LITERARY FICTION

Yvonne Georgina Puig

A Wife of Noble Character

Henry Holt

Hardcover, 978-1-627-79555-5 (also available as an ebook, an audio book, and on Audible), 320 pgs., $27.00

August 2, 2016

Beautiful and pedigreed Vivienne Cally finds herself thirty years old, still living with her spiteful aunt, and working in a boutique for little more than minimum wage. Born to an oil fortune, Vivienne was orphaned as a very young child, and whatever money remains is controlled by her aunt, who has stipulated that Vivienne won’t see a dime unless she marries well.

Future architect Preston Duffin is drawn to Vivienne, but has neither money nor pedigree. Preston, a scholarship student living in a garage apartment, hangs on the periphery of Vivienne’s privileged crowd, attempting to protect his ego by disdaining his friends’ values with lofty philosophy.

Yvonne Georgina Puig’s debut novel A Wife of Noble Character is inspired by Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. Puig updates the story, setting it amid Houston’s oil-money elite. It’s a charming and engaging story, but the views of women and marriage don’t mesh with the modern milieu, resulting in a psychological pastiche, inducing a time-warp effect.

The narrative alternates between the very different perspectives of Vivienne and Preston. They are sympathetic though frustrating characters whose complexity Puig develops deftly and steadily. Vivienne “desire[s] to exceed the expectations of her world and [simultaneously] not to care about those expectations at all.” She has many more options than Wharton’s Lily Bart could have conceived of, but she’s paralyzed by lack of imagination and the social mores imposed on her. Whenever Vivienne breaks with convention and acts upon her personal needs or wants, she is punished.

In the beginning, Preston views Vivienne as a public utility. “Wasn’t it her job, in a way,” he muses, “to adapt to the various scenarios life presented and, by her loveliness, make those scenarios pleasant for the other people involved?” He wants what he presumes he cannot have, and he, too, punishes Vivienne with assumptions born of his own insecurities and envy.

A Wife of Noble Character features an engaging cast of supporting characters who run the gamut from true-blue to dangerous, some of whom are types Texans will recognize. Texans will also enjoy the portrait of Houston, from Montrose and Westheimer, to Memorial Park and Buffalo Bayou.

Puig offers small, delightful turns of phrase: grackles who “curse” and toads “holding a celebratory concert” in honor of humidity, that “thick and insolent thing.” She indulges in a little purple prose, though infrequently: “[Vivienne] coalesced with her environment because, by her grace, without knowing it, she coalesced with every environment and improved each, a vivid blossom on a dark bough.”

Puig’s imagery can be striking, as when Preston examines limestone “trac[ing] the ancient shells, pok[ing] his pinky into the tiny caves carved by some vanished immensity.” It can be cozy: Preston’s garage apartment is covered by ivy “forming a sort of structural shawl, softening the corners.” Puig is also frequently funny, referring to Preston’s “graduate school apartment from which his income had yet to graduate.”

Vivienne makes a friend in Paris who tells her, “If you’re born into a world where you don’t belong, you don’t have a choice. You have to find a way out.” A Wife of Noble Character is the story of Vivienne finding her way out, and the serendipitous conclusion is surprisingly satisfying.

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