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lisa_mc's review against another edition
3.0
“The Adjustment” is gritty and dark, full of sex, prostitution, bad language, drinking, drug abuse, blackmail, fighting and even murder. None of the main characters are heroic, or tragic, or even decent people. Main character Wayne Ogden is not a romanticized Wild West outlaw, he’s someone you don’t want to mess with — whether you realize it or not. And although I couldn't quite root for him, I was curious about what was going to happen to him.
The book starts as Ogden is back from WWII, back to his job at an aircraft company, back to his wife. And he’s bored.
He’s not a war hero — instead of fighting Nazis, he used his position as a quartermaster to spend the war pimping and black marketeering, managing to smuggle home a significant sum of cash, which he’s stashed away.
Now at Collins Aircraft, where he is nominally in charge of public relations and marketing, Ogden’s main job is keeping an eye on and, frequently, cleaning up after his boss, a man of short temper and large appetites. This means spending long nights in speakeasies and procuring prostitutes for hotel liaisons — both for his boss and himself.
Clever and resourceful, but also petty and vengeful, Ogden knows when to finesse and when to use force, and does plenty of both.
Not long after his return to Wichita, Ogden starts receiving threatening letters — badly written and improperly punctuated, but clearly threatening — obliquely referring to Ogden’s actions as a pimp in Rome. Not so much worried as amused at first, then later a bit wary, Ogden devotes more of his energy to getting illicit prescriptions for his boss, then getting his opiate-addicted boss off the drugs, then scheming to make sure the board members of the aircraft company don’t oust the old man from leadership. Meanwhile, he’s setting up a supply of pornography for an Army buddy stationed in Japan, having a fling with a co-worker and a woman in Kansas City, and seriously meddling in the personal lives of other co-workers.
"The Adjustment" is unpredictable and fast-paced, and it keeps readers guessing as to whether Ogden is facing a serious threat from the letter-writer or whether it’s simply a nuisance; what’s going to happen with his boss, his wife and his other entanglements; and how it’s all going to end.
Phillips’ writing is vivid and smart, and he takes an incisive look at the readjustment of returning veterans to life after wartime, as well as the adjustment the men and women whose lives changed at home have to make as the soldiers return.
Plus, it’s fun to see Wichita, Kansas, captured in such a sordid light, and then see Ogden blithely dismiss that picture in a memory of his cousins: “they all went to the picture shows and they pictured Wichita as the very heart of urban sin and decadence. It struck me now that if Wichita really was that way I’d be happy as a clam there.”
The book starts as Ogden is back from WWII, back to his job at an aircraft company, back to his wife. And he’s bored.
He’s not a war hero — instead of fighting Nazis, he used his position as a quartermaster to spend the war pimping and black marketeering, managing to smuggle home a significant sum of cash, which he’s stashed away.
Now at Collins Aircraft, where he is nominally in charge of public relations and marketing, Ogden’s main job is keeping an eye on and, frequently, cleaning up after his boss, a man of short temper and large appetites. This means spending long nights in speakeasies and procuring prostitutes for hotel liaisons — both for his boss and himself.
Clever and resourceful, but also petty and vengeful, Ogden knows when to finesse and when to use force, and does plenty of both.
Not long after his return to Wichita, Ogden starts receiving threatening letters — badly written and improperly punctuated, but clearly threatening — obliquely referring to Ogden’s actions as a pimp in Rome. Not so much worried as amused at first, then later a bit wary, Ogden devotes more of his energy to getting illicit prescriptions for his boss, then getting his opiate-addicted boss off the drugs, then scheming to make sure the board members of the aircraft company don’t oust the old man from leadership. Meanwhile, he’s setting up a supply of pornography for an Army buddy stationed in Japan, having a fling with a co-worker and a woman in Kansas City, and seriously meddling in the personal lives of other co-workers.
"The Adjustment" is unpredictable and fast-paced, and it keeps readers guessing as to whether Ogden is facing a serious threat from the letter-writer or whether it’s simply a nuisance; what’s going to happen with his boss, his wife and his other entanglements; and how it’s all going to end.
Phillips’ writing is vivid and smart, and he takes an incisive look at the readjustment of returning veterans to life after wartime, as well as the adjustment the men and women whose lives changed at home have to make as the soldiers return.
Plus, it’s fun to see Wichita, Kansas, captured in such a sordid light, and then see Ogden blithely dismiss that picture in a memory of his cousins: “they all went to the picture shows and they pictured Wichita as the very heart of urban sin and decadence. It struck me now that if Wichita really was that way I’d be happy as a clam there.”
mikedeab63's review
4.0
I'm sitting here wondering just why I enjoyed The Adjustment so damn much. Nothing much happens in the way of plot and the main protagonist is a self-interested SOB that can't ditch his pregnant wife fast enough. Still, I was rooting for him by the end and laughing at his demented sense of humor and twisted worldview. Scott Phillips is that good and it's his confident and unique voice, that very rare ingredient to transcendent fiction, that makes this very black noir novel sing.
The little details and turns of phrase anchor you in place (1940s Witchita) without overwhelming and all the various side characters (just about every one of them unsavory) are fleshed out with just a quip or a quick, yet spot on description. My only qualm is that Phillips takes so long to write! Still, if that's what it takes to polish these little noir gems, I can be a patient man.
The little details and turns of phrase anchor you in place (1940s Witchita) without overwhelming and all the various side characters (just about every one of them unsavory) are fleshed out with just a quip or a quick, yet spot on description. My only qualm is that Phillips takes so long to write! Still, if that's what it takes to polish these little noir gems, I can be a patient man.
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