Pickle's Progress

First off, this surprised me that this was a debut novel as the writing is highly accomplished. The scene is set when Stan and his wife Karen drink-driving home from a party knock over a woman whom they take in and Stan's identical twin brother Pickle becomes enamored of. This could have be considered satire, as Stan and Karen belong to a certain class of American with very privileged lives with their architecture business, alcohol problems, dog named THE Doodles and general selfishness, however, I wouldn't really have said this is intended to be funny or to send some sort of message as satire usually does. The characters are very well drawn, but not particularly likeable, although as a reader you do come to understand why at least Karen and Pickle are the way that they are, and I didn't find Karen a stereotype, although I found Stan a bit more difficult to judge as we don't really get inside his head in the same way.

The plot is more of a conundrum, as it starts with a bang with the scene on the bridge and slows down, with Karen and Pickle reminiscing about their lives and their pasts. It becomes a more difficult read as there are not always clear distinctions between the thinking about the present and the future, and not much actually happens in the story. This is all ended in a highly unexpected way, and I'm not sure I agreed with the ending. I would like to do a seperate post just discussing it as I don't want to spoil it for people. All in all, a rather bizarre book but overall it was well written and it did make me think.