Biloxi: A Novel
By: Mary Miller / Narrated By: Danny Campbell
Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
Woooould be a sweet little listen, but there’s kinda sorta a vein of hatred thrown in throughout…
I get it, really I do: When you write a novel with a character who develops, you gotta start somewhere. Usually the character starts as a jerk (Which, yeah I know, I sometimes find cringeworthy until they develop) then, as they meet other characters or have the rug pulled up from beneath their feet, they grow into someone totally awesome… in a good book, to me, at any rate.
But that’s what’s so confounding about Biloxi (Which the Publisher’s Summary—I KNOW, I can’t seem to keep from reading the danged things!—touted as showing that author Mary Miller was, like, one of THE voices of her generation) cuz our hero, Louis McDonald, Jr., starts out as someone we like. He’s in his mid-sixties, his wife of a gazillion years left him, he’s fairly estranged from his daughter, he watches too much TV, and he sorta is gaining weight from lousy food and some beer-sipping. On a routine run to the drugstore to pick up meds, he spazzes out that he saw his wife in another car, and he takes a different route, finding himself pulling up to a house, the words: Free dog mesmerizing him.
And so he meets a large, large, large guy claiming to have had 14 dogs and a new wife who’s allergic. Won’t Louis take Layla, the best and last of the lot. Immediately, Louis has the sense that this funny looking mixed-breed dog with her weird ears, and weird black on white markings, is The One. Life as Louis once knew it changes.
Likable, right? Plus he goes on to treat her with bologna, thoughtfully buys her a soft bed with rounded corners so that she’ll feel snug and enveloped, buys her a red collar with a red leash. He speaks to her, looks into dog parks.
Oh, and suddenly, he HAS to know who Large Guy’s new wife is. This sets up all sorts of warmth, hopefulness, and MAYHEM. Suddenly, the life of our hero Louis is even MORE upended as he has to start juggling all manner of balls in the air, figuring out whom to trust, whom to date, and what about that inheritance he doesn’t have much hope of getting.
Hijinks, doncha know? The book is all about all this new stuff in his life, all these new people in his life. And how ol’ Layla changes him by being the one true and pure individual he knows and can count on. Author Miller packs a whole lotta STUFF into his life, and…
Uhm, things start surfacing here and there. Like racist comments. Like homophobic comments. Oh, and let’s not forget the PLETHORA of misogynistic comments cuz it turns out Louis is misogynistic like all get-out.
Sure, there are a few bits at the end whereby Louis discovers that, all along, all his life, he’s been afraid of women, so maaaaaybe thaaaat’s why… But it’s like this, see: There’s some sweet writing throughout, but these weird observations and hateful comments come outta nowhere. Miller turns a likable character into an unlikable one and sorta tries to save it all with just a tad of self-awareness at the end.
Let’s not fault narrator Danny Campbell for any of this, though. His warm, avuncular tones are as pleasant to listen to in this as in anything else I’ve ever heard him narrate. So it’s rather odd to hear the odd slur here and there, seems out of character to hear Louis bemoan just how much he haaaaated his wife, is rather deplorable when we come to his growing dislike for other women even as they’re just minding their own business.
So no, no exTRAOrdinary depth of writing here that’ll shed new light on the Human Condition; dunno whose Generation Miller is the voice of; it’s just too simple a listen of New Dog Teaches Man How to Live… With Odd Slurs Now and Again.
It was a sweet enough story, and Louis isn’t a jerk the whole way through. Just those danged hateful and ignorant comments. I understand a non-PC character; I understand growth through the character arc. I just am confused why he wasn’t a total jerk to begin with growth into something AWEsome, or why the self-awareness at the end was over and done within the last few minutes.
Odd that…
… just odd…
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