My New American Life

By Francine Prose, 2011, HarperCollins Publishers, 306 pages
Reviewed by Jim Stasiowski, September 3, 2020

“My New American Life” is a nice novel, and I mean that in the most negative way possible.

A few Saturdays ago, as Sharon and I were sitting outside, she with her vodka, me with my gin, our neighbor walked by, headed for the convenience store about a quarter-mile away. “Need anything?” he politely asked, and we said no.

Fifteen minutes later, he returned lugging a 12-pack of Coors Light.

I thought: He’s going to have a nice evening with one of America’s blandest beers. He can pound six, eight of them, no sweat, achieve a mild buzz, not gain a pound, yet have left maybe as much as a half-dozen cans of bland for a nice Sunday of no football (yet) on TV.

“My New American Life” is 12 Coors Lights: pleasant, unchallenging, requiring more than one evening of my time, promising more than fulfilling, and despite some fun moments, not worth all the trips to the bathroom.

Lula, 26, is from Albania. I know what you’re thinking: “Albania. Finally, a novel about a young Albanian.” And, “Where is Albania?” (Hint: At Greece, take a sharp left.)

Unsatisfied by her Manhattan-waitressing job, Lula catches a break when an unhappy financial whiz in New Jersey hires her to be a, a, … hmmmm, it’s hard to say what he wants. He hires her to live in his house – his wife split for unknown reasons – and watch after (that’s the inadequate but closest descriptive verb phrase I can come up with) his unhappy son, Zeke, a high school senior.

She is a beautiful émigré from the unhappiest country in the world, and her only duty is to … look, I don’t know about New Jersey, but in the rest of the known universe, pairing up an eager-to-please young stunner with an alienated wannabe Goth of 17 or 18, you can be sure there will be, at a minimum, devout panting, right?

So that’s a promising start in the department of prospective drama. After all, debauchery is as reliable in the United States as in Albania, if somewhat tamer, and New Jersey seems to have more than its per capita share, according to TV. Add in the several characters who are either weird – “Mr. Stanley,” Zeke’s dad, who easily could be running a pyramid scheme and uses the pronoun “one” to excess – or shady – Don, the immigration lawyer whose success and pro bono work seem too good to be true, and Alvo, an Albanian smoothie who steals Lula’s heart and gives her a gun – so let the fireworks begin.

Or, hose down your dirty minds. For nearly the whole novel, everyone is too nice to make the effort of either an affair or a fuss.

The one exception is a volatile and implausible scene involving an unexpected visitor, the aforementioned gun, a kitchen knife and mud. Otherwise, the plot just plods along like a fat, placid old basset. Francine Prose, a prolific and much-praised author, deftly builds tension, but instead of letting it explode then picking up the pieces, she releases it gradually, the way you pinch the mouth of an inflated balloon to create that farting sound as the air escapes, as if she is saying, “Fooled you again, readers.”

My question to Prose is: Why write about Lula unless you’re willing to take her to the edge, then nudge her over it? Isn’t that the novelist’s role, to establish the protagonist’s character, then challenge it with a potentially life-changing predicament?

Lula is odd enough to be compelling: She casually alternates between lies and candor, her superstitions are looney, she yearns for something she cannot define, she mocks Americans’ pretensions. But all that lying, truth-telling, fearing, yearning and mocking toddle off to nowhere. I think Prose’s point in writing “My New American Life” is to reveal that the problems that are problems in Albania are problems in Alabama, in America, even in parts of New Jersey.

That’s not a revelation; that’s reality TV.

By contrast, Dunia, Lula’s countrywoman, conspirator and confidante, steps right up and lives her life with the gusto of a perpetually on-the-lam con artist. Thwarted in her attempt to fly back to Albania, she seduces Steve, the wealthy doctor who helps her at the airport, marries him, spends his money, drinks like a communist, smokes cigarettes like a communist anticipating Stalinist purges, then dumps Steve when he starts an affair with his (male) driver. The split is friendly enough for Steve to award her a hefty settlement, so Dunia leases a lavish splash in – get this – Trump Tower for six months. Six months, that’s one hell of an edge. That six months of Dunia is worth reading about. She’s not worrying about the edge; she is the edge.

Lula is likable. The problem is, so is almost everyone else named in the novel. There is mild humor throughout, but not enough to sustain what I think is meant to be a serious work of contemporary literature.

Not every novel has to be “Anna Karenina” – thank goodness, because “Anna” drove me bananas – but a writer of Prose’s reputation should appeal to something powerful in readers. “My New American Life” appeals to how nice it is to be a novelist without all that responsibility.