Book review: Firm hold on skillful storytelling

Readers will readily empathise with, and root for, Dan and Tamma as they try to overcome every obstacle that lands in their path in this coming-of-age story

Gabriel Tallent’s superb character portrayals and skillful storytelling make this big-hearted book very difficult to put down. Picture: Michael Friberg

• Crux
• by Gabriel Tallent
• Riverhead Books, £18.99

Crux, Gabriel Tallent’s second novel, is a coming-of-age story focused on two teenagers, Dan and Tamma, in their final year of high school.

Living in poverty in the shadow of California’s Joshua Tree National Park — one of the world’s great rock-climbing meccas — they dream of breaking out of their narrow lives by becoming legendary climbers.

Every day, Dan and Tamma get up before dawn to go climbing, their absence barely noticed by the various members of their dysfunctional families. 

When not climbing rocks, they watch endless videos of their climbing heroes online. 

They can’t afford proper equipment and what little they have is old and threadbare, so catastrophe looms over their every effort.

Climbing is portrayed as a sport of the privileged but Dan and Tamma’s unlikely dream is their only ticket out of poverty, out of the literal desert that they’ve been raised in — or so it would seem. 

Dan, it turns out, has other potential escape routes. A gifted and diligent student, he’s a candidate for a fully-paid college scholarship, provided he doesn’t let climbing distract him from his studies.

Tamma has no such options and has long ago accepted that her teachers, community, and family have given up on her. 

For Tamma, it’s rock climbing or bust, and so we follow our lead characters through this single, tumultuous year.

Crux is, for the most part, engaging and well-written without offering us anything formally innovative or unique. 

It’s a typically American narrative in many ways and Tallent’s writing style is unashamedly in keeping with the tradition that produced him.

There has never been a shortage of books or films centred around young people finding themselves in the vast American landscape. 

What sets Crux apart is the largeness and complexity of every character. Tallent has a true story-teller’s gift for bringing every actor in his novels fully to life. 

Everyone has a backstory, everyone has complex motivations, even when they do bad or selfish things.

Tamma’s mother is narcissistic and overbearing. She lives for the approval of her drug-dealing, all-day drug using, boyfriend, and actively sabotages Tamma’s ambitions. 

Yet, we also learn that she helped Dan’s mother edit her novel decades before. She’s a victim of poverty, of thwarted potential as much as anyone.

It is only Craig, Tamma’s brother, who appears to have no redeeming features whatsoever. No mitigation is offered for anything he does. 

Perhaps his main value is to act as a contrast to the other members of his family who at least have the excuse of being tragic figures.

The pressures and stresses of poverty are portrayed in virtually every page of Crux but class divisions are placed under the harshest spotlight when the book’s characters encounter America’s famously privatised healthcare system. 

Dan’s mother needs heart surgery but doesn’t think the family can afford it and she wants every spare cent to go towards Dan’s college fund. 

Doctors and hospitals are visited as a last resort. Even the smallest accident can leave entire families bankrupt and homeless — bad news for two headstrong young climbers without insurance.

The book is dialogue-heavy in ways that aren’t always convincing. 

Tamma, in particular, undertakes long poetic monologues about life, death, the universe, sex, climbing, and more that sound more like the words of a hungover Kerouac put in the mouth of a 17-year-old high-school student.

Nonetheless, Crux is easy to love. Readers will readily empathise with, and root for Dan and Tamma as they try to overcome every obstacle that lands in their path.

Tallent’s superb character portrayals and skillful storytelling make this big-hearted book very difficult to put down.