That quintessentially American icon, the suburban shopping mall, is at the center of this quiet and pleasing debut novel. This particular mall, in a small town in Pennsylvania, is dying, and only a few shops are still open, with the novel focusing on a few people who work at this mall.
Of these people, the best characterized are the beguiling Jackson Huang, 9 years old, and his mother Tina, a single parent who is a hair stylist. They have a solid and sweet relationship, but each has a aspirational secret: Jackson dreams of being a magician and Tina wants to go to art school. He secretly does card tricks, and she secretly draws on scraps of paper. Jackson and Tina are the most appealing characters by some length.
Maria is a high school senior who works at the fried-chicken food shop, and resents the fact that she didn’t get the main part in the school musical. She is described rather blandly as ‘beautiful’ over and over, and minor characters keep telling her (and the reader) that she’s beautiful and talented. But just beauty and talent do not necessarily make an interesting character, and Maria remains less engaging than Jackson.
A tad better drawn is Kevin, married to Gwen. Kevin and Gwen are academics in literature: Gwen is a brilliant poet teaching at the community college, and Kevin is an English ABD (‘All But Dissertation’, in American academic slang) who has been working on this dissertation for a decade without significant progress. They are an interracial couple, and live in a ‘tiny house’ in the backyard of Gwen’s mother along with their six-year old twins. Academic job-hunting problems and the poor salaries and job insecurity were described with spot-on accuracy.
Next door to Keven and Gwen lives Ro, ninety years old and somewhat racist. She is not a likeable character, which could make her interesting, but there is little of interest in the description of her life. At ninety, one would expect some health concerns, but in this case, she is in perfect if unlikely health, and her only struggle is that
I always say the wrong thing
Will Kevin ever finish his dissertation or will he abandon academia? Will Maria make it big in show business? Will Gwen get published? Will Ro start treating her black neighbours as just humans (after 40 years of living next to them)? What happens to Jackson and Tina? Will there be angst and tension between the characters?
Here’s the short answer: all the characters change over the course of the book. Some of the changes are precipitated by a traumatic incident at the mall. This is dealt with rather briskly, and I found its buildup unconvincing. The teenager who perpetrates the traumatic event is ‘creepy’, we are told multiple times
with his pale skin and gray eyes and crackly voice
he’s really pale and thin, and has gray eyes, and he usually wears gray too, like he doesn’t want anybody to notice him
In this author’s world, unusual-looking people seem to be suspicious, which is a somewhat simplistic take. The boy can hardly help his pale skin and light gray eyes.
In You Are Here, physicality plays a large role. Maria’s beauty is often mentioned, and so is Kevin’s messy orange beard. The ‘grayness’ of the creepy teenager is mentioned whenever he appears. As Kevin starts finding himself, he physically changes into a clean-shaven, more American-wholesome person. The only characters who are never physically described are Gwen and her mother, the two black characters.
it’s difficult not to compare this book with Richard Russo’s Empire Falls, which deals with a similar traumatic event with much more depth and understanding.
You Are Here is not a powerful book, but it is a pleasant read about mostly pleasant people living ordinary lives. Their concerns are not earth shattering, but they are largely realistic. By the end of the book, they have all gained in self-awareness. But the only ones I cared about were Jackson and Tina.
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