From almost the opening sentence of this darker-than-dark domestic saga, it is obvious that Doug Willis, unlikeable anti-hero extraordinaire, is a husband and father on borrowed time. Setting off for the house in the country that only he seems to want to go to, Willis is a man not so much in denial as a state of suspended development. "How can this be happening to someone so well read?" he ponders. David Gates is so determined to present Willis as citizen-on-the-edge that he approaches the characterisation with a relentlessness that simply never relaxes. There is nothing subtle here: it really is a case of six guns blazing. And Willis is offered too few of those vital moments of silence and regret that might just happen to render him human, or at least more than merely two-dimensional.
Even the dialogue, always a strength in US fiction, and an element which Gates obviously wants to sound natural, is completely, almost dangerously, forced. All too often unconvincing macho-speak leaves the reader wondering if these sort of barely funny, endlessly aggressive exchanges ever occur spontaneously. Could that many inarticulate men have actually managed to come together in one book. The result is that for much of the early chapters Gates runs the risk of scaring the reader off. Willis shouts and screams, swears and rebels, further alienating his wife and kids, all the while reading Dickens as his life, his personality and his country retreat fall apart by his own hands. Of course, it is all his fault. And yet, and yet. US writers have been chronicling spectacular crack-ups for a long time and it could be argued that no nation is better at this style of "you better believe it" fiction. Life may or may not be the stuff of art - that depends on who is writing about it - but it certainly is the gristle of fiction. Willis, the aspiring drop-out, is white and middle-class; works in a New York office, is educated. He has a nice house in the suburbs, a wife who works and who single-handedly and resentfully referees their bickering kids, a duo well past the lovable baby stage. The bewildered Jean and Willis barely speak, yet their anger has an unsettling eloquence - be assured that Preston Falls has higher ambitions than having a few laughs on the-marriage-as-life-sentence theme.
So the house in Preston Falls, Vermont, Willis's hiding place, becomes a sort of OK Corral, the final shoot-out for yet another dying relationship? Yes and no. Gates seems more interested in Doug Willis's non-state of mind than in the Willis household. Noone could accuse him of making a plea for sympathy for his central character. There is no romance in this book, no graceful dying cadence. It is all pretty ugly with some humour and several direct hits between the eyes, though most land in the softest part of the gut. Readers of Jernigan - Gates's fine debut (1991) and in many ways a stronger, more controlled performance than this second novel - will be aware that Gates can produce the goods, and the fact that the deceptively ambitious Preston Falls has so many initial difficulties testifies to the various levels of truth he is attempting to explore.
It is not until the narrative reaches the point where Jean and the children leave Willis to begin his two-month sabbatical while they prepare to go back to school that this novel acquires any real conviction. The family head for a camping park to spend their last day of freedom. Willis stays behind and begins restoring the old house.
Within minutes he is on the way to wrecking the place. To avoid further destruction, and as a conciliatory gesture, he decides to follow his neglected family as a surprise. Some surprise.
On arrival at the park he is quickly at odds with the stroppy park ranger's approach to regulations, and worse is to follow as he contravenes the rules. His temper does the rest. The incident ends with him bound for jail. It is the first of several well-written sequences in the book. Suddenly Gates has found another gear and leaves no doubts as to Willis's multiple angers. The plot also tightens up with the introduction of Reed, a shadily benign lawyer who springs Willis and also adds to his problems.
AGAIN, the reader is faced with having to wade through banal expletive-laden exchanges uttered by a group of ageing men, but there is more to Reed than his swagger and greasy ponytail. Willis is quickly recruited as a drugs courier.
So much for Willis and thanks to what we know of him thus far - it seems even easier than it should be to mutter "It couldn't happen to a nicer guy." But far from allowing his novel to slide further, Gates triumphs when he transfers his attentions to Jean, the disgruntled wife, who emerges as a far more convincing, human and believable character than the cliched Willis. At the mercy of her sulky children, she is subjected to all the unrest caused by her husband's abandonment of all human response.
Exasperation becomes her abiding state of mind. Jean is no goody-goody martyr but a real person drawn more skillfully than one might have considered within Gates's powers. Tormented by her children, whose need ensures she is permanently guilty, she hears herself asking them "Why are you punishing me?" Meanwhile Willis has disappeared, placing Jean in a mess worthy of Hitchcock. Soon she is dealing with the police, her life is beyond rescue, and then there is her job . . . In the middle of her crisis she must fly to Atlanta on a junket. Here Gates is at his sharpest, as he is later in the bitter reunion scene.
As the search for Willis continues, causing her more and more embarrassment, Jean is also on the lookout for what has happened to her. Just as he turns to Dickens, she finds refuge in Jane Austen. Perhaps not quite the novel it almost could be, nevertheless Preston Falls bravely takes risks. While Doug Willis neither quite engages nor convinces, in Jean's character Gates is assured a believable heart to a novel so real it hurts.
Eileen Battersby is an Irish Times journalist
