meezly mostly reads

3. House of Stairs

2012-01-16T14:51:00.005-05:00

By William Sleator

Continuing my exploration of YA fiction, House of Stairs is a 1974 dystopian classic about five 16-year-old orphans mysteriously confined within a huge, Escher-like complex of stairs. Left alone without purpose or explanation, they come across a machine that emits voices and flashing lights, but more importantly, the machine dispenses food (meat pellets!) after the kids act, or even move, a certain way. The kids soon rely on this machine for sustenance and it gradually becomes apparent they have to psychologically torture each other in order to survive!

The title is a little misleading since the confines are much more vast than the interior of any house, yet no less claustrophobic. It’s like a reverse locked-room (white void), psychological horror story where people are trapped with others whom they grow to hate. Each character has distinct, if rather stereotypical, personality traits: Peter is socially awkward and withdrawn; Lola is rebellious and distrustful of others; Blossom is manipulative and spoiled (as well as obese); Abigail, despite being pretty, has low self-esteem and is a total people-pleaser; and lastly, Oliver is your typical douchebag jock. It's no surprise that it’s going to take a miracle for this demented Breakfast Club to get along, let alone work together as a team in order to beat the system.

As the characters converse or bicker at each other, we get pieces of information about the outside world , which seems not much better than the maze-like prison they're stuck in. In fact, America sounds eerily like North Korea except that the environment is ruined to the point where even the air is no longer fit to breathe. There are constant resource shortages where only a privileged few can live in relative comfort and society has become extremely regimented, if not authoritarian, in its control over citizens.

There are obvious, heavy-handed themes of governmental mind-control, individualism vs authoritarianism, paranoia, and behavioral conditioning that was trendy in the 1970’s. As a YA book, however, this was dealt with enough skill and respect to the reader. The author obviously had no qualms about disturbing young minds. For instance, when the cruelty escalates amongst the teenagers, a rift splits the group. One group gives into their sadistic tendencies to the point of urinating on each other. Interestingly, there are no overt portrayals of sexuality in the novel: Abigail and Oliver never go beyond the furtive kissing stage and it’s merely implied that Peter is a closet homosexual. In reviews I’ve read, there was a writer who remembered seeing this book in the “Special Permission” shelf at the high school library. So I’m sure this book was a minor shit-disturber in its day.

House of Stairs was not a terribly profound book and it felt a bit dated at times, but the story was a treat to read, as it made an absorbing psychological character study. My only regret was not discovering this book in my youth. I was so into finding out what happened next that I even brought the book with me to work and finished it during my lunch break. Being a slim paperback also helped since I don’t like lugging thick books around when I’m commuting.

Interestingly, Dark Carnival, the genre bookstore conveniently located near my in-law’s house in Berkeley has a nice collection of William Sleator books in their YA section. It’s amazing how well-stocked their store is, it’s no wonder they still have stacks of un-shelved books on the floor. Unfortunately, thanks to me, House of Stairs is no longer in stock!

In keeping with the YA dystopia movie trend, there’s supposed to be a film adaptation planned for late 2012. Exciting!

Here is the review which made me put this book on my Xmas list.

Here’s a site which looks at the various literary tropes that Sleator used in House of Stairs.

Here’s a site which looks at 25 William Sleator books.

2. Z for Zachariah

2012-01-10T12:41:00.011-05:00

By Robert C. O'Brien

Now this is what I’m talking about!

I have Mount Benson to thank for this, since Z for Zachariah came into my purview after seeing his review (fortunately, the copy I have has a much better-looking cover).

I was already acquainted with author Robert C. O’Brien having read Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, one of my favourite YA books of all time. It was a deceptively simple yet incredibly poignant tale. A true classic. The same quality of writing is also found in Z for Zachariah (1974). As I expected, this book kicks The Hunger Games and The Uglies in the ass in terms of being a more enriching read.*

Z for Zachariah is told in journal form by a fifteen-year-old girl, Ann Burden, who seems to be the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust that devastated America. The remote valley where she lives is somehow unaffected by the fallout. As a farmer's daughter, Ann has the skills and experience to survive on her own and maintain what's left of the crop and livestock. One day, a man appears in the valley. For weeks, he had been walking across a contaminated landscape searching for life and wearing the world’s only prototype radiation suit, which he invented just before everything went to shit. When he discovers the flourishing valley, he thinks he has found paradise. When he finally meets Ann, well... let’s just say if there is a happily ever after, there wouldn’t be much of a story. If I had to write a blurb for this book, it would be something like:

What happens when the last girl on earth finally meets the last man on earth… and he happens to be a total dick?

Ok, my summary makes the story sound rather silly, but this is far from the case. I have not read many PA books, but this is up there as one of the good ones. In fact, Z for Zachariah seems to be a favourite among readers who are selective about their PA fiction. It is not perfect, as there are a couple of logistical questions that are never fully explained. For instance, for a mountain valley to miraculously escape nuclear contamination, the mountains would have to be closely packed together and high enough to shield the valley from deadly radiation carried over by wind and storm into the valley. The Rocky Mountain range makes geographical sense. However, the novel mentions Amish communities nearby (hence the well-stocked general store), but I don’t think any Amish settlements ever existed in the Rockies. So this would place Ann’s valley somewhere in the Appalachians, the next largest mountain range, but still much smaller in scale compared to the majestic Rockies.

Anyway, logistics aside, this was still a great book. I think I would have loved this book had I read it in my youth. I would have admired the resilience of Ann Burden, how she managed to stay one step ahead of the predatory Mr. Loomis, who was not only older and smarter than her, but was not beholden to any rule of law to act like a civilized being either. This was when Ann truly understood that she was frighteningly on her own. Pretty dark stuff!

O’Brien did a wonderful job in making the reader identify with Ann. You felt her excitement when she discovered the possibility of another survivor, as well as her naivety in wanting to like and trust Mr. Loomis. You were there with her growing sense of unease as the man she nursed back to health gradually revealed his true colours as an insane control freak. Before she knew it, Mr Loomis had managed to take everything from her. To quote Ann:

I was in a game of move-countermove, like a chess game, a game I did not want to be in at all. Only Mr. Loomis wanted to be in it, and only he could win it.

Like Mrs Frisby, the cat and mouse game between Ann and Mr. Loomis made for an incredibly gripping read on one level, yet there were also interesting underlying themes that provoked some thought. The sexual power struggle was an obvious one (this was, after all, written in the early seventies), but even so, it did not feel heavy-handed at all (like an Ira Levin novel, for instance). There were other dichotomies going on too. Fortunately, I found this Guardian review where author Sarah Hall did a wonderful job explaining how Z for Zachariah influenced her as a writer.

Here are some other archived reviews, such as Boris and SFsite.

Robert C. O’Brien was definitely a gifted storyteller, so it's too bad he had only written four books in his lifetime. Apparently, he died before he could finish the last chapter of Z for Zachariah, but since he had left notes, his wife and daughter were able to complete it posthumously. I'm so thankful they did.

* Note I did not say "exciting", but "enriching". This book may not appeal to readers with short attention spans who are expecting another Enclave or Divergent as there isn't a whole lot of action until much later. There aren't any stupid love triangles either, since there are only two characters in the entire book.

1. A Wrinkle In Time

2012-01-02T16:50:00.062-05:00

By Madeleine L'Engle

One of my goals for 2012 is to explore more young adult fiction, with a particular focus on dystopian, post-apocalyptic, and sci-fi/ fantasy. These YA genres are all the craze these days. I've already re-read Pat Murphy’s The City, Not Long After (1989) and it still holds up pretty well more than 20 years later. I found The Hunger Games enjoyable yet forgettable and The Uglies disappointingly hackneyed. Though these two books made quick, entertaining reads, they were somehow also unsatisfying, lacking a level of substance that is important in a popular work of YA fiction. Genre books are very similar to pop music. Contemporary pop can be catchy yet highly derivative, and it is usually worthwhile going back to the source. This is not just for authenticity’s sake, but predecessors sometimes just sound better.

With books, I realize there is a whole wealth of dystopian and fantastical YA novels from decades past just waiting for me to explore. Having recently read the NYT article “Fresh Hell” also clinched things for me. I am not delving into any more contemporary YA fiction until I have read some of their (more often than not, superior,) predecessors.

First up is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. In my youth, I loved fantasy books and magic realism, but never read this classic story of time travel. Now having finally read it, I realize why I had avoided it in the past. I may have already attempted reading before, but lost interest. This is not a great book. First, the story is not very well written and rather clunky in parts. Second, the theme of good versus evil is rather simplistic and the C.S. Lewis-style religious symbolism trite. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful when a YA novel equates fascistic conformity with the forces of evil, but it's ironic that the powers of good are affiliated with God, since religion means conformity in my opinion. Finally, the depiction of the guardian centaurs as little old ladies (Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which) is too cutesy for my liking. When you begin your story with “It was a dark and stormy night”, you are either being incredibly unimaginative or too clever for your own good. That opening sentence is indicative of what a mixed bag A Wrinkle In Time is.

However, where I would have dismissed this book entirely in my youth, I do recognize its appeal as an adult. There are some really neat ideas in the book, like the fifth dimension of time travel, known as a tesseract. So instead of saying “Let’s go time traveling”, you say “let’s go tessering!”. I like how the siblings, Meg and Charles Wallace, despite their fears and doubts, rescue their scientist father, who is imprisoned on planet Camazotz. Camazotz is like a parallel universe of Earth, except that its human inhabitants are ruled by an ernormous, disembodied brain with fascistic tendencies known as IT. IT is headquartered inside a scary building called CENTRAL Central Intelligence, which I thought was pretty funny.

The most memorable thing about A Wrinkle in Time are the characters. I liked the portrayal of the Murry family as a scientific and intellectual household and how the Murry kids are misfits who don't quite fit in at school. Meg is a geeky, awkward adolescent with an attitude problem and Charles Wallace is a preternaturally gifted five-year-old who acts dumb to avoid notice. Their neighbour, Calvin O’Keefe, is also a closet misfit, despite his appearance as a popular athlete at school, and comes out of his shell upon meeting the Murry family. There is also a good sense of kinship and love, up to a fault, as this is also what undermines the novel with the “love conquers all” ending.

You see, Charles Wallace falls under the hypnotic influence of IT. Even though CW has extraordinary abilities, he is no match for IT. After all, IT is a humungous brain with a whole population under mind-control. But despite all odds, Meg is able to defeat the power of IT by the sheer force of her love for CW.

I was of two minds on this. On the one hand, I admit I did get a little caught up in the emotional drama of Meg's rescue, but at the same time, I was like, really? I could not help but feel disappointed by the author relying on such a copout device.

So yeah, A Wrinkle In Time was a definite letdown. Which ain't a bad thing, since this saves me the need to read the rest of the quintet.

Next!

The Wrap Up

2012-01-01T12:36:00.004-05:00

Definitely could’ve squeezed out Book 42, but got caught up with the pre- and post-Xmas whirlwind of familial obligations and socializing. Damn the holidays!

2011 was nevertheless a fantastic year for me with a new record of 41 books. With Olman’s 61, we have a combined total of 102 in our household. There were a few new parents in the 50-book circle, which has been very exciting, but also resulted in lower overall output and contribution. There have been a few resolutions to get motivated again, so let’s hope 2012 will help parents find some extra time for reading and posting!

For Olman and myself, not busy raising little ‘uns certainly helped, but I think, for me at least, I’m becoming more efficient in my reading. And I have learned that I can write my reviews during slow times at work. This works great because I actually look like I’m working instead of surfing the internet!

Though I was aiming to break the previous year’s record of 34 books, I really wasn’t expecting to hit the 40th milestone this year. It was only due to the enthusiastic lending of graphic novels by a mutual friend in November that helped me get past 40 books, otherwise I would not have considered even touching comics. But since I have read a fair number of hefty novels this past year, I felt justified in counting the occasional comic. However, my top 5 favourite reads of the year are all novels:

Fingersmith

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Far From the Madding Crowd

HMS Surprise

Crocodile on the Sandbank

[I suppose it is kind of interesting to note that 4 of these novels are set (or partially set) in pre-20th century England]

I am closer to the 50 book milestone than ever before, but at the same time, don’t want to get too worked up about reaching for the gold. I’d be happy to read 40 books again for 2012 and I have a great incentive: to whittle down my huge, ever-expanding on-deck pile!

Book 41 – Crocodile on the Sandbank

2011-12-23T19:51:00.028-05:00

By Elizabeth Peters

Olman picked up this book while we were in the Maritimes this summer and highly recommended it to me, saying I’d really like the heroine, Amelia Peabody - “a feisty and headstrong Victorian woman, who embodies all the values of the British Empire, but is somewhat restricted by doing so in a female form” - as well as the friendship that develops between Peabody and a younger woman (no, there is no lezzing out á la Fingersmith). Just don’t expect it to be a satisfying mystery.

Olman was right. I did enjoy Crocodile on the Sandbank very much. The beginning was awesome, as it sets up the adventure in which Amelia Peabody is about to begin. What else is an unconventional Victorian woman to do when she inherits a modest fortune and has no wish to marry? She embarks on an exotic voyage, of course! Almost immediately, she rescues, adopts and befriends an abandoned, fallen young woman named Evelyn, who becomes her travelling companion. You can’t help but admire this female protagonist, who proclaims:

I may say, without undue egotism, that when I make up my mind to do something, it is done quickly. The lethargic old city of the Popes fairly quaked under my ruthless hand during the following week.”

For once, I am of complete accord with Olman on both the strengths and weaknesses of Crocodile on the Sandback - it had a great premise that got undermined by the narrative. I also agree with Olman that there wasn’t much of a mystery, and that the so-called mystery was actually in service of the narrative, which is more of action-adventure than a mystery (which I guessed early on anyway, so it must have been pretty obvious!).

[SPOILER ALERT]

Even more so than Olman, I was terribly disappointed with the ending when Amelia got married and had a child. Don’t get me wrong, as I quite enjoyed the sexual tension between her and Emerson. But what made Peabody so appealing for me was her fierce independence and unconventionality. She was proud being a thirty-two year old spinster, and makes a point of explaining her opinions about marriage to Evelyn:

…my nature does not lend itself to the meekness required of a wife in our society. I could not endure a man who would let himself be ruled by me, and I would not endure a man who tried to rule me.

As a result, I wasn’t expecting Peabody to settle down so soon, and was hoping that her romance with Emerson would continue for at least a few more books, so that readers could enjoy her as Amelia Peabody (not Emerson), not beholden to any man, or any prosaic duties of domesticity. So I'm in no dire need to read the next book. But like Olman, I wouldn’t say no if someone were to lend me the next Peabody book.

Addendum: after perusing the wikipedia, it seems that Peters had originally thought this was a one-off, and I think the book was so popular that a series was born. Peters had rued the fact that in Crocodile, she had stated Peabody's age, and would've probably made her a few years younger had she been planning a whole series. So that was interesting to know.

Book 40 - The G.N.B. Double C

2011-12-13T19:21:00.000-05:00

The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists

A Story from the sketchbook of the cartoonist “Seth”

This is my first time reading a comic by Seth. Being already familiar with the work of Joe Matt and Chester Brown, I knew a little bit about the friendship and history (as well as the idiosyncracies) of this trio. A mutual friend recently lent Conan and I a bunch of comics (City of Glass, The Death Ray), which helped boost my book quota. The G.N.B. Double C comes in at an auspicious Number 40.

At first, I wasn’t really sure what I was reading – was it fact or fiction? I expressed my confusion to Olman, who told me to keep reading, as this is “Seth’s conceit”, to create a fictional universe where cartoons are revered like works of art. To quote The Comics Journal, Seth “deftly mixes real and imagined cartoon history in its depiction of a fictional cartoon society in the city of Dominion, where artists from every facet of the medium once gathered to drink, carouse, and sometimes even discuss cartooning.”

The book has an appealing old school hardcover, and there is a nicely crafted quality to the overall design and narrative, yet I wasn’t particularly fond of the cartoon style within. I think Seth succeeded too well in invoking the thick-lined, squat-figured cartoons of old. I just didn’t find the old-time, cornballish style very graceful or aesthetically interesting.

This National review did a good job explaining this oddball comic, but the opinion of the reviewer was not very clear. For myself, I liked this comic ok, and it was indeed a neat conceit. But it just didn’t really do much for me. I think I might enjoy Seth’s other work, like Palookaville or Clyde Fans, so I will have to see if Olman or Dan has any of those comics.

Book 39 – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

2011-12-03T19:38:00.132-05:00

By Stieg Larsson

Well-- it’s been over year since I became The Girl Who Kicked Herself For Not Getting The Cheap Hardcover at Chainon.

Last we left off with the exciting conclusion of The Girl Who Played With Fire, Lisbeth Salander was shot in the head by her estranged Pa, her semi-conscious body airlifted to the nearest hospital. Even though you know our heroine is going to pull through somehow, it was still one hell of a cliffhanger to nurse for a year and three months. When hubs got me an iPad last Xmas, I was tempted to get the e-book, but thought the $11 price tag was a little steep. Now that it’s finally released in paperback (for $8! so Why-TF was the e-version more expensive?), I promptly ordered a copy.

Lemme tell ya, it was well worth the wait, despite the fact that this 563–page action-packed tome kept me up multiple nights in a row. To quote that silly line from the new Cronenberg movie: “It excited me!”

Unlike the majority of trilogies or series where each sequel is like a watered-down and/or inferior version of the original (take The Dark Materials trilogy, for instance), each installment of the Millenium trilogy was better than the last. I liked The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo all right, but The Girl Who Played With Fire took it to the next level, focusing on the character development of the fascinating Lisbeth Salander, as well as allowing her to kick even more ass (physical and cyber-spatial) than before.

The second book also introduced a whole web of new characters and how they were all inter-related to one another. Of course, the common denominator was The Girl herself, but there were new writers working for Millenium, various police inspectors, government officials, secret police agents, biker gang members, old friends of Lisbeth, as well as not-so-friendly people from her tragic past.

The third book has many of the same characters, and then some. It’s like a crazy Swedish version of The Wire, except we have a young woman entangled in some secret government conspiracy to have her locked away in an institution for life. And all because her father happens to be a badass Russian defector and ex-spy who keeps getting into trouble with the authorities because he's an underworld gangster as well as a wife-beater!

Despite the fact that Salander is not able to kick as much ass as she did in the previous book (due to her recovering from a bullet hole in the head (--oops I gave it away, oh well!), Salander’s motley crue of unlikely allies (a few who have friends in strategic places) rise to the occasion to help her out of this conspiracy mess, and Lisbeth also turns to her comrades at the exclusive Hacker Republic for help. The plot of TGWKTHN has been criticized for being preposterous, which is ridiculous. I mean, the Millenium trilogy from the get-go has been about as realistic as, say, the Bourne books. This is escapist fiction, for chrissakes, and other than the not so subtle theme of Men Hating Women, these books aren’t pretending to be anything more. If you want to read a more realistic story, then go read some Margaret Atwood or something.

More importantly, despite the phenomenal number of subplots and characters, Larsson managed to tie everything together into something that was competently cohesive. There was a whole other seemingly unrelated subplot where Erika Berger quit Millenium to work as editor-in-chief for the major newspaper, SMP, and within the first two weeks of her new job, conventiently acquired a stalker. That storyline could have been cut out, but at the same time, it felt like it fit into the narrative, logistically and thematically. It could’ve been a structural mess in the hands of a less disciplined writer. As an experienced journalist, Larsson also did a great job writing about the bustling newsroom of a major daily, the inner workings of Swedish governmental politics or a general overview of constitutional laws. The complicated plot allowed Larsson to touch on various aspects of Swedish society, from the high-ranking offices of CEOs and government officials to some shabby apartment of a lowly drug dealer.

Even if you think the story was rather preposterous, Larsson grounded his universe in such a confident, straightforward maner that you won’t immediately realize how much info you’ve been absorbing at once… that is, until you’re having a fitful night of sleep as the various elements from the novel float about inside your head! Even after more than a year between the 2nd and 3rd books, I was able to remember many of the plot points and characters. I think, after reading the Millenium books, everyone becomes a little like Lisbeth Salander, with her photographic memory and careful observation of details. And the finale was awesome. There were no loose strings I could find.

Immediately after finishing The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Olman and I watched the movie version, which was rather hurried, omitting tons of details and subplots. A few times Olman went “huh?” after the movie skipped or altered something from the book. Since he hasn’t read the Millenium books, I had to fill him in on some background info. So if you’re gonna watch the last movie, it might not make as much sense if you haven’t read the final book. It might have been worthwhile to split the book into two parts, like what they did with Twilight and Harry Potter. Let’s hope the American remake will do this!

Book 38 – The Death-Ray

2011-12-02T19:10:00.002-05:00

By Daniel Clowes

Originally published in 2004 as a stand-alone issue of the Eightball series, The Death-Ray was recently reprinted as a nicely bound hardcover edition from Drawn & Quarterly. Shortly after reading a review of this release, a copy was loaned to Olman via my coworker (thanks Dan!).

I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything by Clowes, though I very much liked the charmingly sarcastic movies version of Ghost World. All I know is that The Death-Ray is Clowes’ first and only stab at the superhero genre. Perhaps it would be better described as a “stab and twist” since there is a definite subversion of form. However, despite the pastel palette of the colour illustrations, there is hardly any humour to be found, only existential emptiness.

The story is basically about an ordinary and awkward teenaged boy in the 1970’s who grows up to be a lonely bitter man. Andy has the ability to be bestowed with superhuman strength when his body absorbs nicotine by simply smoking a cigarette. The death-ray is the gun he inherits from his odd, scientist father long after he had passed away. Just a single pull of the trigger will zap any living organism into non-existence.

Unlike Spider Man, great power does not come with great responsibility for our young Andy. He doesn’t blossom into a ripped example of sparkling masculinity but keeps his 90-pound weakling physique. Nor does he rise up to save the world from evil. Like any naive teenaged loser, Andy doesn’t quite abuse his power, but he definitely misuses it. Let’s just say this sad sack falls short of living up to any superhero potential, using his rather extraordinary gifts to solve his sadly ordinary problems. It’s a great premise to explore, and I’m sure the upcoming movie, Chronicle, was probably influenced to some extent by this comic.

Though I found the concept of The Death-Ray very interesting, I’m not sure if I liked it as much as, say, Charles Burns’ Black Hole, a comic which also explores the teenage psyche in 1970’s American suburbia in a supernatural manner. But it’s a little like comparing apples and oranges since The Death-Ray was a one-off, while Black Hole was the result of a ten-year effort. But I had felt so immersed in the dark, surreal universe of Black Hole, while The Death-Ray was like dipping into a wading pool by comparison. The brevity of The Death-Ray does not seem allow enough time for Clowes’ to explore his themes with any real depth.

The way Clowes’ jumps in time from panel to panel was probably intentional, but it felt quite disjointed to me. For example, after Andy discovers his new found powers, he decides to confront a school bully when he’s picking on his best friend Louie. All of a sudden, the next panel just shows Andy's bloodied hand, but never follows up on the bully. This happens fairly often throughout the comic. You never see the consequences when Andy decides to use violence against violence. I don’t mind jump cuts in movies, if they work for the story, and it can work visually in comics. Perhaps I am missing some kind of important symbolism that Clowes is trying to get at, but I found the panel jump a little annoying in The Death-Ray.

On the other hand, D&Q did a very professional job with the quality of the hardcover edition. The paper feels nice and thick, and shows off Clowes’ coloured illustrations well. And twenty bucks is a pretty reasonable price if you’re a fan of Clowes' work.

Book 37 – City of Glass: the Graphic Novel

2011-11-29T20:19:00.008-05:00

By Paul Auster
Adaptation by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli

I had read Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy a few years ago as separate books (City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room). My review did not provide any plot summary, so I don’t remember much except the exquisite atmosphere of dreamy dread that permeated each book. And that I really liked them. This turned out to be advantageous since the 1994 comic adaptation of City of Glass recently fell into my hands thanks to my coworker via Olman (the copy was the 2004 Picador edition). Reading the comic made me remember everything about the original novella as I went along, so it was almost like re-experiencing the story in a new way.

As Art Spiegelman mentioned in his introduction, I was impressed with how Karasik and Mazzucchelli created such an effective comic out of a strange and metaphysical work as City of Glass, which apparently posed a challenge for many to visualize (there have been a number of unsuccessful attempts to adapt it as a screenplay).

City of Glass starts off as a fairly straightforward detective mystery, though with a pervasive feeling that something is a little off. At some point, the narrative becomes unhinged and takes a turn toward po-mo existentialism, but compellingly so. I always wondered what City of Glass would’ve been like had Auster stuck to genre conventions because I think it would’ve made a great detective story. But that’s crazy talk since part of the story’s power lies in its deconstruction of narrative and character. After all, City of Glass is one of many novels where Auster explores his trademark themes: the disintegration of reality and identity.

Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli were able to take those trademark Auster themes and visualize them in comic form. They utilized everything they knew about the art of comics into City of Glass, but each panel is designed in a very controlled and thoughtful way. It is a wonderful synthesis of two different but complementary mediums. For anyone interested in a deeper analysis of how Karasik & Mazzuchhelli translate prose to the comic form, take a look at this blog.

If you haven’t read the original novel or the comic adaptation, then I would recommend reading the novel first then waiting a long while before reading the comic. Like long enough to not remember any details of the novel (say a few years!). But if you lack the discipline and cannot wait that long, then I liked what this Guardian review had to say about this little quandary:

If you haven't read City of Glass, then you have an intriguing dilemma: not which of the two books to read - you should read both - but which to read first. I can't really answer that question, because setting them against one another, trying to decide which is more successful, seems pointless. Both are wonderful works of art. Both are worth reading again and again. And each complements the other, the comic driving you back the novel, and vice versa.

Book 36 - Tokyo On Foot: A Graphic Memoir

2011-11-24T19:00:00.003-05:00

By Florent Chavouet

This was one of those rare impulsive purchases when I was at Drawn & Quarterly. Though I didn’t have any luck finding a birthday gift for a friend, I had no trouble spotting something I wanted for myself, as my eye was immediately drawn to the cover of Tokyo On Foot, the last English copy in the store (the original version is in French).

Having visited Japan over a decade ago, leafing through Chavouet’s images evoked warm, fuzzy feelings of that memorable trip, hence the impulsive purchase. This was also the book I sought solace in when I wanted to momentarily escape from exploring the human capacity for war and violence in Three Day Road.

Chavouet is a French graphic artist who moved to Japan with his girlfriend when she landed a one year internship at an unnamed company. The more accurate title would have been "Tokyo By Bike". When Chavouet wasn’t trying to find the odd job as a French waiter, he'd bike to an unexplored area of Tokyo with his portable chair, stopping to sketch something interesting.

His subjects range from random people on the street who’d stop and check out what he’s drawing to a run-down house that stuck out like a sore thumb across the street, or maybe a jumbled view of shops and noodle houses within a city block, or a secluded spot in a park away from the urban hullabaloo.

The hand-drawn maps of each neighbourhood (21 in total) are amazingly intricate, yet useful if you were to use the maps to trace his daily route. Each chapter begins with a map of the district or prefecture with highlights of the various spots where he stops to capture the scenery. Each highlight has a page number so you can find the sketch of what took his fancy and sometimes there are charming little captions or annotations to explain what he observed.

Reading some reviews on Goodreads, there were a few complaints how the book is only an outsider’s superficial interpretation of Tokyo, and Chavouet never learned more than a few Japanese phrases. Well, yeah, the guy did only spend a year there. He’s an illustrator, not a scholar or journalist. I felt that part of the appeal was that his drawings are exactly that, a view from an outsider’s perspective. Chavouet’s art contains a mixture of curiosity, interest, amusement, bemusement and/or mild dislocation. Perhaps his interpretations are not always accurate, but they seem genuine in feeling.

I also really enjoyed his profiles of random people’s fashion styles on the street, such as this cross-section of Shibuya:

Here’s a review which pretty much explains more articulately how I felt about it.

And this blog gives a good idea of what it's like flipping through Tokyo On Foot.

Book 35 – Uglies

2011-11-21T19:55:00.022-05:00

By Scott Westerfeld

I’ve officially broken last year’s record with my 35th book. Yay.

Uglies was on my “maybe to read” list since it’s a futuristic dystopian young adult novel that received mixed reviews. When I found a cheap copy at my good ol’ reliable thrift shop, I thought it would make a quick n’ easy read (as I’m still aiming to read 40 books this year). And it turned out to be the case indeed!

The premise sounds intriguing enough. A few hundred years after some mysterious catastrophe obliterated the world’s oil supply (thus ending human civilization as we know it), society has rebuilt itself by harnessing renewable energy resources and going vegan. Technology has evolved to sustain and populate the cities again. Isolated and self-sufficient yet also fearful of war and dissent, these eco-friendly cities hit upon the need to create standards for the greater good.

Societal ills largely stem from people having vast differences over things like status and wealth, but obviously, not everyone can be rich and fabulous. And going all communist and making everyone poor wouldn’t be very fun either. But since everyone is born with inherent flaws in their physical appearance, wouldn’t the world be a happier place if everyone were beautiful? And even better, beautiful and blissfully ignorant! It would be the perfect equalizer!

When children turn 16, the benevolent government bestows upon them a series of extreme surgeries to have their faces and bodies (among other things) molded to fit societal standards of perfect beauty. Since humans are evolutionarily preconditioned to have positive responses to facial symmetry, clear complexions and proportionate bodies, applying these standards equally for everyone will reduce conflict and create a more harmonious society. By agreeing to go under the knife, you are also rewarded by getting to party every day and every night (at least until it's time to reproduce) with all the fancy clothes and cosmos you could possibly want!

Westerfeld thus takes a page off of Dystopian Fiction 101 where you have a “vision of an orderly world in which suffering is minimized and pleasure maximized”. But for me, it is only a partially complete world. As a science fiction novel, the author does not explain how a society (even one with highly advanced technology) can support a whole class of perfectly sculpted hedonists (like who makes their disposable fancy clothes or distills the alcohol that gets them loaded?), nor how it can sustain itself when the majority of its young citizens are partying during their stage of post-educational development instead of working towards being productive members of society (like cosmetic surgeons, for instance). But this pretty little book does not want to bother with such trivial details.

Instead we have a world where everyone is supermodel-gorgeous, so now normal people seem ugly by comparison (one wonders what this world would do with the truly hideous or deformed but, surprise, the book doesn't bother with that either). Children are considered Littlies and therefore exempt from being ugly. As soon as they turn twelve, they are relegated to official “Ugly” status, spending the next four years loathing themselves and longing to be “Pretty”. Sound familiar?

Westerfeld has put a clever spin on the awkward stage of adolescence, but I still found Uglies rather "meh". There just wasn’t anything particularly original or refreshing in the themes, nor in the execution of those themes. We have some dystopian teen angst embodied in fifteen-year-old protagonist Tally Youngblood, and there is the obvious social commentary about how society perpetuates unrealistic images of beauty to our youth. But it doesn’t go beyond, well, the obvious.

What happens to young naive Tally Youngblood is also pretty rote stuff, so I won’t get into how Tally loses her best friend Peris once he becomes a Pretty, then finds a new BFF in rebellious Shay, who convinces Tally to journey to the Rusty Ruins which leads her to a band of merry Uglies living in a secluded mountain valley (as well as fall for the same boy named David who is -surprise!- actually pretty cute for "ugly" standards). To Tally’s amazement, David and his fellow Uglies don’t see themselves as ugly at all. They are content to live out their lives without any surgical intervention imposed on their bodies. Imagine that!

It’s no surprise that the "urban dystopia versus utopian wilderness" theme has become somewhat clichéd: people are unwittingly domesticated by a [enter –ist word, ie. fascist, agist, uglist] society, yet one individual manages to see through the false utopia, escapes to discover an alternate community of [enter synonym for dissenters, counter-culture types, etc.] who eventually overcome the system, and reclaim humanity. I have not read much dystopian fiction, but already Logan’s Run (1967) and John Christopher’s Wild Jack (1974) come to mind. The Hunger Games is another recent example which recycles familiar tropes, but the excellent pacing and tight narrative makes you forgive some inherent flaws. More importantly, the world that Suzanne Collins depicts feels more complete. There are no gaping logistical holes that fester in the back of your mind, like it did for me when reading Uglies.

For whatever reason, I didn’t get the same thrill and enjoyment with Uglies. For one thing, I couldn’t get past the cutesy terms for categorizing people: Littlies, Uglies, New Pretties, Middle Pretties and Late Pretties (or Crumblies). I mean, where are the SILLIES when you need ‘em? Ok, there are the Specials, but they should really be called the SCARIES, since they are government agents surgically enhanced for intelligence, strength and, wait for it, terrifying beauty. Let’s not forget the people of old who used to live in pollution-choked cities and kill animals for food. They were known as the Rusties. Nothing is too complicated that would potentially hurt a reader's pretty little head.

Westerfeld, however, does do a decent job capturing the mentality of a typical teenage girl growing up in a screwed up world. Tally’s guilt for being a potential traitor to the cause is also portrayed quite realistically, as you definitely get the sense that our heroine is a naive character who has a LOT to learn and develops some backbone and principles toward the end. At the end of the day, though, Westerfeld's bland writing style combined with fairly half-baked ideas made Uglies seem like a book aimed at the lowest common denominator.

It’s too bad I don’t feel inclined to read the rest of the series, as it would help get me closer to 40 books!

Book 34 – Three Day Road

2011-11-15T18:21:00.139-05:00

By Joseph Boyden

It’s hard to imagine that Three Day Road is Boyden’s first novel. Not only is it ambitious in scope, it’s remarkably cohesive for its unusual narrative structure and quite gracefully written too (as Kate also noted in her review). However the ambitiousness of the novel is not meant to impress (like Cloud Atlas, for instance), but instead bring to life voices not commonly heard and stories often overlooked by history.

The heart of the novel is centred on thre friendship between Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack, young Cree men who voluntarily enlist and become legendary snipers in Europe during the Great War. They leave behind Xavier’s aunt Niska, a medicine woman who, having avoided assimilation, raised both boys in the Oji-Cree tradition in the wilds of Northern Ontario. The story begins after the war is over when Xavier returns home to Niska, physically and emotionally damaged, and addicted to morphine. As aunt and nephew journey back to their camp by canoe, the narrative weaves between the voices of the three characters: Xavier reliving the nightmare of his war experiences in a morphine-induced fever, Elijah obsessively confessing to Xavier about his war exploits, and Niska reaching out to Xavier by telling him about her past. Within this cyclical structure, Boyden also attempts to evoke the Cree and Ojibwe tradition of storytelling.

As a more conventional narrative, Three Day Road has the potential to appeal to a range of readers in the way it taps into multiple experiences. If you’re interested in war history, the novel is a harrowing account of trench warfare yet on a smaller scale presents an intimate portrait of the modern sniper, whose skill is taken to a new level of specialty during WWI. If First Nations history is more your thing, the little known WWI hero, Francis "Peggy" Pegahmagabow, served as inspiration for the characters of Elijah and Xavier. This in itself is a great story premise because you have the combination of Native game hunters making the transition to deadly snipers, utilizing their skills on the battlefield to "devastating effect” with the narrative freedom of having them leave the confines of mud-filled trenches into more varied geography (from the Penguin Readers Guide).

To make it even more historically realistic, Boyden places Elijah and Xavier as infantry in the real-life Second Canadian Division, tracing their route throughout their three-year involvement in the war. The 2nd Division also participated in the Western Front’s most atrocious battles (like Passchendale), their victories having (ironically) helped put Canada on the international map. The novel is further enriched by the importance the role Native Canadian soldiers played in the conflict yet only to return home without any official recognition.

Three Day Road portrays the period of upheaval when Aboriginal Canadians were forced to assimilate into early 20th century European-Canadian society by separating children from their families and placing them in residential schools. Niska and Xavier managed to escape assimilation and live out in the bush, but Elijah was a product of a residential upbringing. Even though Elijah experienced some abuse at the hands of a nun, Boyden does not dwell on him as a victim, but rather, as a survivor making use of his Western education and English skills to gain favour with his division when he and Xavier are stationed in Europe.

Though much of the novel is grounded in historical reality, there are also elements of the supernatural woven into the tale. This is mostly due to Niska being the last of a lineage of shamans and windigo-killers. Some readers may be wary of this potential for cliché, but her character is nevertheless realistically portrayed as a strong, proud woman who maintains her independence and way of life while her people live in towns as second-class citizens and/or have succumbed to alcoholism.

This was the first time I’ve read about WW1 in a fictional work, and frankly, it's not a subject matter I would voluntarily read about. I remembered enough from my history classes to know how horrifying both World Wars were. Part of the reason why this book took a while for me to finish was because it was so very, very dark. There were many violent depictions of death yet each death was not treated lightly. As Kate mentioned in her review, “the strength and spirit of the characters really overpowered the dark stuff in a good way so that the book felt really balanced in its depiction of events”. But I still had to take the occasional break from the novel to read something else (which is too bad, as it would've been so fitting had I finished it for Remembrance Day on 11/11/11).

I was nevertheless impressed by Boyden’s meticulous research and skill as a writer. He brought to life all the gruesome details of trench warfare and the cultural genocide of aboriginals while at the same time avoided almost all the clichés associated with writing about those subjects in the “native voice”. Combined with the occasional magic realist touches, I admit Boyden did at times verge dangerously close to cliché, but overall he was able to pull it off without being too hokey. What was amazing was that he was able to make a believable symbolic connection between Niska’s background as a windigo-killer and the disintegrating friendship of Xavier and Elijah as the continuing war took its toll on their sanity. Hopefully I’m not revealing too much, but Boyden ties this all together quite effectively.

Overall There Day Road succeeds as a novel because it was a very personal work for the author. Having a grandfather who served in WWI and a father as a decorated medical officer in WWII, Boyden obviously has a vested personal interest in the history of war. Being of mixed Scottish, Irish and Metis heritage also gives Boyden a measure of legitimacy in writing from a First Nations perspective. I would definitely recommend Three Day Road for anyone interested in contemporary Canadian literature. Despite its moments of terrible darkness, it proved in the end to be a very rewarding and enlightening reading experience.

(p.s. was very siked to find a copy of this at my local thrift shop too)

Book 33 – Post Office

2011-10-26T18:24:00.070-04:00

By Charles Bukowski

Amy's Used Books in Amherst, Nova Scotia was probably the most plentiful and least musty-smelling bookstore Olman and I have come across, at least in Canada. However, the over-abundance of books resulted in stacks taller than myself which obscured the alphabetaized books in the shelves. I won't go into detail about how I toppled a six-foot stack when I attempted to extract a copy of Post Office. Suffice to say I was rather surprised that a book by the Buk wasn’t displayed behind the cashier. In fact the book (which was in great condition) was like six bucks (I saw the same used copy online asking for twenty-something euros). So I thought it was a good find.

As the title suggests, Post Office chronicles the sordid life of Bukoswki’s alter ego Henry Chinaski when he lands a job as a substitute for the U.S. Postal Service. And what a miserable job it is. When he is not nursing another hungover at work, Chinaski is either chasing tail, getting gassed or betting on horses. If it's a good day it's all of the above. I've always been midly curious about Bukowski, and asked Olman if he had ever read anything by him. He said he tried reading his stuff back in college but couldn’t finish because he found it too sexist. I thought that was kind of funny considering the male-centric genre books Olman likes to read. I do admit it was at times offputting the way Chinaski regards every female he encounters as potential lays and how he ogles a woman's breasts before even looking at her eyes.

In any case, this is a book where the author’s reputation far precedes it. But I liked Post Office both for and despite its dated sexism, racism and self-destructivism. The fascistic and miserable environment of the post office is offset by the debauchery of the boozy, lusty Henry Chinaski. There is a colloquial deadpan style to the writing that is rather appealing, perhaps due to the fact that it might have been regarded as obscene at the time, but now comes off as rather quaint. But the heart of the novel is still there. Anyone, male or female, who has ever been stuck working at a shitty dead-end job can definitely relate to how soul-deadening it can be. Bukowski was probably one of the first writers to truly express this.

Here is a review that sums up more thoughtfully and eloquently how I felt about Post Office.

Book 32 - Far from the Madding Crowd

2011-10-18T16:39:00.062-04:00

by Thomas Hardy

"This novel digs deep into the rhythms of rural existence. Hardy is unsurpassed when it comes to a sense of place and rich unsentimental evocations of landscape and local culture within which the characters find their fates."
–Charles Frazier

A few months ago, I watched the 2010 film, Tamara Drewe, which was likable enough, but more importantly, it got me to read the Thomas Hardy novel that the original comic drew inspiration from. And I’m so glad I finally did. I knew that this was arguably Hardy’s “happiest” novel, having only read Jude the Obscure, which, though beautifully tragic, was also a bit of a weepfest. Anyway, Far From the Madding Crowd was a wonderful read, it being easily another favourite of the year.

I very recently came across the Charles Frazier quote on Goodreads when he listed his favourite novels “with rural settings”. Though I agree with Frazier wholeheartedly, the quote makes it seem like character is secondary to setting or theme in this novel, which is far from the case. Hardy’s character studies are just as solid as his “rich and unsentimental” evocation of landscape. It's the depth of characterization and the strong pull of narrative that keeps 19th-century literature alive today, according to Jeffrey Eugenides (very curious abou his new novel The Marriage Plot). The fact that Hardy's story is basically a love quadrangle amidst a pastoral setting does not give it credit either. Within this quadrangle (at one point, it even becomes a love pentangle!), Hardy explores every aspect of love in all its human drama: the rituals of courtship, societal versus individual expectations and desires, infatuation versus love, the pains of unrequited love, and so much more.

The person that undergoes all this drama and transformation is the protagonist Bathsheba Everdene: a handsome, independent young woman who has inherited a farm and is courted by three suitors in the course of the novel. (Interesting piece of trivia: Suzanne Collins named her Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen in homage to Hardy’s Bathsheba). The first suitor to court our heroine is Gabriel Oak, a shepherd of solid character but little money to his name; then it's William Boldwood, a respectable yet introverted gentleman in the neighbouring farm whose passion is set alight when he receives an innocent valentine from Bathsheba; and finally there is the dashing Francis Troy, a sergeant who has a way with the ladies, if you know what my mean. Bathsheba ends up falling for the wrong guy, tragedy ensues, but after learning from her mistakes, she ends up marrying the right guy in the end (well, kind of by default since by then, one suitor ends up dead and the other imprisoned for life!).

Through it all, Hardy explores what makes a bad romantic relationship and what makes a solid and healthy long-term relationship (known as a marriage back in those days). I have not read many 19th century novels, but this was also the first time I’ve come across a study in obsessive love, or “pathetic evidences of a mind crazed with care and love”, that was not set in a contemporary period. A lot of stuff gets explored in this novel. Hardy des a wonderful job in letting you inhabit the characters and understand how their actions impact each other’s behaviour. Like this one particular passage about Bathsheba’s unwitting influence on Farmer Boldwood:

The phases of Boldwood's life were ordinary enough, but his was not an ordinary nature. That stillness, which struck casual observers more than anything else in his character and habit, and seemed so precisely like the rest of inanition, may have been the perfect balance of enormous antagonistic forces--positives and negatives in fine adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once. If an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him; a feeling not mastering him was entirely latent...

Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic intensity. Had she known Boldwood's moods, her blame would have been fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable. Moreover, had she known her present power for good or evil over this man, she would have trembled at her responsibility. Luckily for her present, unluckily for her future tranquillity, her understanding had not yet told her what Boldwood was. Nobody knew entirely; for though it was possible to form guesses concerning his wild capabilities from old floodmarks faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tides which caused them.

I also really admired Hardy for creating such an interesting female character in Bathsheba Everdene. As described in the Wiki, FFTMC “might also be described as an early piece of feminist literature, since it features an independent woman with the courage to defy convention by running a farm herself. Although Bathsheba's passionate nature leads her into serious errors of judgment, Hardy endows her with sufficient resilience, intelligence, and good luck to overcome her youthful folly.”

Feminist or no, there are times, however, when Hardy goes a little overboard with Bathsheba’s very “female” attributes and flaws, but ultimately Bathsheba is a remarkable character who is “indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises”.

Lastly, it is Hardy’s evocation of landscape that is also memorable. If anyone has ever seen paintings by Romantic landscape artist JMW Turner or French Realist painter Jean-Francois Millet, one could see that Hardy’s pastoral prose is a happy combination of romanticism and realism:

To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hours of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoiter it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human figure.

One significant blight on my reading experience was not in the narrative itself, but in how the used trade paperback I had was bound. I only realized upon reaching page 289 that the next page was 320, so it was missing thirty pages! Luckily Hardy’s work is available from the Gutenberg Library and I was able to read the missing pages on my iPad. But as soon as I got to the first sentence on p. 321, I switched back to paper.

And get this. When I reached p. 352, the next page was 321 and it kept going until it got to p. 352 and from there I was able to read the novel to the end. But how fucked up was that? I had missing AND repeating pages in a single book. Never experienced such a thing before. Sadly I could not find the cover for this sorry excuse of a paperback online, but it kind of looked like the one pictured here. So I’m thinking it’s probably best that I throw this book into the recycling bin.

Book 31 – The Wasp Factory

2011-09-27T19:06:00.013-04:00

By Iain Banks

I remember this vaguely being in my radar back in the 90’s when The Wasp Factory was touted as a top 100 book of the century. But I wasn’t much of a reader back then, as I was busy either studying, making 16mm films or going to raves. When I spotted a cheap copy at my neighborhood thrift shop, I thought it would make a nice addition to my reading list. Of course, not being familiar with Iain Banks at all, I had always thought that The Wasp Factory was science fiction, confusing the fact that Iain Banks only uses Iain M. Banks for his sci fi work. Guess I only have myself to blame for tricking myself into reading a work of literary fiction!

So I had to get used to the fact that the story was not about a strange boy in a futuristic dystopian world, but a strange boy living in a hippy homestead somewhere in rural Scotland sometime in the now. Then I had to get used to the fact that this odd, obese teenager (his name is Frank) had his wee-wee bitten off by a cantankerous dog when he was little and this traumatic event caused him to be a bit of a child serial killer, a phase which he outgrew when he reached his teens. Not only is Frank compulsively obsessed with death, he collects his bodily fluids and uses the dead animals he has killed for fantastic rituals which helps him deal with the fact that his wee-wee is gone and he will never grow to be a man. Frank lives with his eccentric and distant father, a former hippy now silently tormented by his own demons. Can’t blame the guy since all his sons have met unfortunate fates: one was killed when very young (secretly by Frank); the eldest went insane and has escaped from the asylum (again); and the remaining somewhat sane one (this be Frank) is an overweight eunuch living off the grid since the dad never bothered registering him at birth.

As you can gather from my overview, TWF is not for everyone. If I knew I was delving into an entire novel narrated by a chubby child-killin’ castratee, I would certainly have thought twice. One thing I appreciated about this trade paperback copy was that it featured blurbs both good and bad as Bank’s debut made quite a controversial splash in 1984. There were reviews that praised the novel for its “curdling power and originality” as a modern Gothic horror story and critics who condemned it for its “ghoulish frivolity” and “preposterous sadism”. Here are a couple of my favourites:

"A silly, gloatingly sadistic and grisly yarn of a family of Scots lunatics... the lurid literary equivalent of a video nasty" (Sunday Express)

"A repulsive piece of work and will therefore be widely admired. Piles upon piles of horror in a way that is certain to satisfy those readers who subscribe to the currently fashionable notion that Man is vile" (Evening Standard)

For myself, I didn't love or hate The Wasp Factory, nor was I particularly offended by it, but I also didn’t really enjoy it either. At best, TWF was different from many of the books I’ve read, as it was on the bizarre and macabre side. But these factors made it an interesting reading experience and I don’t regret having read it. One good thing about not knowing anything about The Wasp Factory was that I was completely unaware that there was a twist at the end. If I have ever come across the most unreliable of narrators, Frank Cauldhame takes the cake, and it’s not just because he’s a little bit insane. Banks crafted a story with layers of symbolism and meaning, but has taken care in not being too heavy-handed. When you think about it, the author has created a compelling and clever story that services the rather ambitious theme of gender as construct. The quality of writing is remarkable enough to draw you in, despite the abundance of repellent subject matter (rabbits getting blown to bits, a child plotting the murder of another child, a dog being set on fire, misogynistic rants, etc… yeah, you get the drift). You also feel some empathy for Frank, despite the fact that he is a castrated, fat little freak who has committed some abhorrent acts. This is no small achievement.

Nevertheless, it isn't quite Lord of the Flies either. After I was finished, I really wanted my next book to be something bright and sparkling, to wash away the unpleasantness that was TWF.

My idiosyncratic way of posting

2011-09-26T18:35:00.001-04:00

I like to keep a chronological log of the books I read, so my posts are based on the date when I actually finish the book. Obviously, it takes at least a few days before I follow up with a review. Olman complains he never knows when I have a new post since it never rises to the top of his feed, but for my own obsessive-compulsive reasons, I prefer to track how many books I've read each month.

Of course, when I ranted about that stupid Globe & Mail article last week, it got posted in real-time but since I was two book reviews behind, they appear as older entries.

But in case there are any followers who are vaguely curious, here are reviews for Little Brother and The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Book 30 – A Dog’s Ransom

2011-09-22T10:17:00.049-04:00

Patricia Highsmith

Synopsis from the Wikipedia:

One day, publishing house executive Ed Reynolds finds a disturbing ransom note in the Manhattan apartment he shares with his wife: "Dear sir: I have your dog, Lisa. She is well and happy... I gather she is important to you? We'll see."

How can anyone resist this clever premise that begins with the meaninglessly cruel act of dognapping?

The novel starts off in a straightforward manner then gradually escalates to nightmarish proportions though Highsmith maintains a level of realism throughout, never stooping to gut-wrenching melodrama (like Strangers On a Train did at times). Since I’m feeling a little lazy, I’ll let this Bros Judd review summarize A Dog’s Ransom in a nutshell:

Familiar to most readers via her Ripley books and Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith specialized in creepy portraits of sociopaths as their paths crossed and destroyed the lives of ordinary folk. This less well known little gem starts out innocently enough with a wealthy Manhattan couple and their missing dog, but gets ugly fast as the dognapper proves to be obsessed with teaching them a lesson and the young cop investigating the case turns out to be equally obsessed with protecting the couple and imposing justice.

With the kooks on both sides of the law this time there's an even more claustrophobic effect, as she shows just how frightening the people around us may be and how dangerous everyday life is, but it's all offset by a dark sense of humor. It's not as good as her best, but it's worth seeking out.

If you don’t mind spoilers, then read on.

It’s a great summary, but I disagree that A Dog’s Ransom is not as good as her best work. I certainly thought this was better than Strangers On a Train, mainly because it’s in her subsequent novels where the motivations of her characters maintain believability, even after they’ve become unhinged and commit heinous crimes. Clarence is a young cop who volunteers to help Ed and Greta Reynolds find their dog, simply because no one else in the department gives a rat’s ass. He is obviously idealistic and naive, but nevertheless a rarity in the force where corruption runs rampant, even in the lowliest ranks.

But poor, misguided Clarence gets too emotionally involved with the Reynolds, makes a fatal mistake in his investigation and ends up paying for it dearly. You soon realize how weak a person Clarence is (another fictional example warning parents to never spoil your only son), and that he is not that much different from Kenneth the dognapper. Both characters are pathetic yet still sympathetic. Highsmith also provides a dark backdrop of a morally indifferent and fragmented New York City that swallows up innocents whole, but again, she never over-dramatizes anything.

As I said about A Suspension of Mercy:

I really appreciated how Highsmith set up a situation where you understand the characters underlying psychology and background. Whatever issues that lurk in their veneer of normalcy creates the required conflict to get the plot moving. And as the characters dig themselves into a crazier and self-destructive situation, you may think what an idiot or nutcase this person is, but at the same time, you totally see where they’re coming from. The choices they make, however irrational, makes sense according to their motive. This makes for an intelligent and satisfying suspense novel that also succeeds in being genuinely tragic.

A Dog’s Ransom is no exception.

Book 29 – Rosemary’s Baby

2011-09-16T18:41:00.067-04:00

By Ira Levin

Found this 1st edition 1967 hardback at a recent garage sale but was unfortunately missing the slipcover. I’d imagine it'd look like the very cool image shown here. Ira Levin had a real knack for tapping into the weird sexual politics of his time, creating bestselling novels out of tried and true themes.

Rosemary’s Baby uses practically the same template as The Stepford Wives (or more like, The Stepford Wives uses the same template established by Rosemary’s Baby, since it came out after in 1972). Instead of a town conspiracy bent on dehumanizing its women, we have a conspiracy of Satanists out to get one woman within an apartment building in Manhattan. All the familiar Levin hallmarks are there: the creepy underlying misogyny, the disintegrating marriage, the wife struggling to please her self-absorbed husband, the wife suspecting that her husband may not have her best interests at heart….

I don’t think I’m giving too much away here since everyone and their dog has seen the Roman Polanski film which, if I recall, is pretty faithful to the book. The book was an entertaining read, but it didn’t blow my mind or anything. The satanic ritual where the drugged out Rosemary gets it on with the Devil was memorably dark and creepy, yet also hilarious at the same time (she thought it was her husband but at the same time wondered why he felt huger than normal).

Even though I knew how the story was going to play out, I still wanted to find out how events would unfold. The narrative was nicely paced where everything seemed very normal at first, but as clues gradually got revealed, you felt that mounting sense of claustrophobic anxiety which the film also portrayed so well. Also in the book, more stuff happened after Rosemary gave birth unlike the abrupt ending in the movie version. Really made me want to watch the film again, since it’s been many, many years.

Literary fiction versus genre fiction

2011-09-14T12:33:00.028-04:00

The Globe and Mail books section recently featured an article about how reading fiction is good for you.

I appreciate Keith Oatley's study that reading fiction is indeed good for the mind and soul by fostering empathy for others and expanding worldviews. However, it's towards the end of the article that Oakley makes the specific case that only literary fiction (not any other fiction) can have the capacity to change you:

For his part, Oatley is convinced that the better the writer, the more powerful the simulation, and he makes a distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction.

“You can have a good read, but it is sort of like going on a roller coaster. The engineers have constructed it so you have a particular set of experiences. You get off, your heart is beating a bit, but you are still the same person,” he says of reading a thriller or detective story. On the other hand, “Chekhov was a great artist: The effect is different – the extent to which [the reader] can really inhabit another mind.”

The roller coaster may be fun, but the flight simulator … now that's art.

Does this mean then, that reading genre fiction would not have any of the same benefits – at all? Does reading lowly genre fiction serve to merely excite the mind, rather than enlighten it? Oatley says that in order to truly inhabit the mind of someone else, the story should contain three of six elements (the article doesn't list them; I guess you have to buy a book or something). But what if a story contains the required elements but the characters you are inhabiting the mind of happen to fly spaceships, slay dragons, or investigate murders?

I’m sure if I were to only read Dan Brown or Danielle Steele, I would probably suffer some mental deficiency over time and perhaps become even more self-absorbed than usual. But I can’t get over Oatley's (and the Globe & Mail's) condescending attitude towards genre fiction -- that is, fiction that is not in the lofty form of literature. This kind of smug attitude seems all too common among those who read literary fiction primarily to be enlightened, and if they were to read any other fiction, it would be for simple edification, escapism or entertainment.

For one thing, Oatley sings the praises of how Pride and Prejudice is "a wonderful example of the simulator effect", conveniently overlooking the fact that this classic novel is also a romance at heart. An extremely well-written romance, to be sure, but P&P nevertheless uses the same tropes found in any Harlequin paperback. Even Austen herself admitted that P&P was like a sparkling flight of fancy which stood apart from her other works. Oatley is right in that the power of simulation depends on the talent and skills of the writer, yet he argues that thrillers and detective novels don’t count. So I guess Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith just don’t cut it when it comes to rewarding simulation then.

I just recently read my first Alice Munro book, a classic coming of age novel that was banned from schools because of its sexual content. Alice Munro is considered a sacred cow of CanLit, a master of storytelling. Legions of fans revere her for the powerful realness and understatedness of her writing. But personally I found her book to be a snooze-fest. It failed to have any of that simulator effect on me, and other than a few exceptional passages, the novel failed as a whole to stimulate my mind in any real way, suffering from too much description, a lack of plot and a meandering structure (which happen to be -surprise- the clichés of literary fiction).

At first I felt a little guilty. I consider myself a fairly well-read person who has read all kinds of books (modern and classic literature, romance, fantasy, sci-fi, thrillers, horror, non-fiction, etc), surely I’m missing something important by being bored with a Munro book (and a classic one at that)? But no, I realize that there are plenty of other well-read people who feel the same way.

For me, it’s not about being on a rollercoaster, it's about being engaged – the equivalent is the suture effect when watching a movie. How can I really inhabit another person’s mind (or appreciate the true artistry of literary fiction) if I’m bored to tears? Or worse, if I feel obligated to read literary fiction because it's considered important. Literary fiction shouldn't be a chore, or like a root vegetable (it's not about enjoying it, it's about what's good for you). I get that literature can allow us to understand the human condition better, but I also like to be engaged with what I'm reading at the same time.

In many ways, Alice Munro writes more beautifully than Austen, yet her stories are much harder for me to engage with. What makes Jane Austen distinctive (and so popular) is her brilliant social insight wrapped up in the form of a tightly structured (and appealing) narrative. There are plenty of gifted writers who follow this tradition of mixing "high" (quality writing) with “low” (genre conventions) – Sarah Waters, Gil Adamson, Susanna Clarke, Laura Lippman (no reason why I only came up with female authors), but also Juno Diaz, Jonathan Lethem, Patrick O’Brian also come to mind -- who have made far more impact on my mind than any Munro or Atwood or literary icon of "serious" fiction.

The thing is, I don't believe there is a qualitative difference between literary and genre fiction, as it's apparent that literature borrows much from genre fiction, and all the better for it. By the same token, genre fiction can provide a deeper understanding of human foibles. Again, it's a matter of context. Sherlock Holmes was probably considered pulp fiction in its day, but those books are now regarded as literary classics. These books are most definitely detective novels, but they also contain sharp character studies of the protagonists - do they not qualify as wonderful simulators in Oakley's mind because the stories also happen to be driven by plot? Certainly, reading about the friendship between Holmes and Watson must help readers understand, as Oatley says, "what goes on between people” in real life.

And I'll bet a lot of the simulator effect depends on how the reader responds to the work of fiction. I'm sure if Oatley were to take MRI scans from me and an avid Munro fan on how we respond to Lives of Girls and Women, the mental synapses of the Munro fan would be firing while mine would be dormant. But I'm sure my synapses would awaken if I were to read a Stieg Larsson book. He is not a great writer, but he does a wonderful job of painting a picture of a bleak Stockholm and making the unrealistic yet very identifiable Lisbeth Salander come alive in my mind. Does that make me, as a reader, less capable of empathy? One person's response is not superior or inferior to the other; we're just different people with different perceptions and experiences.

I think that Oatley must have equated genre fiction with sensational writing (which elicits cheap emotions), and literary fiction with great writing (that provokes thought and intelligent emotions), overlooking the fact that great writing is not strictly limited to the lofty realm of literary fiction. That is the only explanation I can think of to understand where his snobby attitude and silly arguments came from.

Perhaps I should pick up Such Stuff as Dreams, as I'd really like to see the type of reader cross-section that was used for these MRI scans. Because at the moment, it strikes me as ironic how Oatley makes the case for fiction fostering greater empathy, yet he himself holds such close-minded regard for genre fiction.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the year!

Book 28 – The Hound of the Baskervilles

2011-09-08T18:17:00.038-04:00

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I’ve always wanted to read a Sherlock Holmes book, and when I found this nice old Penguin copy at the thrift shop, I wasted no time. Though I knew I've never read anything by Sir AC Doyle, the way the narrative unfolded in The Hound of the Baskervilles seemed so comforting and familiar, it felt like I already had. Not surprising since THoB is fairly well entrenched in popular culture. I think I must have watched at least one adaptation on TV when I was growing up. And since THotB is so well-known, I’m not sure what I can offer that has not already been said.

Reading The Hound of the Baskervilles was such a treat it left me wondering why I hadn’t read any of these books sooner. I can totally see why Olman's such a big fan. Not only was the depiction of the friendship between Watson and Holmes a pleasure to read, but I also loved the way Doyle described the surrounding area of Baskerville Hall, especially the Dartmoor bogs. Characters were either creeping about the mansion, going for walksies along the moors, or chasing each other in the dark of night. As a reader, you always had a good sense of geography and place. And the manner in which all these strange events unfolded elicited all these creepy Gothic sensibilities, despite the fact that everything got rationally explained by good ol’ Holmes in the end.

Now I have to get my butt in gear and read the other books. This is, after all, the third out of four Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Book 27 – Little Brother

2011-09-02T13:16:00.034-04:00

By Cory Doctorow

“You can’t declare war on the government of the USA. It’s not a fight you’re going to win. Watching you try is like watching a bird fly into a window again and again.”

Little Brother was one of the first books I downloaded after getting an ipad last xmas, but ironically, I only started reading it after I picked up a hardback copy at the local thrift shop. For whatever reason, I just haven’t yet made the leap to ebooks. But I’m glad I finally read Little Brother, which came out in 2008. Though the post 9/11 pre-Obama alternative reality situation was already starting to feel a bit dated, by the time I was halfway through the book, the media onslaught of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 was running at full steam. So really, the timing was spot on!

The story takes place in San Francisco, not long after the twin towers had collapsed in NYC. Marcus and his three friends (Darryl, Jose Luis aka Jolu and Vanessa aka Van) skip class to go downtown and play an alternate reality game (or ARG) called Harajuku Fun Madness. On that fateful day, terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge, killing thousands of innocent civilians. Caught in the mayhem of panicking crowds, the four friends get taken into custody by Homeland Security. During an interrogation, Marcus makes the fatal mistake of expressing his individual rights, and ends up going through a mini version of Guantanamo Bay Hell. Suffice to say, HS chose the wrong dude to pick on, as Marcus happens to be an uber-smart computer geek who decides to take on the US Government after getting released.

At least two other 50-bookers have read Little Brother: Assignment X via his now defunct Doc’s 50 blog and Mt. Benson who wrote:

Doctorow writes here in a very broad manner and clearly sets up the straw dog of the terrorist attack to drive home his points about freedom of speech and government repression. Nevertheless he manages to make the story fun and interesting without getting too preachy.

I pretty much agree. In broad strokes, Doctorow does a good job in portraying how a democratic country like the USA can gradually become a police state and how the War on Terrorism can infringe upon the rights and freedoms of its citizens and create frighteningly inaccurate systems of security checks. But there have been a couple of times, like any speech by former President Bush, where Doctorow drives home his themes rather unsubtly.

It’s not about doing something shameful. It’s about doing something private. It’s about your life belonging to you.
They were taking that from me, piece by piece.

But Doctorow does frame those themes within a convincing and engaging narrative chock full of geek culture references, like LARPing, and stealth survival tips, like how to create a homemade hidden video camera-detector with an empty roll of toilet paper and LEDs. There were many things in the novel that I liked, such as the thoughtful portrayal of Marcus’ relationships with his friends, girlfriend and parents. With the exception of the two-dimensional portrayal of the Homeland Security agents as convenient villains, I felt all the characters were very realistically well drawn.

Little Brother also made me realize how San Francisco-based novelists love to write about their city. This tradition has been going on long before the Beat Gen poets came on the scene, and is still going strong with contemporary SF writers I admire, such as Lisa Lutz. Doctorow is no exception. Whether he’s talking about how SF has always been a hotbed for political activism and civil rights or how Mission burritos are an institution, he loves to dole out constant homages to his beloved city. At one point, he even name-drops fellow San Franscisco writer, Pat Murphy, which I thought was pretty cool.

This is a great read for all ages, but as a YA novel, it hits all the right notes with a cool setup, a well-paced story, three-dimensional characters, pop culture references and a call for political activism - particularly among the younger generation - in times of need.

Book 26 – Lives of Girls and Women

2011-08-25T21:41:00.095-04:00

Alice Munro

The past few years have seen the emergence of interesting contemporary Canadian fiction and I’ve definitely enjoyed the fruits of writers like Miriam Towes, Ian Hamilton, Alan Bradley and Gil Adamson. Though I’ve never liked Margaret Atwood much, the only CanLit icon I’ve ever bothered to explore was Timothy Findley. Alice Munro is a definite gap in my CanLit reading. When I found a cheap copy of Lives of Girls and Women at a used bookstore in Nova Scotia (dontcha just love the cheezy 70’s cover?), I admit I was kind of expecting a coming-of-age version of The Diviners, or maybe a CanLit version of Judy Blume, since this controversial coming-of-age classic was banned from a number of schools in the 1970s due to its frank portrayal of sexuality.

What I got was a slow-paced anecdotal novel in the form of a “short story cycle”, or a series of episodes, chronicling the life of a young girl growing up in Ontario. All the CanLit tropes are there: a coming-of-age story featuring the minutiae of daily life in a rural setting interspersed with thoughtful introspection… Unfortunately the sex stuff doesn’t occur until at least three-quarters into the book. The very 70’s paperback edition makes much of the sex as the blurb states this is an “intensely readable story of Del Jordan grappling with life’s problems as she moves from the carelessness of childhood through uneasy adolescence in search of love and sexual experience.”

So I waded through mucho exposition about Del and the Jordan family living in rural Ontario, like how Uncle Benny tells Del and her brother about his experience driving around Toronto looking for the young wife who ran away from him:

He remembered everything. A map of the journey was burnt into his mind. And as he talked a different landscape—cars, billboards, industrial buildings, roads and locked gates and high wire fences, railway tracks, steep cindery embankments, tin sheds, ditches with a little brown water in them, also tin cans, mashed cardboard cartons, all kinds of clogged or barely floating waste—all this seemed to grow up around us created by his monotonous, meticulously remembering voice, and we could see it, we could see how it was to be lost there, how it was just not possible to find anything, or go on looking.

To be perfectly honest, that “monotonous, meticulously remembering voice” also aptly describes Munro’s writing. There are certainly moments of brilliance--she is, after all, Alice Munro--but you also get lost in the landscape of that droning voice. It’s not unlike the experience of politely listening to your eloquent yet doddering aunt who goes on a little too long with her stories, occasionally dropping a juicy tidbit of family gossip.

Don’t get me wrong -- I'm didn't pick up LoGaW just for the sex stuff (mostly). But I wasn’t expecting this book to be, so… well…. (Munro fans can take heart that I feel slightly like a Philistine when I say this)… but I found this book to be really rather boring!

Apparently I’m not the only literate person who feels this. But when you have the Quill and Quire pounce on a Calgary Herald reviewer who slammed Munro’s Selected Stories, you have to be a little careful in what you say. Still, I can’t help but agree with the reviewer’s opinion:

It may be one of the seven deadly sins of CanLit to utter a critical word about Munro, but the sin of a scanty plot is an even bigger one. This collection can’t rightfully be called stories. They’re unsatisfying sketches of characters who wander through depressive environments, observing the idiosyncrasies of those around them. Yet, those idiosyncrasies are there simply for the sake of being there; they do not lead to climaxes or denouements.

And just note how the Q&Q smugly puts down the reviewer as not being well-read!

Now, although we’re certainly Munro fans here at Quillblog, we’re also in favour of critical reviewing and disinclined to kneel before sacred cows… However, it does seem painfully apparent that Lakritz simply hasn’t read much literary fiction before. Which is the real issue here: surely some sensitivity and expertise should be a prerequisite for a book reviewer?

How the hell do they know what or how much Lakritz has read? The real question is if there are any literate, well-read people who actually (or even secretly) find Munro boring? A quick google search for “Is Alice Munro boring?” yielded some interesting results.

Take this earthgoat blog for example:

Why are her stories so much longer than most people's? Are her plots more involved, does she bite off larger chunks of time and jump around in them more, does she include more character details or scene description than most writers, are her stories really micronovels? Maybe. Certainly it's working for her. She must be one of the top five most respected living short story writers. I won't spend time here praising her style, use of language, etc. -- her mastery of the form is well known.

Or cracking spines, who provides a fitting analogy:

I imagine that if Alice Munro were a painter, she would paint landscapes. Her finished canvases would look clear and precise as photographs - that is, they would look real... Like her stories, her paintings would be perfect in terms of craft, and as truthful as possible, and probably just a little boring… Still, I can never seem to pull myself away from a Munro story once I’ve started…

My minutes of research resulted in the fact that there does exist intelligent, well-read people who readily admit that Munro can indeed be boring, but nevertheless still enjoy her writing. So where does that leave me? I appreciate that Munro is a gifted writer, and amidst some of the dreary and/or droning descriptive passages, there are as many brilliantly written ones that really hit the nail on the head, like this passage that says so much about female self-esteem and a friendship grown apart:

Well-groomed girls frightened me to death. I didn’t like to even go near them, for fear I would be smelly. I felt there was a radical difference, between them and me, as if we were made of different substances. Their cool hands did not mottle or sweat, their hair kept its calculated shape, their underarms were never wet—they did not know what it was to have to keep their elbows pinned to their sides to hide the dark, disgraceful half-moon stains on their dresses—and never, never would they feel that little extra gush of blood, little bonus that no Kotex is going to hold, that will trickle horrifyingly down the inside of the thighs... But what about Naomi? She had been like me; once she had an epidemic of warts on her fingers; she had suffered from athlete’s foot; we had hidden in the girls’ toilet together when we had the curse at the same time and were afraid to do tumbling… What was this masquerade she was going in for now, with her nail polish, her pastel sweater?

And some of the sex stuff is brilliantly written too, such as Del’s horrifying yet fascinating encounter with Mr Chamberlain in the woods.

His breathing became loud and shaky, now he worked furiously with his hand, moaned, almost doubled over in spasmodic agony. The face he thrust out at me, from his crouch, was blind and wobbling like a mask on a stick, and those sounds coming out of his mouth, involuntary, last-ditch human noises, were at the same time theatrical, unlikely. In fact the whole performance, surrounded by calm flowering branches, seemed imposed, fantastically and predictably exaggerated, like an Indian dance. I had read about the body being in extremities of pleasure, possessed, but these expressions did not seem equal to the terrible benighted effort, deliberate frenzy, of what was going on here. If he did not soon get to where he wanted to be, I thought he would die.

I don't think I have ever read such vivid words about the simple act of jacking off in my life!

But then there are also moments that come across as ploddingly somber, like the time Del’s mother tells her daughter: “There is a change coming I think in the lives of girls and women. Yes. But it is up to us to make it come. All women have had up till now has been their connections with men. All we have had. No more lives of our own, really, than domestic animals.”

I also like to read people's opinions on Goodreads and one reviewer notes:

“A lot of people find Alice Munro boring, even dated, but I like the fact that her stories are real - about real people and places, and never over the top.”

And here is an interesting blog post that looks at why Munro is revered in Canada, but not as well-known outside:

None of that is earth-shaking stuff — Munro does not do earth-shaking. Everything in it, however, is something that every one of us experiences as we go through life. And great writer that she is, Munro has a way of exploring that in such meticulous detail that a reader — even an aging male like myself — can’t help but be touched.

Perhaps literate Canadian readers prefer their fiction to have a realness and seriousness to it. But they should also respect the fact that there may be other well-read people who may prefer to have their fiction with a little more punch or action. Why anyway is "serious literary fiction" considered so much more "worthy" than any other fiction? It's the same mindset where readers found The Outlander too unbelievable for it be "real". Much as Munro is respected and/or revered, it really boils down to a matter of taste, does it not? If you’re a literary snob who’s afraid to admit that Munro is boring, then you might as well stick to your RealLit then. You're probably the type of reader who now and then deigns to read speculative fiction (by Margaret Atwood), but never sci-fi. But as someone who enjoys brilliant writing with equally brilliant pacing and structure (occasionally punctuated by the odd earth-shattering moment), Alice Munro is probably not for me. And I'm not afraid to say that I find her a little too boring ;-)

Book 25 – The Tourist

2011-08-07T19:55:00.075-04:00

Olen Steinhauer

In mid-July, I found myself sans un livre a couple of days before my vacation and wanted something non-committal that I could easily resume upon my return home. The Tourist seemed like a good choice. Coincidentally, both Mount Benson and Kate had also read this book around the same time.

I had never heard of The Tourist before spotting a review copy on the freebie shelf at my work. At first I thought it was related to that silly Johnny Depp/Angelina Jolie vehicle that came out recently. Though it also features undercover agents in Europe, Steinhauer’s novel is a totally different animal. In Steinhauer’s novel, a Tourist is code for a CIA black-op agent with highly specialized skills. Somewhere in the CIA building on the Avenue of the Americas are secret floors stocked with Travel Agents who gather information from Tourists scattered “in all the populated continents”.

Like Kate and Mt Benson, I wasn’t expecting to be blown away or anything, but I did enjoy The Tourist. It had an interesting enough storyline, a decent amount of action and believable human drama, though the premise itself is far from original. If you’ve seen enough spy movies such as the likes of Mission Impossible or the Bourne series, you’ll recognize the tropes:

All Tourists know the importance of awareness. When you enter a room or a park, you chart the escapes immediately. You take in the potential weapons around you—a chair, ballpoint pen, letter opener, or even the loose, low-hanging branch on the tree behind Milo’s bench. At the same time, you consider the faces. Are they aware of you? Or are they feigning a forced ignorance that is the hallmark of other Tourists?

And you won’t be all that surprised who the “bad guy” turns out to be, like I wasn’t. But unlike a typical Hollywood action movie, there was a level of realism that I quite appreciated in Steinhauer's book.

There is definitely a bit of self-deprecating humour in the name given to Milo Weaver, the protagonist who is the Tourist in question. He could have been Mark Whacker or something like that – a tough, ass-kicking kind of guy whom you can escape - but not really identity - with. Whether he’s burned out by amphetamines, listening to France Gall on his ipod at the airport or longing to be with his family (again), there is a world-weary frailty to Milo Weaver that helps make The Tourist likable and fairly memorable.

The NYT review writes: Milo would be the kind of principled hero we long to believe still exists in fiction, if not in life. The only drawback to this warm close-up of the protagonist is that it skews the novel, rendering it more of a character study than a full-bodied espionage novel.

It’s not surprising (as Mt Benson already mentioned) that George Clooney has already optioned the book. The character of Milo Weaver would make a great role for someone like Clooney, though it would bear remarkable similarities to the tired assassin he played in the somewhat boring, The American. And The Tourist has the potential to be a much better movie than The American (as well as that Johnny Depp/Angelina vehicle of the same name, for that matter!).

The Washington Post writes: Much of the time, neither we nor Weaver has much idea what's going on, but we keep reading because he is likable -- a mess but still the most honorable man in view -- and because Steinhauer seems to know the world of spies and assassins all too well. In his telling, it's a nasty, duplicitous world, but it feels real. The question is whether our reluctant Tourist can get out alive and return to the wife and daughter who are counting on him to take them to Disney World. We are clearly being asked to consider which is more surreal: the spy world or Disney World.

One thing that rang false for me was how Milo met his wife, Tina. Olenhauer devotes barely any time to their first meeting, and assumes the reader will fill in the blanks regarding the reasons behind Milo’s near blind devotion to his wife and stepdaughter (whom he considers to be his own flesh and blood). It was on that day Milo had decided that his Tourist days were over, but there was no emotional explanation for how that fateful encounter with Tina changed the course of his life. It seemed rather lazy that the author avoided any exploration of this. Instead we have Tina explain to Homeland Security agent Janet Simmons how she and Milo bonded after seeing the World Trade Center collapse on TV when they were recovering at the hospital. It was 9/11 that brought them together!

“When I figured out what had happened, I started crying, and that woke Milo. I showed him what my tears were about, and when he got it, he started crying, too. Both of us, in that hospital room, wept together. From then on, we were inseparable.”

Yikes.

That little snippet alone would be enough to make Olman stay away from this book!

But really, that was the only, if rather ringing, false note for me.

“It was a basic truth of Tourism,” Milo reminds himself, “that you trusted no one. Yet, if you had to trust anyone, it had better not be another Tourist.”

I agree with the NYT reviewer who notes: This is the kind of tough thinking (and strong writing) that surfaces whenever Steinhauer gets to what really interests him — the crippling disillusion and nerve-snapping paranoia that breed in closed cultures where trust is absent and internal intrigue rampant.

So yeah, I would definitely read the sequel, The Nearest Exit, if it ever appears on the freebie shelf at work!

Book 24 – What the Dead Know

2011-08-02T10:57:00.046-04:00

By Laura Lippman

I don’t pay much attention to crime mysteries in general, but took note when reviews highly recommended What the Dead Know when it came out in paperback a couple of years ago. This summer I happily found a pristine copy at a used bookstore in Halifax. The verdict? The book pretty much lives up to its critical praise, featuring an intriguing mystery, a nicely constructed storyline, emotional depth, solid characters and whip-smart dialogue. Though I didn’t love the book, WtDK did make a great vacation novel and a nice follow-up to The Hunger Games and The Outlander.

The story begins in the present day with a woman walking away after getting into a car accident. The disoriented woman is soon picked up by the police along a highway. With no ID on her person, she claims to be one of “the Bethany girls”, two adolescent sisters who went missing from the area about 30 years ago. From there an investigation is launched involving the retired detective who was originally assigned to the case, a younger jaded detective, and an empathic social worker, as they try to figure who this mystery woman is. The narrative is interwoven with flashbacks to 1975 which chronicle the days leading up to the girls’ disappearance as well as the disintegrating marriage of the parents. In many ways, the novel shares some similarities to The Lovely Bones, with its themes of familial grief and loss, the major difference being that WtDK has none of that wishful saccharine b.s. that made The Lovely Bones so cringe-worthy.

I don’t think I should go much further about the plot, but I will paraphrase what the NYT wrote:

Laura Lippman’s “What the Dead Know” is an uncommonly clever impostor story, so cagily constructed that it easily fulfills the genre’s two basic demands. First, Ms. Lippman is able to keep her reader guessing about the main character’s disputed identity until the very end of this book. Second, when the revelation comes, it makes perfect sense, and it has been hiding in plain sight. This is not one of those mysteries with a denouement that feels tacked on, half baked or pulled out of thin air.

I think what also elevates WtDK from its genre is the thoughtful attention to detail and well-drawn characters. Lippman did not have to go into how much Kay the social worker loves to read, but in this case, it was a nice touch. Not completely necessary, but still very much appreciated:

She took the coffee to a corner table and settled in with her emergency paperback, this one from her purse. Kay stashed paperbacks in every nook and cranny of her life—purse, office, car, kitchen, bathroom. Five years ago, when the pain of the divorce was fresh and bright, the books had started as a way to distract herself from the fact that she had no life. But over time Kay came to realize that she preferred her books to other people’s company. Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal of state of being. At home she had to be hyperconscious not to use books to retreat from her own children. She would put her book aside, trying to watch whatever television program Grace and Seth had chosen… Here at work, where she could have joined any number of colleagues for breaks and lunches, she almost always sat by herself, reading. Coworkers called her the antisocial worker behind her back—or so they thought. For all Kay’s seeming immersion in her books, she missed very little.

There were other nice little pop culture references, like how the Bethany girls snuck into an R-rated screening of Chinatown the day of their disappearance, and how the older sister Sunny loved the Anne of Green Gables books (rather fitting considering we had just visited PEI at the time). I suppose that sometimes it’s these little details that helps to make a novel memorable or not.

Even though Lippman has been writing since the 1990’s, What the Dead Know was her first book that made the NYT bestsellers list. Before that, Lippman was mostly known for her Tess Monaghan series about a Baltimore reporter turned private investigator. It’s funny cuz when I was reading about the Baltimore locales and the confident handling of police procedural in WtDK, I was wondering if Lippman ever wrote for the former HBO series, The Wire. It was only when it came time to write my review did I discover that Lippman is actually married to David Simon! Turns out they also used to work as reporters for the Baltimore Sun. Well, you can’t get any more made for each other than that.

More interesting tidbits gleaned from the Wiki: in episode 8 of the first season of The Wire, Bunk is shown reading one of Lippman’s books. And in the final season, the author has a cameo in the first episode as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom. Makes for a great excuse to watch The Wire again!

Here is a very thoughtful review that sums up the novel nicely without revealing too much.

Book 23 – The Hunger Games

2011-07-26T19:32:00.016-04:00

Suzanne Collins

I was already curious about The Hunger Games when I revisited an old YA PA novel I had liked as a teen, The City, Not Long After. I had this notion that today's YA PA would ramp up on the violence and sex. Thankfully, the violence was not as gratuitous as I was afraid it might be, and there was zero sex, let alone romance.

During our vacay, Olman spotted a hardcover copy of THG at our first B&B and promptly read it. So he gave me the heads up that it was going to be a quick and addictive read thanks to the tight narrative, efficient pacing and generous amount of action. Ingredients for the perfect beach novel! The only thing that annoyed me was how unrealistically naive the awkwardly named Katniss was about the opposite sex. Naïve to the point of daftness.

Though I appreciate Katniss as a strong and self-reliant teenage girl who taught herself to hunt (unlike the lame, milktoast Bella Swan from Twilight) and understand that she may have some trust issues since her mother went catatonic after her father died, but does the same intelligence, cunning and intuition she uses for hunting game just automatically switched off when it comes to reading guys? Katniss' innocence and convenient obliviousness in matters of attraction is simply too trite for my liking.

Though I’m looking forward to the movie adaptation with Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, I don’t have a strong compulsion to check out the sequels (unless an available copy magically lands on my lap, like it practically did with the first). At least we have continued the tradition of leaving THG at a B&B in Lunenberg (the lovely Pelham House where resides two friendly ginger cats and an English Golden named Drum).

Since I still have a few reviews to hammer out, and I pretty much feel the same way as Olman (I also read it right after he did), I’m going to let Olman’s review speak for the both of us!

Book 22 - The Outlander

2011-07-21T17:00:00.008-04:00

By Gil Adamson

In 1903 a mysterious, desperate young woman flees alone across the west, one quick step ahead of the law. She has just become a widow by her own hand.

The blurb alone had captured my fancy so I promptly made it one of my birthday requests (thanks bro!). Then I saved it to bring along for our summer trip to the Maritimes. It made a great vacation book: it had a nicely paced story, and was quite beautifully written too, with a nice balance between literary reflection and almost pulpy action.

A minor annoyance was the tiresome literary device of “the slow reveal”. In the beginning, the reader is purposely left ignorant of the events causing the widow to flee from her pursuers. As the story progresses, you learn that the two brothers are hunting their sister-in-law because she had allegedly murdered her husband in cold blood. More gets revealed -- little by little -- the events leading up to “the big trigger” – the day Mary goes ballistic and shoots her husband to death. I suppose the device is useful in mixing things up, every so often providing little breaks from the present narrative as we flash back to Mary’s past, so I can see why Adamson relied on it (like Sarah Waters did for The Night Watch). But I don’t think it would’ve detracted from the novel if I had known sooner either.

There was also the rather self-conscious habit of referring to Mary as “the widow”. Adamson did such a good job in fleshing out the character of Mary Boulton, that calling her the widow all the time kind of reduces her to a caricature or symbol. Quite a few other reviewers on Goodreads remarked on this too, so I wasn’t alone. There was also a decent love story woven in. After Mary ran to the hills (the Rockies) and after several days in the wilderness is left starved and exhausted, she was rescued by a fellow fugitive William Morleand, aka the Ridgerunner. I won’t reveal much further except this amusing quote from a Q&Q review:

A somewhat unbelievable romantic interlude ensues – can you imagine what the Ridgerunner must smell like after nine years of camping out in the Rockies?

But these are only trifling complaints for me since the novel is really quite good overall with many things I appreciated, like Adamson’s descriptions of character, perspective and place. I really felt like I was right there when Mary was lost in the mountains. I once spent a sleepless night camping alone on a meadow in Mount Seven (Golden, BC). I had never experienced that before, alone inside a pitch-black tent listening to constant rustling sounds from various creatures of the night. This passage totally reminded me of that:

She rested that dusk and woke later to find all light erased. The night was so dark she thought something stood between her eyes and the rest of the world. Blindness could not be this complete. Nothing but the sound of wind through trees. Somewhere to her left, the breathing horse. And high above, the slow funhouse creaking of pine branches. A blessing of her young life had been the fact that she remained more afraid of her own mind than of the dark. In fact, she loved the night. Still, here among the trees there was the call of unknown things. Small scrounging sounds to the left…or in front?

As a Quill and Quire reviewer notes:

…What is interesting about the book… is the fact that most of the characters come from well-heeled backgrounds (the brothers are always described in their “fine black boots”) and now find themselves battling the elements in one of the most forbidding environments on Earth. This is what continues to give Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush such power, and Adamson’s description of Mary’s upbringing strikes a similar note: “a mire of useless things: sonatas and études; the art of a good menu; trousseaux … Bedtime at nine … Alabaster skin and parasols.” These are the items that run through her mind as she tries to puzzle out which alpine plants will keep her from starvation and which will kill her instantly.

I also appreciated the clever yet thoughtful way Adamson fleshed out William Moreland’s character by having Mary sneak a peak inside his notebook while he’s away hunting:

…A strange picture of this man’s life formed in her mind out of these glimpses.

He was soft of heart: “This evening I watched the thick beautiful green mountains surrounding the Canyon Station.” He wrote humourously about God: “The Great Elementary Director has spent almost twenty-eight days amusing himself by way of creating misery for earthly humans. I for one would almost think he had created a switch that would alternate from rain to snow.” And it seemed he had lived lately in empty ranger stations and observation towers: “…the observer feels as if they were becoming strangely intoxicated by the airy stimulants evaporating from such a beautiful nature-created scene.”

Here was a man who suffered no loneliness, who spent his days as he wished…

Most of all, I appreciated Adamson’s deft approach to the theme of being a woman in a man’s world and making it work with an engaging narrative. Mary is intelligent and innately unconventional, who happens to have the misfortune of being an uneducated woman at the turn of the 20th century, struggling with her new role as a young wife to an ungrateful pioneer husband:

…for it was much his usual habit: him watching her struggle to do the most basic things a wife must do, dissatisfaction written all over him. Her grandmother would have blamed her. She was a poor domestic student – in her ineptitude. Mary brought censure upon herself. Never mind that she was barely nineteen, or that all her training had been for a different kind of life. There was, she believed, something about her, or in her, that bred dissatisfaction. She remembered her grandmother saying to her, “You must stop being such a gloomy child. Can you not be pretty inside as well?"

To summarize, The Outlander was a very enjoyable read. I don’t understand some of the complaints about the various plot improbabilities, which is likely due to the fact that The Outlander is published by the prestigious House of Anansi Press (we're talking CanLit here, people). But since when did Canadian novels have to be all realistic, gloomy and unexciting? Can they not have some of those lurid tropes of genre fiction, like nail-biting action, melodrama and romance? For “contemporary literature”, I think Adamson did a wonderful job of creating a nice balance between the two.

Book 21 – Amnesia Moon

2011-07-12T19:31:00.004-04:00

By Jonathan Lethem

Somnambulist’s very favourable review spurred me to read Lethem’s take on post-apoca sci-fi. I loved Motherless Brooklyn and enjoyed Fortress of Solitude, so chances were good that I’d like Amnesia Moon. Instead I found it to be an unsatisfying read, due to some boring segments and an annoyingly deliberate vagueness about the events that led to the demise of American civilization as we know it.

Some mysterious apocalyptic event had caused people to lose their memory and identity. Depending on where you’re from, there’s a different interpretation of what happened, so the event is only referred to as “the change”, or “the disaster”, or “the war”. But probably the most accurate is “the break” because at some point, reality got ruptured. What people used to know as reality was replaced by dreams… someone else’s dream. The dreamers impose their dreams on everyone else around him or her, because everyone else is merely a receiver.

To paraphrase Somnambulist, the dreamers use their power to alter realities, change memory, and control people. Each place uses this function in different ways to establish tyrannical control. Each place has only one dreamer, so there are pockets of different realities all over what used to be the American landscape. A pretty neato concept, really. The only problem is I’m just not sure if I liked the way Lethem executed it. I had gone into this novel not knowing anything about it, but I think if I had an idea of what the concept was, I would've been less confounded from the start. In any case, if you’re interested in reading this book, and want to be kept in the dark, read no further as there will be SPOILERS ahead.

Somewhere in Little America (probably the Midwest), a guy named Chaos is having conflicts with the local dreamer, Kellogg, and soon escapes the town of Hatfork (along with a hirsute female adolescent companion named Melinda) on a search for truth and self (not necessarily in that order). People he meets, he asks them what really happened, but they give their own vague spin on it, because nobody really knows. There are a lot of “I don’t knows” or “There’s a lot I don’t remember. Or understand.” The best answer by far: “It’s like a jump cut in a movie. Everyone is missing something.”

If I had to sum up the premise of Amnesia Moon, it’s about a guy with amnesia taking an acid, I mean, road trip out west through a dream-induced post-apocalyptic America. Somewhere in the Rockies, he gets lost in a land of opaque green mist and ends up inside a sterile complex populated white-suited bureaucrats and a pissed off dream-lady who tells him to move on. Then he ends up in a strange town called Vacaville where all the citizens have to move house twice a week and work a different job each day in order to test their luck. Instead of invasive dreams, the government bureacrats produce, star in and broadcast TV shows that the citizens are forced to watch (kind of like the CBC!). There he meets Edie, a young mother struggling to conform to Vacaville’s weird spin on dystopian society.

Then an old friend of Chaos named Fault shows up from San Francisco because he was able to “tune into” Chaos’ dreams. Edie agrees to look after Melinda while Chaos (now also known by his previous name Everett) continues his journey to San Francisco where he kinda sorta gets some answers. For instance, Chaos/Everett discovers he’s actually a powerful dreamer, he’s just been repressing his ability. Then he realizes that he was partly, if not totally, responsible for “the break” which all started in San Francisco (from what I can glean from the vague dialogue)! At some point, Chaos/Everett realizes that when he thought he had escaped from Hatfork to go west, he was actually going back to the place he originally ran away from!

Even though the novel was slim, I didn’t find the story structure very tight or cohesive. I found out later that the loose structure was likely due to the fact that Lethem cobbled together a novel from several of his unpublished short stories, which are all influenced in various degrees by Philip K Dick.

This is not to say I didn't like the book, as there were a number of cool and humourous moments in the story. Like how Hatfork was described as a bit of a shithole town, even in post-apoca standards:

Nobody went this way anymore because since the war, Hatfork was a sick town. Full of mutants and sexual deviants… Hatfork was a hairy town. Every woman from Hatfork he’d seen undressed—and he’d seen a few—had hair where she shouldn’t.

Or when Chaos and Melinda are lost in the land of green mist and run into a hippie who exclaims:

“Hey! Wow! What are you cats doing out here? … This is like, nowhere, you know. What, did you just come out of the Emerald City? Hey, that is one a hairy chick, man.”

Or when Chaos, in order to talk to his old friend, Cale, has to inject him like a drug. Or when Chaos is having another one of his rambling conversations with Kellogg, who I kind of picture as Jeff Bridges vis-a-vis The Dude:

“… That’s the way it has to be for you. You’ll always be living in an FSR… Finite Subjective Reality... You go creating a little area of control around you, until you bump into the next guy with his. A little sphere of reality and unreality, sanity and insanity, whatever you pull together. There’s no hope of sorting it out. That’s the way you live. FSR.”

Even though I haven’t read a lot of Philip K Dick, his stylistic tropes are easily recognizable in Amnesia Moon. I think if you’re already familiar with the work of PK Dick, this would make a much more rewarding read. As it stands, I only found this novel to be mildly amusing at best.

Here's another review which expressed how I felt.

Book 20 – Fingersmith

2011-07-02T20:07:00.014-04:00

By Sarah Waters

"Fancies, Mrs. Rivers. If you might only hear yourself! Terrible plots? Laughing villains? Stolen fortunes and girls made out to be mad? The stuff of lurid fiction! We have a name for your disease. We call it a hyper-aesthetic one. You have been encouraged to over-indulge yourself in literature; and have inflamed your organs of fancy."

Sarah Waters first came on the scene with her critically acclaimed “lesbo Victorian romps” such as Tipping the Velvet and Affinity, which isn’t exactly fair, as Waters is a gifted writer of amazing range who has since expanded her repertoire to include gothic ghost stories and WWII fiction. My first introduction was a later work, The Night Watch , which I thought was beautifully written but had a rather disappointingly lackluster storyline. I’m glad I gave her early work a chance since Fingersmith is so far the best book I’ve read this year. I highly recommend it for both male and female readers! As the quote suggests, it has everything you could hope for in a Victorian period novel: an intricate plot, cunning thieves, unexpected villains, hapless yet intrepid heroines, and hot lesbian sex! And Waters’ wonderful writing elevates Fingersmith from being mere “lurid fiction”.

The novel begins in the London Borough in 1862. Sue Trinder grew up in a house of thieves run by Mrs Sucksby, who sells orphaned babies, and Mr. Ibbs, who deals with “the passage of poke”. Even though Sue was one of many dozens of orphaned infants that passed through the house on Lant Street, for whatever reason, Mrs Sucksy kept Sue to raise as her own. Like her adopted household, Sue became a fingersmith, which is basically Borough code for thief. One night, a man known only as Gentleman visits Mrs Suckby with a scheme of a lifetime. Before I go on, check out Waters’ introduction of this key character and how she captures his whole life history in just a handful of sentences via Sue’s narration:

We called him Gentleman, because he really was a gent—had been, he said, to a real gent’s school, and had a father and mother and a sister—all swells—whose heart he had just about broke. He had had money once, and lost it all gambling; his pa said he should never have another cent of the family fortune; and so he was obliged to get money the old-fashioned way, by thievery and dodging. He took to the life so well, however, we all said there must have been bad blood way back in that family, that had all come out in him… Mostly, however, he worked as a confidence-man, and as a sharper at the grand casinos—for of course, he could mix with Society, and seem honest as the rest. The ladies especially would go quite wild for him. He had three times been nearly married to some rich heiress, but every time the father in the case had grown suspicious and the deal had fallen through. He had ruined many people by selling them stock from counterfeit banks. He was handsome as a plum, and Mrs. Sucksby fairly doted on him. He came to Lant Street about once a year, bringing poke to Mr Ibbs, and picking up bad coin, cautions, and tips.

Not surprisingly, Gentleman has discovered another heiress to pounce on, but this one’s different. Maud Lilly was raised by kindly nurses in the insane asylum where her mother was committed. When she was left orphaned at 11 years old, her uncle claimed and brought her to live at Briar Estate. Unfortunately, her uncle is a miserly and obsessive book collector, bent only on molding Maud as his personal assistant for the sole purpose of cataloging his vast library of rare books. Confined to Briar Mansion and its grounds, Maud is granted barely any freedom.

Through contacts of his own, Gentleman finds out that Maud has a sweet inheritance which she can only access if she gets married. And of course, Uncle Lilly would never let his niece marry, not when she is destined to be his personal slave! But clever Gentleman is able to wrangle a temporary position helping Mr Lilly in the framing of his illustrations. Clearly, Maud is the perfect target for the perfect con – an heiress who is not only a simple naïf, but desperate to escape her situation. The only catch is that Gentleman must watch himself when interacting with Maud because of her maid, Agnes. This is where Sue comes in. If Gentleman can get rid of Agnes, he can recommend Sue to become Maud’s maid, and then Sue can aid Gentleman in making Maud fall in love with him and accept his inevitable marriage proposal. And of course, Sue will get a nice cut of the inheritance money.

Though Sue dreams of one day landing her fortune, she isn’t completely a cold-hearted Borough thief either. When she first meets Maud, Sue is not quite sure what to make of her mistress, but soon feels rather sorry for her:

She was certainly, then, what you would call original. But was she mad, or even half-way simple, as Gentleman said at Lant Street? I did not think so, then. I thought her only pretty lonely, and pretty bookish and bored—as who wouldn’t be, in a house like that?

And the more Sue spends time with Maud as her maid, the more she begins to develop feelings for her. Ooh, dearie me!

This premise in itself would make an interesting plot-line, but Waters’ really goes all out and takes this premise to the next level and then the next. Before you know it, you’re sucked into this almost 600-page page-turner and when it’s all over, you just can't believe it and try to read about it on the internets and discover there is also a BBC production, and so you acquire it and immediately watch it and then feel incomplete and dissatisfied because the adaptation barely captures the nuances and complexities of Waters’ brilliant novel.

Take for example when Sue infiltrates the Briar household as Maud’s maid how she quickly observes that the servants are no better than her fellow Borough thieves:

That’s like a servant. A servant says, ‘All for my master,’ and means, ‘All for myself’. It’s the two-facedness of it that I can’t bear. At Briar, they were all on the dodge in one way or another, but all over sneaking little matters that would have put a real thief to the blush—such as, holding off the fat from Mr Lilly’s gravy to sell on the quiet to the butcher’s boy; which is what Mrs Cakebread did. Or, pulling the pearl buttons from Maud’s chemises, and keeping them, and saying they were lost; which is what Margaret did. I had them all worked out, after three days’ watching. I might have been Mrs Suckby’s own daughter after all. Mr Way, now: he had a mark on the side of his nose—in the Borough we should have called it a ginbud. And how do you think he got that, in a place like his? He had the key to Mr Lilly’s cellar, on a chain. You never saw such a shine as that key had on it!

Here’s a review that perfectly summarizes what makes Fingersmith such a great read:

In Fingersmith, the approach to the truth is so convoluted that appearances in one case have pointed one way while the truth lay all the while unsuspected in another direction. On top of the entangled fate of the two orphaned women, Waters surrounds their lives with characters who are unforgettable—neither wholly good nor evil. Whether it is Mr. Ibbs’ dealing with pickpockets for the stolen goods, Mrs. Sucksby’s unlicensed nursing of orphaned infants, Sue’s being part of the scam to make her fortune, the intention is to amount some good. Their actions often display a mix of self-interest and surprising altruism. Good to the last page.

Indeed, there is hardly a dull or insincere moment in this novel. Can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Book 19 – The Water Rat of Wanchai

2011-06-28T16:40:00.001-04:00

By Ian Hamilton

When I came across Kevin Chong’s review of The Water Rat of Wanchai, I knew I had to read it, and promptly requested Olman to get it for my birthday in late April. How often do I get to read a stylish thriller about a Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant named Ava Lee who travels around the world kicking butt and breaking hearts? And the cover looks so alluring and tasteful in its hybridized Sino-exotica come James Bond-style graphics (instead of a gun, the Ava Lee silhouette carries a sleek briefcase).

First, let’s get a few complaints out of the way. We all know JB likes his cars fast and his martinis shaken. But does Ava Lee have to be Little Miss Designer Label? I mean, the girl can’t just write with a fountain pen and notebook, it has to be a Montblanc and Moleskine. She can’t just wear a nice watch, it has to be Cartier. She can’t just pack a simple suitcase, it has to be Louis Vuitton. Oh yeah, our heroine also lives in a swank high-rise in Toronto’s Yorkville, and drives an Audi 6. I understand that Hong Kong people may have perhaps a slightly more materialistic lifestyle than the average person. But come on!

I’m also of the same opinion as Chong when he noted that the first half of the book reads more like a travelogue than a thriller. It is understandable that Ava Lee would fly business class or check into luxury accommodation, but the description of her five-star hotel room is a little on the gratuitous side (though this does later make an amusing contrast to her divey far from “three-star” hotel room in Guyana, of which the author also goes into meticulous detail in describing).

You also have the sense that the author, who himself was a high-powered businessman and diplomat, is also kinda showing off that he also is familiar with this kind of lifestyle. The thing is, this may be vicarious lifestyle pornography for some, but for me, it’s boring and unimaginative. Ava Lee may be a top quality person, but can she at least have some taste that is interesting (meaning, not mainstream)? For the price of her swank condo, she could probably live in a townhouse in a hip area of TO, like say, Seaton Village, where I recently spotted Rachel McAdams walking with her bf Michael Sheen ;-)

And then there is the misguided Sinophile thing…

Yeah, it’s great that our heroine is smart, attractive and a lesbian to boot, but do we need to know that she also has “large breasts for a Chinese woman” and not only that, but “large enough that she [doesn’t] need a padded bra for them to get noticed.”

And yes, Ava Lee is also addicted to dim sum. There are quite a few passages where she’s having dim sum with a new client, dim sum with her mom or jonesing for dim sum when she’s in non-Chinese territory.

The thing is, professional Hong Kong business people, especially of the Chinese-Canadian variety, do not necessarily prefer to meet at popular (crowded) dim sum restaurants. Even though the wheeled carts are passé, noisy Cantonese families are distracting enough, even in the fancy places. And tables for two are few. Going for dim sum is a social activity where it’s ideal to go in groups. So it strikes me as odd to meet for a serious business lunch with a new client in such a place. It’s Toronto -- there are plenty of quieter, calmer restaurants (Chinese or non) in which to conduct a business lunch.

And of course, he had to mention the chicken feet! Again, not every Chinese person orders this! I certainly don’t! It’s obvious that Hamilton is targeting a Western market that is interested in some immersion in Asian exoticism. But if Hamilton is indeed aiming for cultural authenticity, he should've used “yum cha” instead of dim sum.

All right, now that I got my white guy lamely striving for Chinese authenticity rant out of the way, let’s get to the meat of the book, which unfolds as a pretty engaging story. There is a lot of setup at first about Ava’s background and how she fell into forensics accounting and working for a mysterious Uncle, who may or may not be a triad boss. Uncle feels obligated to help an old friend and puts her on a case where a business associate took off with 5 million dollars from his friend’s son. Once Ava Lee embarks on her investigation -- which takes her to Seattle, Hong Kong and eventually Guyana and the British Virgin Islands -- it gets quite absorbing.

Ava’s arrival in Guyana is memorable in its description of a destitute country with a barely functional infrastructure and our protagonist as a fish out of water. It’s in Guyana where Ava Lee has no choice but to involve herself with the corrupt military officials in order to carry out her mission. And eventually things get sticky, very sticky indeed for our heroine, and you get caught up in the suspense of whether Ava can extricate herself from the situation. The thing I liked about it is that it maintains a consistently naturalistic realism – nothing gets too over the top in terms of violence or drama, though there is some action (Ava gets to use her super elite bak mei skills a couple of occasions) and plenty of tension and suspense.

On Goodreads, some readers complained about how they couldn’t really relate to Ava because she doesn’t reveal many vulnerabilities. I don’t have that problem. This is a crime thriller, not literature about losers. I’d rather not see dig deep into Ava’s neuroses or whatever repressed psychological issues she may have, and wanna just see her kick some white male butt and solve cases. Did we have to probe into Parker’s psyche in any of the Parker books? Nope, nor do we need to with Ava. Just don't get too carried away with describing whatever designer accoutrements she possesses, please.

Despite that, the Ava Lee story is a great premise that has the potential to carry a series. I would more likely read the next Ava Lee installment over Flavia de Luce. Sorry Flavia!

Book 18 – The Crazy Kill

2011-05-31T19:01:00.010-04:00

By Chester Himes

Six books for the month of May!

This may not be the best intro to the work of Chester Himes as The Crazy Kill is already the third book in a series and generally not considered his best work. I had picked up this Vintage Press 1989 reprint (doesn't boast the greatest cover, I know) for a couple bucks at our fave thrift shop, and read it when I needed a break from Something Borrowed (that book will haunt me for the rest of my days) to immerse myself in something tough from the classic crime genre . So for any fans of Himes please take this review with a grain of salt.

Though I was curious to know more about the back story of Detectives Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed, in The Crazy Kill they merely function as secondary figures who lurk in the background quietly observing the other characters doing their dance as the story unfolds. This worked out well for me since the plot of TCK stands on its own without any need to read the first two books.

The big luxurious sitting room of the Seventh Avenue apartment was jam-packed with friends and relatives of Big Joe Pullen, mourning his passing.

Himes follows literary conventions by establishing the setting, context and cast of characters, but in such a colloquial, engaging style that you are immediately drawn in. Though the story was interesting enough, I was not particularly impressed by it, as it wasn’t terribly exciting as a thriller, nor was it terribly perplexing as a detective-mystery, yet there was a fair bit of criminality and some police procedural. The actual murder at the beginning wasn't really all that crazy - until I got to the end, that is - where I finally realized this was what the title was probably based on. So yeah, that was kind of crazy!

But I did take pleasure in the way Himes depicts the atmosphere of late 50’s Harlem. There's plenty of scenery where street kids touch the gleaming hot fishtails of “Four Ace” Johnny Perry’s Cadillac as it pulls up to a curb or how Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed cruise down Seventh Avenue in their battered black sedan looking for stool pigeons.

Himes really has a way with words. The experience of being immersed in that gritty, noirish world is enough to compensate for a lack of thrilling action or interesting plot construction. It's the little details I tend to savour, such as a peak at a dinner menu at Fat’s Down Home Restaurant:

Today’s Special – Alligator tail & rice
Baked Ham – sweet potatoes & succotash
Chitterlings & collard greens & okra
Chicken and drop dumplings – with rice or sweet potatoes
Barbecued ribs
Pig’s feet á la mode
Neck bones and lye hominy

(Choice of biscuits or corn bread)

(Note that the next book I read tried to do a similar thing with Chinese food, but it didn't quite work for me. For some reason, this works for Himes, but not for others)

Or a brief description of the physical attributes of a character can be loaded with backstory and meaning:

Stripped to her black nylon brassiere, black sheer nylon panties and high-heeled red shoes, Doll Baby was practicing her chorus routine in the center of the floor. She had her back to the window and was watching her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. A tray of dirty dishes containing leftovers from the chili bean and stewed chitterling dinners they’d ordered from the bar restaurant rested on the table top, cutting her reflection in half just below the panties, as though she might have been served without legs along with the other delicacies. The outline of three heavy embossed scars running across her buttocks were visible beneath the sheer black panties.

I have a feeling Himes previous books in the series may be better in terms of plot and characterization of Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed, and I am interested in reading A Rage in Harlem one day, though I’m not in any great rush.

Here is link to a pithy review which I thought had some interesting observations.

Book 17 – The Crystal Cave

2011-05-29T15:18:00.003-04:00

By Mary Stewart

A few 50-bookers have already reviewed this classic tale about Merlin the magician. Le Braconnier, Print Is Dead and Olman did such a wonderful job describing what is basically a coming-of-age adventure tale with a bit of fantasy and historical epic thrown in, that I’m happy to have some respite in having to write about it myself.

I went through a brief Arthurian phase as a teenager, reading the Mists of Avalon, the Rosemary Sutcliff books, and even catching the 1981 flick Excalibur when it played on television. But somehow I missed out on The Crystal Cave. Any spin on the Arthurian legends is subject to interpretation, really, and Mary Stewart distinguishes herself in providing some geographical and historical oomph to her take on the story of Merlin and Uther Pendragon, as well as good old fashioned quality prose that is engaging and descriptive but not at all flowery.

Although I very much enjoyed TCC (which is the first of a quartet), I don’t think I’ll seek out the other books… unless it falls upon my lap like it did for me and Olman.

Book 16 - Paying For It

2011-05-18T18:23:00.019-04:00

a comic strip memoir about being a john

By Chester Brown

In order to wash away the terrible taste of mainstream chick-lit that was Something Borrowed from my mouth, I contemplated going back to a Parker novel. But around that time, Olman had also impulsively picked up the latest Chester Brown and even finished it that very evening (though he has yet to read the copious notes). I then realized that Paying For It would be THE perfect antidote to a woman’s delusional fantasies about romantic love.

I had only started reading the comics of Chester Brown and Joe Matt from living with Olman, and only quite sporadically at that. I’m not really a fan yet on occasion I appreciate their talent and sense of humour. When you read the semi-autobiographical details of CB’s whoring and JM’s porno addiction and then look at Something Borrowed, you wonder how it’s even possible for the opposite sexes to co-exist, let alone have an intimate relationship with one another. Although CB and JM may be weirder than your average male, they nevertheless think a lot like men, while someone like Emily Giffin represents the kind of mainstream gal who typically has a strong - if not extremely reactionary - stance against such hot button topics as prostitution and pornography.

Chester Brown does not seem to be an anti-social loser, closet misogynist or sleaze ball. But he does hold rather unconventional views about sexual relationships and is rather cynical towards romantic love in general. He believes that romantic love is an idealistic concept that was invented in the Middle Ages. It wasn’t very long ago that people in the Western world began marrying for love, yet a long time before that, marriage was basically a financial contract between two families. He makes many comparisons between the institution of marriage and the obligations of a sexual relationship with that of the arrangement between a prostitute and a john.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Though there is definitely a fair bit of pro-prostitution proselytizing on CB's part, he also presents a compelling personal story. The comic begins in Toronto during the late 1990’s where CB and his live-in girlfriend Sook-Yin Lee are at the tail-end of their relationship (she wants to start seeing someone else). Rather than be upset about it, Brown sees this as an opportunity to enjoy his new status as a single guy. He is also genuinely psyched that he can maintain a close friendship with his ex now that they’re just roommates. In fact, he realizes their relationship is even better than ever before since it’s no longer burdened with the emotional baggage that comes with romantic relationships (possessiveness, jealousy, unrealistic expectations, role-playing, etc.). At some point, he even lets Sook-Yin’s new boyfriend move in with them, and soon derives some satisfaction in observing their relationship degenerate into the usual petty arguments that afflicts most long-term couples. This of course, reaffirms his jaded views towards romantic relationships.

Even though CB is enjoying his bachelorhood, he has been celibate a little too long for his liking. So he discusses the idea of seeing a prostitute with his friends Seth and JM, who are initially rather shocked by his proposal. Thus, we get a fairly interesting insider view as CB embarks upon the trials and tribulations of being a newbie john. I found the whole account quite fascinating, and even enjoyed reading the copious notes at the end where CB basically presents his treatise on prostitution. And it's not that he's pro-prostitution because he's a regular customer, but he really argues it with a sympathetic viewpoint of a sex worker as well. As someone who has some left-leaning attitudes, I tend to agree with most of CB’s arguments, ie. that prostitution should be decriminalized rather than legalized, that the sexual obligations inherent in a marriage or relationship are really not all that different from that of a prostitute and client.

The only things I didn’t entirely agree with were CB’s extremely cynical views towards relationships. He really does believe that happy couples are the rare exception to the rule – that it is simply not possible for two people to be happy and fulfilled in such a relationship. Yet I'm not entirely convinced whether a satisfying love life can be achieved by only seeing prostitutes either. Perhaps this kind of lifestyle suits someone like CB, who has been unsuccessful in finding happiness within the confines of a conventional heterosexual relationship, but again, all CB is arguing for is societal acceptance. If he hasn’t already, Chester Brown should read Julian Barnes’ eye-opening treatise on romantic love, “Parenthesis”. And Barnes is the kind of writer who can be as cynical as the rest of ‘em (he's known for saying things like “Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex”).

But what I appreciated most from CB was his honesty, or at least his constant striving for honesty, in Paying For It. I appreciated how the author explains some of his artistic interventions in the notes, ie. how certain conversations that took place in one sitting in the comic were actually condensed over a period of time, or how he wasn’t really that articulate in that conversation. Most of all, I appreciated CB’s skillful artwork and how he portrays himself (and his scrawny body) with some measure of honesty as well. For instance, when he finds himself in a "monogamous relationship" with a prostitute named "Denise" with whom he has some emotional attachment to, he admits in his notes that if he were to stop paying her, she would probably stop seeing him.

If there is one thing I learned in Women's Studies 101, every human relationship is based on the balance of power, in some form or another. If you look at it from this perspective, in some ways, it seems that the relationship between a prostitute and client is probably more honest than the sanctioned or conventional varieties.

This was a very, VERY refreshing and, if you can believe, heartening change from the piece of trash I read before.

Book 15 – Something Borrowed

2011-05-15T16:54:00.017-04:00

By Emily Giffin

It might seem a little odd (and extreme) to go from an uber-masculine book like The Hunter to ultra-feminine trash like Something Borrowed. But hey, that’s how I roll. The only thing the two books have in common is they’re the type of books I do not normally seek out. It makes sense that I wouldn't normally read a Parker novel, but I'm also far from being a girly-girl. Admittedly there are rare moments when I succumb to my more feminine urges and read a chicklit book of the moment.

Our local thrift shop Chainon has been a treasure trove of dirt cheap books for me and Olman. The problem is that the English fiction shelf is also riddled with mainstream chicklit fare such as Eat Pray Love, Sex and the City, Twilight, The Nanny Diaries, The Princess Diaries, etc etc. So when I "happened" to read the blurb for Something Borrowed, I thought why not? The maid of honor ends up having an affair with the bride’s fiancé, and the blurbs made it sound like the situation could be portrayed with some measure of maturity and complexity. The the new movie starring Kate Hudson sounds pretty bad, but I thought maybe the book would surprise me with some interesting insights. At worst, it’ll be a throw away book, right?

Boy, was I dead wrong. I can be so naïve sometimes!

A quarter way through, I was already regretting getting this far, as the novel was turning out to be just another stupid, hackneyed romance. And the writing was absolutely horrid (no surprise there). But like the Twilight books, I just couldn’t stop. Like a terrible yet gripping soap opera, I had to find out what happens next! Still, there were so many things wrong with this book, I don’t know where to begin. But since a Reading Group Guide was conveniently provided at the end of the book to provoke thoughtful discussion, let’s just use what we’ve got.

Reading Group Guide

1. What do you think was the real impetus behind Rachel’s decision to sleep with Dex after her birthday party? Was it about her desire to break out of her good girl persona? Was it about a long-standing resentment toward Darcy? Or was it both?

Maybe it was simply that Dex was hot and he was there? And Rachel was turning thirty, probably hadn’t had sex in months and was super horny?

The question is misguided because this Rachel chick lacks some serious self-awareness, which translates as she doesn’t know WTF she’s doing. From how it was described, Rachel acted (and responded) on impulse, something which she doesn’t normally do. It was far from a decisive action. Deep down she knew what a pathetic loser she was by letting her best friend take her man and this was the only chance she had to get inside Dex’s pants.

2. How do you view Dex? How would you describe Dex and Rachel’s relationship? What drew them together? Did you root for them to be together? Do you think they have true love?

Dex is the stereotypical Mr Dreamboat whose beauty and desirability is constantly mentioned throughout the book. You know this is the stuff of fantasy when Mr Dreamboat is secretly in love with a 30 year old woman with average looks and intelligence who actually hates herself (with reason). Coupled with the fact that he is named Dex is enough to draw guffaws. The “relationship” between Dex and Rachel yields the same reaction. At one point when they are deep enough into their affair, Rachel summons enough balls to try to end it, but then she gets an email from Dex with the subject line “You”. It basically starts like this:

You are an amazing person, and I don’t know where the feelings that you give me came from. What I do know is that I am completely and utterly into you and I want time to freeze so I can be with you the time and not have to think of anything else at all. I like literally everything about you, including the way your face looks when my cock is in your mouth…

Ok, I confess the last 8 words were actually my own, otherwise the guffaws will take over. But seriously. If a guy does write something like “I like literally everything about you including the way your face looks”, chances are likely he will also be thinking about his dick in your mouth.

Re: true love. Well, let’s take a look at Rachel’s take on “true love” at the end of the novel when she finally gets Dex and makes dinner for him for the very first time (as she doesn’t cook):

Only then do I acknowledge that what I am feeling might actually be true happiness. Even joy. Over the past several days… it has crossed my mind that the key to happiness should not be found in a man. That an independent, strong woman should feel fulfilled and whole on her own. Those things might be true. And without Dex in my life, I like to think I could have somehow found contentment. But the truth is, I feel freer with Dex than I ever did when I was single. I feel more myself with him than without. Maybe true love does that.

Wow, do grown women really eat up this shite? If I get this right, Rachel believes that true love is not about two completely independent people sharing a life together, but two people who are missing something in their sad single lives and only find true happiness in each other. True love means that Dex completes Rachel. And Rachel completes Dex. My, the perfect recipe for a codependant relationship, if I ever saw one. (It is interesting to compare Rachel's take on happiness to Cassandra Mortmain's take on happiness - whose do you think is more genuine? But it's not fair to compare since I do not put Emily Giffin in the same league as Dodi Smith). But hey, this book is marketed as a contemporary urban fairy tale and this is precisely what it’s delivering. What did you expect, an update of Jane Eyre?

3. Is anything about Rachel and Darcy’s friendship genuine? Do you believe it has changed over time?

No sane rational woman with any measure of self-respect would remain best friends with a self-serving narcissist like Darcy for so many years. I've known people in these sorts of friendships/relationships and you eventually have to break up with them after a year or two at most because you realize that they are unrealistically demanding and possessive. In other words, they SUCK.

The book does an ok job portraying why someone with major self-esteem issues like Rachel would be friends with someone like Darcy, but again, I was looking for a story that was more about how a decent person would betray her best friend, who happens to also be a decent person, and the ramifications of that kind of fallout; not a story about a goody-goody girl who ends up betraying her friend because she stupidly let her friend have her man and this friend turned out to be a backstabbing bitch in the end so that the goody-goody girl gets a kind of get out of jail free card. That neat ending stuff does not interest me.

4. Do you think Dex and Darcy would have married if it weren’t for Dex’s affair with Rachel? Why did he stay with Darcy for so long?

Although Darcy is shallow, self-centred and high maintenance, she is also smoking hot, fun and charismatic. That is enough for most guys, even someone like Dex. Oh, but Dex is supposedly secretly in love with Rachel, who is average-looking, boring and passive. So maybe that is why Dex has stayed with Darcy for so long, so he could have Rachel close by. Right.

I think Dex ended up with Rachel in the end because he probably realized that he could be with a girl like Rachel and still get with babes like Darcy, because Rachel will take it. Whereas if Dex married Darcy, and he cheats on her, Darcy is the kind of girl who would cut off his dick in a heartbeat.

5. How did Rachel’s flawed self-image contribute to the dilemma that she faces? What do you see as her greatest weakness?

Rachel’s greatest weakness is her total lameness and passivity. It is a total drag to read a book narrated in first person by someone like Rachel. The fact that Rachel lacks self-esteem and insight causes her to let her boss treat her like his personal slave, be loyal to someone like Darcy, and let Darcy have the love of her life. Rachel’s issues causes her life to suck. But what really sucks is having to listen to Rachel whine and fret about her problems for most of the novel.

6. Was Rachel’s moral dilemma made easier because of Darcy’s personality? Would she have acted on her attraction to Dex if Darcy were a different kind of person and friend? If Rachel had fallen in love with Julian, would she have pursued the same course of action? How does Rachel rationalize her affair with Dex?

The novel seems to support the idea that it’s okay to cheat on your best friend or lover if she turns out to be a selfish, backstabbing bitch. There was never really a moral dilemma that Rachel had to face, except her feelings of guilt, which she rationalizes like any insecure person in that situation who has never truly lived. Also, Rachel would not have fallen in love with Julian because he listens to The Barenaked Ladies (gag). She and Dex are obviously meant for each other because they share a deep love of Bruce Springsteen (Darcy, on the other hand, is a big Bon Jovi fan).

7. What risks does Rachel take when she pursues her relationship with Dex? What is the biggest moment of risk for her? How does Rachel grow and change in the novel?

WTF? Rachel never took any risk. She just finally made an ultimatum to Dex and then took off to London. The novel made it clear that the only risk was Rachel's friendship with Darcy, who conveniently turned out to be a villain at the end. No big loss there. Except that Rachel still missed her fun, bitchy friend! What a loser. As for Rachel growing and changing, let’s look at the blurb which mislead this reader so:

As the wedding date draws near, events spiral out of control, and Rachel knows she must make a choice between her heart and conscience. In so doing, she discovers that the lines between right and wrong can be blurry, endings aren't always neat, and sometimes you have to risk everything to be true to yourself.

So did Rachel actually remain true to herself? What does that mean really, in the author's thinking? If it means Rachel achieving some self-realization and growing as a person, then hell no. Darcy got her comeuppance but never learned her lesson because Rachel never confronted Darcy about what a terrible friend she was for all those years. Rachel got her man in the end, which is what the main goal of the book was really about. Yet we don’t have a sense whether Rachel had gained any self-esteem or respect. Oh wait, Rachel did learn how to make dinner for her new boyfriend in the end. That’s something, right?

So you could say that Rachel did become true to herself: she became liberated from her unhealthy friendship with Darcy and found contentment in her new role as Dex’s subservient girlfriend!

8. Disloyalty is a major theme in this novel. How differently do men and women view cheating on a friend? Why is Darcy so indignant when she catches Dex and Rachel together when she has been having an affair of her own?

Because Darcy can't imagine why a super hot guy like Dex would cheat on her with an unattractive, gutless loser like Rachel.

9. Under what circumstances is it justified to choose love over friendship? How important is it for women to stick together? Have you ever been in a friendship like Darcy and Rachel’s?

The novel justifies love over friendship if your best friend turns out to be a backstabbing bitch. Of course it is important for women to develop strong friendships but I do not believe that is the book's message. I have never been stupid enough to be in a friendship like Darcy and Rachel's.

10. This novel is told from Rachel’s perspective. How do you think Darcy would tell the same story? How do you think she would describe Rachel? How do you think she views their friendship?

See answer to 5. I don’t mind reading books about a heroine with low self-esteem written in the first person, as long as she is interesting and has something to say. But this Rachel character is none of these things. She is really a pathetic loser with no backbone, substance or appeal. I would have an even harder time reading a whole novel told from the POV of Darcy in the sequel Something Blue (which focuses on Darcy's struggles to cope with the fallout of her engagement to Dex and her friendship with Rachel). Dear God. Not even if you paid me.

---
Something Borrowed was truly one of the worst books I have read. EVER. Something will have to be borrowed because I won't get back the time I wasted reading this piece of crap. It actually made me kind of hate womankind and feel some anger and embarrassment for my gender because this was a bestseller and from what reviews I could find, it seemed every woman loved this book and would recommend it to their friends. At least the Twilight books were kind of fun, goofy and action-packed but this was just a horrible reading experience. After finishing Something Borrowed, I considered immediately reading another Parker book just to wash the taste of tacky chicklit from my mouth. Then I realized there was an even better antidote….

Book 14 - The Hunter

2011-05-09T18:45:00.011-04:00

By Richard Stark

I’m not quite sure what finally lead me to Richard Stark’s The Hunter. Perhaps it was reading two books back to back about neglected young girls that I felt it was time for something more masculine. Something lean, mean and bad ass. I had heard plenty about the Parker novels from Olman as well as the other 50-bookers. I certainly have also been enabling Olman’s adulation of the series by getting him three new reissues by the University of Chicago Press for his birthday since 2008. So it’s high time I checked out what all the fuss was about.

Another thing - although I have a soft spot for vengeance movies, I’ve never really sought out the equivalent in fiction. I don’t know if there’s a vengeance niche, but I recently came upon the eye-for-an-eye style of vengeance with surprised glee in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stieg Larsson modeled Lisbeth Salander after the Parker character. Unusually intelligent and just autistic enough to be borderline anti-social, Larsson’s (anti-)heroine also operates within her own moral universe.

Since I’m sure all who bother to read this review are well acquainted with the storyline, I won’t go into summarizing The Hunter. I did appreciate the lean structure, taut pacing and sparse prose. Oh, which reminds me, another reason why I wanted to read this was that it simply made a bloody quick read. No wonder Olman bangs ‘em out so quickly – he just focuses on the slim genre books which dispense with all that descriptive, prosaic bullshit that is normally associated with literature. As Olman notes in his review, “there is no fluff here, no moralizing, no glee, no pornographic satisfaction in the revenge. It's like a short, direct punch to the gut that nobody else in the crowd notices until the guy crumples to his knees, gasping for breath”. Yeah, that pretty much nails it right there.

Indeed, the story starts off with Parker telling someone who kindly offers him a lift to go to hell (if this was written today, he would’ve told him to fuck right off). We soon learn that Parker himself went to hell and back, having been screwed over in a heist, thrown in the slammer, then escaping and living as a vagrant for a month. Damn right he is right bloody pissed and he won’t rest until he exacts his revenge, going about it patiently, cunningly and methodically. It was quite enjoyable reading how Parker steals and cons his way until he has the means to go after his enemies. When he finds out that his target Mal is a middle manager within a criminal organization, he single-handedly takes them on. Although he belongs to the criminal underworld himself, he still operates in his own terms.

I guess that’s the appeal of Parker - he’s a true loner - in a world that either wants to mess with him or have a piece of him. So he’s always a man on the move. The Parker character has endured and gained in popularity since The Hunter first appeared in 1962. Sorry if I keep comparing Parker to Lisbeth Salander (I’m not a Parker fan so I don’t have any pretensions of being a purist), but I think this is also why LS appeals to today’s readers (esp. those little old ladies who secretly like to kick a bit of ass) because she’s an updated (and more accessible) version of Parker.

Olman mentioned Parker as “an individual, a free radical, attached to no institution, organization, woman or job”. Parker is not autistic like Salander, but he obviously has sociopathic tendencies. His moral universe is even simpler than Lisbeth Salander’s: mess with me, and you die. Though he may come across as one, Parker is not exactly a misogynist as his black and white worldview applies to both men and women alike. It just so happens that being the wife of Parker allows a certain level of intimacy with this cold, calculating individual, if you catch my drift. This is how Parker ends up getting betrayed – his wife is his weakest link. Mal forces Lynn at gunpoint to choose: either kill her husband or be killed. When Parker finally confronts Lynn, being unaware of the back story, he never asks her what really happened. In Parker’s world, the fact of the matter is that his own wife shot him in the back, and even if he didn’t end up killing her for that, his wife was as good as dead to him. When Lynn ends up committing suicide, this brings little or no emotion in Parker. He just ends up watching too much bad TV and drinking a little too much that night. He just knows that he won’t make the same mistake again. Yup, this guy is bad ass.

A brutal yet entertaining read. And a refreshing change from the stuff I normally read.

Book 13 – The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

2011-05-03T18:26:00.007-04:00

By Alan Bradley

As a grownup, I do fancy stories about precocious young misfits. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is supposedly like a cross between Harriet The Spy and I Capture the Castle, the latter due it being about a motherless family living in an old Victorian mansion in post-WW2 England and told from the perspective of the youngest daughter, Flavia. But the comparisons pretty much stop there. Flavia de Luce is not your average 11 year old girl. Not only does she possess a brilliant aptitude for chemistry, but a morbid passion for poisons as well. It just so happens that when her “strange talents” had begun to manifest themselves, Flavia inherited the alchemist’s laboratory that once belonged to her dead Uncle Tar, conveniently tucked away in the attic of the De Luce mansion.

Soon enough, a dead body is found in the cucumber garden of Buckshaw Estate, and her stamp-collecting father, Colonel de Luce, is the prime suspect. The murder sparks Flavia’s curiosity as well as her obsessive-compulsive tendencies and she goes on a sleuthing spree that takes her all over the English county on her beloved bicycle and eventually leads her to father’s old boarding school. Flavia soon becomes embroiled in a philatelic conspiracy that involved a plot to assassinate Queen Victoria and a mysterious orange-tinted Penny Black stamp.

Alan Bradley is an Ontarian who has made several visits, but has never lived in, England though he does an admirable job capturing English rural life in the 1950’s. It’s interesting to note that this is Bradley’s first published novel at age 70, having taught scriptwriting at the University of Saskatoon for many years and having published non-fiction work. He is also a huge Sherlock Holmes afficionado. The events of TSatBofP unfold quite effectively and charmingly, and the pacing is quite efficient with some good page-turning moments.

However, even though the author has created a fairly original detective-heroine, there were still a few moments throughout the novel where it felt like an old dude attempting to write from the perspective of an pre-adolescent girl, albeit a highly intelligent one. Often it seemed that Bradley completely forgot that his character was only eleven years old. I suppose it’s possible that Flavia could recognize the “acrid protein smell” of insulin by sniffing a vial and deduce that the murder victim was diabetic, or single-handedly solve a cold murder case from 20 years ago (actually more than cold since the death was originally ruled as suicide), thus gaining the respect and admiration from Inspector Hewitt. But too often Flavia talks and thinks, well, like an old fart. Like any young girl who had lost her mother at a tender age, Flavia wants more than anything in the world is to be loved by her father. So when she manages to fanangle her way to see her father in the county jail, she is overjoyed when her father explains his story to her, even though she realizes that her poor deluded daddy thinks he’s talking to his dead wife, Harriet, instead of his youngest daughter.

Here we are, Father and I, shut up in a plain little room, and for the first time in my life having something that might pass for a conversation. We were talking to one another almost like adults; almost like one human being to another; almost like father and daughter…
… And so we sat, Father and I, primly, like two old women at a parish tea. It was not a perfect way to live one’s life, but it would have to do.

Then there is another time where Inspector Hewitt visits Flavia in her laboratory, and she makes him a cup of tea.

“Beautiful bit of bone china,” he said at last, raising the cup above his head to read the maker’s name on the bottom.
“Quite early Spode,’ I said. “Albert Einstein and George Bernard Shaw drank tea from the very cup when they visited Great-Uncle Tarquin—not both at the same time, of course.”

What kind of 11 year old girl talks like this, even if she is preternaturally intelligent and she grew up in an upper class English household in the 1950s? Would she really know or care what kind of china she’s drinking out of? And if she does, does she have to sound like a prim old lady?

Because of this, I found Flavia to be charming to a fault. Bradley has created a charismatic fictional character, but it sometimes feels like he’s trying too hard, with the result of having a heroine who’s much too good to be true. It’s the equivalent of having to watch those annoyingly precocious kids in Hollywood movies dispensing grownup wisdom to their elders. Flavia can’t quite come to life for me because too often I hear Bradley’s voice speaking through her. I understand that by making Flavia more child than adolescent allows her to insert herself in situations where an older person would be more conspicuous, but Flavia has far too much knowledge and experience than is possible for a gifted 11 year old. It would have been much more believable if Flavia was a few years older, say 13 or 14.

Another problem for me was how the other de Luce members were so superifically drawn. Flavia’s father is the same distant, taciturn figure as Daddy Mortmain in I Capture the Castle, and her older sisters Ophelia (“Feely”) and Daphne (“Daffy”) are merely self-absorbed, silly girls with a streak of nastiness. It’s unfortunate I was somewhat disappointed by the first book since Flavia de Luce has the potential to become a delightful mystery series (and the cover design strikes the perfect balance of whimsical restraint). Hopefully Flavia’s voice and the supporting characters will become more colourful and nuanced as the series develops. My brother also gave me the next book (The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag) for my birthday, so I’ll see if things improve. Otherwise, I’m going to be moving on! There are far more interesting books to explore!

Book 12 – I Capture The Castle

2011-04-24T11:50:00.004-04:00

By Dodie Smith

I had only recently heard about this underrated coming-of-age classic by the same writer who wrote The 101 Dalmatians. So captured was I by the irresistible premise that I requested it last Christmas (thanks M&A). In pre-WWII England, a family moves into a castle nestled in the countryside, the patriarch hoping that the isolated setting will inspire him to write a successor to his brilliant debut novel, Jacob Wrestling. Twelve years later, the castle is crumbling and the family has no means of income because the only breadwinner has had writer’s block the entire time. The family has become so desperately poor that they only have stale bread and tea for dinner.

Seventeen year old Cassandra starts a journal as an attempt to “capture” her thoughts and chronicle the daily lives of her rather eccentric family, which consists of her father James Mortmain, stepmother Topaz, older sister Rose, younger brother Thomas and pseudo stepbrother Stephen, the son of a deceased servant who has become a member of the household. Cassandra also serves as the narrator, as we see everything from her perspective as she writes her journal entries. There are many lovely passages, such as Cassandra’s memories of her family discovering the castle for the first time and descriptions of favourite nooks where she likes to write, such as sitting at the sink by the kitchen window or climbing up one of the castle towers to seek more privacy. But there are also detailed accounts about their near destitute lifestyle.

Our room is spacious and remarkably empty. With the exception of the four-poster, which is in very bad condition, all the good furniture has gradually been sold and replaced by minimum requirements bought in junk-shops. Thus we have a wardrobe without a door and a bamboo dressing-table which I take to be a rare piece. I keep my bedside candlestick on a battered tin trunk that cost one shilling; Rose has hers on a chest of drawers painted to imitate marble, but looking more like bacon.

One rainy night, something unexpected happens which will forever change the lives of the Mortmain family. Two American brothers show up at their doorstep, their car stuck in mud. It turns out they are the sons of the landlord who had recently passed away. The older brother Simon is to inherit the land, which includes Scoatney Hall and the castle grounds, and he soon becomes smitten with Rose. Their initial meeting is awkward and plays very much like a Jane Austen novel, with the Mortmains modeled after the Bennet family and the Brothers Cotton that of Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy as the potential suitors. The analogy is not lost on Rose and our narrator:

“Did you think anything when Miss Marcy said Scoatney Hall was being re-opened? I thought of the beginning of Pride and Prejudice – where Mrs. Bennet says ‘Netherfield Park is let at last.’ And then Mr. Bennet goes over to call on the rich new owner.”
“Mr. Bennet didn’t owe him any rent,” I said.
“Father wouldn’t go anyway. How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!”
I said I’d rather be in a Charlotte Brontë.
“Which would be nicest – Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?”
This is the kind of discussion I like very much but I wanted to get on with my journal so I just said: “Fifty per cent each way would be perfect,” and started to write determinedly.

Indeed, the novel makes a number of literary references to Austen as well as other classics of that ilk. And it doesn’t take long for all the Mortmain women to use various stratagems to put Rose and Simon together, with Rose convincing herself that she is in love with him, even though she is not.

Rose’s ethics are questionable at first glance, but after seeing the extent of their poverty vis-à-vis Cassandra, you also understand Rose’s motive for wanting to marry a rich American. She feels a certain level responsibility as the eldest to look after the family since the father appears to have relinquished his role as head of the household. Topaz, a former artists’ muse and moonlit nudist, is torn between being a free spirit and a devoted wife but the Mortmain children find her to be a kind and generous stepmother. Interestingly, the main female characters are well drawn out, but the male characters are rather two dimensional. Mr Mortmain is the distant, self-absorbed genius/father/husband, Stephen is the simple but wise country boy with a heart of gold and the brothers Cotton are primarily there to serve as love interests for Cassandra and Rose.

I Capture the Castle was originally published in 1949, but the story is set in 1930’s England. Although it plays like a contemporary update of a Jane Austen novel, it’s more like a very early precursor to a Judy Blume coming of age story. The narrator Cassandra is seventeen years old, but I don’t know if this novel was aimed at young adults when it came out in the 1940’s because some of the themes are quite mature and adult, with a very non-romantic (hence realistic) take on relationships and love. There are suspicions of adultery, a Graduate-like scenario where a shrewd, older woman from London seduces the younger, but not completely naïve Stephen, and then there is Rose eventually bailing on her fiancé to run away with his brother.

Only one out of at least three potential romantic matches work out, and the running theme seems to be that the few who do find love are the lucky ones, while most everyone else ends up loveless, with unrequited love or stuck with ones whom they don’t love.

Despite the sadness and disappointment of our narrator not finding love, this is still a lovely, lovely book. There is a blurb on the cover from JK Rowling stating that this novel has the most charismatic narrator, and she is right about that. Even though Cassandra does not find love, she does learn to love herself and find contentment in solitude.

Once I got used to the idea of being by myself for so long I positively liked it. I always enjoy the different feeling there is in a house when one is alone in it, and the thought of that feeling stretching ahead for two whole days somehow intensified it wonderfully. The castle seemed to be mine in a way it never had been before; the day seemed specially to belong to me; I even had a feeling that I owned myself more than I usually do. I became very conscious of all my movements – if I raised my arm I looked at it wonderingly, thinking, “That is mine!” And I took pleasure in moving, both in the physical effort and in the touch of the air – it was most queer how the air did seem to touch me, even when it was absolutely still. All day long I had a sense of great ease and spaciousness. And my happiness had a strange, remembered quality as though I had lived before. Oh, how can I recapture – that utterly right, homecoming sense of recognition? It seems to me now that the whole day was like an avenue leading to a home I had loved once but forgotten, the memory of which was coming back so dimly, so gradually, as I wandered along, that only when my home at last lay before me did I cry: “Now I know why I have been happy!”

There was a film adaptation from 2003, which was a bit meh. You could say that the movie captured the setting quite well, but the cast didn’t quite capture the spirit of Dodie Smith’s book.

Book 11 – H.M.S. Surprise

2011-04-16T16:07:00.009-04:00

By Patrick O’Brian

It’s been almost two years since I returned to the most popular 50-Booker series since, if you recall, I was somewhat disappointed in Post Captain. I was spurred back on the horse (or more appropriately, ship) when Olman asked if I had a copy of the third Aubrey-Maturin book since a few Ramblekrafters were at the developmental stage for their upcoming Beat To Quarters game. And there was no way I was going to let Olman read the next installment before me! Good thing I distracted him with a sweet Hornblower hardback ;-)

HMS Surprise proved to be a significant improvement over Post Captain in terms of structure, plot and engagability, though it shared similarities in lots of dramatic exposition and character development for the bulk of the novel, leaving the exciting battle between the East India Company’s China Fleet and a French squadron (with the HMS Surprise caught in between!) towards the end.

At the beginning of the story, Stephen’s cover in Spain gets blown due to an inept person in a high political position. As a result, Stephen is caught and tortured by the French and then subsequently rescued by Jack. What's more, the Polychrest crew lose out on their prize money ( the capture of the Spanish gold ships at the end of Post Captain) due to some legal loophole so Jack can’t pay off his debts and marry Sophia. But thanks to Stephen’s fortuitous connection to Sir Joseph, some reward money is acquired for Jack so he is rescued from the sponging house and given a new post on the HMS Surprise, the very ship in which Jack spent his youth as a midshipman .

The newly crewed HMS Surprise makes sail for the East Indies with the task of delivering a rather delicate and seasick-prone British envoy to the Sultan of Kampong. Along the way, the HMS Surprise languishes in the doldroms, suffers from mild scurvy, consumes a fair amount of rats, picks up some citrus fruit in Brazil (as well as a three-toed sloth – “the most affectionate, discriminating sloth you can imagine!” according to Stephen), encounters a devastating storm around the Cape of Good Hope, and stops in India to refit. Of course, while in Calcutta, Stephen schemes to meet his old flame Diana Villiers, now mistress to the uber-wealthy merchant Canning.

It doesn’t end there. Lots of juicy things happen which I’d rather not summarize, so you’ll just have to read this installment for yourself and see. It’s interesting to note that the film adaptation Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World incorporates a few minor events from this book, such as J.A.'s initials carved in the top masthead of the HMS Surprise and Stephen’s DIY operation as he removes a bullet lodged in his own rib.

And the final battle at the end was worth it too. Perhaps I’m getting better at comprehending O’Brian’s writing, or O’Brian’s writing has improved in clarity, but this was the first time I could clearly follow the bl0w-by-blow account of the HMS Surprise’s run-in with the formidable French squadron, not to mention Captain Aubrey’s risky collaboration with the merchant ships of the East India Company’s China Fleet to deceive the aged yet cunning Admiral Linois. And it was pretty damn exciting and well worth waiting for! It took an effort not to describe any of it -- so much better to just read it for yourself, but I will say that it was another capital game of naval subterfuge.

As usual, there are many humourous and lighthearted gems scattered throughout the book.

He came forward, showing his open hands, and said again, ‘Captain Melbury?’
‘Who are you, sir?’ asked Jack.
‘Joan Maragall, sir,’ he whispered in the clipped English of the Minorcans, very like that of Gibraltar. ‘I come from Esteban Domanova. He says, Sophia, Mapes, Guarnerius.’
Melbury Lodge was the house they had shared; Stephen’s full name was Maturin y Domanova; no one else on earth knew that Jack had once nearly bought a Guarnerius. He un-cocked his pistol and thrust it back.

‘Bonden,’ cried Stephen, ‘take pen and ink, and write – ‘
‘Write, sir?’ cried Bonden.
‘Yes. Sit square to your paper, and write: Landsdowne Crescent – Barret Bonden, are you brought by the lee?’
‘Why, yes, sir; that I am – fair broached-to. Though I can read pretty quick, if in broad print; I can make out a watch-bill.’
‘Never mind. I shall show you the way of it when we are at sea, however: it is no great matter – look at the fools who write all day long – but it is useful, by land…’

Jack stepped on to the western rail and looked down into the water… ‘Come on, then,’ he said, diving in.
The sea was warmer than the air, but there was refreshment in the rush of bubbles along his skin, the water tearing through his hair, the clean salt taste in his mouth. Looking up he saw the silvery undersurface, the Surprise’s hull hanging down through it and the clean copper near her water-line reflecting an extraordinary violet into the sea: then a white explosion as Stephen shattered the mirror, plunging bottom foremost from the gangway, twenty feet above. His impetus bore him down and down, and Jack noticed that he was holding his nose: he was holding it still when he came to the surface, but then relinquished it to strike out in his usual way – short, cataleptic jerks, with his eyes tightly shut and his mouth clenched in savage determination.

Babbington looked wretchedly from one to the other, licked his lips and said, ‘I ate your rat, sir. I am very sorry, and I ask your pardon.’
‘Did you so?’ said Stephen mildly. ‘Well, I hope you enjoyed it. Listen, Jack, will you look at my list, now?’
‘He only ate it when it was dead,’ said Jack.
‘It would have been a strangely hasty, agitated meal, had he ate it before,’ said Stephen…

Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, ‘Jack, you have debauched my sloth.’

[Stephen] ‘… You must write that letter, Jack; for you are to consider, Sophie is the beauty of the world; whereas although you are tolerably well-looking in your honest tarpaulin way, you are rather old and likely to grow older; too fat, and likely to grow even fatter – nay, obese.’ Jack looked at his belly and shook his head. ‘Horribly knocked about, earless, scarred: brother, you are no Adonis. Do not be wounded,’ he said, laying his hand on Aubrey’s knee, ‘when I say you are no Adonis.’

[Diana] ‘But it was kind of him to send his compliments, his best compliments, to a fallen woman.’
[Stephen] ‘What stuff you talk, Villiers,’ he said.
[Diana] ‘I have fallen pretty low for an odious little reptile like that Perkins to take such liberties. Christ, Maturin, this is a vile life. I never go out without the danger of an affront: and I am alone, cooped up in this foul place all the time. There are only half a dozen women who receive me willingly; and four of them are demireps and the others charitable fools – such company I keep! And the other women I meet, particularly those I knew in India before – oh, how they know how to place their darts!...

[Jack] ‘… A most capital dinner, upon my word. The duck was the best I ever tasted.’
[Stephen] ‘I was sorry to see you help yourself to him a forth time: duck is a melancholy meat. In any case the rich sauce in which it bathed was not at all the thing for a subject of your corpulence.'

Book 10 – The City, Not Long After

2011-04-07T20:57:00.007-04:00

By Pat Murphy

This pristine 1989 hardcover has been with me since I first bought it as a teenager. I went through a fantasy/sci-fi period back then, and Pat Murphy was one of my favourite writers. Although labeled a fantasy writer, her stories tend to be grounded in contemporary reality (kind of like Charles de Lint without the faeries and goblins).

Murphy also did double-duty as staff writer at the San Francisco Exploratorium, so her urban fantasies usually involved science and art. At the time, I had already read her Nebula award-winning novella “Rachel In Love”, about a human girl trapped in a lab chimpanzee’s body and The Falling Woman, about an archaeologist’s encounter with an ancient Mayan goddess.

When The City, Not Long After came out, I remember the premise really intrigued me, as it would be my very first introduction to PA fiction. The idea of a desolate post-apocalyptic San Francisco inhabited by a motley group of artists and weirdos appealed to my youthful romantic sensibilities. Now more than 20 years later, I thought it'd be a good time for a revisit.

At first, my older cynical self was suspicious: how could a disparate group of survivors just take over an abandoned city and live peacefully among themselves? But soon enough, I was able to immerse myself in the author’s world, which was starting to make some sense, at least in the realm of magic realism. I had forgotten also that the novel was aimed at young adults. There was some sex, violence and swearing, but it was all quite PG. The themes and social commentary were also fairly simplistic (make art, not war!), but not too annoyingly so, as Murphy is a pretty good writer.

The plot is straightforward: fifteen years before, a plague devastated human civilisation, and small pockets of survivors live in scattered groups. In San Francisco, artists and misfits have taken over, since they're the kind of people who don't mind ghosts of the past haunting the empty streets. However, the peaceful existence of this rag-tag community does not last. A rural army led by a fascistic dictator nicknamed Fourstar threatens to invade the city and impose a new world order. Here the symbolism of a rural dystopia invading an urban utopia is pretty cut and dry. The protagonist is a young nameless woman whose mother was taken by Fourstar’s soldiers, who then escapes to SF to warn the inhabitants about Fourstar’s militaristic plans. While there, she explores the streets and abandoned buildings (described in vivid detail by the author who obviously knows the city well), learns how to become friends with eccentric oddballs, names herself Jax and finds love in the form of paint-can wielding Danny-boy.

[Note some SPOILERS coming up]

The climax is pretty cool. The artists may be wacky, but they aren’t stupid, so they band together and wage a war of resistance against the invading army, made up of uneducated farmers who have been trained in traditional warfare, yet are ill-prepared for non-violent guerilla tactics. Guess it’s rather fitting that this takes place in San Francisco. Radical warfare, man!

Every artist has a speciality which comes to play. Sculptors and gardeners set up creative barricades of religious statues, wrought iron and poison oak. An audio engineer rigs gigantic speakers to blast mind-numbing noise while the soldiers try to sleep. A mechanically gifted autistic called The Machine flies around in his gyrocopter dropping smoke bombs to confuse the army.

----- Spoilers end here -----

As PA fiction goes, the novel has some interesting ideas, though these ideas don’t get explored to their full potential. The ending was fairly ambiguous, never really answering whether non-violent resistance can be achieved in a post-apocalyptic milieu, and the finale also resolved itself too easily and idealistically for my cynical taste. But as PA fiction with a magic realist spin for young adults, it had some good drama and action, making for a fairly enjoyable read. I can see why I got into this in my youth.

It's interesting to note the recent crop of young adult post-apocalyptic (YA PA) fiction, such as The Hunger Games and Enclave (Razorland) series, which seem pumped full of action and violence. Pat Murphy's novel may probably seem quite tame and subtlely nuanced in comparison, so I'd have to check out these trendy new PA YA books to find out!

Book 9 – Barney’s Version

2011-03-13T14:26:00.004-04:00

By Mordecai Richler

Boy, am I glad I read this book before watching the movie, which was released last year, as the book was such a rich read. Also glad that I’d already read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz because the titular character makes a few appearances in Barney’s Version, as well as Jerry Dingleman a.k.a. The Boy Wonder, night club owner and loan shark. Barney and Duddy inhabit the same fictional universe, yet are grounded in a very real Montreal of yesteryear that Richler knows intimately.

But it wouldn’t be a Richler book without its share of bitterness as well. Barney is a difficult, irascible individual who drinks a lot of 18 year old Macallan, and you betcha that there ain't more than a little Richler in the aging Barney Panofsky, who looks back at his life with much regret, speaks his mind and then some as he writes his memoirs.

Perhaps I should not have poked around on the internet before buckling down to post my thoughts about Richler's last novel (Barney’s Version was published in 1997 and Richler died in 2001), but this Yale review and this blog do a fairly damn good job and they also pretty much summed up how I felt.

What was also awesome was that I acquired this nice trade paperback copy of Barney’s Version from the giveaway bookshelf at work, as I would probably have read this much later, and probably after I had already watched the film, which is supposed to be ok. But I can imagine that the movie would gloss over many fine details. Film adaptations are fine when a novel has a good story yet sub-par writing. Part of the pleasure of reading is enjoying good writing, and Richler’s voice really comes through as Barney Panofsky. There are lots of criticism and poking fun of Quebec and Canadian culture, as well as self-indulgent artists and bourgeois Jews. Some samples:

We are dealing with a two-headed beast: our provincial premier, a.k.a. The Weasel, and his minions in Quebec City, and Dollard Redux, the fulminating leader of the Bloc Quebécous in Ottawa. Dollard Redux has lit a fire here. Soon the only English-speaking people left in Montreal will be the old, the infirm, and the poor. All that’s flourishing now are FOR SALE / À VENDRE signs, sprouting up every day like out-of-season daffodils on front lawns, and there are stores with TO LET / À LOUER signs everywhere on once fashionable streets. In the watering-hole I favour, on Crescent Street, there is a wake at least once a month for the latest regular who has had his fill of tribalism and is moving to Toronto or Vancouver. Or, God help them, Saskatoon, “a good place to bring up children.”

---

Self-satisfied Toronto is not a city I’ve ever warmed up to. It’s this country’s counting house. But plunging into the rush-hour din on Avenue Road that warm evening in early May, a spring in my step, I was in a forgiving happy-to-be-alive mood…. Such was my rapture that I guess I smiled too broadly at the young mother coming toward us, wheeling a toddler in a stroller, because in response she frowned and quickened her pace…

---

As for me, following my retreat from Paris and the artistic wankers I had wasted my time with there, I resolved to make a fresh start in life. What was it Clara had once said? “When you go home, it will be to make money, which is inevitable, given your character, and you’ll marry a nice Jewish girl, somebody who shops…” Well, I’ll satisfy her ghost, I thought. From now on, it was going to be the bourgeois life for Barney Panofsky. Country club. Cartoon scissored out of The New Yorker pasted up on my bathroom walls. Time magazine subscription. American Express card. Synagogue membership. Attaché case with combination lock. Et cetera et cetera.

Another pleasure derived as a Montrealer living in the same hood where Richler grew up is reading about Richler waxing remembrances of his old stomping grounds.

In those days Saul was no longer living at home, in the house I had acquired in Westmount after Michael was born, but was rooted in a commune, largely composed of middle-class Jewish kids, in a cold-water flat on St. Urbain Street, right in my old neighbourhood. I wander down there occasionally in unavailing quest of familiar faces and old landmarks. But, like me, the boys I grew up with moved on long ago: those who prospered to Westmount, or Hampstead, and the ones who are still struggling to the nondescript suburbs of Côte St-Luc, Snowdon, or Ville St-Laurent. These streets now teem with Italian, Greek, or Portuguese kids, their parents as out of breath as ours once were, juggling overdue household bills. Signs of the times. The shoeshine parlour where I used to take my father’s fedoras to be blocked has been displaced by a unisex hair stylist. The Regent Theatre, where I could once catch a double feature for thirty-five cents, and enjoy three hours of uninterrupted necking with the notorious Goldie Hirschorn, is boarded up. The lending library where I took out books (Forever Amber; Farewell, My Lovely; King’s Row; The Razor Edge) for three cents a day no longer exists. Mr. Katz’s Supreme Kosher Meat Mart has yielded to a video-rental outlet: ADULT MOVIES OUR SPECIALTY. My old neighbourhood now also boasts a New Age bookstore, a vegetarian restaurant, a shop that deals in holistic medicines, and Buddhist temple of sorts, all of which cater to the needs of Saul and his bunch and others like them.

What can I tell ya, except if you’re planning to watch the movie, do try to read the book first!

Book 8 - Murder, Incest & Cat Food Sandwiches: Collected Confessions from Notproud.com

2011-02-25T14:24:00.005-05:00

By Scott Huot and GW Brazier

A book giveaway shelf was setup at our workplace, and I actually found a couple of books that were worth taking: a like-new copy of Catch-22, as well as a trade paperback of Barney’s Version, which I’m currently reading. Another good find was Murder, Incest and Cat Food Sandwiches, a selection of the “best” confessions from Notproud.com.

Launched in 2000, the website was organized according to the seven deadly sins. You could either make an anonymous confession according to sin category or simply “eavesdrop” on the thousands upon thousands of confessions, which range from harmless and hilarious to downright pathetic and debased. As the title promises, there is a murder (accidental), more than a couple of incestuous admissions, and an act of sweet revenge where a victim got tired of finding his lunch stolen from the shared fridge at work. So guess what kind of sandwich he made one day in order to get even?

Sadly, notproud.com is no longer operational, and the book is out of print. It was such a great idea. I remember being addicted to the website for the longest time, trying to keep it down to a few confessions a day (reading, not making, mind you). Yes, my addiction was based on a bit of that good ol’ schadenfraude and the reassurance in knowing there were many people out there who were way more pathetic than yours truly.

For instance, I remember a girl who confessed to being so lazy, she’d throw her dishes in the trash instead of cleaning them. Damn, and I thought I was lazy! The site comprised such an incredible range of human emotion, yet the book represented only a fraction of these confessions. The slim, minimally-designed book features only one confession per page with a total of over 200 pithy confessions makes for an all too quick read. The pamphlet-like feel of the book also makes it seem like a disposable item of amusement. It is truly a sin that the website is not maintained as an active archive of human frailty and fallibility.

Book 7 – Open & Clothed: For the Passionate Clothes Lover

2011-02-20T14:00:00.006-05:00

By Andrea Siegel

In high school, I admired and envied my best friend’s eclectic wardrobe and the ease with which she wore her clothes. Her mom was an interior designer who always had Vogue and other fashion rags around the house. My friend and her mom would visit sample sales and church rummage sales and find the most amazing clothes and jewelry. Sometimes they’d invite me along and that was how I first learned to develop a sartorial eye, though it took many years for me to find my own style.

It didn't come easy for me. There were much in the way of trial and error and embarrassing mistakes. But it was due to the fact that I had made an attempt to explore. It wasn't to emulate what I saw in magazines, or to find a social niche in going goth or punk, but to simply explore what appealed to me. And if it were not for my friend and her cool mom, my wardrobe would probably be pretty safe and boring. Eventually, I figured out what my own tastes were and what was right for me rather than what was dictated by fashion trends. And though I actually don’t like to shop very much, I enjoy clothes without being burdened with too much clothing anxiety (though as a woman it’s not always possible to be completely free of it).

Andrea Siegel always loved clothes. But she always felt that something wasn’t clicking. When she wrote about her history with clothes, I totally understood where she was coming from:

When I leafed through a fashion magazine, viewed mannequins in a shop window, or glanced at a beautifully dressed woman on the street, I could see how each outfit was assembled. However, I didn’t understand that I brought complicating factors to the equation, that my unique face, body, proportions, preferences, and history mattered. Because of my confusion about clothing, I spent attention, time, and money inefficiently.

I investigated the relationship between wardrobe and the big picture—how cultural constructs about sexuality, frivolity, family, death, fashion, and appropriateness influence clothing choice. By then using all my senses, not just sight, to discover what is beautiful to me, by broadening my appreciation to include all that has been considered beautiful, I discovered my place in the dance, the distinctive qualities that make me feel beautiful.

Many of the things that Open and Clothed teaches is already common sense for the savvy shopper, ie. how fashion is cyclical, how the industry is exploitative, where to find bargains as it’s not all about buying retail. But it still has a lot of relevant things to say with plenty of pointed remarks and well-known adages such as:

When a woman who loves shoes finds a shoe that is beautiful to her as well as comfortable, something akin to rapture occurs.

[sigh] How true!

Even though this book was published in 1999, some things ring true more than ever:

The “individuality” and “statement” clothing, advertised by the industry, has a mass-produced extreme look. Not only does it lack uniqueness—thousands of pieces are made in each size—it also often looks remarkably unflattering. The clothes are meant to attract negative attention rather than enhancing the attractiveness of the wearer.

Maybe it’s because I’m older now and less tolerant of the latest fashion trends, but for the past several years or so, either clothes have gotten cheaper and uglier or I’m just having trouble finding clothes that are flattering or of decent quality. Anyway. It was still a lovely treat reading this book. And Siegel covers a lot of ground. It isn’t just frivolity that she's concerned about:

We who care passionately about clothes owe it ourselves to be educated about the numbers involved, to know who gets exploited and why. The fashion industry’s primary purpose is making money. We often forget this.

I also liked reading about what initially inspired the author to write this book. When she was in college in the early 80s, she always noticed how her Italian professor, “a kindly elegant gentleman of perhaps fifty”, was always beautifully dressed. His style was never ostentatious, just simple and pleasant to the eye, the material of good quality and cut, so his clothes always fit him perfectly. One day she boldly asked him what was up with that, and he gave a very serious and thoughtful response. In a nutshell, having lived through WW2, he saw terrible and unmentionable things. Though he likes to dress well for himself, he also feels a responsibility to look nice for other people.

I want to do a small kindness. It is important to bring harmony and beauty back to this troubled world. I do not feel I am the most beautiful person on earth, but rather that it was important to me to give in this way, to know that I am making a contribution.

She felt her old professor was on to something. Much like the famous Emerson quote: “The sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.” But how does one achieve this sartorial karma? The book does explore at length the mantra: “Clothes must fit you, they must fit the occasion, and they must fit together.” Indeed, Siegel has little tolerance for those who dress sloppily or inappropriately because they either don’t care about appearances or think they are making a statement. She argues these stances have "everything to do with reacting against good taste and seeking to offend rather than finding what’s true for oneself." She goes on to say:

It’s important to dress in a way that respects our fundamental needs and desires, but denying our participation in a social context is dishonest. When we don’t own up to this social influence, it will operate on us rather than our having control of it.

This sounds very similar to the philosophy of Stacy and Clinton of the hit TLC show What Not To Wear (which I love to watch, btw). But unlike WNTW, which encourages you to spend thousands of dollars on a new wardrobe, Open & Clothed teaches the anxious shopper to exercise caution and restraint:

Often people who love to shop are, paradoxically, the ones who don’t feel satisfied with the results. Do you take unmet emotional needs shopping? Next time they cry out to go shopping, meet a need instead. Or if you feel an overpowering urge to shop, stop for a moment, take a breath, and figure out where you can be alone and not shop — the woods? An art museum? … Walk around or meditate.

She goes on to say: “You’re going to make mistakes. The idea of unerring judgment is a prison. As you practice, your mistakes will diminish… The only danger of making mistakes is spending way beyond what you can afford on something you cannot or will not return. A little soul-searching is in order to prevent reoccurrence.”

One thing I didn’t like about this book was the format. The 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.6 inch dimensions made it too big and cumbersome to carry it around or read it during a relaxing bath. That size is fine if there are nice illustrations but there were only black & white stock photos for each chapter. This was also partly a self-help book so there were some creative exercises (to make you a better dresser or to improve your wardrobe), but it doesn’t necessarily mean it had to look like an exercise book. For a book about cultivating clothing taste, it was definitely lacking in the well-designed book department!

Another quibble was the lack of structure. Though the chapters were organized in a logical way, Siegel makes use of so many references, sometimes they're grouped together in a hodgepodge manner, instead of being integrated into a coherent thesis. The book is filled with quotes, interviews, lists, questionnaires, advice, exercises, footnotes… Granted, there are many excellent quotes as Siegel researches archives and interviews many friends, colleagues and well-known pros in the fashion industry. If only she integrated all these in a more book-like structure, this would’ve made a high level tome. In the end though, it makes for a great browsing book for anyone who has a passing or passionate interest in clothes. And that's not necessarily a terrible thing either.

Book 6 – Ripley Under Ground

2011-02-10T19:03:00.011-05:00

Patricia Highsmith

I didn’t mean to read another Highsmith book so soon (see Strangers On a Train) , but I didn’t want to bring the thickish Barney’s Version with me on the train ride to Toronto. I wanted something more economically written and anyway, I was just dying to read the next Ripley installment.

The sequel takes place six years after The Talented Mr Ripley left off. Tom is living comfortably in the French countryside with his modest art collection and recently married to a free-spirited and somewhat amoral French heiress. In the past few years, Tom has somehow gotten himself involved in an art forgery conspiracy, as well as a fencing operation as a side gig. Oh Tom, ever resourceful, ever so shady! Naturally, Tom’s comfortable existence becomes threatened when an American businessman suspects that one of his Derwatt paintings is a fake.

Ripley Under Ground was definitely inferior to The Talented Mr. Ripley. One of the reasons I like the first book so much is because Tom Ripley is a sympathetic character. You could understand why he killed his friend Dickie Greenleaf. There are also certain moments throughout the novel where Ripley contemplates what he has done. With Ripley Under Ground, those moments are fewer and far between, and they don’t ring as true. Perhaps it has to do with the 15 year lag between the first two Ripley books.

The theme of authenticity versus fakery or forgery is explored early on but seems to sputter out after the halfway point. Bernard Tufts is a talented artist in his own right but is psychologically suffering from the years of forging the paintings of his dead friend Derwatt and living a lie. Tom, of course, sees things differently and regards Bernard as a kind of Van Meegeren, and loved the fake Derwatts as much as the real ones. He can’t understand why people like Murchison get so worked up about a fake painting.

He brought up Van Meegeren, with whose career Murchison was acquainted. Van Meegeren’s forgeries of Vermeer had finally achieved some value of their own. Van Meegeren may have stated it first in self-defence, in bravado, but aesthetically there was no doubt that Van Meegeren’s inventions of ‘new’ Vermeers had given pleasure to the people who had bought them.

‘I cannot understand your total disconnection with the truth of things,’ Murchison said. ‘An artist’s style is his truth, his honesty. Has another man the right to copy it, in the same way that a man copies another man’s signature? And for the same purpose, to draw on his reputation, his bank account?...’

The irony is naturally lost on Tom. Though he admires Murchison's intelligence and ends up even liking him (in the wine cellar while his housekeeper is washing dishes upstairs!), he murders Murchison anyway because he couldn’t be convinced to see things Tom’s way, which is skewed but nevertheless has an internal logic of its own.

Several times I had to suspend my disbelief at how Tom could get away with murder, though it is quite funny to read how his neighbours do not notice “his pink and almost bleeding palms, sore from the ropes around Murchison” as they make pleasant chitchat. When he confesses to his co-conspirators about murdering Murchison (Highsmith did have a knack for finding great names), they were dumbfounded but never questioned Tom’s sanity or what they were getting themselves into. There is never really a moment of danger that involves those who are close to Tom (close as in proximity if not in intimacy), his wife or housekeeper, who may suspect him of being a murderer. Tom dispatched Murchison before he could become a real threat. Subsequently his influence on Bernard to commit suicide in Vienna seemed almost effortless (Highsmith did not quite pull off the contrast between the two mentally unstable individuals – one who is emotional-less, the other emotionally volatile). And the London inspector seemed intelligent but conveniently ineffective.

I do enjoy how Highsmith writes about contemporary life in European cities, like how Tom appreciates London graffiti as he spots a defaced poster of the hit 1968 movie Romeo and Juliet and then goes shopping for his wife, buying her a pair of “flared hipsters of black wool, waist twenty-six.” These minute details add a nice flair of sophistication to the setting.

Sadly, due to my disappointment in the sequel, I may postpone reading the third book, Ripley’s Game, which is in Olman’s collection. There are plenty of other on-deck books to read!

Book 5 – Sense and Sensibility

2011-01-26T18:59:00.002-05:00

By Jane Austen

Other than Pride & Prejudice, this is the only other Austen novel I’ve ever read. At the time she wrote P & P, Jane Austen wondered whether it was perhaps a little 'too light and bright and sparkling'. Though it also had its share of wit and satire, I found Sense & Sensibility to be sharper and more critical than P&P.

Of S & S, Wikipedia mentions that “the novel displays Austen's subtle irony at its best, with many outstanding comic passages about the Middletons, the Palmers, Mrs Jennings, and Lucy Steele.” But I found the best comical passages involved Marianne, the most passionate of the Dashwood sisters (the eldest sister Elinor is the rational one). Even though Austen supposedly modeled the character of Marianne after herself while basing the tactful and self-disciplined Elinor on her older sister Cassandra, she had no bones about making fun of Marianne’s self-indulgent and overblown romanticism:

When breakfast was over she walked out by herself, and wandered about the village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning.

The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spend whole hours at the piano-forté alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been used to read together.

Such violence of affliction indeed could not be supported for ever; it sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy; but these employments, to which she daily recurred, her solitary walks and silent meditations, still produced occasional effusions of sorrow as lively as ever.

The novel is full of such wonderfully written passages, and neglectful family members who are too busy being obsessed with status cannot escape Austen’s satirical gaze either. John and Fanny Dashwood -- who break a promise to financially look after John’s stepmother Mrs Dashwood and her daughters -- are prime targets:

The dinner was a grand one, the servants were numerous, and everything bespoke the Mistress's inclination for shew, and the Master's ability to support it. In spite of the improvements and additions which were making to the Norland estate, and in spite of its owner having once been within some thousand pounds of being obliged to sell out at a loss, nothing gave any symptom of that indigence which he had tried to infer from it; no poverty of any kind, except a conversation, appeared-- but there, the deficiency was considerable. John Dashwood had not much to say for himself that was worth hearing and his wife had still less. But there was no peculiar disgrace in this, for it was very much the case with the chief of their visitors, who almost all laboured under one or other of these disqualifications for being agreeable--want of essence, either natural or improved want of elegance--want of spirit or want of temper.

Even though the most unlikable characters, such as John and Fanny Dashwood, Mrs Ferras and Lucy Steele never get their comeuppance, Marianne learns a valuable lesson and Elinor gains a valuable friend in Mrs Jennings, who at first comes across as intrusive and embarrassing, but turns out to be as generous and principled as the well-respected Colonel Brandon. Though S&S does not have the fairy-tale ending of P&P, Marianne and Elinor find some measure of happiness in the end. Not as satisfying perhaps, but in other ways, makes it more emotionally resonant. And I mean this in the most rational way ;-)

Book 4 – Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day

2011-01-08T11:40:00.008-05:00

By Winifred Watson

I discovered this smart looking book at my local thrift shop. It’s one of those Euro-style trade paperbacks with a thick cover flap and nicely printed paper. Upon closer examination, the inner jacket explains that Persephone Books is a UK company that reprints neglected classics by 20th century (mostly women) writers.

“They appeal to the discerning reader who prefers books that are neither too literary nor too commercial, and are guaranteed to be readable, thought-provoking and impossible to forget.”

Well, that had me sold! And $3 for a book that used to go for Can $18, it was a steal.

Miss Pettigrew proved to be a very readable as well as a charmingly delightful story about a down-on-her-luck middle-aged spinster nanny in pre-WWII London who strikes an unlikely friendship with a glamourous nightclub singer. Adventure and capers ensue. Over the course of 24 hours, Miss Pettigrew discovers things about herself that she never thought possible. I would not say that the story is especially thought-provoking as it’s basically a contemporary update of Cinderella, but it does have a lot of heart and comedic appeal.

Here is a lovely review that does MPLFaD more justice than I.

Moreover, I enjoyed the book so much, I even rented the 2008 film adaptation a couple of days later, which stars Frances McDormand as the titular character and Amy Adams as Delysia LaFosse. But I thought Shirley Henderson as Edythe Dubarry really stole the show. A very enjoyable movie too.

Book 3 – Strangers On a Train

2011-01-04T12:33:00.002-05:00

By Patricia Highsmith

Another Highsmith book down the hatch. Another enjoyable read by a writer who's quickly becoming a favourite of mine (thanks to Olman).

If you’ve seen or heard of the Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation (which I haven’t seen yet), then you’ll get an idea of the plot. Anyway, Partricia Highsmith is well-known for her psychological thrillers and her favourite thingof all is to write through the eyes of a murderer. This novel is titled Strangers On a Train - it doesn’t take a Sherlock to figure out what kind of story this is going to be!

What’s more, SOaT is funny, in a very black, wicked kind of way. The humour almost always involve Charles Bruno, the disturbed twenty-five year old mama’s boy who convinces budding architect Guy Haines to murder his father. When Guy first meets Charles (or rather Bruno, as he’s mostly referred as) on a train, there’s a huge protruding pimple on Bruno’s forehead. It’s a great image, since as their journey progresses, Guy grows more and more uncomfortable as Bruno gets a little too excited over the idea of murdering his father, and he can’t help but fixate on the glistening pimple as Bruno’s face gets shiny with sweat. Delightful!

And later on when Bruno stalks Guy’s estranged wife, his cutting thoughts made me LOL:

She was cute in a plump college-girl sort of way, but definitely second-rate, Bruno judged. The red socks with the red sandals infuriated him. How could Guy have married such a thing!

No wonder Olman enjoys Highsmith so!

How poor Guy Haines becomes gradually tortured by remorse was also done well to a fault - his guilt was always boiling under the surface, not spoiled by cheap gestures, like hand-wringing, though there were some nightmares and overwrought touches. But there were also little details, like Guy afflicted with “a slight case of diarrhoea”. Ah, only Highsmith can write about pimples and diarrhoea with such elegance and humour. Guy’s repressed guilt and Bruno’s mental deterioration reminded me a lot of what Raskolnikov underwent in Crime and Punishment. A peak in Wikipedia revealed that Dostoevsky as a major influences in her work.

The protagonists in many of Highsmith's novels are either morally compromised by circumstance or actively flouting the law. Many of her antiheroes, often emotionally unstable young men, commit murder in fits of passion, or simply to extricate themselves from a bad situation. They are just as likely to escape justice as to receive it. The works of Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky played a significant part in her own novels.

Though this is only my third Highsmith novel, I’ll admit that SOaT is not my favourite novel of hers so far, mainly because some of the portrayals of mental deterioration and torture by guilt were overwrought at times. And she was wearing Dostoevsky on her sleeve a little too obviously. But my main concern was that I wasn’t entirely convinced of the quick-bonding relationship between Guy and Charles (the obsessive man-crush/homosexual undercurrent seems trite now, but it was the 1950’s after all á la Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven), though each made for fascinating character study. In her later novels I found the characters’ motivations more believable when they lose it and commit heinous crimes. But SOaT was her first novel, published in 1950 when she was 29. The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I greatly admire, was her fourth novel, published five years later, and there she was already refining her own voice and style.

Book 2 – Fragile Things

2011-01-03T18:23:00.006-05:00

By Neil Gaiman

Since this is a collection of short horror, sci-fi and dark fantasy stories and poems that have been previously published from various sources (magazines, anthologies, even a Tori Amos song lyric), the result was a very mixed bag o’ treats. I must say I was set up for major disappointment after a stunning start with the Nebula award-winning "A Study in Emerald" - a Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu Mythos pastiche which left me excited to dip into the next story (I didn’t bother much with the poems). However, nothing really came close to that first story.

The next interesting tale wasn’t until several stories later, almost halfway thru the book. “Other People” was only a few pages but it was effective and memorable. The next promising story “Keepsakes and Treasures”, had me flipping thru a few pages to remember what it was about. An interesting enough premise at first: a young man exacts revenge for his mother who was raped by several men while committed in an asylum, then comes under the radar of a mysterious but powerful Mr. Alice. But sadly, what promised to be an exciting adventure for this anti-hero fizzled out at the end with a lame pseudo-myth about the most beautiful male youth in the world.

Other tales I enjoyed were "Harlequin Valentine" (but like “Keepsakes and Treasures” had a 'hard' start but 'soft' ending), "Feeders and Eaters" (traditional yet effective horror story), "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" (playful twist on the hot alien females preying on teenaged boys idea), "Sunbird" about a group of gourmands called The Epicurean Club who get a real treat when they feast on a rare Egyptian bird (quite a good fantasy story but is it because Gaiman was emulating another writer? R. A. Lafferty supposedly) and the novella The Monarch of the Glen, which is supposedly a sequel to American Gods (which I remember one of the 50-bookers was meh about – was it Print is Dead?).

At the start of the story, I was surprised to see that Gaiman name-checks Angela Carter with a quote from her short “The Lady of the House of Love”. Yes, it makes sense, as I can see Carter’s influence on Gaiman. But again, none of the stories matched "A Study in Emerald" in story crafting. It seems the stories that have won recognition were ones which involved Gaiman emulating other writers. Hmm, I’m just saying….

Gaiman explains the title Fragile Things: "Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks." I have to say I agree, as his stories tend to be very vague and fleeting, like gossamer threads. I tend toward short stories that are tightly structured with a concrete idea. But this fragile take on writing made many of the stories feel rather half-baked.

Gaiman is a good writer who can spin a good yarn when he wants to, but there seems to be something missing. Carter was known for writing about dark fantastic things seething beneath ordinary reality and had a dreamy, feverish prose style, but she also had a way of concretizing her worlds which Gaiman seems to have more difficulty doing. Perhaps this is the problem. Amusing like a flight of fancy, if you're in the right mood, but nothing to really sink your teeth into. In any case, the overall result was meh, and I’m in no hurry to read any more Gaiman for now.

Book 1 – Maus: A Survivor's Tale

2011-01-02T17:49:00.013-05:00

By Art Spiegelman

A Christmas gift from my brother in which Volume 1 and 11 came in a nice box set. It was a perfect gift as I hadn’t yet read the Pulitzer winning graphic novel and had been meaning to for some time, but was in no hurry. I guess like most people who have never experienced war or its ramifications, it seems like the past few decades there has been an over-saturation of media pertaining to WWII, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Maus seemed like one of many. I think there was an interview where even Spiegelman was wondering at some point while creating Maus, whether we needed another Holocaust survivor story. After reading Maus, the answer was a resounding yes. And yes for the obvious reasons, one being an important personal document about surviving the horror of war.

I only started reading Maus right away because its comic format was more appealing than having to read another vague Neil Gaiman short story (see Fragile Things). At first, I was dubious about using different animal species to represent the various races: mice for the Jews, cats for the Germans, pigs for the Polish, etc. I was thinking, wouldn’t using people’s faces be more realistic and impactful? But after a while, I got used to it and realized later that this device did work in a surreal (and yes, symbolic) way that got under your skin. And then the very human life story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, was incredibly absorbing and moving.

One evening, after taking my parents out for New Year’s dinner at an upscale Chinese restaurant in Richmond, I had trouble sleeping, which always happens when I over-indulge on rich food the evening before. I didn’t want to wake Olman so I went to the living room to finish reading the last volume of Maus. It quickly dawned on me that reading Maus with a belly full of lobster in foie gras sauce felt like a weirdly uncomfortable contradiction. But as a consummate consumer, I had to finish it. Afterwards, my sleep was still fitful and images of Nazi felines and terrified mice haunted me for the rest of the night! I guess that served me right. Still, Spiegelman's expressive artwork lingers and his father's story is something that won't be easily forgotten.

Year End Wrap Up!

2011-01-01T14:06:00.002-05:00

34 books - a new record where I'm closer to 50 than ever before!

It helps having settled down into marriage, and not having kids (yet?). I have also discovered that our local and mostly francophone thrift shop has a pretty good English book section, and I have found a few more while perusing new and used book shops in Berkeley, San Francisco, Toronto, Amsterdam, Seattle and Vancouver. I now have a shitload of books on my on deck shelf to get through for 2011, like at least 20-25!

I don't know if I'll surpass 34 this year, but I already have three down for 2011.

Looking forward to reading more and more and seeing a few long dormant 50-bookers coming out of hibernation!

Book 34 – To Kill A Mockingbird

2010-12-12T13:53:00.006-05:00

By Harper Lee

I came across this article about how To Kill A Mockingbird is America’s most overrated book, which reminded me that I still haven’t read it. Luckily, last month while in Seattle, I picked up a cheap copy at a cute used bookshop at Pike Place Market.

Naturally, it is quite easy to hate on a widely popular Pulitzer Prize-winning classic that has been such an endearing influence and favourite amongst white Liberal elites and idealistic law students. Especially when you have Hollywood celebrity types like Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, who named their second child after the girl character Scout (which was actually a nickname), or Jake Gyllenhaal who named his two dogs Atticus Finch and Boo Radley.

The Allen Barra article makes some pretty valid points:

• Its sentiments and moral grandeur are as unimpeachable as the character of its hero, Atticus. He is an idealized version of Ms. Lee's father … Atticus bears an uncanny resemblance to another pillar of moral authority—the Thomas More depicted in Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons"… Atticus does not become a martyr for his cause like Sir Thomas, but he is the only saint in a courtroom full of the weak, the foolish and the wicked. And like Sir Thomas, Atticus gets all the best lines.

• In all great novels there is some quality of moral ambiguity, some potentially controversial element that keeps the book from being easily grasped or explained... There is no ambiguity in "To Kill a Mockingbird"; at the end of the book, we know exactly what we knew at the beginning: that Atticus Finch is a good man, that Tom Robinson was an innocent victim of racism, and that lynching is bad. As Thomas Mallon wrote in a 2006 story in The New Yorker, the book acts as "an ungainsayable endorser of the obvious."

• Harper Lee's contemporary and fellow Southerner Flannery O'Connor (and a far worthier subject for high-school reading lists) once made a killing observation about "To Kill a Mockingbird": "It's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they are reading a children's book."

I agree with all these points, but I still very much enjoyed TKAMB. Sure the novel had some of that “bloodless liberal humanism” which seems a bit dated now, but it was also extremely engaging human drama that hit all the right notes of childhood wish-fulfillment and romantic sentimentality. It's the equivalent of watching a really good Oscar-contending Hollywood film. If I were in my early teens I probably would have loved this book. So I don’t understand the full intent of this article. Yes, it may be overrated as a great work of classic American literature, but it is definitely a very American book. And wasn’t TKAMB always considered a children’s (or young adult) book? Isn’t this why it’s still required reading for junior high school English in America? And can you fault a book for inspiring generations of lawyers and civil rights activists, no matter how idealistic it is? Maybe we should just hate the unimaginative celebs who like to name their babies and pets after their fave TKAMB characters!

Book 33 – Pride & Prejudice

2010-12-06T13:17:00.005-05:00

By Jane Austen

I remember how one of my Arts One professors professed, in her introduction of Austen’s most famous novel, that she was an Austen fan who made a point of re-reading Pride & Prejudice every year or two. At the time, I was like, whatever, but now I can kind of see what she meant. Though I wouldn’t read P&P every two years, it was definitely a delight and a treat to revisit this after 17 years, especially having read the silly mashup Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and having finally watched the 2005 film adaptation, which wasn’t bad considering my skepticism of the casting. Also helped that I found this Dover Thrift paperback for a buck in the P section at old reliable Chainon.

This year will be Napoleonic era year as I have several Austen classics and Patrick O’Brian Aubrey-Mathurin installments to get through on my every growing on-deck shelf. Very excited about 2011!

Book 32 – Momofuku

2010-11-28T11:22:00.002-05:00

By David Chang and Peter Meehan

As the lifestyle editor of a well-known fashion magazine, Olman’s sister gets a fair share of freebies, especially cookbooks, and Momofuku was thoughtfully passed onto us. It has been on our dining table for a few months as I slowly leaf through it over tea or breakfast.

Thanks to the Globe and Mail’s fascination over all things New York, I’ve heard of Chang’s success, but not soon enough to have actually gone to Momofuku when we were last in NYC (we probably wouldn’t have been able to get in anyway!). I’m not exactly a foodie, but I do love Asian food, be it Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. My favourite appliance is our Zojirushi rice cooker; I can make sushi, a decent Thai curry, any type of fried rice and I have almost perfected the art of making a killer okonomyaki. So it’s not surprising that someone like Chang would do something amazing and inventive with Asian comfort food. And I love my noodles. I have instant ramen every week because it’s like a treat. But instead of having it plain, I like to dress it up with vegetables, chicken broth and a fried egg. And now Chang has provided a recipe for his famous pork ramen dish. Not all of the recipes are exactly easy and straightforward to make, but there are a few that are doable in a layman’s kitchen. I’d definitely have to enlist the help of Olman to roast that pork belly!

But Momofuku isn’t just a recipe book, it’s also part autobiography and part homage to his favourite foods, and lots of neat stuff about noodle-making. There's probably lots of media gossip about Chang being a difficult person, but in the book he comes across as genuinely humble and appreciative of his success, and he makes a point of paying credit where it’s due. My new year’s resolution is to either visit NYC in the spring and check out a David Chang establishment, or make one of his goddam recipes or die trying!

Book 31 - Cloud Atlas

2010-11-25T17:16:00.019-05:00

By David Mitchell

I knew nothing about author or book until earlier this year when a friend (actually a couple, so do I say “a couple friend” in terms of them as a single unit?) voluntarily lent me Cloud Atlas with a high recommendation.

Yet I couldn't get past the first 30 pages or so, wondering if the entire novel was going to be about some 19th century American notary stuck in the South Pacific. I took a peak on the internets and became suspicious this was going to be another one of those epic stories about the interconnectedness of humanity that transcends geography and time. It sat unread on my bedside table for months. At some point I admitted having difficulty to one-half of said couple friend, who then assured me to stick with it - it’ll get better. So I gave it another go. Thankfully, she was right.

But as soon as I was starting to get quite absorbed by “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing”, it abruptly ends in mid-sentence! WTF?! And then it launches into a series of letters from a dropout music student who shacks up with a reclusive composer he admires in pre-WW2 Belgium. This section had some moments of pure comic genius. When Frobisher attempts to impress the miserly composer by playing Chopin on the piano, I couldn’t help but LOL when Ayrs interrupts with a whiny, “Trying to slip my petticoats off my ankles, Frobisher?”

It didn’t take me long to realize that this David Mitchell guy can really write or figure out what he’s trying to accomplish by jumping around in time and dabbling in different voices, style and genre. The entire novel is a tour de force of virtuoso writing, which is part of Cloud Atlas’ appeal but ironically, also its shortcoming. As one NY Times critic notes: “It is not unheard of for a novelist of exceptional talent to write a deliberately difficult book.”

Like some of those recent overrated movies (the horrid Crash, Babel, etc.) that portray seemingly disconnected people from disparate places and races who are somehow linked by some meaningfully profound commonality, when it boils down to it, is a conceit whose ultimate purpose is to showcase complexity in the service of talent. Cloud Atlas is pretty much the literary version of this. I mean, all the characters, though they live centuries apart, share similar circumstances and, get this, a comet-shaped birthmark! And yet Mitchell almost gets away with it (yes, he is that talented!).

I must confess that I only quickly skimmed the middle sections “An Orison of Sonmi~451” (an interview with an upstart cloned human or 'fabricant' in dystopian Korea before her execution) and “Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After” (a post-apocalyptic yarn about a Hawaiian goat herder whose tribe comes across the inspirational recording of Sonmi’s testimony). Though it may be a feat of genre-bending creative writing, 'twas a bit difficult losin' myself in the narrative and I wasn't in the mood to make a mental effort. I kept recalling one of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction:

“Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop.”

Others may beg to differ and argue that the spec-fi/sci-fi sections are sheer poetry, so it’s likely I’m just a conservative (and lazy) reader at heart. Writers like AS Byatt absolutely adored every word in Cloud Atlas - perhaps Mitchell is more of a writer’s writer than a reader’s writer?

On the other hand, I very much enjoyed “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery” and “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish”. With Luisa Rey, Mitchell skillfully uses clichéd noir prose to tell a familiar tale of a plucky young journalist who uncovers corporate greed and conspiracy in Nixon-era California. With Timothy Cavendish, we have a hapless vanity publisher who’s like an evolved version of Ignatius Reilly, trapped in an old folk’s home presided over by a Nurse Ratchett-like figure.

Cloud Atlas proved to be quite a wonderful treat, but it wasn't exactly a cohesive work. Although the disparate stories are linked by a unifying theme, it felt like the author constructed the framework to also showoff what he can do. But when it works, the story and characters can really fly off the page. Without a doubt Mitchell is a brilliant and clever writer (like a friendlier Christopher Priest who doesn't try to mess with the reader's head and annihilate structure) and I look forward to reading his other books. But I would only recommend Cloud Atlas to those who like unusual novels or writerly writers ;-)

Book 30 – The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2010-10-20T20:43:00.009-04:00

By Muriel Barbery (translated from the French by Alison Anderson)

My 30th book! I don’t think I’ve ever read 30 books in a year before. My last record was 27 books in 2008.

One of the best films I saw this year was Le Hérisson. A little suspicious at first of the cutesy premise - unlikely friendship develops between precocious adolescent girl, middle-aged female concierge and retired Japanese businessman! – but the positive reviews convinced me to give it a try. With the sole exception of the generic music score, I loved the film. It's not often you see female curmudgeons onscreen, and a well-drawn one at that. When I discovered that Le Hérisson was based on a novel by Muriel Barbery, I did something rather unusual – I immediately ordered it online!

Unfortunately, I had a preconceived bias that I’d enjoy the book as much as the film adaptation, if not more. Although the novel allowed a deeper understanding of the two anti-heroines and a better platform for philosophical ruminations than what cinematic voiceovers could afford, there were some pretty serious flaws which prevented me from truly enjoying the book as a whole.

The titular character, Renée Michel, is the prickly 54-year-old concierge of a luxury apartment building in Paris. The uppity occupants of 7 rue de Grenelle hardly suspect their custodial drudge is leading a clandestine life (no, Madame Michel does not supplement her meager income by being a Lady of the Night). Off-duty, she is an autodidact who hides in her tiny library reading Tolstoy or watching videos of obscure art house films. Little does she know, Madame Michel has more in common with 12-year-old Paloma Josse, the youngest daughter of an upper class family living on the fifth floor, than she realizes. Gifted with high IQs and keen observation (with a soft spot for Japanese culture), both are painfully aware these qualities make them distinct (if not isolated) from society. Burdened by their brilliance and conceit, they have each made their own decision to opt out of life, albeit in different ways. Paloma silently vows to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday, while Renee is content to hide her intellectual pursuits behind the façade of a lowly concierge:

Let us just say that the idea of struggling to make my way in a world of privileged, affluent people exhausted me before I even tried: I was the child of nothing, I had not the slightest savoir-faire or sparkle. There was only one thing I wanted: to be left alone, without too many demands upon my person, so that for a few moments each day I might be allowed to assuage my hunger [for books].

Sounds annoyingly French, n’est-ce pas? Indeed, Renée says things like: “Phenomenology is beyond my reach and that I cannot bear” and “how distressing to stumble on a dominant social habitus, just when one was convinced of one’s own uniqueness in the matter!” As for Paloma, when she’s tired of listening to her older sister and her boyfriend riffing like banlieu homies, she puts in foam earplugs and immerses herself in classical Japanese haikus so that she won’t be able hear their “degenerate conversation”. Cue the eye-roll, s’il vous plait!

As one reviewer puts it, Barbery’s characters are a little too good to be true: “either utterly beguiling or completely infuriating, according to taste.” Indeed, though I found Renée and Paloma to be both, leaning more perhaps toward the latter! Another critic
hits it right on the nail by explaining how the author:

underpins her writing with an infectious, if occasionally unsubtle, didactic ardour. All three protagonists offer specific antidotes to the ills of modern life: Renée contradicts class prejudice and intellectual pretension… Paloma presents the alternative to a generation of rioting banlieue-dwellers and cosseted little rich kids. And Kakuro embodies a sort of rose-tinted eastern answer to western wretchedness. He, more than anything else, demonstrates how Barbery's charm and cleverness allow for certain cultural and narrative simplifications that might otherwise prove to be insufferable.

From a North American perspective, it’s quite an eye-opener to see how European society operates in such a class-conscious paradigm still, especially in France, and especially so in Paris. Barbery’s rather bold criticisms against the French upper class has mixed success. Although the original book was a huge hit in its native country when it first came out in 2006 (more than 1.2 million copies sold), it’s evident that French readers did not find Barbery’s barbs too offensive. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that, as one reviewer put it, the “Amélie-esque, Parisian setting and cast of eccentrics” probably appealed to many; and “the enormous numbers who bought into the pseudo-philosophical twittering of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist” probably bought into this as well.

Perhaps this is so, but I think a big part of Hedgehog’s appeal is that the book flatters the reader. You feel so superior when Barbery makes jabs at the stupidity of the intellectual elite via Paloma and Renée. You feel so smug and satisfied when Paloma’s self-absorbed family falls for her normal girl act, or when Paloma’s sister Colombe talks to Renée as if she’s a half-wit. Then when Renée comes across Colombe’s graduate thesis, she totally tears into its contents (albeit silently to herself):

… For the quest for meaning and beauty is hardly a sign that man has an elevated nature… no, it is a primed weapon in the service of a trivial and material goal. And when the weapon becomes its own subject, this is the simple consequence of the specific neuronal wiring that distinguishes us from other animals; by allowing us to survive, the efficiency of intelligence also offers us the possibility of complexity without foundation, thought without usefulness, and beauty without purpose…

Fair enough. But then Renée asks herself what she would do if she were in Columbe Josse’s shoes, leading a privileged existence as a young student at the École Normale. She answers:

I would dedicate myself to the progress of Humanity… The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good, or rather joining the ranks in a field of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of a sterile elite…

Right. [MAJOR SPOILER coming up...]

Later, Renée confesses to Kakuro: “You are the son of a diplomat, I am the daughter of impoverished peasants. It is inconceivable for me even to be having dinner here this evening.”

So although Renée is an intellectual force to be reckoned with, is it so inconceivable for her to consort with someone above her station? In a way, the book claims to possess the very things it criticizes others for lacking; it claims to have integrity and profundity, but its criticisms only run skin deep, and never transcends any real boundaries. Here we have an intellectually formidable character who is paralyzed by insecurities and social conditioning, making Renée Michel even more helpless than any Jane Austen heroine from two centuries before. To top it off, she dies at the end of the story just after she has found some measure of happiness, her death symbolic of the fact that you can’t fight the system if you don’t have the right background. One reviewer remarks how:

Barbery's entire tale is soaked in sentimentality. What is most irritating is that it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge itself as such - hiding under a mask of philosophical fuss.

Matters aren't helped much by the English translation “which too often mimics the structure of French sentences, and slips into translatorese”. Indeed, at times I found the translation to be quite clunky, inelegant, and painfully unfunny when it’s actually trying to be humourous. When Renée is invited to Kakuro’s swanky apartment for the first time, she has a rather surprising encounter with a Japanese toilet while alone in the bathroom:

Did I press the wrong button, misjudging the amount produced—such presumptuousness, such pride, Renée, two lotus flowers for such a ridiculous contribution—and consequently I am being punished by the earsplitting thunder of divine justice? Am I guilty of overindulging—of luxuriating—in the voluptuousness of the act in a place that inspires voluptuousness, when we should actually think of it as impure? … Have my lumpen manual laborer’s fingers, succumbing to the effect of some unconscious wrath, abused the subtle mechanism of the lotus button, thereby unleashing a cataclysm in the plumbing that threatens the entire fourth floor with seismic collapse?

Mon dieu. I have a feeling the original French sounds a little better (but it might not be entirely the fault of the translator either). In any case, the result has the opposite effect of being amusing – it comes across as overly contrived, wordy and unfortunately, very French. I’m sorry, but the French are not as capable of comedy and wit in the way that the British are, and this passage sadly illustrates this fact.

And yet despite all these glaring flaws, I still enjoyed the book - if you can believe it. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE reading about over-privileged rich folk making asses of themselves. When the author isn’t too busy admonishing the affluent and aggrandizing the marginalized, there are some moments of good satire and human observation. And some of the French ruminations on the nature of beauty and art, the meaning of life and death can be more thoughtful than pseudo. Though it yields to some sentimentality, the genuine appreciation of friendship and love quietly overcomes the awkwardness in its execution (and translation).

I must say, however, that Mona Achache’s Le Hérisson is the superior work, and would recommend the movie adaptation over the original novel, as the screenplay does away with all that pontificating and conceit and simply distills the best parts of Barbery’s book!

Book 29 – The Night Watch

2010-10-08T20:04:00.007-04:00

By Sarah Waters

Been hearing nothin' but praise for Sarah Waters, so was delighted to find used copies of her two most recent while perusing English bookshops in Amsterdam earlier this fall. It was not my intention to read two novels in succession about WWII London featuring conscientious objectors and ambulance drivers (see previous post about Christopher Priest’s The Separation). How often does that happen?

Comparatively speaking, The Night Watch has a somewhat more conventional structure than The Separation. Don’t know if some reviewers are on drugs or what, but one had likened it to a topsy-turvy time scheme or jigsaw puzzle, the equivalent of walking into a movie and watching the second half first. This is so not the case. The narrative moves in a linear fashion, though backwards in time.

In 1947, we are introduced to four main characters who seem somewhat stuck in limbo as they adjust to postwar life, yet they are all linked by their past experiences in wartime London. There's mysterious, solitary Kay - a courageous ambulance driver during the war - now trying to search for some purpose; sweet naïve Helen, who suspects her girlfriend Julia of being unfaithful; pretty and charismatic Vivian, stuck in a doomed relationship with a married ex-soldier; and Vivian’s brother Duncan, formerly in prison for some mysterious reason and now wrestling with demons from the past. The bulk of the novel is comprised of 1944, and then finally the shortest section, 1941. Thus we first see what kind of jaded, disappointed people these characters have become after the war, what happened to them during the war, and the sense of hope or foreboding they had before the war.

I would agree with this Guardian review that not much happens in the first chunk of the book: coworkers take a tea break and have “desultory, guarded conversations"; a lesbian couple go for a picnic and run into a friend; two chaps meet for a beer. Generally "ordinary life beautifully described - the ‘chill, bitter, marvellous’ taste of beer in a porcelain cup.”

The middle section, 1944, gets a little more interesting. As the story goes back in time, Waters gradually reveals secrets or establishes the connection one character has with another. However, I did not like the deliberate withholding of Duncan’s back-story for being in prison. This was set up as this big dark secret that does not get revealed until the very end of the novel, and it was disappointingly anti-climactic. I felt that knowing Duncan’s secret earlier in the novel would have helped relate to his character better, since that traumatic event really shaped how he behaved in the present. The whole time, I was wondering why he was so meek and insecure and these character traits can be rather tiring when you don’t know what drives this behaviour. I was glad to hear that another reviewer felt the same way:

“By comparison, Duncan's story doesn't quite work. He is beautifully done, and both his imprisonment and its consequences are utterly convincing. But the cause of the imprisonment, when we get to it, is so bizarre that the reader needs what the form won't allow - a considerable amount of back story. Some plainer offence would have done quite well.”

The one thing that shines in The Night Watch is the portrayal of rather ordinary people living in extraordinary circumstances. Indeed, TNW was praised by critics for its attention to detail and meticulous research as for Waters’ earlier Victorian era novels, but TNW goes further in its thoughtful character study combined with a believable evocation of period and place. As the Guardian review observes:

Her ability to bring the times to life is stunning, whether through smell - the "talcum powder, permanent waves, typewriter ink, cigarette smoke, BO" of the typing pool, the "unwashed feet, sour mops, bad food, bad breath" of prison - or through her minute enumerations of her characters' physical lives. There is much face-washing, teeth-cleaning and kettle-boiling carefully described, alongside the illicit sex and bodily peril; Waters brings such a clear-eyed honesty and fresh interest to the everyday that she could probably make drying paint a lively read.

I mostly agree -- up to a point. I’m just not sure if I actually liked TNW as a whole. Like The Separation, both novels were compelling and well-written, but also disappointing for different reasons. The Separation was like a brilliant exercise whose purpose seemed to confound the average reader, while The Night Watch was basically a thoughtful yet ultimately ho-hum soap opera with WWII London as backdrop. The characters in TNW were very ordinary indeed, and all too real, but not exactly likable or identifiable. What is the point of evoking the past in such rich detail if you can't really relate to the characters?

Sometimes it takes an eloquent and like-minded reviewer to make you realize why you didn’t quite like an otherwise generally well-praised book:

I don’t recall another account of wartime London that so faithfully captures the atmosphere of not only the extraordinary, but also – and especially – the quotidian.

… Yet it is the sheer banality of the characters and their lives that to me is both the main strength and the main weakness of this book... how much do we really care about ordinary, self-absorbed people? On the other hand, don’t we, the majority of us who just pass our days on jobs and errands and our small universe of friends and relationships deserve to have our stories told? And yet, how much interest can there ultimately be in insular stories that have no more to say than “I was happy, then I was sad,” or the reverse?

Before The Night Watch, Waters was known for her brilliant novels about young Victorian women reinventing their identities (lovingly known as her Victorian lesbian romps), which were full of melodrama and satisfying plot twists. With TNW, Waters took a different turn with a more downbeat and dispassionate approach with a focus on somber character study. I have a feeling I may enjoy her pre-TNW novels much more! But I still have her next book, The Little Stranger, on my on-deck shelf … so we'll have to see!

Book 28 – The Separation

2010-09-30T19:09:00.012-04:00

By Christopher Priest

WARNING: this will contain spoilers, but with this unusual book, it won't much matter...

The novel begins harmlessly enough with a framing device - in 1999 historian Stuart Gratton embarks on research about these mysterious twin brothers with the family name Sawyer. It makes a point of saying how the historian is adopted. At some point, Stuart encounters Angela Chipperton, the daughter of one of the Sawyer brothers, who gives him copies of her father’s old journal notes.

But the meat of the novel is the back story of the twins Jack and Joe Sawyer. One is a WWII RAF pilot and the other is a conscientious objector. It doesn’t matter who is who since both are confused and get confused throughout the novel. Ok, fair enough. Also some historical facts about WWII are true while others are completely fabricated. Fine, I’m down with this alternate history stuff.

Now skip towards the end of the novel. I realized that Stuart Gratton is the illegitimate son of Jack Sawyer when Joe was having one of his alternate reality hallucinations, while Angela Chipperton was the product of another parallel universe. And then I realized Priest allowed two characters to exist in the same world when they shouldn’t. And then I went WTF? What the hell did I just read?

Thankfully I found this helpful essay by Paul Kincaid that really analyzes the structure of the novel and the author’s motive for creating such a complex, rug-pulling narrative by summing up in a simple sentence: It is not the narrators who are unreliable, but the worlds that they narrate.

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed The Separation. Not only was it brilliantly written, but the nonlinear narrative, despite its elliptical surrealism, was quite absorbing and sucked me right in. But I must admit that Priest is a little too clever a writer for me. There is definitely a logic in how Priest deviates from narrative linearity and it’s a tribute to his skill that he can still maintain a connective suture with the reader, even if the reader doesn’t get everything. The amount of knowledge and detail in regards to WWII historical backdrop was a significant factor. But I lacked the patience and discipline to pay attention to the cues and clues that would have made the reading experience truly rewarding. And when I realized I should have been paying more attention, it was way too late, and I'm damn well not going to re-read the book to get my "oh yeah!".

For example, early in the novel there is a passage where after the Hamburg raid, Jack is driven from a convalescent hospital to a rehabilitation centre. About 300 pages later, Joe is riding in a Red Cross ambulance back to Manchester, but Priest recycles the earlier passage almost word for word. I would not have noticed this duplication at all if I had not found Kincaid’s essay! According to Kincaid, these parallel passages between Jack and Joe are one of a number of deliberate duplications where it may signal a time shift, or symbolize a developing crossover or overlap between the twin identities.

The essay further states “in a very important sense this is not a novel about separation but about unification.” The themes of separation and unification are constantly played out not just between the twin brothers, but between England and Germany, the motives of Winston Churchill and Rudolf Hess, reality and non-reality, etc etc.

A very interesting and absorbing read this was, but The Separation ultimately lacked any emotionally satisfying resolution that usually comes with a more traditionally structured novel. My sentiments lie with what is outlined in this nicely pithy review as well as Olman’s review. Olman also points out that The Prestige is a much more satisfying read for unsophisticated empiricists like him since it lacks the twists and tricks of this book, so I would not hesitate in checking that out too.

Book 27 – Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

2010-09-20T18:59:00.007-04:00

By Matt Ridley

Ok, so this book was published way back in 1999. I especially like how on the final page the author makes a point of how this book will be out of date before it even gets published… and here I am reading it more than a decade later. That’s ok cuz I know next to nothing about genetics, and what little I know I’d forgotten in Biology 11. So really now I’m just a dozen years out of date as opposed to +20!

Genome is categorized as “popular science” but this doesn’t quite do it justice. Not only does Ridley explain scientific phenomena clearly and concisely for the average layperson, he also writes beautifully and eloquently. Even when describing homogentisate dioxygenase, a “boring gene, doing a boring chemical job in boring parts of the body, causing a boring disease when broken” it’s all quite fascinating. Right off the bat, he lays out what he wants to accomplish in Genome :

A coherent glimpse of the whole: a whistle-stop tour of some of the more interesting sites in the genome and what they tell us about ourselves. For we, this lucky generation, will be the first to read the book that is the genome. Being able to read the genome will tell us more about our origins, our evolution, our nature and our minds than all the efforts of science to date. It will revolutionize anthropology, psychology, medicine, palaeontology and virtually every other science.

This is not a book about the Human Genome Project –about mapping and sequencing techniques-but a book about what that project has found. Some time in the year 2000, we shall probably have a rough first draft of the complete human genome. In just a few short years we will have moved from knowing almost nothing about our genes to knowing everything.

He was right. The HGP completed this goal in April 2003. As the HGP website states: Though the HGP is finished, analyses of the data will continue for many years. And since I have a better understanding of genetics, I can see how the HGP will be busy for a while yet!

The bibliography is also impressively well laid out, including websites the author visited in order to get up to date information as he was writing his book. Not only does Ridley want to share the knowledge with his readers but encourages them to do research on their own, if they feel inspired to further their understanding. I can attest that as a non-sciencey layman, I have learned a good many neat things about genetics and how they play a part in the human condition. Here are just a few things that particularly struck me:

a) Ridley repeatedly states “genes are not there to cause diseases”. Read up on it if you want to find out more!

b) Genes don’t just work together but they can also conflict with each other, like a kind of battlefield between parental genes and childhood genes, or between male genes and female genes. This was “a little-known story outside a small group of evolutionary biologists. Yet it has profoundly shaken the philosophical foundations of biology.”

A quick google search of “genes in conflict” resulted in a recent scientific discovery that was published earlier this year in March:

Traits that help one sex can harm the other, resulting in conflicting evolutionary pressures on males and females…This battle of the sexes is thought to extend to the genetic level, with individual genes favoring one sex over the other. Some of the strongest evidence for these sexually antagonistic genes comes from studies showing that fruit fly lines with high reproductive success in one sex typically have low reproductive success in the other. Thus, if males in a particular line have many offspring, the females do not and vice versa.

The genes underlying this sexual tug-of-war, however, have been difficult to find. Now, Paolo Innocenti and Edward Morrow reveal this conflict's genetic basis by linking the expression of sexually antagonistic genes in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to the reproductive success of one sex at the expense of the other.

Pretty neat stuff! This goes to show that Ridley was onto something, since the theory of sexual antagonism as an important evolutionary force was open to debate in the 1980s, but it was only in the first decade of the 21st century that the subject has gained substantial attention.

c) I have wondered why people have different blood types and I’ve read articles about studies where men and women actually prefer the body odour of members of the opposite sex who are most different from them genetically. Since blood groups tend to be linked to cultural groups, this has not only provided insight into the history of human migrations, but since the 1990s they “promise understanding of how and why our genes are all so different. They hold the key to human polymorphism.” Ridley further states “Variation is an inherent and integral part of the human – or indeed any – genome”!

d) The fact that what we know as “personality” is to a considerable degree based on mere brain chemistry, in how our system manages serotonin levels. Romantics and spiritualists may cry “our behavior isn’t based on mere biological determinism!” and may never bother to delve any deeper than that since it’s easier to be in denial. But Ridley explains this does not mean, as it is usually assumed to mean, that our behaviour is socially immutable. Quite the reverse: our brain chemistry is determined by the social signals to which we are exposed. “Biology determines behaviour yet is determined by society.” He further clarifies by saying:

There are a score of different ways in which this one chemical, serotonin, can be related to innate differences in personality. These are overlaid on the score of different ways that the mind’s serotonin system responds to outside influences such as social signals. Some people are more sensitive to some outside signals than others. This is the reality of genes and environments: a maze of complicated interactions between them, not a one-directional determinism. Social behaviour is not some external series of events that takes our minds and bodies by surprise. It is an intimate part of our make-up, and our genes are programmed not only to produce social behaviour, but to respond to it as well.

e) “ … so close are the similarities between genes that geneticists can now do, almost routinely, an experiment so incredible that it boggles the mind. They can knock out a gene in a fly by deliberately mutating it, replace it by genetic engineering with the equivalent gene from a human being and grow a normal fly. The technique is known as genetic rescue. …Indeed, they work so well that it is often impossible to tell which flies have been rescued with human genes and which with fly genes.

This is the culminating triumph of the digital hypothesis with which this book began. Genes are just chunks of software that can run on any system: they use the same code and do the same jobs. Even after 530 million years of separation, our computer can recognize a fly’s software and vice versa. Indeed, the computer analogy is quite a good one.”

f) I have often wondered by different species of animals can have such different life spans. A trio of evolutionists separately put together the most satisfying account of the aging process: “Each species, it seems, comes equipped with a program of planned obsolescence chosen to suit its expected life-span and the age at which it is likely to have finished breeding. Natural selection carefully weeds out all genes that might allow damage to the body before or during reproduction… But natural selection cannot weed out genes that damage the body in post-reproductive old age, because there is no reproduction of the successful in old age… A mouse is unlikely to make it past three years of age, so genes that damage four-year-old mouse bodies are under virtually no selection to die out. Fulmars are very likely to be around to breed at twenty, so genes that damage twenty-year-old fulmar bodies are still being ruthlessly weeded out.” Well, how about that!

g) There is a little protein called P53 which is also known as ‘Guardian of the Genome’, or even the ‘Guardian Angel Gene’ because it regulates the cell cycle and plays a role in apoptosis, genetic stability (apoptosis is the suicide of cells and is Greek for the fall of autumn leaves – pretty ,no?). In fact, apoptosis is the most important of the body’s weapons against cancer, the last line of defence. But what’s interesting is that for a while, many people including specialists, did not fully understand how therapeutic cancer treatment worked against cancer. It’s only been quite recently that chemotherapy works not in killing cancer cells, but because it induces apoptosis by alerting P53 and its colleagues.

h) Instinct versus learning. “The two have little in common, or so the behaviourist school of psychology would have had us all believe during much of the twentieth century. But why are some things learnt and others instinctive? Why is language an instinct, while dialect and vocabulary are learnt? “ Ridley’s book explains very eloquently!

i) How baffling and unique these protein-y genes known as prions are. Prions cause neurodegenerative disease, such as BSE (aka mad cow disease) in cattle and CJD in people. They are not only not like viruses, they replicate in a protein-like manner that nobody quite knows how exactly, thus undermining one of the messages Ridley has been evangelizing throughout his book, that the core of biology is digital.

Here, in the prion gene, we have respectable digital changes, substituting one word for another, yet causing changes that cannot be wholly predicted without other knowledge. The prion system is analogue, not digital. It is a change not of sequence but of shape and it depends on does, location and whether the wind is in the west. That is not to say that it lacks determination. If anything, CJD is even more precise than Huntington’s disease in the age at which it strikes.

More than a decade later after the publication of Genome, not much more is known about prion disease. Yet Ridley holds nothing but humble respect for mysteries that cannot yet be explained by science, he is still able eloquently explain how:

Prions have humbled us with our ignorance. We did not suspect that there was a form of self-replication that did not use DNA—did not indeed use digital information at all. We did not imagine that a disease of such profound mystery could emerge from such unlikely quarters and prove so deadly. We still do not quite see how changes in the folding of a peptide chain can cause such havoc, or how tiny changes in the composition of the chain can have such complicated implications. As two prion experts have written, ‘Personal and family tragedies, ethnological catastrophes and economic disasters can all be traced back to the mischievous misfolding of one small molecule.’

Another reason that compelled me to read this book is my self-education on the science of evolution. Many of the theories Charles Darwin had were proven by genetic discoveries in the 20th century, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that for the first time, evolution became genetic. In the 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins wrote what many evolutionary biologists at the time were just starting to grasp: that evolution by natural selection was not much about competition between species, not much about competition between groups, not even most about competition between individuals, but was about competition between genes using individuals and occasionally societies as their temporary vehicles.

When scientists started reading the code for life, they found that each gene is far more complicated than it needs to be: it is broken up into many different chunks with “long stretches of random nonsense and repetitive burst of wholly irrelevant sense, some of which contain real genes of a completely different (and sinister) kind.” In fact, 97 per cent of the human genome does not consist of true genes at all, but rather “a menagerie of strange entities called pseudogenes, retropseudogenes, satellites, minisatellites, micrsatellites, transposons and retrotransposons, all collectively known as ‘junk DNA’, or sometimes, probably more accurately, as ‘selfish DNA’. Some of these are genes of a special kind, but most are just chunks of DNA that are never transcribed into the language of protein.”

Nobody predicted that when we read the code for life we would find it so riddled with barely controlled examples of selfish exploitation. Yet we should have predicted it, because every other level of life is parasitized. There are worms in animals’ guts, bacteria in their blood, viruses in their cells. Why not retrotransposons in their genes?

So what does it all mean then? I suppose nothing and everything, depending on how you want to look at it. Once more, Ridley brings it all home:

The truth is nobody is in charge. It is the hardest thing for human beings to get used to, but the world is full of intricate, cleverly designed and interconnected systems that do not have control centres.

Book 26 – The Incredible Journey

2010-09-17T21:07:00.008-04:00

By Sheila Burnford

A good animal story is always welcome, and this 1960 Canadian classic is no exception. This little novel was quickly consumed in a day while I was sick at home with an early autumn viral attack. Not only that, it takes place as summer is transitioning to fall - perfecto! In case you’re not familiar with the story, it’s about three friends: an old pit bull terrier (Bodger), a Siamese cat (Tao) and a young Labrador retriever (Luath) who travel almost 300 miles of Ontario wilderness to find their long lost human family.

Their journey is indeed incredible in distance as well as hardship and adventure. But what I like best about the story is that the animals never “talk” to one another. They are just ordinary animals that communicate realistically with body language and vocalization. Burnford made the brilliant decision to simply describe the animals’ actions and emotions in her deceptively straightforward and naturalistic style.

Burnford is also very knowledgeable about the personality traits inherent in popular dog and cat breeds, yet she endows each animal character with unique characteristics and histories. And of course special attention is given to the royal lineage of the Siamese cat, my favourite! She also writes of the affection and camaraderie the animals have for one another with a genuine fondness that is never phony or saccharine. It’s obvious she’s a big dog and cat lover.

I never saw the 1963 Disney adaptation and I’m curious about it, but would never bother with the 1993 remake since they cop out with voicing the animal characters.

Book 25 – The Stepford Wives

2010-09-08T12:29:00.005-04:00

By Ira Levin

There’s already been two movies based on this novel by Ira Levin, who also wrote Rosemary’s Baby. Published in 1972, Levin captured the zeitgeist of his time with this dark, satirical thriller. It’s been nine years since Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique came out and sparked a new wave of feminism in America. In 1969, Friedan helped organize the nation-wide Women's Strike for Equality and then in 1971, she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus.

So it’s not surprising that Levin references Friedan a few times in his novel. The Stepford Wives is also a horror story about the extent of what certain men are willing to do to prevent women from taking away what they feel is theirs by right. Although there is no outright hatred toward women expressed by any of the male characters á la Stieg Larsson, the undercurrent of creepy misogyny is definitely felt throughout the book.

When Manhattan couple Walter and Joanna Eberhart and their two children move into the quiet suburban community of Stepford, Connecticut, it seems they have timewarped back at least a decade. Walter and the kids seem to be happily adjusting to their new home, but for Joanna, there’s something about the Stepford community that isn’t quite right.

Hmm, could it be that the only thriving club in town is the men-only Men’s Association? How archaic is that? And why are all the housewives in the neighbourhood obsessive-compulsive housecleaners? And despite scrubbing floors well into the night how do they manage to look so perfectly coiffed and maintain their knockout figures? But what really makes Joanna suspicious is that none of the Stepford hausfraus are the least bit interested in forming a women’s club with her!

The Stepford Wives, in this day and age, does come across as a little simplistic and naïve. But I think the novel was quite successful when it came out, mostly because it hit the right note at the right time. The novel’s title even entered into the modern American lexicon where a Stepford wife is used to describe:

1.) a servile, compliant, submissive, spineless wife who happily does her husband's bidding and serves his every whim dutifully.
2.) a wife who is cookie-cutter & bland in appearance and behavior, like an attractive robotic doll devoid of emotion or thought.

Hmm, with the cultural phenomena of Japanese men vacationing with and even marrying their $16,000 silicone sex dolls, perhaps Levin’s novel is not so archaic after all! In any case, it was an enjoyable story with a nice pace, tight structure, good characterization and a nicely ambiguous ending. Perfect for a movie adaptation - I may even check out the 1974 version some day (not so sure about the newer one).

P.S. this 1973 Fawcett paperback edition was acquired at a neighbour's garage sale for a whopping 25 cents.

Book 24 – The Girl Who Played With Fire

2010-09-04T15:31:00.007-04:00

By Stieg Larsson

Even though Chainon had $1 books out on the street for August Main Madness, I went inside for the non-discounted books anyway. At the end of the month, you never know if someone moving house will be offloading some books or what. My instincts proved right – I hit pay dirt – before my eyes lay a pristine paperback of The Girl Who Played With Fire as well as a hardbound of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest. Since I wasn’t interested in owning a hardcover, I just got the former. I would later regret this and become The Girl Who Kicked Herself For Not Getting The $4 Hardcover When She Coulda!

While still inside the thrift shop, two old ladies saw TGWPWF in my hand and had to comment on the fact that they have read all three Millenium books and how much they enjoyed them. The first was a francophone lady who worked there and she told me the books are “so much better than the movies” and the latter was an English visitor: “I love it when a book keeps me up all night!”

I mean, I liked The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo well enough, in a gripping and page-turning way, and enjoyed the parts where Lisbeth kicks some men-hatin' ass. But it was also at times cheesy and fantastical, and the themes too simplistically tied together. I guess I like my suspense to be more subtle and grounded in reality. That was part of the reason why I held off on getting the hardcover. Maybe I was in a better frame of mind, but TGWPWF proved to be ass-kickingly awesome! It helped that the 2nd book focuses on mysterious Lisbeth Salander instead of “Mikael fucking Blomkvist”, who thankfully beds only one new conquest this time instead of every frackin' female character that makes an appearance in the storyline.

Anyway, in the 2nd book, Larsson really fleshes out the character of Lisbeth as well as her entire back story. The novel starts off about a year later with Lisbeth vacationing in the Carribbean - alone of course. Larsson really takes his time describing Lisbeth’s almost day-to-day activities and has her involved in a murder-mystery side story that is not directly connected to any later events in the novel. In fact, that section could well be its own short story. When Lisbeth returns to Stockholm, there is a lot of detail about her apartment hunting and shopping for furniture and new car (since she’s now armed with Wennerström’s billions) in her methodical, calculated way. This may be deadweight to some, but I found this “Lisbeth makes a life for herself” section quite fascinating and in fact, this may be my favourite part of the book! I wonder if the two old ladies I met thought the same?

Soon enough, Lisbeth gets herself into trouble. Big Trouble with a capital T! I won’t say anything more, except that Larsson does a great job juggling the other characters and storylines to make it all mesh. And of course, he makes attacks on his favourite hot button issues, including the media machine à la Season 5 of The Wire.

I will repeat again the manner in which the novel ends really left me with bitter regret that I did not buy the 3rd book when I could have. Unlike the first book where everything was tied up neatly, the ending of TGWPWF really left my hanging! Damn I should’ve just gotten the hardcover!

Book 23 - The Talented Mr. Ripley

2010-08-25T17:32:00.003-04:00

By Patricia Highsmith

I’m surprised at myself for not being aware of Patricia Highsmith sooner - she has such a deliciously sardonic yet razor-sharp view of human nature. I’d already seen the Anthony Minghella movie when it came out in 2000, and even though it was a very good film and quite well-cast, it nevertheless tainted my own personal envisioning of the novel. I can’t help but picture the big stars Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow in their respective roles. I hate it when that happens!

In any case, TTMR was excellent. I’ve mentioned before in my review of A Suspension of Mercy how Highsmith has a way of making you relate to her characters, no matter how unlikable or despicable they may be. When characters get themselves into crazy or self-destructive situations the choices they make, however irrational, are understandable according to their motive and reasoning. This makes for intelligent and satisfying suspense.

TTMR was published a decade before ASoM, so Highsmith was on the right track for her characterization of Tom Ripley. The title itself describes the basic premise of an ordinary young man who discovers he has some special talents indeed. In a way, the novel is like a twisted version of A Portrait of the Serial Killer As a Young Man. By all accounts, Tom Ripley sounds like a very scary dude. But the story begins with Tom leading a rather unhappy mediocre existence in NYC and you kinda feel sorry for the guy as he seems kind of stuck in a rut and lacks the resources to get himself out.

Then our dear Tom is presented with an opportunity to go to Europe for the first time with the task of bringing home an errant millionaire’s son, Dickie Greenleaf. Tom is completely enthralled by Dickie and wants more than anything to be his friend. At first Dickie genuinely enjoys Tom’s company, but soon enough gets the creepy feeling that his new friend may like him just a little too much. And of course it doesn’t help that Dickie’s girlfriend Marge insinuates that Tom might be gay. It’s in meeting Dickie that Tom realizes his true nature. Does Tom really want to be with Dickie, or does he actually want to be Dickie? Creepy!

The novel smoothly vacillates between you feeling repulsed yet fascinated by Tom Ripley. When Dickie distances himself from Tom, you really do feel Tom’s torment at the possibility of being rejected and alone again.

Tom felt a painful wrench in his breast, and he covered his face with his hands. It was as if Dickie had been suddenly snatched away from him. They were not friends. They didn’t know each other. It struck Tom like a horrible truth, true for all time, true for the people he had known in the past and for those he would know in the future: each had stood and would stand before him, and he would know time and time again that he would never know them, and the worst was that there would always be the illusion, for a time, that he did know them, and that he and the wordless shock of his realization seemed more than he could bear.

When Tom assumes Dickie’s identify, not only is he uncannily good at impersonating the one-time friend he murdered, he also relishes being him, like how he spends his evenings “handling Dickie’s possessions, simply looking at his rings on his own fingers, or his woolen ties, or his black alligator wallet”. Creepy!

And then, when it looks like Tom has to give up Dickie's identity because the police are closing in, you go back to feeling bad for Tom again:

This was the end of Dickie Greenleaf, he knew. He hated becoming Thomas Ripley again, hated being nobody, hated putting on his old set of habits again, and feeling that people looked down on him and were bored with him unless he put on an act for them like a clown, feeling incompetent and incapable of doing anything with himself except entertaining people for minutes at a time. He hated going back to himself as he would have hated putting on a shabby suit of clothes, a grease-spotted, unpressed suit of clothes that had not been very good even when it was new.

It’s a real tribute to Highsmith’s skill as a writer. As another reviewer sums this up rather well:

What the reader has to remember again and again is that you are inside Ripley's head, and that every word is skewed toward his notion of reality. Reader's can conclude for themselves Ripley's motives and feelings, as he will never tell them outright. This, I think, is the most intriguing quality of reading the novel -- what the reader brings to the book and their own perceptions of emotion and morals informs the story almost more than anything Highsmith lays before you. In that way, she manages to insinuate just how much Ripley is like the reader, and as uncomfortable as that may be to conclude, it also rings impressively true.

Reading the book also inspired me to finally see the 1960 film adaptation by Rene Clement, Plein Soleil (aka Purple Noon), which was in itself a good film, but it disappointingly over-simplified or white-washed some key elements of the novel, namely replacing any homosexual undercurrents for friendly male competition and conceding to the conventional need for the murderer to get caught. Perhaps this was an indication that having a complex yet sympathetic protagonist-villain was still an unthinkable concept, at least in cinema, a few decades ago.

My only complaint is that the 1992 Vintage Crime paperback edition had a fair number of typos in it. It made for distracting reading!

Book 22 - The Little Friend

2010-08-20T13:08:00.001-04:00

By Donna Tartt

Finally! Here is what I think of the 600+ page tome I’ve been laboring thru for bloody weeks. The one where I had to take two breaks for some needed levity and brevity, even if to endure subpar werewolf fantasy. Despite the fact that Tartt is a wonderfully gifted writer, her long-awaited second novel has some huge flaws – it's much too wordy and hubristically long-winded for its own good. If only she had a Nazi editor to mercilessly trim down 200 pages, The Little Friend would’ve been a less torturous read. I much admired her debut novel The Secret History and considered it a bit of a masterpiece, as did legions of fans and critics. It must have been a Herculean task for Tartt to equal or surpass TSH (and a decade later too), and unsurprisintly her sophomore effort received a deal of buzz and fanfare. Ironically, what I enjoyed most about TLF was reading the divided yet entertaining reviews it generated at the time. One Guardian reviewer summed up quite well how I felt:

No [worthy fan] is going to let the author of The Secret History's second book pass by unread, though what they will find is frankly frustrating. For most of its length, The Little Friend lacks the drive of a book that needs to be written, even if it offers the considerable pleasures of being the work of someone who knows how to write.

On the surface, TLF takes a familiar premise—the plucky child sleuth—to a new literary level—kind of like a twisted Southern Gothic fairy tale meets Harriet the Spy. In a backyard somewhere in Alexandria, Mississippi, a little boy named Robin is found dead hanging from a black tupelo tree. Ten years later, the mystery of Robin’s death remains unsolved and the various members of the Dufresnes and Cleve clan are still struggling to move on from that tragic event. The story centres on Harriet, who was only a baby when her brother died. She grows up to be a highly precocious yet troubled 12-year-old who becomes obsessed with finding Robin’s purported killer. She enlists Hely, her best (and only) friend, to exact clumsy, misguided vengeance.

The first half of the book moves along languidly yet interestingly. Tartt does a meticulous job recreating Southern society in the 1970s with its decaying colonial houses overtaken by bland suburbia. Tartt grew up in Mississippi, so she’s obviously writing what she knows. Her treatment of societal subsets -- the tottering spinsters clinging to what’s left of their Southern ways and aging black maids, or the poor white trashy folk who live on the edge of town -- verges on caricature at times. But she take a lot of care in her depiction of Harriet’s dysfunctional, female-dominated family: comatose pill-popping mother, Charlotte, dreamy older sister, Allison, indomitable grandmother-matriarch, Edie and the cluster of doting great-aunts.

Tartt also mines the vast body of juvenile literature to make her own unsentimental, anti-coming-of-age novel and she does a great job portraying Harriet as an anti-heroine who is more hedgehog than Nancy Drew. According to her friend Hely, who is also her secret admirer:

There were plenty of girls at school prettier than Harriet, and nicer. But none of them are as smart, or as brave. Sadly, he thought of her many gifts. She could forge handwriting—teacher handwriting—and compose adult-sounding excuse notes like a pro; she could make bombs from vinegar and baking soda, mimic voices over the telephone. She loved to shoot fireworks—unlike a lot of girls, who wouldn’t go near a string of firecrackers. She had got sent home in second grade for tricking a boy into eating a spoonful of cayenne pepper; and two years ago she had started a panic by saying that the spooky old lunchroom in the school basement was a portal to Hell.

A NYT reviewer described TLF as a young-adult novel for grown-ups and how Tartt bestows Harriet with a

fierce, adolescent sense of right and wrong and [a] dangerous habit of sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. If these aspects of her personality make her recognizable, they also make her memorable and unique: she is part of a literary sisterhood of smart, prickly loners, and as such she is likely to attract generations of loyal followers.

But somewhere around the halfway point, I didn’t feel like reading TLF anymore. I became impatient and frustrated at how slowly events were unfolding. I started skimming through the densely descriptive passages because I had enough of the precious atmosphere and just wanted to find out what happens next. Looking back, I pinned down the key events or turning points:

p. 150 - Harriet pins Robin’s old classmate Danny Ratliff as the murderer.

p. 234 - Harriet and Hely stalk out Danny for the first time.

p. 370 - Harriet and Hely make their first clumsy and failed attempt to kill Danny.

There are 220 pages between 150 and 370, and I started losing interest around p. 300.

Now I understand that TLF isn’t meant to be a plot-driven novel, but there was definitely an overwhelming amount of exposition to muddle through, and worse, it was bogged down by overindulgent prose, which did not go unnoticed by reviewers, one of whom was rather unforgiving by describing TLF as a pretentious, incoherent melodrama as well as “an extended prose catastrophe”, where Tartt has strained too hard to create an air of unreality at the expense of plot and character:

Characters say things ''soberly,'' ''belligerently,'' ''faintly,'' and ''impassively,'' while exhaling ''audibly'' and stuffing bills into pockets ''laboriously.'' That's just page 204. Laughingly, I turned to discover Danny twisting ''rather spasmodically.'' Dumbfoundedly, I wondered how a mosquito might sting someone ''luxuriously.'' Such prose events disqualify ''The Little Friend'' as literature and also rule it out as decent trash. It's hard to dive into an action scene when people running for their lives turn to notice ''the path they'd beaten through the yellow-flowered scraggle of bitterweed, and the melancholy pastels of the dropped lunchbox....''

Even those who liked the book couldn’t help but notice “her tendency to describe things in threes, in arching adjectival triplets”:

Someone’s heart "vaulted up for a soaring, incredulous, gorgeously cruel moment".
A china dinner service that is "heavenly, glorious, a complete set”
A photograph in which the light is "fractured, sentimental, incandescent with disaster".

But despite Tartt’s overwrought writing style, the same reviewer also thought she ultimately succeeded in creating a richly detailed universe.

Even if she stumbles over details, the pace of this novel remains impressive. Tartt is able to make "reading time" slow down, so that you feel you are experiencing the events she describes in real time, or even more slowly than real time. This groggy, dreamlike pace is particularly effective at moments of high drama. One action scene, in which Harriet and her best friend are caught for a few hours between a set of poisonous snakes and two violent criminals high on drugs, takes up 24 pages of unflagging description, which will speed your pulse as if you were trapped along with the children.

And here is someone actually defending Tartt’s overwrought writing style:

Critical puritans (or merely Yankees) will point to its Dixie weakness for verbosity, caricature and melodrama. Yet the verbosity yields passages of mesmerising beauty; the caricature, stretches of delirious comedy; and the melodrama, moments of nerve-shredding excitement. At its close, few readers will wish The Little Friend a page shorter, or a shade paler.

TLF also made me think of the disappointing The Lovely Bones (TLB!), which was also published the same year in 2002. Both novels received mucho hype, both are set in 1970’s suburbia and present realistic portrayals of a family dealing with the tragic aftermath of a murdered son or daughter. More significantly, both are burdened with glaring flaws that pretty much ruined the entire reading experience for me. Also interesting to note that the killer in both novels never gets caught. But where Sebold resorts to a consolatory ending: the killer gets his comeuppance and the victim finds heavenly harmony, Tartt offers no such reassurance nor does she feels a need to assuage her readers in such romantically saccharine notions.

So let’s close with this fair assessment from the NYT :

What this all adds up to is a tragic, fever-dream realism. Though the world Harriet discovers is unquestionably haunted, there is nothing magical about it, or about the furious, lyrical rationality of Tartt's voice. Her book is a ruthlessly precise reckoning of the world as it is -- drab, ugly, scary, inconclusive -- filtered through the bright colors and impossible demands of childhood perception. It grips you like a fairy tale, but denies you the consoling assurance that it's all just make-believe.

Book 21 - Stolen

2010-08-15T13:51:00.018-04:00

By Kelley Armstrong

(interesting how the cover design of this 2009 trade paperback reprint has the same blood-red monochromatic look of the mega successful Twilight books)

So this next installment continues with Elena, our very special female werewolf, resuming her Pack duties by sniffing out misbehaving mutts and researching the internet to see if anyone’s got any dirt on werewolf activity. The Pack must protect their secret identify at all cost!

Elena follows a lead and encounters an elder witch and her young apprentice, who seem to know everything about Elena and her Pack. Once upon a time, reps of various supernatural races would gather together to share info and discuss issues about potential exposure – like a “Supernatural United Nations”. This is no longer the case, which is a bit odd considering how easy it'd be for undercover supernaturals to exploit today’s technology in order to communicate with each other, so you’d think the situation would be the reverse. Anyway, the witches warn Elena that human bad guys are kidnapping shamans and half-demons for nefarious purposes. And witches, vampires and werewolves are next. What’s more, the whole operation is funded by an evil Bill Gates-type billionaire named Ty Winsloe!

Soon enough, Elena gets caught in a trap and spends the bulk of the novel imprisoned inside a high security underground research facility along with other fascinating nonhumans. Sound familiar? Buffy fans will recognize this premise from Season 4 which aired in 1999 (Stolen was published in 2003). Vampires and demons were captured by a secret military project called "The Initiative" and imprisoned in cells within a high tech underground complex. In good form, Armstrong meta-references this fact but she also makes a cheap diss: her heroine blithely quips about how subpar that season was and how she fell asleep for half the episodes.

Ok, I understand that Season 4 was voted least favourite by a number of Buffy fans, but when it’s so obvious that you’re basing an entire storyline on a season’s premise from a well-regarded TV series, wouldn’t you want, at the very least, to pay it some respect? Especially how even the worst S4 episodes have been funnier and more entertaining than any passage I’ve read in Bitten and Stolen so far.

So that confirms it for me: Kelley Armstrong is a misguided snob who’s really a square. I understand not everyone can be Anne Rice or Stephen King in terms of writing quality genre fiction, but if you can’t reference pop culture properly, then don’t do it. At their best, Joss Whedon and Sam Raimi have taken the horror/sci-fi genres to new levels while at the same time giving respect where its due. Armstrong, at best, merely recycles already tried and true tropes, and worse, seems ignorant of the influences she’s drawing from (at least this provides unintentional meaning to the title Stolen). With this in mind, I can see how Armstrong wants to model Elena as a smart-talking Buffy-esque heroine (Elena the Mutt-Slayer doesn’t quite have the same ring), but lacks the referential know-how and finesse to make her novel truly playful and clever.

On a more positive note, I did enjoy the setup and pacing of Stolen much better than the previous Bitten. Perhaps this was due to there being less romantic Elena/Clay time (sadly they had to have corny reunion sex like multiple times for what seemed like pages and pages; there was even a scene where Clay feeds Elena ham and pancakes as he’s penetrating her, I kid you not). And this time, there were some interesting (mainly supernatural) characters introduced during Elena’s imprisonment at the nefarious research facility. Armstrong does a competent job in weaving together the various character dynamics and motivations. But again she doesn’t explore her universe deeply enough and focuses her attention on action and plot.

For one thing, almost every human portrayed in Stolen is basically bad, since they are all involved in the nefarious research project, with the exception of one resesarch assistant, who gets killed anyway. The three or four dozen human stormtroopers, I mean, guards employed at the nefarious facility are basically faceless entities, like the Mutts. And if they do have a bit of characterization, they are violent would-be rapists in the guise of military men. In Stolen, Elena is just starting to feel like she belongs to her werewolf pack, but you’re not sure if she still considers herself part human, since she already killed a couple of guards without any remorse. When the baddest military dudes, under Winsloe’s command, cruelly kill a Mutt (even though this Mutt tried to rape her too), Elena draws the line between us (the supernaturals) and them (human baddies who try to mess with supernaturals).

Eventually, Elena escapes (I don’t think I’m giving too much away) and subsequently returns with the Pack and some supernatural friends to infiltrate the nefarious compound and a bloodbath ensues. After a particularly violent confrontation, she thinks about all the stormtroop— I mean, guards she has killed and wonders “if they had wives, girlfriends, children”. But then she justifies it by telling herself: “They had to die to protect our secrets. They’d understood the danger when they signed on to this project… there was no other way. Everyone had to die.”

So Elena has a pang of conscience for a few sentences, and then she promptly moves on, taking disappointing revenge on the billionaire Ty Winslow . So a potentially complex moral grey area is conveniently left unexplored, given over by the need to deliver mediocre action and drama. It also makes for boring reading.

Stolen was interesting enough to pass the time, but it also relieved me of any remaining interest in pursuing the next Otherworld installment. I’m glad because there are way better books out there to explore. In fact, after reading Bitten and Stolen almost back-to-back, I really need to immerse myself in some high-caliber writing again - a tautly structured thriller by a writer who can really delve into the complex psychological examination of a character's amoral universe - Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley!

Book 20 - Bitten

2010-08-05T20:23:00.030-04:00

By Kelley Armstrong

I had only a hundred pages left of the “serious” novel, but then it took yet another dark and heavy turn. Damn this 600+ tome which has dramatically reduced my reading rate to ONE book for the month of July. Then a friend lent me Bitten, the first book in the Women of the Otherworld series about werewolves, witches, necromancers, and vampires struggling to fit into contemporary human society. Perfect – just when I needed to take a break with something fluffy!

And did it deliver some fluff. Bitten introduces us to Elena Michaels, the only female werewolf in the world. Cuz one, the werewolf gene only gets passed from father to son. Two, werewolves don't have long-term relationships but they can mate with a human woman. If a male baby pops out, the father kidnaps said baby and boy is secretly raised with his werewolf brethren. Three, humans can turn into werewolves by getting bitten, but the majority do not to survive their first agonizing transformation. And it’s super duper rare for a woman to survive a werewolf bite. This is why Elena is so highly coveted in the werewolf world, they all want to do her.

The back-story is told via flashback when our heroine falls hard for Clayton Danvers, a blonde curly-locked academic with piercing blue eyes and a body straight out of Baywatch. Clay has a dirty little secret: he is actually the Beta male of the only werewolf pack in the world, aka the Pack, as well as the foster son & bodyguard of Jeremy, the Alpha (leader of the Pack :-). Clay may lack basic social skills and possess a disdainful attitude towards people, but Elena would never suspect this is because her BF is more wolf than man! Did I mention that on top of Clay’s wolfish sex appeal, he is also a brilliant academic who earned his Ph.D. specializing in ancient anthropomorphic religions?

When Clay ends up biting Elena without her consent, she doesn’t exactly embrace her newfound wolfenness. Instead she spends much of the novel being pissed off at her BF. It isn’t so much that he lied to Elena about his true identity, but he had to thoughtlessly ruin any chance for her to attain the normal happy human life she never had. How bloody inconvenient is that? Elena may not get past the indignant “how could you!” phase but it doesn't stop her from having hot outdoor sex with the guy (in bipedal form unfortunately). You see, our heroine was orphaned at a tender age and subsequently suffered abuse in the hands of foster daddies. After surviving her childhood she became a strong, independent woman, yet she still longs for acceptance and belonging. So Bitten begins with Elena having left the Pack to salvage and resume the ordinary life she was having in… Toronto (what better place to live out a bland, conformist lifestyle?).

Of course, Elena’s attempt at a normal lifestyle gets kiboshed when Jeremy summons her back to his estate in upstate New York to deal with an emergency. Non-Pack werewolves are stirring up trouble in their territory of Stonehaven, perhaps even staging a coup. Pack werewolves use the more derogatory term – mutts (I know, don't laugh) - for these problematic lone wolves. To keep mutts in check, the Pack routinely seeks out and punishes those who try to settle down, since making a home for oneself means claiming territory - and only the Pack could claim territory. As a result, mutts drift from place to place, stealing and killing humans for food.

Armstrong has a couple of interesting spins on the werewolf mythos, but she doesn’t delve into her universe deeply enough for me. The Pack versus Mutts issue plays out like werewolf politics, where the Pack is like a fascistic oligarchy, but I’m not sure Armstrong sees it this way, therefore dodging any complexity by portraying mutts as bad werewolves who really just want to kill people whenever they want, just like in the good old pre-Industrial days.

Pack werewolves are more highly evolved somehow and they also have successful careers in the human world (due to the ability to live in one place and cultivate yourself). Since all mutts live by their own rules, they aren’t exactly team players and thus, not worthy of the Pack. What’s more, murderous mutts call attention to themselves and threaten the safety of all werewolves, so this gives reason for the Pack to eliminate them with impunity. So yes, the Pack is good, Mutts are baaaad. There is no comparison, I know, but if you really want to read a meaty novel about how otherwise civilized people succumb to the pack instinct and transform themselves into barbaric murderers, I suggest you read The Secret History.

But what if there are mutts who don’t want to kill, keep a low profile and want a bit of territory? Just enough land to hunt some wild game, so they don’t have the urge to kill humans. This way the Pack won’t have to waste time traveling around the world rousting out stray mutts, and werewolves can all live happily ever after… oh but wait, we won’t have much of a story then, will we?

So a few conniving mutts want to either destroy the Pack or negotiate territory for themselves, so they come up with the brilliant idea of turning human serial killers into werewolves and sicking them on members the Pack. This would be an exciting plot device but the villainous mutts and serial killers-turned-werewolves are disappointingly two-dimensional characters. Come to think of it, the good guys aren’t very dynamic or charismatic either, but at least they're given a little more development and back-story.

There are also some nagging logistical omissions in the storylines. Since bodies can pile up during werewolf skirmishes, the narrator explains it can take at least half a day to make a body disappear. When Pack brother Logan gets killed, they just bury him in the forest and move on. But didn’t Logan fly in from Los Angeles in order to help his pack? In the human world, didn’t he have a successful career as a lawyer and a long-term girlfriend in Albany? If he had loved ones, they’d want to know what happened to him. His law firm would no doubt report him missing. Yet the novel conveniently avoids going into the ramifications of dealing with the recently deceased.

Another issue I have is the interpersonal dynamics within the Pack itself. Armstrong models much of these dynamics on real wolf behaviour, ie. the pack hierarchy. If Elena is the only female werewolf in existence, then wouldn’t wolf behaviour dictate she belong to the Alpha male, and not the Beta? When Clay betrays Elena and Jeremy spends time taking care of her and teaching her the ways of the werewolf, wouldn’t he want to claim Elena as his mate? Oh wait, but the Alpha is conveniently beyond that, ie. the bonds of brotherhood is stronger than succumbing to instinctual behaviour, or whatever. And why can’t mutts claim any territory again? In any case, it is more convenient for Jeremy to be the benevolent father-figure than for the story to have a potentially interesting love triangle.

I’m also not big on Armstrong’s writing style and Elena’s smart-alecky sense of humour is more jarring than amusing. What’s more, the author’s few attempts at pop culture reference backfires. Badly. When Elena tells her hohum human BF that she’s watching Evil Dead 2 on TV, she quips: “This one’s pure camp… It’s a sequel. Horror sequels suck.” Armstrong may have wanted our heroine to sound clever, but she is embarrassingly unaware that ED2 is the rare classic sequel that surpasses its predecessor in sheer awesomeness! But that isn’t the worse offense. She had to have another character proclaim that Scream 2 is actually superior, pretty much destroying any hipster or geek cred she may be trying to grab.

There was another thing about the novel that bugged me, but I couldn’t put a finger on it until near the end, when Elena’s Pack brother Nick confesses:

“I don’t know how you did it in Toronto all those months,” he [Nick] said with a shudder. “I had to do it a couple times last winter… Anyway, I had to Change by myself…. It was awful. It was, like walk out to the woods, Change, stand there until enough time passed, Change back. It was about as much fun as taking a shit… I’m serious. Come on, Elena. Admit it. That’s what it’s like if you’re by yourself.”

I guess if you’re a Pack werewolf there is no joy in embracing the freedom of running in solitude. Elena ends up making fun of her Pack brother because she was a true loner, not by choice, but by circumstance. What Elena ultimately wants is to belong to a community or family because she never had those things growing up. The running theme of Bitten may be about how supernatural beings (outsiders) try to fit into normal society, but it seems the idea it's perpetuating is that the desire to belong to a group is normal and good. To want to be alone, or worse, to want to live a fulfilling life alone, is bad or undesirable. For me, it seems that Armstrong is an extravert who does not understand non-extravert mentality.

As a werewolf, Elena still clings to the artifacts of human society, like wanting to celebrate Christmas every year. Eventually her werewolf family replaces her need for a human one. But the novel provides no option for her to reconcile her humanity with her werewolf side. Genetic werewolves do not identify with humankind, which makes sense, and neither do made werewolves like Clay, who were bitten when they were young. But what about werewolves like Elena, who were turned as adults, what's more a female adult? Sadly, this potentially interesting theme isn’t explored as deeply as I'd like either, or in the way that I was expecting.

I guess the reason I’m giving this book a hard time is because I was really looking forward to reading this book, and it’s the first in a series of like a dozen. But Armstrong’s universe just didn't turn out as rich and rewarding as I hoped it’d be. Her style, humor and aesthetics seem to be opposite of mine and I didn't find anything particularly remarkable or different in her take on the werewolf mythos. Even though I’m already reading the next book, Stolen, it’s mainly because it's already been lent to me, it’s a quick read and I have a mild curiosity in wanting to know what happens next. But it isn’t strong enough to sustain an interest in following the rest of the Otherworld series. One thing Bitten did do for me though, was to rekindle my interest in going back to the ordinary, yet ultimately much more complex, world of my “serious” novel.

Book 19 – The Spellmans Strike Again

2010-07-15T17:14:00.009-04:00

By Lisa Lutz

The fourth installment of The Spellman series!

Hardcover was published earlier in March, pristine copy discovered at fave thrift shop Chainon (Olman was there as I gasped aloud in delight upon sighting it) and reading commenced the next day. After weeks of reading and only getting halfway through a 600+ page novel, TSSA was a welcome break.

If you recall, the first installment was The Spellman Files followed by Curse of the Spellmans. The third in the series, Revenge of the Spellmans was reviewed just last February.

The latest Spellman book does not bring anything startling new. As our protagonist and narrator Isabelle Spellman explains:

I suppose the most defining characteristic of my family is that we take our work home with us. If your family’s job is investigating other people, you inevitably investigate each other. This single trait has been our primary point of conflict for most of my life.

This single trait is also what makes the continuing saga so entertaining and is the primary source of humour (and misery) in this dysfunctional family saga. Isabelle is busy as ever juggling cases both paid and pro bono, getting dirt on her enemies (and family), keeping current boyfriend from becoming Ex-Boyfriend #12 while appeasing her mother by embarking on a series of “lawyer dates”. Not only that. In order to prove to her mother she actually went on said dates, she has to ask her “date” if she can record part of their conversation.

The purpose of the recordings was to prove that the “dates” had the feel of dates – the uncomfortable, bio-swapping, dead-silent, ice-clinking, dread-filled feel of a date. As far as I could tell, I only had to be myself to bring about all that and more.

And that’s not even reaching the first half of the book. After the halfway point, our (anti)heroine “can barely keep track of the galaxy of investigations, deceit, turmoil, clashes, and chaos that [she travels] through every day…” At some point, she even resorts to making a to-do list, itemized in descending order of urgency:

• Free Merriweather.
• Destroy Harkey.
• Discover Mrs. Enright’s angle.
• Solve the doorknob conspiracy at Spellman headquarters.
• Find out what dirt David has on Rae to explain extra gardening.
• Take shower.

Yes, this latest edition is not short on the usual comic hijnks we’ve seen in previous installments, nor any of the usual pop culture references, such as Get Smart and Doctor Who, not to mention some witty homages to Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein and The Wire.

But at 32, we finally see Isabelle starting to grow up, just a little, both personally and professionally (since for the Spellmans there is no separation between the two). Although Isabelle has gazed at her obsessive-compulsive abyss in the past, she has never really confronted or gotten over it, despite the court-ordered therapy sessions. Not only that, her dear old friend (old as in he was an octogenarian) Morty succumbs to “the cancer” at the same time everything else seems to be falling apart. Then her younger sister Rae locks her up in a filing room all night, and she kind of has an epiphany. It sounds messy and all over the place, but eventually, Isabelle ends up solving her cases and tying up some of her personal loose ends -- but in her own terms.

In case you’re curious, I didn’t tell my parents the whole story. They like to keep their cases out of the gray area. You serve the client and the client only. But I lived so many years of my life in that land where rules exist only to be broken that I still sympathize with those who can’t seem to follow them all, including the law breakers. I was one of them once. I guess, if you think about it, I still am. I know that a world of people ignoring absolutes could create a society that cannot function, but I am so sure of my ideals that I make this choice. If, one day, I notice the world slipping and feel that I am truly part of it, I’ll snap back in line. Until then, this is how I’m going to play the game.