Tuesday Book Review - Train by Pete Dexter

Here again Mayhap of the Gothic Bookshop reviews this weeks title:

Sorry this is a bit late. I was going to review a totally different book, but changed my mind. I picked up the new Pete Dexter novel yesterday. I was glancing at the first page and the next thing I knew it was 1am. I literally could not put this book down.

Train is just about everything I don't like in a novel. That is what made this a doubly amazing read for me. For one thing, it is written in a film noir style, there is some animal cruelty and no one in Los Angeles is very nice. It would seem that most people in Los Angeles in 1953 beat the hell out of each other and had unpleasant personal hygiene habits.

The story hangs around an incident where two black men invade a boat and kill the husband and rape the wife. They also slice off one of her nipples. Sounds pretty bad, right? Yup. But Pete Dexter is such an tremendously good, maybe great, writer, that you don't care. I didn't care – I had to know what was going to happen. Another amazing thing about this novel is that the main characters are sympathetic. They do bad stuff, but I wanted everything to work out for them. Besides, most of the people they do it to, deserve it and then some.

There is a quality to the story that reminded me of Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men. The main character, Train, is a young African American man in 1953 L.A.. He looks after his elderly dog as best he can and eventually does the same for a broken down fighter who caddies with him at the same golf course. That is another reason I had to initially dislike this book – golf is a constant. Train happens to be a great golfer – better than Ben Hogan – whoever he was. Train is African American and that is going to keep him out of playing in pro golf. In fact, he spends most of his time trying to seem invisible as most of the cruel people of Los Angeles go about their daily meanness. Train has his own frightening impulses, and the reader isn't allowed to forget that.

This all makes it sound like a scary, bad book – doesn't it? But, guess what? This book rocks. I was so involved, I felt trapped right along with Train as he pondered his ghastly future with all those bigots and brutal California people. My family tried to interest me in their day, but I was having none of it. It was a wrench to emerge from this book and try to eat dinner.

I was thinking this morning, Train is a great title, because in some ways this novel is like taking a breakneck ride on a bullet train. This is also a tremendously American novel. Everything about it reeks of American ingenuity and stupidity. All the things that made us come up with the Constitution but keep the institution of slavery intact. Perhaps the American motto should be something like “Hypocrisy – We Can Live With It and turn a Profit.”.

I can't recall the last time I stayed up until 1am to finish a book I started that day. I have no regrets and I hope that other people will plunge into this good book and ride the rapids. I wish I had the words to express what an impressive talent Pete Dexter possesses. I want to go back and reread Paris Trout. I didn't like it when I was 25, but I was probably an idiot.

If you can bear the fact that a former idiot is recommending Train, please, do read it.