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by Michel Houellebecq
155 pages, Serpent's Tail (publisher)
Review by Marc Nash
Of all contemporary fiction writers, I love Houellebecq more than any other (apart from maybe Don Delilo). Books like “Atomised”, “Platform” and “The Possibility Of An Island” never shirk tackling big, contemporary themes. I’d never read “Whatever,” his slighter (though no less immodest) opening salvo. The broadside that launched him on to the world.
The book offers a fledgling style and voice pumping their wing muscles in a dry run. The disdain for humanity is evident. An ennui with attitude. Unlike the sneer of say Will Self, Houellebecq’s tone makes me envision him dog end in the corner of his mouth, oscillating with each barb that pours from his mouth to the page as he assigns it to his protagonist – also portrayed as a chain-smoker. Self you would imagine would deliver his acerbic comment on whoever is unfortunate enough to stray into the protagonist’s view, straight between your eyes, ramrod straight back. Houellebecq all shrugged and hunched shoulders probably delivers it into your navel. He is not above a weary permission for someone to do something asinine or to feel forlorn ("I found nothing to object to in it" in reference to a priest's homily. All grist to his silted-up mill).
The protagonist is a man who trains minor French civil servants in new computer technology. He goes on a mini three-town tour within France on assignment. His colleague is a 30-year-old gargoyle virgin, desperate to get laid. Where Sartre and Camus have “Nausea” and “Plague” respectively, an existential sickness of the human soul, Houellebecq’s ‘outsider’ suffers a pericardial, a non-threatening sickness surrounding the heart. It is less philosophical and more social. Kafka’s protagonists are victims of missing files and data getting mixed up. Houellebecq’s has all the data at his tidy, efficient hand, but that there is simply too much data in modern life, none of which means a jot. And this in 1994 before the blogosphere really took off.
Only a Frenchman might openly employ the word ‘treatise’ within his novel, as a character issues a polemic. Here it is artfully delivered by means of an anthropomorphic tale. A treatise on sexual hierarchies, as narrated by a poodle to a dachshund, the protagonist being in the habit of penning such fictions in order to order his thoughts on modern human life consisting of nothing but ordure.
You gotta love a French guy who takes pops at his own nation. Their small-minded provinciality within the global village. Their antiquated apparatchik system of job creation. Their sexual mores (a wonderful little vignette on buying the right size of bed to give the lie to you being perceived as petty bourgeoisie). It all clearly brings up the taste of bile to Monsieur Houellebecq which makes for an entertaining read. Not quite the breadth of vision as with his more realised novels listed above, but a good starting point for a reader new to the author to see if they might appreciate his misanthropy. And you gotta doubly love a French guy who takes pops at his own nation from living in exile, so repulsed is he by the thought of even residing in his country. That he is either demonised or lionised by the French public according to taste, says a lot about that nation; both that literature and all art still hold a central place in public discourse and that they don’t have any minor celebrities hogging the media. I might just move to France…
February 7, 2010
February 6, 2010
HOUSE OF WINDOWS
by John Langan
260 pages, Night Shade Books (review copy)
Review by S.P. Miskowski
English professor and well-known Dickens scholar Roger Croydon has disappeared. The tale his wife Veronica offers to a young horror writer, over late-night glasses of wine at the home of an acquaintance, is intended to describe if not explain the circumstances of that disappearance. In fact, no final explanation may be possible. The answers lie in the complex geometric structure of the house occupied by the Croydons, and in the harsh words spoken by Roger to his only son, Ted, just prior to Ted's death during combat in Afghanistan.
House of Windows is a remarkably engaging synthesis of the themes of Charles Dickens, ubiquitous tales of terror such as "The Monkey's Paw" and classic works of horror by Shirley Jackson, M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft. To the author's credit, it does not read like a scholarly work, but a believable exploration of human weakness and parental grief. In the best horror tradition, John Langan creates a plausible landscape with recognizable characters in order to convince us of the possibility of the supernatural in every day life.
Roger's marriage to Veronica (one of his former graduate students) is the final straw in a lifelong conflict between Roger and his son. When that conflict erupts into physical violence, the two men part company--but not before Roger delivers a farewell speech which Veronica, in its aftermath, comes to see as a curse. Roger, although he refuses to admit the nature of his final words to Ted, begins to assemble a strange map, one intended to account for all conditions in the known world at the exact moment of Ted's death. Descending into this geometrical and astronomical endeavor, Roger is unaware of the forces his efforts are unleashing upon his home and his wife.
Langan is never overly explicit in his depiction of Roger and Veronica as they construct their own private nightmare. He doesn't explain what happens. Instead, he allows a character that is significantly flawed and morally ambiguous to guide us through the last days of an increasingly unhappy life. Like Eleanor in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Veronica is not intended to elicit the reader's sympathy. Rather, she reveals what she knows of events that have left her damaged beyond repair, and her knowledge is obviously limited. We catch glimpses of the emerging horror in her marriage, and we are meant to put together the pieces of this disturbing jigsaw. The scary scenes are that much sharper and unsettling because our imagination is filling in the gaps.
John Langan's previous published work includes the collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. He seems to be mining the territory shared by Joe Hill and Peter Straub--the meticulously described real world occasionally losing focus to reveal something quite horrible just beneath the surface. It might not be real. It might be an illusion or a psychological state, but it chills us nevertheless. Perhaps it would not be so frightening, if it did not follow our protagonist's movements with such merciless precision.
260 pages, Night Shade Books (review copy)
Review by S.P. Miskowski
English professor and well-known Dickens scholar Roger Croydon has disappeared. The tale his wife Veronica offers to a young horror writer, over late-night glasses of wine at the home of an acquaintance, is intended to describe if not explain the circumstances of that disappearance. In fact, no final explanation may be possible. The answers lie in the complex geometric structure of the house occupied by the Croydons, and in the harsh words spoken by Roger to his only son, Ted, just prior to Ted's death during combat in Afghanistan.
House of Windows is a remarkably engaging synthesis of the themes of Charles Dickens, ubiquitous tales of terror such as "The Monkey's Paw" and classic works of horror by Shirley Jackson, M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft. To the author's credit, it does not read like a scholarly work, but a believable exploration of human weakness and parental grief. In the best horror tradition, John Langan creates a plausible landscape with recognizable characters in order to convince us of the possibility of the supernatural in every day life.
Roger's marriage to Veronica (one of his former graduate students) is the final straw in a lifelong conflict between Roger and his son. When that conflict erupts into physical violence, the two men part company--but not before Roger delivers a farewell speech which Veronica, in its aftermath, comes to see as a curse. Roger, although he refuses to admit the nature of his final words to Ted, begins to assemble a strange map, one intended to account for all conditions in the known world at the exact moment of Ted's death. Descending into this geometrical and astronomical endeavor, Roger is unaware of the forces his efforts are unleashing upon his home and his wife.
Langan is never overly explicit in his depiction of Roger and Veronica as they construct their own private nightmare. He doesn't explain what happens. Instead, he allows a character that is significantly flawed and morally ambiguous to guide us through the last days of an increasingly unhappy life. Like Eleanor in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Veronica is not intended to elicit the reader's sympathy. Rather, she reveals what she knows of events that have left her damaged beyond repair, and her knowledge is obviously limited. We catch glimpses of the emerging horror in her marriage, and we are meant to put together the pieces of this disturbing jigsaw. The scary scenes are that much sharper and unsettling because our imagination is filling in the gaps.
John Langan's previous published work includes the collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. He seems to be mining the territory shared by Joe Hill and Peter Straub--the meticulously described real world occasionally losing focus to reveal something quite horrible just beneath the surface. It might not be real. It might be an illusion or a psychological state, but it chills us nevertheless. Perhaps it would not be so frightening, if it did not follow our protagonist's movements with such merciless precision.
February 5, 2010
LOVE AND SUMMER
by William Trevor
212 pages, Penguin
Review by Pat Black
A Feeling’s So Much Stronger Than A Thought
Lovers – the most selfish of all creatures. No greed can be greater than the one you experience in those early stages of a relationship, when you become intoxicated with another human being. It’s the taste you just can’t have enough of, the well you can’t stay away from, the thirst that’s never slaked. Sometimes this love is beautiful, but just as often it’s ugly. It’s always necessary; wanted as much as it’s needed. This rush, this supernova of emotion can engulf lots of other priorities in life. It clouds our judgement, and it breaks the strongest convictions, the tightest bonds and the most sacrosanct rules. It can make a stone cold horror out of you.
Those sentiments would almost certainly not be expressed by William Trevor, a very fine writer who I had never encountered prior to cracking open this slim volume. While a quick scan of the dust jacket would lead you to believe you’re going to read a novel of lust and betrayal, the reality is something totally different. It played with my expectations in a way that made me feel almost ashamed; by the time I had closed this book, I felt that I had failed not just as a reader of prose, but that I had fucked up as a human being. It’s a Kobayashi Maru test of your emotional responses, and it could only have been written by a person with a lifetime of experience, a supremely benevolent soul taking a calm - but never dispassionate - look at the strange places that hope, love and loss can lead us to.
His central plot is simple: a dedicated but bored young wife crosses the path of a handsome stranger in a small town, and falls in love with him over the course of one summer. It seems to be one of those narrative strands that goes beyond hackneyed, almost ingrained within our DNA as storytellers. It’s right up there with someone seeking revenge for the murder of their father, or a princess needing to be rescued. But the execution is everything, here; and it gives us not the kind of love we can see played out on a thousand squawking soap opera episodes, but something much more resonant than that. And all without ever once raising its voice.
At the expense of blasphemy, I’d say there’s an almost god-like tenderness on show in Love And Summer, a sense of caring and total understanding that only a divine creator could have for its children.
Ellie is our heroine, a girl in the Ireland of the 1940s or 1950s who ends up married to Dillahan the farmer. She helps this hard-working but haunted man rebuild his life after a tragic accident in which his first wife and their child were killed. On this scene appears Florian Kilderry, something of an aesthete who takes photographs and paints pictures; watching over all are a wandered old man named Orpen Wren as well as Joseph Paul Connulty and his sister, “Miss Connulty”, looking after their mother’s guest house following her death. It is at Mrs Connulty’s funeral that Florian first appears, taking pictures of the service and the mourners.
The blossoming relationship between Florian and Ellie takes on the tone of a perfectly natural occurrence, while never once losing sight of the potential tragedy that threatens to unfold. Trevor hints at those odd little sparks that crackle between two people who are attracted to each other; the weird coincidences and chance meetings, and the dreams they have of each other, subconscious spurs of passion. And yet Trevor never shows us too much of what goes on between Florian and Ellie; “they embraced” is the one description of contact he gives us, apart from hand-holding, his only concession to physicality. Ellie does visit Florian at the family home he is trying to sell up in order to escape Ireland for Europe – Scandinavia perhaps – and they have special meeting places out in the countryside, secret spots where they leave signs and notes for each other. But for all that, there is a perhaps naive part of me that wonders if these two characters ever had sex.
So, no Harlequin Romance shenanigans to be found, here. Not so much as a throbbing member or a yanked pair of knickers anywhere.
(audience groans)
But, hold on there! That’s not to say it is devoid of passion; Trevor manages to instill more genuine feeling in just a few words than many commercial fiction writers can manage in thousands. One sentence – “I dreamed about you” – brings out a flood of feelings and recollections for us all, a silent bomb right at the end of a chapter that causes Ellie’s heart – and ours – to kick. Compare and contrast, Ian McEwan’s single-line shotgun blast in Atonement, the typewritten confession that leads to disaster. “In my dreams I kiss your c*nt.”
William Trevor would not ever write that phrase, I suspect, even if someone gave him a marker pen, a blank toilet wall and complete diplomatic immunity.
Everyone seems wrapped up in their own private worlds, whether it’s the deranged Orpen’s mistaking of current events for ones which happened long ago, or Florian’s photography, or Miss Connulty’s outrage and indignation at what she sees as Ellie’s scandalous relationship. Everyone’s trying to get away from something in their lives. But while the dark side is always present in these pages, it’s more of a deep sadness than a raging storm - there are always good things having happened, and waiting to happen, if only people would turn their attention towards them. Miss Connulty takes great pride in feeding her guests; Joseph Paul Connulty has a liberated view of Ellie and Florian’s togetherness which might not be far off the truth of things; Ellie’s past as a “saved” orphan is unusually sympathetic towards the nuns who cared for her.
And there’s another one of those flashbulb sentences that struck me as cute, when Joseph Paul Connulty’s trustworthy female employee betrays something of her true purpose in her flow of thoughts: “She wondered if he had trouble sleeping.” How much more telling was that, than pages and pages worth of longing looks, pregnant pauses, licked lips and flushed cheeks?
Trevor’s handling of his people showed me how deeply entrenched my prejudices toward stories of love and passion are. It shows me up; I feel like I’ve behaved badly with this book. (Nothing happened though, I swear.) I expected Ellie to be made pregnant by Florian. I expected Miss Connulty’s nosiness over Ellie’s affair to lead to its own disastrous ends, satisfaction and catharsis for a bitter woman who has experienced her own sharp loss in love, a story cut horribly short by her own father. I expected Dillahan to discover his wife’s infidelity and to turn violent. I expected this to dovetail neatly with the story of how his first wife really died, perhaps during some awful Grand Guignol climax, a maelstrom of revelation, melodrama, jealousy and blood, with a summer thunderstorm crashing away in the background.
None of these awful things happen. It’s not that Trevor has pulled the rug out from underneath me, or sought to trick me. It was simply a mark of my own expectations, and they were ugly ones, at that.
And Trevor’s unconcerned with that type of worldview. What the writer is trying to say - whether he’s showing poor, ox-like Dillahan labouring away on his farm, cutting the turf and mending the fences, or focusing on the two young lovers taking bicycle rides to quiet country places where they can lie in the green grass, or having anyone patiently endure the non sequiturs and ravings of Orpen Wren – is that there is always a heartbeat in there somewhere. Even at the very last moment, when I fully expected one character to serve their time as an instrument of the plot, precipitating disaster, they don’t.
All through the book, it’s only ever people’s goodness that is played upon, never their malice. When the one big emotional punch of Love And Summer is delivered, it has the strange quality of having come from an unlikely place, and landing on a sensitive, unguarded spot – but for all that, still being the most obvious blow to strike. There is such great sympathy for all the characters, even where it does not, and cannot, exist between them in the narrative itself.
The prose style is at once simple and at the same time thick with meaning. The dialogue sometimes reads as deadpan, with just a single line in quotes to decorate a paragraph of description. It’s an eloquent way to frame an exchange between people – only the good stuff is left in. Anthony Burgess once said of Ernest Hemingway, “there’s not a word wasted”; this certainly applies to William Trevor.
The author is in his eighties, having published his first work of fiction more than 50 years ago. In the book jacket, there’s a wonderful photo of him, a man with kindly lines in his features. If asked where we thought this man had come from, knowing nothing about him, I’ve a feeling many of us would say, “Ireland”. He’s sort of like what Alex “Hurricane” Higgins might have looked like at the age of eighty if he hadn’t done... well, all the stuff he’s done.
If William Trevor has brought all that life experience to bear on this book, then it’s been a life well-lived. We should all be so lucky.
212 pages, Penguin
Review by Pat Black
A Feeling’s So Much Stronger Than A Thought
Lovers – the most selfish of all creatures. No greed can be greater than the one you experience in those early stages of a relationship, when you become intoxicated with another human being. It’s the taste you just can’t have enough of, the well you can’t stay away from, the thirst that’s never slaked. Sometimes this love is beautiful, but just as often it’s ugly. It’s always necessary; wanted as much as it’s needed. This rush, this supernova of emotion can engulf lots of other priorities in life. It clouds our judgement, and it breaks the strongest convictions, the tightest bonds and the most sacrosanct rules. It can make a stone cold horror out of you.
Those sentiments would almost certainly not be expressed by William Trevor, a very fine writer who I had never encountered prior to cracking open this slim volume. While a quick scan of the dust jacket would lead you to believe you’re going to read a novel of lust and betrayal, the reality is something totally different. It played with my expectations in a way that made me feel almost ashamed; by the time I had closed this book, I felt that I had failed not just as a reader of prose, but that I had fucked up as a human being. It’s a Kobayashi Maru test of your emotional responses, and it could only have been written by a person with a lifetime of experience, a supremely benevolent soul taking a calm - but never dispassionate - look at the strange places that hope, love and loss can lead us to.
His central plot is simple: a dedicated but bored young wife crosses the path of a handsome stranger in a small town, and falls in love with him over the course of one summer. It seems to be one of those narrative strands that goes beyond hackneyed, almost ingrained within our DNA as storytellers. It’s right up there with someone seeking revenge for the murder of their father, or a princess needing to be rescued. But the execution is everything, here; and it gives us not the kind of love we can see played out on a thousand squawking soap opera episodes, but something much more resonant than that. And all without ever once raising its voice.
At the expense of blasphemy, I’d say there’s an almost god-like tenderness on show in Love And Summer, a sense of caring and total understanding that only a divine creator could have for its children.
Ellie is our heroine, a girl in the Ireland of the 1940s or 1950s who ends up married to Dillahan the farmer. She helps this hard-working but haunted man rebuild his life after a tragic accident in which his first wife and their child were killed. On this scene appears Florian Kilderry, something of an aesthete who takes photographs and paints pictures; watching over all are a wandered old man named Orpen Wren as well as Joseph Paul Connulty and his sister, “Miss Connulty”, looking after their mother’s guest house following her death. It is at Mrs Connulty’s funeral that Florian first appears, taking pictures of the service and the mourners.
The blossoming relationship between Florian and Ellie takes on the tone of a perfectly natural occurrence, while never once losing sight of the potential tragedy that threatens to unfold. Trevor hints at those odd little sparks that crackle between two people who are attracted to each other; the weird coincidences and chance meetings, and the dreams they have of each other, subconscious spurs of passion. And yet Trevor never shows us too much of what goes on between Florian and Ellie; “they embraced” is the one description of contact he gives us, apart from hand-holding, his only concession to physicality. Ellie does visit Florian at the family home he is trying to sell up in order to escape Ireland for Europe – Scandinavia perhaps – and they have special meeting places out in the countryside, secret spots where they leave signs and notes for each other. But for all that, there is a perhaps naive part of me that wonders if these two characters ever had sex.
So, no Harlequin Romance shenanigans to be found, here. Not so much as a throbbing member or a yanked pair of knickers anywhere.
(audience groans)
But, hold on there! That’s not to say it is devoid of passion; Trevor manages to instill more genuine feeling in just a few words than many commercial fiction writers can manage in thousands. One sentence – “I dreamed about you” – brings out a flood of feelings and recollections for us all, a silent bomb right at the end of a chapter that causes Ellie’s heart – and ours – to kick. Compare and contrast, Ian McEwan’s single-line shotgun blast in Atonement, the typewritten confession that leads to disaster. “In my dreams I kiss your c*nt.”
William Trevor would not ever write that phrase, I suspect, even if someone gave him a marker pen, a blank toilet wall and complete diplomatic immunity.
Everyone seems wrapped up in their own private worlds, whether it’s the deranged Orpen’s mistaking of current events for ones which happened long ago, or Florian’s photography, or Miss Connulty’s outrage and indignation at what she sees as Ellie’s scandalous relationship. Everyone’s trying to get away from something in their lives. But while the dark side is always present in these pages, it’s more of a deep sadness than a raging storm - there are always good things having happened, and waiting to happen, if only people would turn their attention towards them. Miss Connulty takes great pride in feeding her guests; Joseph Paul Connulty has a liberated view of Ellie and Florian’s togetherness which might not be far off the truth of things; Ellie’s past as a “saved” orphan is unusually sympathetic towards the nuns who cared for her.
And there’s another one of those flashbulb sentences that struck me as cute, when Joseph Paul Connulty’s trustworthy female employee betrays something of her true purpose in her flow of thoughts: “She wondered if he had trouble sleeping.” How much more telling was that, than pages and pages worth of longing looks, pregnant pauses, licked lips and flushed cheeks?
Trevor’s handling of his people showed me how deeply entrenched my prejudices toward stories of love and passion are. It shows me up; I feel like I’ve behaved badly with this book. (Nothing happened though, I swear.) I expected Ellie to be made pregnant by Florian. I expected Miss Connulty’s nosiness over Ellie’s affair to lead to its own disastrous ends, satisfaction and catharsis for a bitter woman who has experienced her own sharp loss in love, a story cut horribly short by her own father. I expected Dillahan to discover his wife’s infidelity and to turn violent. I expected this to dovetail neatly with the story of how his first wife really died, perhaps during some awful Grand Guignol climax, a maelstrom of revelation, melodrama, jealousy and blood, with a summer thunderstorm crashing away in the background.
None of these awful things happen. It’s not that Trevor has pulled the rug out from underneath me, or sought to trick me. It was simply a mark of my own expectations, and they were ugly ones, at that.
And Trevor’s unconcerned with that type of worldview. What the writer is trying to say - whether he’s showing poor, ox-like Dillahan labouring away on his farm, cutting the turf and mending the fences, or focusing on the two young lovers taking bicycle rides to quiet country places where they can lie in the green grass, or having anyone patiently endure the non sequiturs and ravings of Orpen Wren – is that there is always a heartbeat in there somewhere. Even at the very last moment, when I fully expected one character to serve their time as an instrument of the plot, precipitating disaster, they don’t.
All through the book, it’s only ever people’s goodness that is played upon, never their malice. When the one big emotional punch of Love And Summer is delivered, it has the strange quality of having come from an unlikely place, and landing on a sensitive, unguarded spot – but for all that, still being the most obvious blow to strike. There is such great sympathy for all the characters, even where it does not, and cannot, exist between them in the narrative itself.
The prose style is at once simple and at the same time thick with meaning. The dialogue sometimes reads as deadpan, with just a single line in quotes to decorate a paragraph of description. It’s an eloquent way to frame an exchange between people – only the good stuff is left in. Anthony Burgess once said of Ernest Hemingway, “there’s not a word wasted”; this certainly applies to William Trevor.
The author is in his eighties, having published his first work of fiction more than 50 years ago. In the book jacket, there’s a wonderful photo of him, a man with kindly lines in his features. If asked where we thought this man had come from, knowing nothing about him, I’ve a feeling many of us would say, “Ireland”. He’s sort of like what Alex “Hurricane” Higgins might have looked like at the age of eighty if he hadn’t done... well, all the stuff he’s done.
If William Trevor has brought all that life experience to bear on this book, then it’s been a life well-lived. We should all be so lucky.
February 4, 2010
LEVIATHAN
by Scott Westerfeld
448 pages, Viking/Penguin/Simon Pulse
Review by S. F. Winser
One of the big YA series of the Noughties (May I digress and note that I hate the term 'Noughties' and feel the the coming of 2010 has been a boon for the English language? No? Okay, then I won't) was Westerfeld's 'Uglies' series. A fast-paced sci-fi book about a totalitarian regime that controlled people with plastic surgery and I never actually finished it. I thought book #1 was pretty good, book #2 was good and I got partway into book #3 before realising I just couldn't take anymore.
This was very much a taste thing. The Uglies series relied very heavily on showing the protagonist a situation/society and/or group she hated, then forcing her to become that. And then showing her a new situation. Which she also hated. And, whoops, now she's part of that, too. Now here's another brainwashed group to hate. And so on. It was... emotionally draining. I gave up, not for issues of Westerfeld's style but out of personal fatigue. I couldn't follow the put-upon protag down any more bloody rabbit-holes. The poor girl had suffered enough.
However, I always felt guilty about giving up on 'Uglies'.
So when Scott Westerfeld's new YA Steampunk book came about, I – renowned lover of Steampunk goodness - grabbed it with a mix of anticipation, fear, and hope at a small chance of personal redemption.
Oh boy, was it fun.
Westerfeld's style in 'Leviathan' is sharp and controlled. I barely felt like I was reading Young Adult. Sure the protagonists are mainly young. Sure, one or two concepts are explained in text and in an afterword. But... Well... There's also an amazing depth of plotting and socio-political subtext that would be fine in any novel aimed at adults. 'Leviathan' is set in a alt-history version of World War I. The politics around the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand – a notoriously difficult subject and the subject of many a PhD thesis – are stripped down and used as YA plot-points with a grace and ease that are simply staggering. There are depths here enough for any adult reader. And not just politically. In science, as well. Because, deep down, all Steampunk is a comment on science and its place in the world. Which, in 'Leviathan', is the use of genetically-modified animals (including the eponymous 'Leviathan' a giant, part-whale airship) by some 'Darwinist' political powers and the use of mecha-style 'Clanker' war-machines by others. It's biology versus physics as the playing-ground, but the morality of using advanced technology in war is the idea somewhat explored. We also see the joys and dangers of science. And questioning human impact on animals through genetic engineering for our own purposes.
Also, you know, giant walking machines! With guns! Fighting giant, genetically-modified whales! Giant machines with machine guns fighting each other! In WW I!
'Leviathan' is, however, only the first book of what looks to be a trilogy. Westerfeld may end up psychologically damaging his rather likable protagonists to the point where I find myself giving up again. I hope not. I like the plucky little suckers. The naïve but bright and brave Alek, (fictional) son of Archduke Ferdinand and the equally smart and brave and downright daring Deryn. Oh, and Deryn's a girl pretending to be a boy. And she's in the equivalent of the Air Force.
Yeah. I think she's gonna hit some trouble in the future.
They're both too easy to like and root for. Poor Alek starts the novel under a cloud, but for Derryn so far there's only hints of the more intangible dangers she's sure to encounter. Though there's physical danger aplenty for both of them. Jumping off airships, piloting giant war machines secretly towards Switzerland, attacks from enemies secret and overt – it's all there. And it's all a great ride. Westerfeld handles potentially murky action scenes with easy clarity and a fair bit of heart-pounding fear.
The book is also heavily illustrated. And rather beautifully. The illustrator was apparently trying for something like Victorian Manga in the fifty-odd illustrations. A very Steampunky ambition. In some cases it's a bit over-sketchy. In others, the style works wonderfully. Even the end-papers' stylised map of Europe is an awesome work of art that references old-style allegorical maps of the period (Except the US edition – the end papers appear in the UK and Australia only). There is an almost cult-like love for the map for this series in various online communities. And the artist has good reasons for almost every detail of it.
Now comes the curse of any good 'book #1' in the series. I honestly can't yet say if this is a good series. I don't know. I've only read a third of it. Sure, that was good, but what happens when the aliens turn up in book #2 and kill everyone? Or it turns out that it was all just a dream? Or Westerfeld spends all of book #3 in a long-winded rant about local government regulations on rubbish collection? I don't know: Westerfeld hasn't even written all of book #2 yet and it's not due out until October. How does a reviewer honestly rate a movie if he only watches the first 30 minutes?
At the moment the best I can do is 'I think this series is very promising'.
...Is it October yet?
448 pages, Viking/Penguin/Simon Pulse
Review by S. F. Winser
One of the big YA series of the Noughties (May I digress and note that I hate the term 'Noughties' and feel the the coming of 2010 has been a boon for the English language? No? Okay, then I won't) was Westerfeld's 'Uglies' series. A fast-paced sci-fi book about a totalitarian regime that controlled people with plastic surgery and I never actually finished it. I thought book #1 was pretty good, book #2 was good and I got partway into book #3 before realising I just couldn't take anymore.
This was very much a taste thing. The Uglies series relied very heavily on showing the protagonist a situation/society and/or group she hated, then forcing her to become that. And then showing her a new situation. Which she also hated. And, whoops, now she's part of that, too. Now here's another brainwashed group to hate. And so on. It was... emotionally draining. I gave up, not for issues of Westerfeld's style but out of personal fatigue. I couldn't follow the put-upon protag down any more bloody rabbit-holes. The poor girl had suffered enough.
However, I always felt guilty about giving up on 'Uglies'.
So when Scott Westerfeld's new YA Steampunk book came about, I – renowned lover of Steampunk goodness - grabbed it with a mix of anticipation, fear, and hope at a small chance of personal redemption.
Oh boy, was it fun.
Westerfeld's style in 'Leviathan' is sharp and controlled. I barely felt like I was reading Young Adult. Sure the protagonists are mainly young. Sure, one or two concepts are explained in text and in an afterword. But... Well... There's also an amazing depth of plotting and socio-political subtext that would be fine in any novel aimed at adults. 'Leviathan' is set in a alt-history version of World War I. The politics around the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand – a notoriously difficult subject and the subject of many a PhD thesis – are stripped down and used as YA plot-points with a grace and ease that are simply staggering. There are depths here enough for any adult reader. And not just politically. In science, as well. Because, deep down, all Steampunk is a comment on science and its place in the world. Which, in 'Leviathan', is the use of genetically-modified animals (including the eponymous 'Leviathan' a giant, part-whale airship) by some 'Darwinist' political powers and the use of mecha-style 'Clanker' war-machines by others. It's biology versus physics as the playing-ground, but the morality of using advanced technology in war is the idea somewhat explored. We also see the joys and dangers of science. And questioning human impact on animals through genetic engineering for our own purposes.
Also, you know, giant walking machines! With guns! Fighting giant, genetically-modified whales! Giant machines with machine guns fighting each other! In WW I!
'Leviathan' is, however, only the first book of what looks to be a trilogy. Westerfeld may end up psychologically damaging his rather likable protagonists to the point where I find myself giving up again. I hope not. I like the plucky little suckers. The naïve but bright and brave Alek, (fictional) son of Archduke Ferdinand and the equally smart and brave and downright daring Deryn. Oh, and Deryn's a girl pretending to be a boy. And she's in the equivalent of the Air Force.
Yeah. I think she's gonna hit some trouble in the future.
They're both too easy to like and root for. Poor Alek starts the novel under a cloud, but for Derryn so far there's only hints of the more intangible dangers she's sure to encounter. Though there's physical danger aplenty for both of them. Jumping off airships, piloting giant war machines secretly towards Switzerland, attacks from enemies secret and overt – it's all there. And it's all a great ride. Westerfeld handles potentially murky action scenes with easy clarity and a fair bit of heart-pounding fear.
The book is also heavily illustrated. And rather beautifully. The illustrator was apparently trying for something like Victorian Manga in the fifty-odd illustrations. A very Steampunky ambition. In some cases it's a bit over-sketchy. In others, the style works wonderfully. Even the end-papers' stylised map of Europe is an awesome work of art that references old-style allegorical maps of the period (Except the US edition – the end papers appear in the UK and Australia only). There is an almost cult-like love for the map for this series in various online communities. And the artist has good reasons for almost every detail of it.
Now comes the curse of any good 'book #1' in the series. I honestly can't yet say if this is a good series. I don't know. I've only read a third of it. Sure, that was good, but what happens when the aliens turn up in book #2 and kill everyone? Or it turns out that it was all just a dream? Or Westerfeld spends all of book #3 in a long-winded rant about local government regulations on rubbish collection? I don't know: Westerfeld hasn't even written all of book #2 yet and it's not due out until October. How does a reviewer honestly rate a movie if he only watches the first 30 minutes?
At the moment the best I can do is 'I think this series is very promising'.
...Is it October yet?
February 3, 2010
GLIMPSES OF A FLOATING WORLD
by Larry Harrison
214 pages, lulu.com
Review by Marion Stein
Larry Harrison's dark and dazzling first novel, Glimpses of a Floating World, takes its title from the phrase used to describe the red-light district of 18th century Edo, now known as Tokyo. The Japanese term alludes to the Buddhist concept for "the transient nature and suffering that defines our earthly existence". Edo's floating world was a haven of pleasure and illusion, filled with kabuki actors, geishas and courtesans. Harrison's work is set in London's Soho, 1963, its denizens -- anarchists, mods, rockers, beats, and others. Our protagonist, seventeen year-old Ronnie "Fizz' Jarvis loves feeling that he is part of "the scene."
The novel opens with two heroin addicts on their way to a fix. The griminess of the dialogue is pitch perfect in its rhythm and authenticity. Ronnie, one of the fortunate few with a prescription for heroin and cocaine, is eighteen minutes away from his chemist's and would gladly die sooner to make up the time.
Our "hero", the son of an abusive, alcoholic, upwardly mobile Scotland Yard officer, survives by staying in squats and selling small amounts of his excess stock on the black market.
Harrison skillfully makes it easy for the reader to identify with Ronnie despite the character's being vain, selfish and occasionally cowardly. He is, after all, an adolescent trying to understand the world and his place in it. Ronnie, fiercely intelligent, tells himself that he is not constricted by his addiction, but enhanced by it. He is a self-proclaimed rationalist and anarchist, identifying with the beats. Since age twelve, he has "collected extreme experiences in a conscious attempt to destroy childishness."
Ronnie reminds us of other young, unreliable characters on the precipice of manhood in an imperfect world. The reader is immediately aware that no matter what else happens, Ronnie will either grow and change, or he will not. We root for Ronnie's potential, hoping he will live to tell the tale.
Harrison's Soho is not a land of flower children and love beads. There's still a sense of post-war deprivation. Ruth Ellis has recently been executed. Political scandals involving naughty politicians and call girls are in the news, while on the streets police corruption is endemic and gangsters have celebrity status. Heroin addiction, however, is relatively rare. While addicts like Ronnie scam the system, which allows him to walk away drugs in hand for easy resale, the black market in illegal drugs is small.
Early in our story, Ronnie is caught shooting up in a restroom. While his heroin and cocaine are legal, he has a small amount of opium that isn't. In jail, he is interviewed by an elderly (at least to his adolescent eyes) prison doctor. When she tells him that he'll be dead soon if he keeps going, he replies, "We're all going to die... You're going to die a lot sooner than I am."
She believes she's been threatened, classifies him as a psychopath, and Ronnie is sent to a mental hospital that reminded this reader of a cross between a Dickensian workhouse and a Ken Kesey nightmare. Ronnie overhears the nurses discussing how easy psychosurgery will make their jobs and soon escapes.
Several chapters are told from different points of view. We see both the war and early post-war years through the eyes of Ronnie's parents. Freddy's drinking, jealousy and violence eventually drive Flo to leave and return to her hometown of Swindon, a place Ronnie will always deny being from. Freddy has managed to rise to become a senior officer, but his son has been out of his life for years.
While the atmosphere and depth of characterization is strong, so is the pacing and plot development. Ronnie's initial arrest, psychiatric diagnosis, escapes and recaptures all lead to a situation where he is forced to turn informant even though he knows nothing about any large scale narcotics dealers and does not believe that any exist. The shifting points of view allow the reader to know more than the characters, and the last quarter of the novel is a compulsively addictive page-turner in which Ronnie's fate is anything but certain.
Harrison, who has written nonfiction books on alcohol and drug issues, seamlessly weaves in the growing panic over narcotics. While the world was on the brink of nuclear Armageddon and scandal reigned, Britain -- influenced by the US -- was changing its policies, moving from treating addiction as a public health issue to criminalizing addicts. Ronnie is as much a victim of these changes as he is of his abusive father and his own self-destructiveness.
Glimpses of a Floating World is described on its back cover as "a lyrical and triumphant elegy to a seedy, vice-ridden London of the 1960's." It is that, but also a tale of familial tragedy, a history lesson, a novel that offers much more than simple glimpses.
Glimpses may not be easy to find in your local bookstore though you can order it online as a paperback or download FOR FREE as an ebook through the link provided. It's from Year Zero, a writers' collective dedicated to creating a new relationship between readers and writers without the filter of the publishing industry. Agreed, there are many skeptics who still won't touch books not given the imprimatur of even a small publishing house. This novel puts lie to the myth that important literature can only be found on store shelves. In addition to reading like a lost classic, it's polished, proofed and edited. If you're a serious reader, skeptical about anything that sounds like self-publishing, I urge you to rise to the challenge and sample it online for free. Believe me, it'll be a more rewarding experience than a trip to Borders to browse through the latest Jane Austen with zombies tome.
214 pages, lulu.com
Review by Marion Stein
Larry Harrison's dark and dazzling first novel, Glimpses of a Floating World, takes its title from the phrase used to describe the red-light district of 18th century Edo, now known as Tokyo. The Japanese term alludes to the Buddhist concept for "the transient nature and suffering that defines our earthly existence". Edo's floating world was a haven of pleasure and illusion, filled with kabuki actors, geishas and courtesans. Harrison's work is set in London's Soho, 1963, its denizens -- anarchists, mods, rockers, beats, and others. Our protagonist, seventeen year-old Ronnie "Fizz' Jarvis loves feeling that he is part of "the scene."
The novel opens with two heroin addicts on their way to a fix. The griminess of the dialogue is pitch perfect in its rhythm and authenticity. Ronnie, one of the fortunate few with a prescription for heroin and cocaine, is eighteen minutes away from his chemist's and would gladly die sooner to make up the time.
Our "hero", the son of an abusive, alcoholic, upwardly mobile Scotland Yard officer, survives by staying in squats and selling small amounts of his excess stock on the black market.
Harrison skillfully makes it easy for the reader to identify with Ronnie despite the character's being vain, selfish and occasionally cowardly. He is, after all, an adolescent trying to understand the world and his place in it. Ronnie, fiercely intelligent, tells himself that he is not constricted by his addiction, but enhanced by it. He is a self-proclaimed rationalist and anarchist, identifying with the beats. Since age twelve, he has "collected extreme experiences in a conscious attempt to destroy childishness."
Ronnie reminds us of other young, unreliable characters on the precipice of manhood in an imperfect world. The reader is immediately aware that no matter what else happens, Ronnie will either grow and change, or he will not. We root for Ronnie's potential, hoping he will live to tell the tale.
Harrison's Soho is not a land of flower children and love beads. There's still a sense of post-war deprivation. Ruth Ellis has recently been executed. Political scandals involving naughty politicians and call girls are in the news, while on the streets police corruption is endemic and gangsters have celebrity status. Heroin addiction, however, is relatively rare. While addicts like Ronnie scam the system, which allows him to walk away drugs in hand for easy resale, the black market in illegal drugs is small.
Early in our story, Ronnie is caught shooting up in a restroom. While his heroin and cocaine are legal, he has a small amount of opium that isn't. In jail, he is interviewed by an elderly (at least to his adolescent eyes) prison doctor. When she tells him that he'll be dead soon if he keeps going, he replies, "We're all going to die... You're going to die a lot sooner than I am."
She believes she's been threatened, classifies him as a psychopath, and Ronnie is sent to a mental hospital that reminded this reader of a cross between a Dickensian workhouse and a Ken Kesey nightmare. Ronnie overhears the nurses discussing how easy psychosurgery will make their jobs and soon escapes.
Several chapters are told from different points of view. We see both the war and early post-war years through the eyes of Ronnie's parents. Freddy's drinking, jealousy and violence eventually drive Flo to leave and return to her hometown of Swindon, a place Ronnie will always deny being from. Freddy has managed to rise to become a senior officer, but his son has been out of his life for years.
While the atmosphere and depth of characterization is strong, so is the pacing and plot development. Ronnie's initial arrest, psychiatric diagnosis, escapes and recaptures all lead to a situation where he is forced to turn informant even though he knows nothing about any large scale narcotics dealers and does not believe that any exist. The shifting points of view allow the reader to know more than the characters, and the last quarter of the novel is a compulsively addictive page-turner in which Ronnie's fate is anything but certain.
Harrison, who has written nonfiction books on alcohol and drug issues, seamlessly weaves in the growing panic over narcotics. While the world was on the brink of nuclear Armageddon and scandal reigned, Britain -- influenced by the US -- was changing its policies, moving from treating addiction as a public health issue to criminalizing addicts. Ronnie is as much a victim of these changes as he is of his abusive father and his own self-destructiveness.
Glimpses of a Floating World is described on its back cover as "a lyrical and triumphant elegy to a seedy, vice-ridden London of the 1960's." It is that, but also a tale of familial tragedy, a history lesson, a novel that offers much more than simple glimpses.
Glimpses may not be easy to find in your local bookstore though you can order it online as a paperback or download FOR FREE as an ebook through the link provided. It's from Year Zero, a writers' collective dedicated to creating a new relationship between readers and writers without the filter of the publishing industry. Agreed, there are many skeptics who still won't touch books not given the imprimatur of even a small publishing house. This novel puts lie to the myth that important literature can only be found on store shelves. In addition to reading like a lost classic, it's polished, proofed and edited. If you're a serious reader, skeptical about anything that sounds like self-publishing, I urge you to rise to the challenge and sample it online for free. Believe me, it'll be a more rewarding experience than a trip to Borders to browse through the latest Jane Austen with zombies tome.
February 2, 2010
THE CAPTIVE
The True Story of the Captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson Among the Indians and God’s Faithfulness to her in her Time of Trial
By Mary Rowlandson
64 pages, CreateSpace
Review by Kate Kasserman
The Captive is a memoir of Mary Rowlandson’s 1675 capture and enslavement by the Wampanoag alliance, and it made a big splash back in the seventeenth century upon its debut. Not only was it the first full-length (by the standards of the time, to wit, a pamphlet) literary work by an American woman, but it had NEWS FROM THE OTHER SIDE: the Native Americans. It would be fair to say that early American colonists were more than moderately concerned about their neighbors.
That window into the now-destroyed Wampanoag culture is just as fascinating today, as is the glimpse into Rowlandson’s Puritan mindset. She is both matter-of-fact and, heh, a little intense, a mixture of admirable and poignant and freak-me-out-y to the modern eye.
Rowlandson was about forty (they were SO not into specific dates and ages back then – but she was properly middle-aged heading on old per 1675) and living in Lancaster, Massachusetts with her reverend husband and some random number of surviving children (at least three, because that many were captured with her) when King Philip’s War busted out and all hell broke loose. (King Philip was a Wampanoag leader with a chip on his shoulder – and we learn a bit about that, tangentially, through Rowlandson’s narrative, as she describes the effects – she’s living with them – of the white settlers’ efforts to starve the local Natives out.) The Reverend Rowlandson was off trying to get the rest of Massachusetts to raise an army to fight off King Philip when the Wampanoag alliance attacked Lancaster and turned it into a smoking pit. Mrs. Rowlandson and her youngest were wounded by a gunshot and taken prisoner. She didn’t know what happened to most of the other people in her family, including two other children who surface later, other than the relatives she saw killed on the spot.
Then she was bundled up and taken on the run with the retreating Native forces. The colonial army, perpetually a day late and a dollar short, was nevertheless on the move and pursued them briefly…until it came to a river. Rivers are cold and wet! So the colonials gave up, for all that the Natives were in visual range (Rowlandson could certainly see the colonials) and had just hurriedly crossed the river themselves, and were in disarray. So much for le rescue. Onwards to slavery.
We see a mix of good and bad among the Wampanoag from the outset, and to Rowlandson’s credit – and believe you me, she does not like the Natives one teensy bit and considers them monsters – she relates both with an even hand. Her wounded child is permitted to ride on one of the horses – but at the same time, Natives seem to take a particular delight in coming to Rowlandson and informing her that once she’s sold into slavery, her new master isn’t going to put up with a damaged child and will promptly have “it” killed (Rowlandson herself refers to the poor girl as “it” frequently, and for understandable cause – the girl dies of her wounds, before her future master has the opportunity to off the child).
Life as a slave, in Rowlandson’s experience, was a hit-or-miss affair that depended, logically enough, upon the disposition of the wife of the household. Her master had a couple wives, and Rowlandson got stuck with one who liked to put on airs, with the general dismal personality to match. Mrs. Master (we don’t get names here) apparently did not see fit to feed Rowlandson routinely, nor to give her a place to sleep, leaving Rowlandson to beg scraps from other Natives – most of whom were generous, if unpredictable, with the tiny, tiny gleanings available to them. Those gleanings really are a sorry affair. The colonists’ starve-em-out policy seems to have been a smash hit. We’re talking boiled horse hoof, on a good day. Rowlandson also hires out her services as a seamstress and sometimes gets food or trade goods through that expedient, although again, she is a slave, and so sometimes the whole transaction comes down to “give up your apron and make some baby caps out of it, or I will knock your face in.” She yields; and she even goes out of her way to try to curry favor with her master (and particularly that snot-bitch mistress).
A Native kindly offers Rowlandson a Bible he plundered from one of the other towns the Wampanoag alliance pillaged, and she refers to it frequently. You’d think she’d have had the whole thing more or less memorized, but maybe not – she reads stretches of it for peace, and under particular duress she’ll flip open to a random page hoping for one of the “God loves you” remarks. If she gets one of those, she takes it as a miracle and is happy for days; if she does not, she simply muddles on anyway.
What is particularly fascinating is her lack of sense of entitlement on any particular tactical front (“tactical” is an important distinction – because of course she has no sense of any acceptable outcome, long-term, other than the whites defeating the Natives). As far as she’s concerned, if she’s suffering, God thinks she deserves it, and she’s not going to quibble, complain, or resent. She’ll just get on with it and try to be better. An amazing section has Rowlandson going through how the colonial army’s PATHETIC (she doesn’t say pathetic – that’s me talking) giving up at the river and the Native’s remarkable ability to find food despite the white starvation policy are signs of God’s greatness and benevolence. Wait – Mary? – are you suddenly saying that you’re on the Natives’ side? MAIS NON!!! It is part of God’s greatness and benevolence to STRENGTHEN A SCOURGE for the white settlers, who need to be CHASTISED for – well, she’s not sure what exactly, but something no doubt, and that’s God’s business, not hers. Whoa!
Rowlandson is bought back by her family at length (while the Rowlandsons’ personal assets were annihilated upon the destruction of Lancaster, other settlers pitch in to make up the twenty pounds), as is one of her captured children; the other escapes, as King Philip’s War fizzles out. Her successful return, even before the publication of her pamphlet, made her a minor celebrity, and we get a small sample of seventeenth-century colonial stardom in that Rowlandson makes several dear new friends and also apparently suffers some knify-tongued gossip about her assertion that the Natives did not try to do anything sexual to her. DUDES, aside from the fact that most of the Natives treated her within adequate bounds of respect anyway, they were STARVING (not a general libido-enhancer), and Rowlandson’s age made her pretty much a CRONE. Get over the sex thing, Puritans! (I doubt it, but I can always suggest.)
By Mary Rowlandson
64 pages, CreateSpace
Review by Kate Kasserman
The Captive is a memoir of Mary Rowlandson’s 1675 capture and enslavement by the Wampanoag alliance, and it made a big splash back in the seventeenth century upon its debut. Not only was it the first full-length (by the standards of the time, to wit, a pamphlet) literary work by an American woman, but it had NEWS FROM THE OTHER SIDE: the Native Americans. It would be fair to say that early American colonists were more than moderately concerned about their neighbors.
That window into the now-destroyed Wampanoag culture is just as fascinating today, as is the glimpse into Rowlandson’s Puritan mindset. She is both matter-of-fact and, heh, a little intense, a mixture of admirable and poignant and freak-me-out-y to the modern eye.
Rowlandson was about forty (they were SO not into specific dates and ages back then – but she was properly middle-aged heading on old per 1675) and living in Lancaster, Massachusetts with her reverend husband and some random number of surviving children (at least three, because that many were captured with her) when King Philip’s War busted out and all hell broke loose. (King Philip was a Wampanoag leader with a chip on his shoulder – and we learn a bit about that, tangentially, through Rowlandson’s narrative, as she describes the effects – she’s living with them – of the white settlers’ efforts to starve the local Natives out.) The Reverend Rowlandson was off trying to get the rest of Massachusetts to raise an army to fight off King Philip when the Wampanoag alliance attacked Lancaster and turned it into a smoking pit. Mrs. Rowlandson and her youngest were wounded by a gunshot and taken prisoner. She didn’t know what happened to most of the other people in her family, including two other children who surface later, other than the relatives she saw killed on the spot.
Then she was bundled up and taken on the run with the retreating Native forces. The colonial army, perpetually a day late and a dollar short, was nevertheless on the move and pursued them briefly…until it came to a river. Rivers are cold and wet! So the colonials gave up, for all that the Natives were in visual range (Rowlandson could certainly see the colonials) and had just hurriedly crossed the river themselves, and were in disarray. So much for le rescue. Onwards to slavery.
We see a mix of good and bad among the Wampanoag from the outset, and to Rowlandson’s credit – and believe you me, she does not like the Natives one teensy bit and considers them monsters – she relates both with an even hand. Her wounded child is permitted to ride on one of the horses – but at the same time, Natives seem to take a particular delight in coming to Rowlandson and informing her that once she’s sold into slavery, her new master isn’t going to put up with a damaged child and will promptly have “it” killed (Rowlandson herself refers to the poor girl as “it” frequently, and for understandable cause – the girl dies of her wounds, before her future master has the opportunity to off the child).
Life as a slave, in Rowlandson’s experience, was a hit-or-miss affair that depended, logically enough, upon the disposition of the wife of the household. Her master had a couple wives, and Rowlandson got stuck with one who liked to put on airs, with the general dismal personality to match. Mrs. Master (we don’t get names here) apparently did not see fit to feed Rowlandson routinely, nor to give her a place to sleep, leaving Rowlandson to beg scraps from other Natives – most of whom were generous, if unpredictable, with the tiny, tiny gleanings available to them. Those gleanings really are a sorry affair. The colonists’ starve-em-out policy seems to have been a smash hit. We’re talking boiled horse hoof, on a good day. Rowlandson also hires out her services as a seamstress and sometimes gets food or trade goods through that expedient, although again, she is a slave, and so sometimes the whole transaction comes down to “give up your apron and make some baby caps out of it, or I will knock your face in.” She yields; and she even goes out of her way to try to curry favor with her master (and particularly that snot-bitch mistress).
A Native kindly offers Rowlandson a Bible he plundered from one of the other towns the Wampanoag alliance pillaged, and she refers to it frequently. You’d think she’d have had the whole thing more or less memorized, but maybe not – she reads stretches of it for peace, and under particular duress she’ll flip open to a random page hoping for one of the “God loves you” remarks. If she gets one of those, she takes it as a miracle and is happy for days; if she does not, she simply muddles on anyway.
What is particularly fascinating is her lack of sense of entitlement on any particular tactical front (“tactical” is an important distinction – because of course she has no sense of any acceptable outcome, long-term, other than the whites defeating the Natives). As far as she’s concerned, if she’s suffering, God thinks she deserves it, and she’s not going to quibble, complain, or resent. She’ll just get on with it and try to be better. An amazing section has Rowlandson going through how the colonial army’s PATHETIC (she doesn’t say pathetic – that’s me talking) giving up at the river and the Native’s remarkable ability to find food despite the white starvation policy are signs of God’s greatness and benevolence. Wait – Mary? – are you suddenly saying that you’re on the Natives’ side? MAIS NON!!! It is part of God’s greatness and benevolence to STRENGTHEN A SCOURGE for the white settlers, who need to be CHASTISED for – well, she’s not sure what exactly, but something no doubt, and that’s God’s business, not hers. Whoa!
Rowlandson is bought back by her family at length (while the Rowlandsons’ personal assets were annihilated upon the destruction of Lancaster, other settlers pitch in to make up the twenty pounds), as is one of her captured children; the other escapes, as King Philip’s War fizzles out. Her successful return, even before the publication of her pamphlet, made her a minor celebrity, and we get a small sample of seventeenth-century colonial stardom in that Rowlandson makes several dear new friends and also apparently suffers some knify-tongued gossip about her assertion that the Natives did not try to do anything sexual to her. DUDES, aside from the fact that most of the Natives treated her within adequate bounds of respect anyway, they were STARVING (not a general libido-enhancer), and Rowlandson’s age made her pretty much a CRONE. Get over the sex thing, Puritans! (I doubt it, but I can always suggest.)
February 1, 2010
2666
by Roberto Bolano
892 pages, Picador
Review by Marc Nash
A writer pens 900 pages without hobbits or generations of undead, then he's asking for a huge investment from his readers. A literary work of this length can't rely on the established tropes of genre like vampire lore or fantasy world to speed the reader through sections of the opus, rather we have to work for every scintilla there is to be had.
The note to the first edition mentions that there was serious debate with the dying author whether to release it as 5 novellas, or to keep the integrity of a 900 page novel. However, for the purposes of review, it is useful to break up each of the 5 parts and then see how successfully they are brought together within the whole. Part 1 sees a menage a trois et demi (one is wheelchair bound) of literary academics across four European countries pursuing an elusive German author. The writing is deft, sly and charming as the ivory tower academics are gently picked apart in their inadequacies. We are introduced to the author through their various paths towards the obscure author, but increasingly they reach out towards each other, so that conventions and plenaries come to matter less than their time spent in each other's company. Finally they raise their noses from books enough to start making some observations about each other, but in doing so relinquish their hold on the literature. It's not exactly cutting edge as far as themes go, but it is so delightfully done: (on searching for whores during a break in the menage) "Espinoza found them by reading the sex ads in El Pais , which provided a much more reliable and practical service than the newspaper's arts pages". Literary snark.
Part 2 takes a minor character from Part 1, the host academic who receives three of the academics in the increasingly crux locus of the book, Santa Teresa on the Mexican side of the border with the US. The town is ravaged by an unending series of sexual murders on women and this is the backdrop for the host's fears about his own daughter falling victim. However, the chapter first focuses on his estranged wife who goes off with her best friend around Europe in search of a poet, whom they find in an asylum. (Asylums appear as a recurring motif, in Part 1 it was an artist who chopped off his own creative hand, who was consigned). It is touching in places, but she succumbs to a slow death from AIDS. Then we return to the host academic and apart from some ramblings on philosophers through history and an active recreation of a Duchamp piece hanging a book on a washing line so that it is assailed by the elements, there really isn't a lot going for this section.
Part 3 starts off with a Mersault "Mother died today" moment as journalist 'Oscar' Fate has to deal with bereavement even as he takes up a new post within his Afro-American newspaper. He is dispatched to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match with a hot hope American boxer. The whole piece is him hanging out with the locals in a place he doesn't know and in a state of detachment presumably caused by his dislocation both emotional and physical. here lies the problem with this section. It drifts aimlessly to reflect his own purposelessness killing time before the fight. Lots of themes are offered, all left hanging. Be it a history of Marxism and the Black Panther movement, a book by a British Victorian colonialist, the start of a Jerry Springer-like programme which was well rendered but without denouement and snatches of overheard conversation which Fate describes more than once as 'interesting' but moves out of earshot. At one point I thought even the boxing match wasn't going to be resolved, but in fact it was over in the blink of a camera flash. Fate latches on to the murders in the city, but his editor refuses him permission to cover the story. He returns to the US. I found this section the least believable as well. Bolano was trying I believe to reference the American literary tradition, but I just didn't buy it. fate I found hugely uninvolving a character and I just don't think Bolano's forays into American history, such as the Black Panthers, just didn't convince me he was in full control of his material. No asylums here though.
And on to Part 4. The murders. At one point I thought the title "2666" was going to refer to the bodycount. A litany of dead women, names in some cases, clothes, wounds and whether there had been forced sexual activity. Though some of the cases get pinned on lovers and husbands, most are unsolved and closed, because as a page of Mexican male chauvinist jokes makes clear, this is the status women have in such a society. Despite being interspersed with vignettes on the people involved in the investigation, such as policemen, politicians, a US sheriff, the prime suspect and an asylum boss, the chapter reads like the first 10 minutes of every single CSI one after the other. We don't get to read about the other 50 minutes. Now my sources tell me that the Mexico depicted by Bolano is pretty much spot on. The pull of globalisation immediately to the North, has furnished human trafficking (both across the border and the sex trade), drugs and the whole amoral panoply of modern urban life. The delicate trade off between Aztec and Catholic inheritances portrayed beautifully by Octavio Paz, has been swept away by modernity. Magical Realism is dead, long live desultory realism. Bolano offers us an updated version of Latin American literary tradition. Now while this comes through loud and clear, I'm not sure I want to waded through all the murdered women to get there.
And to Part 5. And back to the light touch and charm even though this is set during World War 2 and through the eyes of a German soldier. I didn't always buy the logic of the character, even though I quickly guessed who he was in relation to the earlier parts of the book; for example, how does a boy who barely employs language, end up being moved by all things literary? But I was enchanted by the quirky observations and in answer to if they were 5 discrete novellas, I would buy 1 and 5, but not the intervening 3.
Does the whole thing hang together? There are lots of metaphors for the modern world; death, sex and madness being the obvious ones. In that sense, the book reminded me of Elias Canetti's "Auto Da Fe". But I expected this book from its hype to be the first real breakaway novel of the new century and it ain't. Like Canetti, the book is primarily about books and literature. Well that debate is raging on Twitter and blogs. Bolano clearly wants to present an epic sweep between European, American and Latin American literary traditions, but I think he lets slip his own frustrations, when Archimboldi is described by a critic as German in style and yet also not German, maybe Indochinese, maybe Persian - areas Bolano can't offer insight and commentary on.
I don't know when Bolano conceived this book if he knew he was dying. But certainly in the race against time to complete it, he was concerned with his legacy; 6 pages from the end "The style was strange. The writing was clear and sometimes even transparent, but the way the stories followed one after another didn't lead anywhere; all that was left were the children, the parents... in the end all that was really left was nature." Bolano in his other books seems obsessed with vanished artists, artists who take on new identities, artists in asylums, artists who steal the work of others and make careers (there is a chain of 3 authors to get to Archimboldi's published works). This is all very ho hum, especially when you consider Sam Shepherd did all this in a much more accessible way with the central image of his play "Suicide In B-Flat", wherein all a musician had to do to disappear, or for a lay person to become an artist, was to lie down in the chalk outline of a suicided rock musician and imagine themselves into the relevant identity. It didn't take 900 pages...
892 pages, Picador
Review by Marc Nash
A writer pens 900 pages without hobbits or generations of undead, then he's asking for a huge investment from his readers. A literary work of this length can't rely on the established tropes of genre like vampire lore or fantasy world to speed the reader through sections of the opus, rather we have to work for every scintilla there is to be had.
The note to the first edition mentions that there was serious debate with the dying author whether to release it as 5 novellas, or to keep the integrity of a 900 page novel. However, for the purposes of review, it is useful to break up each of the 5 parts and then see how successfully they are brought together within the whole. Part 1 sees a menage a trois et demi (one is wheelchair bound) of literary academics across four European countries pursuing an elusive German author. The writing is deft, sly and charming as the ivory tower academics are gently picked apart in their inadequacies. We are introduced to the author through their various paths towards the obscure author, but increasingly they reach out towards each other, so that conventions and plenaries come to matter less than their time spent in each other's company. Finally they raise their noses from books enough to start making some observations about each other, but in doing so relinquish their hold on the literature. It's not exactly cutting edge as far as themes go, but it is so delightfully done: (on searching for whores during a break in the menage) "Espinoza found them by reading the sex ads in El Pais , which provided a much more reliable and practical service than the newspaper's arts pages". Literary snark.
Part 2 takes a minor character from Part 1, the host academic who receives three of the academics in the increasingly crux locus of the book, Santa Teresa on the Mexican side of the border with the US. The town is ravaged by an unending series of sexual murders on women and this is the backdrop for the host's fears about his own daughter falling victim. However, the chapter first focuses on his estranged wife who goes off with her best friend around Europe in search of a poet, whom they find in an asylum. (Asylums appear as a recurring motif, in Part 1 it was an artist who chopped off his own creative hand, who was consigned). It is touching in places, but she succumbs to a slow death from AIDS. Then we return to the host academic and apart from some ramblings on philosophers through history and an active recreation of a Duchamp piece hanging a book on a washing line so that it is assailed by the elements, there really isn't a lot going for this section.
Part 3 starts off with a Mersault "Mother died today" moment as journalist 'Oscar' Fate has to deal with bereavement even as he takes up a new post within his Afro-American newspaper. He is dispatched to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match with a hot hope American boxer. The whole piece is him hanging out with the locals in a place he doesn't know and in a state of detachment presumably caused by his dislocation both emotional and physical. here lies the problem with this section. It drifts aimlessly to reflect his own purposelessness killing time before the fight. Lots of themes are offered, all left hanging. Be it a history of Marxism and the Black Panther movement, a book by a British Victorian colonialist, the start of a Jerry Springer-like programme which was well rendered but without denouement and snatches of overheard conversation which Fate describes more than once as 'interesting' but moves out of earshot. At one point I thought even the boxing match wasn't going to be resolved, but in fact it was over in the blink of a camera flash. Fate latches on to the murders in the city, but his editor refuses him permission to cover the story. He returns to the US. I found this section the least believable as well. Bolano was trying I believe to reference the American literary tradition, but I just didn't buy it. fate I found hugely uninvolving a character and I just don't think Bolano's forays into American history, such as the Black Panthers, just didn't convince me he was in full control of his material. No asylums here though.
And on to Part 4. The murders. At one point I thought the title "2666" was going to refer to the bodycount. A litany of dead women, names in some cases, clothes, wounds and whether there had been forced sexual activity. Though some of the cases get pinned on lovers and husbands, most are unsolved and closed, because as a page of Mexican male chauvinist jokes makes clear, this is the status women have in such a society. Despite being interspersed with vignettes on the people involved in the investigation, such as policemen, politicians, a US sheriff, the prime suspect and an asylum boss, the chapter reads like the first 10 minutes of every single CSI one after the other. We don't get to read about the other 50 minutes. Now my sources tell me that the Mexico depicted by Bolano is pretty much spot on. The pull of globalisation immediately to the North, has furnished human trafficking (both across the border and the sex trade), drugs and the whole amoral panoply of modern urban life. The delicate trade off between Aztec and Catholic inheritances portrayed beautifully by Octavio Paz, has been swept away by modernity. Magical Realism is dead, long live desultory realism. Bolano offers us an updated version of Latin American literary tradition. Now while this comes through loud and clear, I'm not sure I want to waded through all the murdered women to get there.
And to Part 5. And back to the light touch and charm even though this is set during World War 2 and through the eyes of a German soldier. I didn't always buy the logic of the character, even though I quickly guessed who he was in relation to the earlier parts of the book; for example, how does a boy who barely employs language, end up being moved by all things literary? But I was enchanted by the quirky observations and in answer to if they were 5 discrete novellas, I would buy 1 and 5, but not the intervening 3.
Does the whole thing hang together? There are lots of metaphors for the modern world; death, sex and madness being the obvious ones. In that sense, the book reminded me of Elias Canetti's "Auto Da Fe". But I expected this book from its hype to be the first real breakaway novel of the new century and it ain't. Like Canetti, the book is primarily about books and literature. Well that debate is raging on Twitter and blogs. Bolano clearly wants to present an epic sweep between European, American and Latin American literary traditions, but I think he lets slip his own frustrations, when Archimboldi is described by a critic as German in style and yet also not German, maybe Indochinese, maybe Persian - areas Bolano can't offer insight and commentary on.
I don't know when Bolano conceived this book if he knew he was dying. But certainly in the race against time to complete it, he was concerned with his legacy; 6 pages from the end "The style was strange. The writing was clear and sometimes even transparent, but the way the stories followed one after another didn't lead anywhere; all that was left were the children, the parents... in the end all that was really left was nature." Bolano in his other books seems obsessed with vanished artists, artists who take on new identities, artists in asylums, artists who steal the work of others and make careers (there is a chain of 3 authors to get to Archimboldi's published works). This is all very ho hum, especially when you consider Sam Shepherd did all this in a much more accessible way with the central image of his play "Suicide In B-Flat", wherein all a musician had to do to disappear, or for a lay person to become an artist, was to lie down in the chalk outline of a suicided rock musician and imagine themselves into the relevant identity. It didn't take 900 pages...
January 31, 2010
THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC
by Richard Russo
Random House, NY 2009
Review by Anthony Barker
Richard Russo writes of ordinary life with consummate skill.
Ordinary life is mostly about marriage and work—the vehicles in which we invest most of our psychic capital, and from which we expect to draw bonuses of ‘meaning’ and ‘satisfaction’ that would stagger a Goldman Sachs director. Well… good luck.
Russo plays with us a bit. A screenwriter and writing professor writing a novel about a professor of screenwriting who wants to write novels, he blithely violates various sacred rules (e.g., beginning the story with main character waking up in the morning.) He changes points of view at his convenience (‘head-hopping’) and thumbs his nose at other ‘no-no’s’ he may actually have preached as a professor. More subtly—the story of screenwriter Jack’s life follows the conventions of movie scripting—the Accord is the ‘treatment’ or ‘concept’—the rest of it, the creation of characters, the continuity, the careful placement of conflicts, the jokes (his mother’s annoying phone calls that pursue him even after her death) and above all, ‘the revelation’ are all part of the ‘working out.’
In work, as in marriage, people bring different gifts. His script-writing partner, Tommy, is better at the ‘the big picture’—but can’t make it happen without Jack, who excels at the ‘working out’. Together they’re good at it, and paid well, but Jack, infected by his mother’s snobbery, can’t help thinking he ought to be writing books.
Jack’s parents were disappointed in life. They thought their Yale PhD’s entitled them to brilliant careers in the Ivy League—or failing that, at some sanctuary of privilege (Northampton? Haverford?) on the East Coast. Instead, they have jobs at a state university in Indiana. What could be more awful, they repeatedly ask, than to live eleven months of the year in ‘the mid-fucking-west’?
It is a question that might evoke some sympathy if they weren’t equally bitter about the rest of their lives. Their colleagues are inferior, their students inadequate, and their marriage (even aside from its competitive infidelities) frightful. Their son is a ‘pill’, boring and irrelevant. The sole redeeming feature of their lives is their annual vacation on Cape Cod. Each year, as they cross the Sagamore Bridge, it seems possible that things might work out—until they must re-cross it in the direction of reality.
Jack can’t stand them, and takes their phone calls in another room to protect his own marriage from their interference.
When they married, his wife bought into his vision. He persuaded her to honeymoon on the Cape, where they crafted The Great Truro Accord, a plan for the lives they thought they wanted, including the writing of books, and a nice home somewhere in New England. Meanwhile they’d work in the film industry and enjoy life in California (far from their families.)
All goes well, but as we should have expected (but didn’t) beneath their happiness, they are unhappy. Jack (who can’t imagine loving one’s parents) cannot understand that Joy misses her family, that she wants to visit them on holidays, that she doesn’t view her father’s offer to ‘help-out’ as interference.
Fast forward to the ‘now’ of the story. No longer a young screenwriter, but a writing professor, Jack has driven from their rural Connecticut home to the Cape, to attend a wedding. He and Joy have had an argument, but she’ll be along later. Afterwards they’ll scatter his father’s ashes.
He’s been schlepping those ashes around for months, unable to decide what to do, or how to do it. They are a reproach to him, stirring reflections on how he and his parents have lived their respective lives. Astonishingly, he has recently seen his wife weeping. She meant to conceal her unhappiness (and he respected her intention by sneaking away unobserved.) But how could she be unhappy? She has created exactly the home and the life they agreed to thirty years before.
Women always have better reasons than men for doing what they do (or at least, reasons which are more persuasive to them.) No matter that a wife may accede to her husband’s wishes, these reasons remain valid, like coals under the ashes, so that all he can gain by reopening a discussion is to risk being burned. True of Jack’s father, it is as true of Jack, although he is too self-centered to notice.
In yet another argument, Joy accuses Jack of being ‘congenitally unhappy’. From this choice of words he guesses that she has recently spoken to his old partner, and suddenly understands that Joy’s ‘meaningless’ flirtation with Tommy, decades before, has had a lifetime of consequences. Griffin never noticed when the game got serious, and as Joy has remained faithful to their marriage and their life plan, he never understood that leaving California, and starting their ‘real’ life was not so much the fulfillment of their dream, but a means of distancing herself from her desire—a choice she might still regret.
She confesses to it, and they separate. The downward spiral that followed his parent’s divorce seems about to be duplicated in Griffin’s life. It is conceivable that by stopping here, and perhaps cutting back on his mother’s phone calls, Russo could have written a French movie—a sort of marital 400 Blows, rueful, ironic, symbolic, the great ‘revelation’ even more agonizing (and no doubt post-mortem.)
Happily, Russo is an American writer. American lives, however ordinary, are in technicolor, and among us, marriage is always followed by ‘happily ever after’. In a spectacular display of comic writing, Russo rescues his characters from their ‘second act complications’, disposes of those pesky ashes, gets their daughter safely married (for now) and brings the old lovers (nursing wounds incurred at a Marx Brother’s wedding rehearsal) back across the Sagamore Bridge to Reality (and the sunset) reconciled to the past, and to each other (more or less.)
It takes a special writer to write ordinary lives.
That Old Cape Magic
Random House, NY 2009
Review by Anthony Barker
Richard Russo writes of ordinary life with consummate skill.
Ordinary life is mostly about marriage and work—the vehicles in which we invest most of our psychic capital, and from which we expect to draw bonuses of ‘meaning’ and ‘satisfaction’ that would stagger a Goldman Sachs director. Well… good luck.
Russo plays with us a bit. A screenwriter and writing professor writing a novel about a professor of screenwriting who wants to write novels, he blithely violates various sacred rules (e.g., beginning the story with main character waking up in the morning.) He changes points of view at his convenience (‘head-hopping’) and thumbs his nose at other ‘no-no’s’ he may actually have preached as a professor. More subtly—the story of screenwriter Jack’s life follows the conventions of movie scripting—the Accord is the ‘treatment’ or ‘concept’—the rest of it, the creation of characters, the continuity, the careful placement of conflicts, the jokes (his mother’s annoying phone calls that pursue him even after her death) and above all, ‘the revelation’ are all part of the ‘working out.’
In work, as in marriage, people bring different gifts. His script-writing partner, Tommy, is better at the ‘the big picture’—but can’t make it happen without Jack, who excels at the ‘working out’. Together they’re good at it, and paid well, but Jack, infected by his mother’s snobbery, can’t help thinking he ought to be writing books.
Jack’s parents were disappointed in life. They thought their Yale PhD’s entitled them to brilliant careers in the Ivy League—or failing that, at some sanctuary of privilege (Northampton? Haverford?) on the East Coast. Instead, they have jobs at a state university in Indiana. What could be more awful, they repeatedly ask, than to live eleven months of the year in ‘the mid-fucking-west’?
It is a question that might evoke some sympathy if they weren’t equally bitter about the rest of their lives. Their colleagues are inferior, their students inadequate, and their marriage (even aside from its competitive infidelities) frightful. Their son is a ‘pill’, boring and irrelevant. The sole redeeming feature of their lives is their annual vacation on Cape Cod. Each year, as they cross the Sagamore Bridge, it seems possible that things might work out—until they must re-cross it in the direction of reality.
Jack can’t stand them, and takes their phone calls in another room to protect his own marriage from their interference.
When they married, his wife bought into his vision. He persuaded her to honeymoon on the Cape, where they crafted The Great Truro Accord, a plan for the lives they thought they wanted, including the writing of books, and a nice home somewhere in New England. Meanwhile they’d work in the film industry and enjoy life in California (far from their families.)
All goes well, but as we should have expected (but didn’t) beneath their happiness, they are unhappy. Jack (who can’t imagine loving one’s parents) cannot understand that Joy misses her family, that she wants to visit them on holidays, that she doesn’t view her father’s offer to ‘help-out’ as interference.
Fast forward to the ‘now’ of the story. No longer a young screenwriter, but a writing professor, Jack has driven from their rural Connecticut home to the Cape, to attend a wedding. He and Joy have had an argument, but she’ll be along later. Afterwards they’ll scatter his father’s ashes.
He’s been schlepping those ashes around for months, unable to decide what to do, or how to do it. They are a reproach to him, stirring reflections on how he and his parents have lived their respective lives. Astonishingly, he has recently seen his wife weeping. She meant to conceal her unhappiness (and he respected her intention by sneaking away unobserved.) But how could she be unhappy? She has created exactly the home and the life they agreed to thirty years before.
Women always have better reasons than men for doing what they do (or at least, reasons which are more persuasive to them.) No matter that a wife may accede to her husband’s wishes, these reasons remain valid, like coals under the ashes, so that all he can gain by reopening a discussion is to risk being burned. True of Jack’s father, it is as true of Jack, although he is too self-centered to notice.
In yet another argument, Joy accuses Jack of being ‘congenitally unhappy’. From this choice of words he guesses that she has recently spoken to his old partner, and suddenly understands that Joy’s ‘meaningless’ flirtation with Tommy, decades before, has had a lifetime of consequences. Griffin never noticed when the game got serious, and as Joy has remained faithful to their marriage and their life plan, he never understood that leaving California, and starting their ‘real’ life was not so much the fulfillment of their dream, but a means of distancing herself from her desire—a choice she might still regret.
She confesses to it, and they separate. The downward spiral that followed his parent’s divorce seems about to be duplicated in Griffin’s life. It is conceivable that by stopping here, and perhaps cutting back on his mother’s phone calls, Russo could have written a French movie—a sort of marital 400 Blows, rueful, ironic, symbolic, the great ‘revelation’ even more agonizing (and no doubt post-mortem.)
Happily, Russo is an American writer. American lives, however ordinary, are in technicolor, and among us, marriage is always followed by ‘happily ever after’. In a spectacular display of comic writing, Russo rescues his characters from their ‘second act complications’, disposes of those pesky ashes, gets their daughter safely married (for now) and brings the old lovers (nursing wounds incurred at a Marx Brother’s wedding rehearsal) back across the Sagamore Bridge to Reality (and the sunset) reconciled to the past, and to each other (more or less.)
It takes a special writer to write ordinary lives.
That Old Cape Magic
January 30, 2010
PASSAGE OF ARMS
by Eric Ambler
256 pages, Vintage reprint, 2004
Review by Maria Bustillos
This is a wonderful book. It’s not as much of a thriller as the more famous A Coffin for Dimitrios or Doctor Frigo, both of which I am really crazy about; Passage of Arms is fantastic in a slightly different way. But first, a little backstory.
Eric Clifford Ambler was born in 1909. He started life as an engineer, and then went to work as a copywriter for an ad agency. His first novel was published in 1936; he was in the Army Film Unit during the war, and worked with Peter Ustinov on “The Way Ahead.”
By 1957 Ambler was in Hollywood, and he stayed there for over a decade, writing scripts, including the script for “A Night to Remember,” and “The Cruel Sea,” for which he received an Oscar nomination. His wedding to fellow screenwriter Joan Harrison was orchestrated by none other than Alfred Hitchcock. And during all this, he managed to invent the modern political thriller. What a man!
Back to Passage of Arms, which was published in 1959, and written, therefore, while the author was in Hollywood, cranking out film scripts. This book could never have been turned into a movie in 1959, because the protagonist is an ambitious Malaysian guy who learns this big, dangerous secret, and there weren’t any movie stars who could have been cast in the role, or any studio that would have even tried looking for one (I wonder if these things were much discussed by Mr. and Mrs. Ambler?)
Anyway, if things go right for our brainy, quiet hero, he will be able to turn his secret into the sizeable chunk of cold hard cash he needs in order to realize his life’s ambition. There are a lot of scary political complications. Also, a ton of very unscrupulous guys are involved in the deal, each of whom can throw a spanner in the works, or worse. Toss into the mix a pompous, exasperatingly narrow-minded American businessman and his shrewd, pleasure-loving wife. What the heck, you’re thinking! This is going to be a catastrophe. So the story is just riveting. The situation is structured quite like a modern thriller, wheels-within-wheels in a way that was really new to the period during which Ambler wrote. And the book delivers on all levels, quietly but very effectively, just qua thriller.
But what I love the most about this book is what I call its Nevil Shute Quotient. As I mentioned last week regarding the novel Independence by Kate Kasserman, it is very appealing to read a book with very detailed descriptions of arcane subjects. Descriptions amounting almost to a series of instruction manuals. Nevil Shute was a master of this rare skill; he was a kind of precursor to Tom Clancy and John Le Carré, with their very thorough descriptions of sophisticated weapons systems and clever espionage techniques. But Shute, in novels like A Town Called Alice, turned the focus of his observation to quite a disparate range of topics: business considerations involved in opening an ice-cream parlor in the middle of the Australian outback, for instance. The making of a pair of shoes by hand. The courtship methods liable to be employed by a shy, awkward former POW. What you get with a great Nevil Shute novel is not a police procedural so much as a Life Procedural. It is in just this way that Passage of Arms shines brightest. Every time you have a bizarre little question, e.g. –why would the canisters be sealed that way? –what kind of wax did they use, and how come?–you will find it answered in the most elegant, compact and engaging style. This, together with the classic charms of a thrilling tale well-told, make Ambler’s books the best possible source of “a few hours' relaxation, or to while away the tedium of a journey,” in Maugham’s memorable phrase.
256 pages, Vintage reprint, 2004
Review by Maria Bustillos
This is a wonderful book. It’s not as much of a thriller as the more famous A Coffin for Dimitrios or Doctor Frigo, both of which I am really crazy about; Passage of Arms is fantastic in a slightly different way. But first, a little backstory.
Eric Clifford Ambler was born in 1909. He started life as an engineer, and then went to work as a copywriter for an ad agency. His first novel was published in 1936; he was in the Army Film Unit during the war, and worked with Peter Ustinov on “The Way Ahead.”
By 1957 Ambler was in Hollywood, and he stayed there for over a decade, writing scripts, including the script for “A Night to Remember,” and “The Cruel Sea,” for which he received an Oscar nomination. His wedding to fellow screenwriter Joan Harrison was orchestrated by none other than Alfred Hitchcock. And during all this, he managed to invent the modern political thriller. What a man!
Back to Passage of Arms, which was published in 1959, and written, therefore, while the author was in Hollywood, cranking out film scripts. This book could never have been turned into a movie in 1959, because the protagonist is an ambitious Malaysian guy who learns this big, dangerous secret, and there weren’t any movie stars who could have been cast in the role, or any studio that would have even tried looking for one (I wonder if these things were much discussed by Mr. and Mrs. Ambler?)
Anyway, if things go right for our brainy, quiet hero, he will be able to turn his secret into the sizeable chunk of cold hard cash he needs in order to realize his life’s ambition. There are a lot of scary political complications. Also, a ton of very unscrupulous guys are involved in the deal, each of whom can throw a spanner in the works, or worse. Toss into the mix a pompous, exasperatingly narrow-minded American businessman and his shrewd, pleasure-loving wife. What the heck, you’re thinking! This is going to be a catastrophe. So the story is just riveting. The situation is structured quite like a modern thriller, wheels-within-wheels in a way that was really new to the period during which Ambler wrote. And the book delivers on all levels, quietly but very effectively, just qua thriller.
But what I love the most about this book is what I call its Nevil Shute Quotient. As I mentioned last week regarding the novel Independence by Kate Kasserman, it is very appealing to read a book with very detailed descriptions of arcane subjects. Descriptions amounting almost to a series of instruction manuals. Nevil Shute was a master of this rare skill; he was a kind of precursor to Tom Clancy and John Le Carré, with their very thorough descriptions of sophisticated weapons systems and clever espionage techniques. But Shute, in novels like A Town Called Alice, turned the focus of his observation to quite a disparate range of topics: business considerations involved in opening an ice-cream parlor in the middle of the Australian outback, for instance. The making of a pair of shoes by hand. The courtship methods liable to be employed by a shy, awkward former POW. What you get with a great Nevil Shute novel is not a police procedural so much as a Life Procedural. It is in just this way that Passage of Arms shines brightest. Every time you have a bizarre little question, e.g. –why would the canisters be sealed that way? –what kind of wax did they use, and how come?–you will find it answered in the most elegant, compact and engaging style. This, together with the classic charms of a thrilling tale well-told, make Ambler’s books the best possible source of “a few hours' relaxation, or to while away the tedium of a journey,” in Maugham’s memorable phrase.
January 29, 2010
COUNTESS OF SCANDAL
by Laurel McKee
368 pages, Grand Central Publishing--Historical Romance
Review by Kwana Jackson
I was thrilled when the mailman dropped off a surprise package of ARC’s from Hatchette Books and not just a pile of bills during a recent mail drop. And I was even more thrilled when in that batch was an ARC of Countess of Scandal by Laurel McKee. Full disclosure here: I had been looking forward to reading Countess of Scandal, since I’m a friend and fan of Laurel’s alter ego, author Amanda McCabe.
Here is the blurb for Countess of Scandal, which is book 1 in the Daughters of Erin Trilogy:
As children, Eliza Blacknall and William Denton ran wild over the fields of southern Ireland and swore they would be friends forever. Then fate took Will away to England, while Eliza stayed behind to become a proper Irish countess.
Years later, Will finally makes his way home-as an English soldier sent to crush the Irish uprising. When he spies the lovely Eliza, he is captivated by the passionate woman she has become. But Eliza's passions have led her to join the Irish rebel cause, and Will and Eliza now find themselves on opposite sides of a dangerous conflict.
When Ireland explodes in bloody rebellion, Will's regiment is ordered to the front lines, and he is forced to choose between his duty to the English king and his love for Eliza and their Irish homeland.
Now Ireland during a bloody rebellion may not seem like the most romantic setting for a book, but Ms. McKee did a wonderful job weaving romance and heartbreak with tenderness and beauty in this sweeping story.
Eliza is a strong-willed heroine brought up in privilege, but with a heart softened by patriotism and an intense compassion for her poor Irish countrymen. She also has a love for Will, the second son of an aristocrat who is bound by duty to his family and to England. He’s called to fight against the Irish rebels even though it means going against Eliza’s wishes and losing her love.
The story picks up when Will and Eliza meet again five years after Will bought a commission in the army despite Eliza’s feelings against it. Eliza is now grown and a widow, working in secret for the rebels, and Will is a major in the army representing everything that Eliza is fighting against. The trouble is, she can’t fully hate Will even as she tries so hard to.
Will is torn. He knows caring for Eliza is dangerous but he can’t help himself. He never stopped loving her and seeing her again only fuels the fire. Besides she needs him to keep her safe. Things are becoming more dangerous than ever and it’s no longer a secret what Eliza is up to as Will discovers she’s being watched by more than just him. He feels he has to get her to listen to reason and stop what she’s doing; all the while, Eliza is campaigning to get Will to see her way of things.
It seems the two can only agree on one thing, how passionately they love each other, both in the bedroom and out. They are a well matched pair. Will, the dashing solder, strong and determined, and Eliza, the beautiful Countess, but equally as strong and determined.
There are tense moments of intrigue and scary scenes of war, when the lovers and their families are running for their lives--a twist you don’t normally see in romances, but which I enjoyed, as it brought grounding and realism to the story.
There was also a very nice set-up for the next two books in the series, as there are many more battles to fight and Eliza has two other sisters, Anna and Caroline, to round out the trilogy.
I look forward to the next book in the series Duchess of Sin.
You can read more about The Daughters of Erin and Countess of Scandal here at: http://ammandamccabe.com/mckee/index.htm
All the best,
Kwana
368 pages, Grand Central Publishing--Historical Romance
Review by Kwana Jackson
I was thrilled when the mailman dropped off a surprise package of ARC’s from Hatchette Books and not just a pile of bills during a recent mail drop. And I was even more thrilled when in that batch was an ARC of Countess of Scandal by Laurel McKee. Full disclosure here: I had been looking forward to reading Countess of Scandal, since I’m a friend and fan of Laurel’s alter ego, author Amanda McCabe.
Here is the blurb for Countess of Scandal, which is book 1 in the Daughters of Erin Trilogy:
As children, Eliza Blacknall and William Denton ran wild over the fields of southern Ireland and swore they would be friends forever. Then fate took Will away to England, while Eliza stayed behind to become a proper Irish countess.
Years later, Will finally makes his way home-as an English soldier sent to crush the Irish uprising. When he spies the lovely Eliza, he is captivated by the passionate woman she has become. But Eliza's passions have led her to join the Irish rebel cause, and Will and Eliza now find themselves on opposite sides of a dangerous conflict.
When Ireland explodes in bloody rebellion, Will's regiment is ordered to the front lines, and he is forced to choose between his duty to the English king and his love for Eliza and their Irish homeland.
Now Ireland during a bloody rebellion may not seem like the most romantic setting for a book, but Ms. McKee did a wonderful job weaving romance and heartbreak with tenderness and beauty in this sweeping story.
Eliza is a strong-willed heroine brought up in privilege, but with a heart softened by patriotism and an intense compassion for her poor Irish countrymen. She also has a love for Will, the second son of an aristocrat who is bound by duty to his family and to England. He’s called to fight against the Irish rebels even though it means going against Eliza’s wishes and losing her love.
The story picks up when Will and Eliza meet again five years after Will bought a commission in the army despite Eliza’s feelings against it. Eliza is now grown and a widow, working in secret for the rebels, and Will is a major in the army representing everything that Eliza is fighting against. The trouble is, she can’t fully hate Will even as she tries so hard to.
Will is torn. He knows caring for Eliza is dangerous but he can’t help himself. He never stopped loving her and seeing her again only fuels the fire. Besides she needs him to keep her safe. Things are becoming more dangerous than ever and it’s no longer a secret what Eliza is up to as Will discovers she’s being watched by more than just him. He feels he has to get her to listen to reason and stop what she’s doing; all the while, Eliza is campaigning to get Will to see her way of things.
It seems the two can only agree on one thing, how passionately they love each other, both in the bedroom and out. They are a well matched pair. Will, the dashing solder, strong and determined, and Eliza, the beautiful Countess, but equally as strong and determined.
There are tense moments of intrigue and scary scenes of war, when the lovers and their families are running for their lives--a twist you don’t normally see in romances, but which I enjoyed, as it brought grounding and realism to the story.
There was also a very nice set-up for the next two books in the series, as there are many more battles to fight and Eliza has two other sisters, Anna and Caroline, to round out the trilogy.
I look forward to the next book in the series Duchess of Sin.
You can read more about The Daughters of Erin and Countess of Scandal here at: http://ammandamccabe.com/mckee/index.htm
All the best,
Kwana
January 28, 2010
NOTHING TO LOSE
by Lee Child
531 pages, Dell
Review by Kate Kasserman
Okay, I am seriously bummed that this is the first Lee Child Jack Reacher vehicle I’m reviewing here, because Nothing to Lose is by far the weakest entry in the series so far (NTL is #12 – I have not yet read #13, Gone Tomorrow, but I hope it proves to be a return to form, and I will certainly give it a shot).
And I am wondering whether its flaws are ALL MY FAULT.
No, truly. Because I like Jack Reacher, and I like Jack Reacher stories. A lot of people do. He is hugely popular. And that places a pretty high burden on the author – both hard pressure (publisher: GIVE ME MONEY-MAKING PRODUCT, Child!) and soft (the great masses: we’re all waaaaaaaiting, Leeeeeee!). Nothing to Lose shows every sign of being too hastily assembled and insufficiently edited. Maddeningly, I can see the raw elements of what makes a fun Reacher book, but they just haven’t quite been smoothed out. And the seams really show.
One small example: okay, in a genre pulp thriller (which is what these ALMOST universally tasty morsels are), it is more the rule than the exception that you have to roll with some implausibilities and some “my goodness, somebody remembered to take their stupid-pills today for SURE” moments. The trick lies in making these painless. Here, we get some that approximate more closely a Civil War battlefield amputation. In this scene, Reacher has just been informed that an unknown girl, also a stranger in these parts, very, very much wants to talk to him and will be looking for him at the one diner in town. So he heads to the diner, with no other purpose than to find out what the girl wants. He scopes out the scene:
The diner was all lit up inside and three booths were occupied. A guy on his own, a young woman on her own, two guys together.
So, he talks to the young woman, right? No. No, he does not. He keeps hunting, hunting, hunting for this mystery girl.
The sidewalks close to the diner were deserted. No girls hanging around. No girls watching who was going in and coming out. No girls leaning on walls.
What about the single solitary girl in the booth in the diner where you’re supposed to meet a girl?
No girls hiding in the shadows.
YES BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GIRL IN THE DINER???
So Reacher waits for like about twelve billion years without seeing a girl come in or wander past before he figures out that the girl sitting in the diner is probably the girl in the diner he wants. The scene, to be fair, serves an ostensible purpose: Reacher realizes he’s busy thinking that everyone would treat the problem of “meet a stranger in a diner” the way he would – sneakily, relentlessly – while in fact ordinary people do something a little more pragmatic, like “if I want to meet someone in a diner, I will sit at that diner and wait.” But oh my heavens, I found it difficult to swallow that he would be quite so dumb.
And much of the book goeth thusly. People are just a bit too stupid, villains a bit too central-casting, coincidences a bit too contrived, motivations a bit too forced. A couple of very minor irritants I had noticed cropping up in earlier books are also more clearly visible here: the author is kind of in love with his creation Reacher (and ya know I can’t really blame him for this, because so am I, but still . . .), and he shows a curious lapse every now and then into preachiness. Now, I don’t object to authors having political views nor to these views inflecting or even being a direct part of authors’ works. Nor do I have to agree with those views in the slightest – Mishima fan here! FURTHER YET, if I were at a dinner party with Lee Child, and he started spouting off the views he’s pushed in his books, I would say “right on, brother!” to most, although not all, of them. And yet – they just come across as grating and tacked-on, like a product placement, in a Jack Reacher novel somehow. (Has anyone else noticed that the title of the book where he was pushing PETA has the acronym BLT? Hee hee . . .)
So, ’nuff of that. I would feel guilty to the core if I didn’t talk at least a little about what makes Reacher so flipping awesome as a character. Especially after slagging him off for his loboto-moment at the diner. We do ever so much love that solitary one-man balance-restoring machine: the avenging/defending cowboy, the (reasonably) honorable ronin, “you’re a good cop but ya just don’t follow the rules,” etc. etc. As long as he’s competent…and as long as he’s In The Right.
So Army-trained sharpshooter MP turned Establishment-rejecting nomad-with-principles Reacher is solidly inside this type and this genre, which would probably be enough on its own to make him reasonably popular; but what elevates him to particular interest, in my view, is Child’s wonderful knack for detailing Reacher’s highly concrete, almost grinding thought processes. Reacher ain’t quick, but he’s solid, he’s acutely observant, he’s relentless, and he will inevitably get there. That Reacher’s perceptions are so sharp and so tangible places us in a viscerally felt physical world – yes, even in this particular book! And tagging along with Reacher’s mind as he chews his way through the evidence and what is in most novels of the series (not this particular one) a well-drawn cast of secondary and tertiary characters is both fascinating and, in its way, in part because of its thoroughness I suppose, seductive.
Well, but anyway, if you aren’t familiar with the series, this isn’t the book to start with. This is a book largely, I think, for completists. Of course, if you start off at the beginning and get hooked, you may turn into one of those. And then you’ll be in the same boat as I am: hoping, hoping, hoping that we haven’t flogged Lee Child to prostration with our merciless love and that Reacher #13 gets its oomph back!
531 pages, Dell
Review by Kate Kasserman
Okay, I am seriously bummed that this is the first Lee Child Jack Reacher vehicle I’m reviewing here, because Nothing to Lose is by far the weakest entry in the series so far (NTL is #12 – I have not yet read #13, Gone Tomorrow, but I hope it proves to be a return to form, and I will certainly give it a shot).
And I am wondering whether its flaws are ALL MY FAULT.
No, truly. Because I like Jack Reacher, and I like Jack Reacher stories. A lot of people do. He is hugely popular. And that places a pretty high burden on the author – both hard pressure (publisher: GIVE ME MONEY-MAKING PRODUCT, Child!) and soft (the great masses: we’re all waaaaaaaiting, Leeeeeee!). Nothing to Lose shows every sign of being too hastily assembled and insufficiently edited. Maddeningly, I can see the raw elements of what makes a fun Reacher book, but they just haven’t quite been smoothed out. And the seams really show.
One small example: okay, in a genre pulp thriller (which is what these ALMOST universally tasty morsels are), it is more the rule than the exception that you have to roll with some implausibilities and some “my goodness, somebody remembered to take their stupid-pills today for SURE” moments. The trick lies in making these painless. Here, we get some that approximate more closely a Civil War battlefield amputation. In this scene, Reacher has just been informed that an unknown girl, also a stranger in these parts, very, very much wants to talk to him and will be looking for him at the one diner in town. So he heads to the diner, with no other purpose than to find out what the girl wants. He scopes out the scene:
The diner was all lit up inside and three booths were occupied. A guy on his own, a young woman on her own, two guys together.
So, he talks to the young woman, right? No. No, he does not. He keeps hunting, hunting, hunting for this mystery girl.
The sidewalks close to the diner were deserted. No girls hanging around. No girls watching who was going in and coming out. No girls leaning on walls.
What about the single solitary girl in the booth in the diner where you’re supposed to meet a girl?
No girls hiding in the shadows.
YES BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GIRL IN THE DINER???
So Reacher waits for like about twelve billion years without seeing a girl come in or wander past before he figures out that the girl sitting in the diner is probably the girl in the diner he wants. The scene, to be fair, serves an ostensible purpose: Reacher realizes he’s busy thinking that everyone would treat the problem of “meet a stranger in a diner” the way he would – sneakily, relentlessly – while in fact ordinary people do something a little more pragmatic, like “if I want to meet someone in a diner, I will sit at that diner and wait.” But oh my heavens, I found it difficult to swallow that he would be quite so dumb.
And much of the book goeth thusly. People are just a bit too stupid, villains a bit too central-casting, coincidences a bit too contrived, motivations a bit too forced. A couple of very minor irritants I had noticed cropping up in earlier books are also more clearly visible here: the author is kind of in love with his creation Reacher (and ya know I can’t really blame him for this, because so am I, but still . . .), and he shows a curious lapse every now and then into preachiness. Now, I don’t object to authors having political views nor to these views inflecting or even being a direct part of authors’ works. Nor do I have to agree with those views in the slightest – Mishima fan here! FURTHER YET, if I were at a dinner party with Lee Child, and he started spouting off the views he’s pushed in his books, I would say “right on, brother!” to most, although not all, of them. And yet – they just come across as grating and tacked-on, like a product placement, in a Jack Reacher novel somehow. (Has anyone else noticed that the title of the book where he was pushing PETA has the acronym BLT? Hee hee . . .)
So, ’nuff of that. I would feel guilty to the core if I didn’t talk at least a little about what makes Reacher so flipping awesome as a character. Especially after slagging him off for his loboto-moment at the diner. We do ever so much love that solitary one-man balance-restoring machine: the avenging/defending cowboy, the (reasonably) honorable ronin, “you’re a good cop but ya just don’t follow the rules,” etc. etc. As long as he’s competent…and as long as he’s In The Right.
So Army-trained sharpshooter MP turned Establishment-rejecting nomad-with-principles Reacher is solidly inside this type and this genre, which would probably be enough on its own to make him reasonably popular; but what elevates him to particular interest, in my view, is Child’s wonderful knack for detailing Reacher’s highly concrete, almost grinding thought processes. Reacher ain’t quick, but he’s solid, he’s acutely observant, he’s relentless, and he will inevitably get there. That Reacher’s perceptions are so sharp and so tangible places us in a viscerally felt physical world – yes, even in this particular book! And tagging along with Reacher’s mind as he chews his way through the evidence and what is in most novels of the series (not this particular one) a well-drawn cast of secondary and tertiary characters is both fascinating and, in its way, in part because of its thoroughness I suppose, seductive.
Well, but anyway, if you aren’t familiar with the series, this isn’t the book to start with. This is a book largely, I think, for completists. Of course, if you start off at the beginning and get hooked, you may turn into one of those. And then you’ll be in the same boat as I am: hoping, hoping, hoping that we haven’t flogged Lee Child to prostration with our merciless love and that Reacher #13 gets its oomph back!
January 27, 2010
THE LOST SYMBOL
by Dan Brown
528 pages, Doubleday Books
Review by S.F. Winser
“Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing [and] frequent action...”
-Wikipedia
In a thriller, the protagonist should not arrive in a building in Chapter 6 and only make it to the sub-basement of the same building in Chapter 36 unless every second room is full of aliens.
In 'The Lost Symbol', the protagonist arrives in the Statuary Hall of the US Capitol Building in chapter six and doesn't actually see inside the Capitol's sub-basement until chapter thirty-six. I could have hobbled there on my knees more quickly than I read those thirty chapters. (Thirty chapters!) I could have been dragged quicker. I could have attempted to crawl there using only my lips and it would have still been a close race.
This is not a thriller. It's a plodder. A limper.
There is more.
I could go into the dialogue cribbed from the driest encylopaedia in the world. I could also go deeper into Dan Brown's seeming belief that every college-student in the world is a naive moron who exists only to ask the right stupid question of his brilliant protagonist at the right time in a vain attempt to hide yet more bloody boring exposition.
I could savage the continual over-use of flashbacks (You can't claim that the story 'takes place over the space of twelve-hours', as the book's blurb does, and then have about a third of the action occur in many, many flashbacks spaced throughout the entire book. You get a couple of flashbacks – not enough to fill out a novella in their own right).
We could explore the mixed-up subtextual comments on religion and politics that will miss their intended audience by the height of the Washington Monument – when they're kept straight, that is.
I could wax lyrical about the mounting evidence of Dan Brown's complete inability to tell science from pseudoscience (Oh my goodness, I hate to think what Dan Brown must be doing for the scientific literacy of the population of the world!). This would make a few paragraphs all on their own. Trust me.
I don't think I could say much about the really boring and underwhelming 'reveal' at the end. It's boring. It's underwhelming. The shock at how much the twist sucks should not be the greatest shock in the book. That's all there is to say.
But, as Kurt Vonnegut Jr. said: “Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." So, to prevent total ruination of my shiny breastplate with softserve-induced rust, I must admit: I still had some fun reading this. There were some moments of excitement and the odd twist I didn't spot ahead of time. And.... Ummm... That's the best I can do. Sorry, Kurt. Sorry, Dan. I even kind of enjoyed 'The Da Vinci Code' but 'The Lost Symbol' isn't even that level of fun trash. This is a sad book. It left me sad that it'll be the only book many people read in a year. All I can hope is that they got more enjoyment out of it than I did.
528 pages, Doubleday Books
Review by S.F. Winser
“Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing [and] frequent action...”
-Wikipedia
In a thriller, the protagonist should not arrive in a building in Chapter 6 and only make it to the sub-basement of the same building in Chapter 36 unless every second room is full of aliens.
In 'The Lost Symbol', the protagonist arrives in the Statuary Hall of the US Capitol Building in chapter six and doesn't actually see inside the Capitol's sub-basement until chapter thirty-six. I could have hobbled there on my knees more quickly than I read those thirty chapters. (Thirty chapters!) I could have been dragged quicker. I could have attempted to crawl there using only my lips and it would have still been a close race.
This is not a thriller. It's a plodder. A limper.
There is more.
I could go into the dialogue cribbed from the driest encylopaedia in the world. I could also go deeper into Dan Brown's seeming belief that every college-student in the world is a naive moron who exists only to ask the right stupid question of his brilliant protagonist at the right time in a vain attempt to hide yet more bloody boring exposition.
I could savage the continual over-use of flashbacks (You can't claim that the story 'takes place over the space of twelve-hours', as the book's blurb does, and then have about a third of the action occur in many, many flashbacks spaced throughout the entire book. You get a couple of flashbacks – not enough to fill out a novella in their own right).
We could explore the mixed-up subtextual comments on religion and politics that will miss their intended audience by the height of the Washington Monument – when they're kept straight, that is.
I could wax lyrical about the mounting evidence of Dan Brown's complete inability to tell science from pseudoscience (Oh my goodness, I hate to think what Dan Brown must be doing for the scientific literacy of the population of the world!). This would make a few paragraphs all on their own. Trust me.
I don't think I could say much about the really boring and underwhelming 'reveal' at the end. It's boring. It's underwhelming. The shock at how much the twist sucks should not be the greatest shock in the book. That's all there is to say.
But, as Kurt Vonnegut Jr. said: “Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." So, to prevent total ruination of my shiny breastplate with softserve-induced rust, I must admit: I still had some fun reading this. There were some moments of excitement and the odd twist I didn't spot ahead of time. And.... Ummm... That's the best I can do. Sorry, Kurt. Sorry, Dan. I even kind of enjoyed 'The Da Vinci Code' but 'The Lost Symbol' isn't even that level of fun trash. This is a sad book. It left me sad that it'll be the only book many people read in a year. All I can hope is that they got more enjoyment out of it than I did.
January 26, 2010
CHOLESTEROL DOWN
10 Simple Steps to Lower Your Cholesterol in 4 Weeks –Without Prescription Drugs
by Janet Bond Brill, Ph.D., R.D., LDN
336 pages, Three Rivers Press
Review by Melissa Conway
It’s going to be impossible to write this review without basically giving away the author’s “simple” steps, but if you’re like me, you’ll prefer to get the book anyway to read the science behind her recommendations rather than blindly follow a list of things to do that will purportedly lower your cholesterol.
I chose ‘Cholesterol Down’ because I found I needed a book on the subject after my latest check-up.
My family physician, we’ll call him Dr. Nice, turned over the paper that had my blood results on it and drew a cylinder shape.
“This is your artery,” he said.
Then he launched into a lecture on how cholesterol affects the heart—as his pen made squiggly circles until the cylinder representing my artery was completely blacked out. I listened intently, even though he spoke as if I were a simpleton unaware that naughty, sticky bits of cholesterol liked to hang out in people’s arteries and party until the host dies.
“Your LDL cholesterol is at 136, but it should be below 100. I want you to go on Simvastatin.”
I shook my head. “I’d rather try and get it down through diet and exercise.”
He shook his head right back. “High LDL is hereditary. You wouldn’t believe how many of my patients tried to get it under control through diet. They all failed. You may be low risk now, but in ten years, you’re going to have a heart attack.”
After he gave me a brief rundown on the possible side-effects of Simvastatin, I was even more determined to diet it out. We eventually agreed that I would get six months to try, and to seal the deal, Dr. Nice wrote out a lab slip for me to get my blood drawn this July.
Turns out, according to Dr. Janet Brill, the author of ‘Cholesterol Down,’ it will only take 4 weeks. The question is: how pleasant are those four weeks (and the rest of your life) going to be? The answer depends on your definition of “simple.”
I’m a woman in my mid-forties who is already on a self-imposed, life-long restricted-calorie diet and exercise plan just to stay within the healthy weight range for my age. One of the ways I’ve managed to stick to it is to skip breakfast (ignores the collective gasp of outrage from the audience—“That’s the MOST IMPORTANT MEAL!!!”). To assuage my feelings of deprivation, I usually eat what I like. I happen to like a lot of healthy foods, but unfortunately my favorites do not generally include oatmeal, flax seeds, beans, peas, lentils, apples, almonds, Metamucil or soy protein. Garlic I can handle, but not a whole stinkin’ clove every day. Speaking of “stinkin’,” all that extra fiber has me gripped with anticipation as to what its effect on my gastrointestinal system will be (Dr. Brill recommends, rather obviously, that I introduce it slowly).
She wants me to add these items to my diet, but there’s a decided lack of information in the book on what I should leave OUT to make room for it. Presumably, anything that does not fall within the category of scientifically-proven-to-reduce-LDL-cholesterol is fair game. It would have made it easier for me if the book identified foods that raise LDL, and are therefore from now until death off-limits. (fast-food is bad, we all know it, but what’s the worst of the worst, and do I happen to be addicted to it?).
Dr. Brill’s program is all about the foods she considers to be best, on several fronts, at getting that LDL down. She doesn’t cover foods that may be less effective over-all, but which would do the job palatably.
During my subsequent search for LDL-lowering foods that I might actually enjoy consuming in large quantities on a daily basis, I came across several candidates in Jonny Bowden’s ‘The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,’ including avocados, artichokes, blueberries, cinnamon, tea, grape/noni/pomegranate juice and even red wine (no more than one glass a day). While I was choking down my bowl of lentils and browsing through the book, I came upon a quote from Bowden: “LDL is only a problem in the body when it’s oxidized.”
Hm.
Dr. Brill, too, made reference to oxidized LDL in ‘Cholesterol Down,’ pointing to antioxidant consumption as the way to prevent it. She describes LDL, or low-density-lipoprotein, as “the chief cholesterol carrier in the blood, ferrying approximately 70 percent of all the blood cholesterol around the network of arteries,” which made me wonder: if LDL is obviously necessary, what makes too much of it so bad?
Apparently, it’s got a bad rep because, “high levels of circulating LDL have been linked to an increased risk for atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.” Doc Brill says there’ve been lots of studies showing that people who have heart disease also have high LDL, and vice verse. No one knows exactly why that is or how the levels get high in the first place. Brill quotes a popular hypothesis that there’s a shortage of LDL receptors in the liver, which would normally help clear it from the bloodstream.
Notice, however, we’re not talking about high levels of oxidized LDL. So how can my doctor tell if my LDL is oxidized? What if my LDL, elevated or not, is perfectly harmless LDL just trying to do its job and shuttle my various forms of cholesterol around? Is there a correlation between high levels and oxidation?
I’m a stubborn cuss, and when I find what I perceive to be an inconsistency, I tend to run with it, so I hit the Internet (with all its information, misinformation and everything in between) to see if I could get answers. Right away I found some interesting stuff. In his blog ‘Whole Health Source,’ biochemist Stephen Guyenet posted an article* where he says, “oxLDL (oxidized LDL) is formed when the lipids in LDL particles react with oxygen and break down. This happens specifically to the unsaturated fats in LDL, because saturated fats, by their chemical nature, are very resistant to oxidative damage. Polyunsaturated fats are much more susceptible to oxidative damage than saturated or monounsaturated fats. Linoleic acid (the omega-6 fatty acid found abundantly in industrial seed oils) is the main polyunsaturated fatty acid in LDL.”
I’m a layperson, but it sounds like he’s pointing the finger at polyunsaturated fats, like the kind one would find in the hot, salty, crunchy-on-the-outside, squishy-on-the-inside goodness of a McDonald’s French fry, an admitted indulgence of mine. The “very resistant to oxidative damage” saturated fats are found mostly in meat and dairy products.
Wait a minute. That would seem to make eating saturated fats desirable, but aren’t they a no-no?
Dr. Brill says yes. “Ingestion of dietary cholesterol, saturated fat, and trans fat has unhealthy consequences. These foods suppress the manufacturing of cholesterol-clearing liver receptors and raise your ‘bad’ cholesterol level.”
Danish researcher Uffe Ravnskov says no. On his website**, he says, “The idea that too much animal fat and high cholesterol are dangerous to your heart and vessels is nothing but a myth.” In his forward for Dr. Ravnskov’s book, ‘Fat and Cholesterol are GOOD for you,' Kilmer S. McCully, MD, says “Ravnskov systematically demolishes the cholesterol myth by a detailed analysis of the results of research by investigators world-wide. This analysis explains the fallacies of the cholesterol hypothesis and why pharmaceutical companies and the food industry have profited handsomely from this outmoded and disproved theory.”
Huh?!
So the studies Dr. Brill cites in her book, the entire basis for my doctor trying to put me on statin medication, the well-established “truth” that cholesterol is bad…the whole shebang is being challenged? The last thing I expected when I began reading and researching was to find this whole rogue group of doctors and scientists (the medical majority call them “crack-pots”) who, despite being immediately shunned, have gone against the medical majority (the dissenting doctors and scientists call them “deluded by Big Pharma”) on the cause and treatment of heart disease.
I don’t want to delve any more deeply into THAT, because I’m the least qualified person to say who’s right and who’s wrong or whether there’s a happy grey zone. But because I don’t think I’ve complicated matters enough, let’s talk about niacin, or vitamin B3. Nowhere in her book does Dr. Brill mention it. And why should she? Well, according to Shari Leiberman and Nancy Bruning in ‘The Real Vitamin & Mineral Book,’ “There is no drug that is as effective as niacin for treating elevated blood lipids.”
Apparently, I can lower my LDL by “5-15 percent” just by taking niacin, a humble, non-toxic coenzyme essential to “maintain healthy skin and a properly functioning gastrointestinal tract and nervous system.”
In addition to niacin, I found a new clinical trial*** that will hopefully provide an answer to whether an associated link between low levels of vitamin D and high levels of small LDL can be validated as a “cause-and-effect” relationship. Dr. John Cannell, on his website vitamindcouncil.org, says, “Current research has implicated vitamin D deficiency as a major factor in the pathology of at least 17 varieties of cancer as well as heart disease, stroke, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, depression, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, muscle wasting, birth defects, periodontal disease, and more. His colleague, Dr. Michael F. Holick, says, “We estimate that vitamin D deficiency is the most common medical condition in the world.”
From the deep recesses of my mind, I also retrieved a memory about an association between coffee and cholesterol. Studies to date show conflicting results, but it looks like decaff might raise bad cholesterol. Regular coffee might, too, but the fatty acids allegedly responsible can be filtered out by using a paper filter in the brewing process.****
It’s obvious Dr. Brill’s plan doesn’t contain ALL of the dietary options for lowering cholesterol. She’s presented “a clear, practical, drug-free cholesterol-lowering plan based on solid scientific research,” but of the recommended LDL-lowerers in ‘Cholesterol Down,’ plant sterols and soy protein gave me pause. Both substances have detractors with arguments just as heated as the one between Dr. Ravnskov’s ilk and the establishment. Dr. Brill does address some of the negatives (too numerous to list here) in the book, but goes ahead and advises we include those substances anyway, which I won't.
As a person smack-dab in the middle of the author’s target audience, I can attest to the book’s readability and to Dr. Brill’s evident sincerity. She wants to help prevent heart attacks, and she’s showing her readers one way to do it without throwing a handful of pills (and the long list of resultant side-effects) at it. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to incorporate her entire program while sticking to my 1600-calorie-a-day diet (the oatmeal, lentils, apple, flax seeds and almonds alone sucked up a whopping 600 of my precious daily allotment). What I am going to do is increase my exercise, avoid greasy junk/fast food, increase my fiber, avoid decaffeinated coffee and choose more often the heart-healthy foods I’ve identified (in Brill’s book and elsewhere). I will also take niacin (in small doses throughout the day to avoid the “niacin flush,” an interesting and harmless little side-effect that demonstrates niacin’s strong influence over blood vessels).
Finally, I’m going to have to reserve judgment on the efficacy of my chosen strategy (and on ‘Cholesterol Down’) until after a certain blood test this coming July.
* http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/07/diet-heart-hypothesis-oxidized-ldl-part.html
** http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm
*** http://newswire.rockefeller.edu/?page=engine&id=1023
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_and_health
by Janet Bond Brill, Ph.D., R.D., LDN
336 pages, Three Rivers Press
Review by Melissa Conway
It’s going to be impossible to write this review without basically giving away the author’s “simple” steps, but if you’re like me, you’ll prefer to get the book anyway to read the science behind her recommendations rather than blindly follow a list of things to do that will purportedly lower your cholesterol.
I chose ‘Cholesterol Down’ because I found I needed a book on the subject after my latest check-up.
My family physician, we’ll call him Dr. Nice, turned over the paper that had my blood results on it and drew a cylinder shape.
“This is your artery,” he said.
Then he launched into a lecture on how cholesterol affects the heart—as his pen made squiggly circles until the cylinder representing my artery was completely blacked out. I listened intently, even though he spoke as if I were a simpleton unaware that naughty, sticky bits of cholesterol liked to hang out in people’s arteries and party until the host dies.
“Your LDL cholesterol is at 136, but it should be below 100. I want you to go on Simvastatin.”
I shook my head. “I’d rather try and get it down through diet and exercise.”
He shook his head right back. “High LDL is hereditary. You wouldn’t believe how many of my patients tried to get it under control through diet. They all failed. You may be low risk now, but in ten years, you’re going to have a heart attack.”
After he gave me a brief rundown on the possible side-effects of Simvastatin, I was even more determined to diet it out. We eventually agreed that I would get six months to try, and to seal the deal, Dr. Nice wrote out a lab slip for me to get my blood drawn this July.
Turns out, according to Dr. Janet Brill, the author of ‘Cholesterol Down,’ it will only take 4 weeks. The question is: how pleasant are those four weeks (and the rest of your life) going to be? The answer depends on your definition of “simple.”
I’m a woman in my mid-forties who is already on a self-imposed, life-long restricted-calorie diet and exercise plan just to stay within the healthy weight range for my age. One of the ways I’ve managed to stick to it is to skip breakfast (ignores the collective gasp of outrage from the audience—“That’s the MOST IMPORTANT MEAL!!!”). To assuage my feelings of deprivation, I usually eat what I like. I happen to like a lot of healthy foods, but unfortunately my favorites do not generally include oatmeal, flax seeds, beans, peas, lentils, apples, almonds, Metamucil or soy protein. Garlic I can handle, but not a whole stinkin’ clove every day. Speaking of “stinkin’,” all that extra fiber has me gripped with anticipation as to what its effect on my gastrointestinal system will be (Dr. Brill recommends, rather obviously, that I introduce it slowly).
She wants me to add these items to my diet, but there’s a decided lack of information in the book on what I should leave OUT to make room for it. Presumably, anything that does not fall within the category of scientifically-proven-to-reduce-LDL-cholesterol is fair game. It would have made it easier for me if the book identified foods that raise LDL, and are therefore from now until death off-limits. (fast-food is bad, we all know it, but what’s the worst of the worst, and do I happen to be addicted to it?).
Dr. Brill’s program is all about the foods she considers to be best, on several fronts, at getting that LDL down. She doesn’t cover foods that may be less effective over-all, but which would do the job palatably.
During my subsequent search for LDL-lowering foods that I might actually enjoy consuming in large quantities on a daily basis, I came across several candidates in Jonny Bowden’s ‘The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,’ including avocados, artichokes, blueberries, cinnamon, tea, grape/noni/pomegranate juice and even red wine (no more than one glass a day). While I was choking down my bowl of lentils and browsing through the book, I came upon a quote from Bowden: “LDL is only a problem in the body when it’s oxidized.”
Hm.
Dr. Brill, too, made reference to oxidized LDL in ‘Cholesterol Down,’ pointing to antioxidant consumption as the way to prevent it. She describes LDL, or low-density-lipoprotein, as “the chief cholesterol carrier in the blood, ferrying approximately 70 percent of all the blood cholesterol around the network of arteries,” which made me wonder: if LDL is obviously necessary, what makes too much of it so bad?
Apparently, it’s got a bad rep because, “high levels of circulating LDL have been linked to an increased risk for atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.” Doc Brill says there’ve been lots of studies showing that people who have heart disease also have high LDL, and vice verse. No one knows exactly why that is or how the levels get high in the first place. Brill quotes a popular hypothesis that there’s a shortage of LDL receptors in the liver, which would normally help clear it from the bloodstream.
Notice, however, we’re not talking about high levels of oxidized LDL. So how can my doctor tell if my LDL is oxidized? What if my LDL, elevated or not, is perfectly harmless LDL just trying to do its job and shuttle my various forms of cholesterol around? Is there a correlation between high levels and oxidation?
I’m a stubborn cuss, and when I find what I perceive to be an inconsistency, I tend to run with it, so I hit the Internet (with all its information, misinformation and everything in between) to see if I could get answers. Right away I found some interesting stuff. In his blog ‘Whole Health Source,’ biochemist Stephen Guyenet posted an article* where he says, “oxLDL (oxidized LDL) is formed when the lipids in LDL particles react with oxygen and break down. This happens specifically to the unsaturated fats in LDL, because saturated fats, by their chemical nature, are very resistant to oxidative damage. Polyunsaturated fats are much more susceptible to oxidative damage than saturated or monounsaturated fats. Linoleic acid (the omega-6 fatty acid found abundantly in industrial seed oils) is the main polyunsaturated fatty acid in LDL.”
I’m a layperson, but it sounds like he’s pointing the finger at polyunsaturated fats, like the kind one would find in the hot, salty, crunchy-on-the-outside, squishy-on-the-inside goodness of a McDonald’s French fry, an admitted indulgence of mine. The “very resistant to oxidative damage” saturated fats are found mostly in meat and dairy products.
Wait a minute. That would seem to make eating saturated fats desirable, but aren’t they a no-no?
Dr. Brill says yes. “Ingestion of dietary cholesterol, saturated fat, and trans fat has unhealthy consequences. These foods suppress the manufacturing of cholesterol-clearing liver receptors and raise your ‘bad’ cholesterol level.”
Danish researcher Uffe Ravnskov says no. On his website**, he says, “The idea that too much animal fat and high cholesterol are dangerous to your heart and vessels is nothing but a myth.” In his forward for Dr. Ravnskov’s book, ‘Fat and Cholesterol are GOOD for you,' Kilmer S. McCully, MD, says “Ravnskov systematically demolishes the cholesterol myth by a detailed analysis of the results of research by investigators world-wide. This analysis explains the fallacies of the cholesterol hypothesis and why pharmaceutical companies and the food industry have profited handsomely from this outmoded and disproved theory.”
Huh?!
So the studies Dr. Brill cites in her book, the entire basis for my doctor trying to put me on statin medication, the well-established “truth” that cholesterol is bad…the whole shebang is being challenged? The last thing I expected when I began reading and researching was to find this whole rogue group of doctors and scientists (the medical majority call them “crack-pots”) who, despite being immediately shunned, have gone against the medical majority (the dissenting doctors and scientists call them “deluded by Big Pharma”) on the cause and treatment of heart disease.
I don’t want to delve any more deeply into THAT, because I’m the least qualified person to say who’s right and who’s wrong or whether there’s a happy grey zone. But because I don’t think I’ve complicated matters enough, let’s talk about niacin, or vitamin B3. Nowhere in her book does Dr. Brill mention it. And why should she? Well, according to Shari Leiberman and Nancy Bruning in ‘The Real Vitamin & Mineral Book,’ “There is no drug that is as effective as niacin for treating elevated blood lipids.”
Apparently, I can lower my LDL by “5-15 percent” just by taking niacin, a humble, non-toxic coenzyme essential to “maintain healthy skin and a properly functioning gastrointestinal tract and nervous system.”
In addition to niacin, I found a new clinical trial*** that will hopefully provide an answer to whether an associated link between low levels of vitamin D and high levels of small LDL can be validated as a “cause-and-effect” relationship. Dr. John Cannell, on his website vitamindcouncil.org, says, “Current research has implicated vitamin D deficiency as a major factor in the pathology of at least 17 varieties of cancer as well as heart disease, stroke, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, depression, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, muscle wasting, birth defects, periodontal disease, and more. His colleague, Dr. Michael F. Holick, says, “We estimate that vitamin D deficiency is the most common medical condition in the world.”
From the deep recesses of my mind, I also retrieved a memory about an association between coffee and cholesterol. Studies to date show conflicting results, but it looks like decaff might raise bad cholesterol. Regular coffee might, too, but the fatty acids allegedly responsible can be filtered out by using a paper filter in the brewing process.****
It’s obvious Dr. Brill’s plan doesn’t contain ALL of the dietary options for lowering cholesterol. She’s presented “a clear, practical, drug-free cholesterol-lowering plan based on solid scientific research,” but of the recommended LDL-lowerers in ‘Cholesterol Down,’ plant sterols and soy protein gave me pause. Both substances have detractors with arguments just as heated as the one between Dr. Ravnskov’s ilk and the establishment. Dr. Brill does address some of the negatives (too numerous to list here) in the book, but goes ahead and advises we include those substances anyway, which I won't.
As a person smack-dab in the middle of the author’s target audience, I can attest to the book’s readability and to Dr. Brill’s evident sincerity. She wants to help prevent heart attacks, and she’s showing her readers one way to do it without throwing a handful of pills (and the long list of resultant side-effects) at it. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to incorporate her entire program while sticking to my 1600-calorie-a-day diet (the oatmeal, lentils, apple, flax seeds and almonds alone sucked up a whopping 600 of my precious daily allotment). What I am going to do is increase my exercise, avoid greasy junk/fast food, increase my fiber, avoid decaffeinated coffee and choose more often the heart-healthy foods I’ve identified (in Brill’s book and elsewhere). I will also take niacin (in small doses throughout the day to avoid the “niacin flush,” an interesting and harmless little side-effect that demonstrates niacin’s strong influence over blood vessels).
Finally, I’m going to have to reserve judgment on the efficacy of my chosen strategy (and on ‘Cholesterol Down’) until after a certain blood test this coming July.
* http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/07/diet-heart-hypothesis-oxidized-ldl-part.html
** http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm
*** http://newswire.rockefeller.edu/?page=engine&id=1023
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_and_health
January 25, 2010
AMAZON NIGHTS: CLASSIC ADVENTURE TALES FROM THE PULPS
by Arthur O. Friel
348 pages, Wildside Press
Review by Hereward L.M. Proops
Say the words “pulp fiction” to someone and nine times out of ten, they’ll immediately think of the stylish, snappy 1994 movie by Quentin Tarantino. Before the film’s release, most people would associate the term pulp fiction with hastily written, disposable works of fiction whose heyday was during the days of magazines with lurid covers and titles such as “Adventure” or “Weird Tales”. Whilst the stories were of sometimes dubious quality, it would be unfair to dismiss all pulp writers in such a way. After all, if it wasn’t for the pulp magazines we wouldn’t have the works of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft.
Many writers from the era of the pulps have slipped into obscurity and although this might not be a great loss to literature, there are undoubtedly a number of pulp writers who deserve more recognition. I had never heard of Arthur O. Friel before I picked up a copy of this collection. From reading the introduction to the book by Darrell Schweitzer, it became clear that very little is known about the author of the eight short stories and one novella that comprises Amazon Nights. What is known about Friel is that he was a member of the American Geographical Society and took part in a number of exploratory expeditions into the Venezuelan jungle in the early 1920s. It is this first-hand experience of the jungle that gives the stories a sense of realism that is often lacking from other pulp adventures.
The stories are narrated by Lourenco, a rubber harvester (or seringueiro) and self-confessed “jungle-tramp”. Accompanied by his good friend Pedro, Lourenco wanders the Amazonian rainforest, ostensibly in search of new rubber trees to harvest but invariably stumbling across a different wild adventure in each tale. Amongst other encounters, they come across snake-worshipping cannibals, half-human savages and (essential in any work of pulp fiction) beautiful but dangerous women. Although the stories share the same jungle setting as many “lost world” adventures, Friel steers clear of outright fantasy. What may appear mysterious or magical at first is eventually explained by the rational approach taken by Lourenco and Pedro. Adept at jungle survival and comfortable communicating with the native tribes, they bring a modern perspective into the primitive world.
Friel’s knowledge of the flora and fauna of South America helps to shape the tales. It is the small details that serve to bring the jungle to life. Lourenco frequently compares characters to animals and from this starting point he weaves the tale around them. Unfortunately, this means that many of the short stories share a similar narrative structure, leading to a sense of déjà vu if reading the collection from cover-to-cover. It must be remembered, however, that these stories were never intended to be read together in one sitting. Each story would have been published in a different edition of “Adventure” magazine, perhaps months apart. Taking this into account, the sense of familiarity that the opening of each story brings is very useful, helping to ease the reader back into the jungle after a lengthy absence.
Those reading Friel’s tales with a more critical eye might find fault with the lack of development in his central characters. Lourenco and Pedro are pretty one-dimensional; Pedro being the strong, square-jawed heroic type whilst Lourenco is physically smaller, reflective and thoughtful though no less capable of handling himself in a fight. The stories follow a chronological order in the collection but the Pedro and Lourenco we see at the end of the book are no different to the characters we are introduced to in the first story. Once again, it should be noted that these stories are pulp fiction – the readers of “Adventure” expected thrills and excitement from their magazine, not detailed character development. The stories had one sole purpose – to entertain – and it is testament to the skill of Arthur O. Friel as a writer that they are no less capable of doing so today.
Amazon Nights is a rousing collection and Wildside Press should be praised for having the courage to reprint the stories of a near-forgotten writer. Whether describing a pitched battle against a tribe of bloodthirsty cannibals or the eerie sounds of the rainforest at night, Friel’s prose is a delight to read and succeeds in transporting the reader to the timeless depths of the jungle.
Hereward L.M. Proops
348 pages, Wildside Press
Review by Hereward L.M. Proops
Say the words “pulp fiction” to someone and nine times out of ten, they’ll immediately think of the stylish, snappy 1994 movie by Quentin Tarantino. Before the film’s release, most people would associate the term pulp fiction with hastily written, disposable works of fiction whose heyday was during the days of magazines with lurid covers and titles such as “Adventure” or “Weird Tales”. Whilst the stories were of sometimes dubious quality, it would be unfair to dismiss all pulp writers in such a way. After all, if it wasn’t for the pulp magazines we wouldn’t have the works of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft.
Many writers from the era of the pulps have slipped into obscurity and although this might not be a great loss to literature, there are undoubtedly a number of pulp writers who deserve more recognition. I had never heard of Arthur O. Friel before I picked up a copy of this collection. From reading the introduction to the book by Darrell Schweitzer, it became clear that very little is known about the author of the eight short stories and one novella that comprises Amazon Nights. What is known about Friel is that he was a member of the American Geographical Society and took part in a number of exploratory expeditions into the Venezuelan jungle in the early 1920s. It is this first-hand experience of the jungle that gives the stories a sense of realism that is often lacking from other pulp adventures.
The stories are narrated by Lourenco, a rubber harvester (or seringueiro) and self-confessed “jungle-tramp”. Accompanied by his good friend Pedro, Lourenco wanders the Amazonian rainforest, ostensibly in search of new rubber trees to harvest but invariably stumbling across a different wild adventure in each tale. Amongst other encounters, they come across snake-worshipping cannibals, half-human savages and (essential in any work of pulp fiction) beautiful but dangerous women. Although the stories share the same jungle setting as many “lost world” adventures, Friel steers clear of outright fantasy. What may appear mysterious or magical at first is eventually explained by the rational approach taken by Lourenco and Pedro. Adept at jungle survival and comfortable communicating with the native tribes, they bring a modern perspective into the primitive world.
Friel’s knowledge of the flora and fauna of South America helps to shape the tales. It is the small details that serve to bring the jungle to life. Lourenco frequently compares characters to animals and from this starting point he weaves the tale around them. Unfortunately, this means that many of the short stories share a similar narrative structure, leading to a sense of déjà vu if reading the collection from cover-to-cover. It must be remembered, however, that these stories were never intended to be read together in one sitting. Each story would have been published in a different edition of “Adventure” magazine, perhaps months apart. Taking this into account, the sense of familiarity that the opening of each story brings is very useful, helping to ease the reader back into the jungle after a lengthy absence.
Those reading Friel’s tales with a more critical eye might find fault with the lack of development in his central characters. Lourenco and Pedro are pretty one-dimensional; Pedro being the strong, square-jawed heroic type whilst Lourenco is physically smaller, reflective and thoughtful though no less capable of handling himself in a fight. The stories follow a chronological order in the collection but the Pedro and Lourenco we see at the end of the book are no different to the characters we are introduced to in the first story. Once again, it should be noted that these stories are pulp fiction – the readers of “Adventure” expected thrills and excitement from their magazine, not detailed character development. The stories had one sole purpose – to entertain – and it is testament to the skill of Arthur O. Friel as a writer that they are no less capable of doing so today.
Amazon Nights is a rousing collection and Wildside Press should be praised for having the courage to reprint the stories of a near-forgotten writer. Whether describing a pitched battle against a tribe of bloodthirsty cannibals or the eerie sounds of the rainforest at night, Friel’s prose is a delight to read and succeeds in transporting the reader to the timeless depths of the jungle.
Hereward L.M. Proops
January 24, 2010
LAMB: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BIFF, CHRIST'S CHILDHOOD PAL
by Christopher Moore
506 pp, Orbit (2002)
Review by Bill Kirton
After reading a skit I’d written, a friend recommended this book. I can now see why but the comparison is flattering. When I started reading it, I was immediately grabbed by the ease of the narrative and its relaxed, inviting tone. But I did wonder whether it would turn out to be a book which churned out variations of a single central gag for 500+ pages. Well, it did – except that there wasn’t just one central gag, but many, and beyond that, it opened some gentle but telling insights into spiritual searches, faith and the relationships between gods, organised religions and – the most important element of all – people.
The easiest way for me to get some laughs here would be to quote examples from the text; it’s consistently entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny. But taking the many one-liners out of context, while it wouldn’t diminish their impact, would do Moore a disservice, because they’re integral to the narrative and funnier in situ. I do, though, need to tell you that, throughout the book, Christ is called Joshua. Why? Well, Moore tells us at the start: ‘By the way, his name was Joshua. Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Yeshua, which is Joshua. Christ is not a last name. It’s the Greek for messiah, a Hebrew word meaning anointed. I have no idea what the ‘H’ in Jesus H. Christ stood for.’ (Although even that secret is eventually revealed.)
As the sub-title tells us, Biff is Christ’s childhood pal and, with the 2000th anniversary of His birth coming up, it’s decided that the four gospels don’t tell the full story so Biff is resurrected to fill in the gaps, especially the first thirty years Matthew and the others seem to have left out. He spends his time in a hotel room with Raziel, the angel charged with resurrecting and looking after him. They both have the gift of tongues so the narratives and their dialogue are in colloquial modern American English. The main narrative is the gospel itself as Biff recalls his travels and experiences with the young Joshua, but it’s counterpointed with the story of the tensions between Biff and the angel Raziel, whose passion for TV soaps and wrestling colours his perceptions of modern life.
There are hilarious takes on obvious targets – The Sermon on the Mount, the various miracles, the impenetrable nature of parables, Christ’s celibacy (which is more than compensated for by Biff’s promiscuity), and the fact that bacon is delicious – but it’s humour that derives from the characters themselves, not from some clever 21st century pastiche of familiar anecdotes. Biff even invents sarcasm, although he seems to accept that irony had already been around for a while.
Joshua decides he needs to find out exactly what being the Messiah entails so, with Biff in tow, he sets out to find the three magi who visited the manger in Bethlehem. The journey takes them over great chunks of Asia but, more importantly, reveals the teachings of other prophets and faiths to them (or, rather, to Joshua, since Biff has a much more practical approach to life and the pleasures on offer).
Subtly, and in the same easy tone, Moore suggests how Christ’s message is informed by the teachings of Confucius (‘little more than an extensive system of etiquette’), Taoism, Buddhism, the Indian caste systems, and other religious ceremonies and observances. It’s a persuasive, sympathetic vision of the underlying values and lessons of faith itself. There are no doubt people who would be deeply offended by this seemingly trivial treatment of Christianity but their offence would reveal the flaws in their own version of faith rather than in this compassionate view of how people interact with one another and channel their dreams into positive, life-enhancing ways of being. I’m a non-believer and yet this journey through some of the major religions in the company of two people who share a genuine, warm and enduring friendship felt like an affirmation of powers outside ourselves.
Despite the inevitability of the outcome, the final pages leading to the crucifixion, are surprisingly tense and suspenseful and confirm how expertly Moore has constructed and written the novel. His research is impeccable, his characterisation superb and the range of his humour a constant delight. I bought Lamb expecting to get a few laughs. I got that and lots more.
506 pp, Orbit (2002)
Review by Bill Kirton
After reading a skit I’d written, a friend recommended this book. I can now see why but the comparison is flattering. When I started reading it, I was immediately grabbed by the ease of the narrative and its relaxed, inviting tone. But I did wonder whether it would turn out to be a book which churned out variations of a single central gag for 500+ pages. Well, it did – except that there wasn’t just one central gag, but many, and beyond that, it opened some gentle but telling insights into spiritual searches, faith and the relationships between gods, organised religions and – the most important element of all – people.
The easiest way for me to get some laughs here would be to quote examples from the text; it’s consistently entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny. But taking the many one-liners out of context, while it wouldn’t diminish their impact, would do Moore a disservice, because they’re integral to the narrative and funnier in situ. I do, though, need to tell you that, throughout the book, Christ is called Joshua. Why? Well, Moore tells us at the start: ‘By the way, his name was Joshua. Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Yeshua, which is Joshua. Christ is not a last name. It’s the Greek for messiah, a Hebrew word meaning anointed. I have no idea what the ‘H’ in Jesus H. Christ stood for.’ (Although even that secret is eventually revealed.)
As the sub-title tells us, Biff is Christ’s childhood pal and, with the 2000th anniversary of His birth coming up, it’s decided that the four gospels don’t tell the full story so Biff is resurrected to fill in the gaps, especially the first thirty years Matthew and the others seem to have left out. He spends his time in a hotel room with Raziel, the angel charged with resurrecting and looking after him. They both have the gift of tongues so the narratives and their dialogue are in colloquial modern American English. The main narrative is the gospel itself as Biff recalls his travels and experiences with the young Joshua, but it’s counterpointed with the story of the tensions between Biff and the angel Raziel, whose passion for TV soaps and wrestling colours his perceptions of modern life.
There are hilarious takes on obvious targets – The Sermon on the Mount, the various miracles, the impenetrable nature of parables, Christ’s celibacy (which is more than compensated for by Biff’s promiscuity), and the fact that bacon is delicious – but it’s humour that derives from the characters themselves, not from some clever 21st century pastiche of familiar anecdotes. Biff even invents sarcasm, although he seems to accept that irony had already been around for a while.
Joshua decides he needs to find out exactly what being the Messiah entails so, with Biff in tow, he sets out to find the three magi who visited the manger in Bethlehem. The journey takes them over great chunks of Asia but, more importantly, reveals the teachings of other prophets and faiths to them (or, rather, to Joshua, since Biff has a much more practical approach to life and the pleasures on offer).
Subtly, and in the same easy tone, Moore suggests how Christ’s message is informed by the teachings of Confucius (‘little more than an extensive system of etiquette’), Taoism, Buddhism, the Indian caste systems, and other religious ceremonies and observances. It’s a persuasive, sympathetic vision of the underlying values and lessons of faith itself. There are no doubt people who would be deeply offended by this seemingly trivial treatment of Christianity but their offence would reveal the flaws in their own version of faith rather than in this compassionate view of how people interact with one another and channel their dreams into positive, life-enhancing ways of being. I’m a non-believer and yet this journey through some of the major religions in the company of two people who share a genuine, warm and enduring friendship felt like an affirmation of powers outside ourselves.
Despite the inevitability of the outcome, the final pages leading to the crucifixion, are surprisingly tense and suspenseful and confirm how expertly Moore has constructed and written the novel. His research is impeccable, his characterisation superb and the range of his humour a constant delight. I bought Lamb expecting to get a few laughs. I got that and lots more.
January 23, 2010
THE BIRTHING HOUSE
by Christopher Ransom
320 pages, St. Martin's Press
Review by Hereward L.M. Proops
Don’t you just love it when you stumble across a real gem when you’re least expecting it? I bought The Birthing House on a whim at an airport. From the blurb on the cover, it looked like an immediately accessible, enjoyable but ultimately disposable horror novel that would be a quick, undemanding read. How wrong I was! Christopher Ransom’s debut novel is an intelligent, haunting read that is as wise and introspective as anything I’ve read by a more seasoned author.
The plot is fairly straightforward – having experienced some marital difficulties, Conrad Harrison and his wife Jo relocate from California to an old birthing house in a quiet Wisconsin town. Once there they discover their dream home is harbouring a number of dark secrets. Sounds like your average haunted house novel, right? Thankfully, it is anything but. The Birthing House is a far more complicated, multi-layered experience than the blurb on the cover would have you believe. Whilst the novel has its fair share of creepy moments, its real power lies in the psychological impact that it carries.
Ransom provides us with an unflinchingly honest portrayal of male sexuality through the character of Conrad. Much of the novel focuses on his own ailing relationship with Jo and the simmering resentment they feel for one another. The narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to Conrad’s first serious relationship, his sexual awakening and the girl that got away. To reveal any more of the plot would be to spoil the numerous surprises that lie hidden within its pages. In places it is dreamlike and hallucinatory, at other times rational and grounded in the real world. Seamlessly switching between the two, Ransom’s enthrals and disorientates his readers in equal measures. Reading the book in one sitting is akin to experiencing some kind of fever-induced nightmare and I very much doubt anyone could make it to the end without feeling thoroughly creeped-out.
Part of me was disappointed that The Birthing House was not a run-of-the-mill trashy horror novel. It was a challenging read, both disturbing and emotionally exhausting. That isn’t to say the book is not rewarding. Patient and attentive readers will find some chilling insights into the traumatic aspects of birth, sex and death. Sex and childbirth can be beautiful experiences but they can also be brutal, damaging ones. Ransom further compounds this bleak philosophy by adding that a traumatic passing from this world can leave similar emotional scars in buildings and that these bad memories feed on the negative emotions of those around them. As I said, pretty heavy stuff.
Ransom writes well. Very well. So well, in fact, that it is hard to comprehend this is his first novel. His characters are believable and the dialogue is snappy, with a witty ear for the regional dialect of small town America. Though not filled with incident, the narrative ambles along at a leisurely pace and it is this unassuming rhythm of the book that makes the scar bits so utterly terrifying. Conrad Harrison is a wonderful central character: unsure of what he wants from life, it would be easy to dismiss him as embittered and cynical. As we learn more about him we discover that he is emotionally needy and irreparably damaged by the experiences of his past. Whilst not entirely likeable, sensitive readers will be able to identify with him and share in his own private horrors.
If The Birthing House is anything to go by, Christopher Ransom will be a name to watch in the future. Uncomfortable and uncompromising, it is a demanding book that may be too heavy-going for those used to the splatter-fiction of James Herbert or Shaun Hutson. Readers who approach Ransom’s debut with an open mind will discover a book whose psychological horrors have the ability to haunt them long after the gruesome conclusion.
320 pages, St. Martin's Press
Review by Hereward L.M. Proops
Don’t you just love it when you stumble across a real gem when you’re least expecting it? I bought The Birthing House on a whim at an airport. From the blurb on the cover, it looked like an immediately accessible, enjoyable but ultimately disposable horror novel that would be a quick, undemanding read. How wrong I was! Christopher Ransom’s debut novel is an intelligent, haunting read that is as wise and introspective as anything I’ve read by a more seasoned author.
The plot is fairly straightforward – having experienced some marital difficulties, Conrad Harrison and his wife Jo relocate from California to an old birthing house in a quiet Wisconsin town. Once there they discover their dream home is harbouring a number of dark secrets. Sounds like your average haunted house novel, right? Thankfully, it is anything but. The Birthing House is a far more complicated, multi-layered experience than the blurb on the cover would have you believe. Whilst the novel has its fair share of creepy moments, its real power lies in the psychological impact that it carries.
Ransom provides us with an unflinchingly honest portrayal of male sexuality through the character of Conrad. Much of the novel focuses on his own ailing relationship with Jo and the simmering resentment they feel for one another. The narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to Conrad’s first serious relationship, his sexual awakening and the girl that got away. To reveal any more of the plot would be to spoil the numerous surprises that lie hidden within its pages. In places it is dreamlike and hallucinatory, at other times rational and grounded in the real world. Seamlessly switching between the two, Ransom’s enthrals and disorientates his readers in equal measures. Reading the book in one sitting is akin to experiencing some kind of fever-induced nightmare and I very much doubt anyone could make it to the end without feeling thoroughly creeped-out.
Part of me was disappointed that The Birthing House was not a run-of-the-mill trashy horror novel. It was a challenging read, both disturbing and emotionally exhausting. That isn’t to say the book is not rewarding. Patient and attentive readers will find some chilling insights into the traumatic aspects of birth, sex and death. Sex and childbirth can be beautiful experiences but they can also be brutal, damaging ones. Ransom further compounds this bleak philosophy by adding that a traumatic passing from this world can leave similar emotional scars in buildings and that these bad memories feed on the negative emotions of those around them. As I said, pretty heavy stuff.
Ransom writes well. Very well. So well, in fact, that it is hard to comprehend this is his first novel. His characters are believable and the dialogue is snappy, with a witty ear for the regional dialect of small town America. Though not filled with incident, the narrative ambles along at a leisurely pace and it is this unassuming rhythm of the book that makes the scar bits so utterly terrifying. Conrad Harrison is a wonderful central character: unsure of what he wants from life, it would be easy to dismiss him as embittered and cynical. As we learn more about him we discover that he is emotionally needy and irreparably damaged by the experiences of his past. Whilst not entirely likeable, sensitive readers will be able to identify with him and share in his own private horrors.
If The Birthing House is anything to go by, Christopher Ransom will be a name to watch in the future. Uncomfortable and uncompromising, it is a demanding book that may be too heavy-going for those used to the splatter-fiction of James Herbert or Shaun Hutson. Readers who approach Ransom’s debut with an open mind will discover a book whose psychological horrors have the ability to haunt them long after the gruesome conclusion.
January 22, 2010
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
THE classic romance
by Baroness Orczy
first published 1905
Review by Maria Bustillos
The Long Beach library fire was a huge boon to me, I am ashamed to admit. You will be wondering why a booklover should say such a thing, but the answer is quite simple; after the fire, the whole huge Long Beach Public Library was temporarily housed in an annex maybe a mile or two from my house near the Traffic Circle, until they managed to build the new library, which took ages. So I could bike to the big library in a matter of minutes, on my red-white-and-blue Bicentennial Edition Free Spirit 10-speed bicycle from Sears; a hideous contraption, but absolutely the best bike I ever had. I’ve never really gotten over the theft of that bike. Anyway, I believe I spent more time in that cold, pale, zero-amenity, fluorescent-lit barracks among the bazillion books than I did in my own house, ca. 1976.
I developed a game with myself there that I still play, once in a while. In order to play the Library Game, you must first make sure there’s nobody else around. Then position yourself safely at the beginning of an aisle. Now close your eyes, and walk slowly and carefully down the aisle, and when the mood strikes, reach out, or up, or down, and take hold of a book. You’ll have to read it, according to the rules of the game. Being a scofflaw myself, I cheat like crazy, but I know a number of readers will find themselves unable to do so; I suspect they will not enjoy the game as much as I do. If I wind up with what looks like a clunker, I just pop it back on the shelf, with a very slight twinge of guilt, which adds an extra little frisson to the whole proceedings, and start over.
I have no hesitation in saying that the subject volume is the very best book I ever chose while playing the Library Game. I remember the book very well; it was small and thick, in a glazed-cloth library binding, dark green, with largish print in an old-fashioned font, and very wide margins. The book block was very, very well worn by the time it came so fortuitously to me. The pages were heavy, grown soft and flexible with age and wear, and the corners had been read clean away so that they were evenly rounded, top and bottom. The tipped-in sheet at the back boasted a profusion of due dates, stamped in each time the book had been checked out—starting, if I recall correctly, in the 1930s. Long Beach has always had a huge retirement community, so the library was very popular. A lot of the books there—particularly the classic literature that I have always favored—had been read many times, but even so, I could tell straightaway that this book had been unusually popular. The title already sounded so exotic, so promising. I had no idea what a “Pimpernel” was, but it was very obviously something fabulous and strange, and who doesn’t love the word “Scarlet”? And the author!! My god, she literally called herself Baroness Orczy. Well, her real name was Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi, and she really did start life as an impoverished, exiled Hungarian baroness in London, but that is by the bye.
The book exceeded my wildest conjectures. It became evident at once that the Baroness was possessed of an inexhaustible fountain of the most exquisite melodrama ever devised, plus a total lack of shame. There is not the slightest scintilla of a curb on the romance, the passion, or the total ridiculousness of this wonderful love/adventure story, set during the French Revolution. Every page glitters with gloriously excessive prose that is not so much purple as amaranthine, amethyst, violet, pomegranate. “The fond embrace of Madame la Guillotine,” “priceless lace at his neck and wrists,” “Aye! I, whom that same popular rumour had endowed with the sharpest wits in France!”
The Scarlet Pimpernel may also be the sexiest, most exciting romance novel of all time. My pulse still literally quickens when I think of certain moments in this book (oh god, the staircase scene ... !) Men will like it too, though, because the hero is absolutely awash in brains, dash and heroism. And humor. Barbara Cartland made an enormous fortune by making inferior copies of this one book, over and over! Come on! It’s got audacious rescues, clever disguises, hair’s-breadth escapes, gorgeous clothes, secret identities! Please believe me when I say that this book is about one hundred times better than any of the (many) movie versions.* All of which, I believe, I have seen. Oh, gosh. Look! You just have to read it, if you haven’t.
*Matthew Macfadyen is the first actor I’ve ever seen who could possibly do the part justice, and I have been considering the matter for literally decades. Get on it, Beeb.
by Baroness Orczy
first published 1905
Review by Maria Bustillos
The Long Beach library fire was a huge boon to me, I am ashamed to admit. You will be wondering why a booklover should say such a thing, but the answer is quite simple; after the fire, the whole huge Long Beach Public Library was temporarily housed in an annex maybe a mile or two from my house near the Traffic Circle, until they managed to build the new library, which took ages. So I could bike to the big library in a matter of minutes, on my red-white-and-blue Bicentennial Edition Free Spirit 10-speed bicycle from Sears; a hideous contraption, but absolutely the best bike I ever had. I’ve never really gotten over the theft of that bike. Anyway, I believe I spent more time in that cold, pale, zero-amenity, fluorescent-lit barracks among the bazillion books than I did in my own house, ca. 1976.
I developed a game with myself there that I still play, once in a while. In order to play the Library Game, you must first make sure there’s nobody else around. Then position yourself safely at the beginning of an aisle. Now close your eyes, and walk slowly and carefully down the aisle, and when the mood strikes, reach out, or up, or down, and take hold of a book. You’ll have to read it, according to the rules of the game. Being a scofflaw myself, I cheat like crazy, but I know a number of readers will find themselves unable to do so; I suspect they will not enjoy the game as much as I do. If I wind up with what looks like a clunker, I just pop it back on the shelf, with a very slight twinge of guilt, which adds an extra little frisson to the whole proceedings, and start over.
I have no hesitation in saying that the subject volume is the very best book I ever chose while playing the Library Game. I remember the book very well; it was small and thick, in a glazed-cloth library binding, dark green, with largish print in an old-fashioned font, and very wide margins. The book block was very, very well worn by the time it came so fortuitously to me. The pages were heavy, grown soft and flexible with age and wear, and the corners had been read clean away so that they were evenly rounded, top and bottom. The tipped-in sheet at the back boasted a profusion of due dates, stamped in each time the book had been checked out—starting, if I recall correctly, in the 1930s. Long Beach has always had a huge retirement community, so the library was very popular. A lot of the books there—particularly the classic literature that I have always favored—had been read many times, but even so, I could tell straightaway that this book had been unusually popular. The title already sounded so exotic, so promising. I had no idea what a “Pimpernel” was, but it was very obviously something fabulous and strange, and who doesn’t love the word “Scarlet”? And the author!! My god, she literally called herself Baroness Orczy. Well, her real name was Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi, and she really did start life as an impoverished, exiled Hungarian baroness in London, but that is by the bye.
The book exceeded my wildest conjectures. It became evident at once that the Baroness was possessed of an inexhaustible fountain of the most exquisite melodrama ever devised, plus a total lack of shame. There is not the slightest scintilla of a curb on the romance, the passion, or the total ridiculousness of this wonderful love/adventure story, set during the French Revolution. Every page glitters with gloriously excessive prose that is not so much purple as amaranthine, amethyst, violet, pomegranate. “The fond embrace of Madame la Guillotine,” “priceless lace at his neck and wrists,” “Aye! I, whom that same popular rumour had endowed with the sharpest wits in France!”
The Scarlet Pimpernel may also be the sexiest, most exciting romance novel of all time. My pulse still literally quickens when I think of certain moments in this book (oh god, the staircase scene ... !) Men will like it too, though, because the hero is absolutely awash in brains, dash and heroism. And humor. Barbara Cartland made an enormous fortune by making inferior copies of this one book, over and over! Come on! It’s got audacious rescues, clever disguises, hair’s-breadth escapes, gorgeous clothes, secret identities! Please believe me when I say that this book is about one hundred times better than any of the (many) movie versions.* All of which, I believe, I have seen. Oh, gosh. Look! You just have to read it, if you haven’t.
*Matthew Macfadyen is the first actor I’ve ever seen who could possibly do the part justice, and I have been considering the matter for literally decades. Get on it, Beeb.
January 21, 2010
THE RANGER'S APPRENTICE SERIES
Books 1-9
by John Flanagan
Philomel (publisher)
Review by SF Winser
A young orphan is chosen for a life he never expected.
Blech.
Cliché.
Why would I read those? A series of over-marketed, clichéd, badly-titled crap.
But, a while ago I was helping in a literacy programme in a Primary School. One of the eleven year old boys told me that this was one of his favourite series. Being a dedicated librarian (I read three Twilight books and the newest Dan Brown, for goodness sake!) I try to check out recommendations and see what various people in other demographics like. Especially kids, because some of the best stuff written these day is YA.
And I got a lovely little reward for my adventurousness. Having read them I've talked to many boys in late primary/early high school who love them. I know one 17 year-old girl who loves them. I now know many, many people love these books. I count myself one of them. These are fun and exciting reads. More importantly, they're well-written.
The best part is that the Ranger's Apprentice books do what good fantasy should – taking tropes and re-examining them, doing new things and doing them well.
Because Will – the protagonist - is not destined for anything. He's just clever, funny and physically adept. He's not strong or tall. He's a skirmisher and tactician. He's good at hand-to-hand but swords and war are not his specialty. He's definitely not a king in disguise. There are no prophecies about his life. He gets picked as a Ranger (a cross between forest warden and cop and spy) because of what he's good at – not the circumstances of his birth.
There is a secret around his origins. But it's a normal, real sort of secret. Hidden for good reasons. He isn't hunted by A Grand Evil because he holds the Secret of Plot-Device and Wields the Mighty Sword 'Deus Ex Machina'. He's just a good kid with some well-trained skills.
What Will does, along with his friend Horace and mentor Halt, is just go around solving problems by being clever, funny and physically adept. And failing at times. Sometimes, Halt is the real hero of the book. Sometimes Horace is. Sometimes it's other characters. Because Will is not infallible. Nor are his companions. They are just people doing their damnedest in hard circumstances.
Magic is treated very cautiously in the books. One of the best explanations I have for the tone of the series is that it's fantasy without magic. There are some odd creatures. Strange plants. People with interesting knowledge of unusual arts... but magic is either background or pretty much non-existent. These books are about derring-do and cleverness. There are cool swordfights, horse-chases and political wrangling. There's even a bit of romance. But the Ranger's Apprentice books have more in common with Robin Hood than King Arthur. In this world, Merlin would get his nose punched in, and the Lady of the Lake would turn out to be a charlatan with a very clever snorkel and permanent prune-fingers, desperate to offload a stolen sword to gullible royalty.
Flanagan is very good at this – setting you up to see a typical fantasy idea, and then doing something else with that starting-point. Not always something earth-shattering, but often something interesting.
The world the stories are set in is a rough analogue of medieval Europe. The mandatory fantasy map would almost align perfectly with a map of our world. There are Viking-like people. Scots-types. All in the parts of the world in which you would expect them. But this feels like a deliberate choice, rather than laziness. And they are rarely all 'the bad guys'. There are political and social reasons for enmities and although these aren't deeply explored this is YA and not adult socio-political literature. These details are often explored to a deeper point than might otherwise be expected. Just don't expect too much.
There is one odd quirk in the series. Flanagan originally wrote the stories as an encouragement to his son to read. He expanded them and worked on them until they were ready for print. Which meant they weren't all published in chronological order. Readers are advised that book 7 should be read after book 4. Which really screws up the order on the bookshelf. This is particularly upsetting to Northern Hemisphere readers: Book 7 was only just released there. (Lucky Antipodeans have just gotten book 9 and are expecting book 10 later this year! Die, US cultural hegemony! Die!)
This has become one of my go-to recommendations for unwilling pre-teen boy readers (for teen boys I usually go for Robert Muchamore's 'Cherubs'. But that's another review), for adults who want a new fantasy series or anyone just after an exciting read. I'm almost embarrassed to admit how desperately I searched out copies to buy once I tried them (that's right, I work in a library and I BOUGHT these books) and then waited like a sad fanboy for book 9 and the conclusion to book 8's cliffhanger. Almost. Even though that hunt often involved traipsing through bookstore after bookstore in two states and four cities as everyone had sold-out of the volumes I wanted. Fans will understand why I would go to such lengths. Once you read them, you'll most-likely be hooked, too. Warn your bookstore in advance.
by John Flanagan
Philomel (publisher)
Review by SF Winser
A young orphan is chosen for a life he never expected.
Blech.
Cliché.
Why would I read those? A series of over-marketed, clichéd, badly-titled crap.
But, a while ago I was helping in a literacy programme in a Primary School. One of the eleven year old boys told me that this was one of his favourite series. Being a dedicated librarian (I read three Twilight books and the newest Dan Brown, for goodness sake!) I try to check out recommendations and see what various people in other demographics like. Especially kids, because some of the best stuff written these day is YA.
And I got a lovely little reward for my adventurousness. Having read them I've talked to many boys in late primary/early high school who love them. I know one 17 year-old girl who loves them. I now know many, many people love these books. I count myself one of them. These are fun and exciting reads. More importantly, they're well-written.
The best part is that the Ranger's Apprentice books do what good fantasy should – taking tropes and re-examining them, doing new things and doing them well.
Because Will – the protagonist - is not destined for anything. He's just clever, funny and physically adept. He's not strong or tall. He's a skirmisher and tactician. He's good at hand-to-hand but swords and war are not his specialty. He's definitely not a king in disguise. There are no prophecies about his life. He gets picked as a Ranger (a cross between forest warden and cop and spy) because of what he's good at – not the circumstances of his birth.
There is a secret around his origins. But it's a normal, real sort of secret. Hidden for good reasons. He isn't hunted by A Grand Evil because he holds the Secret of Plot-Device and Wields the Mighty Sword 'Deus Ex Machina'. He's just a good kid with some well-trained skills.
What Will does, along with his friend Horace and mentor Halt, is just go around solving problems by being clever, funny and physically adept. And failing at times. Sometimes, Halt is the real hero of the book. Sometimes Horace is. Sometimes it's other characters. Because Will is not infallible. Nor are his companions. They are just people doing their damnedest in hard circumstances.
Magic is treated very cautiously in the books. One of the best explanations I have for the tone of the series is that it's fantasy without magic. There are some odd creatures. Strange plants. People with interesting knowledge of unusual arts... but magic is either background or pretty much non-existent. These books are about derring-do and cleverness. There are cool swordfights, horse-chases and political wrangling. There's even a bit of romance. But the Ranger's Apprentice books have more in common with Robin Hood than King Arthur. In this world, Merlin would get his nose punched in, and the Lady of the Lake would turn out to be a charlatan with a very clever snorkel and permanent prune-fingers, desperate to offload a stolen sword to gullible royalty.
Flanagan is very good at this – setting you up to see a typical fantasy idea, and then doing something else with that starting-point. Not always something earth-shattering, but often something interesting.
The world the stories are set in is a rough analogue of medieval Europe. The mandatory fantasy map would almost align perfectly with a map of our world. There are Viking-like people. Scots-types. All in the parts of the world in which you would expect them. But this feels like a deliberate choice, rather than laziness. And they are rarely all 'the bad guys'. There are political and social reasons for enmities and although these aren't deeply explored this is YA and not adult socio-political literature. These details are often explored to a deeper point than might otherwise be expected. Just don't expect too much.
There is one odd quirk in the series. Flanagan originally wrote the stories as an encouragement to his son to read. He expanded them and worked on them until they were ready for print. Which meant they weren't all published in chronological order. Readers are advised that book 7 should be read after book 4. Which really screws up the order on the bookshelf. This is particularly upsetting to Northern Hemisphere readers: Book 7 was only just released there. (Lucky Antipodeans have just gotten book 9 and are expecting book 10 later this year! Die, US cultural hegemony! Die!)
This has become one of my go-to recommendations for unwilling pre-teen boy readers (for teen boys I usually go for Robert Muchamore's 'Cherubs'. But that's another review), for adults who want a new fantasy series or anyone just after an exciting read. I'm almost embarrassed to admit how desperately I searched out copies to buy once I tried them (that's right, I work in a library and I BOUGHT these books) and then waited like a sad fanboy for book 9 and the conclusion to book 8's cliffhanger. Almost. Even though that hunt often involved traipsing through bookstore after bookstore in two states and four cities as everyone had sold-out of the volumes I wanted. Fans will understand why I would go to such lengths. Once you read them, you'll most-likely be hooked, too. Warn your bookstore in advance.
January 20, 2010
THE RAW SHARK TEXTS
By Steven Hall
368 Pages, Canongate.
We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Idea
By Pat Black
Conceptual art – it’s the Robin Williams of the creative industries. Some love and admire it and engage with it, even for all the undeniable rubbish that has emerged under its name. Others simply loathe it and mentally hibernate whenever it shows up on their sonar, ignoring the wit and the sometimes genuinely startling examples of work. So, nanu-nanu, be warned. To read The Raw Shark Texts is to dive head-first into conceptual art-infested waters.
The blurb on the cover refers to the high concept – “The bastard love-child of The Matrix, Jaws and the Da Vinci Code!” I think this hyperbole might actually have come from the otherwise wonderful Mark Haddon, the guy who wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. This description of The Raw Shark Texts, if we were to represent it visually, might look something like this:
s s
t t
e e fly
n n
fly c c fly
h h
Pong pong pong pong pong
Pong Brown Pong
Pong pong pong pong pong pong
That is to say, shite.
What you see above is a key part of Steven Hall’s debut novel – not shite, of course, but the graphical representation of ideas and images using letters and symbols to make concrete forms. It pervades this strange, occasionally desolate but never dull piece of work and provides flashes of colour, even brilliance.
Much as you see my word turd above and cease to see it as a collection of words or even letters, but rather as a fixed shape, so too will you see the ferocious Ludovician – the shark promised in the play-on-words title of this book. It’s not a real flesh-and-blood fish, but a conceptual fish. Although its bite is real enough; this laddie will still pull you under the floor if you’re not quick, if you’re not smart.
Hall is obviously a Jaws freak; I’m guessing he grew up watching the greatest of all scary stories and loved it, before working out his own unique way of spinning a big fish tale of his own over the course of a lifetime.
I’m a Jaws freak, too. I’ll admit it, the idea that a shark might be lurking beneath the cover is what first caused me to take a look at this book in the shop. (The same instinct drove me to buy James Delingpole’s Fin last year, but with decidedly different results.)
This shark doesn’t just eat people, though – this one eats memories and identities, leaving people amnesic and confused if it doesn’t outright scoff them. It does not exist in the real world, but rather in the conceptual world, or Un-space. It’s an idea of a shark, only visible on strange tableau throughout the book. Sometimes it’s visible in the static on a television set, sometimes as a moving shadow across the shaded tiles of a drained swimming pool.
The story concerns someone called The Second Eric Sanderson, who wakes up with no idea of who he is with only a series of guiding notes from The First Eric Sanderson to keep him out of the Ludovician’s jaws. Through conversations with a psychiatrist, he discovers that he is suffering from a dissociative condition, or fugue. His psyche is blocking out something terrible that happened while he was on holiday in Greece – an accident that killed his partner, Clio Aames.
Except, that’s not the way either Eric Sanderson sees it. He thinks it’s all to do with Un-space, and his job in mapping out this strange, sometimes deadly territory. Creatures from Un-space, as one of his letters to himself says, “do not see physical plants and trees and animals. They do not see the sky or the moon. They only see people, and the things that people make and say and do”.
Eric finds out that he used to work for the Un-space Exploration Committee, and that the Ludovician represented his way of attempting to preserve the memories of Cleo in Un-space. But there’s another girl in the Second Eric’s story, too – a spirited creature called Scout who seeks to use the Ludovician to destroy the sinister internet presence known as Mycroft Ward. But why does she remind him so much of Clio? And why does she have the same tattoo as Clio (a smiley face on her toe to let the mortician in on the big joke)?
Throughout the text, we get illustrations of these conceptual creatures; starting off small with ickle fish, then stunning us with some fantastic, unexpected shark moments. The only books which ever gave people “jump scares” before are ones that fell off bookshelves or had guns concealed in them. But the Raw Shark Texts has one part that’s as close as you’re going to get to an author leaping off the page and shouting “Boo!” at you.
Using text as illustration in this way is nothing new; Irvine Welsh used to enjoy using word chunks as building blocks in some of his fiction; Alfred Bester took the form one step beyond in parts of The Stars My Destination nearly sixty years ago; concrete forms in poetry has been around for a while, and I’m sure I recall someone sending in artwork to a kids’ TV show, a picture of Prince Charles’ face created entirely on a typewriter. (Poor devil! Can you imagine that effort? And for what reward?) I gather the House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski takes a similarly experimental tack, though I haven’t read it. Here, it is part of the story itself, almost an entity on its own. It forms part of the central intrigue; what is the shark? Why is it pursuing Eric, and what does it have to do with the trauma his mind won’t face?
Ironically, confusion is the best defence Eric has against the shark. When he posts letters to people who can help him, he’s advised to do it just before the postman empties the box, with the other mail acting as a screen of static. The shark can sense whatever conceptual moves you make, much as a real shark will sniff out a cloud of fresh blood in the water. Only other concepts, ideas and communications can confuse it and throw it off the scent. Eric has to run dictaphones in the background when he’s making calls; he even uses a psychic defence mechanism, thinking of a completely false identity and name ,when he knows the Ludovician is on his trail. It is the logic and logistics of a lunatic, and it fits in well with the general drive of the book.
There are clues, enigmas, mysteries and puzzles dotted throughout, and it’s here that Hall might lose some people. The Ludovician is a barmy idea, and it – and the entire book – will only work if you give the author’s imagination a little leeway. This is a story about positives and negatives, matter and anti-matter. It is also littered with references which hint at the plot – Casablanca is a strong one, as is the obvious Jaws, and there are also nods to work as diverse as that of Jorge Luis Borges and Frank L Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Some you’ll get, a few you won’t, and some you may not care about either way. But there’s no doubting the skill that went into creating the conundrum. There are “lightbulb fragments”, journal entries where the original Eric Sanderson recounts his time with the lost Clio; there’s a keyboard-based Morse code that the narrator has to crack. There’s the mysterious Mr Nobody, a sinister presence who represents the Mycroft Ward entity – itself an enigma.
And what’s with these names, anyway? Is Mycroft Ward a piss-take of Microsoft Word? I’m rather tickled to think that it is. I imagine Steven Hall losing a document or something, unable to retrieve it, raving mad about it, and taking this most delicious revenge. What about Dr Trey Fidorous, the scientist? It seems like it must be an anagram.
If you don’t like the sound of these linguistic games, then the bad news is that it gets worse. Hall has set up a number of Easter Eggs surrounding the Raw Shark Texts since it was published – “negative chapters” which complement the “positive” ones printed in the book. These are sometimes hidden around the internet, or even in the foreign language versions of the book. It’s possible that there is a definitive version of The Raw Shark Texts out there, but it’s never been collected in one volume in English before so far as I can ascertain.
Where the whole thing threatens to sink is in the final section. I’m not spoiling much for you by saying that this part is effectively a “reimagining” of the movie, Jaws. Eric, Scout and the expository Dr Fidorous head out on a conceptual boat, into a conceptual sea, to hunt their conceptual shark. It’s a bonkers leap of faith for a reader to make, going from the trio basically setting up a wendy house in a real-world basement to imagining they’re out at sea in the very familiar story of three shark hunters on the trail of a monstrous fish. (During this section there is also a wonderful “flip-book” style piece of self-service animation, running to dozens of pages, which I guarantee you’ll want to go back to again and again.)
Hall just about gets away with all this. Not through any metaphysical jive, but because at the heart of this story there is a human tragedy. The flashback (or “lightbulb”) parts of the book which detail the First Eric Sanderson’s relationship with poor, doomed Clio Aames are luminous, striking for their lack of conceptual clutter. There’s a glorious phrase where he describes her embrace of the European style of sunbathing – “she went continentally tits-out”. They take pictures of each other. They send postcards. They make love and frolic in the sunshine. They are free and happy. It has a strong sense of a young couple on their first vacation together, and there’s a kind of innocence in their time spent on the Greek island. Something to be looked back upon like a photograph that’s started to bleach in the sun, just leaving shades of white and very, very pale blue.
And it’s that sense of tragedy and lost love which might just make you fall for this book, very hard. It’s almost certainly the reason why, according to some reports, Nicole Kidman begged the author to allow her to have the film rights. I think it would make a great movie; for me, Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight) is the man to direct it. He does love his puzzles, his duality and his ciphers; The Raw Shark (Rorshach?) Texts seems tailor-made for him.
This is a triumph of a novel; I’m at once envious of it and in awe of it. No matter how much I want to be snarky about certain parts, something makes me bite back my comments. Some new idea connected to it that I hadn’t considered before. Only the best books, the best films, can have this effect. I look forward to reading it again.
When you enter this world, you’d be advised to dive right in. Immerse yourself in it, allow yourself to go deep, to drink in the freedom of ideas, the neatness of the concept. These are warm seas. But beware – keep your wits about you. Don’t linger in the deep places. Because you never know what you might
. .
O
\/\/\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/
368 Pages, Canongate.
We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Idea
By Pat Black
Conceptual art – it’s the Robin Williams of the creative industries. Some love and admire it and engage with it, even for all the undeniable rubbish that has emerged under its name. Others simply loathe it and mentally hibernate whenever it shows up on their sonar, ignoring the wit and the sometimes genuinely startling examples of work. So, nanu-nanu, be warned. To read The Raw Shark Texts is to dive head-first into conceptual art-infested waters.
The blurb on the cover refers to the high concept – “The bastard love-child of The Matrix, Jaws and the Da Vinci Code!” I think this hyperbole might actually have come from the otherwise wonderful Mark Haddon, the guy who wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. This description of The Raw Shark Texts, if we were to represent it visually, might look something like this:
s s
t t
e e fly
n n
fly c c fly
h h
Pong pong pong pong pong
Pong Brown Pong
Pong pong pong pong pong pong
That is to say, shite.
What you see above is a key part of Steven Hall’s debut novel – not shite, of course, but the graphical representation of ideas and images using letters and symbols to make concrete forms. It pervades this strange, occasionally desolate but never dull piece of work and provides flashes of colour, even brilliance.
Much as you see my word turd above and cease to see it as a collection of words or even letters, but rather as a fixed shape, so too will you see the ferocious Ludovician – the shark promised in the play-on-words title of this book. It’s not a real flesh-and-blood fish, but a conceptual fish. Although its bite is real enough; this laddie will still pull you under the floor if you’re not quick, if you’re not smart.
Hall is obviously a Jaws freak; I’m guessing he grew up watching the greatest of all scary stories and loved it, before working out his own unique way of spinning a big fish tale of his own over the course of a lifetime.
I’m a Jaws freak, too. I’ll admit it, the idea that a shark might be lurking beneath the cover is what first caused me to take a look at this book in the shop. (The same instinct drove me to buy James Delingpole’s Fin last year, but with decidedly different results.)
This shark doesn’t just eat people, though – this one eats memories and identities, leaving people amnesic and confused if it doesn’t outright scoff them. It does not exist in the real world, but rather in the conceptual world, or Un-space. It’s an idea of a shark, only visible on strange tableau throughout the book. Sometimes it’s visible in the static on a television set, sometimes as a moving shadow across the shaded tiles of a drained swimming pool.
The story concerns someone called The Second Eric Sanderson, who wakes up with no idea of who he is with only a series of guiding notes from The First Eric Sanderson to keep him out of the Ludovician’s jaws. Through conversations with a psychiatrist, he discovers that he is suffering from a dissociative condition, or fugue. His psyche is blocking out something terrible that happened while he was on holiday in Greece – an accident that killed his partner, Clio Aames.
Except, that’s not the way either Eric Sanderson sees it. He thinks it’s all to do with Un-space, and his job in mapping out this strange, sometimes deadly territory. Creatures from Un-space, as one of his letters to himself says, “do not see physical plants and trees and animals. They do not see the sky or the moon. They only see people, and the things that people make and say and do”.
Eric finds out that he used to work for the Un-space Exploration Committee, and that the Ludovician represented his way of attempting to preserve the memories of Cleo in Un-space. But there’s another girl in the Second Eric’s story, too – a spirited creature called Scout who seeks to use the Ludovician to destroy the sinister internet presence known as Mycroft Ward. But why does she remind him so much of Clio? And why does she have the same tattoo as Clio (a smiley face on her toe to let the mortician in on the big joke)?
Throughout the text, we get illustrations of these conceptual creatures; starting off small with ickle fish, then stunning us with some fantastic, unexpected shark moments. The only books which ever gave people “jump scares” before are ones that fell off bookshelves or had guns concealed in them. But the Raw Shark Texts has one part that’s as close as you’re going to get to an author leaping off the page and shouting “Boo!” at you.
Using text as illustration in this way is nothing new; Irvine Welsh used to enjoy using word chunks as building blocks in some of his fiction; Alfred Bester took the form one step beyond in parts of The Stars My Destination nearly sixty years ago; concrete forms in poetry has been around for a while, and I’m sure I recall someone sending in artwork to a kids’ TV show, a picture of Prince Charles’ face created entirely on a typewriter. (Poor devil! Can you imagine that effort? And for what reward?) I gather the House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski takes a similarly experimental tack, though I haven’t read it. Here, it is part of the story itself, almost an entity on its own. It forms part of the central intrigue; what is the shark? Why is it pursuing Eric, and what does it have to do with the trauma his mind won’t face?
Ironically, confusion is the best defence Eric has against the shark. When he posts letters to people who can help him, he’s advised to do it just before the postman empties the box, with the other mail acting as a screen of static. The shark can sense whatever conceptual moves you make, much as a real shark will sniff out a cloud of fresh blood in the water. Only other concepts, ideas and communications can confuse it and throw it off the scent. Eric has to run dictaphones in the background when he’s making calls; he even uses a psychic defence mechanism, thinking of a completely false identity and name ,when he knows the Ludovician is on his trail. It is the logic and logistics of a lunatic, and it fits in well with the general drive of the book.
There are clues, enigmas, mysteries and puzzles dotted throughout, and it’s here that Hall might lose some people. The Ludovician is a barmy idea, and it – and the entire book – will only work if you give the author’s imagination a little leeway. This is a story about positives and negatives, matter and anti-matter. It is also littered with references which hint at the plot – Casablanca is a strong one, as is the obvious Jaws, and there are also nods to work as diverse as that of Jorge Luis Borges and Frank L Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Some you’ll get, a few you won’t, and some you may not care about either way. But there’s no doubting the skill that went into creating the conundrum. There are “lightbulb fragments”, journal entries where the original Eric Sanderson recounts his time with the lost Clio; there’s a keyboard-based Morse code that the narrator has to crack. There’s the mysterious Mr Nobody, a sinister presence who represents the Mycroft Ward entity – itself an enigma.
And what’s with these names, anyway? Is Mycroft Ward a piss-take of Microsoft Word? I’m rather tickled to think that it is. I imagine Steven Hall losing a document or something, unable to retrieve it, raving mad about it, and taking this most delicious revenge. What about Dr Trey Fidorous, the scientist? It seems like it must be an anagram.
If you don’t like the sound of these linguistic games, then the bad news is that it gets worse. Hall has set up a number of Easter Eggs surrounding the Raw Shark Texts since it was published – “negative chapters” which complement the “positive” ones printed in the book. These are sometimes hidden around the internet, or even in the foreign language versions of the book. It’s possible that there is a definitive version of The Raw Shark Texts out there, but it’s never been collected in one volume in English before so far as I can ascertain.
Where the whole thing threatens to sink is in the final section. I’m not spoiling much for you by saying that this part is effectively a “reimagining” of the movie, Jaws. Eric, Scout and the expository Dr Fidorous head out on a conceptual boat, into a conceptual sea, to hunt their conceptual shark. It’s a bonkers leap of faith for a reader to make, going from the trio basically setting up a wendy house in a real-world basement to imagining they’re out at sea in the very familiar story of three shark hunters on the trail of a monstrous fish. (During this section there is also a wonderful “flip-book” style piece of self-service animation, running to dozens of pages, which I guarantee you’ll want to go back to again and again.)
Hall just about gets away with all this. Not through any metaphysical jive, but because at the heart of this story there is a human tragedy. The flashback (or “lightbulb”) parts of the book which detail the First Eric Sanderson’s relationship with poor, doomed Clio Aames are luminous, striking for their lack of conceptual clutter. There’s a glorious phrase where he describes her embrace of the European style of sunbathing – “she went continentally tits-out”. They take pictures of each other. They send postcards. They make love and frolic in the sunshine. They are free and happy. It has a strong sense of a young couple on their first vacation together, and there’s a kind of innocence in their time spent on the Greek island. Something to be looked back upon like a photograph that’s started to bleach in the sun, just leaving shades of white and very, very pale blue.
And it’s that sense of tragedy and lost love which might just make you fall for this book, very hard. It’s almost certainly the reason why, according to some reports, Nicole Kidman begged the author to allow her to have the film rights. I think it would make a great movie; for me, Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight) is the man to direct it. He does love his puzzles, his duality and his ciphers; The Raw Shark (Rorshach?) Texts seems tailor-made for him.
This is a triumph of a novel; I’m at once envious of it and in awe of it. No matter how much I want to be snarky about certain parts, something makes me bite back my comments. Some new idea connected to it that I hadn’t considered before. Only the best books, the best films, can have this effect. I look forward to reading it again.
When you enter this world, you’d be advised to dive right in. Immerse yourself in it, allow yourself to go deep, to drink in the freedom of ideas, the neatness of the concept. These are warm seas. But beware – keep your wits about you. Don’t linger in the deep places. Because you never know what you might
. .
O
\/\/\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/
January 19, 2010
SEX & VIOLENCE, DEATH & SILENCE
Encounters with recent art
by Gordon Burn
Review by Marc Nash
There are two voids at the heart of this book. The moral/cultural one of the art itself (my subjective opinion, therefore discountable), but the more pertinent one is the void of our tour guide, the late Mr Burn. Any book on art is a bit like those headphones you can hire at the start of a visit to a foreign gallery - (not me buster, I try and hover on the edge of tour parties who have proper flesh and blood guides; in The Louvre once I attached myself to the fringes of a women's Church party from Atlanta Ga, but it didn't take them too long to spot me standing out like a bit of a sore thumb and I was asked, uncharitably I felt, to leave) - but anyway, there are two likely outcomes; firstly such is the impenetrable language and terminology of art criticism, it's akin to your tape being stuck on Portuguese or Swedish for all the good it does you; the second, is the commentary is so basic, that you gain not one insight from the words of soporific wisdom. I fear both are evidenced alternately here.
Burn was also a novelist by trade. Where his tools were words and metaphors and dare I say it, images. Yet all are virtually absent here. Now I would argue strongly that all modern art fails because it relies so heavily on our writerly stock in trade that is language, to inject it with even the first rung of comprehensibility; be it the words of the title (usually an ironic juxtaposition), or a paragraph of explanatory text in the catalogue or even by the exhibit itself. Otherwise, the piece is completely adrift in a sea of sargassum. A dead shark preserved behind glass is less aesthetically pleasing to my eye than watching one in an aquarium, or even better, going cage frightening with one in the ocean. This particular Damien Hirst piece only has any association from its title "The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living" (leave it to us writers darling, we're so much better at that sort of contemplation). But as Burn states, the Young British Artist movement was virulently anti-literary and sought out the more unseemly side of life through its choice of materials, dung, maggots, refuse bags, cigarette ash, used tampons etc. It's our reality baby; it's where the artists each claim to have come from (The North & Scotland). Oh yes an attempt to reinject life into the dear old British Class system. By artists who were only suckled life at the cash teat of Charles Saatchi and the curatorship of Nicholas Serota (The Turner Prize and Tate Museum) and Jay Jopling (White Cube Gallery). In a frustratingly evasive chapter on Saatchi, focussed around the author's failed attempts to manoeuvre a personal interview with the elusive svengali (not meta writing, just tame), Burn admits Saatchi largely is to the artworld what George Soros is to high finance, ie he makes and breaks the market (and the artists). When he tires of an artist, having inflated their market price, he moves their work around the world of high investments, not so very class conscious now are you YBAers? Damien Hirst's latest works are diamond encrusted skulls... Burn argues Hirst has entered the nation's consciousness. I beg to differ, one artwork, a pickled shark has, but only in the same 'what's it all about then?' disdain as "Equivalent VIII" that infamous pile of bricks at the Tate Gallery.
Just how wide of the mark are these working class heroes? Rachel Whiteread's Turner Prize winning "House" in which she plaster cast moulded the inside skein of her house before its shell was demolished, became vandalised and graffitioed by the local community. Why? Not from any exclusion from understanding, rather the real exclusion of housing stock being a live issue in their locale. If you want to make a statement about class, then the logical thing would be not the bricks and mortar, rather the interior, what with the British obsession with DIY and TV home makeover programmes. I've an idea, a gallery full of sculpted snakes, with human features and inside their bodies is the outline of an item of furniture each one has swallowed whole and is slowly ingesting. In their mouth, snagged on their venomous fangs, is a swatch of various fabric samples the snake is poised choosing between to upholster said furniture item. There, please give me an exhibition, I can call myself a cutting edge artist now can't I? The problem with this art is that it only has one idea behind each exhibit. A single association. Hirst did a metamorphosis cycle of the butterfly, ending with them being mounted on cork behind glass. I've done it in one of my novels and it contains more than the one idea running through it. Because words are where it is at. We can take our time to explain it properly.
The book suffers from being a collection of disparate essays written originally for "The Guardian" newspaper, now brought together under one cover. Each essay on an artist may hang together internally - actually they barely do, jagging around from one impression to another - but collectively there is no ongoing analysis tying them together, since that wasn't how they were written at the time. For a movement, it all seems somewhat disparate and lacking in the intellectual rigour required to make an argument. There's an essay on The Clash in 1977, starting out and fumbling their way towards their later greatness and political savvy. It is left dangling as the portal into the artists who follow some ten years later (by which time the Clash were a very different and committed band), it just doesn't make any sense even being here. (Interestingly the most vocal opposition to the YBA has come from the music community, from Wild Billy Childish and his Stuckist movement and from The K-Foundation's sizeable £40,000 cash prize award for the worst artist of the year mocking the 1993 Turner prize). Burn's chapter about the 1993 Turner Prize competitor from Laos, with his piece constructed from rice, is headed with an illustration of an unattributed Sarah Lucas self-portrait collage when she makes no appearance in the chapter. Sloppy. The tone itself is also curious. Rather than the sense of him standing in front of an artwork under discussion, it's more akin to being at the Doctors as he reads from his notes in your file a week later, rather than at the time when he's succussing you with his fingers, or depressing your tongue, or ultrasounding your abdomen. It's like Burn's detached from the whole thing, both the art and the act of having to write about it. Hardly surprising in some ways, when most of the works aren't available for public scrutiny, sat in Saatchi's private collection (remember the fire in his warehouse that wiped out a significant gob of YBA work? - I've an alibi for the date in question btw), or those he's moved on to other wealthy individuals around the world.
But ultimately one is forced to consider the writing itself. Burn invokes the extended image of a safe cracker to compare with Hirst's own asseveration of his work being like a dissector in the morgue. I can see Hirst's comparison, Burn's just seems to be offering something way off the mark. He refers to the use of cigarettes in a piece as 'cancer sticks' and 'coffin nails' - yes, but such association is verbal only, not visual. And so on and so forth. Other critics are quoted at length and just make me want to go and read their texts instead. There are three uninterrupted pages of quotes purporting to talk about Hirst, but none of them are directly addressing him. If an author wants page filler, just list the prolix titles of each and everyone of Hirst's artworks...
Of course there is a perfect validity to writing about YBA movement. Personally, I don't think YBA merits the term 'movement' - the British no longer do movements or waves, such is our fecklessness and decadence we are happy to import movements wholesale from West of us. This coterie all studied at Goldsmiths College, under the same tutor Richard Wentworth, but they were only lumped together courtesy of the market created by one man, Charles Saatchi. Without his patronage, there would have been no movement. Can one individual really be said to determine a grass roots cultural movement?
Like I say, if you're a fan of the art then I can't see you're going to glean any new nuggets from this. If you're uninitiated, this tome won't change that. There are hints of the lifestyle of these artists living and mythologising their lives in public (lots of drunkenness and drug-taking), seeing as Burn socialised with them, but even these insights are few and far between. I'd like to know if the book was commissioned from Burn, or cobbled together in the knowledge of his immanent death from cancer.
Unwittingly Burn may have produced a book illustrating the artistic, cultural and intellectual void in Britain over the last two decades. Don't think this was his intent though. Gordon Burn RIP. YBA, rest in pieces.
by Gordon Burn
Review by Marc Nash
There are two voids at the heart of this book. The moral/cultural one of the art itself (my subjective opinion, therefore discountable), but the more pertinent one is the void of our tour guide, the late Mr Burn. Any book on art is a bit like those headphones you can hire at the start of a visit to a foreign gallery - (not me buster, I try and hover on the edge of tour parties who have proper flesh and blood guides; in The Louvre once I attached myself to the fringes of a women's Church party from Atlanta Ga, but it didn't take them too long to spot me standing out like a bit of a sore thumb and I was asked, uncharitably I felt, to leave) - but anyway, there are two likely outcomes; firstly such is the impenetrable language and terminology of art criticism, it's akin to your tape being stuck on Portuguese or Swedish for all the good it does you; the second, is the commentary is so basic, that you gain not one insight from the words of soporific wisdom. I fear both are evidenced alternately here.
Burn was also a novelist by trade. Where his tools were words and metaphors and dare I say it, images. Yet all are virtually absent here. Now I would argue strongly that all modern art fails because it relies so heavily on our writerly stock in trade that is language, to inject it with even the first rung of comprehensibility; be it the words of the title (usually an ironic juxtaposition), or a paragraph of explanatory text in the catalogue or even by the exhibit itself. Otherwise, the piece is completely adrift in a sea of sargassum. A dead shark preserved behind glass is less aesthetically pleasing to my eye than watching one in an aquarium, or even better, going cage frightening with one in the ocean. This particular Damien Hirst piece only has any association from its title "The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living" (leave it to us writers darling, we're so much better at that sort of contemplation). But as Burn states, the Young British Artist movement was virulently anti-literary and sought out the more unseemly side of life through its choice of materials, dung, maggots, refuse bags, cigarette ash, used tampons etc. It's our reality baby; it's where the artists each claim to have come from (The North & Scotland). Oh yes an attempt to reinject life into the dear old British Class system. By artists who were only suckled life at the cash teat of Charles Saatchi and the curatorship of Nicholas Serota (The Turner Prize and Tate Museum) and Jay Jopling (White Cube Gallery). In a frustratingly evasive chapter on Saatchi, focussed around the author's failed attempts to manoeuvre a personal interview with the elusive svengali (not meta writing, just tame), Burn admits Saatchi largely is to the artworld what George Soros is to high finance, ie he makes and breaks the market (and the artists). When he tires of an artist, having inflated their market price, he moves their work around the world of high investments, not so very class conscious now are you YBAers? Damien Hirst's latest works are diamond encrusted skulls... Burn argues Hirst has entered the nation's consciousness. I beg to differ, one artwork, a pickled shark has, but only in the same 'what's it all about then?' disdain as "Equivalent VIII" that infamous pile of bricks at the Tate Gallery.
Just how wide of the mark are these working class heroes? Rachel Whiteread's Turner Prize winning "House" in which she plaster cast moulded the inside skein of her house before its shell was demolished, became vandalised and graffitioed by the local community. Why? Not from any exclusion from understanding, rather the real exclusion of housing stock being a live issue in their locale. If you want to make a statement about class, then the logical thing would be not the bricks and mortar, rather the interior, what with the British obsession with DIY and TV home makeover programmes. I've an idea, a gallery full of sculpted snakes, with human features and inside their bodies is the outline of an item of furniture each one has swallowed whole and is slowly ingesting. In their mouth, snagged on their venomous fangs, is a swatch of various fabric samples the snake is poised choosing between to upholster said furniture item. There, please give me an exhibition, I can call myself a cutting edge artist now can't I? The problem with this art is that it only has one idea behind each exhibit. A single association. Hirst did a metamorphosis cycle of the butterfly, ending with them being mounted on cork behind glass. I've done it in one of my novels and it contains more than the one idea running through it. Because words are where it is at. We can take our time to explain it properly.
The book suffers from being a collection of disparate essays written originally for "The Guardian" newspaper, now brought together under one cover. Each essay on an artist may hang together internally - actually they barely do, jagging around from one impression to another - but collectively there is no ongoing analysis tying them together, since that wasn't how they were written at the time. For a movement, it all seems somewhat disparate and lacking in the intellectual rigour required to make an argument. There's an essay on The Clash in 1977, starting out and fumbling their way towards their later greatness and political savvy. It is left dangling as the portal into the artists who follow some ten years later (by which time the Clash were a very different and committed band), it just doesn't make any sense even being here. (Interestingly the most vocal opposition to the YBA has come from the music community, from Wild Billy Childish and his Stuckist movement and from The K-Foundation's sizeable £40,000 cash prize award for the worst artist of the year mocking the 1993 Turner prize). Burn's chapter about the 1993 Turner Prize competitor from Laos, with his piece constructed from rice, is headed with an illustration of an unattributed Sarah Lucas self-portrait collage when she makes no appearance in the chapter. Sloppy. The tone itself is also curious. Rather than the sense of him standing in front of an artwork under discussion, it's more akin to being at the Doctors as he reads from his notes in your file a week later, rather than at the time when he's succussing you with his fingers, or depressing your tongue, or ultrasounding your abdomen. It's like Burn's detached from the whole thing, both the art and the act of having to write about it. Hardly surprising in some ways, when most of the works aren't available for public scrutiny, sat in Saatchi's private collection (remember the fire in his warehouse that wiped out a significant gob of YBA work? - I've an alibi for the date in question btw), or those he's moved on to other wealthy individuals around the world.
But ultimately one is forced to consider the writing itself. Burn invokes the extended image of a safe cracker to compare with Hirst's own asseveration of his work being like a dissector in the morgue. I can see Hirst's comparison, Burn's just seems to be offering something way off the mark. He refers to the use of cigarettes in a piece as 'cancer sticks' and 'coffin nails' - yes, but such association is verbal only, not visual. And so on and so forth. Other critics are quoted at length and just make me want to go and read their texts instead. There are three uninterrupted pages of quotes purporting to talk about Hirst, but none of them are directly addressing him. If an author wants page filler, just list the prolix titles of each and everyone of Hirst's artworks...
Of course there is a perfect validity to writing about YBA movement. Personally, I don't think YBA merits the term 'movement' - the British no longer do movements or waves, such is our fecklessness and decadence we are happy to import movements wholesale from West of us. This coterie all studied at Goldsmiths College, under the same tutor Richard Wentworth, but they were only lumped together courtesy of the market created by one man, Charles Saatchi. Without his patronage, there would have been no movement. Can one individual really be said to determine a grass roots cultural movement?
Like I say, if you're a fan of the art then I can't see you're going to glean any new nuggets from this. If you're uninitiated, this tome won't change that. There are hints of the lifestyle of these artists living and mythologising their lives in public (lots of drunkenness and drug-taking), seeing as Burn socialised with them, but even these insights are few and far between. I'd like to know if the book was commissioned from Burn, or cobbled together in the knowledge of his immanent death from cancer.
Unwittingly Burn may have produced a book illustrating the artistic, cultural and intellectual void in Britain over the last two decades. Don't think this was his intent though. Gordon Burn RIP. YBA, rest in pieces.
January 18, 2010
I AM THE ANGEL
by Michael Stuart
296 pages, iUniverse
Review by Marie Mundaca
Everyone has an idea of what heaven might be like—bright blue with fluffy clouds, lightning speed conversations with famous people, and lots of chocolate. But few people would include school and jobs. In Michael Stuart’s I Am The Angel, heaven is as pimped out as you’d like, but there’s still a lot of bureaucracy for the newly dead, like classes, with tests and everything. I would’ve hoped for a little less structure. In some ways, Stuart’s afterlife is a cross between The Lovely Bones and Beetlejuice, with its hellish waiting-room limbo. But don’t expect the sentimentality of Bones, -- the unnamed protagonist of I Am the Angel is fairly cantankerous, and his difficulty with his post-death assignment gives Stuart the opportunity to present philosophical discussions about the plight of humanity with a great degree of insight and humor. Readers will find Angel maybe a little sappy, but not at all predictable.
The hero of I Am the Angel dies as a result of getting hit by a car on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and we immediately see where his priorities lie—the first thing he notices upon realizing that he’s dead is that his hair looks perfect. Apparently, when you die you get an idealized version of yourself to parade around it—pretty nice! And regular clothes too. No flowing white robes here, unless that’s what you want. But unfortunately for our hero, his obvious misanthropy is overlooked by the all knowing angel of death, Michael, and he immediately gets shuttled into “Angel School,” where he’ll learn to help out the living when bad hair days push them over the edge.
The protagonist has a slow and believable journey throughout the novel—his hatred and intolerance of people comes from how they constantly disappoint him with their bad decisions and bad manners. He struggles with the decision of whether or not to accept his assignments. Sure, he gets to go back to earth, but he has to deal with—eww--people. But an accidental overdose victim, Marley, along with his fellow students, show him that everyone has some good in them, and just about everyone deserves to get an angelic hand now and then.
Stuart spends quite a bit of time describing how things work in heaven. Besides the idealized self, you get to design your home and place it in the neighborhood of your choice, and you can also go to fantasy ballgames. It’s pretty swanky. But Stuart’s descriptions and side trips don’t get in the way of the real story, which is the hero’s journey from regular ol’ dead person to angel.
The protagonist starts out with general distain for humanity, and some of his fellow students. As he gets to know people a little better, his hatred tempers a bit—he is obviously a man who can hate on a large scale, but is able to find a little good in the people he actually meets. But when he attends his own funeral, his anger and disappointment are palpable as he notes the absence of his former fiancé and the presence of people he doesn’t even know whom he suspects may be business associates of his parents. He writes. “Who the hell were they to turn my death into a networking opportunity? Didn’t they have expensed business lunches where they could spew their sycophantic dialogue to dear old mom and dad?” He bemoans the lack of heart-felt eulogies, and people talking about the weather instead of about him. And who can blame him? Hopefully we really don’t get to attend our own funerals—I’m sure we would find them equally appalling.
Despite the fact that this book takes place in a fairly traditional version of a Judeo-Christian heaven, the archangels tend towards a very liberal interpretation of the Bible. Readers shouldn’t be expecting any evangelizing here. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. At one point archangel Michael says, “We find it very distressing when someone imposes his interpretation of the Bible onto someone else. It’s the same as forcing your personal values onto others. This mocks the very idea of both free will and the individualist nature with which God created humans.”
Stuart missed some opportunities to explore the protagonist’s misanthropy and his relationship with his ex-fiancé isn’t as fleshed out as it should be. But these minor flaws don’t detract from this sweet and enjoyable novel.
296 pages, iUniverse
Review by Marie Mundaca
Everyone has an idea of what heaven might be like—bright blue with fluffy clouds, lightning speed conversations with famous people, and lots of chocolate. But few people would include school and jobs. In Michael Stuart’s I Am The Angel, heaven is as pimped out as you’d like, but there’s still a lot of bureaucracy for the newly dead, like classes, with tests and everything. I would’ve hoped for a little less structure. In some ways, Stuart’s afterlife is a cross between The Lovely Bones and Beetlejuice, with its hellish waiting-room limbo. But don’t expect the sentimentality of Bones, -- the unnamed protagonist of I Am the Angel is fairly cantankerous, and his difficulty with his post-death assignment gives Stuart the opportunity to present philosophical discussions about the plight of humanity with a great degree of insight and humor. Readers will find Angel maybe a little sappy, but not at all predictable.
The hero of I Am the Angel dies as a result of getting hit by a car on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and we immediately see where his priorities lie—the first thing he notices upon realizing that he’s dead is that his hair looks perfect. Apparently, when you die you get an idealized version of yourself to parade around it—pretty nice! And regular clothes too. No flowing white robes here, unless that’s what you want. But unfortunately for our hero, his obvious misanthropy is overlooked by the all knowing angel of death, Michael, and he immediately gets shuttled into “Angel School,” where he’ll learn to help out the living when bad hair days push them over the edge.
The protagonist has a slow and believable journey throughout the novel—his hatred and intolerance of people comes from how they constantly disappoint him with their bad decisions and bad manners. He struggles with the decision of whether or not to accept his assignments. Sure, he gets to go back to earth, but he has to deal with—eww--people. But an accidental overdose victim, Marley, along with his fellow students, show him that everyone has some good in them, and just about everyone deserves to get an angelic hand now and then.
Stuart spends quite a bit of time describing how things work in heaven. Besides the idealized self, you get to design your home and place it in the neighborhood of your choice, and you can also go to fantasy ballgames. It’s pretty swanky. But Stuart’s descriptions and side trips don’t get in the way of the real story, which is the hero’s journey from regular ol’ dead person to angel.
The protagonist starts out with general distain for humanity, and some of his fellow students. As he gets to know people a little better, his hatred tempers a bit—he is obviously a man who can hate on a large scale, but is able to find a little good in the people he actually meets. But when he attends his own funeral, his anger and disappointment are palpable as he notes the absence of his former fiancé and the presence of people he doesn’t even know whom he suspects may be business associates of his parents. He writes. “Who the hell were they to turn my death into a networking opportunity? Didn’t they have expensed business lunches where they could spew their sycophantic dialogue to dear old mom and dad?” He bemoans the lack of heart-felt eulogies, and people talking about the weather instead of about him. And who can blame him? Hopefully we really don’t get to attend our own funerals—I’m sure we would find them equally appalling.
Despite the fact that this book takes place in a fairly traditional version of a Judeo-Christian heaven, the archangels tend towards a very liberal interpretation of the Bible. Readers shouldn’t be expecting any evangelizing here. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. At one point archangel Michael says, “We find it very distressing when someone imposes his interpretation of the Bible onto someone else. It’s the same as forcing your personal values onto others. This mocks the very idea of both free will and the individualist nature with which God created humans.”
Stuart missed some opportunities to explore the protagonist’s misanthropy and his relationship with his ex-fiancé isn’t as fleshed out as it should be. But these minor flaws don’t detract from this sweet and enjoyable novel.
January 17, 2010
AN OLD PUB NEAR THE ANGEL
by James Kelman
185 pages, Polygon 2007
Mate, kin ye spare two bob? by Pat Black.
Awright pal, ye’re lookin’ crackin’ so ye ur. Puttin’ the beef oan, eh? So, ye fancy mebbe a coupla bevvies n’ a game a cairds eh? Ye been doon the burroo? Get a fuckin’ round in then.**
Still with me? I’m not sure Microsoft Word is. It doesn’t like those kinds of sentences. Auto-correct feels it has to step in, clapping its hand on your shoulder like a doorman. There are lots of those squiggly red, green and blue lines under most of the words and phrases. It could be that my writing has the measles. Or possibly I’ve set the typeface to “Arial frown” by accident. Upon a quick scan, I’ve only just noticed that it automatically changed the word “doon” to “doom”, which tickles me - assuming I didn’t type the thing wrong with my sausage fingers anyway.
What would James Kelman make of this? A Glaswegian writer, he was publishing in the vernacular peculiar to his mither city long before Irvine Welsh was making it cool to be shite and Scottish in an east coast dialect. Without any formal education beyond his early teens and armed with nothing more than a love of books and a desire to write, he penned stories which the New York Times Magazine saw fit to call the “Scottish beat” style, following in the footsteps of Alexander Trocchi; tales of guys who were down to the fluff in their pockets, and sometimes even less than that, surviving on whatever crappy jobs they could get or what the labour exchange could provide them with. His language is their language, an authentic voice which is still used as a source of comedy by middle class English people these days – YouTube “Michael McIntyre + Scottish people” for an example of this. There are a lot of laughs in this book, but none of it comes from the use of dialect. Unless it’s at your expense. But more on ra banter later.
An Old Pub Near The Angel is Kelman’s first ever published work, a series of stripped-down short stories which originally appeared in 1973. In them, characters lose their jobs working on the buses and scrounge lifts back home. They scrape by through good fortune, feral cunning and the kindness of others. They do a runner from their lodgings in the middle of the night when they can’t afford the rent. Seasonal work on campsites in Jersey is about as exotic as things get. Their castles are dingy bedsits, their battlegrounds and debating chambers are damp old men’s pubs. But never in this collection is there a sense of despair. There’s existentialism aplenty here, but it’s without the angst. Even in a story entitled “Abject Misery”, where the rain collecting in puddles is seen as a weapon used by a hostile God to torment its unwashed, poverty-addled narrator, he manages to laugh in the face of his circumstances: “Who cares anyway? My feet were soaking already ha ha ha.”
In “Wednesday”, we get another example of this, where a guy in a bedsit goes on to have a wonderful day to himself, owing to what we might now label good karma. It opens with this poor man trying to perfect the technique of boiling an egg in a teapot – his last egg, too – and failing miserably. But life rewards him with boons after he refuses to take money which someone has left lying in some communal toilets. His convoluted path takes him to a free session with a buxom prostitute, leading him to reflect that things are looking up for a Wednesday morning. Kelman’s stories are littered with such gifts of nature and providence, ones accepted gratefully by those on their uppers.
Funnily enough, in his use of the word “Wednesday” itself, Kelman challenges us. His interpretation of it in the story “Nice To Be Nice” - “Wedinsday” - is a fly dig at the proper use of grammar and spelling in English. Wednesday sounds like it’s got a glottal stop, you see. That peculiarly Glaswegian verbal affliction, the scourge of many a thin-lipped elocution teacher. Some’n’s missin’, righ’ enough. So Kelman cheekily auto-corrects this omission from the written representation of commonly-used words and sounds. My own preferred method would be to toss a handful of apostrophes over the text (see my intro par), but no matter.
In his joke, there’s a serious point to be made about cultural elitism, prejudice in the way we read, and also the way we listen to people. As Kelman reflects, broadsheet newspaper columnists and arts show couch dwellers would launch attacks on his style, seemingly not considering the possibility that the working class men and women who would use such language as a matter of course would be reading the paper, watching the television or sharing in their cultural experience. His 1994 Booker Prize winning novel, How Late It Was, How Late, did cause a great fuss at the time (though the more cynical of us might point to the fact that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, old son). Told in Glaswegian dialect, it was completely traduced in some quarters as a somewhat unworthy winner of so well-respected an honour. In Kelman’s afterword to this collection he says that this attitude was present and correct even when he was starting out, 20 years earlier, with some critics saying he was “dragging language through the gutter”. The chairman of the Booker panel even threatened to resign over it. As he was then, Kelman is forthright in his defence of this method of representing language, eager to expose cultural snobbery and prejudice – I mean, a whole novel in Glaswegian! The very idea! – and more power to him for it.
This book was first published two years before a weird-looking ex-Clydeside shipyard worker with long hair, a beard and a funny accent called Billy Connolly appeared on the Michael Parkinson show in the UK, changing comedy forever. Kelman’s voice and attitude is broadly similar that of the younger, less caustic version of the world’s favourite former welder. They are the Scots baby boomers, growing up in the 1960s and slowly shedding that damned Presbyterian outlook, learning to laugh at whatever life throws at them instead of slowly sinking under its weight, and looking beyond the unceasingly grim reality of life for working class people in that once great industrial city. There were others about at this time, too; Archie Hind, Alasdair Gray – working class artists, encroaching into strange territory. It seems to have been an unusually fertile time for the city in terms of its literature.
Kelman’s tone grows dark in the collection’s best story, “Nice To Be Nice”. In it, a kindly (if naive) older man looking out for his friends and neighbours finally loses his temper with the social security services and its bureaucracy after they attempt to throw a young woman and her children out on the streets for rent arrears. This is the only story where the Glaswegian dialogue is consistent throughout the text, and I don’t think it’s an accident that this goes hand in hand with the terrible sense of social injustice boiling within our narrator when faced with the indifference of a guy in a suit sitting behind a desk. In showing a decent, mild-mannered man railing against the authorities, Kelman reveals a sense of social conscience and basic good nature which transcends our ideas of law and order and the structure of society; and it’s here that he hits us hardest.
This new edition’s longest piece is the lengthy Afterword, a mini autobiography where Kelman addresses his themes, chronicles his development as an author and raises a few smiles. There’s one section where he jokes – one hopes – about having Asbestos sandwiches with brown sauce at the deadly-sounding Lancastrian fibre manufacturer he once worked at. In this and other recounted true-life tales, he acknowledges that the engine room of stories are in their depiction of people; Kelman is happy to explain where a lot of the ideas and inspiration came from, revealing the spark provided by real-life stories and characters, and the magic of kindling this into a story. Those precious snapshots of life.
There’s also a mention of his close connection with Glaswegian literary contemporaries, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead, the poet Tom Leonard (last year, Kelman made a case for Leonard being awarded the Nobel Prize), and the Gaelic writer Aonghas MacNeachall. They had their own literary salons and artistic brainstorming sessions, in the flats of benevolent academics; a kind of Parisian set-up, except that instead of pissing about in cafes, guzzling wine, they hid themselves away in tenement flats, producing art in a curiously shy way – even someone as strident and insouciant as Kelman.
There’s something about Glasgow that sort of shies away from the idea of the written word as art; it’s a place where a terrifying amount of technological concepts and scientific discoveries were made. You know, useful things, like bicycles, the stuff of real life, not literature. You have to head east along the M8 if you want to find the great Scots writers. Back in Glasgow, there’s that very Calvinist shame about someone trying to do something for a living that doesn’t involve you breaking your back. As another great Glaswegian author, Archie Hind, notes: even with half the population being Catholic, in many ways Glasgow remains one of the world’s most Calvinist cities.
I’m reminded of my dad’s frank appraisal of short stories I would pen as a young boy. “That’s good. What book did you copy that out of? I don’t know why you bother with that rubbish.”
I wonder if there’s some sort of residual cultural guilt still dragging down the Weedgies; a shameful acknowledgement that writing a book is not, and never will be, equated with digging a road. Even nowadays, despite the fact it has such a wonderful Art School that makes waves across the world, Glasgow is a city that doesn’t like its children to get ideas above its station. What, you think you’re some kind of smart arse, eh? By Christ, you’ll be made to regret it. You’ll laugh on the other side of your face. Away and work.
Speaking of which. This book was the last one I ever bought out of my favourite bookshop, a thriving place always stuffed with people which had fallen foul of the financial climate and its effect on a parent group. The store closed two days before Christmas and discharged its staff onto the burroo. It also disposed of a silly hope I’d harboured that one day I’d go in there and see my own books on its shelves.
“Everything must go”, said the signs – and indeed it did. There was something very sad about the place when I walked past it the other day, the shelves completely bare, the walls and staircases and cash desks stripped naked, the escalators stilled. I’m thinking there may be a story hiding in there somewhere.
**Translated: Hello my good man, you’re looking well I must say. You do not appear to be quite so skinny as the last time I saw you, if I may be so bold. What would you say to an ale or two and a hand of canasta down at the gentleman’s club? I notice you appear to have come into an inheritance of some sort – surely you wouldn’t be so parsimonious as to deny your old friend a drink now that your circumstances are less reduced?
185 pages, Polygon 2007
Mate, kin ye spare two bob? by Pat Black.
Awright pal, ye’re lookin’ crackin’ so ye ur. Puttin’ the beef oan, eh? So, ye fancy mebbe a coupla bevvies n’ a game a cairds eh? Ye been doon the burroo? Get a fuckin’ round in then.**
Still with me? I’m not sure Microsoft Word is. It doesn’t like those kinds of sentences. Auto-correct feels it has to step in, clapping its hand on your shoulder like a doorman. There are lots of those squiggly red, green and blue lines under most of the words and phrases. It could be that my writing has the measles. Or possibly I’ve set the typeface to “Arial frown” by accident. Upon a quick scan, I’ve only just noticed that it automatically changed the word “doon” to “doom”, which tickles me - assuming I didn’t type the thing wrong with my sausage fingers anyway.
What would James Kelman make of this? A Glaswegian writer, he was publishing in the vernacular peculiar to his mither city long before Irvine Welsh was making it cool to be shite and Scottish in an east coast dialect. Without any formal education beyond his early teens and armed with nothing more than a love of books and a desire to write, he penned stories which the New York Times Magazine saw fit to call the “Scottish beat” style, following in the footsteps of Alexander Trocchi; tales of guys who were down to the fluff in their pockets, and sometimes even less than that, surviving on whatever crappy jobs they could get or what the labour exchange could provide them with. His language is their language, an authentic voice which is still used as a source of comedy by middle class English people these days – YouTube “Michael McIntyre + Scottish people” for an example of this. There are a lot of laughs in this book, but none of it comes from the use of dialect. Unless it’s at your expense. But more on ra banter later.
An Old Pub Near The Angel is Kelman’s first ever published work, a series of stripped-down short stories which originally appeared in 1973. In them, characters lose their jobs working on the buses and scrounge lifts back home. They scrape by through good fortune, feral cunning and the kindness of others. They do a runner from their lodgings in the middle of the night when they can’t afford the rent. Seasonal work on campsites in Jersey is about as exotic as things get. Their castles are dingy bedsits, their battlegrounds and debating chambers are damp old men’s pubs. But never in this collection is there a sense of despair. There’s existentialism aplenty here, but it’s without the angst. Even in a story entitled “Abject Misery”, where the rain collecting in puddles is seen as a weapon used by a hostile God to torment its unwashed, poverty-addled narrator, he manages to laugh in the face of his circumstances: “Who cares anyway? My feet were soaking already ha ha ha.”
In “Wednesday”, we get another example of this, where a guy in a bedsit goes on to have a wonderful day to himself, owing to what we might now label good karma. It opens with this poor man trying to perfect the technique of boiling an egg in a teapot – his last egg, too – and failing miserably. But life rewards him with boons after he refuses to take money which someone has left lying in some communal toilets. His convoluted path takes him to a free session with a buxom prostitute, leading him to reflect that things are looking up for a Wednesday morning. Kelman’s stories are littered with such gifts of nature and providence, ones accepted gratefully by those on their uppers.
Funnily enough, in his use of the word “Wednesday” itself, Kelman challenges us. His interpretation of it in the story “Nice To Be Nice” - “Wedinsday” - is a fly dig at the proper use of grammar and spelling in English. Wednesday sounds like it’s got a glottal stop, you see. That peculiarly Glaswegian verbal affliction, the scourge of many a thin-lipped elocution teacher. Some’n’s missin’, righ’ enough. So Kelman cheekily auto-corrects this omission from the written representation of commonly-used words and sounds. My own preferred method would be to toss a handful of apostrophes over the text (see my intro par), but no matter.
In his joke, there’s a serious point to be made about cultural elitism, prejudice in the way we read, and also the way we listen to people. As Kelman reflects, broadsheet newspaper columnists and arts show couch dwellers would launch attacks on his style, seemingly not considering the possibility that the working class men and women who would use such language as a matter of course would be reading the paper, watching the television or sharing in their cultural experience. His 1994 Booker Prize winning novel, How Late It Was, How Late, did cause a great fuss at the time (though the more cynical of us might point to the fact that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, old son). Told in Glaswegian dialect, it was completely traduced in some quarters as a somewhat unworthy winner of so well-respected an honour. In Kelman’s afterword to this collection he says that this attitude was present and correct even when he was starting out, 20 years earlier, with some critics saying he was “dragging language through the gutter”. The chairman of the Booker panel even threatened to resign over it. As he was then, Kelman is forthright in his defence of this method of representing language, eager to expose cultural snobbery and prejudice – I mean, a whole novel in Glaswegian! The very idea! – and more power to him for it.
This book was first published two years before a weird-looking ex-Clydeside shipyard worker with long hair, a beard and a funny accent called Billy Connolly appeared on the Michael Parkinson show in the UK, changing comedy forever. Kelman’s voice and attitude is broadly similar that of the younger, less caustic version of the world’s favourite former welder. They are the Scots baby boomers, growing up in the 1960s and slowly shedding that damned Presbyterian outlook, learning to laugh at whatever life throws at them instead of slowly sinking under its weight, and looking beyond the unceasingly grim reality of life for working class people in that once great industrial city. There were others about at this time, too; Archie Hind, Alasdair Gray – working class artists, encroaching into strange territory. It seems to have been an unusually fertile time for the city in terms of its literature.
Kelman’s tone grows dark in the collection’s best story, “Nice To Be Nice”. In it, a kindly (if naive) older man looking out for his friends and neighbours finally loses his temper with the social security services and its bureaucracy after they attempt to throw a young woman and her children out on the streets for rent arrears. This is the only story where the Glaswegian dialogue is consistent throughout the text, and I don’t think it’s an accident that this goes hand in hand with the terrible sense of social injustice boiling within our narrator when faced with the indifference of a guy in a suit sitting behind a desk. In showing a decent, mild-mannered man railing against the authorities, Kelman reveals a sense of social conscience and basic good nature which transcends our ideas of law and order and the structure of society; and it’s here that he hits us hardest.
This new edition’s longest piece is the lengthy Afterword, a mini autobiography where Kelman addresses his themes, chronicles his development as an author and raises a few smiles. There’s one section where he jokes – one hopes – about having Asbestos sandwiches with brown sauce at the deadly-sounding Lancastrian fibre manufacturer he once worked at. In this and other recounted true-life tales, he acknowledges that the engine room of stories are in their depiction of people; Kelman is happy to explain where a lot of the ideas and inspiration came from, revealing the spark provided by real-life stories and characters, and the magic of kindling this into a story. Those precious snapshots of life.
There’s also a mention of his close connection with Glaswegian literary contemporaries, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead, the poet Tom Leonard (last year, Kelman made a case for Leonard being awarded the Nobel Prize), and the Gaelic writer Aonghas MacNeachall. They had their own literary salons and artistic brainstorming sessions, in the flats of benevolent academics; a kind of Parisian set-up, except that instead of pissing about in cafes, guzzling wine, they hid themselves away in tenement flats, producing art in a curiously shy way – even someone as strident and insouciant as Kelman.
There’s something about Glasgow that sort of shies away from the idea of the written word as art; it’s a place where a terrifying amount of technological concepts and scientific discoveries were made. You know, useful things, like bicycles, the stuff of real life, not literature. You have to head east along the M8 if you want to find the great Scots writers. Back in Glasgow, there’s that very Calvinist shame about someone trying to do something for a living that doesn’t involve you breaking your back. As another great Glaswegian author, Archie Hind, notes: even with half the population being Catholic, in many ways Glasgow remains one of the world’s most Calvinist cities.
I’m reminded of my dad’s frank appraisal of short stories I would pen as a young boy. “That’s good. What book did you copy that out of? I don’t know why you bother with that rubbish.”
I wonder if there’s some sort of residual cultural guilt still dragging down the Weedgies; a shameful acknowledgement that writing a book is not, and never will be, equated with digging a road. Even nowadays, despite the fact it has such a wonderful Art School that makes waves across the world, Glasgow is a city that doesn’t like its children to get ideas above its station. What, you think you’re some kind of smart arse, eh? By Christ, you’ll be made to regret it. You’ll laugh on the other side of your face. Away and work.
Speaking of which. This book was the last one I ever bought out of my favourite bookshop, a thriving place always stuffed with people which had fallen foul of the financial climate and its effect on a parent group. The store closed two days before Christmas and discharged its staff onto the burroo. It also disposed of a silly hope I’d harboured that one day I’d go in there and see my own books on its shelves.
“Everything must go”, said the signs – and indeed it did. There was something very sad about the place when I walked past it the other day, the shelves completely bare, the walls and staircases and cash desks stripped naked, the escalators stilled. I’m thinking there may be a story hiding in there somewhere.
**Translated: Hello my good man, you’re looking well I must say. You do not appear to be quite so skinny as the last time I saw you, if I may be so bold. What would you say to an ale or two and a hand of canasta down at the gentleman’s club? I notice you appear to have come into an inheritance of some sort – surely you wouldn’t be so parsimonious as to deny your old friend a drink now that your circumstances are less reduced?
January 16, 2010
THE CLEANER
by Paul Cleave
373 pages, Random House
Review by S. F. Winser
You read the 'Dexter' books, didn't you? You watched the TV show. You lived vicariously through the eyes of the serial killer. The good guy who only kills other killers.
And you felt kinda creeped out, didn't you?
The Cleaner is a serial killer, too. He's hunting another murderer who dared kill on his watch. Who tried to plant a body and shift the blame. But the cleaner, better known as 'The Christchurch Carver' is not one of the good guys. He kills because he wants to. He kills on a whim. He kills violently and sometimes with violatory intent. He describes it to you. You do it, through his eyes.
And somehow that felt a thousand times more honest than the Dexter books. The Cleaner's brutality and easy depravity were much less disturbing reading than the moral ambiguity of books (and TV shows) that seemed not only to be trying to justify murder, but, occasionally, to revel in it.
We see two points of view in 'The Cleaner'. Joe, our protagonist, cleaner at the police station, son of a loving but crazy mother, a bit 'slow'. Not as slow as he seems. Definitely smart enough to track down a killer and get away with nearly a dozen murders.
And Sally. A maintenance worker at the same police station, who tries to look after Slow Joe, in order to in some way make up for the loss of her brother. All she wants is to make sure Joe is safe and looked after.
The genius of this book is the way both these characters misunderstand each other. They do so thoroughly and with grave consequences for each of them. By the end of the book you are reading every interaction between them with two sets of eyes. And Cleave handles this aspect well and often with flair.
Or, I should say, this is one of the aspects of the genius of this book. Cleave's language is tight and inventive. He's often funny and sometimes veers into profound. The character of Joe is real.
Joe is also strangely likable. He loves his pet fish and enjoys a beer. He's nice to his bus driver. And, at times, you root for him.
And you feel bad about it.
Which is one of the many reasons 'The Cleaner' is a better book than the 'Dexter' volumes. If you root for a serial killer, you are supposed to feel bad about it. This is not a nice book. There is blood and easy violence. Cleave shows you that these things are bad. There is no moral ambiguity here. There may be reasons for Joe's past-time, but there are no excuses. 'The Cleaner' is more than just a Killer-seeks-Killer: Must like long walks in the park, in the dark. Please provide photo.
There are some nice twists and surprises throughout. The first chapter has a lovely sting that made me sit up and pay attention. The ending isn't really a twist and comes the only right way that it could come after everything that has preceded it. But that's not a problem, just an observation. Until the last page; where Cleave shows you you were wrong again. There's an even better way for the book to end, and this is it.
When I read genre, and find a good one, I'm often left wishing I had a pile of books in the same genre, just as good. I want the same hit. I want the same high. And I want it now! The moment I finished 'The Cleaner' I was at the library, with a stack of crime books a foot high. This book was one of the best crime novels that I'd read all year. And I want that hit again. I want that high. And I want it now.
373 pages, Random House
Review by S. F. Winser
You read the 'Dexter' books, didn't you? You watched the TV show. You lived vicariously through the eyes of the serial killer. The good guy who only kills other killers.
And you felt kinda creeped out, didn't you?
The Cleaner is a serial killer, too. He's hunting another murderer who dared kill on his watch. Who tried to plant a body and shift the blame. But the cleaner, better known as 'The Christchurch Carver' is not one of the good guys. He kills because he wants to. He kills on a whim. He kills violently and sometimes with violatory intent. He describes it to you. You do it, through his eyes.
And somehow that felt a thousand times more honest than the Dexter books. The Cleaner's brutality and easy depravity were much less disturbing reading than the moral ambiguity of books (and TV shows) that seemed not only to be trying to justify murder, but, occasionally, to revel in it.
We see two points of view in 'The Cleaner'. Joe, our protagonist, cleaner at the police station, son of a loving but crazy mother, a bit 'slow'. Not as slow as he seems. Definitely smart enough to track down a killer and get away with nearly a dozen murders.
And Sally. A maintenance worker at the same police station, who tries to look after Slow Joe, in order to in some way make up for the loss of her brother. All she wants is to make sure Joe is safe and looked after.
The genius of this book is the way both these characters misunderstand each other. They do so thoroughly and with grave consequences for each of them. By the end of the book you are reading every interaction between them with two sets of eyes. And Cleave handles this aspect well and often with flair.
Or, I should say, this is one of the aspects of the genius of this book. Cleave's language is tight and inventive. He's often funny and sometimes veers into profound. The character of Joe is real.
Joe is also strangely likable. He loves his pet fish and enjoys a beer. He's nice to his bus driver. And, at times, you root for him.
And you feel bad about it.
Which is one of the many reasons 'The Cleaner' is a better book than the 'Dexter' volumes. If you root for a serial killer, you are supposed to feel bad about it. This is not a nice book. There is blood and easy violence. Cleave shows you that these things are bad. There is no moral ambiguity here. There may be reasons for Joe's past-time, but there are no excuses. 'The Cleaner' is more than just a Killer-seeks-Killer: Must like long walks in the park, in the dark. Please provide photo.
There are some nice twists and surprises throughout. The first chapter has a lovely sting that made me sit up and pay attention. The ending isn't really a twist and comes the only right way that it could come after everything that has preceded it. But that's not a problem, just an observation. Until the last page; where Cleave shows you you were wrong again. There's an even better way for the book to end, and this is it.
When I read genre, and find a good one, I'm often left wishing I had a pile of books in the same genre, just as good. I want the same hit. I want the same high. And I want it now! The moment I finished 'The Cleaner' I was at the library, with a stack of crime books a foot high. This book was one of the best crime novels that I'd read all year. And I want that hit again. I want that high. And I want it now.
January 15, 2010
CELIA GARTH
by Gwen Bristow
416 pages. Chicago Review Press.
Review by Kate Kasserman
Every now and then, a book surprises me.
I approached Celia Garth with decidedly modest expectations, and the beginning of the story more or less met them precisely. Celia is a plucky 20-year-old orphan in 1780 Charleston, working as a junior apprentice seamstress in a hoity-toity shop and dreaming of better things (love; respect for her extra-spiffy sewing skills, which languish unrecognized while she is tasked on low-level button-reinforcing work and the like; and in general “getting her way,” because, as a Southern character of a certain type, she is full unto bursting with “gumption”). That was a fine set-up. Celia’s fine eye for detail-work (even if no one seems to know it other than herself) is matched by her close observations of the people around her; these are rendered fascinatingly through the simple, direct language of a bright, introspective person with little formal education. So I liked Celia very well, for all that everyone (the author included) keeps calling her sassy. She wanted love and a place in the world – and she had the talent and the moxie and the looks (if she does say so herself) to earn them, if only she got the chance.
Well, she did get the chance, when a well-connected friend (later fiancé) sets her up with the opportunity to sew for a VERY hard-to-please customer who becomes Celia’s mentor and surrogate mother-figure – but right on the heels of that, Celia also got the war exploding around her ears, rendering her hard-earned connections impotent or even dangerous. I was happy enough with the story and the characters that the prospect of watching Celia struggle through to triumph was enough for me; it was a fine and pleasant journey, and I really didn’t need anything else.
Except Bristow pulled a particularly deft switcheroo on me and offered a great deal more.
The book is structured as a potboiler. You can read it cheerfully as such with no harm done, except that the ending might seem like a puzzling brief coda tacked onto the proper conclusion (in my view, it is anything but). There are dastardly deeds and backstabbing, grasping relatives and spies and traitors and hypocrites and MULTIPLE explosions and hair’s-breadth escapes and secret passages and death – almost an overabundance of drama, except that Celia’s matter-of-fact point of view keeps everything grounded – and besides, it really was that violent and tense in the then-and-there. The end-of-Revolutionary-War fighting in South Carolina, gentlepeeps, was deeply, deeply ugly, and Celia is thrust in its maw. Bristow, incidentally, nods to some facts that are inconvenient to the general storyline – like that the Patriot mobs were no more moderate in their predations and slaughters than the Loyalist ones, and the complexity of the entire slavery issue – but does not elaborate on them. It is conceivable to pick a bone with her over this, but I think doing so would be mistaken. This book is told from Celia’s perspective, for one; and for another, it is simply not possible to say everything about everything at once. At any rate, there is plenty of blood and thunder, and it is all very exciting on that score.
But the triumph of the book is that Celia – who does cave in for a while but ultimately never loses that gumption or, God help us all, the sass – thinks and learns so much from the terrible, soul-crushing events around her (warning: Bristow WILL KILL PEOPLE YOU LIKE). That sounds tame. It is not. She’s no Katie Scarlett O’Hara, just “keepin’ on keepin’ on” no matter how rough the sledding, although of course there is a rough, brutal glory in that.
Celia keeps on, all right, and she holds to her moral compass as well (are you listening, Scarlett?). But her understanding of human nature (including her own), and of human relationships, is gouged by terrible experience with scars that deepen her – gullies will do that – and reveal to her the trembling fragility of everything (love, friendship, home, status) to which she had always aspired as a rock upon which she could finally rest one happy day. Now she knows that day will never come. She discovers what she calls the “lonely places” inside every one of us – places that we simply cannot share, no matter how much we love and trust each other, no matter how great our intimacy and regard and even understanding. There is a fundamental solitude that cannot be breached, and cannot be explained. And there are “lonely places” between groups of people too; as when Celia realizes that her husband does not, and never will, understand what is passing between her and her surrogate mother Vivian – although Vivian understands just fine. It doesn’t mean that Celia and her husband (oh, I should mention, that is sort of a spoiler – you are in doubt for a good long while in the book whether C. will ever make it to the altar – but it is mostly not a spoiler, because there is plenty of question about it that I will not resolve or allude to here!) love each other any less.
That is a hard, cold lesson – that there are spaces that cannot be bridged, and that there is no perfect safety in the world, but only possibility, and hope, and faith, no matter how hard you try and even how much you succeed.
And thus we have the ending of the book, which comes after the “happily ever after” where Charleston is restored to America and the war is won and Celia and her new family are back on top. We don’t stop on that upbeat note, but continue on to Celia ruminating about some of the lonely places between herself and her husband – and then learning that with all the clean-up being performed in Charleston after its long, miserable siege and occupation, there is one thing that cannot come back: the English have stolen the expensive church-bells and whisked them away in their retreat.
The bells would remind her of so much. They would remind her – men like war, women don’t. Women like being peacetime homemakers, men don’t. Be gentle, Celia. Be understanding. You’ve got a rough road ahead of you and so has he. Everybody has lonely places. Even [redacted: her husband].
She stopped and turned around, and looked back across the housetops to the steeple. This was what the bells would say, but they were not there to say it. The steeple was silent.
Celia wanted to cry out, No! It must not be this way. She could not, she simply could not, accept the idea that she would never hear the bells again, that her child would never hear that lovely whisper of music. Standing on the sidewalk, she looked up at the silent steeple.
“Please,” she whispered, “please don’t let it be always silent! Please God, give us back the bells!”
We do not conclude, then, with certainty – we move on to the next step, which is the question, and the plea – only something that draws people together from their various lonely places can ever really bring them to where they can touch each other again. As a side note, not alluded to in the book (which ends with the lines above), the bells of St. Michael’s were indeed subsequently recovered in London and restored to the city and people that missed them. But I am quite certain that Celia would have found a way to keep soldiering on even if they had not.
416 pages. Chicago Review Press.
Review by Kate Kasserman
Every now and then, a book surprises me.
I approached Celia Garth with decidedly modest expectations, and the beginning of the story more or less met them precisely. Celia is a plucky 20-year-old orphan in 1780 Charleston, working as a junior apprentice seamstress in a hoity-toity shop and dreaming of better things (love; respect for her extra-spiffy sewing skills, which languish unrecognized while she is tasked on low-level button-reinforcing work and the like; and in general “getting her way,” because, as a Southern character of a certain type, she is full unto bursting with “gumption”). That was a fine set-up. Celia’s fine eye for detail-work (even if no one seems to know it other than herself) is matched by her close observations of the people around her; these are rendered fascinatingly through the simple, direct language of a bright, introspective person with little formal education. So I liked Celia very well, for all that everyone (the author included) keeps calling her sassy. She wanted love and a place in the world – and she had the talent and the moxie and the looks (if she does say so herself) to earn them, if only she got the chance.
Well, she did get the chance, when a well-connected friend (later fiancé) sets her up with the opportunity to sew for a VERY hard-to-please customer who becomes Celia’s mentor and surrogate mother-figure – but right on the heels of that, Celia also got the war exploding around her ears, rendering her hard-earned connections impotent or even dangerous. I was happy enough with the story and the characters that the prospect of watching Celia struggle through to triumph was enough for me; it was a fine and pleasant journey, and I really didn’t need anything else.
Except Bristow pulled a particularly deft switcheroo on me and offered a great deal more.
The book is structured as a potboiler. You can read it cheerfully as such with no harm done, except that the ending might seem like a puzzling brief coda tacked onto the proper conclusion (in my view, it is anything but). There are dastardly deeds and backstabbing, grasping relatives and spies and traitors and hypocrites and MULTIPLE explosions and hair’s-breadth escapes and secret passages and death – almost an overabundance of drama, except that Celia’s matter-of-fact point of view keeps everything grounded – and besides, it really was that violent and tense in the then-and-there. The end-of-Revolutionary-War fighting in South Carolina, gentlepeeps, was deeply, deeply ugly, and Celia is thrust in its maw. Bristow, incidentally, nods to some facts that are inconvenient to the general storyline – like that the Patriot mobs were no more moderate in their predations and slaughters than the Loyalist ones, and the complexity of the entire slavery issue – but does not elaborate on them. It is conceivable to pick a bone with her over this, but I think doing so would be mistaken. This book is told from Celia’s perspective, for one; and for another, it is simply not possible to say everything about everything at once. At any rate, there is plenty of blood and thunder, and it is all very exciting on that score.
But the triumph of the book is that Celia – who does cave in for a while but ultimately never loses that gumption or, God help us all, the sass – thinks and learns so much from the terrible, soul-crushing events around her (warning: Bristow WILL KILL PEOPLE YOU LIKE). That sounds tame. It is not. She’s no Katie Scarlett O’Hara, just “keepin’ on keepin’ on” no matter how rough the sledding, although of course there is a rough, brutal glory in that.
Celia keeps on, all right, and she holds to her moral compass as well (are you listening, Scarlett?). But her understanding of human nature (including her own), and of human relationships, is gouged by terrible experience with scars that deepen her – gullies will do that – and reveal to her the trembling fragility of everything (love, friendship, home, status) to which she had always aspired as a rock upon which she could finally rest one happy day. Now she knows that day will never come. She discovers what she calls the “lonely places” inside every one of us – places that we simply cannot share, no matter how much we love and trust each other, no matter how great our intimacy and regard and even understanding. There is a fundamental solitude that cannot be breached, and cannot be explained. And there are “lonely places” between groups of people too; as when Celia realizes that her husband does not, and never will, understand what is passing between her and her surrogate mother Vivian – although Vivian understands just fine. It doesn’t mean that Celia and her husband (oh, I should mention, that is sort of a spoiler – you are in doubt for a good long while in the book whether C. will ever make it to the altar – but it is mostly not a spoiler, because there is plenty of question about it that I will not resolve or allude to here!) love each other any less.
That is a hard, cold lesson – that there are spaces that cannot be bridged, and that there is no perfect safety in the world, but only possibility, and hope, and faith, no matter how hard you try and even how much you succeed.
And thus we have the ending of the book, which comes after the “happily ever after” where Charleston is restored to America and the war is won and Celia and her new family are back on top. We don’t stop on that upbeat note, but continue on to Celia ruminating about some of the lonely places between herself and her husband – and then learning that with all the clean-up being performed in Charleston after its long, miserable siege and occupation, there is one thing that cannot come back: the English have stolen the expensive church-bells and whisked them away in their retreat.
The bells would remind her of so much. They would remind her – men like war, women don’t. Women like being peacetime homemakers, men don’t. Be gentle, Celia. Be understanding. You’ve got a rough road ahead of you and so has he. Everybody has lonely places. Even [redacted: her husband].
She stopped and turned around, and looked back across the housetops to the steeple. This was what the bells would say, but they were not there to say it. The steeple was silent.
Celia wanted to cry out, No! It must not be this way. She could not, she simply could not, accept the idea that she would never hear the bells again, that her child would never hear that lovely whisper of music. Standing on the sidewalk, she looked up at the silent steeple.
“Please,” she whispered, “please don’t let it be always silent! Please God, give us back the bells!”
We do not conclude, then, with certainty – we move on to the next step, which is the question, and the plea – only something that draws people together from their various lonely places can ever really bring them to where they can touch each other again. As a side note, not alluded to in the book (which ends with the lines above), the bells of St. Michael’s were indeed subsequently recovered in London and restored to the city and people that missed them. But I am quite certain that Celia would have found a way to keep soldiering on even if they had not.
January 14, 2010
DON’T BUMP THE GLUMP
and Other Fantasies
by Shel Silverstein
64 pages, HarperCollins, reissue edition 2008
Review by Melissa Conway
The scuffed covers and torn pages show how much my now-grown daughter loved Shel Silverstein’s ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ and ‘A Light in the Attic.’ I seem to recall she got them for Christmas from her great-uncle when she was around eight, before that dratted video game bug attached itself to her brainstem. I started reading them to her little brother (fifteen years her junior) when he was only four, and as a true Boy, he was fascinated by the simple, but often quite gruesome line drawings that accompanied each poem, even if he didn’t understand them very well.
So last year when I saw that a “new” Silverstein book of poetry was being released, I snapped it up. When I began reading it to my son, despite being familiar with Silverstein’s style, I thought, “This stuff is bizarre.” My son didn’t like it much, either. Even though he enjoyed the depictions of strange, monstrous creatures, the short rhyming verses in ‘Don’t Bump the Glump’ made even less sense to him than Sidewalk or Attic had when he was younger. In fact, after reading about the “Underslung Zath,” the Bibely, who “rather enjoys (eating) girls and boys,” the Long-necked Preposterous (looking around for a female Long-necked Preposterous), and the Bulbulous Brole, who has a “masculine need for eating his mate,” I thought, “This stuff is more than bizarre, it’s almost…adult.”
We relegated the book to a spot on my son’s bookshelf until I chose it for today’s review. As I flipped to the publisher’s page, much to my *not* surprise, I read the words, “Most of the material in this book originally appeared in Playboy Magazine and is reprinted with permission.”
I’m sorry, but am I the only one who finds it curious that a series of poems/drawings that was considered appropriate to publish in Playboy some 45-odd years ago, was then compiled in a book for children originally called ‘Uncle Shelby’s Zoo: Don’t Bump the Glump’? While not necessarily unsuitable to repackage for children, the collection is certainly not innocent. I’m surprised the Playboy association alone—especially back in the ‘60’s—didn’t prevent the book from hitting the kiddie shelves.
But there’s more! One of Silverstein’s poems in Glump is called ‘There’s a Gritchen in my Kitchen,’ and the more I read, the more familiar it sounded. I popped upstairs to my son’s room and grabbed his copy of ‘There’s a Wocket in my Pocket’ by Dr. Seuss. Both book and poem describe strange creatures living in houses, where the creature’s names are made-up to rhyme with household items. Silverstein has a “lubbard in the cupboard” and Seuss has “nupboards in the cupboards.”
Um, in the spirit of Seuss’ popular tongue-twister book ‘Fox in Socks,’ can we say, “Seuss stole Shel Silverstein’s stuff?” Further, since this particular sample of Silverstein’s stuff was originally published in Playboy, makes one wonder what Seuss was reading for inspiration! Okay, hahaha, don’t crucify me! I love Seuss as much as the next person (Silverstein, too, for that matter); I just notice things like this, and sometimes I try to connect dots that may be pure coincidence. So, yeah, just because Silverstein wrote a poem in Glump called “The Trap,” where the first verse goes, “Let us set a little trap for the Grinch, Grinch, Grinch,” doesn’t mean Seuss cribbed the name for his famous Christmas story. For all I know, the two were best buds and Silverstein knew Seuss was going to write something eerily similar.
As for the contents of ‘Don’t Bump the Glump,’ I guess I shouldn’t worry about my son figuring out the barely detectable “adult” undertones to the poems, at least not until he’s an adult himself, when he might find it all a bit disillusioning. Or maybe he’ll find it amusing in a head-scratching kind of way, as I do.
by Shel Silverstein
64 pages, HarperCollins, reissue edition 2008
Review by Melissa Conway
The scuffed covers and torn pages show how much my now-grown daughter loved Shel Silverstein’s ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ and ‘A Light in the Attic.’ I seem to recall she got them for Christmas from her great-uncle when she was around eight, before that dratted video game bug attached itself to her brainstem. I started reading them to her little brother (fifteen years her junior) when he was only four, and as a true Boy, he was fascinated by the simple, but often quite gruesome line drawings that accompanied each poem, even if he didn’t understand them very well.
So last year when I saw that a “new” Silverstein book of poetry was being released, I snapped it up. When I began reading it to my son, despite being familiar with Silverstein’s style, I thought, “This stuff is bizarre.” My son didn’t like it much, either. Even though he enjoyed the depictions of strange, monstrous creatures, the short rhyming verses in ‘Don’t Bump the Glump’ made even less sense to him than Sidewalk or Attic had when he was younger. In fact, after reading about the “Underslung Zath,” the Bibely, who “rather enjoys (eating) girls and boys,” the Long-necked Preposterous (looking around for a female Long-necked Preposterous), and the Bulbulous Brole, who has a “masculine need for eating his mate,” I thought, “This stuff is more than bizarre, it’s almost…adult.”
We relegated the book to a spot on my son’s bookshelf until I chose it for today’s review. As I flipped to the publisher’s page, much to my *not* surprise, I read the words, “Most of the material in this book originally appeared in Playboy Magazine and is reprinted with permission.”
I’m sorry, but am I the only one who finds it curious that a series of poems/drawings that was considered appropriate to publish in Playboy some 45-odd years ago, was then compiled in a book for children originally called ‘Uncle Shelby’s Zoo: Don’t Bump the Glump’? While not necessarily unsuitable to repackage for children, the collection is certainly not innocent. I’m surprised the Playboy association alone—especially back in the ‘60’s—didn’t prevent the book from hitting the kiddie shelves.
But there’s more! One of Silverstein’s poems in Glump is called ‘There’s a Gritchen in my Kitchen,’ and the more I read, the more familiar it sounded. I popped upstairs to my son’s room and grabbed his copy of ‘There’s a Wocket in my Pocket’ by Dr. Seuss. Both book and poem describe strange creatures living in houses, where the creature’s names are made-up to rhyme with household items. Silverstein has a “lubbard in the cupboard” and Seuss has “nupboards in the cupboards.”
Um, in the spirit of Seuss’ popular tongue-twister book ‘Fox in Socks,’ can we say, “Seuss stole Shel Silverstein’s stuff?” Further, since this particular sample of Silverstein’s stuff was originally published in Playboy, makes one wonder what Seuss was reading for inspiration! Okay, hahaha, don’t crucify me! I love Seuss as much as the next person (Silverstein, too, for that matter); I just notice things like this, and sometimes I try to connect dots that may be pure coincidence. So, yeah, just because Silverstein wrote a poem in Glump called “The Trap,” where the first verse goes, “Let us set a little trap for the Grinch, Grinch, Grinch,” doesn’t mean Seuss cribbed the name for his famous Christmas story. For all I know, the two were best buds and Silverstein knew Seuss was going to write something eerily similar.
As for the contents of ‘Don’t Bump the Glump,’ I guess I shouldn’t worry about my son figuring out the barely detectable “adult” undertones to the poems, at least not until he’s an adult himself, when he might find it all a bit disillusioning. Or maybe he’ll find it amusing in a head-scratching kind of way, as I do.
January 13, 2010
COOL-ER EBOOK READER
Review by Hereward L. M. Proops
As most aspiring writers will tell you, breaking into the world of publishing is a dishearteningly difficult task. Most big-name publishers won’t even consider an author without representation by a well-established literary agent, regardless of the quality of their manuscript. In order to keep up with the big-boys, small presses are increasingly opting for safe-bet publications (misery memoirs, generic thrillers and tween-vampire romances) rather than risk investing their limited funds on something that dares to be a bit different. The publishing world is an increasingly homogenised culture, apparently motivated by an insatiable desire for profit. My stomach turns when I step into a bookshop only to see the shelves cluttered with ghost-written celebrity biographies and the artless scribbling of Dan Brown-a-likes.
A case of sour grapes? Yes, undoubtedly. As a struggling writer, I think it is my right - nay – my duty to rail against the publication of such “books”. We live in a world where Harper Collins gives a five million pound book deal to Cheryl Cole for a series of books she hasn’t even written yet. The same publishers (pestilential shit-heels that they are) gave footballer Wayne Rooney a three book deal for his autobiographies. Come on! Have they gone mad? I very much doubt he can even hold onto a crayon without chewing it, let alone spell his own name. The writing is on the wall for anyone who cares to look at it... The big publishers no longer care about genuine writers – they’re only interested in celebrities. If you aren’t a footballer or being knobbed by a footballer, your chances of making it past the slush pile are exceedingly slim. The prevalence of such cynical practices in the publishing world is already leading to a rapidly narrowing spectrum of choice. It is these reasons (and a box full of rejection slips from agents and publishers) that has led me to become interested in eBooks.
Like MP3s and the enormous bitch-slap they gave to the record industry, the eBook has the potential to do a lot of damage to the world of publishing. It is no surprise that so many big publishers have started pouring money into the new technology in order to keep one step ahead of the competition. It is now possible to instantly download eBooks of the latest releases from most online book stores and they are (normally) cheaper than the hard copy of which you would wait two or three days to be delivered.
Amazon’s expensive but technically impressive Kindle has sold very well this year, as have Sony’s range of eBook readers (linked in the UK to Waterstones bookstores). However, the high price of the new technology has proved daunting for many and it is with this in mind that Interead has developed the Cool-er eBook reader. If the Kindle, with its wireless technology is the eBook reader equivalent of an iPod touch, then the Cool-er is like a no frills MP3 player. Priced at about £180 (or $250), the Cool-er is cheaper than most of its competitors. Though lacking the online functionality of Kindle, the Cool-er is still a solid piece of hardware, quite capable of giving the better known brands a run for their money.
Looking suspiciously like an iPod (even coming in a similar range of colours), the Cool-er is far more aesthetically pleasing than its closest rivals. Navigation through the menus is done with a large button (that bears more than a passing resemblance to the iPod’s wheel) located on the front of the unit . Whilst simplistic and intuitive, this design does mean that numerous clicks through menus are required to access a book. The Cool-er has been created for the less tech-savvy of us out there and the menus and functions are fairly easy to navigate. The Cool-er has enough onboard memory (1 Gig) to store a decent size collection of books but can take standard SD cards should you wish to store more. There is also an MP3 player and Sudoku game built in should you tire of reading. The unit is lightweight and no larger than a paperback book. Alas, I doubt it is a sturdy as a book so the more accident-prone would be wise to invest in a protective case for it. The battery life on the machine is impressive – one charge of approximately three hours will last between 7,000 and 8,000 page turns and as the machine uses very little juice displaying the pages and can be left on indefinitely.
Technical specs aside, the real question is – What is it like to read from? Well, the fancy e-ink technology means that the screen doesn’t tire your eyes like a monitor does – in fact, it is just like reading text on paper except with a click of the button, the text changes to the next page. Though it is possible to change the font and font size, I have discovered that some eBooks are formatted in such a way that altering the font size leaves the text clumsily spaced out like some kind of amateurish free verse. Another negative aspect is that some may find the slight delay as the new page “loads” after a button-click just a fraction too long. I am assured that the delay for a page-turn on the Cool-er is significantly quicker than many other e-Book readers and it is something one soon grows used to. Loading texts onto the Cool-er is a doddle (no more complicated than copying and pasting files from a memory stick) though accessing books through Adobe’s Digital Editions software (used for encrypted PDF files) is a bit more fiddly. That, however, is the fault of Adobe’s downloadable software, not the hardware. Using the Cool-Books store (http://www.coolerbooks.co.uk/) and the rather wonderful Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/), I was able to download a number of eBooks in a very short space of time. If you are considering getting an eBook reader, Project Gutenberg is well worth a visit. An online repository of books whose copyright has expired, it is a great place to track down texts that are no longer in print. Best of all, it is totally free.
Will it replace the traditional book, that masterpiece of design that has endured for so long? In a word: No. Whilst the Cool-er is a great gadget and undoubtedly one of the most user-friendly eBook readers out there, it can never replicate the whole experience of reading from a book. For example, I doubt many would feel confident enough to read one whilst having a bath. Nor do I think the Cool-er is capable of reproducing that glorious “new-book-smell” or that satisfying creak of the spine as the book is opened for the first time. It is easy to sneak a peek at someone’s bookshelves when visiting their house but less so to access their digital library (“Excuse me, mind if I have a nose through this so I can make judgements about you based on your reading habits? - Oh, come on! We all do it!). Regardless of how trendy a device it is, the Cool-er is incapable of decorating a room like a collection of books. However, I do feel empowered by this gadget. EBooks have the potential to enable anyone to see their work in print and receive payment for their efforts. Whilst eBooks will never completely replace print editions, over the next few years I wholeheartedly expect a massive growth in their popularity. In essence, the advent of eBooks heralds the end of the big-name publishers’ dominance of the book market and that is no bad thing. Rejoice, the revolution starts here!
Hereward L. M. Proops
* By the way, if anyone from Harper Collins or any other big-name publisher is reading this, I don’t really hate you. I’d be more than happy to sell you my novel should you come a-knocking with a wheelbarrow full of money. *
As most aspiring writers will tell you, breaking into the world of publishing is a dishearteningly difficult task. Most big-name publishers won’t even consider an author without representation by a well-established literary agent, regardless of the quality of their manuscript. In order to keep up with the big-boys, small presses are increasingly opting for safe-bet publications (misery memoirs, generic thrillers and tween-vampire romances) rather than risk investing their limited funds on something that dares to be a bit different. The publishing world is an increasingly homogenised culture, apparently motivated by an insatiable desire for profit. My stomach turns when I step into a bookshop only to see the shelves cluttered with ghost-written celebrity biographies and the artless scribbling of Dan Brown-a-likes.
A case of sour grapes? Yes, undoubtedly. As a struggling writer, I think it is my right - nay – my duty to rail against the publication of such “books”. We live in a world where Harper Collins gives a five million pound book deal to Cheryl Cole for a series of books she hasn’t even written yet. The same publishers (pestilential shit-heels that they are) gave footballer Wayne Rooney a three book deal for his autobiographies. Come on! Have they gone mad? I very much doubt he can even hold onto a crayon without chewing it, let alone spell his own name. The writing is on the wall for anyone who cares to look at it... The big publishers no longer care about genuine writers – they’re only interested in celebrities. If you aren’t a footballer or being knobbed by a footballer, your chances of making it past the slush pile are exceedingly slim. The prevalence of such cynical practices in the publishing world is already leading to a rapidly narrowing spectrum of choice. It is these reasons (and a box full of rejection slips from agents and publishers) that has led me to become interested in eBooks.
Like MP3s and the enormous bitch-slap they gave to the record industry, the eBook has the potential to do a lot of damage to the world of publishing. It is no surprise that so many big publishers have started pouring money into the new technology in order to keep one step ahead of the competition. It is now possible to instantly download eBooks of the latest releases from most online book stores and they are (normally) cheaper than the hard copy of which you would wait two or three days to be delivered.
Amazon’s expensive but technically impressive Kindle has sold very well this year, as have Sony’s range of eBook readers (linked in the UK to Waterstones bookstores). However, the high price of the new technology has proved daunting for many and it is with this in mind that Interead has developed the Cool-er eBook reader. If the Kindle, with its wireless technology is the eBook reader equivalent of an iPod touch, then the Cool-er is like a no frills MP3 player. Priced at about £180 (or $250), the Cool-er is cheaper than most of its competitors. Though lacking the online functionality of Kindle, the Cool-er is still a solid piece of hardware, quite capable of giving the better known brands a run for their money.
Looking suspiciously like an iPod (even coming in a similar range of colours), the Cool-er is far more aesthetically pleasing than its closest rivals. Navigation through the menus is done with a large button (that bears more than a passing resemblance to the iPod’s wheel) located on the front of the unit . Whilst simplistic and intuitive, this design does mean that numerous clicks through menus are required to access a book. The Cool-er has been created for the less tech-savvy of us out there and the menus and functions are fairly easy to navigate. The Cool-er has enough onboard memory (1 Gig) to store a decent size collection of books but can take standard SD cards should you wish to store more. There is also an MP3 player and Sudoku game built in should you tire of reading. The unit is lightweight and no larger than a paperback book. Alas, I doubt it is a sturdy as a book so the more accident-prone would be wise to invest in a protective case for it. The battery life on the machine is impressive – one charge of approximately three hours will last between 7,000 and 8,000 page turns and as the machine uses very little juice displaying the pages and can be left on indefinitely.
Technical specs aside, the real question is – What is it like to read from? Well, the fancy e-ink technology means that the screen doesn’t tire your eyes like a monitor does – in fact, it is just like reading text on paper except with a click of the button, the text changes to the next page. Though it is possible to change the font and font size, I have discovered that some eBooks are formatted in such a way that altering the font size leaves the text clumsily spaced out like some kind of amateurish free verse. Another negative aspect is that some may find the slight delay as the new page “loads” after a button-click just a fraction too long. I am assured that the delay for a page-turn on the Cool-er is significantly quicker than many other e-Book readers and it is something one soon grows used to. Loading texts onto the Cool-er is a doddle (no more complicated than copying and pasting files from a memory stick) though accessing books through Adobe’s Digital Editions software (used for encrypted PDF files) is a bit more fiddly. That, however, is the fault of Adobe’s downloadable software, not the hardware. Using the Cool-Books store (http://www.coolerbooks.co.uk/) and the rather wonderful Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/), I was able to download a number of eBooks in a very short space of time. If you are considering getting an eBook reader, Project Gutenberg is well worth a visit. An online repository of books whose copyright has expired, it is a great place to track down texts that are no longer in print. Best of all, it is totally free.
Will it replace the traditional book, that masterpiece of design that has endured for so long? In a word: No. Whilst the Cool-er is a great gadget and undoubtedly one of the most user-friendly eBook readers out there, it can never replicate the whole experience of reading from a book. For example, I doubt many would feel confident enough to read one whilst having a bath. Nor do I think the Cool-er is capable of reproducing that glorious “new-book-smell” or that satisfying creak of the spine as the book is opened for the first time. It is easy to sneak a peek at someone’s bookshelves when visiting their house but less so to access their digital library (“Excuse me, mind if I have a nose through this so I can make judgements about you based on your reading habits? - Oh, come on! We all do it!). Regardless of how trendy a device it is, the Cool-er is incapable of decorating a room like a collection of books. However, I do feel empowered by this gadget. EBooks have the potential to enable anyone to see their work in print and receive payment for their efforts. Whilst eBooks will never completely replace print editions, over the next few years I wholeheartedly expect a massive growth in their popularity. In essence, the advent of eBooks heralds the end of the big-name publishers’ dominance of the book market and that is no bad thing. Rejoice, the revolution starts here!
Hereward L. M. Proops
* By the way, if anyone from Harper Collins or any other big-name publisher is reading this, I don’t really hate you. I’d be more than happy to sell you my novel should you come a-knocking with a wheelbarrow full of money. *
January 12, 2010
BREWER'S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE (17th Revision)
Rev. E Cobham Brewer; revised by John Ayto
1326 pages, Collins Reference
Review by S. F. Winser
I must confess I haven't read all of today's book. Mainly because fifteen-hundred-odd pages of fine-print miscellania is too much to take in, even in a few sittings.
Not that I couldn't. No. In fact, this is the second volume of Brewer's much-beloved dictionary that I have owned. That first one (The sixteenth revision) I not only read from cover to cover, many years ago, but I have flicked through and researched with and simply read in chunks at a time to the point where the dust jacket became threadbare and the spine fell off. I killed it with love.
Hence, we come to my ownership of the 17th revision. It's pretty. White with a gold-inlaid unicorn on the front. I've had it professionally covered in protective plastic to prevent spinal-injuries and messing up of the pristine whiteness. I still have no doubt that this wonderful tome will be read to its untimely death sometime in the next few years. Probably cover-to-cover, at least once.
Because 'Brewer's' is wonderfulness in ink and paper. When I was a kid I used to read dictionaries from one end to the other for the discovery of new words and encyclopaedias from Aardvark to Zoroastrianism for the rush of new knowledge. If there'd been a 'Brewer's in my childhood home I think I may have just disappeared into the thing, Alice-like.
'Brewer's' is words, and phrases and history and mythology and story and fairytales all mixed into a wonderous reference soup. It has explanations of old street-slang, current common phrases, lists of regimental nicknames, and diagrams of the Ptolemaic system of planetary motion. While it might sound like any-old book of miscellania that could be picked up in your local bookstore, what sets 'Brewer's' apart is that, rather than being put together out of a love of trivia, it was originally put together out of a love of trivia, and words, and language in general. Brewer was an aficionado of myth and story and speech. And, just as importantly, it's laid out with forethought, like a proper dictionary. It's not only fun to browse through, one actually can (and this one often does) use it as an honest-to-goodness reference book. It's full and deep. It's not a few hundred factoids in a pleasing layout, chapter by chapter; it's several thousand factoids laid out in dictionary style, cross-referenced. Need to know what the Coryphaeus did in Greek Drama? Look it up and you'll find that not only was he the 'Chorus Leader' but you'll also find the root Greek word and meaning (koruphais, 'leader'), a reference to look up 'Choragus' for more information on the use of the term in Oxford university and a quote that shows both terms in context.
It's like all the joys of a Classical education without the rugby or brutal beatings.
On the same page you'll find among the entries explanations of the phrases and terms 'cot death', 'Coueism' (autosuggestive psychotherapy), 'cottage cheese', 'Costermonger' (and old term for fruit-seller; with a etymological explanation), and The Cottingley Fairies. If it was interesting or useful, Brewer put it in. And, to paraphrase Brewer, most of the stuff in it is even correct! The editors/revisers since then have fixed what was wrong, taken stuff out. Added more, put stuff back in and basically just tried to keep it as fun and interesting and useful as possible. It's been in print since 1870 so it seems to be doing something right. It's definitely my first port of call if I need to look up a god, a monster, an architectural style, a philosophical term, an explanation of that weird German idiom my friend just used or if I'm bored and it's too damn hot to concentrate on a novel. It's almost the perfect book for the smallest room except that it weighs several tonnes and has temptingly soft pages.
Look. Let me just quote some for you from a random page; These three entries are from the first section I looked at and are part of the longer entry for 'Jack':
Jack Horner. A fanciful explanation of the old nursery-rhyme 'Little Jack Horner' is that Jack was the steward of Glastonbury at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries (1536-9), and that by a subterfuge he gained the deeds of the Manor of Mells. It was said that these deeds, with others, were sent to Henry VIII concealed, for safety, in a pasty. 'Jack Horner' was thus the bearer who, on the way, lifted the crust and extracted this 'plum'.
Jacki O. A nickname of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1924-94), the glamorous widow of President J.F. Kennedy (JFK). She married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (1906-75) in 1968, after he had cast off his long term mistress, opera diva Maria Callas.
Jack-in-a-bottle. The long-tailed titmouse or bottle tit, so called from the shape of its nest.
See? Wonderful! That's just a fraction of the stuff under one entry. I've gotten plot-ideas and entire premises for stories just by flicking and flicking through 'Brewer's' until one of the entries set my brain on fire. And it's guaranteed that on any few pages there'll be at least one entry that makes you go 'Wow!' or 'Ewwww' Or even 'What the futhark*?'.
'Brewer's' comes in a 'Modern Phrase and Fable' version, too. Which is almost as good, but simply because it's restricted in time-frame, is thinner and somehow a touch less charming.
Go. Buy. Enjoy. Learn about stuff that you didn't even know existed until you opened the book. 130 years worth of readers can't be wrong.
*Futhark: Brewer's tells me it's an ancient runic alphabet of the Anglo-Saxons and named after its first six letters – f, u, th, a, r, k.... And, therefore, not rude at all **
** Unless you then use those letters to spell some of the old, Anglo-Saxon words that we still use today like:----censored due to booksquawk's editorial policy---. Then it could be quite rude indeed.
1326 pages, Collins Reference
Review by S. F. Winser
I must confess I haven't read all of today's book. Mainly because fifteen-hundred-odd pages of fine-print miscellania is too much to take in, even in a few sittings.
Not that I couldn't. No. In fact, this is the second volume of Brewer's much-beloved dictionary that I have owned. That first one (The sixteenth revision) I not only read from cover to cover, many years ago, but I have flicked through and researched with and simply read in chunks at a time to the point where the dust jacket became threadbare and the spine fell off. I killed it with love.
Hence, we come to my ownership of the 17th revision. It's pretty. White with a gold-inlaid unicorn on the front. I've had it professionally covered in protective plastic to prevent spinal-injuries and messing up of the pristine whiteness. I still have no doubt that this wonderful tome will be read to its untimely death sometime in the next few years. Probably cover-to-cover, at least once.
Because 'Brewer's' is wonderfulness in ink and paper. When I was a kid I used to read dictionaries from one end to the other for the discovery of new words and encyclopaedias from Aardvark to Zoroastrianism for the rush of new knowledge. If there'd been a 'Brewer's in my childhood home I think I may have just disappeared into the thing, Alice-like.
'Brewer's' is words, and phrases and history and mythology and story and fairytales all mixed into a wonderous reference soup. It has explanations of old street-slang, current common phrases, lists of regimental nicknames, and diagrams of the Ptolemaic system of planetary motion. While it might sound like any-old book of miscellania that could be picked up in your local bookstore, what sets 'Brewer's' apart is that, rather than being put together out of a love of trivia, it was originally put together out of a love of trivia, and words, and language in general. Brewer was an aficionado of myth and story and speech. And, just as importantly, it's laid out with forethought, like a proper dictionary. It's not only fun to browse through, one actually can (and this one often does) use it as an honest-to-goodness reference book. It's full and deep. It's not a few hundred factoids in a pleasing layout, chapter by chapter; it's several thousand factoids laid out in dictionary style, cross-referenced. Need to know what the Coryphaeus did in Greek Drama? Look it up and you'll find that not only was he the 'Chorus Leader' but you'll also find the root Greek word and meaning (koruphais, 'leader'), a reference to look up 'Choragus' for more information on the use of the term in Oxford university and a quote that shows both terms in context.
It's like all the joys of a Classical education without the rugby or brutal beatings.
On the same page you'll find among the entries explanations of the phrases and terms 'cot death', 'Coueism' (autosuggestive psychotherapy), 'cottage cheese', 'Costermonger' (and old term for fruit-seller; with a etymological explanation), and The Cottingley Fairies. If it was interesting or useful, Brewer put it in. And, to paraphrase Brewer, most of the stuff in it is even correct! The editors/revisers since then have fixed what was wrong, taken stuff out. Added more, put stuff back in and basically just tried to keep it as fun and interesting and useful as possible. It's been in print since 1870 so it seems to be doing something right. It's definitely my first port of call if I need to look up a god, a monster, an architectural style, a philosophical term, an explanation of that weird German idiom my friend just used or if I'm bored and it's too damn hot to concentrate on a novel. It's almost the perfect book for the smallest room except that it weighs several tonnes and has temptingly soft pages.
Look. Let me just quote some for you from a random page; These three entries are from the first section I looked at and are part of the longer entry for 'Jack':
Jack Horner. A fanciful explanation of the old nursery-rhyme 'Little Jack Horner' is that Jack was the steward of Glastonbury at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries (1536-9), and that by a subterfuge he gained the deeds of the Manor of Mells. It was said that these deeds, with others, were sent to Henry VIII concealed, for safety, in a pasty. 'Jack Horner' was thus the bearer who, on the way, lifted the crust and extracted this 'plum'.
Jacki O. A nickname of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1924-94), the glamorous widow of President J.F. Kennedy (JFK). She married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (1906-75) in 1968, after he had cast off his long term mistress, opera diva Maria Callas.
Jack-in-a-bottle. The long-tailed titmouse or bottle tit, so called from the shape of its nest.
See? Wonderful! That's just a fraction of the stuff under one entry. I've gotten plot-ideas and entire premises for stories just by flicking and flicking through 'Brewer's' until one of the entries set my brain on fire. And it's guaranteed that on any few pages there'll be at least one entry that makes you go 'Wow!' or 'Ewwww' Or even 'What the futhark*?'.
'Brewer's' comes in a 'Modern Phrase and Fable' version, too. Which is almost as good, but simply because it's restricted in time-frame, is thinner and somehow a touch less charming.
Go. Buy. Enjoy. Learn about stuff that you didn't even know existed until you opened the book. 130 years worth of readers can't be wrong.
*Futhark: Brewer's tells me it's an ancient runic alphabet of the Anglo-Saxons and named after its first six letters – f, u, th, a, r, k.... And, therefore, not rude at all **
** Unless you then use those letters to spell some of the old, Anglo-Saxon words that we still use today like:----censored due to booksquawk's editorial policy---. Then it could be quite rude indeed.
January 11, 2010
UNDER THE DOME (Review part 2)
by Stephen King
877 pages, Hodder & Stoughton, 2009
Review by Paul Fenton
Part 2:
When we last left our ensemble cast of neatly vacuum-sealed Yankees in Stephen King’s latest epic “Under the Dome” (read review part 1 here), a gigantic invisible and seemingly impenetrable barrier had sealed off the entire town of Chester’s Mill, Maine.
In the blue corner: the challenger, weighing in at whatever Gary Sinise happens to weigh when he plays the part in the five-part tele-movie due out in summer 2012 – Dale Barbara, ex-Army Captain and designated hero. In the red corner: the reigning Mussolini of the town – Big Jim Rennie, the town’s second selectman and car salesman. If I had to cast Big Jim right now I’d probably go for Alec Baldwin (who seems to be headed in the right direction, proportionally), so if you’re in need of a visual, there you go.
So far the key characters are falling pretty cleanly to one side or the other of the moral divide. Julia Shumway, the owner and editor of the local newspaper, has become Barbie’s number one; while Big Jim’s son Junior is lining himself up for the shadow position in the baddie camp.
Junior has problems. He gets bad headaches. Also, he doesn’t like Barbie because Barbie dared fight back when Junior and his buddies tried to ambush him. Also, he murdered two girls and keeps them in a pantry where he hangs out whenever he needs a break from the everyday rigours of living under a dome. Quality time, if you know what I mean. No, nothing like that, that would be sick – second base, maybe third, but no further.
Junior’s dislike of Barbie is championed by daddy Big Jim, who wanted Barbie out of town before the unfortunate woodchuck from chapter one took a dome in the back; and now that Barbie is sealed in with the rest of them, it doesn’t look like either of the Rennie lads are willing to let bygones be themselves. Barbie’s prospects aren’t improved by the abrupt deputising of Junior and his mates to the town’s police force to help keep order in the forecast coming turmoil. Of course these new deputies are certain to be the cause of a lot of said turmoil, but I think the omelette/egg argument is implied somewhere in there.
So, Chester’s Mill is completely cut off. There’s a group of power-hungry bully-boys who claim to represent the town, and who hold in physical contempt the morally upright folk and get carried away with their own authority. You’re probably thinking “kill the pig”, right? I thought that too, and might even have done so unprompted if King hadn’t planted the idea by having one of the characters voice the comparison for me in the early chapters.
The ingredients for conflict are handed a big fat Jalapeno in the form of a letter from the President himself (never explicitly named, but we know it’s Obama) confirming Barbie’s reinstatement to the armed forces and promotion to Colonel. The message is: Barbie’s in charge. Big Jim’s response runs along the lines of: tell it to the dome. Obama tries to tell it to the dome with a couple of cruise missiles, but they create barely more than a hot breeze inside the bubble.
What we don’t know yet is where the dome came from, not even a clue. I’m about a third of the way through at this point. The local priest (a habitual self-flagellator, of course) sees it as God’s work. The anti-establishment establishment thinks it has government written all over it. Is it man-made or is it supernatural?
But wait: a little girl in the throes of a petit mal seizure issues a cryptic warning. The same basic message is repeated by others, all in a state of seizure. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? No? Here’s a clue: “Eepa, eepa … trapped forever …”
I know I’d ruled out similarities to The Simpsons Movie in part one of this review, but I don’t believe in coincidence. I’m not crazy: everyone IS out to get me, there ARE listening devices hidden in my clothes, and the writers for The Simpsons Movie somehow hacked into Stephen King’s home network and stole his story ideas – or they read his thoughts, I haven’t fully committed to either theory just yet.
WARNING: PLOT SPOILER
At least I think it’s a plot spoiler. At what point does a summary, or even a hook for that matter, become a spoiler? Hard to judge on a marathon story like this, but I thought it would be prudent to warn you.
Why is Big Jim so eager to maintain his stranglehold on the small town? Why is he so resistant to the notion of outside influence? Could it be … Yes, of course it could. Big Jim is running a crystal meth lab; and not just any meth lab, but one of the largest in the country, supplying the meth-heads of Boston and beyond. By implicating a number of influential townsfolk in the operation, Big Jim is able to gain far more control over the will of the people than by merely offering low, low prices on Toyotas. He has money, he has power, and he seems to think the dome has sealed all that in quite nicely. I’ve yet to reach the point in the story where he realises he can only make so much cash by selling meth to the residents of Chester’s Mill, but that shouldn’t be too far off.
Could the meth factory be the cause, or perhaps the catalyst, of the dome’s appearance? Is there a moralistic theme lurking? Remember what brought about the endomement of Springfield? That’s right, Homer dumping a huge silo of pig leavings into Lake Springfield, leavings which produced copious amounts of noxious methane gas. Methane, meth … I wonder.
And the idea of the quiet townsfolk running a meth lab – is it too much of a stretch to suggest this idea provided the inspiration for the television show “Breaking Bad”? Probably, but I’m willing to stretch that far and say Stephen! Look out! TV writers are stealing your thoughts!
I’m going to leave it there until I finish this thing, whereupon I’ll return for a part three wrap-up. If you don’t hear from me again, assume I’ve been rubbed out by the screenwriters’ guild.
877 pages, Hodder & Stoughton, 2009
Review by Paul Fenton
Part 2:
When we last left our ensemble cast of neatly vacuum-sealed Yankees in Stephen King’s latest epic “Under the Dome” (read review part 1 here), a gigantic invisible and seemingly impenetrable barrier had sealed off the entire town of Chester’s Mill, Maine.
In the blue corner: the challenger, weighing in at whatever Gary Sinise happens to weigh when he plays the part in the five-part tele-movie due out in summer 2012 – Dale Barbara, ex-Army Captain and designated hero. In the red corner: the reigning Mussolini of the town – Big Jim Rennie, the town’s second selectman and car salesman. If I had to cast Big Jim right now I’d probably go for Alec Baldwin (who seems to be headed in the right direction, proportionally), so if you’re in need of a visual, there you go.
So far the key characters are falling pretty cleanly to one side or the other of the moral divide. Julia Shumway, the owner and editor of the local newspaper, has become Barbie’s number one; while Big Jim’s son Junior is lining himself up for the shadow position in the baddie camp.
Junior has problems. He gets bad headaches. Also, he doesn’t like Barbie because Barbie dared fight back when Junior and his buddies tried to ambush him. Also, he murdered two girls and keeps them in a pantry where he hangs out whenever he needs a break from the everyday rigours of living under a dome. Quality time, if you know what I mean. No, nothing like that, that would be sick – second base, maybe third, but no further.
Junior’s dislike of Barbie is championed by daddy Big Jim, who wanted Barbie out of town before the unfortunate woodchuck from chapter one took a dome in the back; and now that Barbie is sealed in with the rest of them, it doesn’t look like either of the Rennie lads are willing to let bygones be themselves. Barbie’s prospects aren’t improved by the abrupt deputising of Junior and his mates to the town’s police force to help keep order in the forecast coming turmoil. Of course these new deputies are certain to be the cause of a lot of said turmoil, but I think the omelette/egg argument is implied somewhere in there.
So, Chester’s Mill is completely cut off. There’s a group of power-hungry bully-boys who claim to represent the town, and who hold in physical contempt the morally upright folk and get carried away with their own authority. You’re probably thinking “kill the pig”, right? I thought that too, and might even have done so unprompted if King hadn’t planted the idea by having one of the characters voice the comparison for me in the early chapters.
The ingredients for conflict are handed a big fat Jalapeno in the form of a letter from the President himself (never explicitly named, but we know it’s Obama) confirming Barbie’s reinstatement to the armed forces and promotion to Colonel. The message is: Barbie’s in charge. Big Jim’s response runs along the lines of: tell it to the dome. Obama tries to tell it to the dome with a couple of cruise missiles, but they create barely more than a hot breeze inside the bubble.
What we don’t know yet is where the dome came from, not even a clue. I’m about a third of the way through at this point. The local priest (a habitual self-flagellator, of course) sees it as God’s work. The anti-establishment establishment thinks it has government written all over it. Is it man-made or is it supernatural?
But wait: a little girl in the throes of a petit mal seizure issues a cryptic warning. The same basic message is repeated by others, all in a state of seizure. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? No? Here’s a clue: “Eepa, eepa … trapped forever …”
I know I’d ruled out similarities to The Simpsons Movie in part one of this review, but I don’t believe in coincidence. I’m not crazy: everyone IS out to get me, there ARE listening devices hidden in my clothes, and the writers for The Simpsons Movie somehow hacked into Stephen King’s home network and stole his story ideas – or they read his thoughts, I haven’t fully committed to either theory just yet.
WARNING: PLOT SPOILER
At least I think it’s a plot spoiler. At what point does a summary, or even a hook for that matter, become a spoiler? Hard to judge on a marathon story like this, but I thought it would be prudent to warn you.
Why is Big Jim so eager to maintain his stranglehold on the small town? Why is he so resistant to the notion of outside influence? Could it be … Yes, of course it could. Big Jim is running a crystal meth lab; and not just any meth lab, but one of the largest in the country, supplying the meth-heads of Boston and beyond. By implicating a number of influential townsfolk in the operation, Big Jim is able to gain far more control over the will of the people than by merely offering low, low prices on Toyotas. He has money, he has power, and he seems to think the dome has sealed all that in quite nicely. I’ve yet to reach the point in the story where he realises he can only make so much cash by selling meth to the residents of Chester’s Mill, but that shouldn’t be too far off.
Could the meth factory be the cause, or perhaps the catalyst, of the dome’s appearance? Is there a moralistic theme lurking? Remember what brought about the endomement of Springfield? That’s right, Homer dumping a huge silo of pig leavings into Lake Springfield, leavings which produced copious amounts of noxious methane gas. Methane, meth … I wonder.
And the idea of the quiet townsfolk running a meth lab – is it too much of a stretch to suggest this idea provided the inspiration for the television show “Breaking Bad”? Probably, but I’m willing to stretch that far and say Stephen! Look out! TV writers are stealing your thoughts!
I’m going to leave it there until I finish this thing, whereupon I’ll return for a part three wrap-up. If you don’t hear from me again, assume I’ve been rubbed out by the screenwriters’ guild.
January 10, 2010
THE ROAD
by Cormac McCarthy
256 pages, Picador
Review by Pat Black
No Direction Home
Stuck on a snowbound train, caught between two countries, an icy wasteland only just visible beyond the window, lots of grim-faced people around about me and my stomach growling with hunger - conditions couldn’t have been better for a read of Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece, The Road.
A grit-lit classic, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the book will come to even wider attention now that a film version starring Viggo Mortenson is due out shortly. It’s a simple story of a father and son – never named – making their way through a post-apocalyptic American landscape towards the sea, and hopefully a better life, people they can trust. They’ve got nothing in their possession but a shopping trolley, the clothes on their backs and the shoes on their feet, a tarpaulin to sleep under plus a gun with two bullets in it. They survive on the tinned foods they can find in the abandoned, haunted houses and ransacked stores they look inside on the way. Their fellow travellers on the road are mostly gangs of cannibals attempting to eat them, or scavengers intent on their store of provisions. Everyone they meet is treated as a potential roadkill chef with designs on whatever meat they have left in their wasted, grimy bodies.
It recalls Hemingway in its stripped down descriptions and bleak outcomes, but it’s a lot less concerned with the type of internal lives, grumpiness and sometimes pomposity of Uncle Ernie’s characters than it is with the pair’s need for basic survival. The man in the story isn’t a sourpuss wanting to show you how horrible life is – and you’ll take it and like it, boy – but he does worry about how he’s going to feed his son, as well as some of the choices he might have to make when all hope is finally extinguished.
There is great tension in the encounters with cannibal gangs and moments of outright horror when we see just how far society has broken down, and the things people are prepared to do to others simply to survive. There are worse things than rape in this book, and worse things than cannibalism.
It might seem like a misanthrope’s paradise, this idea of living off the land, seeing off anybody who might look as if they want to mess with you... And being armed. But there are more primal things on the go here for our two protagonists. They really are at rock bottom, a place where having their shoes stolen could mean death. They sleep out in the open, fearful of being discovered by the feral gangs, clinging to each other for basic heat. Finding tinned fruit somewhere, or a dried-out windfall apple, is a great blessing for them. Hardship is a day-to-day reality, and both man and boy are aware that they may not be alive to see the next week, the next month. Where it really got me was in its depiction of constant, terrible hunger, a state of being most readers of this book simply will not be aware of.
The disaster which strikes the United States, and presumably the world beyond it, is never specified. It has certainly involved great heat, though there’s no suggestion that nuclear missiles were involved. There are piles of ash everywhere; cities are full of dried-out corpses like fish left to cure, grinning at the shattered world. Their cars, half-melted in roads turned into molten tarmacadam. There are no birds, no insects, tree leaves crumbling to powder in your grasp. There’s a curious suggestion that cows are now extinct, and a fantasy of the man’s that perhaps life has survived deep, deep beneath the sea, with gargantuan squid zooming over the ocean floor.
Although this unspecified doom has tones of something biblical in it, which suits McCarthy’s style, I did think this was too simple, something of a cop-out. The author has spoken in interviews of the fact that Yellowstone national park is due to blow sometime soon, which seems to account for this vision of an American apocalypse, but perhaps not a global one, and perhaps not a herald of the utter social breakdown we see here, either.
McCarthy’s style is an oddity; he dispenses with the apostrophes on things like “can’t” and “don’t”, but is happy to put them in for “he’d” and “they’d”. There are no quotation marks around speech, nothing to demarcate it out of the usual flow of narrative. This doesn’t upset us so much as you might think, though; the dialogue is so stark and clean that you’re never tripped up by it or unsure of what you’re reading, or whose mouth it came from. Just for jolly, I wondered how McCarthy got on with his early editors, driving them to distraction with his crazy punctuation. Probably sat and stared them out I guess, before suddenly hitting them with some sparse, blank descriptions, sending them diving beneath their desks.
It’s not all 4/4 beats, though. What I like best about McCarthy is that he splashes lots of colour here and there, bright and vibrant among the grey of the ash and the constant patter of drizzle in the book. These moments come in the quiet of the night, as the man watches over his sleeping son. So we get things which are rare and beautiful and scary, like:
“The frailty of everything (was) revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.”
And these are always just when you weren’t expecting them. Strange, wonderful phrases creep in, something building up in the author, running through each and every scene. If he wanted to show us expressions of something primal but also beautiful, he has succeeded.
There are hardly any women on this road. The father did have a wife, and his boy a mother, but she is only present in the briefest of flashbacks. She decides to take one of the most rational choices presented in the book, knowing that there is no future and that any fate she encounters in the open will be worse than the one she designs for herself. I’ve read here and there that McCarthy is a mysoginist, but this is totally unfair, for me. The story is just fine when it’s pared down to these two characters. And in No Country For Old Men, McCarthy’s women are the ones with heart, the ones who do the right thing, with only the men concerned with savagery, greed, the randomness of violent death.
I’m a big fan of No Country For Old Men, but something which disappointed me a little in that book was its gun-coveting aspect. It’s something we read a lot in American fiction, and it seems to be something to admire in some novels, given some reviews I see on Amazon and other places – something you might mark out of ten, how realistic the “tech” descriptions are. The weapons and the calibre of the barrel and the ammunition and what it could do to you.
This is mercifully absent from The Road, although there are a couple of moments of gun violence in the book. This precious object is simply referred to as, “the gun”, “the pistol” and a “nickel-plated revolver”. Relief. That’s all we needed to know. They start off with two bullets in it. One gets used. It doesn’t take too much imagination to think of what the father’s plans might be for the final one, when things get a little too grim.
Something that irritated me was this pair’s insistence on hitting the road at all times, moving on from places where they might live in security and comfort for the foreseeable future. They have the fear of the gangs, of course, and the knowledge that just as they have come across places of refuge and sustenance, then at some point, so will the cannibals. However, I would imagine that freezing and starving to death are more critical concerns, so it seemed bizarre that these two should take off from almost surreal places of heat, light, cleanliness and large supplies of mouth-watering tinned foods in order to take their chances on the blasted landscape, and all its constant reminders of the immanence of death.
There’s horror to be found on this journey. “Once something goes into your head, it never comes out,” the father tells his son. You will feel the same way about some of things you will read in The Road. The cannibal gangs are a source of real terror, a presence which forces the man and boy to ditch everything they have in order to flee from these monsters. Although I picture the arseless chaps and the crazy punk hairstyles of the baddies out of Mad Max 2 when considering such post-apocalyptic crazymen, the reality is much scarier, more prosaic. You could easily see that boorish neighbour of yours as one of these boiler-suited creatures, eyeing you and your loved ones up with unspeakable desires. There’s a moment of dialogue between the father and one such specimen they encounter that was all the more chilling for its ring of truth and reality. “You won’t do it,” this person says to the father, who is holding the pistol on him. “Know what I think? I think you’re chickenshit.”
There’s another scene in a forest, a campfire tableau in which what is witnessed is spelled out, nothing implied, nothing hinted at. It puts the reader in the same mental zone as the father when he thinks that he might never be able to speak again. There’s something else they stumble upon in the cellar of a house which is almost as bad; there are simple, stark tokens of moral terror and malice they find on the way. Skulls left on gateposts, a freshly severed head left in a cake jar in a looted shop.
Unforgettable images of horror and degradation, sure, but they help us to root for the man and the boy as they journey towards a coastline and a sea without any blue left in it. There is something within the pair of them – that the father nurtures in the son – that none of these images, encouters and hardships can corrupt or damage. Always, the man refers to the boy “carrying the fire” within him, no matter what happens. Later, when the boy begs his father not to kill a poor man who tries to steal their precious shopping trolley, we come to understand that “the fire” is not rage or desire or cunning, but simple decency. Something that keeps them warm at night, huddled together, cowering away from the storm. A quality the boy thanks God for, simply because he doesn’t know how else to express this feeling.
The Road may not be for everyone, and it’s maybe not the best thing to pick up at the airport before you head off on your holidays. Whatever your tastes, you won’t forget it. A simple tale, and a great achievement. I loaned it out immediately, as soon as I finished it. You’ll like this, I said. You have to read this.
Anyway, back to the top: I got to where I was going that night. Even after I finally got off the train I had one more journey to take, a very slow one by car across ice and fresh snow. We went into a skid as we took a turn off the motorway into a minor road. There was nothing hurried about this unforeseen maneouvre, nothing dramatic, just a car moving its own way in its own time, staggering across those empty lanes like a drunk after closing time. We were glad there was no-one else on the road with us, and I hugged her tight that night, much later.
256 pages, Picador
Review by Pat Black
No Direction Home
Stuck on a snowbound train, caught between two countries, an icy wasteland only just visible beyond the window, lots of grim-faced people around about me and my stomach growling with hunger - conditions couldn’t have been better for a read of Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece, The Road.
A grit-lit classic, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the book will come to even wider attention now that a film version starring Viggo Mortenson is due out shortly. It’s a simple story of a father and son – never named – making their way through a post-apocalyptic American landscape towards the sea, and hopefully a better life, people they can trust. They’ve got nothing in their possession but a shopping trolley, the clothes on their backs and the shoes on their feet, a tarpaulin to sleep under plus a gun with two bullets in it. They survive on the tinned foods they can find in the abandoned, haunted houses and ransacked stores they look inside on the way. Their fellow travellers on the road are mostly gangs of cannibals attempting to eat them, or scavengers intent on their store of provisions. Everyone they meet is treated as a potential roadkill chef with designs on whatever meat they have left in their wasted, grimy bodies.
It recalls Hemingway in its stripped down descriptions and bleak outcomes, but it’s a lot less concerned with the type of internal lives, grumpiness and sometimes pomposity of Uncle Ernie’s characters than it is with the pair’s need for basic survival. The man in the story isn’t a sourpuss wanting to show you how horrible life is – and you’ll take it and like it, boy – but he does worry about how he’s going to feed his son, as well as some of the choices he might have to make when all hope is finally extinguished.
There is great tension in the encounters with cannibal gangs and moments of outright horror when we see just how far society has broken down, and the things people are prepared to do to others simply to survive. There are worse things than rape in this book, and worse things than cannibalism.
It might seem like a misanthrope’s paradise, this idea of living off the land, seeing off anybody who might look as if they want to mess with you... And being armed. But there are more primal things on the go here for our two protagonists. They really are at rock bottom, a place where having their shoes stolen could mean death. They sleep out in the open, fearful of being discovered by the feral gangs, clinging to each other for basic heat. Finding tinned fruit somewhere, or a dried-out windfall apple, is a great blessing for them. Hardship is a day-to-day reality, and both man and boy are aware that they may not be alive to see the next week, the next month. Where it really got me was in its depiction of constant, terrible hunger, a state of being most readers of this book simply will not be aware of.
The disaster which strikes the United States, and presumably the world beyond it, is never specified. It has certainly involved great heat, though there’s no suggestion that nuclear missiles were involved. There are piles of ash everywhere; cities are full of dried-out corpses like fish left to cure, grinning at the shattered world. Their cars, half-melted in roads turned into molten tarmacadam. There are no birds, no insects, tree leaves crumbling to powder in your grasp. There’s a curious suggestion that cows are now extinct, and a fantasy of the man’s that perhaps life has survived deep, deep beneath the sea, with gargantuan squid zooming over the ocean floor.
Although this unspecified doom has tones of something biblical in it, which suits McCarthy’s style, I did think this was too simple, something of a cop-out. The author has spoken in interviews of the fact that Yellowstone national park is due to blow sometime soon, which seems to account for this vision of an American apocalypse, but perhaps not a global one, and perhaps not a herald of the utter social breakdown we see here, either.
McCarthy’s style is an oddity; he dispenses with the apostrophes on things like “can’t” and “don’t”, but is happy to put them in for “he’d” and “they’d”. There are no quotation marks around speech, nothing to demarcate it out of the usual flow of narrative. This doesn’t upset us so much as you might think, though; the dialogue is so stark and clean that you’re never tripped up by it or unsure of what you’re reading, or whose mouth it came from. Just for jolly, I wondered how McCarthy got on with his early editors, driving them to distraction with his crazy punctuation. Probably sat and stared them out I guess, before suddenly hitting them with some sparse, blank descriptions, sending them diving beneath their desks.
It’s not all 4/4 beats, though. What I like best about McCarthy is that he splashes lots of colour here and there, bright and vibrant among the grey of the ash and the constant patter of drizzle in the book. These moments come in the quiet of the night, as the man watches over his sleeping son. So we get things which are rare and beautiful and scary, like:
“The frailty of everything (was) revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.”
And these are always just when you weren’t expecting them. Strange, wonderful phrases creep in, something building up in the author, running through each and every scene. If he wanted to show us expressions of something primal but also beautiful, he has succeeded.
There are hardly any women on this road. The father did have a wife, and his boy a mother, but she is only present in the briefest of flashbacks. She decides to take one of the most rational choices presented in the book, knowing that there is no future and that any fate she encounters in the open will be worse than the one she designs for herself. I’ve read here and there that McCarthy is a mysoginist, but this is totally unfair, for me. The story is just fine when it’s pared down to these two characters. And in No Country For Old Men, McCarthy’s women are the ones with heart, the ones who do the right thing, with only the men concerned with savagery, greed, the randomness of violent death.
I’m a big fan of No Country For Old Men, but something which disappointed me a little in that book was its gun-coveting aspect. It’s something we read a lot in American fiction, and it seems to be something to admire in some novels, given some reviews I see on Amazon and other places – something you might mark out of ten, how realistic the “tech” descriptions are. The weapons and the calibre of the barrel and the ammunition and what it could do to you.
This is mercifully absent from The Road, although there are a couple of moments of gun violence in the book. This precious object is simply referred to as, “the gun”, “the pistol” and a “nickel-plated revolver”. Relief. That’s all we needed to know. They start off with two bullets in it. One gets used. It doesn’t take too much imagination to think of what the father’s plans might be for the final one, when things get a little too grim.
Something that irritated me was this pair’s insistence on hitting the road at all times, moving on from places where they might live in security and comfort for the foreseeable future. They have the fear of the gangs, of course, and the knowledge that just as they have come across places of refuge and sustenance, then at some point, so will the cannibals. However, I would imagine that freezing and starving to death are more critical concerns, so it seemed bizarre that these two should take off from almost surreal places of heat, light, cleanliness and large supplies of mouth-watering tinned foods in order to take their chances on the blasted landscape, and all its constant reminders of the immanence of death.
There’s horror to be found on this journey. “Once something goes into your head, it never comes out,” the father tells his son. You will feel the same way about some of things you will read in The Road. The cannibal gangs are a source of real terror, a presence which forces the man and boy to ditch everything they have in order to flee from these monsters. Although I picture the arseless chaps and the crazy punk hairstyles of the baddies out of Mad Max 2 when considering such post-apocalyptic crazymen, the reality is much scarier, more prosaic. You could easily see that boorish neighbour of yours as one of these boiler-suited creatures, eyeing you and your loved ones up with unspeakable desires. There’s a moment of dialogue between the father and one such specimen they encounter that was all the more chilling for its ring of truth and reality. “You won’t do it,” this person says to the father, who is holding the pistol on him. “Know what I think? I think you’re chickenshit.”
There’s another scene in a forest, a campfire tableau in which what is witnessed is spelled out, nothing implied, nothing hinted at. It puts the reader in the same mental zone as the father when he thinks that he might never be able to speak again. There’s something else they stumble upon in the cellar of a house which is almost as bad; there are simple, stark tokens of moral terror and malice they find on the way. Skulls left on gateposts, a freshly severed head left in a cake jar in a looted shop.
Unforgettable images of horror and degradation, sure, but they help us to root for the man and the boy as they journey towards a coastline and a sea without any blue left in it. There is something within the pair of them – that the father nurtures in the son – that none of these images, encouters and hardships can corrupt or damage. Always, the man refers to the boy “carrying the fire” within him, no matter what happens. Later, when the boy begs his father not to kill a poor man who tries to steal their precious shopping trolley, we come to understand that “the fire” is not rage or desire or cunning, but simple decency. Something that keeps them warm at night, huddled together, cowering away from the storm. A quality the boy thanks God for, simply because he doesn’t know how else to express this feeling.
The Road may not be for everyone, and it’s maybe not the best thing to pick up at the airport before you head off on your holidays. Whatever your tastes, you won’t forget it. A simple tale, and a great achievement. I loaned it out immediately, as soon as I finished it. You’ll like this, I said. You have to read this.
Anyway, back to the top: I got to where I was going that night. Even after I finally got off the train I had one more journey to take, a very slow one by car across ice and fresh snow. We went into a skid as we took a turn off the motorway into a minor road. There was nothing hurried about this unforeseen maneouvre, nothing dramatic, just a car moving its own way in its own time, staggering across those empty lanes like a drunk after closing time. We were glad there was no-one else on the road with us, and I hugged her tight that night, much later.
January 9, 2010
ROAD DOGS
by Elmore Leonard
259 pages, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Review by Paul Fenton
“If you want we can go over to First Bank, I’ll tell them I have an account, so you won’t have any trouble depositing the check.”
“What I think I’ll do,” Foley said, “is deposit half of it and take the rest in cash. I don’t walk out of a bank with at least five grand, I feel like a failure.”
I don’t have a clever or apt observation to lead into, I just really like that dialogue, and one thing you can always count on Elmore Leonard for is excellent dialogue. Of course, I’m a dedicated Elmore Leonard fan and would read just about anything he put out, except for his 10 Rules for Writing. Don’t ask me why – after all, I swallowed Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ in one gulp – but I think it might be due to Leonard’s style. He is the king of cool dialogue and the creator of characters you so want to be like, even the bad guys, characters who cut their way through storylines so effortlessly you don’t even realise you’re approaching a key scene or a climax until the first cap has been popped. What I love about Leonard, I don’t imagine it’s the kind of thing which can be taught. Worse still would be if it could be taught – after reading an Elmore Leonard novel I have enough trouble as it is trying to shield my own characters from his influence without having an instruction guide at hand.
Elmore Leonard’s novels are defined by their characters, and ‘Road Dogs’ is populated by not one, not two, but three characters plucked from earlier novels. It’s not so much a crossover novel as an intra-novel reunion for the loyal reader, sporting a dream-team cast of characters:
From ‘Out of Sight’, the Sweetheart Bank-Robber – who looks and sounds exactly like George Clooney if you happened to see the movie either before or after reading the book – Jack Foley.
From ‘LaBrava’ (probably my all-time favourite Elmore), the diminutive Latino menace, Cundo Rey. Yes, we all thought he was probably dead after being shot three times in the chest at the end of LaBrava, but no, he just fell into a wee bit of a coma before eventually hooking up with Foley in prison. I admit I had my breath half-held for a good part of the story, waiting to see if Joe LaBrava himself would put in an appearance.
Between resurrection and serving yard-time with Foley, Cundo managed to woo the opportunistic hottie Dawn Navarro, the sexy psychic from ‘Riding the Rap’, who has been waiting eight years for Cundo to get out of prison in a state of unlikely celibacy.
‘Road Dogs’ is the term used to describe Foley’s and Condo’s relationship in prison – a pair of cons who walked the yard together, looking out for each other and passing the time. Cundo uses this correctional bond as the reason for paying his own expensive (hot female) lawyer about thirty grand to re-try Foley’s case in a proper lawyerly fashion (his court-appointed attorney was useless and the magistrate was the infamous Maximum Bob, which all added up to a thirty-year sentence for Foley). Foley gets out with time already served, and Cundo insists he stay at one of his two Miami mansions until Cundo’s own release a week later. So begins the trademark “I’m going to pull a scam and I’ll let you know what it is just as soon as I figure it out myself” plot development so recognisable in Elmore’s stories. Cundo has a scam. Dawn has a scam. Jack maybe has a scam, or a scam to get out of scamming. Half a dozen other scammers lurk in the background waiting to pounce.
Do I sound like I didn’t enjoy it? I did. I enjoy all Elmore’s novels – at their very least every one of them is a lesson in dialogue. Would I recommend Road Dogs to an Elmore newbie? Maybe, maybe not; but I’m leaning towards the latter.
It’s hard for me to be completely objective about Road Dogs as a stand-alone novel because I’m so familiar with its ancestry – there were even references in there to Maximum Bob, the first Elmore book I ever read. If I had to think like someone new to Elmore, I’d probably complain about a lack of action – it’s a slow-boiler, but that’s often the way Elmore cooks them. As a fan, if I were forced to be critical, I’d say the story was a touch too easy, well inside Elmore’s comfort zone, like he was just enjoying getting caught up with some old friends. Having all those characters in the same story did make it that bit more surreal, like kids having an argument about who would win a fight between Superman and Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk, and then seeing them all suddenly thrown together in the same comic book all embarrassed and shy.
Elmore snaps out of his feel-good trance towards the end, possibly a hundred pages or so too late, but that’s still good enough for Leonard’s peerless cool to carry the story and its characters through.
Good enough for me, anyway.
If you haven’t read Elmore before, go and read LaBrava, Out of Sight, Riding the Rap … perhaps even Pronto and Maximum Bob too. Familiarise yourself. Develop an appreciation, because without it, Road Dogs might not be as much fun as it could be.
259 pages, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Review by Paul Fenton
“If you want we can go over to First Bank, I’ll tell them I have an account, so you won’t have any trouble depositing the check.”
“What I think I’ll do,” Foley said, “is deposit half of it and take the rest in cash. I don’t walk out of a bank with at least five grand, I feel like a failure.”
I don’t have a clever or apt observation to lead into, I just really like that dialogue, and one thing you can always count on Elmore Leonard for is excellent dialogue. Of course, I’m a dedicated Elmore Leonard fan and would read just about anything he put out, except for his 10 Rules for Writing. Don’t ask me why – after all, I swallowed Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ in one gulp – but I think it might be due to Leonard’s style. He is the king of cool dialogue and the creator of characters you so want to be like, even the bad guys, characters who cut their way through storylines so effortlessly you don’t even realise you’re approaching a key scene or a climax until the first cap has been popped. What I love about Leonard, I don’t imagine it’s the kind of thing which can be taught. Worse still would be if it could be taught – after reading an Elmore Leonard novel I have enough trouble as it is trying to shield my own characters from his influence without having an instruction guide at hand.
Elmore Leonard’s novels are defined by their characters, and ‘Road Dogs’ is populated by not one, not two, but three characters plucked from earlier novels. It’s not so much a crossover novel as an intra-novel reunion for the loyal reader, sporting a dream-team cast of characters:
From ‘Out of Sight’, the Sweetheart Bank-Robber – who looks and sounds exactly like George Clooney if you happened to see the movie either before or after reading the book – Jack Foley.
From ‘LaBrava’ (probably my all-time favourite Elmore), the diminutive Latino menace, Cundo Rey. Yes, we all thought he was probably dead after being shot three times in the chest at the end of LaBrava, but no, he just fell into a wee bit of a coma before eventually hooking up with Foley in prison. I admit I had my breath half-held for a good part of the story, waiting to see if Joe LaBrava himself would put in an appearance.
Between resurrection and serving yard-time with Foley, Cundo managed to woo the opportunistic hottie Dawn Navarro, the sexy psychic from ‘Riding the Rap’, who has been waiting eight years for Cundo to get out of prison in a state of unlikely celibacy.
‘Road Dogs’ is the term used to describe Foley’s and Condo’s relationship in prison – a pair of cons who walked the yard together, looking out for each other and passing the time. Cundo uses this correctional bond as the reason for paying his own expensive (hot female) lawyer about thirty grand to re-try Foley’s case in a proper lawyerly fashion (his court-appointed attorney was useless and the magistrate was the infamous Maximum Bob, which all added up to a thirty-year sentence for Foley). Foley gets out with time already served, and Cundo insists he stay at one of his two Miami mansions until Cundo’s own release a week later. So begins the trademark “I’m going to pull a scam and I’ll let you know what it is just as soon as I figure it out myself” plot development so recognisable in Elmore’s stories. Cundo has a scam. Dawn has a scam. Jack maybe has a scam, or a scam to get out of scamming. Half a dozen other scammers lurk in the background waiting to pounce.
Do I sound like I didn’t enjoy it? I did. I enjoy all Elmore’s novels – at their very least every one of them is a lesson in dialogue. Would I recommend Road Dogs to an Elmore newbie? Maybe, maybe not; but I’m leaning towards the latter.
It’s hard for me to be completely objective about Road Dogs as a stand-alone novel because I’m so familiar with its ancestry – there were even references in there to Maximum Bob, the first Elmore book I ever read. If I had to think like someone new to Elmore, I’d probably complain about a lack of action – it’s a slow-boiler, but that’s often the way Elmore cooks them. As a fan, if I were forced to be critical, I’d say the story was a touch too easy, well inside Elmore’s comfort zone, like he was just enjoying getting caught up with some old friends. Having all those characters in the same story did make it that bit more surreal, like kids having an argument about who would win a fight between Superman and Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk, and then seeing them all suddenly thrown together in the same comic book all embarrassed and shy.
Elmore snaps out of his feel-good trance towards the end, possibly a hundred pages or so too late, but that’s still good enough for Leonard’s peerless cool to carry the story and its characters through.
Good enough for me, anyway.
If you haven’t read Elmore before, go and read LaBrava, Out of Sight, Riding the Rap … perhaps even Pronto and Maximum Bob too. Familiarise yourself. Develop an appreciation, because without it, Road Dogs might not be as much fun as it could be.
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