Pete Dexter’s novel won the National Book Award back in 1988. Whenever you encounter a prize-winning book long after its publication, naturally the first question that comes to mind is, does it hold up? Reading Paris Trout in 2016, I’m not sure I can really answer the question, but I do feel like I can state unequivocally that a novel like it would not win any major awards in this day and age, and it’s not hard to understand why.
The namesake of this book is a late middle-aged business owner in a mid-sized Georgia community sometime in the aftermath of the Second World War. In a more comically-inclined novel you might call Paris an irascible old coot, but it’s clear that’s not what Dexter intends when, near the beginning of the story, Trout travels to a black family’s home to collect on a debt and winds up shooting and killing a child.
The aftermath of this senseless crime will have far-reaching impact on the community. Trout’s wife is horrified by his actions, his lawyer Harry Seagraves is perturbed by his lack of remorse, the local prosecutor is righteously incensed, though most of the leaders of the town seem more annoyed at all the trouble.
Dexter’s prose is nimble and brisk. He also admirably zigs when you expect him to zag. The trial of Paris Trout happens early on in the novel, and is fairly anti-climactic. Dexter is much more interested in what happens next.
However, there is something decidedly missing in this novel. Despite the fact that the crime at its center is perpetrated against a black family, Dexter seems oddly uninterested in how the crime affects them. After the trial, Dexter devotes separate sections of the novel to Hanna Trout, Harry Seagraves, and a young new layer Carl Bonner, but we never hear from the victim’s family again. It’s an odd choice even for 1988 and seems indefensible now.