A university student out walking one night stumbles across a gangster’s corpse and a loaded gun. He pockets the gun and proceeds to go coo-coo bananas over it, slowly deciding that he needs to fire it - at someone. Just ‘cos Chekhov’s rule I guess!
The Gun is not a very good novel. Despite being relatively short at 200 pages, almost all of it is unnecessary filler. There’s a side story involving the student’s dying biological father in a hospital that doesn’t go anywhere; he picks his targets arbitrarily; and most of the book is him wandering around smoking, thinking about the gun, polishing the gun, and alternately sleeping with either of his two girlfriends.
So it’s more of a psychological portrait than a plot-driven piece? Yes and no. The focus is on the main character’s interior life but I still don’t think we got to understand him very well. Why’s he obsessed with the gun? Why is he the way he is and why does he do what he does? It’s never really clear. Because he’s always been nuts and the gun was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Maybe the gun offered excitement and an escape from his mundane life? No clue. Not that I’m against this kind of story but it has to be engaging and/or somewhat clear as to what it’s point is.
Beyond the nothing story and its repetitive meanderings, and the flat supporting cast, the scene with the detective who confronts him was good and the ending was unexpectedly bonkers. Otherwise I’d say The Gun is an overlong, tedious novel and I’d recommend Fuminori Nakamura’s slightly better book The Thief over this instantly forgettable dross.
No comments:
Post a Comment