Fair Warning is the ninth novel from Robert Olen Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his short story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. The title refers to the warning given by an auctioneer when the bidding levels off, before the gavel falls. It is a notice to clients to increase their bids or withdraw.
The novel explores the erotic nature of the desire for ownership of rare and valuable objects as seen through the eyes of Amy Dickerson, a successful auctioneer who manipulates, seduces, charms and bullies her wealthy New York clientele into paying well over the odds for collectable items.
Amy's career begins when, at the age of seven, she auctions her little sister Missy to a neighbour's child for $6.25. Their parents find out when Missy goes home to collect her dolls and the sale does not go through. Amy, banished to her room, is unrepentant. Instead, she delights in the knowledge that she had secured at least twice what she considers her sister's actual value to be.
One of the rewards of this novel is its portrayal of a woman who is intelligent, gifted and passionate about her work. For Amy, selling is an art, and she is a perfomer par excellence in the service of that art:
I love my job. I am the maker of crucial connections. Between the passion in a heart for an object outside it and the object itself. Between the self and its defining act of acquiring a certain thing of this world. And in that transaction, my own passion flows both ways - through the object desired and through the one who desires it. I become part of both. I value and I am valued. I collect and I am collected.
The idea that we are what we have (or, as one character puts it: "I buy, therefore I am"), that a person's identity is revealed through the objects with which they choose to surround themselves, has the uneasy effect on a reader of making one survey the tattered accumulations and detritus of family life with fresh eyes.
Never mind that the novel is peopled by wealthy collectors for whom money is no object. Never mind that it has no truck with the struggles and messes of everyday life, being full of talented, articulate people, all of whom, without exception, have healthy bank balances and strong future prospects. Ask yourself, as your eye falls on the bargains, swaps, hand-me-downs and impulse buys which clutter your living space, what your environment might reveal about you to a trained observer. It is telling that, when Amy goes to visit Missy and her husband, she avoids looking too closely at her sister's décor or belongings, knowing that she would learn too much about her inner life by doing so. It would be voyeuristic, an invasion of Missy's privacy.
Another promising feature of the novel is its portrayal of the levels of tensions and conflict between the sisters (and between each of them and their mother). Amy and Missy swing between affection and irritation, envy and malice in their feelings about each other. "I love you like a sister," is their code warning when one of them goes too far, when their exchanges get a little too barbed, too close to the bone.
Relationships between men and women are presented as tense, intelligent, erotically charged - and overlaid by a lust for acquisition. Amy revels in the tension of anticipation at the onset of an attraction when you know that "a man you want exists in the world and you've not yet held him, but you will". She is adept at recognising and channelling the "shopping pheromones" present in a room during a sale, and it is hardly suprising when the erotic energy released as a result spills over into a specific sexual attraction. Butler enmeshes both forms of desire until eventually even Amy has to make the connection so that she can begin a journey to self-possession.
This is a promising subject, and the novel is brisk and well written. It includes fascinating insights into the world of the collector and some delightful set pieces, notably accounts of the sale of a 1938 Bugatti and of the score of a previously undiscovered piece of music by Ravel. But overall, like the objects under Amy's hammer, the novel doesn't quite deliver what it promises, being stronger in style than in substance. The sophisticated self-awareness of its own characters work against it, keeping them at a distance from themselves and from each other. Moments of confrontation or personal insight are briskly absorbed and don't radically affect either the characters' sense of self or their circumstances. While the initial questions it poses are intriguing, they don't lead us far from the brightly lit, moneyed world of the auction room where this novel, like its protagonist, is at its best.
Fair Warning. Robert Olen Butler. Secker & Warburg. pp 225. £10.99 sterling
Lia Mills is a novelist