CHEVY IN THE HOLE
By Kelsey Ronan
There is a certain kind of melancholy endemic to cities in the industrial Midwest. It is not the dominant emotion or the dominant atmosphere of the region, but there is no gloom like Rust Belt gloom. (Being from southeastern Michigan, I owe much of my own literary imagination to this particular feeling.) It contains a strange mix of community pride and civic disappointment, the sense of existing in a time and place that is a huge has potential but repeatedly gets bogged down in a lack of resources, the corrupt power of a few criminal politicians, and the mythology of a better time, a time when work was good. It’s the kind of gloom that molds you growing up there: it dampens optimism about political movements, instills mistrust of government and corporate authority, and sometimes limits ideas about what’s considered possible for your own life.
“Chevy in the Hole,” Kelsey Ronan’s debut novel, does a great job of capturing this kind of melancholy, especially the melancholy of Flint, Michigan, where August (Gus), who is recovering from an opioid addiction, falls in love with Monae, a hardworking activist, just as the water crisis in Flint comes to light.
It is Gus who anchors this novel, while Ronan skillfully dramatizes one of the most dangerous monsters of addiction: self-loathing. We meet Gus as Narcan revives him in the bathroom of the Detroit farm-to-table restaurant where he works; it’s an intriguing resurrection moment, and Gus is grateful for the second chance, but also deeply convinced that he doesn’t deserve his happiness. In what feels like an attempt to add some value to his self-esteem, he volunteers at a local environmental organization in Flint, where he meets Monae, whose grounded, hands-on skills and active involvement in her community make Gus almost magical. He has spent much of his life in his own head, hating himself. Monae is a miracle to him. She gets things done.
And so this becomes a love story between opposites: Gus’ ambitions are limited and vague; Monae’s are focused and intense. Gus is a white man and Monae is a black woman, giving them completely different perspectives and experiences of life in deeply segregated southeastern Michigan. For a while we wonder what Gus has that Monae wants: He’s neither particularly charming nor particularly promising, but there’s a heartbreak about him, and Ronan’s intimate third-person story finally gives us a glimpse of what might be sweet about Gus. He’s thoughtful in every sense of the word – he’s nice and he thinks too much, and Ronan has a gift for propulsive sentences that somehow make even his deeply inner moments exciting and endearing.
Late in the novel, Monae offers her philosophy on love, which sheds light on why Gus might appeal to her: “I think you decide on someone and somewhere and the commitment is the sentence that makes it all. You choose someone and you do your best.” for that one. That’s the way I love you. That’s the way I love this place.”
This passage reflects the central question of the novel: does relentless devotion always yield positive results? Monae seems devoted to what others see as lost cause, namely Gus, and the town of Flint. It’s lonely work, this kind of dedication, and the parts of the novel from Monae’s point of view reflect that loneliness. Contrary to Gus’s heart-on-sleeve emotion, Monae feels somewhat unfathomable; her point of view is based largely on the five senses of the present moment. Yet they form a relationship based on something subtly beautiful, an unspoken but profound understanding of a certain kind of loneliness they both share. Thus, the novel’s main propulsive engine becomes a question that often applies as much to relationships as it does to stories of America’s forgotten and marginalized landscapes: Can we save them with love, or will they just collapse?
