The Reckless Oath We Made by Bryn Greenwood
Bryn Greenwood is best known for her gritty, emotionally complex stories about flawed characters finding love and connection in unlikely and often dark circumstances. Her latest novel, The Reckless Oath We Made (G.P. Putnam’s Sons), now out in paperback, is the moving story of Zee, whose family is torn apart when her sister is abducted, and Gentry, an autistic man obsessed with all things medieval and chivalrous who comes to her aid in her quest to rescue her sister.
Zee’s family is already no stranger to hardship; when Zee was still a child, her father died in prison serving time for murder. Her housebound, morbidly obese mother buries decades of sorrow amid the excesses of food and hoarded objects. Zee was forced to move out at 16 as there was literally no space left for her to live in. In this essay for BookTrib, Greenwood tells us more about the inspiration behind Zee’s mom, one of the many richly conceived characters in the novel.
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When my sisters and I were teenagers, my stepdad made us clean our rooms twice a year, going through every drawer, choosing what to keep and what to discard. A Command Sergeant Major in the Army, he stood in the doorway of our closets, watching us handle each item of clothing. Does it fit? Do you wear it? If the answers were no, he would say, “Put it in the bag,” while holding open the large black trash bags he used for those occasions. He grilled us in a similar fashion about shoes, toys, books, everything in our rooms.
The one person in the house who was never subjected to his cleaning techniques was my mother, whose closets were overstuffed and who smuggled her purchases into the house while my dad wasn’t home. He knew, but he also knew he couldn’t control her stuff the way he controlled ours. Every time she and my dad moved, they moved into a bigger house, and my mother promptly filled it. After the Command Sergeant Major died, there was no one to check the accumulation of stuff, and now there’s no way to hide that my mother is a hoarder. Entire rooms overflow with fabric, dolls, dishes, mountains of paperwork and catalogs.
My mother is not an anomaly. I come from a family of hoarders. My grandmother, both my mother’s sisters, one of my sisters. The year after my dad died, as my mother’s house began to fill faster and faster, I thought of how loss has been the spark for the women in my family. The loss of a husband, a mother, a child, a marriage. Loss turned them from women with too much stuff into dragons perched on hoards. To keep loss at bay, they gather their treasure around them and pile it up like walls. Eventually, they can’t get out and no one can get in.
I knew I had to write about it, because there was no other way to process being a witness to my mother’s transformation. The Reckless Oath We Made was the book that came of my need to talk about what it’s like to watch someone entomb themselves with stuff. It’s about a great many other things as well, but it’s a meditation on a mother-daughter-stuff relationship similar to mine.
Despite what my stepdad taught me, I’m aware that I carry that same propensity to accumulate. My weakness is books, and every year I go through my books to weed out the ones I can live without. Some years the weeding is more successful than others. The years I fail, I think of the way stuff can become like a choking vine, slowly strangling the tree it grows on. I’m determined not to be choked.
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Praise for The Reckless Oath We Made:
“Unforgettable … Greenwood depicts an unconventional romance with honesty and tenderness. [This] upside-down contemporary fairy tale captivates with its wonderfully inventive storytelling and its compassionately drawn, flawed characters.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Themes of chivalry, loyalty, family, and personal responsibility, along with a recognition that people don’t need to be perfect to be worthy of love, make this latest from Greenwood … a good fit for those looking for gritty contemporary realism in their romance novels.”
— Library Journal
“Greenwood is an exquisite storyteller, using multiple narratives to effortlessly bring to life characters that are complex, flawed, generous, and utterly human, and Gentry and Zee’s tender, unusual romance is drawn in sweetly delicate strokes. Readers will be enchanted by this compassionate, winning novel.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Wry, vivid … The story draws together themes of desperate poverty, the complicated bonds of family, mental illness and unlikely (but no less deep) love. Like Zee herself, Greenwood’s fourth novel is sharp, unexpected and undeniably powerful.”
— ShelfAwareness
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