Venomous, by Christopher Krovatin
Krovatin, Christopher (2008). Venomous. NY: Ginee Seo (Simon and Schuster). 336 pages.
This is going to sound pretty harsh, but I’m going to say what I really think here: Christopher Krovatin is an immature writer who trades a little too much on his youth for my taste. In his second book, Krovatin introduces Locke Vinetti, a high school loner with an anger problem. Almost anything will set Locke off and, once the “venom” takes over, everybody better get down. When Locke’s best school friend introduces him to his own out-of-school crew, Locke meets a fellow traveler with his own “venom” and a gorgeous but messed up girl who just might help Locke keep the venom at bay.
Told in chapters that alternate between Locke’s real story and the sort of fiction-within-the-fiction comic book style story of Locke’s anger personified, we watch Locke struggle to contain his violent impulses and witness the inevitable head-to-head between Locke and the equally angry friend he meets. The problem I had with this book is similar to the problem I had with Krovatin’s first novel, Heavy Metal and You: namely, there doesn’t seem to be enough explanation or justification for the main character’s anger in Venomous, just as there didn’t seem to be enough explanation for the narrator’s heavy metal devotion in Heavy Metal. I’m not saying that heavy metal fandom needs justification, just that, in both novels, the characters’ obsessions (with heavy metal or with his own anger) seem to just be as symbolically incidental as the clothes they are described as wearing. That is, just as we’re told that Locke stalks around Manhattan wearing a black trenchcoat, we’re also similarly reminded that he stalks around Manhattan with barely repressed rage. For neither detail am I compelled to care one way or the other.
To extend the metaphor further, I guess I don’t like the deliberate use (or rather, misuse) of symbol here. We (the readers) are supposed to just believe in Locke’s anger. He’s a high school loner raised by a single parent who wears a trench coat; why shouldn’t we believe he’s angry? I guess my question is: Why should we? Krovatin doesn’t give me any reason to believe in Locke as a distinct character; the character is kind of a cipher, it’s the anger (the “venom”) that’s the real star of the show. And, let me tell you, the venom is really not a fun dude. And, really, the “venom” could be any “character flaw.” If Locke were an alcoholic, we could pretty much go through the narrative and replace all references to the venom with references to “the drink.” And that’s the problem I have with this novel. We’re asked to believe in something the narrator seems to think is if not indescribable, then at least inescapable. This is a character flaw (albeit a pretty major one) and one that can motivate a plot; however, just as we need a Dr. Jekyll to establish a baseline for Mr. Hyde, this book needs a legitimate character against which to situate “the venom.”
P.S. This is another one of those books that features a damaged, sexy, dangerous girl who forces the (male) hero to look into the metaphorical mirror he’s been avoiding his whole life blah blah blah.