REVIEW Strong characters make up for lacking plot

The author's prose shows emotional truth.
By THERESA M. HEGEL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
"Ballad of the Confessor," by William Zink (Sugar Loaf Press, $15).
"Ballad of the Confessor," by Akron native William Zink, is a lyrical and stark examination of working-class lifestyles.
Short on plot, the novel is nevertheless a compelling read, focusing on well-drawn characters and their everyday trials, the small-scale betrayals and tragedies that are the building blocks of their lives.
On one of the last pages of "Ballad of the Confessor," the main character notes: "It's not that poverty is beautiful, or disease, or suffering, or death; it's the struggle against it that's beautiful." This statement is an apt summary of the novel's appeal. There is beauty in Zink's prose, emotional truth and poignancy in the scenes he relates.
"Ballad of the Confessor" is narrated in the first person by Lorne, a man filled with a destructive mix of despair and hope. He has an abusive wife (both verbally and physically) and works at a plant nursery as a general laborer, a dead-end, minimum-wage position.
He is dissatisfied with almost every aspect of his life -- although he does seem to enjoy fishing on the beach with his immediate supervisor Reggie -- but he lacks the impetus, the ambition or the resources to move on to something better.
Fantasy escape
Lorne's only escapes from the monotony of mind-numbing, back-breaking physical labor are his rich fantasy life and active thoughts. To make things bearable, he said he decided about two years before the story begins to give himself leeway to contemplate whatever popped into his mind; however, the plan backfires.
He explains that "the more I allowed myself the freedom to think, the closer I got to going crazy. I thought the freedom would cure me, when all it did was emphasize my bondage."
Lorne has nothing to hold on to, nothing to believe in. He talks often about moving to Colorado and becoming a cowboy. He considers taking Reggie up on his weekly offer to accompany him to church. He contemplates leaving his wife and starting a relationship with a pretty waitress who mentions that she frequently visits the beach. He even constructs an elaborate daydream in which they swim together and she says she's studying marine biology.
By the end of the novel, Lorne has done none of these things, although the possibility for change looms just beyond the book's last sentence. Based on the rest of the action of the novel, however, it seems unlikely that this change will result in improvements in Lorne's life.
hegel@vindy.com