Carry the Dog

September 1, 2021
The daughter of a famous photographer confronts her mother's difficult legacy and the challenges of aging. "The brink of sixty, it's rough terrain for anybody, time to take stock of your life even if you didn't have Miriam Marx as a mother," writes her daughter Bea, who's working on a memoir at a glacial pace. Miriam is a very dark version of a Sally Mann character--a photographer who made her reputation with nude pictures of her children that continued into puberty, pictures that sound disturbing enough to merit the charges of child pornography they engendered. Since Miri's suicide when Bea was a teenager, which came just months after the death of one of Bea's older twin brothers, her oeuvre has garnered more and more attention. Now both Hollywood and MoMA are knocking on Bea's door, and despite her understandable wish to let sleeping dogs lie, she needs the money. The Hollywood connection comes through Gary Going, Bea's ex-husband, a Lou Reed-style rock star now in his 70s. After making his fame with songs Bea wrote but was inadequately credited for, he remains her sole financial support and closest friend. Gangi, who thoroughly entertained readers with her debut novel, The Next (2016), spins a much darker story here. The greatest achievement of the book is the character of Bea. Having been focused on for her appearance since infancy, she is having a tough time with what she sees as the loss of her beauty and sex appeal. Yes, she is damaged, but her heart is big--she's practically adopted not only her neighbor's dog, but her father's adopted daughter from a second marriage; a standout section takes the two of them down to visit him in assisted living in Florida. The final act of the novel is overcrowded with terrible reveals as Bea finally opens her mother's archive and decides what to do about her past and her future. A smart, sophisticated, lively read with the dysfunctional frosting laid on a little thick.

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September 6, 2021
A woman nearing 60 looks back on her life in this bounteous if unfocused novel by Gangi (The Next). Bea Seger was the youngest of three children of Miriam Marx, a photographer made infamous for the nude pictures she took of her children and who died many years earlier by suicide. Bea has recently discovered a stash of Miriam’s work in a storage unit, and has to decide whether to show it at the Museum of Modern Art or allow a Hollywood producer to use it for a biopic. The work brings up unresolved speculation for Bea that she might have been abused by one of her twin brothers, who died at 16, and about what happened to her other brother, with whom she lost contact after he left for college. Meanwhile, she’s dealing with a possible cancer diagnosis, an ongoing, sometimes complicated friendship with her rock star ex-husband, the challenges of sharing an apartment with her father’s adopted aspiring musician daughter, and a long-term dog sitting job. There’s plot to spare, but the many mysteries, when solved, have little consequence, and the tone veers inexplicably between dark and light. Most endearing is Bea herself, who deals with the physical, psychological, economic, and romantic challenges of aging with humor and attitude. The memorable main character makes an otherwise flawed novel worth reading.

Starred review from October 15, 2021
Berenice ""Bea"" Marx-Seger has spent most of her life distancing herself from the "Marx Nudes," controversial childhood photos featuring Bea and her brothers, Henry and Ansel, that achieved notoriety for their mother, photographer Miriam "Miri" Marx. Both Miri and Ansel died soon after, and Bea has been mostly estranged from her father and surviving brother since she left home with rock musician Gary Going the night of her senior prom. As she approaches 60, dueling offers from a Hollywood producer and a MoMA curator force Bea to explore an archive of her mother's work that she has long avoided. What she finds causes her to re-examine memories of her childhood and reconsider the family history she's constructed. But rather than definitively answering the long-held central questions about her mother's work--Was it abuse? Pornography? Art?--Bea's new knowledge enables her to find a path forward. Prickly but vulnerable, Bea is an irresistible character, and Gangi's novel is less a chronicle of growing up in the shadow of an artist parent as it is a late-in-life coming-of-age story. Fans of Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (2017) will find as much to love in this novel as those of Myla Goldberg's Feast Your Eyes (2019) and Dawnie Walton's The Final Revival of Opal Nev (2021).

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