Solo Pass by Ronald De Feo

Published by Other Press on March 5, 2013

After two months in a psych ward, a patient who identifies himself only as Ott is given a solo pass that will let him spend part of a day outside the hospital. He earned the pass by learning to play the game, to say enough without saying too much, to gain the trust of the doctors and nurses who probe him with questions. "The trick is to be chatty yet discreet."

Although Solo Pass is written in the first person, it's not clear that Ott is a reliable narrator. He believes he once visited "a quaint little village" in the Cotswalds, although he may have constructed that memory from photographs in a magazine. He vaguely recalls looking bruised and haggard before he came to the hospital but he doesn't remember why. He is careful not to tell staff his true feelings about Prodski, the therapist who "ruins lives." He wants revenge against Prodski but he dismisses those urges as "the leftover thoughts of a once sick mind." Does that kind of self-awareness suggest that Ott has largely recovered, or is he fooling himself? He wants to be the person he once was, but he can no longer trust his life. Whether others should trust Ott is doubtful.

Ronald De Feo deftly portrays the inner turmoil of his mentally ill protagonist. Ott is just a little off in his conversations with others, a little inappropriate, always guarded, never quite achieving the relaxed, natural interaction of people who have less troubled minds. One of the novel's best scenes involves a conversation Ott has with his uncle, as he desperately tries to underplay his obsession with Prodski and to pass off as humor a reference to the gun he left in his apartment. On his journey into the city, Ott is disoriented; nothing is quite as he remembers it. He tries to choke down his fears, fights to suppress his ill-tempered impulses, but it is obvious that he is torn between the rational and the compulsive. The realism with which Ott is sketched is impressive.

In contrast to the novel's narrator, the supporting characters might be on loan from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. They cover the gamut of mental illnesses. Maria is paranoid. Tommy is delusional and hyperactive. Mandy suffers from schizophrenia. Carl stares at the wall. Staff members are insensitive and self-contradictory (at least from Ott's perspective). None of them add much value to the story.

The drama and humor and poignancy that make Cuckoo's Nest so memorable are muted in Solo Pass. That doesn't make it a bad novel, but it isn't as powerful as it could have been, given its subject matter. The first part of the novel, during which Ott is an enigma, is more interesting that the beginning of the second half, which is largely an information dump about Ott's past. The story regains its momentum in the final quarter, as Ott struggles to make his way through the city.

Given the anticipation that mounts as Ott prepares to leave the ward, his actual taste of freedom is anticlimactic. I did, however, appreciate Ott's keen observation in the concluding pages that most people function too well, that they deserve no respect because their lives are too easy. They are untested, "oblivious to everything that could go wrong." That's an interesting way to look at the difference between people who are fortunate to have good brain chemistry and those whose have become unbalanced. Solo Pass reminds us that what happened to Ott could happen to any of us, and that people shouldn't be judged (as they so often are) for being mentally ill.

RECOMMENDED