{"id":4281,"date":"2015-04-14T06:57:11","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T10:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4281"},"modified":"2015-04-14T06:57:11","modified_gmt":"2015-04-14T10:57:11","slug":"chum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4281","title":{"rendered":"**Chum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"cocktail\"

(photo: wikipedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Jeff Somers <\/a>\u2013 By the time I finished this 2013 book I felt like I had a very bad hangover and my tongue had been used as an ashtray. Practically nothing seems to hold this group of nine friends together except drinking and smoking, and the quantity of alcohol consumed explains many of the difficulties they encounter.<\/p>\n

Written in the stripped-down modern style, the book is unencumbered by information about jobs, personal histories, and life outside the interactions among various pairings of these friends. With alternate chapters told by different members of this seriously dysfunctional group, the book starts with a hilarious wedding scene in which first the bride, then the groom, lock themselves in the venue bathroom, refusing to come out and carry on with the proceedings. Subsequent chapters skip backward and forward in time to before the wedding and some months after. Nevertheless, Somers guides the reader well, and I was never confused about when events took place or who narrated them.<\/p>\n

Much of the narrative focuses on two characters\u2014bad boy Tom and good guy Henry\u2014as much of the plot focuses on the trials of the newly married or to-be married couple, Bick and Mary. The book is full of snarky dialog that\u2019s at first amusing, as in this conversation between Tom and Henry on the wedding day. . Henry speaks first:<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long you give them?\u201d I asked.<\/em>
\nTom sat forward immediately, as if he\u2019d been thinking about the very subject. \u201cWell, let\u2019s be logical. Bick drinks, and Mary doesn\u2019t like it when he does. Mary drinks but doesn\u2019t think she has a problem, when she very obviously <\/em>does. Mary is jealous and controlling. On the other hand, Bick is snide and weak, while Mare is easily annoyed and shallow.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cBe fair,\u201d I admonished, \u201cThey\u2019re both shallow.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cFine. Put all that together, and I don\u2019t give them a day over seventy years. Eighty years, tops.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, the constant put-downs are just sad. As I neared the end, I started to wonder whether Tom and Henry are actually two sides of the same person and could think of only one scene where that wouldn\u2019t work. Both were described as present in scenes, just as multiple sides of other characters\u2019 personalities were present, waiting to break out\u2014usually after a couple of cocktails.<\/p>\n

While the novel starts strong and with good humor, the excessive alcohol use, which damaged existing relationships and prevented the strengthening of new ones was, in the end, a downer. Back-of-the-book copy calls it \u201cthe story of love, liquor, and death.\u201d That would be one actual death and the death of friendship too.<\/p>\n

Somers writes a popular series of futuristic violence featuring his character Avery Cates, and Amazon readers who liked this book tended to be fans of that series. I am still puzzling over this reader comment: \u201cUltimately I felt disappointed that what was revealed was more or less the point of the whole book.\u201d
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