All I Have in This World

November 18, 2013
The stylish eighth novel from Parker (The Watery Part of the World) brings together a pair of unlikely but likeable protagonists. Marcus Banks’s quixotic attempt to create a farm and educational center devoted to the Venus flytrap on his family’s swampy North Carolina acreage has ended with the property being foreclosed by the bank. Making for Mexico, he stops in Pinto Canyon, Tex., for a hike, and while he’s gone, his pickup truck is stolen. Meanwhile, Maria has taken a leave of absence from her job as a chef in Oregon to return to Pinto Canyon and help her mother, Harriet, run a motel. Ten years earlier, Maria fled the town after her high school boyfriend committed suicide. Maria decides she needs her own car and bumps into Marcus at a used car lot, where they find they both like the same 1984 sky-blue Buick Electra. The two strike an unusual but pragmatic agreement to become half-owners of the car, which Marcus nicknames “Her Lowness.” While sharing the Buick, the troubled Marcus and restless Maria gradually overcome their initial mutual suspicion. The growing friendship between the two makes for the most engaging aspect of this story of the Texas desert.

January 1, 2014
Two hard-luck cases come together in West Texas over a homely but storied 1984 Buick Electra. The latest novel by the veteran Parker (creative writing/UNC-Greensboro; The Watery Part of the World, 2011, etc.) shifts between Marcus, who's arrived in Pinto Canyon from North Carolina, and Maria, who's returning home from the Northwest to reconnect with her mother. Marcus has hit the skids badly, losing his family's land through a poorly considered nature center dedicated to carnivorous plants, while Maria still bears the emotional scars of a teenage abortion and her boyfriend's suicide. The two meet in a used-car lot, where the light blue Buick fires dreams of redemption in both. Soon, they arrange a co-ownership deal for the car. Maria's mother is aghast that she purchased a car with a total stranger; her act will strain credulity for the reader as well. Parker means to show how inanimate objects can be surprisingly emotional touchstones in our lives; brief interludes trace the Electra's travels through the years, from the assembly plant to car carrier to a handful of owners. These set pieces bring some welcome color and humor to the novel, particularly in the case of an Ohio schoolteacher who errs in loaning out the car for a homecoming parade. But though Parker is an assured and emotionally sensitive writer, this novel is imprisoned by its preposterous setup. Parker needs a lot of room to cycle through his protagonists' thinking behind their irrational decision, which diminishes the impact of the novel's closing reconciliations. As Maria works to reconnect with her estranged mother, Marcus is doing much the same with his estranged sister, and parallels like those make the novel feel too tidily structured for what strives to be a tale about surviving cruel, random fate. Smart writing undone by an overly engineered conceit.

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February 1, 2014
Parker's latest novel (The Watery Part of the World, 2011) follows two wandering souls who seek to reconcile heartbreak and failure. Marcus is on the road to Mexico, after losing his family's long-held North Carolina farmhouse in foreclosure. He is also leaving behind his latest botched enterprise, an educational center dedicated to the Venus flytrap. Meanwhile, Maria leaves Oregon for her hometown of Pinto Canyon and settles in with her distant mother. Maria remains tormented over the suicide of her high-school boyfriend 10 years earlier, and her return to the small West Texas town has been far from welcomed. Marcus' and Maria's paths unexpectedly cross on a used-car lot, where both are so taken by a 1984 Buick Electra that the two strangers hurriedly enter an agreement to co-own the vehicle. As their friendship grows, Marcus and Maria begin to confront their pasts and how their actions affected those closest to them. Parker deftly captures his characters' uncertainties and hesitations as they struggle to move away from regret and toward the absolution they so desire.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)