Book 33 – Post Office

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

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 (1895), which, though beautifully tragic, was also a bit of a weepfest. Anyway, Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) 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 about 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 I 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 does 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

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 he outgrew once he reached his teens. Not only is Frank compulsively obsessed with death, he collects his bodily fluids and uses the dead animals he's killed for fantastic rituals which helps him deal with the fact that his wee-wee is gone and he'll 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'd have certainly 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's on the side of the bizarre and macabre. 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 has crafted a story with layers of symbolism and meaning, but has been careful of 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's a fat, castrated, 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 The Wasp Factory.

My idiosyncratic way of posting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, 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 used for hunting game just automatically switched off when it came to reading guys?  Katniss' innocence and convenient obliviousness in matters of attraction was 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

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

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

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

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!