Book Review: "A Meaningful Life" by L.J Davis

The New York Review of Books classics series has always been great for discovering new writers and works by writers you wouldn't have even thought about. There's books about authors, there's books on the topic of war, of identity and everything in between. A short time ago, I wrote my article on my favourite books of the series and yet, I don't think I'm even halfway through digging through the publications. Since they keep coming out with new ones, I have always had something obscure to read. A Meaningful Life is about a man, upon turning thirty, chooses to take a look at how his life hasn't really gone quite the way he planned. He definitely feels as though it is slipping through his fingers.

First of all, there are lots of introspective thoughts in this story - our main character tries to reason his own misanthropic hatred of other people. For example: he doesn't like his in-laws and doesn't like seeing them and yet, he never actually mentions it to them. Instead he seems to take out his frustrations on his wife whom he has an argument with about where they should be moving to. He doesn't seem to enjoy the fact that she keeps visiting her mother, the fact that her mother keeps a room done up for her just in case she changes her mind about being married and comes home. Even though the main character isn't the narrator, we definitely feel his feelings coming through every inch of the narrative.

Once the new couple has moved to New York, the relationship starts going even further down the pan. With our main character, Lowell, now wanting to write a novel he states that he may want to try his hand at cab driving. Having stated before that he wants to be aspirational for a career, this new direction would drive any woman who was counting on some money to see a new move by infuriatingly mad. I'm not going to lie, she's not perfect either but it seems like Lowell is just a piece of shit that only thinks about his own wants and needs. The story is great because it works its way through the mundane and yet, the main character is a terrible example of the modernising man - or maybe an accurate picture of one who has lost all sense of meaning and sympathy for others.

Through all of this, he continues to argue with his wife about absolutely everything. She is attempting to keep things afloat where all he can do is mope about. The reader can very much tell that he doesn't hate her, but he doesn't particularly like her either. As the story moves on, he starts to do up the house. He works on everything and places all of his 'meaning' into one thing even though the language doesn't move from its melancholic tone. He starts to become heavily guarded about the way he acts towards this project, even to the point where he engages in the same casual racism his father-in-law once spouted early on in the book. He comes to the conclusion that the only way he can possibly hold on to what he wants is to be ruthless about it and so, he murders someone who threatens the equilibrium. No, it isn't his wife. But he does kill someone.

The novel is written in a surprisingly mundane way, there seem to be no big reveals of anything, everything just happens. This definitely makes everything feel more like real life and I think we all know what it is like to search for our own meaning. There is something deeply weird about this though, he kills someone and yet there's no tension building in the story. It happens and it happens over a few pages. We see the blood, we see the way he waits in the house for the police who never come. We see the way in which he concedes defeat over the way his life has taken a strange turn and now, he cannot possibly get it back. There's no redemption arc. It's not only deeply unsettling but it is one of the saddest books you can read. There's just nothing. Nothing at all.