Arlene McKanic

FictionHistorical Fiction

A Well-Behaved Woman

Review by Arlene McKanic

In comparison to our current crop of dingy squillionaires and robber barons, the Vanderbilts, Belmonts and Astors were so much more entertaining, with their monstrous Fifth Avenue chateaux and even more monstrous “cottages,” their frivolous costume balls, their genteel contempt for the hoi polloi and their obsession with bloodlines, both their own and those of their thoroughbred racehorses. Therese Anne Fowler’s biographical novel isn’t about careless people, but people who care too much about the wrong stuff.

Alva Vanderbilt Belmont married for money, as did just about everyone else in her set. She hasn’t a scintilla of a sense of humor. She is a hypocrite and a coward. She may feel bad about letting her lady’s maid go because she is black, or for shunning one of her friends because he penned a silly book, but she does it anyway. She all but imprisons her beautiful, dimwitted daughter, Consuelo, because she wants her to marry the Duke of Marlborough and not the older, less well-heeled Winty Rutherfurd. (Fowler leaves out how Alva used to beat Consuelo with a riding crop but leaves in how she threatens to shoot Rutherfurd dead.) Fowler skillfully depicts both the doomed, cruel, ridiculous society that Alva married into and how she tries, in her plodding yet ruthless way, to navigate it. It is ever so tempting to believe that Edith Wharton’s ghastly Undine Spragg contains some of Alva’s DNA.

But don’t feel sorry for the Vanderbilt women. Both Alva and Consuelo lived to ripe old ages, and both gained some wisdom, no doubt born of pain. The end of Fowler’s absorbing book finds them at a suffragette rally in London’s Hyde Park, spellbound by the words of a true heroine who really knew how to buck the patriarchy. As the book says, “[Alva] was no Emmeline Pankhurst.” Indeed.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In comparison to our current crop of dingy squillionaires and robber barons, the Vanderbilts, Belmonts and Astors were so much more entertaining, with their monstrous Fifth Avenue chateaux and even more monstrous “cottages,” their frivolous costume balls, their genteel contempt for the hoi polloi and their obsession with bloodlines, both their own and those of their thoroughbred racehorses. Therese Anne Fowler’s biographical novel isn’t about careless people, but people who care too much about the wrong stuff.

FictionWestern

Heresy

Review by Arlene McKanic

By now, most people know that the myth of the Wild, Wild West was indeed a myth. Melissa Lenhardt’s Heresy presents yet another interesting take on the Wild West circa 1877 through a story of female outlaws—and not just one or two like Cattle Annie and Little Britches, but whole bands of them, many of whom were better at robbing banks than men were. The women’s planning was brilliant and done well in advance. They never stole from ordinary people and were generally nonviolent. They also lasted longer than male gangs, mostly because no one believed that women were capable of banditry.

The leader of the gang in Lenhardt’s novel is Margaret Parker, a transplanted Englishwoman who prefers the more androgynous and sexier name of Garet. Proud, smart, stubborn, loving and persistently bitter over being dismissed by men who don’t take her criminal activities seriously, Garet almost wants to get caught. She and her husband were both members of the British aristocracy before they moved to the States to stake a claim. Then he died, and her ranch was stolen out from under her by a Salty Sam type. It was then that Garet figured out that robbing stagecoaches and banks was a good way to keep herself and her family from starvation.

Garet’s family is her gang of thieves, which is composed of complex, lusty women of diverse backgrounds. The men around them, most of whom are smug in their male chauvinism, underestimate the women at their peril. The gang’s story is told many years later by Henrietta “Hattie” Lee, Garet’s sister-in-arms. Lenhardt cleverly intersperses Hattie’s recollections, told to a reporter from the Works Progress Administration, with journal entries from Garet and a female “travel writer” and snippets from old newspapers.

Heresy, which is also the name of the horse ranch where the women live between heists, is a rollicking, engrossing book that’ll keep you reading well past your bedtime.

By now, most people know that the myth of the Wild, Wild West was indeed a myth. Melissa Lenhardt’s Heresy presents yet another interesting take on the Wild West circa 1877 through a story of female outlaws—and not just one or two like Cattle Annie and Little Britches, but whole bands of them, many of whom were better at robbing banks than men were. The women’s planning was brilliant and done well in advance. They never stole from ordinary people and were generally nonviolent. They also lasted longer than male gangs, mostly because no one believed that women were capable of banditry.

FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

You are your history

Review by Arlene McKanic

To start a Walter Mosley novel is like sitting down to a feast. In this case, the tastiest dish is not the protagonist who gives the book its name, but his mother. Lucia Napoli-Jones is such a vivid, vibrant presence in John Woman that when she leaves early in the book, the reader may spend the rest of it, like her son, longing for her return. Earthy, deeply imperfect, possessed of a rollicking Lower East Side way of speaking and living, she is easily Mosley’s best secondary character since Mouse Alexander.

But enough about flamboyant Lucia. John Woman is all about history: its slipperiness, its unknowability and maybe even its ultimate uselessness. John Woman’s autodidactic father teaches him about this, which John in turn teaches to his students after he becomes a college professor.

This is all ironic, for John is trying to outrun his history. First, there’s the uneasy relationship between his parents, both of whom he loves with the helpless passion of a young child even into his 30s. John’s real childhood ended abruptly when he was forced to kill someone in defense of himself and his father. Soon after, he’s raped. He then flees, changing identities until he settles on his unusual moniker, which is in part a reference to his rapist.

As usual, Mosley’s superpower lies in his slantwise take on the world and his characters, of whom there are dozens, and every one is memorable, even if they speak only a line or two. They include John’s bright but fractious students, the weird faculty members of the university where John teaches, a slew of detectives and lawyers and a hooker with a heart of gold. (The trauma of John’s defloration challenges his ability to engage in conventional relationships and kinkless sex.)

All the while, the reader, like John, looks for signs of Lucia. Will we ever see her again? This reviewer won’t tell. I will tell you that this fantastic, surprising, humane and somewhat perverse book is one of Mosley’s best.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

To start a Walter Mosley novel is like sitting down to a feast. In this case, the tastiest dish is not the protagonist who gives the book its name, but his mother. Lucia Napoli-Jones is such a vivid, vibrant presence in John Woman that when she leaves early in the book, the reader may spend the rest of it, like her son, longing for her return. Earthy, deeply imperfect, possessed of a rollicking Lower East Side way of speaking and living, she is easily Mosley’s best secondary character since Mouse Alexander.

FictionThrillerDebut Fiction

Baby Teeth

Review by Arlene McKanic

It seems that more and more books, films and TV shows feature relationships between mothers and children who despise each other and seek each other’s slow death. In Zoje Stage’s debut novel, you can’t blame put-upon Suzette Jensen for wanting to be free from her monstrous daughter, Hanna. Indeed, by page five you’re praying for the little horror to eat it in the worst way possible.

What’s less clear is why Hanna hates her mother so much. What could Suzette have possibly done to Hanna, 7 years old when our tale opens, to fill her with such psychotic rage? On top of this, Hanna’s dad, Alex, is so love-blinded that he refuses to see how utterly atrocious Hanna is.

Soon enough, it becomes clear there is no answer, for Stage’s real subject is the conundrum of evil itself. There’s simply no reason for loving, gentle, organic veggie-eating, granola-crunching progressive parents who live in an eco-friendly house to produce something like Hanna. For these two benighted bobos to wonder where they went wrong as parents is as ridiculous as Cesar Millan wondering why he can’t bring the werewolves in Tolkien’s Silmarillion to heel. It’s sad and frustrating to watch the Jensens rush from pillar to post, trying to get other good-hearted folk to help their daughter, when it’s clear there is no hope.

Yet what else can they do with this child whose one and only goal is to kill her mother? What can the reader do? Hanna’s chapters conjure a sickened incredulousness in the reader. Hanna is not so much a character as an abyss; her mind is so warped and inhuman that you even fear for her big, cuddly Swedish bear of a dad. Because of this, her parents’ ultimate solution can be only temporary, as are all “victories” over evil. Don’t be surprised if there’s a sequel to Baby Teeth before long.

It seems that more and more books, films and TV shows feature relationships between mothers and children who despise each other and seek each other’s slow death. In Zoje Stage’s debut novel, you can’t blame put-upon Suzette Jensen for wanting to be free from her monstrous daughter, Hanna. Indeed, by page five you’re praying for the little horror to eat it in the worst way possible.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Matriarch of a fallen dynasty

Review by Arlene McKanic

If there were ever a cautionary tale about the disasters of patriarchy and inequality, the tale of the Romanovs is it. C.W. Gortner’s engaging historical novel tells the story of the last dowager empress of Russia, Maria Feodorovna, née Princess Dagmar of Denmark.

Engaged as a teenager to the czarevich (the Russian heir apparent) who dies suddenly, Maria is handed over to his brother, the gruff Alexander III. Luckily for her, their marriage is a devoted one.

Despite (or because of) the unfathomable wealth and privilege of the Russian imperial family—they can literally get away with murder—the Russian people are getting tired of them. Nihilists finally blow up Maria’s father-in-law, Czar Alexander II, and other members of the czar’s family. And everyone knows the fate of Maria’s son Nicholas II and his family.

Is it possible that these tragedies did not have to happen? Under inhuman pressure to produce a male heir, Maria’s emotionally brittle daughter-in-law Alexandra gives birth to four healthy daughters before she finally produces a son, the hemophiliac Alexei. Because of the boy’s illness, Alexandra and Nicholas II fall under the spell of Rasputin. Consider what would have happened if Alexandra had her first two daughters, an heir and a spare, and was then allowed to quit.

Maria is fairly good-hearted, but forget about her checking her privilege. According to her, the czar and imperial family were ordained to rule by God. There is no scene in the book more heartbreaking or queasily funny than when Cossacks break into Maria’s bedroom in the middle of the night, and she reminds them that she’s the dowager empress—though by then, it hardly matters. The imperial downfall has already begun.

Gortner is wonderfully subtle, but given the times we live in, the problems are obvious: When a tiny percentage of people hold most of the wealth, it leads to demagoguery. The Romanov Empress relates an important piece of history. It’s also a warning about what comes when a nation is marred by rampant inequality.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If there were ever a cautionary tale about the disasters of patriarchy and inequality, the tale of the Romanovs is it. C.W. Gortner’s engaging historical novel tells the story of the last dowager empress of Russia, Maria Feodorovna, née Princess Dagmar of Denmark.

FictionSpeculative FictionDebut Fiction

An allegory with teeth

Review by Arlene McKanic

A title like A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising suggests a story that is way cool, with lots of spine-chilling action and armies of vampires and vampire slayers. Of course, we think we know who wins in the end. But Raymond A. Villareal’s novel doesn’t quite work like that. His tale is a little disturbing, and that’s a good thing. It functions somewhat as an allegory: The vampires are the 1 percent and everyone else is, well, everyone else.

In Villareal’s world, vampirism is the result of a plain old virus—though there’s nothing plain about a virus that imparts superhuman speed and strength, a greatly lengthened life span, infertility and the obligation to drink human blood and stay out of the sun. Like the vampirism of folklore, the condition is passed along via a bite, a practice that the vampires, who call themselves Gloamings, are reluctant to talk about. But that’s pretty much the only thing they’re modest about. Determined to take over the world, they’re choosy about who they “recreate.” The lucky few tend to be rich and powerful. Folks from the 99 percent are exsanguinated before their bodies are dumped in roadside ditches, or they’re kept on “farms” as a ready blood supply.

Villareal brilliantly and stealthily examines how Gloamings have abandoned being human. Amoral in ways that normals can’t comprehend, the Gloamings only act to advance their situation. This might mean donating blood to sick children, getting Gloaming-friendly legislation passed or murdering political opponents or anyone who’s in their way. These creatures use the levers of government, society and religion to get what they want. And a lot of people fall for it. This becomes the new normal.

A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising is an unsettling book. It’s also a warning.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A title like A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising suggests a story that is way cool, with lots of spine-chilling action and armies of vampires and vampire slayers. Of course, we think we know who wins in the end. But Raymond A. Villareal’s novel doesn’t quite work like that. His tale is a little disturbing, and that’s a good thing. It functions somewhat as an allegory: The vampires are the 1 percent and everyone else is, well, everyone else.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

A magnificent, musical debut

Review by Arlene McKanic

Do you ever wonder what people who play in string quartets are really like? When they come onstage, they seem so ascetic in their concert blacks. Surely, this quality extends to their personal lives. If they are old enough to be married, they must have tidy, quietly happy unions. I must admit to these prejudices, which I didn’t even know I had. So I was shocked when the chief violinist of an ensemble pulls out a cigarette and lights up in the opening pages of Aja Gabel’s brilliant, groundbreaking novel—and then the violinist boinks one of the judges of an upcoming contest and tries to blackmail him.

The message: People in elegant string quartets are just as messed up as everybody else.

In the case of Gabel’s quartet, they’re probably even more messed up than everybody else. There’s brittle Jana; orphaned, sad Brit; bitter Daniel; and rackety, sweet-natured Henry, the youngest and most talented. The Ensemble follows them from ambitious youth to resigned middle age, through hookups and breakups, marriage and children, lonely hotel rooms and crummy apartments. The four characters may not like each other, but they love each other. They are, to their surprise, a family.

Gabel, a musician herself, knows this world intimately. An alarm rings in B-flat, a note one character particularly hates. Their instruments leave marks on them in the form of bruises, divots, “violin hickies” and bad backs, as well as tendonitis—a mere inconvenience to a civilian but destructive for a string musician’s career. Each chapter relates the point of view of one of the musicians, and each section opens with a list of musical pieces that the reader might listen to while reading.

No other novel is quite like The Ensemble.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Do you ever wonder what people who play in string quartets are really like? When they come onstage, they seem so ascetic in their concert blacks. Surely, this quality extends to their personal lives. If they are old enough to be married, they must have tidy, quietly happy unions. I must admit to these prejudices, which I didn’t even know I had. So I was shocked when the chief violinist of an ensemble pulls out a cigarette and lights up in the opening pages of Aja Gabel’s brilliant, groundbreaking novel—and then the violinist boinks one of the judges of an upcoming contest and tries to blackmail him.

FictionThrillerDebut Fiction

A hypnotic debut noir

Review by Arlene McKanic

A novel should stir the emotions, and Tangerine, the debut novel from Christine Mangan, does just that. It made this reviewer boiling mad. And that’s a good thing.

A reader could be forgiven for imagining Tangerine as a Patricia Highsmith spinoff—Mr. Ripley Goes to Morocco. Its villain is a psychopath who would give Tom Ripley—not to mention Hannibal Lecter—pause. Why, Ripley even rhymes with one of the protagonists’ names: Alice Shipley. The other protagonist is her former Bennington roommate, Lucy Mason, who’s shown up out of the Mediterranean blue on the doorstep of Alice and her husband’s home. It is best not to spoil the story and reveal the identity of the baddie. Is it Alice’s miserable, sexist, condescending, unfaithful husband, John? Or is it Joseph, an oily grifter who meets Lucy when she first arrives in Tangier? Is it Alice? Is it Lucy? Is it Alice’s rich, chilly aunt?

At first, Lucy earns some sympathy after she barges in on Alice and John like Blanche DuBois; she is sure to suffer the same fate, since John is such a creep. Then it seems that Joseph has sinister intentions he’ll inevitably act on. Mangan keeps readers guessing for a surprisingly long time, but as the story goes on, it appears the truth was hiding in plain sight. The ending will send you back to the beginning to pick up on all the clues you missed.

Speaking of the book’s ending and my ensuing anger, be warned: There is not even a hint of justice prevailing. The miscreant isn’t all that smart or talented, but is simply ruthless in the way of a cold-blooded reptile or politician. Readers will hope that Mangan, like Highsmith, writes a series of books about this villain, if for no other reason than to see whether the lowlife gets his or her comeuppance or slips away one more time.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A novel should stir the emotions, and Tangerine, the debut novel from Christine Mangan, does just that. It made this reviewer boiling mad. And that’s a good thing.

FictionDebut FictionComing of Age

Follow you anywhere

Review by Arlene McKanic

Nafkote Tamirat’s debut novel is a story of failure.

This isn’t a spoiler, because we meet the unnamed narrator, a girl in her late teens, and her father as they languish on some forsaken, palmy, unnamed island off the coast of east Africa. They’re there because of a man named Ayale. The book is the story of how this could have possibly happened.

The narrator has a hard life from the start. The American child of Ethiopian immigrants, she first lives with her mother, then is shunted off to her father. Both are majorly ineffectual as parents, and it is no wonder that the young woman is drawn to Ayale, the Ethiopian parking lot attendant of book’s title. She does her homework in the booth at his Boston parking lot and runs errands for him. He is kind and fatherly. He’s also much more than this—Ayale has plans, and none of them are good.

Tamirat has created fascinating and tragic characters. Ayale is charming, inscrutable, megalomaniacal and rotten to the core, and the narrator is a smart, bitter, tough girl—sometimes she carries on like a half-wild teenage boy—who knows that Ayale is bad but doesn’t care, or thinks she can handle it. She needs a father, because her real one doesn’t know what to do with her, doesn’t know how to succeed in America and ends up even more lost on the island.

All this makes the book seem dire, but it’s not. It’s often funny, with barbed, machine-gun dialogue worthy of Aaron Sorkin, but there’s a twist at the end. It happens so suddenly that you’ll miss it if you skip a few lines, but it plunges the tale into darkness. Everything has failed for the narrator: the love of her parents, their hopes for life in America, her friendship with Ayale, Ayale’s own screwy dreams and the island’s utopian vision. Everything has failed, that is, but the narrator. Because she’s the one who’s lived to tell the tale.

Nafkote Tamirat’s debut novel is a story of failure.

This isn’t a spoiler, because we meet the unnamed narrator, a girl in her late teens, and her father as they languish on some palmy, forsaken, unnamed island off the coast of east Africa. They’re there because of a man named Ayale. The book is the story of how this could have possibly happened.

FictionDebut FictionComing of Age

A child navigates a family’s nightmare

Review by Arlene McKanic

Readers learn several things very quickly in the first devastating pages of Rhiannon Navin’s debut. We learn that the narrator, Zach Taylor, is a 6-year-old boy. He is hunkered down in a closet with his teacher and classmates while a maniac shoots up their school. When the crisis is over, we learn something about his family: His mother, Melissa, does the family’s emotional work because his father, Jim, is constricted in ways that seem a throwback to Sinclair Lewis’ Babbit. Jim’s mother has taught Zach how to hold back threatening tears by pinching the bridge of his nose, much as we suspect she taught Jim. Then we learn that Zach’s older brother, Andy, has been murdered.

That’s the worst of it, but that’s not all of it. Nine-year-old Andy was not an easy kid to like, to say the least. The burden of dealing with their eldest son strained Jim and Melissa’s marriage, and it’s likely there were times that his family wanted him to get lost, at least for a few hours. How does a family pull itself together after the slaughter of someone they were a little ambivalent about? There are times when you fear that they won’t; it’s not a spoiler to say that Melissa nearly loses her mind from grief. How do the Taylor men, raised to be stoic, deal with any of this?

The title, Only Child, is clever in several ways. Andy’s death leaves Zach as his parents’ only child. He is also only a child and, like so many kids his age, inadvertently wise. His wisdom comes from innocence: The reader understands things that he can’t possibly fathom at his age. We know why his neighbor, a woman whose child also died in the massacre, stands in the rain wearing only her T-shirt. We can guess why Andy has a closed coffin during the wake. Zach, this bright kid who shares a name with a dull president, knows only that things are bad and he wants them to get better. He also knows what he has to do to make that happen.

Though Zach’s character could have benefited from being a little older, Navin succeeds in the tricky job of narrating her tale through the eyes of a young child. She views her characters with compassion, even as they are not on their best behavior. How could they be? Only Child shows the painful aftermath of a calamity that’s becoming all too common.

Readers learn several things very quickly in the first devastating pages of Rhiannon Navin’s debut. We learn the narrator, Zach Taylor, is a 6-year-old boy. He is hunkered down in a closet with his teacher and classmates while a maniac shoots up their school.

FictionInspirational Fiction

A town at the heart of something supernatural

Review by Arlene McKanic

Something strange is going on in Bellhaven, South Carolina, an exurb of Charleston. It’s the spring of 1920, and everything is blooming at once. That means the Carolina jessamine, the honeysuckle, daffodils, dogwoods, azaleas, crepe myrtles and magnolias. The whole town looks like a Monet painting. If you’re familiar with the South, you know that just doesn’t happen. But here it is in James Markert’s tale of destiny and good versus evil in the Low Country.

Another bright, strange thing is the town itself. It’s multiracial, like many historical Southern towns, but everyone is equal. The African-American friends of the white protagonist, Ellsworth Newberry, feel free to come into his home and call him by his first name. The town hosts a congenial jumble of the Abrahamic religions and their offshoots. One character calls Bellhaven the highway to heaven, and it just may be. It seems that everything bad that happens here comes from the outside, like an infection.

One of these pathogens is a strange little chapel in the woods just outside of town. At first, it’s in a place of surpassing beauty, with blossoming trees and singing birds. Inside, the very air is fresh and invigorating, and people who enter hear the voices of their deceased loved ones, granting them forgiveness. The townspeople long to believe this is unalloyed goodness, but it isn’t. It’s “fool’s gold,” as Ellsworth says, a trick of the devil that must be resisted.

All Things Bright and Strange feels like an allegory, probably a religious one. Consider that four of the main characters are named Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel. Then again, it might be an allegory of the evils of slavery and genocide, as the chapel is a place where slaves and Native Americans were tortured and killed. It may even be an allegory of drug addiction, as the need to revisit the chapel becomes a nearly irresistible craving. It may be all three. Whatever is going on, this magical novel warns us to be careful what we wish for. We may get it.

Something strange is going on in Bellhaven, South Carolina, an exurb of Charleston. It’s the spring of 1920, and everything is blooming at once. That means the Carolina jessamine, the honeysuckle, daffodils, dogwoods, azaleas, crepe myrtles and magnolias. The whole town looks like a Monet painting. If you’re familiar with the South, you know that just doesn’t happen. But here it is in James Markert’s tale of destiny and good versus evil in the Low Country.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

By the light of the flames

Review by Arlene McKanic

Critics claim that stories about adultery are going out of style. Contemporary adultery is so commonplace and banal that no one’s interested. Does any 21st-century woman stand to lose what poor, dumb Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina did back in the day? With Jamie Quatro’s stunning The Fire Sermon, the answer may not be as simple as we suppose.

Margaret Ellmann is a writer and amateur theologian. Brought up as an evangelical Christian, her faith is real and important to her, and thus a bit vexing. It keeps her tethered to a man who, though somewhat repulsive as a lover, is a great father, provider and citizen. Maggie would adore her two lovely kids whether she was devout or not. They are teenagers when she starts to correspond with a poet named James Abbott. Their correspondence—handwritten letters and email—is heady, with shared intelligence and enthusiasm.

Maggie and James meet at a conference in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. Later, they meet again at a conference in Chicago. This time, James’ wife isn’t around. Neither is Maggie’s husband. She will spend the rest of her life wondering just how what happened could have happened. As her kids grow up and leave home, as her hair turns gray, as her husband starts to slip gently into dementia, Maggie will wonder what her affair meant and how it fits into her relationship with God. Could it be that her out-of-control passion for James was just a simulacrum of the passion she should have for God? If it was, was it a sin? Would God have understood if she’d run away with James? After all, Buddha’s Fire Sermon teaches that everything is burning, and to understand this is a path to enlightenment.

These questions aren’t the usual ones you see in a contemporary novel, and they make The Fire Sermon gripping.

Critics claim that stories about adultery are going out of style. Contemporary adultery is so commonplace and banal that no one’s interested. Does any 21st-century woman stand to lose what poor, dumb Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina did back in the day? With Jamie Quatro’s stunning The Fire Sermon, the answer may not be as simple as we suppose.

FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

A New Orleans symphony

Review by Arlene McKanic

Has anyone written the Great Novel of New Orleans? If not, Nathaniel Rich’s sprawling, funny, tragic, generous new work, King Zeno, comes close. It reminded this reviewer of John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy, with its clever melding of real and fictional events, its snippets of newspaper articles and astonishingly memorable characters.

Like the U.S.A. novels, the action in King Zeno takes place around the time of World War I. An axe murderer is preying on Italian grocers and their families, and sometimes tosses what’s left of them into the dig site for the Industrial Canal. Sicilian-born Beatrice Vizzini is bankrolling the construction of the canal, which will connect the Mississippi with Lake Pontchartrain. (The canal is real; Beatrice is fictional.) The imperious Beatrice is ever worried about her son, Giorgio, a hulking brute who is probably not as stupid as he wants everyone to think he is.

Detective Bill Bastrop is on the Axman case. He is just back from the trenches and suffering from what we would now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. More than this, he shot an innocent man suspected of being a robber—though this wasn’t taken very seriously, as the man was African-American. On the other side of town, Isadore “King” Zeno is a young man who can play a fierce cornet but has a pregnant wife and mother-in-law to support. The money just isn’t rolling in—until it is, thanks to a prank that he almost regrets.

Eventually, Bill and Isadore, Beatrice and Giorgio find themselves tangled in the Axman’s mayhem. Rich not only knows these folks and their loved ones, but he also knows New Orleans. He loves the honky-tonks, cathouses and bayous, the names of its streets and even the fetid mud and miasmic summer heat. He is cognizant of the city’s racial hierarchies, which may not be as brutal as those in neighboring Mississippi but still have the power to crush young black men. Readers will genuinely worry for Isadore and his friends, ever threatened by this sledgehammer of racism. Because of this, the ending is a nail-biter—with a twist.

King Zeno is the New Orleans novel we’ve been waiting for.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Has anyone written the Great Novel of New Orleans? If not, Nathaniel Rich’s sprawling, funny, tragic, generous new work, King Zeno, comes close. It reminded this reviewer of John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy, with its clever melding of real and fictional events, its snippets of newspaper articles and astonishingly memorable characters.

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