David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "mona-simpson"
The Casebook
CASEBOOK is a rather strange book written by a former finalist for the Pen/Faulkner award. It’s a somewhat novelistic account of Miles Adler-Hart’s mother’s divorce and affair with a man named Eli. Miles is writing the book with his best pal, Hector.
We hear from Hector in the occasional footnote. Hector claims in one of them that he’s really the fat kid, and Miles is the spider-legged 98-pounder.
Eli is a liar, which would be apparent to anyone but a woman longing for what she once had, a regular family. This is strange because Irene’s ex-husband seems to be around more than the typical divorced husband, and they appear to be friends. Miles and Hector hire a detective to ferret the guy out. This is also hard to believe because he’s willing to do it for nothing. He later says he thought Irene’s friend was Miles’s mother, and she’s kind of hot.
Irene doesn’t seem to be the type to fall for this guy’s line; she a professor of mathematics for one thing. Her husband is a Hollywood lawyer; yet she needs to sell their former house and rent a newer, smaller one. She makes on the order of $90,000 a year and one would think her husband would kick in enough to pay for the house. I don’t remember her turning him down.
Hector is also a budding cartoonist and he and Miles concoct a comic book, based on the Irene/Eli affair. They’re a likable twosome; they join the gay rights group at school, and Miles sells soup to enhance his allowance. The school lunch is apparently deplorable. Somebody squeals on him and he has to give up on that scheme, but he and Hector soon acquire another one, finding homes for unwanted pets for a fee. Again they’re found out and they’re forced to give the money to an Animal Rights group, one of Eli’s favorite obsessions.
There’s some humor in the book; Miles feigns contempt for his younger twin sisters he calls Boop One and Boop Two. Even his mom has a nickname, Mims; she has a bunch of friends who’re hard to keep straight; one of them, Marge, another mathematician, marries Phillip, Hector’s dad.
I guess you could call this a coming of age novel as Miles has a girlfriend, Ella, that he worships on a pedestal, never really imagining she’d return his affection. There’s another girl, Maude, who is obviously smitten with him, but she’s just not the girl of his dreams.
If there’s a theme, it’s people are both good and bad; even Eli loves animals and seems to genuinely care about Irene, although he can’t seem to part with his wife or stop lying. About the nicest person in the book, is Ben Orion, the P.I., who does what he does because he sees Miles and Hector as human beings, not just goofy kids.
We hear from Hector in the occasional footnote. Hector claims in one of them that he’s really the fat kid, and Miles is the spider-legged 98-pounder.
Eli is a liar, which would be apparent to anyone but a woman longing for what she once had, a regular family. This is strange because Irene’s ex-husband seems to be around more than the typical divorced husband, and they appear to be friends. Miles and Hector hire a detective to ferret the guy out. This is also hard to believe because he’s willing to do it for nothing. He later says he thought Irene’s friend was Miles’s mother, and she’s kind of hot.
Irene doesn’t seem to be the type to fall for this guy’s line; she a professor of mathematics for one thing. Her husband is a Hollywood lawyer; yet she needs to sell their former house and rent a newer, smaller one. She makes on the order of $90,000 a year and one would think her husband would kick in enough to pay for the house. I don’t remember her turning him down.
Hector is also a budding cartoonist and he and Miles concoct a comic book, based on the Irene/Eli affair. They’re a likable twosome; they join the gay rights group at school, and Miles sells soup to enhance his allowance. The school lunch is apparently deplorable. Somebody squeals on him and he has to give up on that scheme, but he and Hector soon acquire another one, finding homes for unwanted pets for a fee. Again they’re found out and they’re forced to give the money to an Animal Rights group, one of Eli’s favorite obsessions.
There’s some humor in the book; Miles feigns contempt for his younger twin sisters he calls Boop One and Boop Two. Even his mom has a nickname, Mims; she has a bunch of friends who’re hard to keep straight; one of them, Marge, another mathematician, marries Phillip, Hector’s dad.
I guess you could call this a coming of age novel as Miles has a girlfriend, Ella, that he worships on a pedestal, never really imagining she’d return his affection. There’s another girl, Maude, who is obviously smitten with him, but she’s just not the girl of his dreams.
If there’s a theme, it’s people are both good and bad; even Eli loves animals and seems to genuinely care about Irene, although he can’t seem to part with his wife or stop lying. About the nicest person in the book, is Ben Orion, the P.I., who does what he does because he sees Miles and Hector as human beings, not just goofy kids.
