Next
Fiction is never a true representation of real life, hence it's attraction and lasting legacy. However, it pains a reader to have to endure such instances in fiction that feel forced or contrived in what is otherwise an interesting and appealing work. There are certain genres that certainly are based solely on these contrivances and that constitute their backbone, but when you are in the midst of a work that doesn't feel as if it should be considered threadbare and trite, it devalues the work in such a way that any resemblance or relationship you might have had with the characters is disregarded. James Hynes' novel, Next, is just such a fictional work.

What starts out with a premise that's easily recognizable to anyone who has drifted career-wise quickly turns into a rumination on the absurd. The narrator, Kevin Quinn, boards a plane to fly to Austin, Texas in the hopes of landing a job at a publishing company. Kevin, who is fifty years old, has been working as nothing more than a glorified staffer at a local university in Michigan. (In the interest of full disclosure, I worked at a university in a staff job for four years and know and can relate to the predicament Kevin finds himself in, but my empathy ends with that simple trait.) Surely, rational behavior is not what one reads fiction to encounter. Plain, run-of-the-mill daily minutiae does not make for a good, gripping narrative. However, when the actions of a character shift from truly humanistic to implausibly irrational, it's hard to remain invested either emotionally or simply quizzically in the hopes of following a narrative arc to its logical and well earned conclusion. This is shameful, because Hynes constructs a perfect setup for a novel in our day and age.

Terrorism, and the fear of it, weighs heavily on Kevin. Anyone in America can relate to this sense of unease that has pervaded the country in the years since 9/11. While 9/11 alone would have provided Hynes with more than enough to endear Kevin to the reader, he goes further in having subsequent attacks having happened in the recent past that weigh heavily on Kevin and hears unceasing fear. Having that backdrop may have been enough to sustain our interest in Kevin, but Hynes isn't content to leave it at that.

Kevin's obsessiveness quickly drifts from the fear of attack to the desire to follow his seatmate on the plane. Thus, the entire narrative descends into the realm of the ludicrous. And this is in the span of the first fifty or so pages. What can be described as a man in the midst of a mid-life crisis seems to devolve into the ruminations of a man past his prime both in terms of a new career as well as with the opposite sex. As Kevin totally abandons the realm of the sane, nervous, eager to impress job seeker, his mind races from relationship to relationship that should be the last thing one would expect someone to be thinking about in the midst of a day in a new city with the express purpose of getting a new job. Adding insult to injury, Kevin's journey around the city apparently leaves his mind in such benumbed state that his ability to ascertain that during this very day another round of attacks are occurring has been lost in a haze of sexual regret and the looming prospect of fatherhood. It seems a stretch to concede that someone so infatuated with the possibility of a terrorist attack would be so oblivious to the fact that one is occurring. Paranoia, a trait that is clearly evident in the opening pages, is lost in what can only be described as a sad cataloging of past and present relations with women.

Kevin's quest may have been better served in a short story or novella form where it would have been less likely for the reader to become tired of the character amidst the main arc of the narrative. What makes Hynes' effort seem even more wasted is when you contrast his novel with Joshua Ferris' The Unnamed, which is based on an even more absurd premise, Tim Farnsworth's inability to stop walking, but who is infused with such delicate humanity and a family life that's both compelling and familiar. Ferris seems to take some flack for his writing, but I find that it's much less tiresome or filled with cliches that wear a reader down and bog a narrative in detritus. His sentiments might seem trite and trendy, but it's much more effective in terms of a novel. Hynes has previously descended into the realm of the supernatural in his novels that seemed to be grounded wholly in the real world. What happens when he tries to stay afoot in the real world is indicative that he's more adept at the former than the latter.