Pickle’s Progress is the debut novel of Marcia Butler, retired world-famous oboist. The title drew me in as I could only think of one other novel with “Pickle” in the title, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. The latter is an 18th century satire in which a young, self-centered country gentleman becomes alienated from his cold-hearted mother, the father who snubs him, and his dissolute brother. Little did I realize how these ideas would resonate through Pickle’s Progress.
Pickle and his brother Stan are such identical twins their mother dressed them differently so she could tell them apart. Though identical, the mother prefers the eldest-born (by mere seconds), Stan. who is given every imaginable opportunity including upper-crust college education. Pickle, on the other hand, drops out of community college and becomes a cop. Pickle falls in love with Karen, but through machinations of their mother, Karen marries Stan. Together they become a successful Manhattan power couple.
The opening scene is a tour deforce, setting up the power struggle between the brothers. Stan and Karen are alcoholics, who drive while intoxicated. They have an accident in the rain on the George Washington bridge and nearly run over a young woman, Junie, whose lover has just jumped over the railing. Pickle must rescue his brother and Karen for the umpteenth time as well as get a statement from Junie regarding her lover’s suicide.
This book is a mass of dysfunction in both Karen’s and Pickle and Stan’s families and a bizarre love triangle between the three that has somehow followed the rules of physics and been stable for many years. When Karen asks Junie to move into the brownstone she shares with Stan, the triangle becomes an unstable quadrangle that wobbles their relationships between the four. There are issues of child sexual abuse in Karen’s past that are never fully resolved. While the opening is exceptional, the middle is something of a slow muddle, then there is an unexpected twist marked by a point-of-view shift that is a bit startling. Overall, it is an unusual domestic thriller with little overt violence, but lots of psychological abuse by all parties and even a sprinkle of romantic love.
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