Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Joe College

Tom Perrotta pens what feels like a semi-autobiographical novel (the protagonist, Danny, is attending Yale, Perrotta went to Yale; Danny is an English major, Perrotta taught English, yadda yadda). It isn't that great. The book is full of "quirky" college students, contrasted with the folks back home in New Jersey where Danny spends his spring break driving his father's lunch wagon to office parks and construction sites.

There are not many good novels set at college -- probably because it is an "unreal" time of life, as the student moves from childhood to adulthood, but in a setting where things are both unreal (no mortgages, usually no kids) and yet are desperately important (learning to love, to succeed or fail solely on the strength of one's own self-discipline) and with obvious repercussions that influence the rest of one's life. In this case, Danny is not much of a role model. Which may be the point.

Danny makes a lot of stupid decisions, as college students often do, and doesn't seem to know what he wants or who he is, as college students often don't. But is he wiser at the end than he was in Chapter 1?

As a writer myself, I have always believed that a stand-alone novel is supposed to depict the most important event in the character's life. It is what changes him, teaches him, strengthens him or kills him -- sometimes all of these. But Danny isn't significantly changed by the events in the novel. While that may be the author's point, in my opinion a novel that is about nothing much is worth nothing much.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Full Dress Gray

I read Lucian Truscott's first novel, Dress Gray, many years ago and really liked it. It gave an intriguing view of what it was like to be a cadet at West Point. In one word, it was brutal. Who, I wondered, would ever want to go through such humiliation, but it fascinated me akin to staring at a car wreck.

Too bad Truscott apparently only had one (good) novel in him. I suspect Dress Gray's authenticity had to do with the fact that it was largely autobiographical. Certainly the semi-sequel, Full Dress Gray, is in no way a comparable novel.

If you have a predictable plot, telegraphing the solution of the murder mystery in the third chapter, populating the book with one nasty general, one earnest cadet, and one wise good man, you aren't going to excite or intrigue your readers. If the author twists the plot with coincidences too neatly convenient to be believed, one might keep reading, but perhaps with more disbelief than enjoyment.

What I resent most of all is what happened to the main character, Ry Slaight. In Dress Gray, he was an interesting person -- flawed, but stubborn in his determination to solve the mystery of a dead cadet. This man, thirty years later, has lost almost everything that made him interesting. In Full Dress Gray, he has dinner with his wife. They talk about food and wine. He goes to his office, gives a few orders, but because of his position he stays out of the investigation. At the end, he gets to embarass a congressman in a Congressional hearing, but other than that, he doesn't act and really doesn';t seem anything like the character from the first book. Well, what fun is that?

Sorry to say it, because I've also recently read another of his novels, Heart of War, and it wasn't any better. So on the basis of available data, I have to say that Truscott is a one-hit wonder.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Ammonite

Nicola Griffith's science-fiction novel (and what seems to be her first published novel) is amazingly inventive and doesn't "talk down" to the reader. You don't really know at first what is going on -- just as the main character, an anthropologist named Marghe, doesn't know what she will find when she heads down to "Jeep" - a planet inhabited only by women. The reader learns, as she learns.

A virus killed all of the men who landed on Jeep as part of the Company's exploration of the planet. Many women died as well, but those that survived were changed, somehow, by the virus. The Company, unwilling to lose half their crews to the disease, has developed what they believe is an effective vaccine. Marghe is to test it, but her agenda is to learn about the social structure of the native women who are the descendents of survivors of the first colony. The biggest mystery -- how have they managed to reproduce?

The background -- climate, society, way of life -- are rich with detail. An all-female society is no more a perfect one that ours is, and the women we meet are full characters. Women are bullies, silent and undisclosing, insane, killers -- as well as nurturers, gardeners, storytellers, healers.

Echoes of "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula LeGuin in the handling of sexuality and gender roles in a new and intriguing way, this novel is definitely worth a re-read. Maybe even a permanent place on the bookshelf.