Open Line

By Ellen Hawley
Coffee House Press

What if they didn’t give a war and people came anyway? That’s the question posed by the talk-radio host heroine of Ellen Hawley’s second novel, Open Line. The story begins when Annette Majoris, an ambitious broadcaster trying to work her way up from a station in the frozen reaches of small-town Minnesota, glibly states on-air that the Vietnam war never happened, but was in fact “the biggest scam a government ever put over on its citizens.” This flippant remark takes on a life of its own, and soon Annette is drawing in larger ratings, syndicating her show, and moderating (and stoking) a heated debate about whether one of the most divisive events in twentieth century American history actually happened.

Annette also draws the attention of both Stan, the head of the state Liberty Constructive Party (Libertarians in thin fictional disguise), and Walter, a power-broker behind the governor’s as-yet-unannounced presidential campaign, both of whom want to use her for their own political (and in Walter’s case sexual) agendas. Whether Annette actually believes what she’s saying on the air becomes a moot point; as any good talk-radio host knows, it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you get people to call in.

A sense of investment may not be necessary for talk radio, but it does matter for a novel, and this is the big weakness of Open Line. Hawley never gives a sense of what’s at stake for Annette (or for the other characters) in the Vietnam debate. What, besides the obvious ratings concerns, does Annette have invested in keeping her listeners arguing about whether Vietnam happened or not? Does she believe what she’s saying? Aside from the veterans, does it ultimately matter to anyone (including the reader) if the war was a hoax? The novel never really builds up a sense of urgency about these questions, and it doesn’t really offer any clear answers to them.

Of course, Annette’s ambivalence, at least, may be the whole point — ambivalence is the only way to survive in talk radio. Still, aside from a few rote mentions of an absent father and a desire to get back to New York, it’s hard to get a sense of who Annette is or what drives her, and that makes it hard to care about her story. In the same way, it’s hard to get a sense of what Hawley has invested in taking on talk-radio or Vietnam or what she wants to say about either. (In fact, “Why Vietnam?” is the biggest question I have for both Annette and Hawley.)

Hawley may not be absolutely clear about what she wants to say, but she says it in a relaxed, almost colloquial style peppered with clever turns of phrase and images. In one scene, for example, Annette hits “undo” while playing a game of computer solitaire and wonders “if she hit [undo] enough times, maybe the computer would unwire itself, jump into its cardboard boxes and Styrofoam packing forms and ship itself back to the store.” Hawley also has a talent for creating clear voices for her characters. The story alternates between Annette’s and Stan’s points of view, and Hawley does a nice job of giving each one a distinct style of speech and thought. (In fact, Stan arguably ends up being more interesting and sympathetic than Annette.)

Clever wordplay and strong voices aside, Open Line is ultimately a novel of missed opportunities. At a time when even mainstream news coverage is sounding more like talk radio, anyone with an internet connection can post her pet opinions or conspiracy theories and get responses, and the United States is has entered into another protracted, unjustified war based on false pretenses, a novel that takes on both the media and politics is not only timely, but necessary. Open Line is an enjoyable read, but it lacks the bite and the scope to be that novel.

Review by Rochelle Mabry

Click here to buy:

Open Line