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Review of Heather, the Totality

The Bombshell

By Paul LevinsonPublished 6 years ago 1 min read
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As everyone knows who has read my blogs, listened to my podcasts, or seen me talk at conferences about The Sopranos, etc., I've long admired Matthew Weiner's work on both The Sopranos and Mad Men, and indeed consider it to be at the very apex of television. I was thus more than pleased to get a slightly-advance copy of Weiner's first novel (published November 7), and read it in one-and-a-half sittings (a little in the wee hours of the morning, the rest just this afternoon). It's only 134 short pages, but it's so compelling I'm sure I would have read all of it in that time anyway, had it been twice as long.

It didn't need to be. Weiner's novel is exceptional, very much a slice of life in New York at this moment, and very different in style and pacing at the same time. There's only one line of true dialogue, and it's a bombshell. The descriptive passages are reminiscent of both Dickens and Salinger. And the story rings true on all kinds of levels.

Not long ago, I got in my car in the parking lot of a supermarket, and noticed a guy looking at a woman who was walking by. There was something in his eyes that, I don't know, was more sinister than just appreciation. I stayed in my car a few minutes, until the woman got safely in her car and drove away.

This is the spark plug of Heather, the Totality. A father (Mark) notices a construction worker looking at his 14-year-old daughter (Heather) as she walks out of their building. That scene happens 2/3s or more into the novel. Before that, we learn a lot about Mark, Karen (Mark's wife and Heather's mother), Heather, and the construction worker, Bobby. We learn enough about Bobby to know that Mark's concerns about what Bobby might do to his daughter are well-founded.

I'm not going to tell you the ending. Give yourself a treat and get a copy of this novel, destined to be recognized as a new kind of storytelling.

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About the Creator

Paul Levinson

Novels The Silk Code & The Plot To Save Socrates; LPs Twice Upon A Rhyme & Welcome Up; nonfiction The Soft Edge & Digital McLuhan, translated into 15 languages. Best-known short story: The Chronology Protection Case; Prof, Fordham Univ.

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