Monk's Quirky Characters Never Transcend Silliness

Bathsheba Monk is generally talented at toeing the line between platitude and profundity. But the prose in her debut novel, “Nude Walker,” occasionally stumbles across that line, and the results can be nauseating: “The North is the land of ice; the South, the land of fire and passion. If ice mates with ice, there is only more ice. And if fire mates with fire, there is a conflagration. But ice and fire make water and life.”

To be fair, not all of “Nude Walker” is so painfully cliché. It does, after all, have a scene in which a naked schizophrenic—the main character’s mother—struts around rural Pennsylvania bedecked with little more than a handbag and red lipstick. But by indulging in this kind of purple dialogue so early in a love story, Monk writes herself into a stylistic predicament that is hard for the novel to recover from. Especially when it’s a love story between an American woman and Lebanese man, a supposedly smoldering tale of doomed passion, East and West, North and South, so familiar that the book seems to almost be a parody of itself. Certainly, parts of the story are intended to be tongue-in-cheek, especially the aforementioned schizophrenic and her litany of medications; her husband, who embezzles $30,000 from his wife’s steel company; and the last Lenape Native American, running a love-shaman enterprise, complete with spirit bears. The simplicity of the characters in “Nude Walker” adds to the sense of parody; few of them have credible levels of emotional complexity, in spite of their idiosyncrasies. Yet despite Monk’s cheeky attitude toward her characters, “Nude Walker” does not quite cross the line into actual parody. There is something too earnest in the love story and its tragic end, in Monk’s clear affinity for the inhabitants of Warrenside, Pennsylvania. The reader instead is left with the creeping horror that she might actually be serious. Ultimately, her paper cut-out characters and the lack of depth in the narration leave this matter ambiguous. Though the story Monk narrates is at times wonderfully wise, and her characters consistently entertain, the inconsistency of her tone prevents “Nude Walker” from succeeding either as humor or a serious novel.

The novel begins in Afghanistan, where Kat, a female soldier descended from wealthy steel entrepreneurs in Warrenside, falls in love with Max, her unit’s translator, from the same town. Of course, Kat has a childhood sweetheart to whom she is practically betrothed, and her schizophrenic mother would be absolutely horrified if she brought home an Arab-American. And, of course, Max’s hyper-traditional father has already arranged a marriage for Max with a beautiful Lebanese girl, and wants him to take over the family business. Instead of developing a believable romance between Kat and Max, however, Monk relies entirely on familiar clichés—Max is a dark, exotic stranger, sensitive and and intellectual, gifted at quoting Arabic love poetry. Chick magnet.

But thankfully, the scope of ”Nude Walker” is not totally confined to their fate. Instead, as they return home from Afghanistan, the story blossoms into a narration of the tensions between their families in Warrenside. As the events unfold, Monk offers the perspectives of a range of characters. While each character seems blown wildly out of proportion, at least each is interesting, and each is treated with equal humanity. There are many stereotypes in this book—among them a Native American “love-guru” who induces dreams of dancing bears in her clients through “shamanic methods,” and an crazy, rich, old woman absorbed by her family’s role in the history of the town. Yet, the author’s attitude toward them is affectionate and thoughtful, even if it is occasionally fraught with stereotypes. Monk seems to examine each stylized man or woman as they come into the story with care, then to send them into the mysterious wheel of fate. The story Monk weaves is one that is genuinely interested in people and how they live, and though her characters lack real dimension, their anguishes and motivations are plausible. The arbitrariness of fate in “Nude Walker” rings uncomfortably true in the midst of all the clichés, because the way each character is served in the end does not align with any predictable plot or poetic justice. Rather, fate in this book has an ironic authenticity—no one gets what they deserve, because life is not fair, only surprising. It is an uncomfortably realistic and thoughtful end for a book wavering on the edge of parody. The final product is discord and confusion about Monk’s intentions.

There is some genuine warmth and wisdom in Monk’s ideas, in the things her characters are searching for, and the malicious hand that guides the fate of each. But, ultimately, it seems to be the warmth and wisdom of someone who likes telling too many stories in a coffee shop without ever probing the humanity of the people who inspired her stories. Monk may be making fun of her characters in the wry way she constructs their streams of consciousness. But in doing so she asks us to identify with their yearnings and believe in the wisdom of the destinies they’re dealt. Sadly, without the necessary depth in any of her characters, these ambitions prove too lofty for Monk to surmount.