|
Limitations New York, Picador, 2006 Reviewed by Nicole Terrien Turow’s faithful readers will find a world they have become familiar with since the publication of Presumed Innocent; the place and some of the characters are the same. The new readers will find it equally fascinating to gradually enter the inner circle of the Court of Appeal in Kindle County. One of the main characteristics of Turow’s prose is indeed to give us access to the minds of attorneys and judges whose profession has taught them not to speak out, and thus to provide us with an insight into the making of the law. Intertwining inner and outer focalisation, the process of characterisation makes the hero very human underneath the perfect surface of objectivity. But we have known, since the first novel, that appearances can be dreadfully deceptive. Suspense thus relies both on action and psychology. George Mason, a Virginian, the perfect southern gentleman, is the descendant of “the fabled American founder George Mason IV—the real George Mason, as the judge will always think of him” [11-12]. He has been burdened from the beginning by the tradition of the family and although he ran away from home and became “an ordinary seaman on a coal freighter, a job that provided an alternative to Vietnam,“ he finally enrolled at Easton Law School “becoming a Deputy State Defender after graduation“[12]. One cannot escape one’s fate, or so it seems. The mood is set through a myriad of concurrent details : the past shall visit the present. The case—People v. Jacob Warnovits et al.—that bothers the judge has something to do with this mood: four young men stand accused for a rape committed more than seven years earlier. Hence the title referring to the statute of limitations that normally makes it impossible to try a case so long after it has been committed or for victims to report it more than three years after they have come of age. The main instigator of the rape has filmed the whole episode and showed it around to his frat friends till one of them, acquainted with the victim, reports it to the police. The girl, who had been drunk at the time and then remained helpless, has thus become aware of the brutality of the evening just past the official delay allowed her to file suit. The three judges involved try to keep away any form of feeling to focus on the legal implications of their verdict. But the narration makes it clear that, as men, they have been shocked by the crudity of the images and the savagery of the aggression. So shocked that Judge Mason has asked his clerk to review the tape for him because he could not stand the images. This detail will turn out to be a major element in the structural development of the plot (but let us not spoil the suspense). Suffice it to say that Judge Mason is so moved because the crime reminds him of an episode in his own past: the night when, partly drunk, he lost his virginity to a poor girl the whole fraternity took advantage of. Thus a conflict arises between the judge’s imperative need for objectivity and the intense inner struggle to grasp his own personality. However, to create a moment of revelation, more is needed : the judge’s wife has just been hospitalised for cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. So his main confidante is not available and must even be protected from the truth of his torments. To add to the inner suffering, the judge becomes the victim of hate mails that soon become outward death threats and has to submit to the almost constant presence of a bodyguard. When he finally manages to snatch a moment of rest and solitude, he is assaulted by two young thieves who are naturally suspected of acting for the so called #1 fan, the avenger, possibly a drug baron he helped send to prison for life. Many of the traditional ingredients of a successful thriller sustain the attention. The various hints suggest possible political manipulations, frustrated ambitions, jalousie, search for media coverage, organised crime on a large scale—all forms of corruption or retribution. No hypothesis can ever be totally dismissed; as each single character may have a good motive to act against the Judge, not to mention that he could have been the instigator of the whole confusion in order to have one of his colleagues accused. Limitations, however, is indeed a thriller and, if the reader is to be caught into the web of what could, after all, be considered as a rather weak plot, there must be more to the book. This quality lies in Turow’s ability to play with language, albeit in a very simple way. Words in fact convey their full weight, as they should in a legal context. The subtle intertwining of meaning links the various levels of the intrigue. The reader is clearly invited to pay constant attention to the impact of words and to go beyond the appearances of simplicity. The title itself is designated as a clue to the process: “Sainthood is not required. You’re entitled to some limitations “[194]. These words are significantly pronounced by the Chief, i.e. Rusty Sabich, the hero of Presumed Innocent, Turow’s first novel. This confirms why, when Mason almost declares to his staff “this case is me”[39], the reader hears even more than just a need for confession and keeps in mind the narrative comment: “He has no clue even what the words could mean”[39]. The unuttered statement rings like Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary c’est moi,” and points at the seriousness of this novel that we could also choose to consider as mere entertainment. Cercles©2007 |
|
