Something Fishy

I honestly have no idea what this book was trying to say.

Before one of my friends points out that I never stress what a book “has to say,” I’ll reiterate my position: characters first, story second, something to say third. It’s there, it’s important, it just can’t (usually) carry a book on its own. Pretty much every book has something to say. If we didn’t have a point to make, we wouldn’t be writing. The characters and the story are what makes the book interesting while you’re in it. The something it has to say is what keeps you thinking about it afterward. Brian Strause’s Maybe a Miracle was memorable only for its sheer inscrutability.

A slightly clichéd family setup and coming-of-age plot sets the stage for the novel: high school senior Monroe, a quiet skeptic, lives with his too-concerned mother and nearly-absentee lawyer father, along with his eleven-year-old sister (and best friend) Annika. All is happily dysfunctional until Annika decides that Monroe’s prom night would be a good time for a swim, and cracks her skull on the diving board. Monroe is then forced to be the reluctant hero and do CPR, but she goes into a coma from oxygen deprivation anyway. Fun. (Shut up, Brittany.)

Over the next two years, Annika gradually becomes a religious icon who sparks a massive pilgrimage of the sickly faithful (be my guest and take that in either sense) hoping to divine a miracle from her bleeding palms. Yeah. The poor kid’s got stigmata. Monroe stands by and watches, horrified and cynical, what he is sure is the exploitation of his sister. His mother has become a religious freak, and his father is well on his way. Monroe’s own life keeps on, bit by bit, but mostly it revolves around Annika. Things continue to horrifically, and fascinatingly, build.

And this is where I must ruin the ending. If I were you I’d TURN BACK NOW, but it also might be worth continuing, to watch me bleed some more sarcasm. I’m not sure it was worth reading this book, but, while I’m having trouble writing this blog, it’s kind of fun. I don’t get to be this sarcastic very often.

Annika and Monroe are big fans of the Cincinnati Reds. Monroe had promised to take her to a game before she took the big splash. At a gruesomely imaginable stadium tribute to Annika, Monroe steals the tractor on which her bed rides, puts her in a wheelchair, and takes off for the game. Where she gets whacked in the head with a ball. Where she wakes up. Where it is discovered that she was “locked-in” all along, fully conscious of everything going on around her. Where everything’s suddenly okay.

Double-you tee eff? (That’s WTF for you non-fans of phonetics.)

I want me my payoff! I fail to see, really, at all, what the point of all that was. Yes. Yes. It’s the journey and not the destination, of course. That’s true. But it’s hard to know what stance the author was really taking. Monroe’s coming-of-age takes a backseat to—and is reliant upon—Annika’s situation. Both Annika and Monroe roll their eyes at her religious-icon status, but it’s hard to know what it was supposed to mean. Ostensibly it was a statement about humanity’s blind faith and lemming-like behavior, but that wasn’t at all how it came across in the book: it almost seemed like an endorsement of belief, hope, faith—but I think that kind of hope and faith is pathological. Also, as the founding member of Novelists For Scientific Accuracy (sign up today, just $1 million a month, membership cards are gold-plated), the whole “locked-in” thing really irked me. I know. It’s a novel. And I know. We never know. But…but!

It was a puzzling journey that the destination failed to illuminate, and that was what bothered me.