Review: 51, by Patrick O'Leary

Review: 51, by Patrick O'Leary

by Rich Horton

Patrick O'Leary published three impressive novels a couple of decades ago: Door Number Three, The Gift, and The Impossible Bird; but has been silent since a story collection, The Black Heart, appeared in 2010. So it was very exciting to see his new novel appear in 2022: 51, from Tachyon Press. O'Leary says in the afterword that it took 16 years to write, which in itself accounts for his "silence" the past decade plus. 

The novel opens in 2018 in Detroit. The narrator, Adam Pagnucco, or Nuke, is coming home from an AA meeting when he sees a tall old black man, a bum, stops to help, and the man recognizes him. This man is Winston Koop, and Nuke was the best man at his wedding. It's clear that both of them have fallen on rough times (and drink seems to be involved) and Nuke takes Winston home, to get him warm and get him some food. And then, over the next little while, Koop tells him a story. A crazy story. But it's a story that Nuke was also involved with ...

The title, 51, tells us pretty much what the story is about -- a secret Air Force base in Nevada. But of course it's about much more and stranger things than that. The novel, in short chapters, bounces back and forth and around in time -- back to 1947 of course, and to Nuke's and Winston's childhoods a bit later than that, and to the 1970s when they both end up working together at that Air Force base, and to Winston's career since then. 

The central story concerns -- maybe? -- what really happened in the late 1940s at Area 51. The alien visitor story, you see, was a coverup. Or, sort of. The visitors are real, but they come through a portal apparently opened by a atomic bomb test. They are called Imaginary Friends, or IFs -- because not everyone can see them, and because they, or at least some of them, seem desperately to want friendship. Over the decades all Presidents get to meet them, and there's a hint of technological secrets they offer; but there is also plenty of danger. And what the IFs really want is -- something we refuse to give them.

All this is assuming we believe Koop's story. There is a human story here, too. About Koop and Nuke's friendship. About Koop's wife -- and Nuke. About Koop's apparent job -- to track down anyone who knows anything about the IFs and who isn't under Air Force control and erase their memories. (Wait a minute -- what about Nuke? ...)

It's a confusing story, entirely on purpose, in part because of the atemporal arrangement, in part because of the unreliable nested narrators -- and maybe mostly because the IFs are confusing period. But it's fascinating, and compulsively readable, and cumulatively quite moving. O'Leary's first three novels proved he is a major writer in our field -- and 51 shouldn't change anyone's mind about that!