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MR. PEANUT
by Adam Ross
HarperCollins, June 2010
352 pages
$32.99 CAD
ISBN: 155468837X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

David Pepin is a successful computer games designer and an unsuccessful novelist, at least so far. He is married to Alice, who works with disturbed children and who has been, as the current phrase goes, morbidly obese but who has been steadily losing weight. She suffers from multiple food allergies, especially to peanuts, and in the end it is a peanut that kills her. Or was it? Or to be more precise, why was she found with an expression of dread and horror on her face and a plateful of peanuts near at hand? Did David, who has been spending many years of their marriage trying to finish a novel in which he imagines his wife's death in various scenarios, somehow induce or force Alice to consume the fatal groundnut?

The two detectives on the case believe he did. Each of them has been involved in a marriage parallel to David's own. Detective Ward Hastroll is married to Hannah, who spent months clad only in her slip, refusing to leave the bed, at least when Hastroll is around. Try as he might, he cannot compel her to say what the problem is, even when he stops bringing her food and drink. Her only explanation, if that is what it is, is, "Oh, Ward, you just don't get it." Ward is not alone.

The other detective, Sam Sheppard, also has what might be called a vexed marital history. Initially, I assumed that since this novel is set in the present decade, he was simply named in memory of that famous osteopath, convicted, possibly wrongfully, of killing his wife Marilyn in the 1950s. But as the novel churns on, it appears that this is really Dr Sam himself, now finding a second career (and eternal youth) as a NYPD homicide detective. For those unfamiliar with the original case, a great chunk of the book is devoted to rehashing it from multiple viewpoints and coming to various conclusions about Sheppard's guilt.

Add into the mix a killer-for-hire named Mobius (website: DialM.com), a lengthy appreciation of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and David's application of the work of Escher to computer gaming, and it does not take an overly astute reader to recognize that what we have here is a particularly egregious example of the literary thriller.

If that were its worst offence, then I suspect I would have passed over this book in merciful silence. It is, after all, a first novel, and its author has been labouring over it for thirteen years. But it has been a very long time since I have read a work so resolutely, determinedly, devotedly misogynistic as this. Each of the dreadful marriages follows the same pattern - the wife exercises absolute power through passivity while the poor husband, baffled and unmanned (did you think that title referred just to Planters?) can find relief only in impotent fantasies of violence and murder. I was reminded of that famous Thurber cartoon, "Home," in which a meek little chap in a bowler hat comes home to a house that morphs into a terrifying, large, consuming wife. Superficially, MR PEANUT may seem to be a post-modern affair, but at its heart it is rooted well back in the last century.

Whoever interviewed Ross for the Amazon.com page for the novel seemed to share some of my uneasiness as the question arises of what his wife thinks of the work. The interview also reveals that Ross spent thirteen years finishing the book. "Finish" may be an overstatement as it simply stops rather than concluding in any certain sort of way. And it's all rather a pity, since Ross can clearly write when he can stop being terribly clever. The section set in Hawaii is lyrical and lovely even if it ends horrifically. (Speaking of being set in the last century, the United Airlines passenger agent in the Hawaii sequence is a throwback to a time when air travel was a treat, not an ordeal.)

I suspect Ross would do better next time if he were to abandon the crime fiction genre (to the extent he has embraced it) for something more suited to his talents. With the three failed novels that comprise MR PEANUT out of the way, he might feel freed to write the experimental novel he clearly has in mind. Or not.

§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, June 2010

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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