“An individual life passes through a continuum of time and space, but now and then you enter a warp that sucks you back into the past. You understand what’s going on because you’ve been there before; but that’s no guarantee that you’re going to get it right this time. In fact, experience is just another word for baggage. And memory carries the bags.”
“A verse from Matthew popped into my head: Wide is the gate, and broad is the road, that leadeth to destruction.”
“She’d never really left my side for ten years, so this was not a reunion, because we had never been apart, and this voyage we were about to take would be our second together.
“And if Fate had already decided that we would not return from the sea, then that was all right. Every journey has to end, and the end of the journey is always called Home.”
This is a book that shouldn’t have been written.
If you think that’s a rather controversial way to start a book review, well, strap on your seatbelts. Parts of “The Gate House” by Nelson DeMille came across as contrived, others felt predictable and still others appeared to be illogical. You wouldn’t want any book to be described with any of those words, much less all three. We’ll call it the Shit-Hack Hat Trick.
“The Gate House” is the sequel to the popular “Gold Coast” (which I enjoyed), and DeMille succumbed to some outside pressures to write it 18 years after the first book. The plot itself takes place a decade after the events in “Gold Coast,” and in terms of the book’s timeline, only nine months after the events of 9/11, which overhangs the story in many ways.
After a fitting line from the “Great Gatsby” (“Gold Coast” was often described as a modern-day “Gatsby”), the book got off to a promising start, with the hero (or antihero) John Sutter waking up after a rather evocative dream involving his ex-wife, Susan, and the man she cheated on Sutter with and then murdered, Mafia kingpin Frank Bellarosa. Sutter is flying back to New York’s Long Island after a decade of self-imposed exile in London (three of the years spent sailing around the world) to preside over the estate of Ethel, a longtime family servant. Sutter temporarily (which we never believe, based on loaded comments like “Though, on second thought, what difference does it make to me? I’m only passing through.”) takes up residence in the gate house of Stanhope Hall, Ethel’s former home that sits less than a mile away from where Sutter used to live with Susan -- who, by the way, has just moved back to the guest house after a failed marriage in South Carolina. Convenient, yes?
“We had been separated for a decade by oceans and continents, and now we were a few minutes’ walk from each other, but still separated by anger, pride, and history, which was harder to overcome than continents and oceans.”
Anyway, after poring through old pictures and papers of his former life with Susan, Sutter gets nostalgic, until the doorbell rings … and he sees the ghost of Frank Bellarosa. I’ll stop here to say that it might have been a much more interesting book if it really was his ghost. Unfortunately, it turns out that Bellarosa’s son, Anthony, is a dead-ringer (pun intended) for his father, and has apparently taken a shine to Dad’s previous line of work. Long story short, he essentially threatens Susan’s life to help force Sutter to become his personal attorney, a role Sutter had “enjoyed” for a time when the elder Bellarosa was around. Cue the “Every time I think I’m out, they pull me right back in!” line.
This opening part of the story is rather slow-developing, filled with lots of words but not much actually being said, like DeMille is just passing the time while trying to think up a suitable plotline. After passing mention of a serious “girlfriend” in the UK that is brushed aside and a rather odd and nonsensical dalliance with Elizabeth, the daughter of the dying servant, all of a sudden Sutter is back with Susan. And Sutter isn’t the only one who appears to be taken off-guard by this turn of events -- as a reader, you find yourself asking, “What just happened?” In fact, I almost got the sense that DeMille himself was surprised by this “twist” (well, at least its suddenness).
Joining the “wtf” and out-of-the-blue themes, all of a sudden Sutter starts allowing Susan to dictate his life and decisions, which is out of character for him. She essentially demands that their relationship be revived and he ask her to marry him, she begins telling what and when to drink, what he is allowed to eat, what happens next, etc. We’ve known Sutter is a racist and a hypocrite who pretends to hate the gentrified life, but then passes judgment on those who don’t follow, honor or respect it; but not only is that reinforced, but once Susan starts removing his spine piece from piece, the reader starts to wonder just what it is that is supposed to make Sutter likeable as the main character?
“I was happy, too, but this was a little sudden, and I wasn’t processing it at the speed it was happening, and I really wanted at least ten minutes to think about completely changing my life.”
“I sensed that I was losing some control of the agenda, and my life.”
In the background, Sutter had irrationally been allowing himself to get sucked back in by the Bellarosa family, conversing with Anthony and meeting him for dinner a couple of times (“‘If you are going to sup with the devil, bring a long spoon.’”). When Sutter finally tells Anthony he is getting back with his former wife, Anthony overtly threatens him and her, feeling that Sutter is backing out on an unstated agreement to work with him. Showing a passive-aggressive side, Sutter, for some reason, slashes a painting (done by Susan) that sits in Anthony’s office while over for dinner. It is the latest act in a major stretch of the book that all feels dramatically out of scale and out of character for Sutter.
On a side note, there are other somewhat awkward devices that are introduced by DeMille, led by literary clichés such as multiple times Sutter being lost in thought and being brought out of his reverie by someone saying, “What are you thinking about?” Annoying and ghey, sorry. Then, at one point, Susan goes out for a jog and comes back naked and evasive; I’m not sure if DeMille had this in mind, but the seed was planted in at least my mind that Susan was now potentially involved romantically with the son of her former lover, which whom she had a torrid affair. But no explanation is offered then nor at any later point. Oh well … moving on, as they say.
From there, the story drifts badly, filled with melancholy reminiscences, overly dramatic family reunions, fabricated threat levels, the involvement of local and national law enforcement, John Gotti’s funeral and Anthony’s disappearance. Being set in New York, you almost find yourself saying, “Yada, yada, yada” throughout most of the book, up until an abrupt, illogical and forced ending.
I guess one of the lessons here is that you should recognize that you’re in for a bad book when the testimonials on the back cover are NOT for the book that you are holding in your hand. And the reviews for “Gold Coast” only serve to remind you of what is missing badly in “The Gate House”: pacing, relevance and humor.
All that being said, Sutter still brings the funny sometimes (“And my mother made it more difficult. I wonder if she ever understood the irony of her calling me a son of a bitch.”). But there’s an overriding sense that he is being written in a different way, almost as if DeMille is fighting an internal battle over who he really wants Sutter to be. Is he redeemed? Is he a forgiver? Is he still supremely flawed? What are we to make of his snide comments, hatred of his new (and old) bride’s family, as well as his own? Why does DeMille feel it necessary to have Sutter launch into this overly sentimental, Hallmark–greetingish soliloquies out of nowhere? What future does Sutter really see extending from here? Who is he now? How and why did he change so much?
The brush with which DeMille paints the evil of Susan’s father is also way too broad, to the point of not being believable. In fact, Sutter rather quickly jumps to the conclusion that he will have to go back to London and leave Susan because of her father, which naturally leads the reader to assume that maybe that is really what he has wanted all along -- essentially giving him the easy out he’s been waiting for.
“It was hard to believe that two idiots -- Anthony Bellarosa and William Stanhope -- could alter my future, and Susan’s future, and our future together.”
“It occurred to me that there was nothing here for me, except unhappiness and bad memories … I felt no further obligation toward her, and no desire to be part of her life.
“That wasn’t true, of course, but that would have to be my exit line as I packed my bags—then maybe we could try again, ten years from now.”
Undoubtedly, there is something captivating about the setting, the scene, the culture of this part of Long Island and its history -- of that, there is no argument from me. Yet there is a reason this sequel was nearly 20 years in the making: there was never a story there to follow, and DeMille’s attempt to sizzle one up out of thin air not only doesn’t resonate, but pans badly.
Which all leads to the inevitable question: “Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?”
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