3 out of 4 stars
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McDowell by William H. Coles is the story of a man who had it all and lost it through pride and an unwillingness to see his own flaws and shortcomings. Only when he’s at his lowest point does he start to question his beliefs, find the capacity to care for other people without expectations. Even though he had a career as a doctor, he lacked an empathy that made him push his friends and family away which inevitably led to his downfall. The change the main character Hiram McDowell ends up going through doesn’t happen all at once. Gradually, he’s put in positions where he is questioned about his long-held beliefs, forced to confront them in a way he hasn’t really been able to in the past through the people he meets. He is at first writing a memoir but the more he journeys on and the more he’s willing to see, the more he’s able to find that the world doesn't revolve around him.
The book that this actually reminded me the most of was Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. It has been a while since I’ve read it but from what I remember about the story fits McDowell in the broad strokes. It is about a man who has committed a crime and has to, in his own way, atone for what’s done while at the same time evading a criminal system that still seeks to punish him. It’s not a perfect comparison but I can pick out similarities in both, even if Hiram McDowell, as much as he changes as a character, isn’t exactly sainted like Jean Valjean. That is fine, though. Hiram McDowell as a character is a flawed human being. Whether or not you think he’s in the wrong or not most of the time is almost irrelevant, considering the crime he is ultimately guilty of. I feel the author did choose to write the character this way: as a man who was rich and successful but undone by his hubris. Whether that then makes the story akin to a Greek tragedy or Les Miserables is maybe up to the reader to decide for themselves. All I can say is that I do understand what the author was maybe going for with both the main character and the structure of the book, split into two parts: the fall and the journey towards redemption.
That being said, there were things about the book I didn’t like. I feel like I should couch these in an overarching ‘Your mileage may vary’ disclaimer because I’m honestly not sure these are structural problems that could keep other readers from enjoying this book a lot more than I did. All I can say is that there were one too many casually sexist asides from characters in the story for my taste. To be fair, I understand their function as pieces in a story. One of my favorite authors, Stephen King, does play with this a lot: putting the reader in the mind of someone with sexist or racist ways of seeing the world. It isn’t always to get us to empathize with them as people but to turn the reader’s attention inward, to invite them to see the things polite modern society tells us we should hide but don’t ever really go away. A lot of these sexist views do come from Hiram’s perspective, which I understand, but its pervasiveness in the rest of the book is maybe harder to justify. I should also say, again speaking subjectively, there is a chapter in the second half of the book from the point of view of a black character that was for me as a woman of color, pretty uncomfortable to read. I don’t think it was meant to come off as anything but the author trying to speak through a character of another race. Bringing up Stephen King again, he does the same thing as well. It’s just for me personally, when I’m reading the dialogue and inner thoughts of a black character from what I know to be a white male author’s interpretation of what a black character thinks and sounds like, I cringe a bit on the inside.
Overall, in really thinking about the book, it is hard for me to say for sure whether or not the book succeeds in what it is trying to say about its lead character. The actions that lead Hiram McDowell to be imprisoned were born out of selfish needs, an unwillingness to see other peoples’ actions or feelings as more than inconveniences of himself. For a long stretch of the book, Hiram does feel like the world at large was out to get him and he’s a victim of unjust circumstances. Even the crime that he commits, euthanasia, could be seen as just or unjust as a crime itself depending on who looks at it. The impetus for writing the memoir is born out of an albeit selfish need to paint himself as a victim, to get back at those who wronged him. His character does undergo a noticeable shift, it's just a question of does the final change happen: does he, in the end, understand why he was imprisoned from the crime he did commit or even understand that what he did was a crime in the eyes of the law? In the end, I'm not sure if the author adequately answers that question himself or instead invites the reader to draw their own conclusions.
All in all, McDowell is a hard book to pin down for me. I’m not sure I really liked it but on the other hand, I’m not sure I outright hated it or feel like it giving it an A for effort 2 out of 4 stars. The book is well-written, the main character has a believable organic arc from self-centered to a more selfless person. The conclusion feels satisfying and the chapter by chapter POV switching between characters means we get insights into other characters and some needed variety. On the other hand, the casual sexism and aforementioned stereotypical black character kept me from having an overwhelmingly positive experience with it. In the end, I give this book 3 out of 4 stars. 2 stars would imply that it had something at least worthwhile but could not deliver on it. At the same time, I can’t call this book a perfect 4 out of 4 because there were things that just personally turned me off. The book does mostly succeeds in the story it wants to tell. The degree of success depends on whether or not the reader feels that Hiram McDowell found his redemption in the end. I recommend McDowell to readers who enjoy stories about characters who learn to be more empathetic to the people around them without there really being any religious overtones to it. There are some shades of it here and there but the growth and change is more of a personal kind of journey towards understanding. If that sounds up your alley, it's worth a shot.
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McDowell
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