Strange but True
by John Searles
Alternative Beach Reading
A review by Anna Godbersen
Everyone in Strange But True, John Searles's second novel, is scarred in some way. Take Philip Chase, Searles's bedraggled hero. After a fall from the fire-escape of his East Village walk-up, he is living at home in suburban Pennsylvania, sporting a leg cast and an ominous wound to his neck. Then there's Philip's mother Charlene Chase, a grotesque of a woman who, five years after her younger son Ronnie's death, is still assuaging her sorrow with pills and binge-eating. And most of all there is Melissa Moody, Ronnie's high school girlfriend, whose face was ruined in the same accident that killed her sweetheart. When Melissa shows up at the Chase's house one night five years later, nine months pregnant and claiming to be carrying Ronnie's child, all the secrets and lies surrounding that accident begin to unfurl.
Searle's tale has a deliciously campy feel. Melissa and her twin sister are the daughters of a strict and domineering minister. The accident that disrupts their lives happens on prom night, and Melissa still keeps her blood spattered gown in the little cottage she rents from a retired couple. She backs up her outrageous immaculate-conception claim with the word of a TV psychic. Philip is a failed poet who once staved off loneliness with a string of anonymous lovers, and has now resorted to obsessively reading an Anne Sexton biography. Branches screech and blackbirds hover over Philip, Melissa, and Charlene as things go from bad to worse. Besides rage and sorrow, Searles tells us, these characters are about to experience real danger. This heavy darkness is one of the many reasons to read this wonderfully entertaining novel at the beach.
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