Famous

As I went back to visit my parents over Christmas I fell back into the unfortunate habit of not reading. For reasons that aren’t clear to myself, any time I spend at my parents is time I just cannot get myself motivated to read which means that my reading year ends on the 15th of December. Once back in the UK I started reading one of the books my mum gifted me but as it was a book about writing it felt akin to reading a textbook, it’s interesting stuff but it’s not fun and I was looking for fun to start the year with. So I started reading The Fellowship of the Ring with my partner as a natural follow-up to reading The Hobbit recently and whilst that has also been interesting and relatively fun, it is a very long read and one that isn’t in my comfort zone either and as such it’s been a month since I read anything in full. Whilst I am fine with not reading a book per week like I used to, 1 book a month is the bare minimum for me and this is how I picked up Famous. I got notification on my phone that Amazon was recommending this to me, it was 200 pages and by my favourite author and as such seemed ideal for a quick 1-day power read.

The irony is that having finished it, I wish it had been longer. Famous‘ biggest weakness is that it is only 200 pages long and the ending whilst fitting also feels like it wastes a lot of set up work. The book also has the mirrored problem though of starting way too quickly, within 2 chapters Lance has already introduced himself, gotten fired and started enacting his plan of leaving his old life behind to impersonate James Jansen, it really feels like the author just had an idea to write about and he wanted to get into it immediately with as little introductory work as possible.

Nevertheless, as little of an introduction as there is, it is efficient, Lance is a prick. He is extremely depressed and cynical but that doesn’t stop him from being an objectifying selfish holier than thou sociopath. The way he sees women is extremely immature and gross, often purely focusing on their looks and more importantly their “gazongas”. He also presents his view of the world in a “I’ve figured it all out” way that is kind of reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye, there is a childishness to the way he sees the world but also a relatable disappointment and difficulty he is experiencing with the way the real world functions. I wouldn’t I empathise with him because he is 38 years old unlike the teenage Holden Caulfield but his frustrations aren’t entirely misplaced.

In any case we follow Lance as he transforms himself into James Jansen using the money he’s saved up and that is disappointingly kind of it. The story culminates very predictably with Lance murdering James to fully replace him (in case the blood on the cover art and the entire premise weren’t enough of a giveaway) but for the majority of the book, it really is just a sequence of adventures as Lance figures his new identity out. On this point, Lance did really have it all figured out, he runs into some minor issues along the way but for the most part, everything in his plan goes exactly as he predicted. He executes through it extremely coldly in a way that emphasises his sociopathic tendencies and does get mildly unsettling but he never runs into any bumps…that is until the ending.

I was hoping for him to attract suspicions after murdering James, after all some people were bound to have known him well enough to notice that Lance wasn’t James but Lance did have a plan for that: drive off a cliff and pretending to have amnesia after that to then indulge in the life of a retired star following a tragic accident. The one component that Lance couldn’t control was what would really happen in that car crash and instead of coming out with a couple broken bones and a headache he ends up tetraplegic and suffered such significant brain trauma that he forgot who he is or where he come from and he is unable to remember anything new, forcing him to just live in an ever repeating moment of people telling him he’s a movie star, forgetting, repeat. It is where Lance is arguably at his happiest as he finds himself just enjoying the present moment and scenery but it is also a nightmarish end as Lance is in fact dead, as the only memory this paralysed body is given when it is conscious is that it was the movie star James Jansen.

It is dark and it is maybe what Lance deserved but it also falls short of what could have been. It might have been more cliché to go through the usual motions of people investigating Lance, involving the police until James’ body is discovered and Lance’s plan unravels but just how the start felt like the author had an idea and just wanted to get into the thick of it without proper introduction, the ending feels like he had written his idea and wanted to get out of it without proper conclusion.

I read the book in one sitting and I was captured by it for the time and as such I cannot say it was bad but it definitely felt lesser than the potential it had and lesser than what Blake Crouch should have been capable of writing.