In 1981, Toni Morrison, addressing the Ohio Arts Council, said, “Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I must admit there are many books I have long wanted to read that have gone unwritten. And instead of trying to write those books, I’ve resorted to hoping and praying that other writers might make Morrison’s axiom their credo. One kind of book I’ve long hoped would get written was about churches — Black ones, like the ones I grew up in and still attend — replete with all the irreverence, scandal, intrigue, warmth, and comedy I’ve witnessed and imagined. Even more specifically, I’ve wanted to read a book about the most under-covered members of the church landscape: pastors’ wives, first ladies of their churches, who, like the first ladies of the United States, imbue their positions with meaning and purpose.
Here enters National Book Award Finalist Deesha Philyaw, with her novel, “The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman,” an initially promising but mostly unsatisfying attempt to answer that prayer.
From the beginning Philyaw’s narrator and main character, first lady Scharisse Freeman, strikes a confessional tone less auricular than irreverently entertaining. From her vivid descriptions of sex to a flashback scene of a sex-toy mini-conference she hosts for her peers and their pastor-husbands, most of whom get UTIs. I was initially delighted to witness Philyaw dispense with prudishness and embrace the scandalous.
Sadly, this book about mess is itself a bit of a mess. Philyaw tries to weave together the stories behind first lady Freeman’s tumultuous year, but the connective tissues fray. Among the scandals Philyaw describes are an unraveling marriage, uncertainty about Freeman’s father’s identity, difficulty relating to her unique peer set of other megachurch first ladies, and the trials and tribulations of competing in a beauty pageant of that same group.
Any one of these threads could make for a rich novel. But Philyaw chooses to follow them all, often putting these narrative threads in competition. The result is a mess of subplots with no clear winner.
Philyaw’s short story collection, “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” was met with deserved acclaim. Short story collections have always struck me as the pinnacle of literary indulgence: a way to avoid choosing a narrative lane, while novels face the necessary tragedy of choosing, prioritizing, hierarchizing. I see no such tragedy in Philyaw’s latest.
The reader will never be left wondering what Freeman is thinking, but the disclosures aren’t accompanied by commensurate introspection, just valorizing her actions. At times, there are flickers of reflection, such as when the book offers crossed-out phrases that seem to offer glimpses at truer meanings. But in a confessional novel, for whom is Freeman self-editing?
There is, toward the book’s final chapters, a flash at what I imagine Philyaw to be writing toward: “This god you keep talking about. Is he mighty or fragile? Pick one!” her agnostic childhood friend, Petra asks. The book could soar with the reflection that perhaps our main character hasn’t picked which kind of god she serves — is it her, her self-interest, her desire to win over those who wish her ill, the friends she acquires, re-acquires, and then ultimately loses again? Is it the God of the Bible which she (and an ensemble cast of characters) unrealistically quotes, citing chapter and verse in moments of heated debate? But the book’s overstuffed nature obscures what could have been a brisk, irreverent, yet meaningful confessional tale. Perhaps this reveals that the mess and messiness of church scandals (the best kind of scandals) might require tidier narrative control.
I always wanted an irreverent tale about a church, its members, its ups and its downs, and the scandals that beset moral high grounds. I didn’t take Morrison’s advice to write the book, but I prayed someone else would. I hoped Philyaw’s attempt might answer my prayer, but I prayed in vain.
Caleb Gayle is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, an associate professor at Northeastern University, and the author, most recently, of “Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State.”
The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman
By Deesha Philyaw
Mariner Books, 432 pages, $32