Book Review: A Ruling Passion

A Fair Trade Book

Title: A Ruling Passion

Author: Judith Michael

Author's web page: http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Judith-Michael/242

Date: 1990

Publisher: Poseidon (Simon & Schuster)

ISBN: 0-671-64891-8

Length: 574 pages

Quote: "Valerie Ashbrook, of Park Avenue and Oxford, Maryland, was born to silk and sable."

And (since she's a fictional character) to suffering, loss, and the delectable tale of a virtuous widow avenged.

Not that Valerie is all that virtuous; she wasn't a virgin bride, and she sleeps with the ex-boyfriend she should have married in the first place before she marries him. But that's standard for her generation. Valerie does have a conscience; although that conscience has not had the benefit of a sound biblical education it does keep her from becoming lazy, mean, or greedy.

Her childhood friend Sybille Morgen is all of those things. This is the story of how Sybille, who wasn't born really stupid, chooses stupidity because she lets envy, for Valerie and for many other people, consume her life. Envy is Sybille's ruling passion.

Nick, who should have married Valerie long ago, but didn't want to wait and married Sybille instead, likes to think that Truth and Democracy and True Love and Honest Work are the ruling passions he and Sybille share. Hello? They work in the television business.

If you want to read a novel with a little too much explicit extramarital sex, about the "coastal elite" (Valerie, Sybille, and Nick jet from East to West Coasts with occasional episodes in Europe, but most of the action takes place in the posher suburbs of Washington), with two adorable children and Valerie proving she doesn't need an inheritance before she recovers the one due to her, A Ruling Passion is for you...although you might want to hide it from school-aged children.

Here's what I don't like about it: Judith Michael dedicated this novel to "Rebecca, Ysabel, Daniel and Levi--the new generation." So I'm prepared for it to be an ethnically Jewish story, with or without overt religion. But no; Nick and Valerie seem to be secular Protestants (Valerie is naturally blonde), and other characters appear to be Protestant preachers. But when we hear the preacher characters actually preaching, Christianity is not what they're preaching. They're sympathetic characters, a child preacher, her mentors, and one of her assistants, but their religion is pop psychology with no genuine religious content at all. I read lots of books with no Christian characters, or other specifically Christian content, at all, and have no problem with those. I find it distracting, nevertheless, when characters are supposed to be Christians but aren't--and aren't even frauds. The child preacher is sincere, idealistic, deeply decent...and old enough to know, even if she's not yet in college, that she's a Humanist masquerading as a Christian. Would someone as nice as Lily seems to be really masquerade like that? I'm not insulted, but I am distracted. I suspect, on closing the book, that Michael is/are Jewish, wanted for some reason to write about Christians but either didn't know how, or didn't think it was ethical, to get them right.

Where do preachers even come into the story, though? Michael may have intended to make a pro-Christian point by comparing these fictional preachers to the ones who were in the news in the 1980s. The story line is that Nick, a brilliant polymath, made his fortune in Silicon Valley. While married to him, Sybille hated living in a neighborhood so mellow that children and animals wandered around outdoors, and dreamed of living somewhere more control-freaky. Sybille left him for a TV producer and co-owned a cable company, which her husband was sure she'd ruin, and she almost did. Nick bought the cable company and fired Sybille, who started her own cable TV company with the money. Both cable channels have sometimes featured Lily the child preacher, who grows up in near-total retreat from the world until her late-blooming sexuality finally pops up. Lily really is innocent; the older men who've taught her most of what she knows about preaching and about TV performance weren't really bad, either. What Sybille is trying to build on the money Lily draws in for Sybille's company is, of course, disgusting. There's not a greedy or envious thought in the little preacher's head, and she hates the fundraising she's been told a good sermon must include--but there's very little but greed and envy in her business manager Sybille.

Names matter in this story, so much that some characters use names that are hard to believe. Enderby is near the end of his life; Dominus considers himself a servant of the Lord; Warman is a rich contractor; Targus becomes a target; Sterling has a lot of money; Wymper's proposal is elaborate, but wimpy and unsuccessful; Scutigera is well shielded (and a scuttling little thing); Lily is a "pure white" virgin; and the name of a company provides a clue to the mystery of how Valerie's husband lost so much money. Valerie Ashbrook is a woman of valor who at least appreciates the status-symbol farm she buys. Sybil was associated with a much more interesting form of Major Mental Illness than Sybille has, in the 1980s, and if you want to debate the philosophical issues the novel raises you'll probably end up debating to what extent Sybil has caused other characters to be in the morgue.

If you want to debate its literary merit...those who say "It hasn't got any" are likely to be objecting to the fact that in real life, although it might be a good thing if the sort of "demons" Sybille has cherished through her youthful years possessed people completely as their former victims gather around to reclaim their due, a person can wait a long time to see it happen. A person can go into court and say, do, and show things calculated to bring the demons of people like Sybille out into the light, and the people like Sybille rather often fail to react and manage to present themselves as sane, almost decent human beings. It isn't faaair that the ending of this novel seldom happens.

Judith Michael is, we learn from their web site, a couple--a Judith and a Michael--who write together and have been splendidly successful producing big flossy novels, partly because, working as a couple, they're able to get both halves of a heterosexual couple right. Both are alive and writing so all their older books can be ordered as Fair Trade Books. To buy them here, pay $5 per book, plus $5 per package (two of these books will fill a package) and $1 per online payment, and we'll send $1 per book to Michael or a charity of their choice.