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For the first third of the book, the focus is on Freddie and his family. Freddie visits from his out-of-town college (often summoned to town by his mother to help deal with trouble in the family) and besides his mother the other main characters are Freddie's brother and his stepfather. Besides keeping peace in the family and maintaining his pot supply, Freddie’s main motivation is to finish college, in accordance with his dead father’s wishes. Then, after so much time spent with the family, the narrative suddenly shifts--the brother becomes a spiritual adviser to a rock band and is literally never mentioned again in the book. The mother and stepfather are at least mentioned again later, but never again appear in a scene or affect the action of the story. I found this very disconcerting, and to enjoy the book thoroughly, a reader would have to be content with a series of adventures featuring Freddie rather than a consistent story line.
Small Town Crazy is nothing more, and apparently does not mean to be anything more, than a series of fun and interesting episodes. This is not to put down books with such intentions. Don Quixote and Catch-22 are quite episodic in nature, and much of one’s enjoyment of them springs from the absurd situations in which the main characters find themselves. In Small Town Crazy, Freddie has no such noble aims as righting wrongs, fighting evil, and opposing an absurd world. If you enjoy the book, and I did enjoy parts of it, you enjoy it because Freddie is a fairly likable character and some of the characters and situations are humorous. For example, Freddie’s brother, who seems to be a devoutly religious teenager but is really a shameless religious hypocrite, is funny, as is Freddie’s reaction to the discovery. When a possibly psycho ex-girlfriend invades the hospital where Freddie is a patient, and her approach toward Freddie is apparent from increasingly frenzied announcements on the intercom, that situation is also funny.
However, the book is so extremely episodic that it is a little hard on the reader. After getting to know Freddie’s family and the dynamics between each of them, they disappear. We discover, after a third of the book is over, that it is not about Freddie’s relationship with his family or about his determination to complete college. New characters float in and we follow them for a while before they are replaced in turn by Freddie’s old friends and chance acquaintances, who we have never met before. For a while the action centers on Freddie’s attempts to get out from under a debt he owes to his gangster employer, and then that complication is resolved. Again, the reader must not expect a strong direction from the plot and must be prepared to be satisfied with interesting but not very strongly connected incidents.
One important obstacle between me and the story was an unusual sentence structure that occurred throughout the book. Pronouns are conspicuously absent. Only sometimes, though. At other times they are used as they normally are. At first I thought there were typos, and the he, she, it, I, you had accidentally been left out. Then it happened over and over again. This made me think it was an intentional effort to convey dialect or a unique author’s voice. However, none of the rest of the speech or narration was in dialect, and everyone from judges to maniacs to the narrator of the story speaks this way. A random example is: “the only excuse can offer” instead of “the only excuse I can offer.” This occurs hundreds of times in the book. At first it drove me crazy, but in the end I decided it was intentional and mentally supplied the missing words, since the rest of the wording was correct and sometimes well-turned. It remained a significant irritation throughout the book, though, and created an unnecessary distraction between me and the work.
I would give this book a rating of 2 out of 4 stars. With a more coherent plot and a supplied motivation for the main character beyond getting high and getting by (as well as a better understanding of where all the pronouns went), I would have rated it more highly. Because I was sometimes interested and diverted by the characters and events I would not give it only one star.
A reader who does not mind the lack of a continuous story line and a consistent cast of characters, and is looking for nothing beyond a diverting series of events may find this book worthwhile to read. Readers looking for a gripping plot line and penetrating psychological insights, or who would be bothered by apparently missing pronouns, should keep looking.
***
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