Fugue State
By: Steffan Piper / Narrated By: Nick Podehl
Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
Only The Walkman Remains the Same—a stellar sequel…
Just up front? If you’re here right after listening to Piper’s first book, Greyhound, and are expecting the gentle moments and light at the end of the tunnel that that book did so well? Well, prepare yourself cuz Life continues to happen to us, even after we’ve had spots of Grace during difficult times. You see, if you’ve a broken childhood, you do grow up to be a broken person. If there’s no stunning intervention to help you rebuild your broken foundation? Well, you take your pain with you…
I’ve come from reading the Boo Reviews elsewhere for this book, and the one that stumped me called our somewhat author-autobiographical main character Sebastien Ranes a sociopath. Holy crud! It’s not sociopathy; it’s dissociation bred from living in painful situations. And as someone who spent the first three decades of her life viewing everything from waaaay above her head, I can relate.
Sebastien didn’t last forever with his loving paternal grandparents, you see; his uncaring mother went and claimed him and dragged him to Alaska where he lived a detached life. A mother who spends more time smoking than speaking to her son. A stepfather who belittles, berates, spews scathing commentary whenever he sees fit but then goes on to ignore. Add serious illness to the mix, and you have one shattered individual who cares deeply but from such a great distance. He’s a lonely young man, has skewed thought patterns that cause him to do a STUPID, excuse me: Ill-considered, thing, and there’s no way out.
Until there is. A bystander and Good Samaritan to a horrific car crash just happens to be a Marine recruiter. To escape what is an increasingly untenable situation, Sebastien takes his chances. A PLEthora of tests find him to be of exceptional intelligence, and suddenly he has a future, a golden something there before him: A posting in Washington D.C.
He gets through Boot Camp very much at home; after all, he’s used to detaching from pain and humiliation, and kicking back and reading old hardboiled detective novels while other recruits are sobbing and writing home are kinda sorta just par for the course within his life. And that walkman that once played Hall & Oates over and over and over during an early journey on a bus? He still has one, but this time he’s taped aaaaaallll of the film (Do NOT call it a Movie!!!) “Blade Runner”, and he listens to it, finding his emotions all in one place, easily accessible, but away from him, expressed by much-known characters.
There’s not much of a story here; this isn’t Down on His Luck Boy Finds Acceptance and Purpose Through the Marines. Nope; there’s pain here too. The most amusing parts are just how grittily Marines talk to each other, in insults and asides, denigrating even while bonding in the extreme.
But Sebastien’s bonds never stick. He’s that single Marine who just happens to honestly be an Island, alone, adrift, weighing morality and pairing it with righteous action, no matter the DEVastating consequences. And a stint after volunteering to be part of Desert Storm has him seeing corpses burnt and curled, mouths open in agonized screams, has him seeing action, taking action, suffering PTSD afterwards.
All of this is brought to the listener in a fanTAStic performance by veteran narrator Nick Podehl. That he could do Sebastien as a young boy so superbly only to come back and give us the clearest of pictures of a young man, failing, excelling, failing, finding purpose, losing purpose, making his own choices after the greatest of choices has been made for him? Good cow, man, I was sobbing by the end. There are sooo many instances of Grace found again in this sequel, of hands outstretched by a Gunny Sgt., by a Lt. Col. who only wanted the very best for Sebastien but felt burnt by the actions a confused and broken young man might make. There is such pain at the end, but it loops back nicely, and when one considers that this is autobiographical with just enough fiction thrown in to make it believable, it’s of great comfort to think that Piper found his way. And he certainly found his voice.
If you cared about a little boy stuttering his pain and hiding from the world, do consider what he might grow up to be: A young man desperately needing models to show him how to shape pain into strength, how to live with Hope even while being an Island, how to carry on even after the worst has happened. A truly devastating Listen, and it’s hard to review. To say I felt slugged in the gut a few times would be to put it mildly indeed.
But even after all the sorrow there remain guts and stamina, a definite looking forward; that’s the good part of dissociation: You get to pick up and land on the spots that might be most helpful, detaching from that which could absolutely grind and kill. Sebastien picks up a few pieces, leaves the greater parts behind, and he moves on. To where?
Well, if there’s aNOTHer sequel to be written? I’d be there…
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