Exley [Hardcover]

Brock Clarke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2010

For nine-year-old Miller, who lives with his mother in Watertown, New York, life has become a struggle to make sense of his father’s disappearance, for which he blames himself. Then, when he becomes convinced that he has found his father lying comatose in the local VA hospital, a victim of the war in Iraq, Miller begins a search for the one person he believes can save him, the famously reclusive — and, unfortunately, dead — Frederick Exley, a Watertown native and the author of his father’s favorite book, the “fictional memoir” A Fan’s Notes. The story of Miller’s search, told by both Miller himself and his somewhat flaky therapist, ultimately becomes an exploration of the difference between what we believe to be real and what is in fact real, and how challenging it can be to reconcile the two.

Part literary satire, part mystery, Exley unleashes the enormous talent of a writer whom critics have compared to Richard Ford and John Irving and whose work has been called “absurdly hilarious” (Entertainment Weekly) and “wildly entertaining” (Daily Candy).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Clarke follows up his acclaimed An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England with a less gripping exploration of truth and fiction, set in Watertown, N.Y., during the Iraq war. Miller, a precocious nine-year-old eighth grader, is convinced that when his parents split up, his father joined the army, was shipped to Iraq, and is now recovering from combat injuries in a VA hospital. The father-son dynamic has roots in, strangely enough, Frederick Exley's cult book, A Fan's Notes, which Miller's father is obsessed with, leading Miller to fantasize that, if he can locate Exley, his father will be cured. Miller's story is augmented by the notes of his therapist, whose professionalism is first compromised by his attraction to Miller's mother and soon by his amazingly unethical (and sometimes morbidly funny) antics--breaking into Miller's house, playing along to a perverse degree with Miller's interest in locating Exley--that eventually obliterate the already tenuous line between reality and imagination. Clarke's a deft satirist, but the narrative's structural intricacies are more confounding than anything, resulting in a work that's fitfully engaging but slow, wonderfully mysterious but increasingly confusing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In his latest brain-teasing raid on literary history, following the much-acclaimed An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England (2007), Clarke riffs on a cult classic, A Fan’s Notes: A Fictional Memoir (1968), by Frederick Exley. For Tom, a lost soul living in Exley’s hometown, Watertown, New York, this misfit’s ballad of fury and alienation is a sacred text. Tom’s precocious nine-year-old son, Miller, is caught between his floundering father and his lawyer mother, who works at Fort Drum. Then his father abruptly joins the army, goes to Iraq, and ends up in the VA hospital in a coma. Or does he? Miller is beyond unreliable as a narrator, and so is his dangerously crazy shrink, who not only lusts after Miller’s mom, but also encourages his young patient’s impossible search through Watertown’s underworld for Exley, whom Miller believes can save his dad. If only this clever and tender novel didn’t get stuck in a vortex of aberrations. There are hilarious moments; Miller is endearing; and Clarke’s take on the cruel toll of the Iraq War is profound. --Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; First Edition edition (October 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781565126084
• ISBN-13: 978-1565126084
• ASIN: 1565126084
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,259,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars It's all in your head, little boy! October 9, 2010

By Amy Henry TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

After you finish reading Exley, by Brock Clarke, you may need to take a few moments to catch your breath. You may not sleep well, and that's certainly not because of anything horrific or scary in the book. This book, quite simply, messes with your mind.

First, the characters are wildly created and completely unpredictable. It starts with Miller, or M-, who is a child prodigy on a quest to find his father who left the family suddenly and without explanation. He's a weird little kid, but likable, and you can't help but feel sympathy for him as he misses his dad. The only explanation he can find is that his father must have left for Iraq (they live in an army base town), and this explanation doesn't sit well with his mother. She arranges for him to meet with a psychiatrist to discuss Miller's `wild imagination'. Miller and the doctor form a tentative relationship, with Miller's explanations sounding more reasonable than anyone else's.

The key to all of this, to separate it from any number of books about dysfunctional families, is Exley. Frederick Exley, is the author of A Fan's Notes, the favorite book of Miller's father. His father's so tied to Exley's books that when he gets a phone call on 9/11 to tell him to turn on the television, he can't be bothered. He's too busy re-reading the book. The book becomes Miller's only connection to his dad. He carries on his father's obsession and turns to Exley (or at least anything even remotely related to Exley or his writing) to bring him back. With book in hand, he searches all over Watertown to find a connection and an explanation. In between searching, he teaches his father's English class at the Junior College, meets a mysterious young woman who may have known his father, and visits the VA hospital searching for clues.... This is one busy kid.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Pahnee, isn't exactly the appropriate choice for a mental health professional for Miller. This makes him perfect in terms of the book. Because while Dr. Pahnee utters the traditional psychobabble, he's also not above prowling Miller's house when no one's home, and following him around to verify if any of Miller's claims could possibly be true (both of them on bikes). He's not above hitting on Miller's mother, and as several of the chapters are written as his patient notes, we see just how far out of the range of normal he is. He is given to uttering repetitive phrases-repetitive and, indeed, annoying. (Just like that sentence!) Quirky doesn't even begin to describe him.

Clarke writes the characters in a brisk way that creates instant visuals: he describes the father "like a bear with hurt feelings." The mother is an uptight lawyer whose emotions are best deciphered by the position of her hands on her hips, and who is so rigid that her business suits are assigned a certain day to be worn. Everyone else that Miller meets fits the same non-mold, and the effect is dizzying. Despite the craziness, there is a genuine thread of humanity that aims to understand how much (or how little) of what we want to believe relates to what actually is true. It also toys with the idea of imagination as a therapeutic process, a means to adjust to and possibly accept changing circumstances.

The book reminded me a bit of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which has a child protagonist on a similar journey. Yet Clarke's novel has a more satisfying ending, and doesn't fold up quite as neatly. The flawed and outrageous characters for the most part were still sympathetic. My only irritation was that the character of Miller's mother seemed apathetic much of the time, and insensitive to Miller's father need. And to be honest, at times the unpredictable events almost became predictable once you get involved into the story...it's as if you begin to expect more of the same. The cleverness that was refreshing at first, did, albeit only a few times, get stale. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant insight into the need to fantasize December 26, 2010

By J. Luiz

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I understand why this book garnered some negative reviews. If you're looking for a straightforward tale, told by a reliable narrator, you won't find it here. But if you want a departure from conventional storytelling (without any of the quirks of overly "post-modern" techniques), then you might find this book worth the ride. The novel is about a boy who can't accept his reality -- that his parents have separated and he's lost touch with his father. He is now convinced that his father went off to Iraq, but got injured and is lying comatose in a VA hospital in Watertown, New York -- the setting of the novel A Fan's Notes. The father was a big fan of Exley's book and modeled his life after Exley and the boy is convinced that if he brings Exley to his father, he'll be able to save his father's life. But the boy's mother doesn't believe him, and she brings the boy to a psychiatrist to help him stop fantasizing and creating what she believes are elaborate ruses to convince her he's telling the truth. The psychiatrist is no ordinary psychiatrist. We learn that he's a social misfit, and we discover right off that something's not quite right with him because he has a crash on the boy's mother and initially his only interest in treating the boy (whose name is Miller, but 2ho is mostly referred to as just M. in imitation of Exley's style) seems to stem from his desire to interact with her. Things get more and more complicated from there.

The chapters switch back and forth between M's point of view and case study notes taken by the psychiatrist. As each chapter unravels, the story functions like a series of Russian nesting dolls, where you assume each time you've gotten to the bottom of things, but you can never be sure.... One minute you think Miller's telling the truth, another you think his mother is right and that his story is all just a fantasy. Facts that you thought were true are pulled out from under you, as you discover you too have been the victim of the boy's need to fantasize. The psychiatrist provides good comic fodder because he starts to unravel. In an attempt to get to the truth, he starts to follow the boy and even breaks into his house to read the journal he's told M.to write. In doing that, he even steals some letters written, we think, by the father from Iraq to his son, which the mother's been hiding because she believes Miller fabricated them. You're constantly kept guessing as the story gets more complicated and the stakes get higher. Later on, the psychiatrist takes on the persona of Exley, and it's not clear whether it's from lunacy or a brilliant to attempt to help Miller cope with what the psychiatrist realizes would be an unacceptable reality. Exley's biographer, Jonathan Yardley, is even brought into the story as Miller tries to sort everything out. The closing is heart-wrenching and pays off in a big way the effort you made to keep poring through what at times is a perplexing story. You'll be left feeling heartbroken for those of us who have to cope with untenable realities and sympathetic to the extent we can all go to create fantasies that make those harsh realities livable.

There's some serious "meta" stuff, and deep thinkers (of which I'm not) will have a lot of fun with how the story's bigger themes play into the whole notion of fiction. There's a lot of playing with words. The psychiatrist insists on being called a "mental health professional" because he doesn't like all the pejorative nicknames for psychiatrists -- in the belief that the words we choose can somehow shape the reality we live in. There's a whole examination of whether the stories we create for ourselves can become reality -- and Exley is the perfect vessel for that exploration. He wrote a "fictional memoir" (what is that? after all) and created a persona -- the fun-loving drunk who had disdain for all in the world he disaproved of -- as if that story and persona could become his reality. So in other words, if you're patient with the unconventional storytelling approach here, the book offers plenty of rewards. Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Well worth it January 28, 2011

By manly-but-bookish

Format:Hardcover

I loved Exley. I think I should be clear and up-front about that at the very beginning because the book itself is anything but "clear" and "up-front". Those who choose to read the book should be prepared for a different type of reading experience. The book has two narrators: young Miller Le Ray, a nine-year-old whose parents have separated and who is seeing a therapist, and the second is the therapist himself.

Miller believes that when his father and mother separated, that his father joined the army and was shipped off to Iraq. He also believes that his father was wounded in Iraq and is currently recovering in the local VA hospital. Clarke borrows heavily from an actual book that achieved cult status in the '60s called A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley. Miller's father is obsessed with Exley's book and Miller believes the if he can track down Exley and bring him to his father, that his father will miraculously recover and that the pieces of his life will be put together again.

Clarke alternates between the viewpoint of Miller and his therapist. and does an excellent job of blurring the line between what is real and what are the fantasies of a young child's mind who has created them in an attempt to deal with the world and its disappointments.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A Rough Draft of a Good Book November 8, 2010

By Josie Renwah

Format:Hardcover

Too many things in this book didn't come together. The author must have realized this because he makes a mad dash at the end to tell the reader what's going on. I hate it when writers do that. Yeah, it has moments, and there are some promising elements but bits and pieces just don't cut it. In my opinion this book is a rough draft of a good book.

The characters were odd and all over the place. The kid is cerebral and too advanced to read as a minor. The therapist goes off the deep end for no apparent reason, nor does he appear to return. And the mother is so shallow and sketchy I think the author would've done better off to skip her all together. She's a whisp of a character.

The pathetic character build of the women in the book seemed to make sense after I read the last page - which turned out to be the Acknowledgements - where I got the impression this was some sort of fan fiction that I was not in the loop for. If that's the case then perhaps the author felt he could slide in the development of his characters (as well as the arc of the story) because he assumed his readers were in the loop.

My inclination is to suggest that people read Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes first, and that other book Clarke mentions, and for me to do the same but sadly, after reading this book I am in no way inspired to read anything else like it. And frankly, I'm a little peeved that I wasn't warned up front about it being Fan Fiction.

Clarke has some skill. Enough that I'll give him a chance with a future publication.