Mike Sager, High Tolerance, Sager Group, 2013, ISBN 9780988178564, 265 pages.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO–If you enjoy puzzles, you may like to ponder the meaning of this novel’s title, “High Tolerance.”
Does it refer to the protagonist, Jewish television writer Nathan Sulcov, who is the white partner in a black/white marriage, whose biracial, basketball-playing son’s best friend is a Mexican American team mate?
Perhaps it refers to the name of the television series on which Sulcov is employed, at least when he and his fellow writers are not on strike?
Could it be a reference to the way society treats the misdeeds and peccadilloes of Hollywood celebrities, including a sexy white female star and a black billionaire record mogul?
Or maybe, just maybe, it is a phrase borrowed from manufacturing, in which, for example, certain metals are said to have a “high tolerance” for heat or for pounding. And if that’s the case, the characters in this novel get plenty of both. The Sulcovs, for example, find themselves drawn into a gang war pitting Mexican-Americans against African-Americans.
So which of these meanings is the right one–assuming any one of them is?
Author Sager has a penchant for fast-moving action leavened by adjective-laden description. His novel doesn’t stop for reflection or contemplation, so there are no easy answers here. What lessons you draw from this story more likely will come from within you rather than from within the covers. The characters we meet are a melange of quickie Los Angeles-area portraits. We don’t really get to know any of them, but we are left with an overall impression of their world.
Money doesn’t buy happiness. Neither does glamour.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com