Tessa Handley
At the end of the day
transl.: Angelos Angelides, Maria Angelidou
Ed. Gutenberg, 2022, p. 356.

A sudden, unexpected, shocking death that turns the lives of those left to mourn. Dead or themselves? Zachary, one of the couple’s husbands, Lydia’s husband and Alex and Christina’s inseparable friend, dies and leaves cracks in the mosaic of their lives. An art dealer, wealthy and extroverted, cheerful and delightful, born to taste and enjoy the joys of life, goes into the darkness of death and forces the remaining three to confront their common, collapsing present, their past, which he determined their relationship, their future, which, like him imagines becomes a source of suffering.

The four of them have a comfortable life, they are interested in art, literature, music and cinema, enjoy the privileges of their social status, have one daughter each, a copy or a typo. They are united by their experience, their relationship begins from adolescence, they are connected not formally, socially, simply by honoring their friendship, but in essence, as they communicate, empathize, open up to each other without pretense, no armor is needed to coexist. They are just on their own. Or maybe not; Isn’t the essence behind “a series of cover-ups and disguises” and “after all, weren’t the disguises just as interesting?”

The picture of the life of the characters turns out to be false and peels off, exposing desires, bitterness, addictions and rivalry.

Mismatch

When the four of them together, they look so coordinated, coordinated, interesting, delightful. But when we see two couples separately, we understand how the spouses differ from each other, so much so that in the end they turn out to be incompatible, each actually chose the image that he had about the other, the one that attracted him, when they met and kept him from daring to accept the changes that were taking place, from not wanting to recognize the new “other”, from shooting at the known, fixed, harmless, given.

Once the bond that binds them together is severed by this unexpected death, it is discovered that they are not pretending to be who they seem, the picture of their life that they thought was authentic turns out to be a fake and peels off, revealing repressed desires, bitterness and secrets, addictions and rivalries. It reveals their unspoken, real connection, which seemed strong and unshakable, almost predetermined, but which was changed by the breath, the last breath of the deceased.

Christina is assigned the main role of the story, she basically remembers, remembers, takes offense, humbles herself, tempers herself in order to live on. She turns out to be stronger than she thought, more independent, more independent, more ruthless when she needs to recover from unexpected terrible loneliness. Her husband, Alex, manifesting new needs, revealed and awaiting before the death of his friend, will want to satisfy them in a way that is painful both for others and for himself. And Lydia, the widow of Zacharias, will take off the veil of a bohemian, fragile, beautiful, carefree woman, nourished by someone else’s interest and tamed by matter, wealth, luxury, and with belated maturity she will reach out to the only one she has always wanted, another husband.

big gap

Subtly and secretly, quietly and meaningfully, an inevitable conflict develops for the heroes, a great discord. Love that has been strangled, marriages that have fallen apart, desires that have been smoldering and now avenged. Melancholy and slow development, terrible inner tension, constant balance in the void – and Hadley gives us a novel that dissects the human soul, torn between need, possibility, demand, refusal, between joy and pain, between drama and the relief of truth. .

There is a theatricality in Hundley’s writing. Enclosed spaces, precious objects, attention to the symbolism of small details, internal wars, subtle impulses, self-control and silence. And a provocative sound. This is the skin that changes many times in a marriage until you decide “whether you stay with the other person, going from one transformation to another.” Or you didn’t stay.