Old Buildings in North Texas ~ Jen Waldo

Waldo, Jen. 2016. Old Buildings in North Texas. London, England: Arcadia Books Ltd. ISBN 978-911350170. $15.95 USD.

"One little cocaine-induced heart attack, and it's back to my childhood to start over."

With an opening line like that, and a North Texas setting, I thought this book would be right up my alley. I was imagining a Denton/Dallas setting, but it actually takes place in far North Texas - a small town called Caprock, in the Panhandle.

Olivia is a 32 year old, highly educated journalist who had a little problem with cocaine - as in she became addicted and it caused all sorts of legal and medical problems for her, culminating in a heart attack and a required stay in rehab.  As a condition of her release from rehab, she had to have someone act as her legal custodian, and that someone turns out to be her mother, who lives the small Texas town where this book takes place.

At first I really enjoyed the story. It's well-written, with interesting characters and a certain quirkiness that I like in the best novels.  Olivia gets a job at a small jewelry store owned by a family friend and attends court-mandated therapy sessions. It seems, at first, as if she is trying to get her life back together.  Rather quickly, however, reading this novel starts to feel like watching a train wreck.

Olivia has a lot of unpaid debt, and her therapist keeps insisting she needs a hobby to distract her from her cravings for cocaine. On a whim, after reading about Urban Exploration, or Urbexing, Oliva decides to explore some old buildings in the area, when she can sneak out of her mother's house (she's being watched very carefully by her disappointed single parent). She finds things she can steal and sell online (the state owns these old buildings, you know, and has forgotten about them, so it isn't really stealing). In one of the old buildings she discovers the dead body of a missing high school boy.

From the above premise, as a reader, I'm expecting Olivia to learn some lessons and maybe solve a murder. Oh, no. What we end up with is an addict who, although no longer using her drug of choice, continues to make terrible choices that affect not only herself, but everyone around her.  She doesn't learn anything, the crime doesn't get solved, her relationships don't improve, she continues to steal, even though she does realize that it's not exactly legal.  Her main motivation in the book seems to be earning enough money to get out of the conservative, boring town she grew up in and start over somewhere. She says at the end, "My goal is to get better, not to be better...I am what I am - a self-absorbed addict with murky morals. And slipping into buildings, taking things and selling them...- these aren't things a good person does. But they're the things I do."

The publisher indicated to me that creating an amoral character with an unchanging voice was intentional on the author's part, and I do admire her craft as a writer for achieving that goal. But I cannot end this blog post and book review with "Happy Reading" this time, because after reading Old Buildings in North Texas, I am not a happy reader! 

Better luck next time!