With American reviewers likening The November Criminals to The Catcher in the Rye and Donna Tartt's The Secret History, Sam Munson's debut novel has a lot to live up to on its European release. First published in the US in 2010, the book makes its European debut this month through Little Brown, with a film adaptation expected in 2016.
There are many parallels between JD Salinger's classic tale and Munson's debut. Most obvious is the fact that both books have marginalised male teenage narrators directly addressing an audience, and in turn the reader, with stories that rail against an unjust society. There are echoes of Holden Caulfield's impassioned rebellion against maturity and the "phony" adult world in Munson's protagonist Addison Schacht, a final-year student at a privileged high school in Washington DC who uses a college admission essay to air his views.
Recalling Caulfield’s declaration that he’s “the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful”, Addison chooses to write his essay on his best and worst qualities, professing that he’s “just trying to get everything down, so that you can form a clear picture”.
Articulate and outraged, Addison is a highly intelligent young man with a love of Latin and a handy obsession with Virgil's The Aeneid. Although somewhat ham-fisted in the way it shifts from the story to explain grand concepts, Addison's discussion of Virgil's work is nonetheless a clever device for relaying key themes: universal sorrow; "infandum", the notion of inexpressible horror; or the line "Ille dies primus leti", the point in The Aeneid when everything starts to go wrong.
The inciting incident for Addison’s own story is the murder of a schoolmate, Kevin Broadus, a black student who is gunned down while working in a Stubb’s. Both Kevin and Addison were members of the school’s Gifted and Talented Program, which admits “six black kids or so every year to balm their consciences, and set up pantomimes like Black History Month and Diversity Outreach (which is just as horrifying as its inept name suggests)”.
Addison applies this contemptuous, no-nonsense tone to the social structures around him as he sets himself up as an amateur sleuth, determined to solve Kevin’s murder. The plot, if you could call it that, involves visits to his drug suppliers, getting stoned and having sex with his friend Digger (real name Phoebe, a nice touch ruined by Addison overegging the reference), altercations with anti-Semitic red-necks, multiple dog killings, a surreal interlude in the house of Kevin’s parents and a very public polemic where Addison becomes the unlikely hero at a school rally.
The story comes to life when Addison focuses on his relationships, whether with Digger, a commendably bolshie and believable female presence, or more poignantly with his chronically depressed father, whose lamentations are one of many sources of humour in the novel. Dialogue and dialect are well done, with the drug dealer Noel in particular coming to life through his idioms and stories about mythical girlfriends.
There’s no great tension in the murder mystery, especially in the final quarter where Addison’s random jaunts seem barely linked. It will irk some readers, as will the lack of finesse in the polemic in the closing chapters, which sheds the trappings of plot entirely to discuss the atrocities of the Holocaust. Addison is Jewish and his anger at society’s injustices stem from a deep well of personal and universal suffering.
The title of the book refers to “the slur aimed at the German politicians who signed the Treaty of Versailles” and who were considered by German patriots and fascist groups to be traitors to the country. Addison views himself as a modern-day November Criminal and Munson presents a convincing portrait of an angry young man out to battle the world, even as he feigns indifference.
Recent debuts with similar themes include If I Fall, If I Die by the Canadian author Michael Christie and Neil Smith's engaging novel Boo, which considers the problem of gun violence in contemporary America. Munson's writing has appeared in The National, the New York Times, the Daily Beast and the Times Literary Supplement, among other publications.
"This is the point in the story where, if I were a professional writer, I'd insert a meaningful, beautiful scene." Lines like these appear frequently throughout The November Criminals, with Addison constantly drawing attention to the fact that his essay is not fiction.
But of course, it is fiction, though nowhere near the heights of Salinger or Tartt. It is a solid attempt at conveying a frustrated, lonely voice struggling to understand a perverse adult world.
Or in Addison’s righteous teenage words: “You think eighteen is too young to suffer over your own mortality? Fuck you, ladies and gentlemen.”
