On 19 September 2010, Ravi used a webcam to videotape a homosexual assignation between his roommate, Tyler Clementi, and a visitor - an act that may or may not have been a hate crime. Perhaps intentionally, Strout’s story recalls the Dharun Ravi case, in which Ravi committed a crime that may or may not have led to another person’s death. Has he committed suicide? What role must each of the adult Burgesses take in the search for Zach (or Zach’s body)?
When the government decides to bring harsh charges against Zach, the boy disappears. A white person, a police officer, explains that Somali émigrés tend to overreact, and the car incident will not reflect well on the Burgess family. He has almost accidentally backed into a Somali émigré. Meanwhile, back in Maine, Bob is having problems.
Helen doesn’t sympathize when Jim screams that his brother is a fuck-up. It was a freak accident, involving a car.Īs the story unfolds, the Burgess family unravels. Long, long ago, one of the Burgess boys - Bob, not Jim - accidentally killed Papa Burgess. Meanwhile, Helen takes a vacation, and her husband, Jim, does some golfing. Now, Helen’s brother-in-law, Bob, must return to Maine to help his sister, Susan, and Susan’s son, the perpetrator, Zach. Her sister-in-law’s son has desecrated a Somali-American mosque by tossing the head of a pig through the front door. Her comfortable Park Slope life is invaded by an incident. There’s a new woman, similar to Kitteredge, in Strout’s upcoming (and often unsuccessful) novel, The Burgess Boys. It’s somewhat unusual to have a major novelist so fearlessly embrace unsympathetic characters. In Strout’s Pultizer winner, Olive Kitteredge, the title character is a bit of a monster, but you can’t help but feel some warmth toward her as you read. Throughout her earlier books, Elizabeth Strout was quite good at taking a nasty person and making you understand, even sympathize.
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