A love triangle that works

Men feel lonely when they do not do the one thing they ought to do. It is only when we fully exercise our capacities -- when we grow -- that we have roots in the world and feel at home in it.

Eric Hoffer, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

Eric Hoffer, writing in his journal in 1958, neatly summarizes the plot of Carrie Brown's novel Lamb in Love, written 40 years later. Actually, this describes the essence of quite a number of novels: a character steps out in faith from his or her confined, routine life and discovers life at its fullest and richest. Brown's beautiful 1999 novel seems particularly to fit, however.

Middle-aged Norris Lamb leads a quiet life as a postmaster in a small English village. Never married, he collects stamps and plays the organ on Sunday mornings. That's just about it. Then one night, as it happens the same night that Neil Armstrong walks on the moon, he happens to see Vida Stephen dancing naked in a garden. He has known Vida, now in her 40s, all her life, but only now does he fall in love with her. Never having been in love before, he has no idea what he "ought to do," and so he does it all wrong. What to him seems like a bold, if anonymous, declaration of love, his own "one small step for man,"  would, to most other people, seem more like stalking.

As for Vida, she became a nanny for baby named Manford as a young woman. Now more than two decades later, she remains Manford's nanny, for though his body has grown into that of a man, a very large man, his brain remains that of a small child. And he has never spoken, or as much as made a sound, in his life. Manford's mother is dead, and his wealthy father is an architect who is rarely home. Even when home, he remains distant from his son. So Vida, too, is ripe for love, or for just about anything that can break her out of her routine. She has not enjoyed a holiday, or as much as a day off, since she became Manford's caregiver.

Love triangles in fiction tend to be complications, obstacles to be overcome if they don't lead to tragedy first. In Brown's hands, this unusual love triangle helps all concerned to, in Hoffer's words, "have roots in  the world and feel at home in it." Manford loves Vida, but when Norris befriends him, giving him a male friend for the first time in his life, his life becomes richer and the creativity hidden inside him emerges in surprising ways. Norris loves Vida, but he probably has little chance of winning her until he also discovers his affection for Manford. Vida loves Manford, but hers is a narrow, confined life until introverted, awkward Norris opens doors for her.

In other hands, all this could easily turn into sentimental slop, but Brown manages it skillfully and artfully. Lamb in Love is a novel to be savored, sentence by sentence.