Someone Better Than You

Someone Better Than You is a comic novel of manners that demonstrates it's never too late to "know thyself." The novel also dramatizes how, in a time of relentless change, remembered private experience is what redeems daily life. It's early June. Change-averse and critical of the young, retired newspaperman Brady Ritz is seeing off his artist stepdaughter Jane and her family at Florida's Fort Myers Airport. The visit has obviously not gone well, but it's clear that Brady sees Ashley, Jane's four-year-old as a rebellious kindred spirit. On the drive back to Naples, Ritz's estranged wife calls him from their Michigan home. He tunes her out as she begins a familiar lecture: the publication of a collection taken from his secret satire column in a little magazine has hurt and angered friends and family. Ritz dismisses such talk as the whining of humorless people "mired in a steamy compost mound of feelings." Back in Donegal Golf and Country Club, his gated golf community, we see that Ritz has offended almost everyone. But not Ace Foley, a right-wing exercise fanatic with dementia. Ace represents the social and political bubble occupied by many enjoying an upscale retirement. Ace leaves. Bitter over the failed visit with Jane and at being left by his wife, Ritz calls Sunshine Urbanski, a clever young "sex worker" he recently met in a Naples restaurant. She comes to his club, and when she presses him to talk about his wife, Ritz tells her "She suffers." With odd certainty, Ritz knows this is true: "Sitting in a bar with a hooker, he has thought his way to something worth remembering." Their date is interrupted by the arrival of Ritz's older, latter-day-hippy stepdaughter Anne, and her two children. Ritz has never forgiven Anne for her counter-culture revolt in adolescence. She tells him she will leave the next day to visit friends. The following morning, Ritz's likeable, blind neighbor Murray Grunwald makes Ritz read aloud the snarky column on karaoke that caused so much anger at the club. Hearing his own words, Ritz decides to apologize on karaoke night. During "rehearsal" in his walk-in closet, he discovers that Anne has left her dog in his house. Alone all day, it has urinated on the rug. "I'm sorry." The dog won't look at him. It's been in here since ten this morning. Seven hours, and not a sound. "Your name's Truman." Nothing. Ritz goes in the bathroom and grabs a hand towel. He runs it under the faucet, comes back and drops to his knees. "I know all about it," he says, rubbing hard. "I have an enlarged prostate. I couldn't last three hours." This sincere apology to a dog contrasts with the following night's disastrous fake apology at karaoke: the song Ritz sings turns out to be the signature song of a man who has lost his larynx to cancer. It also initiates the process by which the dog will help Ritz recover what he has long suppressed in his relations with people: a capacity for feeling and kindness. Anne returns, and soon leaves in anger with her children. Ritz's neighbor Murray sends him to another neighbor's house. Crazy Ace Foley has wandered into Daisy Pruitt's. Daisy has had lots of "work done," and cosmetic surgery is something else Ritz wrote about. Daisy denounces him, and he leaves with Ace. At the novel's midpoint, Ritz discovers Anne has again left her sad dog. A thunder storm rages, and he does his best to comfort the terrified animal. He calls her previous owner, and learns that, like himself, Truman is suffering over the loss of a companion. A growing sense of guilt leads Ritz to visit Aspen Afternoons, the nursing home where Ace Foley has been taken. Ritz now sees a reality he has always ignored. The novel ends with Natalie Ritz returning to Naples. In the first person, she explains the suffering that has kept her gone so long.