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Joseph Conrad was thirty-nine when he penned The Return. Supposedly, it was sparked by a lunch encounter with Henry James. Indeed, one can detect James’ influence within the piece. Colm Tóibín, who wrote the forward in this edition, states that Conrad wrote that the story “embittered five months” of his life. Initially, no magazine would print it; it first emerged in Conrad’s Tales of Unrest. The Return is distinct from anything I’ve read by Conrad. No high seas adventure unfolds in this slender novella. Instead, it’s a story about two people – a man and a woman – who fail to connect in any meaningful way. What occurs between its covers is no less a high drama. Alvan Hervey returns home early one evening and discovers a letter left by his wife. In the letter, she informs Alvan that after five years of marriage, she is leaving him for another man. She even names the other man: a journalist within their circle of friends whom Alvan regards with contempt. Alvan is thrown into a tailspin. He vacillates among feelings of anger, betrayal, despondency, and more. He’s heartbroken, but for all the wrong reasons. It’s all about him, appearances, and what the hired help and their friends will think. His wife, who is never named, has made a fool of him. And then Alvan’s wife returns. She claims she’s made a mistake, but what that mistake might be is never made clear. What is evident is that she returns for the wrong reasons. It isn’t because she loves Alvan or even desires to reconcile. Perhaps it’s simply out of a sense of duty. She claims she and her would-be lover never consummated their relationship. Indeed, she states she returned before she ever met him, leaving Alvan to infer that he’s still waiting for her. She also claims she returned to make amends because she still loves him and views him as the superior specimen. Alvan wants to forgive and forget, to sweep his wife’s indiscretion under the rug. He claims he loves her and always has, but she tells him if she ever thought he’d truly loved her, she never would’ve returned. In her eyes, he loved the idea of being in love, of being married, but he never really loved her. For Alvan, marriage was all about appearances. Yet, she, too, married for all the wrong reasons, and Alvan – still the victim who has done nothing wrong – soon discovers that it was all a lie, the last five years. What the reader learns, in fewer than eighty pages, is that in a marriage that crumbles, both parties are at fault. Like many of us today, Alvan and his wife married for the wrong reasons. And also like many of us, a failure to communicate effectively that needs weren’t being met ultimately led to the end. Highly recommended.
