You know how some novels are so good that as you are reading them, you are making a mental note to find more writing by the same author? Well, this is the opposite – I am making a mental note not to bother with other books by Noah Hawley. (I’m reading this one for my book club.)
It is a tedious read despite a potentially very exciting plotline, because the writing is so pedestrian and its concerns so apparently constrained – it is obsessed with millionaires and billionaires, and in how much money they have. There are constant ‘calculations’ sprinkled liberally throughout:
Among the five of them, there was a net worth of almost a billion dollars.
p128
He is the 9th richest person in the world and even with only one-third pf her inheritance vested, Layla Mueller is the 399th.
p119
At current market value,” he tells them, “JJ’s trust is worth a hundred and three million dollars.
p111
There are so many mentions of chauffeurs, housekeepers, secretaries, and serving staff of all manner, cliches of eating fIfty-dollar steaks and drinking top-shelf scotch, and practically every second character seems insanely wealthy and privileged, with the author seeming to relish the details of their wealth and privilege to the point of obsession.
The billionaire loved this idea, of controlling the news, as David knew he would. He was a billionaire afterall, and billionaires get to be billionaires by taking control.
p55
Her [Sarah’s] husband [Bill Kipling] had a hard time with conversations that weren’t about money. […] It’s just that he’d forgotten what it was like to have a mortgage or a car loan. What it was to be getting by, to go to a store and have to check the price of something before you buy it.
p134
Yes, okay, we get it, this novel has a cast which contains many extremely super-duper, rich-beyond-normal characters. There is so much telling and hardly any showing, that it is not a lot of fun to read.
And it should be fun to read – the plot goes that a private plane takes off from Martha’s Vineyard bound for New York, and goes down into the ocean with 3 crew (pilot, co-pilot and air stewardess), David Bateman (whose plane it is) his wife Maggie, David’s security man, David and Maggie’s children (9 year old Rachel and 4 year old JJ), Scott Burroughs, a painter friend of Maggie’s, and Ben and Sarah Kipling, work associates. Scott and JJ are the only survivors of the crash, and only because Scott is such a strong swimmer that he was able to swim for 8 hours in the dark and cold seas, with a dislocated shoulder, towing the 4 year old. The story thereafter runs both forward and in the past, filling in the background stories of those who did not survive, as well as how events unfolded in the investigation of the crash and how Scott and JJ fared.
The problem with this book is that the writing is so run-of-the-mill that one simply does not much care for any of the characters. The ones who did not survive – well, the reader only knew them for a few passing moments at the start of the book before the plane crash happened, and their stories thereafter is not of that much interest nor told compellingly. The various parties grinding their axes in the wake of the disaster and investigation are mostly unpleasant people, and also uninteresting. Scott is of course our protagonist, but it is difficult to feel anything for him as the author insists on telling rather than letting the reader develop a relationship with the character. There should be such suspense and interest given the plotline and dramatic survival of 2 of the passengers, but this book is a cautionary tale of how even the most interesting of stories can be rendered lack-lustre depending on how it is narrated. Too many cliches, too many stock characters, too many 2-D portrayals of people. Too many heroes and villains, painted in primary colours. Not badly painted, just boringly so.
The second half gets a little better as the crew characters are actually better drawn than the passenger characters. However, there are a lot of story lines that go nowhere – the investigation, the FBI agents, Scott’s story, etc. The ending – there is nothing much to give away or spoil – is one of those where there is no conclusion really, no loose ends tied up, just everything left mid-air, so to speak. Yes, we do find out what happened to the plane, but so what? It is incredible that such an exciting story can be told in a way which leaves a reader feeling, and so what?
To be fair, this is not an awful book. It was not an awful read. There is nothing terribly wrong with the novel. The narrative is like background music, non-demanding. It flowed quickly, and was over quickly. If I was bored silly on a flight and had nothing else except a Noah Hawley book to read, I’d read it. But first I’d ask if there were any other books available.
Recent Comments