You Don't Love This Man by Dan DeWeese

Published by Harper Perennial on March 1, 2011

At some point in You Don't Love This Man, Paul asks himself why he even tries to interact with other people. It's a good question because Paul isn't very good at it. Throughout the day that the novel chronicles, Paul antagonizes nearly everyone he meets (and the pattern continues in his memories of past encounters). The snapshot of his life makes for a worthwhile but not wholly pleasant reading experience. This is Paul having a bad day, but it left me wondering whether Paul has ever had a good day.

When the bank Paul manages is robbed on the day of his daughter's wedding, it brings back memories of an earlier robbery when he was a younger man, a teller whose encounter with the robber interrupted his fantasy about Gina, a former girlfriend who (with Grant, her new boyfriend) had visited the bank earlier that day. Paul had been dating Sandra at the time; now she's his ex-wife. Grant and Paul became friends; now Grant is about to marry Paul's daughter Miranda. Dealing with the aftermath of the current robbery occupies Paul's time as he wonders where Miranda has gone, why she hasn't appeared to begin the pre-wedding preparations. The narrative alternates between the past and present as the mystery of the missing bride unfolds and it soon becomes apparent that the two bank robberies are in some way connected. As Paul drifts through the day, he recalls seemingly random moments in his life: a confrontation with a boy Miranda invited to the house when she was fifteen; a conversation with Miranda after the boy kicks in the front door; a birthday dinner for Miranda that Grant unexpectedly joins; a barbecue for Sandra's tennis team in the final stages of their marriage.

A fair amount of this novel consists of Paul bickering with other people: most notably his ex-wife Sandra, his co-worker Catherine, Miranda and Grant. After awhile it becomes tiresome; the arguments all seem to run together. Anger is Paul's default emotion, although it's a low-key anger, fueled by angst that's driven by his inability to control everything and everyone around him, particularly his daughter (he's an archetype of the overprotective parent). He's sort of a self-aware jerk: he knows when he's being a jerk but can't seem to stop. He doesn't much like himself but he seems incapable of change. Although he doesn't try very hard to connect with people, it's obvious that he deeply regrets his inability to connect with his daughter -- and it's that regret that creates some hope for Paul's redemption.

If Dan DeWeese's purpose was to show a man in full as filtered through the prism of a single day, he created a man who seems crabbed, lacking any dimension beyond frustration and quiet rage. Maybe his purpose was to show a man in the late stages of disintegration. Difficult though it may be, there is value in reading about (and trying to understand) people we would rather not know. If nothing else, the novel might serve to heighten our awareness of unhealthy character traits that we might see in ourselves, or to guard against them.

I like DeWeese's writing style and I give him credit for bringing difficult personalities to life. His characters and their conflicts seemed very real: these are people who could (and probably do) live next door. The novel gains momentum as it moves along and the ending is strong. Some of the writing, particularly near the novel's end, is quite powerful. DeWeese creates moments that are illuminating and poignant. As much as I disliked Paul, I liked the book, and I look forward to reading more from DeWeese. I just hope his next novel features a main character whose life is more complete than Paul's.

RECOMMENDED

Abbott Awaits by Chris Bachelder

Published by Louisiana State University Press on March 1, 2011

Abbott Awaits is a snapshot of Abbott's life at thirty-seven, a three month record of his wonderfully scattered thoughts about marriage and parenthood, neighbors and home repairs, freedom and constraint. Abbott feels entrapped by "his small beseeching world," by "the broken hinge, the moldy tub, the dog who has to pee." It's difficult to tell whether his marriage is troubled or typical. His experiences often make him despondent, yet he's moved by motorists who cooperate with each other when the traffic light fails. Believing that children need stability, he wonders whether he should consistently appear sullen and unresponsive to his daughter at breakfast despite her preference for the few mornings when he manages to be interactive and entertaining. Abbott thinks he has a responsibility to enjoy life, an obligation to delight in his existence, but he's distracted in his effort to do so by a branch leaning on a power line. Sometimes the only thing Abbott wants "is to be knocked unconscious by the long wooden handle of a lawn tool." On the other hand, watching his two-year-old daughter take in the passing world through a car window with wonder and amazement makes Abbott feel that he, like his daughter, is "living fully and directly." In short, Abbott is a complex individual in the very ways we are all complex. I suspect many readers will recognize a bit of themselves in Abbott; I certainly did.

Although quite different in style and subject matter, there's an eccentricity and playfulness to Chris Bachelder's storytelling that reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut. Other comparisons also come to mind. Like Seinfeld, Bachelder chronicles the mundane and makes it funny. Like Woody Allen, Bachelder finds the humor in a character who is preoccupied with human suffering and with the possibility of his own death (particularly while cleaning the gutters). Yet Bachelder writes in a voice that is all his own, sometimes whimsical, often evocative, always precise. This is a writer who knows what he wants to say. And if what he has to say isn't always profound, it's nearly always amusing and often thought-provoking.

Readers who dislike fiction that isn't plot-driven should avoid Abbott Awaits. There is no plot to speak of; the novel is written as a series of introspective vignettes addressing seemingly random events in Abbott's life or thoughts in his head: his reaction to something he has seen on television or read in the newspaper; his interaction with his wife and daughter; his chores, his health, his fears, his neurotic dog ... in short, his life, reduced to bite-sized morsels. Some of the vignettes are quite funny, some are insightful, a few seem a little pointless, but they sum up to a greater whole, a life defined by the small things that comprise it. I enjoyed reading about Abbott and wondering how his life will turn out. Maybe ten years from now Bachelder will give us another glimpse of Abbott's life. If so, I'll read it. 

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Rodin's Debutante by Ward Just

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on March 1, 2011

I give this unusual, meandering novel credit: I had no idea where it was going yet it held my interest throughout its circuitous journey. More than that, it made me think. What starts as a story about a wealthy rogue at the end of the Nineteenth Century segues into a World War II-era story about a young man who invigorates a prep school football team before he begins collegiate life and pursues an interest in sculpture. The story takes seamless detours into tales of small town violence (a vicious assault upon a female student) and big city violence (a mugging on Chicago's South Side) while exploring questions of perspective and memory. Tying together the stories of the rogue and the intellectual are a boarding school, a cathouse, and a bust sculpted by Rodin.

Rodin's Debutante focuses on two characters. Tommy Ogden, the son of a wealthy railroad baron, has no need to work and so indulges his passions: hunting, sketching, and sleeping with the women provided by the "social club" that leases him a space for his engagements. To the dismay of his wife, Ogden converts their estate into a boarding school for boys who can't fit in elsewhere. The bulk of the novel follows Lee Goodell, the son of a small town judge, who attends Ogden Hall before pursuing an intellectual and artistic life at the University of Chicago and in Chicago's Hyde Park. Like Rodin, Goodell becomes a sculptor. Two episodes of violence are central to the story: the vicious assault of a girl who is Goodell's classmate before he attends Ogden Hall and Goodell's own mugging years later. The two attacks have very different consequences for the two lives ... and that, I think, is one of the novel's points: you never know how your life will turn out. You may or may not be able to shape your future; you may or may not be able to remember your past -- and you may or may not want to do either one.

Although most of the novel is narrated in the third person, Goodell tells his story in the first person in a couple of segments, a jarring shift in point of view that at first puzzled me. This may have been one more way for Ward Just to illustrate the importance of perspective, an issue that lies at the novel's heart. Sometimes perspectives differ and the truth of the matter is hard to know: A headmaster believes that people learn only from their defeats, while Ogden thinks that defeat teaches nothing: it "stays with you and becomes the expected thing."

The differing perspective of urban and rural America is one of the novel's most intriguing themes (small town America, according to one of the novel's voices, provides the country with armies while urban America provides governance) but the larger theme is how people view similar events in different ways, and how the truth, whatever it might be, often remains concealed -- just as the hidden interior of a sculpted stone may never be entirely revealed. At the same time, some perspectives in the novel parallel each other, leading to the same result for different reasons: the small town leaders don't want to publicize the assault of the school girl while residents of the South Side Chicago neighborhood want to keep a lid on Goodell's mugging. In each case, the community believes that airing the truth will lead to harm (the loss of a sense of communal safety in the small town, retributive police action in Chicago). From their perspectives, it is the community that stands to suffer the greatest harm from the crime, not the victim. Of course, the victims see it much differently.

While these ideas make the novel well worth reading and thinking about, the book might not appeal to readers looking for a conventional plot-driven story. Ward Just tells the story in a nonlinear style, resulting in the meandering feeling I mentioned; events trigger memories of other events, stories beget more stories. That didn't bother me but I suspect some readers will be put off by it. A more significant criticism to me is the novel's tone. I rarely felt an emotional connection, either positive or negative, to the characters. I don't necessarily need to like the characters to enjoy a novel, but I want the novel to make me feel something, and about all I felt while reading Rodin's Debutante was curiosity about what might happen next and admiration for Just's writing style. There's little dramatic tension; conflict, when it comes, is usually low key, often described in a voice so detached as to drain it of vitality. A couple of scenes involving Lee and a mugger and one involving Lee and the assault victim are exceptions, as is a wonderfully written scene in which young Lee overhears his father meeting with town leaders in the aftermath of the girl's assault. If the novel had reached that level of intensity more often, I would give it five stars and recommend it highly. I recommend it nonetheless, but for different reasons: the sureness of the writing style and the ideas it explores.

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The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Published by Doubleday on February 8, 2011

Comedy, like so many things, is a matter of taste: some people laugh at slapstick, some at dry wit, some at cross-dressing British comedians. Not everyone will find The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady funny. My sense of humor must mirror Elizabeth Stuckey-French's because I found myself smiling, chuckling, and often laughing out loud at her quirky characters and offbeat plot.

Its title notwithstanding, the novel is less about revenge than it is about a family dynamic -- yes, it's yet another story about a dysfunctional family. Ava (who loves Elvis and flirts with the notion of being the next America's Top Model) and Otis (who is trying to build a nuclear reactor in the tool shed) both have Asperger's syndrome. Their neurotic and depressed mother, Caroline, is nearly always in a foul mood, in part because she's approaching fifty and feels her best years (such as they were) are behind her. Caroline's husband, Vic, obsesses about hurricanes. Vic has detached himself from the family and has more than a passing interest in the parson's sister. Caroline's father, Wilson Spriggs, is a retired physician who suffers from Alzheimer's; having outlived his wife, he lives with Caroline's family. Only the middle child, Suzi, seems to meet societal expectations of normalcy (she's bright, beautiful, and popular), yet she gets herself into deeper trouble than her less advantaged siblings. While all of this sounds like the foundation for a tragedy rather than a comedy, laughter (as they say) is the best medicine, and Stuckey-French finds ample opportunity to inject humor into the family members' woeful lives.

The radioactive lady to whom the title refers is Marylou, who in 1953 became an unknowing participant in a government-financed experiment. While visiting a clinic for prenatal care, Marylou was given a drink containing radioactive isotopes as part of a study overseen by Dr. Spriggs. She attributes her daughter's death from childhood cancer to the radioactive liquid. It is for this that Marylou has vowed revenge and, having found Spriggs in Florida fifty-three years later, she plans to kill him -- or at least to disrupt the lives of his family members. I know, it still doesn't sound funny, but dark comedy is necessarily about dark subjects.

The main characters are recognizable (maybe even as members of our families) without becoming stereotypes. Some of the minor characters (like the lecherous pastor and his goth daughter) are a bit more formulaic, but they nonetheless seem real. The story moves quickly, reflecting a writing style that is comedic rather than literary. Despite its dark side, an underlying sweetness shines through. The novel teaches familiar but nonetheless worthwhile lessons: (1) vengeance, like radioactive particles, can spread in unexpected ways, touching innocent people and causing unforeseen effects; (2) forgiveness heals more effectively than revenge; (3) even if you can't be perfectly happy, perhaps you can be happy enough; and (4) we're all weird in our own ways. Sometimes the weirdness has a label: autistic, obsessive, neurotic. Other times it doesn't. "Some of us," Stuckey-French writes, "are more 'typical' than others, that's all."

Whether you read this novel for laughs or for its lighthearted life lessons, you're likely to be satisfied -- assuming your sense of humor is tickled by the story I've described. If it's not, this probably isn't the novel for you.

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The Diviner's Tale by Bradford Morrow

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on January 20, 2011

Bradford Morrow is an excellent writer, one whose style I greatly admire. In The Diviner's Tale, he brings a literary sensibility to what is essentially a genre novel ... although defining the genre is difficult. The Diviner's Tale is story of the supernatural that has elements of a thriller and the flavor of a family saga. Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed Morrow's prose, I couldn't get excited about the story. The key problem, I think, is that the story is told in the first person by a narrator who has such a depressed, lackadaisical attitude toward life that her indifference rubs off on the reader.

Cassandra inherits the familial talent for divining, but when she foresees her brother's death, her father (without judgment) proclaims her a witch. Years later, Cassandra begins to doubt her own mind when, while walking a field in search of hidden water, she finds a dead girl hanging from a tree -- only to discover, when returning with the sheriff, that the body has vanished (and with it, all evidence of its existence). A series of creepy events unfold; Cassandra sees ominous people who could be real or imagined, living or dead, while receiving warnings (decidedly real) that she doesn't understand. She tries to hide for awhile, but how does one hide from visions (if that's what they are)? Eventually (roughly at the novel's midpoint) she decides to investigate. Several chapters later, the story evolves into a deeper mystery concerning missing children. While that development breathed some needed life into the story, it left me wondering why it took more than two hundred pages for that essential slice of drama to manifest itself.

Divining becomes a metaphor for seeing things that others can't -- not just underground water or dead people but troubled souls and hidden truths. One of the book's goals, I think, is to illustrate something that Cassandra says about her family: "All we had ever been were stories, and saying ourselves, unveiling our stories, was the best, the only, chance at divining ourselves." As Cassandra reflects upon her life, she discusses the sort of difficulties that regularly arise in lives both real and fictional -- illness and loss, abuse, uncertain relationships and unexpected pregnancy -- problems so familiar that Morrow's treatment of them here feels stale, as if we've heard it all before. Moreover, as the book begins to alternate Cassandra's unhappy memories with her problematic present, the memories tend to dominate the narrative -- an unfortunate choice on Morrow's part, since the present threat is much more intriguing than Cassandra's bleak past.

Ultimately, I found the story interesting but not compelling. The mystery that finally emerges isn't very mysterious. Some of the interaction between Cassandra and her children seemed forced, the dialog inauthentic. Despite the fact that Cassandra tells her story in the first person, it seems cold and distant, as if she is describing emotions she didn't actually feel. That made it difficult to connect with the narrative. Still, while I was less than captivated by the story, I found it easy to keep reading. Morrow's writing style kept my eyes moving from sentence to sentence, caught up in the graceful flow of words. The novel's doesn't have the kind of plot twist ending that thrillers and mysteries often deliver; that just isn't the kind of novel Morrow wanted to write. That's fine, but the lackluster ending didn't help the novel. This isn't a bad effort, but it's not my favorite Morrow.

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