Rem is on the tail end of a failed relationship, tapping away at a novel and microdosing to get through the day. Gene has a comfortable, suburban life as a web developer. In high school, they were bandmates in the punk rock band The Bubbling Samovars, the only worthwhile art either of them has ever produced. When Gene’s father dies, an unexpected encounter leads the two erstwhile bandmates to reconnect and reflect on the paths they’ve taken by their mid-40s.
Dave J. Andrae’s REM’S CHANCE is, in some ways, an extremely conventional novel: it is, fundamentally, about straight male anxiety about aging; romantic fulfillment with women is a primary indicator of success; and even the other thematic markers, like being in a punk band in high school, feel slightly more like a throwback to Gen X concerns. But the text squeezes out enough charm to set itself apart and make it worth reading. It is, first off, an early-pandemic period piece, and although this doesn’t overwhelmingly affect the plot (nobody is ever in quarantine after an exposure), one-off references to 2020s culture (like a “sexy stuck container ship” Halloween costume) are suitably weird and often genuinely funny.
The text is also structurally sound. A major subplot involves a misanthrope who murdered his stepmother and her partner, and is now squatting in her house while distracting himself with video games and junk food (it’s Florida). For much of the page count, it’s unclear how this subplot relates to Rem and Gene, but in addition to providing some unsettling, threatening undertones to the text, it also provides an additional foil for the protagonists: Rem is positioned between this violent misanthrope on one side and the fully conventional Gene on the other. All of them are seen in the context of Gene’s dead father; while cleaning out his house, the characters reflect on the habits of an older generation of men and the effluvia they accrue. This is still basically a story about straight men feeling anxious about aging, but it’s a smartly constructed and complex story nonetheless.
The prose may throw some readers. The overall style is fluid, rich, and tongue-in-cheek, ranging between the bluntly observational and deeply psychological—which allows it to draw out the absurdity of the circumstances and often landing in quips like, “Gary prided himself on not being delusional.” There are some awkward turns of phrase as well—there’s nothing grammatically wrong with “his living space had probably been in need of being spruced up”—but there’s no reason for it to be so clunky. Still, they don’t impact the flow of the text at large.
The dialogue has two distinct modes. One is plain and naturalistic; the other is more elevated. At times, characters enter a kind of fugue state and deliver stilted, performative monologues on themes like life or art, interrupted only by token asides from a listener. In an early example, Gene considers his own emotional state upon the death of his father, noting outright a few sentences in that “I’m feeling several things at once, to the point that it’s almost as if I feel nothing at all.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—many of these characters are anxious and reflective, and deliberate performativity isn’t inappropriate for them—but it can be jarring. Accepting the switch from naturalistic dialogue to these hieratic interludes requires a certain amount of buy-in to the overall absurdity; and, in that regard, REM’S CHANCE doesn’t feel like it convinces the reader to buy in quite as effectively as it could.
Overall, though, REM’S CHANCE takes a well-established literary form and successfully updates it for the older, millennial man negotiating the modern era.
REM’S CHANCE, by Dave J. Andrae, is a fun, weird meditation on life and death for older millennials.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader
