Book Review: When You Don’t See Me

Does anything last? It’s a question that plagues Nick Dunhill, the 19 year old protagonist of Timothy James Beck’s most recent novel, When You Don’t See Me. When the book opens Dunhill, who had been introduced to Beck’s readers in his third novel, I’m Your Man, as Advertising whiz Blaine Dunhill’s outspoken nephew whom he took in after his parents couldn’t take him anymore, is now attempting to carve his own path in life.

Formerly a minor character, who I believe was given some of the greatest one-liners in the history of one-liners, the younger Dunhill has always been someone who wanted to be different than his Stepford-appearing Wisconsin family, but he is hardly a bad kid. When he gets suspended from class and Uncle Blain asks why he says, “the teacher asked what Britain’s greatest import was and I said ‘George Michael’s ass.” Now making the jump to main attraction, Beck manages to keep Dunhill true to that nature, delighting fans, while still keeping the story informative and with enough background information for new readers to pick up the story without having read the last three novels.

Nick’s situation is not unlike that of many young adults in this day and age. He makes the unpopular decision to leave college, upsetting those he feels closest to, hearing the ever popular saying of millennium parents, that by dropping out of college he is dooming himself to an unfulfilling future. He also has a feeling of entitlement that generation Y has so often been accused of having. He moves out, not because his uncle wants him out, but because Blaine didn’t immediately hook him up with a cushy job at his advertising firm. He quickly moved into an apartment in Harlem, complete with three roommates, and gets a temporary job cleaning apartments with an agency called “I Dream of Cleanie.” It isn’t long before he faces the jolting reality that comes from leaving a two-story loft in Hell’s Kitchen with a housekeeper and all the comforts of home and replacing it with roommates who can’t make rent, no health insurance, roaches on the counter top, and clients who try to take advantage of him.

On top of this, Dunhill has lost his daring nature. Once the young teen who fearlessly told his parents and brothers that he was gay and that he wanted to go live with his uncle in New York because they couldn’t handle him the way he was, he is now afraid to go in an elevator, take the subway, and all but refuses to go into any building that is more than 15 floors. Nick Dunhill has experienced a change that, though it varies in degree, a lot of his real world contemporaries- and I count myself among them- experience as well.

In the fall of 2002, the University of Rochester released its findings in a study about teens and stress. The study was originally conducted in the summer of 2001, and found that 21 percent of preteens and teens across the continental United States had acute to moderate fears of stressful situations and occurrences that were out of their control. When the surveys were re-conducted in the winter following the September 11 attacks, the percentages had spiked up to 39 percent and the fears were considered significant as the teens reported having this feeling on a range between often and nearly always. Those surveyed, now almost seven years older, are the young people venturing out into the world as the new breed of adults and the worries are just as prominent.

As American children, the idea of this kind of disaster was a farfetched thought. Depending on the exact age, this is a group who was born toward the end of, or after, the Cold War. The idea of foreigners threatening our world seemed something out of a History book, we were taught that wars were something fought on far away soil and that, while other children in far away countries might have to worry about that sort of thing, America was strong and that we would be protected. Then, out of nowhere and at ages where we still, for the most part, believed in the strength and invincibility of our country, we experience a greater disaster than anyone three times our age could have imagined. That’s something that never goes away, it changes something inside of you and you never see the world the same way again.

Nick hasn’t only been changed by it, however, he’s been paralyzed by it. Too scared of the past, he tries to run away from it, but ends up running from everything and everyone who cared about him and is still haunted by all that has been left unfinished. Throughout the book, Nick must learn how to reenter the world of the living after so many years of trying to blend into the background.

It’s an interesting, and more importantly, realistic portrayal of the journeys we take when we’ve veered off life’s path. Watching Nick Dunhill reengage in his own life-trying and failing, rebounding and reconnecting, and learning to deal with both love and loss- is not only enjoyable, but also allows the reader to feel “ if he can make it through so can I.”