Thoughts & Review on Sneaky People by Thomas Berger
Thoughts & Review on Sneaky People by Thomas Berger
There are times, when a book chooses you. As simple as that, no thunder lightning, no symphony, no loud signs, neither does the book automatically delivers at your door. But it just picks you up.
I was facing a readers block for a fortnight. While i did have piles of books waiting for me to read, but I didn't just have enough interest to read any. After heavy duty reading of Neel Mukherjee's State of Freedom & Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, I was drained out. While these two novels, did satisfy my literary cravings & but somewhere I felt a void.
These novels were intense, diverse of course, the treatment & the writing different. But they were like two living entities who possessed me & both refused to leave me steadfastly. However the ghost did wear off, but the emptiness remained.
I stared blank at the PC, didn't read in bus, at home whatsoever. I did have this novel "Mckluskiegunj" by Vikas Kumar Jha, but i could barely get past through 25 pages.
Random articles on internet, how does your partner surprise you on Quora, why the world to live in is still a douche bag & the virtual fluff floating on internet were the only the fodders to my mind.
Luckily enough, as always when inspiration strikes at work, i came across this article on flavor wire, giving a list of 50 essential mystery novels to read. Out of the Fifty, while i was oscillating between Daphne Du Maurier's Parasites & Agatha Christie's Murder on Orient Express, i was inexplicably drawn towards Sneaky People by Thomas Berger.
It seemed like a potboiler, American Noir drama and i don't know why i was drawn towards a simple plot of a husband planning to murder his wife.
Buddy Sandifier is an owner of a used car lot in a nondescript American Town. The time is of 1930s, post depression & Buddy Sandifier's business is earning enough to get by.
Buddy Sandifier is in relationship with a woman named Laverne whom he plans to marry & also plots at the same time to kill his wife Naomi. Their teenage son Ralph on the verge of biological discovery of himself, whiles away his time in dreaming about a girl he likes & carrying out misadventures with his friend Horace.
Buddy Sandifier's crew of employees are Leo, a middle aged man who stays with his mom, Jack an insurance salesman & Clarence , who does odd jobs in the lot.
This twist of emotions in Buddy's heart starts a chain reaction, which perhaps he is not able to control.. The anxiety, helplessness, devious thoughts of each character in the story is so well defined, that you feel as if each character is a walking canvas.
Where author Thomas Berger actually scores in this novel, is the study of each mind in detail. There are no poetic references, no splendid description of sunsets, colours or varied myriads of life. This is life without makeup.
Sex heavily lays on everyone's mind in this novel. Buddy Sandifier who believes, that if he can't get sex from one woman, he will go to another. Towards the end, he does becomes loyal towards Laverne, but fate defies that with a cruel twist. His son, Ralph who is just fifteen gets aroused by reading "Picture" manuals. His friend Horace get high on thinking about sex & he admires his older brother's Lester carnal adventures. There is Naomi, Buddy's wife who has a secret life of her own. Buddy's employee-Leo, a middle aged man who fantasies about pin up girls in newspaper by writing imaginary letters to them. There is Laverne for whom sex is also one way of earning money.
This might be hard-hitting novel for the purist readers, who will perhaps dislike this novel altogether.
This is a linear plot novel. The novel follows a simple plot of Buddy plotting to kill his wife Naomi so that he can marry his lover Lavernne.
Thomas Berger's study of each character, breathes life into each one of them. Most of the time, reading this novel was almost like a party in mind. It was like reading Great Gatsby with the middle class American dream. One never knows, which secret would further open up in this book. The suspense built up around this in this plot & the terse, tense & intense relationship between all the characters present makes a pot pourri of the emotions which the author serves us on a humble platter.
This is not a mystery novel to be exact, its noir, dark and comic too. Towards the end, perhaps as we see all characters fading away in their own lives, we are left with a sense of incompleteness. This American novel, brings out so many memories of American Noir movies and books like-The Great Gatsby, A street Car named desire, Little Miss Sunshine, August-Osage County, Blue Jasmine, Nebraska.
Almost while reading this novel, I felt as if I was reading a plot from a Woody Allen movie.
There are no flowery sentences, no bitter truths sugared, it is presented the way it is. The dialogues between the characters are real, filled with cuss words at times, but there is nothing unrealistic about them. The ending perhaps will leave a invisible tear in your mind, that why did this happen and what next. It stops at a point just like in real life, waiting for tomorrow, wondering and hoping for the best.
One more angle for this novel to be worth studying would be that how does the mind react in extreme circumstances. A very strange scenario unfolds in front of us in this incident where Leo's mother dies. Leo in extreme desperation, shoots his parrot to stop its screeching, lays his dead mother's body on a sofa & keeps all the furniture out in the garden. The once sane, sensitive Leo lashes out his boss for his sexual adventures.
Many contemporary American authors portray this sadness so eloquently. Almost the characters reminds me of the stories written by Lucia Berlin, Raymond Chandler, George Saunders & up to a certain extent Stephen King.
This US of melancholy , of people going through their lives trying to achieve something & of course people coming of age is written beautifully. The dialogues between the characters seems real, the characters seemed alive. And it was only after a bit of research on internet, I came to know that Thomas Berger has also written successful scripts for movies.
Do read this book, it will take you back in time. And it will linger with you for a long time after you have completed it.
Book Name : -Sneaky People
Author :- Thomas Berger
Publisher :- Simon Schuster
Format :- Paperback
ISBN :- 0743257952
No of Pages:- 320
You can buy the book from :- Infibeam | amazon
There are times, when a book chooses you. As simple as that, no thunder lightning, no symphony, no loud signs, neither does the book automatically delivers at your door. But it just picks you up.
I was facing a readers block for a fortnight. While i did have piles of books waiting for me to read, but I didn't just have enough interest to read any. After heavy duty reading of Neel Mukherjee's State of Freedom & Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, I was drained out. While these two novels, did satisfy my literary cravings & but somewhere I felt a void.
These novels were intense, diverse of course, the treatment & the writing different. But they were like two living entities who possessed me & both refused to leave me steadfastly. However the ghost did wear off, but the emptiness remained.
I stared blank at the PC, didn't read in bus, at home whatsoever. I did have this novel "Mckluskiegunj" by Vikas Kumar Jha, but i could barely get past through 25 pages.
Random articles on internet, how does your partner surprise you on Quora, why the world to live in is still a douche bag & the virtual fluff floating on internet were the only the fodders to my mind.
Luckily enough, as always when inspiration strikes at work, i came across this article on flavor wire, giving a list of 50 essential mystery novels to read. Out of the Fifty, while i was oscillating between Daphne Du Maurier's Parasites & Agatha Christie's Murder on Orient Express, i was inexplicably drawn towards Sneaky People by Thomas Berger.
It seemed like a potboiler, American Noir drama and i don't know why i was drawn towards a simple plot of a husband planning to murder his wife.
Buddy Sandifier is an owner of a used car lot in a nondescript American Town. The time is of 1930s, post depression & Buddy Sandifier's business is earning enough to get by.
Buddy Sandifier is in relationship with a woman named Laverne whom he plans to marry & also plots at the same time to kill his wife Naomi. Their teenage son Ralph on the verge of biological discovery of himself, whiles away his time in dreaming about a girl he likes & carrying out misadventures with his friend Horace.
Buddy Sandifier's crew of employees are Leo, a middle aged man who stays with his mom, Jack an insurance salesman & Clarence , who does odd jobs in the lot.
This twist of emotions in Buddy's heart starts a chain reaction, which perhaps he is not able to control.. The anxiety, helplessness, devious thoughts of each character in the story is so well defined, that you feel as if each character is a walking canvas.
Where author Thomas Berger actually scores in this novel, is the study of each mind in detail. There are no poetic references, no splendid description of sunsets, colours or varied myriads of life. This is life without makeup.
Sex heavily lays on everyone's mind in this novel. Buddy Sandifier who believes, that if he can't get sex from one woman, he will go to another. Towards the end, he does becomes loyal towards Laverne, but fate defies that with a cruel twist. His son, Ralph who is just fifteen gets aroused by reading "Picture" manuals. His friend Horace get high on thinking about sex & he admires his older brother's Lester carnal adventures. There is Naomi, Buddy's wife who has a secret life of her own. Buddy's employee-Leo, a middle aged man who fantasies about pin up girls in newspaper by writing imaginary letters to them. There is Laverne for whom sex is also one way of earning money.
This might be hard-hitting novel for the purist readers, who will perhaps dislike this novel altogether.
This is a linear plot novel. The novel follows a simple plot of Buddy plotting to kill his wife Naomi so that he can marry his lover Lavernne.
Thomas Berger's study of each character, breathes life into each one of them. Most of the time, reading this novel was almost like a party in mind. It was like reading Great Gatsby with the middle class American dream. One never knows, which secret would further open up in this book. The suspense built up around this in this plot & the terse, tense & intense relationship between all the characters present makes a pot pourri of the emotions which the author serves us on a humble platter.
This is not a mystery novel to be exact, its noir, dark and comic too. Towards the end, perhaps as we see all characters fading away in their own lives, we are left with a sense of incompleteness. This American novel, brings out so many memories of American Noir movies and books like-The Great Gatsby, A street Car named desire, Little Miss Sunshine, August-Osage County, Blue Jasmine, Nebraska.
Almost while reading this novel, I felt as if I was reading a plot from a Woody Allen movie.
There are no flowery sentences, no bitter truths sugared, it is presented the way it is. The dialogues between the characters are real, filled with cuss words at times, but there is nothing unrealistic about them. The ending perhaps will leave a invisible tear in your mind, that why did this happen and what next. It stops at a point just like in real life, waiting for tomorrow, wondering and hoping for the best.
One more angle for this novel to be worth studying would be that how does the mind react in extreme circumstances. A very strange scenario unfolds in front of us in this incident where Leo's mother dies. Leo in extreme desperation, shoots his parrot to stop its screeching, lays his dead mother's body on a sofa & keeps all the furniture out in the garden. The once sane, sensitive Leo lashes out his boss for his sexual adventures.
Many contemporary American authors portray this sadness so eloquently. Almost the characters reminds me of the stories written by Lucia Berlin, Raymond Chandler, George Saunders & up to a certain extent Stephen King.
This US of melancholy , of people going through their lives trying to achieve something & of course people coming of age is written beautifully. The dialogues between the characters seems real, the characters seemed alive. And it was only after a bit of research on internet, I came to know that Thomas Berger has also written successful scripts for movies.
Do read this book, it will take you back in time. And it will linger with you for a long time after you have completed it.
Book Name : -Sneaky People
Author :- Thomas Berger
Publisher :- Simon Schuster
Format :- Paperback
ISBN :- 0743257952
No of Pages:- 320
You can buy the book from :- Infibeam | amazon
Glad that this book was a good one for you and the portrayal was really realistic. I have not read Neel Mukherjee's book but I have read The ministry of Utmost happiness. Yes, those are more literary than enjoyable. I agree that after books like those, we need a dose of other kinds of books and I am glad you found a great author in Thomas Berger
ReplyDeleteHi !! Thank you so much for the comment. Yes, Thomas Berger was quite an revelation & this was a good book in its own way. This book also reminded me of "Roger's Version" By John Updike.
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