The Alcoholic: A Hero Contends for His Soul - Paid Review

Author T.S. Flanagan and his agent recently reached out to me asking if I would be interested in doing a paid review of his novel, “The Alcoholic: A Hero Contends for His Soul”. T.S Flanagan holds a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. He has published dozens of poems in numerous literary journals as well as one middle school history textbook on Post-Civil War Reconstruction.

Before I accepted, the author made it a point to ensure I was aware of the heavy and sensitive nature of the story. He assured me that I could decline and he would understand, as the material covers controversial topics and he wanted to ensure I would not be triggered.

Hearing this warning, I went into the book expecting heavy emotional prose and an in-depth exploration of addiction, trauma, and mental health. To be completely candid, that is not necessarily what I encountered.

The book is almost 700 pages, and while my final consensus is that this book wasn’t really for me, I will say that it kept me entertained. No matter what page or part of the story I was reading, something interesting or wild happened or was said. In my opinion, this book is immune to skimming or speed reading. Any time I found myself subconsciously skimming, I’d be brought back immediately by something new and strange that our protagonist Roland Hazzard is on about, and I would choose to go back through the pages and read every word to see how we got there. So, while the book rambles and could probably have been 200 pages less, its pretty impossible not to read every page.

Roland Hazzard, a god among men in every way except his mortality, kills a serial killer and then that killer’s cousin, both in self defense. Roland becomes a celebrity, appearing on TV and radio interviews and being recognized in public. All the while, he battles alcoholism. He meets many women, none of which he gets emotionally close to, or apparently very physically close to either, because he is “too big” for every woman he encounters. But, regardless, he still has plenty of sexual escapades with the random women in his story.

I expected Roland Hazzard’s story to revolve more around his struggles with alcoholism and it’s emotional and physical effects on his life and relationships. However, with the plot being so complex and the main character’s time spent in interviews, alcoholism seemed to take a bit of a back seat. The main character’s addiction was not unpacked nearly enough in my opinion, and even when he attended AA meetings in the story he seemed too proud and closed off for there to ever be a true dissection of addiction and emotion. In fact, at one meeting he meets a woman, who then becomes another tag-along extra female character for Roland to lust over and lean on for support. We also only get snippets of his family relationships. It is made clear in the novel that Roland has a strained relationship with his family, but other than that they barely interact. The most we see is a phone call or two and his mother reading his sexual and presidential fan mail in the hospital (more on that later).

After his self-proclaimed self-defense murders, Roland Hazzard becomes a controversial media personality. He uses his newfound platform to speak verbosely about history, poetry, politics, and other topics that allow him to dissect and discuss them ad nauseam, until the plot becomes lost entirely in pages of Roland’s personal ideas and lectures via media interviews.

At the height of his fame and popularity, the FBI and the President of the United States himself take interest in Roland Hazzard; and the president is no other than Donald Trump. The President actually becomes a main character toward the end of this novel. So does his deceased brother Fred Trump, (who was, in fact, a real person). Trump’s brother Fred, in the real world, was an alcoholic and died of a heart attack at a young age. This book finds an impressive way to capitalize on all of that later.

Trump insists upon meeting Roland Hazzard, and so the president and our main character become friends, with Donald sealing the deal by telling Roland of his alcoholic dead brother in order to drive home the request that Roland become sober, with the intent to play golf with the President.

Roland likes this challenge from Trump, and evidently the two of them are fond of each other. What truly puts Roland’s nose to the grindstone, though, is the car accident he causes from his own drunk driving.

He claims that he saw Fred Trump standing in the road, swerved to avoid him, and crashed badly.

We then are transported for multiple pages of the story to a spiritual realm. This realm came as quite a surprise to me, and the entire scene felt strange and out of place. Roland meets his grandfather’s ghost as well as Fred Trump’s in the in-between stage before the after life. He receives many words of wisdom from his grandfather and Fred Trump.

Yes, Fred Trump is an inspirational ghost in this novel, which took me quite by surprise.

Roland learns that his spirit was once that of a hero, or Greek god of some sort, and that is why he is so above other people in so many ways . Now all of the women talking about his huge anatomy and how intelligent and dangerous he is makes a lot more sense. He is a hero, reincarnated.

Roland takes the ghostly advice and discussion to heart. When he wakes from his coma after the accident in the hospital, he is visited by his mother. This, I believe, is the only real scene we get with Roland and his mother interacting. During this bonding time after her son’s crash, she aids him in opening his fan mail, and many of the letters are from women admiring him. One woman writes of wanting to strengthen the breed with Roland, believing him to be the ultimate alpha male. His mother reads this aloud to him, but Roland tells his mother he is not interested in responding.

There is a letter from Trump, his close personal friend, as well. It encourages Roland to get back on his feet, get sober, and work on golf. He ends the letter with “Remember Fred”.

Roland spends some time in jail , because even though he’s basically a god among men he is not immune to the law, and he is found guilty of multiple crimes.

For one thing, aside from the self defense killings that probably didn’t need to result in killings, Roland has been illegally selling copies of the video games he tests at his job. He is busted, and in the process, his female coworker almost loses her job because of his illegal actions.

Roland takes his time in jail to reflect and work on himself, although this part of the book is quite vague and dream-like with not a lot of heavy focus or emotional turmoil.

Still, he emerges a sober, driven man. He gets right to work on his golfing, enlisting the help of that female coworker, Gina, who is conveniently a great golfer and not too mad about almost losing her job because of Roland’s actions. They unexpectedly form a romance, and he calls up the president to arrange a golf match. Of course Trump takes his call, and agrees to Gina accompanying Roland to golf with the president. He congratulates Roland on his sobriety and hard work.

After this touching scene, the book comes to an end. The final paragraph features a seemingly homeless Spanish-speaking woman and her child pushing a shopping cart by Roland Hazzard's house, and the child worrying out loud that there is a woman being hurt in his home because she hears screams. The mother replies, half in Spanish and half in English, that the woman is actually enjoying it very much. So, the book ends with homeless characters that do not relate to the story listening to Roland Hazzard and Gina have loud, violent intimacy.

I found the ending to be quite out of place, and frankly a little disturbing. I fail to understand the relativity of the characters and this experience being included at all, and I believe without that ending paragraph the book would have had a more solid end.

While I personally think the general plot is a bit disjointed, it is not the plot that made me feel this story was not for me. This book truly feels like a published collection of monologues about topics like societal structure, religion, and politics, while I was expecting a more in-depth dive within the specific main characters and their emotional states relating to their environment.

Roland Hazzard takes every chance at a platform he gets to spout his beliefs and argue tangentially with anyone who will engage in his roundabout ramblings. This trait of his pretty much dominates the book, drowning the plot in pages of opinions about the world. The plot feels secondary to the ideas of the main character, so much so that the book often feels like Roland Hazzard’s diary.

And this seems to be my main reason for a lower enjoyment of this book; I felt like I wanted more emotion and interpersonal connection from the story than there was. While the topics involved in the story may be “controversial” or “difficult”, they become flattened and dull once buried in exposition and unrelated digressions.

As a writer trying to build up my own reputation and image as well, I would like to state that I personally do not agree or align with many things the main character expresses. Unfortunately, Roland Hazzard and I would definitely not get along, but I found his story intriguing all the same.

Without the ramblings, the plot itself is interesting. This is a book I would never have picked for myself, so I am glad for the experience! This book is obviously written by a creative, imaginative, ruminating author, and it shows in the prose and in the many characters we meet throughout the story. I appreciate that the author has allowed the reader into the complex brain of his character Roland Hazzard.