“Four
friends…four secrets” the cover declares and for some reason that - and the
fact Kirsten Tranter’s new novel A Common
Loss (HarperCollins, $39.99) is set in Las Vegas - was enough to make me
think I’d stumbled on a cross between The
Hangover movies and Donna Tartt’s A
Secret History. As it turns out I wasn’t far wrong although in my opinion
this novel isn’t as good as either of them.
Tranter
is an Australian novelist who is making her name writing literary psychological
thrillers. Her first one, The Legacy,
was published to great acclaim a couple of years ago and this is the follow up.
It’s
the story of a bunch of former college students who meet annually for a boy’s
trip to Vegas. Charismatic Dylan has been the leader of the group, the fixer of
problems and the glue that held them together. Now he is gone, killed in a road
accident, and the four remaining friends – Tallis, Brian, Cameron and Elliot -
are taking their first trip without him.
Elliot
our narrator is beginning to question his friendship with the group, wondering
if he even likes them. He’s about to learn he doesn’t know any of them very
well – most especially the late Dylan – for no one is quite what they seem.
While
in Las Vegas each man receives a mysterious envelope containing information
about a long-buried secret with the potential to destroy their careers,
relationships or families. The sender is found to be Dylan’s secret half
brother, Colin, who has stumbled on the careful records the dead man kept over
the course of his life. Dylan was party to all his friends’ most shameful
secrets and he kept the evidence. Now Colin dreams of a bigger, better life
than working in a casino and has decided blackmail is the way to get it.
Under
stress, Elliot is forced to look back and reassess everything about his
friendships. “I realised with a nauseating lurch that this was only the
beginning, this new reckoning of the past, and it would be Dylan’s role, his
words and gestures and expressions, that I would be forced to re-evaluate the
most seriously,” he tells us.
As
the scales are falling from his eyes, Elliot is also busy enjoying the sights
and nightlife of Vegas with Brian’s alluring new girlfriend Cynthia – a thread
of the story that never seems to go anywhere. And that’s one of the problems with
his novel – the premise is good but the suspense just isn’t there. There’s too
much fluff about the Bellagio Fountains and bits of the Berlin Wall, too much
time spent drinking in bars, and rather too much of Elliot’s over-thinking, for
the pace to really crack along.
Also
none of the characters truly engaged me and I couldn’t decide if that was
because Tranter hasn’t entirely pulled off writing from a male perspective or
whether the shallowness of Las Vegas sort of leached into everything else.
A Common Loss is a diverting
enough thriller and as a treatise on male friendship it has plenty to say. It’s
well written and smart. Yet from start
to finish I as if it ought to have been a whole lot better than it actually
was…perhaps even as good at The Hangover
crossed with A Secret History.
Nicky Pellegrino, (right NZH photo), a succcesful Auckland-based author of popular fiction is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on 12 February, 2012
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