• About Me
  • Contact Me
  • Policies
  • Welcome

Novelhistorian

~ What's new and old in historical fiction

Novelhistorian

Tag Archives: retrospective storytelling

Breaking the Rules: World, Chase Me down

13 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Andrew Hilleman, anti-capitalism, book review, historical fiction, kidnapping, literary fiction, Omaha, Pat Crowe, retrospective storytelling, sympathetic criminal, twentieth century

Review: World, Chase Me Down, by Andrew Hilleman
Penguin, 2017. 332 pp. $16

Like Pat Crowe, the hero of this brash, rambunctious novel about power and reputation set mostly in Omaha around the turn of the last century, the author breaks a lot of rules and gets away with it. You have to admire that, and World, Chase Me Down is a lot of fun, proof that there’s nothing like a character who does and says what readers can only fantasize about. But it’s not just the audacity to tell off corrupt authorities or rob rich people, as Pat does, which makes him attractive. Bravado and violence wear thin, eventually, no matter what purpose they serve. Rather, despite however many rules of storytelling Hilleman ignores, he burnishes one to a high luster–his protagonist’s feelings for the poor and downtrodden, which earn the reader’s respect and sympathy.

Omaha, Nebraska, as it appeared in 1914 (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

As the novel opens, Pat reflects on his life in 1939. As most of you must know by now, retrospect is just about my least favorite narrative technique. I’ve always suspected that prologues are the refuge of authors who lack confidence in their readers and themselves, fearing that unless they offer a teaser of future action or tension, no one will sit still for their story. But only a bond with characters can keep me reading; curiosity about the story isn’t enough.

So I’ll say this for Hilleman: His prologue throws down a gauntlet. He’s not interested in teasing anybody; he tells you most of what happens in World, Chase Me Down before it’s three pages old and defies you to put the book aside. But it’s not just his daring, like Pat’s, that draws you in and keeps you turning the pages. It’s that by the second sentence, both Pat and his creator have you in their grasp through a shocking admission. For the past twenty years, Pat says, “I’ve been puzzling my way back to humanity,” but will be remembered, if at all, for perhaps the “foulest of all crimes”–kidnapping a child. That touch of humility, his acknowledgment that he has much to atone for, elevates him above and earns greater sympathy than a garden-variety criminal, trickster, or rebel whose freedom to tweak (or punch) any nose he desires.

That said, it’s no mean feat to tell a story that offers few surprises in plot and still make it work. How does Hilleman pull it off?

First, he’s got a pig-headed protagonist. Pat hears a lot of good advice and ignores nearly all of it, to his terrible cost. He never learns, either, to guard himself against his impulses, but that’s part of his charm as well as his undoing. So you know that trouble will come, but you don’t know how. The “no; and furthermore” gambit is alive and well in these pages. But none of that would work if you didn’t see Pat struggle with himself as much as his circumstances, and Hilleman takes care to show this.

Also, even if Hilleman has revealed early on what happens, you don’t know how Pat will adjust to it until you get there, and the author takes care to show that too. Consider the moment after Pat visits Ed Cudahy, Omaha meat-packing baron and father of the boy Pat intends to kidnap:

It would take an equal or perhaps even greater measure of villainy to expose what I hated most about the villainous world. The children in rags who came pawing at the gigantic carriages parked along the decorated boulevards, and the men inside who tossed out a few coins on the street only to shoo the children away. The stockyarders who worked for half a dollar a day only to have to pay twice that for the same meat they labored over to fill their families’ tables.

I wish I saw Billy Cavanagh, Pat’s friend and partner in crime, as clearly. Billy’s a simple soul–give him a jug of whiskey, and he’s content–and the two men trade hilarious insults, bickering like a married couple. But I don’t understand why the glue between them should be as strong as it is, and Billy doesn’t grab me anywhere close to the way Pat does. Moreover, Pat’s magnanimity doesn’t extend to police who try to apprehend him and who, after all, are only doing their jobs; he wounds or kills them with nary a dash of empathy.

Still, World, Chase Me Down is a wonderful book–and for those who care about such things, Pat Crowe was a real person.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Recent Posts

  • A Way of Seeing: The Electric Hotel
  • Mission Improbable: Three Hours in Paris
  • Independence in India: The Henna Artist
  • Blood Will Have Blood: The Abstainer
  • The Shakespeares, at Home: Hamnet

Recent Comments

Rocket Terror: V2 |… on The Man Who Saw It All: D…
Novelhistorian on Island Idyll: The Guernsey Lit…
Roxana Arama on Island Idyll: The Guernsey Lit…
2020 – A Year… on Missing, Presumed: The Poppy…
Novelhistorian on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…

Archives

  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Categories

  • Comment
  • Reviews and Columns
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blogs I Follow

  • Rewriting History
  • Damyanti Biswas
  • madame bibi lophile recommends
  • For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction
  • Suzy Henderson
  • Flashlight Commentary
  • Diary of an Eccentric

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 156 other followers

Follow Novelhistorian on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • A Way of Seeing: The Electric Hotel
  • Mission Improbable: Three Hours in Paris
  • Independence in India: The Henna Artist
  • Blood Will Have Blood: The Abstainer
  • The Shakespeares, at Home: Hamnet

Recent Comments

Rocket Terror: V2 |… on The Man Who Saw It All: D…
Novelhistorian on Island Idyll: The Guernsey Lit…
Roxana Arama on Island Idyll: The Guernsey Lit…
2020 – A Year… on Missing, Presumed: The Poppy…
Novelhistorian on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…

Archives

  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Contents

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Rewriting History

How writers turn history into story, and story into history

Damyanti Biswas

For lovers of reading, writing, travel, humanity

madame bibi lophile recommends

Reading: it's personal

For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction

Suzy Henderson

What's new and old in historical fiction

Flashlight Commentary

What's new and old in historical fiction

Diary of an Eccentric

writings of an eccentric bookworm

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×