NOTHING TO SEE HEREBy Kevin Wilson
Good Lord, I can’t believe how good this book is. I know you’re supposed to begin book reviews with subtlety and a nod to storytelling’s past and the long literary tradition that the book has managed to hook itself onto. But “Nothing to See Here,” the third novel by Kevin Wilson (“The Family Fang”), defies an entry like that because it’s wholly original. It’s also perfect. It gives me no pleasure to say this; the enjoyment of reading a perfect book was much mitigated by the fact that I am in the middle of writing a new novel, and I believe agreeing to write this book review has set me back egregiously.
Where should I start? Here’s the plot: Lillian is a young Southern burnout, living with her mother (who is so mercenary that she would make the stepmom in “Hansel and Gretel” cringe), working and losing shift jobs. When Lillian was young, she’d managed to defy the inertia of her poverty and self-propel into a fancy girls’ boarding school, “a training ground for Amazons,” where she roomed with the luminous Madison, the kind of beautiful blue blood for whom the school existed. “I wasn’t destined for greatness,” Lillian says. “I knew this. But I was figuring out how to steal it from someone stupid enough to relax their grip on it.” Lillian and Madison were close, though Madison also had the kind of friends who would never hang out with someone like Lillian. One night, drugs are found in their room, and Madison’s father pays Lillian’s mother a largish (but not really large enough, if you ask me, but that’s maybe the point) sum of money for Lillian to take the fall. Lillian’s mother agrees, and Lillian’s fate — shift work and living at home — is set.
But Lillian and Madison stay in touch through letters, and when the book begins, Madison has written Lillian asking her to come to her home in Tennessee, where she is now the mother of a small child and married to a senator who has been nominated to be the secretary of state. Madison would like Lillian to come because just as confirmation hearings are about to begin, the senator’s previous wife has died, and their two children are about to enter his custody. The problem with this is that the kids — 10-year-old twins named Bessie and Roland — have a genetic disease in which they catch fire spontaneously when they experience intense emotions. Lillian, who can only say yes to Madison, agrees to watch the children in a back house on the estate for the summer while the senator gets confirmed, at which point they will figure out what to do with them, though each option fills Lillian with foreboding. The last third of the book has a plot twist that is inevitable, which is the only good kind of plot twist.
The fire disease is enough to cause a rash. It doesn’t consume the children, though it does fairly wreck everything flammable they come in contact with through one of their fits. Lillian works to make the kids appropriate for a normal life — a trip to the library, a family dinner at the main house — but it’s never quite enough to be normal. I’m sure I’m supposed to wonder what the fire disease is a metaphor for: It’s something that makes children unsuitable for the public. Or it’s our shameful past? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s so bonkers and works so well that it only occurred to me to wonder this while I was writing this review.
