The Keep
by Jennifer Egan
Knopf, 256 pp., $23.95
Dun, dun, dunnn!Jennifer Egan’s The Keep is a page-turner. Despite its many flaws, its emphasis on complicated plot twists over poignancy, and its flippant demonstration of punctuation (there isn’t a semicolon to be found in this psychological thriller), even the most unimpressed reader, or grammar stickler, would be so lucky as not to finger the bottom right corner of each page without feeling the impulsive need to yank it back and read further.
The jacket of Egan’s novel invites us in with a brief plot synopsis: “Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank whose devastating consequences changed both their lives, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe, a castle steeped in blood lore and family pride.”
Dun, dun, dunnn!
The reader mustn’t be fooled, however, for this novel has nothing to do with any of that. The Keep is about a prisoner telling a tale – in a writing workshop for prisoners – telling his tale of committing an unreasonable murder (as in without a tangible reason, à la The Stranger), a tale more easily understood in terms of medieval castles and blood lore. Egan employs some of the old back-and-forth storytelling, alternating the chapters about the two cousins with those pertaining to the convict telling the cousins’ story and, simultaneously, his own. But as the reader plunges forward, the lines between fiction and, well, fiction, blur more and more due to the increasing plot twists within the story and the increasing plot twists within the story-within-the-story. Confused?
Truth be told, The Keep might make a better film (or play) than a book. The story – stories really – is quite compelling, but Egan’s language is a bit weak. She spends too much energy trying to make the story unconventional, like a Palahniuk tale, and thought-provoking, like a Camus or a Rand tale, but not enough energy keeping The Keep alive with thoughtful stylistic choices and original philosophical exploration (“What is real?”). Still, it’s a fun read, but with some enhanced dialogue, extraordinary directorial vision, and eerie music, this could be a great piece of art.
This article appears in September 1 • 2006.