19. Bastion Falls

By Susie Moloney  

Bastion Falls was on my list for years.  I only heard about it years after it was published (back in 1995) and was intrigued by its premise -- like a Canadian take on a Stephen King story.  The only description I had was “town trapped in snowstorm w/ psychic teen girl”. 

 

Recently, while perusing Abe Books, I found a copy of Bastion Falls for only a few bucks.  It came with my first order (along with St.Lucy’s Home for Girls) and I only realized it was a mass produced paperback after I opened the box.  Inside the back page was a library slip from Eagle Nest Public Library, N.M. with three sign-outs in 2001, 2003 and 2016.   On Goodreads, Bastion Falls had only 78 ratings and 9 reviews.  This was obviously a pretty obscure find, so I was prepared to be disappointed. 

 

     There were northern towns just like Bastion, and yet Bastion stood alone among them. It had in its earlier days a harder edge, a meaner desperation, a need for the fulfillment of some kind of darker order.

     Things change; in that Bastion was no exception. The years piled on years brought it an air of civility that was inevitable. Its past was buried with the ruins of the old fort. What remains of the fort, in irony, are only its walls, the bastions.

 

When a freak September storm envelops the town in snow, strange things start to occur in Bastion, but no one is able to trace it back to the old fort site.  That is, no one except a teenaged girl named Shandy.

The strangest thing about the fort was that no one ever went to see it:  there were no field trips to study Bastion heritage, no commemorative dates to mark on the calendar, no Familis of the Fort to celebrate. People around Bastion almost pretended the fort didn’t exist.  They never denied it was there, and it was brought up, duly, during local history cases, but there was an unspoken agreement that the history of the fort was not up for public view or scrutiny.  It had seemed a town eccentricity, and before today Shandy had never questioned it, it having never been important. But it’s important now.

In recent years, a “mall-like” complex was built in the town centre, constructed out of “good old Bastion Falls limestone” and providing an epicentre for the inhabitants to gather.  The public school and bar were also part of the complex.  When the blizzard descends upon Bastion, many people stayed inside the mall to wait out the storm and pretty soon the mall became a refuge centre.

 

When running late for work, Marilyn got caught in the sudden blizzard, but made it to safety and took refuge inside the mall.  The same morning, Shandy was pressured by her boyfriend to skip school so they could hang out, but she was reluctant to because of the approaching storm.  She relented, and unfortunately, later witnessed her boyfriend overtaken by an unknown entity.

     In the corner of his mouth, for just a second, Shandy saw a black tail-like thing, attached to something bigger, but like a shadow. It moved down his throat to the center of him, she followed it with her eyes as it moved into his chest.

     It reversed. The swell disappeared.

    “David?” she whispered.

     David’s body shrunk into itself, the blood disappearing from his flesh leaving it the color of corn husks, the flesh shrunken.

Shandy is the psychic teenage.  Through her abilities, she sensed that the source of the entities originated from the old fort site and comes to the realization that she must destroy it.     

    Somewhere up around the old fort site. That was where it was coming from. Whatever it was that was happening. (Something to do with the storm, the storm and those things.). That was where she had to go. Shandy knew this, the same way she always knew.

When Marilyn finally met Shandy and saw how determined she was to set off on her suicidal mission, she went with her and helped Shandy set fire to the fort.

 

There were some obvious flaws with the plotline and which ‘genre’ this work of fiction wanted to fit into.  But I was pleasantly surprised to find the quality of the writing quite solid.  There was care and detail in describing the town of Bastion Falls and its various inhabitants. 

Like Candace Bergen, the new principal of Bastion Falls Composite Highschool and “by Bastion standards, the most progressive principal the town had ever known… But by standards formed by the rest of the liberal world, she was conservative to the highest degree."  In describing her personality and dedication to her role, Moloney also painted a general picture of the student body, where chronic truancy, teen pregnancies, substance abuse and dropout rates were relatively high. 

 

Another interesting character was Joe Nashkawa, mall manager.  “Besides running the mall, Joe was chief o the Bastion Volunteer Fire Brigade; in the winter he coached the under-six hockey team, the only team to play inside the rec center’ and he was a band elder…”

 

And then there was Emma, the cheatin’ stay-at-home mom, who killed time by having serial affairs, her latest being occasional handyman and closet toxic male, Tully.

She sometimes thought of divorce, and then having all the affairs she wanted, but she did love Don—it wasn’t anything personal—and hadn’t loved any of the others. She had hardly even liked any of the others. They simply were a part of that other life, add a lift to her day. Her days were desperately lift-less, and her affairs were very, very important to her in their own right.  She wouldn’t give it up, didn’t even want to think about it, even though she did, every single morning when the before of it all was happening and the excitement high and her genitals were throbbing and all of it overwhelming her. She simply could not help herself.

It looked like Emma was gonna get punished for her sins when her lover didn’t handle being dumped well.  Her being trapped by Tully the Unhinged Handyman was probably the most tense part of the novel.  When the entities got him, it was pretty satisfying to read.

 

Last but not least, there was Ed, the manager of the bar that also provided a safe haven for the locals to take refuge and drown their boredom.

Just about all his regulars were there, having been in for most of the day. But a lot of folks were people he hardly ever saw, the twice-a-month folks, the once-in-a-while folks, some of them were in the bar. Most of those folks had come in out of the storm for refuge and found it in booze. There was no helping that: he couldn’t exactly start throwing people out into the worst storm he’d seen in years… Therein lay the problem. What was he going to do with all these people?

It looked like Moloney was going to build up to a big massacre or showdown between the townsfolk and the mysterious entities.  I mean, that’s what Stephen King would’ve done.  Despite all the care and attention that Moloney put into the setting and disparate characters, it never all quite gelled together into a gripping cohesive narrative.  Oddly enough, the only character who was sparse on background and detail was Marilyn, the young divorcee who ended up helping Shandy defeat the entities and save Bastion.  For someone who was the sole remaining witness to what went down at the old fort site, we didn’t know much about her, yet Moloney devoted so many pages to the other side characters, like Emma and Candace, that had nothing to do with the main plotline.

 

When Marilyn and Shandy finally met, it felt kind of rushed considering all the time spend developing the other characters.  What’s more, their attempt to burn down the fort (“fire cleanses”) was somewhat laughable, as Shandy only packed several cans of lighter fluid in her knapsack.  Shandy somehow holds back the demonic entities with her mind while Marilyn sets the fort ablaze in a snowstorm with those cans of lighter fluid.  But it really seemed like they needed something with more oomph, like gallons of gasoline and/or a flame thrower!

 

It was pretty miraculous that two ordinary people were able to defeat a legion of supernatural, soul-sucking entities with a few cans of lighter fluid and the whole thing was disappointingly anti-climactic.  Shandy even died an unsung hero, with the people of Bastion unaware of her sacrifice.  Only Marilyn knew what really happened.

The stones were black with soot, and more of the limestone bricks that had held such misery had fallen over. The acrid smell of smoke was still there, and under it the smell of the lighter fluid. It truly looked like ruins now. Marilyn thought it looked harmless. She knew it felt harmless. Her amazement at the place was mostly because she didn’t feel much changed from that night. She felt no ghosts at her side; her mother didn’t come to her in dreams. She was herself again. The aches were gone. There were no echoes in her head. There seemed no aftermath, except that some people had died; many that she knew, one that she felt responsibility for, even if she’d tried.

Despite it’s anti-climactic-ness, I still found Bastion Falls a low-key page-turner, which makes it very Canadian. Yet the novel is written in a way that doesn’t point out how Canadian it is.  We know that Bastion Falls is a northern prairie town, but which province, it didn’t really matter.  There were clues though, like when Joe always had his radio tuned to CBC, “the only station he would play in the office, damn the others all to hell if they wanted to listen to their shit-kicker music, he liked his news.”

 

Moloney also sidesteps any explanation regarding the supernatural forces.  Were they pre-colonial?  Did early European settles massacre a First Nations village?  Was the fort built over some ancient burial site?  Stephen King would’ve delved into the origins a little, but Moloney is no Stephen King.

 

Still, Bastion Falls made for a good winter holiday read while I was staying at the in-laws. Thanks to Abe Books, I'm glad I finally got to read it, but unfortunately, it ain't a keeper.

18. Papillon

By Henri Charriere  

 

17- Salt Magic

 By Hope Larson.  Illus. by Rebecca Mock.

17. The Queen's Gambit

 By Walter Tevis

16. St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

By Karen Russell

This was part of my first order from AbeBooks that I sent to arrive at my in-laws in the Bay Area.  These books were hard to find used, this one especially, and since Olman was there in October to care for his dad, he was able to bring them back for me. 

 

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is a collection of short stories from 2006 that was recommended by Paul Tremblay in his afterword.  I was intrigued when he mentioned how Russell was inspired by The Bloody Chamber, but also aware that I’d be setting myself for disappointment.  Superficially, Russell's stories did evoke the spirit of Angela Carter with a modern American spin.  There was a light-hearted, fairy tale like quality to the stories which are set all over America.

 

It started off well enough with “Ava Wrestles the Alligator”, about two sisters left to run the family business, a Gator Theme Park called Swamplandia! situated deep in the Florida Everglades.  Their mother died and their dad, Chief Bigtree, hadn’t yet returned from the Mainland.  Ava is the one feeding the gators since her older sister Ossie is too wrapped up with her succubus boyfriend, Luscious.  When Ava catches Ossie wading into the swamp pond as an offer of sacrifice, the story abruptly ends in media res just as Ava pulls her sister out of the water.

 

The next story “Haunting Olivia” was alright, and evidently not that memorable as I had to flip through the story to jog my recall:  two boys, who lost their little sister some months ago, decide to go in search of her in their “boat”.  They think she was trying to reach a place called the Glow Worm Grotto, where you have to swim under water to reach it. The story again seems to end in medias res where the protagonist is alone inside the grotto and realizes that Olivia isn’t there as his goggles are fogging up. 

 

The only thing a bit different about this story is that the flora and fauna are somewhat out of the ordinary, ie. the boys used the shell of a giant crab as their boats, which they rented from Herb’s Crab Sledding Rentals.

 

Next up was a story with a neat premise -- a day in the life of an unnamed boy and his friends at “Z.Z.’s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers”, which was also the story's title.

 

The boy shares a bunk with Oglivy (sic), “the only other person I have ever met who shares my same disorder.”  One night, they both woke up screaming at precisely the same time and discovered they had the exact same dream, or “postmonitions” --  disasters and tragedies that already occurred in the past, from the historical (The Bubonic Plague, the Pompeii eruption) to the lesser known (the St. Louis Zoo Cataclysm of ’49).

 

The boy and Ogli are in Cabin 4: Miscellaneous.  The other cabins are known by hierarchy.  Here’s a sample:

Cabin 2: Sleep Apnetics

Cabin 3: Somnambulists

Cabin 6: Somniloquists

Cabin 7: Gnashers

Cabin 13: Night Terrors

Cabin 9: Insomniacs

Cabin 1: Narcoleptics

Cabin 10: Incubuses

 

“Z.Z’s” was creative and clever, and probably my favourite of the what I’ve read in the collection, as truth be known, I didn’t read all of ‘em.  Russell seemed to have fun with it:

This year, we’ve got a New Kid, this Eastern European lycanthrope.  He is redolent of tubers and Old World damp. New Kid’s face is a pituitary horror, a patchwork of runny sores and sebaceous dips. Ginger fur sprouts from weird places, his chin, his ears. You intuit some horror story—homeschooled, his mother’s in a coven, he eats rancid cabbage out of a trough, that sort of thing. He sleep cycles with the moon.

 

By the fourth story, I got a little tired of the style and tone, and wasn’t in the mood for making myself work to get to know another new set of quirky characters.  I started skipping a story here and there, as I was impatient to get to “St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, the final story, as I assumed Russell had saved the “best” for last.

 

The title story is told from the POV of one of the girls at St. Lucy’s, who watches herself and her “pack” of sisters struggle to assimilate and civilize themselves under the watchful eyes of the nuns.  This section sums up the premise:

 

Our mothers and fathers were werewolves. They lived an outsider’s existence in caves at the edge of the forest, threatened by frost and pitchforks. They had been ostracized by the local farmers for eating their silled fruit pies and terrorizing the heifers. They had ostracized the local wolves by having sometimes-thumbs, and regrets, and human children. (Their condition skips a generation.) Our pack grew up in a green purgatory. We couldn’t keep up with the purebred wolves, but we never stopped crawling. We spoke a slab-tongued pidgin in the caves, inflected with frequent howls. Our parents wanted something better for us; they wanted us to get braces, use towels, be fully bilingual. When the nuns showed up, our parents couldn’t refuse their offer. The nuns, they said, would make us naturalized citizens of human society. We would go to St. Lucy’s to study a better culture. We didn’t know at the time that our parents were sending us away for good. Neither did they.

 

As expected, “St. Lucy’s” was charming and well-written, with obvious nods to colonialism and European white-washing.  There was humour, intelligence and magic realism.... but it wasn’t anything like “The Company of Wolves”, and the collection was nothing like The Bloody Chamber either.  Something was lacking for me.  Perhaps I wanted a little less exposition and more mystery?  A little more darkness and sexuality beneath the quirky, light-hearted surface?  

 

In summary, some enjoyable stories there, and Russell is definitely a talented writer, but overall, not quite my cup of tea.

15. China Rich Girlfriend

 By Kevin Kwan

Found a pristine hard copy in the free book nook on Clark and Villeneuve, which was installed earlier this year and quite handy as it’s en route to my kid’s school.  This was the first and only book I found there so far. 

 

The plot of China Rich Girlfriend was a little odd.  Crazy Rich Asians was a straightforward romantic comedy of manners featuring an ordinary ABC woman meeting her prince charming-in-hiding with Singaporean high society as colourful backdrop.

 

CRG started off in London with a drag race gone horribly wrong.  Carlton was one of the drivers, and his uber rich Chinese mom managed to cover up the accident with a small team of “experts” and a shit ton of money, not only keeping it from the public but her own husband as well, a high-ranking PRC official.

 

Early on in CRG, Nick was tricked into having lunch with an old family friend, Jacqueline Ling, which involved a pep talk about how much he’d lose by marrying Rachel.  It's not just the inheritance but his entire identity as a Young, etc. Jacqueline cautioned Nick to delay his wedding while his nonagenarian grandmother's still breathing.  Meanwhile Rachel’s been unable to locate her biological father, who rescued her mom from her abusive marriage and helped her flee from China to the USA.  It seemed that this was going to set the tone for the rest of the novel. 

 

Despite it looking like Nick’s mother Eleanor may spectacularly sabotage the wedding, it turned out Nick and Rachel had their wedding after all.  Eleanor was able to find out who Rachel’s father was, and guess what, he’s Bao Gaoliang, a high-ranking Chinese minister who has scads of money thanks in part to marrying into a wealthy family.  And guess who his wife and son are? 

 

And since Bao Gaoliang seems fond of Rachel, any tension with Eleanor or interference from Nick’s grandmother is now brushed aside, as Rachel is now part of a wealthy high status Chinese family. The plot then expands to include Bao Gaoliang’s son, Carlton and his China-rich “friend”, Collette Bing, an uber fashion influencer and a spoiled princess. 

 

Meanwhile, there are other subplots.  Kitty Pong, so determined to rise above her actress image and be welcomed by HK high society, that she outbid "the establishment" for a bunch of rare, ancient Chinese scrolls she knows nothing about.  Her relationship with Corinna Ko-Tung provided some of the more entertaining parts of the novel. 

 

Corinna’s from old money but she discreetly provides consultation services to status-seekers who are desperate to know the in's and out's of high society.  When Kitty retains her services, Corinna wastes no time in preparing a “Social Impact Assessment” that breaks down what Kitty needs to work on in all aspects of her life, such as her Appearance, Wardrobe, Jewelry, Lifestyle Transport Dining, Social Life, Travel, Philanthropic Affiliations, Spiritual Life, and Culture.  There’s even a Reading List at the end!  

 

Spiritual Life

 

When I feel you are ready, I will introduce you to Hong Kong’s more exclusive church, which you will being attending on a regular basis.  Before you protest, please note that this is one of the cornerstones to my methodology of social rehabilitation.  Your true spiritual affiliations do not concern me—it does not matter ot me if you Taoist, Daoist, Buddhist, or worhip Meryl Streep—but it is absolutely essential that you become a regular praying, tithing, communion-taking, hards-in-the-air-waving, Bible-study-fellowship-attending member of this church. (This has the added bonus of ensuring that you will be qualified for burial at the most coveted Christian cemetery on Hong Kong Island, rather than having to suffer the eternal humiliation of being interred at one of those lesser cemeteries on the Kowloon side.)

 

Astrid Leong was a little sadder.  She’s described as naturally gorgeous, discreet, and sophisticated with exquisite taste, but when it comes to her husband, Michael, she’s a bit of a doormat and a total doorknob .  It took her all of CRA and CRG to figure out what a douchebag asshole he’s been to her and her son, Cassian.  When you think about it, the books are full of absent and incompetent fathers and meddling, conniving mothers.   But the, what kind of soap opera would you have without damaged people?  The only person who seems to be completely honest with himself is financier, Edison Cheng.  He at least owns the fact that he's a self-centred ass-hole and his inner monologues are sharp and funny.

 

Still, there was something morally repugnant reading light-hearted fiction about the lifestyles of the filthy rich, even though it was mostly satirical.  The displays of wealth were so over the top, especially fpr those who’ve never witnessed the spoils of wealth firsthand.   There were fancy apartments, and then there were fancy apartments that come with car elevators and rotating floors to showcase your fancy car collection. There were private jets, and then there were jumbo jets with a spa and koi pond garden.

  

China Rich Girlfriend was not completely without a teensy bit of self-awareness.  Kwan made a couple of mild digs at uber rich families, but it was very subtle.  Part Three featured a quote from Balzac:   

Behind every fortune lies a great crime.  

For example, the novel mentioned how Astrid’s family wealth was built on generations of palm oil exploitation.  But Astrid and Nick don’t seem terribly concerned about how their lifestyle has been sustained by the destruction of huge tracts of Indonesian rainforest.  They get a pass because they aren’t spoiled or arrogant rich people.

 

An opportunity for a critique presented itself when Rachel expressed to Peik Lin about how astounded she was observing the insane amount of money that Collette et co. spent on their week-long shopping spree in Paris.

 

Peik Lin, who also comes from wealth, explains how it’s a way of “validating their success” and to make up for all the suffering their families endured in the past. Rachel still doesn’t understand and goes “when you’re spending more money on a couture dress than it takes to vaccinate a thousand children against measles or provide clean water to an entire town, that’s just unconscionable.”

Peik Lin gives her a thoughtful look.  “Isn’t it all relative though? To someone living in a mud hut somewhere, isn’t the $200 you paid for those Rag & Bone jeans you’re wearing considered obscene? The woman buying that couture dress could argue it took a team of twelve seamstresses three months to create the garment, and they are all supporting their families by doing this…   We all choose to spend our money in different ways, but at least we get to make that choice.  Just think—twenty years ago, these girls you went to Paris with would only have two choices: Do you want your Mao jacket in shit brown or shit gray?”

Not only did that argument not make much sense, it was a total cop out in fiscal irresponsibility.  Collette’s wealth is astronomically larger than the average person who can splurge on $200 jeans. If it was really a matter of degree, what $200 could do vs what $200,000 could do makes a HUGE difference - ask any charitable cause!    

 

What Peik Lin seemed to being saying was that allowing some educated Europeans to send their kids to a good school because you employed them to build your vacation villa has the equivalent impact as vaccinating a thousand poor children against preventable diseases.  No, it’s not the same at all.  What you choose to do with your wealth can make a difference, and Kwan is saying that it's ok to be selfishly rich without any concern for how your wealth is interconnected with the world at large.

 

CRG was published in June 2015.  So it’s situated post-Occupy movement and right after the 2014 Hong Kong democracy protests, BUT the events of the narrative are set primarily in 2013.  This is too bad since protests had a pretty huge impact on HK society, dividing tight social groups, such family and friends.  So it was quite a convenient choice for Kwan, as he didn’t have to deal with all that in this book, and only had to concern himself with the superficial cultural differences between HK and China among the wealthy elites.

 

Imagine if China Rich GF was set during the HK protests, with Bao Gaoliang as a high-ranking minister in the PRC.  For him to reach such a high level, he must have absorbed much of the Communist party values.  Kwan made it clear that Bao was still a man of integrity, but he never explored the dichotomy very deeply– like how Gaoliang belonged to a party that drew a hard line against democratic values and would likely go against the American values of Rachel and Nick.  

 

That’s fine, I suppose.  Kwan had aimed for confectionary social satire for the masses, not great literature, and he succeeded.  CRG was an amusing page-turner, nothing more.  Everything ends happily for the most part, with everyone figuring out who or what they're happy with, etc.   

 

I still wonder though, if Kwan tackled some the socio-political aspects to his story would China RIch Girffriend attain more literary status?

 

14. Crusoe’s Daughter

By Jane Gardam 

Crusoe’s Daughter (1985) been on my list for some time with this short description:  Book-loving girl lives with 2 isolated maiden aunts by Irish Sea; off-beat female British writer.

This is obvs in my wheelhouse, so imagine my delight when I found a used copy somewhere for 8 bucks (can’t remember where exactly).

In 1904, six year-old Polly Flint goes to live with her two spinster aunts in their house by the sea, near a village so isolated that she “might have been marooned on an island”.  And there she stays for eighty-one years while the century raged around her.

This was my first book by Jane Gardam, apparently a well-loved but less well-known author compared to her contemporaries (like Maeve Binchy maybe).  I wonder if it’s because Gardam didn’t start writing fiction until well into her forties, though she had a career in journalism and the book industry.  Crusoe’s Daughter is one of Gardam’s earlier works of adult fiction (she began writing books for children) and according to her, is her personal favourite among all the books she has written.

Crusoe’s Daughter was simply a lovely and lovingly written book; the kind of book that you can curl up to under a wool blanket with a hot mug of tea.  There were some really nice reviews on Goodreads that pretty much encapsulated how I felt, so will just paraphrase them here (and save myself some time!):

   Northern England, 1904, and young Polly Flint is brought to stay and to be raised by her two very Christian aunts. Books are her solace and Robinson Crusoe her favorite. Throughout the years she would turn again and again to this book, so identifying with him and his situation.
   She would very seldom leave the island again, due to circumstances, tragedies and obligation. She would compare the plight of being a woman as being stuck and imprisoned, like her hero Robinson Crusoe.
   Although she would seldom leave, history would be brought to her, World War I and II, would both change her life in various ways.
Although this is an early Gardam, her wonderful writing ability, which would only get stronger in subsequent books, is already apparent. Beautiful descriptions, especially of the marsh, humorous passages, quirky characters and a story that covers over six decades in very few pages.
   A profound and entertaining look at a young woman's survival, her fight to find a life for herself within the limitations and tragedies inherent in her situation. Enjoyed this very much. Made me want to re-read Robinson Crusoe.

 --------------

It's hard to write a review for a book I loved so much because I want to gush over it. I have read a couple of other Jane Gardam books and loved them, but this one really resonated with me on a very personal level. In short, Polly Flint read "Robinson Crusoe" as a child and used him as a guide for her life. She was marooned with two very religious maiden aunts in a house by the sea, but created a landscape for herself from the fiction she read. It's a book about how fiction can save us, and how we can also get lost in it if we're not careful. Like Crusoe, she finds her Friday who helps to save her from an island of her own making. Eighty years in the life of a woman who uses a book written in the eighteenth century to navigate her life in the twentieth. Wonderful!

 

13. The Boy who Became a Dragon / City of Dragons

The Boy who Became a Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story 

by Jim Di Bartolo 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

City of Dragons: The Awakening Storm 

By Jaimal Yogis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12. Track of the Cat: An Anna Pigeon Mystery

 By Nevada Barr

A total random find during our summer visit to Vancouver. We had a rare late afternoon in Kits without any plans and I suggested we go for a pre-dinner walk to visit a couple of used bookstores. Our first stop was Tanglewood Books on West Broadway and Vine. 

Olman came across some good finds and even our kid found several graphic novels she wanted to read. I didn’t find anything until I spotted this slim 1993 paperback in the mystery section. I’d never heard of Track of the Cat before, but I was intrigued by the premise of an intrepid female park ranger investigating a suspicious death in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas.

Since it was such a slim paperback, I brought it with me for our family trip to Shelter Island, thinking that I wouldn’t have time to do much reading. I was right – I only read the first chapter. When we got back home, I went straight to work the following morning.  I was seriously vacationed out and it took me a while to recover from being away so much this summer. I did a lot of zoning out to Netflix (ie. Better Call Saul, highly rec’d by Scott and Kareen). I read some more of Papillon, but I needed to immerse myself in a tightly structured plot, so I went back to Track of the Cat.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover this book was much better than I thought it’d be, and it took me only a few days to finish the book.

Author Nevada Barr was a former park ranger herself so she offered lots of insight into the politics and mismanagement that can go on behind the scenes of the National Park service, as well as the ongoing tension with neighbouring ranchers. Interestingly, Track of the Cat was written in the early 90’s and even back then, wildfires were a big concern, especially since this was set in south Texas.  Despite being written 30 years ago, the writing is quite forward-thinking – a lot of the issues the novel touched on are still very relevant today.   

 I also related to the strong pro-animal/anti-people subtext.  For example, when Anna realized that the dead ranger she discovered had mountain lion marks on it, this was her reaction:

Now the lions will be hunted down and killed. Now every trigger-happy Texan would blast away at any tawny shadow that flickered in the bush. The government’s bounty quotas on predators of domestic livestorck would go up.  Lions would die and die. 

“Damn you, Drury,” whispered Anna as ways to obscure the evidence appeared in and were discarded from her mind.

The mystery itself was decent enough, but it was more the setting, dark humor and good writing that made the book enjoyable for me.  At times, it reminded me of Generation Loss, another unusual murder mystery featuring a tough yet vulnerable has-been NYC photographer whose eye for detail and obsessive tendencies get her in trouble. With TofC, I guessed the killer about halfway through and sure enough, it wasn’t someone on Anna’s list.  It didn’t mean there weren’t any other surprises. Despite being able to figure out the killer (though not the motive), the story was still sharply written and I also liked the character of Anna Pigeon.  She was definitely flawed and made mistakes, which of course made her relatable, but she was also obsessively single-minded and had her own sense of morality that was more aligned with the laws of nature than those of society.

Barr had some nice lines that were perfect for a neo-noir mystery featuring a hapless park ranger-slash-detective.  When Anna was hospitalized for a near fatal fall off a cliff, she gets “ awakened to eat a supper not worth being conscious for and again, later, to take a sleeping pill.”   It’s these little nuggets that made the story so likable.  But there was a darkness there too, especially when it came to humanity as a whole.  By the end of the book, I realized how fitting it was for Barr to transpose what’s essentially the existentialism of the noir detective to a “lone” park ranger.  

Why did she see such evil when no one else could?  Sheila was dead. No one had cared desperately about her. Not even Christina. People wanted to go on with their lives and jobs and plans. To see a murder would interfere.  Anna understood that. And the lions that might die in reaction? Even people who care about animals thought of them basically as things: things to eat or wear, own, take pictures of. Things for people to use and enjoy. Sad to lose one, certainly, but nothing to lose sleep over. That was the attitude that prevailed and Anna had learned to live with it.

Now if only some streaming giant will make an Anna Pigeon series someday!