I just finished Mona Simpson’s Casebook. Her most recent novel. I really enjoyed it. I think I have read and enjoyed every novel she has written except one. She reminds me of Anne Tyler, except that Anne Tyler does a great job of writing the same type of story every time. Mona Simpson does not. Mona Simpson’s novels are deeper, even though I think she is a master of the story in which nothing much happens. In Casebook, a boy nominally proceeding through adolescence during the course of the story engages in his parents divorce and subsequent relationships through espionage. He and his best friend spy on the parents. They record and listen in on private conversations. Some of them are very intimate. They hire a private investigator. These people have pretty weird relationships. But the boys have a purpose: Self preservation. They want to know what is going to happen to them.

Other than in-home espionage, the story is typical white American family privilege and angst. Suffering, outside of the divorce and newly forming relationships, manifests in a slightly receding economic orbit for the mom post-divorce, but frankly not much else. Far from tragic in the scheme of things. Especially if your schema is living in war torn countries overseas, in countries with oppressive governments or cultures, or in economically deprived and racially divided regions of this country. The new man in the mother’s life lies in a despicable way. But let’s face it. A verbal bomb isn’t much like a real bomb. Everything that happens in this story happened yesterday to a few million young American men and their families, and will again tomorrow.

But Simpson’s stories read with ease. Casebook reminds me of a very popular book from my youth, Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh), which in less direct terms, deals with many of the same issues and from a similar perspective. Perhaps that is the clue as to its appeal for me. I loved Harriet the Spy. I was sucker for books about New York  City (The Catcher in the Rye, The Godfather) way before I ever got there (in 1974). In many ways, this is a version for the next century, as Fitzhugh’s classic came out in 1964, but mostly for adults. And that is the one troubling issue with Casebook. This narrator is able to feel and interpret and express way beyond his age, at least what I would conceive of for that age. Then again, maybe that’s how much the world has changed, I can’t fathom a boy at this age being so worldly, or so blase about things like sex and his parents.

I seem to remember thinking the same thing of Holden Caulfield and Harriet. Perhaps the narrator is telling the story about his earlier years at a much later point in time and therefore he is entitled to add some worldliness. In other words, he is narrating a story, not journaling. Does a teenage boy, not portrayed as academically superior, know what disyllabic means? This one does. Maybe it’s not so logical, but I like the narrator anyway.

Another strange thing for an experienced contemporary female novelist: The female characters are relatively two dimensional, but then again, we see through the eyes of this adolescent narrator, so that may be authenticity rather than character defect.

Anyway, there’s something warm about Simpson’s writing. Cozy. Commanding. The story never gets out of hand. It’s tightly controlled. It’s not too long or too short. No long-winded passages demonstrating literary pyrotechnics. Somehow, in the course of 300+ pages, I felt I had born witness to the maturing of Miles Adler, the narrator. His arc is clear, in the midst of his parents’ divorce, modern grappling with sexual identity, a close-knit group of his parents friends (whose kids are his friends). The kid turns out just fine. Thousands of course do every week, but I still found it reassuring. It’s more about how Miles seeks to exert some control over family events out of his control. His methods may seem shady for an adult, but come off as precocious for a kid.

And there is something comforting about Simpson herself as an author. For me. I read Anywhere But Here in the early 1980s. It was one of the first books I found when I began searching for (1) books by new contemporary authors that were not part of a syllabus, (2) books which no longer were reflecting my age and circumstances (Catcher in the Rye; This Side of Paradise; KinFlicks; Bright Lights, Big City; and others), and (3) books by and about women and their struggles. So it was instructive to read how Simpson would capture a male protagonist, a young ‘un at that.