope I can’t resist, it’s troubled women. I just couldn’t justify $19 for a novella under 200 pages.
But I caved. I wanted a book to read on the plane back from spring break, and I encountered it once more. It beckoned me. So there I was, on my six-hour flight, finally cracking open my new Cold War-era, feminist, thought-altering Bible.
Not worth the Jackson.
Look, I’m not going to sue the publisher, but Jessica Anthony’s “The Most” was not what I thought it was going to be. Firstly, half the book was from the perspective of the husband, Virgil. Why do I care about him? I picked up this book to hear his wife’s thoughts and her thoughts only, goddamit.
Not that her — Kathleen’s — thoughts were any more interesting. She’s your typical burnt-out housewife, a former athletic star who settled for suburbia and the nuclear family after understandable circumstances. Now, she’s decided she wants more. Think “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan.” I thought the book would do something different with that, but I was mistaken. Nothing about Kathleen’s character felt particularly unique in the grand scheme of her trope.
To add insult to injury, it was entirely impossible to become invested in the characters or their relationship. Individual scenes that were meant to complicate Kathleen and Virgil fell emotionally flat; side characters did not contribute to making the story or its protagonists more layered. I did not care about how the book would end its story out of emotional investment, but pure, natural curiosity that I cannot help. I truly believe that the only reason I was able to finish the novella is because it was so short. If it were a longer novel, I would’ve certainly given up on it.
The novella keeps bringing up the Sputnik launch and the plight of the Russian space dog, Laika. Hypothetically, it appears to be a metaphor for how the characters are feeling in their relationships: trapped. Instead, it feels shallow and out of place, like its sole purpose is to date the text, which it is not.
Also, the whole “over the course of eight hours” premise is not exactly the case. Flashbacks dominate word count, explaining how Kathleen and Virgil’s relationship ended up as it is, while briefly touching on the present. It’s not the 150-page feminist meditation set in a pool that was advertised to me.
“‘The Most’ achieves the impossible: it says something new about marriage,” reads one of the reviews on the cover. I can confirm it says nothing new about marriage. Here’s an unapologetic spoiler: husband and wife are BOTH cheating on each other. Repeatedly. Big whoop. No one’s ever written that before!
I understand that my perspective on this novella suffers from not meeting my expectations. But my expectations were created by its cover and back-cover blurb. Maybe if they had been more accurate to its contents, I would’ve felt differently (or not picked it up at all). I’ll blame the marketing team, not the author.
I wish this review was more detailed, but so much of it was forgettable that I’d have to reread it to remember. Please do not put me through that.
