The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms:The Chronicle Of One Of The Strangest Stories Ever To Be Rumoured About Around New York by J.P. Donleavy

     This may be a little strange, but when I saw The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms in the half-off paperbacks bin at The Strand’s stand near Central Park, I knew I had to read it. I usually get books with a certain mission in mind, trying to grab things that I’ve always wanted to read, or that I think I should read, but this time, the thin, orange volume seemed to be practically calling out to me. There was a particular resonance: I had always sought out the cleanest public restrooms to use and, working in midtown, I frequent the Waldorf Astoria and the Peninsula Hotel on my way home. Furthermore, the book is about a woman who, after divorcing her husband and falling into a sort of a slump of upper-middle-class ennui, wanders New York City, around Central Park (where I picked the book up), the Metropolitan Museum, and the same sort of nice restrooms that I had always preferred. Of course, I cannot relate to the first part of this sentence, but the latter part reminded me of the activities of my childhood, an interesting contrast to the activities of the fictional woman in the book.

     I opened the book and read the first paragraph that ends, “but what worried her more than anything was that she might sink down so deep into the doldrums that back up out of them she might never again get.” I thought this line was beautifully crafted; it had a kind of reflexivity, seeming to tread delicately on the words it was using. It captures the tone of the book. It is a little careful, playing and testing the tolerance of the reader who, while enjoying the meandering narrative, might find the story of Jocelyn Guenevere Marchantiere Jones a little annoying. While the book did annoy many reviewers (a perception I get from glancing at the goodreader reviews) I thought that Donleavy’s play with the notion of privilege was very enlightening. The behaviors that Jocelyn indulges herself in are typical of a male bon vivant, but readers still have a difficult time letting a woman “get away” with such indulgence.

     In the context of the charming, frustrating prose, the book is ultimately about how, after such a strong presence of the role we are meant to play (Jocelyn is a rich, East-Coast housewife), we can begin to construct ourselves.

          -Isabel Stern 

“How when one is able to indulge the luxury of beginning one’s life again.
All one thinks to do is end it.”