Speculative (Beyond Reality) – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.25 RAISING STEAM by Terry Pratchett /2014/raising-steam-by-terry-pratchett/ Sat, 05 Apr 2014 13:11:27 +0000 /?p=26043 Book Quote:

“… the man to whom you refer is a master of every martial art ever conceived. In fact he conceived of most of them himself and is the only known master of the de’ja’ fu*. He can throw a punch into the air and it will follow you home and smack you in the face when you open your own front door. He is known as Lu-Tze, a name that strikes fear in those who don’t know how to pronounce it, let alone spell it.

* A discipline where the hands move in time as well as in space, the exponent twisting space behind his own back whilst doing so.”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (APR 5, 2014)

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett is a book in his marvellous Discworld series. As in all the books of this series, Sir Pratchett spins an immensely readable yarn centered on the impact of an idea, an invention or the like into Discworld society. The ideas he’s tackled include the introduction of paper money; the post office; telegraph; deity, religion, and the corruptible priesthood; warfare rooted in ages-old history; terrorism; and in Raising Steam, the introduction of the steam locomotive. His characters are satirical and humorous, often takes on historical and literary icons, from Machiavelli’s Prince to LoTze to Don Giovanni. Discworld is unlike our own on the surface, but seen through Pratchett’s satirical lens, the reader finds hilarious commentary on our own world and its foibles. His impressive social intelligence and wicked sense of humor make for an engaging read.

Raising Steam is about the invention of the steam engine and the attendant implications in Discworld society. The inventor is Dick Simnel, a young man, clearly modelled on a Scots engineer, impenetrable accent and all, who employs a rational and disciplined process to create Discworld’s first steam powered locomotive. Dick goes to the capital to seek funding from Harry King (king of night soil and other smelly endeavors), a wealthy entrepreneur with a history of getting things done, legality be damned. The whole prospect of change engages the interest of Lord Vetiari, a professional assassin and machiavellian lord of the country. Vetinari is a tyrant, but he requires that all the different species (dwarves, trolls, goblins and so forth) of his country be treated alike as sapient creatures. Lord Vetanari engages Moist von Lipwig, his manager of the Post Office, the Mint, and the State Bank to manage the new enterprise. Moist von Lipwig was chosen by Vetanari because his gift for larceny makes him uniquely capable of managing it in others. Lipwig is managed by Vetanari by threat of torture and because he really enjoys living on the larcenous edge under impossible demands. Moist is the central character to this story.

The train becomes a successful enterprise. A cabal of dwarf rebels is trying to bar the entry of dwarves into the larger society. They want to literally derail the train as it makes its first trip to the land that is home to the vampires, one of whom is Vetinari’s lady love. The dwarf cabal sound suspiciously like fundamentalist religious terrorists in our world. Dick is continually improving on his beloved steam engine, Iron Girder. Moist resolves one impossible demand from Vertinari after another with wit, subterfuge and beguiling dishonesty.

There are goblins (a smell that is unbelieveable, but you stop noticing after a while, and they are marvellously good at coding and decoding as well a very handy with all sorts of metalwork) , dwarves (only a dwarf can tell the difference between a male and a female and they both have long beards) , trolls (one of whom is a lawyer, and others are on the police force), werewolves (one of whom is on the police force as a gesture to diversity), vampires, golems and more. All these creatures of fantasy are intensely human, filled with human flaws and foibles with surprising depths of warmth, loyalty and sometimes cruelty and evil.

As with all the Discworld series, the premise entails taking an idea to its logical and absurd conclusions in the setting of a fantasy world that reflects on our own. Raising Steam takes on the Industrial Revolution and does an admirable job of it. Pratchett is a true master. He writes with elan and great skill. His ideas are gut-busting funny and trenchant satire on our world. He is an antidote to prissy and snobbish “art” writing. The work is intelligent, and totally readable. One small quibble; I wish the author had focused on a more limited cast of characters in this novel, rather than bring in so many from the richly imagined Discworld. Regardless of this, I strongly urge you to read him and then go out and read some more.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 191 readers
PUBLISHER: Doubleday (March 18, 2014)
REVIEWER: Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Terry Pratchett
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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The Disc World Series:

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]]> KABU KABU by Nnedi Okorafor /2014/kabu-kabu-by-nnedi-okorafor/ Sun, 23 Mar 2014 12:30:42 +0000 /?p=26049 Book Quote:

“Lance the Brave stood on the edge of the cliff panicking, his long blond hair blowing in the breeze. Behind him, they were coming fast through the lush grassy field. All Lance could do was stare, his cheeks flushed. Once upon him, they would suck the life from his soul, like lions sucking meat from the bones of a fresh kill. He held his long sword high. Its silver handle was encrusted with heavy blue jewels and it felt so right in his hand.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (MAR 23, 2014)

Nnedi Okorafor’s story collection Kabu Kabu, published in 2013, provides the reader with a fascinating glimpse into the author’s rich imagination, vibrant language and captivating scenarios. Created at different stages in her extensive writing career, Okorafor treats us to a range of intriguing characters and their adventures, skilfully (and successfully) combining elements of speculative fiction and fantasy with African folklore and magical realism, and yes, indeed, political and social present day issues. Many of her stories have been nominated, shortlisted and/or have won literary recognition and awards as have her novels.

Born in the US of Nigerian parents, Nnedi Okorafor developed strong ties to her parents’ home country since her childhood. Not surprisingly, her stories here are set in Nigeria – the real and the imagined society. In fact, Okorafor is a convincing advocate for African science fiction category of storytelling. It opens, among others, new avenues for creating future realities.

Admittedly, I am not usually a great fan of speculative fiction, yet, Okorafor has captured my attention and imagination, from the first story to the last – all twenty one of them. I particular enjoyed the character of Arro-yo, the “windseeker”, who appears in several somewhat linked stories. Arro-yo is an outcast in her community because she can capture the wind and fly. Okorafor expands with her stories on African folklore that singled out girls born with “locked hair” and who had special powers. They could bring misery and misfortune to their home and were therefore chased away. Arro-yo’s adventures in Okorafor’s stories are nonetheless anchored very much in reality, whether she is caught up in civil unrest or fears for her life for other reasons.

The title story, Kabu Kabu – the name for an unlicensed taxi – sets the reader up for a roller coaster of a ride. The protagonist, a young woman living in Chicago, needs to catch a plane to return to Nigeria for a wedding… a hilarious escapade and a great opening story for the adventures that follow in Africa… humorous at times, serious at others, yet always engaging and thought provoking. It would take too long to introduce other stories… just read them all. Whoopi Goldberg provides a motivating introduction to the book

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0 from 5 readers
PUBLISHER: Prime Books (October 2, 2013)
REVIEWER: Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
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EXTRAS: More on this book
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]]> A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED by Dara Horn /2014/a-guide-for-the-perplexed-by-dara-horn/ Tue, 18 Feb 2014 13:40:53 +0000 /?p=24116 Book Quote:

“What happens to days that disappear? The light fades, the gates begin to close, and all that a day once held— a glance, a fight, a taste of bread, a handful of braided hair, thousands of worries and triumphs and regrets— all of it slips between those closing gates, vanishing into a dark and silent room. When Josephine Ashkenazi first invented Genizah, all she wanted to to do was open those gates.

At least, that was how it started.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate (FEB 18, 2014)

The idea for writing a modern version of the biblical story of Joseph came apparently from the author’s husband. It is a brilliant one, even more brilliantly executed. First, because she uses it for resonance rather than prediction; you recognize the biblical parallels after they have occurred, but you never know when she is going to depart from the Genesis version, so her novel remains surprising to the end. Second, because the Egyptian setting grounds the book in aspects of Jewish history that are perhaps less well-known, but obviously relevant to the eternal geopolitical situation in the Middle East. And third, because the Torah reference provides the perfect opening to explore many issues in Jewish teaching and philosophy, most notably those concerning divine providence, accident, and free will. The title of her novel, actually, is borrowed from a treatise on these very questions written in Cairo by the twelfth century doctor and philosopher Maimonides. The result, in Horn’s hands, is a richly layered novel that is humane, exciting, informative, and thought-provoking, all at the same time.

Josephine (Josie) Ashkenazi is a software developer and CEO of a company called Genizah, which enables its customers to record, index, cross-reference, and recall even the most trivial aspects of their lives, linking them to everything around them in both historical and geographical dimensions. She is asked to go to Egypt as consultant on a vast new library in Alexandria, and accepts the challenge, leaving behind her Israeli-born husband Itamar, her six-year-old daughter Tali, and her elder sister Judith, who has a subsidiary position with the firm. I must admit that there was something a little science-fictiony about the premise (or magical realist, if you will); although the ideas are all conceivable, it requires some suspension of disbelief to accept the degree to which they had been developed. But two things happen to anchor the book almost immediately. The first is that the action suddenly shifts back to 1896 in Cambridge, England, where two formidable Scottish sisters confront the University Reader in Rabbinics, Solomon Schechter, with a fragment of manuscript they have recently brought back from Cairo. Despite the slightly comic tone of this episode, it is also feels entirely true, and indeed one discovers that Schechter was a real person. And when Josie goes to Egypt, she falls victim to a more contemporary reality: she is kidnapped and held for ransom. The suspension of disbelief quality never goes away completely from Josie’s story, but from now on her role as CEO fades behind those as absent wife, missing mother, and beaten woman.

Genizah, the name of Josie’s firm, is the Hebrew word for the store-room in a synagogue where Torah scrolls and similar documents were placed after they had become unusable, for the name of God could not be erased. The real Schechter unearthed in the Genizah of a Cairo synagogue a chaotic hoard of documents, secular as well as sacred, a discovery which made his name. Among them were letters from Maimonides and a draft of his Guide for the Perplexed. This opens the door to scenes in Cairo of the 12th century, to interweave with those in the 19th and 21st. It also introduces some of the philosophical themes of the book.

Horn is a Jewish writer (and winner of two National Jewish Book Awards), not just because she writes about Jewish characters and subjects, but because she shares the Jewish fascination with philosophical debate. There is a chapter, for instance, in which Maimonides outlines five theories of divine providence, ranging from total predestination to utter chance, and another in which he classifies three different kinds of evil. Other readers might consider these dry diversions, but they fascinated me both as ideas and for how they linked to the moral implications of the story of Josie and her family at home. They formed a serious core to the novel that amply balanced its more fantastic aspects. And indeed balance is all; the more I look, the more I see parallels and linkages that bind this complex novel together. Perhaps some of its characters could be developed a little further, but as a theme-based novel it could hardly be bettered.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 68 readers
PUBLISHER: W. W. Norton & Company (September 9, 2013)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Dara Horn
EXTRAS:
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]]> 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
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*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:

]]> HELL AND GONE by Duane Swierczynski /2011/hell-and-gone-by-duane-swierczynski/ Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:14:09 +0000 /?p=21892 Book Quote:

“There was no such thing as an escape-proof prison, because to sustain life inside the prison you need support from the outside.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 31, 2011)

Hell and Gone, another nail-biting read from author Duane Swierczynski is the second volume in the Charlie Hardie Trilogy. In part one, Fun and Games middle-aged Charlie Hardie leads a driftless life as a house-sitter moving continually from gig to gig. Hardie hails from Philadelphia but left his wife and child after a shootout he blames on himself, and which caused the death of his long-time friend. Hardie reasons that his family is safer without him and never recovering from the guilt and depression of a case that went horribly wrong, Hardie finds it easier to take on the low-level stress of house-sitting gig. In Fun and Games, Hardie arrives in L.A. to housesit the remote Hollywood Hills home of an affluent composer. The house is supposed to be empty, but as it turns out troubled Hollywood starlet Lane Madden has taken refuge inside the home and claims that Hollywood star whackers want her dead. Hardie, while skeptical at first, discovers the hard way that Lane is telling the truth.

Part 2—Hell and Gone picks up where Fun and Games left off. Hardie, once more, has pissed off the wrong people. After being drugged and offered the choice of being recruited as a member of “The Accident People,” Hardie, who naturally has refused to be part of the team, is sent for permanent incarceration in the secret underground facility known as Site 7734. Hardie, however, isn’t a prisoner. Supposedly he’s the new warden, and he answers to the nebulous Prisonmaster:

“You call it in, the Prisonmaster has it sent down. He also controls the environmentals—-heat, cooling, water temperature. Without a warden, the Prisonmaster’s been just sending down the bare minimums, enough to keep the facility running. Even environmental requests were ignored.”

“So you want me to talk to this Prisonmaster guy and ask him to turn up the heat?”?

“If you would,” Yankee said with a smile that was meant to be charming but came off as slightly overeager, bordering on homicidal. “And there’s also the food situation.”

At Site 7734, paranoia reigns, and for this reader the hierarchal benefits of being the warden or one of the psychotic guards differs only slightly from being one of the prisoners. While the prisoners are “crammed into poorly lit rusty cages,” everyone lives nervously in poor living conditions. Both sets of people are given the same bland diet; both sets of people are essentially prisoners. The big difference is who gets to wield the batons.

By creating Site 7734, Swierczynski involves the reader in his psychological experiment. We are along for the ride as Hardie, much the worse for wear, tries to figure out and then game the system. Should he accept the role of warden and try to bring some sanity to the horrendously inhuman system? Can he relieve the suffering of a handful of anonymous prisoners who are subjected to brutal dehumanizing treatment on a daily basis? Hardie never was much of a team player:

“Hardie was a born loner. Not only did he not play well with others, he couldn’t fucking stand others.”

Site 7734 is rigged with various “death mechanisms” so that the successful escape of one resident will result in the deaths of those who remain behind. In an incarcerated-lord-of-the-flies scenario, Hardie tries to figure out just what is going on in this hellish dungeon, and the reader also tries to solve the puzzle as jail breaks, underhand deals, back-stabbing and betrayals guarantee that the day-to-day life in Site 7734 will be as evil, disruptive and as paranoid as possible.

While Fun and Games was non-stop action, a roller-coaster ride of explosions, chases and high-tech weaponry, Hell and Gone offers psychological suspense. My first reaction to the book was a shade of disappointment at the novel’s complete change of pace, but after mulling it over and as the story develops, I have nothing but respect for Swierczynski. He brings the action and motion of Fun and Games to a screeching halt and then digs in for long-term head games in Hell and Gone. Then there’s the issue of believability. Given the recent headlines,  secret Hollywood Star Whackers, in Fun and Games Swierczynski stretches the possibilities only marginally. But in Hell and Gone, “The Accident People” are clearly much more powerful than previously imagined, and while the power-brokers of Fun and Games could, theoretically be publicity agents and studio heads on a bloody, maniacal power trip, in this sequel, it’s clear that those who pull the strings can even fuck with the FBI. While Fun and Games Swierczynski offers an action thriller, in Hell and Gone, Swierczynski stretches genre seamlessly and cleverly so by the end of the novel, elements of science fiction appear.

The Third and final novel: Point and Shoot is scheduled for publication in 2012. It’s almost cruel to make us wait….

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 3 readers
PUBLISHER: Mulholland Books; Original edition (October 31, 2011)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Official blog for Duane Swierczynski
EXTRAS: Mulholland books page on Hell and Gone
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]]> ZONE ONE by Colson Whitehead /2011/zone-one-by-colson-whitehead/ Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:08:52 +0000 /?p=21668 Book Quote:

“…Most skels, they moved. They came to eat you-not all of you, but a nice chomp here or there, enough to pass on the plague. Cut off their feet, chop off their legs, and they’d gnash the air as they heaved themselves forward by their splintered fingernails, looking for some ankle action…”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (OCT 18, 2011)

Zone One by Colson Whitehead plays on the archetype of apocalyptic zombie literature. The unnamed protagonist is known as Mark Spitz, because he is afraid to swim. He is a sweeper, someone assigned by the pseudo-government in Buffalo to destroy any zombie AKA skel or catatonic victim AKA straggler of the plague that has destroyed civilization. The zombies are virtually mindless with a lust for human flesh that can only be quenched by destroying their heads. A zombie’s bite is what spreads the infection. Stragglers just stay immobilized where they stopped. They do nothing, even in response to attack. Both are routinely exterminated by a lethal strike to the head via bullet, baseball bat, axe or what have you. The authorities in Buffalo are sponsored by the remnants of corporations and are in touch with similar enclaves around the world

Everyone suffers from PASD, or Post Apocalyptic Stress Disorder. Every survivor has killed, starved, and betrayed others in order to survive and has horrific flashbacks. Nobody is immune to PASD. The horrors of Last Night (when the plague started) and its sequelae have taken all joy out of life. This is dystopia maxima.

Pheenies, non military survivors, do the grunt work. Mark Spitz is a pheenie, but as a sweeper, he is more or less privileged, better off than many and somewhat valued. He has always wanted to live in Manhattan. Now he has been assigned as part of a team to mop up zone one, the first part of Manhattan to be cleared of skels and stragglers and made safe for a rebirth of civilization. Mark is “everyman.” He never stands out; neither brilliant nor dunce, leader nor blind follower. He ekes out survival and remembers horror upon horror like everyone else except the skels, the stragglers and the dead.

We have a brilliant exposition of survivor guilt; of the dehumanization that derives from inhuman behavior. The prose is poetic and compelling. It has the awful beauty full of grue that is required to represent a world gone mad. No one is a survivor in this world; they are all dead, brain dead or going to die. The dead and the dying are all ugly. Paranoia is the norm. What is delusional are hope and belief in a future. Is this a judgment like Sodom and Gomorra, a revolt by Gaia, or just an unlucky roll of the dice over and over and over again unto bleak horror and total despair? We never learn why skels do not eat stragglers or why they do not fall on each other in an orgy of eat and be eaten. How can any creature, no matter how torpid survive with absolutely no food? Who cares in a story about zombies; and one so well-written!

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 342 readers
PUBLISHER: Doubleday (October 18, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Colson Whitehead
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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]]> THE NIGHT STRANGERS by Chris Bohjalian /2011/the-night-strangers-by-chris-bohjalian/ Sat, 08 Oct 2011 13:39:18 +0000 /?p=21444 Book Quote:

“My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (OCT 8, 2011)

In Chris Bohjalian’s The Night Strangers, Chip Linton is a forty-year-old commercial airline pilot who is traumatized when, through no fault of his own, one of his regional planes goes down in Lake Champlain. In the aftermath of the accident, Chip, Emily, and their ten-year-old twin daughters, Hallie and Garnet, move from Pennsylvania to an isolated three-story Victorian near Bethel, New Hampshire, in the scenic White Mountains. Emily resumes her career as a lawyer, the kids enroll in the local school, and Chip becomes a do-it-yourselfer, replacing wallpaper, painting, and doing carpentry around the rickety old house.

Unfortunately, Chip is an emotional wreck who sees a psychiatrist to treat his depression, guilt, and anxiety. He has upsetting flashbacks and vivid nightmares and knows that his career in aviation is most likely over. Although Chip adores Emily and his daughters, they are not enough for him. He cannot help but mourn the loss of his livelihood.

The Lintons soon have concrete reasons to regret their move to Northern New England. There is something creepy going on in this town. The place is filled with greenhouses. Various herbalists and botanists grow exotic plants, talk like aging hippies, and constantly bring over homemade food that they foist on the Linton family. In addition, it is possible that the Linton house, which was once the scene of an untimely and unnatural death, may be haunted. If Chip was teetering on the brink of madness before he moved to New Hampshire, living here may very well push him over the edge. The Night Strangers is a tale of psychological horror in which Chip and Emily gradually suspect that when they relocated, they may have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Chip starts having visions and hearing voices; his family is also under threat from others who are up to no good. How will the Lintons cope with the various forces threatening to tear them apart?

Chris Bohjalian has always been an outstanding descriptive writer who uses setting brilliantly. He has a gift for creating sympathetic characters with whom the reader can readily identify. This time, alas, he may have bitten off more than he can chew. Chris’s mental deterioration alone would have been a strong enough centerpiece to this book. Even adding a haunted house into the mix might work. However, Bohjalian overreaches when he veers too far into Stephen King and Ira Levin territory. He concocts an outlandish (yet oddly predictable) plot that throws the book seriously out of balance. What should have been a compelling narrative about the demons that inhabit our minds becomes, quite literally, a story about evil incarnate. Still, Bohjalian creates readable dialogue, brings Chip, Emily, and their girls to life, and engages our interest in the fate of his protagonists. In spite of ourselves, we hold our breaths, wondering whether this horribly tormented husband, wife, and two children will ever reacquire the peace of mind that they once took for granted.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 252 readers
PUBLISHER: Crown (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Chris Bohjalian
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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]]> THE WHITE DEVIL by Justin Evans /2011/the-white-devil-by-justin-evans/ Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:05:38 +0000 /?p=21233 The White Devil, his latest thriller/horror novel that sheds light on the bullying and other nastiness that can go on at boarding schools past and present.]]> Book Quote:

“The eye sockets were sunken; the eyes protruded, a vivid blue; his flesh was a morbid gray. Long blond hair—almost white, albino-looking—hung over his eyes. Once he was forced to break from his labor to cough—and Andrew recognized the noise that had drawn him. The cough combined the bark of a sick animal with a wet, slapping sound. The skeletal man drew his hand across his mouth. Then he looked up. He locked eyes with Andrew.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  (OCT 1, 2011)

Kicked out of his last American boarding school for drugs, Andrew Taylor’s father has sent him to England’s Harrow Academy to redo his senior year. It’s his last chance, and Andrew tries hard to follow the rules and not bring attention to himself. But author Justin Evans has other plans for Andrew in The White Devil, his latest thriller/horror novel that sheds light on the bullying and other nastiness that can go on at boarding schools past and present.

Andrew witnesses the murder of his friend, Theo, on a path near the school’s graveyard, but he can’t give all the details to the police. No one would ever believe that a ghost, for that is all Andrew can come up with for an explanation of the albino-type figure that killed his friend and then vanished.

Rumors abound of the Lot Ghost, a ghost that haunts the house-turned-dorm in which Andrew lives. But there’s much more to this mystery that’s gradually revealed. Andrew bears a strong resemblance to Byron and is cast as the lead in the school play about the Harrow alumnus, written and directed by Piers Fawkes, a poet and master at Lot. Andrew’s other confidante and love interest is Persephone, the only girl at Harrow, the daughter of the school’s headmaster. What Andrew can piece together is that his friends’ lives are in danger, and if he can’t find out the mystery with Lord Byron at its center, he may die as well.

Life at Harrow lies at the center of Evans’s tale. He combines the bullying and torrid relationships of the past with the goings-on in the present, moving easily between the two. Our hero, Andrew, with his resemblance to Byron, links the two eras together. There’s a chance he can solve the mystery of who the ghost is and why people are dying with the help of Fawkes, Persephone and a library researcher, but time may run out on him.

My only pet peeve with this book is that the author tries to do too much. Add in Fawkes problem with alcohol, a speech Andrew has planned for speech day and some of the story threads get dropped without becoming fully developed. That said, Evans does a nice job of pulling the reader into the story and maintaining enough tension and hints to keep one’s focus.

I have a penchant for books with boarding schools at their center as well as those with historical settings in part or in whole, so I enjoyed the story immensely. Part horror and part thriller, there are enough creepy, very realistic moments in the story to give out shivers. Evans has a talent for vivid descriptions too, and some weren’t so pretty. While I don’t think the novel has any profound messages to pass along, fans of historical settings, Lord Byron or boarding schools should give it a whirl. Just don’t turn out the lights if it’s late.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 44 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper (May 10, 2011)
REVIEWER: Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Justin Evans
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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]]> THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morganstern /2011/the-night-circus-by-erin-morganstern/ Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:06:47 +0000 /?p=20913 Book Quote:

“The circus arrives without warning.

No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers.  It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (SEP 13, 2011)

Illusion and reality intersect and overlap to reveal a luminous, mesmerizing character– Le Cirque des Rêves (The Circus of Dreams). As the sun is the center of the solar system, the Circus of Dreams is the central character of this enchanting tale. Like a magnetic field, Le Cirque des Rêves pulls in other characters like orbiting satellites around a bright star. This isn’t your childhood circus–rather, this is more in tune with Lewis Carroll or M.C. Escher–a surreal and hypnotic place of the imagination and spirit.

Le Cirque des Rêves is a dazzling venue of magical intensity and Tarot images, a story of dreams and desires. It is an invention that reflects the Jungian collective unconscious and personifies the archetypes of polarity–night/day, good/evil, life/death, safety/danger, among other symbols and experiences that have repeated themselves since ancient times. The manipulations of these images and forces speak to the core of the story.

At the end of the nineteenth century in London, two self-regarding necromancers arrange a duel, part of an ongoing contest reaching back through their long history. Prospero the Magician and “the man in the grey suit” agree to provide a worthy opponent each for this contest of illusion, a competition that is only partly visible to the reader’s eye. Prospero trains his daughter, Celia; the grey-suited man selects a fitting boy, Marco, from an orphanage. Sealed with a ring in a familiar ritual, the turf war proceeds.

When Marco and Celia become adults, the duel commences within the venue of the atmospheric, aromatic circus, which is open only at night, in colors black and white (and shades of silver). The duel and its setting is showcased in its artistry of conception, the beauty of its containment, and the mystery of its migration. Le Cirque des Rêves travels silently, invisibly, from country to country, unannounced. There’s a tent of stars, a room of sculpted ice, a pool of tears. The fireplace burns eternally with a white-hot blaze. The landscape of the duel’s setting is a phantasmagorical tour de force.

The cast is inseparable from Le Cirque des Rêves. Among others, they include the tattooed contortionist, Tsukiko, the twins, Poppet and Widget, (born on the dawn of the circus’ opening night), and the Tarot reader, Isobel. Marco is a chameleon-like magician and Celia is the Isis of alchemy. They mirror the archetypes of Jung’s collective unconscious–the shadow; the animus/anima; the hero; the mother; sacrifice/rebirth; the Self, and the wise old man.

The tarot readings, like the story’s progression, are dynamic components of character transformation, digging down to the layers of repressed memories and sublime intuition. ??Within this process of transformation, the individual characters of this story must journey through uncharted terrain like portals in the soul, proceeding toward a cosmic relationship with humanity. How to separate reality from illusion and arrive at the totality of the Self? What obstacles and pathologies must be overcome to achieve a kindred consciousness? Likewise, the duelists become lovers, complicating the stakes of the game–if you win, you lose.

A magnificent, spectral clock is commissioned from a renowned German clockmaker, a clock that is mystical and harlequin, dreamlike and figurative. It stands like an emissary at the gates of the circus, a timepiece of magical stratification, an emblem of temporal shifts. No patrons can enter until dusk, and all must be gone by dawn.

In Erin Morganstern’s enchanting first novel, illusion and reality are two sides of the same coin. Inspiration and imagination become tangible territory, a dream circus of the wakened mind, a magical mystery tour of the unconscious. This is a Fool’s (Hero’s) journey, an adventure for the immortal child and enduring lovers, to a star-filled tunnel and a silver sky. Step from bare grass to painted ground, eye the towering tents of black and white stripes. Enter.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 1085 readers
PUBLISHER: Doubleday (September 13, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Erin Morganstern
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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]]> MILLENNIUM PEOPLE by J. G. Ballard /2011/millennium-people-by-j-g-ballard/ Sun, 04 Sep 2011 14:14:11 +0000 /?p=20763 Book Quote:

“People don’t like themselves today. We’re a rentier class left over from the last century. We tolerate everything, but we know that liberal values are designed to make us passive. We think we believe in God but we’re terrified by the mysteries of life and death…We’re an accident of nature, but think we’re at the center of the universe. We’re a few steps from oblivion, but we hope we’re somehow immortal…”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (SEP 4, 2011)

Millennium People by J. G. Ballard is an important existential novel, not as some suggest about the corrosive effects of technology, but rather about the vacuity of middle class life. As the middle class comes to realize that all the things for which they have yearned are meaningless traps, they become consumed by a fear of nothingness. In response they seek authenticity. They find authentic feelings from violence and protest, the more meaningless and random the better.

The protagonist is a psychologist whose ex-wife was killed by a bomb that went off in the luggage carousel at Heathrow. He has decided to infiltrate a middle class revolutionary movement in order to investigate the crime. In the course of his investigation he becomes involved with their charismatic leader and her shadowy mentor in revolution; a doctor who specializes in treating terminally ill children; and a priest who has lost his faith only to see it becoming reborn out of violence.

Characters in this novel posit that true meaning can only be found in authenticity, an authenticity that derives most purely from absurd acts of meaningless rage. Inescapably we are led to the conclusion that the fear of nothingness is the fear of a very real situation that finds a remedy only in escape from the entire system via revolution. The middle class will go to revolution only if fortified by a fresh cappuccino and never in yesterday’s underwear. They are vacuous revolutionaries. Their revolution is by its very nature foredoomed to failure. God is found only in the absurd, particularly in meaningless violence.

One might consider this book as an explanation of Osama Bin Laden and al Qaida. He was the spoiled and educated child of wealthy Saudis; a man who had learned that there were no consequences to his actions. His search for authenticity led him to embrace the stupidest, most ignorant excesses of Islamist fundamentalism and the most profoundly absurd violence against that icon of modernity, the World Trade Center, emblem of 20th century America. The result has been a Holy war that corrodes life on all sides and resolves absolutely nothing. But a similar analysis can be made for Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing and those children who commit mayhem in public schools, further demonstrating the point that meaningless violence is the middle class’ response to the void of inauthenticity. For that matter, the same could be said of many of our political leaders for whom consequences are for the under classes.

This is a whale of a good read, well plotted, competently told and with an important message about the core meaninglessness of our civilization. It is also profoundly pessimistic. Ballard is the real thing and this next to the last book of his life should be read by anyone with an interest in the Hell that is modern middle class liberal culture.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 8 readers
PUBLISHER: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on J. G. Ballard
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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