On Right This Way

Review by Valerie Fox

Miriam Kotzin’s Right This Way begins: “When he was in his suburban garden weeding the pole beans, Ely Cutter saw God’s face in the sky.” This vision signals, if not sets into motion, Cutter’s crisis, his midlife indecision about his marriage and commitment to his wife. He also faces an inadequate reckoning with earlier decisions, aging, and personal loss.

The garden itself becomes an important and memorable setting. Ely takes a strong interest in his tomatoes, beans, and eggplants. Plus, things happen there. A lot of thinking and interactions between Cutter, his wife, and their friends happen on the terrace adjacent to the garden. Things are also, literally, dug up there, leading to inevitable consequences.

The early chapters fill us in on important backstory, including Ely’s marriage to his high school sweetheart, Lynne, as well as his recent infidelity. Seeing God has set into motion a backsliding involving Eleanor, with whom he’d had his affair, and Grace, a vivacious, slightly younger woman he is starting to get to know. Kotzin’s mastery of comic timing keeps this set-up from coming off as a cliched romantic triangle (or quadrangle). Ely is a man in trouble, and to quote Kotzin’s own words on his situation, “Fortunately, trouble sometimes can be funny.” 

There’s a theatricality to many scenes. For example, an important early chapter involves Ely showing Grace around a house she is thinking about buying.  Ely is in real estate, and Grace, whose marriage has fallen apart and ended, is pining for a new home. The scene involves a slapstick fall that puts Ely in a compromising position with his client. Ely knows his wife will hear about this incident because the scene is witnessed by her friend, another realtor who just happens to come by to show the house. Gossip and intrigue follow. Yet, Ely thinks he has things under control due to his clever “storytelling” (what he tells his wife and how). As his flirtation with Grace advances, however, it becomes clear that his efforts to control the situation are failing. Earlier wounds are reopened in the marriage of Lynne and Ely.

Right This Way excels as suburban comedy of manners, with a tinge of satire, a lightness that overlays a darkness and the presence of grief and great loss. If you enjoy “thinky” characters you are going to love Ely. Kotzin’s characterization of Cutter relies much on Ely’s overthinking, his running interior monologue. At one point, he listens in on Lynne’s telephone conversation, analyzes what’s going on, and plans what he’ll say next to her and under what contingencies. At another point, he worries: what will he say if someone has seen him kiss Grace? 

Ely’s voice is entertaining and helps to convey his charm, his self-centeredness, his smarts, and even some vulnerability beneath his outward confidence and calm. Particularly, I started wondering if his musings on others, especially on Lynne and Grace, were trustworthy.  Is Ely as smart as he thinks he is? What, then, are the implications of this unreliability?  Proceeding through the middle and second half of the novel, this helped to rivet my attention. I had no idea what to expect. Thus, when something wild or unexpected occurs, as it does in numerous instances, I totally buy it.

Ely, as a seller of real estate, has learned a thing or two about how to sell dreams to his customers, to know what they yearn for, what would please them. But what makes him happy? What gives him satisfaction and fulfillment in his own life? What is in or beyond his control? These questions, so familiar to us all, are central to his story.

Kotzin, known for her poignant poetry and humorous flash fiction, brings an attentiveness to image and detail to Right This Way. To return to the garden, she doesn’t need to emphasize that it is a metaphor, as this is revealed organically and deftly. And in terms of THE garden, a place where humans start in innocence but fall from grace (Grace!), there is a tale here for our time. Ely and Lynne have a traditional marriage. They are seemingly close partners. They’ve shared a long life together, not to mention deeply held values and habits connected to their Jewish heritage.

But will that be enough? Eleanor and Grace are unattached, but both seem to be looking for someone like Ely. I appreciate how Kotzin challenges us to think about the evolving meanings of marriage, staying single, and personal agency, especially as it relates to women of different generations.