In Dope, Gran’s third novel in as many genre’s, we are introduced to Josephine, a former addict, who is offered a thousand dollars to find a suburban couple’s missing daughter. But the search will take her into the dark underbelly of 1950′s New York that she thought she’d escaped-and a web of deceit that threatens to destroy her.
Gran is capable of condensed moments of characterization. Those nutshell moments contain a wealth of information. She presents for you some dots in a picture and then leaves it to you connect them. If she held your hand and led you to the conclusion this would be lesser fiction but instead she wants you to actually engage the book. Because you participate in the process of characterization the result is much more powerful. Here is an example that shows how much weight a few words can carry.
Do you have children?” she asked.
“No,” I told her. “I can’t.”
She looked at me. There’s usually only one reason why a healthy woman can’t have children. Maybe a woman like her could find a real doctor when she needed one. But not me.
What’s unsaid and unseen can be more powerful then what’s said or shown.
This style of storytelling, which exists in the gaps, mirrors the lives of these characters. Their existence on the shiny gold coin that is America is on the tarnished side that is face down in the gutter, never to see the light of the sun. They are junkies, con men, drug dealers, dancers and pimps. You might think that you know these characters but you don’t because there isn’t a cliché in sight. Gran’s ability to infuse even the smallest of characters with depth and life adds to the rich tapestry on display here.
Without getting into the specifics of this book or any others it needs to be said that one of Gran’s biggest strengths is that she knows how to write strong endings. They are logical extensions of the story that they follow and are never afraid to end the way that they are supposed to.
I originally reviewed Dope by Sara Gran on March 28, 2007
I gave this one a shot a few years back after reading her fucking amazing novel Come Closer. Never got into it and tossed it aside. Keep hearing from different people how much it kicks ass. Might have to dig it out again. I remember it being short, anyway.