A provocative, globe-trotting, time-shifting novel about the seductions of — and resistance to — toxic masculinity.“Frank knew as well as anyone how stories start and how they end. This fiery mess, or something like it, was bound to happen. He had been expecting it for years.”Frank Baltimore is a bit of a loser, struggling by as a carpenter and handyman in rural New England when he gets his big … England when he gets his big break, building a mansion in the executive suburbs of Hartford. One of his workers is a charismatic eighteen-year-old kid from Liverpool, Dmitry, in the US in the summer before university. Dmitry is a charming sociopath, who develops a fascination with his autodidactic philosopher boss, perhaps thinking that, if he could figure out what made Frank tick, he could be less of a pig. Dmitry heads to Asia and makes a neo-imperialist fortune, with a trail of corpses in his wake. When Dmitry’s office building in Taipei explodes in an enormous fireball, Frank heads to Asia, falls in love with Dmitry’s wife, and things go from bad to worse.
Combining the best elements of literary thriller, noir and political satire, Born Slippy is a darkly comic and honest meditation on modern life under global capitalism.
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Tom Lutz, the founding editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, has published six non-fiction books including Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (2007) which won the American Book Award. Now he has published a remarkable debut novel, Born Slippy, a noir psychological thriller that reflects on our twenty-first century world of global capitalism. The book focuses on the strange friendship established between Frank Baltimore, a moderately successful American contractor, and an Englishman, Dmitry Heald, eight years younger than him. Frank thinks of himself as a moralist (he reads a lot of philosophers) while Dmitry is an amoral sociopath who manipulates Frank at every turn. What does he want of Frank? “Maybe,” Frank reflects, “Frank was where he parked his conscience.” But then Frank is too hypnotized by Dmitry to ever get him right. His friends have only to met Dmitry once to ask Frank, “What sick part of you . . . responds to him?”
What is it with Dmitry that so fascinates Frank? This question haunts us as we watch Dmtiry turn into a ruthlessly successful financier who makes his fortune investing the corruptly acquired funds of international dictators and criminals. Dmitry ascribes his success in making millions to his ability to assess the risk involved. As he explains to Frank (or Franky, the puerile nickname he insists on calling him), “we have an entire economy that is fundamentally based on the notion of risk.” Dmitry dismisses all other considerations, especially those of ethics, as irrelevant. He may be representative of the world’s wealthiest one percent, but Frank’s claim to be better than that is cleverly exposed as so much hypocrisy by the end of the novel. Relativity and amorality reigns.
Tom Lutz’s psychological portrait of the two men is central to the first two-thirds of the novel. Each man needs something from the other, but neither is entirely clear what they want from someone so utterly different – or are they? The first two thirds of the novel rely on this conundrum, while the last third becomes a fast-paced thriller; yet it still retains the psychological interest and brings the novel’s musings on the amoral workings of capital into clearer focus.
Born Slippy is very well written. Tom Lutz’s facility with words surfaces even in his description of minor characters. For instance Margie, a client of Frank’s, “might have been pretty if it weren’t for her angry jaw and cruel eyes, whipping around like gale-warning flags at the end of the dock.” Tom Lutz’s wanderlust, exemplified in his marvelous travel writings, serves him well as he takes his two characters from Connecticut to Los Angeles, to Taipei and other Asian locations, such as “the science-fiction, parallel-universe feel Tokyo produced,” or Jakarta where a modern 500-foot tower and scattered mosques remind Frank that he was “between worlds.” His manipulation of chronology provides added insight into how the past informs the present over the thirteen years covered by the narrative.
I highly recommend this unusual novel. Read it. You won’t be disappointed.
If asked to describe this book in one word I’d have to say “interesting.”
From the first chapter onward, I just wasn’t sure what I thought of the two main characters and their connection. On one hand you have a basically lovable, regular guy – Frank – who works with his hands building homes and tries to do what is right as he stumbles through life. Opposite him is Dmitry – libertine, amoral, self-centred, sexual swinger with wide tastes, unfaithful, questionable business practices……..and the list goes on. Yet these two characters seem to be bound together in some unfathomable way.
From their first meeting when Dmitry worked for Frank building a house, over and over and over again, through countless scenarios, Dmitry brings chaos and problems into Frank’s life. Yet Frank continues to have a soft spot for him, to feel he is responsible for this man in some way – his moral compass. Frank even says yes to applying for a passport and sending it to Dmitri so financial accounts can be set up in his name. NO NO NO NO NO! How can Frank be that naive?
Born Slippy moves smoothly back and forth in time from present to past and back. We follow the life of Frank, both on his own and during the unsettling times that Dmitri appears. I found myself continually trying to figure out what drew Frank to Dmitri, and what drew Dmitri to Frank. They seem to have nothing in common, but their paths continue to intersect regularly over time. This journey will challenge Frank to his core and lead him down unexpected paths.
Born Slippy offers a complex, intriguing storyline while weaving in opposing views on the themes of morality, sexuality and friendship.