Judging a book by its cover

For several years before and during my undergraduate years at KU, I worked at the Town Crier in downtown Lawrence. It no longer exists, but it was a bookstore, pipe shop, and Hallmark card store. We sold magazines too. I worked there mostly for the books and the employee discount.
For me, one of the first things that attracts me to a book is its cover. Often with the books displayed with only the spine visible, I am drawn to titles. This was the case with Scott Bradfield's first novel, The History of Luminous Motion. Bradfield had earned a PhD in English from Cal-Irvine, part time home of Jacques Derrida.
I have learned that Bradfield is now an American expat who lives in London. He has written several additional novels and has achieved a modicum of fame for an speech turned into in a essay titled "Why I Hate Toni Morrison's Beloved."
This is my first and probably last Bradfield novel I will read. The novel is the story of an 8-year old boy Phillip who lives with a mentally ill mother who makes a living by stealing the credit cards of men she sleeps with. Phillip's father comes in and out of his life throughout the novel. Phillip kills one of her mother's boyfriends who they had actually moved in with. The man, Pedro, according to Phillip is one of the few decent men his mother had met. From the grave, Pedro occasionally appears to counsel Phillip on a variety of topics.
Phillip's two friends in the novel are a pair of 12-year olds named Rodney and Beatrice.
From what I described so far, the novel is a bit odd, but I suppose there are 8 year olds who are capable of murder and probably women like Phillip's mother too. So that is not my primary beef with Bradfield's novel. It is the utter implausibility of the maturity and interests of the three kids. Now I'm a fan of Marquez and other magical realists. I don't mind the appearance of fantastical elements into a narrative, but I think Bradfield over does it.
To his credit, Bradield is a gifted writer who has a true talent with his prose. Here is Phillip's mom explaining the concept of luminous motion:
“‘The history of motion is that luminous progress men and women make in the world alone,’ Mom said. ‘We’re moving into sudden history now, baby. That life men lead and women disavow, that sure and certain sense that nothing is wrong, that life does not beat or pause, that the universe expands relentlessly. You can feel the source of all the world’s light in your beating heart, in the map of your blood, in the vast range and pace of your brain. That’s the light, baby. You don’t need any other. Just that light beating forever inside of you.’” (42)
Bradfield also excels at creating vivid portraits of the inner landscape of his characters. This is a description of Phillip's mom and her darkness:
“Sometimes I even looked forward to having the darkness take me places. I took me down luminous rivers on large rotting rafts and barges. I saw strange birds flying overhead, and the eyes of other creatures emerging from the mucky water. I traveled down the river where twisted houses sat on shores filled with dark men who wouldn’t come outside. The dark men were inside whispering about me. They held heavy spears and weapons by their side while their addled women cooked large pots of gristly meat and hung their washing out to dry. The men wore loincloths and streaks of paint on their arms and faces. A few mangy dogs lay around outside the circle of men, contemplating the dim fire. One of the dark men was my father.” (130)
We learn of Phillip's desire if not for love, then for an enveloping sense of affection:“I never wanted to be loved when I was eight years old. I wanted to be crushed by soft massive arms. I wanted to be lifted into some towering embrace. I wanted to be hugged so tight I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to be hugged until my eyes watered and my lungs collapsed and my heart popped.” (140) Though there is an implicit sense of violence in this description, there is also the presence of a deep longing in Phillip. Since Phillip does not find this embrace, he turns to drugs (taken from his parents, weed, and various types of beer and hard liquor. This is where the novel starts to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Because everyone knows of 3rd graders who can easily score good dope and cheap liquor. Phillip is kept out of school too, so he sits around stoned and drunk all day.
When he does go out, Phillip hangs with Beatrice and Rodney his 6th grade "mentors" for lack of a better term. Rodney at least has an ambition. “So that’s when I decided to become a warlock. To master the satanic arts of black magic. Devil worshipping, for you laymen. I want to learn to master what they call the black arts.” (178)
Beatrice rounds out this odd triumvirate of boy murder and apprentice warlock by appearing to be the group intellectual.
Here's Beatrice lecturing Phillip on one of his intellectual shortcomings:“Man’s myth of intentionality. I do things to you. Prediction. Subject and object. The dream of perfect cosmic grammar.” (170) Is this the type of grammar they teach in schools now? It gets better though. Beatrice not to be outdone by Rodney's aspirations of the dark arts embarks upon an ambitious reading project.
“I’ve been reading a lot lately, Phillip, since we broke up. French feminists, existential Marxists. I’m teaching myself French so I can read Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason— much of which has been improperly translated, from what I understand.” (171) So the real question I suppose is what Beatrice woudl be doing if she and Phillip had not broken up? Heidegger, Camus or perhaps de Beauvoir?
For me, all it would have taken is for Bradfield to add ten years to the age of the protagonists to make me go along for the ride, but I don't know that even Garcia Marquez would try throwing in a prepubescent devotee of French existentialism!
Without spoiling the ending, Rodney and Phillip embark upon a violent course of action encouraged partially by the dead Pedro.
If you can imagine a trio of messed up, but hyperintellectual tweens with a passion for drugs, sex, and violence, this is the novel for you. I couldn't make it work.
Czar