Reviewing Caleb Crain’s new novel, Necessary Errors, Zeke Turner plumbs its central theme – “Can a change of scenery solve problems we have with ourselves? Has an existential crisis ever had a geographical solution?”:
As Jacob grows into his new universe, Crain neatly develops the paradoxes at the heart of life abroad, chief among them the reality that beginning to feel comfortable in a strange place can mean losing a sense of home. The more homes you make, in other words, the more lost you feel. “I don’t know what I am in America,” Jacob says to a group of chemists who want to know about his life in the US, which he must inevitably return to. Just as Jacob feels like a phony when he talks about himself as a writer, he feels equally unsure about himself in relationships with men. Jacob doesn’t see himself in the behaviors and values ascribed to gay men, and he has to reconcile his own values and ambitions with his expectations. Luckily, being abroad gives him space to do this work.
In an interview, Caleb (an old friend whose novel refers to an abstract version of me) discusses his book and the limits of nonfiction:
[W]hen I was a reporter, I remember thinking that there are times when you find out in the process of reporting certain things. And you realize, I just can never print this. The social reality is so complicated and so delicate that the whole process of fact-checking would destroy it. I feel like there are certain kinds of social reality that can only be portrayed on the understanding that it’s fiction.
The Dish 