The Lola Quartet

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel is another of those novels I picked up because something about the title and the cover (there I go again, initially judging a book by its cover) intrigued me. It turned out to be a pleasure to read - a well-paced mystery exploring all those complicated issues surrounding the juxtaposition of who we are compared to who we thought we'd become.

The novel is named for a high school jazz quartet consisting of most of the novel's central characters, who are pulled back together years later by a dangerous coincidence. Gavin Sasaki is a fedora-sporting, noir-loving, soon-to-be disgraced journalist on an assignment in his Florida home town when his sister informs him that she has come across a young girl who looked exactly like she did when she was that age. They suddenly both wonder what became of Anna, his high school girl friend, who seemed to vanish after his senior year of high school, right before he moved to New York. The picture his sister takes of the eerily familiar-looking child leads to an unforeseeable chain of events as the mystery slowly unravels.

We spend a little time with each of the main characters: the members of the original quartet, and Anna. The story also shifts between past and present, giving us glimpses into how each came to be living a life so far from their youthful, hopeful renderings of the future.
He stopped halfway to look up at the sky. He'd been reading about constelations recently, and had fallen particularly in love with the North Star. It always took him some time to find it in the haze of the streetlight, but there it was. True north, the direction of his second life, New York. He felt in those days that he was always on the edge of something, always waiting, his life about to begin. Everyone seems to be in some state of flux - and none of their lives have turned out remotely as they'd imagined. Their self-imposed isolation and loneliness doggs them all in varying ways, but they also manage to find solutions to their stases - although whether or not they are good solutions is up for debate. Nevertheless, the novel manages to end on a hopeful note.

I also had the good fortune to meet the adorable Ms. Mandel yesterday evening at Left Bank Books, one of my favorite local bookstores! It was not the largest turnout, but the four of us managed to have a nice time sitting in a circle, chatting about the novel, writing, and musing about life in general. Meet the author events always seem to have a certain level of awkwardness (or, perhaps it's just me that's awkward!), but this one felt more intimate, like a new book club getting off the ground. At any rate, I highly recommend both reading The Lola Quartet and meeting the warm and unassuming Emily St. John Mandel if you get the chance. I've already picked up a copy of her second novel, The Singer's Gun, and hope it won't remain in my substantial TBR pile for too long.

*I originally received this novel from NetGalley & Unbridled Books in exchange for my review, but have since bought a hard copy. ( )

This was a quick read, but didn't really move me. The characters, setting and story were all fairly distinct and memorable, but for me that little spark of magic was missing and in the end, I didn't care all that much what happened. ( )

3.5 stars

My blog post about this book is at this link. ( )

"The Lola Quartet" refers to the musical group created by four of the five principal protagonists when they were students at a high school for the performing arts. Gavin, Daniel, Jack, and Sasha were the members of The Lola Quartet. The fifth student, Anna, a year younger than the others, was the sister of one of the members and girlfriend of at least one of the others. The story tells what happened to them in the subsequent ten years by weaving back and forth in time, gradually exposing the meaning and consequences of the puzzling scene in the opening chapter.

Discussion: In spite of being talented students at a magnet school, the five main characters of this book all turned out to be colossal losers. Ten years later, one is a publicly-disgraced mendacious reporter, one a wasted drug addict, one a wasted gambling addict, one a washed-up, twice-divorced cop, and one a drop-out and thief. What are the odds? It seemed a bit unlikely to me. In any event, we never really find out why that happened.

But even if one accepts that set-up, there is more that just didn’t ring true for me. Gavin and Anna were dating in high school and presumably spent all their spare time together, yet in the last two weeks of school, Gavin didn’t see Anna; had no idea where she was; nor any idea why they were incommunicado. Furthermore, when she abruptly left town, he made only a few minor efforts to reach her or find out where she went and why, even after, and in spite of, hearing rumors she was pregnant when she left! (And Gavin isn’t even the one who was drug-addled!)

As for Anna, we are never let in on her motivations, especially about why she felt she had to distance herself from Gavin. In addition, we learn of at least two subsequent unhappy break-ups of hers after Gavin, and though rather central to the plot, we get not a word as to what caused them either.

So Anna remains a cipher, which means to me that (a) her purpose is to show who the other characters are by how they react to her; or (b) she is left enigmatic as part of the noir atmosphere of the book. I could almost believe (a) except we really don’t learn enough about the other characters, save for Gavin (and him only superficially), to support that argument. So I am assuming (b) to be the case, which reminds me why I don’t like noir….

(More broadly, all the information we don’t get may have been a meta referential plot device to point up the annoying way in which none of the characters fully and honestly communicate with one another. Even if that is the case, I don’t think it added to the appeal of the book.)

And then there is the ending, in which two of these five very damaged individuals decide they are somehow qualified to pass judgment on the other three about their moral rectitude (or lack thereof). It just doesn’t seem realistic to me.

One final complaint: There is some very pretty writing in this book, but to me it felt a bit too much like the result of a writing workshop. It definitely has a cinematic, sparse, noir feel, but the regular inclusion of stylistic flourishes at the end of paragraphs and chapters seemed too consciously constructed.

Some examples:

“He stared unseeing out the window into white.”

“Gavin walked back out into the heat with his fedora in his hands.”

“He drifted alone in his lawn chair on the grass.”

Evaluation: This book has gotten very good reviews, but I wasn’t as enamored with it as most reviewers. I thought there were too many holes in the plot, and too much that didn’t make sense to me. I also felt a bit too aware of a writer plying her craft, rather than being immersed in the story in a way that fully transported me. ( )

I'm a fan of Emily St. John Mandel. There is something about her writing that creates a mood or atmosphere around her characters, allowing the reader to come to know them deeply. I can feel what they feel.

The Lola Quartet talks about the consequences of choices we make. These characters seem especially disposed to make bad ones, leading to almost inevitable conclusions. And yet the book ends on a hopeful note, with most of them positioned to make a better start.

The plot isn't told in a linear fashion. The beginning is downright disjointed. But, knowing this author, I knew it would come together and that I would be drawn into this world of jazz music, drug dealers and people haunted by their own past. ( )