Beautiful Children

I've never been to Las Vegas. I have flown over it while on a flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles and all I saw were vast columns of light shooting up from the desert floor, a striking image that has stayed with me a long time. I may never go to Las Vegas, so for the moment it will remain a bright and shiny object that is very pretty on the surface, and I may never know what lies beneath the surface. Charles Bock, on the other hand, grew up in Vegas and lends his expert eye to detailing all levels of society in his debut novel Beautiful Children. This was the selection for my latest book club,

We met over at Lee's house, however, it was woefully attended, with only Lee, me, Will, and Joshua. And Joshua didn't even finish the book. Yes, Josh, I am calling you out. Bad book clubber! The consensus between those of us that finished the book was that it was a solid B. It was a well crafted book that set up many different characters and interesting plot lines, however, the ending was unsatisfying because Bock failed to bring a sufficient resolution to the main conflict, and never showed the connection between the characters, which it seemed like he was attempting to do for the first half of the book, but disregarded in the second half.

The novel is set in present day Las Vegas, with the main plot line focusing on the disappearance of Newell, the 12 year old son of Lincoln, a former professional baseball player turned promotions executive for a big Las Vegas resort, and his wife Lorraine, a former Vegas stripper. Newell disappears after his parents let him go out on a Saturday night with his older friend Kenny, who is 16 and has a car. The novel slips back and forth between the present where Lincoln and Lorraine are struggling to live with the constant spectre of Newell's disappearance, and the night that Newell disappeared. The tension arises from the disconnect between these two time periods, both of which are hopefully leading to an explanation for the disappearance.

As a counterpoint to this central plot line, we are also introduced to many secondary characters, including Bix Biederbexxe, a cartoonist, Cheri Blossom and Ponyboy, a stripper and her punk boyfriend, and the bald girl, another young girl who finds herself hanging out with various slackers and layabouts, traveling the city in a old ice cream truck. Most of these characters end up circling and intersecting with each other, in some direct ways and in other more ephemeral ways.

Throughout the novel, Bock builds a vast overview of the different levels of society that makes up Las Vegas. He tends to focus primarily on the seedier side of Las Vegas, with its strip clubs, gambling halls, pawn shops, and porn producers. He shows a society built and sustained on getting and receiving pleasure and what people will go through and what people are willing to give up in order to attain it. It is a scathing assessment of our consumer-oriented society. Most of the people in the book are self-absorbed and only looking out for their own needs. Newell is shown to be a spoiled child who has no moral center. His disappearance does not come as a shock but merely as an inevitable action of his character.

Although this description makes the novel seem nihilistic, there are moments within where Bock shows fleeting instances of humanity, touching on how his characters are always human, and as such, they can not be purely good or purely evil. The bald girl meets a pregnant runaway who is strung out on drugs, but who collects milk cartons with her picture on them, so that she can always call her parents if things get too dire. Ponyboy, who is probably the most vile character, using his girlfriend's body as a platform for his get rich quick schemes, protects Cheri when a porn shoot gets out of hand.

Unfortunately, after painting this broad canvas, Bock gets trapped in the corner. Plot lines and characters that you think are going to have impact or will intersect never do, some characters leave the scene without much explanation, and the central plot line of the mystery of Newell's disappearance is not satisfactorily concluded. I read the last chapter several times in order to ascertain why Newell disappeared to no avail. Sometimes ambiguity is needed, but in this case it blunted the impact of the novel.

Aside from those small quibbles, Beautiful Children is very well written and is a fine debut showcasing the work of an emerging talent. He definitely is adept at highlighting the seedy underbelly that is hidden beneath the shiny surface that is Vegas. It makes me wonder if my nighttime flyover is probably the best vantage point to see the city. All shiny, bright and light filled, the darkness hidden away from view.