Forgiveness

January 15, 2007
Grimsley's hollow fantasy of upper-middle-class homicide has little to do with forgiveness. Three years after being laid off from his senior job at Arthur Anderson, Charley Stranger can no longer support the haute California lifestyle he and his spoiled, Botoxed wife, Carmine, are used to. Carmine wants a divorce, knowing Charley is no longer bothering to look for work, though it takes a visit from their obese banker son, Frankie, to realize the true extent of the financial damage. The fights are nasty: Carmine tells Charley he looks like "ne of the fucking Teletubbies.... the purple one, the grey one." Meanwhile, Charley rehearses his violent thoughts in imaginary exchanges with famous actresses and interviewers like Barbara Walters, and in running sitcom scripts that chronicle years' of the family's mutual scorn. When Charley actually kills Carmine and Frank, the murders are described in some detail—as part of a literary tongue-in-cheek, of course. Grimsley's tale is a single-minded, scathingly unfunny look at American materialism.

March 1, 2007
With this black comedy about America's obsession with wealth, TV, and celebrities, Grimsley ("Winter Birds") offers a contemporary version of Camus's "The Stranger", but he is not entirely successful. His protagonist, Charley Stranger, is modeled partly on Camus's existentially troubled protagonist. Both are oddly detached from the world, and both commit a senseless murder. In the humorous first section of Grimsley's novel, Charley narrates a "Lifetime" movie version of his ruined life. He has lost his high-powered job at Arthur Andersen and hasn't worked in two years. All he cares about is finding a way to become famous by killing his wife. This seems like harmless venting, so it comes as a shock when he actually stabs both his wife and his son to death. Such violence seems preposterous here, and it feels at odds with the humorous tone of the previous passages. This is unfortunate because Stranger's obsessive musings about celebrities and brand names offer a stinging critique of American culture. An ambitious but flawed novel; recommended for libraries with large modern fiction collections.Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2007
Charlie has been unemployed for three years, and his wife, Carmine--whom he thinks has been out of work ever since their wedding 25 years ago, busy with cosmetic surgery (never mind that she raised their son and daughter)--is fed up with his sloth, his drinking, and their impending poverty. The last is relative, since she drives a late-model Lexus, and he hasn't let the maid go. After Carmine announces she's planning a divorce, Charlie spends three days drunk in the pool house and decides to murder her so spectacularly that he'll be interviewed by the likes of Katie Couric (in particular), who'll ask whether homicide has changed his life. He also plans a Lifetime movie, " Breakdown at Midnight." In Grimsley's smoothly executed, grimly humorous satire, things ultimately turn savagely icy for this "failed wreck" of an accountant who aspires to renown "of a peculiar character, since it must earn for [him] all the bounty of fame and celebrity without the appearance of seeking to do so."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)