Eastman Was Here

July 3, 2017
At the center of Gilvarry’s excellent second novel (after From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant) is Alan Eastman, a fading author on a mission to reestablish his literary and personal reputations. It’s 1973 when antihero Eastman is introduced. He’s in his 50s and in the middle of a crisis, having learned that his second wife, Penny, has left him, possibly for another man. Not quite a model, loyal husband, Eastman wastes no time before letting his suspicions and insecurities get the best of him. As part of a plan to win his wife back and keep his family intact, Eastman—though apprehensive—accepts an assignment to cover the tail end of the Vietnam war as a correspondent for the International Herald. The latter half of the book transports Eastman from his home in New York to Saigon, where he takes interest in Anne Channing, an ambitious reporter in her 30s who’s researching for a book project that will collect the personal narratives of local subjects. It’s in this relationship that the book’s greatest sources of tension reside; Channing attracts Eastman while challenging his ego, and one begins to root for her despite Eastman’s acts of condescension and professional sabotage. Gilvarry is skilled at highlighting the humor of hypocrisy, jealousy, exaggeration, and foolishness through scenes that crackle with amusing dialogue. The supporting characters come alive and animate every page, and play well off of Eastman, who, though volatile, petulant, and infuriating, still somehow comes across as endearing. Gilvarry succeeds in drawing Eastman as a convincing and recognizable composite of the breed of male figureheads who dominated American letters in the middle of the 20th century, only to realize the tides were slowly but surely beginning to turn against them.

Narrator Bronson Pinchot brings a healthy dose of bravado and vulnerability to Alex Gilvarry's disarming new novel. The book is a study of the kind of bushy cold war masculinity that dominates America's past and is notably less venerated in contemporary times. Pinchot is careful to treat the protagonist/narrator with enough humor and puerility to balance Eastman's veneer of trumpeting masculinity and quiet underbelly of corrosive self-doubt. The female characters, who are pivotal in the novel, are portrayed in disappointingly similar tones at times, but then again, in a narrative that is knowingly wound around its misogynistic antihero, this proves a complementary approach. Crucially, Pinchot never overstates his characterization, leaving it to the listener to cast judgment on the complex figure of Eastman. Z.S. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine