Subtlety in Funaro's The Sculptor

Every child is drawn to good stories.  Stories that transcend time and space, and place us in the shoes of a hero or heroine that defies the odds and conquers their quest.  Centuries ago, these stories were didactic in nature and were often cautionary tales for the impressionable but still the root of the story had to be good enough that the didacticism was transparent, leaving the story arc in the foreground.  At least at first.  And that's because those stories exercised subtlety.  And it's because of subtlety that Grimm's Fairy Tales are as popular today as they were in the 1850s.  The story came first, the lesson second.  

Now, Gregory Funaro's, The Sculptor is not didactic.  There are no lessons to be taught to the impressionable child but I believe the book itself can still teach the impressionable writer a thing or two.  While the book does some things right, I recognized what not to do, especially in regards to subtlety, more so than not.

So, as a reader, what do we dislike more than anything else?  Being aware we are being told a story, right?  We want to transplant ourselves into someone else's shoes, experience what they experience, overcome what they overcome.  It doesn't take much to be pulled out of a story.  It can come in an instant with a simple word or phrase or line of dialogue, but when a reader is pulled out of the story and is suddenly aware they are reading a story, the spell the story teller is weaving is broken.  The house of cards of a narrative comes crashing down and may take some time to build back up.  And who says that reader gives the writer that kind of time?

For this entry I just want to focus on character and character motivations.  Outside the mystery and sometimes horror genre, character is usually the most important thing in a story.  They are driving the plot, right, so of course they'd come first.  Characters should think, talk, and act as real people should, correct?  Even if the story is of an alien on a space station surrounded by other alien species, there should be something that resembles human expectations of realism.  Characters should not resemble marionettes being manipulated and dragged along by the writer.  This breaks down the fourth wall and the reader recognizes that this is indeed a story, and we've been in our own shoes the entire time.  Nothing is more disappointing.  As writer's we don't want that.  So, in Gregory Funaro's, The Sculptor, the protagonist is Dr. Cathy Hildebrandt, professor of art history at Brown University.  Recently separated from her husband, Dr. Hildebrandt's life is already in a bit of a tailspin when a body is discovered posing as Michelangelo's Bacchus with her name on it.  And from the very beginning, we get a lesson on subtlety. 

When we’re first introduced to the villain, The Sculptor, he’s in his carriage house where he performs his art, in his case posing corpses in likenesses of Michelangelo sculptures.  “The Sculptor removed from the desk drawer the only book he allowed in the carriage house: his copy of Slumbering in the Stone” (Funaro 30).  While the novel up to this point has been anything but subtle this is a contained example.  Is it possible the killer only keeps Dr. Hildebrandt’s book on Michelangelo in his workspace, the space where he kills?  Absolutely.  But is it subtle?  No, it’s convenient.  Why would a sculptor rely on one text, or even one artist as an inspiration?  It would be the same if as a writer, I only read and cared about the work of one author.  I wouldn’t make a very good writer, would I?  And the same would go for The Sculptor.  It’s an intrusion by the author to keep the focus on Dr. Hildebrandt when in reality, an artist interested in classical art would appreciate and admire hundreds of artists.  In the novel, The Sculptor constantly hums classical music by various composers, why wouldn’t he like different artists and their work?  What would make for a more compelling and believable villain would be if Funaro pulled actual scholarship regarding Renaissance sculptures and made us believe through subtlety that the villain disregarded the other artists because they xyz unlike Michelangelo who is abc.  Actual research would lend itself nicely to this sort of thing.  Even if we don't understand the subtle plugs of research (I'm thinking of Michael Crichton), we'll believe it because the subtle hints will, keyword hint, at a bigger, grander picture regarding the character.    

Another example just a few pages later, “Nonetheless, the fifty-year-old lifer could not help but feel cheated that the first and only break in the biggest case of his career had fallen into Markham’s lap, for no matter how much he admired Markham, Bill Burrell was instinctively territorial.  Like a bulldog.  And this was his junkyard” (Funaro 40).  This excerpt is shortly after we’re introduced to Bill.  So without letting readers discover that Bill feels this way, we’re told outright.  Bill’s character is summed up in exposition.  Is it accurate to the character?  Sure, but does it lack subtlety?  Yes, again Funaro intrudes and tries to make us feel a certain way about a character before we have a chance to make our own conclusions, which is a falsehood in my opinion.  You can tell me a character is a certain way every time but if the evidence isn’t acted out on the page, I won’t believe you.

And while none of Dr. Hildebrandt’s and Agent Markham’s relationship is subtle, the very first mention of a connection is so forced I had to put the book down.  “Cathy detected a hint of Yankee in his voice—a disarming but relaxed formality that made her like him” (Funaro 20).  Now, imagine Funaro brought that out in a scene rather than telling us within one page of being introduced to this character.  If he stopped the line at ‘voice’ and throughout their conversation, readers inferred rather than being told how she feels, wouldn’t that have made for better writing?  He could still be just as pointed in their conversation but let us, the readers discover how characters feel, what their emotional state is.  Don’t tell us.  Because you show me an author who’s intruding in a story and I’ll show you a story I don’t believe.  

With just a pinch of subtlety, the fourth wall would remain intact and readers would have a much better appreciation for the characters, and the novel.