I seem to be reading a lot of modern lit lately despite my propensity towards disliking them. Frederick Reiken recently had an article on a Glimmer Train bulletin, and in looking him up, I read descriptions of his two novels. Both looked interesting, so I ordered them from the library. His second novel came in first, so it’s the first one I read and am now reviewing. I do admit the first novel actually looked more interesting, and I’ll be reading it soon. Take it as a good sign that I still want to read it after finishing this one!

I did like this book. I wasn’t jumping out of my chair the way I was with The Jane Austen Book Club, but this wasn’t bad. It’s a character-based story about a 4-person family who has fallen apart in the late 70s: the husband, who cheats on his wife; the wife, who has some sort of undiagnosed psychological disorder and has spells of absolute insanity; the older sister, Dani – well, she’s not talked about a whole lot, actually, that was one of the points of the book I’d have liked to see more on; and the younger brother, Anthony, a hockey player struggling through adolescence (especially with regards to girls) and from whose pov the story is told (for the most part anyway). The story is set up, in the main, in a series of stories about events, told in a legend-ish format (hence the title). While this is mainly from Anthony’s pov, a lot of it is third person (as in ‘Anthony went to a hockey game’). It’s a little convoluted to actually discuss the setup of the book, because really the plot isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that each of the characters are having to come to terms with a whole lot that’s happening – with relationships, with their family, with friendships, etc. There were a couple things I didn’t like – not knowing more about Dani, for instance, or the number of times people started vomiting – but for the most part, it was captivating and well done.

Oddly, and completely coincidentally, this book actually has some bizarre parallels with the last book I read (The Eight). Unintentional, I’m sure, but for awhile I was reading both of these books together, one on one day, one the next, so the parallels were more obvious. Both had a lot of Jewish people in it – even some of the same Jewish slang was repeated. They each had a section about the same year in the 70s. Both books had a character with two different colored eyes. And so on. There were probably 10 or so parallels between them. I know this makes no difference to anything and it’s completely unrelated to any review of either book, but it was interesting enough that I thought I’d note it.

I would say this is a pretty good book if you like character books. There is nothing out of the ordinary. It’s about ordinary people trying to make sense of their lives, and maybe even give them meaning. In the end, I didn’t feel like I’d learned anything in particular that I haven’t already learned from life (though I think there are lessons to be learned, this just happened to touch on ones not relevant to my current life), and I’m not sure I will remember these characters in five years, because they really are very ordinary. (To me, this is what the definition of ‘realism’ should be.) But at the same time, I like this type of book, and it was nice to read, the same way that it’s nice to study people and their habits. A psychological study far more interesting than a non-fiction study. The mother in particular is fascinating, but abnormal psychology is my kind of thing. Reiken writes well, and I’m interested to see what his debut novel is like.

*Tacked on later: I was thinking about this later in the night and realized that it isn’t that I will probably forget the characters. It’s more like this book is written in a reminiscing way. The scenes and stories have a memory-type quality with a quiet sort of power. They don’t beat at the forefront of my brain like many book images do, but I have a feeling that for years they will periodically float before me in a haunting, dreamlike way. In twenty years I might suddenly think of the little anorexic boy with the bear claw over his hand in the hospital, or the empty syringes washing up on the beach, and I’ll remember it the same way I remember stories friends told me in my childhood, or maybe even the way I remember stories from my own childhood. I might try to focus on them and wonder who told them to me, or if I might have read about it on CNN.com once. They are so realistic and ordinary that they transcend the story-scene category. The characters could be people from your own life, and the events, too. I won’t remember the characters individually, but I will wonder, incorrectly, who I knew that once saw instruments in a landfill, or who I knew who played starfish wrestling with their friends. And I have to say, once I realized this fact, I became much more impressed by the book. I had to add this.

**Note: It did not take long for my positive opinion of this book to sour. Reading the debut book – which was basically just another version of this one – started the souring, and the fact that a few days later, I couldn’t even remember the book – that didn’t help. Now, even reading through the description here, I have absolutely no idea what this book was about. I literally remember one scene from the two books by Reiken that I read, and I don’t remember which book it was.