I won a free advance copy of this from the publisher in a Twitter contest.
Another year, another excellent novel from William Boyle.
It’s 1996 in BrooklI won a free advance copy of this from the publisher in a Twitter contest.
Another year, another excellent novel from William Boyle.
It’s 1996 in Brooklyn, and a couple of teenage boys are just doing the kind of idiotic things that teenage boys do when they inadvertently cause a tragic accident. Cut to the summer of 2001, and that cloud hangs over one of the boys, Bobby, as well as Jack Cornacchia. Jack used to be a small time hit-man/enforcer, but he doesn’t do much of anything anymore until he takes a writing class being taught by Lilly who just graduated college. However, she's uncertain of what to do next, and she's being stalked by an ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, Bobby has started working for a guy who runs a Ponzi scheme masquerading as an investment firm when he meets Francesca, a neighborhood girl who just finished high school and dreams of making movies. When crazy Charlie French runs across a bag of stolen money and drugs, he leaves it with Max for safe keeping while he tries to cut off any connections between him and the loot.
As people start meeting, things start happening, and while some of these relationships result in some heartwarming bonding, others turn bloody.
This is some of the best literary crime fiction you’ll find out there. Boyle has a knack for bringing these Brooklyn streets to life, and then he populates them with complex characters who are all in orbit around each other even if they don’t realize it. Everybody has a rich inner life, and whether it’s quiet but deadly Jack mourning a loss or Charlie visiting a prostitute to satisfy his own particular kink, it all feels real and authentic.
Small events and chance encounters can cause a string of unintended consequences, some good and some terrible. Through it all Boyle shows once again that if you have a bunch of people with their own baggage and ambitions, the results can make you care about them all.
I read a lot of great books in 2021, and this is one of the best of the bunch....more
It’s too bad that this book has been so forgotten. If only somebody would do a really good TV adaptation of it then….What’s that? Oh. Never mind.
AfterIt’s too bad that this book has been so forgotten. If only somebody would do a really good TV adaptation of it then….What’s that? Oh. Never mind.
After her mother dies Beth Harmon is sent to an orphanage, and it’s just as much fun as that sounds. However, she manages to get by thanks to daily doses of tranquilizers they give to all the girls, and she discovers a natural talent for chess thanks to a gruff janitor who reluctantly teaches her the game. Beth is eventually adopted by a less than ideal couple, but she finally manages to make her way to chess tournaments where she’s an instant sensation despite her fondness for her little green pills and a growing taste for booze. As she grows into adulthood she tries to become a player capable of beating the Soviet grand master who is the world champion, but Beth’s personal demons always threaten to overwhelm her as she struggles to live up to her full potential.
The amazing thing about this story is that it sounds like it could be pure misery porn, but it really isn’t. Yes, the lead is an orphan who has a very hard life in many ways including coping with addictions. Yet author Walter Tevis manages to keep the story from feeling grim, even when the circumstances really are.
I think this is because he’s more interested in how Beth reacts and copes with her problems rather than just dwelling on the ugliness of them. Even when she hits rock bottom and goes on an extended bender, we don’t wallow in the seedy picture of a young lady doing her best to drink herself into oblivion. Instead, by being in her head we see how she slides into this pattern because she doesn’t know how to deal with her issues rather than being some kind of narcissistic exercise in self-destruction.
Another thing Beth has to resolve is that the very nature of chess and studying it often means she spends a lot of time alone and in her own head which as a socially awkward person is how she often likes it, but she also has abandonment issues and also doesn’t really want to be alone. Since she’s her own worst enemy this is often a recipe for disaster. Plus, there’s been some chess masters who had mental health problems so for a woman who has her own issues, she’s uneasy about how going deep into the game might not be the best thing for her.
At the heart of the entire story is what it means to be a genius at anything. Beth has a natural talent that allows her to achieve a lot without much training, but because it’s all been easy for her she has to learn how to apply herself if she wants to become the world champion. When it’s been easy to be the best, it’s often hard to dig in and take the next step because talent will only get you so far in any field. When things get tougher, failure is always a possibility, and if there’s one thing Beth is frightened of, it’s failure.
Tevis also manages to make chess interesting in this. Like a lot of people, I know how to play, but I have no particular talent for it. His accounts of Beth’s games and study of it provide a glimpse into what it must be like to be a player at that level, and I actually found myself looking up some famous chess games and finding them fascinating.
It’s an extremely well written and sympathetic portrait of a woman struggling with her past and her talent. I’d already seen the Netflix show based on it, and it’s pretty faithful so there were no real surprises. Yet, I still found myself getting anxious about Beth and how she was doing both in her chess matches and in her life all over again....more
In Pittsburgh during the winter of 1995 Bobby is a young biracial man passing for white who has never told anyone that his father was black. So when BIn Pittsburgh during the winter of 1995 Bobby is a young biracial man passing for white who has never told anyone that his father was black. So when Bobby’s old buddy Aaron gets out of prison and shows up looking like a ‘roid monster with neo-Nazi tattoos, it’s not a great situation. It gets even worse when Aaron viciously beats a young black man, and Bobby unwittingly acts as his getaway driver. Terrified both of being arrested and of Aaron finding out his true heritage, Bobby also has to deal with his alcoholic mother who has a starling encounter of her own with a doctor who is struggling through a divorce.
When I attended the 2019 Bouchercon everyone was raving about this book, and I saw John Vercher a couple of times. After reading this now I’m kicking myself for not taking the opportunity to meet him.
I’m not sure if this is social commentary as crime fiction or crime fiction as social commentary, but whatever you call it, it’s a great book. In an incredibly tight 200 pages Vercher not only creates several vivid characters, but he also manages to make all of their backstory part of a personal mystery that revolves around exactly why Bobby is so committed to hiding the fact that he’s biracial. ...more
I received a free advance copy of this for review.
Back in the 90s Donnie Parascandolo was a disgraced ex-cooooooppppppp….
I offer my sincere apologies I received a free advance copy of this for review.
Back in the 90s Donnie Parascandolo was a disgraced ex-cooooooppppppp….
I offer my sincere apologies to Bojack Horseman, Grouplove, and William Boyle for that one.
Starting over.... In a Brooklyn neighborhood during the ‘90s a group of people impact each other in various ways. Donnie was a dirty cop whose son committed suicide, and his wife Donna left him in the aftermath. As part of his grieving process Donnie once hit Mikey Baldini with a baseball bat for trying to hook up with the underage Antonina, and then later when Donnie went to collect a gambling debt from Mikey’s father, Donnie ended up killing the man. A few years after that Mikey has dropped out of college and lives with his clingy mother, Rosemarie, who is still grieving her husband. Donnie has been fired from the cops and works for the local mob guy. Ava is another neighborhood widow living with her alcoholic son Nick who works as a high school teacher but dreams of being a writer.
A couple of chance encounters bring a few of these people together, and the results are….not great for everyone.
As you can tell from that description there’s a lot going on in this book. Even though it’s not that long the characters and their backstories make for a dense story that explores how these people have already been connected, and how them making new connections with each other triggers a string of unintended consequences. The strong character work makes you understand everybody’s behavior and choices even if those decisions are frequently bad.
Grief is a big factor here with several characters mourning a dead loved one, and their reactions are varied. Donnie has lost his job as a cop and seems to content to live on booze and cigarettes in his increasingly filthy house. His ex-wife, Donna, has retreated to a shabby apartment where she spends most of her time listening to her record collection and rereading her son’s suicide note. Mikey is completely adrift with no idea of what to even try to do even as his mother is torn between wanting him to get his act together vs. wanting him to stay as her needy son. Ava has become all about her work at a nursing home although she doesn’t enjoy it, and she worries about Nick who seems to have come down with a terminal case of arrested development in the way that he is content to stay with her.
All of this character work is done extremely well by William Boyle, and like his other books, there’s an incredibly rich sense of place and the people. You feel like you know this Brooklyn neighborhood as well as its residents by the end of the book, and he also did a great job with the ‘90s setting by making it seem familiar to someone who lived throughout without ever descending to the nostalgia porn levels. I also caught a few connections to his other books so this feels like getting more history on a place I’ve visited before.
Overall, it’s the epitome of what I look for in a character based crime novel. After reading his three previous books I’ve said that Boyle was quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, and now he sits high on that list....more
If you live in a neighborhood called Gravesend you should probably expect things to be kind of depressing, but damn…
Ray Boy Calabrese is being releaseIf you live in a neighborhood called Gravesend you should probably expect things to be kind of depressing, but damn…
Ray Boy Calabrese is being released from prison after sixteen years for causing the death of Conway’s brother, and Conway wants revenge. Meanwhile, Conway’s old school classmate Alessandra has returned home from LA following the death of her mother, and Ray Boy’s nephew Eugene has heard all the stories about his bad ass uncle and dreams of being a neighborhood legend like him.
I’d read William Boyle’s excellent The Lonely Witness without realizing that it’s a follow-up novel to this one, and while they can be read as self-contained stories I wish I’d read this first because it does add some layers to it. Better late than never though, and this one is just as good, maybe even better in some ways, than that one.
This isn’t the kind of crime novel that the set-up makes it sound like. It’s much more of a Richard Price style of thing with the characters and place being far more important than the plot or action. Boyle does an exceptionally good job at establishing this Brooklyn neighborhood which feels more like a small town then a part of New York in many ways. The characters are all extremely well-done, and all of them feel like confused and sad human beings rather than stereotypes in a book which they easily could have been.
That’s two books from Boyle that I thought were top-notch, and I can’t wait to get to the third which is being released soon....more
Eli Sisters and his older brother Charley are a couple of killers working for the Commodore in 1850s OregoThe Sisters who kill together stay together.
Eli Sisters and his older brother Charley are a couple of killers working for the Commodore in 1850s Oregon. Their new assignment is to journey to San Francisco during the latest gold rush and kill a chemist named Hermann Warm. Along the way they kill some people and Eli learns how to brush his teeth.
I’d been meaning to read this one for years, and the trailer for the movie finally got me off my ass. Unfortunately, I found myself a shade disappointed in it. Which is weird because one of all-time favorite books is Lonesome Dove, another well written and highly acclaimed western filled with sudden violent death as well as casual brutality amidst some humorous moments so this would seem to be right in my wheelhouse.
I think it’s a matter of degrees. There’s plenty of dark stuff in this genre that I love such as the aforementioned Lonesome Dove, Blood Meridian, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, and the HBO series Deadwood. However, there’s other quality things of a similar nature like Bone Tomahawk or The Revenant that for me slide into areas that feel more like misery porn or torture based horror movies. That’s what this one seemed closer to.
So I know it’s good, but it’s just not my cuppa tea....more
When I first saw the title The Feral Detective I imagined Humphrey Bogart as a werewolf. I guess if I want that book I’ll have to write it myself.
PhoeWhen I first saw the title The Feral Detective I imagined Humphrey Bogart as a werewolf. I guess if I want that book I’ll have to write it myself.
Phoebe Siegler is a lady from New York who quits her media job after the election of 2016. To distract herself from thinking about the living nightmare that America is about to become she heads west to California looking for the daughter of a friend of hers who dropped out of a school and hasn’t been in touch with her mother. The trail leads to the desert areas of Inland Empire and Phoebe enlists the aid of a local detective with a reputation for being able to find people. Phoebe expects to meet the kind of low rent PI you usually see in pop culture, but she gets something very different in Charlie Heist whose eccentric ways both intrigue and infuriate her. It appears that the missing girl has gone to live among some of the outcasts that populate the area, and she also learns that Charlie’s strange history includes links to some of those people.
I know that Jonathan Lethem is a Very Serious Author who does Lit-A-Chur known for ‘fusing genres’. Which I think essentially means he puts tropes in a blender and then gets nominated for lots of awards unlike those rubes who just write straight genre fiction. That shows here with a plot set-up that kind of sounds like it could be a big studio movie trailer, but then things get weird.
I enjoyed parts of this quite a bit. Especially Phoebe’s shell-shocked reactions to the election of an orange nightmare to the supposed highest office in the land. This is the first book I’ve read that had some serious reflection on that whole stunned WTF-just-happened? thing some of us went through in the immediate aftermath as well as the creeping dread of wondering just how bad it would get. (So bad. So very bad.)
The plot also fooled me in the same way that it sets up expectations much like how Phoebe thinks she’s starting her own personal mystery story by going to hire a detective. I’ve consumed plenty of stories about young women going missing, and I was expecting Charlie to lead us through seedy bars to a serial killer’s lair or a sex trafficking ring or something similar. Instead we go out to the desert and start meeting all those weird characters living an existence entirely off the grid. That’s interesting as is Charlie himself who comes across as a complete enigma that neither Phoebe nor the reader can get a handle on until late in the book.
However, this a man writing in first person about a very privileged white woman leaving her East Coast bubble and going on a kind of journey of self-discovery. Which sounds like a really bad blog that would get turned into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon. That’s problematic at times although to be fair Letham writes Phoebe to be painfully self-aware of this. Yet she also can’t stop acting like a whining ninny despite often knowing better. That gets pretty annoying after a while although it seems designed to be that way so I feel silly complaining. It’s still annoying though.
I’m left scratching my head over the whole thing. It was interesting with some very good writing, but I kinda wish that Megan Abbott would have done this book instead of Jonathan Lethem....more
Kit Owens is a bright high school girl didn’t think much about her future until she met Diane Fleming when Diane’s dreams She blinded me with science!
Kit Owens is a bright high school girl didn’t think much about her future until she met Diane Fleming when Diane’s dreams of a career in chemistry rub off on her. The two young women become both study buddies and rivals that push each other to excel until Diane confides a dark secret that shatters their friendship. Years later Kit is working in a lab and hoping to score one of the few slots available in a prestigious project when Diane is hired by her boss. Kit struggles to deal with the return of Diane to her life, and the fallout from that has unintended consequences.
Mighty Megan Abbott takes on a lot in this one and delivers on almost all of. What’s most impressive to me is how well she establishes the tone for each aspect. Whether it’s detailing Kit’s life with limited prospects as an underachieving kid in a dead-end town or getting into the nuances of the cutthroat politics hidden under a thin veneer of civility in the lab you completely understand and buy into every bit of it. When Abbott has Kit realizing how close she is to either achieving a critical next step in her career resulting in a vastly improved lifestyle or is about to come up short after all her hard work to get there you know exactly what’s driving her.
At the heart of all it is this complex relationship between Kit and Diane, and that’s where the noir part comes into it. I especially liked the revelations at the end that explain so much of what occurred throughout the rest of the novel....more
I received a free advance copy of this from the author for review.
This is one of those impossible reviews because I’d have to get into huge chunks of I received a free advance copy of this from the author for review.
This is one of those impossible reviews because I’d have to get into huge chunks of third act plot to talk about the parts I found the most intriguing so I don’t want to spoil it, but on the other hand I suspect that this is the kind of book where a lot of readers are going to think it’s one thing and be pissed off when it turns out to be another so providing some warning seems to be in order.
It’s a real pickle we got here, folks.
Let’s start with the basic plot which is about an introverted teenage girl named Lee who thinks of herself as being completely invisible and unremarkable except for her talent for shoplifting. Lee’s life is derailed when she’s falsely accused of a crime, and eventually she ends hiding among the homeless on the streets of Philadelphia. (That Bruce Springsteen reference was not intentional.) Eventually she finds shelter in an old building dubbed the Crystal Castle run by a strange group of people that Lee soon grows to distrust. When Lee ends up on their bad side she once again finds herself on the run and caught up in a conspiracy centered around the works of French artist Marcel Duchamp.
That description makes it sound like this is just The Da Vinci Code, but that really sells the book short and would be misleading because while this definitely has elements of a conspiracy thriller it’s closer to being serious Lit-A-Chur than a genre book even though it also has some sci-fi elements to it. Plus, it’s not terrible. So it’s probably better to compare it to Night Film which is another book that blends some solid real-world thriller aspects with a general tone of uncertainty that makes you scratch your head a lot while reading because you’re pleasantly baffled.
The writing is deceptively straight-forward. There’s no real lines that blew me away in and off themselves, but where Rose excels is in creating haunting imagery. Whether it’s an abandoned aquarium at night or a rave in an old missile silo with an inflatable clown head by the entrance or a guy in old-timey clothes riding an antique bicycle down the street you really see these things, and they all combine to help create the aura of mystery that hangs over everything. He also does a very good job of breaking down the visual aspects of Duchamp’s work which ties into his philosophy about the observation of art.
Since it isn’t a straight line thriller that’s as concerned with atmosphere as plot there are some points where I found myself wishing that things would move along and that Lee didn’t spend quite as much time on the run and in hiding as she does. There’s one sub-plot in particular that didn’t seem to go much of anywhere other than to provide Lee with one skill that’s critical for her a couple of key points. And in fairness the sense of desperation Lee has is built by these extended periods of her in survival mode.
While I enjoyed this quite a bit I also think it’s going to be a real Love-It or Hate-It book that will be impossible to predict how another person might react to. It’s general WTF tone for much of the book leaves a reader on uncertain footing and that’s not everybody’s cup of tea, and the payoff is only going to appeal to some folks, not all. Still, it checked off a lot of boxes for me, and it’s one of the more unique and original things I’ve read in a while despite it’s basic familiarity of starting out as a conspiracy thriller. It’s an intriguing debut novel, and I’ll be looking for more work from Augustus Rose....more
This novel should win some kind of award for Best Character Names. Check some of these out: Henry Skrimshander. Guert Affenlight. Pella Affenlight. AdThis novel should win some kind of award for Best Character Names. Check some of these out: Henry Skrimshander. Guert Affenlight. Pella Affenlight. Adam Starblind.
No John Smiths or Jane Does allowed in this one.
Mike Schwartz is a hard working and ambitious student athlete at second rate Westish College in Wisconsin. At a summer league baseball game, Mike sees Henry Skrimshander play and instantly recognizes that he’s seeing the kind of fielding talent that can only be called genius. Skinny Henry has just finished high school and assumes his days in organized baseball are over because all the college scouts passed him over because of his lack of size and below average hitting ability. Where Henry excels is at playing shortstop where no ball gets past him and all of his throws are right on target.
Mike arranges for Henry to get a baseball scholarship to Westish, and begins putting him through a rigorous training regimen designed to turn him from a talented fielding shortstop into a complete baseball player. As eager Henry flourishes under Mike’s guidance, the Westish baseball team starts winning for the first time, and pro scouts have started talking big money just as Henry is on the verge of breaking the record of his idol for most consecutive games without an error.
Then one bad throw with disastrous consequences shatters Henry’s confidence and suddenly leaves him unable to complete the simplest toss during a game. As Henry struggles to get his mojo back, Mike is realizing that his own ambitions may be bigger than his actual talent. The school president Guert Affenlight, a Herman Melville fanatic, has fallen in love with Henry’s gay roommate Owen, and Guert’s daughter Pella has just come to the campus looking to jumpstart her life after a bad marriage.
You don’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy this one. The author doesn’t engage in the practice of trying to sell the readers on the greatness of the game. Henry loves it because it’s what he was born to do just like a great painter was born to paint, but other characters complain that it’s boring. Even Owen, who is on the team, bitches about it and prefers to read in the dugout rather than watch the games.
For the first half of this book, I was completely sucked in by the characters. Any one of these could have made a great book by themselves: Pella’s backstory about leaving high school to marry an older man and coming to Westish to finally pick up where she left off. Guert’s falling for Owen after a lifetime of heterosexuality and fearing that he was making a fool of himself. Mike’s bitterness over thinking that he’d never be truly great at anything himself while completely dismissing his own talent for motivating and getting the most out of people. All of these were excellent and the writing makes you feel for all of them.
Where it really hits a next level is with Henry’s struggles. Harbach spends a lot of time in the early going telling us about Henry’s development into a top baseball prospect and his incredible grace on the field. And he’s also just a helluva nice guy, the kind of student who doesn’t like to talk in his English class because he’s worried that he’ll hurt his sensitive teacher’s feelings. He works his ass off not for fame and fortune but because he wants to be the best. Then he's helpless to keep it from falling apart just as he’s about to achieve his dream. It’s painful, particularly the way Harbach puts you into Henry’s head on the field where he’s over thinking every play to the point where I almost found myself yelling aloud, “Just throw the fucking ball to first, Henry!”
That’s why I almost consider this a horror story with it’s notion that no matter how much work has gone into something, talent is such a mental thing that it can be destroyed in moments if the wrong set of circumstances cause self doubt to creep in.
Unfortunately, things got a bit too drawn out in the second half of the book, and the various self-destructive cycles that some of the characters enter when things get rough almost turned them from sympathetic into tiresome whiners. Shaving about a hundred pages from this book and tightening it up would have made this a five star read. It’s still an excellent book with some great characters and very good writing. ...more
Don’t you hate it when you’re hoping for great and get merely pretty good instead?
I was really excited about this going in. Lawrence Block edited a coDon’t you hate it when you’re hoping for great and get merely pretty good instead?
I was really excited about this going in. Lawrence Block edited a collection of short stories in which each one was based on an Edward Hopper painting, and the writers include some of my favorites like Stephen King, Megan Abbott, and Joe Lansdale as well as many other publishing heavyweights. What’s not to like?
Sadly, this is one where the concept was better than the execution. Block’s introduction certainly got my hopes up, and I completely agreed with his idea that each Hopper painting seems to invite the viewer to create a story for it. The results ranged from straight crime and spy tales to more character based Lit-A-Chur. There’s nothing I actively disliked or found terrible in any of them, but none of the stories really blew my hair back. In fact, it sometimes seemed like the writers were really trying too hard to be clever to fit the premise.
It’s no great shock that the best story Block’s since the whole thing was his idea, and what he came up with seems the most effortless that still feels like a Block story even as it fits his painting perfectly. (And I’ll make a special note to any King fans out there that if you’re getting this just for his story you’re gonna be disappointed because while his is OK it’s also very short.)
It’s not a bad collection, and it’s certainly an interesting theme. As much as I wanted to love this I kept finding other things to do rather than pick it up, and it took me a couple of weeks to finally get through even though it’s less than 300 pages so it never really hooked me completely....more
The 2016 Summer Olympics are getting ready to start this week, and after reading this I’ll be leery of any heartwarming features about athletes and thThe 2016 Summer Olympics are getting ready to start this week, and after reading this I’ll be leery of any heartwarming features about athletes and their families because it seems like they won’t scratch the surface of the toll it probably took on all of them to get there.
Devon Knox is an extraordinary young gymnast with a real chance to become an Olympian, and her parents, Katie and Eric, have made this goal the focus of their entire lives. However, the shocking death of someone connected to their gym causes a disruption that unveils secrets, lies, jealousies, and manipulations that threaten to undo everything.
As with her other recent novels Megan Abbott once again uses a backdrop dominated by adolescent girls as the basis for the story, but this one has a more decidedly adult point of view with most of the story told to us via Katie’s third party perceptions. As a mother who has sacrificed enormous amounts of time, effort, and money to support Devon no one could question her dedication, but Katie sometimes worries about what their relentless pursuit of this single dream has cost their family including the often overlooked younger brother Drew.
The book digs deeply into the whole sub-culture of gymnastics and creates the environment and characters so vividly that the reader is completely immersed in it. Whether it’s explaining how a minor misstep can hurt a score or describing the various injuries common to the girls it all feels incredibly authentic. Explaining that world to us is probably the easiest challenge Mighty Megan had in this one because once again it’s her incredible knack for putting us in the head of a conflicted character who has to face up to some ugly truths where the book really shines because that’s where it asks how much you can know someone else even if they’re the ones closest to you.
I especially like the theme about greatness requiring sacrifice and the questions that get explored regarding that idea. Devon might be able to do something that very few can, but does that mean she should have had to give up a normal childhood and teenage experiences? Is she doing this because it’s her dream or because so many adults around her have their own reasons for wanting her to succeed? Should the Knoxes have dedicated so much of themselves towards a single goal of one child, or does a parent of a kid with an extraordinary talent have a responsibility to do anything to see it fulfilled?
This might be the best book that Megan Abbott has done, and it’s because of the way that she weaves all that together in a story that is crime story, family drama, and reflections on the real cost of the pursuit of excellence in almost any endeavor. ...more
T S Eliot wrote that the world would end with a whimper instead of a bang, but if you’re in space or at the frozen wasteland at the top of the planet T S Eliot wrote that the world would end with a whimper instead of a bang, but if you’re in space or at the frozen wasteland at the top of the planet you might not even hear that much when it finally happens.
Augustine is an elderly astronomer who refuses to leave his Arctic research station after an unspecified world emergency causes the evacuation of everyone else there. He soon loses contact with the outside world, but a mysterious young girl becomes his only companion. Meanwhile, Sully is a female astronaut on the spaceship Aether that is returning from a mission to explore the moons of Jupiter, but they’ve lost all contact with Earth even though their equipment is functioning perfectly. The unsettling silence from home and what it means begins to deeply affect the crew.
Augustine and Sully, with one surrounded by ice and the other floating through a merciless vacuum, may be in vastly different circumstances, but they have a lot in common, too. They’re both people who deliberately avoided family entanglements and steady domestic lives to pursue their scientific dreams. In his younger days Augustine was always ready to move on to the next observatory once his chronic womanizing had worn out his welcome somewhere. Sully left her daughter in the care of her ex-husband to pursue her quest of going into space. Their isolation and fear make both of them reflect on their lives as they wonder if their choices had any meaning at all one way or another considering the now silent Earth.
This one belongs to be shelved along with other literary apocalypses like The Road or Station Eleven although this is definitely it’s own thing. (However, the cover certainly appears to be designed to evoke Station Eleven.) It’s extremely well written, and at about 250 pages it doesn’t have a wasted word. It’s by far the quietest end of the world story I’ve read, and that’s fitting with its settings as well as the lack of noise from Earth being the thing that lets you know something has gone terribly wrong.
It’s also got some nicely straightforward and pragmatic descriptions about the logistics of life in a mostly abandoned scientific station and a state of the art spaceship rocketing towards home. There’s enough to make both these places feel vivid, but whereas some books of this type become all about how you survive end-of-the-world scenarios this one keeps it focus on the inner lives of its two main characters which ends up being more compelling than how Augustine gets a snowmobile started or Sully helps fix a problem on her ship.
It’s the silence and the questions about what may have happened that lurk in the background here and give the book a haunting quality, but those questions end up being relatively unimportant. It’s the story of these two people and their deeper connections that really matters. (view spoiler)[ I’ll admit to feeling like a bit of an idiot that I didn’t pick up that Augustine is Sully’s long lost father sooner than I did. That piece could have made this all very hokey, but I think it works in the context of this story. (hide spoiler)]
I received a free advanced copy of this for review from the publisher....more
”To understand the gunfight in Tombstone, stop — now — and watch a clock for thirty seconds. Listen to it tick while you try to imagine one half of a ”To understand the gunfight in Tombstone, stop — now — and watch a clock for thirty seconds. Listen to it tick while you try to imagine one half of a single minute so terrible it will pursue you all your life and far beyond the grave."
One of the things I find fascinating about the ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral'* is how the same set of facts can be presented to show one side or the other as the ‘good guys’ or the ‘bad guys’. Were the Earps and Doc Holliday heroes who fearlessly faced down some dastardly cattle rustlers and thieves, or were they corrupt opportunists who essentially murdered some innocent ranchers as part of their efforts to take over the town of Tombstone?
As with most things the reality probably lies somewhere in the middle, and what Mary Doria Russell has done so brilliantly with this historical fiction is to show us a version that feels a lot more true than many of the non-fiction accounts that ascribe some kind of agenda to the actions of those involved. Her depiction here shows all the participants not as mythical incorruptible Western lawmen nor mustache twirling villains. Instead, she tells a story in which they are just flawed people who found themselves at a nasty intersection of local politics, business, and crime that led to series of events that eventually found a group of men trading bullets in a vacant lot that was unfortunately just the beginning of even more violence that would cost them dearly.
The previous Russell book Doc focused on John Henry Holliday and his friendship with the Earps through their days in Dodge City. This one puts Wyatt in the forefront, but like Doc we get the viewpoints of many characters. For example, a lot of the story comes to us via Josie Marcus, the woman who left Sheriff John Behan for his political rival Wyatt which was another key factor in escalating the tensions in Tombstone.
The first part of the book that details the events leading up to the infamous gunfight is a stew of conflicting agendas enhanced by post-Civil War grudges and shady political moves that combine until even the most frantic stirring couldn’t keep that particular pot from boiling over. A lot of this reminded me of HBO’s Deadwood in the way that various schemes play out. There’s also distinct parallels to American society today like the town’s two competing newspapers choosing sides and trying to spin events like a cable news network.
Another interesting aspect is how much time is spent on what happened after the gunfight, and unlike some versions such as the film Tombstone which glamorized the ‘vendetta ride of Wyatt Earp’ this story dwells instead on the immense price that everyone involved paid in one way or another. The book pretty much destroys the romanticized myth of the Old West in which disputes can be permanently settled by showdowns at high noon, and instead presents the much messier reality in which violence kicks off revenge cycles when there’s no strong authority around to put a stop to the whole mess.
Although the Earps and Doc Holliday are definitely the heroes of this story Russell deglamorizes them as legends. Instead she skillfully and compassionately shows how their complicated lives and a variety of good and bad decisions led them to that pivotal thirty seconds, and how those moments haunted and defined their reputations forever afterwards.
* - It’s common knowledge that the shooting didn’t actually happen at the OK Corral, but as Russell writes, “…..it took too long to set the type for 'Gunfight in the Vacant Lot Behind Camillus Fly’s Photography Studio Near Fremont Street.'”...more
The main reason I wanted to read this is because I’m such a huge fan of the TV show Fargo. Noah Hawley is the main producer and writer responsible forThe main reason I wanted to read this is because I’m such a huge fan of the TV show Fargo. Noah Hawley is the main producer and writer responsible for transforming the great Coen brothers’ movie into something that has risen to the top of my viewing list even during this Golden Age of Television which has filled so many DVRs. If you haven’t seen it yet then watch it right now. Go on. We’ll wait. It’s only two seasons of ten episodes each so it won’t take you that long. Then you’ll be ready to properly appreciate Hawley’s talents. All done? Good. Let’s talk about the book then.
A private plane carrying eleven people crashes in the ocean shortly after takeoff from Martha’s Vineyard. A middle-aged painter named Scott Burroughs survives the impact and saves both himself and a small boy by making a miraculous swim to shore. Scott is at first hailed as a hero, but he wants only to be left alone. Since the plane was also carrying a media tycoon who ran a cable news network and a wealthy financial advisor who was about to be indicted for shady dealings there are a lot of questions about why it crashed. An opinionated bully of a political commentator from the news network uses his show to spin wild conspiracy theories as well as inciting a witch hunt against Scott for having the unmitigated gall to survive while rich and important people died.
There’s two parallel stories going on here. The first is a Bridge of San Luis Rey kind of thing where we follow the lives of the people on the plane as well as others impacted by the crash. The second involves Scott trying to cope with the crash and its aftermath. There’s also a mystery lurking in the background of what ultimately did happen on board the jet.
A lot of the history and reflections of the characters have to do with wealth. As a person who wasn’t rich and was essentially just hitching a ride because of a chance encounter there’s an interesting dynamic in that Scott was in this bubble of privilege for only moments before being thrown out of it violently. His lack of money and yet being with people who had it in that moment where their bank accounts couldn’t save them is seen as suspicious. The lingering presence of wealth hangs over the backgrounds and actions of the other characters, too. Everyone has to come to terms in some way with how money - serious money – is what makes the world go round. Here’s a bit I particularly liked:
“But money, like gravity, is a force that clumps, drawing in more and more of itself, eventually creating the black hole that we know aswealth. This is not simply the fault of humans. Ask any dollar bill and it will tell you it prefers the company of hundreds to the company of ones. Better to be a sawbuck in a billionaire’s account than a dirty single in the torn pocket of an addict.”
I wasn’t entirely happy with the ending which seemed rushed and as if it was kind of what Hawley wished could happen in this situation rather than what actually would. Still, this was a very well written story with many profound bits of wisdom about life, death, art, money, media, and air travel gone wrong. It’s the same kind of story telling skill he’s shown himself to be a master of on Fargo.
(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley for review.) ...more
If Richard Russo wasn’t a great writer he might have made a pretty good physicist because he seems to know all about inertia. Or at least he’s an expeIf Richard Russo wasn’t a great writer he might have made a pretty good physicist because he seems to know all about inertia. Or at least he’s an expert at having his characters struggle against its force whether they're trying to get moving or change direction.
This sequel to Nobody's Fool returns us to the blue collar town of Bath in upstate New York. A change in his circumstances from the previous book has made Donald Sullivan relatively prosperous with no need to work the kind of back breaking jobs he’d done for most of his life, but at 70 he’s just received some very bad news about his health. Sully’s old nemesis, Douglas Raymer, is now the police chief, but no one respects him including Raymer himself. His wife died just as she was about to leave him for another man, and Raymer is obsessed with learning the identity of this guy by using the only clue he has, a remote control for a garage door opener.
In addition to Sully and Raymer we catch up with several other Bath residents. Rub feels forsaken and heartbroken that he doesn’t get to spend all day working with his best friend Sully anymore. Carl Roebuck’s construction company is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and a disgusting unknown substance oozing of the basement in his latest project isn’t going to improve that situation. Ruth used to cheat on her husband with Sully, but even though their affair has cooled off she is growing conflicted about his regular presence in the diner she runs. She’s also worried that about her no-good former son-in-law hanging around now that he’s out of jail despite the restraining order against him. Raymer has to deal with his sassy officer Charice whose sharp tongue often makes him feel even dumber than usual, and her twin brother Jerome isn’t helping his state of mind either.
There’s a couple of things that set this apart from Nobody’s Fool. The first book happened over several months and took its time getting you into the small town rhythms of Sully’s life. Everything here occurs over an eventful 48 hours that begins with a funeral and includes a construction accident, deadly reptiles, a tree pruning mishap, lightning strikes, and a crime spree. Russo does a nice job of filling us in on the back stories of the previous novel while catching us up on what’s happened since, but as with Nobody’s Fool or Empire Falls the real charm lies not with the story but with the characters.
You’d think that with small town folks like these would be fairly dull, but Russo gives us the rich inner lives of each person he shifts the focus to so that each of them feels like the hero of their own epic story. Even a pretty simple and stupid guy like Rub, whose biggest dreams are of free cheeseburgers, becomes a minor tragedy as he reflects on how much he misses working with Sully every day and faces the realization that things will never be like that again. However, Russo is also constantly throwing in touches of comedy that keep things from becoming maudlin and morose.
Sully is as big a draw here as he was in the first novel. There he was an aging rogue who was determined to live his own way even if he acknowledged that his stubbornness was preventing him from ever getting ahead. Older now and facing his own mortality Sully has started to reflect a bit more on what his actions mean for the lives of others.
Raymer is the second major piece and maybe more of an accomplishment for Russo. Moving an existing character like Sully forward ten years has the advantage of starting with a known quantity. Raymer was a very minor figure in the first book who was portrayed as a complete idiot. Turning him from that into a sympathetic guy who constantly thinks of himself as a fool who is failing at everything was no easy task. He could have come across as self-pitying or tiresome, but I found myself engaged and rooting hard for Raymer to pull his act together.
As with other two Russo books I’ve read it did seem to go on a bit too long, and there were a few too many story twists and turns. Still, he’s got an incredible knack for writing about these small town people and immersing us in their lives to the point where I’m interested and entertained by pretty much anything they’re doing. It’s a great follow up to Nobody’s Fool with the same warmth and humor.
One thing did bum me out while reading this. Nobody’s Fool was adapted into a very good movie starring Paul Newman as Sully. Newman died in 2008 so obviously he couldn’t reprise the role, but that film also had Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who was just starting out at the time, playing Raymer. Reading this now I was repeatedly struck by the thought this would have been a fantastic part for Hoffman to come back to. More’s the pity....more
I’ve noted in reviews of the three other Martin Amis novels I’ve read that he’s got this incredible knack for writing despicable people while still maI’ve noted in reviews of the three other Martin Amis novels I’ve read that he’s got this incredible knack for writing despicable people while still making them funny and entertaining. But doing a book about Nazis running a concentration camp?
Well, you can’t say the man isn’t willing to take on a challenge.*
The story is told by first person accounts from three men. Angelus Thomsen is a Nazi officer and nephew to Martin Bormann whose hobby is seducing women. He’s got his eye on Hannah, the wife of camp commandant Paul Doll who is our second narrator. The third one is Smzul, the leader of a work gang of Jews who have to search and dispose of the bodies of people murdered in the gas chambers.
Amis does a great job of riding the line of mocking the Nazis and their beliefs without ever trying to use humor to disguise the horror all around. Smzul is the character who keeps the book honest with the depiction of him as a man forced to do the unthinkable but doing it well. Thomsen is a bit trickier with his motivations initially being only a desire to sleep with Hannah and seemingly not much reaction to what’s happening around him. He only comes into focus late in the book.
Like many other Amis characters, Doll is a stupid brute without the self-awareness to realize what a pathetic joke he actually is. Amis does some of his sharpest work here in highlighting the utter terrifying banality of Nazi evil by making Doll a clown, but then pointing out that things can go seriously wrong when the clowns start running the circus.
I’m struggling to put my finger on why this didn’t do more for me, and I think it’s just comes down to the setting. Amis manages this delicate tone about as well as anyone could, and obviously reading this should make someone feel uneasy at the very least. Maybe my problem is that I have genuinely enjoyed reading when Amis puts an awful person front and center despite them doing some pretty terrible things, but you can’t get into that same mindset when the terrible things actually happened.
* I know that another Amis book, Time's Arrow, also features a Nazi character, but I haven't read that one yet so I can't compare it to this one....more
Arthur Leander is a famous actor who suffers a heart attack and dies on stage just before a deadly version of the This is one well written apocalypse.
Arthur Leander is a famous actor who suffers a heart attack and dies on stage just before a deadly version of the swine flu kills most of humanity. Station Eleven then uses Arthur as the center of a web of connections that we learn from the people in his life before, during and after the disease wipes out the world as we know it. Kirsten sees Arthur die as a child actor, and years later she’s part of the Traveling Symphony that tours the small towns of the post-apocalyptic landscape. Jeevan is an ex-paparazzo turned paramedic who once stalked Arthur, but he is in the audience when the actor keels over and tries to save his life. Miranda is Arthur’s first wife who could never adjust to the spotlight his fame brought and wrote a comic book about a space station as a hobby. Clark was one of Arthur’s best friends who gets stranded far from home when things really start to fall apart.
The thing that astonishes me most about his is just how deftly Emily St. John Mandel portrays the end of the world. There’s no shortage of post-apocalyptic scenarios out there, but whether the culprits are zombies or nuclear weapons or killer viruses the aftermath is generally as brutal as an ax blow to the face. Mandel writes with such an understated elegance that there’s a dark beauty and grace to her fallen world even as she acknowledges all the hardship and horrors of it.
She also does a masterful job of managing the structure with its shifting third party perspectives at various times. All the links and coincidences could have felt very forced and ultimately pointless, but again it’s her skill at making us interested in all of these people at their various stages of pre and post apocalypse that make it all work so that the connections feel organic and not simply plot points.
While the post-apocalyptic world seems believable for the most part there are some quibbles I could make. Mandel writes this as if a flu with a near 100% mortality rate would essentially wipe out all the accumulated knowledge and technical ability of the survivors and takes everyone back to an almost medieval way of life.
It’s weird that everything has been so ransacked just fifteen years later because the math doesn’t seem right there. If 99% of the US died within days so that there was no prolonged destructive cycle to use up resources, that'd be roughly 3 million people left in a country that had all the crap that 300 million people accumulated. Yet, Kristen is amazed to find a house in the woods that had not been searched where she finds a dress to replace hers that is worn out. Or guns and ammo are portrayed as being increasingly rare even though America has enough guns that each survivor could have about 1000 each. Books also seem to be in short supply as if the libraries were also killed by the flu.
So those would be some serious flaws in the premise if you were judging this solely on criteria like world building (Or world destroying.) and plausibility, but it didn’t lower my opinion much because this just isn’t that kind of book. It’s more interested at exploring human connections as well as providing a reminder that we’re living in an age of unappreciated wonders that is a lot more fragile than we want to admit, and at that Mandel succeeds exceedingly well....more
The main character of this book, Donald ‘Sully’ Sullivan, is a routinely careless man who left his wife and had almost nothing to do with raising his The main character of this book, Donald ‘Sully’ Sullivan, is a routinely careless man who left his wife and had almost nothing to do with raising his son. He’s had an affair with a married woman for twenty years, and he’s lusting after yet another man’s wife. Sully also drinks and gambles on a near daily basis. At one point in this book he pimp slaps a woman, and there's another part in which he engages in an act that probably meets the legal definition of animal cruelty.
Sounds like a real bastard, doesn’t he?
Actually, Sully is one of the most likable characters I’ve read in some time, and most of the damage he inadvertently does to others is trumped by the amount he does to himself.
In the blue collar town of North Bath in upstate New York, Sully is a 60 year old laborer with a bum knee that he injured on a job, but rather than follow the advice of his lawyer and everyone else he knows Sully insists on returning to work rather than follow the legal course of trying to get full disability. Why? Even Sully couldn’t tell you, but his insistence on doing things his way rather than the smart way is a lifelong habit with him. The fact that this attitude has him perpetually broke with only a run-down pick-up truck to his name does nothing to hinder Sully’s commitment to turning left whenever someone tells him to go right.
If he’s low on money then Sully is rich in friends. Or at least he has no shortage of people to bullshit and argue with as he makes his daily rounds of the coffee shop, OTB, and the local bar. As Sully tries to get back to work while coping with his wrecked knee he bumps into his estranged son Peter and his family who are back in town for Thanksgiving. Events eventually force Sully to face that even though he’s spent a lifetime trying to avoid even the mildest form of personal responsibility that there are some times when it can’t be dodged any longer.
I've seen the movie version of this with Paul Newman several times over the years and liked it so much that I always meant to pick up the book but never got around to it. After checking out Russo’s Empire Falls and now this, I’m wishing I’d been reading him for a lot longer. Stories about small communities fallen on hard times are something he does exceedingly well in both, and while there are a lot of similarities between his fictional towns he creates large and vivid casts of characters with their individual histories and motivations that feel unique to each book. There’s also more than enough humor to keep the whole thing from becoming a boring slog about how hard life can be.
Sully is a particularly great creation as a good natured slob with a self-destructive streak that he acknowledges even as he feels no particular urge to change. He’s smart enough to win most of the arguments he gets into, but still usually too stubborn to lose a battle to win a war. While he may bitch about how he’s spent his life working like a dog and yet doesn’t have to pot to piss in there’s also a feeling of general contentment about Sully. As long as his truck starts and he can afford to bet his daily horse race and get a few beers at the bar he really doesn’t feel like he needs much more.
It’s a bit long and there are a few too many sub-plots for my taste. (The scaled down plot of the movie actually works better as a story.) It’s still a terrific book with a lead character that you can’t help but like even as you wish that he’d wise up just a little bit. ...more
Empire Falls, Maine is a town that’s best days are long behind it. The mill and factory that used to be the main employers have been closed for years,Empire Falls, Maine is a town that’s best days are long behind it. The mill and factory that used to be the main employers have been closed for years, and the only person around with two dimes to rub together is the very rich Francine Whiting who essentially owns and controls everything worth having in the area. Miles Robey was on the verge of earning his college degree and escaping Empire Falls forever when he returned home to care for his dying mother and ended up working for Mrs. Whiting as the manager of the Empire Grill.
Two decades later and Miles is a middle aged punching bag still slinging burgers who probably bursts into tears every time he hears Pearl Jam’s Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town. His selfish wife Janine is divorcing Miles to marry health club owner Walt Comeau who likes to stop by the Empire Grill every afternoon to rub it in. Miles’ father Max is the town neer-do-well who is impervious to guilt and is constantly trying to get money out of him. Town cop Jimmy Minty starts approaching Miles under the guise of friendship but has some long simmering grudge against him. Worst of all is that Miles has to report the slender profits to Mrs. Whiting even as she refuses to pay for any improvements to the increasingly shabby diner. The one bright spot in life for Miles is his teen-aged daughter Tick who he loves dearly and has a close relationship with.
This is the first book I’ve read by Russo (Although I’ve seen the movie version of Nobody’s Fool.), and I absolutely loved it. At least until the ending, but we’ll get to that shortly. The depiction of a small blue collar town slowly going under was done incredibly well from the opening that describes how Empire Falls has been ruled by the Whitings for generations and how heir C.B. went from his dream of wanting to be a poet and artist in Mexico to running the family business and marrying Francine.
The characters are another big selling point because there’s a lot more than I described in the brief summary above, and all of them seem rich and fully developed. It’s to Russo’s credit that he was able to make a cast that includes some absolutely infuriating and unpleasant people and make you at least understand all of them. There were times where I wished that Miles would push his father out of a moving car or toss a pan full of hot grease into the face of Walt, but there was also a certain obnoxious charm to them most of the time.
Miles is the heart of the book, and I was a little worried that I wasn’t going to like him much in the early going. I’m generally not a fan of passive characters that are so wrapped up in regrets and unearned guilt that they’re essentially just pawns for anyone looking to use them, and Miles fits this description to a T. Being raised Catholic by his selfless mother has convinced him that wanting anything is practically a sin, and he’s almost pathologically incapable of standing up for himself. However, Miles’ brother is constantly calling him out for taking the path of least resistance and urging him to at least try to change his circumstances. That awareness of his nature and the flashes of backbone that Miles shows at times make him sympathetic despite being pretty much a doormat.
As far as the ending (view spoiler)[ I loved that Mrs. Whiting had essentially turned Miles into an indentured servant because of the affair his mother had with her husband. Miles seemed exceptionally slow on the uptake there, but the hardest place to see a trap is from inside it.
However, I was less pleased with other elements. John Voss shooting the people in the high school was the kind of dramatic moment that it would take for Miles to make a big gesture like leaving Empire Falls to protect Tick. So while I wasn’t sold on the idea of this character driven story about small town secrets and regrets turning into a ripped-from-the-headlines tragedy, it made sense in that respect. But I didn’t like how everything got kind of deus ex machina after that. Mrs. Whiting drowns, Jimmy Minty is disgraced, Zach gets shipped off to Seattle, Janine leaves Walt all while David and Bea get the new restaurant going. That all just seemed a little too convenient for Miles. (hide spoiler)]
Despite those complaints this was still an exceptionally well written book with that did a great job establishing and exploring all the tangled relationships in one dying town, and it has enough humor to keep everything from getting overly grim and depressing for the most part. It’s easy to see why it won a Pulitzer. ...more
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