Review: "Ohio" by Stephen Markley

I’m sure for many people of a certain age (of which I am only marginally younger than) reading Stephen Markley’s debut novel Ohio will be a painful experience but also an enriching one in the way great literature, whether upbeat or downbeat always is.  It is a compassionate yet uncompromising story about people caught between their idealized past and their disappointing present, where the promise of youth gives way to adult failure and while the events in the book are extreme and farfetched in some cases, the feeling they produce is not far from the truth and strike a very raw nerve. The book begins with a very great introductory prologue recounting the death of Rick Brinkman, one of the book’s three shadow characters, who are talked about but don’t play an active roll, and subsequent parade held in his honor in the town of New Canaan, Ohio. It happens about five years before the central night in questions, and in cataloging the minute of the town, the troubles that befell it and others like it when the towers fell in 2001, it casts a large dark shadow over the book’s preceding story, recalling work as varied as Sherwood Anderson and Stephen King (I would not think New Canaan would warrant non-ironic comparison to Castle Rock) and prepares the reader for the sadness they will encounter as the book digs deeper into the terrible night at the book’s heart. The first section introduces Bill Ashcraft, a self-described eco-activist, paranoid, hopeless and drug-addled, as he comes back to his hometown to deliver a mysterious package he has taped to his chest to an old Flame, Kaylyn Lynn, the second shadow character in the story and whose motivations are always unclear. Markley likes to intercut scenes from the night and scenes from the past, and thankfully, he is very good at doing that so no one story overpowers the other or overstays its welcome. It also is a great showcase for blending genres, as once Ashcraft takes a cut of meth he got from one of his former classmates, Markley treats us to a staggering, hellish scene of hallucination that reminded me of the work of Dan Chaon, another Midwestern writer. The following section follows Stacy Moore, a PhD candidate and finally comfortable to come out of the closet, who is back in town to confront the mother of her first same-sex lover, Lisa Han, the third shadow character, and whose relationship with Kaylyn and others, such as the wounded veteran Dan Eaton, whose in town also to reconnect with an old flame, leads to the book’s haunting final few pages, where Markley’s omniscient voice acts as a kind of chorus to what really happened to the shattered lives of New Canaan’s residents. The fourth story focuses on Tin Ross, a character we know before from a much talked about video tape that shows terrible things being done to her, who comes back looking for something more profane and disturbing. This is a haunting example of suburban gothic: a tale of small town rumors and urban legends, filled with people who, try as they might, are stuck in rose-colored past, mainly as an antidote for their uncertain futures. But there is a bit of hope in this bleak tale, one the characters refuse to acknowledge and one that might save them: they are not alone in their pain.