Immaculate Blue by Paul Russell; Cleis Press, $16.95
Revisiting characters first seen in his 1990 novel The Salt Point, in Immaculate Blue Vassar College English literature professor Paul Russell thrusts Anatole, Leigh, Chris, and Lydia back into a place where the ravages of time and economic recession have taken their toll: Poughkeepsie, New York.
A wedding reunites them all, and even though 20 years have passed, some things have not been forgiven. They were "a pack of stupid, self-absorbed predators back then," and now, Chris "the wanderer" manages to travel internationally to reconnect with his former friends. He finds himself still under scrutiny for his betrayal of Anatole 27 years ago when a boy came between them. Sentimental hair stylist Anatole finds himself wracked with anxiety over reuniting with Chris (a Xanax didn't help), even as his own wedding looms. Fifty-something Lydia, who manages the salon and searched out Chris, is happily married to her conservative husband. Together they've raised hearing-impaired teenage son Caleb. Though she attempts to wrangle them all together, it's "barely two hours into the weekend, and they're at odds with each other."
As the wedding proceedings plod forward, the novel backtracks to establish points in the characters' relationships. Instead of stalling the narrative, this technique deepens the emotional and unresolved melodrama still simmering after decades. Chris is now an oil company "private military contractor" in Nigeria and the Middle East. His attitudes toward his brackish life and controversial work, and Caleb's objections to them, add spice and sexiness to a character who takes center stage throughout.
Russell is smart to add sex and passion into the mix, if only to humanize these pushy characters and make them more likeable. They're obsessed with the past and continually betrayed by age and bodily changes (Anatole has "gone rubbery"). The author's sense of place in Upstate New York is expertly conjured and romanticized; Poughkeepsie is a "forest from which slender church spires and squat apartment towers rise." The third section reunites Chris with Leigh, the beautiful former hustler who insinuated himself into their lives and loves with destructive results two decades prior. It's an incendiary coupling which is by turns transformative, sexy, and riveting.
Writing through the ever-changing perspective of each character in turn, Russell shows himself a master of the flashback and the flash-forward, without sacrificing narrative tension or the story's integrity. Altogether, this quartet of sadness, longing, joy and revelation is an intimate delight in the form of a richly realized novel. Readers who have left behind friends to depart for greener pastures of personal growth will relate to Russell's tale of friendship, jealousy, and the unfortunate staying power of resentment and broken hearts.