
Book Review: Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel
Woke Up Lonely
A Novel By Fiona Maazel
Graywolf Press, May 2014
ISBN-13: 978-1555976279
$15.00 (Paperback); 324 pp.
Reviewed by Natalie Sypolt
In this age of high tech gadgetry, there are thousands of ways for people to connect with one another. Social media makes it easy to keep in touch with friends and family; apps like Tinder might even help us find possible mates. Why, then, do we still feel alone? Woke up Lonely, Fiona Maazel’s 2013 novel recently released in paperback, explores the abstract idea of “loneliness,” as well as the very real people who strive every day for a human connection.
At times fragmented and often frantic, the style of Woke up Lonely reflects the fast paced, information overload of the 21st century. The central story is set in 2005 when Thurlow Dan, leader of the Helix (a cult-like organization originally meant to bring people together) takes drastic steps in order to assuage his own loneliness. These steps include holding hostages in his compound and creating a Waco-style standoff with authorities.
Some might say the relationship between Thurlow and his ex, Esme, is convoluted. She’s a childhood friend, then a CIA agent assigned to Dan during his rise to power. During a brief sexual encounter, Esme becomes pregnant and vanishes after telling Dan that she intends to terminate the pregnancy. Dan eventually convinces her to come back and marry him. Is this reversal real for Esme or part of the job? This is a question that permeates most of the couple’s interactions. Yes, the relationship is messy and confusing, but couldn’t this be symbolic of the complicated interactions most people have every day?
Though constantly surrounded by members of the Helix—including prostitutes and sycophants—Thurlow Dan never feels anything but alone. He constantly misses Esme and Ida, the daughter who has grown up without him, and has determined that reuniting is the only possible solution to his unhappy life. The reader knows, though, that even if his family was near, Dan could probably never be completely satisfied. No one in this book ever is. There is always a constant yearning, pushing just beneath the skin.
“But this isn’t about me,” Thurlow Dan says in a video plea to Esme. “It’s all about us. Because everywhere and all the time, people are crying out for each other. Your name. Mine. And when you look back on your life, you’ll see it’s true: woke up lonely, and the missing were on your lips.” Motives are seldom clear, emotions are always complex.
There are no perfect antonyms for the word “lonely.” The closest, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “accompanied.” The Thesaurus offers “loved” and “befriended” as possibilities, but these words don’t quite mean the opposite of “loneliness” either. Someone who is loved can still feel isolated; a person accompanied by a hundred people can still feel internally alone. Perhaps there is no opposite of “lonely” because there is no escape from it. Maazel seems to support that it is the fate of humanity to always, in some ways, be lonely. The question then becomes, “What is the loneliness I can most bear?”
With a wry sense of humor and energetic prose, Maazel pulls the reader by the hand through this twisted, tangled story. By the end, the reader understands that loneliness is not something that can be escaped. However, perhaps there are better ways that people—Thurlow Dan and Esme; all of us—can be together. While trapped in his compound, government agents bearing down and the end looming, Thurlow Dan makes a final plea to Esme. He says, “So what if I am the one for whom loneliness is insoluble—so what? I’d rather be lonely with you. I’d rather treat loneliness like the air I breathe, and breathe it with you.”
Natalie Sypolt lives and writes in West Virginia. She received her MFA in fiction from West Virginia University and currently teaches creative writing, literature, and composition. Her fiction and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Glimmer Train, r.kv.r.y., Superstition Review, Paste, Willow Springs Review, and The Kenyon Review Online, among others. Natalie is the winner of the Glimmer Train New Writers Contest, the West Virginia Fiction Award, and the Betty Gabehart Prize. She also serves as a literary editor for the Anthology of Appalachian Writers; is co-host of SummerBooks, a literary podcast; and is currently the special guest prose editor for Banango Street Review.