Fischer, Maribeth

PERSONAL:

Married (twice). Education: Virginia Commonwealth University, master's degree, 1990.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Rehoboth Beach, DE. Office— University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250. E-mail—fischer@umbc.edu; newsletter@maribethfischer.com

CAREER:

Writer, educator, and lecturer. University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, visiting lecturer in creative writing, composition, and rhetoric, 1992-c.—2002.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pushcart Prize, Pushcart Press, 1996, for essay "Stillborn"; Smartt Family Prize.

WRITINGS:

The Language of Good-bye (novel), Dutton (New York, NY), 2001.

The Life You Longed For (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to anthologies, including Pushcart Prize XX: Best of the Small Presses. Contributor of essays to periodicals, including Yale Review and Iowa Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

The strong grip of the past, the deep and lasting ache of loss, and the hopeful optimism of new beginnings form the thematic basis of Pushcart Prizewinning essayist Maribeth Fischer's first novel, The Language of Good-bye. The characters in this "thoughtful novel," wrote reviewer Anita Shreve in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "are all struggling to make new lives without seeming to invalidate the old ones." Annie Helvorson, who teaches English to immigrants and foreign students, and Will Sullivan, a child psychologist, are a newly minted middle-age couple, finally together after several years of a clandestine affair. But despite their affection for each other, Annie and Will are "finding that the past doesn't disappear when you slam the door and walk away," Shreve stated. Annie left her childhood-sweetheart and husband Carter, who gave her a safe but emotionally bland marriage. Will walked out on his wife Kayla and his beloved five-year-old daughter, Brooke. "Like Annie's foreign students, they have renounced their pasts to start a new life," wrote a reviewer in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "If the present doesn't work, they're in trouble."

Kayla is fundamentally shaken by what she sees as Will's betrayal. Carter becomes more and more obsessed with Annie, even to the point of setting fires outside her apartment, while struggling with his own emotional misery and self-doubt. "Their spouses' reactions profoundly affect Will and Annie, as the new couple discovers that living with the decision to leave can be as devastating as being left," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Even while reveling in the exhilaration of their mutual passion, Will and Annie feel the full force of the grief and guilt behind their decision to abandon their spouses. They constantly circle the unspoken question of whether what they have lost was preferable to what they have gained.

Another of Fischer's characters who feels the tremendous pain of loss is Korean immigrant and artist Sungae Oh, a character who "serves as a sort of keystone where all the principal actions and themes are joined," wrote Patrick Tompkins in a review posted on Richmond.com. Sungae, a student of Annie's and an employee in Kayla's bakery, has lived in the United States for years without learning English. She continues to resist picking up the language despite Annie's encouragement, wrestling "with how words change lives, exhume and destroy memory, and violently recast the nature of things through naming," Tompkins remarked. From her perspective, Sungae can see the effects of marital infidelity on both her employer and her teacher. Yet Sungae "knows more about loss than all of these 30-somethings combined," wrote the Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributor. Sungae's own loss goes much deeper than a pair of ruined relationships, to the loss of her country, the lover with whom she had an extramarital affair, and her baby daughter, the product of her own infidelity. "Given Sungae's losses—lover, daughter, country—the losses of the other four seem almost trivially annoying," wrote reviewer Amy C. Rea on the Literal Mind web site.

However, it is through Sungae's painting that she finally finds "closure and resolution to her past life," Rea remarked, "allowing her to finally live in peace with the present." Despite the seeming lack of connection between a Korean immigrant and the other upscale characters, "as Fischer makes brilliantly clear, Sungae has much to teach them," Shreve wrote. "Sungae's breakthrough is a victory for everyone in the end, a release of cosmic proportions."

"Fischer is good on the details," remarked a reviewer in Kirkus Reviews. The novel's setting is "vividly evoked, and the minor characters, especially Korean immigrant Sungae … are fully realized people whose plights move and engage." To Tompkins, the novel "is most stunning, perhaps, in its depiction of the interior lives of these characters, in the thoughts, words, and feelings behind their actions of loving, leaving, wanting, searching, and remembering." For other reviewers, however, the novel's complicated narrative structure is its most significant weakness. "The story is told from all five of the main characters' viewpoints, and sometimes their internal monologues tend to bog things down," wrote the Publishers Weekly contributor.

The Language of Good-bye is an "artfully realized first novel," wrote Booklist contributor Danise Hoover. "Great happiness is punctuated with betrayal, loss, and grieving but leads to peace and self-knowledge," Hoover noted. "There are no pat answers or easy endings in this excellent novel of real people and strong emotions."

Fischer's Pushcart Prize-winning essay, "Stillborn," has been equally well regarded. The essay deals with similar themes of loss and sudden endings of long-term relationships, when a grown daughter's mother suddenly and inexplicably leaves her family for another man. The pain, loss, and betrayal felt by the narrator is related to the complicated connections between her mother's leaving and her mother's earlier tragedy of a stillborn child. "This essay is an articulate and emotional depiction of how the avoidance of grieving corrodes the soul, the spirit, and relationships," wrote Harriet A. Squire in the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. "Fischer is a strong new voice in women's fiction," observed a Publishers Weekly contributor, adding that her "courageous, gently affirmative first novel" should "find a receptive audience."

In her second novel, The Life You Longed For, Fischer tells the story of a dedicated mother who is accused of Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSP), a syndrome in which a mother seeks sympathy by faking or causing a child's illness. Explaining that she originally wanted to write a book about women accused of being witches during the Salem witch trials, the author told Geeta Sharma Jensen in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she found the research to be too daunting and instead decided to write of Munchausen syndrome. "The accusations from women about women in the Munchausen thing—it seemed parallel to what I was wanting to do with the witch trials," Fischer told Jensen. "Here a child is sick, and nobody can understand the sickness and they say, ‘Oh, it must be the mother.’"

In the novel, Grace Connolly finds herself accused of the syndrome because her son Jack often seems perfectly normal even though he has been diagnosed with mitochondrial disease. When Jack is taken from the home, Grace must face the fact that she cannot be with him as he grows increasingly sicker. In addition, as she is investigated, Grace's affair with a former highschool boyfriend comes to light. Although the novel received mixed reviews, Teresa L. Jacobson wrote in the Library Journal that The Life You Longed For is "crammed full of fascinating historical and scientific detail." Referring to the novel as "wrenching," a Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the author's "prose … matches the heaviness of Grace's grief."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 27, 2001, review of The Language of Good-bye.

Booklist, January 1, 2001, Danise Hoover, review of The Language of Good-bye, p. 915; January 1, 2007, Joanne Wilkinson, review of The Life You Longed For, p. 52.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2001, review of The Language of Good-bye, p. 128; February 1, 2007, review of The Life You Longed For, p. 90.

Library Journal, December 1, 2006, Teresa L. Jacobsen, review of The Life You Longed For, p. 109.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune, April 15, 2001, Anita Shreve, review of The Language of Good-bye.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 24, 2007, Geeta Sharma Jensen, "Talking With: Maribeth Fischer."

Publishers Weekly, January 8, 2001, review of The Language of Good-bye, p. 44; November 20, 2006, review of The Life You Longed For, p. 33.

ONLINE

Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database,http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/ (August 22, 2001), Harriet A. Squire, review of "Stillborn."

Maribeth Fischer Web site,http://www.maribethfischer.com (August 22, 2001).

New Century Reading,http://www.newcenturyreading.com/ (August 22, 2001), Sandra Mahaniah, review of The Language of Good-nye.

Richmond.com,http://www.richmond.com/ (October 23, 2001), Patrick Tompkins, review of The Language of Good-nye.