Book #67: The Lonely Polygamist

Title: The Lonely Polygamist
Author: Brady Udall

There are people (like my little sister) who looked forward to the release of the Harry Potter books with impatient enthusiasm. More than once, she went to a midnight release party, then spent the rest of the night reading. I've heard of Harry Potter-ites who said that book release day was more exciting for them than Christmas. That's how I felt on the day when I got the email from the library saying that my reserved copy of The Lonely Polygamist had arrived. I dropped everything and hopped in the car, then rushed home and tried to finish the other book I was reading as quickly as possible. This was going to be it-- possibly the very first truly "Great American Novel" written by a Mormon. I couldn't wait to get started.

When I start out with such high hopes I often end up disappointed, but The Lonely Polygamist didn't let me down. Is it the best book I've ever read? Probably not, but it may be the best book I've read so far this year. Did I cry at the end? If I hadn't read ahead and known what was going to happen, I would have been a great big blubbering mess. My advice? Resist the urge to skip ahead. Just let the story unfold. And what a story it is. Golden Richards arrives in Southern Utah as a barely literate 20-year-old, to live with a father who he hasn't seen in ten years. Over that decade, his father earned millions of dollars and joined a group of fundamentalist Mormon polygamists. Over the next twenty years, Golden finds himself with four wives, twenty-eight children, three houses, and the remains of his father's building empire, which he's managed to the brink of bankruptcy. Golden's a decent guy who wants to do right by people and he finds the scale of his life unmanageable. He copes by taking on a project to build a brothel in Nevada (not a senior citizen center like he tells his wife) and starts to look forward to the time he spends on the job site because it allows him to escape the clamor of his life at home.

Udall nails the characters in the novel. In many family dramas, the author can explore the inner lives all of the members of a family, but Udall wisely chooses to focus on just a few: Golden, his son Rusty (a kid suffering from serious "middle child" syndrome), and the youngest of the four wives. The other kids and wives flit in and out, but really only as they relate to these three main characters. None of the three is happy, all are both overwhelmed by their lives and lonely in the midst of thirty-some other family members, and Udall does a great job showing how this combination of feelings leads all three to self-destructive behaviors (and, ultimately, to some form of redemption, depending on how you look at these kinds of things).

One interesting thing about Udall's novel is the focus on Golden. I know that the title of the book is The Lonely Polygamist, which seems to indicate a male protagonist, but many of the books I've read about polygamy tend to focus on the female experience (The Giant Joshua and this year's fantastic The Chosen One, to name a few), and while Udall does probe the character of Trish, the youngest wife, it's always Golden at the center of the story. In some ways it feels like a very male-centric novel. Between Rusty's "friggin a-holes" and the exploration of his budding sexuality, and Golden's confusion over his desires and his duties, it's a book for and about guys. That's not to say that a girl wouldn't enjoy it, but it's not a girly book. In fact, with the strong, interesting, conflicted male characters of Jens Thorsen (in Todd Petersen's Rift) and Paul Flitkin (in Jonathan Langford's No Going Back) this seems to be a banner year for exploring the psyche of the Mormon male in literature.

One difference between The Lonely Polygamist and Rift and No Going Back (other than the obvious fact that although Golden Richards may call himself a Mormon, we in mainstream Mormonism probably would not) is that The Lonely Polygamist feels edgier. Yeah, Jens is crusty and Paul is pushing the boundaries of his culture, but Udall doesn't write for a Mormon audience. In fact, I think that many Mormons might be turned off by the image of Golden sitting in a room filled with sex toys, or by some of the language and themes of the book. Ultimately, The Lonely Polygamist seems to show characters who try to make the best of a life that they think will bring them happiness in the eternities, but tends to make life on earth a living hell.