Lynne's Book Notes

Sunday Sentence: Carol Rifka Brunt

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:47:00 +0000

Inspired by Fobbit author David Abrams at The Quivering Pen, here is today's Sunday Sentence:

If you always make sure you're exactly the person you hoped to be, if you always make sure you know only the very best people, then you won't care if you die tomorrow.

-- Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Review: 'Tenth of December'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sun, 12 May 2013 17:08:00 +0000

TENTH OF DECEMBERBy George Saunders
Literary fiction short stories
January 2013
Random House
ISBN: 978-0812993806

Many of George Saunders's characters in Tenth of December live in complex worlds they have imagined. Even when those worlds bump up against reality, Saunders makes us believe in both the worlds that his characters have imagined and the ones that they inhabit.

The imaginations begin in the opening story, "Victory Lap", in which both a young teenage girl, Alison, imagines herself a princess or the belle of the ball, and her neighbor Kyle suddenly finds himself in a situation where he gets to use his imagination.

Alison's teacher, Mrs. Dees, is a bellweather in Saunders's writing. She isn't fooling herself, but she is the kind of person who carries on. Her husband is cheating on her, but she still comes to her Ethics classes every day and tries to get the students to care. She "still obviously found something fun about life and good about people, because otherwise why sometimes stay up so late grading you come in next day all exhausted, blouse on backward, having messed it up in the early-morning dark, you dear discombobulated thing?"

This is the kind of thinking that propels Kyle when Alison is grabbed by a stranger who comes to her door. Kyle is the son of ultra-controlling parents. Every thing must be just so. They wouldn't be thrilled if he intervened to try to save Alison as the stranger drags her across the yard. What if something happened to him? But Kyle is near his father's prize geode, which he wants placed just so, exactly right, in the yard. And it's too much to resist.

There are three characters whose POV we see things from: Alison, who is nearly 15 and imagines herself a princess; neighbor Kyle, who runs cross country and whose extremely controlling parents expect perfection from their son; and the would-be rapist who abducts Alison from her house and who is spotted with her by Kyle.

Saunders is masterful here at the shifting POVs, the shifting "what if" scenarios and still lets us know what actually happened and what did not, and the ways both parents and children can relate to the parental expectations.

Expectations about family life are at play in the next story, "Sticks", a sad tale of a father who dresses up a pole in the front yard to correspond to the seasons and holidays, and what happens when the kids grow up and go away and Mom dies. The story shows, without telling, what he may have perceived as cheer was never reflected inside their home.

Saunders next nearly goes off track with "Puppy", which is as sad as you imagine a story with this title would be. A chipper, would-be perfect mother comes up against a working class mother with a problem child tethered in the back yard when the perfect yuppie and offspring arrive to get a puppy.

The next stories are not as successful (and "Puppy" is not very successful as it is predictable and close to trite). "Escape from Spiderhead" has some interesting ideas about the treatment of prisoners in a situation where taking the right pill does more than make you small or tall, as in "Alice in Wonderland". The ending hit the same emotional tone for me as the last we see of a certain Replicant in Bladerunner.

The next story, "Exhortation", is marvelously constructed, as the story is told through a business pep-talk memo. Although, again, the story itself was not successful in plot, its conception and Saunders's writing style are marvelous. They do convey the idea of a world not quite our own, but just a bit off. Like a Twilight Zone episode. The warning, to not ever end up on the shelf, can, like the warnings explicit and non in all of the stories here, certainly apply to our world.

"Al Roosten" is an exercise in an unreliable narrator who gives away the goods in the end. He's a disagreeable man who tries to fool himself, almost talks himself into it, but reality keeps poking him.
A world not quite our own also is on display in "The Semplica Girl Diaries". Like other stories, there is a parent who wants a perfect world for his children. There is an odd concept even stranger than being injected with experimental mood-altering drugs as in "Spiderhead". This time, refugee young girls are hung in yards as decorations. Just when this story seemed to go completely off the rails, it veered back into emotional reality. And Saunders completely won me over just when I was ready to chuck the book.

The rest of the stories in the collection are all powerful. They have similar tropes to other stories here, including a family skirting the edge of abject poverty and veering in and out of abject pity for themselves and others, word play in dialogue, pharmaceuticals, a young boy imagining a world of his own when reality presents him with the opportunity to be a hero, and a man who has hit his limit with life. He thinks.

"Home", like The Yellow Birds, deals with a young man who has survived his military experience physically, but something inside was broken. He appears to be homeless, going first to his mother's, his sister and her family, his ex-wife and her new husband's house. In the most basic sense, what's going on is not spelled out. Mom says "beeper" and "beeping" because she's trying to clean up her language for her new minimum-wage job.

But masking is what goes on in the rest of the story as well as in her dialogue. Is she sick, as her sad-sack live-in boyfriend says? What's up with the narrator's ex-wife? What did he do? Why won't his sister and her husband let him touch their perfect baby? And why are his ex-wife and sister so well off in Yuppieland while he, his mother and the boyfriend are well below middle class? To an extent, it doesn't matter. What matters is what he feels when it appears he has worked himself up into taking fervent action.

One of my favorite stories in the collection comes next. "My Chivalric Fiasco" with its pills (shades of DeLillo in Underworld with the better living through modern chemistry section), TorchLightNight at Ye Olde Fake Medieval Amusement Park, office politics, not keeping one's mouth shut when one should, and the language. And the language. Oh the language. He gets to be a guard, a Medicated Role, and take a KnightLyfe pill.

After he doesn't keep his mouth shut when he should, the medication starts to wear off. And his dialogue goes from full-out medieval, as written by Hollywood mid-20th century, to a partly that and partly contemporary, to marvelous effect:

Anon I found Myself in proximity of the Wendy's on Center Boulevard, by the closed-down Outback, coming down and coming down hard, aware that, soon, the effect of the Elixir having subsided, I would find myself standing before our iffy Television, struggling to explain, in my own lowly Language, that, tho' Winter's Snows would soon be upon us (entering even unto our Dwelling as I have earlier Vouchsafed), no Appeal wouldst be Brook'd: I was Fired; Fired & sore Disgraced!"...

Taking a Shortcut through the high-school practice Field, where the tackling Dummies, in silhouette, like men who knew the value of holding their Tongues, seemed to Mock at me, I attempted to Comfort myself, saying I had done Right, and served Truth, and shewn good Courage. But 'twas no Comfort in it. It was so weird. Why had I even done That? I felt like a total dickBrain, who should have just left well enough alone, & been more Moderate. I had really screwed the Pooch, no lie. Although, on the other Hand, did not the Devil himself, upon occasion, don the Garb of Moderation, as might befit his Purpose? Was it not Salutary that Events might proceed so as to see Don Murray punish'd? Although, then again, who did I think I was, Mr. Big Shot? ... This was going to be Hard to live down.

And then there is the title story, "Tenth of December", with an intrepid boy who invents a world of his own in which to be an explorer-hero, who calls to mind a younger version of the teen in the opening story, albeit one with less controlling family, and a seriously, perhaps mortally, ill man who decides to end it all. There is an icy lake involved.

Robin, the boy, is marvelously inventive with his little Nethers who are worse than malevolent fairies and brownies. If only Suzanne Bledsoe, the new girl in school, recognized his valor. He would if the Nethers kidnapped her. They would know when it was a fair cop when he caught up to them.
The ill man, Don Eber, has a complicated family life. But Saunders makes it all clear. And why Don might want to end it all before it was done for him. Then again:

He'd been afraid to be lessened by the lifting and bending and feeding and wiping, and was still afraid of that, and yet, at the same time, now saw that there could still be many-many drops of goodness, is how it came to him -- many drops of happy -- of good fellowship -- ahead, and those drops of fellowship were not -- had never been -- his to withheld.

Withhold.

Again with the language. Don is losing the ability to say exactly the word he wants. No spoilers, but it's worth reading. Not everything happens that a reader might expect. But nothing is out of place.

Saunders recently was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award. The acclaim this story collection has received is certainly merited. Tenth of December has stories that will be worth reading again and again. The stories are filled with an honest look at human failings that does not condemn them, but which knows that there are times when we let ourselves down and then there are the times we stop and realize "those drops of fellowship" do not have to be withheld.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Sunday Sentence: 'Tell The Wolves I'm Home'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sun, 12 May 2013 15:46:00 +0000

Inspired by Fobbit author David Abrams at The Quivering Pen, here is my Sunday Sentence, presented without embellishment or commentary:

I can't even really sing, but the thing is, if you close your eyes when you sing in Latin, and if you stand right at the back so you can keep one hand against the cold stone wall of the church, you can pretend you're in the Middle Ages.

--Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Review: 'The Girl from Felony Bay'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sat, 11 May 2013 14:04:00 +0000

THE GIRL FROM FELONY BAY

By J.E. Thompson

Middle Grade Mystery

April 2013

Walden Pond Press

ISBN: 9780062104465

Life once was very good for young Abby Force. She and her father lived in a beautiful old house that had belonged to the family for generations, back to before the War Between the States. She had the whole of Reward Plantation to roam and horses and a private school in nearby Charlotte. She loved them all.

But everything changed a year ago. Abby’s father, once a respected attorney, lies in a coma, accused of stealing from an elderly client. The client is herself the victim of a stroke and cannot speak well. Their house has been sold and Abby is forced to live with her aunt and uncle. Uncle Charlie is nothing like Abby’s father, his brother. He drinks, punishes Abby, puts her down and pretty much treats her like Cinderella.

On the last day of school, after a miserable year without her friends, Abby has had enough. When the bully goes after her and a smaller, younger boy, Abby fights back. She’s had enough of Uncle Charlie, too, and is determined to find out why her father was found at the bottom of a ladder in his study with his client’s jewelry.

Abby has felt alone, but reinforcements have arrived. The new owner of Reward Plantation also is a Force, but from the former slave side of the family. He’s with one of his companies in India, but his daughter, Bee, who is Abby’s age, and Bee’s grandmother have arrived. After the discovery that part of the plantation on Felony Bay itself has been sold, and holes are being dug on the beach, Abby and Bee go into action.

They go through public records, the law, neighbors’ memories and spying on suspicious activities before putting all the pieces together. Both their investigating and episodes of danger are believable and entertaining. They also are informative in a non-lecturing way as to the limits and strengths of various types of law. They weave in historical and contemporary issues, as well as treasure.

Abby and Bee are smart, intrepid young teens who face their fears, overcome family tragedies and have fun. Even the secondary characters have more than one-dimensional stories. The bully, for instance, is the hit by his father, a deputy who is awfully friendly with Uncle Charlie. Bee’s grandmother and the people Abby seeks out at her father’s law firm play their roles without taking over from the girls.

Highly recommended for grades 5-8

Sunday Sentence: Andre Aciman

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:24:00 +0000

Inspired by Fobbit author David Abrams at The Quivering Pen, Sunday Sentence is, simply, the best sentence I've read this week, presented without comment. To wit:

...for all its rosy cheeks, the past always gives off that off-putting, musty scent of old pipes and mildewed rooms that haven't been aired in years.

-- Andre Aciman, Harvard Square (2013, W.W. Norton & Company)

Review: 'Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 22:45:00 +0000

THE REVISED FUNDAMENTALS OF CAREGIVING
By Jonathan Evison
Literary fiction
August 2012 hardcover (paperback edition coming in May 2013)Algonquin Books
ISBN: 978-1616200398

Jonathan Evison's novel of love and family lost and a road trip in which the narrator may get his bearings has some tremendous strengths. It's not a perfect novel. Benjamin Benjamin (shades of Major Major) and his wife had a horrific loss. She's moved on but he has not. With nothing left to do, or lose, he ends up becoming a caregiver to a teenage boy with MS.

There are plenty of sad people in the novel, but the teenager, Trev, is not one of them. Benjamin and Trev hit the road on a sort of odyssey through the seas of sad sackery. The characters they meet are the kind that might draw disdain or even disgust, but Evison shows their full humanity. None are throwaway people, not even the least among them, a convict with a get-rich scheme that Benjamin doesn’t have the heart to burst.

It is frustrating that Evison doesn't reveal exactly what happened in the lives of Benjamin and Janet -- it's easy to know the outcome but there's still a deliberate withholding of information until Evison can line it up with something that happens on the road. Having come across this writing decision in other books recently, it isn't innovative. And based on recent evidence, it's rarely effective. Tell the reader and get on with the story.

Perhaps this is because Evison lives on the west side of the Cascades, but for a novel set on the road, there's little sense he knows the places Benjamin and the others drive through. At one point, they stop at the Big Stack in Anaconda, Montana, but it's placed near Great Falls. Those two places are about 180 miles apart, with Helena in the middle. It was hard to recognize places I’ve known for more than 50 years.

And there are some speeches the narrator makes to the reader that veer toward hokey and “here is the point of my story”. But when with the space of two pages, in two different times and places, it is stated that everything will be all right, the book’s weak points don’t matter. If those other aspects are what Evison needed to get to those two points, it was worth it.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Sunday Sentence: George Saunders

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:16:00 +0000

Author David Abrams has started a marvelous idea on his blog, The Quivering Pen. Each Sunday, he posts, without explanation, the best sentence he has read during the week.

Here is mine:

"He'd been afraid to be lessened by the lifting and bending and feeding and wiping, and was still afraid of that, and yet, at the same time, now saw that there could
still be many-many drops of goodness, is how it came to him -- many drops of happy -- of good fellowship -- ahead, and those drops of fellowship were not -- had never
been -- his to withheld.
"Withhold."

-- George Saunders, Tenth of December, from the collection with the same title

Review: 'Z'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Z: A novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
By Therese Anne Fowler
Literary fiction
March 2013
St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 978-1250028655

Of all the members of the Lost Generation, the one who claimed the biggest piece of hearts of certain readers of a certain age was Zelda Fitzgerald. After Zelda, Nancy Milford's biography was published in 1970, F. Scott Fitzgerald's denounced wife regained sympathy and, for some, admiration for surviving Fitzgerald's alcoholism and decline while she battled mental illness and the inability to care for her daughter, Scottie.

Therese Anne Fowler is one of those readers. And she's taken that restoration of Zelda's image to the next step by imagining her life in a new novel, Z.

The prologue, set in the year before she dies, is one of the strongest sections in the novel. She posts a letter from her hometown of Montgomery, where she has gone after hospital stays, to her husband, who is in Hollywood once again chasing the end of the rainbow, and wishes she could mail herself as well. In it, she wishes to mail herself to Scott and to their "next future", as if they could revise their lives as easily as letters and novels are revised.

Zelda, or at least her life, underwent revisions after she met Scott near the end of WWI in Montgomery. He was dashing, she was swept off her feet, she did not want a conventional, staid life. In that respect, she got her wish. She and one of her sisters took the train to New York City, where she and Scott married, and they began the live the lives of the unconventional. They partied, they drank, they danced. Scott wrote short stories that paid a fortune that they used to party, drink and dance.

Off and on over the years, Zelda wrote as well. But much of her work was either published under both their names or even Scott's.

And while Fitzgerald practically invented the unconventional flapper, he was as staid and conventional as any patriarch in Fowler's novel. He wanted Zelda to worship him, to emotionally support him, to back him whatever he wanted to do, whether it was write, party all night, go meet friends or not put up with resistance when he mentored Ernest Hemingway or starlets, or slept with other people. When Zelda develops a serious crush that she mistakes for love with another man, and plans to run away, Fitzgerald embarrasses her, brings her back and takes her back.

The relationship with Hemingway is fascinating in both reality -- even considering what we don't know and what Papa may not have reliably reported (such as a certain incident that Hemingway relates took place in a restroom and involved Fitzgerald's anatomy) -- and in fiction.

Hemingway's charisma is related in full force in this novel. Zelda's distrust of him is brought in quietly and carefully. She doesn't come across as a shrew or unreliable or mentally unstable. Fowler creates an incident in which the origins of Hemingway's turning against first Zelda, then Scott, could be explained. It's an all-to-human incident in which a man who either thinks a lot of himself or who overcompensates because he doubts himself so greatly (both of which I've thought about Hemingway at times) could initiate. And take revenge for when he doesn't get his way.

Later, it is intimated that Zelda may have evidence that Scott and Hemingway slept together. There is nothing definitive in the historical record, and it is easy to imagine their varying times appearing jealous of the other's acclaim as more than that of fellow writers, but imagination is what it appears to be. In the case of the fictional Zelda, it is easy to imagine her jealousy of losing her husband's attention.

All of this sent me down rabbitholes of Google and unresolved determination as to what may or may not have happened.

And then it hit me: Is that not part of what literary fiction might do? Consider possibilities that fit with human nature? Is this a reasonable way to puzzle through what certain real people or any person might do? Is a novel a reasonable way to think through how a person with certain characteristics might respond to certain situations?

These questions are a breakthrough for me as a reader, because I've long held an animus against real people being featured in fiction. For this alone, I'm grateful to Fowler for her ideas as she's expressed them in Z.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'The Nightmare Affair'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:56:00 +0000

THE NIGHTMARE AFFAIR
By Mindee Arnett
YA contemporary fantasy
March 2013
Tor Teen
ISBN: 978-0765333339

Sixteen-year-old Dusty has nearly reconciled herself to needing to attend Arkwell Academy, a private school for creatures closer to her nature than normal people, but as a Nightmare whose talents increase just as murder takes place on campus, she would really rather have been human.

Dusty, as a Nightmare, has to feed off the dreams of others. Crawling on top of them while they sleep to enter their dreams, she gets her energy as the daughter of one of the strongest Nightmares around, her estranged mother. But this time, she's entering the dreams of Eli, a very cute normal guy who she went to school with before her powers kicked in. The dream is located at the cemetery, and there's a body. It's another student.

And, for the first time, the dreamer knows she's there. Dusty is able to make a getaway, but not before Eli wakes up to find her on top of him.

It turns out they're a fated pair, and Dusty and Eli are maneuvered into trying to find out more about the student's murder. The victim was supposed to be part of a protection against a force that threatens the existence of all the creatures at Arkwell Academy.

The set-up is a combination of mystery sleuthing as Dusty, Eli and Dusty's best friend and roomie, a siren, hunt for clues, and a romance as Dusty and Eli get tingly around each other. If only Eli wasn't so infuriating and if only another boy wasn't so nice to Dusty all the time. And there's Dusty's issues with her mother, who got away with everything while Dusty cannot sneeze without getting in trouble.
But then Arnett's over-use of mythology kicks in. It's not enough to have Nightmares (succubi, basically), sirens, demons, vampires and werewolves. We also get Merlin and Excaliber. But not Arthur. And sudden violence that feels out of place.

It's a mindless enough entertainment if fluff is the goal. For older teens and up.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Beneath a Meth Moon'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:42:00 +0000

BENEATH A METH MOON: An Elegy
By Jacqueline Woodson
YA contemporary realistic
February 2012
Nancy Paulsen Books (Penguin Young Readers Group)
ISBN: 9780399252501

Laurel has been through a lot in her 15 years. She, her father and her younger brother lost her mother and grandmother when they wouldn't leave Pass Christian when Hurricane Katrina came. They've moved to a small Midwest town after living with her aunt for two years in Jackson.

To say she misses her mother and grandmother, M'Lady, is understatement. Their loss is a deep pain that is with her always. It's not enough that she dearly loves her baby brother, who was three months old when they left Pass Christian, and that he deeply loves her. It's not enough that she adores and respects her father, a good, quiet, God-loving man. It's not enough that she has found a good friend, Kaylee, who is the reader to her writer (and Woodson's recounting of their dialogue in this regard is a gorgeous homage to the joys of reading and writing).

It's when the cute boy on the basketball team, the one with a tattoo of gumbo, kisses her and offers her meth, that she thinks she has found something that is enough. Meth dulls the pain of loss, makes her giddy and makes her want more. And more. And more.

Woodson tells Laurel's story by weaving back and forth in time without preaching, but by showing what Laurel is thinking and feeling throughout her descent into drug addiction and living on the street, through attempts at rehab and believing she can handle it. Laurel is fortunate that even on the street, she meets a wonderful person. Moses is a teenager who is paid by grieving parents to paint portraits of their meth angels, the teens they lost to meth, on buildings.

For both Laurel's story and Woodson's strong, lyrical, heart-deep writing, Beneath a Meth Moon is a very good book for teens to discover. The publisher recommends for ages 12 and up; it's going into my middle school library next to Woodson's other books.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'A Killing in the Hills'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 18:21:00 +0000

A KILLING IN THE HILLS
By Julia Keller
Crime fiction
August 2012
Minotaur Books
ISBN: 9781250003485

A woman returns to the place where a family tragedy took place years ago. Everyone else is gone. She decides there is nothing here for her, either.

That woman is the prosecuting attorney of Raythune County, West Virginia. Bell Elkins has brought her teenage daughter, Carla, back to her hometown when her husband wanted a high-flying career that didn't seem to include them. But home hasn't been a sanctuary. Carla is in full teenage-rebel mode. She also could have been hurt the day a gunman walked into a local restaurant and killed three old men in the middle of their morning coffee meeting.

Bell and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong, who was a young deputy when the tragedy in Bell's family took place and who took her under his wing, seek to find the killer. They also deal with other cases, the people they work with and the rest of the town where everybody seemingly knows everybody else. As is normal in a small town, not everyone is as they seem.

One of the cases appears to be an easy prosecution but shows Bell's determination for precision and doing right. A developmentally disabled young man plays with a much younger boy. One day, the younger boy dies. On its own, this case could have taken center stage in showing Bell's character, the ins and outs of small-town prosecutions and a decent plot.

The main story is told from the investigation side as well as the first-person account of the shooter, who is fairly standard-issue small-town nobody who wants to be known for something. The interesting part of the case has to do with Carla as she struggles with growing up and wanting to make her mother proud of her even if she wants Mom to just leave her alone.

Keller's first novel is an interesting attempt to showcase the struggles of people who live in beautiful country and high poverty, where drugs can offer an easy way out and a way to make some money. It isn't the strongest novel, as a few Too Stupid to Live moments are employed to raise the stakes in finding the killer. A contractor wanting to stop by a house after 10 p.m. also can easily take a reader out of the story. But the novel is an honest attempt and shows the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's considerable admiration for West Virginia and her people.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

In progress: 'Yellow Birds', ties to 'Fobbit'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 19:48:00 +0000

Having just finished the midway part of Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds, the big chapter with the big sentence where the young narrator who has survived a tour of duty in Iraq drifts through life and partway down the river, one of those "aha!" connection moments between books occurred.

The Yellow Birds is one of the three Iraq novels published last year. The first I've read, David Abrams' Fobbit, succeeded for my brain and my heart, as well as my sense of humor. It was a smooth, stunningly clever novel in which the total nonsense of war came together.

Powers's novel is completely different. In style, it veers between the extremes of Hemingway admiration and Jamesian twists and turns. One sentence, in the above-mentioned Chapter 7, takes up about two pages. It reveals a great deal of the narrator's character, his motivation, his heart and why his mournful inertia is so hard for him to get past.

And that's when I realized the difference between the two novels. Fobbit is told from an omnipresent perspective that shows the interior and exterior portions of several characters. It's grown-up. It knows war is supremely ridiculous and tragic at the same time.

The Yellow Birds reads from the perspective of a sensitive young man who is just seeing how bad life can be, and has learned this lesson in the worst way possible -- by seeing and causing the taking of life in service of powers that take but never give.

This difference in the two novels is one of the reasons to celebrate the breadth of contemporary fiction. It takes more than one voice, one story, to try to convey the scope of something like war, especially Iraq. I'm looking forward to adding my reading of Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk to my cumulative knowledge in hopes of understanding more.

Review: 'Brooklyn Bones'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 02:59:00 +0000

BROOKLYN BONES (An Erica Donato mystery)
By Triss Stein
Crime fiction (traditional mystery)
February 2013
Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN: 9781464201202

Erica Donato is making a life for herself and her daughter, going to grad school, working part-time in a museum and renovating their Park Slope home. She misses her husband, who died too young, but she treasures her friends and family. What was a quiet life is shattered when the renovaters, including her daughter, discover the bones of a teenage girl, cradling a teddy bear, hidden in a wall of the house.

Soon, Erica and her teenage daughter, Chris, are encountering strangers threatening them in the street and on the phone. Retired cop Rick Malone, friend of Erica's father, has been a surrogate parent to both of them, but now he's not answering phone messages.

Meanwhile, Erica's friend introduces her to dashing and rich Steven Richmond, who offers her consulting work. He represents developers who want to be highly regarded when they change the neighborhood. Erica is not certain how her historian credentials work into this, but as a grad student and single mother welcomes the extra money to look up material about where she lives. The search is also to try to find out about the early 1970s, when that girl's remains were walled up inside Erica's home.

To help with the historical record, Erica befriends a crochety retired newspaper reporter who broke stories about the gentrification of part of Brooklyn. Leary's old clippings and notes of the days when runaways crashed in Park Slope homes and landlords wanted them out are interesting not just to Erica the historian and homeowner where a skeleton was found, they also attract the attention of those who may not want the past brought to light.

Stein does well in setting up both the main characters -- Erica and her daughter, their friend Joe, the contractor who is renovating the house, and other characters -- and the whodunit. There are times when the story threatens to veer into romance rather than mystery, but it's intentional for both the plot and for the character development of Erica the young widow. The groundwork laid in this novel should provide a sturdy foundation to further books in the series.

One area in which Stein particular excels is in bringing Erica's Brooklyn neighborhood to life. Readers see what it was like back in the day, as well as the vibrant district it is now. Families have roots of several generations or as newcomers make a block their own. The interactions play a key role in solving the mystery of the skeletal remains, but also show what makes Brooklyn a special place to the author and her main character.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'The St. Zita Society'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:13:00 +0000

THE ST. ZITA SOCIETY
By Ruth Rendell
Crime fiction
August 2012
Scribner
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6668-7

Ruth Rendell is, along with P.D. James, the jewel in the crown of British crime fiction after the first Golden Age. Her Inspector Wexford novels, stand-alones and deliciously creepy tales written as Barbara Vine have garnered fans and favorable critical attention for decades.

In recent years, she has enlarged her range to include stand-alone novels taking place on various London streets. The St. Zita Society takes place among the posh and would-be posh. Set on Hexam Place, it's an "Upstairs, Downstairs"-style novel in which those in service, and those roped into doing for others, gather at the local.

June has been lady's maid for more than 60 years to Princess Susan, who came by the title from a long-abandoned Italian prince. June forms the St. Zita Society, which she says is named after the patron saint of domestic servants, as a way for the downstairs group to congregate, discuss issues and perhaps go to a show.

Although most of the others don't mind congregating at the local, they're not that interested in any type of society or causing trouble. It's not that they're cowardly. It's that most of them are too wrapped up in themselves or the onus their employers place upon them.

Take Henry, for example. Lord Studley's valet is sleeping with both Lord Studley's wife and his daughter.

June has to walk the dog but her employer, the princess, is taken with June's nephew, Rad, who acts on a TV soap. Preston Still's wife also is taken with Rad. But it's the Stills' au pair, Montserrat, who has to let him in and out off the house across from where June and the princess live. At least Preston and Lucy Still's children are diligently cared for by Rabia, whose traditional Muslim father wants the young widow to get married again. But Rabia also lost her children and Thomas is such a lovely baby who adores her. Thea isn't in service but her landlords seem to think she works for them without pay.
Then there's Dr. Jefferson. His driver, Jimmy, doesn't work too hard but he does put up with Dex the gardener. Dex killed someone once because a voice commanded him to get rid of that evil spirit. Most people don't have faces to Dex, but there is the voice of Peach, sometimes found by dialing random numbers on his mobile, to guide him.

Rendell sets up these dominoes and, with one push, sets them all into inevitable motion. The rest of the novel is a delightfully devilish discourse on how some people get away with things, how some people only seem to get away with things and how some people are doomed.

Along the way, Rendell is as great as ever with her wicked ability to skewer those who need it, add just the right touches of pathos and the occasional moment of genuine sweetness.

If the set-up seems to take a bit, hang on. It's worth it when those dominoes begin to fall.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

In Progress: 'The St. Zita Society'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 15:27:00 +0000

Ruth Rendell has been writing novels set on various London blocks in addition to her stand-alones, Inspector Wexford novels and Barbara Vine books.

The latest, The St. Zita Society, has the usual combination of various households but is the first written in "Upstairs, Downstairs" mode. Hexam Place is one of those posh London squares where people still have servants. One of them insists on forming a society of the downstairs folk while they meet at the local pub.

Not much happens at these meetings. There are so many characters that it's best to read as much of the book at once as possible (which you know I can't seem to do these days).

I was about to put this one down as a rare misstep for Rendell, whose work has been creepy good for decades, but an unexpected event midway through has really picked things up. If only Hitchcock was still around to film a version of this.

Now to see if it continues through to the end as well as it's going now.

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 02:33:00 +0000

AS THE CROW FLIES: A Walt Longmire mystery
By Craig Johnson
Crime fiction
May 2012
Viking
ISBN: 978-0670023516

Walt Longmire has survived desperate situations before, but this could be the most dire. His daughter is getting married, and he and Henry Standing Bear have been assigned some of the preparations. When the pair witness a murder while looking for a wedding site in Montana, Longmire doesn't exactly complain about being drawn into the investigation.

The victim is a young Cheyenne woman. She was shielding her baby when she went over a cliff. The child improbably survives with only a few bruises, and the father is the presumed suspect. But in the entangled family relationships, long-held grudges and dealings with drugs, government bureaucracy and war wounds, easy presumptions may well not be enough.

Longmire also comes up against the young tribal chief of police, an Iraq war vet named Lolo. Her attempts to run down every miscreant have her placing Longmire under arrest in their initial meeting.

The revealing of Lolo's character, which shows more depth than small-town, hot-headed rookie cop, is one of the highlights of the novel. So are the appearances of Longmire's daughter, Cady, and her mother-in-law to be, and, of course, the Cheyenne Nation. For those who still haven't warmed up to Vic, she doesn't play a significant role. A certain FBI agent also shows up, for better or for worse.

Johnson also is master of pacing. As with all Longmire novels, they are fast reads but contain a fully realized plot with characters to wonder and care about.

But as with all other Longmire novels, there are parts that still don't feel right. There is the obligatory woo-woo. This time, a milky-eyed older Cheyenne medicine woman invites Longmire to a peyote ceremony. The disbelief has a hard time staying suspended for that, since there are opposing philosophies about allowing whites into these ceremonies. Johnson does a good job showing awareness of what modern life is like on reservations with his characters, what they go through, what they face and how they respond to myriad obstacles. He doesn't have to go the route of Native American mysticism through a white man's perspective for a solid series with a grand cast of continuing characters.

This is especially true when the plot itself is so solid and the action-filled resolution is high adventure without being too much to believe.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:24:00 +0000

WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE
By Maria Semple
Literary fiction
December 2012
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 978-0316256193

WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE could have gone in so many directions. Maria Semple's novel, told from various points of view and in emails, letters and journal entries, starts off in full-blown, glorious snark mode. The parents of a snooty Seattle private school's children have their knickers in a twist over the antics of fish-out-of-water Bernadette. She is a reclusive, misanthropic famed architect and mother of talented prodigy Bee. Dad is a Microsoft muckymuck who has one of the most-viewed TED talks ever.

Bee wants to see Antarctica as a graduation present. Because Bernadette cannot face people, she hires a virtual assistant in India to make the arrangements. Below their house, which is really a rundown former school, Audrey Griffin wants to hold a fundraising party for Bee's school. (Her son also attends.) The goal is to attract the best Mercedes parents, like one of the Pearl Jam band members. It doesn't have to be Eddie Vedder.

Audrey is a gnat to Bernadette. She demands Bernadette remove the rambling blackberry bushes from her yard before the party. The fact that it's winter and the hillside will lose its cover to battle erosion do not occur to Audrey. Then again, she's also the kind of parent who wonders what the principal is doing looking in her son's locker. After all, "don't they have locks on them? Isn't that why they're called lockers?"

Bee's dad, Elgin, is up against a tight deadline at work. His new admin assistant, Soo-Lin, is another prep school gnat, um, parent. Soo-Lin is a divorced single mother who attends Victims Against Victimhood meetings. Complications will, of course, ensue as lives become entangled.

It all gets to be too much for Bee's mother. So she disappears two days before Christmas. And Bee decides to find her. That's when the novel hits its true stride and the reader discovers its deep heart.

As the story begins, the satire and snark are delicious. Semple began the novel after moving to the unknown territory known as Seattle, and to someone who has watched the pretentiousness present in some Emerald City residents from the other side of the Cascades since before Microsoft, Starbucks and grunge rock existed, she is spot on.

But like all great novelists who use various forms of humor, Semple knows when to add layers of emotional depth. Bernadette has good reasons to do what she does, and few of the characters turn out to be as cartoonish as they may appear at first. There is a great set piece of sorts when the novel changes tone, a long letter Bernadette writes to a former colleague about her life as a MacArthur grant-winning architect and the birth of Bee. His response to the letter is nearly the same as the one that Semple received as she adapted to a city she now loves, after Bernadette has poured out her heart for pages:

"Bernadette,

Are you done? You can't honestly believe any of this nonsense. People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society."

To see what Bernadette does next is not revealed until the end, and there is far too much tell rather than show in the revealing, but it is still a resolution that rings true emotionally and fits these characters just right.

Best of all, Bee is a delightful creation. A brilliant, intrepid daughter could be too twee a character, but Semple keeps Bee from going too far into that territory. Instead, Bee is a fully realized character who just happens to be the youngest of the main ones in this novel. And, just as Semple handles the various voices who relate the narrative, she also allows more than one main character to have her own journey of discovery.

These are characters worth knowing, and their story is one well worth discovering.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reposted with permission

Review: 'The Wandering Falcon'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 03:11:00 +0000

THE WANDERING FALCON
By Jamil Ahmad
Literary fiction
October 2012 (trade paperback edition)
Riverhead
ISBN: 9781594486166

Most of what I know about the part of the world where Pakistan and Afghanistan meet is through Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. So you know I don't know much.

But I do know that when Daniel Dravot and Peachy tried to use their guns and wits to conquer the tribes in this mountainous, inhospitable region, the tribal culture initially worked for them, then against them.

This view of tribal culture, in which the individual may endure but does not achieve dominance, is but one of the conclusions reached reading another book that takes part in that high corner of the world. Jamil Ahmad, at age 80, published his first work with The Wandering Falcon after spending years in the area.

It isn't quite accurate to call The Wandering Falcon a novel. It is part fable, part character study of a way of life rather than one singular character and part a setting down in writing tales that have probably been told there for years.

There is a man in the book who is a wandering falcon. His parents are unfortunate lovers; she's the daughter of a tribal leader and he's a nobody. They ran away together, finding refuge for several years near an army fort. When her father's people eventually find them, the outcome is not good. Their child, the falcon of the story, survives. He's passed from mentor to mentor over the years. What he learns and how he became what he did is not told, however. He disappears for pages and pages.
But in between those appearances, the various stories provide a few clues as to how the people of the region may view life.

In one of the early stories, a tribe comes to grips with the newly enforced border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, not sure if everyone will be able to get across as they move their few animals to better grazing. The tribe's leader tries to negotiate safe passage with an army official, unsuccessfully. As he leaves, he adjusts his cloak. As he does so, his son realizes that the cloak is now an "ordinary covering for an old man". The "general" has lost his authority.

The general later reminds his son about a time they met another old man, who said the secret to his long life was eating raw onions:

What he told you that day was the secret of life itself. One lives and survives only if one has the ability to swallow and digest bitter and unpalatable things. We, you and I, and our people shall live because there are only a few among us who do not love raw onions.

As bitter as life is for the menfolk, it's worse for the women. They are property to be kidnapped, sold for a pound of opium, to be treated worse than a bear that does tricks. Malala Yousufzai would know the attitudes here well.

In all these stories within the book, the boy who is known as the falcon either does not appear or makes only a brief appearance. He could be likened to a bird that views the actions of these characters from a distance and without passion.

One character, a magistrate, in Ahmad's tales is disdainful of anything that is not a cold, hard fact. Telling rationales through fables, for example, serves no purpose in his world view. "Fables have no use here," he says. "Can a fable explain a death?"

Of course a fable can explain a death, a way of life and the dying of a way of life. Which is, perhaps, more to the point of The Wandering Falcon than anything else.

The Wandering Falcon is a finalist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. The winner will be named Jan. 25 in Jaipur. Also on the shortlist are The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam, River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif, The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash, translated by Jason Grunebaum, and Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission
Note: A version of this review first appeared on Daily Kos.

In Progress: 'The Rivals'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 23:40:00 +0000

Daisy Whitney's first YA novel, The Mockingbirds, was a terrific novel on many levels: Alex attends a private school where adults look the other way when wrongs are committed. When she is date-raped, she discovers there is a vigilante group on campus, the Mockingbirds, that stands up for students who have been harmed.

The novel dealt with date rape, with victims not being believed, with friends and strangers sticking up for doing right by victims and with teens knowing what the right thing to do is, even if the adults around them do not. All of this was done in a fast-moving plot with complex characters to care about in a believable set-up.

The follow-up novel, The Rivals, deepens the stakes when Alex, now head of the Mockingbirds, is told about a possible prescription drug abuse ring. Students may be doping up to try to win a competition.

The complexity of the situation includes Alex not sure about who to tell what, including her fellow Mockingbirds and friends, as well as who to believe as she starts to ask questions. Early on, the who-to-trust aspect and how it affects justice is brought up as Alex wonders what's going on:

For a second, it strikes me as odd that two students here are so worried they'd be implicated that they'd come to me for help. But then again, maybe that's the point -- maybe they are the nameless victims we're supposed to protect. Maybe they're the ones who could get hurt by what's happening. But even so, I have to make sure I'm not being played.

Layers of deception will have to be unwrapped before this novel is done, methinks. So far, The Rivals is another winner.

Review: 'Brotherhood of Shades'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:33:00 +0000

BROTHERHOOD OF SHADES
By Dawn Finch
YA Fantasy (Middle school)
October 2012
Authonomy (HarperCollins)
ASIN: B0095C3J6Q

When Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the church in England and wreaked havoc throughout the country as monasteries and other religious communities were pillaged, a small group determined to remain true to traditions they deemed necessary. The foremost tradition was to have three souls to mourn another's passing.

Documents gathered by a monk who saw visions of turmoil to come were given to a boy who had survived the illness that claimed the rest of his family. He made his way to a nunnery where knowledge from across the realm was to be hidden as their world collapsed. Grievously wounded, he was still able to deliver the materials.

Several hundred years later, another young teen dies in a hospital after being found starving on the streets of London. The homeless lad had no one to mourn him. But unlike the others solaced by the Brotherhood of Shades, this boy saw the spirits moving amongst the living. Now the teen, named Adam Street for where he was found, may be the one to fulfill a longstanding Brotherhood prophecy.

This is the setup to Dawn Finch's debut YA novel, a paranormal fantasy that involves the boy wounded during the Dissolution, the boy from the modern streets and a witch whose spirit has survived in her family for generations.

Adam has a guide to help him adjust. Toby D'Scover is the Keeper of the Texts. He takes care of the ancient documents and monitors current spirit activity around the world, and is the one to whom other members of the Brotherhood report unusual phenomenom. The fact there is more activity is but one of the reasons he suspects Adam may be the Sentinel predicted of ages ago. Perhaps he is the one who, with two others to help him, will defeat the resurgence of evil. But first he has a trial to survive.

Finch is superb at world-building in this debut novel, which could serve as the springboard for a series. But for that to happen, the writing will need to be more balanced between the expository writing that threatens to overwhelm the narrative and the action scenes. However, as a bonus, Finch, a children's librarian, adds an afterword with information and links about the real-world objects and places that figure in her story.

D'Scover is a particularly interesting character, with a fully developed past and present. He and Adam work well together. As dead guys, their ability to navigate the world is augmented by the addition of 14-year-old Edie to form a trio. The potential development of a relationship between the dead Adam and living Edie is a problem it would be interesting to see how Finch develops.

A note about the publisher: Authonomy is an online community developed by HarperCollins book editors.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Hello Gorgeous'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 18:38:00 +0000

HELLO GORGEOUS: Becoming Barbra Streisand
By William J. Mann
Biography
October 2012
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 978-0547368924

Before Madonna, before Lady Gaga, before Nicki Minaj or any other performer of the past 50 years, there was Barbra. Hello Gorgeous is a well-structured look at how a quirky teenager who desperately wanted to become an actress became one, but not before becoming the toast of Broadway and a woman who didn't even realize the power of her gift -- that voice. That glorious voice.

William J. Mann, whose previous books include biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn and John Schlesinger, as well as novels, has put together bits and pieces of not only the legend, but also stories from people who knew her when. The result is a coherent and cohesive narrative of how Streisand became an overnight sensation after only four years.

Mann recounts Streisand's early acting classes and compares the myth to what he can document. He takes the same approach through her tutelage under her first boyfriend, actor Barry Dennen, who encouraged her to sing and who introduced her to music she later incorporated in early nightclub appearances. Two other friends helped Streisand with her distinctive makeup and fashion sense to cultivate the thriftshop look that became an early trademark.

Throughout, there is a consistent sense that Streisand wanted to be the best and do her best, although doing the same performance night after night after night soon grew tiresome in her first Broadway show, I Can Get It For You Wholesale. Streisand made a splash in that show and captured the heart of leading man Elliot Gould in her small role. Mann recounts the lack of warmth and support from her mother without making her a monster.

Between the show and her nightclub appearances, comparisons soon began between her and Fanny Brice. The convoluted path that led to her getting the role of a lifetime in Funny Girl is described chronologically and thoroughly. Even knowing the outcome and the bare bones of the myth, Mann's account makes for compelling reading.

Mann is careful about noting his sources, but part of his writing style does grate. When he refers to how Streisand or others must be feeling or how if something didn't happen on one night it happened on a night like this, the reader can be forgiven for pausing to question, well, how does he know? Because so much of this comprehensive look at Streisand's path to stardom is documented here with credit to primary sources, these narrative tics take away from the scholarship that was plainly involved.

Even so, Hello Gorgeous is an engaging look at a star and the era when she first blossomed.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Carnival for the Dead'

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 03:44:00 +0000

CARNIVAL FOR THE DEAD
By David Hewson
Suspense
August 2012
Thomas & Mercer
ISBN: 9781612183985

David Hewson's Nic Costa novels of Rome feature strong plots and strong characters. Among the strongest of the secondary characters is police pathologist Teresa Lupo. However, when she goes to Venice during Carnival to search for her beloved aunt, who is missing, she may be at her most vulnerable because she is out of her element.

Teresa's Aunt Sofia has always lived as a vagabond. Even Teresa's mother doesn't know the kind of details that families usually know that prove helpful in, say, missing persons reports. When Teresa contacts the police, she is met with little sympathy. Her aunt is a grown woman with no diminished capacity and it's Carnival. The police have a lot of other things going on.

Staying at her aunt's flat, Teresa mets the neighbors, a young woman who makes masks for the other main occupant, an older man confined to a wheelchair. The owner is rarely there. The neighbors, although nice, especially for Venetians to Teresa's Roman mind, know little that is helpful. When Teresa finds an envelope slipped under the apartment door with a story, she learns that this and subsequently delivered stories are supposed to lead her to Sofia.

Hewson is a master at weaving these stories, which feature Teresa and other people she meets, with the real story of her search for Sofia. The stories include a British professor and a young Englishman who is a master baker, who both end up in Venice, and a woman who resembles Sofia's neighbor Camille, but with an odd need for nutrients in other people's blood. Carnival season and the narrow, twisty streets of Venice add layers of mystery to the novel; this is not the Venice of a traveller's delight, but rather a dark place where people's obsessions become overpowering.

The stories also feature the enigmatic Count St. Germain, who is based loosely on a real person who was as mysterious as the one in Hewson's story. Readers who know of a St. Germain through Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's groundbreaking series of historical paranormals or in Diana Gabaldon's stories will recognize this figure, even though he is not the same character.

When the stories Teresa has been receiving and her investigation merge into one storyline, there is the usual over-the-top action seen in most thrillers. But Hewson does make everything fit together without jamming it into place. And there is sweetness along with the bitter in the telling.

The main result of reading the novel, however, is to want to spend more time with Hewson's Nic Costa series and see Teresa Lupo back where she belongs.

The novel was not published by Hewson's regular publisher but rather by the Amazon imprint Thomas & Mercer.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Essay: Murakami's 1Q84 Book 3

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 15:34:00 +0000

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami is one odd novel. It's one of those odd novels that is far too long but that, once the end is in sight, a reader may not want to end.

That's because in Book 3, Murakami pulls out all the stops and goes totally sentimental. The song quoted at the beginning of this massive novel is the old standard "Paper Moon" -- "but it wouldn't be make-believe/if you believed in me".

After three books and more than 900 pages, that's what it comes down to -- believing in another person. In their very existence. And in the existence of a world where two moons hang in the sky.

In Book 3, which takes place from October to December in an alternate world that the heroine Aomame has named 1Q84, a cult is after both her and our hero Tengo. They have not seen each other since they were 10 years old. They've lived separate lives for 20 years. But now, the coincidence of the cult -- with Tengo ghostwriting a bestseller that actually betrays its secrets and Aomame killing the cult leader (albeit with his blessing), an operative named Ushikawa is trying to find them both.

Ushikawa is an interesting character. Appearing first as oily and suspicious, it turns out he's got a backstory. The ugly little man once was a successful attorney with a wife and family. But he skirted past what isn't ethical and now operates more outside the law and society than within either. He discovers the old connection between Tengo and Aomame. When he gets too close, Aomame's ally takes care of the problem. The cult is flummoxed. They've lost the voice they listen to but change their minds about going after Aomame. They desparately want to talk to her. She's carrying a child.

Murakami leaves until the end whether the child is important to the cult or if any of the players -- cult members, Tengo, Ushikawa, even Aomame -- really know everything that's going on.

The resolution of the cult's problem, its pursuit of Aomame and whether she and Tengo are trapped in a world with two moons reminds me more of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell than anything else. Ushikawa's fate is like that of a once-sinister character in that book. What Aomame calls 1Q84 and Tengo calls The Town of Cats, based on a story he reads about a deserted town where the only inhabitants are cats at night, is the realm of fairies in European folklore. And not nice fairies. These are the ones who enjoy tormenting humans and who keep them at endless parties for years on end, always dancing.

Other notes in the overall novel do echo other Murakami works. The NHK collector who pounds on the door where Aomame is in hiding and Tengo's apartment when Fuki-Eri -- the teenager who wrote the original story about the Little People that Tengo rewrote -- may or may not be Tengo's father. He's lying in a coma in a coastal town that Tengo also likens to the Town of Cats. The only movement he makes, the reader learns after his death, is of his hand knocking against the bed, much as someone knocking at a door.

Both Tengo's mother and Aomame's friend suffer the same kind of death, recalling the across-time travel that took place in Kafka on the Shore. The whole other world and the air chrysalis that is a womb call to mind the alternate reality and deeply sleeping figure in After Dark.

All of these works by Murakami feature lonely, isolated people who still remain open to the idea of connecting with another human when one, no matter how seemingly unattainable, comes across their path. It's the belief that they might matter and the openness to connecting that make Murakami a sweet author. The last chapters are full-throttle sentimental and are as successful as his earlier passages about sex were not. The feeling is far more important than the plot. Aomame and her friend Tamaru, the dowager's right-hand man who is a deadly killer and intellectual, convey this when saying goodbye in a telephone call:

"I might end up never firing the pistol. Contrary to Chekhov's principle."
"That's fine, too," Tamaru said. "Nothing could be better than not firing it. We're drawing close to the end of the twentieth century. Things are different from back in Chekhov's time. No more horse-drawn carriages, no more women in corsets. Somehow the world survived the Nazis, the atomic bomb, and modern music. Even the way novels are composed has changed drastically. So it's nothing to worry about."

The contrast between the sweetness at the end and the realization in Book 3 that not all lives are so meaningful is realized by Ushikawa:

Everything he had done seemed pointless. He had used up all the cards he'd been dealt -- not that great a hand to begin with. He had taken that lousy hand and used it as best he could to make some clever bets. For a time things looked like they were going to work out but now he had run out of cards. The light at the table was switched off, and all the players had filed out of the room. ...
Where in the world did I come from? he asked himself in the dark. And where the hell am I going?

1Q84 apparently was conceived as two books rather than the three it ended up being. That would explain part of why the whole feel so drawn out. There is much repetition. There are plot holes all over the place, especially acknowledged ones, and disbelief is always is danger of not remaining suspended. But when one lover promises another "I'll never let go of your hand again," it doesn't matter. Because that kind of love may not be believable by everyone. But for those who do, there's nothing stronger.

© 2012 Lynne Perednia; originally published online at Daily Kos

In Progress: Crime fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 15:14:00 +0000

Two of the books I'm reading right now are in the crime fiction genre -- Laura Lippman's And When She Was Good and one of the latest in Akashic City Noir series, Kansas City.

They're both good in different ways.

Lippman's latest stand-alone is narrated by Heloise, a soccer mom who overcame an abusive father. She's not just a soccer mom, though. She's a madam with powerful clients. And another secret that threatens to overturn the double life she and her son lead. Lippman is masterful in creating voice and characters.

The Kansas City story collection, edited by Steve Paul, oozes despair the way barbecue done right oozes sauce. It's gloriously gritty, and I haven't even gotten to the Daniel Woodrell story.

And when I'm done with these, there is the new Louise Penny, more City Noir collections and a wide range of Poisoned Pen Press books. I also want to spend more time with James Lee Burke this winter. I don't see how I can go wrong.

Essay: Murakami's 1Q84 Book 2

noreply@blogger.com (Lynne Perednia) — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 15:37:00 +0000

Jung was writing about James Joyce's Ulysses, but his observation rings just as true for Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 when he wrote:

What is so staggering about 'Ulysses" is the fact that behind a thousand veils nothing lies hidden; that it turns neither toward the mind nor toward the world, but, as cold as the moon looking on from cosmic space, allows the dream of growth, being, and decay to pursue its course.

Two moons hang in the sky, and the reason for why that is so is revealed by Murakami in Book 2 of 1Q84. The second moon, which existed in a story told by a teenage girl who ran away from a cult, was brought to life by a cram school teacher who took that story at the behest of his editor and rewrote it into a bestselling piece of literature. The woman that this teacher, Tengo, has always loved finds herself looking at the two moons in the sky and remembering the boy she gave her heart to when they were both 10 years old.

At the same time Aomame is looking at the two moons, coming to terms with her new-found realization that she has spent her life loving Tengo, he is looking at those same two moons with the new-found realization that he has always loved her. He imagines that the moon has given Aomame the best thing it can give a person -- "pure solitude and tranquility".

That there are two moons gazing impassively down at the separated pair plays directly into Murakami's theme of duality. It's seen throughout this middle section of 1Q84 with the various couplings of characters and reflected situations. In one of the many expository speeches in this section, Jung is referenced:

Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung said this about 'the Shadow' in one of his books: 'It is as evil as we are positive ... the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive ... The fact is that if one tries beyond one's capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.

Aomame, begins this section accepting her final, and most difficult, assignment. She is a vigilante assassin whose benefactor, the dowager, wants her to kill a cult leader who has been raping prepubescent girls. His victims include a little girl who is sheltered at the dowager's safe house for abuse victims but who mysteriously disappears.

Yes, this is the same cult that the teenage storyteller, Fuka-Eri, escaped from, and her father is the same cult leader who has been raping the little girls. In what is the most difficult part of the novel to accept, the cult leader has a different story to tell. The sexual congress is how the Perceiver and Receiver in Murakami's created mythology see and hear the Little People who are the movers and shakers, the tricksters, in this novel. Fuka-Eri tells the story the same way and performs the same with Tengo after she goes into hiding following her story's publication.

This conceit is where Murakami's delicately woven tale threatens to unravel. Instead of taking this part of the story on face value and waiting to see what happens next, my reaction is to wonder why any man would think this kind of NC17-rated excuse of Star Trek-style fan fiction would fit into a complex structure of a three-book literary work.

Although I don't think Murakami intended this to be the profane counterpart to the sweet tale of Tengo and Aomame, this is the only way I can make it fit. Because the crux of the tale is stated explicitly in this section:

If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life.

Aomame decides to carry through her mission because doing so, she is told, will keep Tengo safe. When she tries to go back the way she came when she entered 1Q84 (the alternate reality from the year 1984) the way is blocked.

Book 2 starts to pull together some of the threads that were introduced in the first book, especially the stories of Tengo and Aomame, the two moons and the Little People. How other parts of the whole narrative fit haven't quite coalesced, although they are becoming part of this main story. Most importantly, Tengo's distant father, wasting away and suffering from dementia, speaks to him cryptically about his mother. Tengo was raised by this man, who apparently isn't his father, after his mother left.

And because this is Murakami, there are finally cats. In this case, they appear in a story Tengo reads while going to visit his father and later tells to the older man. It's a fable (which calls to mind Philippe Claudel's latest novel, The Investigation, with a seemingly abandoned village) in which a man on a train stops in a quiet town. No one is there. He stays until night falls, when hundreds of cats arrive and carry on as if they were human, doing routine things. He stays a second, then a third, night. The town is the place where the man "is meant to be lost".

This story seemingly inspires Tengo's father to tell him that he is nothing and that he has been filling a vacuum left by someone else. When he is gone, Tengo will fill that vacuum. Tengo has had a dream for years that he is a baby in his crib, watching his mother embraced by another man. Now, he is told that "the woman who gave birth to you is not anywhere anymore" and that she "joined her body with a vacuum". When one of the strange figures in Fuka-Eri's story, an air chrysalis, forms on the bed where his father has been in a coma, the stories are nearly joined together. But there is a third book to come.

There also is a cliffhanger to see resolved regarding Aomame's determination to save Tengo. Murakami leaves no doubt that belief in love and in the world are entwined. The cult leader Aomame was sent to kill tells her, while referencing the Paper Moon song:

If you don't believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about ...

Meanwhile, Tengo ends Book 2 vowing:

I will find Aomame ... no matter what happens, no matter what kind of world it may be, no matter who she may be.

With this great a set-up, and still shaking my head over the offensive idea of sex with young girls as a way to transfer knowledge, Book 3 had better be transformative.