The Black Brook, by Tom Drury
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The Black Brook, by Tom Drury
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An utterly original and compelling novel from “one of our living masters (McSweeney’s), originally published in 1998 and now re-issued by Grove with a new introduction--a conversation between the author and Daniel Handler.Paul Emmons has his faults—envy, lust, naiveté, money laundering, and art forgery to name but a few. A fallen accountant and scamster, Emmons and wife Mary are exiled abroad, though they enjoy frequent and inadvisable returns to New England, the region of his crimes, to check in on the property they own but cannot claim.With this, the stage is set for Drury's darkly comic novel of love, death, guilt, redemption, and the various forms of clam chowder. Through a series of flashbacks and bizarre encounters, we see Paul's life as a college student in Quebec; his unfortunate professional beginnings in Rhode Island as business associate of Carlo Record, the one-armed president of the fraudulent company "New England Amusements"; and his stint as an investigative journalist.As time passes, Paul is tracked down by Carlo's cronies--Ashtray Bob, Line-Item Vito, and Hatpin Henry--who try to coerce Paul into stealing the infamous John Singer Sargant painting "The Black Brook" from the Tate gallery in London. Instead, Paul begs Mary, a painter, to reproduce the Sargant, in an attempt to outwit Carlo and his henchmen; a plot that produces comic consequences. Through it all Paul strives to find and accomplish his mission in life, and myriad characters contrive to tell their stories—of broken promises, nightmarish evenings, and identities lost and found in this "irresistibly droll portrayal of an All-American liar, loser, and innocent" (Kirkus).
The Black Brook, by Tom Drury- Amazon Sales Rank: #1078337 in Books
- Brand: Grove Press
- Published on: 2015-03-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.30" h x 1.00" w x 5.40" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 336 pages
Amazon.com Review There is certainly no disputing the fact that "serious" contemporary fiction has valid things to say about "real life," but the worth of the ludicrous has perhaps been undervalued in modern literature as of late. If television can explore our psyches with one-armed men and dancing dwarves, and if the film industry can claim the Coen Brothers (not to mention the Farrellys) among its ranks, can't the written word itself share in the meaningful silliness? Yeah sure, you betcha. Welcome to The Black Brook and the world of Tom Drury. Fargo lite, if you will. A kinder, gentler Twin Peaks. Here, modern life is not only accepted but embraced in all its gloriously weird complexity as the author cranks up the weirdometer and opts for an anything-goes narrative suffused with breezy humor.
In 1989 in Rhode Island, accountant Paul Nash and his wife reached for the easy money, and when they fell, it seemed like they might never stop: in trouble with the law, out of the local crime syndicate's good graces, and into the arms of the Witness Relocation Program. Here they were baptized Paul and Mary Emmons, managers of a small country inn in Belgium. New name or not, Paul eventually fails to escape the lure of his past and soon finds himself leaving his wife to return to rural Connecticut. Quickly securing not only a newspaper swing shift but also the affections of his ex-best-friend's wife, he somehow finds time to investigate not only the sudden disappearance of a local creek but also the checkered history of a sexy ghost, all the while barely eluding the attentions of a few grudge-bearing Mafiosi.
Drury's first fiction, The End of Vandalism, has been compared to murals from the Works Progress Administration era. Anywhere you look, something interesting is afoot. And the representational link persists in The Black Brook, whose title springs from a moody John Singer Sargent painting. But this novel shares a certain kinship with Jackson Pollock's infinitely tangled webs of paint--amid the chaos, there is some sort of divine order, though one that resists pat explanation. It's either that or the 300 pages of belly laughs you've just endured that accounts for your breathless sigh when you hit the final paragraph. --Bob Michaels
From Publishers Weekly Drury follows his winning debut, The End of Vandalism, a laugh-out-loud funny portrait of small-town eccentrics in Connecticut, with a diffuse and unfocused attempt at, one guesses, social satire. This novel, too long, insistently not funny and seemingly enamored of the non sequitur, reads like the script for an unmade John Cassavetes film. The protagonist, Paul, is an unremarkable fellow from New England attending college in Quebec, sharing a house with Loom and Alice, his best friends, who later marry. Paul weds Mary, the widow of a man for whom he interned during the summer, filing police records in Boston. After graduation, Paul takes an accountancy job and bumbles into money laundering for one of his clients. This earns him a subpoena and eventual entry into a witness protection program, a short stay in the Pacific Northwest and then a spell in Brussels, where Mary has inherited a hotel. Paul and Mary split up, and Paul lands a newspaper job in the small New Hampshire town where Loom and Alice live. Paul has an affair with Alice, speaks with a woman's ghost (she committed suicide or drowned), goes searching for the woman's daughter, whom he finds working as a golf pro in Scotland. And so on. Since Mary is also a copier of famous paintings, Paul returns to Belgium to ask her to make a copy of Sargent's Black Brook, because (perhaps) one of the stories Paul worked on at the newspaper was about a stream that disappeared. This book will try the patience of anyone who does not equate feckless with funny. It's a tremendous disappointment from a writer once called a mixture of Keillor and Carver. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist The hero of Drury's second novel, Paul Nash, is unable to do or feel things in an ordinary or predictable way, hence he drifts. He becomes an accountant, then, after marrying a painter, explores the darker side of art and finance, laundering money for the Mob and dealing in forged paintings. Fickle, intractable, and fearless, he testifies against his gangster clients when the heat is on, then slips off to Belgium. Undeterred by death threats, Mary and Paul can't resist returning to their old haunts, and on one fateful visit, he stays behind, ending up in the small Connecticut town where his old college buddies live. He transforms himself into a newspaper reporter and becomes enamored with the ghost of a drowned woman, but these strange, somehow bewitching days are numbered since, as his uncle told him, it's "very easy to get into trouble, very hard to get out." Drury displays the same flair for crazy yet significant detail that shaped his first novel, The End of Vandalism (1994), as well as a gift for dazzlingly hilarious dialogue and startling juxtapositions of the mundane with the extraordinary. A unique voice, Drury will nonetheless appeal to fans of Richard Ford and Raymond Carver. Donna Seaman
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. I can't define Drury's writing but I love him. By A Customer I don't think it ruins anything to mention that the title comes from a painting of a girl's thoughts. How does Tom Drury think about so much and with such wit? As an experiment before writing this review I flipped the book open randomly at several points. Just as I thought, there was a wonderful surprise to be savored on every page. There are descriptions, scenes and sentences I wanted to bring home and turn into house pets. The fact that he manages to weave a plot around all this delicious satirical writing is amazing. I can't wait for his next book since I've read all three now.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. All his books are great By Linda Gaines Read The Black Brook. Drury is funny and poignant. The people are a little off the beaten track but that's what makes this a book to be read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Highly atmospheric, somewhat meandering, but fascinating. By A Customer I kept thinking that this is the kind of novel Paul Auster would write if Auster wrote more mainstream books. (It especially reminded me of Leviathan, due maybe to locale.)Though he depends less on coincidence than Auster does, Drury is still pretty far from the mainstream with this slow but beautifully written "mystery." That is, it seems like it should be a mystery, but it doesn't read as if there's any rush to find out what's at the bottom of the odd circumstances surrounding Paul Emmons, formerly Paul Nash, who is in the witness protection program for ratting on the mob. It's more of a character study. Category-defying. The prose is sharp and fresh.
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