On a trip to Peru, Mark dies of an overdose. Tim is there, but freezes up and does nothing to save his friend. The Peace Corps takes him and puts him on a quick flight home in an effort to cover up the death. Lake does what he is told — and that is his least likable characteristic. He's a weak person in general, and for a main character, his passivity can be annoying. Not necessarily in the moment of Mark's death — that's understandable — but in what ensues.
"Ultimate Excursions," by Ecuador RPCV Alan Gottlieb, follows Timothy Lake through his short-lived Peace Corps stint and then his foray into drugs and booze
Peace Corps journey devolves
Anti-hero's good intentions can't save him from aftermath of a friend's death
By Renee Warner
Special to The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 02/09/2008 02:45:47 PM MST
Timothy Lake joins the Peace Corps post-college after seeing an advertisement touting the Corps as "the toughest job you'll ever love" and showing a man flanked by children smiling adoringly. Enticed by the ad and the potential of excitement, Lake heads off to Ecuador. He doesn't know that for him, the job will be the easy part — and he won't love it.
"Ultimate Excursions," by Alan Gottlieb, follows Lake through his short-lived Peace Corps stint and then his foray into drugs and booze. While in the Corps, Tim takes a liking to wild child Mark Miles, who tries to pull the reclusive Tim out of his shell and into his wild doping life.
On a trip to Peru, Mark dies of an overdose. Tim is there, but freezes up and does nothing to save his friend. The Peace Corps takes him and puts him on a quick flight home in an effort to cover up the death. Lake does what he is told — and that is his least likable characteristic. He's a weak person in general, and for a main character, his passivity can be annoying. Not necessarily in the moment of Mark's death — that's understandable — but in what ensues.
Back home at his parent's house, Tim is full of self-pity and self-hate and takes to drinking and drugs, and squeaks by leading a quiet life. In the beginning of the book, Tim was a mild-mannered, shy kid unsure of what to do after college. It seems very out of character for him to be hellbent on self-destruction. He hurts people, snorts coke and then attempts to write epic poetry, which we are lucky enough not to have to read.
It's hard to believe he would ruin his life for one misstep, or that it would disturb him so much. Of course, it would be hard to get past initially but to give up his whole life for a mistake seems unlikely.
Tim decides to apologize to everyone else in his Peace Corps group as a means of closure. It seems unusual for the group to be so distraught over Mark's death and Tim's leaving the Corps so abruptly, especially after 10 years have passed. The relationships just didn't seem that strong at the beginning of the novel.
The road trip is somewhat therapeutic for Tim until he goes back to Ecuador to re-enact Mark's last day. Back in Quito, Tim eats some cocaine paste, watches a dogfight and gets caught up in a conspiracy that is supposedly a big deal, but it feels anticlimactic.
A magazine has apparently offered a co-worker of Tim's a $25,000 contract to write the story of Mark's death and the drug smuggling behind it. The dogfight is a grueling scene. The intensity and brutality of the fight stays vibrantly fresh long after putting the book down. It is downright disturbing and only good writing could make it so real.
There are, however, some missed opportunities for a better story. Tim at one point works with a kid named Eugene, who has beaten the odds already by escaping the ghetto eight hours a day and working in a newsroom. He's proud of his achievement and Tim makes fun of him, calling him Eugenics but feeling a little guilty about it.
Eventually, Tim takes him under his wing a little only to turn around and destroy him by asking him to get him drugs and then letting Eugene take the fall for it. Tim never even visits him in prison. Fixing this mistake could have given Tim penance for Mark — and perhaps finally a way out of his self-wallow.
Instead, he just moves out of state to continue his dismal existence somewhere else. Gottlieb just lets this possibility hang there until the end of the book — and even then doesn't finish the thought.
There are awkward moments, too. When Tim visits Mark's mother after his death, for example, she sits there crocheting while hearing the story of her son's death. It's a very odd scene, even if the mother is emotionally distanced from her child. These moments detract from an otherwise good book.
"Ultimate Excursions" is Gottlieb's first novel, and the book is well-written. He writes with intensity, and parts are so vivid they make the reader uncomfortable. The characters are unique, and their individual stories keep the novel interesting. We are sure to see more from Gottlieb in the future.
Renee Warner is a freelance writer in Atlanta.
