She Treads Softly: Lacking Character

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Lacking Character

Lacking Character by Curtis White
Melville House Publishing: 3/13/18
eBook review copy; 208 pages
paperback ISBN-13: 978161219678

Lacking Character by Curtis White is a witty, puzzling, digressive, meandering fairy tale of sorts, set in N(ormal), Ill.

The queen of spells dispatches Percy, a masked courier to deliver a message to the marquis of N. The marquis spends much of his time playing Halo an inadvertently kills all of Percy's companions. The request was for the marquis to care for Percy, an "animated doll" created by the queen. Percy lacks character, but has the skills to survive, which is good, because the marquis doesn't assist Percy. Marquis is more concerned with grandson Jake either finding a job or money. Percy ends up working for/with Fanni, Jake's promiscuous wife, performing "ritual abasement" in exchange for housing.

This philosophical novel is a mish-mash of narrators, styles, and low comedy. I really tried to engage with the novel and go with the flow of the presented novel, and managed to appreciate parts of it, but the totality of this one eluded me. There were several messages that could be parsed out of the divergent trails the prose traipses through, and the effort was worth some of these, but not all of them. Additionally sometimes I did always find the comedic episodes all that humorous. In the end Lacking Character is a so-so novel for me. Not bad, but not for me.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Melville House Publishing.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.