An Absence of Cousins review: ‘it does Segal a disservice’

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Lore Segal is a largely unsung doyenne of American literature. The 96-year old came to prominence with her novel Her First American in 1984, having previously written the gripping Other People’s Houses, a fictionalised account of her own experience escaping Nazi Germany as a ten-year-old and ending up in England. Her most recent short story collection Ladies Lunch offered a witty account of friendship in one’s twilight years.

Off the back of this, her publisher has released An Absence of Cousins, a collection of interlinked short stories originally published in The New Yorker. And I rather think it has done her a disservice.

It’s not that her stories aren’t droll or sharply observed; many are drawn from a collection that was Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted in 2007. Focusing on Viennese expat Ilka Weisz, now an academic teaching at a fancy liberal institution on America’s East Coast in the 1960s and 70s, they enjoyably skewer the pretensions of the elite, so excruciatingly smug in their ivory tower.

There are stories about grudges whose origin no one quite understands, endless parties, breakfasts and outings amongst Ilka’s group of “elective cousins” (all of them verbose intellectuals like her). There is the minutiae of everyday life; parenthood, marriage, fallings out with neighbours, a comedic Greek island adventure, and more seriously bereavement. Through it all Ilka (who we read to be a version of Segal) casts an acerbic eye on her friends and her own failings too.

“On Sunday, when Ilka came to brunch at the Shakespeares, Eliza had her Supermarket Adventure to relate,” starts one story, which pokes fun of people’s attitudes to crime. Everyone drinks too much, everyone gossips and badmouths everyone else, and no one seems to suffer the consequences of their decisions.

And yet the stories are so, so dated, and so narrow in perspective. For a writer whose skill is social commentary, they tell us little about the world today or even modern relationships and friendships. Perhaps because of this, the characters come across as superficial, glib, even when serious events are transpiring. An affair is had, yet we get minimal insight into the emotions behind those party to it.

Perhaps the stories worked better as standalones in a magazine, dipped into here and there. Read as part of a collection in 2024, despite Segal’s abundant skill, they felt like a relic. Which is a pity; she deserves to be remembered for more than this.