We review "Beneath the Neon Egg", a novel by Thomas E. Kennedy
By C.M.
Beneath the Neon Egg. By Thomas E. Kennedy. Bloomsbury; 192 pages; $26. Buy from Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk
THE American author Thomas E. Kennedy has lived in Copenhagen for over 30 years. For him, the city is defined by its seasons, and Mr Kennedy explores each one in “Copenhagen Quartet”, his series of four independent novels. “Beneath the Neon Egg”, the last of the set, nips with the chill of the Danish winter—a counterpoint to the steamy bars and jazz clubs where the novel’s protagonist seeks respite from his mind’s restless ramblings.
Patrick “Blue” Bluett is a 43-year-old American expat, recently divorced. When he’s not eking out a modest living as a translator, he’s perambulating Copenhagen’s streets, musing on James Joyce and Dante, fretting about his ex-wife and kids, and agonising over questions big and small: What is love? What is life? And where’s the next shag? More often than not, Bluett doesn’t have the answers. In consolation, he regularly partakes of the “sacrament of vodka”, all the better to settle in for an evening of worship. Who are his gods? Stan Getz, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
Mr Kennedy has found a compelling character in Bluett, but for most of the novel doesn’t do much with him. Tone interests Mr Kennedy more than plot. To his credit, he can paint a picture. Before leaving for his nights out, for instance, Bluett always takes a moment to savour l’heure bleue, that moment between day and night when the sun, lingering below the horizon, turns the light a soft shade of blue. It is this hibernal gloaming that makes “a perfect noir setting” of Copenhagen, Bluett thinks. Little does he know—in the apartment next door, his friend Sam is falling for a Russian prostitute with a heart not of gold, but of hoarfrost.
For Bluett’s stream-of-consciousness wanderings, Mr Kennedy skilfully builds a mood of erudite noir. But when he belatedly introduces a lurid plot, the novel becomes less Joycean nocturne, more Pulp Fiction. Mr Kennedy hasn’t melded these genres together so much as set them side-by-side. Striking, but never really one thing or the other, “Beneath the Neon Egg” is more evocative of l’heure bleue than it realises.
