Mr. Peanut [Hardcover]

It can be a nuisance when you get something, a book, a movie, a game, expecting one thing and receiving something completely different. Take Mr. Peanut, for example. If you were to read the synopsis, you'd think it was a murder mystery with a tinge of familial drama, concerning David and Alice Pepin. Alice, deathly allergic to peanuts, is found dead, having eaten said peanuts. The police think David's to blame. Okay, then take the back of the advanced readers' copy that reads, "...when Adam Ross asked me to read what he'd been working on far longer than the eight years we'd known each other, I was in for an extraordinary surprise...And I was soon thrilled (again) to see it take Knopf by storm, reader by reader, department by department--an occurrence that signals a truly exceptional book." Okay, so we have an interesting premise and a very highly praised congratulatory note by no less than the Vice President, Editor-at-Large of Random House.

What I got out of Mr. Peanut, instead, was something completely different...and nowhere near as exciting. True, David and Alice Pepin are characters and true Alice does die from a peanut...this happens in the first few pages. But the story doesn't really center around the Pepins so much. I'd almost call their story a MacGuffin except that they do get circled back to, because the plot quickly spirals away from them and toward the two detectives who are working his case. You see, all of the men in this book have problems with their wives. And all of the women in this book have problems with the men. Neither side are exactly shining examples of their genders. The women all seem to be depressed that married life and their husbands aren't what they're cracked up to be.

Meanwhile, the men all seem destined to do things (sometimes eye-rollingly preposterous things) to screw up their relationships. Take Ward Hastroll, one of the detective working the Pepin case. His wife decides not to leave the bed for months and Hastroll does everything (wrong) in his power to get her out of it, including refusing to feed her, trying to sell away everything. It's very soapy and borders on the ridiculous at times. Then there's Sam Sheppard, the other detective, whose wife was murdered years ago and he was/is the prime suspect. I'd like to focus on what I thought was the point of this book--David Pepin--but the truth is that his life only gets a very cursory look. His wife has been yo-yoing through weight loss and it, apparently, makes her bitchy. Meanwhile, he reacts as an ass and...well that's about it. She dies.

The brunt of the book is about Hastroll and Sheppard and how they screwed up their marriages. In fact, more ink is spent in a quasi-Silence of the Lambs ("quid pro quo" is actually mentioned) interrogation with someone who is apparently well-versed in Sheppard's familial history and the murder of his wife. And so for a good chunk of the book, we're going back and forth between the present and Sheppard's past, piecing together who killed his wife. Never mind that the book is named Mr. Peanut and all signs point to a story about the Pepins. In an attempt to be inspired, author Adam Ross attempts his hand at writing a meta-story to try and be, I assume, post modern, by adding Sheppard's story to the mix. I didn't know it when I read the book, but it turns out that Sam Sheppard is a real person, who inspired the story of The Fugitive. I had to wiki him, because his story was a bit before me, but it seems to be a pretty sensational story, the way the Michael Jackson/OJ Simpson trials were. By adding this story, Ross tries his hand at offering a solution to the mysterious case and somehow tie it back to the David/Alice Pepin storyline. But, in truth, it doesn't add anything to the story and in fact ends up detracting. Too much time is spent rehashing the story and the problem is that the people who know the story will want to keep flipping through it because it'd be well-known to them; meanwhile, to those, like me, who had no idea it's based on a real person, it feels like filler. I wanted to give up on this book for awhile and turn my attentions to more promising works (like The Passage), but I stuck with it in hopes that things would improve. They don't, really.

I was mildly intrigued with how the murder mystery unravelled. It pulled some of the parts together into an interesting package, but it wasn't enough. Instead of focusing on the central story, Ross allows his prose to get ahead of him and goes to far in his ambitions. It just doesn't support what he wanted to do, I don't think. What we're left with are characters who react in soap opera ways and two murder mysteries that aren't mysterious or interesting. Not impressed.

Adam Ross challenges expectations and traditional literary narrative in his bold, yet sadly disjointed, novel "Mr. Peanut." I had fully anticipated enjoying this dark journey through the psyche of twisted relationships and possible murder--but ultimately what seeks to be complex comes across as strangely convoluted. The novel does have some powerful passages, and full sections of the book can be captivating in and of themselves. But put together as a whole, there's just too much going on to bring any story line through to a satisfying conclusion. This lack of focus has made me ambivalent toward the final product, and it is unfortunate because I think there are several good novels competing within the framework of "Mr. Peanut."

Ostensibly a murder mystery, at least in theory, Ross's story begins with the unusual demise of Alice Pepin whose death is by an allergic reaction to, you guessed it, everyone's favorite legume. Her husband is the prime suspect and their tumultuous past, including his infidelity and her obesity and subsequent weight loss, is fodder for the investigators who take the case. The murder investigation is soon overshadowed, however, by Ross's exploration of love, dysfunction and co-dependence within the conventions of marriage itself. We branch off from the main narrative to explore the lives of the detectives--one of whom is also haunted by a relationship in psychological torment and the other having been the subject of a murder investigation himself. Add references to Alfred Hitchcock, pop-psychology, M.C. Escher, and the process of writing--and "Mr. Peanut" becomes as overstuffed as my favorite sandwich. But what's good for my belly isn't good for my mind. Ultimately, Ross's goal may have been to challenge the nature of reality itself, but by the end it was hard to care about the final revelations having picked through everything in the kitchen sink prior to that point.

Ross is a talented writer, but that is what disappointed me most about "Mr. Peanut." I see the potential. But too much is too much. And even though, as I said earlier, there was much I admired about individual components of "Mr. Peanut"--overall I just didn't think it worked.

First of all, do you know what a Mobius strip is? Thought not. You will need a dictionary and access to Wikipedia before you start Adam Ross' debut novel, Mr. Peanut, and even then you may scratch your head a number of times before you get to the last page. But please do persevere, for this is one cracker jack of a novel that is oh so entertaining. Filled with puzzles, dreams that cry for interpretation, quirky characters (one named, cleverly enough, Mr. Mobius) it's a psychological mystery that reaches into the past and thrusts you forward into the future before dropping you, gasping for air, on the doorstep of the conclusion. Solve the puzzle and you will breathe a sigh of complete satisfaction. Not for the faint- hearted or the easily offended, the book includes a novel within a novel, passages filled with sex-fueled antics, an exploration of the hidden meanings in Alfred Hitchcock films, a case for the plight of the obese, an investigation of a murder that took place over sixty years ago and, most importantly, asks the question that faces many married couples, "Can marriage save your life, or is it just the beginning of a long double homicide?" (Page 309)

Within the first ten pages of the novel, Alice Pepin's obesity, insecurity and depression have culminated with her death from anaphylactic shock from the ingestion of a peanut at her kitchen table. Her husband, David, is the prime suspect in her murder. From here on, this brainteaser on steroids drags you through the maze of possibilities, moving forward, then backtracking, then looking behind door number two, then trying to twist the Rubric's cube another way, well, you get the idea. But as the book progresses, you realize that the novel is a book about three marriages and the predominant theme is, `Can a married couple change?' The struggles that the three married couples confront force you to compare, contrast and define what your personal picture of marriage is. But it's all done with smoke and mirrors, and with abundant metaphors and symbolism and dark, dark humor.

This book will not be for everyone, but if you choose to climb aboard the rollercoaster, you're in for quite a ride. Rated R. Highly recommended.

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