The Wild Zone

May 3, 2010
When Jeff, Will, and Tom make a wager to see who can bed an attractive woman first, it (inevitably) blows up in their faces and sends them all down paths of destruction from which no one will walk away unscathed. Unfortunately, neither the prose nor the narration can sustain our interest in the characters or their fates. Fielding’s attempt to inject several core character-building events (a dying mother, rival brothers, post-traumatic stress from fighting in Afghanistan, childhood abuse and exploitation, body dysmorphia, and more) falls flat. Jeffrey Cummings’s narrative voice keeps the story going, but his character voices are lacking: his female voices lack authenticity and his male characters sound forced. An Atria hardcover (Reviews, Dec. 14).

Starred review from December 14, 2009
The Wild Zone, a South Beach (Miami Beach, Fla.) bar filled with lusty men—specifically, charismatic personal trainer Jeff Rydell; his cute visiting half-brother, Will, a Princeton graduate student; and Jeff’s married best friend, Tom Whitman, a dishonorably discharged Afghanistan war veteran with some serious problems—provides the starting point for bestseller Fielding’s nonstop thrill ride. A sexy bar patron, Suzy Bigelow, inspires the trio to make a wager on who can bed her first, and they even ask Jeff’s live-in girlfriend, a Wild Zone bartender, for help. Suzy chooses Will for a platonic date, which has some distinctly unpleasant repercussions that involve not only wide-eyed Will but desperate, gun-loving Tom, whose wife takes their children and files for divorce. Fielding (Still Life
) combines a fast-paced plot with top-notch character development to create an atmosphere of brooding unease that explodes in a wonderfully wild resolution.