THE LAST REFUGE OF YANKEES

THE HILLS AT HOME
By Nancy Clark
481 pp. New York:
Pantheon Books. $25

Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves

Those of us who are in noticeable ethnic groups can sometimes forget that everyone is from some kind of ethnic group, even those who are at the top. In this country, especially in New England, that would be the Yankees, those hardy, flinty Puritan souls who came here from England to escape religious persecution and promptly persecuted those who did not believe as they did. From these early Yankees, this country got its work ethic, a zeal for literacy, and a legacy of bland food. Fortunately, Julia Child rescued us from this last affliction, and why we don’t have a national holiday in her honor is beyond comprehension. Having a Yankee mother-in-law, I have seen some of the things that they eat, and it is not a pretty sight: crushed Saltine crackers in milk, dropped egg on toast doused with boiling water so that the whole thing becomes a soggy mess, and lemon and lime Jell-O mixed with pineapple and mandarin oranges.

However, despite the Puritan cultural dominance and the legacy of bland food, it is important to remember that everyone has a story, even the old Yankee families. In The Hills at Home, Nancy Clark has written a wry, satirical, but nevertheless moving account of an extended Yankee family—the Hills—whose members are in the midst of various crises and emergencies. Home they all flock, like chickens to a coop, to recover and gain their strength.

Home, in this case, is a big, old house that stands “alone out in the relative countryside of what used to be known as an old Yankee town, no longer situated so very far to the north of Boston.” The novel opens on the proverbial dark and stormy night as the “[rain flings] itself by the fistful against the clapboards” and “the house [resembles] nothing so much as an ocean liner caught in elegant passage gliding toward a farther horizon.” Right away, we know the Hills are in for some rough weather, and the house is a fortress as well as a ship that will help them get through the storm.

At the center of the story is Lily, a retired teacher who has never been married. Lily, who is frugal, careful, and precise, owns the big home, and as the family members make their way to the house, she ruefully but affectionately observes that “all of the Hills had been raised to regard the old house…as home, whether they had been reared there or in some other place.” Their very “souls” urge them homeward.

Lily, of course, is polite and hospitable. “She [peps] up the first-night supper menus with piccalilli and cottage cheese spread on Ritz crackers for before, and she [bakes] batches of Congo bars for after…” No wonder the family doesn’t leave! Who could resist such culinary treats?

The first to come is Harvey, Lily’s brother. Harvey is a “rosy-skinned and fluffy-headed old man,” a hard-core Republican who hates the Kennedys and “thinks that chiseled verse about the huddled masses and the tired and the poor always spoke to the wrong sort.” Married three times but now alone, he has come home to be taken care of. Next come a niece and grandniece, Ginger Hill Lowe Tuckerman and her daughter Betsy. Ginger, who is stunningly self-absorbed and self-indulgent, is fleeing an unsatisfying marriage. Betsy, her beautiful teenage daughter, has the unenviable task of mothering mother. Indeed, as they leave Kansas before heading east, Betsy’s father tells her: “You must look after your mother.” And look after her she does, hiding the checkbook and the three thousand a month that her father sends them. Betsy knows her mother cannot be trusted with money. Therefore, Ginger is given an allowance.

Not long after Harvey, Ginger, and Betsy are settled, Alden, Ginger’s brother, arrives with his wife Becky and their four children: Glover, Brooks, Rollins, and Little Becky. Alden has lost his job on Wall Street, Becky is nice and motherly, Glover is stoned most of the time, Brooks and Rollins are young teenaged pests, and Little Becky is too eager to please.

The last (well, nearly last) to come are Harvey’s grandson Arthur and his girlfriend Phoebe. Arthur has quit his advertising job (that his grandfather helped him get) to become a comedian. Naturally, Harvey does not approve.

For awhile, the Hills live in a sort of torpor, unsure of what they should do or where they should turn. But then Andy Happening arrives at the house. He is the nephew of a friend of the family and has come to study the Hills and write his Ph.D. dissertation on them, as though they are some long, lost tribe. (And, in a way, they are. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is described in this novel, the Hills’ Yankee supremacy is tumbling down, signifying the end of an era.) As befits his last name, Andy unleashes a chain of events, some of them humorous, some of them improbable, but in the end, all strangely satisfying.

Ms. Clark does a fine job with the swirl of personalities, wants, needs, and desires. She ties the Hills into different knots and tangles and then sorts them out. I must admit, however, that it took me awhile to connect with the various characters. Ms. Clark’s ironic writing deftly captures the famous Yankee reserve, and this is not a family that immediately draws the reader in. Like their real-life counterparts, it really does take a long time to get to know the Hills, and the reader needs all 481 pages to do so. However, by the end, I was rooting for the whole family, even hard-edged Harvey and self-absorbed Ginger. I really did want them to find their way, to find love, happiness, and success.

Home is always there, waiting for the Hills, in troubled times as well as good times. My only wish is that the Harveys of the world would be grateful for their very good fortune, for the houses to which they can always return, which came to them by accident of birth. And perhaps realize that “the huddled masses” are not similarly blessed. But, there. It would be churlish to begrudge happiness to an old man, and in The Hills at Home, Ms. Clark shows us why we should care about this proud, sometimes stiff, at other times foolish, but in the end, very human family.

 

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