Beautiful Children
Book | Charles Bock
What happens in Vegas isn’t all glitter.
Topless bars and poker games, all-night romps and casino binges: this is the Las Vegas that Charles Bock summons and complicates in his sprawling novel, Beautiful Children. Often decadently (and sometimes exhaustingly) detailed, the novel focuses less on the tourists of Las Vegas and more on the people who take root there. An ex-showgirl and an ex-ballplayer, the Ewings, have settled down in the city as casino workers, only to have their adolescent son Newell go missing. Bock isn't afraid of unsympathetic characters—Newell, in fact, is such a pain one might wonder how much he could really be missed. As the narrative builds to include a comic book writer and a stripper, the unflinching characterizations of down-and-out Las Vegans reveal Bock at his best, with nuanced characters arising out of meticulously accumulated details. Yet more is often just more in this ambitious novel, and the plot frequently loses focus and momentum. Ultimately Beautiful Children resembles the city of Las Vegas itself: excessive, glittery, ugly, yet brimming with Americans willing to gamble on their hopes.
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