Book Reviews - 2023 - Robert Schladale

I’ve mentioned my approach to book reviews at the outset of my 2019 reviews, and so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say that I give a book I enjoyed three stars and one that I found wanting gets two stars. I do my best to explain my rationale. To get four stars, a book has to be outstanding in terms of its characters, story, style or voice. Five stars will go to a work that is exceptional in all those areas. My ratings for books I’ve reviewed during 2023 are listed immediately below, with the full review of each following thereafter.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere, I looked forward with great anticipation to reading this novel. The fact that it deals with contemporary social issues makes it the type of work that I particularly appreciate. Nevertheless, I was disappointed.

What Is The Novel About?

Initially, the novel came across as something of a dystopian story of a future America in which an authoritarian regime has cracked down on free speech as a means of achieving social stability after the implosion of the national economy. Then it seemed that the novel was going to focus on anti-Asian hate crimes, although only a few of these were depicted. Similarly, the idea that China was to blame for the national’s economic problems was mentioned, but the idea was never explored in any depth.

The major focus of the novel turned out to be on the removal of children from homes that were deemed insufficiently patriotic, pursuant to PACT – the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act. While removing children from their homes is undesirable, it typically results (in the real world) from parental abuse or neglect, which can have a serious negative effect on a child’s health and welfare. The removals portrayed in the novel, on the other hand, do not respond to any child safety issues. As such, they didn’t strike me as particularly credible, even in a fictional world.

A Lack of Economic Verisimilitude

While I read along merrily for a while, it was when the Crisis is introduced as a major social disruption that led in turn to PACT that I lost faith that the book might provide meaningful social commentary. The novel provides no credible description for what caused the economic downturn. We get throwaway lines like, “It happened slowly at first, the way most things did.” Then we get assertions that it was inexplicable: “They would never fully agree, the economists, on what had caused it: some would say it was just an unfortunate cycle, that these things happened periodically—like cicadas, or plagues.” What this tells me is that the author hasn’t got a clue about how the American economy operates, how recessions occur, and the actions the federal government would take to deal with them. Given that the Crisis is central to the novel, and a precursor to the creation of PACT, the failure to provide a credible description of the origin and evolution of the Crisis completely undermines everything that follows.

Is There a Novel Here?

The sentence level writing in Our Missing Hearts is quite spare early in the novel, but becomes more literary in the last third. This is a credit to the author. But other elements of a typical novel are missing. For example:

PLOT: For roughly the first two-thirds of the novel, the plot involves Bird’s search for his mom. The series of events by which he finds her stretches credulity. At the same time, he never really faces any obstacles or threats, so the novel generates little tension. Then, when he succeeds in finding her, he more or less fades into irrelevance, and the plot switches to his mother’s bottle cap action. In carrying this out, Margaret like Bird encounters no real resistance, so the lack of tension continues.

CHARACTER: The characters in the novel don’t come across as real individuals. Rather, they are like players acting out a not-very-imaginative socio-political drama meant to make certain points. The novel could have focused on a cast of individuals with complex lives, including their loves, hopes, dreams and disappointments, and how those are disrupted in the post-Crisis world. But instead all the characters are very one-note.

PRESENTATION: A cardinal rule for good writing is Show Don’t Tell. Most of this novel comes to the reader via exposition, which is a form of Tell. Among the problems with so much exposition is that it precludes dramatization, and it is in drama that characters reveal themselves at depth, so that the reader gets to know them.

A Nonfiction Alternative

The author is clearly interested in the history of child removals, as she discusses in her Author’s Note. Perhaps she should consider applying her knowledge to a nonfiction book where she would not need to worry about the requirements of novels, and could focus directly on the subject she seems so passionate about.

I Hold A Wolf By the Ears by Laura van den Burg

This has been the most difficult book review I’ve ever written. This because I try to understand the author’s writing style at a detail level. What is she doing, how does it work, and what effect does it produce?

In I Hold a Wolf By the Ears Laura Van den Burg offers us a set of stories that amount, in many ways, to complex mysteries. However, they are mysteries that are not plot driven, and often the mystery isn’t solved. Rather, we find ourselves presented in each with a vast collection of facts and anecdotes and scenes that usually but not always relate in some way to the narrator’s situation. In some of the stories, all the details form a powerful and meaningful gestalt. Sometimes the upshot of this gestalt is a clear picture of what has happened, or is happening, in the characters’ lives. At other times, we are left only with a general impression of the aching complexity of human life. It is hard to say which of these end points is more satisfying.

Certain characteristics are common in these stories. For one, except for Lizards, the narrators are women. For another, the narratives are non-chronological; in some stories, multiple flashbacks appear. Thirdly, the stories are associative in structure. The subject of a given paragraph may be entirely different from that of the preceding paragraph, but often they share some partial or peripheral connection of story or theme or sometimes just emotional overtone. This associative quality adds to the mystery of each story. At the same time, often some of the associative elements seem unnecessary to the overall story. In these instances, they leave the reader with a complex ambiguity, and in some instances seem like outright misdirection.

In the end, while all of these stories are rather mesmerizing, some succeed more than others.

Last Night

“Last Night” is a story of survival. The protagonist/narrator is a woman who, as a teenager more than twenty years earlier, was placed in a mental institution after trying to kill herself. She begins the story by saying that she wants to tell us about the night she was hit by a train and died, except that it didn’t happen. From there, she expands her story to include brief bits about her work at a women’s crisis center, her memory of a hypnotist who told her she was suffering from deeply buried abuse, a free counselor’s suggestion that she take up swimming, advice to her writing students, and a novel she read years later in which the protagonist’s sister commits suicide by train.

The central action in this story involves the narrator and two other young female patients in the mental institution going for a walk on the night before she is to be released. All three have been placed in the institution for trying to kill themselves. They end up walking on some abandoned railroad tracks and talking about committing suicide by train. But no train ever comes, and eventually they return to the facility.

In the end, the narrator is wondering what would have happened if there had been a train that night. She wonders whether the other two would have committed suicide by train, or whether all three would have come to their senses and gotten away from there. Lastly she wonders “if I would have abandoned them both to the tracks, those ghosts I killed to survive.”

A craft tool that VDB uses frequently is ambiguity. In the sentence just quoted, she refers to “those ghosts” and the reader is left to wonder why she describes the other two girls as ghosts. Too, she says she killed them to survive, which may merely mean that she escaped those girls and their goal of self-destruction. Still, “killed” is an arresting word. To me, this ending phrase is an example of the associative ambiguity the author also frequently employs, with captivating affect.

Slumberland

In “Slumberland” we find ourselves once again hearing from a first person narrator who is something of a mystery; she even admits at the outset, “My life there [in her apartment building] seemed provisional.” In terms of story threads, we have her wandering around her town taking photographs, the upstairs neighbor who wails at night, the run down Slumberland motel, the two teenagers having sex in the night shadow of the dilapidated Victorian across from the motel, and the mystery of a girl who was murdered in the hotel. Nearly all of these threads are misdirection. The heart of the story is revealed slowly, and is the story of the narrator’s son who died in a fall from a tower, which he climbed on a dare. The shock of it destroyed her life, and she is still so emotionally crippled that she cannot feel any pain, which we learn at the end, when she visits her upstairs neighbor and can’t cry. To me, this is a powerful story perfectly told. Moreover, in this story Van den Burg’s practice of combining associative threads works effectively. Each one alone may have limited import, but together they are like brushstrokes in an Impressionist painting.

Hill of Hell

In “Hill of Hell” a woman confesses to her dying daughter that she is not her first daughter, that she had another who was stillborn, which she believes resulted from her own desire not to have a child. For years the woman has carried guilt for the death of her first daughter, and when her second daughter is emotionally troubled and then gets cancer, she blames herself. But events surprise her. Her long-troubled daughter becomes strong and kind in the face of her coming death; she not only accepts her fate, but organizes her own celebration of her life/death. The woman is further surprised when her husband overhears her confession about her first daughter, and then never questions her about it.

This story has less in the way of misdirection than some of the others, but like them the narrative raises complex ideas. At one point, a friend of the woman’s describes “the big alone” as what one is left with when everyone close to them dies. Later, she decides that he is wrong, that the big alone is not so much being physically alone, but being walled in by our secrets and the implacability of our judgments. “The big alone had little to do with physical company; rather it was a matter of understanding, and where understanding broke down.”

A clear example of effective associative misdirection comes when the narrator tells us the story of how the pope got men to build the Basilica of Saint Francis. The construction site had previously been used for public executions, and was known as the Hill of Hell. Because of its history, workers believed the hill was contagious with doom, and so refused to work on the basilica. Only when the pope offered them forty days off their stay in purgatory did they finally agree. The narrator comments, “I thought about how few things were more ancient than the bartering of souls.” (p40) While nowhere does the narrator barter anything, her confession to her daughter might be seen as a kind of barter, her way of earning a partial absolution.

Much more could be said about this story, and about all of the stories. There is as much depth and richness in these stories as I’ve found anywhere, and the way the author infuses them with associative misdirection and ambiguity only makes them more engaging.

Wonderful Language

Throughout these stories are sentences that stand out on their own. Here are a few:

“I used to make my living as a wedding photographer, but . . I migrated over top pet portraiture. There was a surprising amount of money to be made in photographing German shepherds in bow ties. Plus no one ruins their life by getting a dog.” (p18)

“the teenagers looked like quicksilver spilled in the grass.” (p21)

“Is any thought truly private, or is everything overheard by a presence we cannot detect? If nature loves a symmetry then why is symmetry so cruel?” (42)

“Remember that history is not only about what happened,” the guide added, “but also about what those in power want you to think happened.” (48)

[On showing the tour group the bronze statues of sheep in Arezzo] “That is how evil first creeps in,“ she went on. “Through the falsification of beauty.” (48)

“Sometimes trying to see the whole of a person could be like describing a painting with your nose pressed to the canvas.” (149)

“You notice details, you write them down. You cultivate your eye. This, I tell my students, is what a writer does.” (8)

These sentences barely begin to suggest the fabulous writing in these stunning stories. But I will stop here, and only mention that anyone who appreciates short fiction should also read this author’s two previous story collections, both of which I would rate as 5 star literary marvels.

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

I was looking forward to reading this novel for a long time, particularly since it won the National Book Award. In the end, however, I found both the style and the story perplexing.

The first paragraph of this novel is effective at introducing the reader to two of the work’s main characters, Sarah and David, providing a detailed characterization of their present teenage state: “The intuitive parts of themselves are always highly aggravated when they are together. Intuition only tells them what they want, not how to achieve it, and this is intolerable.” (p1)

Unfortunately the following paragraphs are much longer and filled with an enormous amount of information about the two characters and their world. What makes all this so unappealing is that it is simply told to us by a omniscient narrator. We never actually meet the characters, never see them talk or act. They never come alive. By the time I reached the end of the first section, on page 12, I felt like I had just survived a core dump of information spewed out by a computer. I was ready to quit the book then and there, which is something I almost never do.

I kept going, hoping that what I’d just read was just backstory that the author decided to get out of the way all at once, even though a backstory splurge is generally considered bad writing form. I felt sure that soon the novel would transition away from exposition into scene with dialogue and a consistent, distinct point of view. But while there were fragments of dialogue, the omniscient narrator still retained a paralyzing hold over the narrative, eliminating whatever emotional connection the characters might otherwise have established with me and readers like me.

Craft Stumbles

Aside from a writing style that I can only term gobbledygook, there seemed to be many other needling annoyances. One of these was the way point-of-view could jump into one or another of the characters, even while the overall narrative remained in the stranglehold of an omniscient entity. Another was the way tenses could change in the middle of a scene. For example, a section that begins in the past tense on the bottom of page 17 abruptly changes into present tense on page 21. Why? Moving into the present tense didn’t seem to inject an immediacy into the scene, or serve any other purpose as far as I could see. I could only presume it was a mistake.

Another disappointment: the insertion of seemingly profound observations that don’t actually make sense. One example: “It’s possible for silence to change quality.” (p42)

And here is the overbearing narrator telling us what ought to be shown: “Mr. Kingsley never uses nicknames or pet names. To indicate an altered attitude he sometimes calls them, instead of their given names, Mr. or Ms. and then their last name. This denotes bemusement, disapproval, and much in between, but whatever the case there is always a distance implied.” (P43)

Character Shortcomings

In the first Trust Exercise (pp1 – 131 ) (and yes, the book is separated into several sections that all have the same name) the characters provide more disappointment. Specifically, they are neither interesting nor sympathetic. They are narcissistic, self-centered and pretentious. Moreover, the overbearing omniscient narrator somehow makes them worse. In the subsequent Trust Exercises beginning on page 132 we finally get relief from this overbearing narrator and get to hear and see the characters – especially Karen Wurtzel. But the paragraphs are still long and drudge-filled with trivia that adds not so much depth as distraction.

In the past I’ve always viewed the National Book Award as the most prestigious and reliable of book awards. No More. For me, this book wasted my time.

Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Like the premise of Nothing to See Here, where children can catch on fire without being burned themselves, that of Now Is Not the Time to Panic is not really credible, but in a different way.

The novel presents the reader with two loner sixteen-year-olds, Frankie and Zeke, who share a summer in Coalville, Tennessee. Discovering a common interest in the arts, they create a poster with some catchy words and odd drawings. What sets their story apart is that they decide to make hundreds or possibly thousands of copies of the poster (on a copier conveniently abandoned in the protagonist’s garage) and distribute them all over town—taping them to shop windows and local bulletin boards, leaving them in residential mailboxes, etc. This seems to be, particularly for Frankie, a way of saying to the world, I’m here, I’m alive, I’m somebody, the somebody who did this. As such, distributing the posters is very important to her.

Because Frankie and her partner in art, Zeke, don’t tell anybody that they are behind all the posters that are turning up, various theories regarding their provenance spring up, such as that they are the creation of Satan worshipers or some other cult. The novel seems to imply that, when faced with mystery, ordinary people leap to the conclusion that evil is involved. Indeed, bad things eventually happen in the novel, although this theme isn’t deeply explored.

The Limits of Plot

As a story, this one struck me as relatively simple and uninventive. The paragraphs unspooled with a logic that could easily be anticipated. As a result, after a while I began to speed read. There was nothing surprising in the plot until the very end, when we learn about Zeke’s problem. But that in itself seemed tacked on and unnecessary.

As far as characters are concerned, Frankie and Zeke both struck me credible teenagers. Both were also somewhat sympathetic, but I didn’t find either very interesting. They were one-note characters in a one-note story.

Pleasing Writing

The best aspect of this novel is the writing. Wilson’s style is easy to digest and frequently humorous. He loads the narrative with enormous amounts of the cultural trivia that formed part of Frankie’s and Zeke’s teenage world, and in doing so provides the reader with a full-bodied, entertaining context. I especially enjoyed the way the author inserts nice little homey philosophical statements from time to time, often at the end of a paragraph of Frankie’s interiority. For example: “To be a teenager, it takes very little to think that someone might actually know who you are, even as you spend all your time thinking that no one understands you.” (134)

Lucy By The Sea by Elizabeth Strout

Having thoroughly enjoyed Strout’s two novels about Olive Kitteridge, I expected to find the same combination of humor, character insight, wisdom and good writing here. Instead, I was disappointed to find an uninteresting story about a couple of uninteresting people, and written in a style with only occasional literary merit.

In terms of story, what we get is William, Lucy’s first husband, ushering her out of Manhattan at the outset of the Covid pandemic. He has rented a house on the Maine seacoast so that they can ride out the viral storm in safety. While in Maine Lucy makes a few friends, re-learns some of the things about her ex, William, that irritate her, but ends up rekindling their relationship. She also deals with her two daughters from time to time, while William develops a relationship with a half-sister that he only recently came to know.

The novel apparently intends to show how ordinary people lived their lives during the pandemic. Here and there it shows us what Lucy thinks about Trump, the January 6^th insurrection, George Floyd’s murder, and a few other highlights of the day. In all of this there is no real conflict or drama, which is to say nothing I would call a plot.

Craft Matters

The writing is competent. While for the most part it is spare, there are moments when Strout provides a nice lyrical passage, as when she first takes in the ocean at her new home: “On both sides of the road was the ocean, but I had never seen an ocean like this one. Even with the overcast sky, it was unbelievably gorgeous to me; there were no beaches, just dark gray and brown rocks and spiky evergreen trees that seemed to grow right on the rocky ledges. A dark green water curled up over the rocks, and seaweed that was a brown-gold color, almost deep copper, lay wavy-like on the rocks as the dark green water splashed up. The rest of the ocean was dark gray and there were very small white waves farther from the coast, just a huge expanse of water and sky…” (17) And now that I re-read, phrases like “wavy-like” and “The rest of the ocean” seem less than sterling.

A Little Philosophy, A Touch of Drama

Here and there we also get little philosophical reflections, such as, “Who knows why people are different? We are born with a certain nature, I think. And then the world takes its swings at us.” (39) And: “It’s our duty to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can, ” (150) a statement that also appears and is expanded upon in Olive, Again.

Throughout the novel we gain insights into Lucy and William, and into Bob Burgess. We learn about their daughters’ difficulties with spouses and Covid. The latter added a modicum of drama to the novel, but William’s connecting with his heretofore rejecting step-sister fizzled.

I understand that this is one of several novels in which Lucy appears, and perhaps if I’d read the others I would have found this one to be a good addition. Overall, while I feel this novel deserves an acceptable rating of three stars, it is not one I would rush to recommend.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

This novel surprised me in a couple of ways. For one thing, at 397 large pages, it looked daunting, a novel that would require a significant effort to get through. It turned out that the novel read exceptionally smoothly and easily. I realized that finishing it would not be the challenge I expected, and so I kept going. But then when I came to the end of the second part, on page 124, I realized that I wasn’t getting much out of it, and decided to stop.

Pet Peeves

One of the reasons I quit was that the subject – video games – isn’t something that interests me. The novel assumes that the creation of a video game is like the creation of other types of art, and perhaps the creative process is similar. However, the novel provided little detail about this creative process, other than that it involves long hours, working out a design, and doing programming. But there wasn’t enough detail provided for me to really grasp what any of these activities involved. The characters in the novel asserted that, beyond first-person shooter video games, there are other games that have educational purposes and/or involve moral lessons. Nevertheless, the novel did not provide any information that convinced me that this was possible.

The novel’s second shortcoming (in my opinion) is that the characters aren’t interesting. Neither Sam nor Sadie came across as likable people or sympathetic characters. At the same time, being obsessed with video games makes them rather one-dimensional. Even Sadie’s affair with her married professor seems to be all about video games and their development. I was surprised when, after the guy dumps Sadie, she is seriously depressed for a month or so, since nothing in the novel suggested that there was an emotional aspect to their relationship.

Craft Matters

In terms of craft, the novel is decently written. There is little if anything in the way of literary language, but as I noted above, it reads easily. Beyond the smooth sentences, the reason for this is that it’s plot driven, or at least action driven. Things were always happening, and so I was drawn along in order to see what would happen next. Unfortunately, what happened never became interesting enough to hold me.

Given the generally positive reviews I’ve seen for this novel, I might have found it more interesting had I read more. But 124 pages ought to be enough for a writer to show what she’s got. Here, what she’s got just wasn’t enough—for me.

Haven by Emma Donoghue

In this novel of 7^th century Ireland, two monks, one young and one old, are enlisted by a famously reverent prior by the name of Artt to found a new monastery far from the sinful settlements of ordinary folk. The story of the monks’ journey proceeds slowly by design; this is not a plot-driven novel by any means. But it has its successes, and included among them is the author’s fine descriptive language. For example:

“Curled up against the skin of the boat, Trian breathes in pine pitch and wool fat, but behind it all, the savoury sting of the sea. The long night’s paling at last. The air above and around him is awhir with birds. . . The mainland lies like a black smear to the east; light rises over its low hills, tinting the sky pink. . . The sea is quite glassy, as if God’s poured oil on it. As the red berry of the sun floats up into the sky, Trian can see everything: the silken fabric of the ocean, stretched out smooth with barely a ripple; flocks of voracious cormorants and moaning puffins working the waters.” (79)

Impressive Historical Detail

Equally impressive are the author’s descriptions of the primitive tools available to the three monks, like the mallet and pitcher with which to cut stone, as well as the knowledge of how they were used; Cormac’s knowledge of edible plants like goosefoot, spoonwort, seaweed and sea beet, and his knowledge of how to prepare them; and their technique for sustaining the heat in embers overnight so as to have fire readily available in the morning. Similarly, the author impresses with her familiarity with pagan beliefs, such as the idea that if you saved a man from drowning in the sea, you would owe the sea a life—yours. In these and other ways the author thoroughly envelopes the reader in the primitive world of 7^th century Ireland.

Perhaps most impressive is the novel’s depiction of the way that religious belief filled the lives of the three monks and essentially defined their reality. As the novel progresses, however, we also see how it imposes a stranglehold on their minds such that they suffer greatly and unnecessarily. Their resistance to this suffering, which is imposed by their Prior (leader) Artt grows only slowly in Cormac and scarcely at all in Trian. Artt, on the other hand, never sees his demands as unreasonable because he can always explain away any misfortune or suffering as God’s will. Toward the end of the novel, the major question becomes: will the two followers of Artt ever break free from the vow of obedience that binds them to their uncompromising, maniacal leader?

Craft Matters

In terms of quibbles, the novel lacks tension. While the author deserves high marks for her presentation of historical detail and the power of religion during the time of the novel, she seems to have paid less attention to the creation of an engaging drama. Although the three monks ventured out into a world that was largely unknown and potentially dangerous, and although they lacked most of the resources available in established settlements, they invariably managed to prevail over the challenges they met. Time and again the narrative showed the ingenuity of Trian and Cormac, but it could have been more compelling if those challenges had proven more difficult to surmount. For example, Trian might have had difficulty in catching certain birds and fish. He could come close to drowning one time, and Cormac might have been injured in saving him. They both could have been ordered to cease fishing by Artt, only to persevere and finally succeed—and then be reprimanded by Artt for disobedience. In short, the same story could have been told with substantially more drama.

My only other quibble has to do with the revelation that Trian is androgynous. Coming late in the novel, it acts like a deus ex machina in that it is a surprise that makes possible the climax (such as it is) and resolution of the plot (such as it is).

Nevertheless, the novel is an amazing accomplishment in bringing alive for readers the rudimentary world of the 7^th century, along with the power and faults of religious faith.

Trust by Hernan Diaz

This is a novel about story telling, fiction and truth.

In this novel we get multiple versions of a story about a fictional Andrew Bevel, an enormously wealthy financier of the first half of the 20^th century, and his wife Mildred. The first of these stories is a novella entitled Bonds, ostensibly written by one Harold Vanner. In the novel the Bevels names are changed to Benjamin and Helen Rask, but apparently the (fictional) reading public of the era could see through this ruse, and devoured the book in order to get a peek into the lives of the uber-wealthy.

In Bonds, Benjamin Rask is presented as a man who is very much uninterested in other human beings. He descends from a long line of financiers, but applies himself to his work so monomaniacally that he becomes vastly more successful than his predecessors.

Eventually Rask decides that he should have a wife to fill the social role of a wife and marries the aristocratic but poor Helen Breevort. Like Andrew, Helen is a loner, though not quite the misanthrope that he is. The two are never especially close, have no children, and indeed may never have sex. But Helen entertains lavishly, and hosts musical concerts in their home, and although Rask largely avoids these occasions, he is satisfied. Later, when Helen develops a mysterious mental illness, he takes her to Switzerland for treatment. When the treatment, which appears to have no scientific basis, fails, Helen dies, and Rask is once again alone and friendless. Although he resumes his single-minded managing of investments, he never achieves the kind of returns he earned before Helen’s illness.

A Different Perspective

The second story is presented as the memoir of Andrew Bevel, and is entitled My Life. Here, the story is both similar to and distinctly different from the novel written by Harold Vanner. In the memoir, Bevel attributes his success to his mathematical prowess, and emphasizes that his work is not only a pursuit of wealth for himself, but a benefit to the nation as a whole. Like Helen Rask in Bonds, his wife Mildred is a great supporter of the arts, and he wholeheartedly appreciates her work. Unlike Helen Rask, however, Mildred Bevel’s reason for going to Switzerland is that she develops cancer. Bevel’s memoir notes that he never left Helen’s side but once, to attend to an urgent matter in Zurich, and while he was away, Mildred died. Thereafter he returned home and was actively involved in expanding his fortune, all of which is described in his memoir’s typically self-aggrandizing prose.

A Wealthy Man’s Manipulation of Truth

The first two tellings of the Bevel story share more similarities than differences, but in the third section of the book, a memoir by Ida Partenza, we are treated to a distinctly different fiction. For one thing, Ida indicates that it is being written roughly fifty years after she met Bevel. All those years ago Ida was the ghost writer who actually wrote Bevel’s memoir (although the title page names him alone as the author). Additionally, we learn that Bevel instructed Ida to use her writing skills to fabricate interesting anecdotes about Mildred in order to ensure that readers understood she was a marvelous wife and benefactress of the arts. In short, in Ida’s memoir we learn that Bevel’s intent in penning his autobiography was not simply to correct the many misrepresentations of his life that he believed were in Vanner’s novella, but to burnish his own image and finally to celebrate his wife through Ida’s creative fictions. Notably, the fact that he required Ida to make up much of what he considered the “truth” about his life did not trouble him at all.

The fourth and final fiction contained in Trust consists of Mildred Bevel’s diary. In it the reader discovers the key “truth” that was missing in the earlier stories of Andrew Bevel the great financier, which is that he wasn’t: she was. Mildred in fact possessed a thoroughly brilliant mind, and many if not all of Bevel’s financial success stemmed from following her suggestions. Indeed, we read that Bevel’s unwillingness to credit her publicly as the source of one particularly brilliant investment gambit led to a two-year estrangement during which they didn’t speak to one another.

Structural Issues

As is obvious from the foregoing description, Trust is an onion, with each succeeding story bringing us closer to the truth about Andrew Bevel. In terms of writing, the first section, the novella ostensibly written by Harold Vanner, is a remarkably easy, smooth read. This is primarily because it is all exposition; there are no scenes, and little drama. Partly as a result, neither Benjamin Rask nor his wife ever come alive on the page. Neither are likable or sympathetic characters. Perhaps this was the author’s intent.

In the second version of Bevel’s life, written by Ida Partenza, the narrative is again one of smooth exposition, like the novella produced by Harold Vanner. However, because it is told in the first person, the characters of Bevel and his wife take on more reality. Bevel in particular becomes distinctive, though not entirely likable, in crowing his pseudo-patriotic capitalist philosophy. Most real, however, are the passages in Partenza’s memoir about her life. The scenes with her father, which portray their gritty working class life, are actually more interesting than the wealthy lives of the Rasks and Bevels.

Quibbles

Structured as it is in four separate parts, Trust does not offer the reader a conventional narrative arc. Nevertheless, a reader can construct one’s own, in that the last section, Mildred’s diary, provides the ultimate answer to the mystery of who financier Bevel is. To me this reveal was modestly gratifying, but there was little other meaningful substance in the book. This discussions of the Rask/Bevel financing machinations, along with other comments about economics and capitalism, were all too thin to amount to anything. Finally, the structural creativity of the novel, while offering a different way of telling a story, did not seem to me to provide a better way.

In terms of characters, the Rasks are uninteresting. The Bevels are somewhat more appealing, although Andrew is an unsympathetic liar. In the pages of her diary, Mildred Bevel is the most sympathetic of the novel’s characters, though her role is rather small.

Ida Partenza is a more life-like character than any of the wealthy ones, as is her anarchist-sympathizing father. Ida’s memoir provides us with a series of entertaining anecdotes about her interactions with Bevel and with her father. But aside from serving as the complete opposite of Bevel, and thereby providing Ida with the opportunity to swing between two poles of the economic spectrum, her father doesn’t do much. As for Ida, we never learn anything about the roughly fifty years between her work for Bevel and her stealing of Mildred’s diary. Thus, she is not so much a character as she is a mechanism for enlightening the reader about Bevel’s solipsistic pride and for delivering the story’s twist by stealing and revealing Mildred’s diary.

In sum, while the structure of the novel is creative and the writing is good, the lack of sympathetic characters makes it one that I will not find memorable.

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

High Fidelity is a wittily written comedy about a manchild who runs a record shop and experiences various challenges with the women in his love life.

Rob Fleming, the narrator, operates Championship Vinyl with two other like-minded men, Dick and Barry. All three are obsessed with modern music and Rob is quick to judge the people he meets by their record collection. But Rob’s major focus throughout the novel is Laura, the woman with whom he’s been living for several years, and who just walked out on him because, as she says, “we really weren’t getting on, or even talking.” (p108 in the paperback)

A Humorous Riff

The novel turns out to be little more than one long humorous riff on Rob’s semi-failing life. Although he talks as if he longs to get Laura back, when she finally tells him that she hasn’t slept with Ian, the guy she went to live with, Rob’s response is solipsistic joy and relief: “I kiss her on the cheek and go to the pub to meet Dick and Barry. I feel like a new man, although not very much like a New Man. I feel so much better, in fact, that I go straight out and sleep with Marie.” In short, Rob feels good not because she may come back to him, but because his self-confidence has been boosted.

Rob the Sleaze

Rob is not a particularly admirable character for the first half of the novel: he takes a loan from Laura without repaying it, has an affair with another woman, and is generally so unsupportive that when Laura gets pregnant she has an abortion without telling him. But it is later, when Laura does decide to come back to him, that Rob becomes downright mean. When they first reconcile, he refuses to have sex with her, and tells us: “I wanted to hurt her, on this day of all days, just because it’s the first time since she left that I’ve been able to.” (255)

Saint Laura

Oddly enough, Laura puts up with his bad attitude , insults, and low-quality lifestyle. Somehow, she continues to have hope for him. She tells him, “I’m just trying to wake you up. I’m just trying to show you that you’ve lived half your life, but for all you’ve got to show for it you might as well be nineteen, and I’m not talking about money or property or furniture.” (267) As a lawyer with a good job and income, Laura’s willingness to stay with Rob, who offers her nothing, is hard to fathom.

As these scenes toward the end of the novel continued, I found myself rather disgusted with Rob. I understand that the author is trying to present a particular character in detail, warts and all, and that some readers will find this interesting. I did not.

A Happy Ending

Finally, in the last chapter or two of the novel, Rob figures out his problem. “I’ve always been afraid of marriage because of, you know, ball and chain, I want my freedom, all that. But when I was thinking about that stupide girl I suddenly saw it was the opposite: that if you got married to someone you know you love, and you sort yourself out, it frees you up for other things. . . . And I know that if we got married I’d take it seriously, and I wouldn’t want to mess about.” (318)

Rob’s turnaround seemed to happen so quickly and easily that I found it less than convincing. Nevertheless, in changing as he claims, Rob rescued the novel for me. I wound up with a favorable feeling about it.

Overall, I give this novel 3.5 stars because the humor, particularly at the beginning, is outstanding, and the writing overall is worth 5 stars. However, the story is ordinary, Rob is obnoxious, and Laura is not entirely credible. And the rather happy ending didn’t seem earned.

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

And so we have, with its sibling Stella Maris, McCarthy’s audition for the Nobel prize.

The Passenger opens with a single page in which a hunter discovers the frozen body of a girl in the snow. It continues with about ten pages that present a girl being harassed by a group of strange people including the Thalidomide Kid, with whom she has a bizarre conversation. I wasn’t quite sure what these two sections, which are all presented in italics, were offering me. But the balance of the chapter introduced Bobby Western, the protagonist of the novel, a salvage diver, and his buddy Oiler, another diver. They are investigating a small jet plane that sits in about 40 feet of water near New Orleans. What they discover is that one of the nine passengers is missing, along with the plane’s black box. How that individual could have gotten out is a mystery, since the exit door is still locked, and this mystery at first seems to be the genesis of the novel’s name. I expected the novel to revolve around Western solving the missing passenger mystery. It doesn’t.

The Plot

It’s difficult to say if the novel has a plot. If anything, the story seems to be Western coming to terms with his life, although if asked he would probably say that achieving that level of grace is beyond him. Here and there he talks about dying, and how he would welcome it, though he makes no effort to off himself.

Chapter 1 continues past Bobby’s dive to the mystery plane, bringing the reader to the French quarter of New Orleans. There he spends time with Oiler drinking, talking first about the mystery plane, and then listening as Oiler recounts his bizarre Vietnam stories, including how he and his mates would use the rockets on their helicopter gunship to blow up elephants. After he goes home, he discovers two men in his apartment who want to know what he knows about jet under water. They appear to be government agents, and to already know everything Western knows, but won’t tell him why they’re investigating.

As the novel continues, it seems as if the agents believe that Western is withholding information about the jet. They pressure him by freezing his bank accounts and seizing his car. It’s completely unclear why the agents are after him because he knows nothing and has committed no crime. McCarthy provides no resolution to this mystery, but seems to suggest that, for Western at least, life is largely a paranoid fever dream. Western eventually escape this trap by taking the advice of his friends and buying a new identity, after which he leaves the country.

The Reward of Madness

Interwoven with Western’s horror mystery story is the story of his family. His father was a top physicist who helped build the first atomic bombs, but who died in poverty in Mexican and was buried in a grave that Western could never find. His mother was a beauty queen who died young. His sister was a math genius who was also beautiful and schizophrenic. Western was in love with his sister and she with him, but he couldn’t see how they could live successfully in the world in an incestuous relationship and with her schizophrenia. Even so, Western believes he can never love anyone else and, over the many years of the novel, he remains alone. His greatest desolation comes from realizing that he is slowly losing the ability to remember his sister clearly.

Craft Matters

The writing throughout the novel is first rate, although I found the passages where his sister Alicia is hallucinating to be trying at first, even though the main hallucination, the Thalidomide Kid, is a captivating conversationalist. Elsewhere there are a number of over-the-top conversations with his friend Long John Sheddon in which John displays an entertaining philosophical virtuosity. Additionally, there is a long conversation with a friend named Asher dealing with theoretical physics circa 1980 which I could sort of follow, but left me befuddled as to why it was there. Was McCarthy merely showing off his smarts? At least the passages with Long John are witty and entertaining, which is perhaps a plus in a book with no strong plot.

Since the only other McCarthy novel I’ve read is The Road, I was not familiar with McCarthy’s style. Early on, I felt in the conversations a huge debt to Hemingway in the cadence of the run-on sentences. Toward the end of the novel, after an older Western has moved to Ibiza, Spain, I couldn’t help thinking about “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” There, two waiters debate the value of an old man, one sympathetic, and one saying, “An old man is a nasty thing.” It would be easy to imagine Western growing old and drinking alone in a bar. Indeed, at the end of the novel, that is what he does. Unlike the old man in Hemingway’s story, however, we are privy to a great complexity of Western’s memories, as Western recalls fragments of his life in a non-linear stream of consciousness.

Passengers as Metaphor

In the last pages of the novel, as the themes of the novel are illuminated by Western’s reflections about his father and sister, I was stopped by this passage: “It was his father who took her to see all those doctors. . . He’d written in a notebook things she had said that he could not understand and he read them over and read them over until in the end perhaps he came to realize that her illness—as he called it—was less a condition than a message.” (368) What struck me upon reading this in the context of the revelation about his father’s sins and his sister’s brilliance was that we are all passengers, moving through space and time. And with his father and his physicist workmates having awakened the “vast videocolored creature rising up out of the earth where it had thought to sleep its deathless sleep”—aka the atom bomb—our destination does not look promising.

There is much more that could be said about this novel. It is breathtaking and amazing and difficult. One of those novels that deserves to be read twice.

Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

This novel comes to us in such an unconventional form—nothing but the transcripts of seven interviews between the protagonist, Alicia Western, and her psychiatrist—that it hardly appears to qualify as a novel. Certainly the ordinary elements of plot, narrative arc and character arc seem in short supply. Nevertheless, the book is captivating. We find ourselves in the presence of a unique and brilliant mind – Alicia’s. Moreover, although she is an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital, she checked herself in, meaning that she is mentally competent—at least part of the time.

Beyond Gifted

What makes Alicia particularly interesting is that she seems to have control over her thoughts—in part no doubt because she refuses to take any medication. Those thoughts, moreover, are at times intellectually brilliant. We learn that she entered a PhD program in mathematics at the University of Chicago at age 14, and received a fellowship to the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifique in France at age 17. In addition, we learn that Alicia is an excellent violinist, and owns an Amati violin for which she paid $230,000. Yet by the time she checks herself into Stella Maris, around age 20, she has given up both the violin and mathematics. She did so because she came to see pursuing both as futile.

Why this happened is the mystery at the heart of the novel. Perhaps the predominant reason is her psychiatric disorder. At around age 18 Alicia was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Some of her beliefs, such as that there is a demonium that lies beneath the surface of the world, along with a terrifying creature called the Archatron that has control over her, support the diagnosis. She also has a history of hallucinating a variety of odd personages, most notably the Thalidomide Kid. Unlike her belief in the Archatron, however, these hallucinations don’t particularly bother her. Indeed, she asserts that they have as valid a claim to reality as any other aspect of her world.

The Problem of Reality

As frightening as the Archatron and the demonium are for Alicia, my sense is that what truly keeps her trapped in her disorder is her own intellectual brilliance, which has left her unable to accept and to live in the ordinary reality that forms the world of 99+ percent of human beings. As she tells her psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen: “The world you live in is shored up by a collective of agreements. . . . The hope is that the truth of the world somehow lies in the common experience of it. Of course the history of science and mathematics and even philosophy is a good bit at odds with this notion.” (p 92)

Alicia repeatedly marshals evidence to support her contention that the reality which most people share isn’t anything absolute. In her second interview with Dr. Cohen she tells him about the very real fact that what we see through our eyes depends entirely on our processing of it: “I understood for the first time that the visual world was inside your head. All the world, in fact.” (39)

She also expresses amazement at the provenance of creative genius. She tells Dr. Cohen, “Leonardo can’t be explained. Or Newton. Or Shakespeare.” And: “What is even more remarkable is that there is no prototype to the violin. It simply appears out of nowhere in all its perfection.” (121) Who can explain music, which she says follows some simple rules, but rules that no one made up. She says, “The notes themselves amount to almost nothing. But why some particular arrangement of these notes should have such a profound effect on our emotions is a mystery beyond even the hope of comprehension.” (38) Her point is that our understanding of “ordinary” reality can’t explain some of its most profound aspects.

Enlightenment

Although Alicia gave up her study of mathematics, she remains intensely curious about it, and about other aspects of physics and philosophy, at least insofar as they reveal the shortcomings of “ordinary” reality. She experiences a moment of enlightenment when her father explains some Feynman diagrams, which are used to describe particle interactions in spacetime, that she discovered on his desk:

“I understood—really understood—that the equations were not a supposition of the form whose life was confined to the symbols on the page which described them but that they were there before my eyes. In actuality. They were in the paper, the ink, in me. The universe. Their invisibility could never speak against them or their being. Their age. Which was the age of reality itself. Which was itself invisible and always had been.” (85)

In the most basic sense, what Alicia has realizes here is that she herself along with all of reality are composed of tiny particles—subatomic particles that interact consistent with the laws of quantum mechanics and special relativity. Reality is not, therefore, the ordinary world that human beings operate in. That world is nothing more than a construct of the human mind: an illusion. In realizing this, however, Alicia embraces it so completely that her interest in living in the ordinary world is undermined. She has gone down an intellectual rabbit hole that traps her in a truth that—perhaps because of her psychiatric condition—she is powerless to escape. Thus, Alicia’s powerful intellect is her enemy. She is too smart for her own good.

Two Ways Out

There is perhaps one means of escape for Alicia, and that would be Bobby, her brother, with whom she is in love and wants to marry. But at the time she talks to Dr. Cohen, he is in a coma after an accident racing cars in Europe. She believes he is dying if not dead already, leaving her with no hope.

Having reached the end of her intellectual road, death is all Alicia has left. Yet she has trouble accomplishing it, against because of her intellect. She describes to Dr. Cohen a trip she made to Lake Tahoe to drown herself, and how as she contemplated what would happen to her body, she was so horrified by the physical suffering she would endure—which she describes in great detail—that she gave the idea up. Later she talks about going up into the mountains in Romania and starving herself to death. And as she says about Bobby, “I would rather be dead with him than alive without him.” (54)

Is This A Novel?

But to get back to my initial question—Is this a novel?—my judgment now is that it is. There may not be a conventional plot, but we do get to see Alicia’s character arc. At the very end, after seven episodes of powerful intellectual gymnastics, Alicia asks Dr. Cohen to hold her hand. It is a simple request that Cohen does not immediately understand. When she explains, “Because that’s what people do when they’re waiting for the end of something,” we realize that, despite all her strength, Alicia is still alone and fearful of what is to come. She becomes in the end quintessentially human, and we feel for her.

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

In this novel Bodie, a college professor and podcast personality, accepts a short-term teaching position at

the Granby School, the private high school from which she graduated twenty years earlier. Returning to Granby resurrects for Bodie the mystery death of her roommate Thalia, and with the help of the students in her podcast class, she digs deeper into the mystery than anyone ever has.

Complex Characters

The strength of this novel comes from the author’s ability to craft a complex protagonist who is thoughtful and resourceful yet far from perfect. Every chapter seems to provide great depth not only for Bodie, but for others in her orbit, including Granby, the school. Some novels are like trees with few branches and a thin canopy, so that it’s easy for a reader to hold the entire story in her mind. This novel, by contrast, is like a tree with enormous foliage, all of it attractive yet at the same time distracting.

Although I appreciate well-rounded characters, I also prefer characters that are appealing for one reason or another. That was not the case with Bodie. To me, she was bland and uninspiring. She wants to investigate Thalia’s murder, but can only do so by encouraging one and then several of her students to get involved. For this and other reasons, I didn’t particularly care how her life or her investigation of Thalia’s death turned out. Beyond Bodie, there seemed to be too many other characters with such tiny roles that they never became interesting.

Not a Thriller

Although advertised as a thriller, this novel struck me as a mystery, and a slow-moving one at that. Much of the depth and detail that make the novel rich also make it seem wandering, since most of it is irrelevant to the characters or plot. Also, for a novel that focuses on solving a murder, which should keep it moving forward, the novel seems to spin its wheels, and lacks tension. Not until page 288 does Bodie set in motion the search of the shed, which changes everything. Thereafter, Part II moves more quickly because there is finally a plot with a direction. When I got to this last third of the book, I became much more engaged.

Of course, part of the reason that the novel wanders is that the author is interested in more than the murder mystery. Indeed, she touches on subjects that include class differences, cancel culture, feminism, male violence against women, male predators, and the ever-present threats against young women even in a supposedly protective environment like Granby. I appreciated the novel involving these subjects, and I thought the author brought them in naturally; they never struck me as unneeded appendages.

Craft Matters

Conceptually, I think there are two problems with this novel. First, Bodie wasn’t involved in the crime. Second, the crime occurred twenty years in the past. Because of these two framing factors, we get a story where Bodie and others attempt to piece together what happened. But we never experience what happened in a scene, or scenes. Without direct scenes, the novel has little opportunity to create drama and tension, and we are left with a book that talks about and comments on sexual predators and their impact, but we don’t get to see it and feel it.

On the positive side, I appreciated the author’s technique of providing tiny tidbits of other crimes that have been committed against women either at the outset of chapters, or as standalone chapters. They provide a good reminder of the bad things that we need to watch for and guard against.

I also thought the subplot of her ex, Jerome, being canceled by a young woman was interesting because as I read it, the woman really didn’t have a legitimate complaint. Nevertheless, when Bodie defended him, she herself became the target of online abuse. (And I wondered: who are all these people who have time to waste canceling other people? Don’t they have their own real lives?)

What Happens to Bodie?

To me, the ending was good and bad. The fact that a new trial isn’t granted came across as realistic, as did the fact that no charges would be brought against Robbie Serenho. But more importantly, what happens with Bodie, who is really the focus on this novel? How is her life affected by these events? Oddly, the novel doesn’t provide much in this regard. Instead, it just seemed to fade away, leaving me wondering exactly what this novel was supposed to be about.

Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper

For once the blurb on a book jacket doesn’t oversell the quality of a novel. It does, however, fail to capture what I found most engaging about the book: the author’s amped up, incendiary language. That language grabs the reader’s attention and pulls him or her relentlessly into the dark world of L.A. noir. In doing so, Everybody Knows provides an experience that few books offer.

The story in Everybody Knows comes to us through two points of view. Mae is a public relations fixer for Mitnick & Co., an L.A. firm that specializes in covering up the sleaze and criminality of its Hollywood-related clients by manipulating appearances and/or buying off the media. Chris is an ex-cop who uses his overpowering size in the employ of Blackguard, a security firm that provides more muscular solutions when Mitnick’s “soft” power isn’t enough to cover up particularly complicated, embarrassing or criminal situations.

The Plot and Its Twists

The novel kicks off when Mae’s mentor, Dan, is killed just before he reveals to her a scheme he wants her help with, one that can bring them both bigtime rewards. Suspecting that Dan’s death wasn’t simply the result of a random carjacking, Mae searches out the killer, only to see him killed by the police. This too-quick location and killing only reinforces Mae’s suspicions that Dan was on to something big, and she keeps digging.

As she digs, the plot twists keep coming. When she and Chris learn that they’re both checking into the mystery, the two, who were once a thing, join forces. Soon they discover that a prominent Hollywood player is also a long-time sexual abuser of young girls—a crime and scandal that Mae is pretty sure is the one Dan was pursuing when he was killed. Taking up where Dan left off, Mae and Chris decide to score a big payday by blackmailing the abuser while also selling the story to major media outlets. But as they do so, more people begin to die, and they realize the breadth and ruthlessness of the forces they’re up against.

Craft Matters

The characters in Everybody Knows are distinctive if not very subtle or deep—as befits a plot-driven crime novel. The plot moves at a hectic pace, driven by the book’s outstanding language. Stylistically, the author employs a variety of hyper-energized prose, including short staccato sentences, always in the present tense, and street-smart slang. Pointed phrases appear repeatedly, like incantations: “the rules say . . .” and, “Nobody talks, but everybody whispers.” Frequently, we’re treated to gritty descriptive passages that portray in gaudy color the world Mae and Chris are immersed in. For example:

“Hannah’s cottage smells like an industrial dump site . . . The cottage’s front room is beyond trashed. Clothes in piles tumbling out of Gucci luggage, this mix of couture and sweatpants. Room service trays and empty bottles crowd every surface. A plate of fries jellied in ketchup. Kombucha bottles turned into ashtrays. A tray of Dom Perignon and Cool Ranch Doritos. On a table a baggie of something yellow-white like chunks of bone sits next to a well-used glass pipe. Mae looks down—she’s kicking rock-hard dog turds.” (p 5)

Although Mae and Chris have both embraced their cynical and amoral jobs, and both initially intend to use a child to make their big score, in the end Mae takes a different path. It’s a path that she hopes will not only lead her out of that grotesque underworld, but also expose and damage if not destroy “the Beast” that rules it. Fraught and tension-filled to the end, Everybody Knows is a tightly plotted, spectacularly-written tour de force–about as good as a hard-boiled crime novel can get.

My Nemesis by Charmaine Craig

It is difficult to write a novel with an odious narrator that readers will enjoy reading, even if you do an amazing job of capturing the odiousness of the speaker. In the present case, I’m happy to report that I finished this novel and will almost certainly never again have to listen to a voice as solipsistic, narcissistic, and intellectually pretentious as Tessa again. Throughout this novel I found myself asking again and again, Why does anyone want to have anything to do with this person?

Craft Matters

Because this novel is presented from a first person POV, and as a “confession” of sorts, I assume that much of the run-on, quasi-intellectual verbosity in the novel is intentional: the author trying to show us how a distorted mind conjugates reality. In this respect, she does an incredibly good job.

The problem that arises for me is that Tessa is allegedly a published author. To me, writers are the most intelligent beings on the planet. They have to be. But the preening and pretentious verbosity of her thoughts suggests to me such profound ignorance of anyone and anything outside herself that I can’t believe she could be a writer.

I understand from reading other reviews that the novel deals with feminism, Christian virtues, Camus, Sisyphus, and what people owe to each other, but for me all of those matters were overwhelmed and left dead on the page by the narrator’s tortured prose.

Plot Matters

As far as other aspects of the novel, there is no real plot; it is a character novel. The fact that none of these characters come across as sympathetic is probably due to the narrator’s warped perspective; nevertheless, I didn’t care about any of them. The death of Joaquin and Wah struck me as a deus ex machina, an unearned event to bring the novel to a close. But this is a minor quibble.

My reaction to this novel runs the gamut from one star to five. At times, and more so toward the end, the writing became clear and meaningful. At other times it was too labyrinthine to be worth the reading effort. Quite possibly a second reading would bring me to a greater appreciation for the novel, but with such a repugnant narrator I’m pretty sure I’ll never get there.

The Guest by Emma Cline

Alex is 22, tall, and almost but not quite good looking enough to make it as a model. Aware of her shortcoming, and with no other skills or experience, she has fallen into the life of an escort—a rather undisciplined one. She latches onto men for money and drugs, usually until they tire of her and stop supporting her. In the one instance we learn most about, with a man named Dom, she stole thousands of dollars and throughout the novel lives with a vague fear that he will find her and take revenge.

Cline accomplishes a certain magic in this novel, in that she offers the reader a protagonist with no redeeming features who nevertheless engages our sympathy. I know that I wanted Alex to succeed, even if her plan for success is a scam, and I think most readers do. Why?

We Are All Voyeurs

I think part of what makes Alex attractive is that she sees herself that way. Although she prostitutes herself, she never thinks of herself as a prostitute. She never describes for the reader the sex she has with any of the men, and its transactional nature is largely implied, never stated. Her main interest seems to be to ensure that the men enjoy it.

Similarly, Alex never applies any other demeaning labels to herself. Lazy, irresponsible, and manipulative come quickly to a reader’s mind but not to hers. Only rarely does she recognize that her behavior runs counter to ordinary social norms, and even that recognition doesn’t affect her. She chooses the path that she believes is most likely to bring her what she wants.

Another aspect of Alex’s appeal is that she never displays anger or antipathy toward others. Instead she is a friendly, pleasant presence, the kind of woman any older man would love to have around both in bed and to help host a party. For her part, Alex thinks of herself as an attractive young woman who is using the talents she has to achieve a reasonably pleasant life. In short, she is, despite her amoral nature, an appealing young woman with a kind of underdog moxie that makes us root for her.

What makes Alex particularly interesting is that, despite her good fortune in meeting Simon, she blows it. She has won everything she wants—and she’s escaped Dom. Effectively, she has started over, and all she has to do is behave responsibly in order to go on enjoying the kind of pleasant existence that her twenty-two year-old brain thinks of as nirvana. Instead, her tendency to lose control with drugs and alcohol takes over and becomes her undoing. Simon kicks her out.

A Resourceful Heroine

But Alex is not defeated. She very quickly puts together a plan to win Simon back: find a way to survive on her own in the Hamptons for a week, then show up at Simon’s Labor Day party to his waiting arms. Most of the novel portrays Alex’s survive-for-a-week skills put to the test, and although she lies, cheats and steals mightily, she might well succeed in her plan but for the character weaknesses that repeatedly undermine her relationships. Nevertheless, she maintains an irrational, manic optimism that she will prevail right up to the moment when she reaches Simon at his party. And even though he doesn’t come to her, she thinks, “Simon had been waiting for her. She would go to him. He was waiting for Alex, and all she had to do was walk over.”

I appreciated the ending, which Cline leaves just ambiguous enough that a reader can still feel a tug of longing for Alex to succeed. It seems unlikely; indeed, the last two lines suggest that Alex may finally have realized that her dream of reclaiming Simon’s affection will not come true. Nevertheless, with this ending the author has effectively brought the reader into the heart of the story—into Alex—where we can feel the same unrealistic hope that she does. And by leaving the ending unresolved, the author allows each of her readers to imagine whatever ending he or she wants for Alex.

Craft Matters

Throughout this novel, Cline’s writing is so uniformly well-phrased and paced that breaking out quotable sentences seems foolish. So I will only offer a few. For example: “On the shore, the towels were occupied by placid beachgoers. A man tanned to the color of expensive luggage let out a yawn. . .”

Her portrayals of Alex’s ability to glean insights about others is nicely shown early in the novel when she describes Simon and his daughter Caroline: “He had a trainer who hooked him up to electrodes that shocked his muscles to tightness, who suggested ice baths and organ meats, all the novelty add-ons of the professionally healthy. Simon maintained such psychotic discipline because he seemed to believe even the smallest lapse in vigilance would result in catastrophe. And he was probably right.” (p16)

Regarding Caroline we read: “Alex had only seen photos of Caroline, a skinny girl who appeared to be frowning even when she was smiling. She hoped desperately to become a singer. Alex saw sorrow in the daughter’s future but that was probably just projection.” (17)

Alex’s Fatal Flaw

Interestingly, her ability to perceive truths about both others and herself doesn’t protect her once she’s had a few drinks. At a party at Victor’s mansion: “Alex had the idiot thought that somehow Victor would be able to help her. With this Dom thing . . . She smiled at him. The thrill was familiar. The giddy anxiety of watching yourself and waiting to see what you would do next. . . A bad idea had its own relentless logic.” (54) Shortly thereafter, Victor sweeps Alex into the pool with him, both laughing. Then Simon appears and Victor stops laughing. “But Alex couldn’t make herself stop. She knew she was making it worse, laughing like this, but still, she floated for a second too long, waited a second too long before she slogged toward the steps, before she pulled herself out.” (55)

How Can Alex Stand To Be Who She Is?

Lastly, the author does a solid job showing how someone like Alex rationalizes her life. At one point Alex runs out on Margaret to meet Jack. Margaret has been kind and wants her to stay, and although a bit strange she could offer Alex the refuge she needs to survive the week. Nevertheless, Alex insists on leaving, and thinks: “And even if Karen were posted at one of the first-floor windows, watching Alex leave, Alex would let the shame glance off her, become a feeling she considered from a distance, and the house would get smaller, the gate opening for Jack’s car, and by the time Jack turned out of the driveway and onto the street, the house and its occupants would disappear entirely behind a hedgerow.” (179) In short, Alex’s mind molds reality to fit her desires.

I could go on. Definitely a different sort of novel, with a different sort of protagonist. Immensely entertaining and impressive.

She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper

The “she” in this novel is Polly, the eleven- year-old daughter of Nate, who has been released early from prison due to a procedural goof in his conviction. Unfortunately, Nate and his wife and daughter have been marked for death (“green-lighted”) by the boss of Aryan Steel, a nasty white nationalist gang that operates in and out of prison. The day Nate is released, his wife and her new husband are murdered by somebody from the Steel. Nevertheless, not knowing about the greenlight, law enforcements pegs Nate as the prime suspect.

The balance of the novel involves Nate trying to protect his daughter from Aryan Steel’s would-be assassins and extracting revenge on the gang for killing his wife. He’s not particularly concerned with evading law enforcement. The plot is inventive and propulsive, although the last quarter did seem a bit plodding.

Polly the Accomplice

Among its relatively unique features, the novel posits Polly as undergoing “training” by Nate to make her strong enough to be his accomplice as he attempts to get Aryan Steel to withdraw his and Polly’s death sentence. Whether an eleven- year-old is capable of becoming a strong accomplice seems debatable, but Harper clearly thinks she can.

Polly talks to her teddy bear, which is a cute gimmick. The narrative describes the bear as if it’s alive. Often the bear communicates information about Polly’s feelings. On the other hand, the bear seems a bit childish for an eleven-year-old, especially when she commits herself to becoming a fighter via Nate’s training.

Ordinary Voices, Unique Story

Having devoured Harper’s Everybody Knows, I was excited to read She Rides Shotgun, since it too received rave reviews. But the chief attraction of the former for me—it’s fantastic language—is absent here. This is not to say that the writing isn’t well-written crime fiction. It’s well done, and there are many quotable phrases. The voices just don’t have panache of those in Everybody Knows. Maybe no other book does.

Aside from Polly, the story in She Rides Shotgun had a few other unique aspects. The author has chosen to make Nate, a prison inmate, the hero. Nate’s smarts and his willingness to sacrifice himself for his daughter’s safety are the kind of characteristics that befit a hero. At the same time, the evil threat in the novel, which causes the Aryan Steel boss to issue the greenlight, is the result of Nate’s own lack of self-control when he kills the gang leader’s brother, Ground Chuck Hollington.

Of course, Ground Chuck was attempting to coerce Nate into doing the gang’s bidding once he was released from prison. Nevertheless, this doesn’t justify Nate’s killing him. It certainly creates more trouble for Nate than fending off the coercion would have. But that’s who Nate is, an imperfect quasi-hero.

By making a hero out of a murderer, Harper subverts the standard plot of a cop tracking down a criminal. It isn’t a reverse plot – a good guy fleeing cops like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. Instead, he’s a bad guy fleeing cops and other bad guys. Maybe this is unique, I don’t know.

Questions Unanswered

The ending of the novel leaves open the question of what happens to Polly. She is safe with a cousin in Stockton, but how has her experience affected her? Is she not traumatized? And what will her future be like? Will she take Nate’s lessons forward and become an expert criminal, even a killer? And if so, is this a good future for a child, a future that Nate would want for her? The novel doesn’t touch on these questions, but it does at least point up the idea that not everyone in the world is raised in a normal childhood, and may not end up living a normal adulthood. This is something that the sophisticates of the reading world should remember.

The Girls by Emma Cline

The Girls presents the story of Evie Boyd, a fourteen-year-old girl in Petaluma, California. It is 1969, and Evie’s home-life is disintegrating because her parents are divorcing and her best friend seems to be losing interest in their friendship. In particular, Evie’s father has moved into an apartment with his young assistant, while her mother, an inveterate doormat, seeks happiness in various New Age activities.

More or less alone in the world, Evie becomes involved with a group of girls who live a communal life on a ranch in nearby Marin County. The girls have rejected ordinary society’s precepts and believe in loving everyone and owning nothing, including any children a girl may have. Their leader is Russell, who espouses radical counter culture teachings while at the same time believing that he is owed a recording contract by the society he’s rejected. When he doesn’t receive it, he uses the girls as the vehicle for his vengeance. Evie, fortunately, is spared involvement in this vengeance when the girl to whom she is closest, Suzanne, throws her out of the car as they drive to wreak it.

But before we read all this, the novel opens with a much older Evie being awakened by young people entering the home where she is staying late at night. It turns out that the two interlopers are the son of the owner of the home, who is Evie’s friend, and the son’s girlfriend. Essentially, the older Evie is telling the story of the cult from her decades-later perspective.

Genre

The novel is what I would call a literary-commercial novel because its uses literary writing to present a dramatic tale. Initially I felt the literary element was overdone, that the author was trying too hard to be inventive, that her creative verb use was often awkward. But as the book progressed, my perception of these problems disappeared. When I went back later and quickly re-read the first 75 pages, I didn’t notice the difficulties I’d tripped over on first read—and I’m not sure why. Regardless, this is a novel of fine writing, filled with language that uses well-wrought images and metaphors as a means of provoking the reader to see more deeply into characters and events.

Evie’s Search for Connection

One of the things the novel does well is to capture the mind of a 14 year-old girl in 1969, particularly her insecurities and longing for connection. Neither her mother nor her father offer that connection, which seems to be a large part of what attracts her to Suzanne. Suzanne asks about her when they first meet, doesn’t criticize, and tells her she’s a thoughtful person. Evie says, “I was not used to this kind of unmediated attention.” (p 74)

Later, Suzanne asks to braid her hair. “I sat on the floor in front of Suzanne, her legs on either side of me, and tried to feel comfortable with the closeness, the sudden, guileless intimacy. My parents were not affectionate, and it surprised me that someone could just touch me at any moment, the gift of their hand given as thoughtlessly as a piece of gum. It was an unexpected blessing.” (112)

The Philosophy of Love and Freedom

Suzanne teaches her to share freely, a cornerstone of Russell’s philosophy. When Evie asks Suzanne if she doesn’t want to keep some of her clothes for herself, Suzanne says, “Why? I’m not on that kind of trip right now. Me me me. I love the other girls, you know. I like that we share. And they love me.” Evie thinks, “I felt shamed. For doubting Suzanne or thinking it was strange to share.” (111)

The Real v. the Ideal

In this new world, Evie feels a connection that distorts ordinary judgment. Suzanne offers her a dress to wear to the upcoming feast, and Evie thinks: “The dress Suzanne chose for me stank like mouse shit, my nose twitching as I pulled it over my head, but I was happy wearing it—the dress belonged to someone else, and that endorsement released me from the pressure of my own judgments.” (112)

Similarly, the feast “was nothing like the feast I’d been imagining. The distance made me feel a little sad. But it was only sad in the old world, I reminded myself, where people stayed cowed by the bitter medicine of their lives. Where money kept everyone slaves, where they buttoned their shirts up to the neck, strangling any love they had inside themselves.” (115) Evie remembers the perspective of the “ordinary” world, but chooses not to judge the mouse-turd dress or the pathetic feast accordingly, but instead to see an idealized world of love and freedom.

Russell the Manipulator

Cline introduces several other girls besides Suzanne. One, Donna, tells her that she’ll love Russell, their leader. “’He’s not like anyone else. No bullshit. It’s like a natural high, being around him. Like the sun or something. That big and right.’” She said that the place we were headed [the ranch] was about a way of living. Russell was teaching them how to discover a path to truth, how to free their real selves from where it was coiled inside them.” (98)

Cline also captures Russell’s personality, and how he excels at manipulating the girls. When he meets Evie, he quickly wins her over by identifying with her and telling her good things about herself that make her feel special. “’I’m like you,’ Russell went on. ‘I was so smart when I was young, so smart that of course they told me I was dumb.’ He let out a fractured laugh. ‘They taught me the word dumb. They taught me those words, then they told me that’s what I was.’ When Russell smiled, his face soaked with a joy that seemed foreign to me. I knew I’d never felt that good. Even as a child I’d been unhappy—I saw, suddenly, how obvious that was.” (122)

Male Power

While this novel is about the idealistic illusions of young girls, it is also about power, male power that abuses girls and women. Plot-wise, this is reflected in the way Russell gets the girls to carry out his revenge. But a more interesting articulation of this comes late in the novel, when the older Evie talks about both power and the hatred it can evoke. She describes being taken to a fancy restaurant by an older man when she was about twenty. They are joined at their table by the restaurant owner and a famous filmmaker. The filmmaker snaps at her: “Eat your vegetables, you’re a growing girl.” The others laugh. “The filmmaker wanted me to know what I already knew: I had no power. He saw my need and used it against me. My hatred for him was immediate.” (350)

Murder by Hate

One of the central mysteries of this story that I wanted the novel to solve was, What caused young girls to commit such horrific murders? While the novel notes that the girls, aside from Evie, changed when they began to do methamphetamines, Evie’s answer is hatred. Of Suzanne she says, “The hatred she must have felt to do what she’d done, to slam the knife over and over again like she was trying to rid herself of a frenzied sickness: hatred like that was not unfamiliar to me.” (349) Regarding herself, she feels gratitude for Suzanne kicking her out of the car that was taking the girls to commit the murders, but not because she couldn’t do it. “Suzanne stopped me from doing what I might be capable of.” (351)

A Quibble

While I initially found this explanation for violence and potential violence to be powerful, later on I began to wonder whether this analysis made sense in the context of the novel. Evie asserts: “None of this [male abuse] was rare. Things like this happened hundreds of times. Maybe more.” This, I question. Evie is fourteen. She only cites two other instances of abuse (a man who palmed her crotch through her shorts, and another who scared her). Had she really had hundreds of similar experiences by the age of fourteen? Beyond that, the abuses she does cite hardly seem traumatic enough to generate the kind of hate she believes Suzanne felt. In sum, this analysis of the viciousness of the murders seems insufficient.

One of the other elements that affect how people act is an individual’s own personality. In Evie’s case, she presents herself as passive, very much like her mother. Possibly a more assertive girl would have slapped the hand (or face) of a male who touched her inappropriately, or told the insulting filmmaker where to go. Maybe some of Evie’s belief that she too could commit murder stems from the fact that she is so fearful. This fear is portrayed at the outset of the book, when Julian and Sasha arrive, and even more clearly at the end of the book, when she is on the beach and sees a man coming toward her. She is terrified, but he just walks on by, and smiles at her as he goes. Could fear as great as Evie seems to live with not be turned outward by a psyche struggling to survive, and ignite a murderous hatred?

Overall, The Girls was a thought-provoking and exceptionally well-written novel .The characterizations of Evie and Suzanne are subtle and complex, and I found that re-reading passages typically provided new insights. I hope eventually to have time to read the entire novel again, slowly.

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

An eminently readable page turner by Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies is a murder mystery/revenge fantasy set against the implementation of school busing that began in Boston in 1974.

The story is told largely from the perspective of Mary Pat, the mother who engages in a no-holds-barred search for her missing daughter. But the novel also exposes the perspectives of the working class Irish community of South Boston, which is very insular and self-protective. While “Southies” have a few admirable characteristics, including a strong sense of community and a willingness to look after each other’s welfare, they are also portrayed as being wholeheartedly racist. As the novel opens, Southies are already preparing massive demonstrations against the school busing that is set to begin in a week or two.

Racism and Busing

The novel offers a few comments about racism that are noteworthy. In particular, Mary Pat comments several times that the busing which will be imposed on her community has been ordered by the well-to-do people living in upper class neighborhoods, whose own children will never be subjected to busing. Interestingly, Mary Pat’s own racism moderates somewhat over the course of the book, as she is forced to admit that a black co-workers son, who was murdered by white kids, was a decent kid, as are his parents. In fact, she reacts violently against a group of Southie women who shanghai her into participating in an anti-busing protest, partly out of her perception of their racism.

But the busing issue isn’t the driving force in this novel. Instead, the plot revolves around Mary Pat’s maniacal search for her missing daughter and, once she finds out what has happened to Jules, her relentless pursuit of those responsible. Her actions provide a reader with vicarious gratification, since she manages to wreak havoc on at least some of the routinely untouchable thugs of her neighborhood—men who definitely deserve the punishment she doles out. At the same time, Mary Pat’s actions, although consistent with her personality, seem to stretch credulity.

Powerful Writing

What most impressed me about this novel was the effective and at times powerful writing. All of the characters come across as believable if not likeable. Additionally, the author maintains tension throughout, slowly revealing pieces of the puzzle so that a reader is kept both interested and hungry to learn more. The sentence level writing is excellent both in its descriptive details of the setting and in its insights into Southie culture, which is largely working class white culture. Lehane observes, for example:

“They aren’t poor because they don’t try hard, don’t work hard, aren’t deserving of better things. . . people who go to work day in, day out, and give their ungrateful prick bosses ten hours of work every single eight-hour day. . . They’re poor because there’s a limited amount of good luck in this world and they’ve never been given any. If it doesn’t fall from the sky and land on you, doesn’t find you when it wakes up every morning and goes looking for someone to attach itself to, there isn’t a damn thing you can do.” In Mary Pat’s world, then, luck rather than effort creates success, so most people accept their lives, and the drugs and poverty that go with them, and don’t try to improve. (Nicely, Ken Fennessey, Mary Pat’s ex-husband, is one of those who do.)

The Insular Culture

Elsewhere Lehane offers another insight into the poverty of Southie culture: the close-mindedness of its people. Mary Pat notices it even in her own sister: “She knew that no matter what evidence she presented to Big Peg that Marty Butler’s crew had killed Jules, Big Peg would reject it. Marty isn’t just Southie’s protector. He isn’t just Southie’s favorite son. Marty isn’t just the rebel for them all who thumbs his nose at the outside establishment. Marty is Southie. To believe Marty is evil—not merely criminal, not a practitioner of hijinks and shenanigans, but just running an underworld that needs to be run by someone, so why not him?—is to believe that Southie is evil. And Peg could never do that.” (127)

Although Mary Pat and her quest holds center stage in the novel, another thoughtful commentary is offered by Bobby Coyne an Irish cop from nearby Dorchester. Thinking about prejudice, Bobby knows that it extends beyond prejudice against African Americans, but to many oppressed groups: “Call them gooks, call them niggers, call them kikes, micks, spics, wops, or frogs, call them whatever you want as long as you call them something—anything—that removes one layer of human being from their bodies when you think of them. That’s the goal. If you can do that, you can get kids to cross oceans to kill other kids, or you can get them to stay right here at home and do the same thing.” (113)

Black Rage, Too

Lastly, I was impressed by the way Lehane reveals the rage that black Bostonians feel toward racist white people. When Mary Pat goes to Dreamy Williamson’s home to show her respect for the Williamson’s loss of their son, Dreamy thanks her for her sympathy, but lets Mary Pat know how she really feels:

“You raised a child who thought hating people because God made them a different shade of skin was okay. You allowed that hate. You probably fostered it. And your little child and her racist friends, who were all raised by racist parents just like you, were sent out into the world like little fucking hand grenades of hate and stupidity and, and, and you can go fuck yourself, Mary Pat, if you think for one second I’m okay with that. Or that I forgive. I do not forgive. So go back to your neighborhood and sit with your monster friends and get yourselves all worked up to stop us from attending your precious school or whatever. But bitch, we’re coming whether you like it to not.” (252)

Lehane, who is from Boston, is brutally honest in revealing the poverty of both body and spirit in so many of the residents of South Boston. While his use of the N word and other obscenities may be the kind of thing that the PC police would censor, the realism it adds to the novel are sufficient justification for its presence. This is a powerful novel that reveals devastating shortcomings in American society—then and now.

Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421 by T.J. Newman

Drowning is a thriller’s thriller. All the basic requirements are there and the author implements them with skill. We get a unique disaster which begins on page 1. We get a collection of heroes, two of whom share the distinction of being a married couple who are on the verge of divorce. We encounter a complex physical challenge that must be met in a race against time. We watch as the heroes encounter a series of life-threatening hurdles. As a result of all the foregoing we have a fast-paced novel that maintains a high and increasing level of tension throughout. A thriller’s thriller.

In particular, I appreciated the verisimilitude provided in the novel. The author clearly knows how a jetliner like the Airbus A 321 is constructed and operated, and where various resources are stowed. Additionally, the details of the Coast Guard and Navy operations that are incorporated into the novel provide a credible context for the drama that plays out.

I also felt that the author handled a relatively large number of characters well. While she begins by having Molly recite a list of the 12 survivors inside the plane, each of those survivors is subsequently described in a way that highlights their individuality.

Quibbles

Most of my quibbles reflect the fact that Drowning is a thriller. As a plot-driven novel, there isn’t a lot of character development. We do get to see Will and Chris talk and act, and what they say and do tells us a lot about them. I would have preferred a bit more backstory about each. Chris is an industrial diver, a skill she says her mother taught her. But this is all we get. So we don’t really see how she got to be the person she is. Ditto with Will, the engineer. Oddly, the author describes Will’s job as designing offshore oil rigs (p 34), even though there are no oil or gas reserves in the ocean waters around the Hawaiian Islands. Maybe he’s unemployed?

Another character quibble I had was the persistent grief over Annie’s death affecting both Will and Chris. This has the effect of re-doubling the emotion of the life-or-death situation at times, but seemed unnecessary to me. Indeed, if this heavy grief were not bullying the rest of the novel, the relationship between Chris and Will could have been articulated to greater depth, and with the beneficial effect of producing greater character realism. Bottom line: both were not flat characters, but with more development of them and less reliance on schmaltz I would have cared for them more.

One aspect of Will (and the novel) that was unique was that he was frightened of losing Shannon and Chris, a kind of hangover from his reaction to Annie’s death. While this was unique, it wasn’t especially believable because throughout the drama Will is quite rational. So while I assume this was intended to add the kind of realism to Will that I appreciate, this particular effort didn’t work for me.

A Fast-paced Adventure

Particularly at the beginning, the story moved at a breathless pace. There were no extraneous words in the first five chapters, to the extent that several times I imagined the text could have been chunked out by ChatGPT. I was relieved to find that, beginning in Chapter six, the pacing slowed somewhat as the author injected some backstory about Will and Chris.

As befits a thriller, the balance of the novel moved expeditiously. Occasionally, it moved too expeditiously, so that tension was lost. For example, when Kaholo gets in the red suit to test its ability to bring someone safely to the surface, he succeeds easily and almost immediately. No tension or drama is created related to the question of whether he will make it or not, despite the fact that we’ve been told that the success rate is only 32%. Given that, the scene was an easy opportunity for the author to create drama, uncertainty, even fright. Had that been done, the reader would have had the opportunity to vicariously enjoy Kaholo’s success, instead of just reading about it. (p 198)

The Ending

I have the sense that the author was torn between including the dreaded “happy ending” in which Chris lives, and one where she dies, which typically doesn’t happen to the hero in a thriller. So she finessed the problem by providing both. I found Chris’s dream of dying and meeting Annie to be well-written, so sincere and affective that it would certainly ease a reader into accepting her death. Then when Chris shows up alive at the very end, the fact that it is a brief showing also works well. The readers who need a happy ending get it, without the author hammering it home.

Literary Merit

It’s a thriller: forget literary elements. I think I counted one simile. But the writing was workmanlike, and the writer did a good job of keeping the narrative and the timeline clear despite using multiple narrators. No complaints. Overall, an excellent concept effectively presented. 4*.

Falling by T.J. Newman

A thriller revolving around a threat to an airplane and its passengers, Falling also focuses on a secondary threat to the pilot’s family. Both are handled well, in that the plot twists are not easily anticipated by the reader. The novel also benefits from the author’s personal experience as a flight attendant. She provides solid details about an airliner’s operations that add to its verisimilitude.

A Slow Start?

For me the first few chapters seemed slow. While the first five pages depict a life-or-death incident in the sky, they lacked drama because Bill, the pilot and observer of the scene, is oddly detached. When it turns out that this entire opening is just a dream, it felt even less engaging. About all I took away was that Bill is a pilot who may have a fear of flying. If he does, and his psychological problem plays a role in the upcoming drama, then this opening scene is a nice bit of foreshadowing. Turns out that it doesn’t, though: Bill is a solid guy. I ended up thinking the opening was just a piece of artifice stuck on by somebody who wanted to get the story going with a bang.

Craft Matters

Once the drama gets going, on page 25, the novel becomes engaging. The story was new and different (at least for me). The pacing is good and doesn’t falter. The writing isn’t literary, but is appropriate for a thriller. The characters were believable, and I wasn’t bothered that they were relatively flat since this isn’t a character novel.

There were several moments when the tale seemed to stretch credibility for me such as when Carrie and Bill sort of communicate where Sam has taken her and the kids. Also, the ground-to-air communication experienced by all the characters seemed unnaturally easy. Lastly, despite the author’s knowledge of the inner workings of a jetliner, some of the descriptions of the galleys and the cockpit were hard for me to picture. But they were easily skipped over.

A Political Angle

The two men who threaten the plane and Bill’s family are doing so in order to draw attention to the abandonment of thousands of Kurdish men, women and children by the U.S. This real world situation fits nicely into the novel, providing believable motivation and also a helpful reminder that the geopolitical realities in the Middle East don’t readily align with humanitarian values.

I kind of hoped that the novel would drive home this message more effectively by creating some reader sympathy for Sam and Ben. To an extent it did, by having them talk about family members who were killed. But since they were the bad guys, this didn’t go far. To create more sympathy for them would have required a significant change to the plot—e.g., one or the other performing some redemptive act (like abandoning their plan in order to save one of the innocents involved). This didn’t happen.

Overall, this was an entertaining read. Readers who enjoy this should definitely pick up the author’s second novel, Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421, which manages to create drama without relying on terrorists to instigate it. 3.5 stars, rounded down. Please see my other reviews at www.robertschladale.com.

Daddy by Emma Cline

The ten stories in Daddy focus closely on the small worlds of their characters. Action and even drama are secondary to the revelation of the main character at a given point in his or her life. The writing itself is of the highest order. The stories are like the finest wine; a taste worth acquiring.

Plot and Structure

The short stories in Daddy are not ordinary stories that have a discernible plot and a narration that maintains reader interest by slowly ratcheting up tension to a climax. Instead, the stories are like progress reports on the lives of their characters. Typically the author reveals little about how the characters got to be who they are when we meet them, leaving it to the reader to imagine their past.

Sometimes that past involves an unspecified crime. Elsewhere it’s an exercise in perversion, a lost opportunity or a simple desire.

Only in A/S/L do we watch a character intentionally engage in damaging behavior toward another. In this case, the one on the receiving end of the damage is clearly deserving of it, so that one might presume that the author is sharing her own judgment. At the same time, Cline neatly turns the moral tables on the reader, as the potential victim out to be the aggressor.

Character

The characters in these stories vary in age and sex, but most are either troubled or in trouble. A fair number seem to suffer from a psychological or psychiatric problem; we hear about their therapists and see them with their medications. In some stories the protagonist’s problems arise in the context of a crime which is never clearly described (The Nanny, Menlo Park), while in others the crimes that affect a character are committed by others (Arcadia, A/S/L). In the stories involving older men there is no obvious crime, and the protagonist’s problems seem to be inherent in their personalities, or simply an outgrowth of living their lives (Son of Friedman, What Can You Do With A General, Northeast Regional, Mack the Knife). Interestingly, in the two stories that involve young girls, Los Angeles and Marion, the protagonists seem less troubled than the others, possibly because the characters have not yet experienced the accretion of life’s insults that the older men have.

Typically the characters are weak and unable to exert control over their lives. Most do, over the course of the story, recognize their failings. A few, like Alice in Los Angeles, decide to make a change. Others, like Thora in A/S/L, see their resolve quickly fade away.

Craft Excellence

The stories mostly focus on a short period of time—a few hours or days—during which the struggling hearts of the characters are indirectly revealed through deft prose. Cline presents her troubled and challenged characters to the reader through a combination of small acts and inner dialogue in a way that provides an indirect but telling picture of their lives. Equally effective is her practice of constructing paragraphs in an impressionistic manner, such that some of the sentences describe a concrete situation or action, while others offer indirect commentary that adds depth and meaning.

The Revealing Inner Dialogue

In Menlo Park the protagonist, Ben, has committed an unnamed crime that has landed him in deep depression and unemployable—except by a former friend, now a tech billionaire, who wants him to edit his memoir. In the climactic scene with his friend’s assistant, an attractive young woman, Ben feels as if he’s recovering some of what he had: “It took him a moment before he realized: the energy in the room was familiar from what he thought of as the old days. When women seemed to hold his gaze meaningfully and punctuate their anecdotes with little touches of his arm, and that’s what he was shocked no one had ever talked about, how many of the women had pursued him, called him. Even Eleanor had gotten his email from a friend and written him with a question about a movie he had introduced at a screening the week prior.”(78) What is implied here is that Ben used to routinely be pursued by women, and whatever transgression he committed is, in his mind, similar to what they did, and so how could he be guilty of something inappropriate? In short, through this subtle rendering of Ben’s interiority, the author manages to suggest both the nature of the crime, and Ben’s attitude that he is innocent—all indirectly.

Small Acts that Add Up

In Northeast Regional we meet Richard as he goes to meet the headmaster of the school that is expelling his son for participating in the gang beating of another student. Here, we learn a potpourri of facts about Richard that sketch his character. On the one hand we see that he accepts responsibility for meeting with the headmaster even though he rarely sees his son, who has grown up with his mother. Too, we see that Richard is a successful professional, having worked for the Treasury Department, and now earns a good income from self-employment.

At the same time, we see that Richard takes pills to combat depression and insomnia; that he divorced his wife even though they had a two-year-old; that he prefers to have affairs with married rather than single women; that when his current squeeze wants to watch a movie, he falls asleep; that he doesn’t even recognize his son when he meets him; and that when he takes Rowan and his girlfriend to dinner he treats the girl so badly that she breaks into tears. Thus, by depicting these and many other bits of Richard’s thoughts and actions, we get a picture of someone who, although professionally successful and responsible with formal duties, is all about himself. He completely lacks to the ability to connect with and care for other human beings.

Psychedelic Narrative

We are also treated to language in these stories that not only provides character insight, but uses the details of setting to suggest deeper insights about life. For example, in Los Angeles:

“She walked the ten blocks to the parking lot, the light hovering in the tangle of blackberry vines that crawled up the alleyways. Even the cheapo apartment buildings were lovely at that hour, their faded colors subtle and European. She passed the nicer homes, catching slivers of their lush backyards through the slats of the high fences, the koi ponds swishy with fish. Some nights she walked around the neighborhood, near the humid rim of the reservoir. It was a pleasure to see inside those nighttime houses. Each one like a primer on being human, on what choices you might make. As if life might follow the course of your wishes. A piano lesson she had once watched, the repeated scales, a girl with a meaty braid down her back. The houses where TVs spooked the windows.”(59) Note how the first of the two italicized sentences take the narrative beyond mere depiction of events into a kind of philosophical speculation, while the second two of the bring the reader back to depiction, but of highly charged images that can literally expand a reader’s consciousness by immersing her in Alice’s experience.

Putting It All Together

An early passage in the Nanny uses details of setting, actions, and thoughts in an impressionistic style to reveal the protagonist’s personality and suggest her crime: “Kayla drank two (beers) over dinner, then a third out on the porch, her legs tucked up into the oversize hoodie she had taken from Mary’s son’s room. The wildness of the backyard made everything beyond it look fake: the city skyline, the stars. Reception was awful this high up in the canyon. She could try to walk closer to the road again, out by the neighbor’s fence, but Mary would notice and say something. Kayla could feel Dennis and Mary watching her from inside the kitchen, tracking the glow of her screen. What would they do, take her phone away? She searched Rafe’s name, searched her own. The numbers had grown. Such nightmarish math, the frenzied tripling of results. And how strange to see her name like this, stuffing page after page, appearing in the midst of even foreign languages, hovering above photos of Rafe’s familiar face.” (112) Here, we see how self-centered Kayla is: she takes what she wants without asking and feels no moral compunction for doing so. Anything outside of her own immediate world–the city, the stars–seems fake to her. She is mesmerized by her own infamy. A perfect example of Cline’s skill at showing rather than telling, leaving it up to the reader to interpret what is shown.

No, the stories in Daddy are not typical dramas with rising action that leads to crisis and revelation. They are works of art, and a pleasure to read.

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

Ripe has much to recommend it, beginning with the opening image of a man setting himself afire. Soon follow multiple images highlighting the stark differences between the lives of the wealthy compared to those of the impoverished in San Francisco. While much of this is attributable to the high incomes earned in the tech industry, the continuing effects of the Covid pandemic and the attraction of the city (and California in general) for homeless individuals also play a role. In addition, the depiction of monomaniacal techies sacrificing their lives and those of others in the pursuit of wealth and power is an engaging cautionary tale because it is happening now. Finally and most importantly, the writing in Ripe is propulsive and engaging, loaded with telling description and incisive commentary by the first person narrator, Cassie.

Beyond the novel’s commanding narrative skill, Ripe also posited a protagonist with a black hole that dogs her. Although the hole seems to be an extension of Cassie, shrinking and growing in response to her emotional state, the narrator describes it as if it is a real black hole – i.e., the kind cosmologists study. The inclusion from time to time of “Notes & Research” regarding black holes as understood by Einstein and other theorists was a nice touch, adding depth to the conceit. In the end, of course, Cassie’s black hole is psychological, a kind of well of depression, rather than a cosmic phenomenon.

To Plot or Not to Plot

As I progressed through Ripe, I began to wonder what the plot was going to be. I kept waiting for one to show up. Eventually I realized that the novel was a character study, something of an extended plotless anecdote about several critical weeks in Cassie’s life. I was okay with that. By the end of Ripe we know Cassie well. We see the abuse she was subjected to by her mother, and can understand how that sort of treatment contributed to her becoming a rather passive sponge for workplace abuse. Her character isn’t strong, and thus it was no surprise that her ending wasn’t a happy one.

A Symphony of a Single Note

While I enjoyed the fine writing in Ripe, I eventually came to feel that I was hearing the same pained complaint from Cassie over and over. Her job was punishing, her bosses abusive, her lover unavailable and the entire Valley world peopled by Believers. I felt after a while that something more was needed.

I also wondered for much of the book why Cassie doesn’t just quit her job. Although the novel implies that this would be financially impossible for her, it seemed to me she could at least begin to look for a new job. Eventually I realized that she was simply too weak internally to take such action. Between her mother and her bosses at Voyager, Cassie is beaten down. Unfortunately for the novel, a protagonist who lacks agency can’t be very interesting. She may not even be especially sympathetic.

The Redeeming Crisis

Eventually, though, a crisis occurs due to Cassie’s everlasting passivity: she becomes pregnant. Even here, though, she waits until she learns that the chef will never be hers before she decides to have an abortion. Interestingly, after she goes through with it, she discovers at work that her fake self, the one she routinely uses to function and survive, is gone. Then, in one of a multitude of fine passages, we come to the novel’s climax:

“The black hole rotates above us, bigger than it has ever been. A hymn begins, a beautiful symphony of gravitational notes, a song made for me. It is a summoning.

“A tidal wave of peace washes over me; I feel a rush of power, of decisiveness, of calm. I stand up and leave the conference room, ignoring Sasha as she calls after me. A golden path unfolds before me. A new purpose emerges. A thousand flowers bloom. A bright white light shines in the center of the darkness.” (265)

While this seems like a redemptive end for Cassie, a moment when she finally takes charge of her life and escapes the abusive tech world, it doesn’t last. Her sadness and despair remain with her. When she calls her father, she implies it is for the last time, which can only mean one thing.

My Murder by Katie Williams

In the near-future of this novel, five murdered women are brought back to life by a government replication commission. One of the five, Louise, begins to suspect that there was something different about her murder. When she and Fern, another of the five victims, have the opportunity to meet with their killer, he surprises them by admitting he killed Fern, but states unequivocally that he did not kill Louise. But if he didn’t, who did?

Fine Language

As I read through the early part of this book, I first thought I was reading a sort of ordinary sci-fi murder mystery, and considered putting it aside. But after repeatedly being surprised by the quality of the prose, my appreciation for the novel increased. It is not overpoweringly literary prose, but is consistently a touch above ordinary writing. For example, when she describes the mother of her murderer, the chapter ends like this:

“She named her son Edward, knowing his last name would be Early. Perhaps she liked the singsong of it. Sometimes I hug my knees to my chest and rock back and forth. Sometimes I think of what it would be like to never see your child again, not for the rest of your life, though the both of you are still alive. Sometimes I go out and walk as fast as I can walk without my toes pushing up into a run. Sometimes I picture her, that woman, raising her head at the sound of the door.”

An Engaging Speculation

What has happened to Louise is not that her dead body was revivified. Rather, her dead body was cloned. Although she is identical to the woman who was killed, and even retains most of her memory, she knows she is not the same woman. Because of that, she has to deal with how to relate to her—the dead woman’s—husband and child. Fine food for philosophical rumination, this matter is nevertheless dealt with lightly.

Plot Matters

Part of the premise of the novel is that the women who are restored to life by the replication commission are unable to recall the days immediately before and after their murder. These, of course, are the crucial days for Louise, because their unavailability to her makes it impossible for her to know who killed her. If Edward Early was telling the truth, he didn’t. As the novel reaches its climax, with Louise desperately trying to figure out what exactly happened to her, the story veers away from an ordinary murder mystery. Instead of eventually revealing to Louise and to the reader who the murderer was, the novel reveals something else. While I won’t reveal what that is, I have to say that, while credible, I didn’t find it overly satisfying.

Additionally, the plot involved Louise and others donning virtual reality headsets and ‘skins’ (disguises) and playing a game based on their murders. While inventive and interesting, it didn’t seem essential to the plot.

The Undeveloped Subplot

Louise repeatedly refers to the packed bag on the floor of her closet. Her other self—the woman who was murdered—was apparently planning on leaving her husband and baby. Based on that, and other clues in the novel, my interpretation was that she was suffering from postpartum depression. This is a potentially powerful plot line that is only peripherally explored.

Overall, I’m at 3.5 stars – 4 stars for language but only 3 for a storyline that, while containing interesting elements, didn’t work for me overall.

Death Valley by Melissa Broder

My reaction to this novel stems more from the writing than the story. I had trouble with it at first – especially all the long parenthetical asides. Luckily, there was enough astringent humor in Broder’s first person telling to keep me going. Eventually I realized that those parentheticals were really just advertisements for a super self-involved narrator. Once I understood that, they stopped bothering me.

Overall, I found the novel to be a good, entertaining read. The protagonist, a novelist, is beset with dual health disasters, not her own (she is healthy) but those of her husband and father. Given that her husband has been confined to a wheelchair by a mysterious illness for ten years, and that her father is in a coma and close to death, it’s easy to empathize with her. Easy to understand why she would run off to the desert for a break from the dual stressors.

A Different Escape

The novel diverges from an ordinary escape story when the protagonist encounters a humongous cactus. At that point, the novel becomes somewhat fantastical—in a good way. Of course, it’s easy to understand that her encounter with the cactus is essentially a mechanism through which she confronts some of the little demons in her mind. Still, her wit and commentary keep the narrative engaging.

Craft Matters

The novel does a good job tweaking a reader’s interest by keeping most of its chapters short (3 pages is common) and frequently indulging in a cornucopia of up-to-date pop culture references. For me, these had the effect of establishing a familiar and rather friendly story context.

Another pleasing characteristic of the narrator’s style is the way she offers up pearls of wisdom on a regular basis, many emanating from her thoughts about her husband, father, and life in general as she deals with being lost in the desert. Then there are the repetition gags, like the sweatpants her mother wants to return and, later, wants her to re-purchase.

My one problem with the novel is the way it seemed to wander toward the end. Over its last quarter or so, I didn’t feel as though I was learning anything new about the narrator’s situation. Although the writing was always good, I wanted to novel to reach closure a few chapters sooner than it did.

Overall, I’m at 3.5 stars. The writing was 4* or more, but the plot line was, for me, no more than 3*.

America Fantastica by Tim O’Brien

America Fantastica is a fast-paced synopsis of America and American culture circa 2019. As the sub-titles to Parts I and II make clear, the novel is about cars, guns, crime and various other less-than-admirable though commonplace modern totems—including “liars in public places,” an obvious reference to Orange Jesus.

Fantastica Language

The strength of the novel lies in its hopped up, culturally attuned language, beginning with the very first sentence: “The contagion was as old as Africa, older than Babylon, wafting from century to century upon sunlight and moonbeams and the vibrations of wagging tongues.” (2) The contagion is plain old lying, but taken to an entirely new and higher level, mythomania, which has not only become the seed bed of conspiracy theories but has stimulated deranged violence: “In St. Joseph, Missouri, a forty-seven-year-old patriarch named Willard Swift announced to his wife and seven children that he had been crowned king of America in the frozen-foods aisle of a thriving Walmart. That evening King Swift deposited the remains of his family in eight fifty-gallon Rubbermaid recycling bins topped off with kitty litter.” (4)

Similar language appears and dazzles on just about every page of the novel, creating what is a very dark comedy or a satire of contemporary America. Unfortunately, while the dark humor radiating from the language of the novel is entertaining, it was also the only reason, besides my innate stubbornness, that I finished the book.

A Plot to Nowhere

The plot of America Fantastica reads like a road novel with nowhere to go. Boyd Halverson, once a cutting edge news reporter, and subsequently the manager for ten years of the Fulda, California, JC Penney store, decides to rob the local bank, taking the lone bank teller, Angie, with him as he escapes to Mexico. After a short while he returns to California, then pointlessly wanders around the U.S. until ending up in a mansion on Lake Larceny in Minnesota.

Meanwhile, Angie’s former boyfriend, Randy, discovers that she’s with Boyd and begins to track her down with the intent of getting his mitts on some of the $81K that Boyd stole. While doing so, he runs into a couple of ex-cons who want in on his plan, and cause him a fair amount of grief until he dispatches both with a hoe. Ho-ho.

Meanwhile, the owners of Fulda’s robbed bank hide the fact of the robbery. They don’t want any investigators nosing around because they themselves have been robbing the bank for years.

Meanwhile Evelyn, Boyd’s one-time heiress wife, becomes involved—I can’t remember how. In short, there is a lot happening in this novel, probably too much, all of it more or less pointless.

Characters as Caricatures

Similarly, the characters in the novel all struck me as caricatures. Angie, one of the main characters and a Pentecostal religious freak, entertains Boyd (and the reader) with long diatribes about God and being saved. The fact that she willingly takes off with Boyd, who is twice her age, and wants him to marry her, stretches credulity past the literary breaking point. (Oddly, although the novel seems to be part satire, it does nothing to skewer the machinations of the religious right, despite it being an easy and worthy target.)

Boyd himself, and his ex-wife Evelyn, are the only two characters in the novel that come close to being believable human begins. For a time in the latter part of the novel, I had the feeling that the two would eventually come together and reconcile. Something like that might have redeemed the scatter-shot storyline, but it didn’t happen. As far as the rest of the many characters are concerned, none did anything to gain my interest or sympathy.

Overall, while I would give this novel four or five stars for its excellent prose, both the plot, whatever it is, and the comic book characters, did not grab me. I just finished America Fantastica earlier today, and have already forgotten both it and them. 3*