Book Club Recap: The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
Our first book club pick of the year made for a really singular reading experience. We could say a lot of things about this book, but definitely not that it was ‘usual’ or ‘boring.’
This is also our first pick written by a male author. It was great reading a book from a man’s perspective for a change.
Here’s what our discussion revealed.
SETTING… AND ITS EFFECT ON NARRATIVE DRIVE
What a curious setting—the combination of the Utah desert and a truck on a road! The setting is so unusual that the reader immediately gets drawn into the narrative. There’s two ways of creating narrative drive: by raising the reader’s curiosity, or the reader’s concern. In the opening pages, the author relied exclusively on curiosity to make the reader keep turning the pages, and a lot of that curiosity comes from reader’s need to understand and learn more about the setting.
The plot kicks in when Ben (the protagonist) stumbles upon a beautiful woman in a deserted house in the middle of the desert. Up until that point, the author is showing us what peculiar place the desert is, and introducing us to the quirky characters who dwell there.
For some of our members, this was the most interesting and well-done part of the book.
Some of us had issues connecting to the protagonist during this drawn-out opening. Some of those issues are due to use of filter words and passive voice (the author used far too many filter words, and overused the word ‘was,’ to a hardly explicable level) but some are due to the fact that, while our curiosity was employed with the setting, the concern as the other element of the narrative drive was left out. If we’d have known more about what Ben struggled with or cared for, we would have felt more connected to him. In these opening pages, however, he served more as a desert chronicler than a protagonist with problems of his own.
In any event, we agreed that the setting was the most interesting part of the book and it was handled beautifully. The desert is definitely a character in this book, maybe even the main character. The way it affects the people who live there, the way it plays with them, cares for them, taunts them and protects them, is nothing short of amazing.
CHARACTERIZATION
Apart from the desert that was beautifully and fully characterized, we thoroughly enjoyed Ben’s characterization as well. In fact, for many of us, it was the favorite part of the book apart from the setting.
Ben is a truck driver, and if you expect him to be a bigoted hill-billy because of that, you’re in for a surprise. Ben is sensitive, caring, and highly intelligent. This mere avoidance of cliches made you love and root for the guy.
The empathy and kindness which he shows toward other characters in and out of the desert is something that draws the reader in and ultimately connects you with him despite the distance created by filter words and the fact that before the plot kicks in—he’s just chronicling what he sees and knows.
And his loneliness is deep and complete. It is so perfectly mirrored in the desert and its unforgiving, harsh ways. What Ben most wants is connection. The way he gets that connection is by delivering items to his customers along the road 117. He might not exchange many words with these people, but make no mistake—these connections run deep. On the surface level, Ben wants to keep his business going. On a deeper level, his business is just a bridge to human connection. He isn’t in it for the money. Or the kick he gets out of driving toward the mesa in the sunrise. This makes you root so hard for the guy.
As opposed to Ben, Claire’s characterization was a point of contention. Many of us didn’t only fail to connect with her, but genuinely disliked her. We couldn’t decide if her characterization was done exceptionally well, or if it was seriously flawed.
While Ben felt his love for her was requited, most of us felt Claire was calculated and used him to advance her own agenda—getting back to her husband for the betrayal of a century he pulled on her.
So, if this was the author’s intention (to show a calculated character who the protagonist mistakes for a loving one), it was a success. But if his intention was to show Claire genuinely cared for Ben, his efforts failed.
The big takeaway here is—your reader should know, one way or the other. So even if his intention was to make Claire calculated (which is how it appeared to be), the reader should know this with 100% certainty, otherwise they’re walking away from the book with questions, and that can be unsatisfying.
CHARACTER ARC
Ben didn’t have much of a character arc. Sure, he started out longing for connection, and ended up feeling connected to Walt and Claire (and Ginny), but for most of our members, this character arc was not a dramatic one. In fact, if Ben had a character arc, it happened off-stage, when he had transformed from a bar-brawler and drunkard to who he was on the first page.
That said, it can be argued that not all books and stories are rooted in dramatic character arcs. While it is a common definition of a story most of us abide by that the story is how a character changes in response to the plot that happens to them, we tend to forget it’s just one of the rules, and as such, it’s susceptible to bending. Some stories are just a slice of life. For this to work out, though, that slice of life has to offer something of extreme substance (much more so than a regular plot, however interesting it might be).
PLOT ISSUES AND INCONSISTENT PACING
It takes a lot of time for the plot to kick in; that is, if we are going to consider the whole cello theft thing the main plot of this story. That makes the pacing inconsistent—in the first part, the novel is heavy with backstory and set-up, and then, midway or toward the end, it takes off in a thriller direction. Many of us preferred the first, quieter plot, that promised a story of a lonely man finding connection. It even made us wonder if the whole ‘thriller’ thing was built in because someone told the author the story was too slow.
The same thing happened in a comparable book many of us read, Where the Crowdads Sing. The author added a crime story element at her agent’s suggestion—after saying the story needed something to make it pacier and more interesting than just a lonely girl and her love story, wrapped up in a peculiar setting.
Personally, in both cases, I could’ve done without that additional element. Many of us read not for the excitement and pacing, but for better understanding of the human condition. For me, both books would have been better without the thriller/crime element, and have even lost something (some of their depth) to it. I wonder if this is a man thing? It’s okay to write these quiet books if you’re a woman, but men need something to top off the quiet plot. And yes, Delia Owens (the author or Crowdads) is a woman, but her agent—who suggested the change—is a man. Maybe it’s the audience thing too—and most men wouldn’t read a ‘quieter’ plot? I guess, the takeaway is that the decision befalls us, the writers. Both this book and the Crowdads could’ve been differently (without the action plot) but then, they would’ve been aimed at a different audience. Knowing your audience affects the expectations you have to fulfill, and that dictates what goes into your book.
TOO MANY COINCIDENCES/CONVENIENCES
In his attempt to construct a thriller, the author kept throwing in coincidences. A pregnant, homeless drop-out Ginny, suddenly taking accounting classes in the local college. The blanket miraculously costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, conveniently covering all Ben’s expenses.
There were also plot events that made you have to suspend your disbelief; the cop coming inside the truck and in manner of minutes figuring out that the body inside the duck-taped bag is that of Duncan Lacey, that it’s halved, and deciding to let it slide for the time being; Walt giving Ben his Victor to draw out Josh Arrons into the desert and away from Claire, instead of just saying—hey, you go drive your truck, and I’ll warn her…
We learned through one of our members that the author’s provenience is that of a short story writer—so that explains a lot; the whole opening reading more like a series of short stories, and the tendency to pile new plot events on top of the old ones to make the story move forward, instead of honing them to come more organically.
BEAUTIFUL WRITING… AND SOME ISSUES
One thing we couldn’t deny is the beautiful writing. Most of us fell in love with his voice and this was (aside from setting) our favorite part of the book. Ben’s internal monologue had a flow to it—going from one passage to another without it feeling patched up or forced. The use of language was intentional; the author didn’t rely on clichés to convey reactions, feelings, or physical sensations. His turns of phrase were amazing, and rooted deeply in the setting and the circumstances of the story. At all times, you felt this is a real person, his world painted and viewed through desert.
On the downside were his dialogues and info-dumps. Dialogues, especially toward the end of the book, served as a way of informing the reader of something the author thought we should know (maybe this is his short-story experience creeping in again). One person would take a turn in talking, and then just info-dump all the information onto the page. It didn’t feel like a real person talking. There were also some issues with Ben, as the first person narrator, giving account of events he couldn’t have known anything about. Many of us felt that the author could’ve used a good critique partner, because there’s no way our CPs would let us get away with it :)
All in all, despite its flaws and flagrant breaking of some of the writing rules, this book will be the one to remember. The combination of an amazing narrative voice and gorgeous prose, coupled with an otherworldly setting of the Utah desert overshadowed other issues and made this a book one that most of us thoroughly enjoyed reading.
Hope you enjoyed the recap… until next time, keep safe and write on!
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Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
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