Bridge Works is a small publishing company that has brought out some very worthwhile books over the years, notably Rosemary Aubert's Ellis Portal mysteries, and such books as Heather Sharfeddin's Blackbelly, which Katie Haegele called "a good old-fashioned cowboy tale that's as gritty as they come."
So I was looking forward to reading Janet Nichols Lynch's Chest Pains, which Bridge Works brought in February, and even arranged to review it for The Inquirer.
As it happened, I had problems with the book. Of course, space in newspapers is at a premium these days, and the idea of running what would at best be a mixed review of a first novel did not appeal. So the review was canceled.
The novel did get a brief, discouraging review in Publishers Weekly, which you can read at the Amazon page to which I linked.
Now I happen to pretty much agree with that review, but a question keeps popping up in my mind: Is it good for literature that papers no longer have space to pay attention to first novels?
If a person of note writes a novel, it will likely get some attention because of the author's celebrity. Ditto for a writer known for writing something besides fiction. But the journeyman writer who has published stories here and there, and who gets a novel finished and published is likely to see that book ignored, unless some reviewer decides it's really good and manages to persuade an editor to run a review of it.
Not to review such books is to leave a gap in literary dialogue of rather gigantic proportions. So I thought I would take some time here to discuss what I liked and what I didn't about Chest Pains.
The story centers on Gordon Clay, a failed bass player who teaches at a community college someplace in the boonies of California. Gordon is 42, seems older, lives with two cats, and is not in the best of shape. In fact, he's been having chest pains, though his heartaches are as much emotional as physical. (One of his students, a tone-deaf postulant nun named Sister Cecilia, gets him to the doctor.)
One night, Gordon gets a phone call from a woman in the town - though at first he thinks she's calling long distance - who sounds just like and has the same name as Carrie, his one true love from whom he split years before. This other Carrie happens to be married to another guy named Gordon Clay. This Carrie thinks her Gordon has snatched their kid.
OK, pretty coincidental all round. But it could work. But only if everything else works. And little else does.
Using his need for exercise as a pretext, Gordon visits the local playground to see if he can meet up with the new Carrie. One mother thinks he's getting too chummy with the kids and soon Gordo is getting a warning from the playground gendarme to keep his distance. I had two problems with this. One, I don't think mothers in general have yet become quite as paranoid as this suggests. Second, if you get a warning from a cop, heed it.
Eventually, Gordon meets a Polynesian single mom called Mikilauni Kukula. She's a knockout, he's smitten, and she, improbably, takes to him. (I don't know what Polynesian immigrant communities are like - I didn't even know there were any - but the one here is portrayed in a manner that is not exactly flattering.)
The action has mostly to do with Gordon's friendship with Sister Cecilia, who leaves the convent, but whose spirit remains buoyant, and his involvement with Mikilauni, which naturally does not go all that smoothly - though smoother than it deserves.
When we're with Gordon by himself, he and the novel come alive. The interaction of the college faculty is also good. The faculty members may be more caricatures than characters, but they are well drawn and effective caricatures. The problem is, whenever Gordon steps out of his house or his office, he seems to enter some fantasyland where everything is a little askew and nothing quite convinces. The incidents and turns of plot seem tacked on as needed. They are not organically connected to the characters and action. That action, by the way, pretty much just comes to a stop. There is no real sense of anything having been resolved at the end.
There is one other thing, which, while incidental, draws enough attention to itself to be seriously annoying. If you're going write about the Catholic Church, have some Catholic proof your book. The church mentioned at the beginning of Chapter Two would be called Our Lady of Lourdes, not Our Lady of the Apparitions of Lourdes. There is no part of the Mass called the Transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is Thomas Aquinas's hylomorphoic explanation of what takes place at the Consecration. People visited with the stigmata are called stigmatics, not stigmatists. Such slips cancel versimilitude for anyone who knows better.
There is some good writing in these pages, and a genuine sense of the absurd is on display from time to time. I can easily imagine someone else reading this book and enjoying it more than I did. And even though I didn't particularly like it, I do think it shows promise.
As it happened, I had problems with the book. Of course, space in newspapers is at a premium these days, and the idea of running what would at best be a mixed review of a first novel did not appeal. So the review was canceled.
The novel did get a brief, discouraging review in Publishers Weekly, which you can read at the Amazon page to which I linked.
Now I happen to pretty much agree with that review, but a question keeps popping up in my mind: Is it good for literature that papers no longer have space to pay attention to first novels?
If a person of note writes a novel, it will likely get some attention because of the author's celebrity. Ditto for a writer known for writing something besides fiction. But the journeyman writer who has published stories here and there, and who gets a novel finished and published is likely to see that book ignored, unless some reviewer decides it's really good and manages to persuade an editor to run a review of it.
Not to review such books is to leave a gap in literary dialogue of rather gigantic proportions. So I thought I would take some time here to discuss what I liked and what I didn't about Chest Pains.
The story centers on Gordon Clay, a failed bass player who teaches at a community college someplace in the boonies of California. Gordon is 42, seems older, lives with two cats, and is not in the best of shape. In fact, he's been having chest pains, though his heartaches are as much emotional as physical. (One of his students, a tone-deaf postulant nun named Sister Cecilia, gets him to the doctor.)
One night, Gordon gets a phone call from a woman in the town - though at first he thinks she's calling long distance - who sounds just like and has the same name as Carrie, his one true love from whom he split years before. This other Carrie happens to be married to another guy named Gordon Clay. This Carrie thinks her Gordon has snatched their kid.
OK, pretty coincidental all round. But it could work. But only if everything else works. And little else does.
Using his need for exercise as a pretext, Gordon visits the local playground to see if he can meet up with the new Carrie. One mother thinks he's getting too chummy with the kids and soon Gordo is getting a warning from the playground gendarme to keep his distance. I had two problems with this. One, I don't think mothers in general have yet become quite as paranoid as this suggests. Second, if you get a warning from a cop, heed it.
Eventually, Gordon meets a Polynesian single mom called Mikilauni Kukula. She's a knockout, he's smitten, and she, improbably, takes to him. (I don't know what Polynesian immigrant communities are like - I didn't even know there were any - but the one here is portrayed in a manner that is not exactly flattering.)
The action has mostly to do with Gordon's friendship with Sister Cecilia, who leaves the convent, but whose spirit remains buoyant, and his involvement with Mikilauni, which naturally does not go all that smoothly - though smoother than it deserves.
When we're with Gordon by himself, he and the novel come alive. The interaction of the college faculty is also good. The faculty members may be more caricatures than characters, but they are well drawn and effective caricatures. The problem is, whenever Gordon steps out of his house or his office, he seems to enter some fantasyland where everything is a little askew and nothing quite convinces. The incidents and turns of plot seem tacked on as needed. They are not organically connected to the characters and action. That action, by the way, pretty much just comes to a stop. There is no real sense of anything having been resolved at the end.
There is one other thing, which, while incidental, draws enough attention to itself to be seriously annoying. If you're going write about the Catholic Church, have some Catholic proof your book. The church mentioned at the beginning of Chapter Two would be called Our Lady of Lourdes, not Our Lady of the Apparitions of Lourdes. There is no part of the Mass called the Transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is Thomas Aquinas's hylomorphoic explanation of what takes place at the Consecration. People visited with the stigmata are called stigmatics, not stigmatists. Such slips cancel versimilitude for anyone who knows better.
There is some good writing in these pages, and a genuine sense of the absurd is on display from time to time. I can easily imagine someone else reading this book and enjoying it more than I did. And even though I didn't particularly like it, I do think it shows promise.
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