With "Hairdos of the Mildly Depressed," Doug Crandell has given us one of the funniest book titles of 2008.
The book itself is funny, too —- at times. But at others it is almost unbearably sad, with little moments of disappointment, loneliness and self-loathing coalescing into devastating despair. It's raw and real.
Protagonist Brad Orville is 33 and has an unfulfilling job in the corporate office of a convenience-store chain. His parents are dead. He has no wife, no children. He is the sole caretaker of his older brother, Compton, who recently suffered permanent brain damage in a beating given him by the husband of a woman he'd been romancing.
And if Atlanta's suburban sprawl doesn't claim Brad's once-rural childhood home, raging wildfires probably will.
Yet for Brad, perhaps no problem looms larger than his balding head.
He scrutinizes his own hair and that of everyone he meets. When he sees a man with a mullet, he has an urge to scalp him: "Only a fool would wear his perfectly good, full head of hair like a nineties country music star."
His obsession leads him to buy a toupee, which, like some sort of follicularly challenged superhero, he dons in the public restrooms before bad dates with women he meets online.
All that is the funny part.
But when Brad stops taking his antidepressant and begins self-medicating with alcohol, he slides into a dark, dark place where oblivion seems welcome. Salvation may lie in forgiving his brother for a past betrayal, but Brad isn't sure he wants to, especially as he resentfully watches Compton build a happy new life despite his disabilities.
Though "Hairdos'" themes are classic —- sibling rivalry, insecurity, self-destruction —- its feel is contemporary. Besides Internet dating and antidepressants, Crandell touches upon the mortgage crisis, "American Idol" and the business world's BlackBerry obsession.
The author, who lives in Douglasville, sets his tale in fictional Whitchfield County, where strip malls and $400,000-a-home subdivisions are replacing red barns and green fields, and a "newly developed rush hour" has sprung up. Atlanta readers will recognize "the metropolis, which Whitchfield and the eleven surrounding counties orbited like the sun, the New South rising again through pollen and smog." The "Governor's Rainfall Prayer Circle" will also ring a bell.
But what will probably seem most familiar is Brad's sense of inadequacy and isolation. In the acknowledgments, Crandell refers to himself as a misfit. And he writes with authority about what it is to feel ugly, alone, unhappy.
This is his second book on the subject, a follow-up to last year's "The Flawless Skin of Ugly People." (Its heroes make a cameo appearance here.) He plans to write one more in what he calls the "Beauty Knows No Pain" trilogy.
Beauty may not know pain, but Crandell's characters do. Thankfully, they also come to know hope. It's a hard-won hope, with no guarantees. But it's still a relief for all of us who've ever felt less than perfect and mildly depressed.
FICTION
"Hairdos of the Mildly Depressed" by Doug Crandell. Virgin Books USA. 288 pages. $14.95.
Bottom line: Funny as a bad toupee, and just as sad.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Doug Crandell discusses "Hairdos of the Mildly Depressed" at 7:30 p.m. July 29. Wordsmiths Books, 545 N. McDonough St., Decatur. 404-378-7166. wordsmithsbooks.com.
About the Author
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