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Posted Aug 17, 2006
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A Novel by Edward Falco
Unbridled Books, October 2005
ISBN: 1932961089
Hardcover: 234pp; $23.95
Wolf Point
is at its very heart a novel about redemption, not so much in
the eyes of others as in one’s own vision of self. The
protagonist of this dark story is T—T Aloysius Walker—a man who
has recently lost everything to what he feels is a dreadful
misunderstanding about some pornographic images found on his
computer. Abandoned by his wife and stepdaughter, and by the
business life that made him wealthy, T is forced to leave New
York, his home for the past 50 years, and retreat to the blasé
town of Salem, Virginia, where he is free of a potential prison
sentence, but prisoner to his new life alone.
Nothing much happens in T’s
life until he takes a last-minute trip alone to Thousand
Islands, New York, and picks up two hitchhikers (always a bad
decision). These two misfits, Lester and Jenny, are former
lovers, but they are also as close as family, and their tragic
past pushes them toward an even more tragic future.
As with many of Falco’s
works—his collection Sabbath Night in the Church of the
Piranha is a gem—this is another masterpiece of character
development. None are so simple in their motivations that their
actions are predictable, and their interactions are authentic,
unfortunate, and often poignant. His characters seem destined to
create their own disastrous circumstances. Unique to this book
is that in the background there lurks a specter that lends an
unseemly cast to the story: child porn. T returns time and again
to reflect on one photograph—of a woman holding a child who is
being raped by a much older man—though the way he describes it
reveals more about his own inability to empathize.
“There, in the shadows, in
the surrounding dark, he heard the woman whispering promises
into the child’s ear, and there, so close, he saw clearly that
the girl in her arm was a beautiful child, and he knew somehow
that she was more beautiful in that moment than she would be
ever again. It was as if it were the child’s last moment and he
knew it, and then a man who had been standing beside him in the
darkness stepped into the light and T knew immediately at the
sight of that bulky, hirsute body what was about to happen.”
In a way, this photograph
becomes a symbol in the book—of T’s own internal crises, as well
as his relationship to Jenny and Lester. Still, as a reader it’s
difficult to image a person who sees the image described above
and interprets it as nothing but art (as T claims it is
throughout most of the book). On the other hand, Falco deftly
creates just the man to make that type of morbid naiveté
possible. This novel is an insightful glimpse into one raucous,
life-altering weekend, and it’s a wonderful examination of
sexuality and taboo.
—Jennifer
Henderson
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