16 Feb / Carry the One by Carol Anshaw
A couple of months ago, one of my trusty literary friends with whom I often share must-read titles told me about seeing ‘everyone’ carrying this novel around last fall. So she decided to see for herself what the hubbub was about. Once she started, she confessed, she couldn’t put One down.
“[O]n a windless night in the summer of 1983,” the accidental death of a 10-year-old girl who was inexplicably walking on a dark country road far past bedtime, alters lives forever. Nick, in the front passenger seat, is the first to see her but says nothing, cocooned in his drug-induced haze. His sister, Alice, is the one who futilely goes for help. Their sister Carmen, whose wedding the siblings have just left, is the one to witness the aftermath. “‘Because of the accident, we’re not just separate numbers. When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.'”
Over the decades that follow, “the one” is never far. Nick, a brilliant astrophysicist, will alternate between being a rock-star academic and a pathetic addict. Alice, who becomes a world-renowned artist even as she hides away her very best work, desperately cleaves to the fickle lover she met on that fateful night. Carmen, who avoided the fatal physical impact, still can’t escape the death-does-not-part haunting, as her 1983 marriage falls apart, and all her devoted activism is never enough to melt her overly-self-sufficient (lonely) shell. Named after opera characters by a father who wanted to “show off his erudition,” the siblings are seemingly predestined to play out larger-than-life fates.
Go ahead, call me a ‘me, too’-lemming’: once I started, I greedily kept the headset stuck in my ears (Renee Raudman narrates with just the right balance of gentleness and urgency). Thanks to extra (running) miles and too many loads of laundry, I only needed a day to finish, but this will be one to carry for a while yet to come.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2012
Superb review of Carry the One, Terry.
Have to admit, I read it more slowly, so I could carry the characters around a bit longer….little did I know, how long they’d linger in my memory too.
I certainly wouldn’t have found it without you!! We’ll keep carrying one — I mean on. Carrying on, carrying one. Thanks for sharing!
What did you think of the ending to Carry the One?
I had said I was confused by it, and the author actually made me aware of a discussion on her website where many theories of the ending were thrown out, which was really interesting. Have you seen that?
I hadn’t seen the discussion … but I have now, thanks to you! Very interesting!
I wasn’t confused at the ending … although I do remember exactly where I was as I was listening (in the kitchen, waiting for my tea kettle to boil), and had to pause a moment with goosebumps all over, even though I wasn’t cold.
While I wasn’t sure if the girl on the steps was an actual ghost, I understood her to be at least a symbolic representation of Casey (the plaid shirt and moccasins that were always associated with her throughout the book — recurring leitmotifs, as they were — as if reminding us of her presence through those defining physical objects at strategic points throughout, in case we were to forget).
Also, I loved that Alice has been painting Casey all these years, giving her the life that was cut so very short … and I felt that Casey was always present in some form, somewhere, even maybe ‘appearing’ to Alice when she needed the inspiration/apparition to paint. Ironically, when everyone eventually passes — and of course they will — Casey is the only one who will be immortal when the art world finally discovers her portraits through Alice’s work. They will last as close to forever as none of the humans can …
When symbolic Casey actually appears in solid form, as a physical interruption in Olivia’s path, the words she speaks to Olivia are “‘There. You’re okay now.'” My response was to feel an instant sense of relief and release. For us and for Olivia. And then when she returns to the cell phone conversation and adds, “‘No, I was just talking to someone here,'” I feel like that the person on the other end of the call could have been any of the others — Alice, Maude, Nick, even Tom and Carmen. And they had heard the same, “‘There. [Wherever you are, even if you’re dead, as Nick was by then.] You’re okay now.'”
WHAT an ending!
Good insight! I knew that they kept seeing Casey and she was there with them throughout their lives, but with the ending, I was unsure of whether it was a real person or not! That’s where I think the confusion lies.
Whether or not they “saw” her, felt her, drew her, made up songs about her, dreamed her, etc., I think the whole point was that each of them had to always, always “carry the one” … On many levels, that makes that title so effortlessly brilliant. Wowowow.