Review: "Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?" by Brock Clarke

I have been circling the novels of Brock Clarke for more than a few years. I’ve read two of his short story collections and his four novels have been in my collection for as long as I can remember but I have never read them, but I think his new novel Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? is a good representation of his work in the long form. Like his short stories, they possess a cozy sense of whimsy that I have come to associate with any writer hailing from New England (even Stephen King): larger than life portraits of quaint, quirky folks with undercurrents of tragedy and screwball comedy woven into the fabric of every sentence, and presented to us by a narrator both baffled by and an accessory to the strange story that follows. The eponymous narrator at the heart of this story fits that description to a T. Calvin, named after the religious icon his mother wrote an extremely popular book about, is 47 still living at home and reeling from the recent deaths of both of his parents. He has little time to mourn though because at the funeral, his mom’s twin sister Beatrice, whom Calvin does not remember at all, trick him into going on a trip throughout Europe that involves espionage, gerbil porn, an obsessed fan of her mothers and a chair belonging to John Calvin. The one thing you can’t call this book is boring. For a book I described as quaint there is a lot of action and wild scenarios, which I will not reveal here and while they are fun to encounter, they come really close to crossing the line of believability, especially toward the end as it pertains to one of the book’s big twists. But this is still a really entertaining book, shot through with bright, sincere optimism to go with its large heart. 

Rating: 4/5