Meeting Rozzy Halfway (1980) by Caroline Leavitt

 1001 Novels: A Library of America

Meeting Rozzy Halfway (1980)
by Caroline Leavitt

Boston, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: 10/30

    The Map Makers for the 1001 Novels project have Meeting Rozzy Halfway placed in Boston, but it seems like Brookline, a tony suburb that is surrounded by Boston, would be more accurate.  I'm not entirely sure, having never been to Brookline, but I've certainly heard about it, specifically as having a Jewish element within the greater Boston metro area- which is not a Jew intensive area.   I hadn't read or heard of Leavitt before this book- a review of her 2021 novel Cruel Beautiful World identifies her as a writer of "dramatic-absorbing popular fiction", which is not the same as being a writer of serious literature but better than being the type of writer of popular fiction who is ignored by the New York Times Book Review.

  Meeting Rozzy Halfway also got a New York Times book review as part of a two-book review where both books are about family relationships.  The critic in the Times wasn't a huge fan at the time, but I gather from the author's afterword to the Ebook version I read, it was a popular success and sold plenty of copies.  I agree with the criticisms of the New York Times critic back in 1980, Rozzy, the schizophrenic half-sister is not particularly interesting as the literary insane go.  Bess, the sister and narrator, is herself a bit of a bore, and the relationship between siblings seems more of an example of a self-obssessed schizophrenic using everyone around her, with the healthy sister functioning as an enabler. 

  The reader knows that things are not going to end well for anyone in Meeting Rozzy Halfway- like all families that allow themselves to become consumed by the disability of one of them, regret is inevitable and also self-inflicted wounds- in this book the father of the family, a succesful corporate lawyer, eventually becomes a shuffling automaton who stuffs his face with junk food 24/7 and does nothing but watch television in his spare time.  Leavitt is not there to propose any solutions and I sensed that the desired reaction was to stand up and applaud for the sacrifices made by the well-sister/narrator but I found both siblings equally unsympathetic.

   Meeting Rozzy Halfway also scores a zero out of ten for its Boston-ness- they could have been  anywhere and it's quite clear over three hundred page novel that the only thing this family cares about is itself.