He felt like the bright world outside was moving away from him and he wanted it back. He wanted it so badly he could feel rage growing inside him, a terrible, overwhelming rage about what was being taken from him and how deeply he already felt its loss. He felt like he was growing weak, like all the strength and will he had left were being drained away while he was allowed one last glimpse of life before he was shoved into darkness where he would remain forever, lost and broken and alone. [loc. 1706]
Paul Marden is 62 years old: he endures chronic pain after an unidentified infection, and -- no longer able to work as a lecturer in media and communications -- he lives in a Long Island beachside development called Skyview, a product of the 1950s when being able to view rocket launches a thousand miles away at Cape Canaverel was deemed a selling point. Hurricane Sandy devastated the area, and Paul's house is one of the few remaining inhabited dwellings on Satellite Street. One night, stomping back (like Godzilla, he thinks) from a movie showing, he's offered a lift by a woman he almost recognises. She's Lelee, formerly Paul's schoolmate Arthur Connors, and a side-effect of her transition has been the ability to tune into the voices of the dead.
That would be an awesome novel if it went no further: but Satellite Street, while remaining focussed on the friendship between Paul and Lelee, also explores Paul's relationship with his dementia-afflicted father, and Lelee's quest for justice on behalf of the ghost of a popular DJ, Happy Howie, who was hounded out of his job by accusations of pedophilia. His accuser, a former stage magician and professional sceptic known as the Great Osvaldo, threatens to ruin Lelee in a similar way. But, acting on information received via Lelee, Paul finds himself uniquely positioned to redeem Howie's reputation and muster some serious legal firepower.
This was an absolute delight: kindness, hope, friendship, love -- and the dark sides of all of those, too. Lerman is an award-winning poet and can make the simplest sentence into something arresting. I especially liked her depiction of Paul's hopelessness in the face of his disability, and the ways in which Lelee and her (very real) mediumship broaden his horizons and show him that there is more to life than a slow painful descent to death. Past and present, death and the afterlife, despair and survival: and near the end of the novel they sit in Paul's back yard, watching a rocket go up from Cape Canaverel, and I felt as though I was sharing their perfect, transitory happiness.
No comments:
Post a Comment