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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Limitations
by Scott Turow |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Complexity Novelist and
lawyer Scott Turow reprises characters George Mason
and Rusty Sabich in his latest novel, Limitations.
I gave up counting how many different meanings of ‘limitations’ that Turow explores on the tightly written pages of the terse
book. As an appellate judge, Mason is trying to decide a case that leads him
to recall an episode of his own life that he regrets. Distracted by his wife’s
illness, Mason also deals with threats that are coming to him via e-mail.
Here’s an excerpt, all of Chapter 3, “Hospital Call,” pp. 23-27: George
races downthe judges’ private corridor toward the
conference chambers adjacent to the appellate courtroom. He is actually a few
minutes ahead of schedule for his meeting with Purfoyle
and Koll, hut he wants to phone Patrice, and he
stops by a long window where cell reception is better. It is a goofy
rectitude, he knows, uncomfortably reminiscent of his father, to avoid
personal calls from the County line in his chambers, but as a judge he never
shakes the expectation that he must lead by example in matters large and
small. He wears a suit and tie each day and requires similar apparel of his
staff, notwithstanding the more casual attire favored by his colleagues when
they do not have to appear in the courtroom. He is determined that, if
nothing else, he will always look the part: tall, trim, grayhaired,
and handsome in a conventional middle-aged way. Standard-issue white guy. “Fine. Tired. Not a bad day at all,” Patrice says when he
reaches her at the hospital. He has tried her several times this morning, hut the line has been constantly engaged. At the
moment, Patrice’s interaction with the human race is confined to the
telephone. “They think my Geiger levels may be down enough tonight to let you
in the room. Most women want a man’s heart, Georgie.
I bet you were never counting on risking your thyroid.” “Gladly, mate,” he answers, a term of mutual endearment.
“Any organ you like.” The Masons have always relished each other’s company
and the way they generally ride along on a current of low-voltage humor. But
at the moment, his druthers are to he more sincere.
To many men George knows, marriage is a war against their longings. Yet he is
among the happy few. For more than thirty years now, he has been able to say
that he has wanted no one more than Patrice. These sentiments swamp him frequently these days. The
nodule on Patrice’s thyroid was discovered on February 10, and when he stood
in a store a day later reading the humid poetry on several valentines, he
actually wept. But at the moment he feels obliged to keep this torrent of
affection to himself. For Patrice right now the only acceptable behavior is
what she deems ‘normal’—no dramatics and certainly no proclamations of a kind
that Patrice, being Patrice, would deride as ‘soft and runny.’ “How about if I bring dinner?” George asks. “We can eat together.
Any cravings?” “No more limp green beans.
Something with spice.” “Mexican?” “Perfect. After eight. That’ll be thirty-six hours. But
they won’t let you stay long, mate.” Yesterday at 6:00 AM., he’d brought Patrice to West Bank
Lutheran—Sinai. There she’d swallowed a large white pill full of iodine-131.
Now she may not have any physical contact with other human beings. The
radiation broiling through her and eradicating every thyroid cell, especially
the wayward ones that have wandered dangerously into other portions of her
body, might also kill the healthy gland in someone else. ‘The treatment has a
long record of success, but it is disquieting to experience. At the moment,
Patrice would be less isolated on a lepers’ island, where at least she would
have company. At Yesterday, even George was not permitted in her room.
Instead, his wife and he spoke through telephone handsets on either side of a
large window cut into the wall adjoining her bed, on which Patrice can raise
the shade. For George, the comparison with his professional life was
unavoidable. Flow many clients in how many institutions had he conversed
with this way? And how many of their fellow inmates had he surreptitiously
eyed with the usual mix of empathy and judgment, as the prisoners pawed the
glass or wept, with a child or lover on the other side, feeling only now the
sharpest tooth of confinement, and thus of crime? With his own wife isolated
this way, George could not shake a miserable, low conviction that he had
failed. Their conversation was listless and unsettled. The glass between them
might well have been her illness. After thirty-three years, it has turned out
that their life together is a matter of grace rather than mutual will.
Patrice is sick and he is not. ‘There is really no such thing,’ one social worker
warned a support group for spouses, ‘as having cancer together.’ “Didn’t you have arguments this morning?” Patrice asks.
“How were they?” “Lackluster in most cases. But we just heard Warnovits. The high school rape case?” “The one on the news? Were the attorneys good?” “Not especially, but I was sitting with Nathan Koll, who planted a roadside bomb for the lawyers. Now
I’ve got to go to conference and watch him wrap his arms around himself so he
can pat his own back. I’m due now.” “Then go ahead, George. I’ll call if I fail the Geiger
counter.” Clicking off, he peers from the window into the Some might think that it is #1 getting on his nerves. That
probably hasn’t helped, but this moodiness predates the first e-mail George
received from his anonymous tormentor. Instead his unease correlates more
clearly with the time of Patrice’s diagnosis. He is convinced in every fiber
that his wife is not going to die. The doctors have done everything short of
issue guarantees. Her chances approach nineteen in twenty, and even those
odds take no account of the robust good health in which she otherwise
remains—lean, athletic, tanned, still beautiful. Yet as George’s friend Harrison Oakey
has put it, serious illness at this age is like the lights flashing in the
theater lobby. If life is a three-act play, then the curtain has gone up on
the finale. After John Banion had read #1’s
message saying ‘You’ll die,’ the judge had tried to settle his clerk with
humor while they awaited Still, irony gets you only so far. The facts settle hard.
And with them comes an inevitable calculation of pluses and minuses. George
tends to be unsparing, even harsh, in his self-assessments. Husband. Father.
Lawyer. Judge. These days, he seems to be keeping a cool eye on the
scoreboard. Turow does a great job at conveying the humanity
of a judge, and the complexity of human interactions. Limitations
will encourage readers to think about the law, the past and the consequences
of personal decisions. Steve Hopkins,
March 23, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the April 2007
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Limitations.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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