It continually amazes me how even the most formulaic novel can be enlivened by one good character. This is very much the case with Alina Bronsky's Broken Glass Park. The narrator of Broken Glass Park is a precocious seventeen-year-old girl named Sascha (short for Alexandra). She, and her narration, are hysterically, laugh-out-loud, funny, in, of course, a totally morbid way. Sascha has been scarred terribly by an abusive stepfather who shot her mother and her mother's boyfriend in plain view of her and her siblings. Not one for profound psychological insight, Sascha has two goals in life: one, to kill her mother's murderer, and two, to write a novel about her mother. She has also sworn off men forever, although, not surprisingly, she falls for the first semi-functional father figure she encounters, and several times uses her sexuality to punish herself. The thing that separates her from most seventeen-year-old girls is that when she uses her sexuality to punish herself, she is aware of what she is doing, explicitly comparing herself to classmates who starve themselves or self-injure. That's pretty much what separates Sascha from seventeen-year-old girls generally: although not psychologically astute, she understands her drives and motives (with the notable exception of falling for the older father figure).
To observe the hubbub surrounding this novel is to acknowledge just how rare the self-aware seventeen-year-old girl is in literature. This is a shame, and it is a void that needs filling. Broken Glass Park is an extremely good, well-written, novel no doubt, but the fact that a seventeen-year-old girl can be self-aware should not be the revelation the critics have made it out to be. That it has been such a revelation shows only that there is a job yet to be done by those of us who have pretensions to writing our own novels.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Three by Tana French
There are thrillers that exist merely to thrill, and then there are thrillers that use the genre to make larger statements about history or memory or psychology. Tana French's three novels--In the Woods, The Likeness, and the forthcoming Faithful Place--exemplify the latter type of thriller. One of the characters in The Likeness comments that there is a Spanish proverb that, roughly paraphrased, goes something like "God says, take what you like, but pay the price." He observes that modern individuals have forgotten the second part of that proverb. All three of French's novels might be seen as illustrations of what happens when individuals come face to face with that second part.
French links her novels very subtly: all are stories of the fictional "Dublin Murder Squad," and all have some overlap in terms of characters, but the overlap is slight and not always immediately apparent. In the Woods chronicles an investigation by detective Rob Ryan and his partner Cassie Maddox. The Likeness is about Maddox herself and an undercover investigation she undertakes several years later. Faithful Place, likewise, is about the life history of Frank Mackie, the man supervising Maddox's undercover operation. These connections give the three novels a fascinating continuity without confining French to the limitations of any one character or set of characters.
In the Woods offers a double mystery: twenty years ago three children disappeared. Only one of them was ever found, and he has no memory of what happened. Twenty years later, Rob Ryan, the found boy, is a member of the Dublin Murder Squad. When the body of a young girl is found in the woods, he sees the case as his opportunity to solve both the current crime and the mystery of his past. the best aspect of In the Woods is Ryan's relationship with his partner, Cassie Maddox. Their banter captures a friendship at its height and is utterly believable. The tragedy of the novel is that Ryan is willing to sacrifice everything, from his professional credibility to his relationship with Maddox to his opportunity to solve the crime at hand, in order to chase the demons of his past and try to solve a mystery that, French suggests, may not be--or should not be--solvable.
In The Likeness Maddox is thrust into what almost seems to be a parallel universe when a young woman who looks just like her and has assumed an identity that Maddox herself used as an undercover operative shows up stabbed to death. At Frank Mackie's behest Maddox infiltrates the young woman's life in an attempt to find the killer. This entails inserting herself into a group of five graduate students who have created a makeshift family in an inherited house. As in In the Woods, the relationship between the students is the most beautifully crafted element of French's novel. Their interactions and banter are profoundly appealing, the reader, and to Maddox, who relaxes in their company so far that she doesn't necessarily understand the extraordinary sacrifices the students have made in order to create their impromptu family. When these sacrifices become apparent, however, it is clear that the students are not living in the utopia they may have hoped for and that conflict, even violence, were, and are, inevitable.
In Faithful Place French returns to themes of family in a very different way when she has the prodigal Frank Mackie return to his family in order to solve a a twenty-two-year-old mystery. Mackie grew up in a neighborhood where if you didn't work at the Guinness plant you were likely on the dole, kids slept three or four to a mattress, and alcoholic husbands beat their wives and children with impunity. Mackie's journey is about digging up the past, discovering who murdered his girlfriend twenty-two years earlier, and coming to grips with his own role in and responsibilities to his dysfunctional family. French is at her absolute best when she is showing that individuals are frequently neither as guilty nor as innocent as they initially appear. This is particularly the case when the tells the same story from two different perspectives, as when the younger Mackie sons remember with horror a night they spent locked in the basement of a nearby derelict house, while the older Mackie son explains that he (at eight years old) chose to lock them in that basement to protect them from their drunken, knife-wielding father.
There are legitimate mysteries in French's thrillers, but more often than not the true mysteries are about psychology, emotion, and memory. Family features prominently as a theme, although in very different ways. The students in The Likeness make a pact they call "no pasts" not to bring their pasts into their new family structure. In their attempt to form a new family, they try to recreate themselves as blank slates. As Frank Mackie well knows, that attempt is destined to fail. Just like you can't escape paying God his due, you can't escape your past. Faithful Place is about what happens when all of the members of the Mackie family start to realize that. French knows that no matter how hard we try to deny them, our pasts have a sneaky way of creeping into our everyday lives. She is a true student of William Faukner's adage, "the past isn't dead--it's not even past."
French links her novels very subtly: all are stories of the fictional "Dublin Murder Squad," and all have some overlap in terms of characters, but the overlap is slight and not always immediately apparent. In the Woods chronicles an investigation by detective Rob Ryan and his partner Cassie Maddox. The Likeness is about Maddox herself and an undercover investigation she undertakes several years later. Faithful Place, likewise, is about the life history of Frank Mackie, the man supervising Maddox's undercover operation. These connections give the three novels a fascinating continuity without confining French to the limitations of any one character or set of characters.
In the Woods offers a double mystery: twenty years ago three children disappeared. Only one of them was ever found, and he has no memory of what happened. Twenty years later, Rob Ryan, the found boy, is a member of the Dublin Murder Squad. When the body of a young girl is found in the woods, he sees the case as his opportunity to solve both the current crime and the mystery of his past. the best aspect of In the Woods is Ryan's relationship with his partner, Cassie Maddox. Their banter captures a friendship at its height and is utterly believable. The tragedy of the novel is that Ryan is willing to sacrifice everything, from his professional credibility to his relationship with Maddox to his opportunity to solve the crime at hand, in order to chase the demons of his past and try to solve a mystery that, French suggests, may not be--or should not be--solvable.
In The Likeness Maddox is thrust into what almost seems to be a parallel universe when a young woman who looks just like her and has assumed an identity that Maddox herself used as an undercover operative shows up stabbed to death. At Frank Mackie's behest Maddox infiltrates the young woman's life in an attempt to find the killer. This entails inserting herself into a group of five graduate students who have created a makeshift family in an inherited house. As in In the Woods, the relationship between the students is the most beautifully crafted element of French's novel. Their interactions and banter are profoundly appealing, the reader, and to Maddox, who relaxes in their company so far that she doesn't necessarily understand the extraordinary sacrifices the students have made in order to create their impromptu family. When these sacrifices become apparent, however, it is clear that the students are not living in the utopia they may have hoped for and that conflict, even violence, were, and are, inevitable.
In Faithful Place French returns to themes of family in a very different way when she has the prodigal Frank Mackie return to his family in order to solve a a twenty-two-year-old mystery. Mackie grew up in a neighborhood where if you didn't work at the Guinness plant you were likely on the dole, kids slept three or four to a mattress, and alcoholic husbands beat their wives and children with impunity. Mackie's journey is about digging up the past, discovering who murdered his girlfriend twenty-two years earlier, and coming to grips with his own role in and responsibilities to his dysfunctional family. French is at her absolute best when she is showing that individuals are frequently neither as guilty nor as innocent as they initially appear. This is particularly the case when the tells the same story from two different perspectives, as when the younger Mackie sons remember with horror a night they spent locked in the basement of a nearby derelict house, while the older Mackie son explains that he (at eight years old) chose to lock them in that basement to protect them from their drunken, knife-wielding father.
There are legitimate mysteries in French's thrillers, but more often than not the true mysteries are about psychology, emotion, and memory. Family features prominently as a theme, although in very different ways. The students in The Likeness make a pact they call "no pasts" not to bring their pasts into their new family structure. In their attempt to form a new family, they try to recreate themselves as blank slates. As Frank Mackie well knows, that attempt is destined to fail. Just like you can't escape paying God his due, you can't escape your past. Faithful Place is about what happens when all of the members of the Mackie family start to realize that. French knows that no matter how hard we try to deny them, our pasts have a sneaky way of creeping into our everyday lives. She is a true student of William Faukner's adage, "the past isn't dead--it's not even past."
Saturday, April 3, 2010
The Possessed
No, not Dostoevsky's The Possessed, rather Elif Batuman's homage to all things Russian and Central Asian, as well as to the graduate study of literature as an enterprise. This book taught me several things: (1) I must reread Rene Girard's Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, which I haven't read since I was seventeen, but which Batuman claims will explain a great many of what I consider to be the great books; (2) if I wanted to get funding, I should have studied Uzbek, which would have let me travel to even stranger lands with even stranger foods and facilities and which, frankly, would have been even less useful than Russian; (3) elite graduate programs in the humanities are all pretty much the same and attract pretty much the same characters (demonic characters, some of them) but some are MUCH better funded than others (damn you Stanford!); (4) I wholeheartedly approve of the graduate study of literature for its own sake and believe that it needs a better defender than Batuman who seems at times wishy washy and opportunistic, as if she's constantly in search of her next paid gig. Sorry, sucker. The study of literature was, is, and always will be largely pro bono, and if you try to make it anything but you probably deserve to end up in some godforsaken hellhole in Uzbekistan. 'Course, she did get a book contract out of it. Now if only I could harness some of her good fortune. Hmmm....I'll have to think on that one.
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