CBR14Bingo – New — This is both a newish book and an author new to me.
We begin with Jacob Finch Bonner, a character we are told early on who decided that he wanted to be a great writer long before he knew anything about voice or writing or books or anything. The Finch in his name is an affectation, taken from his love for To Kill a Mockingbird. Now 10 years into his writing career, he’s published two novels, one moderately successfully, and the second not even a novel but a collection of short stories an enterprising editor shaped into a linked-story novel. He works at a summer residence MFA program (ala, but certainly not Middlebury, which gets mentioned at some point) where he’s lost whatever verve he used to have for writing, a point that is well-made by the fact that we never hear anything about the novel he’s working on, but never publishes, except that it exists, and it’s in trouble. At the start of the new summer session, the normal kinds of malaise start in. After a get-together happy hour, he settles into his first workshop where he meets a cocky writer who tells him he’s got an already perfect novel ready to go that has a plot so great that it’s a guaranteed hit. He won’t tell anyone, but submits a few pages about a teenage daughter with a frustrating young mother that shows decent writing skills, but none of the lightning in a bottle that had been promised. In a one on one meeting, Jacob coaxes the plot out of the writer, where he agrees, it seems so good that it will certainly lead to multi-media success.
A few years pass and he’s working for a for profit residency for writers ala Yaddoo, but for profit — the constant mention of pay for play within publishing comes up a lot in this book, written by a novelist who has recently shifted into thrillers. Anyway, an uncomfortable conflict with a resident reminds him for the first time in a while of that cocky writer and he begins to google the novel, assuming it was written, published, and mostly forgotten. He can’t find anything, but further searching lands him on a page for the obituary of the writer. Wheels start turning, and Jacob decides to take the plot, and write the novel himself. Assuring himself, this is no different from what Shakespeare, Jane Smiley, or The Lion King did.
One more jump brings us into a year or more into his wild successful turn as a best-selling novelist now on the cusp of the movie rights being secured, and even writing a workmanlike, but less dynamic second thriller….and of course the knowledge of his crime (and the novel does a good job of never settling of what, if any crime is committed — and crime is also not the right word, but perhaps, sin)….and he starts getting some “I know what you did last literary conference” emails. And I will stop there with the plot.
I spent some time thinking about this book in terms of “how much irony should I read into the novel within the novel parts of this book?” Obviously you spend a lot of time discussing a “plot” and then there’s short sections of the actual book itself. You have to wonder whether or not the big twist that keeps getting hyped in the book will come out. It does. I will say that. And well, I have to say, here’s where my questions of irony come in…..because…well, thrillers aren’t good because of plot. They are, and I like this book and the book clearly articulates plot is just a device, but execution (ie writing) is what actually matters. So I wonder how much playing the novel is intentionally doing around this idea. The novelist is more clever than her writer character, and for me, even having To Kill a Mockingbird be his favorite novel is maybe a joke. Not because it’s not good but because it’s almost the one book everyone in the US has read, so it seems like a cliched choice for a favorite novel, and the character is so bent on his own creation of self, that the lack of self-awareness, and this isn’t the only example, is hilarious to me. There’s a kind of juicy cynicism in this novel that never reaches the level of greatness. As one character says, “This is not Nabokov” after all.