Finding fault

I've just finished reading Kate Chopin's first novel, At Fault, which would be the ideal textbook for a course in How To Write a Bad Novel. The plot is ridiculous, the characters are flat, and the writing is, how shall I put this kindly, uneven.

At Fault is the story of David and Therese. David loves Therese. Therese loves David. David is always quoting his best friend Homeyer, who never makes a single appearance in the novel despite being the most influential person in David's life. David has a younger sister, a silly girl who enjoys flirting with Therese's nephew, Gregoire. What is David's sister's name? I've already forgotten--that's how memorable she is. I've also forgotten the name of David's wife, so let's just call her Bob. If the BP boss can call his yacht Bob, why can't I do the same with David's wife? Especially since she eventually ends up bobbing on the water like a yacht. Or an oil slick. Only smaller.

But I'm getting ahead of myself: David loves Therese and Therese loves David, but David has a wife, or actually an ex-wife, Bob. Why is Bob a problem? Because the novel is set in 1890s Louisiana and Therese is a Catholic. David explains the reason for his divorce and places all the blame on Bob, whose vices are whispered in code language but a discerning reader can guess that she's a lush and perhaps a floozy. Therese persuades David that his lack of husbanding skills drove Bob to drink so he is actually at fault (see? the title!) for her sins, and if he were an honorable man, he would uphold his marriage vows.

And David loves Therese so much that he goes right back to the city and marries Bob. Again. It happens so quickly that if you blink you'll miss it: David shows up and says "Let's get hitched!" and Bob just goes, "Um, okay, anything you say!" So then David takes Bob back to the country to live next door to Therese and show her what an honorable man he is: "See! I love you so much that I remarried my wife, the lush! Now come into my arms and tell me you love me!"

Right.

Then Jocint burns down the lumber mill.

Who is Jocint and why does he burn down the lumber mill? Good questions, which the novel unfortunately fails to answer. Jocint is this shadowy figure who pops up once or twice to mumble dark imprecations and oil his gun, but when he burns down the lumber mill, the novel tells us that "everyone" knew he would do it someday.

Wait a minute! I'm part of "everyone" and I didn't have any idea Jocint would burn down the lumber mill! Why did he do it? As far as I can tell, the only reason Jocint burns down the lumber mill is to provide Gregoire an excuse to shoot him, which provides Gregoire's girlfriend (David's sister) an excuse to act like an idiot. Yes: the lumber mill had to burn to send a silly girl stomping off in a huff.

But back to Jocint: just as everyone knows Jocint was fated to burn down the lumber mill, everyone knows that Gregoire is at fault (see! the title!) for killing Jocint, even Jocint's elderly and infirm father, who arrives on the scene to pull Jocint from the flames while threatening to kill Gregoire, so you think it's all up with Gregoire until the moment when Jocint's father keels over and dies right there in front of everyone. The novel doesn't reveal what he dies of but I suspect SCD, Superfluous Character Disease. There's a lot of that going around.

Fortunately, the lumber mill is insured, but it must be the most incompetent insurance company that ever existed because no one ever comes around to investigate the arson or the murder of Jocint. There is no Sheriff, no fire inspector, not even a mild-mannered insurance investigator, and in fact no one ever even asks Gregoire any questions about the shooting of Jocint, which leaves Gregoire free to go off on a spree and eventually succumb to SCD.

Which takes us back to the central plot: the love story between Therese and David, whose devotion to each other is undying even though David is married to Bob, the lush, who, despite living in a cabin in the middle of Nowheresville, finds a handy supplier to keep her liquored up. She's a bad woman, that Bob. You can hardly blame poor honorable David for wanting to be rid of her, but how can he remove Bob from the picture while retaining his honor? What he needs is some sort of horrible accident that will take her life while sparing him so he can hitch up with Therese. What he needs is another outbreak of Superfluous Character Disease.

And he gets it. I won't tell you how Bob dies because you'll see it coming three chapters away, but SCD takes her out of the scene in a way that allows David to act heroically, so heroically that you lose sight of the fact that yet another minor character dies at the scene, disappearing so completely that you might have to leaf back to an earlier part of the book to confirm that she ever existed.

But she's not important. This is the story of David and Therese, who love each other. That's all you need to know. In fact, if you know that much, you don't even have to read the book.