Jabberwocky Reviews

26: Tales From Heller by FranklinBarnes

@FranklinBarnes, Tales From Heller

So at this point I imagine y'all might be sick of hearing about this guy and his writing, and y'all might also be wondering why he got to skip the queue, but when he told me about this sequel I knew I wanted to read it, and I figured that if I were reading it anyway I may as well review it. That's just how it is sometimes.

Anyway, this is a sequel, and for that reason I'm going to be lighter on some elements and heavier on others, since there are different norms about character and plot development. I also have the tough task of writing a review while still avoiding plot spoilers for this or the previous book. Let's get into it, shall we?

If anyone wants a refresher of where we left off, in brief summary: kid gets bored, starts a cult, realizes too late this was a very bad idea. There's some other stuff that happens in between, but that's the TL;DR which is most relevant here, as the Tales From Heller spend more time on the "very bad idea" part than anything else. I liked this book. You know it.

So with where we left off last time, and with my knowledge that this was a sequel, I was expecting something chronologically separated from what came before: perhaps this would be a set of new characters in Heller's dystopia, or the original cast all grown up. And we do get some of that. But what this really is is a set of short stories that, in a way, are a lot of "what ifs" about the original story: what could have happened behind the scenes, or parallel with what happened. We start with Alan investigating a theft in a satire of a film noir, and most of the stories are these sorts of unconnected scenes, often funnier ones: Frank tries his hardest on multiple occasions to avoid implying he has a thing for Juliet, two teachers have a prank war, a minor character gets her moment in the limelight chasing down a pigeon. Many of these vignettes serve to give formerly minor characters their time in the limelight—Madeline and Harry, names you probably remember only if you were really paying attention the first time around, end up adjacent to the main cast, and everyone gets some time to shine. Those sorts of vignettes comprise the majority of the beginning, and honestly most of these, even if there's some greater meaning, can stand alone as lighter fare. That's not a bad thing, but it's noticeably different from You Must Remember This.

As usual, you appear to have some tricks up your sleeve: by the time we get about halfway through, it's clear that there are some underlying plotlines that have been stringing these tales together, and these occupy the rest of the anthology. It's parallelism, that's what it is. Frank and Juliet are the main characters here as they were before, and I think the main "plot" we have is recasting them in a different light: Juliet, especially with the UCLA diversion, is forced to step out of Frank's shadow and become her own leader making equally tough and significant decisions; in contrast, Frank is defined by his inability to escape his fate, and perhaps more so than in You Must Remember This he feels like a tragic figure, someone who wants to atone for his mistakes but doesn't know how. I think these are the main foci of the Tales From Heller, but we see these same ideas reverberate through the side-plots: we have Harry and Daisy following in their predecessors' footsteps, Bill (you really didn't think we'd notice the Bill Murray reference) lampshading what a weird world Heller is and reminding us how this world is very real even though it's very absurd, and of course the constant Groundhog Day references that make this book (like many others) about Man's search for meaning. A lot of these themes reminded me of You Must Remember This, and I get the distinct impression I just read 120000 words you wanted to put into that book rather than a true sequel. This is what I mean when I say this is a book of "what ifs": I wouldn't have blinked twice at reading many of these in the original, even if some stand out as their own thing.

There's a lot more I could say analytically, but I think the most effective way of explaining my thoughts is through comparison with the original. You've recontextualized a lot of your original material in a really sophisticated way, but you've made no secret—you even said so in the blurb–that you aren't intending to stray far from your roots. You're standing on the shoulders of giants here—giants you've written, at least—but I think where You Must Remember This excelled in creating a broad world where so many ideas exist in harmony, this excels in taking a deep dive into a few very specific ideas. This feels like you were tasked with writing an essay to prove "You Must Remember This is about ____," and to prove that claim you drew from your source material and wrote a lot more in lieu of analysis. If your first book were a symphony, this collection is a theme and variations. Rachmaninoff's take on Paganini, perhaps? You'll get what I mean. Some of what we don't get that we got originally is a deeper look at characters like Tom and Regina, or really the holistic view of what people were doing outside the club—and yeah, the point is that the club extends its tendrils into everything, but perhaps we could have had more of a break.