Book Review - Austin Wright's Tony and Susan

Tony and Susan by Austin Wright
Published by: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: 1993
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Susan's ex-husband Edward views her as "his greatest critic." Could it be because she was so critical of his life choices, abandoning law school for a career as a writer, that she cheated on him and eventually divorced him for a philanderer? Or is his sending her his manuscript for Nocturnal Animals an olive branch? A way to forgive the past twenty-five years? A way for him to tell her what his book is missing and why. She reluctantly takes up the mantle of critic, after putting it off for months, at the thought she will see him again. The book is about mathematician Tony Hastings. He and his wife and their daughter are on their way to their country house in Maine. Three men in a truck accost them on the highway. Tony's wife Laura and his daughter Helen are brutally raped and murdered. He did nothing to stop it. Not that there's anything he could have done. Or so the police insist. Tony falls into a deep depression. He's fatalistic and rants about green houses and terrorists and war and death. He is spiraling out of control. It's only after a year when he's able to positively identify one of the murderers that he starts to move on with his life. He begins a relationship with one of his former grad students and feels like he's on stable ground again. But then he finds out that the killer of his wife and daughter is about to be set free. The cop who was assigned to the case is dying of Cancer and he wonders if Tony would be interested in some vigilante justice. At first Tony thinks that he is incapable of such violence. But hearing the murderer confess tips him over the edge and he kills the man. Wounding himself in the process. He stumbles out into the woods, blind, in pain, and awaiting his own death. Susan finds herself enjoying the book and connecting with Tony. She wants to talk to Edward about this book he has created. About their life they had together. Maybe she, like Tony, has regrets. But Edward will have the last word by saying nothing.

Rarely does a book annoy me to such a level that I never want to have it in my sight again, and I'm not even talking about how this book failed when it was released in the United States but was somehow a hit in England so that when it was reissued in the United States to coincide with the film adaptation they didn't even bother to go back to the original text and instead released the version with of all the Britishisms still intact. That was just mildly WTF. But that lack of initiative, that lack of drive, that complete incomprehensible stupidity just emanates from every page in this book and made me want to throw it across not just the room but the continent. Begone from my sight foul demon. Of course what I did was give it to another member of my book club to read and told her to never give it back to me. Ever. Let's dig into the stupidity of this book and the book within the book. The characters and not just dimmer than a dead light bulb they are all too dumb to live. Not to mention they don't even achieve anything beyond one-dimensionality. Why does Susan feel a need to recap Nocturnal Animals for us? We're reading it too. It sucks. And if she likes this bably written piece of shit well, what does that tell us about her? Or maybe there's some sort of mirroring of her own lack of a single brain cell with Tony's lack of a brain at all. He totally lets his wife and daughter be caught and is oblivious to the consequences but then again Tony Hastings always refers to himself as Tony Hastings. Because that's so normal. You know what? Tony Hastings is a fucking coward who always thinks of himself as Tony Hastings. But what about the characters that aren't even here? Like Edward. We never hear from Edward so his writing and Susan must speak for him. Well seeing as we don't even get Susan's opinions just random thoughts and how she's burying herself and her feelings below the floorboards through the trapdoor every night, hoping to learn anything about Edward from her is futile. And Nocturnal Animals is futile. Reading this book was futile. But more than that, it verged on infantile.