A TRUE STORY is a story of deception and truth. It is a story about the nature of reality and the intrinsic unreliability of perspective. It is allusive literary fiction disguised as a cheap, pulpy crime novel where You, the reader, become the detective and the story itself becomes suspect. Nothing exists outside of the frame of the narrator. No character can have a true voice—only impersonation. The difference between truth and lies becomes meaningless; everything becomes a reflection of itself. It is, then, the job of the astute reader to glean the truth of the misrepresented characters, their soft sorrows, through the broken lens of the narrator—to see things for what they are and not simply for what they seem.
Through the book, we follow the protagonist, John Smith, through a series of events involving crime, deception, and personal turmoil.
The story begins with an unnamed narrator addressing the reader directly, apologizing for breaking storytelling conventions, assuring the reader that he had no part in the soon-to-be unfolding events, and setting the stage for a narrative that promises to be pure and true.
After a false start, John's life is depicted in detail, including his relationship with his wife, Mary, his affair with Bella, and his burgeoning obsession with Donna. He is involved in various criminal activities, including drug deals, burglaries and insurance fraud.
The narrative explores his interactions with other characters, such as Bruce, Pepe, and Ethelbert, who play significant roles in the unfolding drama.
The story takes a dark turn with the deaths of multiple characters, leaving John to navigate through these challenges, dealing with the consequences of his actions and the relentless pursuit of Ethelbert E. Ethelbert, an insurance investigator.
The document is rich in descriptive language, character development, and thematic elements, making it a complex and engaging read with layers of hidden subtext and wordplay to delight the reader and the re-reader both.
In other words, an image:
There is a puddle that has collected around the gutter in a city street. The particular street and city is inconsequential; you may imagine it as any city street you wish, somewhere you are familiar with, or somewhere not. What matters is the puddle. It is dark, almost obsidian against the worn asphalt of the street, and stretches out in an oblong, uneven semi-circle. Within it you can see a reflection distorted by the shifting prismatic shimmer of motor oil and brake fluid—the underside of the storm drain, reaching with its brush and litter choked bars up to the bottoms of its mirrored twins; the buildings, swaying with the breeze in the surface ripples, towering away towards the sunset that glows behind them, somehow brighter in this distorted reflection; your own face, slowly morphing and partially translucent, staring up from the miniature abyss. Through this rainbow shimmer, through this shifting transportive reflection, and through all the darkness and the brown opacity of the water, you can make out the sediment beneath—the candy wrapper and cigarette butt embedded within; the trampled dandelion, fighting to grow between the cracks of the asphalt and the cement; the recently minted quarter, dropped before it was ever even spent; the shoelace tied to the storm drain, oscillating with the rhythm of the water as it slowly drains out.
There, in this dirty puddle, in the reflection of the world within, and in the distorting polychrome oil-slick that washes over it all, the essence of A TRUE STORY can be found.
