Book reivew: Ed King by David Guterson

CAN a story still astonish us when it’s based on an old familiar tale? This is what David Guterson, winner of the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award for his bestselling Snow Falling on Cedars, seeks to do in his new novel Ed King. Based on the story of Oedipus, the boy who unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother, Ed King’s back cover promises to “upend” the myth.

Guterson’s story begins conventionally enough. Mild-mannered Seattle actuary Walter Cousins has an ill-fated affair with his English teenage au pair, Diane Burroughs. The result of this folly is a baby boy who is swiftly abandoned on a doorstep by Diane, who flees to begin her life again elsewhere. So there we have the key players set in place: the father, the mother and the baby boy who is oblivious to both their existences.

The boy is adopted by Jewish parents, Dan and Alice King, who conceal from him the fact that he’s adopted. They name him Ed, and in time provide him with a brother, Simon. Both boys are child prodigies who are particularly adept at maths, although Ed is a talented athlete where Simon is most decidedly not. With this, questions of nature versus nurture are raised in the reader’s mind.

Ed, after his turbulent teenage years, filled with underage sex, drug-use, fast cars and depression, goes on to become the world- famous “King of Search”, inventor of the leading internet search engine. His self-penned title echoes both his desire to go down in history and his ongoing search for the truth: “ … you’re always better off with the truth … the truth sets you free. The truth is the truth! Ignorance is bliss – I can’t live like that.” But, as a certain key player in his life later advises him, when it comes to finding out the truth about his parentage: “You might be better off not searching, Ed.”

But Ed is staunch in his commitment to the truth: “What you know about … you have to face. What you see, you have to confront. That’s the beauty of information, and of search. Search brings us face to face with the world, and so revolutionises our relationship to it.” We know Ed’s destiny as he crashes towards it, we cannot stop it, and yet watching it unfold is fascinating. The same can be said of the original myth; we know the prophecy that hangs over the head of Oedipus: we can predict his fate, and yet it still enthrals us.

Some way into the novel, Guterson addresses his readers directly: “Okay. Now we approach the part of the story a reader couldn’t be blamed for having skipped forward to … the part where a mother has sex with her son.” This is the author’s acknowledgment of the predictability of the story: we know Ed will kill his father and sleep with his mother. Yet these two incidents, when they come to pass, are genuinely alarming.

The other components of the novel: the crafty structure; the plot twists; the wide array of characters (compelling, gruesome, comical); the technological explosion that Guterson extends some years into the future, these cannot be predicted. Nor can the particular twists and turns that Diane’s life takes. Resourceful, determined, manipulative, resilient, Diane is a remarkable character, and reading about her exploits is one of the biggest pleasures the book has to offer.

There are also a number of surprising parallels with the Oedipus myth running throughout the novel. Sybil, the prophetess of Greek myth, becomes Cybil, Ed’s experiment in Artificial Intelligence, a computerised machine that answers his questions. The way Ed develops the malformed feet from which Oedipus gets his name is a particularly nice touch.

The dialogue between the English characters can, at times, feel inauthentic and slightly embarrassing (would a character of Diane’s brother’s age, background and apparent brutality really say “Get your mitts off that bag”?). But this doesn’t detract from the overall authenticity of the characters who are, in the main, brilliantly drawn.

So Ed King does have the power to astonish. Whether it’s Guterson’s vivid, sensitive and convincing depiction of depression, or the truly eye-watering scene involving Diane’s half-brother Club and a can of Boddingtons, the book, for all its basis in the Oedipus myth, is continuously surprising.

Which goes to show that even the oldest stories can be told afresh; that sometimes the journey, not the destination, provides us with the most thrills.

• Ed King, by David Guterson. Bloomsbury 304pp £12.99