No Two Persons: A Novel
Erica Bauermeister
St. Martin's Press
Fiction, Collection/Literary Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Millions dream about writing the "great American novel", but only a handful actually do it. Writing is a peculiar alchemy, melding skills, talents, perseverance, timing, and a healthy dose of luck... and even then, once a book is released, there is no sure way to predict how people will react to it, no two people ever reading the same story in the same way. One reader's treasured tale is another's one-star trash, and one generation's brilliant bestseller is the next's cringe-worthy and forgotten dust collector. Some books, though, seem to transcend.
After Alice's wayward brother Peter dies of an overdose, she manages to turn her emotional devastation into a novel, "Theo", about a young man struggling with a broken life - a character who is and is not her brother. Her book survives the gauntlet of the slush pile and debuts to solid reviews, passing into the hands of all manner of readers from all walks of life. Each pick up Theo's story with different expectations, and each are changed in ways Alice could never have imagined.
REVIEW: The title refers to a quote attributed to Edmond Wilson: "No two persons ever read the same book." It's not just about different tastes or different reading levels, but about life experiences and expectations. The book one reads at eighteen will likely seem like a different story entirely at forty. Baurmeister's novel, in truth a collection of shorter stories linked by the fictional novel "Theo", explores that idea, starting and ending with the author Alice. In between, "Theo" comes to the hands a variety of people - an agent's reader, a frustrated artist, a recently-homeless teenager, a widower struggling to move on, an actor facing a crumbled career, and more - in a variety of ways. None of them see the exact story Alice intended, let alone glimpse Peter's shadow lurking behind the main character, but all find something in the story that helps them re-evaluate their lives or rediscover something they'd lost or forgotten. As the novel is discovered by more people, some of the threads overlap around the edges, though each person experiences "Theo" as most reading is experienced: on their own, in their own heads and hearts.
This being "literary" fiction, the stories comprising No Two Persons are prone to meandering and slow character buildups; the central novel often doesn't land in their hands for quite some time. There was also a sense of... I don't want to say "sameness", but a familiarity in characters across several stories. I can't quite put my finger on just why that was, and since it was an audiobook I was listening to at work it's not like I can flip back and check my notes, but I found myself feeling a bit "been there, done that" with more than one character. (And I also had to wonder about some vicarious wish fulfillment in the idea of one woman writing not just any debut novel, but the debut novel, the one that so deeply and irrevocably touches so many readers... and is then apparently able to live off that one success for many years.) Throughout are insights into storytelling, writing, and reading, and even audiobook recording. Speaking of, the audiobook version I borrowed via Libby included an interview between the author and one of the voice actors (it was a "full cast" presentation), which was interesting but sometimes felt like it ran a bit long.
After thinking it over for a while, I wound up shaving a half-star off a Good rating for the meandering and sense of repetition, and also the usual subjective "just not my cup of cocoa" reasons that sometimes hold down ratings. My blog, my call, etc.
That said, I can see what it was going for and what it accomplished, even if it didn't quite hit the mark for me.
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