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THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM
by Nathan Larson
Akashic, April 2011
240 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 1617750107


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

At an unspecified date, but at some time in the very near future, New York City has suffered a series of catastrophic assaults. All but two of its bridges have been destroyed. A flu epidemic of monumental proportions has taken out 90% of the population. Central power sources are undependable, gasoline is largely unavailable, and shops and offices are shuttered and looted. Gangs of feral former hedge-fund brokers are armed and ready to defend their stores of gold.

One survivor of the catastrophe is a man who has forgotten much of his own past. He knows he is an Army veteran, he thinks he might have had a wife and child, now dead, he believes he was subjected to dubious scientific experiments at Walter Reed that have left him dependent on medication. He is an obsessive compulsive, cleaning his hands continually with what he invariably refers to as Purell™ and fingering a mysterious key he carries in his pocket. He does not remember his name nor does he want to. He generally goes by Dewey Decimal, a nickname derived from his current residence, the 42nd Street Public Library, where he is engaged in reshelving the disordered stacks according to their Dewey decimal system numbers. Currently, he is in the 000s.

He spends relatively little time in the library, however, as he is also employed as a heavy by the current DA, Daniel Rosenblatt, to deter any challenges to the DA's grip on construction contracts, bribery of all sorts, and general official looting of what public purse remains. This time out, he is sent to deal with one Yakiv Shapsko, a Ukrainian with a dubious past and strong labour connections. Luckily, Dewey has serviceable Ukrainian.

What follows is a nightmare journey up and down Manhattan, with occasional side trips to Queens and Brooklyn, punctuated regularly by exchanges of gunfire and falling bodies. Dewey is a very good shot.

It's difficult to say why I enjoyed this book as much as I did. It lacks a coherent imaginative structure. The disaster that has overtaken New York is plain enough, but what is going on in the country as a whole or even the rest of the state for that matter? (I know New Yorkers tend to imagine that nothing west of the Hudson River effectively exists, but the isolation here is total.) Bits of the infrastructure are conveniently operating when Dewey needs to use them. The plot largely consists of a series of ambushes and murders. Who is killing whom and why is not always clear. This is a first novel for Nathan Larson, who is an award-winning film music composer, and the narrative is more a series of riffs on a central dystopian theme rather any comprehensive political or moral statement.

Still, Dewey Decimal makes an oddly attractive companion through the wilds of a New York in total and irrevocable breakdown. He is a killer, it's true, but who isn't in the world he's in? Nor is he a grim survivalist, with that edge of arrogant superiority the type seems to feature. He's just trying to get along and not do any worse than he must.

The cover copy likens the book to an amalgam of MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN and Charlie Huston. Generally, these comparisons are absurd, but in this case, Megan Abbott is far from wrong. It's an odd book, one that with a little further effort could have been an extraordinary one, but as long as you're aware that the title is, to put it mildly, misleading, you may very well enjoy the ride.

§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, May 2011

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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