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The Hunger Moon
Suzanne Matson. W. W. Norton, 1997. 252pp. $23.00

Kevin Johnson

Good characters, those whom we find compelling, try to reinvent themselves. This novel, Suzanne Matson's first, explores the lives of three women who attempt to redefine themselves and change their circumstances. Their stories are absorbing because of the risks involved in their personal growth as well as our knowledge that success is not merely a matter of determined will.

Renata discovers that she is pregnant. Believing that the father, her surfer boyfriend Brian, is not a suitable parent, she takes off for Boston and does not tell Brian about his son Charlie. Renata becomes friends with Eleanor, a retired judge and recent widow, and June, a young college student. They share time taking care of Charlie, and come to depend upon each other as they slowly shed their solitary lives.

Amidst the drama of motherhood, the emptiness and calculation of an eating disorder, or the vertigo of memory loss, each discovers that she is afraid of the potential cost of her desires. The women can either bound forward to satisfy their hunger for love and stability, perhaps choosing to ignore their fears, or they can retreat back into their isolation.

It is this difficult inclination to secure stability by avoiding relationships, while knowing that comfort comes from others, which Matson deftly describes. But somehow a force of nature draws us to the challenge. Like a dance between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, "Neither seemed able to stray too far from the other's orbit without gravity pulling them back, fusing them together." And that dance is beautiful. Relationships are strangely worth the bother.

In her last book of verse, Durable Goods, Matson, an accomplished poet, celebrated the things we can have and can aim our hope toward, like becoming a new bride, finding a son lost at sea, watching Armstrong on the moon. The Hunger Moon is an interesting reply. Here Matson recognizes the difficulty of learning that the lives we construct may not pan out. Hope may be met with pain.