THE BARGAIN SHOPPER

Toulouse Charles Rochambeau is not, by own admission, a “modern man.” Although he’s scion of a once-prominent family (his French ancestor helped Gen. George Washington defeat the British at Yorktown), the 60-something Charles works for his living. Specifically, he’s employed as the “Certified Professional Shopper” and majordomo for blue-blooded divorcee and “giftaholic” Beatrice Wolcott, who owns a three-acre farm in Westchester County. Charles himself resides down the road in a tiny studio apartment in a hideous modern building owned by Beatrice’s inept handyman, Ryan Keneally. Charles is highly literate, unbearably pretentious, and preternaturally good at finding bargains: “You will never see me in a department store from November to March. These ‘sales’ are fraudulent or outright scams. Stores charge ‘bust out retail prices.’ By Thanksgiving, retailers gradually withdraw discounts and promotions, mark things up and insidiously bolster their net selling prices and profit margins.” He grouses his way through life with little positive to say about anyone other than his aristocratic employer, whose closeness with Ryan fills him with suspicion. A fierce believer in the American dream—which he feels he has been denied—Charles maintains increasingly contrarian positions regarding Covid-19 as the pandemic continues. While he attempts to unspool the nature of the relationship between Beatrice and Ryan and hatches plans to restore the Wolcotts (and, therefore, the Rochambeaus) to greatness, the bargain shopper and self-described “Soldier of Truth” recounts missed opportunities in his life and pens a manifesto worthy (in his mind) of the philosophical and literary greats that crowd his bookshelves.  

In Charles’ narration, LaTour’s prose takes on a delusional grandiosity worthy of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, littered with literary references, syntactical gymnastics, and orotund vulgar jokes. Here, for example, the narrator asserts that his talent for shopping is equivalent to a sex act, thus allegedly producing an orgasmic reaction in a cashier: “To put it bluntly, my vendeur, Donna has been transmogrified into a horny wench. Although not quite une salope. Nakedly exposed to the staggering value of my purchases, she is turned on—not just aroused, but desperate to seduce my monster, the unrepentant Dingle Screw.” The story is rather threadbare, but the plot is hardly the point: This book is centered solely on the voice and personality of Charles, who proves, ultimately, to be even stranger than he initially appears. The shopper is a proud Luddite, and much about the novel feels like a throwback to an earlier literary postmodernism. Even so, Charles manages to capture something of the madness of the moment, as embodied in a certain type of aging White American male (former president Donald Trump included, who’s referenced often). Readers will know after only a page or so whether this book is for them, but it’s most likely to appeal to fans of such verbose authors as Sterne, James Joyce, and John Kennedy Toole.