Phew! What a ride! Roadwork is an emotional and rather intense story. It doesn’t deal with unnameable horrors or supernatural phenomenon, rather with more mundane fears, loss and grief.
The story takes place in an unnamed Midwestern city in 1973–1974. Barton Dawes is a man in his 40’s, driven to mental instability when he learns that both his home and his workplace will be demolished to make way for an extension to a highway. His inability to cope with this results in him losing his job and the disintegration of his marriage. The story reveals that Dawes’ son Charlie died of brain cancer three years earlier. His wife has somewhat gotten over it, but he has not. He is unable or unwilling to sever his emotional ties to the house where his son grew up, and to the industrial laundry where he works. It’s his task to sort out the relocation of the laundry and finding a new home, and he has no intention of doing either. Dawes is a broken man, a tired and angry man, who hides everything from those around him.
It’s written in an inner monologue (sometimes inner dialogue) style, much like Rage and The Long Walk. This makes for intense reading, as the reader gets to follow Dawes train of thought, which is very emotional and sometimes very funny.
The setting is an almost dystopian America during the energy crisis in 1973, a wintery and grey place. Dawes grief over Charlie and losing his last link to him drives him to apathy, to anger and to question his self worth and the society as a whole. He’s disappointed at the seemingly meaningless everyday life, the consumer society, the callousness of corporate bosses. His journey is heart wrenching, and the reader is pulled along feeling both fascinated and and at the same time anxious, as Dawes’ life crumble around him. It sounds like a very depressing story, but it isn’t. At least I didn’t feel that way.
He finds some sort of freedom by breaking free from society’s norms, refusing to conform to what is expected of him. By saying “Fuck it, I’m not playing your game” he raises the question Why? from the people around him. A question he doesn’t have the answer to.
Reading the novel I found myself thinking of Gary King in the movie World’s End. Gary is a really obnoxious character who is seemingly unaware, or uncaring, about the chaos he creates around him. But he’s also funny and charming in a devil-may-care way. He’s the one we sympathise with. One wouldn’t want to be one of Gary’s friends, but maybe one would like to be Gary sometimes? To be able not care so much. To not worry about the result of all ones actions.
When Dawes’ inaction results in the laundry shutting down, when he lies to his wife and friends, I feel a strong frustration. Inside my head my super-ego is screaming; You can’t do this! Why don’t you take responsibility? At the same time my id is having another mouthful of popcorn and enjoying the ride. At some level I can sympathise with Dawes, not just for his grief, but for his courage (or maybe it’s not courage, maybe it IS his mental breakdown) to go his own way. I can identify with him questioning what he has achieved, his fear of getting old, the meaninglessness of our society. I mean there have been days when everything feels pointless and I want to get away, just get in the car and drive. Damn that super-ego!
There are no elements of horror, it’s more of a psychological suspense story, a journey into a disillusioned man’s mind. The ending isn’t surprising, since King is kind enough to start the book with revealing it. It’s the journey of getting to the end that is interesting, not the end in itself.
Words that count... 