In the space of two weeks, I read three articles about Charles Bock and his debut novel "Beautiful Children." I was impressed.
The reviews were a little evasive in their praise, but he was being put front and center. This, I thought, was either an excellent novel or the work of a very good publicist. I decided to determine which.
I ordered my copy from the Gulf of Maine bookstore. Returning a week later to pick up the hefty, 417-page novel (a detail everyone seems to include in their reviews of the book), I was deterred by the title, which is printed in glittery, bubble-block letters. It is an appropriate introduction to the book's setting: Las Vegas.
Bock is a native of the city and he is tremendously successful at evoking the heat, the heaviness of the wealth, and the unnerving and upsetting proximity of poverty only a few blocks from the strip. He knows the discrepancies of truth in Las Vegas.
People come in for a weekend of uncouth debauchery and what's left in the glittery dust is a certain species of humanity that is trying to hang on, attracted to the light and unable to participate in it, wasting away in a number of private miseries. His characters are culled from different stratifications of Vegas dwellers and it is hard to find a happy one among the bunch.
The disappearance of Newell, son of Lincoln and Lorraine, is announced in the first chapter. The book culminates in the exact moment of his escape. In between are the events that lead to his disappearance, along with the repercussions.
The characters overlap with one another, and Bock spends a significant amount of time acquainting the reader with each of them. Cheri Blossom is a stripper who does more than entertain the crazed schemes of her boyfriend Ponyboy; she performs them. In hopes of moving ahead, she not only gets breast implants and hollows out her nipples in order to insert flaming objects in them for her audience, but she agrees to star in a porn film with him.
Ponyboy has been on the streets for years. His face is studded with piercings and his body is covered in tattoos. The girl with the shaved head is another who falls prey to his lechery; her body and self-worth sacrificed to his schemes.
But Ponyboy is not supposed to be a demon. In a rare moment of clarity, Cheri recognizes that he is so damaged that the havoc he wreaks is a bi-product of his good intentions. But for me this was not enough of an excuse.
There are a number of scenes in this novel that I believe are meant to serve as a critique of enterprises that exploit struggling, na?ve, and/or desperate women. Sex scenes are described in explicit detail, attempting to expose the intensity and complexity of what is at stake.
But where I believe Bock was aiming for sensitivity, I found a relish for the scenes he was depicting in his explicit descriptions. The women in his novel are ultimately pitiable. Their myriad dimensions proved to be unimportant, unless it is in their inches and pounds.
The tragedy and reality of teenage runaways and homelessness is one of the issues that Bock attempts to illuminate in his novel. Ponyboy was damaged by the streets and Newell may be headed there. Bock extends a hand toward this faction of the population; he inspires empathy for them and those they left behind.
Bock exposes much that is disturbing about human nature and mourns the ruin of beautiful children. He is not blind to the plights of humanity, but he misses the mark with the construction of some characters and this undercuts the import of his overall intent.