An Impressionist Painting in the Form of a Novel

She has come to understand the importance of structuring details around a narrative, the expectation of histories having a beginning, a middle, and an end, though she doesn’t really believe this is the way life works: she does not know the way life works.

For CBR6 last year, I reviewed Kate Walbert’s 2004 novel Our Kind and among other things I was struck by the stream-of-consciousness narration. It allowed Walbert to move back and forth through time, building a web of interconnectivity between events and among people. The Sunken Cathedral has a similar narrative quality but while Our Kind reminded me of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, this novel reads like an impressionist painting. Walbert uses a palette of characters whose past, present and future lives blend together to create a picture of Chelsea at a particular point in time. More importantly, Walbert uses her artistry to ponder questions of history and memory, of “what ifs” and “who we are.”

The base colors for this novel can be a bit dark. Some crucial scenes take place in rain and/or at night. We know from the outset that Chelsea is located in zone 3 of New York City, a flood zone, and in addition to the tale of the Sunken Cathedral, related beautifully by art historian Helen in memories of her father and his love of Debussy, Walbert provides several other references to drowning. Each character has some deep sadness in their past. Art instructor Sid lost his wife to drug abuse shortly after the birth of their daughter, and French Jewish emigre Marie lost her entire family in the Holocaust. Other characters have damaged relationships with children or have lost someone too young or have lived long enough to have lost lifelong partners.

Connections lost. This is what has plagued her most about Abe’s death — not so much the death of Abe, but the death of all Abe knew: his books, his lifetime of asking, his thoughts, his memories, all this and everything else ….

Yet, to counter these somber hues, to deal with tragedy, guilt, and sadness, Walbert’s characters seek understanding and connectivity, often through artistic expression. Elizabeth is a poet who becomes agitated by her son’s school project on the topic “who we are.” Her actions in response to this anxiety draw in school administrators and a local cop, which in turn causes upheaval, tragedy, and leads to more artistic creation. Marie and her friend Simone take an art class together so that Simone can finish her dead husband’s painting, but the class unleashes memories and unexpected creativity for Marie as she comes to terms with encroaching age and the inevitable end of life.

… she was trying to make something of the way she felt. 

While Walbert weaves together many detailed life stories, there are two — those of Marie and Elizabeth — that unfold with the most detail. Theirs are the stories that link to the others and each other. Elizabeth, her husband and son rent the upstairs of Marie’s brownstone. Elizabeth, perhaps in her late 30s, has memories that haunt her as well as feelings of guilt and doubt. Marie, in her 80s, has painful memories of her youth and the loss of her family; she is surrounded by memories of her late husband, but she is not haunted. Marie has come to terms with her pain and with the end of life. She quietly and with strength manages her memories and her reality. One might hope to emulate her attitude as one ages.

Despite what might appear as dark themes, The Sunken Cathedral has an overall positive message about the power of art and creativity to counter painful history and memories. I found it to be haunting in all the right ways.