A SMILE SHY

In Mendel’s debut novel, a heavy drinker hiding from his past and a schemer looking for an easy life meet in a run-down trailer park.

It’s 1998, and Weezal Peterson resides in a rural Pennsylvania-based complex called Big Bass Lake and Mobile Homes—a bit of a misnomer given that the lake has dried up—slamming back whiskey, leaving drunken notes for himself on the bathroom mirror, and trying to forget his greatest regrets. His drinking buddy is Marty McGraw, a would-be poet suffering from writer’s block, a bad marriage, and the dubious distinction of cooking the best-smelling meatballs in the trailer park. Then Maisey Walker shows up at Weezal’s trailer, looking for a man whom she believes to be a millionaire. Maisey has already been married twice, killed both her husbands, and been acquitted of murder twice. Now she’s looking for a third husband—and she thinks that Weezal could be that very man. The complicated backstory involves an ink company founded in Colonial Philadelphia, an unstable billionaire who once served as Weezal’s mentor, and a tattooed tough named Teenage Jesus. Will Maisey’s scheme force Weezal to come to terms with his past? Mendel gleefully illustrates the world of the trailer park with a sense of lyricism: “The thick, leafy rhubarb sat motionless, sagging in the humidity like a field of ninety-year-old breasts. The gnats and horseflies were busy inspecting something rotting in a burning barrel that was planted at Weezal’s front door.” The book is satirical and often quite funny: Marty, whose wife is a teacher in the local school system, notes the rise of groups such as “Teenagers Against Being Identified With Aggressive Nicknames,” which take issue with high school mascots like the Swashbucklers or the Cavaliers. However, the narrative has a tendency to ramble, and although Maisey’s backstory is engaging, the prolonged sections of Weezal and Marty drinking and riffing soon grow tedious, which is disappointing, as there’s a great deal of fun material here.

A grungy, absurdist work that would have benefited from better pacing.