The Vices: A Novel

by Lawrence Douglas

Oliver Vice, forty-one, prominent philosopher, scholar, and art collector, is missing and presumed dead, over the side of Queen Mary 2 .Troubled by his friend’s possible suicide, the unnamed narrator of Lawrence Douglas’ new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice’s life history. Douglas, moving backward through time, tells a mordantly humorous story of fascination turned obsession, as his narrator peels back the layers of the Vice family’s rich and bizarre history. At the heart of the family are Francizka, Oliver’s handsome, overbearing, vaguely anti-Semitic Hungarian mother, and his fraternal twin brother, Bartholomew, a gigantic and troubled young man with a morbid interest in Europe’s great tyrants. As the narrator finds himself drawn into a battle over the family’s money and art, he comes to sense that someone—or perhaps the entire family—is hiding an unsavory past. Pursuing the truth from New York to London, from Budapest to Portugal, he remains oblivious to the irony of the that in his need to understand Vice’s life, he is really grappling with ambivalence about his own.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Mystery Thriller

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The beginning of Lawrence Douglas’s elegant book, The Vices, begins with a Hegel quote: There was but one man who understood me, and he didn’t understand me.

That quote is far more ambiguous than it first seems.

At first, it seems as if the quote applies to the unlikely friendship between Oliver Vice, the wealthy, urbane, eccentric, and debonair philosopher, scholar and art collector and the unnamed and awestruck Jewish narrator.

The narrator – a fellow professor – is besotted by Oliver, who, at the start of the book, has disappeared over the side of a luxury cruise ship, presumably, a suicide. He muses, “Oliver didn’t despise himself. His problem was more acute and exemplary; he despised being himself.”

In flashbacks, as he becomes more and more obsessed with his friend, he becomes enmeshed in his family life. Oliver’s mother Francizka is a glamorous, secret-hoarding matriarch with various accoutrements that may or not be forgeries; she is engaged in a rather suspect relationship with his fraternal twin, Bartholomew. Oliver’s absent BF (birth father) may or not be trading in art from Jewish victims and his stepfather, Jacob Epstein, is slowly dying of Pick’s disease. The narrator sets himself up as the chronicler, the witness.

The book veers into more exotic territory: the very meaning of identity. The questions become: Does Oliver understand Oliver? Does the narrator understand himself? Is personal identity a matter of finding the right evidence and drawing the proper inferences?

The narrator – a novelist – convinces himself that he is following the Vice family to unearth a story. His wife, Melissa, dispels that notion: “You’re obsessed with him. Him and his extraordinariness. You dress like him, you follow his interests, you even wear the same cologne…Oliver doesn’t appeal to you because you’re a novelist. You’re a novelist so you can dream about wealth and titles and exclusive bloodlines.” Perhaps, he reasons, it is a compensatory mechanism to make him larger, grander, possibly more worthy of love.

In this fascinating hall of mirrors, nothing is quite what it seems and the curtains are pulled back to reveal more and more ghosts. Erudite and suspenseful at once, the book questions the shibboleth of self-help gurus: does “myth and invention deliver a means of reconciliation, accommodation and perseverance?” Does The Truth ever really set any of us free?

[Cat]

This book may have rather limited appeal outside of the Amherst community (it's written by a poli sci prof), but for former students of either Alex George or Lawrence Douglas, the gossip is hard to resist. The title character, Vice, is a philosophy professor described to look exactly like George, with a similarly blue blood background and astringent personality. The novel starts strong, with the narrator (the Douglas-like character) puzzling over Vice's recent disappearance off the bow of the Queen Mary. Unfortunately, the writing does not keep pace with the first few pages. The narrator, a creative writing professor at Harkness College (an imperfect but phonetically close anagram for "Amherst"), is criticized by one of his students for relying too heavily on cliche. Douglas suffers from the same problem; promising passages (like the appearance of Vice's several "widows" at his funeral) get short shrift while less interesting descriptions (like a mall parking lot) are described more fully, without the additional words evoking concrete images. The narrator's obsesssion with Vice (his wife disparagingly calls it "love") could have been an interesting relationship to explore; instead, Douglas never penetrates its surface (perhaps the lack of "penetration" is key). The narrator and Vice enact a familiar chick lit trope: the fat girl admires the golden girl until she finds out that it's better to be emotionally and physically satiated than hungry. The Vices has potentially rich content; Douglas' writing and his timidness towards the narrator-Vice relationship prevent it from fulfilling the promise of the first few pages.

[Justy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book floated along quickly, fairly interesting plot and characters. Found the Vice family story intriguing but somewhere in the middle of the book it started to remind me too much of the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley. The ending was annoying and felt incomplete.

[Marc Krauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to this novel after reading the review in Tablet by Adam Kirsch, the New Yorker writer. Kirsch praised the novel's Nabokovian structure and the wonderful dynamic created between the unnamed narrator and the protagonist, Oliver Vice. The review might have come with a spoiler alert, as I think it gives away too much of the story, but otherwise I found it spot-on. The novel reads very smoothly and quickly, almost like a mystery, but the writing is quite beautiful, with vivid, interesting sentences on virtually every page. The characters are quirky, but fully realized, not simply an assemblage of idiosyncratic tics. I was particularly taken with Francizka Vice, Oliver's powerful, manipulative, dissembling mother. And the dynamic that emerges between the narrator and Oliver Vice is wonderfully handled--part hero-worship, part homoerotic attraction, part school-boy rivalry. There's also a fascinating theme of twinning and doubling that's sustained throughout the book. At times The Vices reminded me of the fiction of Paul Auster, though with a bigger heart, as the novel ends on a moving note. Overall a fascinating novel about identity that will stay with me.

[Kristen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this book after hearing the author at the Boston Book Festival. The subject matter sounded great for a discussion- how do we really know someone? And I liked the idea of piecing together someone's life through the eyes of others'. I was promised travels and twists, and varyng chronology, and unreliable narrative. I feel like by the time I got to all these things I had waited so very long to experience, I was about 85% of the way through the book. And quite frankly, by the time I got there, I no longer cared. In reading some of the other reviews, it appears that this story is very relevant to the Amherst community. It wasn't to me. I found I got tired of the plot, and really found the character difficult to relate to, and pretty unlikeable. I like certain quotes, like the beginning: "There was but one man who understood me, and he didn't understand me." -Hegel. Overall, I was disappointed and hope that my book club finds something a bit more redeeming about this book than the high potential and minimal payoff that I experienced. It's not often that I really get behind a book, and this is sort of why.

[John Pappas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who are we? How do our memories, histories and the stories we tell define us? How do we make sense of a person's life its end? These are the questions at the root of Douglas's novel The Vices. Haunted by the seemingly sudden and entirely unexpected suicide of his friend and colleague, Oliver Vice, the narrator attempts to piece together the shards of his friend's story as his own life unravels. Brilliant writing and structure. HIghly recommended.

[Guy · Rating 5 out of 5]

review @ His Futile Preoccupations

www.swiftlytiltingplanet.wordpress.co...

[Siel Ju · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Over the years, I’ve come better to understand that writing about someone dear is never an innocent gesture, is always part homage, part predation.”

The Vices is about the disappearance of a philosopher and professor — likely from suicide — and the unexpected secrets surrounding his family of origin that slowly come to light. I found the philosophical musings enjoyable —

[Anne Putnam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a random library grab. Expected a mystery and received a memoir. Not a page turner but more along the lines of a classic journey into someone’s life and how it unraveled. Bit of a culture look as well - however, didn’t knock my socks off by any means.

[Dan Wever · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ripley vibes

[Verena · Rating 3 out of 5]

His tragedy, as I’ve always insisted, was that he wasn’t fit for the life he wanted nor able to want the life that fit him.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

perfectly enjoyable, esp if you went to Amherst College

[Heather M · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you liked The Goldfinch you will like this too. Loved it. Apparently I like stories about art.

[Travis Fortney · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second Lawrence Douglas I have read, after The Catastrophist, and I think he is a smart and entertaining writer who deserves a larger audience.

This book contains an extended S&M slapstick scene, which is hilarious. I have often thought that that particular subculture could be effectively mined for comedy, and I was happy to see someone go there.

There's also some great material about a dog, and many of the small details are just right (Oliver chews a baby aspirin every morning, for example). Douglas writes about relationships very well--particularly among well-educated liberals. To me, his books have an almost Woody Allen quality to them.

That said, The Vices fell a little flat for me. I got a much more real sense of existential despair from The Catastrophist than I got from this book.

One problem is, like that earlier book (which shared much with Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim), The Vices draws inspiration from a well-known classic, this time Nabakov's Pale Fire. We're dealing with two characters, both academics, allegedly friends, although the narrative is tinged with hints of obsession, and we're relying on the perhaps obsessed narrator to tell us the story of Oliver's life. Also, Oliver and the narrator seem oddly like mirror images of one another, and several characters in the book remark how they look and act alike. And Oliver's death (at least as it is narrated in the opening passages of the book) is never made explicitly clear. The book has a Nabakovian feel of brainy playfulness, and the themes are large and heady--identity, forgery, history.

Sadly, Douglas doesn't prove himself up to the task of successfully navigating all of this. This story wants to be funny, wants to have wild twists and turns, wants rise up and be more than it is, but it never gets there. It's puzzling, but Douglas for some reason decides to play it perfectly straight. He's a writer whose skills are suited to the kind of book The Vices wants to be, but not the book it ultimately is.

For the last 100 or so pages of this, I alternately felt like I was A) not getting the joke, and B) waiting for the curtain to be pulled back, revealing some elaborate ruse. To me, the reveals about Oliver/the Vice family fell very flat, and I didn't care much about what happened to unnamed narrator.

All in all, this book is worth reading. I just think that as a fan and big believer in Lawrence Douglas's skill and ability, I was hoping for more.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Douglas's "The Vices" is one of the best novels I've read this year. Hands down. Douglas writes about the death - and the life - of Oliver Vice, a popular professor at a small liberal-arts college in Massachusetts (read: "Amherst") who is reported missing on the crossing of the Queen Mary II. He had been traveling from Europe to New York in the company of his mother, an aging widow. His reported death stirs up the conjecture about his mysterious life that has been part of his appeal to others. The nameless narrator, a colleague at the college Vice teaches, has been a long-time friend of Oliver's and sets off to peel the onion of Oliver Vice's life.

Douglas writes in a rather matter-of-fact voice, which is perfect for the story he tells. Oliver Vice has lived a life of almost complete compartmentalization. His family - and he's one of fraternal twins - never really combines with his friends or his lovers. Oh, they meet at holidays at Oliver's mother's New York City apartment, but the different people in Oliver's life are on different tracks. The station they meet at is Oliver, but all continue on their way, taking a bit of Oliver with them.

Very few people in Oliver Vice's life are really who they seem at first glance. Fortune - and the Vice's are wealthy - comes from various sources in their lives, and the pathway to wealth is certainly not straight. European connections from the WW2 era are hinted at, and some semi-shady transactions are acknowledged. Oliver Vice has many female lovers but none can fill the unfulfilled at Oliver's core.

Lawrence Douglas - he's a professor at Amherst - has produced a fairly short in length but long in texture novel about the many mysteries of a man's life. The Vices stayed with me after finishing the book, and it's one of the few books I'd like to read again.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was largely not what I expected. I tend to read mysteries, and from the description inside the front cover of this book, that's what I was anticipating with The Vices. The beginning of the book does have a very mystery-oriented feel to it, but the rest of the book is something different altogether. It's more an observation of a very strange man and his life experiences (and his relationships). The book felt somewhat stretched out and slow in parts, whereas others were fascinating... but the book probably could have been 50 pages shorter without sacrificing much content.

I spent much of the book waiting for the lightbulb moment where Oliver Vice's backstory would suddenly explain his disappearance (described in the first chapter), but that never happened. In fact, the end of the book didn't feel much like an ending at all. That isn't to say that the plot isn't concluded before the end of the novel, but rather that the ending didn't come to a good final note. It almost felt like the author had difficulty writing a good final paragraph that summed up the whole novel, and instead opted to just leave the novel with some nice imagery.

Overall, I would recommend this book -- especially to those who enjoy analyzing a good novel and/or like novels more driven by character development than plot.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a flame to moths, philandering philosopher Oliver Vice is irresistible. He is also enigmatic, inscrutable, and narcissistic. But is he suicidal?

The Vices opens with Oliver's death, a dramatic finish in the swirling waters of the north Atlantic into which Oliver pitched, or was pitched, from the Queen Mary II. Oliver's final days are investigated by the narrator, who remains cleverly unnamed, though he is at the story's heart. Indeed, his is the heart that pulses for Oliver's for the length of this story, as he explores Oliver's life in search of an explanation for his death.

It is also an examination of obsession and identity, of forgery and fraud. And it's wrapped up in a delicious package of bright language and fascinating characters, chock full of wit and thrills, layered with humor and melancholy. It was a pleasure to partake of this sometimes zany, sometimes poignant work of fiction.

Lawrence Douglas is a writer new to me. His style brings to mind the precisely-crafted novels of Michael Frayn, Kate Atkinson, Ian McEwan, and Russell Banks. I love his way with words, the economy of phrase that turns smartly on a crisp heel, yet provides rich imagery "...a bald homunculus crawled toward her on the concrete floor...and curled nautiluslike at her feet.." Yes, I had to look up "homunculus." I dig learning new words. I dig this book.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd add a word about influences - to my ear, The Vices is written within the tradition of some of my favorite Philip Roth novels. If you like the early Zuckerman books, or the late ones, for that matter, those are the ones I'm talking about. It's similarly unafraid to be discursive, ruminative, thoughtful.... And, admirably, Douglas manages this in under 400 pages, (without footnotes or endnotes!). It's a lot of fun to read.

Maybe the sub-genre I'm referring to should be called Academic Tragicomedy, or something grand like that. Roth was definitely a master of it. Like Roth, though, Douglas cares a little more for his characters' human innards than Waugh or Kingsley Amis did. The Vices is a novel of ideas, in a way I wish more contemporary novels were: it thinks along with us and ahead of us. Douglas clearly writes with his whole brain, the philosophical, literary, funny, and crude parts all together. (Cf. T.S. Eliot on looking into "much more than the heart", right down to the digestive tracts.) Here is a book denying that fiction is an escape from life, least of all from thinking.

But the most important thing is to tell you what even a five-star rating can't put into words - should you read it? Read it.

[Joshua Finnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library Journal Review:

In the genre of murder mysteries, the detective often maintains a calculated distance from his subjects so as not to cloud judgment and to avoid emotional attachment. Here, Douglas (English, Amherst Coll.) displays the emotional complexity of becoming the detective in your best friend's disappearance. The book begins with the disappearance of Oliver Vice, a philosopher and colleague of the unnamed narrator at Harkness College. On a quest to uncover the truth about his friend, the narrator recalls the evolution of their friendship and the emerging details of Oliver's life. One of the book's pleasures is watching the narrator determinedly circumvent Oliver's obstructions of his past. Through a skillful portrayal of Oliver as a public intellectual with a penchant for philosophical discourse on the nature of being, Douglas elaborates on the inherent tensions that make up the contested borders of identity. Oliver's own projection of himself, the narrator discovers, is an intentional fabrication.
Verdict A quick read without the denouement twist, this mystery is deceptively philosophical and introspective.—Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won an ARC of this book from Goodreads First Reads giveaways.
The Vices is a story of the Vice family. A clinically depressed clan who also happen to be pathological liars, art forgers, smugglers, & extortionists. The main character in the book, Oliver Vice, is actually dead when the story is written. It's told from the point of view of his "best friend" a fellow college professor. The friend recounts the mysterious story of Oliver's death & then flashes back to occurances throughout their friendship.
In the end, all is not as it is originally presented. The family is a sham. At first the why of this story seems obvious...in the end there were parts I was right about & portions where I was completly off base. Those portions are what were able to let me rate this a 3. Nothing really happens in this book yet at the same time a family is torn to shreds without there really being a result...unless of course you view Oliver's death as suicide, then you could conceviably argue that the death stems from the lies his family maintained.

[Dorothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a great read. Firstly, I find the author's writing style inviting and enjoyable. His use of language is precise without being pedantic and his "peripheral narrator", who is never given a name, feels wisely honest. Throughout the novel are interwoven themes of fraud, forgery, embellishment, little white lies, Whopping falsehoods and the many meanings associated with survival. Characters are never fully revealed which is truly how lives are experience...we never know everything about anybody yet we search for the keys to unlock their secrets never fully realizing that is is simply impossible. We all exist in relationship and perception of our interactions with others thus keeping full reveal like an asymptote never reaching bright. A provocative book about interior and exterior lives wrapped in the historical context of the contemporary world and the ongoing role of the Holacaust in understanding the many forms of survival.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a very fine novel --- and I'm no Amherst insider. What literate person reads novels for their gossip value? There's already enough of that crapola on the Net.

The Vices did what I expect literature to do: it took me inside the lives of people very different from myself, and it made me think about the deep issues. What is the meaning of self? How does one invent an identity, and what are the costs of doing so? These are very American --- and very Jewish--- themes. Themes played out in the lives of my own relatives, with varying answers and degrees of success. Themes I have struggled with myself.

Besides, Douglas is a witty and smart writer. Most academic novels are content to mock academic life. This one is far more thoughtful and serious at its core. It stayed with me, long after I turned the last page.

[Opera4fun · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started out strong with the promise of a murder mystery and to solve the suicide/murder of his friend. The book is well written but for me didn't so much meet the pleasure of murder mysteries. Half way in I knew more about the subjects but no real conjecture about a "murder mystery". To be honest, I got bored and speed read through the last chapters just to finish (I can't not finish a book - although I gave it some thought with this one). I like my mysteries to focus on the crime, not the narrator and family history only. I'm not sure I'll read anything else by him. I had high hopes for this one, but it was not so much my cup of tea.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recieved this book awhile ago from a goodreads giveaway and have been waiting to read it until i found a time where i didnt have to dedicate all of my day to studying. This novel deserves full attention; it follows the life of Oliver Vice through his unnamed friends perspective after he musteriously commits suicide. I loved every bit of it, found it to be one of those books that i just couldnt put down. The wordy text combined with the brilliant idea behind it all prevented me from sleeping most nights.

[Karla · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started right into this book and was enveloped with the storyline. However, after 100 pages, I could see where the author may be taking the reader but it was no longer captivating. I then realized I was only still reading the book to try and finish it but really felt that the story was bland and had lost me altogether. After 150, I knew I was not going to see this to the end and I had other book adventures to jump into.

I have spoken to others who agree that the book is not worth struggling through to the end for.

[Kyrsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading this book I read that some reviews said it may be difficult for those out of the area to really get into, but I have to disagree! This book was well developed, the plot made a lot of sense and the characters where intriguing and believable. I recommend this most certainly!

**I won this book in a First-Reads Giveaway. My review is a reflection of my honest opinion and is not influenced by the fact that I got the book for free.

[K.C. Shaw · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I expected. The exploration of self and identity might have been interesting if the writing was better. The bleak humor is hit-or-miss, usually miss, and depends on the unnamed narrator being simultaneously intelligent and profoundly stupid (not to mention possibly not even real).

Full review: http://skunkcatbookreviews.blogspot.c...

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it somewhere between a three and a four. A quote on the cover calls it a "whodunit," but don't believe it. It's a story about identity, both our own and the identity we prescribe to others. It's about family, history, and secrets. It's about what we do to protect the people we love.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable inasmuch as much of it is an insider western Massachusetts dream. Slow discovery of the narrator's friend's life and history also good. Hard to overlook the upsetting, repeated characterization of dark jeans and french cuffed shirts as the height of fashion.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was funny, mysterious, and philosophic. I liked that the book paced itself well and was just mysterious enough to keep you learning about the characters all the way to the very last page. Definitely worth reading.