A review by boopsnooter
A Simple Plan by Scott Smith

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

In the middle of “A Simple Plan,” Jacob explains to his brother Hank that one can’t be happy without being rich. 

“Mom and Dad were never rich.” Hank retorts.

“And they were never happy.” Jacob replies matter-of-factly.

The moment reveals this darker than black crime fable to be something more, knottier and more elusive than at first it appears.

So what does it appear to be? “A Simple Plan” is a crime thriller about regular people in a surprising situation. The entirety of the book is narrated from the perspective of Hank Mitchell, a man who finds 4.4 million dollars in a duffel bag in a downed plane alongside his brother and his brother’s friend. What follows is so procedural, so step-by-step that nothing escapes the readers’ gaze. Scott Smith has constructed most critical scenes of the novel to be so intimate that the reader will want to tap out—the pain inflicted is always noticed, the wrongs committed are all documented, the reader will know everything in a way not dissimilar to a God.

It is appropriate, then, that Hank’s narration is indistinguishable in tone from a confession. Being confessed to immediately reminds the reader that they are in fact, not God. We’re people, people like Hank. Which is the other, painfully obvious reason why “A Simple Plan” is so thorny; Hank being the protagonist makes it so that we understand Hank, and even harder, are automatically going through the motions that he is taking. More than once I caught myself imagining a horrible action and then immediately began distancing myself from it—this isn’t real, he did that, he is fictional—not realizing at the time that I was still mimicking Hank’s processes by trying to psychically remove myself from the situation.  It almost seems upsetting enough to suggest that it’s not worth the effort to take the money (or read the book for that matter).

But the hook is too good. 4.4 million dollars is life changing money to most people, and Scott Smith knows most people want their lives changed. The regular world presented inside “A Simple Plan” is suffocating beneath blankets of snow that Hank has to drive through every day to eke out a living as an accountant at feed store. At one point in the story Hank admits that his career trajectory would land him (in the distant future) the position of owner of said feed store—and that admission is too much to bear. Jacob reminds Hank that their parents didn’t steal 4.4 million dollars and they were miserable. Surviving doesn’t feel like winning. Is it too much to want to win?

In case the capitalism metaphor was too subtle, at one point Hank, his wife Sarah and his brother Jacob play monopoly with a packet of the money they stole. What starts out as an exciting way to spice up the game fades almost immediately and what is left is the doldrums of having to play monopoly. “A Simple Plan” might as well take place on a monopoly board. The characters want the game to mean something, to reclaim the old farm, to travel the world, but they’re still going around the board.

And having an awful time of it, too. Plenty of bad things happen over the course of the novel, and Scott Smith is invested in how  those things happen. One of the profound and unsettling ideas presented is that two people can together form an emotional bureaucracy that stalls and sidelines humanity so that it won’t get in the way of making an omelette, for which you had to break a few eggs (read: people). Not since Macbeth has a marriage been so openly destructive to the people in proximity of the happy couple. More than once Smith expects you to feel a healthy dose of Schadenfreude for a pair of people that definitely earned the coal they are receiving in their proverbial stockings.

Of course, we are not God, and enjoyment of punishments well-dealt vanish as we realize they are effectively meted out to us as well, since Scott Smith has no interest in cutting away from our Heroes’ suffering. Eventually he must, for all books end, but in the conclusion Smith delivers the final blow. In the final paragraph he clarifies that “A Simple Plan” is a tragedy. The way off the board is caring about something, anything but money, even if it’s just a memory of your brother, dressed up and trying to impress you, wanting you to love him.