Sophomores

October 12, 2020
Everyone in Desmond’s so-so second novel (after Adam’s Fall) is canny enough, but still has an awful lot to learn. The story is told from the perspective of three members of the Malone family, which moves from the Bronx to Dallas, Tex., in the late 1980s. Dan, a sophomore at a Catholic boys school, finds inspiration from an English teacher, Mr. Oglesby, who encourages him to write, while his parents’ lives spiral out of control. Dan’s dad, Pat, an alcoholic American Airlines exec who’s been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, makes an ironic miscalculation amid a recession and ends up losing his job. Dan’s mother, Anne, a conflicted Catholic who becomes more unsettled every day by her husband’s dwindling health, is chosen to sit on a jury for the trial of a popular evangelical preacher accused of strangling his wife—Anne had been hoping to vindicate “some defeated housewife who turned on her unfeeling husband and child.” Meanwhile, book-smart Dan travels through a keenly-realized cultural wasteland of Dallas with a group of underachievers from one bland subdivision to the next, until Oglesby challenges him to find focus. While the denouement borders on histrionic, leaving Dan further adrift from his struggling parents, Desmond is good at conveying suburban angst. Those who love coming-of-age stories may want to give this a look, even if it doesn’t quite stand out.

November 1, 2020
Desmond (Adam's Falls, 2000) returns after a long hiatus with a wistful novel following the lives of the Malone family in Dallas in 1987. Dan Malone is drifting along as a sophomore at a Catholic school when his life is transformed by his eccentric honors English teacher, Mr. Oglesby, whose unique teaching style pushes Dan in new directions. Dan's father, Pat, is an Irish American New Yorker who has moved to Texas to work for American Airlines and is trying to drink away the reality of his recent MS diagnosis. His alcoholism particularly affects his wife, Anne, a former nun whose complex relationship with Catholicism is brought to the surface as she struggles as part of a jury for a very public murder trial. Like Anne Tyler's fiction, Desmond's tale simmers as it shifts among members of the family, and an unspoken tension is present throughout. Infused with a dry and mournful humor, this slice of late 1980s nostalgia is a quietly fascinating exploration of coming of age, faith, and heritage.

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December 1, 2020
In late-1980s Texas, a small family grapples with existential questions. Desmond's novel follows three members of a family over a tumultuous year in Reagan-era Dallas. Dan Malone, a high school sophomore, finds himself challenged by an English class taught by an exacting instructor. His father, Pat, who works for an airline in the age of deregulation, is coming to terms with an MS diagnosis and has begun drinking heavily. And Dan's mother, Anne, wrestles with her Catholic faith and her role as a juror in a high-profile local case involving infidelity and attempted murder. The novel spans the course of an academic year in 1987 and '88, which offers some foreshadowing to readers familiar with the period. Overall, Desmond's novel abounds with contradictions--it wrestles with grand moral questions, such as whether flawed behavior can change, but its scale is also decidedly modest. Through Dan's assigned reading, including a late sequence that includes Animal Farm, Desmond throws in plenty of discussion of a literary canon (or at least the literary canon as late-'80s high schoolers would have experienced it), but the nature of Dan's reading is rarely challenged, for good or ill. The travails of the three Malones remain largely separate, and while that works well on one level, illustrating how cut off the family members are from one another, it also gives the feeling of reading a trio of interwoven novellas rather than one cohesive work. Thankfully, Desmond also works in some moments of levity, as when Dan mentally conflates coquette with croquette. Scenes like this, and a thoroughly lived-in portrait of Dallas, go a long way--but for a novel wrestling with such big issues, the stakes could stand to be higher. Desmond's novel is smartly written and structured but leaves a sense of unfulfilled potential.

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