dianne b.'s Reviews > The Lonely Polygamist

A rollicking story, perfect follow up for the I. Allende book (with flawless, dull, not-believable characters) I’d just read. This one is chock-a-block with fatally flawed, totally convincing, wretchedly lovable quixotes, most of whom are trying - really, really hard - to Be Good.

The 600 pages flew by. Full of delicious irony - the polygamous family’s 28 children (más o menos) all competing hopelessly for just a moment of their father’s distracted attention. They shouldn’t bother. His repetitive thoughts are compartmentalized: a large part taken mourning the loss of the one child he’d bonded with; Glory, a densely handicapped girl with cerebral palsy he had nursed and connected with. Although she was nonverbal he understood her humor, her sense of fun, could interpret her signs, and when she died - probably from an accident as he was temporarily distracted - he never forgave himself and missed her terribly. Most of the rest (of his thoughts) are about his crush on the Guatemalan wife of the mafioso whorehouse owner he's working for (will she save him?) and wondering how he landed here, right here, in this stranger's messy life.

At one point when the father, Golden, just barely avoids making a huge mistake he realizes it was Glory that saved him:
“... the possibility that all things might be restored to him, that the tragedies of this existence might be made right somehow, that Glory might be waiting on the other side, had kept him, as they said so often in church, holding fast to the iron rod. His faith in God and heaven had always been weak, but he believed in them now, if for no other reason than belief in them offered the possibility to be with his daughter again; he believed because to do otherwise would be to consign her to oblivion.”

Are we saved by our magical thinking?
Is that why we need our stories and myths so desperately?

Meanwhile, Son #5, a funny, creative, misfit boy of eleven is magically thinking himself into disaster. Rusty “The Family Terrorist,” is an oddball kid who lives in his head - just trying (like all kids) to get noticed by his parents - a difficult task when you’re in a huge polygamist family, particularly when you don’t say or do the right things, and you seem to lack the conviction and discipline to obey without question - an absolute necessity in Mormonism.

He just can’t get along. Early on he wonders to himself:
"Was it because Rusty was not a human at all, but the last survivor of a race of intergalactic robots who had sent Rusty to earth in the form of a human to find out if it was a good planet for starting up a whole new race of robots that would one day blow up the universe? Possibly. And being an intergalactic robot, Rusty was new to earth ways and customs and that’s why he was having trouble communicating with the earthlings, especially the Richards family, who were all a-holes?”

So, as is predictable - his actions get bigger and bigger, until there is a definitive explosion. Literally.
Ka-boom. So now a:
Real World Aside (sadly not fiction): Another child, born inside another cult. The cult was Scientology, both of his birth parents were Sea Org so he was raised, like livestock, essentially without them. He, too, was ‘playing’ with explosives, like our fictional child, but in this real case, he blew off both his hands and forearms and was thus deemed “evil” by his parents and Scientology (because he was not perfect) expelled forthwith from all he’d ever known, and his life went exactly as well as you’d imagine, since. End of aside.

There are so many stories within stories, threads of silliness and sadness and truth. People who are not who they seem to be, who have recreated themselves in the big, open West. I may have enjoyed this more than some because I have roots in this whacky place. My extended family came across the plains to settle in Utah, some were polygamists in southern Utah, some escaped to Mexico when The Principle (polygamy) was outlawed. I have beloved family that lived their entire lives in the nuclear testing (another recurring theme) fallout zone.

I found this a poignant, wise and completely hilarious book. I understand why some might find it odd. It is.

Another moment:
“One of the children, Daughter #11, has started a rumor that has been picking up steam among the under-seven segment of the domestic population, that Mother #3 is disappearing, fading in and out, flickering into nothing at inopportune and often comical moments, like a ghost in a black-and-white cartoon. For so long she has asked for nothing, required nothing, taken nothing, only given. It is the story of so many mothers in this small valley and, for that matter, in the larger world that she has heard so much about. It’s very simple: she has given too much, and now there is very little left of Mother #3.”