From the massive archive…
Scott Ryan is a man besieged. His opponents include coworkers, fellow
commuters, neighbors, and—above all—his house. Oh yes, and squirrels. Living in
an area the police sometimes treat as if it’s under martial law, having to duck
below window level when his commuter train passes through a Red Zone to avoid
being shot, his urban dream has become an urban nightmare.
He and his wife Kathy have purchased a fixer-upper in a becoming-gentrified
section of their unnamed city. With three small children and the burdens their
new home has imposed, and despite Scott’s ascendancy in the market research
company he works for, they’re in over their heads. Working on the house consumes
the bulk of Scott’s time when he isn’t working. He still manages to fit in some
tennis now and then, but reluctantly because the house has become his Circe,
luring him inexorably back to it and demanding that he cater to its every need
and want.
When he isn’t cheating on Kathy with several different partners, that is.
Scott’s first-person recounting of events seems at first reasonable, if
sometimes edged with desperation. But the reader soon realizes that something
is wrong, that he’s an utterly unreliable narrator, that he may or may not be
seeing things that aren’t there, claiming to do things he really doesn’t.
Some of the neighborhood squirrels have invaded the house and taken up
residence in the walls and attic crawl space. They become Scott’s obsession,
and his attempts to eradicate them become steadily more frantic—and sometimes
dangerous.
John Blades’ short serio-comic novel might well be described as Kafkaesque in
its depiction of a man driven to fulfill but overwhelmed by the popular notion
of the “American dream.” Crisply written, and peppered with evocative turns of
phrase, its episodic structure builds to a memorable finish.
Barry Ergang © 2009, 2013, 2021
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