I have been really intrigued by the publication of four reviews of my novel “Skyscrapers.” A writer never knows how another will perceive what is written, and friends tend to like – or say they like – a friend’s book whether that is their honest opinion or not. After all, what are friends for, if not to support each other’s efforts?
Reviewers, however, must accurately describe a novel for a potential reader. Since “Skyscrapers” has a rather unusual and complicated plot, I wasn’t sure how reviewers would feel. They noted the plot action as having “unique twists and turns,” “a challenging array of narrative threads,” “offering narrative gems among its quick twists and turns,” and that it “will keep readers guessing from page to page.”
I had not expected all four to describe it as a “thriller.” I thought I had written a book about corporate malfeasance, hidden backgrounds (I’ll come back to this) and very strong, upwardly mobile CEO’s who were in direct competition with each other and determined to climb to the very top of their profession. The term “Skyscrapers” refers to the buildings in which these two work, but also to their individual personalities. They are not alike in any respect except their ferocious drive to succeed against backgrounds which gave them quite the opposite of a head start.
I have been a writer since I wrote my first novel, “George’s Picnic,” at the age of nine. The “George” of the title was my dog, and I wrote it in the first person. I illustrated and bound this book and gave it to my mother. She accepted it, graciously not pointing out to me that in order to get lined pages for my “novel” I had amputated January, February, March and April from her appointment book for that year. Under my page numbers in #2 pencil one can still read the names of the months.
I published a number of short stories before I got into writing on gun control and terrorism. The non-fiction was a direct result of my Master’s thesis which got a book contract immediately from New York. I found the research fascinating. In those days, one could access a lot of sites on the Internet about the government and get floor plans of nuclear energy plants and all sorts of information terrorists might use. I also got a Civil Defense booklet which had not been updated since the atom bomb first began to scare people. It suggested polite behavior when driving out of the city after a nuclear explosion: no beeping or cutting across lanes. Also, if no other shelter offered, it suggested one could bury the family car, load the family and supplies into it, and survive the bomb that way. It’s quite a priceless document, printed by our own government, and I have often wondered if its purpose was to defuse panic, since no one who understood what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could possibly have believed one word of this “helpful” Civil Defense booklet.
I also published a number of stories based on modern physics, fascinated by Borges and his visionary leadership in such stories as “The Garden of Forking Paths.” His effect on South American fiction was immediate: it is entering American fiction much more gradually.
Over the years I have come to realize that in most fiction I write, there is either an unreliable narrator or there is someone hiding something, or consistently lying, or playing a well-rehearsed part. In “Skyscrapers,” Vern Webb is doing all three. Eleanora T. Smith is not, she is honest about her life and choices but begins, in the novel, to question whether she has limited herself in her drive to succeed. That is a different matter entirely: we all lie to ourselves from time to time, sometimes because we don’t see the truth or because we see it as unbearable. Eleanora’s struggle to escape her own self-imposed restrictions ends up happily- unexpectedly so – whereas Vern Webb is not so lucky.
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