Book Review - "Little Beasts"

BOOK REVIEW

‘Little Beasts’ – Matthew McGevna - 286 pages – Akashic Books - Reviewed by Jeb Ladouceur

There’s no questioning that Long Island’s Matthew McGevna is an excellent writer, maybe even an inspired one … but so is my cousin Chesley. The difference is that Chesley makes no claim to being a novelist.

When a writer enters into a compact with readers who have invested a small amount of money, but more significantly, eight or ten hours of their valuable time, in return for a well-told fiction, the least the author can do is provide a tale that fits the genre’s general description. In ‘Little Beasts,’ based on the notorious Pius murder in Smithtown, McGevna lives up to the deal only fifty percent of the time … strangely, in the second half of the book.

This is particularly unfortunate, because one can envision crowds of eager, but soon-to-be-disillusioned readers, immersing themselves in Matthew McGevna’s promising imagery when, on the very first page they read: ‘This is the town of Turnbull…The smell of salt from the ocean to the south is faint in the hot air…’

“Aha!” We say, “Smithtown’s been re-named Turnbull, and transported to the author’s native South Shore.” Perhaps it’s just as well. North Shore residents … and especially we sometimes provincial inhabitants of Smithtown … don’t appreciate being reminded that one of the most brutal crimes in the annals of juvenile homicide was committed right down the street. Let the stigma fall on the likes of a thinly disguised Mastic Beach (where the gifted McGevna was born and raised) … ‘a stretch of land on the south shore of Long Island that juts out into the Great South Bay like a sore thumb, has one road in, one road out.’

But alas, these compelling descriptions prove only to be teasers. Though the well-crafted poetic pictures and metaphors fill 150-or-so pages, and taken individually are pleasing … in the aggregate they produce disturbing repetition that ultimately leads to that most disastrous of literary afflictions … boredom.

I tried to find some justification for the author’s flirting with this paradox … because Matthew McGevna is such a promising young poet. Perhaps, I thought, these irritating vignettes having to do with peer pressure and teenage angst, are clever devices, intended to annoy us. ‘Little Beasts’ is an annoying story, after all. But such rationalization has its limits … and one soon runs out of excuses for McGevna’s psychological reiterations.

One of the problems associated with the re-telling of a story whose outcome is a matter of public record, is that even when fictionalized it can hardly be made fresh. It’s the reason Shakespeare is offered in so many vastly different interpretations. Nobody ever passed on a promising production of ‘Hamlet’ because ‘…I’ve already seen it.’

But there are only so many variations on a theme wherein a child is suffocated by being force fed with rocks! … and perhaps that’s why McGevna wears us out with so much run-on psycho-baloney about the commission of the crime. Maybe he’s trying to re-invent it.

It doesn’t work.

What does succeed, though … to near perfection … is the account of one defendant’s experiences during the Pius murder trial. That event occupies the last one-third of ‘Little Beasts,’ and more than qualifies as a novella in its own right. Modern murder trials are so comprehensive in describing the crimes they address, that the entire narrative, which occupies so many early pages of this book, could have been eliminated and left to testimony delivered in the courtroom.

Perhaps the classically-trained and capable Matthew McGevna will one day reward his admirers (among whose ranks I now count myself) with such a trimmed-down version of this gripping story.

Again, he certainly is blessed with all the necessary skills.

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Award-winning writer, Jeb Ladouceur is the author of ten novels, and his theater and book reviews appear in several major L.I. publications. Ladouceur’s newest thriller THE QUANTUM SYNDROME is patterned on the Atlanta child murders of the 80s and is set on Eastern Long Island. His next novel is titled “THE SEQUEL.” It will explore the odd relationship between Harper Lee and Truman Capote. The Website is www.Jebsbooks.com.