Book Review - Sweat

I don't think I will ever be invited to be the President of the Mark Gilleo fan club.

"Sweat" is the second book by Gilleo I've read ("Love Thy Neighbor") and my reaction is consistent.  Gilleo is an adequate story teller and an inadequate writer.  He creates interesting characters and story lines then offers a reasonable array of plot twists to keep the story interesting.  Unfortunately Gilleo's short comings as a writer then surface.  He fails to give his characters any real depth which keeps you from caring too much about them and too often relies on flimsy rationale for how they navigate the plot turns.

The novel is the story of Jake Patrick a college aged young man who has just buried his mother after a prolonged battle with cancer.  His father, founder of a  hugely successful international trade business, has never been a part of his life.  Jake ends up taking a summer job with his father's company that will draw him into a game of business intrigue and murder.  His path out of danger will take him to the other side of globe and the other side of life in Washington D.C.  Along the way he will meet a down and out former C.I.A. agent with State Department connections, a beautiful medical student and a young Chinese woman working in near slave conditions making clothing in Saipan.  Between the three of them they will face great challenges, potential death and the power of a sitting U.S. Senator.

The consistent annoyance is Gilleo's adding long-ish bits of writing that do nothing to advance the story.  Near the beginning of the novel there is what the author describes as a "human interest story" from a newspaper.  Other than being a gimmick for adding details that will not be featured in the rest of the action it's quite possibly the worst example of supposed feature writing I've come across in a while.  No paper of any repute would have allowed it to hit the page.  It's neither journalistic nor feature writing.  And it serves no story telling purpose. The few pieces of background information provided could have done much economically and logically through the police characters investigating the incident.  Later in the action he includes the entirety of the the prayer/poem "Desiderata".  It has no lasting impact on the character reading it and no influence on the story at all.  So why burn over 300 words on including it?  That's a question I can't answer.  The author tries to juggle 5 or 6 story lines which gives the book a lurching quality to its story telling.  Trying to tell the story from too many points of view makes it hard to read.  Add in Gilleo's often awkward images and metaphors and you end up with a good story that never gets to realize its potential.  Finally he chooses to end the novel with a fair number of story lines completely unresolved.  Which meant that my final experience of the book was one of disappointment.  In the review of the earlier book I compared his writing to that of a modestly talented undergraduate student.  This is consistent with that assessment.

Gilleo's story telling is probably enough to carry you through a quiet weekend with no other options.  His writing isn't good enough to make it worth seeking out if you have other options.


"Sweat" by Mark Gilleo will be available August 28, 2012.