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    Casebook: A Novel
    Casebook: A Novel
    Casebook: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Casebook: A Novel

    Written by Mona Simpson

    Narrated by Nick Podehl

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the acclaimed and award-winning author of Anywhere But Here and My Hollywood, a powerful new novel about a young boy’s quest to uncover the mysteries of his unraveling family. What he discovers turns out to be what he least wants to know: the inner workings of his parents’ lives. And even then he can’t stop searching.

    Miles Adler-Hart starts eavesdropping to find out what his mother is planning for his life. When he learns instead that his parents are separating, his investigation deepens, and he enlists his best friend, Hector, to help. Both boys are in thrall to Miles’s unsuspecting mother, Irene, who is “pretty for a mathematician.” They rifle through her dresser drawers, bug her telephone lines, and strip-mine her computer, only to find that all clues lead them to her bedroom, and put them on the trail of a mysterious stranger from Washington, D.C.

    Their amateur detective work starts innocently but quickly takes them to the far reaches of adult privacy as they acquire knowledge that will affect the family’s well-being, prosperity, and sanity. Burdened with this powerful information, the boys struggle to deal with the existence of evil and concoct modes of revenge on their villains that are both hilarious and naïve. Eventually, haltingly, they learn to offer animal comfort to those harmed and to create an imaginative path to their own salvation.

    Casebook brilliantly reveals an American family both both coming apart at the seams and, simultaneously, miraculously reconstituting itself to sustain its members through their ultimate trial. Mona Simpson, once again, demonstrates her stunning mastery, giving us a boy hero for our times whose story remains with us long after the the novel's end.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 15, 2014
    ISBN9781491504642
    Casebook: A Novel
    Author

    Mona Simpson

    Mona Simpson is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Grant and the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. She is the author of the acclaimed novels Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road and My Hollywood. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her husband and their two children.

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    Reviews for Casebook

    3.5/5

    69 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Will it improve upon the silence?"An updated, for-adults, Harriet the Spy story. Whimsical, quizzical, oblique, beautifully written about families and love. The character of Miles is stupendously realized. A real treat.
    • 2/5
      The whole "casebook" concept was just a gimmick to explain why the son can narrate the story of his parents divorce and mother's relationship with a psycho (because he eavesdrops and snoops). Even Hector's footnotes are lame and add nothing to the story. [small chance a print copy of the book plays out the casebook better than audio, but that just proves it's a cosmetic gimmick and does not add narrative value.] The psycho comment, that's not a spoiler -- even though Miles says he likes Eli, it is obvious there is another shoe to drop. Yes, there's some interesting perspective on how kids view divorce and the life they live afterwards -- for example, the insight that the single-parent family should stop trying to act like they're a typical family like everyone else [read: every two parent family] because they are not like everyone else. That's good advice, I think. So take it and read something else.
    • 4/5
      I did not know what to expect going into Mona Simpson's Casebook. The synopsis made it sound more like a mystery--two boys acting as sleuths to uncover their parents' secrets. But at its heart, this is really a tender coming of age story about a boy finding his way after his parents divorce and their new relationships. It's the story of how Miles struggles with his conflicting emotions, faces life's challenges and searches for answers about love and betrayal. Casebook is funny and charming. It is also sad and thoughtful.

      I loved the way Mona Simpson sets the story up. In the introduction, the reader learns that the narrator and his friend are the "authors", telling the story behind the graphic novel they wrote about their espionage efforts. Names have been changed or nicknames used (like for Miles' two sisters, Boop One and Boop Two), descriptions even, in order to avoid identification of the people involved. Written in the first person perspective, this is Miles' story, with added footnotes by his friend Hector. (For those not liking footnotes--there are not very many, but the ones that exist are brief and funny in their own right.)

      I liked that the story is a quiet one. It is not action packed, although it is a fairly fast read. If you are expecting big climaxes and life shattering revelations, you won't get them here. The mystery behind Miles and Hector's search for the truth about Eli, Irene's boyfriend, is not at all surprising. It is easy to guess early on, the markers being quite clear. For me, what was more important was how Miles dealt with the truth once he found it, how it changed him and impacted his choices there after.

      I adored Miles. He is so innocent and naive on one hand and yet extremely resourceful and wise beyond his years in others. Even when he was exacting revenge on his enemies, he demonstrated he had heart and cared about others. I also really liked Miles' friend, Hector, who was the kind of best friend I wish I could have had growing up. His loyalty and taking matters into his own hands for his friend's sake say much about him. At the same time, I wish Miles' had paid more attention to what his friend was going through. Miles noticed Hector's troubles, but, to me, it felt like he was too caught up in his own life to really see his friend and the trouble that might be brewing in Hector's life, behind the scenes. I don't completely blame Miles though. Hector used Miles' life to avoid his own.

      I am glad the author told the story from the point of view of Miles. I think back to my childhood, my curiosity about what was going on around me, including about my parents' relationship. I never resorted to tapping their phone, or rifling through their things, but I caught snatches of conversation here and there. And sometimes, perhaps, I snooped a little more than I should have. I do understand the desire to want to know more about a parent, to understand why he or she is depressed or angry, and wanting to find a way to fix it, hurting alongside them, and wanting them only to be happy. Miles loved his mother dearly and wanted so much for her to be happy. Miles learned some difficult lessons through the course of his story, but the fact that he came away from it all with hope . . . . Well, that warmed my heart.
    • 4/5
      In Casebook by Mona Simpson a young amateur sleuth hears more than he bargained for which eventually leads to an expanded investigation and results in some hard earned lessons and maturity. Highly Recommended

      When Miles Adler-Hart was 12 he originally began eavesdropping on his parents in a vain attempt to discover any plans they might have for his futures. Instead of talking about him, Miles discovers that their relationship is in trouble and they are getting divorced. After the divorce Miles' mother, Irene, introduces him to her boyfriend, Eli. With the help of his friend, Hector, Miles increases his surveillance on his mom and this questionable new man. Miles and Hector eventually befriend a PI to help in their investigation.

      Miles says of Eli: "It was odd story. Like the brother. A lot of Eli’s life seemed weird. Sad, too. I felt that even then. But sad in a way that had no poignancy. More like a disease I hoped wasn’t contagious."

      Simpson follows her teenage protagonist Miles from age 12 to post high school, with most of the novel centered around Miles to about age 15. This novel manages to transcend the usual teenage novel full of angst associated with a broken family and the ensuing financial stress it causes by focusing on the mysterious relationship between Irene and Eli as seen through the eyes and ears of a sometimes clueless, sometimes insightful Miles and Hector. There is also a dose of humor in Miles story through some of his schemes and antics, along with the poignancy of an alienated teen during a tragic time in his life.

      The novel is set up as an account after the fact, with a present day Miles and Hector as successful comic book authors, with footnotes added later with comments on what is written. This is a coming-of -age novel with a mystery entwined in the story. Simpson does a wonderful job capturing Miles thoughts for his age while allowing Irene's personal struggles to remain somewhat aloof and beyond Miles' ability to comprehend.

      In many ways Simpson's account is a somewhat sanitized picture of what divorce means to many women and children. While there is definitely emotional strain, the devastating blow that many experience emotionally and financially isn't pictured quite as insidious here as the reality is for many.

      The quality of Simpson's writing and her ability to really allow us to connect with her teenage protagonist help to elevate Casebook up from just-another-coming-of-age-story to a novel with a mystery to unravel while we gain insight into all of the characters.

      Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday for review purposes.
    • 2/5
      DNF', it really dragged
    • 2/5
      The narrator is Miles Adler-Hart who retrospectively tells the story of the divorce of his parents and his mother’s subsequent relationship with another man. Miles, from the age of nine, is an old-fashioned snoop; because of his eavesdropping he learns his parents are separating. Later, when his mother begins dating Eli Lee, Miles and his best friend Hector set out to investigate Eli because his broken promises and long absences make them suspicious. The novel is framed as an unfinished manuscript written by Miles with footnotes added by Hector. The problem is that Hector’s annotations serve little purpose. They could have added insight into the accuracy of Miles’ memory, but don’t. In my ebook the footnotes appear at the end of the chapter so by the time I read them, they made no sense. Having to go back to find context for those notations is tiresome.Miles as a narrator is problematic. At times he sounds like the young adult he is at the end of the book; at other times he seems much younger, the age he was when experiencing the events described. This blend of childish befuddlement and adult perceptiveness is not illuminating. The passage of time is not clearly indicated so the overall impression is one of disjointedness. Sometimes large spans of time are skipped over; at other times, mundane events are detailed. This choppy flow with its erratic jumps in time adds confusion, not enjoyment.None of the characters is particularly appealing. Irene, Miles’ mother, is especially frustrating. She is a mathematician, intelligent and educated, but totally clueless in many ways. Why she falls for Eli and remains devoted to him for years despite his evasiveness and deceptions is beyond my comprehension. I can understand that a young boy may not understand the romantic relationships of adults, but even as an adult Miles offers little insight.This is a coming-of-age novel and Miles does learn a little about the complexities of the adult world. In particular, he learns about the strange compromises made in the name of love. Certainly the lasting impact of divorce is emphasized. Perhaps because his parents are divorced, Miles concludes, “Love ruined people’s lives.” From several descriptions I read, this book sounded really interesting. Unfortunately, it proved not to be so for me. I found I had to force myself to finish it.
    • 4/5
      I know there are a lot of reviews out there talking about all the problems in this book. I'm just gonna say straight out - none of that stuff bothered me. I know Miles sometimes sounded like a teenager and the next page sounded like an adult. I felt like that was normal. His best friend Hector (maybe gay? maybe Miles is gay too? who knows?) had the same kind of thing happening, but I felt they were both characters I could identify with, and I could have when I was in high school, too.I liked the Harriet The Spy vibe going on when Miles and Hector were listening in on phone conversations, trying to find out if The Mims (Miles' mom) was ever going to be happy again after the divorce. I liked the private investigator they hired to look into Eli, the new guy. I liked the way this was mostly a story about growing up and worrying about parents and being a friend. Parents are real people, too, and it's a really hard time finding that out and still being a kid.
    • 4/5
      We learn to be adults through our observations, learning from our parents and the other adults in our lives. Most children want to be grown-up long before they are and so they scrutinize their parents' lives. They listen in on phone conversations. They eavesdrop. They sit at the top of the stairs or by a vent where voices carry to try and overhear what to children is information about the unknown landscape of adulthood. In Mona Simpson's newest novel, Casebook, her main character Miles Adler-Hart and his best friend Hector spy on adults, like all children do, but they hear and uncover things they shouldn't with unintentional results. Miles is not yet a teenager when he starts eavesdropping on his mother. He starts because he wants to watch Survivor and hopes to hear his mother discussing the forbidden show with one of her friends. But he and his walkie talkie, with the transmit button taped down for extended listening, get trapped in his parents' room where he overhears the information that his parents are separating. Slow to learn that no good ever comes of listening in to others' conversations, Miles continues to listen to things he was never intended to hear on an extra phone extension specially rigged for surveillance. And eventually, after his parents' divorce and even after he comes to like his mother's long term boyfriend, he can't break the habit, an inability that has the power to ultimately destroy the things that make his mother the happiest. The novel opens with a note about the book being a prequel to a popular comic, noting that it was written by one of the authors and annotated by the other. This opening seems rather out of place and only ties into the story itself at the tag end of the novel. The structure does set the reader up for the few, scattered footnotes to be found in the text but the notes are so few and far between that they are unnecessary, or on the flip side, there should have been more to make them more effective. The characters are well drawn and appealing, especially Miles. He starts as a typical, slightly nerdy pre-teen, chubby, and unsure of himself. He is generally a loving older brother to his younger twin sisters, nicknamed the Boops, and is pretty accepting of what he admits is his parents' "good" divorce. He struggles with his mother's geeky new boyfriend Eli at first but eventually comes to welcome him as a part of their lives, until his suspicions get the better of him. Miles is a caring son, concerned with his mother, whom he calls the Mims, her happiness, and the hope that her romantic fantasy of happy families comes true. As the novel progresses and the year pass, Miles' interests and actions change and broaden beyond the domestic drama. He harbors a long unrequited love for a girl in his class and kindly holds back from hurting another who is interested in him. He develops an interest in sex (but please not when concerned with his mother!) just like any other normal teenaged boy. He internalizes a need for security and financial stability learned from his mother and some of the funniest moments in the book occur when he and Hector flex their entrepreneurial muscles, reselling soup at school and rehoming vicious pets. Although this was not the boy version of Harriet the Spy that I might have expected when I first picked it up, it is a satisfying read. Although very different books, Harriet learned a lot about people through her spying and Miles does too. How do we learn about love and relationship? By watching (and listening to) our elders, of course. And this is just what Miles learns: the ins and outs, successes and failures of love and relationship, the importance of truth and the destructive power of lies, and the ways in which happiness grows more complicated and sometimes more fragile in adulthood. Simpson has written an engaging coming of age tale that easily reminds readers of their own innocent childhoods before they understood heartbreak, sadness, and loss and how they felt when they discovered that this trio is forever a part of life.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book in ways I didn't expect - perhaps because it reminded me of so many things I loved when I was a kid. Harriet the Spy, for instance - I read that book over and over again because I loved the idea of looking into windows, of observing people in the neighborhood and the world and trying to figure out things about them - all kids are snoops, right? It made me think of hanging around on the upstairs landing when my parents had a dinner party and after I was supposed to go to bed - just listening to the adults. I never wanted to go to bed because I was positive I'd miss something.Our hero, Miles, and his friend, Hector, spy on and listen in to Miles' divorcing parents. They snoop their computers, their phone calls, try to figure out things about the new boyfriend (who seems very suspicious to them). Much of what they learn is confusing and a bit scary - what do they do with their suspicions? What is this adult world all about? Will Hector's mother be okay?Ms. Simpson captures the confusion and glamour of kids just learning about the grown-up world and trying to fit together the pieces. Moving and profound, Casebook offers a glimpse into a family coming apart and changing through the eyes of a very smart and cool kid who just wants to understand. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      As Mona Simpson's newest novel, Casebook opens, Miles is twelve years old when his parents separate. His mom, Irene (whom he calls the Mims) is a mathematician, not an occupation you find frequently in novels. His father Evan is a lawyer in the entertainment industry and they live in Los Angeles.He has younger twin sisters whom he calls Boop One and Boop Two. His best friend Hector's parents aren't together either. Hector has a bit of a crush on the Mims, and he is more than willing to help Miles figure out why Mims and Evans are separated and whether they are headed towards divorce.Miles has heard rumblings that Mims cheated on his dad, and to find out the truth he rigs up a phone extension so that he can listen to his mother's phone conversations. Mims soon begins dating Eli, who works for the National Service Foundation in Washington.Eli seems like a good guy, but he is in the midst of a divorce from his wife and he misses his young son. His mother recently died, and he has a brother who has mental health issues. Eli promises Mims that he will move out to Los Angeles and they will be a family, she just has to give him time. And more time. And more time. And then he has to take care of his dying cat, who seems to hang on forever.Miles and Hector become suspicious of Eli, so they seek out a private investigator, whose jobs usually consist of background checks on reality show contestants (Big Brother, The Bachelor), but there is something about these boys that gets to him, and he agrees to help them without pay.Casebook puts me in mind of Caroline Leavitt's recent novel Is This Tomorrow?. They both tell the story of a lonely young boy, who loves his mom very much, and takes on her problems. They both tell the story from the boy as an adult looking back on his life. And they both feature strong characterizations and beautiful writing.It took me awhile to get into Casebook, but about halfway in, I fell in love. Miles and Hector are such real, wonderful boys, trying to make sense of an adult world. Mims got to me too; she so wants this relationship with Eli to be the real deal.Simpson creates believable characters that you feel you know. Her description of Sare, one of Mims's friends is a good example."She was way cooler than my parents. Sare was a very smart person who never tried anything too hard for her. She had that confidence and that boredom."My only criticism of the book is that there are many characters, and at first it is difficult to keep track of who belonged to whom. And the fact that Miles had nicknames for his mom and sisters confused me when other characters called them by their given names.Miles and Hector write a comic book based partly on Eli, and I'm glad we get to see the results of their work. Hector also has footnotes in the book, giving his point of view on things that Miles has written about him, which adds a unique perspective.The ending is poignant, much like Is This Tomorrow?, and if you liked that novel, you will love Casebook, as I did. It's a beautiful coming-of-age story, sure to touch your heart.
    • 4/5
      I love a good coming-of-age story. Mona Simpson’s “Casebook” is a good coming-of-age story, and so much more.The story starts when narrator Miles is 12 years old and takes us through his high school years, and a few years beyond. We also get insights from his friend Hector through some “footnotes.” At points, the story is heart-breaking, laugh-out-loud funny and poignant. So many emotions and situations are played out that it’s certain to tug at everyone’s heart strings one way or another.The crux of the story is that Miles’ parents are splitting up and his mother’s new boyfriend is a bit of a mystery. Miles goes from not liking or trusting him, to liking him, to hoping he can make them a normal two-parent family again, and then back to not liking him. With the help of Hector and a private investigator they hire (How they get the money is one of the really funny parts of the story.) and his own eavesdropping and surveillance techniques, Miles learns that the boyfriend – Eli – is not what he claims to be.In the six years the story spans, Miles’ relationship with his twin sisters changes as he, and they, mature. As often happens when you’re 12 and growing up, his relationships with his friends changes. While he grows closer to Hector, other friends drift apart for various reasons. He’s also thinking about girls, sex and his own weight issues.We also learn a lot about what Miles and Hector feel about divorce and other relationships their parents, adult relatives and friends of their parents are having.As I said, I love a good coming-of-age story. They don’t get a whole lot better than “Casebook.”I received this book from Goodreads First Reads in exchange for an honest review.