A Trick of Nature: A Novel

By Suzanne Matson

Book Overview

Greg Goodman is a very ordinary guy--a not-very-ambitious school teacher and football coach who takes his attractive wife, Patty, their twin adolescent daughters, and the comfortable ease of their suburban routine for granted. Until lightening strikes--both literally and figuratively--as Greg runs a pattern with his junior varsity team during a muggy August practice and fifteen-year-old Timothy Phelps is directly struck. This crisis threatens to unravel all the strands anchoring Greg to his normal habits of being. When Timothy's mother, a stripper and addict who abandoned Timothy as a child, enters the mix, Greg discovers his own complicated and misguided longings. As in her debut novel, Suzanne Matson employs "crisp, clean writing . . . [and] compassionately drawn characters" (New York Times Book Review) to create a gripping story about the nature of love, trust, family, and marriage. Set in a seemingly safe world of split-levels and carefully tended lawns, A Trick of Nature powerfully captures the characters' emerging self-awareness as they are forced to test the assumptions they hold about themselves and the connections that bind them.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393048543
• ISBN13: 9780393048544
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 1.2" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

incandescent, melancholy insights into family fragmentation

When an oblique bolt of lightening strikes Timothy Phelps during a junior varsity football practice, its force not only extinguishes the youngster but shatters the calm, predictable and unremarkable lives of the Goodman family. Suzanne Matson is little less than brilliant in her wise, sad and compelling novel, "A Trick of Nature." Through the terrible force of this freak accident, a family's facade is crumbled, and its members forced to face the raw and painful realization of unexamined lives, suppressed rebellion and desperate dissatisfaction. That Ms. Matson so convincingly allows her characters to suffer, to wrestle with frightening questions, to make awful mistakes and to learn to live with newborn responsibility and freedom testifies to her skill as a writer and great compassion for the human condition.Each of the fascinating characters which populate "A Trick of Nature" has his/her life altered by the accident and its consequences. Told through multiple perspectives but interwoven gracefully in a manner which both advances and illuminates both the plot and themes, the novel's focus on its tormented, befuddled and anguished characters emerges as its most impressive strength. Greg Goodman, whose quiet reserve and emotional detachment for his wife and daughters, confronts his own guilt by embarking on actions which not only disorient his own life but disrupt his household. Suspended from his teaching job, his marriage disintegrates, his twin teen daughters spin off in separate worlds, and he undertakes a perilous search for Tim's mother, partly to understand his own responsibility and partly out of a guilt so enormous, so consuming that it distorts his ability to function. Greg's wife, Patty, in turn responds to the paradoxical pressures of he life by leaving her home. An obsessive housekeeper who controls and programs practically every movement inside her house, Patty feels liberated by the act of abandonment; work refreshes and familial ties weaken. Her lonely journey into independence rings true in its melancholy and consequences. Tim's mother, Lorraine, receives exceptional treatment. A woman who abandoned her child at an early age, she lives a near nihilistic life, and her encounter and developing relationship with Greg proves pivotal to the resolution of the novel's central conflicts.Suzanne Matson ably joins other modern authors who have explored the disintegration of middle-class marriage and the sudden, unexpected and ironically unwelcomed obligation of adults to come to grips with both the need to learn their true identities and to understand how and why marriages work. What makes "A Trick of Nature" so exceptional is its compassion and tenderness. This sad, painful novel consumes the reader; from its inception, the author has delicately interwoven the anguish and confusion of its characters into the texture of our own lives. As Greg and Patty face their own demons, their lives become even more insecure. It is this in

A compelling examination of marriage

Greg and Patty Goodman are highschool sweethearts, married almost twenty years and living the American dream until lightning strikes literally and figuratively.With subtle and understated prose, Suzanne Matson serves up an eye opening examination of the unraveling of a marriage.A TRICK OF NATURE makes one realize just how a long term relationship can be affected by routine and indifference. Reading this novel made me feel very lucky to be married to my husband, and appreciate him even more than I ever have.

This Book Will Scare You

No this is not a horror novel similar to something written by Steven King, but it scared me to death. Life can be wonderful and you can have everything going for you, but it can all be derailed with the most simplest of circumstances. If you don't believe me, read this book!Ms. Matson has crafted a compelling story that should be read by anyone who might be a tad complacent in their work or family life. The story will grip you because it isn't over the top. It isn't far fetched. In telling that story, she also examines the importance of relationships and families in a way that is important and profound.While it will make you uncomfortable at times, it's supposed to that. I strongly recommend this book to anyone.

Multi-layered splendor

The perfect curl-up-and-lose-yourself-for-awhile book. Anyone who's read Matson's earlier book will already be a huge fan. This is a perfect primer for families, for husbands and wives, for people who want to lose themselves inside someone else's mind -- Patty and Greg. Lyrical, intriguing, beguiling ... an excellent read. Matson is as good as a novelist gets.

A Trick of Nature

A Trick of Nature by Suzanne Matson is an elegantly explosive novel. The author deftly reveals the peril of lives that are outwardly safe, yet spin without a true consciousness about their innermost desires. The characters, whose lives seems 'normal' or 'ordinary' are held up to the light where both beauties and flaws are illuminated. I was pulled along throughout this book -- the story's quick action unfolds in passages of poetic language and stirring details. This is a book to read, and to read again.