Author: Lewis Shiner

When I first started putting up these short reviews, I didn’t think I’d write about multiple books by a single author. As in so many other ways, Liz Moore has made me think again.

HEFT is her second novel, from 2012, and it’s radically different from her gritty, suspense-driven LONG BRIGHT RIVER (2020). HEFT alternates between two first-person viewpoint characters: Arthur Opp, a morbidly obese former academic who hasn’t left his house in years, and Kel Keller, a high-school athlete with prospects of a major league career. What these two people have in common is Charlene Turner, who is Arthur’s former student and Kel’s mother. Over the course of the novel, secrets are revealed (but not all of them) and lives are changed. I’ll let you discover the details for yourself.

From reading the flap, I didn’t think these were characters I would be interested in. In fact I came to care deeply for them. The rare and wondrous thing that Moore has crafted here is a novel in which there are no villains and none of the characters is mocked or condescended to. Everyone is fighting to make sense of the world as best they can, to be a good person, to live with their particular pain. Arthur’s descriptions of the great solace he gets from eating are sensuous and convincing. Kel’s struggle to accept the kindness of his friends and their families is likewise profound and real. The supporting characters, down to the lowliest spear-carrier, are vivid and memorable. No gunfights or car chases are needed to make this book utterly compelling reading.

In HEFT, Moore repeatedly confounded my expectations in delightful ways, and proved that LONG BRIGHT RIVER was no fluke. With these two novels, she has become one of my favorite writers, and I’ll be gobbling up her other books with an appetite worthy of Arthur Opp.

I could go on at some length about all the things in this book that should have annoyed me. The present tense. The lack of quotation marks (why, oh why do writers do that?). The half-page chapters needlessly breaking up continuous action. The space breaks after every sentence during the climax. The secrets that the not-entirely reliable first-person narrator holds back until nearly the end.

But I won’t. The truth is that Moore’s protagonist–Michaela, aka Mickey, Fitzpatrick–uniformed beat cop, single mom, sister to the homeless heroin addict Kacey–hooked me from the start. It’s not just the gorgeous prose, the complex characters, the vivid setting (Philadelphia’s vice-ridden Kensington neighborhood), or the masterfully constructed storyline (which had me gobbling red herrings and fighting for balance as the rug was pulled out from under me time and again). What makes this book so mesmerizing is its relentless compassion.

There’s a somewhat conventional suspense armature that holds everything together, the hunt for a serial killer of prostitutes. Moore strips this chestnut of all sensationalism and focuses instead on realistic police work, the grim monotony of the victims’ lives, and hints that things may not be what they seem. It’s personal for Mickey because her sister could be the next victim, yet this plot thread recedes as Moore, in long sections labeled “Then,” reveals more and more of the Fitzpatrick family history, the addictions, the bonds, the betrayals, the poverty and hardship. Privilege, in this novel, is something only seen at a distance.

As the story unwinds, the characters surprise repeatedly–with cynicism and cruelty, but also with unexpected kindness and wrenching insight.

LONG BRIGHT RIVER is literary suspense with the emphasis on “literary,” making me think of a cross between Donna Tartt and Tana French, dealing with the most serious issues of morality, gender, and psychology, while never losing the momentum of its juggernaut plot.