Writing other people's novels - hate to do it, but

I believe there's potentially a good novel lurking within Norman Rush's Subtle Bodies but whether that novel emerges or not in the last 100 pages I'll never know. To get a little didactic here, in a novel - something has to happen that either changes the characters in some fundamental way, challenges them, surprises them (and us), there has to be a problem to solve, a crisis to resolve - something, and not just a premise. Sometimes a movie can work reasonably well that's just about a gathering of old friends or a family gathering for a wedding or funeral - but even then there has to be some tension, something to resolve, some transformation. That's what's missing in SB - the characters - four old college friends from the late 70s - gather some 30 years later for the funeral of Douglas, their acknowledged group leader. As noted in yesterday's post, some things seem really off about this gathering - for one thing, Douglas is very wealthy and one of the characters is pretty much assigned full time to manage media expected for the funeral service - but these four are pretty much the only people to come to his Catskills estate to mourn him, so what's going on here? Only very famous people have a crowd of media at their memorial service - and everything in this novel seems to suggest that Douglas was a sophomoric isolate, not a great leader. Second, the friends act more like guys on a road trip than like mature adults reflecting on their lives - none (including the wife of the main character, Nina - and I literally felt nauseated reading Nina's phone conversations with her astrologer mother) speak in any way like normal human beings, rather - like a very smart and well educated writer forcing his gags and japes and cultural references into the mouths and minds of his characters - none sounds real but all sound like a writer hard at work. What could go right with this novel? Well, Rush builds quite a bit of suspicion from the early pages, mainly centered on the death of Douglas. His falling of the edge of a cliff in a lawnmower accident sounds highly dubious - so did someone off him? His extremely troubled son, Hume (gulp, named after the philosopher)? His widow the sultry and mysterious Iva? The hyperactive college friend Elliot who's trying to control the entire funeral process and keeping Iva to himself? I hate playing busybody and writing other people's novels, but Rush does not build on these hints. I'm not saying this should be an Agatha Christie summer-house mystery, but why include these elements unless you use them to advantage? For those charmed by the characters and their witticisms, this book will work - it's short, easy to read, focused on one place over a short span of time, keeping to the classical unities. For others, not so much.