There Must Be Some Mistake

There Must Be Some Mistake by Frederick Barthelme (2014) After reading an earlier Frederick Barthelme novel I liked (Elroy Nights), I was looking forward to this one—but often that optimism doesn’t work out—so I was prepared for disappointment—but I liked this one even more. It was one of those books that, day to day, I looked forward to the next chapter—comforting in some ways, but always surprising. Being set in a condo community on the Gulf Coast of Texas—a locale that feels alienating to me—it took me a bit to warm up to the setting, but once I did, I was in. The main character is a single guy, just over 50—which is shorthand for that age and older—I could relate. There’s a really pleasing balance of nothing happening and too much happening, as well as a balance of the mundane and the absurd. I love the dialogue, which sounds to me the way people speak—funny, annoying, sweet, and sometimes totally off, wrong even, as if populated by space alien pod replacements. In my experience, that’s how people, in general, strike me. Maybe I’m the ideal audience for this book. Judging by books, movies, TV shows I’m aware of in our culture, maybe people want more, and more extreme—the grisly and the horrific. But isn’t there enough of that in the news? I like reading about people I can relate to, and like, more or less, and can put myself in their shoes. Not necessarily heroic, but not evil, either. And the book holds up right to the end—and you know how hard endings are.