The Gretchen Question by Jessica Treadway
A Gretchen question, Gretchenfrage in German, derived from poor Gretchen in Goethe’s Faust, is an uncomfortable question, one that is difficult to ask and more difficult to answer as it will reveal something ruinous and hurtful. In Jessica Treadway’s moving and delicately paced novel, The Gretchen Question (Delphinium Books), there’s more than one; and each one is met with denial, a vague response or a lie — a white lie, a half-truth, a lie of omission. The intricate cobweb built with these lies is what holds the story together and reveals how much all of us may lie to ourselves and to the people we love.
The action takes place over the course of a day during which Roberta Chase has one simple chore to do for a friend before a routine work meeting and an appointment with her therapist. Roberta is a good friend and neighbor, a devoted single mom and a responsible employee; but she is also grappling with problems that range from inconvenience to disaster. Her car won’t start, road repairs send her off on a detour, she’s late, she’s tired, she’s sick. The simple favor she’d promised her friend — taking in the trash bins from the road — turns into a calamity which would be hilarious under different circumstances.
As she soldiers through her day — she helps rescue a cat, surprises a burglar, loses her job — flashbacks tell the reader her backstory. The central Gretchen question that has haunted her for years: her son wants to know who his biological father is. But there are unspoken Gretchenfragen that unhinge her and fill her life with regret and longing, questions she hasn’t asked, questions the people who love her don’t really want to know the answers to.
Her son Will, her best friend and old college roommate (the real Gretchen of the story), her co-workers and her neighbors support and sometimes complicate Roberta’s life, but everything’s kept a sort of balance until Roberta’s cancer returns. There’s so much unsaid by the characters in The Gretchen Question that it’s almost a relief when Will brings home his girlfriend Sosi who is not shy about making her tactless but perceptive observations.
The story takes on an urgency that carves an edge into everything, and it slowly becomes clear how all the pieces fit. Treadway meticulously feeds her readers bits of information about the characters and what they do. There are no two-dimensional characters here, no obvious, predictable motives or familiar plotlines. It all rolls to an unsettling conclusion where readers can argue about whether Roberta’s choice at the end was a bold act of defiance or a disappointing, irrevocable mistake.
The Gretchen Question is a no-judgment zone from the very beginning when Roberta sympathizes with the motives of a petty thief to the moment her old friend puts a comforting arm around her shoulders and says, “Oh, Bert. We’re beyond all that now, aren’t we?” Readers may close the book thinking that Gretchen questions are, simply, better left unasked. We’re beyond all that.
