Profane veteran grapples with son, modern life in ‘The Reason You’re Alive’ – STLtoday.com

Just about everything David Granger despises about a changing America, his son, Hank, venerates.

David is a profanely politically incorrect Vietnam veteran who rails against multiculturalism and anti-gun liberals and refers to hijabs as Muslim torture devices.

Hank is a young art dealer who must apologize for his fathers Archie Bunker worldview, telling one perturbed stranger that Dad needs help acknowledging his privilege.

Their relationship is a long, awkward Thanksgiving dinner with extended family that keeps veering toward politics.

And yet, David Granger cant cut off the conversation not with a granddaughter in the picture, the 7-year-old Ella with whom hes not too proud to share dainty playtime tea. Plus he cant just write off his son.

If he werent mine, I would probably despise Hank Granger, but he was the closest Id ever get to producing an heir, so my emotions continue to betray me.

In The Reason Youre Alive, David Granger must confront what divides him and his son. A car crash forces the matter, with subsequent medical tests revealing brain tumors.

Hank comes to his widowed fathers unwelcome aid just as his own life is careening off track. His wife, in his fathers words, has just taken off with another man forsaking her maternal duties for a sex romp through Europe.

Its funny, a miserable Hank tells his father. I tried to do the opposite of everything you did, Dad, and yet here we are, both alone.

Author Matthew Quick traffics heavily in such life-worn souls, oddballs trying but failing to reach one another, until circumstances leave them no choice. His characters dont connect so much as collide, more times than not with sharp comedic effect.

One of Quicks prior novels, Silver Linings Playbook, which became an Oscar-nominated film, pulls this all off brilliantly as a romantic comedy.

Its a formula that Hollywood continues to buy. Several of Quicks novels have already been optioned for film, including this one, months before its release.

That could be a turnoff in some literary circles, but in this case it shouldnt be. The role of David Granger may someday be played by an Oscar-hungry actor. But that shouldnt distract from the vivid, high-definition protagonist that already glows from the page.

Here, Quick sets David on a mission to come to terms with the demons of the Vietnam War as he seeks to return something of value to a fellow soldier, mysteriously known as Clayton Fire Bear.

Recollections of Vietnam and on Vietnam factor heavily in this slim novel.

David remembers how he and his own father, a World War II vet, are brought closer by that conflict. On the beaches of Normandy, David presents his father with a Rolex to replace the watch he lost in combat there.

Davids war, in contrast, has estranged him from a son he thinks knows nothing about the war or his life.

That candor and honesty gives this first-person narrative its potency.

It also supplies the humor, with David emphatically reminding us he is not a bigot or a racist, even as he tramples on societal discretion.

He marvels when his black friends bedroom has no leopard-skin blankets or black fists on the walls or red-green-and-black Africa cutouts or anything like that. Later, he asserts that you never see gays move into a neighborhood and make it worse.

Amid these cringe-inducing moments, Quick asks us to take a deeper look at David and his decency, most often expressed through his yearning as a grandparent. Hank also is forced to reassess his father, encountering unexpected revelations in the process.

At a hilarious dinner party, for example, Hank learns that his father has for years had a deep relationship with a gay couple, who sends him a card each Veterans Day.

But ultimately, this voyage of discovery has darker places to go. David must face truths about not only the war, but his deceased wife. More challenging still, the cantankerous father must share many of those truths with his seemingly distant son.

Still, this is not a story about crossing political bridges or of meet-me-halfway accommodations.

Theres no changing David, who will continue to call his Vietnamese friend a little yellow woman, as surely as his son will continue eating kale salads.

What this novel offers instead is a hope that we have the capacity to get beyond what offends us about one another.

Perhaps, at this particular political moment, thats plenty.

The Reason Youre Alive

A novel by Matthew Quick

Published by Harper, 226 pages, $25.99

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Profane veteran grapples with son, modern life in 'The Reason You're Alive' - STLtoday.com