Soooo…. We are well into the new year and I am just finishing the book I was reading when the year ended. Not because it was hard to read but because I am an old man who only gets in 10-20 pages a night before the eyes just get too… heavy. Very sad, brain plasticity among so many other things deteriorating. Ah well.
So this book was on a lot of short lists for best book of 2016 and it is with good reason:
A New York Times 2016 Notable Book
Entertainment Weekly's #1 Book of the Year
A Washington Post 2016 Notable Book
A Slate Top Ten Book
I would concur with the gushing. It is author Nathan Hill’s first novel and other than winning some prizes for his short stories he had not been on anyone’s radar. This is a really ambitious first novel, essentially the story of a screwed up (really, really screwed up) mother son relationship and you spend a great deal of time dealing with the results of the dysfunction but more importantly he unravels the causes of it and at the same time pokes at, but does not really explore our current societal, political maelstrom with a blowhard hate speech candidate.
The main backstory in the novel unfolds during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and it is a pretty dark picture. Walter Cronkite appears as a beleaguered hero of sorts, Hubert Humphrey cannot believe his crowning moment is unfolding amongst violence, pepper spray and the stink of blood and death from the convention which was close to the Chicago Stockyards. In what I hope was an apocryphal scene the candidate is obsessively showering to get the stink off of him. There is some pretty good commentary about police, policing and the specter of violence and the manipulation of these images and Alan Ginsberg makes a brief appearance.
But that is not the only story as our main protagonist, the son, a failing writer/college professor is dealing with an entitled co ed when his long estranged mother is arrested for terrorism (throwing a handful of pebbles at the Trumpian candidate). After that...events begin to unfold with childhood nightmares and romances disclosed and ultimately explained. In a portion of the novel we delve into the son’s excessive video game immersion as an adult and his on line friend Pwnage who is the mightiest of warriors in ElfQuest. This gaming series and exploration of the characters relationships in real life and on line is...troubling.
With 50 pages left I was a little frustrated because I could not imagine how he would tie it up successfully but… he does. He does not put a bow on it but ends it honestly with the characters working towards reconciliation of relationships as they try and first reconcile with themselves.
I think this is the best modern literary fiction has to offer and it is worth the extended pages. Read it. You will see things in the narrative that resonate.
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