Blame: A Novel [Hardcover]

Michelle Huneven (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2009

Michelle Huneven, Richard Russo once wrote, is “a writer of extraordinary and thrilling talent.” That talent explodes with her third book, Blame, a spellbinding novel of guilt and love, family and shame, sobriety and the lack of it, and the moral ambiguities that ensnare us all.

The story: Patsy MacLemoore, a history professor in her late twenties with a brand-new Ph.D. from Berkeley and a wild streak, wakes up in jail—yet again—after another epic alcoholic blackout. “Okay, what’d I do?” she asks her lawyer and jailers. “I really don’t remember.” She adds, jokingly: “Did I kill someone?”

In fact, two Jehovah’s Witnesses, a mother and daughter, are dead, run over in Patsy’s driveway. Patsy, who was driving with a revoked license, will spend the rest of her life—in prison, getting sober, finding a new community (and a husband) in AA—trying to atone for this unpardonable act.

Then, decades later, another unimaginable piece of information turns up.

For the reader, it is an electrifying moment, a joyous, fall-off-the-couch-with-surprise moment. For Patsy, it is more complicated. Blame must be reapportioned, her life reassessed. What does it mean that her life has been based on wrong assumptions? What can she cleave to? What must be relinquished?

When Huneven’s first novel, Round Rock, was published, Valerie Miner, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, celebrated Huneven’s “moral nerve, sharp wit and uncommon generosity.” The same spirit electrifies Blame. The novel crackles with life—and, like life, can leave you breathless.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this gripping tale, Huneven charts the parameters of guilt and how a young, wisecracking intellectual becomes a shadow of her former self. Patsy MacLemoore, a boozy history professor, is helping her boyfriend, Brice, take care of his niece, Joey, whose mother is undergoing cancer treatment. But when Patsy goes on a bender and emerges from a drunken blackout in jail, she learns she's accused of having run down a mother and daughter in her driveway. After her conviction, Patsy transforms from free spirit into a convict, and Huneven deftly underscores the bizarre trajectory Patsy's life has taken. In a prison AA group, Patsy seeks redemption and meaning; she also develops a relationship with the man whose wife and daughter she killed and helps put his son through school, stays the course after her release and maintains a friendship with Brice and Joey. Brilliant observations, excellent characters, spiffy dialogue and a clever plot keep readers hooked, and the final twist turns Patsy's new life on its ear. Huneven's exploration of misdeeds real and imagined is humane, insightful and beautiful. (Sept.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

Huneven's elegant third novel probes some deep questions: What does it mean to be good? Is it possible to atone for terrible transgressions? If so, how? Patsy is an intelligent, honest heroine, and her guilt and pain are palpable. Huneven skillfully leads Patsy on the long and winding road to self-discovery and maturity over the course of 20 years, and critics praised Huneven's supple prose and nuanced view of the world. The only debate arose from her unconventional dialogue. The Kansas City Star thought the lack of quotation marks and attributions gave her prose a "dreamlike, luminous depth," while other critics found it confusing. These reservations aside, Blame is a sensitive and insightful novel of recovery and redemption.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374114307
• ISBN-13: 978-0374114305
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #256,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michelle Huneven was born in Altadena, California. She received an M.F.A. at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. For many years her "day job" was reviewing restaurants and writing about food for the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, Gourmet and other publications. Her first novel, Round Rock (Knopf 1997), was a New York Times notable book and a finalist for the LA Times First Fiction Award. Her second novel, Jamesland (Knopf 2003) was also a New York Times notable book, a finalist for the LA Times Fiction Prize, and a winner of the Southern California Bookseller's Award for Fiction. Her third novel, Blame, (Sarah Crichton Books, FSG, 2009), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Michelle has also received a GE Younger Writers Award and a Whiting Award for Fiction. She presently teaches creative writing at UCLA and lives with her husband, dog, cat, and African Grey parrot in the town where she was born.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing, thoughtful read, July 28, 2009

By 

sb-lynn (Santa Barbara, California United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Blame: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Brief summary and review, no spoilers:

Patsy MacLemoore is a professor of history at a small college near Pasadena. She is also an alcoholic, who has suffered several blackouts. One morning she wakes up in jail with a bad hangover and having no idea what happened to get her there. She thinks it's probably something minor since she's woke up in jail like this before. But this time it's much more serious - 2 people, a young mother and her daughter were run over and killed.

This book is divided into sections by year. We start off in 1980 just one year before this accident, and this novel moves us forward over two decades. During this time we follow Patsy as her life takes this sudden plunge, and as she tries to make amends for what she did.

There were many things to love about this novel. I thought the dialogue and characterization were spot on, and I was completely pulled into the story. The locale is mainly Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, and I am very familiar with both places and thought their descriptions were accurate and I could just picture them all.

There was also an epic feel to it as we travel the years with Patsy. We age along with her and we share in her traumas. When I turned the last page of this story I felt like I had been through an experience - I needed to think about this book before I could pick up anything else.

I think this book would appeal to a lot of people. We relive the AIDS crisis and we learn about the criminal justice system, AA, and what it's like to be in prison. We see (and experience) how life can turn on a dime, and how our lives can take strange trajectories away from our best laid plans. This book is about forgiving and atonement, in the truest sense of both those words.

And for those who like this sort of thing (and I do), there is a twist of sorts, towards the end.

I highly recommend this book. It was an absolute page-turner for me, and I can easily see this novel being made into a movie. I also recommend it for book clubs as there is a lot to think about and discuss.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uniquely engaging and thought provoking, October 21, 2009

By 

mcryan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blame: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is the first novel I have read from Huneven and I loved it. Her beautiful and poetic description of both places and feelings made me long for her talent. I loved the way she portrayed the passage of time. Yes, the book is broken down into sections marked by dates but instead of this feeling like some big announcement to the next part, it did not interfere with the story at all. Time going by felt the same as it would in life. Early on in the story we meet the main character Patsy as a young woman with a serious problem. If this was to be the last time she appeared, I doubt she would have been liked by many readers even though her addictions were apparent. The Patsy we get to know over the course of the book is one of the finest characters I have ever read. We learn how decent a person she really is and just how insidious a monster her addiction was.

There is a twist at the end and like many readers, I had it figured out before it came so it is not at all like something you won't see coming but there is a scene that takes place at the end in a Shell station bathroom that was the perfect metaphor for what it really means to be imprisioned and how we choose to handle the way our lives turn out. Patsy learns this over and over again throughout the story. It seems imprisonment ends up meaning far more than time served in jail. The final scene also caught my eye because of the 3 people present. It was as if Patsy had come full circle in a sense.

This one is definitely worth the time.

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 3.5 stars A sobering look at alcoholism, August 27, 2009

By 

switterbug (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Blame: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

It's another morning in the county drunk tank for Patsy, who is sadly inured to this ritual. She wakes up in her vomit and her filth, with no recall of last night--she experiences frequent blackouts when she drinks. A young, talented, comely, and statuesque college professor, Patsy is nevertheless on a grease skid to oblivion due to untreated alcoholism. This time she is accused of running down and killing a mother and daughter in her driveway, and her life subsequently takes a turn to prison.

The first part of Patsy's story reflects the jacket blurb and marketing for Blame--bracing, taut, suspenseful. The book description even contains an unnecessary, thoughtless spoiler, which doesn't affect my rating of the author's work but does illustrate that the publishers are intent to mislead readers into thinking that it is one kind of book when it is entirely another. The author is a superbly talented writer, i.e. her use of language, the written word, is obviously what earned a sterling endorsement from Richard Russo. Her metaphors and turns of phrase are verdant, fragrant, lyrical. Her characters are sympathetic and genuine. There were no false notes there. Her erudition is in the contemplative, the characterizations.

I adjusted to the temperament of the story, which often meanders and slows down to a staid portraiture of a collection of people. The narration actually reads like a 19th century novel at times, even though 20th century issues were involved. Now, that was unexpected. The author seemed to forgo what she started out to do and then changed course. The fuel-injected thriller morphed into a balmy sea. I went with it, but I want to warn readers--if you are looking for a tight, twisting, adrenaline-pumping thriller, look elsewhere. This is a cerebral look at rehabilitation and redemption. AA plays a vital role in this story, and the author does a stellar job of capturing the impact and life-altering possibilities of its sobering influences on existence.

Blame opens in 1981 and spans twenty years. The weakest area of this story is its architecture and structure. Some characters are introduced as poignant, but elusive. And then they recede or disappear awkwardly (which is too bad, since she creates compelling characters). Direction is lacking, uneven; it is as if the author had several books or story ideas and then labored strenuously to fuse them together. It came off as choppy and indistinct. She kept my interest up because of her beautiful passages; the warm and dusky tone; and the characters of Patsy and her gay friend, Gilles, whose brio is scene-stealing.

The concocted denouement was prosaic, tipping toward bathetic. As if the author decided to get back to writing a thriller again. I sighed. And the anticlimax was dour. Events felt cobbled together, the story was circumvented--and yet I read every word. And I would read her next book, too. She is a classy wordsmith, a sensuous writer, a fathomless thinker. Another draft or two would have helped this story to coalesce.