Decent People by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing on January 17, 2023

Decent People is a novel of small-town secrets and southern bigotry. In 1976, black and white people mix uneasily in the North Carolina town of West Mills, but everyone understands that there is a black side of town and a white side of town. 

As a white widow with black children, Savannah Temple Russet is not accepted in either side. Savannah has been estranged from her racist parents since she decided to marry a black man. Savannah’s mother is particularly vile. Savannah’s best friend is Marva Harmon, whose sister Marian is the town’s first black doctor.

Savannah and Marva are keeping a secret — their addiction to Valium and the source of their pills. Savannah’s father, who owns the shopping center in which Marian rents space for a pediatric clinic, has a secret that reveals his small-town hypocrisy.

Josephine Wright spent most of her life in New York, where her brother Hershel was able to be open about his sexuality. After returning to West Mills, Jo learns that Hershel was keeping a secret about why their mother decided to move north.

A family secret was kept from Fran Waters and Eunice Manning until 1960, when they were in their late teens. At that point, the girls became rivals for a farmhand named Breezy Loving. He took advantage of the situation and enjoyed the company of both girls. The secret that the girls will only learn later in life adds to the soap opera of their triangular relationship.

Eunice and Breezy are married when the novel begins. They have a son named La’Roy. Concerned that her son is too effeminate, Eunice takes La’Roy to Marian Harmon in the hope that a doctor will know what to do. Eunice expects Marian to talk to La’Roy, but Marian tries to persuade Savannah’s sons to beat the gay out of La’Roy. Savannah does not appreciate the attempt to turn her children into thugs, even if they are already bullies. Confrontations with both Marian and Marva ensue.

Much of this is backstory suggests that Decent People will be a novel of melodramatic scandal. The novel threatens to cross that line, but the secrets take on new importance after Marian, her sister Marva, and their brother Lazarus are murdered. Marva was Marian’s assistant; Laz was her driver and cleaner.

Savannah and Eunice are both murder suspects because Eunice confronted Marian and Savannah confronted both women, although neither Eunice nor Savannah want to admit that the confrontation concerned Marian’s attempt to “treat” La’Roy by persuading Savannah’s sons to beat him. Savannah’s father Ted is a suspect because he was seen arguing with Marian for reasons he also chooses to conceal. Jo’s fiancé, Lymp Seymore, is a suspect because he made nasty statements about the Harmons in public.

Jo is angry that of all the suspects, Lymp is the only one who was taken into custody for questioning. She conducts her own investigation because she’s convinced the police don’t care who murdered three black people. She’s right that the police aren’t making much of an effort to solve the murders. They blame it on the usual suspects — unidentified “folk from up North” — and chalk it up to a drug deal gone bad because pills were found at the murder scene. But why would drug dealers leave drugs behind?

The novel isn’t a whodunit. Most of the story has passed before a reader has enough information to make an educated guess about the killer’s identity. In hindsight, the clues are there, but I didn’t solve the mystery on my own. Nor is the killer’s identity particularly important to the story. The reveal is almost an afterthought.

This is instead a novel about characters concealing truths in the hope that they can live relatively decent lives, free from judgment and hypocrisy, lives that are not defined by small-town scandals and the prejudices that are passed from generation to generation. It is the story of a gossipy town in which secrets will out. As Eunice observes, “nothing stays secret for long in West Mills.”

De'Shawn Charles Winslow tells the story in quietly understated prose. He creates lives in full. It's good to give characters flesh, but some of the backstories stray from the essential. One that comes in the novel’s second half bogs down the story for a bit. For the most part, however, the story moves at a good pace as it shifts its focus among the key players.

The novel fails to generate the emotional intensity one might expect from a book based on a triple homicide and attempted child abuse, perhaps because its tragedies come across as representative rather than personal. Marian’s desire to punish La’Roy for effeminate mannerisms might best be seen as a stand-in for all vicious intolerance, rather than a convincing response to Eunice’s request for help.

The novel’s strongest moment comes at the end, when Savannah realizes that her reliance on pills (which never seems to have a negative impact on her life) causes her to lose credibility with her children. I’m not sure Eunice ever gains comparable insight into the much greater harm she does by failing to accept her son for who he is. Still, that’s an honest portrayal of life. Some parents make progress and others don’t.

Novels that spotlight the evils plaguing small towns are a literary staple. Maybe the targets of the spotlight are too easy to hit. Yet Decent People is an admirable attempt to remind readers that racism and homophobia are accepted by supposedly “decent people” in too much of the nation, particularly in towns where like-minded people allow bigotry to thrive.

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Mr. Breakfast by Jonathan Carroll

First published in translation in Poland in 2019; published by Melville House on January 17, 2023

Mr. Breakfast is constructed from fantasy elements that are popular in modern romcom plots. I’m not typically a fan of those elements (how many variations of Groundhog Day does the world really need?), although I make obvious exceptions. Dickens used similar elements — motivating choice by providing access to alternative lives — in A Christmas Carol. Who doesn’t love Scrooge learning the truth about himself by gaining a new perspective?

Graham Patterson learns the truth (or possible truths) about himself from a tattoo that only a select few share. Graham is a struggling comedian who rejected a friend’s advice to take an edgier, more daring approach to comedy. His girlfriend, Ruth, left him, in part because his career and life were going nowhere, in larger part because he did not want children.

Graham decides that he will never make it as a comedian. He buys a Mustang and drives from the east coast to the west, where he expects to make a conventional life, perhaps working for his brother. He buys a camera so he can take some pictures along the way. One of the pictures is of an abandoned diner in Nevada called Mr. Breakfast. Graham will become a celebrated photographer unless he decides to reject the track his life is on.

Graham’s car breaks down in North Carolina, where he enters a tattoo parlor and impulsively chooses a “breakfast tattoo.” The tattoo comes with a lot of rules, but the short version is that it will allow him to visit two other lives that he is apparently living in parallel realities. He samples them and learns that in one he is a successful comedian who took his friend’s advice about edgy jokes. In the other he married Ruth. He has the opportunity to choose among the three lives. After making the choice, the tattoo will disappear. If he makes no choice, all the lives will merge and the result won’t be fun.

Other characters with the tattoo (including Anna Mae, the tattoo artist) demonstrate the possible outcomes of varying choices. For example, one learns something in a future life that allows him to succeed in his original life. One decides to embrace the pain of her current life rather than escaping into a different one because “sometimes you’ve got to be lost to find yourself again.” All the tattooed lives intersect with Graham’s at different points.

As if the premise doesn’t provide enough fantasy, more mystical events occur as the story progresses. A blind girl and a dead friend tell Graham about other rules associated with his tattoo. Only certain people can see certain pictures Graham has taken; everyone else sees a blank page. A significant turtle and an extinct but very nasty bird make unlikely appearances in Graham’s lives. Graham and another tattooed character learn something about the afterlife. Believe me, you shouldn’t be in a hurry to get there.

I struggled to find a coherent point to the conflicting messages that the story seems to send. Anna Mae suggests that by trying on alternative lives, people can choose the one that best suits them, but then must do their best to make the life work. Doing so puts positive energy into the universe. But if the choice turns out to be wrong, you might get hit by a train, so what good does the positive energy do? Maybe your energy helps other people. Maybe getting hit by a train is the tradeoff for living your best life. Maybe the point is that making a choice, even the wrong choice, is better than making no choice. Maybe the novel’s point is that the best choice, with or without a tattoo, is to live an unselfish life, although another character does well by focusing on self-interest. That’s a lot of maybes in a book that often seems to be moving in circles.

In an alternate life, Ruth makes the argument that whether it is good or bad, nobody deserves the life they have. Life is what it is. Lives are determined by the choices you make but also by health, the circumstances into which you are born, and other factors over which we have no control. Graham thinks about a girl herding cattle in Africa who has the intelligence to be a groundbreaking medical researcher but will never be given the education needed to make that choice possible. He thinks about the difference between a special life (defined by fame and accomplishment) and a peaceful one (defined by love, family, and an unchallenging job that pays the bills). Graham does a lot of thinking but the choice he makes is ultimately based on the need to respond to a crisis, not by calm meditation on which of two lives will fit him the best. Maybe the point is that we shouldn’t think so much.

The story could also be viewed as teaching a “the grass is always greener” lesson. Graham’s alternative lives have their merits, but they also have the pain that is part of life. Maybe the point is that we should be content with making the most of life even if that means enduring pain and hardship (although if I’m a wealthy sultan with a harem in one of my possible lives, I’m jumping to that one).

None of the potential lessons are particularly original. Nor is “visit alternative lives and see how they might turn out” an original plot device. Still, Jonathan Carroll assembles strong characters to tell a muddled but entertaining story. Make of it what you will. I recommend it simply because I enjoyed reading it, not because I regard it as profound.

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Liar, Dreamer, Thief by Maria Dong

Published by ‎ Grand Central Publishing on January 10, 2023

Katrina Kim is a Korean-American. She lives in a city not far from her hometown, works for a temp service, and shares a small one-bedroom apartment with Leoni, who was seeking a co-tenant to split the rent. Katrina dropped out of college when her parents were unable to continue paying her tuition. Her parents were victims of a financial fraud scheme that wiped them out. Katrina believes her parents abandoned her after their financial disaster because they never visit or answer her letters.

Katrina is stalking a co-worker at her temp job. Kurt is all she thinks or talks about. She follows him around the office. Oddly, Katrina didn’t pay any attention to Kurt until Leoni saw him in a photograph and questioned Katrina about him.

Leoni is almost mothering in her concern for Katrina’s well-being. Leoni thinks Katrina might need to see a therapist. For multiple reasons, Leoni is probably right. Katrina has longstanding mental health issues, including her obsession with the number eleven and certain geometric shapes, particularly endekagram stellations. She believes an eleven-point sigil keeps her safe, so she obsessively traces one on her door. She occasionally slips into a “kitchen-door world” that she associates with Mi-Hee and the Mirror Man, a Korean book from her childhood. Standing on a bridge helps her maintain control when all her other rituals fail.

By snooping through his desk, Katrina knows that Kurt reads books about Masons and ancient magic. Seems like a guy who is perfect for a crazy woman. Kurt might or might not know that she’s snooping through his desk and might or might not have left a message in his desk for her. The line between reality and Katrina’s imagination is difficult to discern.

Kurt disappears from work. Katrina later sees him crash his car and then jump from a bridge. The police don’t believe her because they can’t find a body or a wrecked car. Katrina isn’t sure that what she saw was real.

All of that sets up Katrina as a neurotic detective. I think I’ve had enough of mentally ill detectives. Writers have used mental illness (particularly autism) in characterizations for some time, but writers who rely on trends inevitably try to top each other until they go over the top. David Baldacci claimed the prize for making mental illness ridiculous in Memory Man, leaving other writers with nowhere else to go. I give Maria Dong credit for taking mental illness more seriously than Baldacci, but Katrina’s affliction comes across as a gimmick, not as a genuine mental health issue afflicting a real person.

The book starts slowly but it grew on me as I continued reading, in part because I had no clue where it was going. A co-worker named Yocelyn also goes through Kurt’s desk, but why? Is that why Yocelyn was fired? Perhaps Kurt is a popular guy to stalk, but why? Katrina has the sense that someone is watching her. That might be true, but why? The Voynich Manuscript makes an appearance, but why? The plot piles question upon question. It does eventually move in the direction of clarity, but I’m not sure that all the questions are answered. Maybe I just lost track.

The solution to the book’s many puzzles is heavily dependent upon coincidence. The various plot threads are nevertheless woven together in a way that explains (sort of) Kurt’s disappearance, Katrina’s estrangement from her parents, Yocelyn’s firing, Leoni’s helpfulness, and Katrina’s inability to find any school yearbooks with Kurt’s picture. The story is a bit convoluted. Its attempt to generate suspense by placing Katrina in danger at the novel’s end fall flat. Katrina’s conflict between life in a Korean household and life in white corporate America seems forced.

While my reaction to Liar, Dreamer, Thief is negative in many respects, I gained an appreciation of the story as it developed. I wavered when deciding whether to recommend the book with or without reservations. Wavering might imply that I have reservations. I do, but not to the extent that I’m on the fence about recommending it. In the end, my interest in the plot overcame the novel’s weaknesses.

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The Hopkins Manuscript by R.W. Sherriff

First published in Great Britain in 1939; published by Scribner on January 17, 2023

Apart from its outdated science and technology, The Hopkins Manuscript is a book that could have been written this year. Set in the mid-1940s, this post-apocalyptic novel is based on the kind of European nationalism that was festering when it was first published in 1939. The novel even imagines a nationalistic British prime minister who might be mistaken for Boris Johnson. But the novel is not overtly political. At least initially, the apocalypse has a natural rather than a human cause.

The story purports to be a manuscript found in the ruins of Notting Hill. The Royal Society of Abyssinia has been investigating the dead societies of Western Europe. Historians found the manuscript to be of little value, although it does supply the only firsthand account of a Western European who survived the Cataclysm that occurred 700 years earlier.

The Hopkins Manuscript is as much pre-apocalyptic as post-apocalyptic. This is the story of an ordinary man who, despite being flawed by conceit and an inflated sense of self-importance, tells a gradually darkening story about muddling his way through catastrophic times.

Edgar Hopkins is a 53-year-old bachelor and a retired schoolmaster in a small English village. He has given up grammar school arithmetic and now devotes his days to hobbies: raising and showing chickens, gardening, and studying the moon. Hopkins is a prideful man who, thanks to his prize bantam’s accumulation of blue ribbons, regards himself as a minor celebrity. He easily feels slighted. Hopkins is quick to judge people he regards as self-impressed, often believing them to be jealous of his own accomplishments. Like many people, Hopkins wants to be the star of his own story and resents anyone who receives attention that he believes to be his due.

Hopkins attends quarterly meetings of the British Lunar Society in London. Scientists and philosophers deliver lectures about the moon to its members. At one eventful meeting, Hopkins learns that the moon is moving closer to the Earth. The members are sworn to secrecy, as the government does not want the public to panic. Hopkins is unbearably proud that he is among the chosen few who are entrusted with the secret but can barely refrain from boasting of his own importance.

To keep people well-mannered as the apocalypse approaches, the government convinces newspaper editors to report the possibility that the moon will only strike a “glancing blow,” perhaps causing a survivable atmospheric disturbance that will merely cause hurricanes and floods. The government orders the construction of dugouts in each city and village to maximize the chance of survival in the event that the moon does not obliterate the Earth when the bodies collide. It supplies watertight steel doors and oxygen cylinders so that village residents can sit out the apocalypse in comfort before cleaning up the mess. The villagers are happy to have a project to distract them from the end of the world and are even happier to believe that the apocalypse is nothing to worry about.

The reader knows from the start that Hopkins will survive. More than half the manuscript is devoted to events that lead to the cataclysmic event. The wry humor with which Hopkins describes his life is a welcome change from typical apocalyptic fiction. The zombie apocalypse novels that were popular as the end of the twentieth century neared were often amusing (not always intentionally), but the eco-catastrophe novels that have dominated the current century and the “war of annihilation” novels that followed the Second World War were not meant to tickle the funny bone. R.C. Sherriff imagines an unlikely apocalypse that does not depend on war or pandemic or global warming or even a zombie attack. I wish apocalyptic writers of today were as creative, even if modern readers might think it unlikely that the Earth would survive the apocalyptic event (or that the event could happen in the way the novel describes).

The last third of The Hopkins Manuscript reveals its broad lesson. Devastating events can pull us together. Eventually, however, the worst aspects of human nature will pull us apart again. Greed, tribalism, and appeals to fear are so much easier to sustain than compassion and cooperation. R.W. Sherriff certainly had the rise of Nazi Germany in mind as he wrote the story.

Hopkins takes note of political conflicts that weaken western European nations and make it vulnerable to attack from the East, but he sticks to his goal of telling “the story of these days as I saw them with my own eyes.” The days become increasingly depressing, turning an amusing story into a sad one.

Hopkins is true to himself through the entire novel. He’s lonely, apart from the post-apocalyptic attachment he forms with a young man and his sister for a couple of years after the catastrophe. He’s content with his loneliness because he prefers breeding chickens to the company of those who do not appreciate his courage, fortitude, and wisdom. Although those attributes might actually be in short supply, he is appealing because of his ordinariness. He lacks insight into his faults (as do most people), but he is a decent human and the perfect observer to record an eyewitness account of the end of western civilization, albeit from a narrow perspective.

Fans of post-apocalyptic fiction might want to seek out The Hopkins Manuscript as an early example of the genre. It isn’t as emotionally affecting as the best post-apocalyptic novels of the 1950s, but like those novels, it works because of its focus on the life of one person rather than the death (and possible rebirth) of the planet as a whole.

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Better the Blood by Michael Bennett

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on January 10, 2023

The pattern of British colonialism is ugly. White colonists pronounce themselves superior to “uncivilized” natives. Using their superior firepower, they supplant indigenous people in the territories they colonize. In New Zealand, the Māori were a peaceful people who saw themselves as caretakers of land that belonged to all Māori collectively. The British took their land and punished Māori who resisted, sometimes by hanging them. Efforts to restore stolen land through the legal system, if successful at all, result in the restoration of about 2% of the stolen land to the Māori.

Set in Aukland, Better than Blood is a police thriller that tells a story grounded in cultural identity. Hana Westerman is a Māori. When she was a new police officer, her white superiors thought it would be smart to send her to the front line of a police effort to suppress a Māori protest. Hana knew the Māori had legitimate grievances and felt conflicted when she carted off an older woman as the Māori derided her for siding with the whites.

Years later, when she is in her thirties, Hana has the rank of Detective Senior with the Aukland CIB. Someone sends her a video from an anonymous proxy. When she investigates the abandoned house in the video, she discovers a dead body in a hidden room. The death is the first of a series. Each time, Hana receives a video that tells her where a body will be found.

This isn’t a whodunit. The reader knows that the killer is a Māori lawyer named Raki. Hana’s daughter Addison took a class that Raki was teaching. Raki avoids killing innocent people, but he has his own definition of innocence. Hana’s task is to find the thread that connects the victims. That task requires Hana to work harder than the reader. The opening scene provides at least a rough idea of how the victims might be related.

Better than Blood fails to develop sufficient tension to stand as a successful thriller, despite scenes that place Hana and her daughter at risk. An early subplot about an entitled young white guy who decides to mess up Hana’s life disappears soon after it surfaces. I could have lived without Raki’s revealing dreams of his mother (and his encounter with her in the afterlife), just as I can always live without descriptions of dreams (and the afterlife).

Still, any novel that calls attention to social injustice has value. Hana’s conflict between her ethnic identity and her service to a government that has long oppressed her people adds interest to her character, as does her ex-husband’s position as her boss. I appreciated the way the novel ends. And I like the message that injustice cannot be a tool that is wielded against injustice. While the novel lacks suspense, it tells an interesting story through a character whose personal journey is more compelling than the underlying plot.

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