Early Review: Pretend All Your Life
It's been a long time, but at last I am once more posting another selection I received from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer's program. (I know. You're all thrilled. Restrain thyselves, if you please.)
The latest selection is Pretend All Your Life, the debut novel by Joseph Mackin, which deals with the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in New York City. The novel hit bookshelves on, of all days, April 1. (Unfortunate? Appropriate? You be the judge.) I have posted below, as per standard operating procedure, my review of this slim tome, for those who may be interested.
------------------------
Pretend All Your Life is a perfectly okay novel. I suppose that falls under the category of damning with faint praise, but I can't think of any other thing to say that's more apt. Its interest in a significant historical event, one that has only very rarely been handled with both depth and sensitivity, is admirable and brave, but I did not find that 9-11 really added any kind of depth to the story. I left this book wanting to have liked it more than I did, but not able to truly find an substantive reason to give it higher marks.
The novel revolves around tortured plastic surgeon Dr. Richard Gallin, whose practice has been suffering in the months since 9-11 ravaged New York City. Beyond his mere financial troubles, he is also mourning the loss of his son Bernardo, who died in the attacks, an event that renews thoughts of his former wife, who passed away many years before. As he struggles to fill the voids, his life becomes complicated by the presence of a journalist looking to ruin him, and the reemergence of a figure from his past who makes an unexpected and uneasy demand of him.
On the surface, the novel seems very interested in giving depth and interest to its characters, but this is not sustained as the work plays on. We get a strong sketch of Gallin, whose frustrations and listlessness are awkwardly but interestingly intermixed with his sexual longings. For a plastic surgeon, this is an interesting juxtaposition, one that leads the reader to expect a depth of profundity that is ultimately not found. Gallin ends up being little more than a puppet, bending to the whims of a cast of supporting characters that are shockingly static. Gallin's girlfriend Ana serves as little more than a token love interest and a source for tears. Conniving journalist Nick Adams is merely a rat whose tendency to walk around rehearsing his moments of triumph is borderline laughable. Even Bernardo's widow Kiran offers little more than a physical body for Gallin to guiltily fawn over. For a novel so invested in the notion of identity, too many identities fall far too flat.
Yet the novel most notably struggles because its B plot, involving Gallin's controversial firing of a nurse who tested positive for HIV, does not seem to match the impact or substance of the A plot. AIDS enters the plot early and its entrance feels lucid, natural. But as the novel progresses, Mackin almost feels the need to militantly explore the notion of the virus, to the point where it feels in contradiction to the questions the novel raises about a world after 9-11. The notion of this very pre-WTC epidemic invading a novel that is so intensely focused on the aftermath of the attacks feels unnatural and manufactured. And in fact, this is what I feel is the novel's greatest weakness: in its effort to combine several "big" ideas into a relatively compact, high-concept narrative, it all feels too convenient, too convoluted, too constructed. The plot feels so disconnected from its underlying meaning that the characters and events feel not like real people and events, but as a series of specific acts and objects that develop because the author needs them too, not because the story logically moves that way. There is little ebb and flow to the novel, only pushing and pulling.
Unfortunately, saying more requires a spoiler alert so, Reader, consider yourself warned. Where the novel becomes most troubling is in its handling of the return of Bernardo, whose demands on Gallin are couched in the language of rebirth and renewal that were commonplace after 9-11. As a cultural landmark, Bernardo's justifications are legitimate and accurate, but as he continually prattles on about how Gallin could never truly understand his motivations, these feelings lose their impact. If Mackin's intent is to characterize how Bernardo's feelings belong only to those who lived through 9-11, this is, at worst, an arrogant and unhelpful assertion, one that reinforces the type of American selfishness that purportedly inspired the attacks in the first place. At best, it is, to be blunt, lazy writing. A novel that deals with deep thoughts needs to explore those thoughts thoroughly, not reduce them to mere clichés. Either Mackin doesn't want to explore these ideas or he can't--either way, he should not if he can't do so completely.
By the time Pretend All Your Life ends, it feels strangely abrupt and, despite its meager but patient build-up, unsatisfying. In a way, this mirrors the suddenness and surprise of 9-11 itself, a singular moment that causes everything to come to a screeching halt. But there is very little sense that anything substantial has happened, or that anyone has been able to realize what they wanted. And the final gesture, one that is surely meant to be dramatic and foreboding, instead comes off as a line that begs for more where there is nothing more to find. I may be in the minority, but I feel this is an ironically appropriate image for the novel itself: it wants to be profound, expressive, and dramatic, but offers little substance beyond its surface intrigue. William Gibson's Pattern Recognition proved that 9-11 is ready for novelistic treatment, and so I'm convinced there's more to find within this story, but I fear Mackin has not unearthed it. As a 9-11 metaphor, it is fitting; as a novel, it is sadly underwhelming.
The latest selection is Pretend All Your Life, the debut novel by Joseph Mackin, which deals with the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in New York City. The novel hit bookshelves on, of all days, April 1. (Unfortunate? Appropriate? You be the judge.) I have posted below, as per standard operating procedure, my review of this slim tome, for those who may be interested.
------------------------
Pretend All Your Life is a perfectly okay novel. I suppose that falls under the category of damning with faint praise, but I can't think of any other thing to say that's more apt. Its interest in a significant historical event, one that has only very rarely been handled with both depth and sensitivity, is admirable and brave, but I did not find that 9-11 really added any kind of depth to the story. I left this book wanting to have liked it more than I did, but not able to truly find an substantive reason to give it higher marks.
The novel revolves around tortured plastic surgeon Dr. Richard Gallin, whose practice has been suffering in the months since 9-11 ravaged New York City. Beyond his mere financial troubles, he is also mourning the loss of his son Bernardo, who died in the attacks, an event that renews thoughts of his former wife, who passed away many years before. As he struggles to fill the voids, his life becomes complicated by the presence of a journalist looking to ruin him, and the reemergence of a figure from his past who makes an unexpected and uneasy demand of him.
On the surface, the novel seems very interested in giving depth and interest to its characters, but this is not sustained as the work plays on. We get a strong sketch of Gallin, whose frustrations and listlessness are awkwardly but interestingly intermixed with his sexual longings. For a plastic surgeon, this is an interesting juxtaposition, one that leads the reader to expect a depth of profundity that is ultimately not found. Gallin ends up being little more than a puppet, bending to the whims of a cast of supporting characters that are shockingly static. Gallin's girlfriend Ana serves as little more than a token love interest and a source for tears. Conniving journalist Nick Adams is merely a rat whose tendency to walk around rehearsing his moments of triumph is borderline laughable. Even Bernardo's widow Kiran offers little more than a physical body for Gallin to guiltily fawn over. For a novel so invested in the notion of identity, too many identities fall far too flat.
Yet the novel most notably struggles because its B plot, involving Gallin's controversial firing of a nurse who tested positive for HIV, does not seem to match the impact or substance of the A plot. AIDS enters the plot early and its entrance feels lucid, natural. But as the novel progresses, Mackin almost feels the need to militantly explore the notion of the virus, to the point where it feels in contradiction to the questions the novel raises about a world after 9-11. The notion of this very pre-WTC epidemic invading a novel that is so intensely focused on the aftermath of the attacks feels unnatural and manufactured. And in fact, this is what I feel is the novel's greatest weakness: in its effort to combine several "big" ideas into a relatively compact, high-concept narrative, it all feels too convenient, too convoluted, too constructed. The plot feels so disconnected from its underlying meaning that the characters and events feel not like real people and events, but as a series of specific acts and objects that develop because the author needs them too, not because the story logically moves that way. There is little ebb and flow to the novel, only pushing and pulling.
Unfortunately, saying more requires a spoiler alert so, Reader, consider yourself warned. Where the novel becomes most troubling is in its handling of the return of Bernardo, whose demands on Gallin are couched in the language of rebirth and renewal that were commonplace after 9-11. As a cultural landmark, Bernardo's justifications are legitimate and accurate, but as he continually prattles on about how Gallin could never truly understand his motivations, these feelings lose their impact. If Mackin's intent is to characterize how Bernardo's feelings belong only to those who lived through 9-11, this is, at worst, an arrogant and unhelpful assertion, one that reinforces the type of American selfishness that purportedly inspired the attacks in the first place. At best, it is, to be blunt, lazy writing. A novel that deals with deep thoughts needs to explore those thoughts thoroughly, not reduce them to mere clichés. Either Mackin doesn't want to explore these ideas or he can't--either way, he should not if he can't do so completely.
By the time Pretend All Your Life ends, it feels strangely abrupt and, despite its meager but patient build-up, unsatisfying. In a way, this mirrors the suddenness and surprise of 9-11 itself, a singular moment that causes everything to come to a screeching halt. But there is very little sense that anything substantial has happened, or that anyone has been able to realize what they wanted. And the final gesture, one that is surely meant to be dramatic and foreboding, instead comes off as a line that begs for more where there is nothing more to find. I may be in the minority, but I feel this is an ironically appropriate image for the novel itself: it wants to be profound, expressive, and dramatic, but offers little substance beyond its surface intrigue. William Gibson's Pattern Recognition proved that 9-11 is ready for novelistic treatment, and so I'm convinced there's more to find within this story, but I fear Mackin has not unearthed it. As a 9-11 metaphor, it is fitting; as a novel, it is sadly underwhelming.
posted by Dave at 5/05/2010 10:20:00 PM
1 Comments:
Aw, too bad it wasn't good, but sometimes that's how it is. Good review either way.
Post a Comment
<< Home