Crawling At Night
by Nani Power
Nominations: LA Times Finalist 2001, Women’s Prize Longlist 2002
Date Read: May 1, 2023
Crawling At Night is allegedly an exploration of the anonymity of urban living. I, however, found it be a search for connection and inner truth. All of these characters know who they are in their core, they often aren’t able to accept themselves and find some way to escape from it. As we all do at one time or another.
At the heart of this novel are Ito, Mariane. While other characters circle in their orbit, Ito and Mariane capture the spotlight as two unlikely and mismatched people who almost instantly begin to need each other to return to the truths they have been avoiding. Ito has come to New York looking for a new beginning. His wife in Japan has died a painful death from cancer, his son has been sent to live with relatives and his mistress, a prostitute named Xiu-Xiu is missing. New York provides the loneliness that almost seems Ito’s penance.
Only after a while in this novel do we realize that Xiu-Xiu isn’t missing at all. She has actually been killed by his son when he saw them in bed together. The son, Daisuke, knew his father was visiting a brothel but seeing them together in the bed his mother died in was more than he could bare. Daisuke took a poker to her head. Although Ito was shocked and bereft, he helped clean up the mess and spread the rumor that Xiu-Xiu was kidnapped by a yakuza mobster. New York was to be Ito’s new beginning.
Mariane, on the other hand, has been wandering since she was 17 years old. Being forced to grow up before her time, she took care of her mother who preferred going out with strangers than staying home with her. Foisted on to the gay neighbors, Mariane learned first-hand that sexuality is flexible. Her leaving was inevitable reprieve from continuous violation.
Mariane quickly meets Carl, an older man on the brink of retirement who also has a wife dying of cancer. She moves in with them and in exchange for room and board, tends to the wife as she dies. In short order after her death, Mariane and Carl become lovers and quickly becomes pregnant with Daisy. Being only 18 and a mother, Mariane is exhausted and bored and turns to alcohol to help the days slip by more painlessly. She becomes a rip-roaring alcoholic and ends up losing Carl and Daisy because of her drinking.
Ito and Mariane meet up because he is the sushi chef at the restaurant she is working at and Mariane is a waitress. After Mariane is fired, Ito meets with her to try to help her. He sees in her a counterpoint to himself; they are both suffering in similar but different ways. Ito believes he can help Mariane sober up after decades of inebriation and help her get her child back. He also believes she can help him get his child back.
Power is a talented writer at conveying the despair and broken-heartedness of these characters. None of them are so obtuse as to not know what they are really doing, even if they try to delude themselves in the moment. Their inner selves shine through and they know in their marrow they can do better – just as we all do. But, since we are all human beings, some of us will be able to break out and actually do better and some of us will never break free. Even if we don’t, though, there is always tomorrow.
On a side note, Power refers to parentification, a term I have only learned recently, used already in this early aughts book. Where had I been?
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