Offering a very distinctive narrative voice The One Percenters by John W. Podgursky captures interest with its first line. Edward Pritchard Cain is a unique and compelling lead character, but unfortunately there are elements within the novel that take away from it being a complete success.
Readers are asked to understand and sympathize with a killer from the start. Cain feels he is charged with a mission to restore the balance in a world where technology has interfered in the evolutionary process.
Mother Nature has tired of mankind messing with natural selection and has designated a select few to act in her stead. Cain sees himself as part of the One Percent of the population tasked with eliminating those who are alive due to money and technology. He considers it his place to take those people out before they pass on their bad genes. It’s a compelling premise.
Cain does not buy into the assumption that humans are basically good. He has a heartbreaking view of the world in which the more “you love and feel, the more you realize how hateful the world is.”
It felt like the novel would have benefited from a third person point of view instead of using the first person point of view. The overall structure of the novel is a bit confusing. We are led to believe he is writing his story to a doctor to explain his actions. But there are times where he speaks to directly to a “you” as if he is in the room with someone or addressing the reader – it is unclear which.
Unfortunately when the narrator addresses the “you” it is usually in an insulting manner. Cain is asserting his superiority, and it comes across as off-putting instead of drawing the reader in.
I wanted to sympathize with Cain, but was unable to. He claims to be evolved, doing Mother Nature’s bidding, but his actions and choice of targets don’t provoke empathy. He kidnaps a young woman named Samantha James to tell her his story. He has her tied up to tree, whimpering in fear, and but supposedly he just wants her to listen to him. Also, Cain’s killings don’t leave the reader feeling like he is creating a better world. These aren’t evildoers he is removing.
The author unfortunately lets his character fall into categorizing women as angels, freaks, or sluts. This really disconnected me from the piece and again felt insulting.
There is a moment where Cain runs into a female One Percenter. She acts as his mentor for a brief time. The character of Darien was very intriguing, but not on the page for long. Again in this encounter, Cain comes across as superficial and not appealing. He makes a comment about how it was nice to sit with a woman who didn’t intimidate him with her looks. At another point, he really estranges his female readership by commenting there are “too many angry bitches out there.”
There were many excellent elements in the book, so it was troubling it didn’t quite connect for me. There are some truly magical lines and fabulous writing within The One Percenters. Podgursky writes some of the best, most unique imagery I have read. He is especially skilled in conveying a sense of intimacy in relationships through his imagery.
The themes he tackles in the book are provocative. The narrator is supposed to act with regard to the betterment of mankind. We are taken through his desire for vengeance on those who treated him badly and brought out the other side to alignment with a higher purpose.
For me, the experience of this novel was captured in a magical and heartbreaking scene between Cain and a girl named Thelma. She is totally isolated and seems beyond caring about fitting in with others. She says she is “learning what I can from the shadows, and I’ll use it in the next world. I’ll rock that world.”
I hope that Podgursky takes after Thelma and learns what he can from this effort. He has the skills, eloquence, and vision to rock the next book.