Book Review: The Most by Jessica Anthony

In 1957, on an unseasonably warm November Sunday, Kathleen Beckett (sometimes Kathy, occasionally Katie), doesn’t feel quite right. She informs her husband Virgil that she will not be accompanying him and the children, Nicholas and Nathaniel, to church. After moving the family to Newark, Delaware for a new job a little more than 6 months prior, Virgil insisted that the family begin attending services and since then none of them had missed a single one, so he wonders if his wife is alright. She insists it’s nothing to worry over though and sends them on their way.

At church, Virgil gets excited about meeting his coworkers at the country club for golf, paying little attention to the sermon. Meanwhile, Kathy goes about taking care of some minor housework until she looks out from the balcony of their apartment and sees that the complex’s pool is open to use. On a whim, she digs out a bathing suit she hasn’t worn since her college days when she was a star tennis player, puts it on, and walks into the water.

When Virgil arrives home, he is surprised to find that Kathy isn’t in the apartment. He is even more surprised when one of the children proclaims that they can see her in the pool. He hurries outside to see if she is doing alright and then to find out why she decided to go swimming, only for her to remark that she is fine and she felt like taking a dip. Weirdly flustered by this, Virgil asks her to come out so she can watch the children, allowing him to make his tee time. She tells him the kids will be fine and that he should just go to the club, so he does, and she remains in the pool.

What follows is an examination of the myriad things, both big and little, that happen over the years to cause a seemingly happy marriage to go cold. Alternating perspectives from one chapter to the next we learn how the couple met, what their dreams are (or were), how they found themselves moving to their new apartment, and the secrets they’ve hidden from each other that are now threatening to burst forth from the depths and out into the light.

It’s amazing just how much detail Jessica Anthony is able to pack into this slim book. At 144 pages it’s easily readable in a single sitting, and using beautifully spare language to imagine a pair of fully realized characters Anthony makes it hard not to do so. The repression forced on people in that era, along with the unequal standards imposed on men and women have led our couple to make some poor decisions, often for heartbreaking reasons. The novella ends on an ambiguous note, simultaneously hopeful and trepidatious, leaving us to ponder over Katie and Virgil’s fates, and I can’t think of a more perfect place to have left us. ★★★★★