Review by New York Times Review
THE WORD "SPYING" now brings to mind boundless digital nets trawling the ether for millions of emails at a time, but Miles Adler-Hart, the young protagonist of Mona Simpson's sixth novel, practices snooping the old-school way. He plants a walkie-talkie in his parents' bedroom. He eavesdrops on therapy sessions through a heating vent. He listens to phone conversations by carefully picking up a landline in the next room. Miles is 9 when "Casebook" starts, in 2001, and his furtive habits soon yield knowledge about the precarious state of his family. Hiding beneath his parents' bed, he hears his father telling his mother, Irene, "that he didn't think of her that way anymore either." "What way?" Miles wonders. "And why either? I could hardly breathe." After the marriage ends, Irene begins dating a friend named Eli, who visits California from Washington, D.C., where he lives and works for the National Science Foundation. Or so he claims. At first, Miles is glad for his mother's new companion. "I really was relieved. The nights we went to our dad's in the canyon, I thought, she had someone to talk to." But Miles's friend Hector suspects that Eli is hiding something, and he persuades his buddy that they should investigate. By the time they're teenagers, they're following clues around greater Los Angeles with the help of a private eye named Ben Orion. As the story progresses deeper into the 21st century, there are mentions of email, and Miles uses Google to search for a street address and to look up Xanax after he finds a bottle of it in the house. But the search for information about Eli remains oddly removed from the Internet. In the book's opening pages, Irene is roundly drawn. She describes herself as "pretty for a mathematician." She keeps an old blackboard in the kitchen, on which she scribbles high-end inspirational quotes, like this one she attributes to Einstein: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." She "listened to gospel, but she didn't believe in God." She is (Efferent from other people but "probably would rather have been more like everybody else." So why does "Casebook," occupied with the same complex familial concerns that Simpson has vividly animated for so long, feel like a misstep? The book suffers most from its uncertain register, with Miles too often sounding as if he's narrating events in real time as a child, rather than as someone in his 20s looking back on formative experiences. Overhearing a conversation about possible Eving arrangements, he writes: "It took me a minute to understand: They were talking about custody. My parents must have been fighting over us!" He lapses in and out, mostly out, of his latter-day vantage point, like Kevin Costner navigating a British accent. In this way, especially, "Casebook" is not flattered by comparison with Simpson's reputation-making 1986 debut novel, "Anywhere but Here," in which a woman recalls her troubled mother with a tersely poetic blend of childlike befuddlement and adult perspective. Miles feels more like the guide through a novel for younger readers. As Eli and his mother get more serious, he wonders: "Were they getting married? What about his kid? Would it live with us? . . .I wanted things to stand still." There are darker glimpses of how Miles's surveillance of adults affects his development. He thinks of sex as a "lower, threatening world." Hearing his parents argue about their lack of passion "neutered me somehow." More mysteriously, coming across naked pictures of his mother "made me feel exposed. As if I would never be attractive." These are moments when Miles the adult might offer context or reveal something deeper about the person he has become, but they pass in flurries of young wonder: "People in my class at school, some of them, they were having sex already. We all knew exactly who. Simon told us. What was sex, even?" Simpson has also adorned the book with a needless conceit that seems to betray a lack of confidence in the material. It opens with a "Note to Customer" written by the owner of a comics store, who says the book we're about to read was written by one of two friends behind a classic comic called "Two Sleuths." It becomes clear that Miles wrote "Casebook," and that Hector later added his own thoughts, which appear as footnotes. There are just 21 annotations by Hector, many of them less than a dozen words long. The fruits of this device, announced so loudly at the book's start and so ripe with possibilities for complicating Miles's memories, are conspicuously flavorless. Typical is a moment in which Miles describes Hector's favorite Roald Dahl story. We're then drawn by an asterisk to the bottom of the page, where Hector notes: "Still my favorite." There is a sense throughout of an author operating just a degree or two removed from her comfort zone. This is not Tom Wolfe implausibly ventriloquizing the college set in "I Am Charlotte Simmons," but Simpson's decision to so fully inhabit the mind of a boy forces her into a simpler style and cordons her off from more nuanced insights, despite the fact that her themes remain humble but profound: compromises brought on by love; what we can know about other people; the unavoidable and unintended effects of parents on children. The constant use of unexplained nicknames (Miles's mother is "the Mims"; his younger twin sisters are "Boop One" and "Boop Two") stands out because they push an intimacy with the family and its dynamics that is never fully established through more rigorous methods. For much of the novel, the stage blocking is too visible. Eli's Efe is, in fact, not what he says it is - among other things, he lives in California. But the nature of his deception becomes obvious long before the final page. The second half of the book leans on descriptions of school-age high jinks, Eke Miles and Hector dropping unwanted pets into Eli's yard as revenge for his lies. Near the end, we're shown illustrations from the pair's "classic" comic, leaving us perplexed about why it's a classic. Like the Hardy Boys or Veronica Mars, Miles learns a few lessons about life by doggedly pursuing the truth. ("Everyone had secrets; I understood now that I did. With that one revelation, the world multiplied.") But for readers of Simpson's more skillful novels, who presumably learned these particular lessons long ago, it's not clear what "Casebook" has to teach. Simpson's young protagonist practices snooping the old-school way. JOHN WILLIAMS is a senior staff editor at The Times.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 1, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Simpson's latest ensnaring, witty, and perceptive novel of family life under pressure in Los Angeles mines the same terrain as her much-lauded last novel, the immigrant-nanny-focused My Hollywood (2010). Here she puts a clever spin on domestic surveillance as young Miles begins spying on his mother, Irene, a mathematician, just as fault lines begin to appear in her marriage to his father, a Hollywood lawyer. Wily Miles, the overweight older brother of twin sisters he professes to loathe yet watches over tenderly, sets up phone taps of increasing sophistication, opens e-mail, eavesdrops, and paws through drawers, aided and abetted by his friend Hector, who is highly suspicious, and rightfully so, of Eli, post-separation Irene's increasingly enigmatic and elusive lover. As they muddle through middle school and high school, Miles and Hector become an adolescent American variation on Holmes and Watson, with the help of a kind, handsome private eye, Ben Orion. They also embark on a crazy entrepreneurial scheme involving troublesome pets. Simpson's opening gambit is a Note to Customer from the publisher of Two Sleuths, the best-selling comic created by Miles and Hector, but she wisely uses this framing device lightly, allowing this exceptionally incisive, fine-tuned, and charming novel to unfold gracefully as she brings fresh understanding and keen humor to the complexities intrinsic to each stage of life and love. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Simpson is a great literary favorite, and this winning novel will be supported by a cross-country author tour and plenty of publicity.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Simpson's (My Hollywood) sixth novel portrays a Santa Monica, Calif., family through the eyes of the only son, Miles Adler-Hart, a habitual eavesdropper who watches his mother, Irene, with great intensity. From an early age, Miles senses the vulnerability of his mother, a recently divorced mathematician, and throughout his childhood and adolescence feels the need to look out for her. When Irene falls in love with Eli Lee, Miles is highly suspicious. He enlists his best friend, Hector, to help him look deep into Eli's background, going so far as to work with a private investigator. Simpson elevates this world of tree houses and walkie-talkies not only through Miles's intelligence-"'Hope for happiness is happiness,'" he tells Hector-but through the startling revelations he uncovers. Simpson tastefully crafts her story in a world of privilege, with private school, show business jobs, and housekeepers all present, but never prevalent details. More remarkable is Simpson's knowledge of her characters, which is articulated through subtle detail: we are not surprised by the flea market blackboard in the kitchen, nor by the preachy quotation Irene chooses to write on it. Ultimately, this is a story about a son's love for his mother, and Simpson's portrayal of utter loyalty is infectious. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Miles Adler prides himself on being a snoop, but after wiring a secret phone extension under the master bed, he overhears a conversation between his parents that turns his stomach. His perfect folks are soon to become a divorce statistic, and if Miles is to stay apprised of the situation, he has no choice but to continue spying. Monitoring his mom's emails is easy; keeping his -overactive imagination in check is not, especially with best friend Hector goading him on. When Eli Lee starts dating mom and promising the moon, she's like a new woman, but even after five years Eli is suspiciously unable to commit. Miles and Hector won't rest until they suss out the truth about Eli, and issues of trust and perception are raised as the boys compile damning evidence against him. Readers will fall in love with Miles as he grows into manhood: from a precocious nine-year-old to a tender big brother to twin sisters to a chubby, angst-filled teen. -VERDICT In this sensitively rendered bildungsroman, Simpson (My Hollywood) recalls authentic, detailed memories of childhood in writing this clever, insightful, and at times hilarious story about family, friendship, and love in all its complex iterations. A great choice for teens and adults to read together and discuss. [See Prepub Alert, 10/14/13.]-Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A child of divorce turns private eye in the latest well-observed study of domestic dysfunction from Simpson (My Hollywood, 2010, etc.). In some ways, Simpson's sixth novel marks a return to her first, Anywhere But Here (1986), which also features a teenage narrator struggling to comprehend a parental split. But the new book is more high concept, framed as a detective story about discovering the deceptions that can swirl around relationships. The narrator, Miles, is a bright LA high schooler who's prone to precocious antics like a money-making scheme selling lunches out of his locker. He's also picked up a more questionable eavesdropping habit, listening in on his mathematician mother's phone conversations after her marriage collapses and she pursues a new relationship with Eli, whose intentions and background strike Miles as questionable. With his friend Hector, he processes his confusion both artistically (via a comic book they create together) and pragmatically, befriending a PI who helps them get to the bottom of Eli's background. The setup is ingenious on a couple of fronts. First, making the tale a mystery adds a dose of drama to what's otherwise a stock plot about upper-middle-class divorce. Second, Miles' snapping to the role of secret eavesdropper and researcher underscores how alienated he is from his mother's confusion and heartbreak. Simpson presents Miles' tale as slightly comic; this is a story of teenage misadventures, after all. But as the truth about Eli emerges and Miles gets wise to reality, she shifts into a more serious register. "Everyone had secrets, I understood, now that I did," Miles explains. "With that one revelation, the world multiplied." Simpson's attempts to add a metafictional touch via Hector's footnote comments feel half-finished, but overall her command of the story is rock-solid. A clever twist on a shopworn theme by a top-shelf novelist.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
