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DEFENDING JACOB
by William Landay
Delacorte Press, January 2012
432 pages
$26.00
ISBN: 0385344228


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Every now and then, the local six o'clock news somewhere in America leads with the shocking tale of an apparently unremarkable teenager, an ordinary high school student, arrested for murdering a classmate or two or ten. Watching the coverage, parents would have to be singularly lacking in imagination not to spend a few minutes wondering how they would feel and act were the child their own. Assistant DA Andy Barber is not allowed the luxury of speculation - his fourteen year old son Jacob, an only child, has been arrested and charged with the murder of a schoolmate, Ben Rifkin, and Andy is determined to defend him as best he can.

He's in a good position to do it - he's been a district attorney in Newton, Massachusetts, for ten years and knows how a prosecution unfolds. He also knows the prosecutor, the unpronounceable Neal Logiudice; he has trained him for years, though now the younger man seems bent on bringing his mentor down. Andy is further armed by his absolute faith in his son's innocence. Save for a bloody fingerprint, there is little direct evidence that Jacob is guilty, though a lot of his fellow students seem to think he might be. So he hires the best defence lawyer he knows of and contributes to a trial strategy calculated to win.

Ben's mother, Andy's wife, Laurie, is less certain. She cannot quite credit Jacob's guilt, but she knows he is far less ordinary, unexceptional, a child than his father thinks. Has she cause for concern, or is this the inevitable work of maternal guilt? Their different responses will drive a huge wedge into what had been, at least by Andy's account, an unusually happy marriage.

Landay chooses to tell his tale indirectly. He begins at the very end, after the trial has ended and a verdict reached and moves back and forth between a linear account of the prosecution and a transcript of a later enquiry. It's a technique that has certain advantages, since it permits Landay to withhold the truth of Jacob's guilt or innocence until the last possible moment. On the other hand, it provides him with the space to introduce a number of issues, some of which will prove to be irrelevant, along the way.

Though the cover copy references ANATOMY OF A MURDER and PRESUMED INNOCENT, this book reminded me more of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. Certainly one strong narrative thread is the trial itself, and the quasi-Oedipal struggle between Logiudice and Barber, but by and large, the attention is on Andy and, sadly, he never comes quite into focus. He narrates most of the book, but unlike Eva in KEVIN, we don't know much more about him at the end than we did at the beginning and what we do find out isn't actually that interesting. Laurie, the mother, is similarly underdeveloped. Clearly she is wracked with suspicions about her son, but too much of her concern seems attributed to a kind of neurotic self-importance. If Jacob is a monster, then it's all her fault, or so she seems to think. The son is a cipher. Of him we merely know that his parents love him (dad maybe more than mum) and he's beautiful when asleep.

I read Lionel Shriver's novel when it appeared in 2005 and it remains quite vivid in my mind. I've just finished DEFENDING JACOB and already it is beginning to fade. The issues it raises seem contrived, the characters thin. It appears calculated to appeal to the book club clientele, filled as it is with meaty little nuggets for discussion - are mothers more guilt-prone than dads? Does early day care create attachment problems in toddlers? Is there such a thing as a "murder gene"? I would not be surprised if the paperback reprint is issued with a handy study guide and discussion questions appended. Nevertheless, manufactured or not, it will certainly generate a buzz and quite possibly a television mini-series.

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

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, January 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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