Books |
Love & Money
Michael M. Thomas
By
Published: Jun 29, 2009
Category:
Fiction
The Governor of South Carolina — a married father of four who wasn’t shy about proclaiming his Christian faith and family values — went AWOL to visit his mistress in Buenos Aires. For days afterward, a nation wanted to know: Why would he take such a risk? And so the nation turned its lonely eyes to TV pundits, op-ed bloviators and shrinks. If you found their explanations satisfying, you are easily satisfied.
Everyone was looking in the wrong place.
The answer can be found in fiction.
As it happened, I was reading Love & Money, a paperback novel by Michael M. Thomas, when the Governor self-destructed. By an amazing coincidence, this novel is about a person in the public eye — in this case, a woman, Connie Grange, who is a freshly-scrubbed, family-first celebrity somewhere between Oprah and Martha — who takes the very same risk the Governor did. Only her lover isn’t someone who speaks several languages and analyzes foreign news; he’s a hot-blooded Latin, built for lust.
If this affair goes public, Connie would be tabloid food for weeks. The economic cost would be just as severe — her career would end, and she’d lose upwards of $100 million in future earnings and merchandise revenue.
Why would she take such a risk?
You’ll find an answer on page 10. Connie’s driving to the isolated house where she’ll meet her once-a-week lover. And as she drives, she examines her motive for committing adultery again and again. It’s not just the “best sex she’s ever had.” It’s this:
It’s the adventure itself: the daring, the deception, the dissembling. A kind of casting off of the shackles of her public existence. A way of proving to herself that she still rules her own life, that she’s not just someone else’s puppet on strings, a slave to her vast, adoring audience, not some automaton who performs at the twist of a dial, not a chattel split up into fat, profitable pieces for others. She can well imagine that people in meetings say things about her like “We don’t want to mess with the brand,” but she’s never spoken up, or shown a scintilla of resentment, not with all that’s at stake. But not for a second in her private heart has she surrendered the right to be the person she knows she is. And now she’s exercising that prerogative to be the real, true self who dwells within the Ms. Perfect on the screen, the paragon of family values who lays the golden eggs.
Work for you? It does for me. And for Connie. Of course she blabs her secret to the woman who is her show’s biggest sponsor. Of course she is reminded, in no uncertain terms, that she could pay a ridiculous price for her reckless romance. But you know already what Connie says: No one will find out.
And, of course, her husband does. Lord knows he has time and opportunity; he’s a film director whose last film bombed so badly he’s been more or less blackballed by Hollywood. His most recent footage? A video he made looking through an uncovered window as his wife and her lover have porno-quality sex.
But Clifford is not a hot-blooded husband out of a romance novel. He’s smart and cool and connected. He has a plan. And it involves the hopes of the sponsor to get even richer on Connie’s work, the evil broadcast king who co-owns the show, and a cynical divorce lawyer who’s a member of his elite New York club.
“Love & Money” is, in its set-up, a Dunne-like thriller. All the pieces are on the board; you can’t wait to see how they dance around and bump into one another. Then something happens — the novel becomes a very smart, but very extended debate about no-fault divorce. I can’t imagine why Michael Thomas took such an odd turn in the plotting. And I have no clue why his editor didn’t suggest hacking the prose back by — I know, this is now my standard complaint — 50 or more pages.
If you’re interested in no-fault divorce in all its legal and moral implications — which is probably: if you or someone you know might be going through a divorce in which the financial settlement doesn’t depend on who committed adultery — you’ll love all of this book. Otherwise, savor the first hundred pages, then skim. Either way, you’ll learn a great deal about the most interesting subject of all: the restlessness of the human heart.
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