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Review by Off the Shelf correspondent Ed Meek

Debra Spark is the author of a number of novels and short story collections as well as a couple of anthologies. She teaches in the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College and at Colby College. Her novel Discipline is a mosaic of mysteries.

Discipline
By Debra Spark
Four Way Books, Tribeca
306 pages. $19.95

It begins with an art appraiser, Gracie, who is hired in 2018 to examine a collection of paintings owned by a collector, but when she arrives at the house in Maine where the art is stored, she finds that the work the artist is most famous for is missing, presumably stolen. Then the novel jumps back to 1978 and the point of view of an adolescent rebellious boy, Reggie, living with foster parents in a poor urban area. This occurs because Reggie has a history of “mouthing off” to authorities. When he insults the owners of a restaurant who refuse to serve him, they call the police and that leads to Reggie being called to the principal’s office. From there, he is turned over to a man who takes him to a “therapeutic boarding school” in remote Maine where Reggie is to be rehabilitated.

The novel moves back and forth in time exploring various points of view including, in addition to Gracie and Reggie, the famous artist known for the missing painting, the daughter of the artist, the son of the daughter of the artist, a man who rides in a horse to rescue the daughter of the artist and the grown-up degenerate son of the daughter of the artist.

The novel is almost mathematical in the way all these stories are woven and brought together and the theme of discipline Spark focuses on is compelling. And who doesn’t love an art heist? If you are from Boston, you know the story of the Isabella Stewart Gardner theft in 1990 in which thirteen works were stolen including a Vermeer, a number of paintings by Rembrandt, and a few by Degas. The case was never solved. There’s still a ten-million-dollar reward!

Spark is adept at writing from the point of view of the women in the novel; artists and art lovers will enjoy the art talk. The other discipline in the novel concerns the boarding school. It is based on an actual boarding school called Elan that used a disreputable version of “attack” therapy to demean and break down troublesome boys and girls by doing things like making them sing “Mary had a little Lamb” in front of everyone, or dress up in a chicken costume as punishment, or engage in boxing matches with multiple opponents.

Although the portrait of the school is based on interviews the author did with adults who attended Elan, the novel runs into the problem Tim O’Brien brings up in The Things They Carried where he talks about the difference between a war story and what makes a good story. The retelling just doesn’t feel right. Reggie, a sensitive young man who doesn’t fight, drink or take drugs is somehow committed to this horrific school where he is degraded and severely beaten. It’s a little over the top.

Here and a number of other places in the novel when a character asks, “Can you believe this really happened?” You might find yourself saying, “No, I can’t.” In addition, Spark makes use of Deus ex machina’s to move the plot along. Reggie meets the daughter of the artist by jumping into a cab with her. A character actually shows up out of nowhere on a horse to rescue the daughter of the artist.

As Foucault says in his book Discipline, “truth isn’t outside power.” And “power produces knowledge.” Whoever has power determines what the truth is. Debra Spark’s Discipline touches on this and some intriguing issues that resonate in our current era when scandalous Indian Boarding Schools, lynching stories and questions about the atrocious behavior of people in the past are uncovered daily. Meanwhile, we are faced with questions about the role of art and the nature of truth, truthiness and alternate truths in our news and politics.