This is the kind of dark, dark comedy that I love, the kind that makes people give me strange looks and ask what's wrong with me. As far as I'm concerned, "Among the Dead" ranks right up there with Fay Weldon's "The Life and Loves of a She-Devil" as one of the great comic novels of moral degradation and its many indignities. Frank Gale is an absolute snake who is plotting how to reveal his infidelities to his wife in order to minimize the damage to himself and maximize his personal happiness. This involves a vacation to Mexico with his wife and daughter, a confessional letter strategically placed in his daughter's luggage, and a planned walk on the beach with said daughter while the wife absorbs the truth of her husband's unfaithfulness. Unfortunately, two things thwart his plan: his wife reads the letter early while packing for the trip, and he misses the flight while staying too long at a lunch with his mistress, at which he ends the affair. Then the unthinkable (to most people) happens: the flight his family is on crashes, killing everyone on board. The rest of this excruciatingly uncomfortable tale follows Frank as he tries to wring gold from the dross of his own calcified soul, while the universe (or karma or a vengeful God, take your pick) knocks the cosmic dominoes over, one by one, in order to ensure that the execrable Frank gets exactly what's coming to him. Tolkin's insights into the depths to which the human animal can stoop are breathtaking, and Frank Gale is one of the truly great villains of modern literature. His inner thoughts are amazing in their lucidity and delusional intensity; while Frank's self-aggrandizement is both hilarious and pathetic, the sheer audacity of his acts of self-preservation are stunning. It's quite the high-wire act, and the shadenfreude we experience at his inevitable fall is tinged with unease, as we comfort ourselves that no cataclysm could ever cause US to stoop to such depths.
I'm guessing that many people start this book because of the synopsis, thinking this would be a cathartic companion piece to something schmaltzy like THE DESCENDANTS (to be fair, I only saw the movie). Those people must hate AMONG THE DEAD.If there was even an inkling of sentimentality here it went down with the plane. The set-up is seemingly simple: LA man cheats on wife, but decides he wants to work on marriage, and calls off his affair; he writes a letter to wife explaining that he cheated, but also that he wants to make things work--sire that second baby she's been pining for. He plans to give wife letter while vacationing, safely nestled in their Mexican hotel suite; he'll leave his wife alone while he takes his daughter out for a stroll along the beach. He imagines. Instead, wife reads the letter before she and the daughter get on the plane. Man misses the plane because he was bidding a long adieu to his lover. Plane crashes. That's when the story takes off. Not since Joseph Heller's SOMETHING HAPPENED have I read anything quite as disturbingly dark, misanthropic, and hilarious. And yet, I'm not recommending this book to anyone.
What do You think about Among The Dead: A Novel (2002)?
