John F. Rooney's Niche-market Novels
BY SHELLY BRYANT I July 28, 2009
John F. Rooney. The Daemon in Our Dreams. Senneff House Publishers, 2007. 285 pages.
ISBN-10: 978-0-9752756-7-2
___________. Last Passage to Santiago. Senneff House Publishers, 2009. 238 pages.
ISBN-10: 978-0-9752756-5-8
I usually prefer to keep my analysis of a book separate from the author's comments on it, but John F. Rooney's two novels seem to warrant a look at comments made by the author in his Ezine article "A New Genre Niche for the Novel." In the article, he talks of his writing, including both The Daemon in Our Dreams and Last Passage to Santiago as belonging to what he views as "a new sub-genre of the novel," in which a particular place serves not merely as the setting, but is central to the story.
I am somewhat puzzled by Rooney's comments. First of all, the sub-genre envisioned in the article is anything but new. A Passage to India, which gets mention in the article and plays an important role in the events of The Daemon in Our Dreams, is not the only novel that has a specific place serving as an integral part of the story — indeed, practically being the story — though it is probably the most famous example. Other books such as Keys to the Kingdom or even The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn come to mind as further instances of such writing, as does the lesser known novel The Return of No. 44, reviewed earlier on this website. The travel novel is a field that has been well explored by such notable authors as Paul Theroux, the Waugh brothers, James Clavell, and Pico Ayer, to pick just a few names out of the multitude available. One could even argue that a fantasy classic like The Lord of the Rings plays on this tradition in literature that was already important at the time of its writing. The idea of a travel novel in which a particular place serves almost as a character is anything but new.
That alone would be puzzling enough about Rooney's take on his own work, but a reading of the books only leads to further head-scratching. His novels are nothing like those fine examples of the travel novel mentioned above. Rooney's tales don't give a deep sense of place, but seem to offer a rather superficial look at various locales as we breeze through them, as if we are on a package tour. In fact, that is perhaps the best way to describe the niche into which these books fit most neatly, the "package tour novel." The places we get an all-too-brief glimpse of seem to race past, as if skimming the surface is good enough. It is a poor way of trying to understand a place, and the novels seem to capture the same feeling one has when joining a package tour. The fact that both books are mostly set on a cruise ship is very appropriate. It is precisely the type of travel stereotypically associated with cruise ships that shows up in these two stories.
Fitting right in with this superficial feeling of place are the characters in the two novels, especially The Daemon in Our Dreams. Character development on these pages is sketchy, at best. In Daemon, there is no clear protagonist, and the three characters destined to die (who serve as the closest thing we have to a protagonist) are all very unsympathetic. The most interesting of the three, Ably, gets the least ink. Ironically, considering the niche Rooney says he was aiming for, Ably is also the character with the broadest knowledge and experience of the places featured in the book. Perhaps using him as the single protagonist, with Fran and Paul serving more supporting roles, would have allowed space for both richer development of character and deeper exploration of place. Last Passage to Santiago avoids this pitfall, having a single clear protagonist in Stephie. It is no surprise that the novel is correspondingly a little more engaging than Daemon.
A bit of editing would probably go a long way for both of these books. Rooney's prose is not bad. His style is readable enough. At times, though, it seems that he is too close to the subjects at hand, too familiar. The novels do not do enough to draw the reader close to the people and places represented on their pages, and the failure to do so makes them hard to recommend. Sadly, it leaves the two books feeling flat and uninspired, despite the obvious love Rooney has for the places he writes about.
[For reference, see Rooney's article.]
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