Earlier this week, I happened upon three novels written in conjunction with LOST. I selected the third, Signs of Life, to include in a LOST-themed
care package and read it before sending it off, at which point I
wondered whether the other two books were available through our library.
A quick investigation revealed that both could be downloaded in eBook
format, automatically disappearing after three weeks. I'd never heard of
such a thing, but I was soon sitting with Secret Identity in front of me, scrolling down through the pages and wishing I'd picked this book for the box instead.
Some of my satisfaction with Cathy Hapka's book - which takes place
within the first few days after the crash of Flight 815, its final pages
corresponding with the death of federal Marshall Edward Mars - stems
from lowered expectations after my experience with Signs of Life.
While it was nice to see familiar faces in that novel, few of the
characters came across very naturally, and the events didn't seem to
synch up very well with the established timeline. Secret Identity
seems much more skillfully written, with an artistic narrative style
and a clear understanding of the different characters and how they
relate to one another.
Because it covers a pretty short and
iconic span of time on the island, there are all sorts of references to
events in the first three episodes, but rather than feeling like a tired
retread, it struck me as a good method by which to root us in familiar
territory while still giving us a different perspective, much the way
the third season's Expose - a wrongly maligned episode, in my
opinion - did. Hapka manages to squeeze in every major character and
even several minor ones, among them Joanna, Scott, Steve and, in a
satisfyingly prominent role, irritating but helpful science teacher
Arzt.
There are brief mentions of Faith, Janelle, Larry and George; I know Faith is the main character in Hapka's first LOST novel, Endangered Species,
and I presume the other three also were introduced in that first book.
None have a significant role here, so if you're reading out of order,
they seem a bit out of place, but Hapka seems determined to include
everyone, so I suppose these characters' presence makes sense.
The focus of this novel is Dexter Cross, a young man in his first year
at a prestigious college. Dexter won my sympathy right away,
particularly once it came to his flashback, showing him as an unlucky,
impoverished teen picked on by his peers and forced to assist his
boorish Aunt Paula (a woman rather reminiscent of Aunt Marge from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
in her frequent trips to the store, where she makes as much of a
spectacle of herself as possible and seizes upon an opportunity to sue
the company for an alleged injury.
While Dexter is mortified
by his aunt's actions, she stuns him by offering some of the money
received from her settlement so he can go to college. At first, it seems
Dexter's dreams have been handed to him, but along with his aunt's gift
comes the expectation that he will major in something that will earn
him a lot of money. Soon he finds himself caught in a tangle of lies,
trying to conceal from his overbearing aunt and timid mother the fact
that he intends to major in English (oh most impractical of all majors!)
while spinning ever more elaborate lies to his dazzling girlfriend
Daisy about his high-brow family back home.
On the island,
Dexter awakes, having been helped out of the wreckage by Boone and
watched over by Arzt. In a state of confusion, he embarks on a search
for Daisy, but no one seems to have seen her. What's more, several
people insist they've seen him wandering around in the jungle.
Investigating the matter further, Dexter sees his doppelganger for
himself, or thinks he does anyway... He has more than one encounter with
this mysterious person, and the inclination is to see him as some sort
of hallucination or vision along the order of Jack seeing Christian or
Eko seeing Yemi. But then how to explain the fact that other people see
him too? Hapka never really delivers on that score, and we are left to
wonder along with Dexter just what the deal is.
But on the whole his story is much more coherent than that of Jeff Hadley, the protagonist in Signs of Life.
Dexter's flashback chapters - all of the even ones - are just as
engaging as the ones that occur on the island; he's very likable and
easy to relate to, while his story has obvious echoes of The Prince and the Pauper and Aladdin,
tales of a poor boy trying to pose as a prince and finding himself in a
little over his head. Most importantly, though, Hapka has a very
enjoyable writing style that lends her prose an air of seamlessness. Her
descriptions of the castaways are dead on, so it's a lot easier to
accept her introduction of new characters as well.
While many
of his encounters with the 815ers are fairly superficial - bumping into
Sawyer as he's pillaging the fuselage, trying to play psychologist for
an unresponsive Rose, chatting up John as he carves the whistle that
will eventually aid in the finding of Vincent - he forms close
friendships with Boone and Shannon, who are close to his age and remind
him of his college friends. They have some nice scenes together, and
almost all of his interactions with the various castaways seem true to
character.
My biggest disappointment with the book was
probably the glaring inconsistency in terms of the timing of the crash,
since Hapka has it occurring during Dexter's spring break. I guess it
wasn't written in stone that the airdate of LOST's pilot episode and the date of the crash were the same until Live Together, Die Alone,
which aired several months after this book was published. But surely
the creators would have known, and I'd think that would be one fact
they'd be sure to pass on to those writing official tie-in novels in
order to avoid this situation. This novel has the crash occurring about
six months before or after it actually did, and considering how the
plane crashed, and the fact that days almost seem like weeks on the
island, it strikes me as a pretty big deal.
Aside from a couple of quibbles, though, Secret Identity is a breezy read with consistent enough characterization and dialogue to satisfy LOST
fans. I'm not sure why Hapka didn't write the third tie-in novel, but
if there is to be a fourth, here's hoping she's at the helm again.
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