“…Connie’s stories are always peopled with real human beings, no matter where or when they take place, recognizably real people whom we immediately be“…Connie’s stories are always peopled with real human beings, no matter where or when they take place, recognizably real people whom we immediately believe in and accept…” – introduction to Impossible Things by Gardener Dozois
Connie Willis is an odd duck. She’s often shelved in the sci-fi/fantasy section, sharing space with elaborate and fantastic worlds such as Dune and grand predictive works by great minds like Isaac Asimov. But she is neither a prognosticator, nor is she a world builder. Her stories take place closer to home. Humans are her worlds. Interactions and emotions her technology.
She writes historical tragedies, scathing satires, and romantic comedies. Whether or not they’re in space or in the future is only coincidental, set dressing to what’s really happening with the characters and the emotions that they bring up in the reader.
Not that I would know the ennui of middle age, but I couldn’t help crying at the ending of “Chance” – a magical realistic tale of a 40-something woman revisiting her past and regretting her present. “The Last of the Winnebagos” and its slow burning depression of a near future world without dogs or RVs, crushed my spirits just as effectively as when I first read it in The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories.
Historical fiction also makes an appearance of course, because you cannot have Willis without a bit of the past showing up at some point. Irrational fears during wartime turns narrators unreliable in “Schwarzschild Radius” (set in the WWI German trenches) and “Jack” (set during the Blitz, Willis’ favorite time period). The bleakness of those tales contrast nicely with “Winter’s Tale”, which quietly plays credence to a Shakespeare conspiracy theory from the perspective of his wife. All are intimate portrayals of the past, human and terrible and wonderful at the same time.
Yet, as much as she’s good at writing tragedies, Willis is a sucker for a happy ending. “Spice Pogrom” is a particular stand out here, a romantic comedy in the style of Golden Age Hollywood. Think Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in an overcrowded space station playing host to an alien who may or may not understand what they are saying. Mad-capped pacing and a lovely romantic ending. Fluffy and fun and exactly what the doctor ordered, especially after her tragedies.
And you can’t forget Willis’s trademark wit, which also makes an appearance. “Ado” peers at a world so obsessed with political correctness that learning is an afterthought. “In the Late Cretaceous” follows professors dogged with efficiency and relevancy measures, which feels like it could play nicely as the next season of Netflix’s The Chair. Both stories were published in 1988 and 1991 respectively and are still painfully relevant today. Hilarious yet depressing tragicomedies that punch you in the gut as much as they make you laugh out loud.
If you think about it, Willis has a nice duality to her work as a whole. Funny yet heartbreaking. Futuristic yet realistic. Ironic yet romantic. Historical yet relevant. And that’s why I love reading Connie Willis’s short stories. They are not only the best of her writing distilled and perfected, but the perfect showcase for her range and talent of creating humans and emotions that are both powerful and fun often at the same time....more
“Who needs a face when the masks in life are endless?” ― Diliana Ovtcharova
I encountered that line in an indie art book where poems and little stories“Who needs a face when the masks in life are endless?” ― Diliana Ovtcharova
I encountered that line in an indie art book where poems and little stories accompanied the artist’s fantastic, whimsical, and thoughtful illustrations. I can’t remember what artwork this line complimented, but the quote itself stuck with me.
It resurfaced when I was trying to go to bed, mulling over Lady Oracle.
The subject and narrator of this novel, Joan Foster, has a lot of masks. She shifts from life to life, identity to identity, almost without really trying. From fat to thin, from dating a Polish count to marrying an armchair leftist, from inept housewife to rising authoress. So many masks in fact that she eventually gets buried underneath them and decides that her only way out is through death…an orchestrated fake death at least.
Through Joan’s meandering and fascinating life, Atwood explores the nature of masks and multiple identities, especially when it relates to what it means to be a (white, heterosexual) woman in the 20th century. All the internalized expectations and sexism, the roles they must play and how they are to play them.
Joan is the perfect embodiment of those pressures. In her naivety and optimism, she soaks up the world and people around her like a sponge. Some part of her knows what is happening, knows that she is being pushed and pulled by her environment. Yet, she is blinded by her incurable romanticism and hope. She lives her life by gut reactions and worries endlessly about what she should be doing. She both floats and worries her way through life until she breaks.
Her story reminds us that we all have masks that we’re forced to wear based on expectations placed on us by society and other people. But what does it say if we are always wearing masks? Is there no part of us that is true?
For Joan Foster, the only way she found her true self was to “die.” In “death”, separated from everyone she knew and society’s pressures, she finally allowed herself to take off her masks and see herself for who she was. She finally saw her face.
Or maybe she just understood better the masks that she was wearing. Who’s to say that the masks aren’t the truth, but instead just different aspects of the truth? Who’s to say if we really have faces at all or if we’re just masks all the way down?...more
“And I’ll mean that being alive matters, even being alive in the smallest, smallest way. And aren’t you lucky to be here.”
The novel runs in parallels.“And I’ll mean that being alive matters, even being alive in the smallest, smallest way. And aren’t you lucky to be here.”
The novel runs in parallels. On one side is Ruth and Nat -- 17-year-old wards of the state that can also speak to the dead. On the other, 12 years later, is Cora, Ruth's adult pregnant niece. As the teenagers escape their hyper-religious foster home using their gift, Cora is led by her aunt by foot through upstate New York to a destination both unknown and unimportant.
It’s a story about motherhood and faith, stars and roads, comets and bleach. It’s a tale of escape and coming-of-age. It’s an exploration of toxic faith and toxic masculinity. It’s a saga of survival and what it means to be a woman when the world is so much larger and more powerful than you. It’s a strange novel, hard to describe but easy to feel, with characters trapped in situations that appear as both harshly realistic and utterly surreal. I mean how do you begin to talk about the power of a pregnant woman exhausted in a forest or the horror of a cult leader dancing to “Space Oddity”?
At lot of the credit can be given to Samantha Hunt’s writing. Hunt's words are lyrical and mesmerizing, like a voice from the darkness, calling to you, chilling you and comforting you. Reality seems magnified here in Hunt’s novel as images flash before you, laid bare by her simple phrases…
“Without electricity I watch the lights of the cars pass by. The traffic never stops, waves on an eroding beach, creeping closer to the house each night, eating the quiet fields, the neighbors, stars in the night sky.”
The best way I’ve come up to describe is it’s as if William Faulkner wrote the podcast Alice Isn’t Dead. The forgotten and hidden cultures of America mixed with the gothic, absurdness of the country’s backroads. It makes for a very intoxicating mix....more
Elsa is "different." A precocious child, she constantly gets bullied at school but takes refuge in Harry Potter and superheroes, but in mostly her graElsa is "different." A precocious child, she constantly gets bullied at school but takes refuge in Harry Potter and superheroes, but in mostly her grandmother's fairy tales. That is until her grandmother dies and tasks Elsa with handing out her apologies, and Elsa begins to learn the real stories behind the tales. Elsa’s hero’s journey ultimately takes her through the multilayered relationships between the people she shares the subdivided house with, and she, of course, learns a lot along the way about family, life, and just being human.
Strange, but it reminds me a bit of a book I vaguely remember reading in middle school. It was a story of a house in Brooklyn and the lives and connections inside... Everything’s hazy as I'm sure other childhood memories will become.
A fitting association because My Grandmother Sends her Regards and Apologies is also about childhood and the fantastic lens the world is seen through when you’re an almost eight-year-old. But unlike what you’d expect with a book about growing up, Elsa is not stripped of her wonder with age and time, but instead the wonder grows and expands to engulf everyone in the house. Just what her granny would’ve wanted.
It’s a sweet novel, but like that vague memory of another book I once read, it feels distant, almost foreign (despite the fact that it literally is). It felt like I was looking in, never quite able to feel the emotions as deeply as intended. I guess you would get more into it if you more directly related to Elsa, her struggles with bullies and her unwavering love of her grandmother.
And, yes, if you look at Elsa in a certain light, the basic make up of her character is borderline cliché (the precocious, lonely child who takes refuge in fiction, I mean, come on). But really, she’s a very distinct person with peculiar tastes and an instantly recognizable voice. Which is why I like her. She’s no Mary Sue; she’s full of energy and life.
In fact, all the characters are detailed in their depiction. Almost full to bursting you could say as the second half of the book is just one heart-to-heart chat after another, rounding out every single character and improbably connecting everyone in Elsa's subdivided house in a web of backstory. While things can get a bit sappy, it’s always nice to see characters this developed. Hopefully, then, that will cause this book to stick in my head longer than that one loosely recalled middle school read....more
I kept imagining a Christopher Nolan-style film while reading this book. The psychological mazes, the twisting realities, the layered timelines. God, I kept imagining a Christopher Nolan-style film while reading this book. The psychological mazes, the twisting realities, the layered timelines. God, it would be cool. And sadly, in some ways, if done right, I’d fancy better than the book.
A young man, lost and bored with his own life, follows his sister to Toronto where he finds companionship, work, and romance amongst her friends. However, things quickly turn messy as his sister, who has always been “difficult”, becomes increasingly erratic until finally disappearing. Her boyfriend disappears shortly after, leaving the narrator a box, a lab rat, and a note that says, “This is the only way back for us.” It seems there was something about what the couple was doing in their research lab, something about time and space and its subjectivity that is the key to both their disappearances and the hope for their return.
What I found most intriguing was the novel’s creative timeline. It chops up those three years the narrator spent in the company of his sister and her friends and layers them together showing one month at a time, highlighting the changes between them. This narrative design drew me in as I began to knit the timeline back together in my head.
And then things turned strange and delightfully creepy as the narrator got farther and farther into what his sister and her boyfriend were doing. I got pulled in more and more until something snapped and the connection was broken.
My main problem: there was too much wedged in where it should’ve been left out. It defined where it should’ve just left vague. It added a character where the plot didn’t need one. The result: the ominous and horrific feeling fractured, the character not fully developed.
This book still needs some tweaking. It needs another hand, a visual layer to flesh it out. The right director, the right writer, the right cinematographer, the right sound team…Oh god I would love to see that.
But considering it’s the author’s first novel, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt....more
This is one of those books where I don’t know what to think afterwards. There’s such of mixture of narratives and emotions and a general concluding feThis is one of those books where I don’t know what to think afterwards. There’s such of mixture of narratives and emotions and a general concluding feeling of what-the-hell-just-happened that to generate an overall opinion is a bit difficult.
The Adjacent is a hodgepodge of stories and characters, loosely tangled together with parallels and similarities that somehow help to create a whole novel. Each section jumps along through time and space from one life to the next. From a tale of a magician sent to the WWI trenches to help make British planes invisible, to a journalist in the near future interviewing the quantum physicist responsible for inventing a weapon that will destroy society, to a female WWII polite longing for her lost love in Poland and the British mechanic deeply in love with her.
One story connects everything though, acting like a handhold in the dark. The novel returns again and again to melancholic tale of a recently widowed freelance photojournalist living in a world ravaged by climate change and threatened by a quantum weapon that annihilates everything within the radius of a perfect triangle.
This depressing look at the future introduces the themes and similarities that somehow turn this collection of struggles throughout time and space into one semi-cohesive whole. It is through the photojournalist’s narrative that a vague sense of the circular nature of history appears -- how we as humans always seem to fight regardless of its increasing toll and how the need for another person, a companion in life, is also just as ceaseless.
At times, I was reminded of David Mitchell’s work in the way that a series of roughly connected stories come together to depict some grand theme of the human condition. But certain traits of the book made it undeniably a work of Christopher Priest, if you are familiar with any of his other writings. Magic and the life philosophy that goes with it (the heart of the The Prestige), WWII airplanes and politics (the basis of The Separation), and even a brief interlude into the Dream Archipelago (the setting of The Islanders), all make appearances in The Adjacent.
I think I enjoyed reading it. I was intrigued at least by the separate stories, trying to figure out how they all worked together. However, I don’t exactly know what happened in the end. The plot was unclear and the connections between the sections of the novel were, like I said, loose. I won’t say any more so as not to spoil any of the twists (and Priest has always been good at crafting a stellar plot twist), but I will leave you with one thing that the novel embodies, one thing that I’ve figured out after a while to help you through the ambiguity of Priest’s work. To him, time and space and history a lot more inconsistent and undefined than you’d think. Just like an atomic quark can exist in two places at once, a human story, a human life, a human society can too. ...more
Read enough of Jonathan Carroll and you start to recognize his style. He’s just one of those authors that is distinct and original, but only seems to Read enough of Jonathan Carroll and you start to recognize his style. He’s just one of those authors that is distinct and original, but only seems to write one kind of thing. Every one of his books are different of course, but they almost all carry the same beats, especially his newer books (such as White Apples, Wooden Sea, and The Ghost in Love).
His work always includes childhood imaginations, relationships new and old, trips to Vienna, and friendly dogs all connected to something large and strange and cosmic. In Carrol’s writing, the nature of the universe can always be improved, helped, and/or explained by the deepest of human experiences and emotion.
If you haven’t already guessed, Bathing the Lion is no different. In this novel, four people from a Vermont town all share the same dream. Why? Because something dark and dangerous is afoot. The universe is shifting, changing under Chaos’s influence and something about who they once were can determine the course of things to come.
In this book, more than any of the others that I’ve read by Carroll, I’ve realized the surreal nature of his writing. Carroll is almost Lynchian in how he shifts from realism to the downright bizarre. One moment there’s a painfully genuine depiction of a failing marriage and the next there’s a red elephant baring maps from their childhood in its wrinkles. There’s a plot, a meaning, a theme but the meat surrounding these bones is strange and almost nonsensical. At times, things seem to come out of nowhere – a memory of Mama Mia, a dream of a talking chair, an appearance of a trans-dimensional cloud – then they are usually followed by musings on the human heart. And yet, somehow, while these strange combinations and transitions are bewildering, they are also seamless. Or maybe I’m just used to his unique style and none of this bothers or surprises me anymore.
I sometimes wonder what it is like inside the head of this man in order to be constantly writing books like this…...more
It was hard at times for me to realize that this book was written over 50 years ago. So much has changed, and yet, apparently not enough, especially wIt was hard at times for me to realize that this book was written over 50 years ago. So much has changed, and yet, apparently not enough, especially when the prime example of the hypocrisy and tragedy that Vonnegut was writing about just landed a seat in the Oval Office.
Vonnegut of course is writing about money and love here, about gaps in human wealth and human compassion, about the death of the American dream and an increasingly individualized and consumer-based world. All of this is done in Vonnegut’s classically witty and ridiculous style. Blunt with his satire and plentiful with his absurdism, he builds a world and a cast of characters that serve to magnify reality.
The story is structured around little vignettes -- character studies, excerpts, and histories. Through these snapshots the novel moves from Rosewater, Indiana and its undereducated middle-American poor to the northeast and its overeducated and idle rich. And just about everyone you encounter is stupid and self-obsessed, irrational and trapped. Almost all long and hunt for money but often get crushed underneath the wheels of capitalism and the power of an elite few.
And in the center of this swirling mass of hapless and hopeless people is Mr. Rosewater. So who is Mr. Rosewater? Well, there is more than one...
There’s Eliot Rosewater, Head of the Rosewater Foundation, who goes about handing out unconditional money, and attention to anyone who asks for it, whether or not they deserve it. Consequently, many people think he’s legitimately insane.
There’s Fred Rosewater, Eliot’s cousin and an upper middle class insurance salesman who likes to believe he’s alleviating the pain of the poor by giving their death monetary value even when their life has none.
And then there’s Senator Lister Rosewater, Eliot’s father and conservative representative of Indiana, who thrives on and propagates a system of victim blaming and unsympathetic individualism. He believes that the poor are poor only because they are lazy and that simple hard work can solve all problems, despite the fact that he, himself, has never had to work for his money and privilege.
Each has an opinion of and a tactic to handle the wealth gap and help the poor. But which one is right? Vonnegut doesn’t really say. The fractured narrative does lend itself to Eliot Rosewater’s solution, one that says money is not the answer but love is. (A bit hokey but appropriate for the beginning of the hippie movement.) But it is still presented with an air of uncertainty. Depending on how you look at it, Eliot Rosewater could actually be insane and doesn’t that negate his solution? And considering that his work doesn’t really enact any real, structural changes (only really makes people obsessed with him and treat him like a god and/or lunatic), is his love-is-the-answer thing really even a solution?
You see, Vonnegut presents an answer to the inequality and injustices of capitalism that is, like in real life, vague and complex and just a bit absurd. And he was writing this 50+ years ago! It was like he knew that a solution wasn’t going to be found, that the political, economic, and social forces that started in his day would lead to neoliberalism, which is has led to all the crap that we’re now in. The question now becomes can we find the solution that so alluded Vonnegut and the 60s? Well we can only hope…...more
There are certain stories that slowly sit down next to you, wrap their arms around your body, and place their head on your shoulder, all without sayinThere are certain stories that slowly sit down next to you, wrap their arms around your body, and place their head on your shoulder, all without saying more than a few words. They’re simple yet lovely, comforting yet sad. It’s those kinds of stories that Katherine Mansfield is known for.
New Zealand born and raised, Mansfield moved back to England in 1903 and in the following years began to write the short story collections which that would make her name. Even though she left New Zealand and her stories often take place in England, she is often labeled as one of the more famous kiwi authors. Several schools are named after her. Statues have been erected. Her childhood house has even been converted into a museum.
She is credited with capturing part of the New Zealand psyche, a settler’s anxiety that is often characterized by a lingering melancholy within as supposed paradise. Even though only a few stories clearly take place in this English colony, each deal with that characteristic sadness that lies just below the surface. For example: “At the Bay” details a day in the life of the Burnell family at a seaside New Zealand vacation village and shines a light onto the child and adult anxieties that lay within this holiday setting. Similarly, “The Garden Party” tells the story of a seemingly perfect party that takes place while their poorer neighbors mourn the accidental loss of a husband.
But Mansfield expresses more than just a New Zealand spirit. She also explores the quiet nature of everyday life, then and now. Her words are full of subtly and grace. They are small stories about small people. Not much happens in these tales. People live their lives as one must. Just like in reality, things may be interrupted by death or love but it all continues forward nonetheless.
Mainly focusing on relationships, her tales also have a female bent, exploring the feminine perspective that was often ignored during her day. Ranging from tales of the old (such as “Miss Brill,” the story of a spinster taking in the day) to the young (like in “Her First Ball,” the story of a country girl’s first introduction into society), from the rich (like “The Young Girl,” in which a rich girl struggles to establish her maturity) to the working class (such as “The Lady’s Maid,” a first person tale of the life of a lady’s maid), Mansfield’s words paint a picture of womanhood at the turn of the century, a state that still lingers in today’s female experience.
In the flashiness of the 21st century, Mansfield simple stories may not seem like much. In fact, some might even find the boring. But it’s their simplicity and consequent beauty that made these tales linger in the literary world nearly 100 years later....more
Words expressing and telling and crafting. Images that linger and others that drift off into void of time. Fragments of stories, of lives. AnthologiesWords expressing and telling and crafting. Images that linger and others that drift off into void of time. Fragments of stories, of lives. Anthologies can be like that, snippets and impressions that can leave one pondering or pass through one’s mind like the wind through trees. Tim Jones’s stories are no different.
What separates Jones’s tales, however, are their range and their kiwi flare. Beginning with realistic fiction, they flow between satire/humor, sci-fi/fantasy, alternate history and back again. “Flights of fancy” as the back cover describes.
Jones’s realistic fiction is soft and sad, wading in melancholy that drives at the heart of everyday life. Often revolving around relationships, the stories—like “Said Sheree,” a tale of a relationship between two writers that came and went or “Alarm,” a sweetly despondent story about the end of a relationship in Wellington and the man’s struggle to accept it—comment on the endings we all face and the need to continue on afterwards.
But as it such the case in a lot of New Zealand fiction, the melancholy is often balanced out with humor and absurdity. Memorable examples include: “Win a Day with Mikhail Gorbachev!,” an silly look at an “average” day in the life of the Russian premier, including discussions of Arthur C. Clarke and appearances from alien representatives; and “Best Practice” in which corporate cuts are taken to the extreme out in the mountains of the South Island.
In a similar vein, Jones takes some satirical notes and expands them into science-fiction and fantasy tales, commenting on New Zealand culture and its’ place in the world. For example, “The New Neighbors” looks at a kiwi community as they struggle to welcome and accept their new alien neighbors. The future effects of climate change is a common topic, bringing the melancholy back into the heart of the narrative. “Going Under” is a personal tale of a climate scientist who can’t swim but still studies the rising seas. Taking the concept even farther, “The Wadestown Shore” is a distant dystopic depiction of Wellington post-climate change flooding. Other future visions include: “Homestay,” in which computerized consciouses visit Earth with wing-clad bodies; and “The Seeing,” set during a future war, in which one former astronaut turns his eyes into stargazers.
Jones also turns his creative gaze into the past, rewriting and dramatizing stories and worlds of history. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge makes an appearance in “Measureless to Man,” in which he struggles to write his famous poem. Alternate worlds are explored in “When She Came Walking,” which details a past in which inanimate objects are moved by sentience, and one boy strives to find a solution and attract the love of his life; and “A Short History of the Twentieth Century, with Fries,” a brief account of Russian history told as if Lenin started a fast food chain instead of a revolution.
The thing with Jones’s tales, however delightful and insightful they may be, is that they’re also often very short. Extremely brief stories that sometimes only span a few pages. While consequently some have slipped through the grasp of my memory, others left me salivating for more. They are so inventive and engaging that I would easily gobble up a whole novel upon the theme.
At the same time, part of me knows that the stories and tales and lives that I found so engaging and thoughtful, are the perfect length. They say what needs to be said and no more. Nothing is rushed or forced to an ending. They’re the prefect snippets, impressions that are succinct but often lingering. That’s all you can ask for in an anthology really....more
I first encountered John Connolly when I read his wonderfully gothic fairy tale The Book of Lost Things. It’s been years but I do remember the caI first encountered John Connolly when I read his wonderfully gothic fairy tale The Book of Lost Things. It’s been years but I do remember the captivating and spin-chilling nature of his plot, and the poetry of his prose.
Collected before Lost Things was published, Nocturnes contains similar tones and themes. Most of the stories read like modern fairy tales. And also like fairy tales, most of them can be summed up in a basic formula. A person or family that comes in from outside the village goes to or buys a house with a dark history. Soon eerie things start to happen, usually involving a woman and/or a child, and an unknown but ancient evil eventually becomes apparent.
Of course each story is different whether it’s the time period its set or the shape of its plot or the narrator that presents it. Sometimes it’s a contemporary father desperately trying to protect his children from wicked fairies like in “The New Daughter.” Sometimes it’s an old man looking back at how the evil beneath the lake took his first girlfriend like in “Deep, Dark Green.” Other times, it’s a 20th century scholarship boy watching as his private school classmates commit atrocities in order to please an ancient benefactor like in “The Ritual of the Bones.”
There are also some exceptions to this formula. “The Cancer Cowboy Rides” centers on a sleepy northeastern town that gets violently woken up when a stranger rides in. The story, the second longest in the collection, takes it’s direction more from Steven King than the Brothers Grimm. Then there’s “The Underbury Witches,” which deals with two London detectives investigating strange deaths in a small English village during WWI and harkens back to the gothic tales of the penny dreadfuls.
Most notably different story is of course the Charlie Parker novella. Having never read any other Charlie Parker story, I can’t compare “The Reflecting Eye” to any other novel. All I can do is look at in the context of this anthology. In that case, Charlie Parker and his hunt to track down a person that may or may not be threatening a little girl at the sight of former gruesome murders is a much more realistic story than the supernatural horrors that also live within these pages. It’s a dark, compelling detective story with interesting and well-crafted characters that holds only the vaguest hint of dark, unreal evil. But it’s still there.
You see, despite all the differences, that’s what unites these twenty stories: their general tone of creeping unease and underlying evil. Something is always going on in the shadows, just out of sight, something made out of the dregs of mysteries, legends, and nightmares. It’s the kind of feeling that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck and causes you to linger a little longer before turning out the lights for the night.
I’m weary of bestsellers sometimes. The cheese and ease that the mass populous likes in their books (mostly written by James Patterson and Nicholas I’m weary of bestsellers sometimes. The cheese and ease that the mass populous likes in their books (mostly written by James Patterson and Nicholas Sparks) is often too simple for my tastes. But then again, sometimes there are bestsellers that are more than just a little light reading.
Christopher John Francis Boone is 15 and loves dogs, his pet rat, the color red, maths, and space. He hates the colors yellow and brown. He lives a fairly structured life until he fines his neighbor’s dog dead and he takes it upon himself to find its killer. He will discover more in his search however, more about his family and himself.
What follows is a fairly straightforward plot. This is not exactly a murder mystery of the most complex caliber. It’s not actually a murder mystery at all. Sure, it all kicks off with the death of a dog, but it’s more than just that one incident.
It’s about how Christopher sees the world. Everything is presented through his Rain Man-esque eyes: Simple, frank, everything clearly explained down to the last detail and definition. Pictures and diagrams also liter his systematic description of events.
And while his words seem, at first, very detached and even a bit robotic, hidden underneath the surface and expressed in his own way is a lot of emotion. His attitudes about people, their minds, and their place in the larger universe are unassumingly deep and poignant. His view of his lower-middle class parents as they desperately struggle with how to deal with him and cope emotionally is touching and, at times, painful to watch.
In the end, Christopher’s voice is so simple and clear and consistent that it gets into your head and temporarily colors your outlook. This book maybe simply written with a fairly straightforward plot, but its Christopher’s voice that adds life and depths to the words and events....more
L.A. The city of angels. The city of dreams. The city of sun. Who knew it could all be so dark?
It would be an understatement to say that this book is L.A. The city of angels. The city of dreams. The city of sun. Who knew it could all be so dark?
It would be an understatement to say that this book is not an uplifting read. Taking place in the early 1980s, the book follows on Clay, a college freshman back home in L.A. for his winter break, as he goes to party after party, catching up with friends, and snorting coke and having sex.
To put it simply, Clay is a dissatisfied youth. He and those around them suffer from too much wealth and not enough purpose. With no parental support, they are emotionally stunted, coasting instead through shallow relationships, unable to form any real attachments. They wander around aimlessly, doing things for physical pleasure because they have nothing to lose and nothing to strive for. This lifestyle, in many cases, pushes people into the dark where sex and drugs and money feed into the sinister underbelly that lives just beneath the glittery city.
In some ways, you can shrug and not care about Clay and others like him. Objectively, it can be hard to pity rich people with no material problems. But strangely, the book still resonates. It’s not just some silly book about rich people’s problems. The writing style makes it something more. It’s almost Hemingway-esque in its presentation: simple words, plainly stated. Delivered in such a way, Clay’s aimless actions and searching thoughts cut through the noise of the everyday world and pierce something deeper inside.
Really, it’s a book about the American experience. The ennui that comes with success and simply having too much and the darkness that comes with diving in too far. In many ways, it’s very specific to the time it was written about, an era where seemingly everyone was enamored with MTV, coke, and magazines. But just like Catcher in the Rye, Less Than Zero may be indicative of its time period, but it still speaks to a greater, ongoing experience about the struggle for youth and purpose.
And the book sends a message that is far from hopeful. No sudden revelations are made. No justice is served. Bad things continue happening. People continue to aimlessly survive. Life just goes on as before. It leaves you with a sick sense in your stomach, a lingering emptiness and disenchantment. And that’s the point....more
It’s always hard to review a book that so many people have read and praised. You build up so many expectations and then reality floods in, creating a It’s always hard to review a book that so many people have read and praised. You build up so many expectations and then reality floods in, creating a muddled mess of memories and impressions. It’s especially jumbled when you watch the movie before you read the book. But I’ve waded through this type of confusion before, I can do it again.
Life of Pi is a strange little book. Recorded by an unnamed author, an adult Piscine “Pi” Patel tells the story of his survival upon a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with only a tiger named Richard Parker for company. The story also extends to his childhood before the shipwreck the left him stranded—which details his unique religious beliefs and life on his parent’s zoo—and his official interview after he landed in Mexico.
The beginning was slow, almost as if I was reading a book written in another century. Its explanations of the Patel family zoo complete with extensive lists and detail layouts, along with numerous tangents about the nature of zoo keeping, felt old fashioned. The meandering style was interesting but a tad tedious.
Thankfully (and a bit ironically) things got better once he was stranded in the Pacific. To use a cliché, it was a heartbreaking and harrowing tale. Startling in detail, fascinating in situation, and remarkable in scope it just pulls you in. Often both horrifying and enthralling, it captures your imagination in a way that few books that I’ve encountered do. It both invites the reader to envision themselves in Pi’s situation and be grateful that they are not.
You can tell there is profound meaning within the tale, but it is deep, buried in the adventure. The movie, in true Hollywood fashion, attempted to pull some it out by making it borderline obvious, but in the book, things are a lot more subtle. The symbolic weight behind Richard Parker, Pie’s actions, and the Pacific is lurking just below the surface, waiting to be fished out. But like actual fishing, it’s hard to pull these deeper meaning to the surface. Can the casual reader do it? Would they want to do it? I doubt it. Unlike Pi, they’re not starving. And in any case, most people would just like to watch the movie instead.
Regardless, it was still worth the read, worth it to know what all the hype is about....more
There are some worlds that an author develops so heavily, so intricately that they always seem to find a story hidden within. These stories gather in There are some worlds that an author develops so heavily, so intricately that they always seem to find a story hidden within. These stories gather in different novels, connected but separate. It mimics the real world and the connections between real people, real stories.
That’s what The Onion Girl does. Despite the fantastic elements, at its heart it is a single realistic story within elaborate world.
The novel takes place in De Lint’s Newton, a seemingly normal North American town where magic hides in the corner of people’s eyes and in their dreams. Jilly is a reoccurring character within this world. An artist and an exuberant open-mind, inside she’s hiding a deep “old hurt” from her childhood. After she gets seriously injured in a hit-and-run, this “old hurt” raises its ugly head as she tries to escape her injuries in the dreamlands.
I’ve never read any of De Lint’s other Newton novels. Even so, I could tell that there a whole history that I was missing. There were so many names mentioned, so many slight references made that I just knew that there was more. It made me feel left out in the beginning, but after a while that didn’t really matter all that much. In the end, the story is singular and mostly self-contained.
On a smaller level, De Lint does tend to add tangential paragraph here and there, waxing on about this detail or that. Those are easily overlooked, though, especially in the light of his rich and well-rounded characters.
As detailed as Newton, these fictional people are what drew me in. I particularly held a sort of gothic fascination with the childhood trauma and consequences endured by Jilly and others. It’s the kind of grotesque curiosity that pulls people into crime shows and car crashes. That more than anything is what I take from the book. At times, the fantasy aspects were only side details, plot devices, to the story of these messy, complicated lives. Take them out and, in some ways, the novel would still be compelling.
It’s the reality behind the fiction that does this. These characters seem real, and they act real. No perfect endings, here. Hallmark and Disney have had no influence.
I don’t know what De Lint’s other novels are like, but if they’re anything like this one, then I might just pick them up for a read. They all live in the same world after all. There are many characters within in this story that I wouldn’t mind seeing again, even if they’re only loosely connected like people are in real life....more
There’s a reason why we don’t get to know other people, those faces that populate our daily lives. They’re just simply boring.
This anthology simply faThere’s a reason why we don’t get to know other people, those faces that populate our daily lives. They’re just simply boring.
This anthology simply failed to capture my attention. Maybe it’s just my state of mind right now, or it’s my taste in books (I tend not to lean towards straight up realistic-fiction, which is what mostly populates this anthology), or the book itself. I don’t know.
Some of the stories were interesting, creative, striking. David Mitchell’s story was heart-wrenching and deceptively simple. Andrew O’Hagan’s story was quiet and remarkably original. Chris Ware’s comic was arresting in its concept and execution.
But then there were others that were dull and melodramatic. A. L. Kennedy’s story was confusing and over-the-top. Adam Thirlwell’s story was mismatched and seem to go everywhere at once. Toby Litt’s story was interesting in concept but tedious in execution.
I got half way through this anthology when I finally decided that despite the few good stories and interesting characters, I couldn’t take the tedium of it all. There seems to be a fine line between real stories and fictional ones. For me at least, there needs to be an air of the unique and extraordinary in fiction. That’s why people read it, after all: to escape the everyday. But when fiction is just as ordinary as normal life…well, then I just have to drop the book and move on. ...more
When people speak, sometimes in reverent whispers, of the great man Charles Dickens, they praise many things: The sharp wit and eloquence of his wordsWhen people speak, sometimes in reverent whispers, of the great man Charles Dickens, they praise many things: The sharp wit and eloquence of his words, the creativity and depth of his plots, the realistic and original nature of his characters, list goes on. There’s a reason why most of his novels have survived time’s wrath.
Great Expectations is certainly one of them. Similar to David Copperfield, the story follows one young boy has he grows up in a word full of class lines and ambiguous morality. One chilly Christmas Eve, Pip, an orphan living with his sister and her blacksmith husband, encounters an escaped convict on the marshes. Months later, he is taken to the house of the wealthy hermit Miss Havisham and falls in love with her adopted daughter. These two events end up defining the rest of Pip’s life as he suddenly comes into money and is taken to London to become a gentleman.
Dickens’ words take you seamlessly from the misty marshes of Pip’s childhood home, to the haunting corridors of Miss Havisham’s decaying abode, to the dirty streets of London town, and to the murky waters of the winding Thames. These places are alive and vivid, even more than a century after they were written.
The characters also have a tendency to stay and linger in the mind. It’s hard to forget the heartbroken and crazy Miss Havisham, or the ruthless and over-rational lawyer Mr. Jaggers, or the obsessed yet damaged convict Abel Magwitch. These characters perch between the lines of the absurd and realistic.
It is these characters that make Pip’s life, contrary to expectations, never easy. He is constantly being pushed and pulled by these people that are never clearly evil or good. The forces of class and privilege represented by them are always attempting to drown him. His love for Miss Havisham’s unattainable daughter doesn’t help matters either.
It is through Pip’s difficulties that the book’s themes about the hypocrisy and ambiguities of society are brought to light. And while many specifics, including some of Dickens’ characteristic sharp wit, are unique to Victorian London, the themes he is trying to convey are universal. The simple fact is, is that people, fundamentally, never change.
And that is what Dickens was good at, capturing the subtleties and different facets of humanity. It is why his books last and why people tend to speak of him and his books in humbled whispers. ...more
A strange life ind“Oh darling, you will be good to me, won’t you?...Because we’re going to have a strange life.” –Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
A strange life indeed…That seems to be the way with every Jonathan Carroll novel. If you’re a character in one of his books, then you best expect the bizarrely magical and deeply personal.
This time around, Carroll’s focus is on Walker Easterling, a small-time actor and scriptwriter living in Vienna. It follows his romance with the beautiful sculptor Maris York after he saves her from a psychotic ex-boyfriend. It quickly zeroes in, however, on the story of his true origins and the magic hidden inside of him.
It’s a tale that twists and trips, relying heavily on the pattern of Carroll’s other novels, especially the ones predating this book (specifically Bones of the Moon which has a couple overlapping characters). There’s a talking animal. There are a variety of eccentric people. There’s an undertone of cosmic powers. And then there’s the interplay between personal realities and grander fictions. But formulates aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Given a set of circumstances, there are always endless possibilities.
That being said, this is not the best book I’ve read by Carroll. The supporting characters, while having plenty of quirks, seemed to also have only a minimal amount of dimension. The love story was oddly reminiscent the one in A Farewell to Arms (hence the quote), which I found a tad stilted and sappy. The continuity was a bit off, especially when it came to Walker’s magical powers and his belief in them.
However, the book still held that Carroll charm, which I fell in love with years ago. There’s just something in the way that he mixes magical absurdities with the absurdity of everyday life that is unique and powerful. The character never just stumbles into a pure fantasy world, with whimsical creatures and grand quests. Instead fantastic elements invade reality and embody the worries and miseries of normal life. I’ve yet to read anyone who does this with such craft and emotional depth.
So yes, there’s a reason why all of his characters have strange lives, but they also draw upon the very real strangeness of the everyday. ...more
In the beginning almost every book has potential. I try to keep an open mind. To me, a book is good until proven otherwise. So when I say this novel wIn the beginning almost every book has potential. I try to keep an open mind. To me, a book is good until proven otherwise. So when I say this novel was far from good and close to terrible, I mean it.
The setup had promise. Foreign dignitaries and industrialists from around the world gather in an unnamed South American country for the birthday party of a Japanese businessman. A world-renowned opera singer has been hired to entertain the guests at the vice presidential mansion, and everything goes smoothly until a gang of terrorists crash the party. They came to kidnap the president, who is conveniently absent, so they end up taking everyone hostage instead. The whole thing lasts months, allowing for the relationships between the hostages and terrorists to bloom into something new and unexpected.
The story is based almost entirely on the Japanese Hostage Crisis in Peru. The event took place in 1996, when a group of terrorists took over a Japanese ambassador’s house during a party and took everyone hostage. The novel continues to unabashedly borrow other details from the real events, such as the Red Cross negotiator and the terrorists’ demands. While the fact that she steals so heavily from reality yet still refused to name the country is irksome, it is hardly the worse thing about this book.
After the terrorists first took over the house, there is an almost complete lack of tension. Yes, it is perfectly plausible that simply over time the terrorists lessened their grip on the hostages and then the atmosphere became less hostile. But it was the lack of tension between the classes that really riled me. The terrorists are supposed to be there to push the government to change how they treat protesters and the poor, yet there is no conflict between the rich industrialists and the impoverished terrorists. These hostages are the people that own and control massive amounts of money (they are even surrounded by this excessive wealth in the mansion), but there is no resentment, no harassment, no attempt to bully them out of their money. Nothing. Instead the terrorists peacefully play chess and listen to the opera singer.
This complete and nonsensical lack of tension is even more unbelievable when you consider the fact that the majority of these terrorists are supposed to be teenage boys, an age group that is notorious for their angst and irrational decisions. These boys are chock full of hormones and have been brainwashed into this terrorist organization, yet all they do in the face of all this gratuitous wealth and plethora of guns and control is jump on the feather beds and watch TV.
The terrorists are the most incompetent terrorists in the history of human terror. They are improbable and boring and have little to no dimension. The other characters are not much better.
They are almost all ethnic stereotypes. The Frenchman is the only one that can cook. The Japanese businessman is quiet and humble. The Russians are big and serious. Those native to the host country (which is so obviously Peru it’s painful) are incompetent and, in the case of the terrorists, illiterate. No one has more than an ounce of dimension.
And that includes the glamorous opera singer, Roxanne Coss. She is blonde, American, and has a singing voice that is consistently compared to the voice of God. She is the symbol of upmost femininity and beauty. Everyone is in love with her, and I mean everyone, save a handful of characters. The glaring wrongness of this (from a feminist standpoint) is slightly dampened by the fact that she and her singing are metaphors for the universality of music and the spectrum of love. But (like every other aspect of this novel) these metaphors go nowhere. The novel just states them (sometimes ad nauseam) and moves on to how they are going to cook dinner.
There are only a few remotely interesting characters: The Japanese translator who, at the beginning, only spoke the words of others and never his own; the teenage girl terrorist who blended in the shadows but desperately wanted to learn to speak; the priest who searched for the light of God in a note of music. Yet, as seems to be the pattern in this book, the novel doesn’t go farther than a surface level exploration with these characters.
I could go on. Disappointments abound. It’s a real shame. The book has so much potential, not just at the beginning but also throughout. There were themes that could’ve been explored. There were characters that could’ve been developed. There were conflicts that could’ve been expanded on. But those were paths not taken. It’s a shame, a damn shame. ...more
Disregarding how I would bend time and hope realities…ah who am I kidding? She probably would think me impIf I could write a letter to Emma Woodhouse…
Disregarding how I would bend time and hope realities…ah who am I kidding? She probably would think me impertinent, silly, and simply unladylike. There’s a reason why she was reimagined as a high school popular girl from Beverly Hills in Clueless.
For those that are clueless (pun intended) about the plot of the novel, allow me to enlighten you. Emma Woodhouse, “handsome, clever, and rich,” decides to play matchmaker for her lowly, parentless friend Harriet Smith. Things of course go awry, or as awry as Austen can get, and Emma is completely wrong multiple times and it turns out that she really doesn’t know anything about the human heart, not even her own.
Rich, smart, and beautiful…could you ask for a better description of Emma Woodhouse at the beginning? Conceited and oblivious, she truly doesn’t believe that she could do anything wrong. I honestly wanted to scream at her.
But for some reason, I didn’t completely hate her. The more faults I found in her, the more her strengths appeared. The fact of the matter is, is that Emma is a walking contradiction.
Class and rank are extremely important to her. She balks at the thought of attending a party hosted by the nouveau riche and hates it when someone below her treats her as an equal. Yet, there’s her mission to help the hapless and common Harriet Smith marry far above the station she was born to.
Emma also dutifully fulfills her womanly obligations by the running the household and caring for her father. She doesn’t dare think about business and highly values beauty as a marriageable quality. Yet, she’s strong willed, keen to debate a topic, and, for a while, refuses to marry.
“Handsome, clever, and rich” may be a good, initial description of her, but, as is the case with any well-crafted character, she is far more than three words.
I guess that’s what I would say to her if I could write her a letter. I would tell her about how she both upholds and tears down the clichés and stereotypes, and about how even though she’s over 200 years old, she is strikingly similar, at times, to the modern woman. She might be appalled by my presumptive and unladylike words, but I wouldn’t care. I doubt she would be able to send a reply. ...more
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