I am utterly nonplussed that this book is out of print. This novel, this arresting and wholly authentic portrait of late twentieth-century family life, deserves an emblem that says: timeless, exemplary. Robert Boswell portrayed these contemporary characters originally and credibly, seducing the reader from the opening prologue to the masterful ending. There were no false notes, no manipulations of narrative or person. It germinates beautifully, organically.
Angela and Stephen Landis are divorced, but their six years of marriage produced a daughter, Dulcie, now 15. Angela is remarried to the promiscuous Quin, a theater agent who genuinely loves her, but is a serial cheater. Angela left Stephen because she didn't want to be a farmer's wife anymore. She begged him to give up their farm and their struggle to stay afloat in the farm's punishing Iowa landscape. Even Stephen doesn't like being a cattle farmer, but husbandry got hold of him, and he can't let go.
"True, as he inevitably pointed out, they had chosen the farm together...Now the farm seemed to her a prison, not only because of its isolation, but because it meant her unhappiness had its source in his pleasure. It pitted them against each other."
They still loved each other when Angela left, but her departure was a shattering blow for Stephen.
Dulcie has become incorrigible. Actually, incorrigible is putting it mildly. She could crush Holden Caulfield between her knees. She is wild, sometimes menacing, possibly disturbed, and her mother, approaching forty and fed-up, decides to send Dulcie to spend the summer with Stephen. In the meantime, Stephen has finally allowed himself to engage in a relationship. He has invited Leah, his paralegal girlfriend, and Leah's 14 year-old spiky daughter, Roxanne, to come live with him.
There is a scene toward the beginning of the book, where Angela, naked except for a bathrobe, is forced to follow Dulcie as she sneaks out to skinny dip at the beach with friends. The scene is so appallingly captivating, so riveting, that I knew I was in the hands of a brilliant artist.
This is a solid and often poetic read. Never quirky or breezy or whimsical, this combination of outlaw and marginalized characters are adamantine, fierce, seductive. Even Boswell's secondary characters are powerful, unbreakable.
I was alternately agonized and appalled. Boswell holds your heart in the palm of his hand. I laughed uncomfortably; I was pinned by his savage story; I cried out loud. For a penetrating story and complex characters with real gravitas, Mystery Ride has all the quality elements--ripe and vicious, vulnerable and noble, piercing and singular.
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2010
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