Life at the bottom

I stuck with Patrick deWitt's first novel, Ablutions (2009) to the end because I love his later novels like French Exit and The Sisters Brothers, but it is a disappointing and disgusting book. The author tells us more than we want to know about humanity at its worst.

The novel — deWitt calls it "notes for a novel" because it consists of short glimpses of characters and events rather than a straight narrative — tells of the regulars at a Hollywood bar. Most of these people have either hit bottom, are on their way down or still wrongly believe they are on the way up. They all drink too much and take too many drugs. This includes our unnamed narrator, who gets free drinks as part of his compensation for working there.

Their drinking, drug taking and sex acts in the back room are described in detail. The narrator's wife leaves him for another man. He begins stealing money from the bar. His life goes from bad to worse.

Yet the novel is a confession, of sorts. The title is a religious term referring to "washing one's body or part of it," a cleansing. And that is sort of what the reader wants to do after reading it.