Customer Reviews

The Suburbs of Heaven

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Merle Drown's powerful rural voice is both authentically simple and poetically lyrical. When we meet protagonist Jim Hutchins he is 50, lugging a shotgun from his trailer, preparing to kill his brother-in-law Emory, his "sworn enemy," (a phrase we later learn is wryly borrowed from his tormented eldest son) and ruminating how things got to this pass.

"Life makes you eat the thorns. Smell the roses if you can, but don't forget, you're going to eat the thorns. Course I ain't so smart. If I were smart, I'd have hunted up a pistol, then my elbow wouldn't hurt so."

Born and bred in Penacook County, NH, Hutchins quit school in the eighth grade, married his sweetheart, Pauline, and had four children. Three of them seem to be making worse messes of their lives than their parents and the fourth, the youngest, their shining hope, Elizabeth, died two years before at age 11 in an inexplicable drowning accident which has fragmented the family.

Bereft of hope, communication among them breaks down and each falls prey to his or her core weakness. Slow, steady Gregory, the oldest, becomes consumed by the voices in his head and the oddly prescient voices coming over his radio. Lisa escapes her abusive marriage after three children only to succumb to drugs and alcohol and prostitution. Tommy, the smartest, seems bent on drinking himself to destruction. Pauline clings mightily to each of her children, blaming others for their troubles.

Jim's grief is internal and inarticulate. Helplessly he watches Pauline turn to Emory for comfort and for money when she's spent all that they have and owe to buy her children out of the holes they've dug themselves. Dunned for back taxes by the IRS and the town, he seems unable to act, except to keep things from falling completely apart. It's Jim who fetches Lisa from her feckless, mean husband ("He claims Fesmire for a name, though I ain't uncertain that a while back in his family a turnip got over the fence"), Jim who keeps Tommy from dropping his hard-mouthed girlfriend out a second-story window, and Jim who takes the gun away from Gregory. But he is limited to reactions and when it comes to Pauline he's helpless.

While Jim's is the main voice, Drown allows each of the Hutchinses to speak. Characters who might otherwise seem people only a parent could love come into their own with humor and passion. Tommy hides his regrets under a breathless, edgy sass and more hell-bent energy than is healthy. Gregory works things out with a meticulous if loony and increasingly frightening earnestness. Lisa, the least comprehensible and least sympathetic, combines self-loathing with bitterness and bursts of rough independence and Pauline's grief and yearning for beauty infuse her every deed.

Violence lurks at the edges. Suplots include a panty thief and Emory's real estate maneuvering, impotence and police suspicions of having murdered his wife (Jim's sister).

Told in the present tense, the story unfurls the convoluted past while hurtling headlong into a ragged future. Despite their bleak, strapped lives, each character's voice is alive with wry humor and yearning. Drown's earthy, graceful, hilarious prose explores love and marriage, friendship, the power of money and poverty, middle-aged regret and other baggage of life. As funny as it is poignant, with an explosive climax that supplies symmetry, hope and a last laugh too, "The Suburbs of Heaven," is as fine a piece of literature as it is a provocative story.

To call the circumstances described in this book as "charming," as several reviewers have done, is patronizing. These characters all have major problems of their own making, they blame everyone and everything but themselves, and they all seem to think that sex or guns will solve whatever problem arises. A woman who buys "catting around" clothes for her adult, married son, then dances nude for her brother-in-law to get back some of the money (needed so that the trailer will not be repossessed for back taxes) is not charming, she's foolish. Another "adult" woman has three children in three years, endures physical abuse, and then turns to prostitution and drugs to support her alcohol habit, is sick and needs help, not a dose of charm. A man who hears snakes in his head and then buys a gun to use against his "sworn enemies" is terrifying, not charming or an example of "black humor," another term used here. This book is like a printed transcript of the Jerry Springer Show.

Speak of a dysfunctional family. Wow! Meet Jim and Pauline Hutchins and their children, nephews and assorted other relatives. They find trouble where was none before. And when you think nothing else could possibly go wrong, another can of worms open up. The Book of Job is a children's tale by comparison. All this gets to the point where, unfortunately, it becomes very funny. It sounds like a story out of some Kentucky holler and not like prim, staid and silent New England.

I very much admire the author for his incredible gift of imagination. He wrote a wonderful book.

Merle Drown has written a sad, poignant yet engaging novel about a family's hard life and downward spiral in rural New Hampshire. The story of the day to day misery of the Hutchins family, as life's troubles bear down on them, should make you want to put the book down and say "forget it, enough already". But this book is written with such insight, humor and hope that you'll keep turning pages to the end. The novel is told from the different viewpoints of the five Hutchins family members. Each adds his or her feelings of past and current events, moving the story foward to its climactic ending. The real strength of this book is the amazing character development and eloquent writing. Mr. Drown has a wonderful ear for dialogue. A book about despair and the beaten down lives of a rural family and yet, uplifting in its own way.

This man certainly is the Faulkner of N.H.! Indeed. If I were to reccomend this book to anyone, it would be someone from New Hampshire. Having lived in the state that lives free or dies, I can easily see why Jim would do what he does, says what he says. The chapters are wonderfully short and blissful. Panty thieves beware! Funny, sad, dark, angry...Congratulations on that NEA grant, Merle! (all this and the man is a fine high school english teacher? wow.)

I often get the impression that authors of character driven stories about poor, and consequently dysfunctional, families write from the comfort of their Soho lofts. Having first-hand experience at being down-and-out, I can say that Drown appears to really get it. The Hutchins' are good folks who can't seem to get a break. Worse, most of the people around them don't offer any breaks. Yet they manage to laugh (occassionally anyway) through it. So, even if Drown doesn't "get it," he does a great job of faking it. And isn't that what its all about?

I can understand those who shrink from the unpleasant aspects of this novel's characters and their lives.

So what.

I think two things made this novel one of the most delightful I've read:

1. Every character is allowed at least one paragraph of first person narrative. That was splendid.

2. Brazen selfishness liberally poured over a dose of banal stupidity contrasts rather nicely with the pointless selflessness. The end result is a perpetual downward spiral of destruction of self, others and the inanimate. Mmm good humor at the expense of clueless characters.

The blue ribbon for family dysfunction has been awarded:
it is the family of Jim Hutchins from New Hampshire.

The blue ribbon for citizen dysfunction has been awarded: it is to any person living in the small town in New Hampshire associated either by relative or friends, neighbors, store owners or law enforcement officials
to the family of Jim Hutchins.

What compells anyone to read this novel is absurd expectation. The characters are barely hanging onto reality. Some of them beckon sympathy and an appeal that they will pull their stupid heads out of their....well...let us just say they beckon some empathy for their predicaments.

Yet, it is their stupidity that turns the pages of this novel. One can hardly believe their ignorance can continue to progress, and the innocent prayer that some savior will rush out to change the course of impending doom is frankly the only reason I kept up with the book!!

If you want to read more than a train wreck, read this.