In a year where I came
across numerous debut novels that really pushed their boundaries, dared to do
something new and gave the reader an amazing experience, I hate to come across
one that does little of any of that, which is the sad case of Scott Cheshire’s
debut novel High As the Horses’ Bridles. This is a novel that is never interesting
and never daring, despite a plot that might warrant some really cool
developments. I finished it yesterday, yet I am still trying to pinpoint any
kind of reason as to why this book never works. I mean the overall quality of
it is such that finding a specific fault is hard. The only parts I liked here
involved the main character’s father, but all of the rest left me feeling empty
and desperately wanting something new. I will try to sum up the plot as best as
I can. In the early eighties, a young boy belonging to a far, far-right sect of
the Catholic Church has a revelation about the end of the world. Years later,
this incident has defined him in a negative way, and on a trip back to his home
in Queens, New York after the break-up of his marriage, his interactions with
his father and memories of his lost love, forces him to look back on his family’s
legacy. Writing that, I think I have an idea as to why this book ultimately falls
flat: it tries to hard to be like other books instead of carving it’s own path.
Looking back on the opening scene, where the kid has his revelation, it tries
to hard to be like the opening baseball game in Don DeLillo’s Underworld. And while
that piece of writing is amazing, what Cheshire does here is just boring and uninteresting,
with the whole thing devolving into a pandering passage that should have been
excised. I hope Cheshire can go when he sits down in front of his typewriter
for Round 2.
Rating: 2/5
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