Book Review -- Ninety-Two in the Shade (1974)
Author: Thomas McGuane
I'll be honest, I like to take a small book that screams "easy summer reading" and take it, well, easy. With the massive heat, a book like this with such a title about a man who returns to exotic Key West felt like a good read to the sounds of summer. So, I picked up what some call Thomas McGuane's best work, an action novel written with Hemingway-esque prose (Hemingway = good), and got excited to read an adventure novel in quite some time.
The Hemingway influence appears clear with the opening page, and there's nothing wrong with incorporating a writer like him into one's own style. The adventure and suspense revolves around two dualing fishing companies, which screams Hemingway. The novel really doesn't progress to anything outside of something Hemingway wouldn't write, which pretty much abuses McGuane's sense of creativity. For every rare moment of adventure we get an interrupting, dragged out description of the coastline and marine life, which is nice and pleasant, but not exactly used in the right places.
It took me a while to figure out where McGuane wanted to go with the story, as sections of the story are constantly stopped in the middle of their momentum to flash to someone else sitting in their office or on a boat. The mix and match technique doesn't bode well for this particular novel, especially with its short length. The introduction works well introducing Tom Skelton and the slums he used to live in, and his friends and family left behind in it, and his arch-nemesis, the evil and murderous Nichol Dance. Well, right there is another problem with the story, a villian with a laughable name.
The characters in this novel are hardly convinceable in their roles. We understand clearly that Dance kills people out of habit, so of course Skelton's life is at risk, but the murders are so anti-climactic and sudden that it's hard to believe Skelton could ever be killed when the suspense arrives. Furthermore, McGuane creates these characters as mere simpletons, so when they start using vocabulary that only high scholars could use in daily conversations, it's even more frustrating and difficult to take this story seriously. I gave the benefit of the doubt that this was McGuane's attempt at humor, but wasn't convinced in that, either.
So, we have a novel that advertises itself as a thrilling adventure involving a deadly business and a game of cat and mouse, and it turns out to be a story about two guys who love fishing and one has a hot temper and kills people. There is hardly anything in terms of development, except in the end when the two finally decide to back up their talk and fight, but that's not development, really, I was just trying to be nice. On a happier note, when isolating certain passages the prose was enjoyable to read, but I must say that work like this belongs in the hands of a poet, not a novelist.
D
I'll be honest, I like to take a small book that screams "easy summer reading" and take it, well, easy. With the massive heat, a book like this with such a title about a man who returns to exotic Key West felt like a good read to the sounds of summer. So, I picked up what some call Thomas McGuane's best work, an action novel written with Hemingway-esque prose (Hemingway = good), and got excited to read an adventure novel in quite some time.
The Hemingway influence appears clear with the opening page, and there's nothing wrong with incorporating a writer like him into one's own style. The adventure and suspense revolves around two dualing fishing companies, which screams Hemingway. The novel really doesn't progress to anything outside of something Hemingway wouldn't write, which pretty much abuses McGuane's sense of creativity. For every rare moment of adventure we get an interrupting, dragged out description of the coastline and marine life, which is nice and pleasant, but not exactly used in the right places.
It took me a while to figure out where McGuane wanted to go with the story, as sections of the story are constantly stopped in the middle of their momentum to flash to someone else sitting in their office or on a boat. The mix and match technique doesn't bode well for this particular novel, especially with its short length. The introduction works well introducing Tom Skelton and the slums he used to live in, and his friends and family left behind in it, and his arch-nemesis, the evil and murderous Nichol Dance. Well, right there is another problem with the story, a villian with a laughable name.
The characters in this novel are hardly convinceable in their roles. We understand clearly that Dance kills people out of habit, so of course Skelton's life is at risk, but the murders are so anti-climactic and sudden that it's hard to believe Skelton could ever be killed when the suspense arrives. Furthermore, McGuane creates these characters as mere simpletons, so when they start using vocabulary that only high scholars could use in daily conversations, it's even more frustrating and difficult to take this story seriously. I gave the benefit of the doubt that this was McGuane's attempt at humor, but wasn't convinced in that, either.
So, we have a novel that advertises itself as a thrilling adventure involving a deadly business and a game of cat and mouse, and it turns out to be a story about two guys who love fishing and one has a hot temper and kills people. There is hardly anything in terms of development, except in the end when the two finally decide to back up their talk and fight, but that's not development, really, I was just trying to be nice. On a happier note, when isolating certain passages the prose was enjoyable to read, but I must say that work like this belongs in the hands of a poet, not a novelist.
D