MADreads

READ IT

November 11th, 2009 Katharine - Sequoya

Michelle Huneven’s new book Blame is just as good as all the reviews say it is.  As I read through them trying to come up with the right words to describe it I decided EW’s Leah Greenblatt said it best, “the novel combines the compulsive pleasures of a page turner with the deeper satisfaction of true, thoughtful literature.”  The only reason Blame might not appeal to a reader would be if it hit too close to home in subject matter (drunk driving).  Otherwise, I say READ IT, it’s an all cap demand.  The book not only meets the “page turning thoughtful literature” standard, it also has that “full circle” feel when you finish it.  The beginning scene makes even more sense as you finish the last few pages, just like one of my favorite books of all time A Prayer for Owen Meany (another READ IT selection).

Patsy’s life up to May 1981 hasn’t been bad.  She lives in sunny California, grew up with two parents, has a loving brother, teaches history at the local college, but Patsy has an issue…blackout drinking.  We meet Patsy in the first few pages of the book in the full throes of a binge trying to pierce her boyfriend’s niece’s ears with an ice cube, a bar of soap and a sewing needle.  To be honest I didn’t think I would like the book after this drunken scene as she coerces young Joey into the unsanitary ear piercing with lots of booze and drugs.  Her standing didn’t get much better in the next few pages as it describes a morning a year later where she wakes up in the local jail guilty of killing two people in her own driveway after a night of drinking.  Patsy gets sentenced to four years and off she goes to prison.  Where could the story possibly go from there?

Prison life means sober life for Patsy and with good behavior and hard work in a labor camp, she’s released in two years.  She moves into an old apartment furnished by the old boyfriend Brice who now has his “own” boyfriend Gilles and this is where the guilt sets in.  Patsy starts seeing a therapist and starts attending AA.  She gets a job teaching ESL to new immigrants and finds a boyfriend.  Life is starting to become normal, but the guilt is not going away.  When Patsy was in prison she was able to meet the man whose family she had killed that fateful night and after she’s begun her “normal” life again she starts to see him more regularly.  Years pass, her life changes, and Patsy’s guilt has not gone away, others have forgiven her, but the pain never leaves for Patsy.  This brings us to twenty years later and a phone call from Joey with a story that changes everything.  Saying too much more will give it away, but needless to say the pain and guilt of Patsy’s life comes full circle in the last chapters of this book.  One last time, READ IT.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction