What started out as a lark, has now become an aggravating habit. When I am just a little way into whatever book I happen to be reading, I see it made into a movie, type-casting characters with actors as they appear to me in their respective roles. I say aggravating because once I get that thespian in my head it refuses to leave. This book was not different, but with the exception of one only, lest I influence another, to their chagrin, I will try to keep my players to myself.
The book Charade by Gilbert Morris opens with the main character, Ollie Benson’s, avowed obsession for mirrors - a bit of irony in that his real obsession is avoiding them in whatever way possible, even to the bizarre. Ollie is grossly overweight to the tune of 406 lbs. and because of it compromised in almost every aspect of his personality. I don't believe I have ever read a book before where the protagonist was a fatty.
Though tops in his field of computer technology and in his private life as a gourmet cook, Ollie has allowed his passion for food and its consequence, too much of a good thing, to overshadow no pun intended his greatest strengths, his intellect and creativity. He is an interesting person, genius if not wise, and kind, but few it seems are willing to look beyond his mountain of human cutaneous tissue to learn his heart. This is his cross he bears and again no pun intended, it is a heavy one. Ollie has only one friend, a co-worker, who also ironically seems driven to matchmake, fixing Ollie up with blind dates, consistent to end in disaster. Ollie is in a catch-22 situation, compulsed to do the very thing that merely worsens his problem, staying to himself and eating, eating, eating.
But Ollie’s reclusive life-style acts as a kind of ‘forest for the trees’ as regards his true persona, a double entendre, as I see it, for the title which describes something more obvious in the plot. In Ollie I see the easy-going extrovert forced into solitude; John Candy cast in the role of a hermit. For example Ollie often wears Hawaiian-style shirts, ostensibly to cover flab, but that which sends a less direct message: ‘here is a fun-loving guy.’ And despite all the pain and discouragement people cause him, subconsciously Ollie still harbors hope for that one profound relationship that is someplace out there waiting. A true introvert gathers strength in solitude; but I sense Ollie is not really satisfied with the great Alone.
And so of course voila! Into this most vulnerable of vacuums steps Ollie's worst nightmare in the person of Dane, a formidable antagonist if ever there was one. And close on his heels Marlene.
Ollie has come up with a unique computer game called Moviemaker that is about to make him absurdly wealthy. A top software company is ready to snatch it up for big bucks. But Dane who has advance knowledge of this has already shown up and bamboozled Ollie into hiring him as his personal agent and marketer. The reader guesses all along that Dane is a con-artist and Marlene his henchwoman, but Ollie seems clueless. It is one of the most maddening yet endearing aspects of Ollie’s character that he can be so smart and yet so naïve. In California, married to Marlene, Ollie faces the end of all things at the hands of the two people he has come to trust most implicitly, his wife and his partner in business.
As the plot unfolds, in the process of conquering the enemy without, Ollie learns that his real enemy, not unlike the rest of us, is mostly inside. His quest for vengeance threatening to destroy him, he learns just in time there is another way out, the only way. And he takes it, following the path trodden before by four people God sends into his life. And God’s providence is seen once again in His economy when the reader recognizes Ollie is also God’s provision for these same four, as well as for others.
The externals of this book belie its tone, which except for the panicky places, carries a subtle humor and lightness of spirit. Again, it is the John Candy chimera that does it. The pace is fast, but not too fast, bearing one right along like a willing voyager on the water of swiftly moving currents. There are few flashbacks and those are minor. I read the book in two sittings and could have done so in one, were the night a little longer. It is written in first person POV.
With apologies for the hackneyed, I have to say Charade is a real page turner.
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