First, let’s keep the FTC’s new blogger disclosure monitor people happy: I got a free copy of Return Policy from a book giveaway on K.M. Weiland’s blog. Neither of these fine folks expected me to review it at all. (But note, you can find them as “@snydermanwrites” and “@KMWeiland” on Twitter.)

Ok. I finished reading Return Policy a couple of weeks ago. It was a solid midlist novel. Entertaining. Very funny in spots, very moving and compelling in others, but here and there I felt the plot was weak. At a couple of critical spots, characters both major and minor fail to do obvious things that, had they done them, would have avoided a lot of trouble that Snyder obviously wanted create for his poor characters. Snyder may be an author to watch, but this isn’t likely to be his breakout book. I give it three stars.

On to the characters. Snyder has three principal characters in this book, and each one is told from the first person POV. That’s a bold choice, because it demands a very high level of craft to keep the characters distinct. It’s the right choice for this book, because first person POV allows him to clearly convey each character’s different opinions and attitudes towards one another and their different interpretations of the book’s plot events. Much of the story’s nuance hinges on the types of miscommunications that can arise from people’s different opinions and interpretations, so going with first person was effective for that.

Snyder structured the book as a sequence of scenes that switch round-robin among the POV characters. But judging by the number of times I found myself confused in the middle of dialogue as to who was saying what, or having to backtrack to remember which character ‘owned’ the scene, I’d say Snyder has some work to do in making the characters distinctive in their details. Their broad strokes are clearly different, but down in the nitty-gritty of words on the page, at times I found them running together.

Wally

Wally Finneran is the book’s central character. He’s a divorced guy with a pretty bleak outlook on life, but given his backstory (which I won’t spoil) you can hardly blame him. One thing I found interesting about Wally is that he’s a writer. I know, cliche alert, right? How many times have we seen writers take “write what you know” a little too seriously and write about characters who are writers? But in this case Snyder makes it work because Wally is not exactly a fan of his own stuff. In fact, he thinks he’s crap, which ends up being pretty amusing. [Update: having recently re-read something I wrote 3 years, ago, I know exactly how Wally feels.]

My main problem with Wally is that overall, he’s too passive. Wally spends way too much of the book letting events push him around, before he finally grows a pair and exerts some sort of influence over his destiny. While his backstory makes this believable, I still ended up feeling sorry for him more than I actually rooted for him. To be fair, I think much of the point of the book was to force Wally not to be so passive. There’s nothing wrong with that as a character arc. This may be a matter of my own tastes as much as anything, it didn’t really grab me.

Shaq

Shaq is a mentally ill dude who lives at a homeless shelter. For my money, Shaq was the most interesting character in the book, and he’s where Snyder really shines. Snyder did a great job of portraying Shaq’s particular variety of crazy-slash-incapacitated in a way that was both believable and at the same time didn’t reduce him to another pitiable wretch of a character. For all of Shaq’s problems and hardships, he left the man with his share of dignity.

But here’s the twist: Snyder also used Shaq’s mental problems to drive some of the book’s central and most compelling mysteries. And he did it really, really well. Read Return Policy for that if nothing else, and pay attention. It’s a marvelous example of using character flaws to drive mystery.

Ozena

Ozena is a telephone service representative for an espresso machine company. She is in many ways the book’s emotional heart, its source of warmth and compassion. She is perhaps the character I empathized with the most, because Snyder did a very nice job conveying her mixture of unfailing love for her very high-maintenance, special needs son. I know how hard it is raising normal kids; they’re high maintenance enough. I can’t even imagine the toll that year after year of caring for her little Leroy Jr. would take, knowing that he’ll never grow up like other kids. But she loves him anyway, and Snyder’s portrayal of this whole package—the emotional and logistical complications of Ozena’s life—was very genuine and tender. I liked Ozena.

Summary

As I said, I got a free copy of the book, which probably biases me in some inevitable fashion towards it. But despite the book’s plot weaknesses, I wouldn’t have been sorry had I paid list price for it. In the end, it is a portrait of three people, each in their own ways coping with tragedy. Snyder does yeoman work in making three people’s very different reactions to tragedy all feel believable. I like books about characters (no surprise there), and this book has three good ones. If you’re like me in that regard, give it a try.