Book Report: Tearjerker

Book Report: Tearjerker

By: Daniel Hayes




From Booklist:
'Evan Ulmer, a struggling writer, finds himself doing the unthinkable. He buys a gun, abducts a book editor named Robert Partnow, and keeps him locked in the basement of his home in upstate New York. Ulmer creates for Partnow a fortress-prison equipped with a TV, portable toilet, and treadmill, but it becomes increasingly evident to captor and captive alike that Ulmer has no real plans for his abductee. Evan is a self-absorbed writer who seems only to write for the possibility of fame. He shares these dreams and his career disappointments with Bob, and he finds they have more in common than expected. A burgeoning romance with a plucky girl, also a writer, whom he meets at the public library forces Evan to face the enormity of the crime he has undertaken: What was he thinking?'

First sentence:
"Until I bought one, I'd never touched a gun, never stood in front of a full-length mirror pointing a gun at myself. Bang, bang."

This story, once I found the rhythm of the rapid-fire POV changes, was addictive. Every few paragraphs rotate between Evan at the library, Evan with his captive, and Evan thinking to himself. It was confusing for the first few pages, until I realized that the author picks up each change with the last sentence of the rotation before. A placeholder, if you will. A memory jogger.

Also, in current literary fashion, there is no punctuation for dialogue. That took some getting used to, but luckily this first-time novelist had a good handle on it. It still slowed my reading, but it was still enjoyable.

I was able to identify a lot with Evan. I have never 'abducted' someone and held them in my basement (I don't even have a basement), but certain passages really resonated with me.

"Who do you envy, Evan?
Whom, I said.
Do you envy me?
No. No offense, but no.
Then who?
I envy the other guy, I said. The one named Evan Ulmer, the one who caught a break or managed to kick aside a small little piece of dust in his imagination and write something that floored an agent, an editor. That's the one I envy. Motherfucker."

Promise, Evan's crush and fellow writer, is the only friend he seems to have. She is not afraid of him despite his... oddities, but he also withholds a lot of his true self. They talk about all aspects of being writers, and much of it I found to be true.

"OK, so here's what it is, Promise said--suddenly breathless. Sooner or later you realize it's entirely up to you. For all intents and purposes there's no one else. It's just you and this awful, tediously fucking task of reassuring yourself. And so if you're lucky, you've got this little person sitting up on your shoulder whispering words of encouragement.
...What I'm wondering, Evan, is how this works. Maybe you have to believe in yourself to get anywhere. And probably this is obvious, but it's sort of a revelation to me, the way it works backwards. The way you can't do anything without believing in yourself, and that's when it's hard to believe in yourself, if you haven't done anything. Which makes me think that maybe you can't really believe in yourself without deluding yourself."

Evan, despite his actions and their unclear motivations, is a writer from start to finish. He embraces it, even when the consequences and retribution are looming on the horizon.

"Only writers understand the ruthlessness with which anything and everything, at any moment, could be twisted, turned, and translated into words. We were like magicians who couldn't resist fiddling with the change in our pockets, making coins disappear with or without an audience."

This story does not have much action, but it explores human reality with a darkly humorous and matter-of-fact manner. Without ruining the ending, I will say that Evan gets his just desserts for what he did, and the pain of it was all too real to imagine.

"There's no escaping the fray. Orchestrate a little, channel a few voices, stare in bewilderment at what you've managed to scribble on the page, and wipe that sweat from your brow. Declare yourself a lucky son of a bitch if you can get anything down on paper.
"All of it happens, if it happens, in spite of you, with barely a polite nod to any of your so-called mysterious powers. It's not a rabbit pulled from a hat--more of a cat out of the bag."

Four out of Five stars for a quick read that kept me guessing, and for letting events play out true to the characters.