“I waited for this to pop up on my Kindle. I even connected that thing to the internet, losing all the library books I’d stashed on there, hidden away from The Man because if you get your library books, put them on your Kindle, and then go Airplane Mode, you can hang onto them. I’m told. I’d never do such a thing. This was just a farcical, wildly imaginative way for me to explain how excited I was for Paul Neilan’s new book.
Um. We had a problem.
This might be a problem specific to me and some readers like me.
When there are more than 5 major characters, I can’t keep track of them worth a damn. When there get to be 10+, I stop trying.
This isn’t necessarily a weakenss of The Hollywood Spiral, it’s a personal weakness, and it’s probably why I never read fantasy novels. When I tried to read Lord of the Rings, I was like, “Are all these dwarves and hobbits and shit really necessary? Couldn’t these characters be combined? Couldn’t like three of these hobbits stand on each others’ shoulders and get under a trench coat and be one guy?
If there are ten-ish characters, to accommodate my disability, I need them to have outrageous names, some kind of physical feature or tic that’s very distinct, and I need a reminder, a cue of some kind, most times each character re-appears. This is somewhat true early into a season of Survivor, and I even have visual cues and the sounds of their voices to distinguish them.
The Hollywood Spiral did not baby me, and I suffered for not realizing early on that there was a good number of characters to track, and in a mystery plot, knowing who’s who is pretty damn important.
Some of this wasn’t my fault. I’ll blame some of it on not me. When there’s a character named Eddie Lompoc, I think it’s fair to call him either Eddie or Eddie Lompoc, but if you go that route, don’t switch it up on me and sometimes call him just Lompoc. Or, don’t go the other way, call him Eddie Lompoc and sometimes just Lompoc, but then hit me with an “Eddie.” When you’ve got two different ways of referring to 10 different characters, that’s 20 pieces of information for the reader to remember just to keep track of all the players on the board.
By the end, I sort of felt like there were four different books mashed up in here. There was a comedy, a cult/crime thing, a techno/social media crime thing, and also just a crime novel. I mean, it’s been like 15 years since we got Paul Neilan’s last book, and it kinda makes sense if he had this many ideas going on. I just ended up feeling like maybe it’d be better to see something more focused.
I was watching Master Chef Junior last night because, despite what people tell you, there is an end to the amount of reality TV on Hulu, and Gordon Ramsay was telling this kid who totally fucked up a cake something like, “You know, if you’re not really sure how to do something, instead of making it complicated and hoping no one will notice, make it really simple and give those simple elements your best effort, and you’ll end up with something better.” The kid didn’t get eliminated, which was fair, but boy was that cake an embarrasment. I bet his family was so ashamed of him. Probably had to sleep out on the porch that night.
Anyway, I think Paul Neilan definitely knows how to write a book and tell a story, I just found that there were some parts in this book that I loved and some parts I wanted to get through so I could get back to the good parts. The parts with the main character talking to his old boss, and his old boss is recounting stories from his youth in an Alzheimer’s haze? Amazing. Hilarious. Heartbreaking. Perfect. I don’t want to spoil it, but there’s a surprise near the end that’s packed with laughs. But I felt like a lot of the rest of the book was like moving the pieces around on a chess board, like the character went here because someone gave him this clue, then here because this clue, and that might be fun for some readers, but it’s not my cup of cake.
When I finished, there was a lot of good, some not as good, and there was too much for me to handle in one book of this length.
ALL THAT SAID: I think this is a reading problem that’s specific to me and a handful of other people. I’ve suffered at least 3 concussions in my life. I’m not the first example to look for when it comes to tracking with a tight plot and full cast. I’m not even a good person to advise on it. Frankly, it’s super irresponsible of Goodreads to even let me review shit on here. “He could be just anyone!” is what people usually say, and to that I say, “You wish, buddy. I’m not anyone. I’m me. And that’s way, way worse.””