The Enchantment Of Lily Dahl
by Siri Hustvedt
Nominations: Dublin Longlist 1998, Women’s Prize Longlist 1997
Date Read: December 4, 2022
Lily, at the tender age of 19, is on her own. She works at a diner as a waitress, but her dream is to be an actress. She participates in community theater and enjoys every moment of it. Her life seems somewhat set until Ed moves into the Stuart Hotel across the street and then everything begins to go haywire.
Lily and Ed’s windows face each other and she is able to see Ed working on his paintings. I was never quite sure why Ed left New York to come to Webster, Minnesota, but nevertheless he becomes Lily’s neighbor. Without a lot of thought and a lot of bravado, Lily strips one night in front of her window and Ed gets an eyeful. She follows this up with a visit to his studio the next night and, of course, they have sex.
The small town of Webster is filled with strange characters, but Martin stands out. He stutters and is simply odd, writing messages to Lily on a napkin that says “mouth” and giving her a hand-drawn map of directions to his home. Martin is also in the same play as Lily, making it even more difficult to avoid him. He wants Lily to visit his home and after practice one day, she finally agrees. Maybe that’s how things work in a small town – you go to people’s houses that you don’t know all that well. But it’s mighty strange she ends up at Martin’s house, knowing he’s a little unhinged and then the Bodler’s, eating cookies with the two brothers while hanging out in their bed.
All kinds of strange begins to occur – a mystery man who hangs out in the alley outside Lily and Mabel’s apartments; sightings of Martin carrying what looks like a dead body; Dolores, the local strumpet, coming and going from Ed’s apartment. All of these occurrences have a cumulative effect on Lily and she begins to come unglued. She even walks out on her job, leaving Vince, the owner of the diner, in the lurch. Knowing that Martin is carrying around a corpse and suspecting he’s hanging out in the local caves, Lily decides to go to the caves on her own to explore.
Instead of a dead body, Lily discovers Martin sitting in the cave next to a life-like doll that is supposed to resemble Lily. Although relieved there is no real dead body, she is incredibly disturbed by Martin’s clear obsession with her. She also discovers he is the person who has been stalking her in the alley by her house. He started doing this after he discovered Lily and Ed were having an affair. Lily realizes she needs to get out of the cave and as she attempts to flee, Martin grabs her and physically assaults her. Thankfully, she manages to escape.
The day after Martin assaults her, he enters the diner, acting more strange, with lipstick and makeup on. Lily speaks with him only briefly but firmly states she is not going to be his friend or ever return to his house. Martin casually picks up a brown paper bag he had set on the floor and unwraps a towel to reveal a gun. He subsequently blows his brains out with Lily only a couple of feet away.
At the time of Martin’s suicide, Ed had left Webster to return to New York to try again with his estranged wife. As he leaves, he writes a note to Lily that says he loves her. Their affair is turning into something more. In only a few weeks, Ed is back because he realizes nothing between him and his wife has changed and that he is in love with Lily. He wants her to move to New York with him and she can take theater classes. There is no resolution to this proposition but I believe she will take him up on his offer.
This book did not bowl me over with its prose or plot. The characters seemed real, in all their beauty and imperfections. There are highlights here that are beautiful – Lily’s relationship with her next door neighbor, Mabel; the white shoes Lily steals from the Bodler brothers’ barn; the kindness extended by Lily’s co-worker at the diner, Bert. All I can finally say is this is a fun read, although vague at times and certain occurrences never quite explained.
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