Sunburn(CD)Lib(Unabr.) [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

The American characters in John Lescroart's recently re-published first novel, Sunburn, have wound up at an idyllic house close to a seaside town near Barcelona. The Spanish summer sun beats down relentlessly.

The owner of the house, Sean, has been able to buy the house, which is isolated atop a hill and reached by a dangerous road, because he received a large settlement after an accident at the factory where he worked for many years. He has lost a hand but appears to have adjusted well to the handicap. His stunning girlfriend has recently moved in with him and he has invited his sister and brother-in-law to stay for a long visit.

Both Sean and his brother-in-law Douglas are purportedly writing novels, although with Douglas it seems to be more of a vague plan than anything else. He has been making a good living writing magazine articles but wants to try something new.

What better place than these lovely tranquil surroundings, and yet the ambience keeps everyone sluggish and unfocused. In Madrid, the dictator Francisco Franco lies in a coma, and the Spaniards wait nervously to see what will happen when he finally dies after years of iron-fisted rule.

The characters' own suspended animation may be a reflection of the white-hot summer heat. A large part of the problem is booze, of which they consume huge quantities. Do they drink because they can't write or can't they write because they drink?

They all seem adrift in a sea of nothingness. Sean has probably the most valid excuse. Years earlier he suffered some trauma in Viet Nam that seemed to go beyond the physical and left him feeling very bitter and betrayed.

If the rest of them were bored at home, they are just as bored and restless here. The introduction of a younger man, Mike, serves as a catalyst for their dissatisfaction, especially Sean's sister, Lea. Since the young man says his sadness began with the disappearance of his girlfriend years before, Lea unaccountably feels she must help with his search, a decision with unusual consequences.

A chain of events brings about tragedy and the break-up of this curious ménage. The pace quickens and overriding the troubles, it propels the actors in this drama into some pursuits and turns them away from others. Despite the flaws of the players, they become more appealing with more doing and less telling. Life is action and passion, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, and no doubt many other people have said it too.

Sunburn is disquieting, told in various voices, oddly compelling. When I finished, I wanted nothing so much as a tall drink of water (or cerveza) and a siesta because Lescroart's settings are vivid and forceful, even when his protagonists are not.

Paradoxically, not much happens in Sunburn yet a lot happens--or may happen. But the characters stop holding back and start to care about "little things," and from there they cease to merely exist and go on to embark upon living. Not passion quite yet, but soon, perhaps.

If this had been the first Lescroart book I had read, I would never have read another. I really enjoy his Dismis Hardy books but this first book written could have stayed unpublished

"Sunburn" is an ambitious literary tome set in the early 1970s.

CHARACTERS
The major characters (Douglas, Lea, and Sean) are bored hard-drinking middle-aged expatriate American living in Spain, variously damaged: by an abortion, by war experiences, by a lost hand, by the death of a child, by the death of a spouse, etc. In short, "Americans playing Hemingway", as one of the characters describes them.

THE SETUP
Specifically, Douglas, husband of Lea, is the principal narrator. They are on an extended vacation in the home of Lea's brother Sean and his girlfriend Kira (ca 25). Other characters are Michael (ca 25) and Tony, both bartenders. Douglas and Sean are unsuccessful wantabe writers. That's the setup.

DEVELOPMENTS--possible spoilers
Subsequently, inevitably, in a drunken stupor Sean commits suicide incorrectly suspecting that Kira is sleeping with Tony, while it is actually Lea and Michael who are having an affair. The death of Sean and the affair split Douglas and Lea, and they go their separate ways, mostly unchanged for the better or the worse. Sort of a "live goes on" motif.

COMMENTS
I happen to be a writer, formerly an American expatriate who lived in Europe in the early 1970s, and variously damaged by life. Indeed, during that period,an unfaithful wife ruined my first marriage. Hypothetically, I could be a character in the novel. However, the novel just doesn't ring true to me.

I don't mean that I haven't known such people. I have. But those I've known were phonies---they did not "ring true" either. The world is full of empty people playing roles, who have no "self". But I don't think they are worthy of sympathy, nor are the disasters they bring upon themselves instructive in any way.

Although I am sure that it wasn't LesCroart's intention, the only convincing "message" that I get out of the book is that, "Idleness is the Devil's workshop". Younger readers---yet to experience real life first-hand--- might get more out if it.

The unnecessary pretentious changes of "person" and tense are rarely effective. First, second, and third persons, combined with just about every tense in the English language are used at various points. Nor is the first person restricted to one character. Several characters speak to the reader in first person. Most annoying is when the "omniscient-third-person narrator" doesn't bother to identify the main characters, but just refers to them by gender--in effect becoming a "ignorant third-person narrator". The novel is just too "busy" with literary devices.

VERDICT
LesCroart wrote the novel as a young man, and the characters are appropriately shallow, self-absorbed, and immature. Even so, it was a fine, even extraordinary, first effort by a young (when written) author. With that in mind, i.e., not expecting profound revelations about the meaning of life, it is an enjoyable novel.