Review: Meg Howrey delivers big feelings including laughter and sobs alongside big social issues
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Set us as preferred Book review'Body Language'By Meg Howrey Doubleday: 304 pages, $30If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.As the personal trainers, spiritual leaders and motivational speakers say, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” This bit of wisdom is key to the lyrical character study that is “Body Language,” Meg Howrey’s sardonic, smart and powerful fifth novel.In alternating, time-traveling, distinctly voiced chapters, the four quirky members of a modern Midwestern family spin on the tilted axis of Barbara, their dementia-impaired matriarch.The precision with which each woman is painted attaches the reader to the characters and the characters to the plot.
As is true of the best novels, the story emerges not as a scheme concocted by the author, but as an organic outcome of each character’s growth over the life of the book.Howrey’s own politics are here — feminist, environmentalist, activist — but believably portioned out to her characters.Sloane, the eldest, is an L.A.-based actor and therapist, a feminist in the throes of menopause.
“Perimenopausal brain fog was a real thing, though like nearly every other perimenopausal symptom it was tricky to distinguish from about a hundred other medical conditions,” Sloane tells us.“Women had needed to prove they could have their periods … and fly planes, perform surgeries, run governments.
They still had to do this.”Laurel, 45, works at a Seattle environmental nonprofit.While mothering her two teenagers, one of them newly identifies as nonbinary — “It was Laurel’s job to not make a big deal about this” — she obsesses about her husband’s questionable fidelity.
“In her socioeconomic group they were all Cool or Hot Moms.Some of her fr...