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Book review – All Involved by Ryan Gattis

By October 15, 2019No Comments

Book review – All Involved by Ryan Gattis

I live a few blocks from the beautifully curated Love Books in Johannesburg. Kate Rogan, its inimitable proprietor, has gotten to know my tastes over the years, and a few weeks ago she called and said –  got something for you. She didn’t even bother to describe it, just put it behind the counter a waited for me to come in and collect it. Which, of course, I did.

This is a story of urban ravage (inspired by true events) told against the backdrop of the LA riots in 1993, which were sparked by police beating of Rodney King. I lived and worked in LA at the time, not too far from the violence, and I remember the shock of it, the disbelief at smoke-darkened skies and near hysterical TV presenters and images of graphic mayhem and brutality as I stayed home for fear of the streets that had turned from familiar to menacing. The author, Ryan Gattis, teaches at a University near LA, and this is his 5th novel.

The book’s opening chapter is perhaps the most explosive and shocking I have ever read. It is told in the first person and ends with an account of the breathtakingly brutal beating and murder of the narrator in the mean streets of an East LA Latino neighbourhood, all told from his own perspective from a early stroll walk home from work to his own demise.

Thus starts a series of chapters, each told in the first person by a new character, the thread of the plot passed along and held aloft from different points of view, and narrated in authentic vernacular. I am generally not a fan of books told in the first person, particularly in street slang (it dampens the possibility of beautifully crafted language), but in this case the reader hears the voice of each character ringing true and clear, and thus the story gains this polyphonic texture which would not have been otherwise possible. Moreover, many of the characters are from the same Latino gang – separating the voices into distinct believable personalities within single chapters is a monumental achievement.

The book is less about the riots than about a particular set of crimes that were committed under cover of the riots – as the city burned and the police and firefighters struggled to impose control (in mainly black South Central LA), a particular Latino crew uses the collapse in law enforcement for their own purposes, unleashing a truly scarring set of events – starting with a single gang-related killing and escalating beyond anyone’s control.

Even amongst these young men (and some young women and very young boys) who murder without guilt (and sometimes with a glee), Gattis manages to find some undercurrent of humanity. There are other characters – a nurse, a firefighter, an anonymous member of a government ‘revenge’ troop outside of normal law-enforcement procedures – all of whom paint a complex and multilayered picture of a truly dystopian moment in recent US urban history.

From the unusual ‘plot-by-many-voices’ structure, to the hopeless and violent landscapes of each character’s lives, to the first person descriptions of anger, fear and retribution, this book is well outside of the usual literary fare, and provided me with a reading pleasure well outside of my expectations. FInally, a health warning – this book describes human violence with unflinching urgency and detail – not for the soft-skinned.

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