Chris Whitaker
Fiction 2016 / 361 pages
Harry Monroe, three years old, is abducted from his bed by someone wearing a clown mask. This transgression rattles the small town of Tall Oaks, which is unaccustomed to major crime.
Tall Oaks, the book, takes us into the lives of many of the residents of Tall Oaks, such as Manny, 17, who wants to be a gangster; Jess, Harry's mom, who obsessively puts up posters in town with Harry's picture on them; Jim, the local sheriff who has fallen in love with Jess; Jerry, the 500-pound manager of CopyMax, whose manipulative mother is dying of dementia and who is actually a brilliant photographer; and Jared, who moves from town to town every few months and clearly has something to hide.
The book is allegedly about the discovery of Harry's abductor, but it isn't a crime/detective novel as such. It is a psychological thriller, much more about the myriad of characters and their intra- and interrelationships. Harry's kidnapping is just the context.
Whitaker, in this debut novel, excels at building idiosyncratic, intriguing, and sometimes funny characters. The struggle I had with Tall Oaks is the format. He writes from the perspective of his characters, but typically no more than one or two pages at a time. It is difficult to keep track of who is who (and there are a multitude of other, lesser, characters in addition to the ones I mention above). It took me about half the book before I could comfortably move between characters and know whose voice I was reading. You will find lists of Tall Oaks characters on the Internet because others have had the same challenge. Use one of these lists to help you! He also does that thing that debut novelists sometimes do ... almost all of his character names begin with the same letter, this time it is a "J," making it more difficult to differentiate.
So, I enjoyed this book, but it won't be my favorite book of the year, for certain. It is an entertaining read, but not something that needs to go immediately to the top of your book pile.
January 2025