Book Review - The Lonely Polygamist

Brady Udall's novel, The Lonely Polygamist, has everything I love in a book:  humor, sympathetic and flawed characters, conflict, action and a realistic resolution that ties up the plot's loose ends without forcing everything and everyone to happily ride off into the sunset.

So, why can't I happily recommend this book to everyone I know?

One word: polygamy.  I don't know how different readers might react to a book devoted to this uncomfortable subject.  Such a highly charged topic creates an immediate bias because most readers will automatically feel either defensive (for LDS folks, we kind of wish this part of our history would just go away - even if our own beloved ancestors practiced the controversial doctrine -  along with all of the fundamentalist offshoots that consistently tarnish our modern day image ) or smug, because clearly all polygamy - past, present and future - is evil, gross, atrocious and barbaric and any story about it is bound to portray it in all of its villainous glory. After all, how else could a story about a man who marries more than one woman go?

Well, Udall surprised me by catering to neither group.  His hero, Golden Richards, is a bumbling, unattractive and abundantly hairy man who rather haphazardly falls into the polygamous lifestyle.   From his childhood to his adult life, he sort of just lets things happen to him and four wives and twenty-eight children, a struggling construction business, and three homes with not enough bathrooms later, he realizes he is not a happy man.  He's lonely in the midst of a very chaotic life.

The book has several narrators which each give an interesting perspective into how a life such as this might be.  One of Golden's wives, his youngest, gets several chapters and feels unhappy because she's not MORE involved in the gigantic family drama.  With only one daughter from a previous marriage, she feels left out among the sister wives, and all but forgotten by her husband.

Another view comes from Rusty, the son of wife number three, whose mother is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  Alone, tormented by his many, many siblings, he gives the book its much needed comical edge.  I wouldn't want a son like Rusty, but his antics sure made me smile.

I'm not saying I approve of a family dynamic like this, or excuse it as being an acceptable variation of what I consider the very bedrock of our society.  But, a good novel is one which allows me to see, feel and be something that I mostly likely never would otherwise.  I suppose that's why, in spite of everything, I throughly enjoyed this glimpse into what should be an unfathomable, and yet is surprisingly familiar, human drama.