Boyle pits victim against criminal in this dual perspective novel about identity theft. Dr Dana Halter is deaf, and a teacher of the deaf, living her life to the full, working, engaged to Bridger, a computer graphics film editor, and attempting to write a novel about language based on a historical figure – the mute wild boy of Aveyron. Always running late, she gets pulled over for a minor traffic violation and she is plunged into chaos. Someone has been using her name and is wanted all over the States for various felonies.
Already a character with attitude, Dana’s steady anger at the world and everyone in it escalates when she is thrown, pitilessly, into jail for the weekend where she suffers indignity and humiliation. Her rage continues unabated throughout the novel as she obsessively tracks the fraudster who is to blame, forcing her fiancée to accompany her on her quest for revenge. Fiancée Bridger is unfailingly supportive and kind, but she gives him nothing. Nowhere in the entire story does she soften, show herself capable of any warmth and, the one time she smiles, it is in the mirror at herself.
William Peck Wilson adopts a bewildering variety of personae, moving from one person’s credit to another. Astonished and enraged when he realizes the real Dana is onto him for his use of her name, credit and reputation, he childishly takes on the ID of her fiancée, Bridger, whose credit isn’t that great and certainly not up to the champagne lifestyle that Peck lives. It’s short lived tit-for-tat before Peck has to change identity again. Haute cuisine, designer shades, silk suits and top of the range cars fit Peck’s image of himself as a sophisticated connoisseur.
Protagonist and antagonist are well matched. Both are egotistical control freaks but it is easier to like Peck, not because he’s a calculating thief with martial arts skills that can kill a man, but because he’s admirably clever and because he loves so much. He loves his fiancée, his daughter, wine, beautiful clothes and food, everything in the world that is finely made. Dana loves only herself, she has no friends and a boss she hates. Boyle tells us repeatedly that she feels angry, frustrated, irritated. He has created a character it is impossible to like or with whom to sympathise.
Every time she hardens her face at gentle Bridger, shuts him out, maintains a furious and repellent independence, the reader questions what he sees in her. He says to his mother that Dana is ‘awesome’ but the reader sees no evidence of this. She is determined and single minded. It’s hard to believe that her abhorrent characterisation is deliberate but, as T C Boyle is a master of fiction, and he portrays her as a woman with no friends this has to be intentional. Late in the novel he springs the surprise of her memory of playing with her four brothers as a child but they are nowhere in the story and her relationship with her mother lacks warmth. Peck, her adversary, however, has everything to lose.
The pursuit story fails to deliver at the end but Bridger gets his job back. He should have earned a lot more for his pains.
Already a character with attitude, Dana’s steady anger at the world and everyone in it escalates when she is thrown, pitilessly, into jail for the weekend where she suffers indignity and humiliation. Her rage continues unabated throughout the novel as she obsessively tracks the fraudster who is to blame, forcing her fiancée to accompany her on her quest for revenge. Fiancée Bridger is unfailingly supportive and kind, but she gives him nothing. Nowhere in the entire story does she soften, show herself capable of any warmth and, the one time she smiles, it is in the mirror at herself.
William Peck Wilson adopts a bewildering variety of personae, moving from one person’s credit to another. Astonished and enraged when he realizes the real Dana is onto him for his use of her name, credit and reputation, he childishly takes on the ID of her fiancée, Bridger, whose credit isn’t that great and certainly not up to the champagne lifestyle that Peck lives. It’s short lived tit-for-tat before Peck has to change identity again. Haute cuisine, designer shades, silk suits and top of the range cars fit Peck’s image of himself as a sophisticated connoisseur.
Protagonist and antagonist are well matched. Both are egotistical control freaks but it is easier to like Peck, not because he’s a calculating thief with martial arts skills that can kill a man, but because he’s admirably clever and because he loves so much. He loves his fiancée, his daughter, wine, beautiful clothes and food, everything in the world that is finely made. Dana loves only herself, she has no friends and a boss she hates. Boyle tells us repeatedly that she feels angry, frustrated, irritated. He has created a character it is impossible to like or with whom to sympathise.
Every time she hardens her face at gentle Bridger, shuts him out, maintains a furious and repellent independence, the reader questions what he sees in her. He says to his mother that Dana is ‘awesome’ but the reader sees no evidence of this. She is determined and single minded. It’s hard to believe that her abhorrent characterisation is deliberate but, as T C Boyle is a master of fiction, and he portrays her as a woman with no friends this has to be intentional. Late in the novel he springs the surprise of her memory of playing with her four brothers as a child but they are nowhere in the story and her relationship with her mother lacks warmth. Peck, her adversary, however, has everything to lose.
The pursuit story fails to deliver at the end but Bridger gets his job back. He should have earned a lot more for his pains.
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