Thus, I read this book because it was assigned

The Sculptor

I spent more time on this in MS Paint and PowerPoint
than Greg Funaro spent on characterization and plot.

Gregory Funaro

I remember growing up with the old generic packaging of cheaper versions of brand name products. It was usually a plain yellow box or container that just said what was in it in black, boxy lettering. Like, CEREAL, or JUICE, or PREGNANCY TEST. Greg Funaro’s matter-of-factly written novel, The Sculptor, could have easily had a big yellow cover that simply said, ‘BOOK.’

It wasn’t a bad book, and it wasn’t a good book. It simply exists. From a trite premise (which I know I’ve seen before in one form or another—only the MO has changed) to a cookie-cutter love story, this book just was.

I normally enjoy thrillers that have a procedural feel to them (i.e., Silence of the Lambs or even stuff written by Kathy Reichs or Dan Brown), but this book dropped all of the stuff that makes those books great. It abandons good detective work for amazing intuition. It was as if Sam Markham’s gut was a better FBI special agent than he was. Give that gut a badge, is what I say. There are characters that don’t really belong, such as Sam’s partner. She ends up being the only one who does any real detective work, but is relegated to off-page work that is only referenced. What got me was, I read the first 30 pages and thought for sure I was getting a Thomas Harris-esque read, but beyond those pages Funaro gave up on trying to build an FBI world I cared about. Even the epilogue seemed to be there only because Funaro thought his book had to have that ending. It was an ending I expected through the entire book.

In fact, I didn’t care about any of the characters. They were such simple caricatures of other writers’ work, that I felt like I’d been there before. He tried to develop his main protagonist, “the pretty Asian art historian,” into some sort of romance novel heroine (She’s beautiful, smart, strong and flawed! I swear, there’s a flaw in there somewhere!). But there wasn’t really a flaw. She was too perfect. As was Sam, the English-teacher-turned-FBI-superstar!

Funaro’s writing is clean and clear, which worked to this book’s advantage, because the plot and narrative were also clean and clear. There were no great similes or metaphors, no flowery prose or complex themes. Even the antagonist seemed to meet all the stereotypical criteria for being a psycho. It’s given to us like the ingredients on the back of a (generic) cereal box: physically abusive mother-30% DV; sexually abusive mother-40% DV; murderous trigger-20% DV.

Aside from being as formulaic as Bisquick Shake n Pour, the dialogue was about awful—but also very plain. It’s as if Funaro (who, per the back cover, is an associate professor in the School of Theatre and Dance at East Carolina University) has never heard people speak. I’m hard-pressed to think of one person who uses the word “thus,” let alone a whole cadre of people who use it out loud in daily conversation. Is it his theatre background that causes him to use it? Or just a desire to be so correct that he does so at the expense of realistic dialogue?

I really wanted to like the book, but I never thought I’d read something that I was so indifferent about. If I weren’t reading this for class, I don’t think I would have finished it. Not because it was terrible, but because I’d have forgotten I was reading it.