The Perfect Man-- Naeem Murr

The cruelty in the first chapter of A Perfect Man took my breath away. We see Rajiv as a five year-old boy, dropped into the hands of his aunt and uncle in London. His father, who purchased Rajiv's mother for 20 GBP during his wartime exploits in India, abandons him en route to another entrepreneurial opportunity in South Africa. Eventually, Raj is left in the care of an aging romance writer in Pisgah, Missouri. It seems that everyone is the sum of their weaknesses in this small town; it's classic gothic, Faulknerian awfulness.

Raj and his friends are an interesting mix-- their characters alternately inspire disgust, heartbreak, pity, and affection. The prose is complex and the characters impeccably developed, drawing contrast between adults and children, men and women, inclusion and isolation, guilt and innocence, love and (I have to say it again; there is no better word) cruelty.

The first half of the book is flawless. I actually wrote part of this review in the early stages, saying this was likely my best book of the year. Unfortunately, something goes awry towards the end... the plot becomes diffused and erratic, and the tragic developments are not framed well. This tempers the melodrama and left me with an unsettled feeling, but it didn't do much for the story.

The characters are wonderful (and terrible), but at the very end I felt that Murr failed the character of Raj. Over the course of the book, we everyone's head except but Raj's, leaving the character impenetrable even though we see him from all angles and his actions speak volumes. When we finally hear from him in the last chapter only for the purpose of tying up lose ends, it's anticlimactic and depressing.

The other odd thing about the last chapter is that it reduced the rest of the book-- which is about many things-- to be mostly about one thing, even though that thing is not what stands out most to me. I thought the title of the book didn't seem to fit until that last chapter, but at that point it cheapened what at first felt like a book about the universe. But maybe I missed the point. (Throughout the book, I kept wondering if I missed the point.)

This book is incredibly dark, and it left me with a lead weight in my stomach I am still trying to shake. Recommended for mature readers (late high school, at the youngest).