Customer Reviews

Dinosaurs on the Roof: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It is easy to be drawn quickly and deeply into this book. Bernice, a middle-aged widow, has recently joined a cultish church whose pastor has the congregation believing that it will experience the Rapture that very night. Bernice's main concern is that her dogs will be fed once she has been "taken up."

What begins simply enough becomes the amazing 24-hour odyssey of Bernice Doorley and the parallel experience of her dead best friend's daughter Janet, who has been tapped to feed the dogs. Such a simple plot, peopled with ordinary-seeming women. How is it, then, that it all turns into a passionate and magnificent book?

The magic of Dinosaurs on the Roof is in its consistently rich and heartbreaking detail, the colorful and sometimes hilarious conversations, and the ability of both to cement permanently into the reader's emotional memory.

Everyone in this book is looking for a miracle; something to pitch them out of the dreary ordinariness of life. Is this it, they want to know, is this all? It can't be-I won't let it be all! Despite the humor, it takes guts to accompany Bernice on her epic struggle towards Rapture. David Rabe leads the reader through some anguishing and difficult moments, indeed. But he is to be trusted. He will lead you out, and you will be smiling.

I took DINOSAURS ON THE ROOF with me to a remote location in the mountains. Cut off from phone, internet, and contact with the world of humans, I read Mr. Rabe's book in the late afternoons, after hiking and exploring and making contact with the wilderness.

Undoubtedly, Janet and Bernice are not easy characters to love: absolutely chock-full of flaws, both of them are ornery, self-centered, and slow to forgive. Yet there wasn't a false note about them; they reminded me of people I knew, or have known, and so, I chose to hang out with them while they both made their way toward the epiphanies they sought: Bernice chasing the rapture of the Last Days, with Janet chasing human feeling while constantly numbing herself out with Jack Daniels.

It would be giving too much away to tell you which one of them finds a more true redemption, but I will say that there is much to admire in this book. Rabe is a playwright, and his gift for dialogue shines in this book. Much of the plot is moved forward by the conversations between characters, which is a remarkable feat in this day and age when we tend to admire the literary pyrotechnics of characters moving forward through metaphor and symbolism to get to their truths.

Here, human truths are hashed out in human ways: by talking through them--not always pleasantly. I found myself feeling like an eavesdropper, listening to two old women argue over the righteousness of their pastor, or Janet pleading for what she needs from people to whom she's willing to really give nothing.

Mr. Rabe is a keen observer of the human condition, and this is not a book for those who seek immediate gratification. Given that so much of this book is about the quest for that kind of immediate gratification, Mr. Rabe has crafted a book whose form follows its message.

David Rabe's plays were the reason I was eager to read Dinosaurs on the Roof, for I've always admired the energy in his drama. Initially I had trouble 'getting into it', but thereafter I was fully engaged. Several mid-western-isms struck my ear as `off', but that's my problem, not Rabe's. I wondered initially whether the novel's theme of redemption was working until I saw it at work: the Rapture embraced by Bernice. That's all we have, our particular raptures, the embraces of life we must believe in or else our lives are derailed. Janet must cross the Styx before she finds her rapture, and within the crossing she thinks a number of times she may have found it (Robbie, for example). For her, for the moment, she thinks the rapture is sex until she finds it isn't that at all. She's just missing a center she may just find by novel's end - and if she doesn't, then she'll remain in hell. But each of us, as we also see in Bernice, has his hell, and as the child is father of the man, so we see Janet in her turn perhaps becoming what Bernice is now, the difference, other than the major one of religion, being only generational. Unable to shed our skins, we are all alike under the sun: desire, dying, bodily functions, hope, despair, love - we all possess these and other aspects to a greater or lesser degree.. However, the beauty of the perspective in `Dinosaurs' regards the redemptive. We look for a rapture in our forgiveness, toward others, toward ourselves. Bernice is illustrative of the 1st (and something of the 2nd) ; Janet, the 2nd. Humor in Dinosaurs on the Roof is displayed in the ironic plasticity of the reading moment where one through the dialog or narrative becomes involved in that moment - in that humor - where the characters see no humor in the moment at all. Dinosaurs on the Roof, a major achievement, will not surprise those who know Rabe's work.

Two days in the lives of Janet Cawley and Bernice Doorley of Belger, Iowa, where the members of Rev. Tauke's Church of the Angels huddle in prayer and munch burgers as they await the imminent coming of the Lord. Keen observer of human foibles and aspirations that he is, Rabe holds us in suspense over 400 plus pages while we wonder whether the Rapture will happen or not, and if so, how, and for whom? And will Bernice's dogs and cats survive? With his gift for freezing a moment in time, as he imaginatively threads his way through the labyrinth of the human mind and emotions, Rabe carries us over fourteen-line sentences of non-sequiturs, where one thing might just as well have been something else--as is often the case in our aimless musings. Alternating between the sublime and the mundane, he allows us to peek into those private and public moments, when religious fervor and human concerns meet and we sometimes don't realize it. With fairness and compassion he has us pause to understand some of those quirky, annoying people we know and to temper our judgments with a sense of humor that dispels meanness. And above all he helps us see ourselves as others see us and don't see us. Read it with a smile and with an ear for his colorful prose. Follow his unexpected twists and turns as he provides a bumpy ride toward the surprising resolution of Bernice's religious quest and Janet's growing dilemma. And when you're finished, you'll miss the vividly drawn characters that populate David Rabe's narrative world.

George Nickelsburg

This book has a lot of good stuff but it's 200 pages too long. It should have been pruned majorly. I enjoyed a lot about the novel: great dialogue, interest in the everyday, casual rythmic writing, feelings of the spiritual in nature and what's around us. But I'm not sure that the casual reader is going to want to slog through almost 500 pages for the good stuff. There's just too much dialogue, rehash, minute details, and uninteresting text to get to the finish. I could envision a pretty damned good book if it came in at about 250 pages. I really liked the ending and the way it resolved (or not). Definitely thought provoking. I'm not that well schooled in classic literature or the bible, but it feels mythic and powerful, like the Gods are at work in these characters.

I cast my lot not with those who disliked this novel. It is truly brilliant writing. For people like myself who wonder why people would throw themselves into the flock of mindless sheep following the likes of Tim LaHaye and his Rapture hocus-pocus, then we can enjoy a trip there with the likes of Bernice and Hazel while sitting at home. Indeed they are very, very pathetic women. And so is deceased Isabel's daughter, Janet. The novel is filled with people we may not want to know in real life, but we do because these are the wandering pathetic that fill this planet. (I wonder if David Rabe might tackle next the followers of Sarah Palin, maybe in a novel titled Moose in the Stew. I hope so.) Anyway, back to Dinosaurs--and these two women are dinosaurs alright. The story is a simple one that takes nearly 500 pages to tell. I would have been delighted with another 500. The good reverend has apparently misheard the Lord because Bernice, Hazel and many more in his flock were ready, dressed up and waiting in their individual homes to be taken naked to heaven. And lo and behold if at the end of the night they don't just find themselves still dressed and still stuck on earth. No, I have not told you much of the story. Bernice has a cadre of animals she cannot leave behind unattended. She chooses not to get her daughter involved. It seems they don't get along well. It seems most parents and offspring don't get along well in this novel. So she has selected Janet to be the caretaker, a woman who quite her teaching job, got divorced and is sleeping around and into drugs. And from there we travel to the Rapture--or maybe we will because it seems the good pastor has received another message, that he may have misunderstood the Lord, so it will take place the following day, the day we spend these pages getting to. But the journey is just wonderful with car rides provided by two seniors who quite clearly should not be driving. But they always make it. This is just a truly wonderful book with dialogue that cannot be surpassed. You just know this novelist is a playwright.

Real dialogue sparks this tale of Janet (drunk, divorced, depressed) and Bernice (devoted, devout, determined) as B. awaits the rapture and J. promises to take care of her cats and dogs after she is gone. A shaggy dog (sorry) story, a bit more off-beat than Keillor, Dinosaurs is a triumph thanks to the misunderstood and misaligned conversations that carry the story along. Rabe, the playwright, knows his craft. Secondary characters are also well conceived.

What a trial. For almost 500 pages we're locked into the heads of two unpleasant characters and privy to every trivial thought, worry, memory, etc. It reminds me of a New Yorker short story on steroids. If you enjoy this type of fiction, this might be more palatable to you than to those of us who do not mind a bit of plot with our elegantly-turned phrases. I'm giving this book two stars because it is extraordinarily well-written (and could have been a great play), but it rates a one-star for enjoyment.

The Rapture is imminent! It's coming to small-town Iowa tonight! And boy, oh boy, there's a lot to take care of before being carried off into eternal sublimity!

The interaction, real or imagined, between the profane and the divine is at least one important thematic thread in this novel, and it suffuses the lives of the book's main characters. Can we be carried away from this life and into Glory without being guilty of abandoning whom and that to which we are responsible on this Earth? How do we negotiate our longing for release and transformation without betraying the sacred obligations we have here in the corporeal world? (And the dogs! There are always the dogs, the presence and care of whom may best symbolize this dilemma!)

Curiously, while this long and winding novel ultimately leaves its main characters at other than completely determinate moments in their lives, it fully resolves its sweeping themes with an answer to the simple bumper-sticker interrogative: What would Jesus do?

And, the answer is remarkably satisfying at some very deep levels.

I'll leave a synopsis to the professional reviewers, but I will add the following commentary:

Many of David Rabe's works are hard. They're difficult. Like a Double Diamond (expert) ski slope. It takes some courage and commitment to push off and begin the plunge. It takes some skill to follow the "line of the hill," and it can be hard on the legs, enduring the rocky conditions and avoiding getting dumped on your butt along the way. But when you get to the bottom there's some real, earned satisfaction in having "engaged with the mountain" in ways that are not possible if you're skiing the "green circle" (novice) runs.

This book is no exception. The "long day's journey" that you take with the heroines, Janet and Bernice, is in many ways arduous and harrowing, though it spans not much more than 24 hours. The intimacy achieved with the characters can be overwhelming, and at times one feels lost along the way, as lost as the characters themselves, who risk journeys the outcomes of which are never assured.

But isn't that what one risks when one seeks "rapture?" (be it strictly religious, as in Bernice's case, or more secular as in Janet's?)

The way is long and fraught. The outcome is uncertain. But the journey (in all its intermingled sadness and hilarity) is well worth it.

I hear that Mr. Rabe is an excellent playwright, and I can see how it would be true. Concepts were there that might have resonated in a more restricted form, but the novel seemed bloated to me. Long before it was over, I was thinking, "I get it already," but it just went on and on until the ending was devoutly to be wished, and that's quite the opposite reaction I have to most literature. The characters, some of whom seemed almost interchangeable, kept repeating the same tedious conversations, snipping at each other and so stalwartly resisting enlightenment that I wanted to whap them upside the head.