Ah, the many intricacies of the quirky rich. Bruce Wagner’s I’ll Let You Go is sprawling, detailed and difficult to summarize, but the story mainly concerns – as do so many stories, I’m realizing (only recently, I have read a number of novels based on this same plot – The Last Samurai, Petropolis, His Illegal Self) – a boy’s search for his vanished father. At the beginning of the novel, Toulouse Trotter is informed by his cousin Lucy that his father is not, as he’d been led to believe up to his current age of 12, dead, but rather has simply disappeared. Further inquiries reveal that Toulouse’s father, Marcus, vanished the night of his son’s conception, the night of his wedding to Katrina Trotter – vanished from the bridal bed, which was located high atop an architectural wonder, a perfect recreation of France’s ruined tower, La Colonne Detruite, which Katrina’s father, Louis, had secretly commissioned for the happy couple as a wedding gift. This revelation launches Toulouse and his cousins on a search for their missing relative, and what they uncover will have profound implications for the entire, extended Trotter clan.
There’s no point in here summarizing the many quirks of the Trotters, and the intricacies of their familial relations, which include, among other things, Alzheimer’s, drug addiction, compulsive real estate purchasing, rare genetic orphan disease, puppy-incest, misdirected philanthropy, schizophrenia, devoted servants, celebrity best friends and an immortal Great Dane. Wagner’s Trotters would feel at home with the Royal Tennenbaums or the George Bluths. Unlike the latter family, however, the Trotters, as well as their friends and acquaintances, are continually trying to do good by others, but their motives are rarely pure and their efforts are always fruitless. Toulouse’s Aunt Joyce gives proper burials to dead babies found in dumpsters, to assuage her guilt over her own son, Edward, who suffers from a disfiguring and debilitating rare congenital disorder, and who she was unable to bring herself to visit in hospital for the first months of his life. Her husband, Dodd, conceives a grand rebuilding of his old grade school, but his plans are impractical and despite his placement on the Forbes list, he is humiliated to discover none of his former classmates have any recollection of him. Lani, a minor though important character, has become an advocate for children in the foster care system because she feels a proud obligation to help the less fortunate, but secretly, she is too terrified of the bad parts of town to meet with any of her clients. The parallel storyline in the novel follows the travails of the unfortunate Amaryllis Kornfeld, an abused and neglected orphan, as she is shunted through the hopeless purgatory that is the LA foster system. Amaryllis is a wide-eyed, sweet, resilient wraith straight out of Dickens, and the loathsome foster parents and wrecked children Amaryllis encounters in the system are likewise Dickensian villains – rotten, selfish and cruel.
Reflecting back a few weeks after having read it, I find that my overall impression of the novel is of the aptly named Trotters (not a one of which can stand to sit still) flitting all over and around numerous solid, massive, grand and immobile architectural structures. Much is made of these structures, as backdrop to the Trotter family life, and the structures have their own function in the story. Most obvious is La Colonne, the ruined tower of the Trotter’s ill-fated honeymoon, still stands and functions as a sort of shrine. It’s repeatedly implied that the tower itself – a replica of the Parisian landmark Katrina and Marcus visited shortly before one of Marcus’s breakdowns – is responsible for the fracturing of his psyche (and their family). As Marcus writes to Katrina, “The Tower had become a conspirator – against us, and our happiness. The Tower had to be placated. It was such a beauteous thing; we are often trapped within wondrous designs, without explanation . . . .” Other structures include the European-style village Dodd Trotter specially erected for his wheelchair-(or actually, small efficient buggy-)bound son to easily navigate, complete with movie theater, book store and inn; the topiary mazes that Katrina designs for a living, including one designed for the Alzheimer’s patients at the home where her mother is eventually installed; the gigantic, elaborate insane school complex planned by Dodd Trotter; Louis Trotter’s sacred Withdrawing Room filled with dozens of scale models of grave site memorials commissioned of famous architects by Louis, to adorn his own cemetery plot. All of these edifices are artificial, and all erected at great time and expense to compensate for the lack of something in the particular lives of the wealthy Trotters.
Unique buildings are the fixed points in the Trotters’ lives, but the Trotters themselves are constantly mobile. Early in the novel, Toulouse complains of his mother’s continual jet setting. Marcus’s breakdowns often manifest in his walking insane distances in a fugue state. Edward and Lucy first roll into focus on Edward’s special golf cart, which he is rarely not pottering around in. He also has a 747 simulator, which Lucy and Toulouse use for their trysts. Speaking of jets, there is a short digression in the middle of the book that follows the Trotter children on a round-the-world summer school trip, in which they visit multiple countries in three weeks. I’m not entirely certain how this episode is meant to function within the larger novel, but it was entertaining, not least because Diane Keaton and her daughter were randomly along for half of the journey, for seemingly no narrative purpose at all.
Primarily, I’ll Let You Go is about estrangement and reunion. The novel begins with some Trotters closely bound and others geographically and emotionally distant. As Marcus moves back into the family, the bonds shift, drawing some family members closer and pushing others away. But it is not distance or death alone that separates us from our closest contacts – people change, they develop, they regress, they turn out to be not at all who you thought they were. And yet physically, they remain. Perhaps even more painful than losing loved ones to death or abandonment is losing them to complete personality overhauls.
Wagner’s novel is difficult to categorize. It’s sophisticated and intelligent social satire, it’s a good yarn based around an archetypal plot, it’s a romantic flight of fancy. It contains enough symbols, parallels, themes and irony to recommend it to high school lit teachers seeking material for infinite five-point essays. The book is as windy and impressive a structure as anything built by the Trotters, but readers will find their way through quickly and easily enough.
