I enjoyed this book, but didn't finish it. It passed my thirty-pages-and-still-interesting test, but about page 66 I decided to read the last chapter and skim around to find out how some of the many plotlines and sub-plots came out. That is a satisfying way to read some novels, novels that are full of good stories, where some of these little stories come to a conclusion and some don't. The stories are interesting, the offhand comments on life are interesting, but not so interesting that I wanted to hear every one.
It is about a fifty-something retiree, Wallace Webster, who likes to talk about his past, his neighbors, and about current events. He tells stories well. They are mostly interesting, and they mostly make him look good. Things happen to Wallace and to his neighbors, and to the women in his life, past and present. Many of the characters tell stories too, usually inside one of Wallace's stories, and most of the characters survive through the end of the book. ( )

This book won't be for everyone. As other readers have pointed out, nothing happens. And then, just in case you miss the point, the characters have another coffee, or a scotch, take a walk around the block, reminisce about some long-closed restaurant, arrive back at their front door and then ... yep, still nothing happened.

This is as little unfair, although almost as much fun to write as it was to read Barthelme's beautifully crafted "conversations about nothing." On the surface, a LOT happens: the death toll begins to creep up toward double digits (if you count the confessions of historical incidents), the central character Wallace Webster returns home, often as not, to find neighbors' houses surrounded by police cars, lights flashing, and incident tape festooning their neatly cut lawns. The alpha-male and female members of a Home Owners' Association indulge in local politics (and what could be more bloodthirsty than that?) However, what happens doesn't seem to add up to much more than the stuff of everyday life.

Which, of course, is the whole point. So, one that is not for everyone. But I find that those small accumulations of "nothing" have lingered in my mind, since I finished the book a few days ago. And my assessment has crept up, too, half-star by half star, as I slowly realized that this is a book that I will come back to.

I do have one quibble: Wallace doesn't seem to me like a man in his mid-50s, forced into early retirement. His attitudes -- to pop-culture, to technology, to life in general -- all added up to someone much older. My father retired to Florida in his 80s, and his day to day routine of coffee, or a scotch, with friends, walks around the block, reminisces about long-closed restaurants, and light flirtations with neighboring widow-ladies, all seemed much more like Wallace than a man in his 50s. This grated, a little, but it was the only "off" note in an otherwise very enjoyable novel. ( )

The language is simple, everyday language you and I use. The characters seem real, all the stupidity and events that mold their lives can be mistaken for ours. ( )

Welcome to consumer heaven

There Must Be Some Mistake: A Novel by Frederick Barthelme (Little, Brown and Company, $25).

Wallace Webster has been given an early retirement, and it’s left him at loose ends. He sleeps too much and drives around wasting gas when he’s not hanging out with women—his daughter, his exes, general women friends.While he’s frustrated and bored, he’s pretty normal.

Then, his neighbors start dying.

This murder mystery is the skeleton on which Frederick Barthelme hangs the flesh of his latest novel, There Must Be Some Mistake; the meaty part is all about the meaning of life and facing our mortality in the consumer’s heaven we call suburbia. But instead of taking a dismal view of life—though he does have some rather funny hits on pop culture—Barthelme’s protagonist is rather upbeat, with an attitude that is willing to take on whatever shows up next. It’s odd to call something set in this sunny, suburban world noir, but if Wallace were a bit more grizzled and pessimistic, that’s exactly what this would be.

With smart people saying smart and funny things—and a thoroughly post-modern ambiguous ending—There Must Be Some Mistake is an insightful slice of contemporary Americana.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com ( )