As We Are Now

As We Are Now by May Sarton
Fiction
1973 W.W. Norton & Company
Finished on July 31, 2019
Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

A novel in the form of a diary, this story tells of Caroline Spencer, a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher who has suffered a heart attack and been deposited by relatives in an old people's home. Subjected to subtle humiliations and petty cruelties, she fights back with all she has, and in a powerful climax wins a terrible victory. "I shared the anger and the righteous indignation which I felt behind every line."--Madeleine L'Engle.

"I am not mad, only old. I make this statement to give me courage. To give you an idea what I mean by courage, suffice it to say that it has taken two weeks for me to obtain this notebook and a pen. I am in a concentration camp for the old, a place where people dump their parents or relatives exactly as though it were an ash can."

And so begins May Sarton's novel, As We Are Now. Once again, I find myself in the minority of a recent read. Three of my blogging friends gave this slim novel (a mere 125 pages) a perfect 5-star rating and while I wasn't familiar with the author, I do enjoy reading books about characters in their later years and was looking forward to this book. I knew from the reviews to be prepared for a bleak, if not depressing story. Those same reviewers said it is a beautiful and honest story, so I decided to give it a read.

The book is very readable and can easily be finished in a single sitting, but I took three days since the content is as heart-breaking as I'd been warned. Carol keeps a written journal in order to keep track of her thoughts and activities before she loses her memory and, or, her sanity.

I call it The Book of the Dead. By the time I finish it I shall be dead. I want to be ready, to have gathered everything together and sorted it out, as if I were preparing for a great final journey. I intend to make myself whole here in this Hell. It is the thing that is set before me to do. So, in a way, this path inward and back into the past is like a map, the map of my world. If I can draw it accurately, I shall know where I am.

 and

I think they want to persuade me that I'm not quite sane. Every now and then Harriet tells me I have done something (broken a glass, burnt a hole in my sheet) or said something ("I won't stay here another minute") that I cannot remember at all. There are also things I have done--or believe I have done--like copying out the letter to Susie, that I may not have done. Losing one's memory is terribly disorienting. The danger is to lose track altogether and begin to be whirled about on time like a leaf in the eddy of a brook--then you begin to wonder what is real and what is not, and where you are, and how long you have been there. And finally it is frightening because I can see that what happens next is a growing distrust of everyone and everything. How can I tell truth from falsehood if I can't remember anything?

and

Old age is really a disguise that no one but the old themselves see through. I feel exactly as I always did, as young inside as when I was twenty-one, but the outward shell conceals the real me--sometimes even from itself--and betrays that person deep down inside, under wrinkles and liver spots and all the horrors of decay. I sometimes think that I feel things more intensely than I used to, not less. But I am so afraid of appearing ridiculous. People expect serenity of the old. That is the stereotype, the mask we are expected to put on.

I thought this was a good novel, and one which would be a great companion read with Being Mortal (Atul Gawande), but I didn't love it as others have. Looking back at a couple of the novels I've read about aging (Emily, Alone; Our Souls at Night; Night of Miracles) I realize that while sad, they were also humorous and hopeful. Sarton's novel is a powerful and thought-provoking, but unbearably bleak and sad. 

About the Author:

May Sarton was born on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. An accomplished memoirist, Sarton boldly came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her later memoir, Journal of a Solitude, was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton died in York, Maine, on July 16, 1995.