Dead Time
by Stephen White
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stephen WhiteEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-03-04
ISBN: 0525950060
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Book Reviews of Dead Time
Book Review: Psychologist, Heal Thyself!
Summary: 3 Stars
I have followed Stephen White's creation, Dr. Alan Gregory, through all 14 of his preceeding adventures (Kill Me was the lone foray off the bike path with Gregory.) After all this time, I am well-acquainted with the frustration that Alan's wives (past and present) have experienced while trying to live in the same house with him--I almost feel as though I'm married to him myself. Alan can be endearing but equally infuriating with his analytical, Sensitive Man INFP continual belly-button gazing. I recognize these traits in him, because he reads like a fictional, male version of myself, an INFP on the Myers-Briggs profile, too. I don't know when Alan's birthday is, but he's probably a Libra, as I am. We are both of us way too much in our heads and afraid of completely spontaneous emotion, and we hold people to stringent standards of accountibility for their behavior. These are stellar traits for a therapist; for a spouse, friend, lover? Maybe not so much. We can be hard to live with, and Alan on paper has brought that uncomfortably home to me in glorious black and white! As Adrienne would say, "Oy, bubbeleh--you've got problems." And how.
This latest installment once again finds our reluctant, increasingly morose protagonist inserting himself into matters and situations where he only marginally belongs, and obsessing over them in patented Gregory fashion. This book takes Alan out of his comfort zone of Boulder, CO as he crosses the country from New York City to L.A. and points in between, battling various personal demons from his past and his present. The book opens with a flashback: A group of students on a backpacking trip to the Grand Canyon witness or participate in Something Terrible, and have engineered a cover-up of those events. The shared dark secret continues to tear apart this once close-knit group and disrupt their collective present. This is an intriguing diversion, but just as we are wondering how our protagonist fits in, White drags us into Alan's more prosaic reality. We are reminded that Alan and Lauren are having marital difficulties (again) as a result of stuff that happened in the last book. They have been named guardians of Adrienne's son, Jonas, in his mother's will. Alan goes to New York to be close to his adopted son while Jonas visits relatives, and Lauren takes advantage of the temporary separation to pay a personal visit to Amsterdam. Alan's ex, Merideth appears out of the blue with a pressing problem she needs him to fix: turns out that one of the student backpackers is now in the surrogacy business, and she's carrying Merideth's baby. Lisa's gone missing and Merideth is frantic. The fact that Merideth's fiance and reproductive collaborator was also one of the student backpackers, and may have once had a romantic relationship with the surrogate complicates matters considerably. Complicated is just the way our hero likes it, and in short order, he's off to L.A. to track down the rest of the group on that ill-fated hiking trip at the behest of his ex, to see if he can find Lisa and Merideth's baby. Of course, Sam Purdy is also pressed into service on this mission, even though he's still on suspension from the police force.
While White managed to carry me along for this ride as he always does, untethering his hero from his natural environment didn't do him (or us) any favors. I found myself idly wondering, Does Alan in fact, practice psychotherapy anymore, if he can afford to be gone weeks and weeks at a time transecting the country? Is the aviation industry getting some kind of kickback from White? I lost track of just how many airports Alan was in and how many flights he was on in this installment. I don't recall him sleeping an entire night, either. If (as I suspect), Alan Gregory is a thinly-veiled alter ego for his creator, also a Colorado-based pyschologist firmly in middle age, isn't it more than a little ridiculous (and transparent) for nubile L.A. twenty-something girls he's just met to be trying so strenuously to seduce Alan? Alan has many fine qualities, but an irresistibility as a sex god to California girls less than half his age surely isn't one of them. I think White may be projecting his own midlife crises onto his character. Part of his midlife crises may be fantasizing that he, and therefore his character, is Jack Bauer--at least if this outing is any indication. A thin plot gets stretched past its breaking point here, and at the end we feel nearly as drained by all the frenetic running-around as Alan does. He lives to fight another day, but let's hope that the next installment finds him fighting in Boulder, where he belongs.
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