‘Males are extremely aggressive in defending their territory, so much so that they often attack their own reflections in windows and break their little red necks.”
The narrator of Matt Sumell's Making Nice, the rageful kidult Alby, is discussing the propensity for violence of northern cardinals, a type of bird he has bought off the internet. Alby is also talking about himself, in one of the book's many colourful metaphors that allow the narrator to explore the uncontrollable anger he has lived with for as long as he can remember.
Set for the most part in Oakdale, New York, a hamlet overlooking Great South Bay in Suffolk County, Alby’s life has revolved around violent acts. At five or six he kicks his father out of frustration at not being able to hold his hand properly. At eight he kicks his brother for the hell of it. At 11 he kills a seagull with a rock, progressing to gull massacre a year later with an airgun. Alby joyrides in his parents’ car at 16, searching for racoons to run over. At 21 he’s punching Mexicans in bars.
But it is the narrator’s earliest memory of violence that tells us the most about him. As jealous three-year-old Alby wanders into a Lamaze childbirth class given by his mother, Marie, a nurse, in the family kitchen. “I waddled over and started petting the little baby on its fat little baby arm, and my mother praised me for making nice.” When the mothers look away Alby pinches the baby so hard that “its head started to shake in a way that seemed involuntary”.
The catalyst for Alby’s turnaround is the death of his beloved mother, a woman who refuses to sentimentalise her life in her final weeks. Calling Alby to her sickbed, pointedly and humorously much later than his siblings, Marie warns him to curb his violent behaviour.
Funny and moving
What follows is a funny and moving book comprised of interlinking, individually titled stories. The 20 chapters vary in length, from a two-page discussion of how to tie a string around a bumblebee to the meatier and more heartfelt
All Lateral
, which sees Alby move to rural Los Angeles as a handyman, process his mother’s death through his love for his dog Jason and then return home to help his troubled father.
Sumell is a graduate of the MFA programme at the University of California, Irvine, from which he received a fellowship for his writing. His short fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Electric Literature, Esquire and Byliner.com. The dedications and acknowledgments at the back of his book – to his siblings, father and late mother – indicate an autobiographical element to his novel.
Making Nice is a confident debut with a strong and youthful voice that refuses to accept life's injustices. Sumell approaches its themes – grief, guilt, atonement, alcoholism – with a bluster and humour that make their bleakness bearable. The bravado does not hide the hurt that lies beneath. The author creates a fully fleshed-out narrator, someone who acts like an oaf for much of his life but ultimately wants to do the right thing.
From lengthy descriptions of his sexual misdemeanours to why his sister deserved to be punched in the face, Alby pours forth his irreverent views on society and its institutions. At his niece’s christening he laments having turned down the role of godfather: “I was kinda bummed it wasn’t me up there waterboarding that baby.”
Oafishness
Sometimes Alby’s ranting feels tiresome and digressive, veering into the land of anecdote and random thoughts, like a teenager needing to air all his or her grievances at once. The story comes centre stage again when he returns to analysing his behaviour and the effect it has on the people closest to him.
At the root of the oafishness is Alby’s father, a lonely and selfish alcoholic consumed by grief. A motorcycle accident left him with a prosthetic leg, and through snapshots of backstory the reader sees how much of a load Marie took on herself to raise the children. As the father shuts down after her death it is Alby who drags and pushes him out of his malaise and suicidal fantasies.
Towards the end of the book – less angry, less juvenile and less in thrall to the past – Alby gets his father to stop by Marie’s grave on his way to the airport to begin a new life. His epiphany arrives too late for his mother but brings the hope of better things to come for those still alive: “And Dad’s still Dad,” he tells the oak beside her grave. “Every time I ask he says, ‘Don’t worry about me. I know how to suffer.’ I worry anyway. And I forgive him everything. ’Cause he can’t help it, same as I can’t help it.”
