Characters of the "Anonymous, Backward, Exasperating" Variety

"For certainly her people were anonymous, backward, exasperating"
What that quote claims is true, the characters of them are of a different sort. They are wierd, they are quirky, they are mad, they are perky. They are all completely different from one another, yet they all have one thing in common: family. And that's what this is, isn't it? A story about one, big, happy family. They are all somehow interconected and the novel begins with...

Loretta Wendall is the first of four narrators. She was a "half-sullen, half-content dream" and an emotional rollercoaster. She is the mother to Jules, Maureen, and Betty Wendall, as well as Randolph Furlong. She begins our story with a murder, one that happened right next to her while she lay asleep. The man murdered is Bernie Malin, her first love and first time. Right after they made love for the first time, he was killed the next morning in her bed, by her brother, Brock Botsford. Who then fled the city and wouldn't be seen again until "Come, My Soul That Hath So Long Anguished", where he re-enters her life as an uncle to her children and caretaker to Maureen Wendall, another narrator and Loretta's daughter. Maureen was beaten nearly to death by her step-father, Pat Furlong, who was a jealous, possesive drunk who beat her when he found out that she became a prostitute, hiring herself out to random men in cars. Jules Wendall, Maureen's eldest brother and the other main narrator, also went through a similiar experience. He was shot by his one true love, Nadine. Nadine was the neice to his now- deceased boss, Bernard Geffen, who was a whirlwind of activity and always on the move. He was found stabbed to death unfortunately...

Betty Wendall is best characterized as so, "Jules and Maureen tended to ignore her. She had no dignity: she did not count". Little is heard of her, besides her wild-child ways and her aimless wandering of streets. The same can be said of Randolph Furlong too, the youngest of the children. He is so utterly forgettable and the only thing different about him is the fact that Pat was his father, as opposed to Howard Wendall, who was a former cop and the one who basically saved Loretta from ruin after the murder. She marries in hopes of securing her future and being in a steady environment, which is pretty much the opposite of what she recieves. Instead, she gets Mama Wendall, Howard's mother and had an "evil condition, brought so low in a household of enemies". She moves the family out to the country before evntually makingher way back to Detroit to leech off Loretta and Howard. Then, Howard dies, and Loretta is stuck to take care of Mama Wendall and the kids all by herself...

Maureen Wendall married Jim Randolph, her former college professor and a formerly married man with three children. He is the last of the narrators, although his part was very minor. It is because of him that Maureen turns her back on her family. It is unsaid what happens to them, if they reunite or not, but the book ends off with a little tete-a-tete between Maureen and Jules about the meaning of family. Jules says that he still plans to marry Nadine, describing her as "that woman, the one who tried to kill me", effectively revealing the extremes to which this family of ups-and-downs will go to for love...