The Fugitives by Christopher Sorrentino

Published by Simon & Schuster on February 9, 2016

The Fugitives is a difficult novel to classify (I regard that as a plus). It falls under the broad category of literary fiction, but it fits within (and elevates) the genre of crime fiction. It isn’t a comedy, exactly, but the story is light and filled with amusing moments when it isn’t a contemplation of death or failure or betrayal.

Some of The Fugitives is narrated by a writer with a talent for wasting time. Having been booted out of his New York home after a disastrous affair, Alexander “Sandy” Mulligan is now wasting time in Upper Michigan. The sojourn gives him a chance to ponder storytelling, which isn’t so different from living -- breaking time into discrete chunks of “anecdote and memory; association and reminiscence; conjecture, desire, and regret; the bones of the lunchtime saga over a glass of wine.” Unfortunately, he isn’t getting his new book written and is about to be sued for breach of contract.

Christopher Sorrentino advances the storytelling theme with a character named Salteau, a Native American (or not) who tells traditional stories to children twice a week at a public library. Meanwhile, a reporter from Chicago named Kat Danhoff, following a story about money stolen from a tribal casino, is taking an interest in Salteau for reasons unrelated to his role as a repository of folk tales. She thinks Salteau might be hiding something, or hiding from something … but is he part of a story that a journalist has any reason to pursue? And what should her editor do if the casino might pull its advertising if the story runs?

Mulligan’s description of his unfaithful past is the familiar stuff of literary fiction but Sorrentino finds ways to describe it that make his insights seem fresh. An extended paragraph about Mulligan’s lover’s underwear, in fact, is nearly enough to make the novel worthwhile. Sorrentino brings the same astute observational power to his third person account of Kat’s failed relationship with her first husband and her troubled relationship with the current one. My favorite line, though, is about an independent bookstore clerk who “shoved the books in a plastic bag as if they were socks or pork chops and sent her on her way, corroding a little more the romance that survived, God only knew why, in Kat’s heart.”

Sorrentino has fun with his offbeat plot and characters. That makes the book a fun read, even if it’s not particularly deep. Mulligan enjoys telling a good lie, particularly when he’s talking to a reporter, so his interaction with Kat is amusing. Identity confusion drives the plot and furthers one of the book’s themes: “Nearly everything is unknowable.” The future is “immune to prediction,” as is the novel’s ending.

The story bounces around in time and sometimes we see the same scene from the perspective of different characters, which might frustrate readers who are wedded to linear storytelling. Yet Sorrentino enhances the story by altering time and perspective and voice, techniques that not many writers can pull off quite so successfully. The techniques cause the reader to question just how reliable Mulligan might be in his first-person narrative. In a book about storytelling, that might be the most important question of all.

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