Calvin and Calvin

Brock Clarke explains in his acknowledgments that his latest novel Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? was inspired by Graham Greene's 1969 novel Travels with My Aunt, although anyone who has read Greene's book will realize this within the first few pages.

Calvin Bledsoe is a tame middle-aged man who meets an aunt he never realized he had after the death of his mother. As in Greene's version, the mother's sister is a very different sort of woman, one very experienced in the world who views laws as challenges and breaking them as sport. She takes Calvin on a trip, during which he does things he could have never imagined doing in his former life.

So far the story follows Greene's blueprint, but Clarke soon veers off into his own wild territory.

While Greene was a Catholic writer, Clarke puts the reformer John Calvin at the center of his own story. Calvin Bledsoe's mother was a pastor of a Calvinist church and the author of a world-famous book about Calvin. Her son, who makes his living as a blogger for the pellet stove industry, quotes John Calvin frequently in his narrative, at least at first. Later on he quotes his Aunt Beatrice more frequently.

The lessons he learns from his aunt include the following: 1) thou shall avoid conflict unless the other persons wishes to avoid conflict, and in that case thou shall pursue it, 2) someone is always also someone else, or at least has the capacity to be someone else, if someone else is indeed what he wants to be, 3) pretty much everyone has an illicit lover and 4) thou shall never apologize.

Calvin and his aunt start in Ohio but are soon in Europe, traveling from city to city. Beatrice seems to have a plan in mind, which eludes Calvin. Soon they are joined by a variety of other characters, including Calvin's former wife, Beatrice's former lover, his mother's lover, Beatrice's son, a neighbor from back in Ohio and an Interpol agent with whom Calvin falls in love.

Much of what happens is totally unbelievable, although nothing is as unbelievable as the popularity of that book about John Calvin. In Europe, everyone seems to have read it. As in his earlier novel An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, Brocke uses dark humor and tall tales to create his art, sort of in the manner of Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut. He doesn't totally succeed (I prefer Greene's version), but he does offer some entertaining reading.