The Most, by Jessica Anthony

A woman sinks into a pool on a warm Autumn day, and refuses to get out.

It’s an unseasonably warm day in November, 1957. Kathleen Beckett, who lives with her husband Virgil and two sons in Newark, Delaware, decides to take a dip in the pool at her apartment block. It’s a slightly odd residence for a young family, as the Acropolis Place is filled with retirees. The apartments overlook the pool and resident busy bodies and curtain twitchers keep a vigilant eye on Kathleen, whose behaviour is considered odd. No one ever uses the pool, and besides it’s November, not exactly the warmest month of the year. When her husband finds her in the pool he becomes alarmed and tries to coax her out. But she insists she’s fine; actually, she’s never felt better. 

​ As Virgil returns again and again to the pool, and the day progresses, the reader is given the backstories for both husband and wife. Kathleen had been a tennis ace in her youth and had enjoyed a romantic affair with Billy Blasko, a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia. The relationship is not only sensual and heartfelt; Billy gives Kathleen intellectual books which she attempts to read. Virgil, on the other hand, is pretty much a failed insurance broker who is trying to escape his boozy past. 

As the day comes to an end, with Kathleen’s soaking in by now cold water, the couple must decide if they can survive their secret pasts and come together as a couple.

The Most reads very much like classic 1950’s American fiction - think Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road), John Cheever (recall his famous short story “The Swimmer”) and Sylvia Plath. Jessica Anthony uses a similar technique to Plath’s Bell Jar in creating an atmosphere of looming dread in the recurring descriptions of the Sputnik 2, launched on the day the story takes place, and harboring the Soviet dog Laika that everyone knew was sure to die in space. (Plath opens The Bell Jar with her famous description of the execution of the Rosenbergs). There are also subtle touches of humour in the character of Colson (“Coke”), Virgil’s father, easily an escapee from a Cormac McCarthy novel and a portrait of over-the-top American masculinity.

Highly enjoyable. A crisply written portrait of American life, one that seems perfect and sunny on the surface, but that harbors darkness and sadness underneath.

The Most, by Jessica Anthony. Published by Doubleday. $29.99

DEC 24