9. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

By Max Brooks

If you already have a penchant for this genre, then World War Z (2006) hooks you immediately within the first few pages. The book is a collection of interviews compiled by a UN agent who travelled all over the world to meet with dozens of survivors to get a firsthand account of the decade long zombie war, beginning with the initial infection in China, the Great Denial when various world powers downplayed the situation, which segued into the Great Panic when the plague quickly spread throughout the rest of the globe and humanity realized it was seriously fucked, and finally, what each region or country did to survive and combat the hordes of the undead as they began to outnumber the living. Even though the interviews were conducted about ten years after the war had officially ended, many of the interviewees remembered it like it was yesterday. The survivors range from regular folk to doctors, scientists and key figures in the military and government, so it’s a diverse range of voices as they recount their individual experiences.

What surprised me was how well-written the book was. I was really expecting something on the pulpy side of things. There was plenty of action and violence for the zombie or PA afficiando, for sure, but Brooks also took great care in inhabiting the mind of the person relating his or her story. Unfortunately, it wasn't how he emulated their manner of speaking. English was obviously not the first language of many of the survivors, yet practically every interviewee had a very similar way of talking, which was perfect, articulate American English with plenty of colloquialisms.  But it was more in the way Brooks took into account the context of each character’s distinct cultural history and background. It was evident the author did a lot of research while writing WWZ. You also get the sense that he’s a big history and military buff, as it really shows in the details.

The best thing about WWZ was that it was incredibly realistic and cynical. Clearly, Brooks spent a lot time envisioning a true hell on earth if ever a zombie apocalypse really did come about. Before reading WWZ, Olman and I had conversations where we’d discuss what we’d do if The Troubles came, often envisioning an adventurous escape to Mount Seven in the BC Rockies. It’s always like that in the movies - where you have city folk escaping to pristine forests with clean running water and no one else around. Brooks totally burst that bubble. When you think about it, if a zombie plague does hit all the populated major urban centres, everyone and their dog is going to run to the hills, even to places you thought were too remote.

We had this great campsite right on the shore of a lake, not too many people around, but just enough to make us feel “safe,” you know, if any of the dead showed up. Everyone was real friendly, this big, collective vibe of relief. It was kind of like a party at first. There were these big cookouts every night, people all throwing in what they’d hunted or fished, mostly fished. Some guys would throw dynamite in the lake and there’d be this huge bang and all these fish would come floating to the surface. I’ll never forget those sounds, the explosions or the chainsaws as people cut down trees, or the music of car radios and instruments families had brought. We all sang around the campfires at night, these giant bonfires of logs stacked up on one another.

That was when we still had trees, before the second and third waves started showing up, when people were down to burning leaves and stumps, then finally whatever they could get their hands on. The smell of plastic and rubber got really bad, in your mouth, in your hair. By that time the fish were all gone, and anything left for people to hunt. No one seemed to worry. Everyone was counting on winter freezing the dead.

That excerpt was from an interview with an ex-American who fled north with her parents to Canada since they, and everyone else, heard the PSA that the undead would freeze in the winter. But once they ran out of supplies, any concern for environmental conservation went right out the door when it came to surviving. Of course people didn't pack wisely and left a wake of useless junk.  Of course most people wouldn't know any wilderness survival skills. The living ain't much better than their undead counterparts, they, too, will consume everything in their path.

What also gave WWZ more substance and impact was its sharp critique of human fallibility and the institutions that are an extension of that. I’ll let you read Olman’s review of his thoughts on the matter, since he's always going on about how soft our society has become.  And he is much more eloquent than I am in this regard. 

It’s great that can I just link to his review too.  Even though Olman had read the book after me, he was way faster at posting his review than I. The best I can do is to backdate mine!

--

I believe I first heard of World War Z from Mount Benson, and had it on my to-read list ever since. Months ago I had scooped up a copy from the freebie shelf at work and it’s been sitting on my on-desk shelf, waiting. What reminded me to pick this up was hearing about a movie adaptation sometime next year.

8. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

By Susanna Clarke

Found this almost pristine trade paperback at Dark Carnival’s sidewalk bargain bin when I was visiting Berkeley one Christmas holiday, having already read the wonderful Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell earlier that year and aware that the short stories of Grace Adieu were set in the same universe as the novel.  Although the collection was published after Jonathan Strange, most of the stories were written much earlier, with the feature story, "The Ladies of Grace Adieu", being Clarke’s first published story.

This was also the same short story that impressed her creative writing teacher (now significant other), who secretly passed on the story to Neil Gaiman, who then showed it to another writer-editor, who then published it in an award-winning anthology. As I mentioned in my review for JS & MN, Clarke began her career as a relative unknown, writing in her spare time since her full-time job was editing cookbooks at a publishing company. So the talent that was evident in "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" really got events rolling which would lead to the long-anticipated publication of her debut novel. The Wikipedia has a great entry about Clarke as a struggling writer, which is a great story in itself -- full of adversity, romance and a happy ending. It also chronicles her creative process, as well as provides a helpful summary of the stories in the Grace Adieu collection.

I must admit that "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" was the best and most memorable of all the stories. As much as I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the short stories as a whole were like pale shadows in comparison, as they only give you a taste of the fully realized brilliance of the novel.  Light, enjoyable and whimsical, the stories were not particularly memorable. 

Like delightful, bite-sized pieces of candy, Clarke’s short stories provided a perfect distraction if I had finished a novel and was momentarily at a loss as to what to read next. The stories are probably best appreciated as a companion to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. If you haven’t read the novel yet, the stories may pique your interest, and if you’ve finished the novel, and like me, was very sad to leave the wonderful universe Clarke had created, then the stories will help prolong your immersion or provide another opportunity to be in that world again, albeit peripherally.

7. The Ice Princess

By Camilla Lackberg

All the evil, pettiness, and malice was quietly allowed to ferment beneath a surface that always had to look so neat and clean. Now that Erica was standing on the rocks of Badholmen and looking back at the snow-covered little town, she wondered in silence what secrets it was guarding.

I had heard mostly positive reviews about The Ice Princess, part of the wave of Scandinavian crime thrillers that have come in the wake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books. I had originally bought this as a Christmas gift for my MIL, but she had already read it (and didn’t like it), so instead of returning it to the neighbourhood bookstore, I decided to read it for myself.

The Ice Princess is a murder mystery set in the coastal Swedish town of Fjallbacka, where the author hails from. Erica Falck is a modestly successful biographer of notable women who has returned to her hometown to sort through the belongings of her deceased parents’ house. While there, her old childhood friend, the beautifully enigmatic Alexandra, is found dead, her body frozen in a bathtub (the ice princess of the title) due to the furnace being broken on the day she died. Obviously, it’s a murder disguised as a suicide, since who would take a bath without hot water? Through various circumstances, Erica becomes involved in a personal investigation of her own. She also gets re-acquainted with Patrik, an old classmate and admirer, who also happens to be one of the local detectives on the case. As Patrik and Erica dig deeper into Alex’s history, they also discover that the quiet fishing town of Fjallbacka has dark, Lynchian secrets of its own.

An intriguing enough premise, I thought at first. However, I could see why my MIL didn’t like this book at all. For one, I was disappointed since I had expectations for a straight-up crime thriller, not a soap opera pretending to be one. The burgeoning background romance between Erica and Patrik was cringe-inducing, for the most part. For their first romantic date, Lackberg actually spoofed Bridget Jones. I suppose the intention was to be charming.  But for me, it came across as jarring and rather condescending, as if someone (the editor? the author herself?) thought some levity was needed in case the story was too dark and disturbing for general readers.

I did appreciate how Lackberg created a realistic, thirty-something female protagonist whom readers could identify with, someone who spent as much time worrying about her weight as she did trying to solve the mystery of her friend’s death.  Who was also human enough to worry about the ethical ramifications of exploiting Alex's story to make her breakthrough as a true crime writer.   That part was a little too self-referential for my taste, but at least Erica isn't without her foibles.

But then, when characters were not discussing serious issues at hand (in other words, making small talk), the dialogue was unbelievably facile. There were also a number of cornball moments which tended to involve Patrik. To demonstrate how psyched that a grown man is to be going out with "the woman of his dreams", he is either shown grinning “ear to ear” or singing out loud to “Respect” in his car. Some of the secondary characters were also laughably two-dimensional and/or convenient villains.  Llike Lucas, Erica’s wife-beating brother-in-law, or Patrik’s boss, Superintendent Bertil Mellberg, an overweight, sexist asshat with delusions of grandeur. He was basically a loathsome yet harmless character, but for reasons unknown, Lackberg thought it funny to bring up Bertil’s comb-over every time he appeared in the narrative.

At first I had thought the lack of sophistication and awkward phrasing was due to the translation to English. But I realized that Steven T. Murray also did the English translation for the Stieg Larsson books, which I thought was rather competent. So I can only attribute the cornball writing to Lackberg. Like Kathy Riechs, Lackberg can construct an engaging plot and a strong sense of place, but a clever wordsmith she is not. What I said about Déja Dead also applies for The Ice Princess, that the attempts at humour or irony are rather pedestrian, where [the author] comes across as more square than, say, hard-boiled. Bad writing is a liability in genre fiction since it prevents the reader from fully immersing oneself in the author’s universe. This is unfortunate because Lackberg has created such a vivid backdrop of this quiet seaside town with a tragic history. And she almost succeeds… until she tries to be witty.

What did save The Ice Princess was an engaging plot that was complex enough for me to want to find out what happens next. A number of times, when a character discovered some vital piece of information, the author relied on the device of withholding knowledge until a later chapter, but I was fine with that, as that wasn’t nearly as annoying as the terrible dialogue. It does not make for an efficiently paced novel, which is not a bad thing, as the narrative moves along at its own leisurely pace. Even though I was able to guess a few plot twists, the big reveal did come as a bit of a surprise for me. So it was satisfying in terms of plot construction and theme. As one reviewer noted, at the heart of The Ice Princess is “the concept of secrets, and how they will always end up coming to light, no matter how deep you try to bury them. Lackberg takes us on a twisty path to uncover those secrets, and it’s fun to be along for the ride.”

Sadly, however, Lackberg’s lack of style left me ice cold. At best, I would recommend this as an airport novel, as it definitely belongs to a lower tier compared to superior crime books of its ilk.

6. A Complicated Kindness

By Miriam Toews

I was already acquainted with Toews’ second novel, The Flying Troutmans, which I quite enjoyed. Yet I was only semi-interested in reading her debut, A Complicated Kindness, uncertain whether I wanted to experience life inside an insular Mennonite community in 1970’s Manitoba.  A friend of mine highly recommended it though, saying it was way better than The Flying Troutmans, which she found rather disappointingly superficial in comparison.

In A Complicated Kindness, we see life through the eyes of Nomi Nickel as a teenager growing up in the stultifying confines of a tiny religious community known as East Village (a stand-in for Steinbach, Manitoba where the author grew up). With precision and humour, our narrator provides the reader with a quick intro to Mennonite 101 in just a few sentences:

We’re Mennonites. After Dukhobors who show up naked in court we are the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager. Five hundred years ago in Europe a man named Menno Simons set off to do his own peculiar religious thing and he and his followers were beaten up and killed or forced to conform all over Holland, Poland, and Russia until they, at least some of them, finally landed right here where I sit. Imagine the least well-adjusted kid in your school starting a breakaway clique of people whose manifesto includes a ban on the media, dancing, smoking , temperate climates, movies, drinking, rock’n’roll, having sex for fun, swimming, makeup, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities, or staying up past nine o’clock. That was Menno all over. Thanks a lot, Menno.

As we get to know Nomi, we also get a fairly intimate portrait of the idiosyncrasies and contradictions inherent in  an insular community that stubbornly refuses to adapt to the modern world, or is simply incapable of change. This is evident in the non-existent bus depot and long abandoned train station, where the only outside news comes as a partially ripped page of a newspaper carried by the wind from a nearby town and the only visitors are American tourists who come in droves during the summer to see how simple, “backwards” people live in the past. And the inhabitants of East Village play up to this illusion by hiring teenagers to dress up in bonnets and aprons, churn butter, and pose for photographs.

The younger Nomi starts off as a devout Mennonite and gradually becomes a kind of rebel without a cause, as she tries to look after her father and deal with being abandoned by her mother, Trudie (Gertrude), and older sister, Tash (Natasha). Her best friend, Lids (Lydia), a good Mennonite girl, is at the hospital wasting away from some unknown condition.  Full of misplaced anger and confusion, yet somehow able to express herself with clever phrases and poignant observations (ie. "Half of our family, the better-looking half, is missing").  Nomi is nevertheless still too young to figure out what to do with her situation in life.

As the novel progressed, it became more and more difficult to fully engage with our clever yet naive protagonist.  Probably the biggest problem for me was how the novel was structured. The first person narrative is told in a very rambling, nonlinear style that is meant to mimic the thought processes of Nomi, as she recounts the collapse of her family after Trudie and Tash become excommunicated from the community.  We get the sense that Nomi is slowly growing up, but when I finally found out the reason behind Trudie's excommunication, it was like a non-event.  Nomi makes so many clever observations, but when it really matters to know how she really feels about her Mom, or whether she suspects that her dad plans to commit suicide, Toews seems to cop out emotionally.

Toews is great at making wry observations about life, and there's no doubt she's a talented writer.  Unfortunately, she is not as skilled at structuring her narrative, at least in ACK. Sometimes the writing resonates, other times it feels like the author is trying too hard and the writing falls flat. Or key passages that should build on story or character developement are missing.  Ultimately the structure was uneven, even messy. I think if the novel was more strongly edited, it would have succeeded much better.

This thoughtful review explains much more articulately what I thought worked and didn’t work in the book. Basically:

Throughout the book, Nomi's search for an ending becomes a kind of leitmotif. Teachers and parents tell her that endings often find themselves once a story has begun and at a certain point there is little control the author has over their story's outcome. Would that were true, but the book's climax comes too little too late and the repercussions of it aren't dealt with to satisfaction.

Like many contemporary authors, Toews strives to imitate the styles of her pillared predecessors. Salinger and Nabokov are referenced directly in the text and float around with a self-conscious awareness that is not quite stealing and not quite homage but rather something that wavers uncomfortably in the middle. Though A Complicated Kindness would benefit from it, it's impossible to judge books as though they were in a vacuum. One must acknowledge the influences and relationships to other very similar works and then ask if it is done well enough to be considered separately. To put it plainly, A Complicated Kindness is derivative, but it is derivation well-done.

I agree with my friend that A Complicated Kindness is a more emotionally complex novel than The Flying Troutmans, but because the stakes are higher, ACK is also a much more flawed work than TFT.

5. Portnoy's Complaint

By Philip Roth

It was Redwing’s enthusiastic review that got me interested in seeking out Portnoy’s Complaint, and sometime last summer, when we were browsing at our fave thriftshop, Olman found me a cheap paperback copy. So even if I haven’t progressed much with the Aubrey-Maturin series, at least I have read one recommendation from Redwing this year.

As Olman pointed out, Portnoy’s Complaint provides some eye-opening insight into the East Coast Jewish mentality. Although this is my first Philip Roth book, I’ve read a few books by Mordecai Richler, who definitely treads similar ground. The only difference is that no Jewish cumming-of-age story has been as over-the-top as this one!

I also agree with Redwing that anyone who reads this book will relate to the universal struggles of growing up under parental expectations, the clash of New World versus Old World values between different generations and trying to find some (sexual) liberation from familial guilt. Many of these issues are not just specific to being Jewish in modern America. Growing up with immigrant parents from ANY culture has probably resulted in a whole generation of sexually stunted and psychologically doomed North Americans. Certainly my own Chinese parents have had both an oppressive and repressive effect on my childhood where I simply longed to fit in with my more liberal white friends.

What makes Portnoy’s Complaint uniquely Jewish is in its execution and style:  Roth's brilliant use of idiom and wordplay (“LET'S PUT THE ID BACK IN YID!"), the neurotic sense of humour, and over-dramatic expressionism. That, and the explicit (and still quite shocking) sexual content, makes for an incredibly entertaining read.

Another personal eye-opening discovery was this:  for the longest time, I had thought that the "wanking with the raw liver and subsequent consumption of said liver at the family dinner" scene from the well-regarded 1993 Quebec film, Leolo, was completely original!  Now I know that the film was inspired by (if not ripping off) Portnoy’s Complaint which was written fifteen years before!

Although I enjoyed many aspects of this very funny novel, in the end it was not completely my cup of tea. True, Alexander Portnoy is a sym-pathetic character (“why, alone on my bed in New York, why am I still hopelessly beating my meat?"), but he still be a little hard to take in large doses. For me, the plot line was at times as “circuitous as a string of wasted 50-minute hours”! (from this interesting 1969 NYT review). Like with the constant use of ALL CAPS, it was difficult to lose myself in a narrative where the text is riddled with exclamation marks! Reading so many pages of hyper-neurotic, masculine whining left me feeling rather anxious and tense!! I found that I had to take frequent breaks from Portnoy’s rants and read something more calming!

As a fairly open-minded female reader, I enjoy explicit content in my fiction from time to time, but even I found the racism, sexism and misogyny quite tasteless and dated at times. But I also recognize that if any offensive content became excised it would also castrate the potency of Portnoy’s Complaint.

Now was THAT a clever Freudian metaphor or vat?!

Addendum:

Here’s an article I came across recently about Roth’s merit as a great writer. I think the critic makes some very valid points, though interestingly, she is also female. It’d be worthwhile knowing if there are any male readers who have a similar opinion on the matter.

4. Emma

By Jane Austen

Another ongoing reading project of mine is to work my way through Jane Austen's oeuvre. So far, Emma is only my third, having already read Pride and Prejudice (twice) and Sense and Sensibility. I had meant to read in order of publication, since I had a copy of Mansfield Park, but mistakenly picked up Emma instead. No matter. Now that I've finally read Emma, I can now say that Amy Heckerling's 1995 film, Clueless, did a great job updating the 1815 novel!

Emma, the youngest daughter of the hypochondriacal Mr Woodhouse, is a bright, attractive twenty-year-old woman burdened with a bit of idleness and boredom, being somewhat isolated in the country estate of Hartfield. She decides to befriend a younger woman of lesser status named Harriet Smith and takes it upon herself to play matchmaker for her new pet friend. When a farmer of solid character proposes to Harriet, Emma intervenes, with the heartfelt belief that Harriet, though illegitimate, is still a "gentleman's daughter" and therefore, "superior to Mr Robert Martin."

... It was a bad business. She would have given a great deal, or endured a great deal, to have had the Martins in a higher rank of life. They were so deserving, that a little higher should have been enough: but as it was, how could she have done otherwise? - Impossible! - She could not repent. They must be separated...

Emma's meddling in Harriet's affairs naturally results in unexpected consequences later on in the narrative. It is also obvious that Emma is a terribly flawed character; her well-meaning efforts to improve a friend's lot in life being rife with hubris. Worse, she refuses to listen to the sagacious advice of her dear friend and neighbor, Mr Knightley. Despite all these flaws, Emma Woodhouse is probably one of the more charismatic Austen heroines I've read so far. Emma may be overbearingly conceited and unwise, but she is also admirable for her independence, self-containment and unconventionality, which is evident in her conversation with Harriet:

   '... If I were to marry, I must expect to repent it.'
   'Dear me! - it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!' -
   'I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! But I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to chance such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of the husband's house, as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eye's as I am in my father's.'
   'But then, to be an old maid at least, like Miss Bates!'
   ...'If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty...'

There are many character foils in relation to the titular character, which is part of what makes the novel so enjoyable. Emma seems fairly confident that she won't end up a silly old maid as Miss Bates, and she is more surely financially secure than Jane Fairfax, who is her equal in age, yet faced with a less certain future. Nevertheless, for various reasons that she confesses to Frank Churchill, Emma has always consciously avoided being friends with Jane Fairfax.

'I have known her from a child, undoubtedly, we have been children and women together; and it is natural to suppose that we should be intimate, - that we should have taken to each other whenever she visited her friends. But we never did. I hardly know how it has happened; a little, perhaps, from that wickedness on my side which was prone to take disgust towards a girl so idolized and so cried up as she always was, by her aunt and grandmother, and all their set. And then, her reserve - I never could attach myself to anyone so completely reserved.'

But it's not until she meets the vicar's new wife where Emma meets her true nemesis. It is not because Mrs Elton is the daughter of a wealthy trader (and therefore not gentry) that repulses Emma, but her utter lack of refinement and character, which induces Emma to rant:

'Insufferable woman!' was her immediate exclamation. 'Worse than I had supposed. Absolutely insufferable! Knightley! - never seen him in her life before, and call him Knightley! - and discover that he is a gentleman! A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr E., and her caro sposo, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and under-bred finery...

Since Mrs Elton is also a social butterfly, her ubiquitous presense in the village of Highbury sets the stage for a few awkward situations which tests Emma's sense of social obligation, and force her "to be always doing more than she wished, and less than she ought! ". A good example is when Mr Weston invited Mrs Elton to join their touring party that Emma herself very much wanted to go:

Now, as her objection was nothing but her very great dislike of Mrs Elton, of which Mr Weston must already be perfectly aware, it was not worth bringing forward again: - it could not be done without a reproof of him, which would be giving pain to his wife; and she found herself therefore obliged to consent to an arrangement which she would have done a great deal to avoid; an arrangement which she would probably expose her even to the degradation of being said to be of Mrs Elton's party!

Naurally, one has found themselves in similar predicaments as our dear Emma! Fortunately (or unfortunately), the novel has a conventionally happy ending where eventually Emma learns the error of her ways and even winds up marrying a man of high character who is suitable to her status and temperament. Ah, but what else can I say that has not been said before about Emma? The novel was immensely enjoyable, but it also lacked a narrative arc that P&P and S&S had. Not only was it denser, but it also felt longer, because it got rather bogged down in the middle. Despite its flaws, Emma was still a book that I'm so glad to finally read. And I'm beginning to understand how Austen's books can inspire such a devoted, near universal following. The charming romances and comedy of manners are definitely a factor in a kind of surface appeal. But when it comes down to it, Austen was, at heart, a keen observer of every day human foibles.

Last year, the Indo-British author V.S. Naipaul caused a minor stir when he proclaimed that there was no woman in the history of literature who was his equal - not even Jane Austen. Perhaps his chauvinistic ego had ample time to inflate since 2001 when he won the Nobel prize, but he also failed to recognize (had he bothered to read any of her books) that Austen had no equal in characterizing pompous asses like himself.

Although Naipaul's declaration was nothing short of embarrassing, it did inspire a wealth of spirited responses from the literary world. One excellent article I found was this book review:
"Like it or not, the reality on the ground is that Jane Austen benefits and suffers from being associated with women, and her status as a major writer has been complicated by gender issues since her earliest readers".

Bilger's insightful review also allowed me to discover William Deresiewicz, a former Yale professor who, twenty years ago, might have wholeheartedly shared Naipaul's attitude... until he started reading Jane Austen and came to the realization that she was - surprise! - a great writer. Looking back on the writers "whose heroes he had wanted to emulate", he found them "wanting by comparison". According to Deresiewicz, "[S]he didn't need to play the same game as the big boys. Her small, feminine game was every bit as good." He then became inspired to write a book about his experiences, A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me about Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter.

Great. Another book to put on my ever growing list of books to read. But not before I finish Austen's entire oeuvre!

3. House of Stairs

By William Sleator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Z for Zachariah

By Robert C. O'Brien

Now this is what I’m talking about!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. A Wrinkle In Time

By Madeleine L'Engle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next!

The Wrap Up

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

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

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

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

  Fingersmith

  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

  Far From the Madding Crowd

  HMS Surprise

  Crocodile on the Sandbank

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

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

Book 41 – Crocodile on the Sandbank

By Elizabeth Peters

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

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

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

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

[SPOILER ALERT]

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

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

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

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

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

The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists

A Story from the sketchbook of the cartoonist “Seth”

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

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

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

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

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

By Stieg Larsson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book 38 – The Death-Ray

By Daniel Clowes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book 37 – City of Glass: the Graphic Novel

By Paul Auster
Adaptation by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book 36 - Tokyo On Foot: A Graphic Memoir

By Florent Chavouet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book 35 – Uglies

By Scott Westerfeld

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book 34 – Three Day Road

By Joseph Boyden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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