"I
want young. I want unknown. Check the acting schools. Avoid anyone
unionized. And don't show him the script. We need someone who is
desperate. And make sure he wears a size ten and a half. We're over
budget as is, and I'll be damned if I pay for another pair of boots."
Italian
film director Ugo Velluto barks out the above impassioned words to his
casting director - and Ugo is deadly serious about getting the American
actor he needs for his pulp horror film, Jungle Bloodbath, a film he's making on location in the Amazon jungle in Colombia, South America.
Kea
Wilson's debut novel is definitely not horror fiction; rather, it's a
tale of suspense filled with an intensity raised to the power of ten. To
underscore just how intense, let me share a We Eat Our Own highlight reel:
SNAPPY STRUCTURE
The
novel contains 14 chapters, shifting back and forth from Richard, the
young, green, desperate American actor who leaves his girlfriend in NYC
and flies to Colombia to take the lead role (Wow! I actually get a
chance to play the lead actor!) to seven other women and men in
the unfolding drama.
An especially unique feature of the novel:
the chapters of those other people (with the exception of director Ugo,
we're talking six energetic, adventurous women and men in their
twenties) are written in third person but, for Richard's chapters, we're
treated to a breezy, hip second person (reminding me of Jay McInerney's
Bright Lights, Big City). And Kea adds so much by noting what
Richard, naive guy that his is, doesn't know. "Here is something you do
not know: The name of the girl who puts her tongue in the hollow of your
ear as you dance."
COURTROOM DRAMA
Another provocative
feature: sprinkled throughout are lively excerpts of dialogue between
Prosecuting Attorney Capo and Ugo Velluto on the witness stand. As it
turned out, Jungle Bloodbath became a box office smash but the
law wants to nail Ugo for making such an offensive, hyperviolent film.
Ugo, forever the director running the show, laughs and fires back his
own questions. You tell them, Ugo! Lawyers trying to get the upper hand
on a true artist. Ha!
SEX, DRUGS AND REVOLUTION
As in
acting, so in life: timing is everything. Just so happens Ugo has
entered a part of the Colombian rain forest that's currently a hotbed
for Marxist revolutionaries and a dangerous drug cartel. Here's a snip
when beautiful, college-age Marina, dedicated Communist and
revolutionary, moves through the jungle:
"The semiautomatic is
slung over her back like an afterthought. She has her fists if she runs
out of ammunition. She has her teeth. They are all distracted, and
whether she wants to admit it to herself or not, Marina has done
terrible things before - done them so recently that when she closes her
eyes at night she still feels the muscle on the inside of her trigger
finger flare with blood and pulse until she has to make a fist."
FEMALE ENERGY
Kea
Wilson's portrayals of her female characters (what extraordinary
talent!) snap with verve. Every single scene with saucy, sexy Swiss
actress Irena or Italian set designer Agata flash and shimmer. Get a
gander at Irena on camera:
"This is what Irena is best at, and
it's what she did all day, alone with Ugo and the cameraman in the
jungle. Ugo told her to writhe in the mud, afraid, and she did it. He
told her to take off her clothes and step into the river and she turned a
dial in her brain and she was a different girl."
KILL THE DOG
A
key philosophic question running throughout the novel: How far are you
willing to go for the sake of art? At one point Ugo tells Richard he has
to shoot a dog. And please note the black humor, or perhaps I should
say black tragedy.
"You mumbled, But I don't think-
You can.
No, no, it's just - I don't know how to use the gun.
You have to.
It's a movie. Can't you just get the effects crew to -
Just pull the trigger. Ugo pantomimed it. Do it quick. Not too gentle. And don't mess up. We only have one dog."
YOU ARE RICHARD
That
American actor (we don't find out his real name until the final
chapters) merges with his character, Richard Trent. You are Richard
Trent. I am Richard Trent. After all, according to the American, the art
of acting requires one to surrender to character, surrender to the
point where the character eats away at one's own identity. Thus one prime reason for the novel's title: We Eat Our Own.
NOVELIST OF REAL SUBSTANCE AND PROMISE
In his New York Times review, Jonathan Dee wrote, "While the publishers of We Eat Our Own
appear to want to position it as (according to its jacket copy), "a
thoughtful commentary on violence and its repercussions," it is, thank
God, no such thing: Wilson is concerned only with detail, with
specificity and precision in the moment, and it's that concern that
marks her as a novelist of real substance and promise."
In the
main, I agree with Johnathan Dee. However, I think the novel also
prompts us to reflect on how we treat violence – individually, as a
society, as an expression of art. For example, here's Anahi, a young
Colombian, confronting her boyfriend Teo about his participation in the
film, in a scene where Teo repeatedly strikes an Indian's head and neck
with the butt of a gun (Kea Wilson does not use quotation marks at all
in her novel):
"What do you mean, then?
I mean the violence,
she says, bracing. I mean the blood and the killing and the guns.
Hurting the Indians....What I meant was...Doesn't it bother you? To even
pretend to do things like that?"
Kea Wilson has written a stunner, a remarkable achievement for a debut novel. Grab a copy and get ready to turn those pages.
American author Kea Wilson
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