TIMES LIKE THESE

In Klein’s novel, a group of estranged middle-aged Californians reunite as expatriates in Mexico.

Seven years ago, two unmarried couples—Jack Carter and Chloe, and Owen Brookes and Anna—were the best of friends. They lived it up in beach towns around San Diego and took trips together to Baja California. After Jack and Anna had a brief sexual tryst, both couples split up, and the four went their separate ways. Since then, former journalist Jack became a bestselling novelist, while Owen made his name as a photographer braving war zones for Time magazine. When Owen shows up unexpectedly on Jack’s porch in Del Mar, California, Jack is initially anxious, but the two immediately fall back into an easy friendship. Owen has a month off from work, and he convinces Jack to get the rest of the gang back together for a trip to Rosarito, Mexico—just like in the old days. Anna, now a wealthy, recently divorced mother of two, agrees to come, as does Chloe, now a successful painter. “Everything was exactly as I remembered it,” Jack marvels while describing Rosarito. “This was Mexico and Mexico does not change, the world merely evolves around it…” The trip is so enjoyable that the group persuade themselves that the expat life in Mexico is what they need to be happy. With Anna’s kids in tow, the reconciled couples resettle in the small Yucatan village of San Rafael. At first, Jack loves it—he’s writing up a storm—but then Owen convinces him to put his journalism hat back on and investigate some fighting in nearby Chiapas, which separates the group. Have things really changed for these old friends, or are they fooling themselves?

Klein’s muscular prose will appeal to fans of a certain tradition of American fiction; the story is apparently set in modern times, but Jack and the other characters often speak and narrate as if they’re in an Ernest Hemingway novel: “ ‘Anna’s a damn good woman,’ I said. ‘Damn good. Too good for the likes of me. Funny, but I’ve been haunted my whole life by kind and good women.’ A sudden feeling of ablution flushed through me as I membered the innumerable days Owen and I had talked about such things.” Those who aren’t fans of this style, though, may find that Jack and Owen’s opinions about what’s wrong with the world and the people in it aren’t very scintillating. It’s a short novel at a little more than 130 pages in length, and its narrative moves along quickly. However, the balance of the story feels skewed; there’s far too much about Jack’s history at the San Diego Sun and his memories of his absent father, for example, and not nearly enough about his relationship with Chloe. Just as its characters are essentially playing at being expats, one may feel that book is playing at being a Graham Greene or Malcolm Lowry opus—evoking such works’ moods and concerns without providing their underlying pathos.

An earnest but ultimately underdeveloped pastiche.