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2014
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Odds Favor At Random a review by Tanya Long Bennett Lee Zacharias. At Random. Greensboro, NC: Fugitive Poets Press, 2013.
NCLR Editorial Board Member Tanya Long Bennett is a Professor of English at North Georgia College and State University. Her publications include articles on writers such as Lee Smith, Lorraine Lopez, and Ana Castillo. She is also a regular reviewer for NCLR. Lee Zacharias is Professor Emeritus of creative writing at UNC-Greensboro, where she directed the MFA program and served as editor of The Greensboro Review. Her books include a short story collection, Helping Muriel Make It through the Night (Louisiana State University Press, 1975) and a novel, Lessons (Houghton Mifflin, 1981), which received the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for fiction. Read essays by Zacharias in NCLR 2004 and 2008.
above right Lee Zacharias reading from At Random at UNC-Greensboro, 21 Mar. 2013
Lee Zacharias recently produced a new novel, At Random, well worth our attention. In this work, Zacharias, clearly a seasoned writer, explores the events in life that seem to occur not only unexpectedly, but despite our often careful and diligent efforts to avoid them. Eva Summer and Guy McFerrin, married for over a decade and living in fictional Random, NC, when the novel opens, respond to tragedy with the subconscious assumption that terrible accidents, and the snowballing effects of their aftermath, should not happen to people like them. Guy’s recent layoff as district manager of the Random Herald and the reclassification of Eva’s job, from Gardell College’s art gallery administrator to tenure-seeking faculty member, seem to the couple merely annoying setbacks, but nothing that cannot be conquered with rationality and determination. After all, they are educated, ethical people. But the world is unpredictable, and, Zacharias reminds us, even Eva, Guy, and their ten-year-old son Nick are subject to its random happenings. Approaching her subject with courage, honesty, and great craftsmanship, Zacharias has produced in At Random a story with the power to make us question the assumptions underpinning our daily actions and personal values. On a rainy evening in November 1991, as Guy and Eva drive home from the opera, their car collides with a young boy. Although they feel sure they have done nothing wrong, the event will change their lives. At points during the following weeks, they feel that even their rock-solid marriage will not withstand the legal, social, and emotional challenges that result from the incident. Yet through the story of this family’s negotiation
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of an ultimately indifferent universe, Zacharias pays homage to love, intimacy, and compassion. Although there is no stable set of ethics to order the world portrayed by this novel, Zacharias suggests that in the middle of the mess, love happens – perhaps in spite of the disorder, but more probably because of it. The boldness with which the novel confronts its toughest issues is both provocative and moving. Ultimately, Eva and Guy are faced with decisions that must be made without the benefit of clear-cut righteousness or blame. What is right and wrong becomes, on some level, irrelevant. For example, until his legal guilt or innocence in the death of nineyear-old Y Bhan Buon To can be established, Guy insists that Eva have no contact with the boy’s family, a seemingly reasonable request in light of the American legal process. Any gift, even one meant to help the family through the loss of Bhan, could be treated in court as an admission of guilt. Yet when circumstances, partially orchestrated by Eva herself, but also resulting from coincidence, bring her into acquaintance with Bhan’s sister H’nghai, what is right for Eva becomes much less clear. Similarly, Eva and Guy’s relationship is portrayed as a fluid thing, subject to time and material reality rather than transcending daily factors, as “true” marriages are often believed to do. Although Eva and Guy have endured the challenges to their partnership longer than many of their friends, daily circumstances affect the quality of that partnership, situations as seemingly trivial as whether Nick cleans up his fishing tackle and, if not, whether his parents will support each other in punishing him for his disobedience.