The Smash-Up - Ali Benjamin

I read this book as part of the buddy read organised by riverrun and Quercus books. Would I have read it if I hadn’t wanted to participate in a buddy read? Yes I would. It’s been on my radar for some time. And why? Well, I’ll tell you.

There are many reasons why we choose to read books. Sometimes it’s the hype. Sometimes it’s the social media buzz. Sometimes it’s other reasons. And sometimes it’s all of these! Ali Benjamin cites Edith Wharton as an influence.  A favourite author of mine, with whom I am on first name terms and interact with fairly frequently even if we don’t  get to meet up very often, lists Edith Wharton as someone who writes perfect books, including her short stories because of  ‘form, balance, weighting of each word in the line and line in the whole. Perfect as prose stylists mostly but also conceptually totally in control.’ So that piqued my curiosity even further. When you start to read the book and you see the name Ethan Frome all kinds of things go off in your head.I hadn’t read more than the first hundred pages of The Smash Up before I was reading Ethan Frome. I found the parallels in terms of setting, characters and story line fascinating. And I loved the idea of using something that means a great deal to you as the basis for your own work. But be in no doubt, this is no act of plagiarism, Benjamin takes a thematic essence and develops it beyond the initial premise and ends up with a piercingly satirical look at life. Predominantly life in the USA but it’s universal. And as for the writing? Is it as ‘perfect’ as Wharton’s? Maybe.

‘After years spent in the city, working with his business partner Randy on Bränd media, Ethan finds himself in the quiet, closed-off town of Starkfield. His wife Zenobia is perpetually distracted by the swirling #MeToo politics, the Kavanaugh hearings, and her duties to the feminist activism group she formed: All Them Witches. Ethan finds himself caught between their regular meetings at his home and the battle to get his livewire daughter Alex to sleep.

But the new, stilted rhythm of his life is interrupted when he receives a panicked message. Accusations. Against Randy. A slew of them. And Ethan is abruptly forced to question everything: his past, his future, his marriage, and what he values most.

Unrelenting in its satire, The Smash-up jolts you into the twisted psyche of successful brand advertising, where historic exploitation is only ever a panicked phone-call away. With magnetic energy and doses of comic wit, Benjamin creates a world of social media algorithms, extreme polarization, the collapsing of identity into tweet-sized spaces, and the spectre of violence that can be found even in the quietest places.’

It’s book of paradoxes for it’s witty in places and will have you chuckling but there are some searingly brutal moments, heart dropping and heart lifting parts as the reader accompanies the almost hapless Ethan through his fragile marriage and previous career battling his wife’s anger and his own confusion. Throw into the mix a daughter probably on the spectrum, challenging and endearing in equal measure  plus a baby sitter who presents with some allure for him. The narrative moves steadily forwards from an enigmatic opening through pasts and presents, with an explosive climax that is so well written it's as if you are witnessing it in slow motion. I found the book did have a very visual quality. It was easy to picture the events and situations.

It’s crisp, dynamic writing that sparkles. The author gets right under the skin of each character. Uniquely, because you can identity with each one even if they are operating from staggeringly different motivations. And your impressions and responses see saw as the story unfolds. Characters who confound initially redeem themselves by the conclusion.  The book throws up questions of feminism, parenting, morality, education, the responsibility of one generation to another - it’s dripping with discussion material. Obliquely it also demands we look deeper, look beneath the outward veneer of who and what we see. Then somehow given the events in recent days it seems even more pertinent. I don’t want to dwell on that other than to say how literature can offer a kind of commentary to our ever challenging world. But it’s an entertaining read, too.

My thanks to riverrun for a gifted copy and the opportunity to participate in a most  enjoyable buddy read.