Oryx and Crake Part Deux

A few years back, Margaret Atwood released Oryx and Crake, one of the greatest literary speculative fiction novels I have ever read. Last year, she put out The Year of the Flood, a book which features two minor characters from the first book. It is not a sequel, but takes place at essentially the same time as the earlier book. This sounds odd, and it is. Most people reading it will have read Oryx and Crake, either because they like Atwood or they learn this is a follow on book. So the ending is already known. You even know some of the characters.

Still, the book is different. The earlier book focused on intellectuals in the upper social strata. This one deals with people of faith trying to survive in an increasingly cruel world. The particular faith is a Christianity blended with nature worship. The saints are the likes of Dian Fossey and Rachel Carson, those that tried and sometimes did protect the natural world. The faithful, called the Gardeners, have a strict vegetarian and recycling lifestyle, which makes sense in a world where the most popular burger chain is Secret Burger. The name refers to the mysterious nature of the source of the meat.

To be honest, I wasn't much taken with the overall story. It was OK. What I did like was Atwood's writing, her portrayal of the characters, and the details of the world she constructed. The tone is a rebuke to our consumerist world, which pays little heed to the destruction of the environment, the peril of the growth of corporate power and our isolation from each other.

Chabon's essays

I am reading Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs. Of course, it is wonderful. You get the excellent essay, the Wilderness of Childhood, on kids and the need to have creative space. He talks about relationships, being a parent, defends a more Christ-rich Christmas and has lots of other takes. He has an absolutely wonderful piece on Legos, at once prosaic and thoughtful.

There are few better stylists out there today, but reading these makes me wonder where the next novel is. I should be grateful for the ones we have, I know, and I can always re-read Kavalier and Klay, but damn it would be good to read a new one of his.

Reading Wolf Hall

I am about 100 pages into Wolf Hall and I am of two minds. I had expected the usual historical fiction problem of overly ornate and archaic language that makes reading a slow process. There is none of that here. The language of the book feels quite modern, not in an anachronistic way, but in a fresh way, like Robert Fagles's translations of Homer.

What does make it hard in places is the in depth history. The book is set during the English Reformation. The main character, Thomas Cromwell, is an adviser to Thomas Wolsey, the archbishop. Both are trying to get the King what he wants, Anne Boleyn. Damn it is complicated though. So much politics and intrigue. That is what makes it slow going. I find myself worried I am missing things.

Anyway, I don't know how I feel about the book at the moment, but I am going to keep reading.

Ian McEwan saves the day

The earlier part of this week, I couldn't engage with anything I read. Glancing at my wall of unread books, I spied Ian McEwan's Saturday and decided to give it a try. I started it some years back but thought it seemed a bit slight compared to the mighty Atonement. I am glad I tried it again. The events are less cataclysmic, much more pedestrian (the book takes place in a day,) but McEwan brings an abundance of psychological and social insight to the story.

The story follows a neurosurgeon named Henry on a Saturday shortly before the start of the Iraq war. His day is focused on preparing for a important family dinner, where his daughter, living in Paris will return to the family and, Henry hopes, will reconcile with her maternal grandfather, a man Henry dislikes. Henry's blues musician son and lawyer wife will also be there. Like most modern folk, he wants to cram more into his day that just the party so he tries to get in a squash game. His reckless pursuit of the game in a city clogged with war protesters leads to a confrontation with many consequences.

McEwan does a wonderful job in creating Henry who balances career and family better than most, but is beset by many minor devils, like his petulant treatment of his opponent in the squash match. His reactions to a violent encounter are unexpected and the conclusion speaks particularly well of him. McEwan's heroes are always reflective, with rich inner lives, but I think he does an excellent job with Henry. He weaves in incidents from the past that quite naturally inform his behavior and thought.

On the social level, McEwan rebukes the selfish mindset of the "not in my name" protester class, but also the paranoid, vengeful GWOT worldview. It is the latter that concerns him the most and Henry's minor transformation of the day is to reject the negative view and to take a positive view of the world. This book is an accomplishment, quite different from Atonement, but great nonetheless.

Zombies in Britain

I am not the biggest Austen fan, although I do love zombies, so I dithered over whether to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the Austen/Romero mashup that got a lot of press last year. Then FSB Associates was kind enough to send me a copy of the newest book, Dawn of the Dreadfuls, a prequel to the first book.

This book focused on the Bennett family and in particular Elizabeth who is a natural born warrior. She only learns this when her father dispatches a zombie, or as polite society prefers, a dreadful, and then begins to teach his daughters the art of monster slaying. His training is superseded by a young master who seeks to hone their skills further, and eventually, to win Elizabeth's heart.

Part of the greatness of the book is that it isn't just a zombie story transposed to the early 19th century. It is a Austenian comedy of manners set during a zombie holocaust. We have various bizarre suitors trying to win the girls' hands. The girls' mother frets about her daughters chances of matrimony as they take up the use of various Eastern weapons.

What makes the book great is just how giddy it is. The writing is funny, thanks to attention to period detail and tone and to pacing and story telling. What should be ridiculous is actually hilarious. The drawings of bloodthirsty zombies in understated black and white are nice touch as well. You can learn more at the publisher's site.

The Little Stranger

Sarah Waters is a slippery one. She makes you work a bit to see what is happening in her novels. Not in a set fire to the book way, like the House of Leaves, but you can't really breeze through her books. She got started with Victorian fiction and then moved on to World War 2 with the Night Watch. Her most recent book, the Little Stranger is set in late 40s England, but feels like a Wilkie Collins novel right out of the Victorian era.

The book centers on a decaying country mansion in Warwickshire. The estate is dying thanks in part to the squeeze of the Labour government, but also thanks to the decline of the Ayres family. With an elderly matron, a war wounded son and a homely daughter resigned to spinsterdom, they don't have much to which to look forward. A country doctor, a local poor boy made good, becomes involved with the family on a housecall. He has good memories of the house from a childhood visit, and finds himself drawn into the doomed household.

A series of terrible events plague the household and one by one they start to blame the supernatural. The doctor will have none of it of course and does his best to do what he thinks is right. What is actually happening requires close reading. Waters never comes out and says it, but the last line is a big clue.

Like the Victorian novels, this one proceeds at an often languorous pace. She takes her time in establishing mood and character. If you aren't up for a read that demands attention stay away.

Stoner

The other day, Powell's was kind enough to have a sale on NYRB classics. Steve had wildly praised John William's Stoner, so this seemed like a good time to pick it up. The book reminded me a bit of Any Human Heart, and I wonder if William Boyd thought of this book as he wrote his.

The book is the life story of William Stoner, a farm boy who goes to college to study agriculture but falls in love with teaching and with literature. At first his life would seem to seem to be a series of disappointments. He loses touch with his farmer parents, who seem closer to the hired hand than they do to William. He marries poorly and enjoys a loving relationship for a brief period. He fails to develop a full relationship with his only child. He publishes very little and it is only modestly received. His career is constantly hobbled by a vindictive superior.

With all that though, William's still argues this life as a good one. Stoner pursues his career well and remains a teacher dedicated to his work, despite his limited career progression. The book shows that doing a job well should be just as lauded as rising to the top. More broadly, He essentially argues that all lives have their disappointments, but we would be better to focus on what went well and what is worth celebrating than dwelling on what went wrong.

I think this book is particularly helpful to the sort of American who wants to attain perfection in all aspects of life. Seeking complete perfection in all aspects of their life, Americans tend to seek optimization, without finding contentment in what they have achieved.

The book comes from the blessed time when novels were relatively short and still packed with meaning. He also works just as well at detail level as he does at the high concept level. William's character portraits are wonderful and help create a vivid world in the small Missouri college in which the book is set.

Philip Kerr is back

For a long time, I thought Philip Kerr was like Weezer, starting off the career with the best work and then slowly deflating. Well, Weezer came back and so can Kerr. I devoured A Quiet Flame, the second in his Bernie Gunther after the war series. I worried that these books would suffer from missing the oppressive atmosphere of Nazi Germany. This book is set in Peronist Argentina and with Nazis on the run and an efficient police state of its own, this book has plenty of dark atmosphere. I could tell the book was going somewhere when Gunther is traveling on a boat with an unrepentent and completely repellent Adolf Eichmann on the way to South American exile.

Gunther feels a bit more like a Chandler character than I remember, maybe that is because I have read more Chandler since reading the Berlin Noir trilogy. His pulpy language goes over the top at times, but I thought he pulled it off well. What does go over the top, for some potenially, is an assertion he makes about Argentina in the 40s. Yikes is all I will say about that.

If I was smarter, I would have started with the One from the Other. The conclusion of that book explains how Gunther ends up on the run with Nazis. Oh well, I will still read it, but it won't be quite as fun.

Death comes ripping

Debut novelist Robert Jackson Bennett has gotten some buzz for his Mr. Shivers. I'm not quite sure what I make of it. Set in Depression America, it features a determined father named Connelly seeking vengeance for the death of his daughter. A man the hobos call Mr. Shivers is responsible, and Connelly follows Shivers into the Hoovervilles, the hobo camps and the desolate and abandoned dust bowl. He winds up joining a small band of men hunting the same man.

Thanks to the setting and the escalating sense that all is not what it seems, the book is called a marriage of Steinbeck and King. I think it is closer to Cormac McCarthy and a certain James Blish novel. I tend to think of California when I think of Steinbeck, whereas the wild, Biblical West is McCarthy's territory. Bennett's writing is also McCarthy like, with lengthy and symbolic descriptions of the barren landscape. He goes one better than McCarthy by pushing past the metaphor straight into reality.

Some of the scenes in the book are great. I particularly liked one where Connelly and his gang of vengeful seekers follow Shivers to an empty down about to be consumed in a dust storm. Bennett creates a great sense of dread and makes a pristine house particularly disturbing.

So why my hesitation? I think the prose weighs down the story of Connelly's dark quest of vengeance. His transformation from grieving father to vengeful destroyer didn't quite work either. Some of the mythological elements also felt a bit forced. In the end, I would recommend it to horror fans who like their books well written and their plots large scale.

A new Boyd is here

I adore William Boyd, one of the finest of Britain's literary writers. His Any Human Heart is just fantastic, right up there with Atonement and Kavalier and Klay in my book. An Ice Cream War is one of my favorite war novels. In his last book, he took a turn into genreland, with his spy novel Restless. His newest, Ordinary Thunderstorms, makes me think he likes the genre fiction. Hey, so does Chabon. This one is a thriller (!) about climate change set in London. Sure, climate change is topical, but I would at least try anything he wrote.

NYRB does scifi

The New York Review of Books Classics line is so good that I will often pick up a book just because they published it. I'll do the same with few others ( Black Lizard and the Library of America come to mind, but the LOA books require a significant time investment.) So, on the rare occasion that the NYRB puts out a scifi book, I get pretty excited. It's such a joy to get my nerd on, while also basking in the glow of the annointed. Inverted World is an early (1970s) novel from Christopher Priest, best known for the Prestige.

The story is set in a bizarre city that rolls down a set of rails on a bizarre planet. The rails are limited, so one set of people takes up the old ones and another sets them down as the old ones come up. The residents of the city do this thanks to a peculiar geophysical effect on their planet. The city is ruled by guilds of engineers that manage the cumbersome process of moving the city. The story is told from the perspective of Helward, a young guildsman. Using a coming of age scifi storyline, Helward, and the reader, slowly comes to understand what is happening to this world and he eventually faces two great crises that threaten to destroy the city.

It's a great adventure tale and it is well told, but this is Christopher Priest, who likes to play with narrative and the ideas of reality, so you know something odd is afoot. As the afterword by John Clute notes, Priest was critiquing the prevailing style of American science fiction at the time. I am happy this was included as an afterword, rather than as a forward, as it is spoiler rich. I don't want to spoil it either, but I do say pay attention to the changes in narrative mode and keep the peculiar introductory chapter in mind. You can enjoy this as a straight scifi novel, but I suspect you will appreciate it more after you read Clute's piece.

The Last Child

The Edgar Award (awards for the best in crime literature) list of nominees is now out and I was thrilled to see that John Hart's The Last Child is on the list for best novel. I am not sure if it reduces his chances, but his last novel, Down River, won the 2008 Best Edgar. The Last Child is a better book than Down River and it should be recognized.

The story takes place over a few days as young Johnny Merrimon marks the anniversary of the disappearance of his twin sister. He is becoming obsessed with looking for her, and has little help. His father ran off shortly after his sister disappeared and his mother spends most of her days drunk or in the arms of an abusive boyfriend. The cops think he is crazy, except for one that he doesn't trust. Things heat up when another child vanishes.

The plot is great and all, but the characters are fabulous. Johnny is a great hero as an outsider who both longs for community and is also a individual. The cops are also quite good. There is a subplot involving a potential crooked cop that keeps the story moving. There is a cliche about these sorts of books that the author keeps you guessing until the end. This is true in this case, Hart does a great job inserting shady characters and plot twists.

If I had to pick an author of whom Hart reminds me, I would have to go with James Lee Burke. You get the solid characters, the mature sense of loss and tragedy, the believable characters loaded with human frailties and the great stories. You even kinda sort get the badass friend to get the main character out of scrapes.

The one thing that bothered me a little and may bother you quite a bit, is the element of magical realism that creeps in towards the end. If such things make you throw a book across the room, then you might want to look elsewhere. I would add though that you are missing a hell of a book.

We can be like they are

Beat the Reaper is written by Josh Bazell, one of those hyper-capable people that might irritate you if they didn't do things so well. While he was in medical school, he came up with an idea for a comic novel about a doctor who is also an anti-healer, a hitman. I guess it helps that he was an English major in college.

Anyway, the book is great fun. We see former hitman Pietro Brnwa, now Dr Peter Brown in the witness protection program, go through his day as an intern in a run down Manhattan hospital. His days are rough enough, but get worse when one of his former colleagues from the Life surfaces and lets his enemies know where he is. Now he has to dodge assassination while saving lives in the hospital.

The book alternates between Peter's life in the hospital and Pietro's life as a hitman. At first, I thought we had some of the dread Killer with a Heart of Gold* here, and to be honest, it is still hard to believe that someone who takes money for murder is going to turn out to be a peachy guy who risks his life to prevent an unnecessary amputation. I accepted it here, because the writing is flashy and hilarious and because there is a life changing event for Pietro that arises from his life of crime.

There is so much to enjoy here, including all sorts of little nuggets about medicine. At the end Bazell puts in a disclaimer that the whole book is fiction, but I like to think there are some fun facts to be enjoyed.

*An example of a book that is killed by the Killer with a Heart of Gold is the Electric Church. Here again we have a supposedly hardened killer, who keeps claiming life is too hard to go easy on people, but who constantly finds reasons to do the ethical thing. Sorry, don't buy it.

Another one I didn't finish

CG is going to be pissed at me, but I put down the Abstinence Teacher. I generally like me some Tom Perrotta, but this felt a bit too much like Little Children Part Deux. Once again we have the unlikely couples coming together while learning of the travails of bourgeois suburbanites. Not that I have anything against bourgeois suburbanites, being a bourgeois urbanite. Perrotta's observational humor is in full effect, but I wasn't in the mood I guess. I jumped into the heady genre pleasures of John Hart's the Last Child (the library is going to freak as I spilled a ton of Pad Prik King all over it) and the Dark Avengers.

Thinking about this made me muse about the nature of entertainment, which of course led me to That's Entertainment. The original version by the Jam is all well and good, but I adore the Moz cover below:

It's tough to be Hungarian

Back in college, we had a requirement to take a year of history of a non-Western region. Given later interests, I probably should have gone with China, but at the time I was open to whatever. I had heard the Eastern European history class was interesting. Rather than reading nonfiction narratives, we read novels as a way of understanding Eastern Europe. So we read Bridge On Drina (our professor tended not to use articles) to learn about the intersection of Christian and Islamic Europe in Bosnia. We read the Good Soldier Svejk to learn about the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian empire. And so on.

We didn't read a lot about Hungary though. I wonder if my professor, if he is still teaching (note: he is!) would include Miklos Vamos's The Book of Fathers on the reading list. It can be a little tough going, but it does shine a light on the often dark history of Hungary.

Vamos did some research on his own family in Hungary and came up with the idea of a history of a family passed down generation to generation by in a book (naturally the Book of Fathers). There is a element of magical realism in that the as they die, they become connected to the generations before them through the book. The deaths are important, as the chapters almost always end with the death of the main character. Since they are Hungarian Jews, the deaths are often less than pleasant.

In his notes at the end of the book, Vamos notes that Hungary has lost every war it has fought after the 15th century. So many of the stories involve terrible fates at the hands of invaders. As such it is not a terribly happy read, but it is an educational one. Thanks to Blue Dot Literary for the book.

Glass Room

Simon Mawer's The Glass Room was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker along with the likes of AS Byatt, JM Coetzee and Sarah Waters. The prize went to Wolf Hall that year, but Mawer's book, like most Booker short listers, deserves attention as well. Sometimes the Booker committee goes for dry, overly literary (See for example the brutally boring The Sea) books. The Glass Room is literary but it is also grounded in popular fiction with plenty of sex, violence, familial discord and history.

The main characters are Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a pair of wealthy Czechs who make the aquaintance of a famed architect on their honeymoon. The meeting leads to more and the architect eventually designs a house made of glass for them. The story then revolves around the house as the the family is thrown from the house and it is taken by the Nazis and eventually the communists. The story is framed by Liesel's return during the Prague Spring and other visit after the fall of the communist state.

Both Viktor and Liesel become dissatisfied by their marriage and launch on affairs, one straight and one gay. The ins and outs of these relationships lead to plenty of trouble but are well portrayed. Thanks to Blue Dot Literary for providing a copy.

The Piano Teacher

There are few places in the world quite like Hong Kong. It is hard to think of a place that is more of a fusion of East and West. My two visits preceded the hand over to China, so perhaps it is becoming another international city like Shanghai, but I suspect it remains something of an amalgam. The historical legacy is less than pristine of course. The city that grew up around the harbor was a prize in a successful war between drug runners (Britain and its companies) and a state attempting to maintain sovereignty (China.) Not that the US can point many fingers have stolen a good chunk of land from Mexico and even more from the Native Americans. Anyway, this legacy and the decaying colonial society in the city make for an ideal setting for novels.

Janice Y.K. Lee well uses the complicated social structure of the city her subtle debut novel, the Piano Teacher. The story revolves around a pair of love affairs, one that starts just before World War 2 and the other in the 1950s. In the later affair, a English newlywed looking for something to do accepts a job teaching piano to the daughter of a pair of wealthy Chinese. She meets Will Truesdale and eventually begins a torrid affair with him. This gets her into the small society of the island, where she finds that the smallness makes it hard to hide an affair. What's more Will and her employers appear to be involved in the disappearance of valuable antiquities during the Japanese occupation. Flashbacks to the previous affair show a decadent social class ignoring the growing threat only to find themselves at the gentle mercies of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Lee's prose is descriptive and I especially like her ability to create so many distinct characters and her subtle ways of communicating character, plot and emotion. She can be quite indirect in her plot development, not in an annoying way, but certainly one that can be missed by an inattentive reader. The writing is evocative and engaging, balanced between description and moving the story forward. A fine read.

Blood's A Rover

So I've finished Blood's A Rover and I am happy to say that my initial enthusiasm carried throughout the entire read. I was so sad to see it finish, which is rare for a crime novel. While I tend to think the best crime novels are the equal of the best litfic, there are those that disagree. Genre snobs should consider the book a literary work and note that while its story line is like that of a thriller, the depth of character, the singular use of language and syntax and the emotional depth of the story will win over the more effete readers. Unless of course you can't stand the over the top vulgarity.

Past fans of Ellroy will note many consistencies with his earlier books. There are a pair of men with a complicated relationship who weave back and forth across the good and evil line. There is an unsolved crime scene around which much of the plot revolves, although it is often unclear why. There is the uneasy sense that the power structure is completely corrupt and there is little chance for hope for the good.

If you want to scare yourself this Halloween, but don't like traditional horror stories, you should pick this up. All the conspiracy theories that nagged you about the 60s and early 70s are true. What's more, in Ellroy's dark world, no one is truly innocent. The left is populated by the deluded, the self-important, the idiotic and the ineffectual. The right is populated by a range of terrifying monsters perfectly happy to grind up anyone in their path. The path chosen by the book's few survivors makes perfect sense after the hell they have been through.

My only regret after reading the book is my fear that Ellroy now has no place to go. He has completed his major work started with the Black Dahlia, the first in the LA Quartet and continued with the Underground America trilogy. His story line has been so epic for so long, I am not sure how he goes back to simpler plots or how he would continue this story. My only solace is that his creativity and vision are strong enough to do just about anything.

To Serve Them All My Days

My views of British primary and secondary education are probably a little off. Like many of my peers I watched Pink Floyd's the Wall a few too many times and had it in my head that all the teachers were like the "Stand still laddie" guy in this clip from the movie. Thanks to my infatuation with the Victorian period, I'd gotten the sense that the public (private in the American sense) schools were factories for creating the foot soldiers of empire.

While Floyd made have overstated the case, the imperial duty awaiting the students is central to R.F. Delderfields To Serve Them All My Days. The main character, David Howlett-Jones, is invalided out of the British Army in the later years of World War One. As part of his recovery, he is sent to a small rural school to serve as a teacher. While he has little formal training, he has a background in history and soon finds himself deeply engaged in the role and in his students lives. He also finds himself at odds with some of his colleagues. David finds himself at odds with a jingoistic fellow teacher, who is all for the war, despite not serving himself. Some of the more conservative elements in the school also oppose his methods of teaching, which many label Bolshevik.

As in his other work, Delderfield takes his time in telling his story. His chapters are filled with details and asides although the various plots including David's romance, marriage and eventual parenthood. As time passes, he becomes more and more senior at the school and becomes a central figure to the community.

Hanging over the later half of the book is the coming of the Second World War. The school is haunted by the large number of dead alumni from the first war and the threat of new losses becomes nearly unbearable. It is David's quiet dignity that keeps it from becoming maudlin. The book concludes with an act that closes the circle opened at the book's start.

So many books today are written for the short reading blocks. In thrillers in particular, the chapters are usually only 10 or 15 pages, just the right amount for your subway ride. This book is meant for longer, committed reading times where you can really sink into the book.

A Map of Home

How many coming of age novels can our bookstores bear? Given the number published each year, the answer is apparently "limitless." Still, how can the reader choose which one to choose? Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home provides a number of reasons to put it on your reading pile.

Number one is the narrator. We've seen a wide range of narrators, but how about a Palestinian/Greek/Egyptian female? Nidali, named for an Arabic word for struggle, is born in the United States, grows up in Kuwait, flees the 1990 invasion via Iraq, moves to Egypt and ends up back in the United States.

Then there is the balance between humor and seriousness. Nidali's tale is told in a series of vignettes about her life. The first, about the day of her birth, is laugh out loud funny and shows that Jarrar is quite happy to work blue, a trait I always appreciate. She is just as capable of presenting subtle heartbreak. Her characters constantly uproot themselves and discard one set of dreams for another.

The overall theme of the stories is the notion of home. Is it geographic, cultural, personal? The characters wrestle with all of these and with the the home they never reach, Palestine. The characters have so many homes that all of them blend in to create a home in the head.

The language may be a bit salty at times for some readers (not me!) but I suspect that most will find this an engaging read.