Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman

Published by Harper Perennial; Original on August 9, 2011

Tom's father (Curtis Violet) is an aging womanizer who just won the Pulitzer for a short story collection. Tom's mother (Maryanne) ended her own writing career years earlier, despite publishing an acclaimed book of stories that didn't sell, because she believed there couldn't be two writers in a family. Maryanne is taking a break from Gary, her second husband, having realized that she only married him because he wasn't Curtis. Tom has just finished writing a novel of his own, which his family members lack the time or desire to read.

Tom hates his copywriting job (he doesn't integrate well with coworkers who use words like "leverage" and "facilitate") and seems dead set against career advancement. His domestic life is no more satisfying than his work life. He's plagued by ED and he's "a little bit in love" with a beautiful young coworker named Katie. Although Tom nervously but politely snubs Katie when he runs into her while having dinner with his family at Johnny Rockets, neither his wife (Anna) nor his father believe his assurance that "there's nothing going on," and the snubbing doesn't endear him to Katie. Just as troubling is Tom's growing concern that Anna is involved with another man. In short, Tom feels inadequate: as a husband, as a son, as a father, and as a writer. Tom is unhappy ... until he does something at work that's either daring or stupid (or both) but in any event wickedly funny, an act of defiance that changes the course of his life.

These events probably don't sound terribly amusing, but domestic turmoil has nourished comedy at least since Shakespeare. Much of the humor in Domestic Violets could be faulted for being too obvious -- it's the routine stuff of comedy club monologues -- but I laugh at old jokes if they're well told, and this novel kept me grinning. A running joke that will appeal to readers is Curtis' rivalry with another acclaimed writer named Zuckerman -- "the most boring writer in America," according to Curtis. More literary laughter, this time bordering on slapstick, involves a brawl between Curtis and the fiction editor for The New Yorker.

While Matthew Norman bases the first two (of four) parts of Domestic Violets on humor, he tries to build emotional intensity in part three as Tom and Anna confront their fears and desires and, finally, each other. Their story isn't deep but it's utterly genuine. Part four increases the intensity and even becomes a little vicious. Characters are definitely not playing well together in the novel's last act, although the worst offenders are minor characters (perhaps too predictably, none of the likable characters become unlikable). Part four sacrifices laughs for drama, leading to a conclusion that, while not unsatisfying, is a little too cute. In fact, Tom seems to lead such a charmed life it was difficult for me to sustain belief in the story.

Those criticisms aside, there are reasons to recommend Domestic Violets. The novel has one of the best sex scenes (or "almost sex" scenes) I've encountered: it's passionate and absurd and tender, just like the real thing. There's a melancholy sweetness to this story that, combined with its hopefulness, serves as a reminder that we can all find our better natures if we make the effort -- and that when our better natures surface as the result of chance rather than intent, we should recognize and embrace them. Whether you do the right thing by accident or design, Tom comes to understand, what matters is that you do the right thing.

Neither Norman's serviceable prose style nor his unchallenging plot will win him a Pulitzer, but Domestic Violets is likely to earn Norman a fair number of satisfied readers. For me, the humor was more effective than the soapy drama, but the novel delivered enough laughs to earn my recommendation.

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13 Million Dollar Pop by David Levien

Published by Doubleday on August 9, 2011

Frank Behr doesn’t fit in with the corporate culture of the private investigation/security consulting firm that employs him, but he has a baby on the way and it’s a better living than he made while working on his own.  Asked at the last minute to fill in as a bodyguard for Bernie Kolodnik, a wealthy businessman who is about to accept an appointment to the Senate, Behr’s boredom is relieved by gunfire.  When Behr later tries to learn what progress the police have made tracking down the man who tried to assassinate Kolodnik, his inquiries are stonewalled.  Behr decides to investigate the shooting on his own.  While he’s at it, Behr investigates an apparent attempt to blackmail his boss.  As we follow Behr’s progress, we’re also introduced to Waddy Dwyer, the Welshman who wants to see Kolodnik dead.  Dwyer comes to America after deciding that if he wants the job done right, he’ll have to do it himself.  A real estate developer, a political consultant, a call girl and her pimp, and a former FBI agent all add to the mystery surrounding the plot to kill Kolodnik.

Behr reeks of machismo but he isn’t as obnoxious as some other thriller heroes who suffer from the same affliction.  He has the standard action hero personality (i.e., not much); strip away his macho veneer and there’s nothing left.  Still, this is a plot-driven novel and while strong characterization would have been a nice bonus, its absence doesn’t wholly negate enjoyment of the fast moving story. 

David Levien’s writing style is reasonably fluid.  Occasional phrases are a little silly (like two big guys hitting each other with “Superman punches”) but most of his prose is slightly better than the norm for action-thrillers.  As the story unfolds, Levien delivers a nice blend of action and anticipation.  The plot threads cohere into a story that is intricate without becoming unduly confusing.  A scene toward the end involving a hot-tempered police officer is contrived, inserted in an obvious attempt to induce the reader’s short-lived shock, but the rest of the story evolves naturally and credibly.  Not every plotline is neatly resolved (one seems to disappear entirely), perhaps with a view to setting up the next novel in the series. My most serious complaint is that the novel’s two heroes, in addition to throwing Superman punches, seem to have Superman’s invulnerability and stamina -- they keep fighting through gunshot and knife wounds -- but that’s standard for action-oriented fiction.   

This is the third Frank Behr novel (I haven't read the first two).  I liked 13 Million Dollar Pop just enough to stimulate my interest in other novels in the series, but not enough to make me stand in line waiting to buy them.

Addendum:  I received a polite email from the author explaining that "Superman punch" is a Mixed Martial Arts term that "refers to a lunging punch where the striker leaves his feet to generate maximum force."  I didn't know that, and while it still sounds silly to my ear, I appreciate the clarification.

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Bed by David Whitehouse

Published by Scribner on August 2, 2011

In a strange way, Bed asks whether love is a force of salvation or destruction. It may just be a question of perspective.

At the novel's center is the massive Malcolm, "the fattest man in the world." He doesn't -- he can't -- get out of bed; he and the bed have conjoined. After spending twenty years in bed, Mal has become a media sensation. Told from the point of view of Mal's unnamed brother, Bed jumps around in time, alternating scenes of Mal and his brother in their childhood and adolescence with events that occurred after Mal stopped rising from the bed in which he now dwells.

Why won't Mal get out of bed? In his early adulthood, after Mal leaves home to live with his girlfriend Lou, he proclaims his contempt for conventional lifestyles. He fears the mundane. It's ironic, given where he ends up, that Mal poses the rhetorical question "What will there be to remember of a mediocre existence?" Mal comes to believe that (as he says on his twenty-fifth birthday) he will be "just someone who was there, and that's it." He is gripped by a malaise so powerful he cannot see the purpose of life as a participatory experience. His conclusion -- "If you can't do what you're meant to do, why do anything at all?" -- explains his decision to stay in bed after his birthday party ends, but his reason for arriving at that conclusion remains unclear.

Depression may account Mal's initial reluctance to leave his bed (eventually, his size and the intermingling of his cellular structure with the bed itself makes it impossible for him to get up). Perhaps a mental illness more serious than depression is to blame. Long before he became morbidly obese, Malcolm was an odd child. He liked to stand in the rain with his face to the sky and his mouth open to the point of drowning. He preferred nudity to clothing, even at the supermarket. It's easy to understand why classmates wrote "Mal Ede is a weirdo" on the condensation-covered classroom windows on rainy days. Mal didn't care; he refused "to involve himself in the transient social systems of school." His weirdness was only beginning.

Mal wonders if his purpose "is to give purpose to others." His brother thinks Mal has always existed to give meaning to his mother's life. Delighted with her role as Mal's servant, Mal's enabling mother feeds him enough to sate a platoon. The novel raises an intriguing question: should Mal's mother be faulted for making him happy when her actions are probably contributing to an early death? A broader question that also applies to Lou is whether love means doing everything you can to make someone happy. Taking care of her father makes Lou happy even if it means sacrificing her own chance at a relationship. Lou's father sacrificed his own happiness to benefit a woman who ultimately left him; he learned that "a life lived in a way perceived to be correct could still come to nothing." Is David Whitehouse saying that love will find a way to destroy you in the end?

Bed is written tenderly, with affection for those (like Mal's mother) who deserve it and for those (like Mal) who probably don't. The story is in some respects touching, yet I often found it more depressing than enlightening. The final chapters initially seem life-affirming (perhaps some of us, at least, can discover a purpose in life that isn't self-destructive) and while I think it tries to be, the message that finally shines through is this: if you want to be loved, you need to be an invalid. There are moments of excellence here, snatches of wistful love stories that are beautifully rendered, but the novel's portrayal of heartbreak coupled with meaningless existence makes it difficult to read. It made me, like Mal, reluctant to get out of bed.

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The Charlestown Connection by Tom MacDonald

Published by Oceanview Publishing on August 1, 2011

Dermot Sparhawk is stocking shelves in a Boston food pantry when Jeepster Hennesey staggers through the door. As Hennesey dies in Sparhawk's arms, a knife buried in his back, he gives Sparhawk a key and says the word "Oswego." Written on a piece of tape wrapped around the key is the name "McSweeney." Before long, ruffians affiliated with the IRA are trying to persuade Sparhawk to reveal Hennesey's last words. As Sparhawk investigates, he learns that the mystery somehow relates to Hennesey's membership in a prison "literary society" called the Oulipo Boys. Further investigation connects the mystery to the worlds of art forgery and high stakes poker and brings Sparhawk into contact with a woman living in the projects who (according to Sparhawk's source) is an undercover FBI agent investigating Somali terrorists.

The Charlestown Connection is Tom MacDonald's first novel. He paints a vibrant picture of Boston's Charlestown neighborhood and enriches the narrative with glimpses of Charlestown's troubled history. The book is filled with unusual characters who are sometimes more colorful than interesting. Sparhawk's alcoholism makes him instantly familiar, but I got no sense of urgency from his battle with the bottle -- his newfound sobriety seemed too easy. Friends who help Sparhawk with the mystery include Glooscap, who speaks slowly and without contractions because "contractions are for the lazy, uttered only by sluggards"; an isolated, wheelchair-bound veteran named Buck Louis; Angus Og, a sometimes delusional veteran who claims to have advised Henry Kissinger about Vietnam and John Updike about baseball (could he be telling the truth?); and the too cutely named Harraseeket Kid, a character who adds nothing to the story. I am impressed that MacDonald didn't succumb to the temptation to turn the characters into superheroes. Louis, for instance, is an adept researcher but he can't break through firewalls with ease like the hackers who show up to provide a convenient assist in typical thrillers.

On occasion, The Charlestown Connection suffers from the first novel blues: unnatural dialog, awkward phrasing, uneven pace. A lecture on female genital mutilation in Somalia is well-intentioned but out of place. More troubling is Sparhawk's relationship with the FBI agent. Maybe Sparhawk has an animal magnetism that inspires professional women to jump into bed with him despite his alcoholism, his minimum wage job, and his residence across the street from the projects, but MacDonald didn't lay the kind of foundation that might have convinced me of Sparhawk's irresistibility. A museum curator's unexplained desire to become Sparhawk's buddy also struck me as artificial. My most serious reservation is the amount of time the characters spend talking with each other, repeating information the reader has already gleaned. The redundant descriptions of fact not only slow the novel's pace, they make the characters seem dense, as if they need to be told why something is important when they were commenting upon its importance in an earlier chapter.

MacDonald clearly did his research. Apart from being interesting in their own right, his discussions of the Oulipo movement and art forgery add credibility to the plot. The story is clever but unexceptional. As a first effort, this novel isn't bad, but it didn't make me eager to encounter these characters again.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Machine Man by Max Barry

Published by Vintage on August 9, 2011

If a body is just a collection of replaceable parts, if love is just a sensation induced by a swirl of brain chemicals, then what is man?

Charles Neumann loves machines; he's a mechanical engineer who, as a child, dreamed of being a train. As a teen, after nearly being run over by a guy driving a Viper -- a guy who then abused him for not getting out of the way -- Neumann wondered when it was that beautifully engineered machines like the Viper became superior to humans, who often wind up being useless jerks. Now an adult, Neumann has a big brain, no social skills, and an isolated life. When he loses a leg in a lab accident, the injury only encourages his inclination to remain apart from others. Given a choice of prosthetic replacements and seeing nothing he likes, Neumann tries out the state-of-the-art model, breaks it, then decides to build one of his own: a leg that not only walks by itself, but decides for itself how to get where it needs to go. Finally happy with the design of his mechanical leg, he becomes dissatisfied with the biological one. You can guess what he does next.

Man's dependence on technology and what that dependence does to us is Machine Man's driving theme. Machine Man also takes a satirical look at corporate willingness to sacrifice human concerns for the sake of profit. Neumann's employer (Better Future) has been reluctant to develop medical technology because medical advances might render the technology obsolete. If, after investing in the development of an artificial heart, medical researchers cured heart disease, Better Future would view that public health benefit as a disaster. Artificial replacements for healthy limbs and organs, however, offer unlimited growth potential. Just as consumers throw away perfectly good cell phones because the new model is superior, consumers will want the latest arm or spleen because it's trendy and sexy to own one. Max Berry stretches that premise to absurd lengths while making an important point: as long as markets drive technology, corporations will spend more money designing sophisticated game controllers (because the market is huge) than they will spend to increase the functionality of prosthetic limbs (because the market is limited). Desire trumps utility in a market economy -- an economic truth that lends itself to Barry's humanistic brand of comedy.

There are some very funny moments in Machine Man: the scientists' certainty that "physical attractiveness was inversely correlated with intelligence, because look at us"; a conversation about the importance of passing the salt before performing an unrelated task. Barry has fun with workers compensation payments for amputations (it's economically beneficial to lose fingers one at a time rather than losing a whole hand) and with middle managers who try to protect a corporation from legal liability by using politically correct jargon while shafting its employees. Barry repeatedly and thoroughly skewers the corporate mentality. By the midpoint of this novel I was laughing out loud. Frequently.

In the end, however, the story is about Neumann. Barry weaves an offbeat love story into the plot -- it has to be offbeat because Neumann is such a poor candidate for love -- but love requires sacrifice. How much will a man who values elegantly designed machinery more than biologically limited people be willing to sacrifice for love? That's the question that gives the novel heart as well as humor.

This isn't the funniest novel I've ever read (Catch-22 and A Confederacy of Dunces share that honor) nor is it the most profound (not even in the top hundred) but it tells a wickedly smart, emotionally appealing story that kept me laughing until the last page. There's an over-the-top aspect to this novel that will put off some readers, but if you believe in the possibility of telling a serious story that isn't meant to be taken seriously, you'll probably enjoy Machine Man.

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