Spartina

SPARTINA

by John Casey

 

Award: National Book Winner 1989

 

Nomination: National Book Critics Circle Finalist 1989

 

Date Read: July 11, 2021

 

Dick Pierce is a fisherman. Before being a husband, father or long-standing member of his community, he is first and foremost a fisherman. Not able to hold down a job working for someone else, Dick knows his long-term financial survival depends on completing his own boat which lies half-finished in his backyard. He simply lacks the funds to finish it.

 

As hard as money is to come by for Dick, his corner of Rhode Island is flush with it as new money keeps washing in with every tide. A resort is being built on a point of land that was once owned by Dick’s family and a locally iconic building, the Wedding Cake, also once owned by Dick’s family, has also fallen into the hands of new money. These developments highlight the class resentment Dick carries deep. He still bristles at having to sell all that land to pay his dying father’s medical bills.

 

So what is a class-conscious fisherman with a half-finished boat to do? In Casey’s world, he starts an affair with Elsie, a privileged Natural Resources Officer who was raised with money. Duh! This affair baffles me and over time becomes somewhat tedious. While there are brief flashes of attraction and heat, there seem to be more longer flashes of false starts, miscommunications, frustrations, annoyance, confusion and hiding from one another. If Dick is going to risk his marriage and kids for this affair, is it really worth it? Little does Dick know, though, that Elsie is pregnant and had that intention all along. 

 

During all of this, humming in the background is Dick’s wife, May, and two boys, Charlie and Tom. May is, frankly, much too good for Dick. She rarely nags at him for his long-absences at sea. She helps out financially where she can by picking crab. She singlehandedly it seems is raising two boys and rarely getting the time of day from her husband. When Dick finally comes clean about his affair, she handles it with maturity and grace. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, though. She could have such a better life.

 

Throughout all of these stumblings, though, Dick is a character that you can’t help but root for. Surly, temperamental, single-minded, borderline obsessed, you want for Dick to succeed in getting his boat into the water. This is really the only financial way forward for his family. Borrowing the money needed to finish it, Dick is finally able to see his baby born and the Spartina is launched into the sea the day before news strikes of a hurricane approaching.

 

If this novel were to be boiled down to one central theme, it would have to be class. Dick is resentful of anyone around him with money, even his friend Parker who pulls of numerous shenanigans to come by it – some legal, some very much not. As much as Dick is wary of Parker, he cannot help but get involved in his schemes. 

 

Full of technical detail about scrounging a living from the sea in New England, love, infidelity and realizing one’s dreams, Casey packs in a lot for readers to sink their teeth into. I didn’t expect to enjoy this as much as I did.