In the glittering city of Las Vegas, where fortunes are won and lost on a single roll of the dice, there exists a world unseen by the pleasure-seekers above. Itâs a community of outcasts who dwell in the shadows, beneath the twinkling lights and towering casinos, beneath the thin veneer of glamour. Here, in the labyrinthine tunnels below the city streets, live the Mole People.
Plagued by schizophrenia and alienated from her loved ones, Suzie Franks abandons her college life in Oregon and ends up in this dark world beneath Las Vegas. Here, amidst the threats underground, her struggle for survival becomes as much physical as it is mental.
Will Suzie find a way out of the tunnels and overcome her demons? Or will she succumb to the crushing darkness of her new world?
In the glittering city of Las Vegas, where fortunes are won and lost on a single roll of the dice, there exists a world unseen by the pleasure-seekers above. Itâs a community of outcasts who dwell in the shadows, beneath the twinkling lights and towering casinos, beneath the thin veneer of glamour. Here, in the labyrinthine tunnels below the city streets, live the Mole People.
Plagued by schizophrenia and alienated from her loved ones, Suzie Franks abandons her college life in Oregon and ends up in this dark world beneath Las Vegas. Here, amidst the threats underground, her struggle for survival becomes as much physical as it is mental.
Will Suzie find a way out of the tunnels and overcome her demons? Or will she succumb to the crushing darkness of her new world?
"Suzie Schizo! Suzie Schizo!"
The sing-song chant echoed throughout the university lecture hall, the familiar mockery of her name making Suzie cringe in her seat. Two little girls stood at the doorway, their school uniforms ill-fitted and their pigtails askew. Their faces were indistinct, but the cruel delight in their voices was unmistakable.
Suzie sat as calmly in her seat as she could, attempting to ignore them. She glanced at the young man seated next to her. He seemed bored by the professor's lecture, yet completely undisturbed by the intruders.
The girls continued to chant, their voices growing louder, but no one else appeared to notice. Not the professor, with his monotone voice droning on about English Literature, not the students, scribbling notes with feverish intensity.
âSuzanne? Are you listening to anything Iâm saying? Iâve asked you the same question twice!â
Suzie looked up, the noise in her head clearing a bit, though the girlsâ voices didnât stop. Their blurred figures hovered in the doorway, their white ankle socks grubby, hair escaping their pigtails. One wore a pink dress, the other a sunflower yellow dress, though by now, Suzie knew enough about herself to guess they were just a figment of her troubled mind.
âSuzie Schizo! Suzie Schizo! Where does your mind go?â They would chant in unison; two girls from her sixth grade class whose names she couldnât recall. Their faces were equally blurred in Suzieâs memory, though their childish spite still reverberated across the years.
They would follow Suzie as she walked home alone. Always alone.
She chewed on a fingernail, her normal method of distracting herself from what her brain was yammering on about, from the ringing in her ears that just would not stop, that never stopped. Normal. It was not usually a word associated with Suzie.
Those girls were right, though they didnât know it at the time. Their diagnosis at the age of twelve or so, when their only intention was to make her suffer, to exclude and punish her for her strangeness, was correct, something Suzie discovered many years later.
Suzie couldnât remember a time when she was not considered odd, different. Kids used to chant âSuzie Schizoââand worseâthroughout middle school; on the playground, on the sports field, in the cafeteriaâor the cafeĚ-fearia as she called it then. Lots of mean things went on in school cafeterias. She wondered if it was something in the water. Or the juice boxes.
Sheâd always inhabited a different world. For years, she wondered why she was always alone, why she wasnât happy when everyone around her seemed okay and able to âfit inâ and âbe normalâ. When she was diagnosed at the age of twenty, only a couple of years ago, suddenly everything made sense:
The voices that no one else heard. The shadowy figures following her, the paranoia, the fears, the confusion, the sights and sounds she was told were not really there, the searing depressions that left her floundering, the strange thoughts, and the loneliness. It was all explained by this official recipe of her brain, as she liked to call it.
The diagnosis was a reliefâsort of. In a session with her third psychiatrist, she'd asked dryly, âSo Iâm not just some freak?â
âNo, Suzie, you have schizophrenia,â he replied.
âSchizophrenia, huh? ... I like that. Thatâs a nicer way to put it, I think.â
Schizophrenia: the root of all her evils. Sometimes the diagnosis made sense. But other times:
âSchizophrenia,â she shouted at Psychiatrist Number Five, her voice shaking with anger, âthatâs what my last psych told you to say, isnât it?â
âNo, Suzie.â
âItâs pretty convenient how you all say the same thing. Just say that magic word and Suzieâll feel better, right?â
Sometimes she wondered if she was actually special, tuned in to a higher realm, able to hear wisdom and messages from the angels. Sometimes, she cut herself just to remember she was still alive, to feel something. Sometimes she downed a bottle of wine to stop feeling anything at all.
âMs. Franks! I ask you again to tell us some of the ways in which Shakespeare is relevant to contemporary society? Is his work relevant? And if not, why not?â
The voice was British, male, and boomed across the stately auditorium. Suzie started out of her thoughts and memories, momentarily dazed by them. Everything in her mind felt so real, but she knew she couldnât trust herself. Her mind lied to her. It told her odd stories. It conspired against her, just like all the others, just like those girls, who called her crazy. At least now, she had a label, a diagnosis, a reason for her strangenessâthough she wondered if that was a lie too.
Suzie blinked, her gaze drifting around the room as if searching for something solid to anchor her thoughts. She was never quite sure of anything. She was never quite sure what was real, and what was not, what was truth and what could be just another deception. She was never quite sure if, in fact, she might be the sane oneâ more normal than anyone else, maybe? Or, perhaps, everyone around her was crazy. That thought, at least, gave her comfort. Anyway, who could prove she wasnât the sane one?
The lecturer, Professor Rami, was standing at his gilded podium at the front of the lecture hall, staring at her. She could hear students around her snigger, including those two schoolgirls who mocked her from the edge of the hall. Rami was six feet tall and wore a brown sports coat over faded blue jeans. He was trying to look hip. He was trying to look like one of his students rather than the fifty-something balding dinosaur he really was.
âMs. Franks, did you actually read last weekâs assignment?â Professor Rami peered over at her. She felt like she was back in high school, and it was definitely not a good sensation.
âShit,â was all she said, almost absent-mindedly. Then a thought arose. âWith all due respect, arenât plays meant to be seen, performed on stage? Reading it is like going to a movie theater, and instead of watching on the screen, we whip out copies of the script...â
There was silence in the hall now, except for the buzzing sound that was growing in Suzieâs mind. It sounded like all the voices that spoke to her, that commanded and tormented her, had joined together and blurred into one. She looked down at the nail sheâd chewed to its ragged end. No nail polish. Nasty chemicals. Not to be ingested by nail biters.
âAnd how relevant can a guy who wrote with a quill be in our age of smartphones. Not very...â But as Suzie said this, the room started to swim in front of her eyes and the urgent beat of panic took over. She had to get out of there. She couldnât breathe with everyone watching her.
âThank you, Ms. Franks, for that insightful analysis of the great bardâs work. Can anyone tell me how and why Shakespeare is still important more than four-hundred years after his death?â The professorâs voice trailed off in Suzieâs mind.
She gritted her teeth, and before she could stop herself, she blurted out: âNobody, like nobody, uses a quill anymore. We have computers and smart phones, tablets, and social media. How could Shakespeare be relevant to this world and all the shit weâve created? Weâre social lemmings now. We have no subtlety or truth. Even my neighborâs seven-year-old niece has followers on TikTok. Now, thatâs crazy...â
As the words left her mouth, speeding up as her thoughts jumbled together, she realized people were snickering.
âSee me after class, Ms. Franks...â the balding dinosaur said, turning to another student. His eyes were cold, gray, condescending.
âWhatever. Just let me get the hell outta here...â
Suzie Franks, mistress of her own words, if not her own head. She stared defiantly at the sea of faces that were now looking up at her. This was bullshit. She didnât sign up for Freshman English in college to sit through this. This was soooo high schoolâand there, they did the same thing. They laughed at her, called her crazy.
She realized now she was standing. Scrambling, she grabbed her backpack and shoved the thick textbook, her laptop (still in its case), and various pens into it. One of the pens fell to the floor and she kicked it away. The whispers started as she moved, shoving through the tangle of legs and designer bags to the end of the seating area.
The professor was frowning, but she saw something else on his face, something akin to pity. They knew why she couldnât concentrate. They knew of her struggles, but they told her there were ways she could manage themâwith the right medication.
âIâm not going to take any drugs,â Suzie had informed one of the psychs, she couldnât remember which one.
âWhy not?â
âDonât trust them. How do I know they wonât turn me into some kind of zombie?â
âThatâs not whatââ
âHow do I know they wonât block out the good thoughts? Sometimes I feel great, inspired, like I could change the world.â
âBut what usually comes after that, Suzie?â the psych responded, referring to her moments of deep depression.
âWhy are you guys always pushing the drugs?â sheâd replied pointedly.
You always had to be careful. Deception was everywhere. Consider color-blindness. How could anyone prove they could see what someone else couldnât? It wasnât possible! So, no, sheâd decided she wouldnât take their meds. She didnât trust themânot the psychs (no matter how friendly they tried to appear) and not the drugs. She didnât trust anyoneâexcept Robbie that is.
The bright and airy campus of Hudson University was nestled in the city of Portland, Oregon, home to free thinkers and students, to a buzzing metropolis of creatives, independent shops, and self-proclaimed weirdos.
Moving here as a young child, Suzie couldnât remember living anywhere else â and when her mental health condition was diagnosed, it was here that her mother Dana insisted she stay for college.
âNo point leaving now,â Dana had said, or something like that.
Suzie, who had grown from a skinny, awkward kid into a rangy, slim adult with long dark hair and pale skin, had looked at her, and shrugged. âNo point leaving,â she might have agreed.
At least, that was how Suzie rememberedâor mis-rememberedâthe conversation. Or perhaps the entire thing had been fabricated by her noxious neurons, the same neurons where the fragments of her memory and pain, of experience and make-believe, jostled and fought in the maelstrom that made up her delicate sanity.
That sanity was now dancing away from her as she pushed past the backpacks and legs, the designer shoes, and grubby combats.
âMs. Franks! Leave now and you risk failing this class!â the professor's voice boomed as she fled the room. The familiar sting of embarrassment and frustration washed over her. He said more stuff, but Suzie couldnât see his lips move, and so she knew that the psychosis was adding its own sour spin. She felt again the desperate urge to get out, to breathe the fresh air outside and run back to her dorm room.
With her heart racing and palms slick with sweat, Suzie stumbled outside, gasping, almost retching. She collapsed onto an iron bench, the college buildings' intricate architecture seemingly closing in around her, their shadows dancing in the brilliant sunlight. Students milled past, holding books, chatting, sipping paper cups of coffee.
Time slid onward and Suzie began to settle down, to come back to herself again. The autumn sun was warm on her face. The trees were turning flamboyant red, orange, and brown, their leaves curling as the season changed. None of this matters, she thought. None of them matter at all, because I have Robbie.Â
I liked what Kevin Landt did in The Mole People. I think to take the mental struggle of an individual and attempt to follow it through a narrative is ambitious and commendable. In my opinion, he has done this with a great degree of success.
Suzie is the central character and we are very much inside her head. She is schizophrenic and controls it with meds, is at college and has a loving relationship with Robbie. But she slides and her stability becomes more than shaky, resulting in her escaping the life that she knows and ending up in Las Vegas.
This is where she meets the Mole People and is brought into their "family" to live in the storm drains under the city. You feel throughout that Suzie is vulnerable and that, because she cannot see things clearly, she makes assumptions and a whole chain of bad decisions and in that, I feel bad for her. Her judgement impaired and the need to escape from the constant mental tugging which is going on inside of her means that she seeks drugs to mute and soften her distress.
Of course, this is in some ways counterproductive and we see Suzie's steady decline through the course of the book.
The novel is very much a book of two halves: the first half shows Suzie gradually being lost in the darkness that is mental illness and insecurity. The second half deals with her acceptance into the Mole People and what that involves for her.
Landt's narrative is tight and well-paced and he describes Suzie's state of mind and her increasing paranoia well. The characters who she encounters have their back stories which shapes the idea of who they are as people and how they've come to be where they are: on the outskirts of society, living day to day to survive.
There's nothing at all to dislike in this book. It's a quick read with a subject which has darkness in it but deals with the subject of mental illness with a sensitivity and an insight so that it is more like looking at the devolution of a person and how this can happen by degrees and quickly if left unchecked. Likewise, it illustrates how with some assistance it is possible to see a way out.