March 5, 2006
Lost in the 'burbs
Rattled
Debra Galant
St. Martin's Press, 256 pp., $21.95
Tell anyone that you're moving to Montclair (as I am), and they'll tell you to check out Baristanet, an online clearinghouse of local news and gossip about a handful of Essex County towns with my future home at its center. The de facto mayor of this virtual community is Debra Galant, a Glen Ridge resident who started the Web site in 2004 after a five-year stint writing about New Jersey for the New York Times.
Galant can be sharply critical at times, but her descriptions of life in these small towns with good schools, decent restaurants and interesting neighbors have become my personal addiction. Naturally, I was eager to read her first novel, "Rattled." A mega-dispatch from the suburbs! All the better to have it in book form, since my husband recently started using the words "obsessed" and "stalker" whenever he finds me trolling Baristanet. (Meanwhile, I say nothing when I notice that the last 12 Google searches on our computer contain the words "gas" and "grill.")
"Rattled" does not disappoint. It's every bit as witty and addictive as Galant's items on Baristanet, even if the suburbs depicted in the book are the kind that make a Manhattan mom like me want to click her Dansko clogs together and head back to the Upper West Side. The novel is set in Galapagos Estates, a subdivision of McMansions in the (I hope) fictional town of Mt. Hebron, a former farm hamlet whose country roads have been widened to accommodate SUVs. There's not a sidewalk in sight; forget about neighbors who are less than a half-acre away or a decent place for Chinese takeout.
At the center of this suburban cautionary tale are Kevin and Heather Peters, new lord and lady of an entry-level mausoleum -- I mean, house -- on Giant Tortoise Drive. The model name is "Walden"; others in the development are the Darwin, the Audubon and the Cousteau. Kevin is a distant husband, befuddled dad and an aspiring partner in a law firm. Heather is a high-maintenance, expensively manicured striver whose main objective in life is to make sure their son, Connor, doesn't sully the white couch in the living room.
Why in the world would you want to read a whole book about these people? Because it's fun watching them get into a huge mess of trouble -- and surprising how they find their way out.
Heather's tenure as the pariah of Galapagos Estates begins when she asks Harlan White, an organic egg farmer who moonlights as a handyman, to clean grass trimmings off her vinyl siding. The two of them are on her patio, trading barely civil notes on the real estate developer who's been trying to snap up Harlan's land, when they notice a rattlesnake, "coiled and watchful ... like the hero in a kung fu movie." She panics and screams bloody murder, as we knew she would. He silences the rattler with a Ming Dynasty vase, then finishes off the job with a croquet mallet from Restoration Hardware. These material details are of paramount importance to Heather who, of course, values possessions more than life itself.
Turns out, killing rattlesnakes is illegal in the state of New Jersey, and the one decomposing at the bottom of the Peters' trash can is trackable thanks to a surgically implanted radio transmitter. Before Heather Peters can race off to Back to School Night with a batch of slice-and-bake-posing-as-homemade cookies, she receives a visit from Agnes Sebastian, a member of the Wildlife Conservation Corps.
What follows is a saga of epic proportions. Heather's refusal to cooperate with the authorities leads to her arrest and imprisonment -- a brief one, but with nary a creature comfort in sight. Meanwhile, Harlan White becomes the target of the greedy real estate developer's increasing ire, and the population of Galapagos Estates suffers cruel retribution at the hands of a group of radical animal- rights advocates. (If you have a problem with rodents, you should skip this part.) In short, everyone is rattled by the end of "Rattled," which is not a bad thing since this cast of characters benefits immensely from their shake-up.
Galant's modern-day fable is equal parts object lesson and comedy of manners. Each page is injected with just the right cocktail of venom and humor. You want to hate these people, but you can't. You don't want to care what happens to them, but you do.
Just as long as none of them are my new neighbors in Montclair ...
Elisabeth Egan
