Handbook for Drowning

A Novel in Stories

By: David Shields

Narrated by: Mike Maloney

Handbook for Drowning features interconnected stories dealing with Walter, a young man trying to understand his parents, his ideals, and his emotions.

Walter Jaffe grows up in a family obsessed with social justice; Walter fixates on his own mortality. The novel's pointillistic structure reflects the gap between the grief Walter feels for his dying mother and the impersonal rationality he's been taught to practice.

©1991 David Shields (P)2019 David Shields

Not quite "in stories"

Some of my disappointment came from misguided expectations; I was hoping that "a novel in stories" meant it would be something like "We The Animals" or "Jesus' Son," two short story collections where the individual stories work on their own but also form a cumulative narrative. The chapters here, though, do not really feel self-contained--in fact, certain scenes or moments in the main character's life get developed a bit at a time across several different chapters . . . which is okay, but not what I was expecting.

I'm actually a big fan of Experimental Fiction, but I didn't feel like the "pointillist" approach here added up to enough when the character's coming of age in the '60's felt so conventional. (Your mileage might differ if you also grew up in that time and want a dose of nostalgia.) There are chapters narrated by Walt and others merely focalized through his experience, but there was no meaningful difference between those approaches.

As for the performance, the narrator mispronounces some words, but he DOES try to inject some personality into his reading . . . though unfortunately his droll tone may be actually too much of a match for the bumbling, uninteresting protagonist.