Ready, Okay! (Hardcover)

It's a good book when it isn't meandering or cheesy (which is not very often), or bogged down in exposition and philosophizing (which is a bit more often). It's difficult to draw the line between Allen the main character and Adam the writer. Cadre is clearly aware of this, as he casts Allen as not only the narrator, but the author of the book.

The conclusion is pulled off better than I expected. It is built up and teased throughout the book, though kept enough in the dark that you can't exactly predict what will happen. And when it finally does happen, it hits with a surprising emotional and visceral force that left me, at least, exhausted.

I certainly have some niggling criticisms, but that's true of anything. It's a heck of a first novel, a great read, and will hopefully be a big hit.

Allen Mockery, the protagonist and narrator, maneuvers through an increasingly surreal Southern California teenagerhood that becomes nightmarish as the novel progresses. Allen styles himself a "deeg," short for "goodygood," unimplicated in the self-destructive lifestyles going on around him. It's that lack of participation that lets him observe the novel's various goings-on, and he maintains his ironic distance throughout; he meets tragedy and absurdity with the same self-aware flippancy. It's a flippancy that's not there simply to amuse, though. Allen's reluctance to take anything seriously seems to serve as a defense against the traumas he confronts. It's also a distancing mechanism of sorts: Allen's running commentary masks the extent to which he sees himself in the sordidness around him, "deeg" persona aside. One of the novel's main conflicts is between the "deegs" and the fallen, so to speak; the two worlds clash at various points, and there are some crossovers. (Cadre repeatedly uses that conflict to show the extent to which apparently similar people can live in entirely different worlds.) The same conflict also provides much of the novel's humor; the contrasts between the anything-goes set and the straitlaced folks set up some amusing one-liners.

The characters, in a few instances, seem more like types than people on first glance, but there's much more there than first appears. It's not so much that apparently loathsome characters disclose redeeming qualities--if anything, they turn out to be more loathsome, but they're loathsome in interesting ways. Similarly, some of the apparently virtuous characters have internal conflicts that ensure that there's more to the characters than caricature. Still, the most intriguing character is Allen himself, in that, for all his ironic judgment, he seems to retain a sense of complicity in the tragedies around him. In other words, Allen (but hardly anyone else) learns to wonder what he can do to save his fellow teens, and to lament not doing more when one of them falls.

Ready, Okay! is not for the faint of heart, or (occasionally) stomach--cruelty and squalor are prevalent, and much of the narrative involves benevolence getting either outwitted or simply overwhelmed (or, in a few cases, turning out to be something other than benevolence). The stark contrasts that the novel draws between virtue and degradation also produce some memorable images, though (maybe *too* memorable) and suggest that the real story is more about the forces that influence and prey on the characters than about the characters themselves. Certainly, there's a lingering sense that the characters who populate Ready, Okay! are at the mercy of, rather than in control of, their social world.

The writing is outstanding; Cadre effectively mixes grimness and pathos with humor. The structure of the story is somewhat episodic; the story sometimes focuses on Allen's relationships with specific people for long stretches, such that important characters disappear entirely. It's a necessary evil, though; the individual stories that comprise the plot arguably wouldn't work nearly as well if spliced among each other, particularly because individual plot strands bring out facets of Allen's characters in ways that would get obscured.

Ready, Okay! is a terrific first novel, though it leaves me wondering where the author will go from here--given the size and the weight of the themes the author tackles, the ambition here is considerable. Most of it isn't especially edifying, but it's well worth your time and cash.

Five out of five stars, two thumbs up, for me anyway. This book is definitely not for everyone. Unfortunately, the only way to tell if it's for YOU or not is to read it. Read it, if you feel ready to vomit by chapter 5, the book is not for you. If you reach chapter 8 or 9 before this reaction occurs, hold out the rest of the way. It's an enlightening experience.