A Theory of Expanded Love

April 13, 2015
Playwright Hicks’s debut novel spans the latter half of 1963. For 12-year-old narrator Annie Shea, that period’s turbulent events—the election of a new pope, the Equal Pay Act, and J.F.K.’s assassination—reflect and shape the changes taking place in her body and soul. Initially she’s willing to lie to bolster her family’s reputation as good Catholics, but she gradually awakens to the hypocrisy in the church and in her family life, in which impressing a visiting priest is more important than tending to a screaming baby in a wet diaper, bragging about the number of children one has is more important than cherishing them, and nightly sexual abuse goes unpunished. When one of her twelve siblings is sent to a convent home for unwed mothers, Annie presses her family to live according to the dubious theory they espouse: that with each new life, there will always be more love to go around. Annie’s insistence on truth telling restores connections and strengthens her own resolve to continue to “say what I see—not just what they want me to see.” This worthy debut has a disarming humor.

April 1, 2015
The astute observations of a little girl from a big Catholic family living in Pasadena in 1963. A middle child in a family of 13 kids, 12-year-old Annie is often a substitute parent for her younger siblings. When her father sends her older sister Clara to a shelter for unwed mothers to give birth in secret, Annie advocates for the unborn baby against her parents' wishes and against the dogma of the Catholic Church. Annie questions her religion in her diary as she decides for herself the difference between right and wrong, and her prose distills the sweetness of childhood. The titular Theory of Expanded Love is her way of coping with having so many siblings: "You kind of love them in the background to everything," she says, but the background noise of a family that size is deafening. Annie rushes to change her little brother's diaper when her parents leave him alone to cry it out, but no one comes to Annie's aid when an unseen pair of hands fondles her under the covers in her bedroom at night. If Annie can't have a direct line to her parents, she hopes to at least have a direct line to God through her family's friend Cardinal Stefanucci, who is in line to become the next pope. But is God really listening? In a conservative community where prayers go unanswered, sins go unpunished, and secrets never leave the confessional booth, God seems to help those who help themselves. Annie's disarming voice evokes nostalgia for a bygone era and hope for humanity in a weary, modern world.