SIMON RECOMMENDS:
“Train”
by Pete Dexter

Set in post war California this story follows the lives of three - misfits really, three people who because of their reaction to quite shocking events or maybe it's just plain reality, are unable to conform to the quite rigid standards of social behaviour which predominate the time. Train the eponymous hero is a quiet golfing genius, in fact he is good at almost all physical things, like gardening or roofing or machine maintainence; he's good with his hands, he has the knack, he is an adept. But he's terrible at communicating. Miller Packard is a good cop, severely traumatised by his wartime experience in the South Pacific (litrerally), he gets a thrill out of violence and only seems to feel alive in situations of extreme danger, in fact he's a psychopath. Norah is the third side of the triangle; subjected to a terrifying ordeal, which is unflinchingly narrated in horrific detail; she is numb and lost.

Somehow these three misfits lives come together for a while, and for a while it works.

One thing I really like about PD's style is that he doesn't labour the story, sometimes he just give you the barest bones of the plot and leaves it up to the reader to flesh out the story. It's actually very cool, I mean that in the sense of elegance.

Actually, I loved it.