According to guest reviewer Ros Smith, this debut novel really scrapes the bottom.

Guest Blogger: Ros Smith

Nothing’s hidden in this book. Everything is as transparent as the dress worn by the female on the cover. It is a thinly veiled, cerebral journey into the mystery of identity. Unfortunately, Paul Jaskunas is no Margaret Attwood and this is no Awakening. All the timeworn metaphors of a confused mind are here – a labyrinth, an encounter with a boy called Will, an oracular figure and a farmhouse lit up but empty. We have read all this before in better books.

As a debut novel, this is a difficult book; difficult to take seriously without laughing out loud at the 8th grade writing and hotchpotch of ideas. In a whodunit plot, Maggie Wilson is searching for the truth, which is buried in her memory. Who almost killed her by bashing her head to pulp? Why does her husband’s father look at her so strangely? Why does it get cold in the autumn? Why is she so beautiful? Who gives a fig?

Jaskunas’ writing is littered with obvious clues so the reader discovers the truth about Maggie in the first few chapters, leaving the rest of the book redundant. Maggie’s voice is indistinguishable from other characters and her tone sounds masculine, which is understandable since she’s been created by a male.

Set between the spring, summer and autumn seasons of 1994 to 2003 in the non-fictional town of New Harmony, Indiana, the heroine is failing to rebuild her life. In clichéd flashbacks and first person narration, Maggie remembers snippets of her hedonistic time at college. Like a Mills and Boon heroine, she is the beautiful 21 year old who’s wooed and won by the older, handsome, rich “Nate” Nathan. Fairytale imagery abounds, with princes’ castles, 3 wishes and blond haired candied girls at Dairy Queen. Even Maggie’s husband’s surname is Duke. Within a few short months her fairytale courtship and marriage is a grim nightmare of living in a desolate Victorian farmhouse with only an old lecher called Manny as a neighbor. Bored with all that money and nothing to do, she gets a job writing obituaries for a newspaper. The obligatory affair with a journalist ensues. Nate becomes a “Nut” and suddenly Maggie’s idyllic world ends in domestic violence. She is left for dead with a hole in the head.

Maggie’s testimony ensures that Nate the Nut is incarcerated for the maximum term. Eight years later Ben “The Apostle” Hodge confesses to beating Maggie to a pulp. We trail miserably through the rest of the book begging for Maggie’s true memory to return, hoping that the story will wrap up soon. She boozes through each chapter aided and abetted by Manny who, like the reader, knows the real story. Since Jakunas doesn’t have enough material to fill 240 pages, he endows Manny with devilish qualities such as a gammy leg. To draw things out, the author doesn’t allow Manny to tell Maggie everything. This is very frustrating and the rest of the book is even more tedious, repetitive and annoying. Maggie lurches from filthy farmhouse room to room in an alcoholic daze punctuated by weekly therapy sessions and epileptic fits. At long last we arrive at the shock dénouement - a peeping tom from the town did the dirty deed and not her husband. What a surprise! Ben Hodge’s confession was the truth.

This book wants to be too many things – a romance, a comment on domestic violence and a philosophical exploration of the mind. It fails miserably in all genres. The heroine and all the other characters are unbelievable with no endearing qualities. The women are stereotypes – the therapist, the grandmother, the office vamp to name but a few. The men are monsters with money, or monsters with monstrous mothers. The religious iconography is heavy handed; the Holy Ghost and Gabriel are thrown in for arbitrary effect. The stormy weather’s clouds and cold fronts, representing Maggie’s inner angst, are far too obvious and the same goes for the pervasive Death imagery. Living in the mausoleum-like farmhouse, Maggie writes obits, likes antiques and has a morbid curiosity of savage homicide. It is surprising the Grim Reaper is nowhere to be seen.

As hard as Jaskunas tries to compare the Wabash Valley cornfields to oceans, crows to gulls and a radio tower to Gatsby’s lighthouse, he lacks any of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s talent. Maggie Wilson has no redeeming qualities and definitely has no “voice like money”. The cover image displays a fat, female naked bottom. This fails in its intended titillation just as the author fails to entertain, with writing that is vulgar, shallow, and misogynist. He has the bare-assed cheek to think that women will appreciate his exploration of the “female” psyche. If you want a superior exploration of fractured lives, memories and brains try reading Iain Banks’ The Bridge.

Litblog Co-Op

This week's fave blog: Golden Rule Jones. On April 9th, Jonesy even had the good taste to mention the newly formed LitBlog Co-op, 'whose purpose is to draw attention to the best contemporary fiction by recommending one new book four times a year.' Well, how generous can you get? Thousands of books out there and one might just cut the co-op mustard. With fiends like these, who need enemies?

Whatever Jonesy's covering, he does it with a Chicago snap. Find him at Blogspot.