reviews The Innocents
FICTION
Going to the chapel? By Jillian Quint
—Harvey Freedenberg
In the wake of the 100th anniversary of Edith Wharton’s birth, there has been much discussion of the writer, from Jonathan Franzen’s polarizing New Yorker piece to the inevitable “Downton Abbey” comparisons. But in many ways, Francesca Segal’s The Innocents is the most ambitious commentary of them all. In this impressive debut novel, Wharton’s masterpiece The Age of Innocence is imagined as a contemporary tale, set in the insular Jewish suburb of North West London. In Segal’s update, “gentleman lawyer” Newland Archer is recast as Adam Newman, a good Jewish boy set to marry his high school sweetheart, Rachel Gilbert, whom he met on a trip to Israel in high school. All is going according to plan when Rachel’s long-estranged cousin Ellie re-enters the community after being kicked out of Columbia University for making a pornographic video. Tall, sexy and irreverent, Ellie is like nobody Adam By Francesca Segal has ever met—certainly the exact opposite of his bubbly, carb-counting Voice, $25, 288 pages, and achingly familiar fiancée. As the wedding approaches, Adam’s desire ISBN 9781401341817, eBook available for Ellie increases and, much like Wharton’s cowardly hero, he struggles with how much rebellion he is willing to embrace. Rachel and Ellie are more self-assured than their Age of Innocence counterparts. Ellie recognizes Adam’s feelings from the onset and is both discouraging and complicit in his pseudo-conquest. Likewise, Rachel emerges as more intelligent than she initially lets on, finding ways to re-engage her precious “Ads” at the very moments he seems closest to abandoning her. This three-person power play is interesting enough already, but what makes The Innocents so smart and compelling is the way in which Segal renders the story entirely her own. Via her expert knowledge of her characters’ milieu, readers are granted intimate access to a wonderfully specific world. Yet the Gilberts’ upper-middle class preoccupation with Purim plays and Friday night dinners and holidays on the Red Sea will ring true not only to those familiar with such traditions, but also to anyone who comes from a similarly cloistered community.
Say Nice Things About Detroit By Scott Lasser
Norton $25.95, 352 pages ISBN 9780393082999 Audio, eBook available
FICTION
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Whether it’s founded on a reputation for rampant crime or the recent travails of the automobile industry, is there any American city more maligned than Detroit? It’s something of an act of authorial courage, then, that Scott Lasser has chosen to set his fourth novel in the Motor City, but with Detroit taking its first halting steps toward a revival, the setting seems eminently fitting for a story about fresh starts and second chances.
When lawyer David Halpert returns to Michigan from Denver to help care for his mother, who’s suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, he’s greeted by the shocking news that an ex-girlfriend and her stepbrother, a retired FBI undercover agent, have been gunned down in Detroit’s Greektown neighborhood. Through those killings he reconnects with Carolyn Evans, sister of the murdered woman, and meets Marlon Booker, a young man who’s struggling to slip the tightening bonds of the drug trade and linked by a family friendship to the other victim. Blending an uncluttered, fastmoving plot with more character development than is sometimes evident in popular fiction, Lasser seems as interested in exploring David’s sorrow over the death of his teenage son in an automobile accident or the emotional pull of his attraction to Carolyn as he is in unraveling the
About Detroit with their perceptions of that beleaguered city fundamentally changed, but this appealing story may prompt some to hope it will receive the chance at redemption that Scott Lasser so generously extends to his characters.
mystery that’s centered in Marlon’s dangerous world. Though he’s chosen to set the novel’s main action in 2006, with some of Detroit’s worst days still ahead, Lasser effectively highlights the racial and economic tensions that have plagued the city for decades. He understands, for one thing, that Eight Mile Road, made famous by Eminem, is much more than a physical boundary separating the city from its more affluent suburbs. That sharp divide is symbolized by David’s decision to move into the Palmer Woods neighborhood, once home to wealthy Detroiters who have long since departed for mostly white enclaves. It’s a brave choice that’s greeted with skepticism by his African-American neighbors and a decision that’s revelatory of his character. It’s not likely many readers will come away from Say Nice Things
The Absolutist By John Boyne
Other Press $16.95, 320 pages ISBN 9781590515525 eBook available
HISTORICAL FICTION
John Boyne has a gift for crafting historical tales that hold all the richness and scope of a period while still maintaining a sense of intimacy. The Absolutist might be his most intimate story yet—a journey inside the mind of a man who’s seen the horror of war, and the tale of his quest to somehow find peace in the lonely aftermath. In the fall of 1919, World War I veteran Tristan Sadler travels from London to Norwich to deliver a package of letters to the sister of Will Bancroft, a soldier Tristan met while training for the war in 1916. Tristan bears the scars of war on his body, but the real reason for his journey is the scars on his heart. The world knows only that Tristan and Will were friends, and how Will officially met his end. But the truth is that Tristan and Will were something more, and what really happened to Will is a secret that cuts Tristan deeper than any war wound. Many volumes of historical fiction swell to massive length thanks to the author’s penchant for period details and historical info-dumps. Amid other works of its genre, The Absolutist is surprisingly slim. Boyne conveys the period accurately and elegantly, but the characters—specifically Tristan, who narrates—are the stars. This isn’t a novel about WWI; it’s a novel about the unique horror of one man’s experience, and Boyne makes every word count. By the end, when Tristan’s secrets