Review: The Wentworths

Meet the Wentworths.

August Wentworth is obsessed with his exhaustive pursuit of pleasure. This Wentworth patriarch hides the fruits of these pursuits from his wife; his compulsive drinking, his excessive eating, and his mistresses.

Judith Wentworth is a ritual-obsessed matriarch whose berating of the cleaning staff of her 1929 Edwardian mansion is her primary source of pleasure. Her son's homosexuality she claims as grounds to call him "special needs." She describes coarse African hair as "negroid kinky."

Becky Wentworth-Jones obsesses over weight and meal portions. This compulsion translates to an overall craving for control in her life. She once "took a locked door personally and attacked it with all her strength" [pg 94].

Conrad Wentworth is a status-obsessed, womanizing, oedipal, defense attorney with a penchant for scumbag clients and their endless pockets; Conrad will argue anyone out of jail time for enough money.

Norman Wentworth is a 35 year old homosexual drug user who still lives with his WASP-y parents and abhors the arrangement due not just to the principal failure it implies, but because he fears the trendy, condo- life for which he yearns has too far passed. He exists now as the family lightening rod, tempered and strengthened by whatever insults come his way.

The trend? Obsession. It seems Katie Arnoldi lives to dig into the lives of consumed characters. In this follow up to her debut Chemical Pink, aptly subtitled "a novel of obsession", Arnoldi bypasses the visual grotesque that she explored with Charles Worthington's female body-builder obsession in Chemical Pink, and instead delves into the status-obsessed lives of the Wentworth's, a wealthy Westside Los Angeles family with ears and eyes enough to judge everyone around them, but not enough communal esteem to realize the judgments work both ways.

Each chapter is told from an individual character's perspective, allowing variety in the views, however the bulk of the narrative takes its momentum from Norman's chapters. Norman is perhaps the closest we have to a rational narrator which, considering the skewed perspectives of the rest of the family, is a welcome tone. But don't mistake his rationality as code for boring. Norman considers himself the family archivist and plays the role well, as his blunt view on family matters permeates this scathing novel; The Wentworths is a cracked window into the life of privilege and a just reminder as to why the aristocracy don't deserve their pedestals.

The Wentworths moves beautifully from Norman's sadistic depravity in the opening scene, to a surprisingly redemptive ending. The cliché is to say that Arnoldi crafted these characters to a level that a reader could feel a personal connection to them; however considering the characters I'd rather pretend no such connection existed. Otherwise, the implication may be that I could be driven to similar pill-popping, womanizing, arrogant ways.

As a bonus, for current Arnoldi fans Chemical Pink's Charles Worthington makes a special appearance at a country club dinner; allowing Judith Wentworth to describe the man as an unsocial "creepy…black sheep" [pg 126]—the undertone being that one isn't too far removed psychologically from the kept company.

[Caleb Ross]

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The Wentworths by Katie Arnoldi
The Overlook Press
256 Pages

Caleb Ross has written reviews for the (now defunct) Depraved Press, Thirdeye Magazine, and even a couple right here at Dogmatika: Palahniuk's Rant, the Falling From the Sky anthology and most recently Rayo Casablanca's 6 Sick Hipsters and Jeremy C Shipp's Vacation. Visit his website for a full list of publications: www.www.calebjross.com/work