GLR Review March-April 2019

T ERRI S CHLICHENMEYER No Deliverance Sugar Run by Mesha Maren Algonquin Books. 320 pages, $26.95 J ODIE McCARTY had been given a life sentence behind bars. But there she was, ready to leave after only eighteen years inside Jaxton Prison, a ticket in her hand, along with $400 borrowed from her twin brothers. Jodi McCarty was going home to West Virginia. So begins Mesha Maren’s novel, Sugar Run . Jodi is given a date to meet with her parole officer and re- leased into the world, much to her disoriented surprise. This episode is told in prose that feels like a movie scene filmed with oil on the lens, creating that gauzy, slow-motion sense of dreamlike reality. But then, in a total head-scratching shift of scene and mood, Jodi is boarding a bus headed for Geor- gia, where she intends to find her dead lover’s brother Ricky. Paula had been Jodi’s lover before Jodi killed her in a fit of rage, and it had always been Paula’s dream to rescue Ricky from his abusive father. Now released, Jodi decides that she should make good on Paula’s intention, though it’s not clear exactly why she feels this. Not knowing where to find him, she lands in a cheap motel, where she meets Miranda. Having fled from a husband who’s too absorbed in his wan- ing career and a marriage that’s swallowed her whole, Miranda is staying at the motel, reaching for any lifeline she can find and any stranger who’ll listen. A somewhat sympathetic character who gradually becomes someone you love to hate, Miranda fi- nally admits to herself that she didn’t really want a divorce; she only wanted attention. But her husband took their three young sons and refused any overtures from his estranged, drug-using, alcohol-abusing wife. Bereft, she ends up in Jodi’s bed and talks her into helping get the boys back by taking them from their school without permission. By this time, readers can clearly see that Jodi, who was imprisoned at age seventeen, is inexperi- enced in the world and ripe for Miranda’s wiles, and that there’s a train wreck coming. That’s especially true when she locates Ricky, who seems to have emotional and mental issues from P ETER M ARINO Greenland Hip Last Night in Nuuk by Niviaq Korneliussen Translated by Anna Halager Grove Press, Black Cat. 288 pages, $16. B ASED ON the age of its characters, Last Night in Nuuk falls squarely in the New Adult market, and the novel closely aligns with current trends in that genre. In first- person, present-tense narration, the novel closely focuses on the chaotic inner lives of five young characters who are trying to make sense of the adult world they’re entering in their native country of Greenland. Because the lens is focused so tightly on their thoughts and feelings, you won’t learn much about Greenland from this novel. With the long, dark night as a backdrop, these young, angst-ridden characters could be living their chaotic, egocen- tric lives just as easily in Duluth or Dublin. We do learn some native words and names and a local expression or two, but the geographical setting doesn’t impose itself onto the story much more than to remind us occasionally that we’re in Greenland. There are a few pages where a young man named Inuk cyni- cally makes a list of Greenlandic characteristics, which is as close as the book gets to any revelations about the island’s peo- ple: “You’re a Greenlander when you’re an alcoholic. You’re a Greenlander when you beat your partner. ... You’re a Greenlan- der when you’re full of yourself/ stupid/ evil/ queer.” The novel is often interrupted by unnecessary narrative gim- micks, and the plot arc itself is hard to identify, especially the significance of the title. Perhaps the author’s intention was to capture the jumble inside an early-twenty-something’s head, the chaos brought on by the mix of newfound personal freedom, drinking, sex, and relationship drama. A character is describing a situation and then a text message arrives. The narration at one point shifts unexpectedly to an epistolary form. Paragraphs end with hashtags. A list of rhetorical questions appears. Inuk at one point sends his best friend Arnaq an actual Yes/No quiz. While this mishmash of narrative delivery may be seen nowadays as representing how the Millennial mind works—always churning and seldom focusing—it doesn’t work as a device for advanc- ing the narrative arc. The novel is translated from the original Danish. Much of the story is told in a fever-dream-like, stream-of-consciousness nar- rative voice that often starts an idea and forgets about it by the end of a long rant. Because all we see are the immediate reactions and impulses from inside the characters’ heads, we don’t learn much about their individuality. It’s a bit like overhearing a group of friends, well-lubricated with booze, taking turns delivering monologues. The characters are itchy, impulsive, neurotic, but not unique. I often had to reread passages in order to remember who was currently narrating (Fia? Sara? Ivik?). Korneliussen generates some amazing lines of prose throughout Last Night in Nuuk that do give us a peek into the window of his characters’ often self-induced torment, such as: “What keeps me alive is dying”; “It was an honour to hold your heart, but my hands are all bloody”; and “I vomit up hell itself, dragging out Pontius Pilate and all my intestines with it.” Re- gardless of the narrator, Korneliussen manages to convey the confection of insecurity, confusion, and fragile self-assurance that one might remember from one’s own early years of adult- hood, a kind of reminder to older readers that it does get better, if you’re lucky. _________________________________________________ Peter Marino is an English professor at SUNY Adirondack in Queens- bury, New York.   