‘A Thing That Is Explained Ceases To Concern Us’*: Susannah Wise’s Okay, Then, That’s Great.
Okay, Then, That’s Great is Susannah Wise’s second fiction. Her latest outing is a very different beast to her debut of 2021, This Fragile Earth – a speculative eco-dystopia focussed on climate change and human survival. Okay, Then, That’s Great is more of a tragicomical romp by comparison, exploring themes of grief, mental health, and midlife crisis.
Our protagonist, Marnie Rose, is a middle-aged poet and full-time mother of three. Marnie has a book of published verse to her name but has been struggling with writer’s block. Try as she might, the words just won’t come, no matter where she turns for inspiration. Her editor, Veronica, shows understanding but, all the same, gives her till the end of the week to get her collection submitted; otherwise, she’s out.
Things are chaotic on the home front, too. The family dog, Parker, crashes in and out; her husband, Ben, enters stage left in his fencing gear; and everything is in a state of disrepair: “Parker chewed the plug on the cooker, and it doesn’t work anymore. Just like the car and the downstairs loo and everything else in this house”. Her children are acid-tongued, precocious, and run rings around her. (The novel’s title is a concatenation they use to shut her down.) Frankly, it’s a madhouse, and it’s a miracle the family unit can function at all!
Marnie is also trying (and failing) to organise an 18th birthday party for her twin daughters, Blythe and Sylvia. For that matter, she’s been struggling with a lot of things. She’s gaffe-prone, easily distracted, and accustomed to the odd cereal-in-the-fridge moment – or, in her case, granola. You’ll want to give her a shake at times!
Marnie has also been seeing – or thinks she’s been seeing – her long-departed sister, Perdita. Perdita passed away decades ago, but Marnie has been seeing her all the same, going about her business as if death hasn’t inconvenienced her in the slightest. Furthermore, this is an older Perdita – Marnie’s age. Not the teenager she once knew. Marnie turned to poetry as a coping mechanism when Perdita died. Now that she’s struggling with writer’s block, it’s possible Marnie is manifesting Perdita directly as a cry for help. Her situation is reminiscent of Joan G. Robinson’s When Marnie Was There, and Wise’s choice of character name is fitting in this instance. Marnie’s namesake in this children’s classic also saw a mysterious girl during her time of need and similarly could never be sure if she, too, was real or a ghost.
The story consistently refers to twins. Marnie has twin daughters. We also learn that Perdita was Marnie’s twin. Marnie even goes to see a production of The Comedy of Errors, a play about identical brothers, separated at birth. These references press home Marnie’s sense of isolation. Whereas every other twin-set is complete, Marnie is the only one of a broken pair. The loss of her sister has left her imbalanced in many ways.
The ghostly apparitions don’t end with Perdita. Marnie has also been seeing, of all people, a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Katherine Mansfield. Can Marnie really see dead people? Or is this woman simply an imposter with issues of her own? Either way, ‘Katherine’ becomes an unlikely muse for Marnie. She finds herself drawn to her and subject to the woman’s coercive control. They begin a steamy relationship, which quickly turns toxic.
Marnie has also been having dreams in which she has a male appendage; I nearly spat my drink out with laughter during a trip to dreamland where things go all-out Orlando! But this isn’t just a bedtime problem. During waking hours, too, Marnie has been seeing phallic imagery and provocative shapes at every turn.
So why the sudden penis envy? Marnie has multiple theories. She doesn’t feel like a ‘traditional woman’ and wonders if she has repressed desires. She even thinks being male might cure her writer’s block: “I need to be more like a man … I’m creatively impotent”.
Alternatively, it’s possible that Marnie desires power at a time she feels powerless. She feels her age, resents the youth and beauty of other women, and wonders if she’s having a midlife crisis. She also has survivor’s guilt following Perdita’s death: “Not that I was bad or anything, but just maybe it would have been better for everyone if it was her who had lived”. At her lowest ebb, Marnie reveals that “(l)ife has no point” and that “(t)he only point of life is that death is at the end of it”. Like Rachel in The Girl on the Train, Marnie takes public transport, peers into the gardens of passing houses, and experiences life vicariously.
Marnie also has a very limited support network. Her husband barely acknowledges her: “Twenty years and three almost grown-up children later, I’m still optimistically searching for any opportunity to secure my other half’s attention”. They’re more like strangers on the Tube than husband and wife. Her parents are daft as brushes and don’t take her problems seriously. After Perdita’s death, they turned to religion as a coping mechanism and are now masters of silence and denial on the matter. But Marnie is a non-believer, and her parents’ faith, which includes quoting scripture at every turn, only distances her from them. When they convert one of her daughters, she sees this as a betrayal, and the rift between them deepens.
You’re probably thinking that Marnie should be seeking therapy. Well, she is. For some time, Marnie has been attending regular sessions with a Dr. Schlapoberstein (or ‘Schlap’ for short). But her time with Schlap hasn’t been productive. Schlap, we learn, has been suffering from memory loss and can barely recall a word Marnie discloses to him. As a result, her sessions feel more like an extended Two Ronnies sketch. Schlap offers one credible explanation for Marnie’s predicament, however: cognitive bias. In other words, Marnie could be creating her own reality as she goes, based on prior traumatic experiences.
Meanwhile, Marnie has a theory of her own – a ‘many-worlds’ theory. Has Perdita’s death somehow unmoored Marnie from reality, and could she be straddling an alternate plane where Perdita was the sister who lived? She feels Perdita’s energy signature from time to time – what she terms “an untraceable melancholia”. In line with her theory, objects begin to bleed in and out of her reality – drafts of her poems, paintings from the walls. The same applies to her words and actions. Friends and acquaintances have no memory of conversations she’s held with them. They think she’s losing her mind, and she’s inclined to agree!
Poor Marnie. I identified with her to a degree. Two thirds in, I scribbled ‘WHATISGOINGON?’ in the margin (in homage to the book’s title). I had a million theories. Was Ben gaslighting her? Was Marnie the ghost? But every time I thought I’d solved the puzzle, Wise rushed in, scattered the pieces, and left me having to start over.
Okay, Then, That’s Great is a funny book. It’s literally a laugh a line. It’s random, quirky, and I thought to myself afterwards, did I just read a book or do a line of coke?! The chapters are long, frantic and action-packed. You’ll be fighting for breath when you park your bookmark for the night. Wise writes in the first-person present, treating us to Marnie’s non-stop inner monologues and jumbled thought patterns. As a result, her thoughts, feelings, and sense of loss are more relatable. On the other hand, our narrator isn’t so much unreliable as an outright liability!
If you crave resolution, get ready for disappointment. Several loose ends remain untied. But this isn’t necessarily a problem. We leave many things unfinished when we pass. Okay, Then, That’s Great is a story about loss, coping, and the way grief cascades down the family tree. Wise handles these themes well and balances them with moments of dark humour to achieve a well-rounded, heartfelt drama.
Okay, Then, That’s Great is published by Gollancz.