THE DOGS...BARKING

In Notzon’s novel, an unhappy young man flees his Texas hometown for an acting career in New York that he hopes will be his salvation.

Jason Kelly lives in a small Texas town near the border with Mexico and is the youngest in his family. His siblings bully him mercilessly, and his less-than-perfect family life, combined with harsh Catholic schooling and sexual abuse by a priest, leads Jason to grow up angry and unhappy. Even the lovely Kathryn, one of his closest friends, can’t convince him that he’s a wonderful guy with many talents. Jason turns away from Kathryn and his small-town friends and finds solace in the works of Shakespeare and the world of the theater, deciding that the path to self-fulfillment must take him across the country to New York. Upon arriving in Manhattan, however, Jason balks at how rough-and-tumble the city is and how unwilling it is to give easy breaks. Notzon adapted his novel from his radio play, and in the primary details—an actor moves from Texas to the Big Apple—it seems to follow the author’s life. Jason’s feeling of incurable emptiness and his sense that nothing he does will ever be good enough will ring true for many. However, what might work as dialogue when spoken aloud, reads as melodramatic and heavy-handed on the page, which distracts from any sympathy readers may have developed for the protagonist. A conversation between Jason and his therapist in New York yields unrealistically verbose pronouncements. Every character in the novel speaks in this same, unnatural way, giving them little sense of uniqueness. Jason’s inner rage initially seems justified, but his reluctance to listen to others and his quickness to dismiss his therapists make him a less likable character as the novel progresses, and his repeated violent outbursts grow tiresome.

Spends too much airtime on overly dramatic language and too little on character development.