Dark, complex 'Keep' haunts

Characters' pain palpable in psychological thriller

Ashley Simpson Shires, Special to the News

Published August 11, 2006 at midnight

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Jennifer Egan is a hard-hitting writer. For The New York Times Magazine, she has tackled such contemporary, fringe topics as the state of the young and homeless and the phenomena of gay teens reaching out through the Internet.

Her fiction is no less prescient. The Keep, her third novel, is a dark and fascinating journey into the life of a convict and the fiction-writing instructor who encourages him.

The title of the novel refers to the stronghold in a castle, the tower where people hole up against invaders. Egan makes skillful use of "the keep" both symbolically and literally. In the beginning of the novel, Danny, a New York City hipster, is sent a one-way ticket to a crumbling castle in Eastern Europe. His rich cousin, Howie, hopes to convert the property into a hotel and wants Danny's help with the renovation.

"The castle was falling apart," Egan writes, "but at 2 a.m., under a useless moon, Danny couldn't see this. What he saw looked solid as hell: two round towers with an arch between them and across that arch was an iron gate that looked like it hadn't moved in three hundred years or maybe ever."

The castle is intriguing, but Danny's relationship with his cousin really ratchets up the suspense. Danny hasn't seen Howie in years, since a traumatic "accident" changed their lives forever. When they were kids, Danny took his cousin into a boarded-up cave. Inside, he pushed Howie into an underground pool and abandoned him, running away with the flashlight. Howie was found in the cave three days later, semi-conscious.

At this point in Danny's story, the narrative voice wavers and the writer breaks in. The surprise is that the writer isn't Jennifer Egan. The writer is an inmate named Raymond. "Why did I take a writing class?" Raymond asks. "I thought it was to get away from my roommate, Davis, but I'm starting to think there was another reason under that."

Raymond, it turns out, is writing the story of Danny and the castle. "What I want to know," another inmate asks, after Raymond reads his work out loud in class, "is which of these clowns is you?" Raymond insists that he made up the story. He wants to impress Holly, the instructor.

The intrusion of Raymond's voice, the details of his life in his cell and his infatuation with his writing instructor only add to the intrigue of the novel. But it is the story of the castle that propels it forward.

Baroness von Ausblinker, the heir of the castle, lives in the keep, locked up like Rapunzel. She is in self-exile, working to prevent Howie from taking over the property her family has owned for 900 years. Danny catches a glimpse of her in a high window. She waves at him, inviting him in. "With every step he took, the lady aged - her blond hair whitened out and her skin kind of liquefied and the dress paunched and drooped like a time-lapse picture of a flower dying."

When Danny points out to the baroness that Howie legally owns the property, she responds, "Well, he paid for it. And now he lives in my house. It's the American way." Danny's experiences with the baroness are irresistibly creepy. She is part Sleeping Beauty and part wicked witch. When events escalate and Danny suffers a head injury, the distinction between reality and fairy tale becomes even harder to differentiate.

As Danny's experiences in the castle become more thrilling, Raymond's experiences in prison intensify as well. The stories are inextricably connected, and Egan skillfully builds the tension to a tipping point, culminating in an explosion of murder. Holly, the writing instructor, is a less-than-innocent observer.

The complicated plot comes together seamlessly, marvelously. The characters crackle with life, reenacting their past mistakes, their pain palpable and strangely inevitable. It's a novel that engages and haunts the reader, a psychological who's-who, who-dun-what and how-do-they-go-on. The Keep is a fast and furious read, a perfect summer novel.

Ashley Simpson Shires is a freelance writer living in Boulder.

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