There’s a fine line between zany and just plain silly, and George Singleton first nimbly hops over it but eventually trips on it in his debut novel, “Novel.” His readers, however, might be giggling too hard to care.
Singleton is a South Carolinian who has garnered good reviews for his short-story collections, including 2002’s “The Half-Mammals of Dixie.” (Yes, the man has a way with titles. And with satire.)
“Novel” is narrated by a guy named Novel. Why the odd moniker? Because his adopted siblings, who purportedly are Irish orphans, are named James and Joyce. And so their hippie-dippy mom and dad, former concert pianists going to seed in the hinterlands near artsy Black Mountain College, could call them home by yelling: “James! Joyce! Novel!”
OK, that was a test. If you don’t find that worth at least a smile, you aren’t going to like this book.
The tale opens strongly, with the explosive death of Novel’s brother-in-law, Irby, and mother-in-law, Ina, as they drive home from the hospital in Forty-Five, S.C., a fictional burg in which Singleton has set many of his short stories. Ina’s got a portable oxygen tank, Irby flicks his cigarette and … boom!
This mishap leaves Novel and his wife Bekah sort of bereaved and sort of rich. Now, he can quit driving the Viper-Mobile, a state-sponsored van full of snakes that promotes herpetological education, and she can stop working as a bill collector.
(Novel, we later learn, has another, clandestine job, and Bekah, we also learn, has plenty of secrets, too. And please keep in mind that once a loaded snake is introduced in a story, it’s bound to go off in the last act.)
Now Bekah can follow her dream, which is to open a weight-loss spa in Gruel, S.C. You see, she once had a weeks-long sneezing fit that caused her to lose weight and tighten up her abs. So she and Novel turn a dilapidated motel into the Gruel Sneeze ‘n’ Tone, blowing irritants through the air ducts into guest’s rooms to keep them sneezing and shedding pounds. Yet this novel enterprise soon goes ka-flooey, and Bekah leaves Novel, for reasons too complex to detail here.
One of them involves a baker named Maura-Lee, who invents a variant of Jewish rye bread that comes with “Jesus Crust.” It’s made with the blood of a lamb, and its devotees are called – what else – Crustians.
Still not laughing? Better go read something else.
Singleton throws a bunch of other wack-job characters into the mix. They include “Jeff the owner,” who runs the local pool hall, and his two best customers, Larry and Barry, backwoodsy dudes quite reminiscent of “my brother Darryl and my other brother Darryl” of Bob Newhart fame. They devote considerable time to setting up impossible trick pool shots. Then there’s the menacing Victor Dees, who runs the Army-Navy store.
When Bekah dumps Novel, he decides to turn the Sneeze ‘n’ Tone into a retreat for would-be authors, and when that fails, to write his own autobiography. This allows Singleton gleefully and viciously to mock the entire amateur-writer phenomenon. One of his clients, for example, is writing a sci-fi sequel called “Gone With the Solar Wind” that features a maid who, Singleton writes, is “some kind of cyborg named Butterfly McC-3PO. She couldn’t deliver a baby either.”
It’s right about here that the plot falls apart. Novel himself gets all paranoid, and, it gets harder and harder to willingly suspend one’s disbelief. But the Southern-fried zingers mixed with sophisticated jokes about fiction, history and philosophy and Novel’s reminiscences of his bizarre childhood make it worth plowing on.
You might say the story is snake-bit. You might say it makes no sense. But you will have to admit that “Novel” the novel and Novel the character have a novel way of attracting your attention.
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