Skating on the Edge by d.g.k. goldberg
A main character on roller-skates, a world on the edge of reality? From the very first sentence, we know this is not going to be an entirely serious book. It is a very apt title. The language skates on the edge of the absurd, without falling into the Abyss. That is a difficult thing to do. Most experimental leaning novels fail because the writer isn't strong enough to propel the experiment to the level needed. Goldberg has the talent to hold that edge.
We are thrown into this absurd world from the very start with headless women, and other creatures wandering around the boardwalk. I would like more off the wall references that hint at previous allusions, like a stand-up comic whose routine builds on the previous jokes. The book is full of great lines that come right from the tradition of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. "I suspect some trauma that occurred shortly after I was made. If there wasn’t a trauma, then I need repressed false memory therapy to create one so that I can recover from it." (p.42) Throw-away lines are instead kept and toyed with. Goldberg is especially good at this trick of wordage.
Famous characters keep stopping by, hoping for an odd cameo; and odd most of them are. The Abyss is a veritable Who's Who of history. These little asides give the novel its spice, its vitality. It lets us into this insane world with figures we know doing unbelievable (or completely mundane) things. The bagel making golem was portrayed quite convincingly. I had never thought about what such a creature would sound like, but Goldberg made it totally believable. Some of the fun, funky asides are a little clunky. We stop to look around at all of the famous people doing absurd things. This adds to the scene, but stops the flow of action. It lends a jerky rhythm to the book.
I liked the POV shifts. 1st person for Lynx and 3rd in the scenes she isn't in. The scenes Lynx is in do have moments of 3rd person narration, especially when things are being described. It is done in a way that is not that obtrusive if done for short periods. It is some of those longer pieces that drag. The reader doesn't have any connection to the strange stuff that is going on, it is just window dressing. The aside to non-smoking readers on 199 pulled me out of the story. Directly speaking to the reader draws me out of the tenuous reality of the novel. I think this is the type of novel that readers love to lose themselves in. It is a great escape to dive into an absurd world. That absurd world is very carefully constructed like a house of cards. It can easily fall like Willie Coyote when he looks down after running off a cliff. If done sparingly, it can be a cool "Ferris Bueler" type of moment. It is a testament to Goldberg's strength as a writer and world builder that she then draws the reader back in. There are a few instances where the aside was worked in so nicely that there would be no shift of reality for the reader. Some of this direct addressing the reader business seemed unneeded, or overdone. "We might forgive Enola if she simply took a nap." (p. 81) Perhaps a better example is the direct address to the reader on page 216 where Lynx, as the writer, pulls the reader out. It lasts until the top of 219, which seemed too long as I started to get antsy. I wanted to go back into the world of the novel. This was the only time I really felt cheated by the asides. I thought it was an easy-out way to explain Lynx's motivations and backstory. I would have liked to have seen this worked into the flow of the novel. The start, talking about Uncle Mendel, could be fine as it isn't much different than the normal asides. It adds some information that works with that type of delivery. This might work better early in the novel though so it doesn't diminish the big moment. The problem with the love of Disaster could just be the length. It is an important moment, probably the most important moment in the novel. It might have worked better for me if Lynx was just talking to herself for that incident. Or, if it was kept 2nd person but things like "Oh, dear. You really won’t like me now that I’ve told you all that." were toned down. Those are the types of asides that really broke the reality of the book at that moment. Telling the reader what they should be feeling is jarring. If the reader wasn't feeling like that to begin with, they would tend to stop and think about why they didn't. This is the type of thing that stops the reader's flow. The writer takes the concentration of the reader off the book, and puts it onto the reader. This is the time when all of the reader's attention should be on Lynx. This is her soliloquy, her moment to show herself.
The caricature of Beautiful did start to get annoying. She is the only character that has the same effect on all the characters, at least the ones that aren't main characters. She is made out to be the perfection of woman in the Real World. It reaches the point of overkill by the 200th page. I became utterly bored with her perfection. I wanted a piano to fall out of the sky and end the misery. How come falling pianos are only to be found in cartoons? Unexpected things of great mass falling from the sky can be rather funny. Books like this are supposed to make use of such larger-than-life characters, but there is a point at which a thin character will collapse when expanded too much. Even the pun of her name becomes too much after a while. I felt too much time was spent just observing Beautiful, much of which didn't further the plot much. Since we also see Enola as Beautiful for a while, the premise gets even more overloaded. Beautiful is a cool character, we just hang on to her too long. It is like a Saturday Night Live Sketch; it's funny at first, but by the end we are looking at our watches wondering when the next skit will start.
I don't want to end on a sour note for this novel. It was a great read. I swore I would never read another novel as a pdf file, and I did again for this one. If it hadn't been as good, I would have probably given up. If you like Adams or Pratchett, pick this one up. I had to search eBay for a copy, but there are a few out there. I know E will love it, but eye problems prohibit her from reading it on the computer. I would not have paid for a hardcopy of a novel I already had if I didn't feel so strongly that others would love it. This novel shows great promise for Goldberg in the future.