A Book A Week - Week 11: The Book of Fate

This week's book:
    The Book of Fate     by Brad Meltzer

Grade:    C   

Last week I was on Cloud Nine.  This week... not so much.  I did not love this book.  I did not hate this book either.  Whatever else I will say of it, I can say it's not as bad as Twilight.  Thank God.  But I can say I will not go out of my way to read any other books by Brad Meltzer.

I had several problems with this book - I'll get into the rest below - but the biggest problem I had with it was the structure.  It's written in short chapters, which can be a style choice, but in this case the chapters are short because the author isn't writing a book, he's writing a screenplay.  Or, more accurately, a 'book' that can easily be adapted into a screenplay.  The scenes are dialogue-heavy and organized in the Hollywood three-act structure for a total of 116 'chapters.'  This unholy chimera of book-screenplay cheats the reader of the experience of reading an actual book and instead subjects them to what is essentially a very, very long treatment.  If you want to write a screenplay by all means do so, but don't slap it between two cardboard covers and call it a book.

On to the other problems, such as pained metaphors.  A novel should treat the reader to elegant, descriptive prose, but a passage like 'The telephone shrieked through the small office, but he didn't pick it up' makes me wonder why the phone was screaming and how it got legs.  Every few chapters the author pitches another one, like 'He could still feel the sharp Wisconsin wind cracking his lungs...' as if he went through his manuscript after the first draft and picked every third chapter to try to 'book it up' with description.  Sometimes it's unintentionally funny, but most of the time it's painful.
   Then there's the changing viewpoint.  The scenes featuring the protagonist are written in first-person and present tense, probably to try to draw the reader into the story.  The other scenes are written from third-person and past tense, though sometimes with a character's thoughts and sometimes without.  The change feels forced to me, and just calls attention to itself rather than enhancing the narrative.
   Then there's the list of trite characters, starting with the hero.  He's been grievously injured, which is supposed to make us feel for him, and the other characters go out of their way to establish that he's been stuck in a rut since the injury - which means he's got some growing to do, always a must in any Hollywood screenplay.  There's the 'unstoppable ex-soldier killing machine' and the 'wisecracking best friend' and the 'helpful journalist who's also a love interest' and the 'sinister cabal' and the 'politician who everyone but the hero can see is completely untrustworthy' and, of course, the 'cops who seem sinister, then seem helpful, then who turn out to be bad guys after all.'  Mr. Meltzer, all the 1980's action movies called and they want their characters back.
   And, of course, with trite characters you get a trite plot.  I won't spoil it for you, but, honestly, if you've seen any TV dramas or watched any movies at any time in the past twenty years you have encountered this plot before.

I never really got into this book, not the characters, not the plot, not the writing.  After the first thirty chapters I felt like I was just marking time until it was over.  It was kind of like going with your girlfriend to a movie she chose, you're committed to seeing it through to the end, but just when you think the credits are ready to roll something else pops up.  Twist after painful twist points to the author's diligence in plotting, but the agony of getting to the end points to his - at best - workmanlike prose.  Maybe that's the big failing here, the characters should always drive the plot, but in this book the plot has the steering wheel and it feels like the characters are just along for the ride.

I would not recommend this book to any of my friends.  Unless I wanted them to stop being my friend.  Or I knew they had really bad taste in books.


Next week:
   Detroit     by Charlie LeDuff
   A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist writing about his decimated home town?  I don't want to set my expectations too high, but this should be good.