Customer Reviews

Internal Combustion: The Story of a Marriage and a Murder in the Motor City

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Author Joyce Maynard has written a combination of true crime novel and personal confession, focusing on Nancy Seaman, a schoolteacher accused of a particularly brutal slaying of her husband, Bob, leaving two brothers adrift and alienated from each other in wake of that crime. That is the basis of this book, the pivotal event that everything else revolves around.
But ths isn't just a recounting of a terrible event but also a way for Maynard to explore marriage in general, including her own marriage, one that eventually led to divorce. She can't help but wonder what separates the pain and rage one feels when a marriage ends from the type of anger that leads to murder? While reading this book, I got the impression that investigating the crime served as a sort of catharsis for Mayhard. Think of it as "true crime marriage therapy".
Maynard also reveals some parallels between her own life and that of the Seaman family- an unhappy marriage, anger, pain, acting irrationally at times....even going so far as to admit that she may have pushed her children to try and make some painful choices. There is a lot of personal revelation and confession here.
I have mixed emotions about the usefulness of this kind of revelation in a true crime novel. Perhaps there is something universal about rage and anger, some connection between "ordinary" rage and that which goes over the edge. On the other hand, I wonder if this book wouldn't have been stronger without the personal viewpoint and comparision.
Even so, there was so much that was moving and engrossing about this book that I read it in one fell swoop, cover to cover. I just wish I knew whether it was meant to be an exploration of the crime itself or an attempt at therapy over the author's long-ended marriage. This left me feeling a bit baffled and ambivalent.

I purchased this book after hearing the author on Fresh Air. It appealed to me because I used to live in Farmington, Michigan, which is next to the city where Nancy and Bob Seaman lived. I also wondered not only why Nancy Seaman murdered her husband but why she did it so violently.

The book is a page turner. I'm usually a slow reader but I finished it quickly. The short chapters help to maintain momentum. Maynard's style also keeps the tempo going. Some of her interviews and observations do give a flavor of the people and places of the story and the Detroit area.

However, the book has fatal flaws (pardon the pun). The worst of these is Maynard's decision to insinuate herself into the story. The book becomes almost as much of an exercise in therapeutic self-exploration as a true crime story.

Maynard clearly takes sides in this story. She writes of the people she likes, such as Lisa Ortleib (now Gorcyca) and Detective Al Patterson, with near reverence. Those she doesn't like seem like cartoon characters. The same facile approach that makes the book easy to read also gives it a television-like tendency to oversimplify.

Maynard also makes abundant mistakes of fact (saying that Telegraph Road runs through Grosse Pointe, calling Dodge Magnums Plymouths, misspelling Tigers shortstop Alan Trammell's name, etc.). This made me wonder whether her sloppiness extended to pertinent parts of the story, too.

In the end, I was disappointed. This was a story that deserved to be told in all its complexity. Maynard captured some of it. However, she could have told it better if she had kept herself off of the pages and abstained from quick and easy generalization.

What do you do when you set out to write a true crime book, but the perp won't talk, even though you've invested a lot of time and money in the faith that she will? Well, this book shows how to get around that major problem. You pad it. Pad it with observations about everything you did while waiting around for the key interview that won't ever happen. You attend the funeral of a Four Tops singer. What's that got to do with Nancy Seaman? Nada. You hang out at the lake house of the local courthouse reporter and pad a few chapters about that. You decide you'll draw parallels with your own failed marriage and divorce. That's good for maybe 25 percent of the required pages to make your book contract. Hmm. Let's see, now? What else can you pad with? Oh, I know. Make some big socioeconomic generalizations about the haves and have nots who populate both sides of the tracks in your setting, in this case, Detroit's 8 Mile Road. Even so, this book is still pretty interesting and Maynard is a world-class writer. So you should read it, even though it's deeply flawed. The case in question is a real beaut.

Let me say this on the onset: I love Joyce Maynard and her writing style. Which is why when I saw this book at the airport 2 weeks ago, I jumped at it and wondered how I had not known it was out. That was 2 weeks ago. Now, 2 weeks later, I am frustrated with the obvious bias and contempt Maynard shows toward Nancy Seaman. I am not sure where this comes from: perhaps because Seaman refused to give Maynard an interview. But the book comes out completely one-sided, despite assertions time and time again by the author that she wants to be fair to all. You get the same feeling when the author speaks about Greg (bad son) vs. Jeff (good son).

I am now at the point where I am now rolling my eyes every time she makes a side comment about Nancy. The section on Nancy calling people "[...]" is actually laughable. By this point, the author is portraying Nancy as the most ungrateful, most despicable, most unreasonable woman in America. Of course, not to mention that she is also an ax murderer.

However, when you see the "support" Nancy gets from her community, the Judge, as well as the angle of the CBS 48 Hours documentary, one really has got to wonder who is really being fair and balanced.

I give the book a 3 because, even with the flaws of the book (such as Maynard now inserting herself into the story -- what is THAT about?), the writing style is still very enjoyable.

But the story itself is really really really sad.

And, I do have a side comment of my own: even though Julie Dumbleton may not have been sleeping with Bob Seaman, I truly believe she was in love with him (the kind of love a spouse has the right to wonder about); and as much as Nancy was fighting for her man, so was Julie giving back ounce for ounce. She is not an innocent naive woman one bit. Instead, I see her as a very calculating woman who was instrumental to the break-down of a marriage. And, quite honestly, I see what Julie and Bob had as an affair. It obviously was not sexual or intimate, but an affair nonetheless.

Like I said, it has been 2 weeks now, and I am internally combusting, but determined to finish the book, because I paid for it. But I am at the point where I am wondering when the book changed from "The Story of a Marriage and a Murder in the Motor City" to "My Life and Times As A Woman, Mother and Writer." The whole focus of the book seems to have changed.

Joyce Maynard's new book "Internal Combustion" is a gripping account of a most unusual murder and its aftermath. The locale is Detroit where murder is not unusual. What makes the story of the Seaman murder unusual is that the principles are successful in that unique American way of climbing from near rags to almost riches while seeming to most as a normal family. It is only after the murder that the family stress factors become obvious. Ms. Maynard, luckily for us, is much more than a casual observer and unlike our often sensational media, stays with the story until she nears full comprehension of what must have taken place. But discovering the truth of what happened is only the beginning for the author. From the start she wants also to divine why this particular tragedy occurred among the vast number of potential tragedies that hover over all of us.
The core of the story is a brutal murder and the fracturing of a family. But the story as told also explores the lives of others involved in a way that enriches the narrative plus Ms. Maynard uses her reporter's eye to limn portraits of her surroundings that add depth and color.
Many will compare "Internal Combustion" to "In Cold Blood" but while Capote's book was about random murder, Maynard's is about murder up close and as personal as it gets. I have seldom read a better book.

I enjoyed Joyce Maynard's style, mixing in personal reactions and asking herself why she was drawn to this story. I liked getting to know her as she investigated the murder. She came across as a sensitive person who consciously tried to be fair and not pre-judge people she interviewed. I wasn't offended by her talking about herself and how she identified with this story. And I enjoyed reading her conclusions.

I agree with one of the reader commentators that it was unusual that Maynard didn't see fault in Julie Dumbleton's becoming so close to a married man, and maintaining the relationship even after she knew how angry and jealous his wife was. But I don't think the author makes Julie Dumbleton out to be perfect.

I would have liked to hear more about the Seaman family before the murder. Did they go to their son Jeff's baseball games together and son Greg's cross country meets? The early years of Bob and Nancy's marriage seem brushed over quickly. Also, the dissolution of the marriage that led to the murder isn't very clear. This is partly because there are very contrasting accounts from Dennis Seaman, Rick Cox, Nancy's testimony, Jeff and others. Also, the author wasn't able to get an interview with either Nancy or Greg.

A commentator mentions that the author's interviews are "frustratingly undirected." I think it is enlightening to let people talk and report what they say, but it sometimes would have been nice to hear answers to particular questions. For instance, why not ask Nancy's father, Eugene D'Onofrio, to talk about Nancy's childhood?

But despite any criticisms, I found "Internal Combustion" very interesting, and after reading it, I want to read more by Joyce Maynard.

I am a great fan of Joyce Maynard's memoir, At Home in the World, and I also recommend her new book, Internal Combustion. Its genre is romantic true crime, not romantic in the 'romance' sense but in the sense of high romanticism. As I have said before, Joyce Maynard understands the world by understanding herself and--in this book--she comes to understand aspects of herself by understanding the experience of the Seamans. The ongoing question within the book (she tells us) is not only why Nancy Seaman killed Bob Seaman but why Joyce Maynard was so attracted to the case that she ended up devoting so much time and energy to it.

She ultimately answers both questions, seeing patterns of behavior in the Seaman case that echo patterns of behavior in her own. Maintaining this balance is the key to the book's success. The problem with romanticism or at least the potential problem with it has always been that it tilts toward the unique and even the ineffable, sacrificing the universal. In reacting against the eighteenth-century's fascination with the commonalities in our experience romanticism risked an obsession with those commonalities' opposite. Hence the risk that it can become recondite to the point of incomprehensible or, in some cases, simply weird. The true trick--for the eighteenth century--was to observe the unique closely and then see, within it, the general. The purely unique, the truly unique, is ultimately not very interesting, because it fails to mesh with our own experience.

I think the most interesting aspect of Internal Combustion is not the principal text--the overlap between Joyce Maynard's divorce behaviors and the parallel disfunctions in the Seaman household. The interesting thing is that there is such overlap at the same time that there are such differences. The Seaman family is incapable of communicating, in part because of the fact that the men are, essentially, engineers who communicate in different ways. Joyce Maynard, on the other hand, is a highly skilled communicator, one who grew up in an artistic family, the antithesis, in many ways, of the Seaman family. As we read the Seaman saga we can see how more effective, more human forms of communication might have helped save them. But would they have? Joyce Maynard succumbed to some of the same human realities and temptations as the Seamans, despite her superior verbal and listening skills.

Hence the real subtext: our common piety that problems could be solved if only we could communicate (in marriage, in global politics, whatever) is, in a sense, belied by the far more powerful dictates of common human reality, what the traditionalists would term human nature. The postmodernists are fond of denying the existence of the latter, but the experience of the Seamans (with Bob's head struck repeatedly by a hatchet) and of Joyce Maynard, pouring wine over her head or threatening to jump out of a moving vehicle, offer compelling evidence of its existence. Seeing the 'only communicate' piety belied may be disquieting, but that's what makes this a true 'true crime' book and not a self-help or 'inspirational' one.

Bravo, Joyce. And for those of you who haven't read At Home in the World, what are you waiting for?

Although I am an afficiando of the true crime genre...I must admit I have never bothered to write a review before. I was selfish enough to merely avail myself of the reviews I read here. Mostly they were close enough to be helpful..however after reading the good reviews that this book received I will never be able to count on them again.

A real true crime fan should have been appalled at the extent that the author insinuated herself into the book. Not only with her own personal life but her uniformed opinions on the main characters. There is so much to comment on I don't even know where to start.

Her dislike of Greg is obvious and annoying. Greg would not to talk her, period...that seems to have been what made him evil. She really seems to actively dislike Greg, who even the seasoned Judge considered truthful. She actually mentions at one point while talking to Jeff in the bar...he (Jeff's)inability to look her in the eye was probably because it all was so painful to talk about or some such tripe. At the same time she mentions that Greg looked you right in the eye...and that proved that he was a liar!! Has she ever even TALKED to a trained detective? The total opposite is true, especially in the case of these 2 young men, neither who seemed to be good at fooling anyone but themselves. The truth of the matter, which my whole book club agreed with, is that Greg was the ONLY truly sympathethic character in the book.

The authors persistance in trying to make a saint out of Julia Dumbie is downright crazy. This woman, above all others, was instrumental in tearing apart a family which, while far from perfect, could perhaps have held itself together, or at least worked out a more reasonable divorce. She describes Julia as too good to have an affair...a statement that is ridiculous in it's naivety. Julia knew that her "friends" wife was very upset about the relationship and encouraged his absences from his family. She must have had no concept of the term friendship...no true friend would have done that. Leaving photos of her children in Bob's office was inappropriate, letting her daughter sit on Bob's lap at 12-14 was very inappropriate,....you get the picture. However the most heinous thing that Julia did was dragging her children into the situation and letting it go on for so long after the fact. Over a year after the death she is obsessing on it constantly with and in front her children. She was obviously more then a friend of Bob's and she is certainly not the best of mothers as the author states ad naseum.

Neither Bob nor Nancy come off as wonderful people, however they both had people who loved and admired them. As I said they might have gotten through this if certain people hadn't pushed Bob. The thought that his brother Dennis would encourage him to try to take half of his wife's lousy little condo payment is unconsciousable. What kind of people think like that? A good man would have said "Go home and get this over with. Help you wife of 30 years, the mother of your children, make a transition to a single life that she never had envisioned. Don't worry about cheating her out of $5000, worry about having peace in your family."

I won't go on though there was so much that was wrong that I made a list while reading it...something I have never done before in my life. Our book club only finished the book so we could talk in detail about the worst true crime book ever wrote. I only gave it the one star as the case itself is interesting...and even this author couln't ruin that. I hope that someone writes a good book about this case. I wonder if 48 Hours is going to...it might explain why this author had an unaccountable hatred of 48 Hours also.

I enjoyed this book immensely. If you are interested in true crime as I am, and especially about crimes which take place within the family, then I would recommend this book to you. This is the story of prim and proper 4th grade school teacher Nancy Seaman who murdered her husband Bob in one of the worst ways possible. The author, Joyce Maynard, did an excellent job in describing Nancy's life in the days before, during, and after the murder of her husband. She also described the uncomfortable relationship between Nancy and Bob's two sons, Jeff and Greg. What would cause someone to do such a terrible thing? What's wrong with just giving up and getting a divorce? Well, you'll find out when you read this book. I liked everything about this book - from the well-written story to the pictures. I think that the reviews for this book came in low because the author incorporated her own story of divorce into the book. But I didn't mind this. In fact, I found her story to be interesting and I like how she discussed her children and their issues while growing up and becoming adults. Overall, I rate this book a 5. Great book!

On one level, Internal Combustion is a standard, true-crime book. Bob and Nancy Seaman were a married couple who appeared to have it all: good jobs, successful kids, and a large house outside of Detroit. But things were not what they seemed. Bob and Nancy's marriage was acrimonious, Bob lost his job as an engineer, and the couple's two sons "took sides" in their parents' arguments.

Shortly after asking Nancy for a divorce, Bob was stabbed to death. Subsequently, police charged Nancy with first-degree murder. However, Nancy claimed that Bob was abusive and that she acted in self-defense. Predictably, Nancy's trial received intense media coverage. In Internal Combustion author Joyce Maynard casts a skeptical eye on Nancy's claims.

There are many strong aspects of the book. Maynard has a talent for making her characters come alive, particularly the Seamans. Also, she does a great job of summarizing the legal proceedings; many true crime books bore the reader during descriptions of trials, but Maynard gives the reader just enough detail. Finally, car fans will enjoy Internal Combustion's descriptions of the role that vintage cars played in the lives of Bob Seaman and his two sons.

On a second level, Internal Combustion differs from most true-crime books. Maynard uses the "new journalism" technique of making herself a major character in the story. She spends dozens of pages discussing her ambivalence about writing the book and she also focuses on her own divorce and how it influenced her perceptions of the Seaman case. A reader's reaction to Internal Combustion will depend, in large part, on how he or she likes "new journalism" approach.

(In my opinion, Maynard's writing is strong in these sections, but she includes too many details. At almost 500 pages, the book is overly long. Less navel gazing would have made the book more satisfying).

There are also several other issues with the book. Maynard had (sporadic) access to only one of the three surviving Maynards, son Jeff. As a result, many details are missing. She unconvincingly claims that she doesn't care that Nancy and Greg Seaman chose not to speak with her. Finally, Maynard irritates the reader by repeating the same descriptions of many of the characters each time she discusses them. (Bob Seaman is short; Nancy Seaman wears nice clothes; one of the prosecutors is beautiful, etc).

I do think that Internal Combustion is worth reading, providing potential readers realize that - at about 500 pages - it involves a large investment of time. (A final note - readers will want to search the web for updates on Nancy - a lot has happened since the book appeared in 2006).