'Bait' - Alex Sanchez

[bookgazing]

Diego beats up a gay classmate for smiling at him, landing himself in court. His probation officer, Mr Vidas recommends that a previous history of non-violence and his excellent school record mean that Diego doesn’t require supervision from a probation officer. Despite feeling at first that meeting with Mr Vidas is pointless, Diego quickly comes to feel an important benefit from speaking to Mr Vidas and asks to be put on probation so they can continue to meet.

Soon, sensing that something isn’t quite right, Vidas tries to draw him out on his past relationship with Mac, the step father who committed suicide, using counselling techniques. Diego just wants to talk about Ariel, the girl he’s crushing on, but Vidas persists until Diego begins to reveal more about his past and the troubles that physically harm him in the present.

‘Bait’ contained many of the same writing problems that irked me when I read Sanchez’s earlier novel ‘The God Box’. The most annoying aspect of the writing is that the main character’s thoughts over explain the significance of any detail of his life that is revealed. In the first pages the reader sees Diego’s mother angrily remind him that she can’t keep taking time off from her job to deal with his problems and immediately Diego tells the reader how this makes him feel and why her absence from work is so important:

‘Feeling a little guilty, Diego stooped down and picked up the clip. He knew his mom was struggling to keep their family afloat. There hadn’t been any life insurance settlement because Mac’s death was a suicide. But even when Diego tried to help his mom with money from his Saturday job, she told him to save it for college.’

This paragraph and others, such as: ‘He wished he could change the channel and be at home, taking care of his aquarium fish or goofing around with his little brother, Eddie; or at the beach with his best friend, Kenny, hunting for shells and riding the waves…’ are crammed with too much information to produce a natural sounding narrative. Sanchez tries to quickly set up all the relationships that Diego has within these first few pages, instead of allowing them to be revealed naturally over a longer period of time.

The forced, fast nature of the way ‘Bait’ distributes information creates disconnection between the reader and the character they’re being asked to see as a real person. Diego is deliberately secretive and keeps from telling other characters in the story about events from his past, yet his thoughts spill quickly out for the reader to see. Sure, the information is relayed in third person and an omniscient narrator can realistically reveal more about a shy, secretive character than a first person narrator can. However, the use of third person narration feels somehow overly intrusive in this book probably because there’s a clumsy rush to hand everything Diego has experienced and all his current thoughts over to the reader and the pacing of these revelations feels too fast.

On a note of personal preference, the way that Diego hands over all the information that the reader needs to contextualise his life makes this novel hard for me to engage with. The reader is not required to expend any effort of their own in imagining his family situation. I like stories where I can have a little imaginative input into creating the story as I read, so this style of writing makes me feel less involved and less connected with Diego’s story.

Another aspect of problematic writing found in ‘Bait’ is the creation of secondary characters. Diego’s best friend Kenny is entirely undeveloped. He appears to have no life outside of Diego’s story and exists merely to support Diego when he needs it. Mr Vidas, Diego’s probation officer is the only secondary character who gets more fully developed. He has a life outside of his supportive role in Diego’s story, where he has a male partner, a child. He has undergone some trauma similar to things that Diego has suffered ¹. However, the development of Mr Vidas’ character does lead to an opportunity for Diego to address his own worries and it could be argued that the fact that his character is further developed, while other secondary characters are not, once again shows that this novel is only concerned with Diego and not with the wider world he exists in. In general I felt as if Sanchez wants to get all the side aspects of writing a novel, like world building and secondary character creation, out of the way, so that he can concentrate solely on fleshing out Diego’s story. That disregard for creating a detailed world, enhances the feel that like ‘The God Box’ this novel is more of a box containing some important messages for teenagers than a novel.

I know I’ve only written about negative aspects of this novel, which may lead you to believe I had a miserable time reading ‘Bait’, but this novel filled a very specific reading need for me. I wanted a novel that would be quick to read, but not insubstantial a book that centred on serious issues, but one that wouldn’t take me weeks to get through and that’s what ‘Bait’ provided. Once again, Sanchez addresses important issues and works through the logic of problems facing confused, silenced people. And despite the barriers to connection that the writing style throws up, as I mentioned above, I did care about Diego, especially once he was able to be honest about how he had been hurt. I think I now know exactly when Sanchez’s novels will fit with my reading mood and when they won’t, so if I’d like to read a little bit more by him (and I think I would because his novels allow the reader knowledgeable access to important social issues) I’ll know when to pick up another of his novels.

¹ I’m hedging here, because revealing what Diego has been through could be seen as a spoiler, since what happened in the past isn’t revealed for a while. I think it’s pretty obvious what’s happened to Diego quite early on.

Other Reviews

Dreaming in Books
Queer YA

Comments

[nymeth]

Judging by those paragraphs I definitely think I'd feel similarly to you about the overexplaining. For a novel to truly come alive for me I need some gaps for my mind to fill, at least for part of the story, and it doesn't look like this narrative style left much room for that. Still, I'm glad to hear the novel filled a particular reading need for you right now.

[bookgazing]

I don't know obviously, but I imagine you wouldn't get on with it, partly because it tells you that people are friends, rather than showing you why they are friends

[aartichapati.blogspot.com]

Oh, I see what you mean about too much information. I think that would get bothersome for me as well. No need for THAT much nitty-gritty detail!

[bookgazing]

And if I'm remembering right, here's a bit right at the begining where Diego lays out his whole life history in about a paragraph flat, instead of letting the info unfold naturally. It just felt really inelegant.

[schilling_klaus]

I don't know Sanchez and Bait; but I like flat characters, intrusive omniscient narration, and a huge distance between reader and characters, no matter what.

None of your critique will ever be able to dissuade me from seeing those as positive aspects of any literary work whatsoever.