Robin Troy at Book People
Remember when MTV stood for Music Television? Now, who knows what it stands for except the ever-elusive Generation X and short attention spans, but the network has branched into publishing. Their first book — This Book Sucks, by Beavis and Butthead — is more or less what you would expect from MTV Books (I’m sorry — MTV Books? Those two don’t go together.) And now they’ve published their first work of real fiction, Floating, by Robin Troy, who, on a whim, sent MTV the first 50 pages of her college thesis the last day of the MTV Fiction contest deadline.
Lucky for them, she did. The initial entries were so few that MTV extended the deadline at least once, and if it hadn’t been for Ms. Troy (a collected 24-year-old Connecticut native and Harvard graduate) who knows what we might have gotten. As it turns out, MTV didn’t do so bad. Though no The Sun Also Rises or Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, Floating shows poise and style, and will reach out to an audience well above and beyond the call of the MTV viewership.
Set in the dry and hot and stark flatlands of Arizona, Floating weaves the reader through the lives of eight-year-old Brian, his headstrong mother, Ruby, his recently jailed father, Carl, and Sean, Carl’s younger, estranged brother. Ruby and Sean begin an affair while Carl, 600 miles away, tries desperately to get out of jail and get back home to the woman he hates but can’t help but love. Stuck in the center of it all is Brian, the oddball of the family. Brian, son of ranchers and riders, doesn’t like horses. He is small-boned and small-bodied, quiet and shy. He is smart and has won the attention and affection of his teachers. And he swims. In the middle of the desert, he swims like a fish, forcing his mother to drive him to the next town for swimming lessons and competitions.
The book is a nice first novel, but it has its problems. There are relationships that aren’t quite real or believable or are oversimplified, and scenes that don’t always ring true, though Troy’s descriptions of floating, “like a coin suspended in a paperweight,” are nice and lyrical. And Brian, described as “the oldest 8-year-old” anyone’s ever met, still thinks too often like an adult would, and sometimes falls into the role of the author’s mouthpiece. But for beginnings (Robin Troy’s and MTV’s) there have been much worse and this one isn’t bad. Unfortunately, the reading itself wasn’t well-publicized and the turnout was low (no more than five in the audience including myself) which made the reading, if nothing else, more intimate. Robin Troy held herself well and answered my questions sincerely, even if it seemed she’d been answering similar questions far too long now, and the chapter she read was one of the better chapters in the novel (and her favorite). Maybe after her second or third novel, her readings will be better attended. Either way, to both of them (Robin and MTV), good luck and welcome to the real world. — Manuel Gonzales
This article appears in October 16 • 1998 and October 16 • 1998 (Cover).