WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3
2013 debut, “Necessary Errors,” a lush
tale of 20-somethings in early ’90s
Prague as the city transitioned out of
communism. That book is one of the
strongest debut novels in recent years,
and “Overthrow” occasionally struggles
for a similar depth and intensity. The
drama of one legal discussion comes
solely from a defendant’s desperate need
to urinate; the particulars of hacking
and its consequences distract from the
characterizations that are Crain’s forte.
But Crain’s chief goal is to put a
narrative shape around the inchoate
sense of dread that we have around
technology, the way we sense we’re being
manipulated in ways we can’t quite
pinpoint. And in that regard, “Over-
throw” accomplishes its mission. In the
years to come, “no one will feel watched,
but everyone will feel, what’s a good
word, appreciated,” a dark figure intones
toward the novel’s end. “No one will have
the feeling that there is a smelly human
on the other side of the screen some-
where, totting up merits and demerits.”
Swapping human connection for an
algorithm of convenience is a lousy
bargain, Crain argues. His novel is a
sensitive, provocative plea to recognize
what gets lost in the exchange.
[email protected]Mark Athitakis is a critic in Phoenix and
author of “The New Midwest.”throw” raises — surveillance, subversion,
hacking, the justice system, government
overreach — and Crain studiously avoids
all of them. Nobody will confuse the
novel for a thriller; on one of their first
dates, Leif and Matthew pad through the
Morgan Library, pondering the Gilded
Age’s excesses. Though jails and the legal
bureaucracy claim much of the stage, the
mood rarely descends into Kafka-esque
paranoia. And while it’s easy to imagine
somebody like Tom Wolfe making a
sweeping statement out of this material,
stuffing his narrative with archetypes,
Crain has declined to write the kind of
social novel that’s thickened with detail
about political movements and the insti-
tutions they tussle with.
Rather, Crain opts to tell this story at a
more intimate level, with a degree of
emotional acuity that recalls Henry
James (whose work plays a modest but
meaningful role in the story). At its
strongest, “Overthrow” captures the
depth of disconnection that the online
world creates, and the dread and depres-
sion it sows. “People get so angry now
when they see someone paying more
attention to thoughts and feelings than
they think thoughts and feelings de-
serve,” one of the Telepathy Four says.
“It’s like there’s a sumptuary law against
introspection.”
Crain demonstrated this knack for
deep habitation in his characters in hisfirst — Tarot decks, one-upping banter, a
half-serious official name, the Working
Group for the Refinement of the Percep-
tion of Feelings. But it’s girded by serious
idealism. “It’s a war over perceiving,” Leif
explains. “Over what we’re allowed to
perceive, still.”
As Leif and Matthew’s romance deep-
ens, so does the Working Group’s prank-
ishly subversive efforts, which include an
intuited password and the hacking of a
Homeland Security contractor. The sub-
sequent arrest of four of its members is
inevitable but soon becomes a farce of
misinterpretations. The quartet is
dubbed the Telepathy Four by the media.
“Occupy hacks Homeland Security,”
reads one headline. “Do you want to
overthrow the government?” one jour-
nalist asks.
For Leif, a barista and aspiring poet
with a line from Andrew Marvell tat-
tooed on his arm, the media circus is at
once an emotional drain and proof that
the forces that control technology ma-
nipulate how it’s used and perceived.
“There aren’t borders anywhere any-
more,” he tells one of his partners. “This
is how we make borders now — with the
way people are looking. With the direc-
tion they’re looking, and with the look-
ing itself.”
There are a number of familiar ways a
novel can address the subjects “Over-
BOOK WORLD FROM C1
book world
Brace yourself, readers, for we are in
the fall publishing season, and this
year’s releases could keep you busy
until next fall. The biggest titles — a
new Stephen King, Margaret Atwood’s
“The Testaments” — will be on
everyone’s radar. Read them, but don’t
ignore these promising books, which
include fiction, memoir, biography and
more.
‘Apple, Tree: Writers on Their
Parents,’ by Lise Funderburg
(Sunday)
Funderberg, who has explored her
own parents and background in her
memoir “Pig Candy,” here gathers
pieces from writers about a trait
they’ve inherited from a mother or
father. Ann Patchett, Daniel
Mendelsohn and Laura van den Berg,
among others, meditate on how
attributes both physical and spiritual
tie us to and distance us from our
elders.
‘Dominicana,’ by Angie Cruz
(Tuesday)
At 15 years old, Ana marries the
much older Juan and moves to 1965
New York City so that her family back
in the Dominican Republic might have
a better life. Just when she’s having
second thoughts about her new
existence and loveless marriage, she
begins forming a bond with Juan’s
brother, Cesar. Cruz delves into the
tough choices that follow in this
beautiful literary debut.
‘The Divers’ Game,’ by Jesse Ball
(Sept. 10)
Jesse Ball (“Census”) levels a steely
gaze at the very concept of humanity
in this three-part novel that introduces
the lower-class “quads” and the rich
“pats,” who treat those below them
with impunity. When a group of pats
conceals the grisly fate of a young
quad girl behind an elaborate festival,
you may start to wonder just how
different this dystopian world is from
our own.‘Talking to Strangers: What We
Should Know About the People We
Don’t Know,’ by Malcolm Gladwell
(Sept. 10)
We humans, Gladwell posits, are
terrible at recognizing liars and lies. Is
there a way to be trusting without
being naive? Gladwell considers the
possibilities with historical examples,
from Neville Chamberlain’s misguided
trust in Adolf Hitler to CIA
Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus
Angleton, whose distrust of everyone
threw the agency into turmoil.‘Sontag: Her Life and Work,’ by
Benjamin Moser (Sept. 17)
It may be a curious choice for a man
to write the definitive biography of a
gay woman, but so be it. “Sontag”reads like an epic quest, offering a
deep and thorough portrait of the
intellectual giant that’s both dishy and
enlightening.‘Red at the Bone,’ by Jacqueline
Woodson (Sept. 17)
Woodson’s fiction for adults, like her
2016 “Another Brooklyn,” often focuses
on young adults (for whom she also
writes). “Red at the Bone” jumps back
and forth in time to tell the story of
16-year-old Melody, the product of a
teen pregnancy that tore her family
apart.‘Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out,
and Finding My Place (A
Transgender Memoir),’ by Jackson
Bird (Sept. 24)
Bird lives as a man today, but his
journey began with the assignment of
“girl” at birth. His memoir details
coming to terms with his gender
confusion while growing up in 1990s
Texas, from figuring out how to get abinder delivered to his college dorm to
undergoing surgery before eventually
becoming an advocate.‘The Water Dancer,’ by Ta-Nehisi
Coates (Sept. 24)
Coates has a gift for describing the
crushing legacy of slavery, as he’s done
through powerful essays for the
Atlantic and his National Book Award-
winning “Between the World and Me.”
Now he does it in novel form, with the
tale of Hiram Walker, a boy with a
magical gift who is born into slavery
but hatches a plan to escape.‘The Dutch House,’ by Ann Patchett
(Sept. 24)
If you’ve never read a Patchett novel,
get ready for something wonderful. If
you have read a Patchett novel, get
ready for something wonderful — and
completely different. “The Dutch
House,” like 2016’s “Commonwealth,” is
a family saga, though this one has an
unusual mansion at its heart — a rich
man’s folly that nevertheless cannot
destroy his progeny.‘Year of the Monkey: A Memoir,’ by
Patti Smith (Sept. 24)
Unlike “Just Kids” and “M Train,”
poet and performer Smith’s latest
memoir zooms in tight, detailing the
12 months between 69 and 70 in which
she lost two close friends: manager
Sandy Pearlman and playwright Sam
Shepard. “I noticed I looked young and
old simultaneously,” Smith writes. Her
willingness to look closely at life’s
closing chapters makes for a magical
book.
[email protected]Bethanne Patrick is the editor, most
recently, of “The Books That Changed My
Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors,
Musicians and Other Remarkable People.”Literary Calendar
WEDNESDAY | 7 P.M. David Lagercrantz
will read from “The Girl Who Lived Twice: A
Lisbeth Salander Novel” at Politics and
Prose at the Wharf, 70 District Sq. SW.
(202) 488-3867. politics-prose.com.SEPTEMBER’S TOP 10
by Bethanne PatrickJDAWNINK/GETTY IMAGESBY BETHANNE PATRICK
An espaliered pear tree is a natural
object forced into shape and productivity
through human intervention, its branch-
es pinned to a wall or structure, its droop-
ing fruits unnaturally swollen and perfect.
Such a tree exists in the garden of
Herbert Powyss, whose Welsh estate, as
depicted in Alix Nathan’s “The Warlow
Experiment,” is a marvel of scientific en-
deavor. Powyss, however, wants more
than horticultural precision; he wishes to
be taken seriously as a man of science. But
scientists need lab rats, so the Lancashire
resident advertises in the Annual Register
in 1793 “a reward of £50 a year for life is
offered to any man
who will undertake to
live for 7 years under-
ground without see-
ing a human face.”
That bizarre adver-
tisement was real, and
when Nathan stum-
bled upon it while
looking at old copies
of the Annual Regis-
ter, she wondered
about the rest of the
story. Powyss dictated
that his subject would
have to let his hair,
beard, toenails and
fingernails grow for
the entire time but would also live in
considerable comfort, with meals sent
down by dumbwaiter, fine furnishings
and art on the walls, and all the books he
desired.
Even more intriguing: The Annual Reg-
ister notes that “a labouring man with a
large family” had answered the advertise-
ment and, by 1797, entered the “fourth
year of his probation.” But no further
information was available, so Nathan cre-
ated her own story. In her novel, the
subject of examination is John Warlow,
beset by drink and a trial to his wife and
children. When Powyss promises that suc-
cessful completion of the “experiment”
will result in the lifelong care of his family,
Warlow agrees to the subterranean or-
deal.
Yes, John Warlow is like an espaliered
pear tree — at first. Warlow employs a
version of 18th-century working-class dia-
lect effectively here, to demonstrate the
distance between rough freedom and the
weird luxury in the cellar. “White cloth.
Fork, spoon. Them’s silver. Wine glass!
Chair legs like bent knees; never sat on
one of them. Look at it! Candlesticks all
shone up. Brass. Pictures. Who’s that in
the mirror? Me is it? Him?” But as the
weeks, months and years pass, Warlow
finds ways to rebel, from idiosyncratic to
destructive. Powyss’s human sapling
yields bitter fruit.
As Warlow molders underground, the
game’s afoot above. For reasons he cannot
fully fathom, Powyss falls in love with Mrs.
Warlow, and the two begin an affair. The
manor cook, Catherine Croft, also falls in
love, learning with bitterness equal to
Warlow’s that life in their place and time
offers few choices above or below one’s
station; they are fixed to their circum-
stances as firmly as trained branches to a
trellis.
Nathan rebukes any “scientific meth-
od” using humans — and maybe any living
thing — as subjects, while questioning
man’s capacity to treat other people as
human. If it takes her some time to get
there, meandering through long scenes of
Powyss’s trials and chunks of his corre-
spondence with a fellow scientist, that’s all
right. This unusual historical novel will
reward readers with the ripe inquiry it
makes of a peculiar subject.
[email protected]Bethanne Patrick is the editor, most recently,
of “The Books That Changed My Life:
Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians
and Other Remarkable People.”THE WARLOW
EXPERIMENT
By Alix Nathan
Doubleday.
272 pp. $26.95Experiment in
underground
living becomes
grave injustice
DOUBLEDAY
Alix Nathan, author of “The
Warlow Experiment.”PETER TERZIAN
In “Overthrow,” author Caleb
Crain focuses on an intimate
story in a disconnected society.A familiar
balance of
personal,
political