The Mentor by Lee Matthew Goldberg
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Publication Date: June 13, 2017
About the book:
Kyle Broder has achieved his lifelong dream and is an editor at a major publishing house.
When Kyle is contacted by his favorite college professor, William Lansing, Kyle couldn’t be happier. Kyle has his mentor over for dinner to catch up and introduce him to his girlfriend, Jamie, and the three have a great time. When William mentions that he’s been writing a novel, Kyle is overjoyed. He would love to read the opus his mentor has toiled over.
Until the novel turns out to be not only horribly written, but the most depraved story Kyle has read.
After Kyle politely rejects the novel, William becomes obsessed, causing trouble between Kyle and Jamie, threatening Kyle’s career, and even his life. As Kyle delves into more of this psychopath’s work, it begins to resemble a cold case from his college town, when a girl went missing. William’s work is looking increasingly like a true crime confession.
Lee Matthew Goldberg’s The Mentor is a twisty, nail-biting thriller that explores how the love of words can lead to a deadly obsession with the fate of all those connected and hanging in the balance. (from Amazon)
My thoughts
Thanks to Isabel Blackthorn and Henry Roi of Blackthorn Book Tours for a copy of The Mentor in exchange for an honest review.
I’ve spent a week or two figuring out how to review this book. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed it. But I vacillated over how to view it. Some aspect of The Mentor struck me as different from the typical thriller, but I didn’t know what. Then I realized that I was viewing the book in the wrong way.
I had viewed The Mentor as a straight-up, standard thriller, albeit with literary flourishes. But upon reflection, I saw that The Mentor is meta-fiction: fiction about fiction.
A thriller about thrillers
It’s not just that the book shows writers writing fiction, nor that we read certain parts of William’s depraved “masterpiece.” We’re reading a work that satirizes its own genre: a thriller about thrillers, if you will.
When I say that, I mean this: the best satire exaggerates certain elements of the truth in order to show deeper truths. Writers are often difficult to deal with. Thrillers often do exploit violence upon the female body, have impossibly powerful killers, and hapless protagonists. The publishing industry is broken, no doubt about that. These are part of the deeper truths that Goldberg exposes in his writing.
There are plentiful references to classic lit–Orwell, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Poe–and Goldberg uses them to reveal William’s depraved heart. The professor’s manipulations affect Kyle’s behavior and threatens to derail all that his former pupil holds dear: his girlfriend, his job, his sobriety.
William is like the all-powerful, master-villain psychopaths found in many contemporary thrillers. This portrayal might seem cliched in a less masterful author’s hands.
But this master manipulator is more satirical than stereotypical. Goldberg is a master manipulator of words and storytelling. He’s not only poking fun at character types or situations. He’s satirizing the entire thriller genre:
- Hot-shot protagonist with a secret troubled past and a gorgeous significant other she/he’s afraid to lose? Check.
- Dastardly, manipulative villain who weasels his/her way into protagonist’s life and derails it? Check.
- Villain guilty of depraved acts of violence, often against young and beautiful females? Who hides his depravity for years after his spectacularly abusive childhood? Descriptions of gory details about the victims’ bodies? Check, check, check.
It’s all here. And yet, Goldberg weaves these well-worn ideas into a dynamic story that keeps us turning the pages.
A satire about the publishing industry
Now, as a satire of the publishing industry, it didn’t immediately work for me. I can’t imagine a scenario where a major publishing house offers a huge advance to an unknown debut novelist whose work is unfinished. From my understanding, that doesn’t happen. Unpublished writers need to finish their novels before they query agents or publishing houses. Editors don’t have time to bother with unfinished novels.
I don’t think the average person realizes this, though; I guess many non-writers think the industry really does work exactly this way. As I was reading, I felt that the situation was too far-fetched for me to accept it as even satire and it distracted me from the story.
However, after some reflection, I saw this aspect differently.
This implausible situation with Kyle’s author made me think of the many ways the publishing industry is broken. Touting one novel as the “it” novel of the year, for example, and throwing the bulk of the publishing house’s resources at promoting this book and this author at the expense of other, equally worthy projects. Or more worthy projects, in some cases.
A satire about writers
When it pokes fun of amateur writers, The Mentor worked for me. Kyle’s newly signed author Sierra wanders around the city, drinking coffee and checking social media while looking for her muse, unable to work unless the conditions are Goldilocks-perfect (“just right”), and unable to even tell Kyle anything about the next section of her manuscript because she hasn’t written it yet. Nor has she plotted it. Instead, she has a blank page and writer’s block.
There’s nothing wrong with being a pantser rather than a plotter. But Sierra is a dreamer who’s afraid of accidentally “zapping” her creativity by working in the same location two days in a row. A talented dreamer, sure, but talent doesn’t get people published. (Nor is creativity zapped by sitting one’s butt in a chair each day and typing.)
As the adage goes, amateurs write when they want to; professional writers write, period.
Obviously, the character’s a spoof on what outsiders think being a “real writer” is all about. Drink coffee. Write at leisure. Converse with the muse. All that sort of nonsense. Having met Sierra-types at various writing conferences, I enjoyed this aspect–except when I wanted to slap her right off the page. Which I was tempted to do, often.
Then there’s William, whose book is his “baby.” Granted, most authors feel attached to their works, but in this context, the word takes on an ominous connotation. He tells Kyle that he doesn’t want to make any major edits to his novel. In his eyes, he claims, his book is perfect. After all, he’s spent ten years writing it!
Meh. I’ve met more talented and less depraved writers who hold this attitude.
Recommended
Overall, this book kept my attention and made me think. The writing is good and while some of the twists are obvious, I think that may be intentional.
William’s novel is gut-wrenching and gory, though. Thankfully, Goldberg keeps those sections short; we don’t have to read too much about William-the-depraved-character tearing out hearts and eating them. If you’re squeamish, you can probably skip these sections and still follow the story.
I think this book is best read as a satire rather than a thriller. So if you’re looking for a standard suspense/thriller novel, this might not be for you. If you’re willing to look beyond the seeming stereotypes and some gory violence, then you might enjoy this dark-witted book.
Talk to me! What do you think?