The Short Version: Ellis Barstow is a reconstructionist by trade. He and his partner Boggs go to crash sites and reconstruct what happened, for legal cases and what-not. Boggs is also, might I add, married to Ellis’ dead half-brother’s former girlfriend… and Ellis’ half-brother died in a mysterious car accident many years before. A novel about the way we crash into each other’s lives and one man’s attempts to reconstruct how he got to where he is.
The Review: There’s a line in a song on the new John Mayer album where he sings that he “can’t trace how [he] got here” – and it’s a rather fitting line to summarize… really everything about this novel. I mean, the whole concept of the ‘reconstructionist’ is that idea of finding how something got to where it ended up: someone who goes out and, using photos and tape measures and plumb-bobs, manages to piece together exactly what happened at a crash scene. Sort of CSI meets Macgyver. But, because novels can’t be written without at least two layers of meaning these days, it’s more than that. It’s about how ELLIS in his LIFE got to where he is. What a coincidence that he happens to be a reconstructionist for a living!
The novel starts off well enough. The first extended sequence – Pig Accident 2 – is masterfully quirky and odd. The Macgyver part comes in when they recreate a pig (long story) with a skin and some Home Depot supplies. It’s just funny and weird and establishes a certain set of rules for the universe of the book. After all, there are plenty of jobs that have odd quirks to them that we don’t ever realize. So this quirky job feels right. I dig it.
We quickly get a sense of the scope of the odd background here – the coincidences like Ellis running into Heather after so many years and all of that. It starts to feel like a not-so-nihilistic Palahniuk novel – and the concept is, honestly, one that Palahniuk could’ve used as one of those now lost-to-history sequels to Rant. It would’ve been a cool addition to that world, I think. But in Mr. Arvin’s hands, unfortunately, it doesn’t turn out so well. Not to say that it turns out poorly, per se – although I disliked the last 50 pages quite a bit – but it just doesn’t turn out well either.
So the Big Question behind the novel is “what happened to Christopher?” even though the novel spends most of its time trying to ignore that question. Still, consider its the one thing that connects all of the main characters and the ending devotes so much effort to revealing the answer, you have to believe that’s the Main Question driving the action. After all, doesn’t it make sense that such a Question would drive Ellis into reconstructionism? Does this all feel a bit heavy-handed to you too? Okay, just making sure I’m not crazy.
See, we can predict most of what happens (as opposed to getting to the end and wondering how we got there) and that’s what makes the book flawed from the get-go. It’s not a spoiler to say that Ellis ends up having an affair with Heather – hell, it says so in most synopses – and as a result, very little seems surprising about what happens. Boggs’ break with reality (if I can call it that/save you from a lite spoiler), the eventual realization of what happened to Christopher… the only true surprise was the resolution to Pig Accident 2 and that gets brushed over almost without a thought. Which is a shame because I found myself most engaged by the reconstruction of these accidents, in the same way that I suppose people continue to tune in to watch CSI every week.
There are a few interesting comments made about fate/the way our lives work. “The only miracle is that there aren’t more miracles” and that whole concept of 1 in a million not actually being so rare is bandied about quite a bit, the obvious “coincidence” angle is a common trope throughout the novel, and that sense of needing to look back in order to figure out what happened/the unreliability of memory – these things are all scattered throughout. They don’t necessarily say anything new but they don’t wear out their welcome here either.
The one thing I will say this book made me consider was the actual physicality of car accidents. I’ve been in one in my life – my car was totaled but I was okay, as were the passengers of the inciting car. Still, I drive through that intersection and can’t not think of the moment. My dad, a few months before my parents’ wedding, was t-boned at impressive velocity in his Jeep and still carries a slight PTSD memory of it today. But it wasn’t until I read this book – the way Arvin describes accidents – that I suddenly understood what it means to smash two cars together so hard that one flips over three times. Cars are terrifying things, man. And then the news of Michael McKean getting hit by a car yesterday on the UWS? Strange timing and strange understanding.
Rating: 3 out of 5. The book is pretty solidly run of the mill. I wish it hadn’t ended like it did. I wish it hadn’t been so repetitive in the middle to be honest. The characters are pretty flat. But the overarching concept – the world that has been created – is interesting. In the hands of another writer, perhaps they would’ve taken it to a different place and created something else entirely. Here, it’s just sort of ‘eh’. Not bad or good, simply eh.
The Short Version: Alison Poole is living the good life. Bankrolled by her parents, enrolled in acting school, living with her best girl friend, doing tons of blow and tons of guys – and then everything starts to fall apart. She meets a great guy but can’t seem to keep him, her best friend blows the rent, everyone’s doing too much coke, and the speed at which things are happening seems entirely unsustainable. But its New York City in the 80s, so rack up another line and let’s play some Truth or Dare.
The Short Version: An unnamed Sudanese narrator returns home to his village after studying abroad for some time. He meets a peculiar man, Mustafa Sa’eed, who moved to the village during his time away. Mustafa recounts some tales of his wild and adventurous life – and then disappears. The narrator continues on with his life but Sa’eed and his story linger in his mind and hang over the village proper until catastrophe strikes.
The Short Version: Charles Yu is a time-travel technician… but he’s sort of feeling a bit listless of late. His father sort of invented time travel but lost out on fame and then disappeared in time, his mother is in an old-age time loop, his dog doesn’t actually exist, and he just shot a future version of himself in the chest. The answer, apparently, lies in a copy of a book called “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” that also may or may not be a paradox.
The Short Version: Karim moves to New York from Qatar to do some Y2K programming for a major multi-national corporation. He develops a new program while there and skyrockets to success – but the hurdles of American culture are confusing and even as he begins to acclimate and become more “American”, he wonders about what it is he’s losing. In the end, he has to weigh everything he’s gained against the man he is and wants to be – and make a decision that’ll change his life either way.
The Short Version: Sisters Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia Andreas have found themselves a bit adrift in life - lost, confused, stagnant – and so they all return home after their mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. Along with their Shakespeare professor father, they chart the murky waters of a sick parent and unmoored lives.
The Short Version: After a young boy murders a young girl in rather sadistic fashion, Leo Curtice ends up as his solicitor. Not surprisingly, Curtice tries to be impartial and do what’s best for his client, even as the entire country seems to be turning against him – because what’s worse than the death of a child? But when the case suddenly hits close to home, Leo has to ask himself what’s most important: his client and career or his family’s safety?
The Short Version: There are many levels to the Tower, friends, and sometimes the wheel of ka turns us to places we’ve already been and times we’ve already known – but to see moments we missed before. After escaping the strange OZ in Mid-World but before they reached Calla Bryn Sturgis, Roland and his ka-tet weather a brutal superstorm in the remnants of yet another ghost town. To keep them warm as the starkblast blows, Roland tells them a story of his younger days in Gilead – and, within it, a bedtime story he’d learned as a child.
The Short Version: After the head of Berlin Station’s last agent is killed just before he could make a break for the West, Control recalls Alec Leamas to London to put him on the shelf – or so Leamas assumes. Instead, Control offers him one final mission before he can come out of the cold: a revenge mission, to take down the man who killed his agents. Leamas ‘turns’ and plays the defector – but even he doesn’t know the full scope of the plan he’s played right into.
