Scribner
Review by Walter Cummins
As he demonstrated in his first two novels, Ethan Joella possesses a special ability to create a community of interrelated characters, each of whom is distinct and convincing. In The Same Bright Stars, the past is also a significant influence on the present, with a number of chapters set in 1982. The central character is Jack Schmidt, a fiftyish long-time restaurant owner in the Delaware resort town of Rehoboth. All that has happened in the 80s and all that is happening now, linked with the presences of the many other characters, influence and reflect on him. Even though he lives alone, his life is involved with so many people he cares for and who care for him.
“The difference between us,” she [a woman named Nicole] says, “is I realize the world can get by without me. You don’t, do you?” This sense of responsibility makes Jack an appealing character, one rare in fiction, whose deep concern for others plays a central role in making the world of the novel a place where each person must be taken seriously and be regarded in the consequences of others’ actions, especially Jack’s.
For example, when Jack is in the process of selling the family restaurant and his well-liked cook, Saul, quits, Jack seeks him out and realizes how upset Saul is. Jack has this reaction: “He [Saul] looks hurt, and Jack feels like he made a decision just for himself when he should’ve been thinking more about all these loyal employees. Saul and Vivian and Sam and Vincent and Paulette. Smokes and Ernie. Even Genevieve. He let them all down.”
Rehoboth itself, an actual town, plays a significant role. Its buildings, shops, beachfront, and neighborhoods are strong visualized settings. Joella even invents a fictional guidebook quoted throughout the novel that glorifies the wonders of the town: “You know you’ve made it through winter when clumps of daffodils gather around mailboxes, when forsythia, like yellow stars, bloom to liven up the forgotten brown trees. All of a sudden, the empty ponds have ducks in them again, and residents name these ducks: Scotty and Louise, Hansel and Gretel, Lucy and Desi.”
There’s an ongoing interplay between this idealized, joyful vision of a perfect place and the pains and losses Jack Schmidt—along with others—has confronted in that place. Jack’s have accumulated from his 1980s childhood to those of the present—death of parents and grandmother, losses of love, deaths of others, and the sufferings of those he truly cares about. In the immediate present he is confronted with several shocking discoveries that shake his sense of what he thought he knew.
In another novel this compilation of hurts, including suicides and seeming betrayals, might come across as melodramatic. But Joella, perhaps because his people are so real and natural, makes these disasters part of life, to be faced with the kind of equanimity Jack possesses. And because others understand Jack’s essential goodness, they are drawn to him, even with love. People manage to survive and some even to thrive.
