Friday, April 8th 2011

9:23 PM

Nude Walker, by Bathsheba Monk

Nude walker

By Bathsheba Monk

As you might suspect from the cover art, Nude Walker is a work of literary fiction, a provocative one, one that will keep your thoughts hopping and the pages turning. Just be careful not to miss anything, as there’s a lot going on here, and it’s all pretty interesting stuff.

Nude Walker is a complex story of love—all the characters are looking for it, in one form or another—but it goes far deeper than that on many levels. There are both cultural and class differences to contend with, as well as old money against new. There’s spirituality, the religious kind, as well as the mythical, other-worldly kind. There’s the war in Afghanistan, which is the setting for the beginning of the novel, in sharp contrast to the tired town of Warrenside, Pennsylvania, a once-thriving steel town, where the majority of the story takes place. The new guard is taking over and, ironically, it’s a Middle Eastern guard. The main love story, in fact, is one of forbidden love between the offspring of the new and the old guards.

The first character we hear from is Kate Warren-Bineki, the last in the Warren line, founders of Warrenside, PA. Her unit, the 501^st, is on it’s way home from duty in Afghanistan. We learn, in flashback form, about her time there, and of her fiancé, Duck, who is her best friend, though she’s not too happy that he chose to follow her into the National Guard. She’s was trying to experience new things before they settled down, but his constant presence made things feel just as mundane in Afghanistan as they did in Warrenside. It is on their journey back that she connects with her true soul mate, Max Asad, whose family has taken over the reins of running Warrenside. Kate, who never liked being a Warren in the first place, sees no problem with that. Max knows different, and even though he’s as enamored of Kate as she is of him, he can’t imagine his father ever letting them happen.

Dr. Edward Asad, head of the new guard, only has eyes for his son, Max (his wife, mistress and daughter aren’t even a close second). Everything he has done in his adult life, starting with bringing his family over from Beirut during the war, and continuing onto the building of his empire in Warrenside, has been for Max, so that Max will have an important legacy to take over and maintain. But Max was born in America and considers himself an American (which was one of the main reasons he joined the National Guard, to prove to anyone watching him that he is not a terrorist). Max wants no part of his father’s business empire or of the beautiful Lebanese bride his father has arranged for him. He’s determined to prove that his father’s cultural ways are not necessarily his. His father is a cold-hearted man, who truly believes that women are second-class citizens, put on this earth solely for men to use. Not surprising then that he owns the only thriving business in town, the Lucky Lady strip club.

Then, of course, there’s the nude walker, Barbara Warren-Bineki, Kate’s mentally unstable mother, who is famous for not taking her meds, stripping, and walking through town—the very town her family once ruled with their steel-making plant. Though her situation is sad, in a way, Barbara is also the character who makes the most sense, the one who lives as she wants to live, without a thought to what anyone might think of her.

The other characters we hear from (the ones with their own chapters) are Wind Storm and Duck. Wind is a Native American, a Lenape, whose ancestors were displaced by the Warrens when they stormed in to build their town. Wind is a shaman, and the townspeople come to her to get advice about love. Ironically, she can’t seem to find love for herself, so involved (and bitter) is she in fighting for her land—prime real estate, much coveted by both Barbara Warren-Bineki and Dr. Asad. It isn’t until a lapis stone, once worn by Kate when she fell in love with Max, appears before her on the neck of suitor, that Wind realizes how good life can be when there’s someone in it to love, someone else to live for other than one’s departed ancestors.

Duck, Kate’s one again/off again fiancé, is the last character to add his two cents to the story, and his, too, is a sad one. He wants, more than anything, for Kate to love him as much as he loves her. He’s lived practically his whole twenty-some years (he met Kate when he was a small child) with one goal in mind—to marry Kate. When Kate finds Max, Duck has no clue what to do, where to go, who to be with, and the one woman he does turn to, Jenna, a religious fanatic and Kate’s Afghanistan roommate, is an odd choice, to be sure, though not necessarily an uninteresting one.

All of this is just the tip of the iceberg, the very basics. As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of layers here, and Monk somehow manages to keep all the strands separated, entwining them only when the time is right. I found it interesting that in Kate and Duck’s chapters, Monk uses first-person narrative, yet in all the others, she employs third person. That in itself sets an interesting tone and reminds the reader what’s at the crux of the story—finding that one person who makes you whole. Here’s how Kate describes just that (referring to Max) late in the book:

“He was more interested in showing me the beauty in life rather than showing me how he could destroy life with his bare fists. I think that’s all I ever wanted: a man strong enough to see poetry in life and who knew how to make me hear my own. A man who looked at life and didn’t see a series of dogfights with the meanest dog winning, but who saw life as an endless dance through time and knew the only important thing was to find a partner who hears the same music.”

Now, if you’re looking for a Harlequin happy, neat-and-tidy ending, this is not the book for you. Everything that can possibly be up in the air is still up there at the end of the novel. No one is settled, but then this is a very unsettling book from the get go. I didn’t mind this, as it left me with a great to deal to ponder. Not always my favorite kind of ending, but in this case, it worked.

Bonnie Crisalli

6 Comment(s).

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Friday, May 6th 2011 @ 1:33 AM