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Crown

reviews by Ron Hogan

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"Standing there on the street corner, I nearly had an 
out-of-body experience. It was almost as if I was 
flying above, looking down, and seeing myself. I 
wasn't disappointed at what I saw. I was sucking
on a Gitane, I was wearing my leather, I had a 
Nine Inch Nails riff echoing in my head, I was 
waiting on a hot Danish number, and I was ten feet
away from my iron. I would have dared anyone to 
tell me I wasn't rimming the godamn Edge."

Nick Laws is plugged into the scene. He's a part-time hand model, a part-time party promoter, and full-time pursuer of Thing. What's Thing? Thing is the hottest of the supermodels, and Nick organizes his life around getting as close to Thing as he can. The Shallow Man follows Nick as he cruises his way through a world of parties, ad shoots, and whirlwind sex with beautiful women. Debut novelist Coerte V. W. Felske plunges the reader right into Nick's head, making us see the world the way he sees it -- inhabited by, among others, Thing, Guy (who is always after Thing), Catsuit Feminists (his best friend Alexis), Donuts (male models so obsessed with themselves that they are metaphorically blowing themselves), and Civilians (nearly everybody else).

But the jargon doesn't end with identifying the people in Nick's world. Here's Nick on a situation he likes to refer to as "The Wall":

"Guy looks at Thing, she looks at him. She expects
him to say something. But, with the pressure of 
her eyeballing him, he chokes, and looks away. He
looks back at her but now she has turned away. 
His lips then part to utter something, but only 
air shoots out (or something stupid that he kills 
himself for saying later). He then notices Thing 
getting fidgety. She shuffles a step. The more 
uncomfortable she gets, the more he can think of
nothing to save himself. He'll try anything. He 
looks over her shoulder, smiles falsely as if 
to greet some imaginary acquaintance, and POOF! 
She's gone..." 

But The Shallow Man isn't shallow. As the events of the novel put him through his paces, Nick is forced to reach under his carefully constructed surface and confront himself. The second half of the book may seem a bit too methodical (Nick's world collapses around him almost too neatly in a boom, boom, boom order), and yet what he discovers about his identity isn't necessarily what you'd expect. Felske offers a fast-paced, clever tour through Nick's world. You don't get a chance to slow down and realize what's hit you until you've put the book down -- and the book reads so well that you'll probably want to race straight through the Thing parade in one sitting.

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