Union Atlantic is one of those great novels that will make readers feel smarter just for having read it. While portraying complex characters and their risky decisions, first time novelist Haslett never makes motivations obvious, but with a little work readers will be able to figure out why these people do the things they do. Haslett does this by giving readers organically presented background information, and his characters can be seen in archetypal terms. Because the motivations are not immediately obvious, readers will feel as if they’re analyzing the drives of these fairly complex characters.
Told in third person from multiple viewpoints, the plot hinges on the struggle between investment banker Doug Fanning and local crazy lady Charlotte Graves over the plot of land on which he has built his eyesore of a McMansion, as well as Fanning’s shady dealings at his job. But at its heart, Union Atlantic is about ambition, entitlement, and, most of all, hunger. Fanning hungers to overcome his wrong-side-of-the-tracks past. Charlotte hungers for the old days when Fanning’s ugly house was a forest and her lover was not dead of a drug overdose. Then there is the intense hunger of Nate Fuller, the teenager who lusts after Doug.
Haslett adroitly balances a compelling plot encompassing the trouble between Fanning and Graves, Fanning and his bank (the titular Union Atlantic), and Fanning and his young lover Nate. But Union Atlantic is not solely plot-driven. The intricately drawn characters are all troubled, but no one is more troubled than the singularly driven Fanning, who has remade himself from the scrawny kid of an alcoholic single mother to a senior manager at Union Atlantic, and is almost single-handedly responsible for the bank’s meteoric rise from a local bank to a major player in international finance.
Retired history teacher Charlotte is also conflicted. After a lifetime of solitude, her dogs have begun talking to her. She’s prone to flights, not so much of fancy but of paranoia. Then there’s poor, skinny high school student Nate, who is failing American History. Sent to Charlotte for tutoring, he becomes wrapped up in her sprawling lectures and intrigued by Doug’s ostentatious and sparsely furnished mansion next door. He breaks in and finds himself falling in love with the well-muscled Doug, who does not kick him out of bed.
Crazy old lady, underhanded titan of industry, innocent naïf—these are characters all readers have seen before. This leaves Haslett the task of playing with these characters and making sure they are raised from an oversimplified stereotype to archetype. He does this skillfully by making each character’s motivations complicated, giving Union Atlantic the quality of mythology.
Individual chapters focus on the characters in a variety of ways, so that it’s never obvious who the “villain” is in Union Atlantic, and this is reinforced by the third-person narration. Readers are introduced to Doug first, and although his ambition and past seem a little dicey, it’s obvious why he wants this big house and why he has spent his life building his career at this bank. He’s trying to erase who he was, and he envelopes that skinny, poor, angry boy he used to be with an armor of muscles and expensive suits. When we meet Charlotte in Doug’s chapters, she’s a batty old lady, but in her chapters, Doug is a lying master manipulator who uses and discards people as his needs dictate. At different points, Charlotte seems like a sweet elderly townie, a whip-smart if absent-minded teacher, a crazy person, and a woman who is stuck in the past. The only mostly sympathetic major character is Nate, who is so in love with Doug’s strength and muscles that it obliterates any sense he might have. Haslett deftly allows readers to see the main characters as both sympathetic and bad.
Doug’s nemesis in Union Atlantic turns out not to be Charlotte but her brother, Henry Graves, the president of the Federal Reserve. Henry’s role in the story becomes more important as the book progresses, but he is clearly the book’s moral center, providing solace to Charlotte and potential punishment to Doug. And vice-versa—he’s not completely behind Charlotte’s suit against Doug.
Finance is a big part of the story in Union Atlantic, and Haslett doesn’t gloss over it. Heavy banking concepts are sprinkled liberally throughout the book, and Haslett manages to make these concepts accesible for readers. But Union Atlantic is not about finance or McMansions or talking dogs. This scene with Charlotte and Nate goes to the heart of the tale:
“I’ve been returning to Whitman,” she said…“He’s right about most things. But if you take him to heart, you can’t always read the poems in your favor. He has this way of looking back at you. Here’s one I came across this morning. ‘To a Historian.’”
She then reads the poem that includes the lines, “Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be, /I project the history of the future.”
Charlotte says, “Bracing stuff, no? The question is, can you chant personality without devolving into solipsism? Can you trust the pulse of life without becoming Mr. Fanning? Because he is the future. One way or the other. His kind of rapaciousness, it doesn’t end. It just bides its time.’” There is a lesson in Union Atlantic for everyone.
(February, 2010)
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