Theo of Golden is the literary equivalent of a “Live, Laugh, Love” sign in the Trump era. Allen Levi spins a hopeful yarn that’s worth the occasional smile but ultimately fails to hit the mark with its message of kindness and left me thinking “read the room.” The result is a book that reads like a privileged young man growing up in an affluent and homogenous suburb, whose romantic ideas of what the world can be are informed only by the small section of the world he knows. Uh oh, might be some time for some introspection.
Theo of Golden stars an older gentleman named Theo as he settles in Golden, Georgia for a spell and begins to make friends with the locals. He appreciates the portraits of Golden residents in the local coffee shop, then starts purchasing them and sending letters to their subjects. He meets with the people from the portraits in hopes of delivering the art directly to them and maybe having a conversation or making a friend along the way. Hints at Theo’s past and backstory are doled out at a steady drip, and we learn more of his motivations as the novel approaches its climax.
This is comfort fiction, built to be inoffensive and hopeful without much friction along the way. The plot (Theo’s sojourn to Golden and his portrait project) kicks off immediately and is well-paced enough to garner lasting interest, even in the most skeptical reader like me.
As the book rolled along, it started giving me little icks. Minnette’s grief over her abortion is real, and she’s entitled to every bit of it. A college kid pressured into a decision by a controlling father has every right to carry that regret for life. What bothers me is that the book treats her regret as the only option available, as if there’s no version of this story where a woman ends a pregnancy and doesn’t spend the rest of her days mourning it. Theo doesn’t sit with that possibility. He dubs her “St. Minnette” on the spot, like her sadness was the moral of the story instead of one possible outcome.
Then there’s the man who pleads with a judge to forgive the immigrant driver who killed his wife and injured his daughter. It’s a lovely scene about mercy, right up until you notice the mercy only works because Theo is secretly bankrolling a top lawyer behind the scenes. I put these two examples next to each other for a reason: one collapses a complicated experience into a single sanctioned feeling, the other turns grace into something that requires a hidden checkbook to function. Some of the ideas in Theo of Golden are actually founded in kindness. Others feel misguided and potentially dangerous. The book can’t tell which is which, because it’s too busy wearing its opinions like cement shoes that ain’t comin’ off.
The extension of this idea, for me, is a question: what sort of place does Theo’s kindness and understanding have in our world? Levi paints Theo as a Christlike figure, able to heal a person’s soul with words. He appears from a mysterious land (Portugal) to perform his little miracles. I know this capacity for indiscriminate kindness exists in our world, but the book frames it as easy, as though anyone could do it. But Theo is rich. He is almost certainly white or white-resembling. He’s an old man with eyes people seem to trust. Show me a Theo in our world, and I’ll show you a toad with a Bachelor’s Degree.
I worry I sound like an intolerable ass, and I don’t blame anyone who bounces off this review because of it. But books, for me, are not shut-my-brain-off-and-enjoy stories. I want to be challenged and rethink my perceptions of the world. Theo of Golden is arguably more fantasy than any actual fantasy I’ve read in the past five years, but it doesn’t take advantage of its fiction label. Instead, it removes any of the helpful political context a book like this could use to carve out a real, informed message and replaces it with a gold-tinted view of what the world should be like. It’s packaged well enough. Levi has a few pretty turns of phrase, particularly when writing in Theo’s voice. But where others may finish this book and feel energized by the power for good in the world, I wished the novel had the balls to grapple with the way the world is.
Theo of Golden’s climax that adds a tarnish to its brilliant good Samaritan fleece, dulling its shine with an understanding of pain, suffering, and malice. Despite my aforementioned disdain for the main story, I at least felt a legitimate connection to this part of the story. The fact that it popped the bubble of Golden as a micro-utopia with Theo as its shepherd was just the cherry on top.
I know a lot of readers will close this book feeling lighter, and I don’t think they’re wrong to want that. I just don’t think ease is the same thing as truth. Theo of Golden asks you to believe that kindness this uncomplicated is available to anyone. It isn’t. It’s available to Theo, a rich, old, white-resembling man, trusted on sight before he’s said a word.
Live, Laugh, Love signs can be sincere too. That’s never been the problem with them. The problem is they perform a sincerity so generic it never has to compete with the burdens of reality.
Rating: Theo of Golden — 3.5/10
