Small Blessings by Martha Woodroof

Small Blessings follows the intertwined lives of academics and their family members in a small Southern college town. 

The above synopsis almost made me pass on this novel – sounded slightly mundane and I’m not a fan of academia novels.

Then, one Saturday morning,  I heard Ms. Woodroof interviewed on NPR (she is a staff writer for NPR) and I warmed to her voice, attitude and that she’s a debut novelist at 67 years of age.  (Approaching said decade myself, I seek any and all such bright, uplifting statistics, if you please)

I remembered I had Small Blessings on my Kindle and turned the first pages that evening — still convinced it would be a predictable read.

Yes, at first this is your average story:  In a small, sleepy college town Tom Putnam, an English professor with a mentally troubled wife, is flatly going about his life when suddenly there is Rose, a lovely new employee of the campus bookstore. Tom and his wife are charmed by Rose and make plans for dinner.

Still thinking oh yes, a Lifetime movie plot is about to unwind, I carried on and wham! The story suddenly twists and turns.  The characters become wholly unpredictable…and I found myself turning the pages and falling headlong into Ms. Woodroof’s atmospheric story.

Without giving away too much, Tom’s poor wife dies in an auto accident during the first few chapters, his mother-in-law, Agnes (my favorite character) becomes his ally.  Tom falls a little bit more in love with Rose each day.  At the same time, a past affair brings him Henry, a 10-year old boy, who may (or may not) be his son.  Stir all this up with oddball (often drunk) supporting characters, a Southern town that knows everyone’s secrets, some melodrama and you’re in for a journey.

The campus atmosphere is beautifully rendered in an insulated Southern setting, but Ms. Woodroof also slyly lampoons the institution’s pretenses.  The front lawns of the faculty housing are beautifully maintained for showing off to prospective students and parents, while the back yards grow weedy dependent on the faculty to tend – which they don’t.

I had my quibbles with Small Blessings. I found Tom Putnam to be almost catatonic in his passiveness, perhaps as an academic, he lives in his head – but at times I found it very irritating – especially in his marriage to Marjory:    “Conscience was such a delicate balancing act.  There was what he knew was right, what he ought to think was right, and what he wanted to do, all to be considered.  It was the ultimate moral chess match, and it was the only game that mismatched married people got to play.”

The mental illness and death of Tom’s wife, Marjory are treated with a light, almost cavalier hand – as in this from Agnes, her mother:   “Marjory is, I really do think, better off dead.  I don’t know what dead is, of course, but it’s got to be more fun than my daughter’s life was.”  and this later quote  “the best thing she ever did in life was to give up on it.  And that’s a bleak as a life can get.”

In the end, I found this an unpredictably candid and real storyline.  Small Blessings teeters on the edge of soap-opera stereotype, but then surprises the reader with realism. The characters are flawed but ultimately loved.  This is a story full of tragic events but it overflows with optimism.  One of my favorite quotes:  “When the going gets tough, the tough suck it up,” Agnes said. “The rest get run over.”

The outline of this novel screams “make me a TV movie!”, but if it is optioned, I hope they capture the story’s quirks and messiness.

Review copy provided by St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley.