So I finally finished Megan Abbott's second novel: THE SONG
IS YOU, and after taking a couple of days to digest it, I
wanted to share some comments with my fellow Rare Birds.
Based on a real-life Hollywood mystery (the 1949
disappearance of a lovely movie extra and L.A. party girl
named Jean Spangler), this book sizzles, man.
SPOILER ALERT!!! Scroll down for more..
OK that ought to do it:
I recall many of you mentioning that you are fans of James
Ellroy's work (or at least of some of it). A quick trip
through the group's archives will alert the reader that I am
not. My reasons are simple: he delights in rolling around in
the gutter, trying to shock his readers as part of some
vainglorious attempt to have the exterior of his characters
mirror the internal existential crises through which he (as
the author) is putting them. He never succeeds, although I
felt that he came close with THE BLACK DAHLIA.
With Gil Hopkins in THE SONG IS YOU, Megan Abbott succeed
where Ellroy fails. Her descriptions, stacatto naration,
punchy dialogue, even the rat-a-tat-tat of emotions playing
through him, how he surprises himself with his thoughts and
his actions, it all rings true.
Speaking of Hop, Abbott did a great job of pulling off a
cross-gender POV narration. He was a believable character,
and his slide into that near-gibbering, giddy, drunken,
sleep-deprived, guilt-ridden state was as artfully executed
as any central character transition I've seen in fiction of
any stripe.
It's not just Hop, though. His soon-to-be-ex-wife Midge is
fully and artfully drawn (I think I dated her, or maybe one
of her spiritual descendants, while I was in college), and so
is girl reporter Frannie Adair. There was a high yella 13
year-old in the brothel that Hop visits who was a terrific
character as well.
And so was the Godot-like Jean Spangler. Her exchange with
Hop in the apartment where she shows him her "whore scars" is
played pitch-perfect. Oh, and I *loved* how Abbott not only
tied up the loose end where she and Midge knew each other
before, the red herring that maybe Midge was involved in the
blackmail, but also how she explained the actual note that
the police found when her purse was recovered in Griffith
Park a few days after she disappeared, and how it turned out
that Hop had not in fact covered up a murder, just a really
nasty rape/beating/cutting. Again, it was pitch
perfect.
For that matter, so was the denouement. I've always believed
that great literature gives us characters who undergo
experiences that change them forever. I've also always
believed that once our characters are formed as adults, our
baseline behavior doesn't vary much. The tension between
these twin truisms is inherent in Abbott's ending. I *loved*
not just what she said, but the silences between her
passages, her ability to leave unsaid all of the changing
(and all of the staying the same) that Hop does throughout
your book.
99 out of every 100 writers who would have essayed writing
this basic plotline would likely have thought of it as plucky
girl reporter Frannie Adair's story, and I'm sure that
several of them would have written credible stories based on
the basic framework of this plot. BUT to tell it from the POV
of one of the people she's trying to get something out of,
who knows something (he thinks) and is wracked with guilt
about it, guilt so subtly played up over a period of a few
hundred pages that it seems unremarkable that he would become
(in a sense) an amateur sleuth on the same trail? And talk
about ratcheting up the tension! He's trying to get to the
bottom of something he thought he sort of knew something
about a couple of years back, trying to cover his own tracks,
all while keeping Frannie from following the same trail he's
following? PHEW!
It takes an adroit writer, and a deft hand on the wheel to
accomplish this.
Don't kid yourself, this *is* great literature. Not great
genre fiction or great crime writing. It's road-tested,
self-assured, well-plotted and tautly written, crackling with
as much energy as the POV character on three days of no sleep
and lots of booze. You can have MacCarthy's THE ROAD. Megan
Abbott is the real deal.
If you've paid attention to the stuff that I post here on
Rara Avis at all, you've no doubt noted that I am not given
to lavish praise. There is a lot of crime fiction out there
now, and hb/noir is hothothot. The sad thing for me is that
most of it (both old and new school) is not worthy of much
mention beyond a cursory "I enjoyed it." Much of it is deeply
flawed, with whole plot turns that call on the reader to
suspend their belief beyond the point of credulity.
Abbott's book isn't perfect (but then again, what is?), but
it's a great read that moves like gang-busters toward and
ultimately ironic noir finish. Coming from picky ol' me,
that's saying something.
Your Mileage May Vary-
Brian
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