Since You Ask

by Louise Wareham

Overview

Since You Ask is about the origins of sexual compulsion, and one young woman’s attempts to be free.

—Winner of the James Jones Literary Society First Novel Award

“Wareham’s simple, steady prose and aversion to glass-shattering drama elevate a potential cliche into unsettling intensity.” —Entertainment Weekly

From a Connecticut sanitarium, 24-year-old Betsy Scott tells her doctor a story about the destructive secrets in an outwardly successful family. A series of affairs take her into increasingly dark situations, from private-school Manhattan, to the outskirts of Queens, the downtown loft of a broker, the suburban house of a doctor in Scarsdale. Since You Ask is about the origins of sexual compulsion, and one young woman’s attempts to be free.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781888451634
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	05/01/2004
Pages:	225
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Louise Wareham grew up in Manhattan and graduated from Columbia University. She has worked as a reporter in New York City, Oxford, Mississippi and New Zealand. Since You Ask was the winner of the James Jones Literary Society First Novel Award. Wareham lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

Last May my whole family drove out to JFK Airport to meet Raymond. He had been gone for six years, and Dad was carrying his camera as if Ray were some kind of movie star. Usually, I was nervous around Ray, but I wasn't that day. Partly because I didn't live at home anymore and partly because Ray didn't bother me anymore.

'Give your brother a kiss,' my mother said, prodding me in the back.

'Put your arm around her,' Dad said, pointing his camera at us. Then Eric stood between us and Dad took pictures of that, too.

In the car, we passed rows and rows of housing projects, all square and brown and the same. I would have to kill myself if I lived in a place like that. I pointed this out, but no one said anything.

Raymond lit a cigarette when he stepped out of the car. Couldn't you wait, I wanted to say. He had a few drags, then flicked it to the gutter. We went to Sardi's. It was loud and crowded, and Dad ordered wine and pasta with clams. He gave a toast to Raymond, 'our prodigal son.' I looked at Eric, but he didn't seem to notice. Raymond set his glass on the table and tapped his fingers. Then he went to the bathroom.

*

Dr. Keats, my psychiatrist here, says I am too 'fragmented.' I am overwhelmed, he says. My mind is overwhelmed and for this reason it has begun to crack, or 'break.' He doesn't say this in a mean way, but in a way I will understand. I do understand, too. I am glad he says this because it is true. It is frightening and it is true.

*

After dinner, Dad dropped me off at 46th and Ninth. I had a sublet there: one room with a platform bed and a table overlooking the airshaft. The building was full of dance studios. I could hear African drums sometimes, or the footsteps of ballet classes. My place belonged to a ballet dancer; she had gone to Europe for a year. As soon as I got inside, I wanted to go out again. No one was around, though. Sylvia was at Yale, and Henry was in the Hamptons. I turned the television on, then off. I sat on my bed and looked through my phone book and finally, I called Beck.

We had met on the street, six years ago. Even then, when he was eighteen, he was the best-looking boy I had ever seen. He was grown like a man and as serious, leaning against a car with his arms on his chest, staring at me.

Now he was a corrections officer at the Tombs. He came over and sat on my bed, lighting matches with one hand. 'Oh, Betsy,' he said. 'Betsy, Betsy.'

'What?' I asked.

'You're all grown up. You've got this apartment and all your books.' He dropped his hand to my knee. 'Can I?'

What People are Saying About This

The truly important novel, as Tolstoi so passionately averred, is the adventure of a question; and the question, most often, is unhappiness. Ranging inward to a psyche’s unsettled relation to itself, and out into the wilderness of family and love, Louise Wareham's Since You Ask is a sustained and sustaining adventure, passionate as Tolstoi would approve. Reading this novel, I saw the substance (and substances) of unhappiness transformed into something even brighter than courage. This is a splendid debut.
—author of Arcady

Kaylie Jones

Louise Wareham's debut novel is a work of staggering intensity, written in a deceptively straight-forward, no-nonsense prose, which belies the vast iceberg of unexplored pain that lurks just below its surface.
—author of A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries

Melanie Rae Thon

Louise Wareham evokes the mystery of sexual compulsion with stunning honesty and quiet compassion. She captures the wry and brilliant humor of Betsy Scott, her core of tensile courage, so that we can bear to witness her life, so that we can keep our faith as she enters chaos to seek redemption. In the fragments of a fractured life, in stark and radiant images, Louise Wareham recovers miraculous beauty, a fragile stained glass vision of one woman's whole and luminous spirit.
—author of Sweet Hearts

Amy Hempel

Louise Wareham's keyed-down style amplifies the threat in the sexual terrain her narrator travels. She conveys the disequilibrium a young woman sustains in a run of soul-honing liaisons. 'He saw I had been through something. And it was something that would serve him'--that the young narrator sees this and LIKES this in a man is the kind of charged and startling observation that powers this striking novel.
—author of Reasons to Live

Editorial Reviews

"Louise Wareham’s debut novel is a work of staggering intensity, written in a deceptively straight-forward, no-nonsense prose, which belies the vast iceberg of unexplored pain that lurks just below its surface."

Kaylie Jones

"Louise Wareham’s keyed-down style amplifies the threat in the sexual terrain her narrator travels. She conveys the disequilibrium a young woman sustains in a run of soul-honing liaisons. ‘He saw I had been through something. And it was something that would serve him’—that the young narrator sees this and LIKES this in a man is the kind of charged and startling observation that powers this striking novel."

Amy Hempel

"The truly important novel, as Tolstoi so passionately averred, is the adventure of a question; and the question, most often, is unhappiness. Ranging inward to a psyche’s unsettled relation to itself, and out into the wilderness of family and love, Louise Wareham’s Since You Ask is a sustained and sustaining adventure, passionate as Tolstoi would approve. Reading this novel, I saw the substance (and substances) of unhappiness transformed into something even brighter than courage. This is a splendid debut."

Donald Revell

"Louise Wareham evokes the mystery of sexual compulsion with stunning honesty and quiet compassion. She captures the wry and brilliant humor of Betsy Scott, her core of tensile courage, so that we can bear to witness her life, so that we can keep our faith as she enters chaos to seek redemption. In the fragments of a fractured life, in stark and radiant images, Louise Wareham recovers miraculous beauty, a fragile stained glass vision of one woman’s whole and luminous spirit."

Melanie Rae Thon

Betsy Scott, a privileged private-school Manhattan teenager, is barely 16 when her reform-school boyfriend's shady boss takes an unwholesome interest in her. Surprisingly, Betsy willingly embarks on an affair with the 41-year-old. This relationship turns out to be only one of many inappropriate pairings that, along with family dysfunction and drug abuse, lead Betsy to a Connecticut mental hospital at age 24. Wareham's first novel is unsettling not only because of its subject matter but because the protagonist's simply stated but astute observations about her own compulsions force readers to rethink a lot of the common assumptions about sexual behavior. Those expecting scathing indictments of what many would view as the sexual predators in Betsy's life will be sorely disappointed, as Wareham is more interested in examining what role Betsy herself plays in these situations. Although it ends on a hopeful note, this is obviously a very dark book-and potentially a controversial one-but Wareham has created a compelling character who earns her reader's attention.

Booklist

Wareham's simple, steady prose and aversion to glass-shattering drama elevate a potential cliché into unsettling intensity.

Weekly Entertainment

Since You Ask is . . . a dark accounting of one woman's irretrievable peace and the lure of destructive silence . . . Louise Wareham has delivered something scarily beautiful . . . befitting the provocation of an intelligent woman wrongly turned, then turned around.

Rain Taxi Review of Books

Wareham is a bold, brave, first-rate writer . . . Since You Ask is a remarkable acomplishment.

The Journal News

For her working manuscript of Since You Ask, Wareham won the 1999 James Jones Literary Society First Novel Award, given "to honor the spirit of unblinking honesty, determination and insight into modern culture." Presented here in finished form, the gritty tale follows Betsy Scott, who was sexually abused by one of her brothers and spiraled into a cycle of dependency on drugs and meaningless relationships with men. Now a resident of a psychiatric care facility, Betsy alternates between past and present as she describes this torturous path to her doctor. Betsy is any and every character in this genre, and while her tale is told competently, it lacks an extraordinary originality of voice that would engage the reader's understanding and compassion. Of marginal interest for most collections.-Caroline M. Hallsworth, City of Greater Sudbury, Ont. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal