The Bewildered

East Burnside, Portland is a land of loading docks, abandoned streetcar tracks, and old mattresses - the detritus of human existence. It is a world that made up of the disparate, disenfranchised, and the marginalized. The characters exist merely in a kind of zombie-like post-industrial landscape, seeking to desperately access "what is most electric in us, and what is most alive." Natalie; a young "bewildered " woman roams this world in her Dickie's and work boots, consumed by the fanatical study of 1970s Playboy Playmates. Natalie is one of the "Afflicted." Once, long ago, she survived electrocution, almost to the degree of death, and now she remains suspended, in a kind of soulless world, hovering between life and death. Haunted by the accident, she has an almost vampiric addiction for wire and electricity - a desperate need for the buzz and drone of the static. Plagued by forgetfulness, the lost time, the erratic sleep patterns, and the attempts at self-medication, Natalie hires, Kayla, Chris, and Leon, three reclusive, skate boarding teenagers to harvest copper wire from telephone poles in undercover raids. While guaranteeing their safety, she takes advantage of their innocence by ensuring that it's legal. But looks are deceptive, because Natalie is using them - she doesn't even know their names - and nothing matters excepting getting the wire, the wire that she so dearly hopes for. But then Leon is electrocuted in a terrible accident that causes a series of catastrophic blackouts throughout the Portland area. Suddenly Leo, shocked and traumatized, becomes an "Affected" one, forever in the grips of Natalie and electricity. Strange and "bewildered," he soon drifts away from Kayla and Chris. Anxious to discover what he is doing, his two friends follow him down into the secretive, subterranean tunnels deep beneath Portland, where they discover the research of a man called Chesterton and his interest in the people he calls "The Affected." Kayla realizes that the key to unlocking the mystery of Leon's conversion and eventual physical disappearance lies among "the transformers, the switching towers, the half-light, and the hum." In Rock's The Bewildered, a hidden world exists around all around of us, where people whose motives desires and understandings differ from our own. The Afflicted are not forthcoming about their condition, so like Chesterton, one must take what one can from them. They are not reflective people. Akin to Kayla and Chris, the Afflicted are disconnected from the past and from the future, and are searching for a different passage to a different place. The Bewildered is a deliberately vague and unsettling novel. With an almost dreamlike intensity, Rock evokes a grey, rocky, rain-drenched landscape that is both atmospheric and reflective, revealing just the edges and limits of things. The author packs the narrative with blurred, hazy notions on the problems of the human condition, observations that are sometimes oblique an

While I understand the accusations of the novel not being "tight" enough, I disagree that this is a bad thing. The book as a whole demonstrates a sense of bewilderment (see: title!), and everyone in the novel is left at the end with the same sense as the reader has-- questioning just what is going on, what everything means. Rock's writing is elegant, his characters are well-crafted, and I found myself not able to put this book down.

The metallic taste of the rain is pleasing to Natalie, which is one of the reasons she likes to walk in the Portland drizzle. Radio static is now preferable to music, which grates. Bright lights, "florescent, flickering so fast no one could tell they weren't steady," provide the ambiance she likes most. She is pure adrenaline - electric - awake all night. Tang - orange flavored water really - fruit roll-ups and beef jerky comprise her diet. She can't remember the last time she ate fresh fruit and vegetables, but likes canned produce, with the slight aftertaste of metal. Home is a lopsided trailer supported by sinking cinderblocks, surrounded by clumps of crabgrass, old bottle caps and scraps of paper, located off a dirt road. Most of all, Natalie is obsessed with Playboy Playmates from the year 1976. She knows their bios by heart, can mimic their photographic poses. That Bicentennial year was a memorable one for the then 12-year-old girl. Now, however, "Forgetfulness disconnected the past from the future, took her in a different direction, and she suspected that was not something she could always deny. For the temptation was not to remember, to really forget, to embrace her best days....moving forward, her energy multiplying, never lapsing." Kayla, Leon and Chris skateboard beneath the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Oregon. They are best friends, have been since fourth grade when they were selected for a gifted student program. Now, at fifteen, they have been inseparable for over five years. They study languages, classical music and play instruments. Kayla is a whiz-kid in math and science, just as she excels, with her sensuous grace, on the skateboard. She is especially fascinated with electricity. Chris is best at literature and history. Leon is good at everything. The three attempt to be intellectually dispassionate, all the while feeling the intense, ever changing emotions of adolescence. They look with disdain at their peers, and what they consider to be the superficial lives of most adults. All three are desperate to figure out a way to live together, "...somewhere, and they would live in a way that no one had lived before..." Natalie sees Kayla skateboarding one evening and is transfixed by the girl's agility and skill. She approaches Kayla and, after a strange conversation about Playboy's 1976 July Playmate, asks the girl to help her with a special project. Natalie will pay well for copper wire stolen from electrical lines located outside the city. Kayla agrees to do the scavenging if her two friends can be included. The teens already have a purpose for the money, and Natalie fits their image of "an especially promising person" - an off-beat nonconformist. They're psyched. And thus begins a bizarre, chilling, and ultimately dangerous affiliation. "The Bewildered" is a riveting novel - pardon the pun, but it is electrifying!! The author's depiction of the three teenagers is on target. They are all three-dimensional, vivid, believable c