Quietly Extraordinary
- Christian Pan
- 6 minutes ago
- 3 min read
2025 (Penguin Random House)
From the outside, Emily seems to have everything. Her husband Jack comes from a wealthy New England family, and they have two beautiful young children in a gorgeous home in upper Manhattan. The two met while she was finishing her undergraduate degree at Harvard, and whenever he would visit her the bar where she worked, she thought he was a Prince Charming. In those early days of their courtship, her friends thought she had hit the jackpot with this one, and that her husband was her ticket to live a fairy tale.
But as Marie Rutkoski´s elegantly written novel Ordinary Love reveals, the truth is much more complicated beneath the surface. Emily´s marriage is one characterized by near-constant fear, an isolated existence where her husband emotionally bullies her regularly, trapping her inside a gilded cage. Listening to her justify or rationalize Jack´s subtly sinister behavior, to herself and her dwindling circle of friends, is like listening to a traumatized hostage suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. We painfully witness Emily attempt to adjust and adapt to this existence, second-guessing her own lived experience and subscribing to the gaslighting that her friends have sensed for years but have yet to know the full extent. But when Jack terrifies their young son in the swimming pool one summer, a "game" of near-drowning that exemplifies her husband´s cruelty and callousness, Emily finally begins to take steps to leave him.
Simultaneous to this present-day drama, the author brings us back to rural Ohio fifteen years before, when Emily and her childhood friend Gen were inseparable. By the time summer arrives after graduating from high school, the two teenage girls have become secret lovers. Their mutual love is powerful, but not felt or expressed in exactly the same way: athlete Gen is openly, bravely lesbian, while bookworm Emily is more uncertain about her identity, of how open she is willing to be around her conservative and homophobic family members. A pivotal family scene, and what the two girls say and don´t say, will prove pivotal for years to come, a fracture that will take years for both women to mend.
Some of the press for Ordinary Love describes this as "a novel about bisexuality," but I think this is misleading. True, Emily´s two primary relationships are with a man and a woman; she is married to Jack, and has an intimate relationship with Gen spanning years. However, the only intimate scenes depicted in Rutkoski´s book are between her and Gen. Clearly, this woman is the love of her life, with her marriage depicted in stark contrast. With Gen, there is not only sex, but genuine intimacy, emotional connection, trust; Emily´s marriage to Jack contains no depictions of sex whatsoever, not even kissing. Instead, the reader sees a prism of threats and abuse directed towards Emily, creating an environment that is materialistically wealthy yet cold as ice. Perhaps a more accurate description of Ordinary Love would be to call it a lesbian novel? Or even an anti-heterosexual story, given how few examples of happy straight people are these pages (the queers are definitely having more fun here, especially amongst its supporting characters.
Rutkoski brings exceptional care and intelligence to her cast, displaying a maturity of understanding the complexities of intimacy and sexual attraction, and how these often get entangled in personal ties to our families, professional ambitions, jealousy, money, and more. Emily´s conflicted reasons for staying with Jack despite all of the abuse depicted in the narrative is understandable as well as completely believable. Ordinary Love is more interested in portraying authentically real people, rather that two-dimensional "heroes" and "villains." Gen can be fiery and affectionate in one moment, but then turn distant and remote, withholding how she truly feels from Emily, and contributing to the instability in their relationship. This novel is generous and compassionate for these two women, and seems to understand how hard it can be for any of us to do what we want, pursue what we want, without at least some friction or difficulty. For Rutkoski, the ability to find and nurture any kind of "ordinary love" with another human being is truly extraordinary, one that requires repeated vigilance, honesty, and communication. This is a truly magnificent book, one I highly recommend.