There is powerful storytelling in Lewis Buzbee’s Diver. In the same way you can be in, on, and under the water, these memories flood you from all sides.
In This LitStack Review of Diver by Lewis Buzbee
Coming Up for Air
This novel could have been entitled “Brother”, “Son”, “Father”, or “Husband”, but the title “Diver” not only differentiates Elwell Macoby (known as Mac) from the rest of the characters, it’s also how Mac identifies himself.
There is powerful storytelling at play in Buzbee’s latest book. The well-known portrait of a parent as seen through the child’s lens is elevated through Buzbee’s original framework and unadorned honesty. Every recounted memory is somehow depicted intimately while avoiding sentimentality—and this quality had me quickly turning pages.
The unflinching nature of the prose leaves readers to determine if Mac’s a good man, bad man, or simply a human as Buzbee alternates between first person and third person accounts detailing the upbringing of Mac’s youngest son, Robert, in contrast with Mac’s own childhood. By stacking the lenses, the author deftly poses the question, “Can you ever truly know someone?”
The State of Things
The novel opens in 1970 with the news of Kent State blaring on the TV in front of the Macoby family during dinner. Robert, our 12-year-old narrator, has one older brother, Ricks, and an even older sister, Judi. His parents are Olive and Mac (birth name, Elwell). Ricks has left the Marine Corps after years of asking to be sent to Vietnam. Mac has retired from his Navy career and survived one heart attack already. Unfortunately, on this day in May 1970, he will die from a second heart attack, opening the book to a nonlinear telling of his life. While the scenes jump out of order, they do so in a coherent manner and the book ends one day prior to Mac’s death.
Robert fondly recalls swimming regularly with his father, despite the fact that Robert didn’t start diving until after Mac’s death. As a MasterDiver with the Navy, Mac executed diving demonstrations, conducted numerous trainings, and, on more than one occasion, got the bends.
Judi, 14 years senior to Robert, is so absent from the narrative that the reader never gets to meet her and is only privy to the fact that she is “long married and gone with kids.” She is just one of many absences that echo throughout the narrative.
Resurfacing after Abandonment
Buzbee has an uncanny knack for transporting his audience back in time until you can practically sense the familiarity of the memories as though they are your own.
Mac’s earliest memory was of the family mule dying. His father left the next day on foot and returned with the family’s first car, first camera, and first promise of tasting oranges. His mother said goodbye to the buried children on their property and they headed to California.
Elwell and his brother, Nim, are surrendered to an orphanage due to “indigence” and they hold out hope their parents will be back to get them as promised.
In contrast, Robert, the youngest of the kids by far, experiences a more tender version of his father, Mac, than his siblings did. He enjoyed all the stories his dad told, but especially the scuba and deep-sea diving ones. Robert reminisces about going to the fair with his dad in Mount Umunhum in California. He recalls losing Mac to a bar during a Boy Scout lodge trip. He remembers, in detail, Labor Day 1969 and the scuffle that broke out at his uncle’s cookout when his brother, Ricks, and his best friend, Brophy showed up. Buzbee has an uncanny knack for transporting his audience back in time until you can practically sense the familiarity of the memories as though they are your own. In the same way you can be in, on, and under water so too do these memories flood you from all sides.
His Submersible Heart
The term submersible implies a craft that needs support, but, lacking such support, Mac strikes out as a diver on his own despite the risks associated with such an activity. Due to his negligent parents, absent brother, and fiercely acquired independence, Mac turns to the family he’s created for stability and a sense of camaraderie.
As Mac attempts to keep his family together while searching out Macoby’s in any phone book handy while traveling, Ricks equally struggles to reconcile with his on-again-off-again wife, Jan. Despite having friendly acquaintances from bowling, the bar, and the Navy, Mac moves through the world mostly isolated from close friendships outside his immediate family.
Just as Robert finds himself too scared to dive with his father and brother during the Navy demonstration at the fair, Mac avoids confronting his own emotions. There are many feelings Mac wishes to wash away altogether, exhibited by a twice-done tattoo, a few too many bottles of beer, and, of course, the burying of “Elwell” as his true name, something he leaves behind in his turbulent childhood.
The Old Man and the Boy
An underlying frisson of violence and addiction weaves itself into the novel.
An underlying frisson of violence and addiction weaves itself into the novel. As a child, fighting was the earliest defense mechanism Elwell and his brother Nimion had at the orphanage when kids picked on them. Nim’s also the one who gives Elwell the moniker “Mac” to help make the world a friendlier place. As they grow older though, both men yield to outbursts that result in insult and, at times, injury to those around them.
Mac becomes a functioning alcoholic and a man unafraid to fly off the handle if his eldest son wants to argue about jobs, college, and the Vietnam War. A fistfight between Ricks and his “old man” leaves a scar of its own on Robert’s memory as he watched from the window as his mother waited patiently to clean up the aftermath. Punctuations of observed violence are threaded throughout both Mac’s and Robert’s upbringing.
Robert “The Bum”, as Mac called him, was exposed to the world at an early age through news footage of brutal current events. He also got a view from the barstools his father would occupy as he brought Robert along, and when Mac falls ill, Robert is tasked with watching him to ensure he follows doctor’s orders. A tall task for a child not yet old enough to drive. Beyond simply portraying the family, the novel builds out a sense of place, time, and context in the world, as well as how Mac moved through it.
Throughout the narrative, Buzbee proves to be a master of cataloguing, evoking vivid imagery for great impact.
Robert observes, “I only saw my father with his shirt off when we went swimming, from the beach at Santa Cruz, at Almaden Pool, in motel pools, and his tan remained constant. Maybe it was Hawaii where he got it, or all those years on or near the water, Espiritu Santo, Greece, Key West, aboard ships in several seas, maybe those suns had stained him.”
So too will Robert’s memories stick not only with his character, but with the reader as well.
~ Allie Coker
About Lewis Buzbee, Author of Diver
Lewis Buzbee is the author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Blackboard, After the Gold Rush, Fliegelman’s Desire, and First to Leave Before the Sun (with Dave Tilton), as well as three award-winning books for younger readers, Steinbeck’s Ghost, The Haunting of Charles Dickens, and Bridge of Time. His essays, poems, stories, and interviews have appeared in Lit Hub, GQ, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, ZYZZYVA, Black Warrior Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. A long-time bookseller and publisher, he lives in San Francisco with his wife, the poet Julie Bruck, and not far from their adult child Maddy.
Other Titles by Lewis Buzbee
Other LitStack Resources
Be sure and look at our other LitStack Reviews for our recommendations on books you should read, including reviews by Lauren Alwan, Allie Coker, Rylie Fong, and Sharon Browning.
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