The life of a struggling farmer is a slog: You drag yourself out of bed at ungodly hours, struggle against the morning cold, service the animals and attempt to service yourself, on and on for days, months and into years. Everything is repetitive, everything is menial. So is Jennifer Acker’s new novel “Surrender.”
“Surrender” follows Lucy, a woman solo-managing her family’s New England goat farm, while tackling many common problems for a middle-aged woman in a small town: a marriage ravaged by her aging husband’s dementia, falling in love with her high school best friend, Sandy, all while processing her friends’ lives over farm-grown meals. It’s a novel of simplistic, mild problems that are typically resolved within a few short chapters. It’s a great “cozy” genre read, but doesn’t go much further.
Acker’s writing bleeds with heavy exposition, reading much too simply. She doesn’t let you draw your own conclusions or let anything sit unresolved for long. This surely makes the book “cozy,” as you know you won’t have to stress about something too heavily, but lowers the stakes too much in an already low-stakes plot. Nearly 300 pages of — admittedly pretty nerve-racking — goat farming and financial problems can only grip you for so long, and lacked the intrigue created by drawn-out conflicts.
The simplicity of the novel isn’t just in the conflicts, but also in the developments of Lucy’s life. For a woman in her middle age, a time known for its struggles in making new friends, Lucy makes them far too easily. In multiple moments throughout the book, she meets someone for the first time and engages in some light small talk, yet by the next chapter, that person is suddenly at her house, helping her work on the farm or discussing intimate details of their lives. These relationships develop too quickly to feel believable and create characters who come across as underdeveloped. The payoff is too immediate, unsatisfying and requires a little suspension of disbelief.
The main relationship we’re likely meant to root for — Lucy’s rekindled, homoerotic friendship with her high school friend, Sandy — doesn’t quite land. Again, there’s no real, immediate struggle, just Sandy showing up to Lucy’s house and their easy banter flowing naturally, like when they were young. It’s incredibly obvious what will happen next, with Lucy explicitly thinking she’s inexplicably drawn to Sandy and paying acute attention to her body. This makes the payoff of them getting together nearly non-existent and entirely inevitable.
And their relationship never seems to go beyond this unexplainable devotion to one another, constantly relying on their high school history to back up their obsession. It cheapens the writing, calling back to their history instead of letting them build a new one. And when they aren’t reminiscing, they’re often fighting over careers or decisions in their personal lives — a relationship just unhealthy enough not to root for.
In contrast to the lack of fully developed or interesting characters, Lucy’s farm feels fully realized. You’re fully immersed in the action of a helping a struggling goat give birth or of newborn kids running around in the warm barn at night. You can feel the dew in the early morning walk to the barn, the hug of the gingham on the couch when Lucy collapses after an exhausting day. You’ll crave goat milk yogurt and differently-aged cheeses and leave with a new understanding of goat mating season. As a piece of cozy fiction, this might be what matters most.
“Surrender” succeeds in its intention of providing a rural escape, but misses a few steps along the way.
Daily Arts Writer Campbell Johns can be reached at caajohns@umich.edu.
