OPINION:
THE BOOK OF ESSIE: A NOVEL
By Meghan MacLean Weir
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95, 336 pages
“The Book of Essie” is about Esther Anne Hicks, the pregnant 17-year-old daughter of a phenomenally popular charismatic preacher. Her whole life has been televised for the reality TV show “Six for Hicks,” which follows her family’s daily life as well as their exertions on missions and their campaigns against most of the social changes of the last few decades.
Though Essie is unmarried, her mother Celia — seemingly devout and undoubtedly devoted to TV ratings and the millions of dollars they bring in — is unfazed by her pregnancy. Celia treats it simply as a problem to be discussed with the show’s producers. She has campaigned showily against abortion. No problem. Abortion could be a solution for Essie. Or she could disappear for a few months and quietly give birth before returning to the show.
Problem is, that such stratagems, however hushed up, risk exposure. In contrast, a marriage with all its romantic moments, dress fittings and reception planning topped off by a big fat wedding would be sure to increase the TV audience. So marriage it is.
Trouble is Essie doesn’t have a boyfriend. Indeed, given her mother’s rigid supervision, she couldn’t have a boyfriend. Someone must be found. Essie has a candidate — Roarke Richards — but she daren’t directly suggest him. Instead she hints at his family’s financial problems, and Celia takes it from there with offers of hundreds of thousands of dollars to Roarke’s parents and to the young couple provided they stay married for five years.
Why should the star of the high-school baseball team agree to marry a girl he has hardly spoken to? He has been accepted at Columbia. There is no chance that his parents can fund four years there. But Celia Hicks can.
Roarke has other issues, too. He narrates some chapters of the novel. Essie narrates others, and yet more come from Liberty Bell, a young reporter for the boring local TV station, who through a series of interviews seemingly promotes Essie’s “romance” while actually helping Essie pursue a plan that not only frees her but exposes the Hicks family as the grasping hypocrites they are.
This triple narration presents the reader with three coming-of-age stories as Essie reveals her plans, Roarke comes to see a surprising solution to his difficulties, and Liberty recounts her experience as a 14-year-old in a shoot out that left her sister dead. Clearly there’s a lot going on and it is a testament to author Meghan Weir’s firm hand on the tiller of her plot that it never gets confusing. Indeed, her novel is nothing if not readable.
It is certainly not an exploration of character. Essie, Roarke and Liberty speak in the same voice. Each is distinguished by a personal history and a concomitant set of characteristics, but once these have been established none of the narrators ever surprises the reader. The tension that keeps the reader hooked comes entirely from wondering how events will play out.
To a significant extent, they do so predictably. But Celia Hicks always hovers in the background and often takes center stage. She’s the spider at the center of the family web, and it seems she never misses the slightest thing that might jostle it, so Essie and Roarke can never be sure that they won’t be derailed and shunted back into the claustrophobic world of reality TV. Celia is the only character in the novel that has energy. Her husband, though supposedly able to rouse the hearts of his vast flock, scarcely appears and seems laughably ineffectual.
At one point the author looks briefly back at Celia’s deprived childhood as explanation of her greed. More of this would have been useful. So would more about her husband and the sources and deployment of his inspirational power. How do such preachers keep the faithful in thrall? And what about the phenomenon of reality TV? Why do so many find it compulsive viewing and others happily let it intrude on their lives?
All these are serious topics. They demand a novelist’s attention because fiction can probe hidden places and pare back the layers of cushioning that hide motives and the wellspring of behavior. The light cast by fiction is ever more valuable as television and social media bombard us with enormous, sometimes bewildering, amounts of information and pseudo-information.
Without a deeper exploration of the behaviors she describes, Ms. Weir has created a novel better adapted to young adults ready to engage with dilemmas and take the high road to solutions rather than to questioning readers, who may prefer to walk the low road explanation. Nonetheless the tight plot and the inspirational ethos will make this novel, Ms. Weir’s first, an attractive candidate for summer entertainment.
• Claire Hopley is a writer and editor in Amherst, Mass.
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