Somewhere between putting Search by Michelle Huneven on my TBR and actually reading it, I forgot it was supposed to be a comic novel. Although I wouldn’t say reading it was a waste of my time or that I didn’t get anything out of it, it took until I looked this book up Bookshop to link to it that I was reminded of that fact.
Apparently something in my reading experience didn’t meet author expectations.
Dana is a well-known food writer in her little Southern California community, something that makes her a minor celebrity among her longtime Unitarian congregation. Maybe that’s a reason why, when the minister announces he’ll be leaving the congregation in a year, she’s picked to be on the committee to find a replacement. Initially, Dana takes the job thinking it will make good content for her next book, a goal that keeps her from losing her mind when the colorful and diverse committee members find this or that ridiculous hill to die on. Gradually, though, Dana realizes she cares about the outcome of the search far more than she expected—and that maybe she has a hill of her own to die on as the search comes to a close.
I think the main reason Search didn’t resonate with me, and why I struggle to find anything humorous about it in retrospect, is not because I came into it knowing nothing about Unitarianism or because I don’t fit into some other demographic, but because of the framing device used. In a “Preface to the Second Edition” before the story starts, Dana reflects on the success of the book written as a result of her time on the search committee. “Yes, this is a memoir of a real experience. It is not fiction. I was on a search committee for a senior minister and this is my story of that search. Others might tell it differently. That said, names and certain details have been altered to protect identities. … Libel law offers clear guidelines for making a person unidentifiable in print—change three characteristics, for example—and I followed them. The talk of lawsuits has subsided.” This preface, while fictional and written by a fictional character, was really effective for me. So effective that during the moments that probably were intended to be funny, I was concerned instead for the people involved.
For me, that turned the comical to cringe. I anticipated the characterizations to be perhaps brutal to the “person” they were about but ultimately loving in their own way, like a Prairie Home Companion approach. But there were some characters that Dana—Huneven—seemingly could find nothing good to say anything about. One character in particular has no redeeming qualities I can name, and regardless of whether they deserve it, their characterization felt too angry to lend itself to a comical story. Which is ironic, because the tension Dana feels toward that character is where the book gets most of its momentum in the last act, and is part of the most interesting change in Dana as a character. In the same way that reading the preface altered my view of the narrative as I read, finding out after the fact all this was supposed to be funny altered it in retrospect. What do you do with a book that mostly works as a slice-of-life story verging on the dramatic when it’s supposed to be funny?
One huge point in the favor of Search, however, is that, continuing with the schtick of Dana being a food writer, the end is stuffed with recipes of the delicious things the committee members were bringing to all the potluck dinner meetings. Regardless of where my feelings about Search end up as it recedes farther into the rear view, I will be making seafood chowder, cinnamon rolls, fiesta rice, custard pie, and all the other goodies Huneven slipped into the end. Maybe in that, the word I’ll eventually associate with Search is “delicious.”
Ring Reads 