The Introvert and The Introvert Confounds Innocence by Michael Paul Michaud
/Thank you Anne Cater for inviting me to join this blog tour. I’m Paterson Loarn, book blogger and author. You’ll find me here writing about comedy, community and crime. My serial ‘Up the Community Centre’ is also featured on FunnyPearls.com the only website dedicated to showcasing humorous writing by women.
I read both of these novellas within twenty-four hours. Although I enjoy reading fast for recreation, when I set out to review a book, I always take it slowly and make copious notes as I go along. This time, that’s how I began, until I realised that my method didn’t match the stories. Going with the flow is the best way to appreciate Michaud’s brilliant use of first-person narration, including a repetition of key phrases, which create humour in what would otherwise be a dark tale.
I also realised that it’s necessary to have read ‘The Introvert’ in order to fully appreciate ‘The Introvert Confounds Innocence’. Yes, one could read Michaud’s second novella first, enjoy the narrative and laugh at its sharp humour, but I advise readers to start at the beginning of the introvert’s journey. And what a great trip this voyage around a sympathetic anti-hero is! At times, the Introvert’s mental dodgems may be hard to steer between, but hang on in there, because it’s well worth the ride.
The Introvert
A vacuum salesman by day, the introvert lives a quiet life alone with his dog until a work relationship and a dark secret from his past team up to create an uncomfortable imbalance in his otherwise ordered life, one that soon finds him squarely at the centre of a murder investigation.
The above sentence, from the back cover of ‘The Introvert’, is a fairly accurate summary. However, it’s not so much that there is a dark secret in his past as that his whole past is secret. The reader need not expect a dramatic emotional reveal in Act 5. In a variation on this common book trope, details are drip-fed and realisation dawns gradually. ‘I also remember how I’d brought it up to my parents later that night and how they just told me that….most people are only comfortable when everyone is eating and wearing and talking and acting the same as everyone else, but that I should never change who I was just because most people changed the way they were to fit into a pattern.’
With his thoughts continually urging him to make people ‘red and open’ and to ‘achieve it’ with his girlfriend Donna, what follows is a sometimes brutal, oftentimes hilarious, and absurdist account of the life of one very anti-social and unexpected anti-hero.
I think the second part of the cover blurb does a disservice to Michaud’s delicate handling of the introvert’s inner monologue, by mentioning two of the repeated phrases, which come across as stark and aggressive. That’s not how they appear in the text. There’s also an implication that he’s violent towards Donna, which is far from the truth. Also, while the events can be described as ‘absurdist’, Michaud explains them so skilfully, using the introvert’s thought patterns, that even the brutality almost makes sense, and the reader has to try hard not to sympathise with his actions.
While reading ‘The Introvert’ I was constantly on tenterhooks, wondering how each cliffhanger was going to play out, and whether the introvert was going to be tripped up by his own tongue. It’s not too much of a reveal to say that at the end of the first novella, he finds love. Whether he deserves this good fortune or not is for the reader to decide.
The Introvert Confounds Innocence
‘The Introvert Confounds Innocence’ continues the story of the eponymous anti-hero introduced in ‘The Introvert’. With his life disrupted by an unscrupulous work colleague and a bully at his son Toby’s school, things go from bad to worse when his neighbour’s abusive boyfriend goes missing, plunging the introvert into the centre of a murder investigation.
On the first page of the second part of the introvert’s adventures, we find him buying an ice cream for his son. It sounds like a simple, everyday thing to be doing, but for our anti-hero, nothing is straightforward.‘I wondered what Toby was going to order. Then just as quickly I started wondering why I was wondering what Toby was going to order.’ For a moment, it seems as if Toby may not get his ice cream, but the introvert’s learned coping strategies kick in swiftly and the treat is saved. This is a pattern repeated throughout the book, in situations which grow progressively more dangerous.
The ‘unscrupulous’ work colleague turns out to be a complex character who, in spite of a poor start when the introvert describes him as being ‘like a bat’, disrupts his life positively.
Increasingly haunted by a meddlesome detective, and with his thoughts continually urging him to make people ‘red and open’ and to ‘achieve it’ with his girlfriend Donna, what follows is a sometimes brutal, often hilarious and absurdist account of the life of one very anti-social and unexpected anti-hero.
Readers will have to figure out for themselves what the phrases ‘red and open’ and ‘achieve it’ mean to the introvert. One is not as bad as it sounds, and the other is much worse.
What do I like about this book? Firstly, it gave me a chance to play my favourite game, ‘Hunt the Comparison’. At first, I thought the introvert was who I imagine Sheldon from ‘The Big Bang Theory’ would be, if he’d spent his school years scoring C minuses intead of stellar As. Reading on, I considered Holden Caufield from ‘Catcher in the Rye’, but decided Holden was too disorganised. When I found myself wondering if the introvert could be compared to P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster, I realised that I was actually comparing narrative styles. Michaud’s first person narration is a delight; sensitive and amusing with a dash of self-judgement. Just what you’d expect from a lawyer with a creative side.
Secondly, I like Michaud’s economical use of names. The introvert is never named, nor are several other characters, for example, his landlord and the detective. They are left as vivid but undefined personalities, for the reader’s imagination to fill out.
Finally, I loved these words of the introvert’s colleague, ‘Well, you go on being weird….Enough phonies in this world already.’ This chimes with Michaud’s dedication, ‘For the weirdos’.
What would I change? I was confused by the faux British accent of the detective. I’ve never heard ‘chap’ used without an adjective, in the same way as ‘mate’. It’s always ‘old chap’ or ‘there’s a good chap’. Perhaps I’m missing a Mickey-take here?
In conclusion, I recommend ‘The Introvert’ and ‘The Introvert Confounds Innocence’, preferably read in that order, to anyone who enjoys a good laugh and a gripping crime story, in the company of a fascinating protagonist.
