Pleasantville

Eminently satisfying. Legal drama/murder procedural combo with no dumb characters to make others look smart. Ray's grief gives all the action bigger stakes. Love the chosen historical moment. Love the genuine focus on human connection amid the who-dunnit-ness. My only real gripe is Locke's fatphobia, which comes up multiple times.

Also, EXCELLENT narration.

given the electoral mayhem going on in the US right now, it was an interesting time for me to read this book and it felt like a good complement to the US's current election cycle. shenanigans, i tell you. shenanigans!

as happened with Locke's first book in the series (Black Water Rising), i enjoyed this story but found it to have a few wobbles that took away from things for me while i read. Locke is great at character - i quite like when authors write convincingly the opposite gender to their own, and Locke does this well. and her supporting cast are interesting as well. again, the setting (Houston) and time (1996) are vividly portrayed. as a mystery, though, this did feel a bit clunky. while the level of manipulations going on were show more (sadly) believable, some of the incompetencies and conspiracies felt just a little bit too unreal. and also as in the first book, some of the plot threads just hung there.

Pleasantville was recently longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, so i was reading through that lens. and perhaps i have been tougher on the book because of that. overall, i did enjoy it - the book is a quick near page-turner, and a good bit of escapist reading which succeeds in pointing out the failings and vulnerabilities of American democracy. show less

I don’t read many crime and courtroom thrillers, so I have little to compare to this novel. Nevertheless, Attica Locke’s writing certainly seems to be a cut above. The plot is well paced, characters are real and with dimension, and the author’s presence as the narrator is light. I was particularly struck by the resolution of plot points at the end (no spoilers) and how the author’s and characters’s black identities shaped the ending and the explanation of motives. I recommend the book for the ending alone.

Fiction
Attica Locke
Pleasantville: A Novel
New York: Harper
Hardcover, 978-0-06-225940-0
432 pages, $26.99
April 21, 2015


Pleasantville is a historical neighborhood in Houston, Texas, “a planned community…built specifically for Negro families of means and class” in the wake of World War II, and one of its favorite sons, Axel Hathorne, has just entered a runoff election for mayor of Houston. The same night, someone is watching Alicia Nowell, a teenage girl who had been handing out leaflets door-to-door for the election as she stands on a street corner waiting for her ride, “still wanting to believe a way out was possible, but already knowing, with a creeping certainty, that this this night had turned on her, that her disappearing had show more already begun.” How’s that for a hook?

Pleasantville is Attica Locke’s sequel to the many-award-nominated Black Water Rising is back -- with environmental plaintiff’s attorney Jay Porter, this time dealing with the death of his wife, single fatherhood, inertia, and a break-in at his law office that occurs the same night as the election, the same night the girl goes missing. When Hathorne’s campaign manager is arrested and charged with the murder of Alicia Nowell, Locke’s compelling setup for this complex, character-driven legal and political thriller is complete.

Pleasantville has a complicated plot with lots of moving parts. There is a large cast of disparate, intriguing characters, liberally peppered with predators of all stripes. The pacing never lags, goosed along by artfully placed plot twists. The story is a highly entertaining brew of political and personal ambition garnished with journalistic, legal, and corporate corruption. All of which Locke handles beautifully.

The cynicism of the political horse-trading is breathtaking and will confirm all of your conspiracy theories. A good number of the cast are politicians and their consultants, including the reincarnation of Lee Atwater, a city council member who can “hear the whir of a video camera from a block over” and a mayoral candidate who began wearing glasses when she entered the race because “talk of her pale green eyes and the height of her stiletto heels starting getting too much play in the press.”

Porter’s floundering without his wife is touchingly conveyed. “There are things she knew about her family, not secrets so much as hard-earned intimacies, that she inadvertently took with her, leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves in this new, foreign land, daily meeting at the kitchen table, or passing in the hallway, without their shared interpreter.”

There is humor here, as well, spiced with sassy one-liners. At one point Porter concedes that “the breadth of his investigation is an ex-con skulking around Hollis’s [a suspect] place in a rusty El Camino.” Hollis’s place is one of those giant, generic apartment complexes with pretentious names. “This one has the nerve to call itself Beechwood Estates.”

Full of family secrets and political secrets, Pleasantville gives new meaning to the truism that the political is personal. For lovers of intrigue and suspense, this is the total package.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life. show less

This is a truth that I must face: I do not like murder mysteries, detective novels, or police procedurals. I have so seldom read one that pleased me or was memorable that I should know going in that I am wasting precious time. It does not matter if the author can write. This one can and I gave her a point for that. It does not matter because I hate the cliche of the missing girl, the sexual predator, the clever cop/lawyer/whatever, the last minute save, the slang language.

No, I am an Austen girl, a Dickens girl, a lover of the language of Edith Wharton. I do not belong in the seedy, underbelly, heaven forbid realistic world that peoples these kinds of novels. I cringe and want to finish so I can get out of there. I already think there show more is evil enough in this world without dwelling on girls who are snatched from dark, deserted street corners, pregnant teenagers or middle of the night break-ins.

The political undertones of this novel did not improve it for me. Unfortunately, I had issues with that part as well. No use in going into those.

I am sorry. There is probably nothing wrong with this novel, the problem no doubt lies in me. But, please (self) stop doing this. show less

Jay Porter, a Houston lawyer, was first introduced to readers in Black Water Rising, a story of oil industry crime and corruption set in the 1980s. Fast forward to 1996, when personal circumstances have kept Jay out of the courtroom for nearly a year. On election night, a young campaign worker disappears from a Pleasantville street corner. Jay sees a potential link to two previous cases where the young women were later found murdered. When a young man is implicated in the girl's disappearance, his grandfather asks Jay to represent him. The grandfather is an influential political figure in Pleasantville, and well connected to others in Houston and Texas politics. Jay's investigation turns up a whole bunch of unpleasantness from political show more favors to racism to family drama, and through a series of twists and turns we eventually learn the true story of the girl's disappearance, and others receive their just desserts for their political misdeeds.

As in Black Water Rising, Attica Locke weaves important societal themes into the story, tackling issues of prejudice and civil rights. And being set in 1996 with occasional references to the Bush family and then-president Bill Clinton, reminds us all of how American politics will change four years later. There was a lot happening in this novel, and I had a little difficulty keeping track of all the characters and the political machinations. When I sat down to read I frequently had to refresh my memory on what I'd read the day before. But I was also distracted by other things in "real life," which limited my reading time and affected my concentration. When I finally found myself with extended free time to dive in, I was fully immersed and enjoyed the story. show less

Attica Locke’s novel opens on 5 November 1996, when Americans were in the process of returning President Clinton to serve his second term at the White House. The Presidential contest is not, however, the only election holding the attention of the people of Pleasantville, which is a real area in Houston, Texas. The locals there are being canvassed by rival candidates for a mayoral election which has split the local community. There are a lot of burning issues around Pleasantville. Jay Porter, the novel’s principal protagonist, has fought a number of class actions for the community over pollution caused by a number of large businesses, and has established himself as a thorn in the side

Alicia Nowell is a young woman about to graduate show more from high school and has been helping the ‘get out the vote’ push for one of the candidates, delivering leaflets and fliers throughout the neighbourhood. With less than an hour to go before the polls close she decides to head for home, but as she waits on a street corner someone is watching her. She never makes it home, and her badly beaten corpse is found five days later, provoking a massive murder investigation. Shortly after her body is discovered the police arrest a prominent member of one of the electoral teams, and the case becomes a political football, drawing massive attention from the media. Reluctantly Porter bows to unwarranted personal pressure and agrees to represent the accused man.

This book is a fascinating blend of political intrigue, courtroom confrontation and whodunit, with a fair sprinkling of the history of the civil rights movement thrown in. Locke crosses genres with ease, and manages the story with great dexterity. Jay Porter is a good man, and an empathetic character, grappling with
self-doubt, money worries and the pressures of raising his children as a single parent, still wracked with grief over the death of his wife a year ago. show less