16 of 52 in my 2011 book blogging challenge.
A friend suggested this book to me with only the word “hilarious.” How could it not be hilarious with a title like this? Someone else called it the “thinking man’s John Grisham,” though I think I’d prefer to call it trailer park Grisham.
I might describe as a legal thriller with a twist of the Southern Gothic, but that would put me in mind of Greg Iles, and this is nothing like Iles. It’s a whole lot more goofball than Iles. It would be nothing but goofball in fact if it weren’t for these moments of sheer brilliance scattered among the mess of the character’s lives like so many spilled peanut hulls on the back deck of a double-wide.
Still, Martin Clark’s The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living had to grow on me. I basically hated it for the first third of the narrative. I tolerated it for the second third. I only became entranced by the final third. Even so, I ended the book not quite sure what to make of it.
There are descriptive moments in this book that rival the best literary thinkers of our time. There are insightful moments that rival the best thinkers period. This was written by a very smart man.
That’s why I hated it. I thought Clark was wasting all of his smarts on this horribly stupid story about these middle-aged drunks with no purpose whatsoever to their lives. Turns out the fact that they had no purpose to start out was sort of the point of the story. Toward the end they do start to find their way a little, in so much as they are capable at any rate.
And yet I don’t know what to make of it. That’s my review.
I’m going to give this 4 out of 5 stars for no other reason than that I can’t decide whether I love it or hate it. Any book that leaves me that confounded must have more to it than meets the eye. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway.
Martin Clark has published two other books that sound like they both fall into this oddball legal thriller category: Plain Heathen Mischief and The Legal Limit. I expect I’ll be reading them soon just to find out if they provide the same bizarre mixture of amusement and annoyance for me.
If you like stories about middle aged drunks involved in legal conundrums with a good dose of trailer park humor thrown in, Martin Clark is your man.
