Book Reviews

Kitty & Virgil: A Novel

Overlook Press, 280 pp., $25.95

Love at first sight is, at best, an implausible notion. A novel about two characters who fall in love at first sight must engage the reader very deeply and convincingly detail the relationship that is the foundation of the novel. In Kitty & Virgil, Paul Bailey organizes the necessary elements for a romantic tale of two people from wildly different backgrounds who manage to find love and symbiosis. He manipulates the fundamental tragedy of the story with the infusion of a comic tone. He dramatizes the events by revealing them in flashback. Unfortunately, although the ingredients for a great love story of grand scope and emotion are present, Kitty & Virgil suffers from simple lack of sincerity, and thus plausibility.

To his credit, Bailey illuminates the nightmare that was Ceausescus Romania with grace and depth, and seamlessly weaves poetry, familial relations, a recipe for mayonnaise, holocaust, and celibate homosexuality between elderly people throughout the story. Into this mix is thrown a colorful cast of characters that provide clues to the main players' motivations and subtly foreshadow the plot. Some of them are key to the development of the story; some are not. One (very minor) character in particular is given 10 full pages to guide Kitty (who is a complete stranger to her) through her memories and photographs. Kitty suffers through the afternoon of stories and photos and anecdotes about people unknown and insignificant to her (and the reader) for no apparent reason. Virgil is the most genuinely felt, fully fleshed-out character. Sadly, Kitty is as one-dimensional as the love affair she acts out with Virgil. She is the good daughter while her twin sisters are the bad ones; Kitty is the even-tempered, eternally patient, and understanding woman who stands by her man. The reader is shown her history, but not given reason to believe in the complexity that should be hers.

Three elements constitute the best of Kitty & Virgil: kindly humor, gifted language, and the philosophy that stories are conductors of history as well as bridges between strangers. Unfortunately, these things are not fundamental to the novel. They are important as mapping devices for the writer, and as tools to guide the reader. What this tale lacks is the heart, the magic that is spun into a love story that elevates it beyond the words on the page.