Against his better judgment and with an almost total lack of ambition, Winston Williamson found himself installed as the head of his father’s successful law firm. Now his father is 86 and in need of round-the-clock care, and his wife Shirley’s cancer has returned. Struggling to overcome his imposter syndrome and the bitter regrets of being railroaded into a career he never wanted, Winston is beginning to unravel. He is unfaithful to his ailing wife and indifferent to the plight of his aging father. Winston’s primary concern is himself. But when his self-loathing and insecurities threaten to tip his world into chaos, how close to the edge is he prepared to go—or is there still a possibility he could redeem himself?

Rodney Nelsestuen’s QUIET DESPERATION is a slim novella written in the first person and charting the disgruntled interior life of its protagonist, Winston Williamson, a reluctant lawyer and perpetual cynic. Williamson pushes the idea of the anti-hero to the limit. He’s not exactly endearing. This is a man who begrudges the time he is spending with his sick wife: “Sometimes, I imagine she’s already dead. The thought brings a miserable form of guilty relief.” Williamson has a mistress who is half his age, a cliché he embraces. More importantly, the key thing is that his younger lover has “no stale scent of illness, none of the overwhelming signs of life coming to an early end.”

Any guilt that Williamson harbors he uses as a shield, a means to deflect the self-loathing that exists below his public facade. As he makes clear: “guilt, when intensely focused on its source, is better than the invisible shifting butterfly my mind and body become when facing myself alone.” But of course he cannot truly escape himself. “All I need to do is look in the mirror,” he says, “but my sins are of weakness, of flesh, of temptation given into as I search for a way out of reality by draining what intellect I have into baser passions.” These baser passions surface throughout the novella, though Nelsestuen dials down any moments of high drama so that Williamson’s predicaments occur in a state of uncomfortable melancholia rather than agitated action. Indeed, the impetus for Williamson’s ultimate self-reckoning is a somewhat underwhelming case of negligence and embezzlement that may be about to trigger the collapse of his company.

Though QUIET DESPERATION is well-written and Nelsestuen creates a believably flawed central character, the novella is rather one-paced. Williamson’s inner emotional turbulence is compelling; far less so the quotidian routine of his working life, which, despite the looming threat of a misdemeanor being revealed, rather drags across too many pages. That said, the ending (though intriguingly inconclusive) centers Williamson’s moment of truth and rewards the reader’s patience through some of the duller, office-bound moments.

QUIET DESPERATION is a well-written literary novella. Author Rodney Nelsestuen has created a memorable central character who, for all of his many flaws, will eventually garner some sympathy from even the most hard-hearted reader.

~Kent Lane for IndieReader