Tresspasses: Dangerous Liaisons Amidst The Troubles

 

Trespasses (2022)

By Louise Kennedy

Riverhead, 293 pages.

★★★

 

 

It has been said that Ireland is the only Western European nation that never experienced the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or the Reformation. That's a mild exaggeration and heaven knows my Scottish ancestors have their share of lowlights, but there's indeed a heavy air of tragedy hanging over Irish history. This shows up so often in literature that I've dubbed it the Angela’s Ashes* Syndrome. Every now and then Emily will finish a depressing Irish novel, hurl it across the room, and proclaim, “Thank God I'm not Irish!” All of which is to say that Trespasses by Louise Kennedy is that kind of novel.

 

It is set during The Troubles of the early 1980s, a time in which sectarian strife in Northern Ireland burned with white-hot passion and senseless violence. Comely twenty-four-year-old year old Belfast resident Cushla Lavery is a primary school teacher whose students routinely witness bloodshed and lose family members. Imagine being a second-grader in a place where you understand homicide better than your ABC’s. Cushla carries the added burden of trying to be a Good Samaritan to seven-year old Davy McGeown and his impoverished family.

 

Cushla is a bit luckier than many in that she lives in a neighborhood in which there is fragile tolerance between Catholics and Protestants. There's no love lost, but as long as everyone respects what is perceived to be the natural order of things, the groups just disparage each other in private and drink in the same pubs, like the one owned by Cushla’s older brother Eamonn and frequented by Michael Agnew. He’s a Protestant–a Prod in the local parlance–but he’s also a civil rights a lawyer who champions the view that the British government has wronged Northern Ireland’s Catholics. The Laverys’  widowed mother Gina helps out at the pub, but she's an alky, which is hard on inventory. To help keep finances in line, Cushla often doubles as a barmaid. That’s where Michael and Cushla meet. Michael and several other Prods even ask Cushla to help them learn Irish Gaelic.

 

Of course, the bigger trouble behind The Troubles is that organized groups such as the Ulster Defence Association (Protestant) and the Irish Republican Army (Catholic) are not on board with a philosophy of live and let live. If you think either group is above recruiting youngsters or the not-so-bright to their respective causes, remind yourself that fanaticism doesn’t work that way. Prods and Catholics alike have ears to the ground to dole out retribution for those who violate their norms. This is so pronounced that the Irish National Liberation Army doesn't even trust the regular IRA to be fanatical enough in its anti-Protestantism hatred.

 

You can imagine that Cushla’s growing attraction to Michael isn't the wisest thing for her career, her family, or their respective safety. Yet Cushla pursues her infatuation even though Michael is married, has children, and is nearly two decades older than she. As such matters often go, each is foolish enough to think they can keep their relationship secret. One way Cushla tries to cover her tracks is to allow others to think she's dating Gerry Devlin, a work colleague, but it's not a very good cover.

 

Trespasses is a romance, but with elements of potential tragedy.  At over 670,000 residents Belfast is a medium-sized city, but during The Troubles it functioned more like a patchwork of neighborhoods than a single municipality. In a place where no one entirely trusts anyone else, the accidental and incidental can be deadly. There are always those too blind to see their own hate, including Father Slattery, a 60s-something vestment-wearing bully and misanthrope. But at least he’s visible; it’s the ones in the shadows who are more venomous.

 

Kennedy does a fine job of taking us inside Belfast before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement established the framework for a peace that has (mostly) held. How did Cushla and Michael fare before that happened? That would be a spoiler. I will say, though, that Trespasses is Kennedy’s debut novel and that, though she spins a good tale, she too often telegraphs where the novel is headed. Her health woes and the fact that she channeled childhood memories imbue the novel with urgency, but more ambiguity would have made it an even stronger work.

 

Rob Weir

 

* The reference is to Frank McCourt’s 1996 novel, which is unrelentingly bleak.

Day Needs Reasons Not to Close the Curtain

 

DAY (2023)

By Michael Cunningham

Random House, 288 pages.

★★

 

 

 

 

Michael Cunningham is such a great stylist that he could imbue insurance forms with elegance. But would you want to read them? I devoured past works such as The Hours and The Home at the End of the World, but Day reads like a treatment in search of something. What, exactly? Perhaps a likable character?

 

The novel’s central device/contrivance, is to unpeel the travails of a handful of Brooklynites by visiting the same day, April 5, in three consecutive years: 2019, 2020, and 2021. You might associate 2020 with the darkest days of Covid, including a nationwide lockdown, but why April 5? Good question. Covid is woven into the novel, but its major theme (intended or not) is the sunset of Generation X. That could be rich fodder for a book, but Cunningham squanders lovely prose via dialogue and interactions reminiscent of a Woody Allen movie in which cloying New Yorkers wallow in their neuroses.

 

Robbie Walker is the novel’s pivot, even when he’s not present. He’s a gay 6^th grade teacher who has been unlucky in love, work, and apartments. He is so bonded with his sister Isabel that since childhood they have fashioned tales of Wolfe and Lyla, imaginary alter egos. Robbie lives in the leaky attic of the small brownstone of Isabel, her husband Dan Byrne, and their two children, 10-year-old Nathan and five-year-old Violet. Though everyone loves Robbie, the kids need separate bedrooms. Robbie is burnt out, can’t find an affordable place to live, and can’t imagine being gay outside of the Metro area. (Really? Has he never heard of Northampton, Ogunquit, Provincetown, Key West, or even Manhattan, Kansas?)

 

Robbie’s not the only character facing 40 with a bagful of blues. Isabel works for an upscale magazine and fears either she or it will fold; Dan is an ex-rocker who came close to making it, but fell short. Addiction didn’t help. He’s trying to shift into sensitive mode, but his dyed locks, wardrobe, and unfulfilled dreams leave him stuck in gear, which doesn’t help pay the mortgage. Dan’s brother Garth was a sperm donor for English professor Chess’s infant son Odin and had the misfortune of falling in love with both of them, though his attraction to misanthropic Chess is hard to fathom. Garth also makes sculptures that bear the names of Shakespeare plays, most of which are abstract and vaguely disturbing. The art world yawns. 

 

This, mind, is just the 2019 setup, but given the respective levels of self-absorption and discontent, you already have a good idea of where things are headed. In essence, there are five characters who have adult responsibilities without adult mindsets. Such matters are more commonplace these days, but an overabundance of delayed development is neither compelling nor interesting.

 

Day often toddles, because the characters aren’t written with enough bandwidth to race past their own narcissism. Cunningham is at his sharpest in showing the disintegration of Wolfe and Lyla, who go from Robbie and Isabel’s private support system to a social media phenomenon whose followers can’t discern them as fictive or spot logical inconsistencies. I believe Cunningham wanted us to see how they paralleled “real” life among his principals–Dan’s off/on/off musical career, Garth’s artistic moment, Isabel’s depression, Chess’ emotional numbness– but their respective stases too often stagnates the narrative. Only Robbie steps outside of himself by moving to Iceland. Huh? It sets up something important, but how a guy who thinks living an hour from Greater New York is intolerable decides upon Iceland is baffling.

 

By the time we get to 2021, everyone is a mess. This includes Nathan, now a surly tween brat, and Violet who is on her way to becoming a prima donna. If we believe Jean Piaget and British director Michael Apted that a child’s basic personality is formed by age 7, the sins of the parents will live on. (I guess we can always root for Odin!) Nonetheless, the shorter third part of the novel is where Cunningham is most affecting. By shifting decisively to tragedy, he hones a sharp edge that induces pathos rather than annoyance. I wonder, though, how many readers will have closed the curtains upon Day before they get there. Cunningham writes too well to call it a failed novel, but I doubt few will call it a notable one.

 

Rob Weir

Closer: Mike Nichols Carnal Knowledge II?

 

Closer (2004)

Directed by Mike Nichols

Columbia Pictures, 104 minutes, R (nudity, sex, adult situations)

★★★

 

 

Director Mike Nichols died in 2014. He excelled as a Hollywood auteur who probed identity issues and the complexities of adu
lt life, as he did in Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) and The Graduate (1967). In 1971, he waded into the destructiveness of lust in Carnal Knowledge, a film considered scandalous in its day for its unbridled discussions of sex. In numerous ways, Closer is Carnal Knowledge II set three decades later.

 

On a crowded London street, novelist Dan Woolf (Jude Law with hair) notices an alluring dye-job redhead smiling as she walks toward him. Their eyes lock a moment too long and she is knocked down by a vehicle. She is bruised and bleeding; Woolf (note the surname) hails a cab and takes her to the hospital. She’s an American stripper who gives her name as Alicia Ayres (Natalie Portman). Soon the two are living together, though Alicia is younger and innocent, her occupation notwithstanding.

 

Dan has a roving eye, however. At a book jacket photo shoot he puts the moves on shutterbug Anna Cameron (Julia Roberts). She’s married, but nonetheless passionately kisses Daniel. He also enjoys trolling online sex chat rooms, where he poses as a woman and revels in his puppet-string power over men on the other end. That’s how dermatologist Larry Gray (Clive Owen) enters the picture. Dan tells Larry his name is “Anna” and arranges a rendezvous the next day at the aquarium. It’s a sick setup as he knows that Anna Cameron will be there. After an awkward approach, Larry and Anna chat and are attracted to each other. Fast forward and Anna is divorced and married to Larry.

 

Don’t expect syrupy endings from Mike Nichols. Closer is a double pas de deux in which Dan pursues Anna, Larry pursues Alicia, marriages are made and broken, and the cycle repeats. Dan and Larry are soon trapped in a don’t love the one you’re with game; when one is with Anna he longs again for Alicia and vice versa. If it seems a dirty male fantasy, don’t jump to conclusions. Nichols lets no one off the hook, so it’s never clear who is calling the shots, who is a willing victim, or who is crossing whom. Alicia, for instance, does seem a child at times–Larry says as much–but then again, in between partners she bares it all in a sex club and acts like a polite dominatrix.

 

In essence, everything and everybody looks one way on the surface, but might be something else altogether. Nichols cleverly parallels the narrative with two pieces of soundtrack music, Mozart’s 1790 opera Cosí fan tutte and Damien Rice’s “The Blower’s Daughter.”  Mozart’s work translates “so do they,” by which he meant women. So do they what? Exactly! “The Blower’s Daughter” is an enigmatic song about a woman who is a clarinet teacher who also works in a call center. A little Freud anyone?

 

Closer was a hit with critics and did well at the box office because it rolled out when Julia Roberts was at the peak of celebrity fame. Audiences were more tepid in their post-viewing assessment of the film because it is, to say the least, not exactly an endorsement of healthy relationships. Marketers also erred in labeling it a romantic drama. There’s plenty of drama, but are we watching romance or simply the fulfillment of lust du jour?  

 

Roberts and Owen shine brightly in the film, with Portman a small step behind. When the camera zooms in on her face, Roberts is absolutely luminous. She also casts an air of a woman in charge–even when she’s not. Owen is at his arch best and brandishes words as if they were an eviscerating sword. Law, though, is arguably too whiny and wimpy to be fully convincing when he tries to turn Machiavellian.

 

The film suffers at times from being more antiseptic than appealing­–as if Nichols is dissecting the psyches and egos of four intensely unlikable people. There are so many ulterior motives that it could be seen as a tale of four adrift amatorcultists. The film’s ending is a riff off that The Usual Suspects, which came out a decade earlier.

 

If you have seen Carnal Knowledge, consider Closer a companion piece. If you’ve not, watch them both for their ensemble acting. Then take a shower!

 

Rob Weir   

Tom Lake Charming, but a One-Trick Pony

 

Tom Lake (2023)

By Ann Patchett

Harper, 320 pages.

★★★

 

 

 

Public school teachers and parents will recognize these scenarios. A student sees you downtown is startled that you’re wearing jeans and sneakers. Do you remember when you assumed your parents had no lives before you came along? To be fair, it’s often hard to imagine someone outside of their customary roles.

 

That’s the central premise of Tom Lake, the latest novel from Ann Patchett, which is  riding high on best-seller lists. It centers on Joe and Lara Nelson, a happily married couple with three young adult children: Emily, Maisie, and Nell. Except for Emily, who wants to stay local, each will soon fly the proverbial coop. In the present they are together on the shores of Lake Michigan, where the Nelsons tend their fruit orchards. Picking a cherry crop is so labor intensive that the daughters wile away the hours by picking Lara’s brain about her years before she married. They know bits and pieces, including that she once dated Peter Duke, an actor who became famous and won an Oscar. In her sullen teen years, Emily imagined that Peter was her real father and would show up to take her away from the farm. Irony alert: Now she’s engaged to the proverbial boy next door and wants to run the orchard when her parents retire. Maisie has her eyes set on becoming a veterinarian and Nell thinks she might take up acting.

 

A story within a story is not exactly the most original premise in literature, but Patchett has written a charming PG-13 novel. Tom Lake riffs off Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. When she was a misunderstood high school kid in Durham, New Hampshire, bucked up by her grandmother Nell, Lara played Emily in Our Town and did so again in college. She was so good that she caught the eye of an avuncular Hollywood agent who sent her to Los Angeles to make a movie. Quite a few completed movies either never get released, or rest in limbo until financing, post production, and distribution issues are ironed out. In the lull, Lara is sent to New York to try out for a Spalding Gray production of Our Town. She did not get the part, so her agent suggested she do summer stock to develop her chops.

 

The novel’s namesake body of water is Tom Lake, Michigan, home to a venerable stage reminiscent of summer theatre in the Berkshires. As it happens, they are doing Our Town and their Emily has just left the cast. Twenty-four-year-old Lara steps in and wows the cast. Before the day is out, she’s sleeping with Peter Duke, four years her elder and  a privileged carefree hunk. Lara recounts her past in pieces and dribbles as she ponders what to confess. Her daughters have seen her film and would not be shocked about sex, but maybe there are parts of her past that Lara prefers to remain private.

 

Legends abound of summer stock drama and trauma that’s not on the stage. The Tom Lake cast is no exception. It was certainly an interesting group: Lara’s black understudy and friend Pallace; Albert, an older actor whom everyone called Uncle Wallace who is overly fond of the bottle; visits from Peter’s older brother Sebastian, a tennis pro; and a director whose Aunt Maisie and Uncle Ken run a cherry farm in Michigan. When part of the cast pays a visit to it, Peter likes it so much he wants to stay. There’s a Great Expectations twist to that trip, and later a break-a-leg moment.

 

In all, Lara had a life-altering summer, and a few subsequent hookups with Peter. But after returning to New York and realizing that Emily was the only role at which she excelled, Lara quit acting. She married Joe Nelson, had three daughters, and never looked back. Of course, her daughters doubt that she had no regrets, but it’s often hard for children to imagine anyone opting for a non-glamorous life. There are also revelations about Joe’s youthful digressions that bring matters into focus and a hint of hold-your-doubts equivocation.

 

Patchett is a gifted writer, but it must be said that Tom Lake is a one-trick pony, a musing on Our Town, which is itself a play within a play. Tom Lake is thus a skillfully written contrivance with many of Wilder’s characters reborn in Michigan. Score it high on the literary scale but middling for originality.    

 

Rob Weir

Wanderers: An All Too Believable Dystopia?

 

Wanderers (2019)

By Chuck Wendig

Del Rey, 800 pages

★★★★ 

 

 

 

These days it is much easier to imagine human destruction than utopia. The Wanderer is a griping look at dystopia. Chuck Wendig published his novel in 2019, but it proved prescient. Can we imagine a contagion first made manifest in a distant locale that inexorably spreads? Check. Pandemic denial? Check. Paranoic politics? Check. A rogue AI program? Maybe! 

 

It opens in the American Heartlands when Shana’s 15-year-old younger sister Nessie becomes robotic and non-responsive. Attempts to take a blood sample fail because no needle can penetrate her. Nor does she speak, respond to others, or feel anything as she begins her barefoot trek toward some unknown destination. It’s as if she is sleepwalking, but can’t wake up. Before long she is joined by thirty-odd others. They relentlessly march and are dubbed “Walkers.”

 

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has theories but no answers. Enter Benji Ray, an African American fired by the agency for falsifying data to prevent pork contamination. He is unofficially brought back into the fold by former mentor Martin Vargas–to the delight of several former colleagues–not because Vargas trusts him, but because Benji has been selected by Black Swan, an algorithm program (and perhaps more). When the CDC fails to detect an immediate cause, the Internet conspiracy machine kicks into high gear. Bio terrorists? Foreigners? A science experiment gone wrong? Attention-seeking fakes? The only thing known for certain is that attempts to impede the Walkers causes them to explode–literally.

 

As others succumb to the mystery ailment, still another crazed theory arises, a government conspiracy that adherents insist is what one might expect when a woman, Nora Hunt, is the President of the United States. That’s the official line of Fox News and red-meat Republicans who push for a military solution. The Walkers, though, are accompanied by Shepherds, human-shield friends and family of the afflicted, as well as potential caretakers should they wake up. As the Walkers’ numbers increase, Matthew Bird, an Indiana preacher, adds backwoods religion to the equation. Bird is an unknown until Ozark Stover, a survivalist/white supremacist, turns the reverend into a media sensation. Bird embraces his instant fame and dubs the Walkers the “Devil’s Pilgrims.” Stover is determined to obliterate the Walkers in a metaphorical showdown at the O.K. Corral. Time is not on the side of the CDC, as even President Hunt, who is getting clobbered in the polls, is willing to turn the matter over to Homeland Security if the contagion isn’t stopped. In essence, we have a battle between science and politics. Sound familiar? Check.

 

Wanderers is a nail-biting drama that riffs off contemporary history, including Trumpism. It is a long novel in part because Wendig interweaves personal stories. The Shepherds are joined by Marcy Reyes, a former cop whose life is a mess, but seems to draw energy and strength from the Walkers. They are also joined, for dubious reasons, by a cynical pop punk/hard rock musician, Shana has issues to resolve with her father, several love affairs blossom, Bird finds himself estranged from his wife and son, and Benji learns that the contagion predates the Walkers. Meanwhile, Stover begins to mobilize his militia, many of whom are anxious to discredit Hunt and the non-white team that dominates the investigation, including Sadie, Black Swan’s inventor. Time is literally running out. There are 1,024 Walkers, but for others the contagion is fatal and the end of the Anthropocene is a distinct possibility.

 

But what of Black Swan? What indeed. And why are the Walkers inexorably marching toward Ouray, Colorado, a played out mining town of fewer than a thousand people?  Is Black Swan the cause of the contagion, a solution, or something else entirely? Wendig’s complex narrative even veers toward the simulation hypothesis–a postulate that is both ancient and recent–that ponders whether human beings are inside a construct controlled by some external force. Wendig’s twist is to suggest connections to quantum entanglement, but mostly Wanderers is a tale of pandemonium, confirmation bias, and the myriad ways in which humans find it easier to scapegoat than cooperate.

 

Wendig owes debts to past apocalyptic novels such as Alas, Babylon; The Andromeda Strain; Cloud Atlas; The Dog Stars; Oryx and Crate; The Road; Station Eleven; and even Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. I suppose we must concede: Dystopia rules.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunana: A Sweet and Marvelous Film

 

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019)

Directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji

Films Boutique, 109 minutes, PG

In Dzongkha with subtitles

★★★★★

 

 

 

 

I tagged this charming film in my end-of-2022 roundup as among my favorite viewing experiences. It was the first film from Bhutan ever nominated for an Oscar. It didn’t win and more’s the pity, as it has delighted audiences around the globe, a place that apparently doesn’t include Hollywood.

 

If you don’t know much about Bhutan, it’s a landlocked nation of 727,145 nestled in the Himalayans between India and China. Nearly 90 percent of the Bhutanese are Buddhists, which helps explain why it’s the world’s most peaceful nation and the least corrupt. But it speaks volumes that among its major exports are root crops and a caterpillar-like fungus used in Chinese traditional medicine.

 

About 15 percent of the population lives in Thimphu, the capital and closest thing there is to a metropolis. That’s where we find Ugyen (Sherab Dorji*). All Bhutanese citizens must do national service and Ugyen owes another year. He’s a slacker who prefers to hang out with his friends and perform in local pubs. His big plan is to move to Australia to become a singer. Because he has been lackluster in previous placements, he is handed a teaching posting in Lunana, home to the world’s most remote school. With just 800 people, it doesn’t have much of anything else except yak herders. It’s an exhausting several day drive and hike from Thimpu with an overnight stop in a hotel I doubt you’ll wish to reserve on hotels.com.

 

His hiking guide Michen (Ugyen Norbu Lendup) promises him he will take him back down if he doesn’t like the village. Ugyen takes one look at Lunana and wants to return immediately, though Michen and village leader Asha Jinpa (Kunzang Wangdi) convince him the mules must rest. He beds down in his quarters, which make the wayside hotel look posh. The wind blows constantly and there is only yellowed paper on the windows. Ugyen crawls into his sleeping bag and falls deeply asleep. Imagine his surprise when a cheerful mite named Pem Zam awakes him, announces herself the class captain, and leads him to the school.

 

He has prepared nothing, but is surprised to find a roomful of attendant students awaiting instruction. I once taught in a resources-poor school, but Lunana takes the cake. Lunana’s school consists of crudely-made adjoined wooden desks, no chalk, no chalkboard, no paper, and no supplies of any sort. Nor does Ugyen have any cellphone coverage, though where he thought he’d plug it in is anyone’s guess. He dismisses the class and promises to come prepared the next day. You can probably predict where all this is heading, but how it gets there will warm your heart better than the dried yak dung locals use for heating and cooking.

 

Several things melt Ugyen’s cynicism. The landscape is breathtakingly beautiful, he feels sorry for the kids, and locals treat him with more respect than he has ever known. Asha insists he was probably a yak in a previous life, a huge compliment! Ugyen also hears a song wafting from the hill behind the school sung by Asha’s niece Saldon (Kelden Lhamo Gurung). Saldon teaches him “Yak Labi Lhadar,” the song he heard, and the fact that she’s easy on the eyes also makes Lunana seem more tolerable. There are numerous amusing city boy in the mountains moments, but we also watch Ugyen come into his own as a creative teacher who helps his students learn math, English, and Dzongkha, Bhutan’s official language.

 

Is there really a yak in the classroom? Yes, and its name is Norbu. Grateful villagers gave it to Ugyen so he can collect his own dung for heat! He keeps it in the classroom because it’s too cold for Norbu to be outside, so why not use the yak in lesson plans? As winter approaches, though, Ugyen cannot stay in Lunana. He will make his way to Australia and sing in a bar where no one pays any attention until he dusts off a special song. Bet you know what it is.

 

You must watch this film as my words cannot express what a gem it is. Call it a thin-air take on Conrack. And if you don’t think Pem Zam is adorable and steals the show, seek help!

 

Rob Weir

 

* No relation to the director; Dorji is a common Bhutanese surname.

The Other Half: Life and Death Among the Upper Class

 

 

THE OTHER HALF (2023)

By Charlotte Vassell

Anchor Books, 368 pages.

★★★★

 

 

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that the rich “are different from you and me.” British novelist Charlotte Vassell focuses on a group that’s not a literal other half–more like the top 1-5 percent. She opens big with a small sentence: “A girl is dying.”

 

The suspects in The Other Half are those turning 30 who met at Oxford and have cultivated the belief that they are superior to those beneath them. They wear bespoke shirts and discourse on the best place to buy suits and designer threads. Rupert Achilles de Courcy Beauchamp decides to mark his 30^th at a McDonald’s by throwing money at the staff, commandeering the second floor, making fun of the food, and trashing the place. Don’t imagine for a second the party invitees feel guilty about leaving a mess for wage earners to clean.

 

The Oxfordians are also arch–Clemence “Clemmie” O’Hara is called “Phlegm” behind her back–spend more on a lunch than some working-class families spend on groceries in a month, use designer drugs (MDMA), hold down “jobs” such as artist, influencer, and private equity manager, and have solicitors and contacts in high places to get them out of scrapes. But what if one of them is guilty of murder?

 

Vassell throws a lot of names at us early on, but the story eventually settles on a handful of the rich: Rupert, Clemmie, Alex(andros) Adonis, and Araminta “Minty” Gaunt. They are beautiful in style and looks, though perhaps the most lovely of all is the one who did not come from money, went to Oxford with loads of scholarship money, and needs to work for her keep. Helena “Nell” Waddington, is bookish, red-haired, and the object of desire of both Alex and Rupert. The latter is a problem as Rupert and Clemmie have dated and/or cohabited for ten years. Alex and Nell have come to see Rupert as a pompous, amoral jerk, but he’s also irresistible in many ways, not the least is that he's filthy rich and in line to inherit a title as soon as an elderly uncle has the decency to expire. Nell prefers Alex, but Rupert dangles a lot in front of a young woman of limited means and promises he’s about to dump Clemence who, to be fair, shows outward signs of being an airhead.

 

The real “other half” of the novel is represented by the law enforcement team seeking to crack a murder case that keeps leading them back into social circles well above their paygrades. Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp has the same last name as Rupert, and is light-skinned enough to pass for white (or maybe Mediterranean), but was raised in a Jamaican fundamentalist Baptist family before becoming a cop and losing his religion (and probably his French girlfriend). He pronounces his surname “Bo’ champ;” Rupert snippily informs his last name is pronounced  “Beecham.”

 

Caius’ partners are Detective Sgt. Matt Cheung, who is half British and half Asian, and Detective Constable Amy Noakes, who finds her male partners’ assumptions partly sexist and partly hilarious. Caius and Matt are the book’s comic relief. Caius is on a self-improvement kick in which he reads weighty tomes, tortures himself with exercise, and tries to convince himself that a vegan diet is good for him. Matt is the devil on his shoulder tempting him with junk food, meat, pastries, and other such things. He also makes sure Caius doesn’t become a Gloomy Gus. The Caius/Matt pairing also serves to show how ethnicity matters if you’re not rich, but is pushed under the rug if you are.

 

You’ve heard the expression “to die for love.” The Other Half hinges on whether someone would kill for it. The book is filled with deplorable people–and I’ve not even gotten into imperious art historian Dr. Fay Bruce Osbald–but does snobbery and doing tone deaf things make someone a killer? Vassell keeps us guessing by moving back and forth between plebeian spaces–the police station, roadside pubs, small flats–and upper crust galleries, estates, clubs, and oh-so-fashionable Bloomsbury.  

 

The Other Half suffers a bit from having too many unlikable characters; not even Nell passes muster as someone for whom we should root. Vassell’s London doesn’t come off well either; it’s either “dirty” or indefensibly posh. But I will say that Vassell kept me off guard and that I did not predict what was coming.

 

Rob Weir