The Restoration of Emily [Paperback]

The Restoration of Emily is Toronto author Kim Moritsugu’s fourth novel. If it were a movie, it would probably be found, like its predecessors, in the romantic comedy section of the video store. A quick summary of the publishers’ synopses of these previous books is revealing.
Looks Perfect (1993): A “funny, sexy fashion editor . . . jets off to Europe and New York to cover the ready-to-wear collections. Suddenly, the man of her dreams, a publishing magnate, falls under her spell.”
Old Flames (1999): “Beth Robinson is a 40-ish public relations person turned stay-at-home mom, who . . . is pretty well content. That is, until Rachel Klein, a hip young advertising executive, moves into the house next door. When Rachel confides in Beth her ambitious career plans and her intention to rekindle an old flame with man-about-town Tim Donnelly, Beth is envious.”
The Glenwood Treasure (2003), Moritsugu’s foray into crime fiction: “After her marriage breaks down, shy schoolteacher Blithe Morrison takes refuge for the summer with her parents in the affluent Toronto neighbourhood of Rose Park . . . uncovers truths about a long-rumoured buried treasure that forever alters her perceptions of her family, her friends, and herself.”
In The Restoration of Emily Moritsugu continues along the same basic literary track she has been on throughout her career. Although her novels are certainly fun to read, there is something ultimately insubstantial about them. They lack staying power.
From the opening lines on, the tone of The Restoration of Emily is relentlessly feisty. The narrator, Emily Harada, is an architect who restores old houses. She is also a single parent whose fourteen-year-old son, Jesse, has just reached the precarious age of push-and-pull. He wants to distance himself from his mother but at the same time still relies on her and needs her more than he would like to admit.
Emily, too, is going through an age-related transformation. She describes herself thus: “What I am, at fifty, is the single mother of a dear and sometimes difficult teenage boy; I’m an independent, self-sufficient, strong woman who answers to no one, who race-walks to her own rhythm track.” A little later, she adds: “I am woman, hear me roar, except when I fuck up.” She is also pre-menopausal, suffers from sharp pains in her right arm, and has not had a lover in the four years since she split up with her husband. (She maintains a barely civil connection with him solely for Jesse’s sake.)
It would be easy to dislike the irascible Emily, whose attitude borders on obnoxiousness. It is to Moritsugu’s credit as a writer that she doesn’t let this dislike kick into full (and possibly irreversible) gear. As Moritsugu takes us past Emily’s crusty exterior and deeper into her life, Emily’s crankiness becomes less grating and more understandable.
Part of Emily’s toughness is really a form of defensiveness. Her father was Japanese, and she comments more than once about how people treat her as a result of this: “ . . . I have no time for people who think their fascination with Asian culture is in any way relevant to me.” Also, both her parents were artists, a fact which caused her various forms of grief during her childhood and adolescence. They had her late (when her mother was forty and her father fifty-one) and were already irrevocably entrenched in their own lives, especially their careers. They were more concerned with themselves than with Emily, who was basically allowed to run loose.
Emily is determined to be different, to give Jesse much more love and attention than she herself received. Jesse, who in typical teenage mode tries to discourage her incessant mothering, feels smothered. Unlike her parents, Emily sets rules for her son, but admits:

“. . . I am in some ways permissive, in most others I do not emulate their parenting technique.” Where she differs is that she doesn’t neglect Jesse the way she herself was neglected: “I did not make my child walk to and from school from grade one onwards, no matter what the weather, or the books, projects and sporting equipment to be carried. I did not leave him alone in the evenings to amuse himself at age eight while I tooled around in my studio with the door closed. I know the names of his friends, and what nefarious activities they’re up to.”

Moritsugu’s portrayal of Jesse is the best aspect of the novel and will resonate with anyone who has raised, or is raising, a teenage son. Jesse’s grades are dropping. He quits the basketball team, and is suddenly spending entire weekends with his friends, not even coming home to sleep. What he cares about is food, music, and his computer. He has deliberately withdrawn into a life that his mother can only guess at.
In the meantime, Emily herself is living a “secret” life, one which her son is not a part of. This life begins when she runs into an acquaintance, Nils, whom she hasn’t seen in six years. He is an ex-student (each year Emily gives several guest lectures to the class of one of her old architecture professors) and much younger than she is. The fact that he’s only twenty-nine is part of his charm-she doesn’t hesitate to go to bed with him-but is also the reason she doesn’t want to get emotionally involved. Nils is a convenient “boy toy”, and the fling feeds her ego, allows her to feel powerful and in control. Moritsugu, zealously intent on conveying Emily’s spunky character, has a few embarrassing literary lapses: “At the touch of his mouth, my body revs into high sex gear, all systems lubricated and ready to go, but I yank on the emergency brake while I still can.”
Aside from the romance with Nils and her changing relationship with Jesse, Emily has one more thing to contend with: a part of her past has resurfaced to haunt her. In her youth, she worked on an archeological dig in England. During the dig, she pocketed an armlet as a souvenir and didn’t mention it to anyone. No one saw her find the piece-or so she thinks. Now, much to her surprise, she has been contacted via email by one of her fellow excavators who is helping to organise a reunion. Although Emily declines the invitation to attend, one of the participants looks her up during a conference trip to Toronto and ends up confronting her about the armlet. This subplot is the weakest, least credible part of the novel and its resolution is completely anticlimactic. In fact, it verges on being hokey.
Overall, The Restoration of Emily is entertaining, and its insightful exploration of the mother-son bond rings true. However, anyone looking for a more substantial meal would be well advised to dine elsewhere.
Eva Tihanyi (Books in Canada)

"With much grace and tremendous wit, Kim Moritsugu's The Restoration of Emily moves the reader skilfully through the fractured but colliding time between youth and middle age. Emily is masterfully drawn and this is a delightful book." -Michelle Berry, author of Blind Crescent

"Kim Moritsugu was short listed for the Arthur Ellis Best Crime Novel award for The Glenwood Treasure. She has a talent for surprising in a novel that is about saving the best elements of the past and present, the old and the new."

Andrew Armitage, Book Editor, The Sun-Times

"Kim Moritsugu's The Restoration of Emily is a very funny, sometimes suspenseful novel for grown-ups. Women of a certain age with adolescent sons will find it particularly appealing. So will those who have had the delightful experience of being attracted to a younger man and having that attraction returned.

...Moritsugu is a pro when it comes to telling a story in a fresh and engaging way. I stayed up late to finish it...

Mary Soderstrom, Quill & Quire, June 2006