Ah, mistakes. The factor by which our lives become anything but predictable.
There are the mistakes you make that you KNOW are mistakes. Watching TV instead of studying for finals. Going out and overdoing it the night before a big job interview.
Or, in Mira Winston’s case, sleeping with a married man 30 years her senior.
What Mira could not see coming, was what happens when you choose to hit golf balls without checking the safety net first.
It’s exactly this kind of mistake — the unintentional one — that sits at the center of Chris Bohajlian’s latest, “The Amateur.“
We’ve all stepped in it without looking at one point or another. Grabbing the salt instead of the sugar for a cookie recipe. Putting face cream on your toothbrush by accident. Slipping on the wrong color shoes when heading out and racing to catch the train.
Embarrassing, but harmless.
But what about those choices, equally unintentional, but disastrous? Not looking before backing your car out of the garage. Butt dialing your boss from a bar. Leaving grapes out on the counter not thinking your dog can reach them.
Bohjalian’s latest problematic female protagonist, a now-adult Mira, is the presumed author of this fictional memoir about a girl’s life gone wrong when one unintentional mistake — hitting golf balls into a loose safety net — kills a high school classmate. From there, everything unravels.
It’s an interesting plot device in that Mira is now taking stock of the choices she made, or maybe didn’t really make after all, of her teens and early 20s.
For example, her lover, Theo Cotton. While at 15 years old garnering the attention of a man literally old enough to be your father may have seemed thrilling, as an adult, Mira can now debate the appropriateness of someone in their 40s seducing a younger teenager.
Or her childhood behavior. What may have felt impetuous and bold as a teen can now be viewed through the lens of someone who’s been through intense therapy.
Did Mira kill Kenny? Yes. Did she mean to? No. Was it still her fault? Not going to tell you. That’s the mystery you need to read the book to solve. Bohjalian always does a great job of writing stories that draw you in and make you care about the characters and The Amateur is no different. I think there are likely places in Mira’s experiences we readers would have liked to delve further, but sometimes a 300-page book is much more satisfying than a 600-page book.
Also? Mira isn’t the only one that makes an unintentional mistake with disastrous consequences. Just sayin’.
If you are looking for a weekend read that’ll keep you on the couch way past your bedtime, this is the one for you.
LitzyDitz 