[Algonquin; 2014]
The plot of Greg Sherl’s debut novel, The Future for Curious People, reads like any number of highbrow-ish indie rom-com films produced since 2000 — think Garden State, 500 Days of Summer, Elizabethtown, etc. We open with Evelyn, our female protagonist and manic pixie dream girl par excellence, who is breaking up with her boyfriend, Adrian, because she has seen their bleak romantic future during an envisioning session. Envisioning is a plot device similar to the erasing procedure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but in reverse; instead of allowing you to erase your past, it allows you to catch a brief glimpse of your romantic future. Evelyn, we soon learn, has become addicted to the procedure because, in her words, “The future no longer has to be messy. It can be tested out. It can be known.” Her counterpart, Godfrey, proposes to his girlfriend Madge, who refuses to accept the ring until she’s see their future together. Godfrey happens to visit Dr. Chin, the same envisionist as Evelyn, and predictable wacky romantic hijinks ensue.
Given the book’s heavy cinematic influences its not particularly surprising that an early cover design for the novel was an image of a television screen. Let’s just say that if this book were turned into a sitcom or a summer blockbuster, it would star Zooey Deschanel and Paul Rudd. In fact, it struck me early on that even the physical descriptions of the two main characters are unquestionably reminiscent of these two hipster darlings, and I began to wonder if the novel had been written with an eventual film contract in mind. It contains so many tired clichés from offbeat “indie” television series and movies that I almost hope this was indeed the case — and as a film or mini-series, I’m sure the story would find an audience. If you approach this novel as a beach read or the screenplay for a light summer rom-com, it’s fine, and it has more than a few funny and clever moments. But the problem is that it wants to be much more; it wants to join the ranks of intellectual rom-com heavyweights like Eternal Sunshine, the quintessential early-aughts angsty existential thinking man’s rom-com. The novel is a beach read that wants to be a deep, existential literary romance novel for the 21st century.
The concept of envisioning is an interesting premise, one that might have served the novel’s philosophical ambitions well. But rather than relying on the power of world-building to play out the implications of romantic foresight, The Future for Curious People attempts intellectual depth through fluff, through tiresome dialogue peppered with witty references to all things hipsters are purported to adore (bangs! Modest Mouse! Vintage clothing! Boat shoes!) and by making unoriginal gibes at its own characters, who feel naked and vulnerable without their phones and other technological devices, a lazy go-to trope which all too often stands in for real analysis of the contemporary human condition.
Sherl’s nascent commentary on contemporary, technologically mediated desires for meaning, order, and self-perfectibility, takes a backseat to the navel-gazing of its protagonists. Evelyn feels she has a “permanent hole” in her heart because her older sister died before she was born, and her parents never quite got over her death. Godfrey is terrified that he is genetically destined to become a profligate philanderer like his biological father. Both characters are much more concerned with their own anxieties than with the problems of those around them, even when it becomes clear that both protagonists have friends that are dealing with serious psychological problems.
But then, who can blame them — the supporting characters offer no more depth than cardboard stand-ins. Madge, Godfrey’s almost-fiancée, is irredeemably awful, yet for some reason Godfrey is initially madly in love with her. Dot, Evelyn’s best friend, is a kleptomaniac, a trait we’re supposed to believe is cute and quirky, but Evelyn’s flippancy towards her friend’s increasingly self-destructive condition comes across as careless at best, callous at worst. But this is a rom-com universe, not the real world, after all.
The problem is that you can’t have both — you can’t have a world where kleptomania makes you fun and eccentric, and at the same time plumb the depths of human despair and isolation in a compelling way. You can’t have a main character who completely lacks the necessary insight to see the painfully obvious flaws in his relationship suddenly become an authority on them after one drunken night of sort-of-cheating on his fiancée (but there was no penetration, so he’s not really a bad guy!). It just doesn’t work that way.
Which leads me to the biggest flaw of the novel: its borderline offensive use of various racial and gender stereotypes to deliver lackluster punchlines. At one point, Dot’s mother suggests to Evelyn that she should consider becoming a lesbian because men just aren’t worth it; Godfrey gives up his dream of becoming an early education teacher because his college roommate once joked that it was a sorority girl major; a lot is made of the fact that Dr. Chin is a white man with a Chinese last name; and Evelyn struggles to assimilate her “feminist” views with her desire for a family. All of these tropes are bizarrely outdated for a novel that seems to be trying painfully hard to be current. The lesbian joke, for instance, appears in almost every B movie rom-com. And the joke might work if it were presented ironically, or as some sort of meta-commentary on the genre. But no such depth accompanies these quips, and it’s hard to forgive the author for leaning on such tired and outdated material as a comic crutch.
And it’s doubly hard to forgive because it shows either an indifference to or a complete misunderstanding of his audience. Sherl wants to attract the sci-fi lite crowd as well as the fashionably jaded 20-something, neither of which will be won over by these quips.
Although the book shouts “Look at me! I’m quirky!” with nearly every turn of the page, its characters are flat, shallow stereotypes and the plot is tiresome and clichéd. The problem in taking so many cues from popular films is that the experience of reading these clichés versus the experience of seeing them played out on a screen is fundamentally different. That’s not to say that what offends in the book wouldn’t also offend on screen, but some of the comedy would come across a little bit better. There is, for instance, a scene in which Godfrey wakes up badly hungover in bed with Evelyn, whom he barely knows, and she is inexplicably wearing an American flag bikini. It’s a funny scene, but the sort of thing that plays out better as a visual gag where the quirk wouldn’t feel quite so overwrought. Perhaps if Greg Sherl had waited fifteen or even ten years to write this novel, he might have been successful at entering Eternal Sunshine territory. But lines like “A lasting relationship isn’t work . . . it’s home” and overly cutesy sub-plots, like the one in which Evelyn makes up happy alternative endings to the works of literature she’s recording for the blind, reveal his immaturity as a writer.
So, is The Future for Curious People worth a read? Sure, if you’re stuck in an airport and you need a distraction while you wait for your flight to board, or you’re looking for a quick, easy vacation read. But if you’re looking for a mature meditation on the tragi-comedy of contemporary romance, you should look elsewhere.
This post may contain affiliate links.
