Newspaper Article

Painting with words Childhood losses frame a deftly evocative portrait of the '60s

Reviewed by Anne Tyler, an author whose most recent novel,"Breathing Lessons," won the Pulitzer Prize

1989

Overview

It should be no surprise, therefore, that when Johnson actually does write a novel, it's almost heartbreakingly evocative. \"In the Night Cafe\" summons up the New York of the early '60s. The Beat Generation has faded away, but her hero, Tom Murphy, would have felt at home among Kerouac and company. He's a tough, hard-drinking ex-Navy man who's ditched his wife and children to come to New York and paint abstract expressionist paintings; and when our young narrator, Joanna, meets him it is love at very nearly first sight. Joanna's a bit more sedate than Tom-she works as an office temporary while rather desultorily pursuing an acting career-but she's cool enough, non-judgmental enough, so that they get along well together. In no time, they marry. But Tom is troubled by thoughts of the young son he abandoned, and he becomes increasingly self-destructive. Little more than a year after the wedding, he's killed. (Readers have been told as much at the outset, so I'm not giving anything away.) Joanna eventually remarries and has a son, but she never gets over her attachment to Tom Murphy. What gives this story its framework is the theme of the abandoned child. The book opens with a description of Tom Murphy's lifelong search for the father who left him in his infancy. Then we're shown Tom's small son-the child he himself left-meeting Joanna in New York a year after Tom's death and listening with pathetic concentration for any clue to his father. Only at this point does Joanna start telling us her own story in chronological order: her first encounter with Tom, their courtship and marriage, and Tom's death.

• Publisher: Tribune Publishing Company, LLC