Alison Wonderland
by
Helen Smith
I
do not pick up books I think I will dislike. Unlike some more
traditional reviewing positions, I am not "assigned" books,
and there are more out there that I want to read than I ever will be able,
so every book I decide to read has promise. Something
about it struck me as interesting, and in the case of Alison
Wonderland,
it was probably the London location mixed with a bit of mystery that
made me open the cover. Unfortunately, this book turned out to be a
hot mess. If it had been any longer than its 189 pages, I don't think
I would have finished. And while of course no author wants to hear
that — and there are readers out there who think that unfavorable
reviews of small press books are bad form — I think that Helen
Smith is capable of a better book. I know she has others (I have not
read them) and that this is an early book of hers, but Alison
Wonderland
suffers from a lack of focus both in character and plot. The writing
itself is not bad, nothing extraordinary, but not overly
cringe-worthy and cliché-filled either. Still, somewhere along the line,
someone needed to say, "What, exactly, are you trying to
accomplish here?"
The
basic premise is this: Alison Temple works for the same all-female
private investigative firm that busted her cheating (now ex-)husband.
She is assigned to pay attention to a company that might be
involved in some shady genetic engineering. Mostly though, she spends
time talking to her nutter best friend Taron and her love
poem-writing, inventor neighbor, Jeff. Taron's mother, who thinks she
is a witch, is sick and she tells Taron that she thinks she needs a
baby in order to be cured. Taron, as though it is perfectly natural,
pays Alison to research where babies are frequently abandoned. Also,
nefarious military types have stolen Taron's address book, believing
it is Alison's, and they are busy roughing up the people listed
trying to find out what she knows.
Each
of these "plot" points run out of steam quickly. Characters
who are so committed to something on one page suddenly seem to go,
"Oh, never mind" on the next, and it's on to the next loopy
scene. For some reason, Smith felt the need to tell the story from
multiple points of view. Alison's story is told from the first
person, but everyone else is in the close third. There is nothing
gained by this other than superfluous information about minor
characters. Anything that we find out in those third person chapters
could have easily been rewritten as discoveries made by someone who
is supposed to be
an investigator.
Alison
herself is one of the most inconsistent characters, and part of me
wondered if the whole book was just some sort of fevered cokehead
dream. She and Taron are snorting up by page 14, and no big deal of
it is made, so one assumes that it is a regular occurrence. On one
page, she can seem quite clever — for instance, telling people at
bars that she's a TV researcher so that she can talk about the people
she investigates like documentary subjects — and then later, I was
rereading paragraphs, thinking, This
woman is beyond barmy.
When
I first learned to drive and I bought petrol, I went to great lengths
to trickle the final drops into the petrol tank so it cost a round
amount of money like ten pounds. Now I try and spend ₤19.87
or ₤20.04
or some other amount that I hope will disturb the cashier's sense of
neatness and uniformity. I'm bluffing him, hoping he'll think I
cannot control the petrol trigger properly because I'm not a man.
Honey,
that cashier is not even fully paying attention to you or anyone else
filling up their tank. I've worked that job. We do not care about
petrol charge uniformity; we care about getting a paycheck,
hopefully without crazy people such as yourself coming through the
door.
She
is equally erratic when it comes to her friends. With Taron, she
thinks, "I'd quite like to drive around with her forever and
never have to do another day's work again," (no kidding, since
you hardly seem to work now),
yet she is always thinking about how she finds Taron's habits
irritating. Also, she seems to have no qualms about assisting her in
the abandoned baby mission. Then, she rambles on to Jeff the Neighbor
about Taron in a block of dialogue that's... problematic.
"I
like her. I know she can be a bit weird sometimes. I can never
believe anything she says, she makes it up as she goes along. It
doesn't matter. I find it quite difficult to trust anyone anyway
after I caught my husband cheating on me, so I might as well be
friends with someone with a fairly relaxed grip on the trust. She's a
lot of fun though. She's always up for it."
Jeff
is quiet, still working. [ed.
That's because he has long since tuned out your BLATHER.]
"I
didn't realize how much time I spent on my own until I started seeing
her. I wasn't lonely, exactly. I spent a lot of time on my own,
though. I've got you, of course. I like spending time with you, too.
Thanks for telling me about the yabbie [crayfish]
thing. That's funny. I'll call you while we're away. I'll miss you."
No
one talks like this. This is not Shakespeare soliloquy time. Also,
she's quite mean to Jeff in the way she soaks up his attention but
never returns it, though at least she has the decency to realize that
later.
The
investigation and the baby-finding plots are only
barely
linked, almost by accident, and the more fantastical elements —
psychic postmen, magical thinking, etc. — are not played up enough
if that's the direction Smith wanted to go. And if this really is
some sort of drugged up nonsense, then that
should be more clear. As far as the "Wonderland" usage
goes, it's a one-note joke used maybe twice, and the Lewis Carrol
references stop there. Either the joke needs to be lost — and
either way, the book needs a better title since it's not only
from Alison's point of view — or it needed to be a modern
retelling. Bizarre characters and investigation elements certainly
could have accomplished this, but as the book stands, it's nothing
but Alison's out of control car going round the bend and straight off
the cliff.
Full Disclosure: This book was sent to me by the author. I thank her for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.
#46
This review is part of Pajiba's Cannonball Read, in which participants aim to read and review 13, 26 or 52 books within one year.