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Any
feelings readers may have about Mark Sarvas's popular blog,
The Elegant Variation, should be put aside. The darkly
comedic and quaintly old-fashioned Harry, Revised shows
that Sarvas is better in novel form than in the pithy statements
on literature he offers on the web.
Protagonist
Harry Rent is not quite reeling from the death of his wife.
In fact, he seems rather relieved that her passing now gives
him the opportunity to flirt with Molly, the pretty young
waitress at the diner. Harry is so smitten that he agrees
to eat the sandwich she recommends, the overly sweet and fatty
Monte Cristo, and be late for his own wife's funeral. After
discussing the origins of the name of the sandwich with Molly,
he buys the abridged version of the Dumas classic and decides
to model his new life on the Count of Monte Cristo.
Sarvas
delivers the novel as slowly and teasingly as a burlesque
show, dropping little facts of Harry's life with his dead
wife, Anna. It wasn't all roses, and Sarvas has set the reader
up to side against Harry by showing him in a rather callous
fashion at the start of the book. Harry takes his wife's death
as a chance to wipe the slate clean of his past mistakes and
remake himself as a thoughtful hero in order to woo Molly.
In this way, Harry also woos the reader.
Harry's
rather heartless nature is brought up again and again through
occasional appearances by Anna's sister, Claire, who harbors
suspicions that Harry may have inadvertently caused her sister's
death. She's a desperate and sloppy drunk, but her thoughts
about Harry are not completely unfounded. Whenever she appears,
Harry begins to think back on his relationship with Anna,
and readers begin to see that Harry isn't the one-dimensional
prick he's initially portrayed as being. Harry's relationship
with Anna was constantly in the shadow of Anna's relationship
with her hyper-critical and class conscious parents. Early
in their relationship, she lied to her parents about where
he went to medical school, slightly embarrassed by the fact
the he was merely a doctor of radiology, making Harry feel
that he was never quite good enough for Anna and her family.
Like
The Count of Monte Cristo, Harry, Revised is
concerned with death, justice, forgiveness and hope. Sarvas
masterfully uses Dumas as an inspiration but doesn't become
bogged down in a retelling of the story. Harry is his own
man, and as such he makes his own mistakes. Harry begins meddling
in the lives of Molly and her co-workers in ways that he thinks
will make him appear heroic, but he makes mistakes at every
step. Because Harry isn't completely likeable, readers can
laugh at him easily but still feel sympathetic towards him.
It's an artful trick, and one that Sarvas pulls off easily.
Although
the specifics of the plot are original, the story itself seems
rather predictable. Once Harry screws up twice, it only remains
to be seen how he will screw up again, and how he will eventually
redeem himself. Still, Sarvas has no problem holding the readers'
attention with his smart prose and good balance of light and
dark moments. Harry, Revised is a witty debut that
should appeal to a variety of readers.
(June,
2009)
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