Pickard County Atlas by Chris Harding Thornton

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on January 5, 2021

The protagonist of Pickard County Atlas believes that people who respond to adversity either overcome or succumb. Adversity is a way of life for the characters in Chris Harding Thornton's debut novel. The story makes clear that people who base rash actions on incomplete evidence are likely to do harm. Rash actions and misunderstandings are the default behavior of Thornton's characters.

When Dell Reddick Jr. was seven, a farmhand killed him. The farmhand called the sheriff’s office, confessed, and killed himself. Dell Junior’s body was never found and the Reddick family has never overcome the tragedy. Dell Senior’s wife Virginia has made a habit of disrobing outside and setting fire to her clothes for reasons of her own. Dell Senior moved out and left his younger sons, Rick and Paul, to act as their mother’s caretakers. Now that they are older, Rick and Paul work for their father, buying and restoring trailers. They always hope to find a double wide so they can make some decent money.

Harley Jensen is a deputy sheriff. He spends his nights patrolling the county roads, occasionally interrupting teens making out on property that isn’t their own. Many of the houses in the county are empty and abandoned, including the house in which Harley grew up. Some of them have been torched by parties unknown.

Harley has had some run-ins with Paul Reddick over the years, beginning when he tried to have Paul committed after Paul climbed a water tower and acted like he was going to shoot people or himself. Paul seems to resent Harley’s failure to find Dell Junior’s body. Paul recently seems to be hanging out at Harley’s childhood home. Harley finds him there on one occasion with a girl who is too young for Paul, at least in Harley’s judgment.

While Harley is driving around at night, brooding about the past, he stumbles upon Rick Reddick’s wife, Pam, in whom Harley takes an interest that is not entirely professional. Pam isn’t happy with her hand-to-mouth existence. She fantasizes about running off, leaving her daughter with Rick. Her tendency to drive around at night in support of her fantasies leads Rick to a mistaken conclusion about Pam’s nighttime actions — or rather, he’s mistaken about the person she’s meeting. That mistake leads to some of the novel’s tension.

To the extent that it is possible to bring Nebraska to life (Nebraska is the only state in which I watched a weather report that took up the majority of the local news broadcast on a cloudless summer day), Chris Harding Thornton does so. He creates a rural midwestern atmosphere that captures the emptiness and desolation of both the landscape and the county’s inhabitants. Thornton’s prose is fluid and sharp without ever becoming self-consciously literary. Readers who crave likable characters won’t find any here, but the characters are unlikeable precisely because they are so realistic.

The themes of “brother against brother” and “small town secrets” have been done before but writers return to those themes because they speak to readers. The dark ending seems a bit forced, as do some of the interactions between characters, but Thornton’s ability to create gritty scenes that transfix a reader makes Pickard County Atlas a solid first novel.

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Kraft by Jonas Lüscher

First published in Germany in 2017; published in translation by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on November 10, 2020

Kraft is the story of an intellectual named Richard Kraft. The story begins in the present, as Kraft is invited to America to compete with other scholars for a million-dollar prize. His task is to write and present an essay on “Why Whatever Is, Is Right and Why We Can Still Improve It.” Kraft understands the topic to be based on the proposition that we live in the best of all possible worlds — presumably because it was created by God — and that the best possible world is nevertheless permeated by evil, which suggests that evil can’t really be so bad. Or perhaps it is bad for the individual but necessary for the greater good of the whole. Kraft doesn’t agree with Alexander Pope’s thesis that “Whatever is, is right” — Kraft is no fan of theodicy — but he needs the million so he endeavors to craft an essay that will appeal to Tobias Erkner, who has funded the competition and will judge the competitors.

Kraft is a professor of rhetoric. Years earlier, as a student in West Germany, striving to stand out in intellectual circles, Kraft embraced neoclassical theory and market liberalism, the trickle-down notions of capitalism that were championed by Ronald Reagan’s advisors. Kraft understands that he has embraced ideas that are the economic equivalent of theodicy because they demand the acceptance of evil (in the form of poverty and injustice) as natural and beneficial to the greater good. He also understands that advancing in the intellectual world doesn’t require him to actually believe the ideas that he defends. As he struggles with his essay, Kraft knows he will need to dress up an economic system that repels him “with an aura of divine ordainment” because Erker is rich and will want to hear that his wealth is the outcome of a natural social order that recognizes his entitlement.

Flashbacks to and beyond Kraft’s student days tell of his friendship with István (a like-minded intellectual), his relationship with Ruth Lambsdorff (who fled without explanation, stimulating Kraft’s “vain craving for admiration”), his equally unsuccessful relationship with Johanna Hueffel (who, years later, takes issue with Kraft’s memory that she fled from him in anger), his past and present unhappy marriages and his ambiguous relationship with his children. Through all of this, Kraft sees himself as an honorable man, although it belatedly dawns on him that others might see him as a monster. In fact, he is neither or both. He would like the freedom of another divorce, but he can’t afford freedom unless he wins the million, a circumstance he finds shameful.

An undercurrent of comedy runs through the story. Usually understated, the comedy occasionally yields slapstick moments (Kraft being found naked in a field near Stanford after a “rowing adventure” is one example). István is almost a comic figure, a man who poses as a dissident intellectual who defected from Hungary when, in fact, he entered Germany as the shirt-washer for the Hungarian chess team and stayed behind when the bus left without him, the officer in charge having failed to notice his absence. The German obsession with David Hasselhoff also inspires some chuckles.

The moral question that Kraft must ultimately confront is whether he can dress up drivel as intellect — drivel he sees through and knows he cannot justify, despite his ability to advance arguments that purport to be honest — for money. Is the cost of being an intellectual sellout outweighed by the greater good of providing for his family? But this has been Kraft’s dilemma throughout his life. His dissertation extolled an economic system that he found repugnant and in which he had so little confidence that he spread the dissertation in all directions, welding on “any number of reinforcements and pointless rivets,” plastering it with his “stupendous knowledge of the relevant secondary literature,” and varnishing it with eloquent rhetoric to disguise its dishonesty.

Kraft is a fascinating novel because of its serious discussion of abstract philosophical concepts and their application to a concrete world. A dissenting voice (who doesn’t need the million dollars) argues that everything that is, is bad: rising nationalism, open acceptance of racism, the democratic election of despots, the embrace of anti-intellectualism and the “legitimation of ignorance,” the failure of countries like India and China to provide hope for a better future to their citizens. Kraft ponders an alternative view — that the coming Singularity that will advance humanity by merging real and artificial intelligence — but wonders whether the Singularity will lead to the enslavement of man by machine. It’s tough to be intellectually honest.

The novel’s humor doesn’t attempt to disguise the reality that world is a bleak place, for some more than others. The novel’s ending is also bleak, perhaps to drive home the point that sunny optimism alone can’t change reality. The ending struck me as something of a cop-out but it reflects a choice that, in a world of infinite choices, might be as valid as any other. Putting the ending aside, I admire Kraft for Jonas Lüscher’s willingness to confront the profound without forgetting that people of all intellectual levels muddle through their lives as best they can, struggling only occasionally (if at all) to make sense of it.

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A Man by Keiichiro Hirano

Published in Japan in 2018; published in translation by Amazon Crossing on June 1, 2020

A Man is a story of people who have changed their identities. The prologue tells us that the author is recounting a story told in a bar by a man who identified himself as Akira Kido before confessing that the name belongs to someone else. Kido told the author that he keeps himself together “by living other people’s pain.” Kido claims to achieve honesty through lies, something that all writers of fiction should strive to accomplish.

The author tells us that Kido told a story of becoming obsessed with the life of a man, but it is Kido, “when viewed from behind as he chases this man,” who the story is about. The author sensed something in Kido that “needed to be seen.” What that might have been is left for the reader to decide.

The man with whom Kido becomes obsessed was known for part of his life as Daisuké Taniguchi. Until his accidental death, he was married to a woman named Rié. Rié had two sons with her first husband. After the younger son died, Rié’s husband divorced her. After Rié’s father died, Rié returned to her hometown with her son Yuto. She met Daisuké, who explained that his father had also died, but not until family friction was caused by Daisuké’s reluctance to be a liver transplant donor for his father. Rié and Daisuké had a girl named Hana, but Daisuké died after less than four years of marriage.

The story begins after Daisuké’s death, when Rié makes contact with Daisuké’s family for the first time. When she notifies his brother Kyoichi of Daisuké’s death, Kyoichi visits Rié and delivers the startling news that Rié’s husband was not his brother. While Kyoichi indeed had a brother named Daisuké, the man who was married to Rié is not Daisuké. Kyoichi’s brother found it better to run away from home than to live with the impossible expectations of an overbearing father. The life story Rié’s husband told her is Daisuké’s story, not his own.

Rié takes this news to her divorce attorney, who happens to be Kido. The story then follows Kido as he attempts to discover Daisuké’s true identity and the reason he concealed it from Rié. The answers he finds give closure to Rié and Yuko, as well as the opportunity to repair the difficult relationship between a mother and teenage son. In a way, ending his obsessive quest also brings Kido a sense of closure.

This is a novel about the lives of people who want to begin anew. Adopting a new identity, or trading identities, seems to be the preferred mechanism in Japan of abandoning an old life and making a new one. Kido, at least, finds multiple examples of the practice that complicate his investigation. Kido’s exploration of troubled lives brings him into contact with stories of violence and despair, but also prompts a potential reunification of a lost soul and the woman he has never forgotten.

Kido tells us of his own life and his interest in heritage, stemming from his Korean ancestry. He is a third generation Zainichi, although he only recently started to understand the discrimination that Zainichi have faced in Japanese culture. An increase in Japanese nationalism and xenophobia has unsettled Kido. Exploring other families makes Kido wonder about his own roots in Korea. It also amplifies his feeling of being isolated in the world.

The theme of loneliness pervades the novel. It is central to Kido’s life, “a bottomless, middle-aged kind of loneliness that he never could have conceived when he was younger, a loneliness that saturated him with bone-chilling sentimentality the moment he let down his guard.” Rié senses Kido’s loneliness but wonders if she is only seeing a reflection of her own “intense loneliness of middle age.” She always thought her second husband was the best man she had ever known and cannot understand why he deceived her about his very identity, leaving her with memories of a life together that no longer feel authentic.

A Man is more than a mystery novel. In addition to nationalism, the novel considers the role of the death penalty in Japanese society. One of the lives Kido explores belongs to a man who was raised by a violent father and in turn became a violent husband and parent. That man eventually murdered his employer’s family. When he was executed, the judicial system made no effort to examine the childhood that shaped him. Kido views the judiciary as covering up the mistakes of other branches of government that failed Japan and its citizens by allowing the killer to be raised in an atmosphere of violence. Kido believes that wiping out the evidence of society’s failure is destined to create an ever-growing number of citizens who will need to be executed.

Apart from its social relevance, the plot investigates questions of identity. Perhaps pretending to be someone new can transform the pretender into someone who is truly new. Adopting a different identity is an extreme way to change a life, but Keiichiro Hirano seems to suggest that unsatisfactory lives can, at least, be changed. Perhaps the person who tells the story to the author, the person who claims to be using the name Kiro, has internalized that lesson. In any event, Hirano gives the reader much to ponder while working through this intriguing mystery.

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Fool's Gold by Dolores Hitchens

First published in 1958; published by Library of America on July 7, 2020

Written in 1958, it is unsurprising that Fool’s Gold reads like a classic crime novel. It well deserves its inclusion in the Library of America’s eight volume Women Crime Writers anthology showcasing novels from the 1940s and 1950s. Hitchens published about half her fiction under the name D.B. Olsen, but Fool’s Gold was published under her own name. The novel was filmed as Band of Outsiders by Jean-Luc Godard. The Library of America released Fool's Gold this year as a standalone paperback.

Fool’s Gold is the story of a crime gone wrong. A criminal in Vegas named Stolz purchased money that a kidnapper needed to launder. Stolz got a good price because the ransom was paid in consecutive bills, making the currency easily traceable. Not knowing quite what to do with it, Stolz hid it in the Pasadena home of Mrs. Havermann, his ex-mother-in-law.

Mrs. Haverman raised Karen, now a teenager, from the age of nine. She’s taking courses in a night school that is also attended by Eddie and Skip, both of whom are just out of their teens. Karen is flattered by the attention she receives from Skip after class. Skip is interested in the story Karen tells about the money that Stolz has stashed in Mrs. Havermann’s house.

Skip hatches a plan to steal the money. He mentions it to his Uncle Willy, a professional thief with mob connections. Willy decides that Skip isn’t sufficiently seasoned to take on Stolz. Sensing an opportunity to make some money for himself, Willy tells Big Tom about the money, who decides to steal the money himself, giving Willy a finder’s fee for the tip. This arrangement doesn’t sit well with Skip, who decides to steal the money with the help of Eddie and Karen before Big Tom can get it. The crime does not go as planned, leaving the key characters with more trouble than they can handle.

Like most 1950s crime fiction, the plot is credible. Hitchens doesn’t try to shock the reader. She makes it easy to feel sympathy for Karen, who reeks of 1950s innocence. It is just as easy to scorn Skip, who takes advantage of Karen’s infatuation and Eddie’s friendship. If Skip were living in the era of message T-shirts, his would say “Born to Lose.”

An interesting subplot involves Uncle Willy’s compulsion to steal. He attends an AA meeting with nefarious intent until, inspired by all the selfless people who want to help him, he has an epiphany that gives him a chance to overcome his weakness.

The story moves quickly as characters enter converge upon and flee the crime scene. They make a series of bad choices for which they pay a price. True to 1950s noir, a reader can expect the bad guys to get what they deserve and the less-bad guys to get a chance at redemption. The story’s ending is thus predictable but only because it gives readers what they want — or at least what they wanted in the 1950s.

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Merry Christmas!