Customer Reviews

Nothing Lost

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

 

 

I found this an excellent novel. Great characters, wonderful plot, and a profound rendering of various social classes. Having worked in the criminal justice system for thirty years noone writes about this milieu better than Dunne. Also there is humor and compassion in his writing; comic writing with a touch of sadness. Dunne will be greatly missed.

John Gregory Dunne was a greatly underappreciated American writer at the time of his death in December 2003. His novel about the Black Dahlia case, "True Confessions" is a masterpiece of neo-noir and black comedy (forget about the dull movie version with DeNiro and Duvall.) His searing, direly funny "Dutch Shea, Jr." is a classic waiting to be rediscovered. "Nothing Lost" is set in the same fictional universe as "The Red White, and Blue" and "Playland". Those books tended to be longer on atmosphere than story, but "Nothing Lost" has the snappy surprise of his earlier work. It's Dunne's fictional version of those sensational, media-driven criminal trials of the 1990's. In a fictional midwestern state, a poor African-American man is tortured and murdered by some lowlife young white men in the horribly familiar manner of Brandon Teena, Matthew Shepard, or James Bird. Because one of the accused turns out to be the brother of a notorious teen supermodel the media is further sucked into the case. The model, Carlyle, seems to be based on Paris Hilton; a conservative congresswoman appears to be modeled on Ariana Huffington before her recent conversion to the left. (Another lady talk show host character, who has a lesbian affair with the congresswoman, seems to be the Ann Coulter figure, so to speak.)

It turns out that eveyone involved, including the dead man, has secrets to hide, secrets that come back and bite them at the worst possible times. What prevents this book from being Dunne's best are a couple of things. In this one his bitterness and misanthropy are out of control. Dunne thought that if you lived in the middle of the country, away from the sacred precincts of LA and New York, you lived in a hell of yokelry and lower-class backwardness. These qualities are bracing and invigorating in his earlier books, but in "Nothing Lost" he seems to hate everything and everyone. A little light and grace would provide some contrast, at least. And the last hundred pages are rushed. Too much happens all at once to be completely convincing. The book has an aura of being unfinished, and it might have been a little better crafted but for Dunne's untimely death. Nevertheless, if you are a fan you don't want to miss Dunne's last effort. It's bleakly entertaining, but if you aren't already familiar with his books you should really start with "True Confessions."

I'm at home on bed rest and desperate for something good to read. This book did the trick.. The narrator is smart, funny, and clearly aware that it is next to impossible to do much about most of the evil sleaziness of the world. Certainly it is impossible to make changes in individual lives, one at a time. (Or maybe I'm just jaded, too. Some may call it maturity.) Clearly, the narrator is the most decent character in a novel full of morally bankrupt people (from both sides of the tracks). Ironically, his career is blindsided due to what others perceive to be questionable morals. Anyway, join Max as he watches pathetic people with and without class, power, and agency screw up their lives even more than they already have, and help him make sense of it. Great literature this ain't, but a smart, fun, cynical read it is.

Totally disagree with AUGUSTABOOKMAN. ( I TOO AM A HARVARD GRAD !
The College.) I write a mini review of each of the hundreds of books I read annually. This is it for "Nothing Lost":

His last book; posthumously published.
A complex story,beautifully constructed; rich, clever dialogue; many threads to surprise you, but all are brought together in the end. The reader is caught from the first paragraph. One of those books which you are anxious to get back to. Given a choice the book takes precedent over other activities. We will miss you John. Several years since your last effort,but well worth the wait

Nothing Lost contains all the right elements: a good plot, good characters, weighty themes, and fine sentence-by-sentence writing. Unfortunately, these elements do not coalesce into an excellent novel. The book is, finally, a hash. Plot lines are disjunct; speaking voices are unidentifiable; transitions are often nonexistent. It feels as if someone took a great novel, threw the pages into the air and then printed the clumps that came down together in no particular order. Dunne did not see the book through to final page proofs, but a strong editorial hand could have made this book competitive with True Confessions, Dunne's masterpiece in fiction.

Having said that, I must also say that I finished it and that I enjoyed it and that I admire its constituent elements. It is sad that the book's narrative potential was not reached.

Nothing Lost is narrated by Max Cline, who was ousted from the prosecutor's office when South Midland's born-again Christian Attorney General, Jerrold Wormwold (AKA "The Worm" finds out that he is gay.

Max was supposed to prosecute trial of two white men (Duane Lajoie and Bryant Gover) accused of the gruesome torture and murder of a black drifter named Edgar Parlance. Gover quickly rats out Lajoie, who happens to have a supermodel sister, Carlyle. Carlyle has agreed to pay for his legal expenses and make a coffee table book out of the trial.

This all turns the case too high profile in the eyes of The Worm, who takes Max off the case and replaces him with J.J. McClure. The Worm doesn't want a gay lead prosecutor ruining his chances of being elected - especially now that conservative talk show hostess and Congresswoman Sonora "Poppy" McClure has mentioned that she will run for Governor as well. Little does The Worm know, J.J. McClure is Poppy's husband.

Max is down but not out, as he returns to the case as a Defense Attorney and goes head to head with J.J. A full blown media circus beings as Poppy tries to use the case to her advantage and The Worm tries to spin the case to his advantage.

Nothing Lost is a fast-paced thriller that is cynical, profane and tongue in cheek funny.

Very near the end of the book, author John Gregory Dunne writes, "We can ask if it is worth caring about." I daresay it took nerve for Dunne to write that, because the same question could be asked about this book. I have never read a book populated with such despicable characters, each and every one of them. Of course they are lawyers, politicians, teen models and thugs, so that explains that. This book is filled with death, people dropping like flies. And nobody exits normally. No passing away in your sleep, no cancer, no heart attacks. Nothing but bizarre endings to worthless lives. There is nobody to care about in this book. Nobody to like, save maybe Max, the sometime narrator, but the most we learn about him is that his career is dead ending and he's gay, living with a lover he doesn't like very much. The first 175 pages is back-story, telling us about the dastardly characters and a dastardly crime which involved skinning the victim alive. The remainder of the book flits about the central issue, but never focuses on it, and brings it to an end with another coincidental death, actually four of them. Dunne writes this book with some style, if vulgar can be considered a style. Occasionally I didn't know who the narrator was, but it didn't matter. Often he eliminates quotation marks over long stretches of conversation. Much of these stretches were of conversations learned second-hand, or hearsay, not allowed as evidence. So maybe that was why he eliminated the punctuation. But not of all of these conversations were hearsay, and I'll leave it to a contemporary literature class to discern why. I don't really care. It's interesting to know that this book was published a year after Dunne's death. Maybe the publisher thought it wouldn't sell otherwise. It's a contradiction. There is nothing much here, yet what is, is fascinating in the telling. And, for that reason, worth reading unless you've got something better to do. It's kind of like reading the National Enquirer where very one you meet would be great fodder for the Jerry Springer Show. But, once the show is over, who cares?

According to the NY Times Dunne died when this book was in galleys. I find this hard to believe, as the book is a sprawl of undigested plot devices, confusing narrative POVS, three or four characters all with similar sensibilities making it hard to tell them apart. I'm sure John, had he lived, would have tightened the book before it got to galleys.

But even for its problems it's a J.G. Dunne book, and a pleasure. No novelist knows his way around a courtroom better. The story of the racially charged murder on the prairie is very good (though the book's extraneity makes you wait a long time for the good parts). Recommend with serious reservations.

I really thought the author had a terrific idea in writing a send up of our modern world plotted around a sensational killing. All the elements were there, the media, hollywood, gays, etc. However, he missed the opportunity to paint the characters and the plot in broad satirical brush strokes. Often you could almost take these characters seriously. The dialogue, which is probably typical for Dunne, is too clever by half. This book certainly did not make me want to read any more of his writings.

Lists about this book:
1. People the author doesn't like (and it shows): Midwesterners, Republicans, football players and coaches, prosecutors, people who live in mobile homes, Vietnam veterans, prison guards, TV reporters, models, bodyguards, cops, the entire population of Las Vegas and Hollywood.
2. People the author pretends to like, but his scorn shows through: Gays.
3. Silly plot tricks: Far to numerous to mention. Several years ago the National Lampoon did a satire on how to write a novel, recommending that if you wrote your characters into a blind alley with no way forward, you should just end your book by saying "Suddenly, he was run over by a bus". The author seems to have taken that advice, not realizing it was satire. This is a book that has no ending, but just stops. Waste of money; avoid.