CARPENTER'S BLUFF

In Sanders' debut, a late-in-life coming-of-age novel, a 33-year-old lawyer tries to escape the traumatic events of his childhood.

“I’m done with the past,” says Hank Anawatty. “I don’t think the past is done with you,” Hank’s friend Daniel Rosenthal replies. Readers meet Hank in 1987, during his first and only therapy session. He’s been fired from his job at a law firm for drinking, and his girlfriendhas mysteriously disappeared. When his therapist probes him about his childhood, Hank replies, “There is no relationship between that period of my life and my current problems.” However, readers later learn that Hank’s father has a terrible temper and is overly critical; that his mother died of Pick’s disease, a degenerative brain ailment, while he was young; that his first love dumped him; and that a childhood friend drowned in front of him. Still, Hank insists, “it did not affect me.” Yet his past keeps cropping up—even in dreams—and demands a reckoning. Sanders jumps between scenes set in 1987 and scenes further in Hank’s past; the latter are told in present tense, reinforcing the idea that those long-ago days are still very present to Hank. In fact, his past concerns feel more real and pressing: what will happen to Hank’s friendships when everyone parts ways for college? Will Hank find direction in life? Will he acknowledge his mother’s illness? The 1980s sections, however, are muddled by improbable legal cases, a subplot involving missing jewelry, and references to angels and past lives, among other elements.The only thing that truly links the various sections together is Hank’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the emotional burden he bears; much of the rest of the action feels like filler, meant to ramp up the intrigue. Although many important events are only revealed in conversation after the fact, the scenes that Sanders does depict are well-drawn and sometimes approach moments of real insight regarding guilt and suffering.

An uneven novel with a split personality, one-half of which is worthwhile.