Book Review: Cage's Bend
Cage's Bend by Carter Coleman. Warner Books. 384 pages. $24.95
Cage Rutledge has an almost perfect life. He's a golden boy with sandy hair and fierce blue eyes, sickeningly handsome, popular, musically gifted, athletic and well educated. He's blessed with supportive parents and a plucky younger brother called Harper. Both the Rutledge boys are achingly attractive to the opposite sex. There's only one fly in the family ointment – the loss of middle brother Nick in a car crash. Despite his early demise, Nick is described as an 'an introvert who's kind of shy' who becomes a familiar presence in the narrative, popping up in flashbacks, as an imagined ghost or during teatime conversation.
Cage's Bend is a town at the coil of a river in Tennessee, a vividly depicted land of blood ties, sweat and tears. The Southern setting is a strong influence on the behavior of the Rutledge clan, from Frank the stoic Memphis preacher to Margaret, the equally stoic housewife and churchwoman. But the sense of place weakens as we follow Cage to Nantucket, where the 29-year-old goes off the rails, much to Harper's dismay.
Cage's world falls apart as he's institutionalized in a rat-hole nuthouse and diagnosed as bipolar. Any dubious pleasure the reader might gain from watching Mr. Perfect's fall from grace is stifled by the overwrought prose that works itself into ludicrous loops, reflecting Cage's mental state. The breakdown kicks off a cycle of recovery and relapse, soulless sex and guilt-wracked soliloquies.
Throughout the book, the narrative skips between four major perspectives (Cage, Harper, Frank and Margaret) in a constant attempt to remind us that we're reading a sweeping saga. The timeline is as fractured as the viewpoint, with leaps back in time to the boys' childhood and forward as Cage and Harper hop from bed to bed, fucking 'like alley cats.' In one sequence we learn of two relationships that Harper's having, then flashback to another conquest; meanwhile in San Francisco his recovering brother fucks a pretty Episcopalian 'five ways to Sunday.' None of the sexual references are particularly titillating or enlightening, but they fill lots of pages.
Aside from its examination of the frustrations of mental illness, the torrid tale touches on a couple of worthwhile themes. There's a mention of the desperation felt by people who live outside normal society, the mentally ill and the homeless – the people who feel like useless failures because they haven't achieved a collectively acceptable level of success.
Cage has similar feelings as he's about to hit 30, then 40; it’s easy to sympathize with his concern that he hasn't done enough with his life at those milestone ages, mindful of his mortality. Unfortunately, Cage can be a self-pitying, pretentious bastard. At one point he moans, 'I feel like Munch’s guy etched in the eternal howl in The Scream, fixed in a landscape of horror.'
The author, Carter Coleman, is occasionally guilty of such pretension himself. Cage's yard in Nantucket is filled with wrecked boats, but this image isn't as interesting as Coleman supposes, judging by his multiple references to the scene. He likes to state the obvious, too, as when Cage reaches a turning point in his mental recovery. 'He’s come to a turning point,' we’re told, in case we haven't figured this out for ourselves. But there are other times when the writing improves, particularly where sailing trips are involved. There's a particularly evocative reference to wind slapping halyards against masts like chimes.
While Cage lives it up as a San Francisco troubadour, Harper worries about carrying his brother's manic depression inside him as a kind of genetic time bomb. To drown his fears, he turns to a heady brew of booze, sex and computer programming. In the world of Cage's Bend nobody's allowed to feel content for long, whether they're shaking from lithium tremens or a head-busting hangover.
The final chapters of the book seem rushed as the story leaps forward nine years to 2001, introducing girlfriends only to replace them with new characters within a matter of pages, suggesting that only a healthy, monogamous relationship and the hope borne of a tight-knit family unit can save Cage's sanity and Harper's soul.
The end result is a book as schizophrenic as its main character, its style a mixture of the florid and the frugal. It's not the kind of novel that makes the reader eager to turn the page and find out what happens next, because of the cyclical nature of the characters' lives. The most satisfying parts of Cage's Bend are the atmospheric flashbacks, fitting for a story that often gets stuck in a deep, conceited rut.
- Nick Smith
Cage Rutledge has an almost perfect life. He's a golden boy with sandy hair and fierce blue eyes, sickeningly handsome, popular, musically gifted, athletic and well educated. He's blessed with supportive parents and a plucky younger brother called Harper. Both the Rutledge boys are achingly attractive to the opposite sex. There's only one fly in the family ointment – the loss of middle brother Nick in a car crash. Despite his early demise, Nick is described as an 'an introvert who's kind of shy' who becomes a familiar presence in the narrative, popping up in flashbacks, as an imagined ghost or during teatime conversation.
Cage's Bend is a town at the coil of a river in Tennessee, a vividly depicted land of blood ties, sweat and tears. The Southern setting is a strong influence on the behavior of the Rutledge clan, from Frank the stoic Memphis preacher to Margaret, the equally stoic housewife and churchwoman. But the sense of place weakens as we follow Cage to Nantucket, where the 29-year-old goes off the rails, much to Harper's dismay.
Cage's world falls apart as he's institutionalized in a rat-hole nuthouse and diagnosed as bipolar. Any dubious pleasure the reader might gain from watching Mr. Perfect's fall from grace is stifled by the overwrought prose that works itself into ludicrous loops, reflecting Cage's mental state. The breakdown kicks off a cycle of recovery and relapse, soulless sex and guilt-wracked soliloquies.
Throughout the book, the narrative skips between four major perspectives (Cage, Harper, Frank and Margaret) in a constant attempt to remind us that we're reading a sweeping saga. The timeline is as fractured as the viewpoint, with leaps back in time to the boys' childhood and forward as Cage and Harper hop from bed to bed, fucking 'like alley cats.' In one sequence we learn of two relationships that Harper's having, then flashback to another conquest; meanwhile in San Francisco his recovering brother fucks a pretty Episcopalian 'five ways to Sunday.' None of the sexual references are particularly titillating or enlightening, but they fill lots of pages.
Aside from its examination of the frustrations of mental illness, the torrid tale touches on a couple of worthwhile themes. There's a mention of the desperation felt by people who live outside normal society, the mentally ill and the homeless – the people who feel like useless failures because they haven't achieved a collectively acceptable level of success.
Cage has similar feelings as he's about to hit 30, then 40; it’s easy to sympathize with his concern that he hasn't done enough with his life at those milestone ages, mindful of his mortality. Unfortunately, Cage can be a self-pitying, pretentious bastard. At one point he moans, 'I feel like Munch’s guy etched in the eternal howl in The Scream, fixed in a landscape of horror.'
The author, Carter Coleman, is occasionally guilty of such pretension himself. Cage's yard in Nantucket is filled with wrecked boats, but this image isn't as interesting as Coleman supposes, judging by his multiple references to the scene. He likes to state the obvious, too, as when Cage reaches a turning point in his mental recovery. 'He’s come to a turning point,' we’re told, in case we haven't figured this out for ourselves. But there are other times when the writing improves, particularly where sailing trips are involved. There's a particularly evocative reference to wind slapping halyards against masts like chimes.
While Cage lives it up as a San Francisco troubadour, Harper worries about carrying his brother's manic depression inside him as a kind of genetic time bomb. To drown his fears, he turns to a heady brew of booze, sex and computer programming. In the world of Cage's Bend nobody's allowed to feel content for long, whether they're shaking from lithium tremens or a head-busting hangover.
The final chapters of the book seem rushed as the story leaps forward nine years to 2001, introducing girlfriends only to replace them with new characters within a matter of pages, suggesting that only a healthy, monogamous relationship and the hope borne of a tight-knit family unit can save Cage's sanity and Harper's soul.
The end result is a book as schizophrenic as its main character, its style a mixture of the florid and the frugal. It's not the kind of novel that makes the reader eager to turn the page and find out what happens next, because of the cyclical nature of the characters' lives. The most satisfying parts of Cage's Bend are the atmospheric flashbacks, fitting for a story that often gets stuck in a deep, conceited rut.
- Nick Smith
posted by Nick Smith at
9:33 AM
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