Neon in Daylight

by Hermione Hoby

Catapult     2018

284 pages    Literary Fiction

 

Neon in daylight is a

Great pleasure 

(Frank O’Hara)

Kate arrived in New York from England to the apartment of her mother’s friend during the extremely hot summer of 2012.  Ostensibly Kate is there to take care of the friend’s cat, but more purposefully (or not) to find herself. She is in the midst of finishing her PhD and may be trying to get away from a disappointing relationship. Her mother’s friend had said to her, “Oh, my god, your mom and I had such adventures when we were your age. Because you gotta travel! You gotta live, you know?”

“And Kate didn’t know. Didn’t know what live meant, in this context.” 

Inez, a teenager who has just graduated from high school meets Kate in the unlikeliest of places, a bodega in the neighborhood. Inez is also at loose ends. Her divorced parents want her to go to college, but she can’t see herself there. She has picked a couple of highly unlikely ways to earn money—selling Aderall on the street and satisfying men’s sexual fantasies. Inez becomes Kate’s summer friend by inviting her to the frantic and frenetic activities of New York’s teenage scene.

Bill plays the pivotal role in the unfolding drama. As a young man, Bill wrote a coming-of-age novel—a kind of Catcher in the Rye—and he has lived off the proceeds of the novel and the ensuing movie into middle age. He teaches creative writing, is a purposeless drunk, and is also Inez’s father.

The plot, such as it is, focuses on these three and the intersection of their lives. Because of the skillfully drawn narrative, the reader doesn’t question the logic about how these three find each other in the midst of America’s largest city. Kate doesn’t realize that Inez is Bill’s daughter until late in the book, but she never mentions to Inez that she is having an affair with an older man. Inez never mentions her father’s name to Kate, and Bill never mentions to his daughter that he has met a young woman named Kate. There is a constant state of ennui that engulfs all the characters. 

Meanwhile, the city of New York chugs on and on. It is alive and vibrant in ways that the characters are not. My favorite scene happens when Kate follows a man lugging a grand piano into Washington Square Park, where he sits down and begins to play Rachmaninoff. The city is so skillfully drawn that it becomes a major player in the story, as is the heat of the summer of 2012. As the narrative ends, Hurricane Sandy is drawing nigh at the same time there is some resolution in the relationships between the three main characters. As the city gears up for the rapidly-approaching hurricane, the book ends—the only triumph being the triumphant city. The New York Times reviewer says, “We can see what these characters cannot. Their lives seem so particular, so painful and noisy to them. But under the city’s “merciless” skyline, in the wake of a hurricane, how similar they suddenly are, how small, how human.” 

One reviewer says “that sentiment—the way unlikelihood fosters a sense of inevitability—is the book’s engine.” None of the characters are particularly likeable, but that is not the author’s purpose. Both the reviews in the New York Times and the LA Review of Books praise Hoby’s talent, her observational ability, and her gift of language. It is a brilliant first novel.

Here is a charming interview with Hermione Hoby on the Shelf Awareness website. Scroll down to find it.