|
There's
a lot going on in Deb Olin Unferth's debut novel, Vacation.
Characters follow, are followed, separate, get lost, run away,
and do other crazy things in an almost domino-like string
of semi-related events, some so fantastical that it's hard
to believe Unferth will be able to pull it off without giving
voice to a trite soap opera.
The drama
begins with the character Myers. Still amateurs in a relatively
young marriage, Myers and his wife are like strangers: hardly
talking, constantly on the edge of argument, and unabashedly
imagining their lives without the other. The slightly off-kilter
beginning isn't exactly original, nor however, does it follow
a usual progression. Myers, perhaps paranoid but definitely
suspicious of his wife, begins to follow her after work, and
in doing so, he discovers she is following another man. In
good dramatic fashion, the man is an acquaintance of Myers,
and Myers, somewhat desperate to save his marriage, is more
than adequately filled with mixed degrees of rage. Thus begins
his vacation from life.
If it
were only that easy. Vacation is rife with point-of-view
changes, each character analyzing details about himself or
herself and others with refreshingly realistic confusion and
raw disappointment. In one such exchange that evolves from
passing thought to irritation to obsession in mere moments,
Myers reflects:
About
the lights: He knew about the lights, that they had become
an issue, in place of The Issue, that the lights had become
a stand-in or substitute, as they are for sunlight or
moonlight. He knew they had this additional function,
they obscured as well as brightened, were a deflecting
glare where before there had been none, only voices, cool
rooms, he knew he and she had achieved this one day when
he came home and said, Why are all these lights on?
Unferth
plows her way through via telling rather than showing, a method
that doesn't often work but that Unferth lets loose so quickly,
it's hard to realize the story is forming.
And then
there's Gray, the man who passes through various scenes as
the followed man, too deep in a struggle with his own life
to recognize himself as followed, too preoccupied with existing
elsewhere to pin himself down to anything. It becomes clear
in Unferth's depiction of Gray that there are no brief moments
of boredom to be had in Vacation; she goes just to
the edge of over-the-top, alternating points of view almost
as often as tense, and includes no fewer than two subplots
to complicate the complicated. Vacation opens, for
example, with Claire, who recounts briefly being told at 16
that she is not biologically related to her single father.
As her story picks up, somewhat like vignettes between parts
of the Myers/Gray debacle, she is tracking down her would-be
dolphin-trainer father and recounting her late mother's Hollywood
career.
Unferth
has a very simple style, however. There is not a lot of actual
conversation between people; her details are in the unsaid,
in racing thoughts, letters and minor movements that physically
separate characters by oceans. If you're not paying attention,
the structure of the individual pieces can be confusing, and
that's a risk Unferth assumes readers are willing to take
to get deeper into the story. To that extent, Unferth is able
to say in a few words what even her characters have trouble
articulating; one gets the sense that the words finally appearing
on the pages are conversations her characters have hashed
and rehashed over the course of years, barely able to choke
out. Though her characters tend toward insight just as often
as blunder, the only real letdown is that it's hard to get
a grip on who the characters are as whole people with a past,
present and future. Most of the characters in Vacation
are trapped in the present with only general ideas to back
up everything that came before. It's not that it's necessary,
it's that it helps.
All the
introspection aside, Vacation is dominated by Unferth's
dry sense of humor. Myers, for instance, is plagued by a seemingly
obvious (but to him, non-existent) cranial deformation, the
cause of which is oft debated and possibly the singular source
of tension in his marriage. If it sounds weird and off-balance,
it's because it is, from the style to the various misadventures
of the characters, Vacation is a kind of break from
the normalcy of mainstream lit.
Vacation
is a very different kind of book. Unferth's unusual style
is sort of atypical for a McSweeney's reader: very abrupt
and slightly abstract, and above all, a modern way of telling
an old story. It's the modern style that makes Vacation
worth reading, at least, for readers who can handle such changes.
(September
2008)
|
