Alternate History – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson /2014/life-after-life-by-kate-atkinson/ Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:45:28 +0000 /?p=23545 Book Quote:

“Don’t you wonder sometimes,” Ursula said. “If just one small thing had been changed, in the past, I mean. If Hitler had died at birth, or if someone had kidnapped him as a baby and brought him up in— I don’t know, say, a Quaker household— surely things would be different.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shultman (JAN 8, 2014)

Kate Atkinson’s first novel, Scenes at the Museum, began with two words: “I exist!” This one says, “I exist! I exist again! And again!” Life After Life is a marvel. It’s one of the most inventive novels I’ve ever read, rich with details, beautifully crafted, and filled with metaphysical questions about the nature of time, reality, and the ability of one person to make a dramatic difference based on one small twist of fate. In short, it’s amazing.

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd arrives early, a cord wrapped around her neck, already dead. Scratch that. On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd arrives early, lets out a lusty wail, and makes a safe transition into this world. Ursula Todd will die many times in this mesmerizing and compelling novel and in many different ways. But each time, she will gain some innate foresight to help her avoid the traps that have occurred before.

It’s not as if writing about living again and making other choices hasn’t been done before by contemporary writers. Lionel Shriver writes about parallel lives in Post-Birthday World; Stephen King delves right into it in 11-23-63 and so on. What makes this novel extraordinary is that this novel is a layered and nuance exploration on the very nature of time and reality. As Ursula’s doctor says to her,

“Time is a construct, in reality everything flows, no past or present, only the now.”

In Ms. Atkinson’s world, one character – Ursula – can be the embodiment of many different people, often as a result of one small alteration. Look – here is Ursula, a fiercely protective mother. But look again – now she is a mistress, an alcoholic, even a killer. Each Ursula rings authentic. And each life could just as easily have happened.

This is a unique and highly exciting way of storytelling, spanning the monumental history of two world wars and complicated family dynamics. Ursula’s memory is like a “cascade of echoes” as Ms. Atkinson returns again and again to a core question: “What if there was no demonstrable reality? What if there was nothing beyond the mind?”

As the choices and consequences grow, the scenes often turn on small details. What book is Ursula reading – a French classic or a Pitman shorthand manual? What is her reaction to a lost dog that crosses her path? In other books, details like these could be easily glanced over; in Life After Life, they become crucial. Everything can turn on the drop of a dime – a simple push or an impromptu decision.

“She had been here before. She had never been here before…There was always something just out of sight, just around the corner, something she could never chase down – something that was chasing her down.”

At one point, Ursula briskly states, “No point in thinking. You just have to get on with life. We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.” But what if we DID have more than one? Ay, there’s the question…

AMAZON READER RATING: from 1,444 readers
PUBLISHER: Reagan Arthur Books (April 2, 2013)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shultman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Kate Atkinson
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Detective Jackson Brodie series:

]]> 11/22/63: A NOVEL by Stephen King /2011/112263-a-novel-by-stephen-king/ Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:34:45 +0000 /?p=21953 Book Quote:

“It’s a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery glass we call life…A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (NOV 8, 2011)

Dedicated Stephen King fans are in for an epic treat—an odyssey, a Fool’s journey, an adventure with romance. A genre-bending historical novel with moral implications, this story combines echoes of Homer, H.G. Wells, Don Quixote, Quantum Leap (the old TV show), Jack Finney’s Time and Again, and even a spoonful of meta-King himself, the czar of popular fiction.

For King fans, the voice is familiar—the hapless, reluctant, lonely, courageous, romantic, destiny-bound hero/scarred social warrior. The story is King-esque– towering, prophetic, and flamboyant. For non-King readers, this may not chime. It may seem melodramatic, exaggerated, histrionic. But he isn’t attempting to write a deep and complex revisionist history. This is mainstream entertainment; King is King of what King does—the unruly escapist story with a huge and sentimental heart. The “Constant Reader” will approve.

This is not horror, in case you are strictly old school fans. However, there is a touch of the supernatural via time-travel. And there is blood and gore sprayed here and there. If you liked Under the Dome,  you will likely enjoy this one. If you are new to King, and are reading this for more insight into the fateful day of 11/22/63, or a “what would the world be like if…?,” this is not King’s principle design. It hovers, yes, and is material only to the primary theme.

Somewhere in the space-time continuum between preservation and progress is the “obdurate past” and the malleable future. Do we have the moral right to alter history, if we could? This is Jake Epping’s noble journey–to answer that question—and, even more so, to ask it. The thrust of the story centers on Jake and the other fictional characters King created; however, JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and other historical characters are an essential backdrop and stimulus to the events that unfold. King’s best nuances illuminate how the past and the present have a harmony that echoes, sings, dances, and shadows.

“It’s all of a piece…It’s an echo so close to perfect you can’t tell which one is the living voice and which is the ghost-voice returning.”

English schoolteacher Jake Epping is introduced to a portal to the past by his friend, Al Templeton, who owns a greasy spoon diner in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Al discovered it years ago, and has made many “trips” back and forth, but he is too sick now to return. The portal brings you to September 9, 1958, 11:58 am. No matter how many days, months, or years you stay, you always return two minutes later on the day you left, 2011 (but you will biologically age).

Jake’s mission is to stay five years, keep tabs on Oswald and uncover the truth of the Kennedy assassination controversy—and, if Oswald acted alone, to stop him. King provides details that make the time-travel plausible—suspending disbelief in that sense is playfully easy. Compounding Jake’s goal is his desire to change other pieces of the past—to change other tragedies, which confronts the prophecy that “the past is obdurate,” those words that he returns to.

Jake assumes the identity of George Amberson, and makes a couple of trial runs before committing to his five-year stay. He eventually lands in the fictional town of Jodie, Texas, a town north of Dallas, where he can earn a living as a teacher, and tail Oswald during his off-hours. It is in Jodie where the moral questions and most of the adventure lodge in the reader’s heart. Jake/George becomes emotionally invested in the people, the town, and one attractive librarian, Sadie Dunhill. Inevitably, his mission and his new life rub together, generating poignant conflicts and urgent demands that threaten to undermine his quest.

King’s strengths include his sense of place and time. He renders 1958 so specifically that you will be transported. Ten-cent root beers with foam; fin-tailed Chevrolets; cigarette smoke wafting inside and out; Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis from the jukebox; dancing cheek-to-cheek; mink stoles and Moxie soda; rotary dial phones and party lines, and so much more to texturize the “Land of Ago.” There’s even a meta-fictional surprise in Derry, where characters from a former novel appear, connecting George with the past’s push on the present. King makes it credible for memories to branch arterially from past to present, for different time periods to cast hazy shadows and intersections on each other. Parallels flourish, coincidences shade.

The novel is both story and character-driven, but there’s no question of the white hats vs. the black hats here. King removes the guesswork, which can be a drawback to discovery. Dialogue is earnestly overstated, motives occasionally simplified, and plot devices conveniently executed, or with a bait-and-switch technique. He isn’t one for much subtlety, justifying (too many) coincidences by cleverly making coincidence part of the theme. But it works, and beneath it all is an enchanting story. The reader cares as passionately as Jake. Sadie, however, is the unforgettable character in this book. Jake/George may be the hero, but Sadie is the spirited touchstone. Comely, fetchingly clumsy, and wounded, she dances off the pages.

Despite the voluminous research done by King into the Oswald controversy, his conclusions are woven into the book rather cursorily, but emphatically. Does this matter? It might, especially to readers who feel that authorial intrusion into the narrative was intemperate. The reader doesn’t have to necessarily agree with a character’s actions, but if a historical context is displayed as fact, but the facts don’t add up for the reader, then it falls apart.

No popular author closes a story like Stephen King. Consummately sublime and serendipitous, he builds deft bridges and ladders that are not only cosmic and mystical, but also fitting and relevant. He captures in a few chapters what an evocative song can capture in a few minutes. Whatever his flaws, his rewards are plentiful. Classy, cosmic, mystical, and kaleidoscopic–it was radiant and clear, through a glass, darkly.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 2250 readers
PUBLISHER: Scribner; Original edition (November 8, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Stephen King
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

*1Takes place in Castle Rock, Maine
*2Takes place in Derry, Maine
*3 Takes place in Little Tall Island, Maine
*P These two books have one “pinhole” vision into each other

The Dark Tower Series

Originally written as Richard Bachman

Co-written with Peter Straub

Non-Fiction:

And the Movies created from his books:

]]> CAIN by Jose Saramago /2011/cain-by-jose-saramago/ Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:50:51 +0000 /?p=21440 Book Quote:

“Only a madman unaware of what he was doing would admit to being directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds and thousands of people and then behave as if nothing had happened.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (OCT 4, 2011)

Saramago’s last, indeed posthumous, book is a real treat. Brief, inventive, funny, it furthers the author’s well-known distaste for religious dogma by traversing many of the familiar stories of the Old Testament by means of a fanciful parable told from a rational point of view. Much like The Elephant’s Journey, it shows Saramago’s stylistic fingerprints in relaxed form. There are still the run-on sentences, but they are the product of irrepressible exuberance rather than philosophic density. There is a lot more dialogue than usual, but, liberated by the author’s minimal punctuation, it propels the page forward rather than breaking it up. And his avoidance of capitals (except to start sentences and dialogue) has the familiar effect of demystifying his various beings — most especially god — making them earn respect rather than being granted it automatically. He treats the lord as an omnipotent but rather amateur bungler, forever tinkering with his unsatisfactory creation, as here with Noah’s ark:

“God was not there for the launch. He was busy examining the planet’s hydraulic system, checking the state of the valves, tightening the odd loose screw that was dripping where it shouldn’t, testing the various local distribution networks, keeping an eye on the manometers, as well as dealing with tens of myriads of other tasks, large and small, each of them more important than the last, and which only he, as creator, engineer and administrator of the universal mechanisms, was in a position to carry out and to which only he could give the sacred ok.”

Saramago’s most audacious stroke is to choose the outcast murderer Cain as his protagonist. He has him argue successfully that at least half the blame for Abel’s murder should be shouldered by god (let’s stick with lowercase) for his unreasonable provocation. Condemned to wander the earth as a kind of compromise, Cain finds the rest of the Middle East quite adequately populated already; it appears that the Garden of Eden was not the beginning of anything, simply god’s private experiment. Other than an extended amorous interlude with the capricious Queen Lilith, Cain will jump around in the Bible story, turning up at most of the key events of Genesis, and several from other books of the Old Testament also. Sometimes he gets there only in the nick of time, as when the official angel arrives too late to prevent the sacrifice of Isaac, and Cain himself has to intervene.

The middle sections of the book are rather episodic, and I was not entirely convinced by Saramago’s choice of just these episodes in just that order. But it gradually becomes clear that Cain’s role is to be a witness, and — murderer though he is — a moral conscience that Saramago’s god himself lacks. The chosen stories focus on god’s capriciousness, apparent unconcern for human life, and willingness to accept any amount of collateral damage in pursuit of his goals. Cain cannot understand how the killing of one’s son can be a worthwhile test of anything; would god be willing to sacrifice his own son? (Well, yes.) How can god think that giving Job another set of sons and daughters can replace the ones he has arbitrarily destroyed, as though family, like wealth, were a fungible commodity? Cain is haunted by the cries of the innocent children slaughtered along with their Sodomite parents. He leaves Joshua’s army in horror at the massacre of combatants and non-combatants alike, and the capture of virgins for other purposes. Finally, having been brought onto the ark by Noah, he takes matters into his own hands directly, standing up to god once more face-to-face.

So a fun book with a serious message. From any other writer, it would be a wonder; from Saramago, though, little more than a jeu d’esprit. Compared to his rewriting of the New Testament in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, a complex book which proves by no means hostile to religion even while denouncing the official manifestations of it, this seems little more than a whimsical after-dinner entertainment. But I would have happily gone to dinner with Saramago any time, and listened to his stories for as long as he cared to tell them. (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 25 readers
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; None edition (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on José Saramago
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Other:

]]> THE LEFTOVERS by Tom Perrotta /2011/the-leftovers-by-tom-perrotta/ Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:05:04 +0000 /?p=20532 Book Quote:

“What mostly struck her, reading the files, was how deceptively normal things seemed in Mapleton. Most people just put on blinders and went about their trivial business, as if the Rapture had never even happened, as if they expected the world to last forever.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (AUG 30, 2011)

On May 21 this year, many Christians waited for an event, the Rapture, which was to physically transport them to their savior, Jesus Christ. Spurred on by a minister in California, Harold Camping, many were disappointed when the event they were confident was to happen, just never came to pass.

In his new book, author Tom Perrotta explores the what-ifs of what eventually turned out to be a non-event. What if an event like the Rapture did happen? What happens to the people who get left behind, the Leftovers? If Perrotta’s vision were to come true, most of the people who get left behind resort to their own special brand of religious fanaticism.

Perrotta’s latest novel, The Leftovers, is set in the fictional bedroom community of Mapleton with the mayor Kevin Garvey, pretty much taking center stage. The book picks up a couple of years after millions of people suddenly disappear one fall morning and the leftovers are still struggling to cope with this devastating loss. This seismic event is somewhat dissimilar from the Rapture in that the people who disappear include many non-Christians and non-believers.

There are many in Mapleton who lose close family members to the event but mayor Kevin Garvey is not one of them. Yet he is as much affected as the worst of them because his immediate family members come horribly undone in the event’s aftermath. Kevin’s son, Tom, drops out of college at Syracuse to join a cult headed by a charismatic leader, Holy Wayne. Holy Wayne, aka Mr. Gilchrest, starts out by proclaiming that he can literally absorb people’s pain by just hugging them. Soon, as his popularity increases, so do his perverse ambitions—Holy Wayne convinces his followers the true savior in the end will be the male child that he is to father with one of many teen “brides.”

As if this cult were not weird enough, there’s the one that takes up residence right in Mapleton, inhabiting empty homes and generally creeping the local residents. Kevin’s wife, Laurie, is in fact a loyal member of this organization called The Guilty Remnants. The GR as the book often refers to them, all take an oath of silence and they mostly pass the time by reviewing residents’ “files” and figuring out which people to stalk every day. “WE WON’T LET THEM FORGET. WE SMOKE TO PROCLAIM OUR FAITH,” are just a couple of core creeds they live by. “It was a lifestyle, not a religion, an ongoing improvisation rooted in the conviction that the post-Rapture world demanded a new way of living, free from the old, discredited forms—no more marriage, no more families, no more consumerism, no more politics, no more conventional religion, no more mindless entertainment. Those days were done. All that remained for humanity was to hunker down and await the inevitable,” writes Perrotta of the GR.

While Tom and Laurie in the Garvey family come undone in their own way by resorting to some kind of faith-based mechanism, Kevin’s teen daughter, Jill, once a stellar A+ student, has now completely fallen apart in the wake of her mother’s leaving. Jill’s heartbreak is especially gut wrenching to watch unfold  since it could have been avoided so easily. “What wasn’t natural was your mother walking out on you, moving across town to live in a group house with a bunch of religious nuts, cutting off all communication with her family,” Jill remembers over and over again.

Despite these setbacks, Kevin gamely soldiers on—trying hard to be a good father to Jill all the while hoping Laurie will return. When it becomes increasingly clear she won’t, he reaches out to Nora Durst, the one woman in the town who has been hit the hardest by the tragedy. Nora lost her husband and two kids in the event and, understandably, has never recovered. “They were always tiptoeing around her, so careful and considerate, so painfully sympathetic, as if she were dying of cancer or afflicted with some disfiguring disease…” Nora thinks of the Mapleton residents who try sharing in her pain every day. Despite a somewhat promising start, Nora realizes she is far too gone to be ready for a new romance—not with Kevin or anyone else.

As he showed in the wonderful Little Children, Perrotta is especially astute at capturing everyday lives in suburbia. Even in The Leftovers, he is best when he describes the goings on at Mapleton and especially at detailing the devastation brought about on the teenaged Jill. But in The Leftovers, the move to the new cults comes across as mumbo-jumbo and less than convincing.

The problem with The Leftovers is that so much of it revolves around buying into the story of the Guilty Remnants. And buying into that story essentially means understanding why Laurie Garvey simply upped and left, why she would leave her loving family behind. Even when she briefly returns one Christmas Day and is handed a present that Jill bought for her (a lighter), Laurie simply tosses it out. She can’t be attached any more, she can’t care any more, she believes. She must simply hunker down and wait for the end. Laurie’s conversion to the GR, oblivious of all else around her, is so unconvincing that it majorly cripples the novel.

Perrotta has said that The Leftovers turns out to be a “surprisingly rich metaphor for growing older and living with loss.” It would indeed be great if the novel were that. It should be pointed out though, that the process of growing old is natural and inevitable. And Laurie’s abrupt leaving—why even the whole Rapture-like tragedy is not. These events are not natural nor are they inevitable. So what remains at the end of it all is a somewhat skewed “metaphor for loss” but a mildly entertaining one nevertheless.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 254 readers
PUBLISHER: St. Martin’s Press; First Edition edition (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER: Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Tom Perrotta
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Movies from books:

]]> THE ASTOUNDING, THE AMAZING, THE UNKNOWN by Paul Malmont /2011/the-astounding-the-amazing-the-unknown-by-paul-malmont/ Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:15:30 +0000 /?p=19484 Book Quote:

“There have been rumors ever since Wardenclyffe was shut down that Tesla was up to something other than trying to create a new form of electronic communication. Something potentially devastating…I need you to help me find out what happened at Wardenclyffe. We need to know why the Nazis consider it a Wunderwaffe. A wonder weapon.”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (JUL 22, 2011)

The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown by Paul Malmont is a celebration of science fiction’s golden years via the pulp magazine ethos. Taking place in 1943, it recounts a story partially based in fact about how the guiding lights of science fiction’s heyday were brought together by the military and tasked with making science fiction real in order to defeat the Nazis. Virtually all the authors who were the mainstays of science fiction and fantasy from 1930’s through the 1960’s are there. Robert A. (Bob) Heinlein is the leader of the team that includes the young Isaac Asimov, under the direction of the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, and Unknown, John Campbell. Heinlein, a graduate of the naval academy, was a prolific and talented writer who almost always got his science right. Asimov, the all-time most prolific writer of books in any genre appears as an earnest young writer in the process of earning his PhD in chemistry. L. Ron Hubbard is featured as are L. Sprague de Camp, Walter Gibson, and inventor/mad genius Nikolai Tesla among many others.

The center of the story is the quest for Nikola Tesla’s purported death ray that he thought caused the catastrophic Tungusta explosion which leveled 800 square miles in Siberia. The explosion is now regarded as having been caused by the impact of a meteor. Tesla, Edison’s rival, was the inventor of the radio and alternating current among many others. He is the perfect model of a mad genius, someone more bizarre and improbable than anything in fiction.

The novel is structured as a series of linked episodes echoing the structure of those novels serialized in the pulp fiction of the era. The pulps were soft cover magazines with short stories, serialized longer fiction, and articles that were printed on newsprint (hence the name, pulp, from the wood pulp source of the paper). The style and structure also recall serialized movies, likewise based on the pulps, shown in short segments in movie theaters up until the late 1950’s. Each episode here is more or less self-contained and many feature an improbable escape by the protagonist/heroes. The blending of fact and fiction is ingenious and great fun.

In one episode, Heinlein, Asimov, and Gibson escape from being trapped in the sub-basement of the Empire State Building by following the path of a buried river under Manhattan only to be swept away to finally emerge in the basement of 2 Fifth Avenue. Clive Cartmill’s prescient description of a functioning atom bomb as published by John Campbell in an issue of Astounding Science Fiction, gains attention by the FBI. A pair of thuggish FBI agents question Heinlein about Cartmill, Campbell, and the revelatory story. Their methods escalate to brutality when they are electrocuted by a lightning strike to their telephone. One of our science fiction heroes escaped from a cavern inside a volcano when it is erupting. He improbably escapes and coincidences just multiply.

The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown celebrates science fiction’s glory years and does so by echoing the style and content of pulp fiction from the time of World War II. The portions that deal with the wives, lovers and generally left-wing politics of the science fiction authors are a nod to modern writing. So, too, is the animated and perceptive description of the fans and the science fiction conventions. Anyone who enjoys or nostalgically recalls such classics of the genre as the Lazarus Long stories, by Heinlein, or Asimov’s Foundation Series will find a comfortable and happy home here.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 5 readers
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Paul Malmont
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

The Chinatown Death Cloud

More Nikola Tesla in fiction:

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

Bibliography:

]]> THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR by Arthur Phillips /2011/the-tragedy-of-arthur-by-arthur-phillips/ Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:39:34 +0000 /?p=18498 Book Quote:

“If you think it’s him, it sounds like him,” Arthur says to his sister; “if you think it’s not, it doesn’t.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (JUN 24, 2011)

The very first thing I did after finishing The Tragedy of Author – Arthur Phillips’s ingenious faux-memoir – was to Google to see what was true and what wasn’t…only to find that much of Phillips’s traceable past has been erased.

Did he really have a gay twin sister named Dana, a scam artist father who spent his adult life in prison, a Czech wife and twin sons of his own? Methinks not. What I do know is that Arthur Phillips shares his birthday with the Bard himself, that he was born in Minnesota, and that he is indeed a writer to be watched very carefully. Because what he’s accomplished in this novel – er, memoir – is sheer genius.

Arthur Phillips – the character – is an unreliable narrator if there ever was one, and points it out in various excerpts. Right from the start when he says, “I have never much liked Shakespeare,” we feel a little off-center. The book is, after all about the ultimate Shakespeare scam: his neer-do-well father, at the end of his life, shares with Arthur a previously unknown play by Shakespeare titled The Tragedy of Arthur and entices him to use his Random House connections to get the play published.

To say his connection with his father is complicated is an understatement. Arthur Phillips, memoirist, reflects, “His life was now beyond my comprehension and much of my sympathy – even if I had been a devoted visitor, a loving son, a concerned participant in his life. I was none of those.” Now he wonders: did his father perform the ultimate con? If so, how did he pull it off? And how do the two Arthurs – Arthur the ancient king portrayed in the “lost” play and Arthur the memoirist – intertwine their fates?

It’s a tricky project and Arthur Phillips – the novelist – is obviously having great fun with it. At one point, he urges readers to, “Go Google the van Meergeen Vermeers…Read James Frey’s memoir now…We blink and look around, rubbing the fairy dust from our eyes, wonder whether we might have dreamt it all. Once you know it isn’t Shakespeare, none of it sounds like Shakespeare. How could it.” But somehow, it does.

The play is reproduced in its entirety in the second part and indeed, it reads like Shakespeare (I read all of his major plays in grad school and have seen many of them performed). It’s absolutely brazen that Arthur Phillips could have mimicked Shakespeare so successfully and with seeming authenticity.

So in the end, the theme comes down to identity. As Phillips the memoirist writes, “So much of Shakespeare is about being at a loss for identity being lost somewhere without the self-defining security of home and security, lost in a shipwreck, confused with a long-lost twin, stripped of familiar power, taken for a thief, taken for the opposite gender, taken for a pauper, believing oneself an orphan.”

And, as Phillips the novelist knows, it’s also a trick for perspective. The play, the novel, the memoir, the scam can equally be said to be “about a man born in Stratford in 1565 – maybe on April 22 or 24, by the way — or about an apocryphal boy king in Dark Ages England or about my father or his idea of me or my grandfather or Dana in armor or or or.” Just as Shakespeare may or may not have written his plays – according to some anti-Bards – so might this new one be a fakery, written by Arthur’s fictional father. There is layer steeped upon layer steeped upon layer in this book. It’s audacious and it’s brilliant. Arthur Phillips convincingly shows us just how easy it is to reinvent a play, a history, or ourselves with just a few sweeps of a pen.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 43 readers
PUBLISHER: Random House; First Edition edition (April 19, 2011)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Arthur Phillips
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:The Song is You

Another book had us fooled:

Incident at Twenty-Mile by Trevanian

Bibliography:

]]> ON STRANGER TIDES by Tim Powers /2011/on-stranger-tides-by-tim-powers/ Sun, 12 Jun 2011 18:47:42 +0000 /?p=18573 Book Quote:

Blackbeard nodded. “I was sure you’d figured that out. Yes, old Hurwood plans to raise his wife’s ghost from her dried head and plant it in the body of his daughter. Hard luck on the daughter, left with no body…”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (JUN 12, 2011)

My review is of a paperback reprint of a Tim Powers novel, On Stranger Tides, first published to a good deal of critical acclaim in 1987. No doubt the success of the new movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides inspired the reprint.

Voodoo plays a major role in this novel, in particular with regard to resurrection. Voodoo and other western systems of magic are all tied up with the relationship between magic, blood (and its analog, sea water) and cold iron. It turns out according to this tale at least that cold iron quenches magic. The magic of Europe has been much diminished in the 17th century due to steel, armor, swords and the other trappings of European material culture. Magic flourishes in the western hemisphere where blood still rules over steel. Blood is the antithesis of cold steel; it is likened to hot iron. Magicians typically have white gums because so much of their blood is in use for magic that they suffer congenital anemia.

Oh, and there are pirates galore; most notably Blackbeard, who we discover is a powerful magician in his own right. Blackbeard’s historic practice of going into battle with lit candles woven into his beard is explained by the revelation in this tale that his patron voodoo demon, his loa, is summoned by smoldering fire. Later in the story a lit cigar serves the same purpose.

Some truly freakish and slimy souls inhabit Powers’ Caribbean world of 17th century. The good people in our tale are not all that good or pure, but they at least try. The bad ones like Blackbeard and Hurwood are truly awful. Hurwood is clearly psychotic, driven to madness by the death of his wife. In his madness he carries her rotting head in a basket and has plotted to resurrect her soul into the body of his daughter, leaving the daughter without a body to call her own. Blackbeard captains a ship of zombies. Among Blackbeard’s other atrocities is manipulating someone to bludgeon-murder his wife in order to be blackmailed into becoming a vassal pirate.

In some ways it is odd to speak to anachronism or logical irregularity in a work about invented magic, but there is one thing that stands out as being off. Hurwood is a University Don, a scholar, who knows the work of Newton and the most up to date developments in science. His explanation of the magic environment surrounding the Fountain of Youth is profoundly anachronistic. He corresponds the locale to a quantum system with some features so precisely known that other aspects are required to be correspondingly unknowable. It should be noted that Newton, who many believe was the archetypical scientist, in reality spent a great deal of his professional life involved with alchemy, and can well be thought of as a magician in his own right. No one from that time and place could have entered into the mind-set of quantum uncertainty. Another quibble is that Jack Shandy, the protagonist is less interesting than the bad guys. Additionally, his love interest, Beth, Hurwood’s daughter, is almost a non-entity. It is not that Jack is two-dimensional or just a purely good guy; he has killed, betrayed and he clearly loves. His back-story is interesting. It is just that he comes off as somewhat vapid by comparison.

Powers is an extremely gifted storyteller His wit is unfailingly dry and brilliant. His powers of bizarre invention are pretty amazing. The plot flows, jumps and bubbles weaving one fantastic invention after another. I enjoyed On Stranger Tides a great deal and I am eager for the next gem from this wizard of off beat fantasy. Readers should be encouraged to explore the long list of his fantastic novels.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 57 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (April 26, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Tim Powers
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

Bibliography:

Fault Lines:

Movies from Books

  • Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides (May 2011)
]]> JANE AND THE MADNESS OF LORD BYRON by Stephanie Barron /2010/jane-and-the-madness-of-lord-byron-by-stephanie-barron/ Mon, 27 Dec 2010 02:41:19 +0000 /?p=14213 Book Quote:

“I stared calmly into his glittering eyes. What countenance he possessed! The features nobly drawn, firm in every outline, the lips full and sensual; the pallor of the skin akin to a god’s beneath the dark sweep of hair. It was the face of an angel—but a fallen one. Lucifer’s visage must have held just such heartrending beauty.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (DEC 16, 2010)

In Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron, by Stephanie Barron, Jane and her brother, Henry, embark on an expedition to the seaside to recover their spirits after the passing of Henry’s wife, Eliza. In the spring of 1813, Brighton was a “glittering resort and “the summer haunt of expensive Fashionables,” including the profligate Prince Regent and his cronies. Although Jane is at first is aghast at the thought of staying in a vulgar place devoted to “indecent revels,” she realizes that “Henry would never survive his grief by embracing melancholy.” In fact, “Brighton, in all its strumpet glory, was exactly what he required.”

Jane, who is thirty-seven (“the autumn of my life is come—my hopes of happiness long since buried in an unmarked grave”), knows that, where she is headed, men and women will be parading about in their finery, while she will be clad in dark-colored clothes and limited to activities appropriate for one in mourning. Her thoughts turn in another direction, however, when Jane and Henry, on the way to their destination, rescue a fifteen-year-old girl named Catherine Twining from the clutches of Lord Byron, who had abducted and tied her up “in a manner painful to observe.” Even though the celebrated poet had many paramours, he was selfishly determined to add Catherine to his list of conquests, whether she willed it or not.

Jane and Henry’s stay in Brighton proves to be unsettling. A brutal murder takes place, for which Byron may very well hang, and Jane and Henry collect information that will help them learn the truth of the matter. Throughout, Ms. Barron lavishly describes “the frivolity and display, the pretty and available women, the horse races and the crowd of gamblers at Raggett’s Club.” Among the large cast of characters are: Lady Desdemona, Countess of Swithin, the niece of Jane’s late, lamented Lord Harold Trowbridge; General Twining, Catherine’s bitter, rude, and extremely strict father; Hendred Smalls, an unctuous and unappealing clergyman who hopes to win Catherine’s hand; Lady Caroline Lamb, a madwoman who ostentatiously throws herself at Byron even though he repeatedly rejects her; and, hovering over them all is the Prince Regent, who enjoys wine, women, and the gaming tables.

Barron is a student of all things Austen, and her research into the life of this great novelist enriches the narrative. However, it should be noted that the premise is a product of the author’s imagination; there is no record of Austen having ever visited Brighton or, indeed, having met Lord Byron. Although Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron is mildly entertaining, it is also excessively talky, overly cluttered, and somewhat pretentious. In addition, the mystery is neither particularly believable nor suspenseful. The novel’s value lies mainly in Barron’s meticulous description of the personalities, fashions, and mores of the upper classes during the Regency period. Readers who wish to immerse themselves in the pursuits, debaucheries, and eccentricities of the wealthy and infamous in early nineteenth century England may find this work of fiction diverting.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 32 readers
PUBLISHER: Bantam (September 28, 2010)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Stephanie Barron
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Wolf

Bibliography:

Jane Austin Mysteries:

Writing as Francine Mathews:

Nantucket Mysteries:

]]> MASTER SIGER’S DREAM by A. W. Deannuntis /2010/master-sigers-dream-by-a-w-deannuntis/ Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:11:09 +0000 /?p=13630 Book Quote:

“[Master Siger] had arrived at a new theory of causality that provided logical extension of the work of Aristotle and Averroes. Against the idea of omnipotent and ever-present Deity, Master Siger had concluded that God is completely detached from the Universe, has no idea what is going on, and is powerless to affect it in any way. . . a case he had finally committed to paper and titled “On the Necessity and Contingency of Causes,” scheduled to appear in the February 1278 issue of Playboy magazine. Master Siger hoped that the Playmate of the month was a blond, since blonds drew more readers.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  (NOV 16, 2010)

Reading A.W. Deannuntis’ debut novel, Master Siger’s Dream, put me in mind of the John Kennedy Toole masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces. The epigraph for that book – When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him – could easily do service here. In the role of the genius is 13th century philosopher Siger of Brabant, with the dunces being played by the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, the Papal Legate, Simon De Brion, and various anonymous sadists of the Roman Catholic Inquisition. And while medieval philosophy abounds in both books, it was Deannuntis’ characterization of Siger of Brabant as an irreverent gadfly that really called to mind Ignatius Reilly. But Master Siger has much bigger problems than his flatulent counterpart: 13th century France is not 20th century New Orleans (although, curiously, Deannuntis endows his medieval Europe with cars and video and helicopters); in Master Siger’s world, irreverence gets you killed (and tortured to boot).

The book opens just after the release of the Condemnations of 1277. Europe emerged from the Dark Ages just as scholars rediscovered the works of Aristotle via Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna and Averroes. Averroes famously tried to reconcile Aristotlean philosophy with the teachings of the Islamic faith in his treatise The Incoherence of the Incoherence. Christian theologians – Thomas Aquinas, among them – promptly concerned themselves with reconciliations of their own. Unfortunately, the Church wasn’t as keen on philosophy as these theologians, and while the motives of the theologians was to find a way to use reason and logic in support of the Church, the Church didn’t take well to having its doctrine vetted against the ideas of some pagan philosopher. The Condemnations, issued by Bishop Tempier, forbid anyone from teaching or listening to a list of disputed ideas on the pain of excommunication. While the Condemnations never named them explicitly, Siger of Brabant, and his friend, Boetius of Dacia, were well-known Averroists. And so, upon the issue of the Condemnations, Siger and Boetius find themselves without allies. Suddenly, Paris is a cold place, and on the advice of Boetius, Siger reluctantly flees the city he loves.

However, Pope Nicholas III’s reach is as far as his pockets are deep and Siger is promptly captured and brought before Bishop Tempier. Instructed to travel directly to the Papal Palace in Avignon, Siger suspects he’s being led into the lion’s den. But, not a man of many options, he figures the Papal Palace safer than the Inquisition’s torture chamber. And besides, he’s told that it’s already been arranged for Boetius to meet him there.

It quickly becomes clear that life in the Papal Palace is practically pagan –food, sex and drugs galore – but forbidden to leave, Siger is little more than a prisoner. To further complicate matters, when he’s not hot-boxing the Popemobile with His Holiness out on the Pope’s private golf-course or rifling through pornography in the palace’s secret archives, Siger is fed information he’s not sure how to use. Was Thomas of Aquinas murdered by the Church? Is his missing friend, Boetius, really dead? Or is he alive somewhere organizing Siger’s rescue? And just who are these beautiful, libidinous women who keep trying to help him? What of this Arab reporter?

But just as the existence of heretics actually functions to strengthen the position of the Church – or so Simon De Brion argues –Siger’s escapes (unwitting and otherwise), and his subsequent recaptures, actually strengthen his resolve to stay with the Pope. For what does it matter, if everything that ever was, is, and will be, was determined by that first fall of the domino? Surprisingly, news of his inalterable fate comforts Siger, and while we, from our privileged place in history, know just which way fortune spins for our genius and our dunces, Deannuntis has created such a wonderful character that we can’t help hoping Siger figures out a way to circumvent his fate, that somehow he finds his way to a better outcome.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 3 readers
PUBLISHER: What Books Press (October 26, 2010)
REVIEWER: Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Publisher’s page on A.W. Deannuntis
EXTRAS: On the Matter of Death by A.W. Deannuntis
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Our very, very short review of:

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Another look at the medieval times:

The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland

Bibliography:

    ]]>         CHALCOT CRESCENT by Fay Weldon /2010/chalcot-crescent-by-fay-weldon/ Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:56:30 +0000 /?p=12936 Book Quote:

    “I will be sorry to leave this life, as soon I must. It is so full of wonder, as well as horror. A surprise around every corner and the pace is hotting up.”

    Book Review:

    Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 15, 2010)

    Two things about British novelist Fay Weldon: she will always be controversial and she will always be relevant. Known primarily as an author of female-centered books, Weldon –who just turned 79, by the way, worked in advertising at one point in her career, and she also wrote the screenplay for the 1980 version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In 1998, Weldon, called a feminist novelist for decades, came under fire for her comments on the subject of rape. In 2001 Weldon once again became the subject of controversy with her novel The Bulgari Connection when it was revealed that she’d been paid 18,000 pounds to quote the jeweler at least 12 times. How’s that for product placement? After some initial waffling came Weldon’s great get stuffed response: “Well they never give me the Booker Prize anyway.”

    Chalcot Crescent--Weldon’s 29th novel (her 30th if you count Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen) is a bit of a change of pace. Weldon’s characters are predominantly females struggling to survive in a male dominated society, and while these women should, of course band together to form a cohesive, formidable alliance, they more often than not devolve into rivalry and squabbling as they battle over men–the so-called spoils. In Chalcot Crescent, Weldon’s world of 2013 offers a tableau of a slightly different sort. Yes men still rule, but it’s the faceless sinister monolithic government–the true enemy–and the ultimate patriarchal society–in charge of a world that’s gone horribly and believably awry. Is this science fiction? Perhaps–although I think the world of Chalcot Crescent is too close to the truth for that. Instead it’s the sort of Weldon-dabbling we see in the futuristic The Cloning of Joanna May (1989) and the alternative realities of Mantrapped (2004).

    Weldon tells the reader that this book is the story of her lost sister “set in an alternative universe that mirrors our own.” With Weldon’s characteristic humour, the novel’s protagonist, Frances now aged 80, is a once-successful, now-penniless writer living in Chalcot Crescent while her loser sister, Fay–a writer of cookbooks has hightailed it to back to New Zealand. Holed up in her Chalcot Crescent home, surrounded by foreclosures, Frances hides from the bailiffs who are about to turf her out of her house and presumably onto the street. Trapped inside her home, she describes a world that’s gone to hell:

    “Then came the Labour Government of 1997 and the Consumer Decade–as it is now called–and by 2007 the house next door to me sold for £1.85 million. Then came the Shock of 2008, the Crunch of 2009-11–when house prices plummeted and still no-one was buying–then the brief recovery of 2012, when at least properties began to change hands again, though our friendly European neighbours became less friendly, the US embraced protectionism and the rest of the world had no choice but to follow. And then came the Bite, which is now, and with it a coalition and thoroughly dirigiste government which keeps its motives and actions very much to itself. And though a few major figures in the financial world went to prison, the nomenklatura still ride the middle lanes, have their mortgages paid for them and do very well, thank you. The rest of us are presumably moving to the outskirts: fifty years on and we are back to where we began. I reckon I had the best of it.”

    With the economy in a permanent state of emergency, the NUG (National Unity Government) is running the country. Rules, regulations, and rationing control everything–from an intermittent water supply to CCTV. Everyone is supposed to eat a rather suspicious manufactured substance called National Meat Loaf, vegetarianism is ridiculed, and home grown-produce is taxed by Neighbourhood Watch programmes. People who’ve lost their homes in the economic downturn disappear and are relocated to the nether regions of the “outskirts.”

    Frances goes back and forth in her descriptions of the past and the present, and as she types her story into the computer (hoping to sell a book if there’s enough paper), she plays with the idea that some of what she’s writing is fiction. She details her major relationships and the lives of her rather disappointing children as she rode the wave of economic affluence to its disappointing conclusion. With numerous marriages, second spouses, lovers and stepchildren, it’s all very complicated. For Weldon fans, reading Chalcot Crescent is very much a pathway through the author’s life and work–the incidents, the loves and the hardships; it’s all here, or at least the parts that Weldon wants us to know about are here, and all treated with her characteristic humour. But apart from the witty and wicked exploration of Frances’s past, there’s also Frances’s present; Amos, Frances’s favourite grandson, a member of the radical breakaway group Redpeace is part of a guerilla composed of members of Frances’s family. While Redpeace plots direct action against the government, Frances is relegated to dotty-old-lady status by her monkey-wrenching grandchildren.

    Chalcot Crescent may read like a science-fiction fantasy, and depending just how you feel about the state of the world, reading the novel may be an uncomfortable experience at times. Weldon’s world is not so far removed from reality. Most of us have seen the gutting of the American and British economies, and the subsequent beginnings of a new peasant class. The novel also dabbles with notions of agent provocateurs and Redpeace–a supposedly radical group that’s allowed to exist in plain sight. Again there’s that idea of Weldon’s relevance. Even as I confess to a certain disappointment in the novel’s ending, I suspect that Weldon is much cannier than her critics acknowledge. I was rather hoping for a Shrapnel Academy style ending, but instead as Guy Debord would say, even the most radical gesture will eventually be Recuperated.

    AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 2 readers
    PUBLISHER: Europa Editions; Reprint edition (September 28, 2010)
    REVIEWER: Guy Savage
    AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
    AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia Page on Fay Weldon

    British Council biography of Fay Weldon
    EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
    MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Contemporary women authors:

    Margaret Atwood

    Joyce Carol Oates

    Bibliography:

    Nonfiction:

    ]]>