“It is the time of year when Kit must rise in the dark, as if he were a farmer or a fisherman, someone whose livelihood depends on beating the dawn, convincing himself that what looks like night is actually morning. His only true occupation these days, however, is fatherhood; his only reason for getting up at this dismal hour is getting his children to school.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (APR 8, 2014)

Julia Glass’s latest book strikes right to the core of personal identity. How do we solidify our sense of who we are if we don’t know where we came from? In what ways can we take our place in the universe if our knowledge of our past is incomplete?

Kit Noonan has reached a fork in the road. Underemployed with no clear sense of purpose, he is floundering, until his wife urges him to take some time away to work out the secret of his father’s identity. That search leads him back to his stepfather Jasper in Vermont – a self-sufficient outdoorsman who effectively raised him along with two stepbrothers. Eventually, the journey brings him to Lucinda, the elderly wife of a stroke-ravaged state senator and onward to Fenno (from Julia Glass’s first book) and his husband Walter.

Through all this, Kit discovers the enigma of connections and which connections prevail. As one character states,

“..the past is like the night: dark yet sacred. It’s the time of day when most of us sleep, so we think of the day as the time we really live, the only time that matters, because the stuff we do by day somehow makes us who we are. We feel the same way about the present…. But there is no day without night, no wakefulness without sleep, no present without past.”

The biggest strength of this novel – by far – is the beautifully rendered portrayal of characters. Kit, Jasper, Lucinda and her family, Feeno and Walter – even Kit’s twins – are so perfectly portrayed that they could walk off the pages. As a reader, I cared about every one of them and – as the book sequentially goes from one character to another – I felt a sense of loss from temporarily leaving him or her behind.

The only weakness was an overabundance of detail (scenes, back story, etc.), which robbed me of using my imagination to “fill in the blanks.” While vaguely discomforting, this story is so darn good and the writing is so darn strong that I was glad to be immersed in its world for the several days I was reading. Kit’s journey and his recognition of what “family” really means — and our imperfect connected world — has poignancy and authenticity.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 9 readers
PUBLISHER:	Pantheon (April 1, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Julia Glass
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: I See You Everywhere The Widower’s Tale

Bibliography:

• Three Junes (2002)
• The Whole World Over (2006)
• I See You Everywhere (2008)
• The Widower’s Tale (2010)
• And the Dark Sacred Night (April 2014)

There are ten of them in the limo’s plush passenger bay, the eight remaining soldiers of Bravo squad, their PA escort Major Mac, and the movie producer Albert Ratner, who at the moment is hunkered down in BlackBerry position. Counting poor dead Shroom and the grievously wounded Lake there are two Silver Stars and eight Bronze among them, all ten of which defy coherent explanation. “What were you thinking during the battle?” the pretty TV reporter in Tulsa asked, and Billy tried. God knows he tried, he never stops trying, but it keeps slipping and sliding, corkscrewing away, the thing of it, the it, the ineffable whatever.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “Mainly it was just this sort of road rage feeling. Everything was blowing up and they were shooting our guys and I just went for it, I really wasn’t thinking at all.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman (FEB 27, 2014)

It is, perhaps, a fortuitous accident that I turned the last pages of Ben Fountain’s absolutely brilliant novel during Memorial Day…a day when rhetoric about courage, support, sacrifice, and patriotism overflows.

Billy Lynn – the eponymous hero of this book – is a genuine American hero. He and his fellow Bravo Squad members decimated an insurgency – caught on film by an embedded Fox News crew — and became overnight sensations in a nation starved for good news about Iraq. They are brought home for a media-intensive “Victory Tour” – in cities that happen to lie in an electoral swing state — to reinvigorate support for the war. We meet them at the end of that tour, on a rainy Thanksgiving, hosted by America’s Team, The Dallas Cowboys.

They are, in more ways than one, anonymous to an American public; their reinvented names are meant to erase their identity (Major Mac, Mango, Lodes, Billy, etc.) In the fabled Texas Stadium, their faces are interspersed on a JumboTron screen with ads for Chevy cars and Cowboy-brand toaster ovens and high-capacity ice-makers.

Surrounded by so-called patriots, Billy and his friends are bombarded with words stripped of meaning: “rerrRist, currj, freedom, nina leven, Bush, values, support.” Billy reflects: “They hate our freedoms? Yo, they hate our actual guts! Billy suspects his fellow Americans secretly know better, but something in the land is stuck on teenage drama, on extravagant theatrics of ravaged innocence and soothing mud wallows of self-justifying pity.”

The people that surround him are insatiably expecting Billy to impart wisdom in sound bites. Amid a world of plenty, multi-millionaires who have never put themselves in harm’s way let loose a stream of platitudes but Billy “truly envies these people, the luxury of terror as a talking point…” At another point, he reflects, “Never do Americans sound so much like a bunch of drunks as when they are celebrating at the end of their national anthem.”

Nineteen-year-old Billy – still a virgin, with major lust going on for a Cowboys cheerleader who believes that cheerleading is a “spiritual calling” – has the necessary replies to inane questions down pat. He is as real as he can be, as American as he can be.

And in this way, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk –marketed as a satire and blurbed as a new Catch-22 – is anything but. There is nothing surreal about it; in fact, it is an entirely apt portrayal of the times we live in. I thought this book was absolutely brilliant – well-crafted, filled with insight and wisdom, and heart-wrenching. In fact, I’d go so far as to call it the quintessential American novel, asking that all-important question: who are we and what do we want to become?

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 506 readers
PUBLISHER:	Ecco; First Edition edition (May 1, 2012)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Ben Fountain
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:

Bibliography:

• Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories (2007)
• Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2012)

“Rocco, I’m in Vegas.”
“Bullshit.”
“I told you guys that the other night.”
“Maybe Jerry remembers, hang on.” Rocco passed the phone to one of the Jerrys, who dropped it.
“Shit!” I heard two people say together.
“Hello?” Jerry Number Two said. “Who’s this?”
“Jerry, it’s me, Duff. I’m in—“
“You comin’ in?”
“Jerry! Listen to me. Just shut up for a second and listen!”
“Hello?” Jerry said.
“Jerry, get the guys to come out to Vegas. I have a…er…a house all to myself—you guys can stay for free.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (DEC 26, 2013)

Although Duffy Dombroski was getting heat from his supervisor to go to a required training program so that he could perform better at his social worker job, Duffy jumped at the chance to go to Las Vegas as a sparring partner for Boris Rusakov, the Russian heavyweight champion. Duffy even somehow finds a way to bring his dog Al on the plane and he convinces all his friends but his trainer Smitty to go with him. Duffy doesn’t care that his doctor is worried about his head injuries; Duffy just wants the chance to go to Vegas. Once he’s in Vegas though, things don’t go the way he hoped and he ends up in some unanticipated situations. Tom Schreck provides an entertaining book with lots of adventures, including some difficult and often touching moments with humor and entertaining moments, primarily provided by his basset hound Al and Duffy’s bar friends.

When Duffy arrives, he finds that he’s not staying at one of the Vegas strip hotels, but rather a legal brothel outside the Vegas city limits. He does have a nice room cleaned every day by the young maid with beauty in looks and voice, a convenient bar and working women that he only visits to have interesting conversations (really). Unfortunately, Boris Rusakov is not interested in following the customary professional sparring practices and is only interested in hitting Duffy hard and often, especially when Duffy gets in a few good hits on the champion.

This is not really a serial killer book, but Schreck includes one that almost seems added after he wrote the main part of the book. Mexicans, primarily ones in Las Vegas illegally, are being killed without any clues to who or why. The reader gets the killer’s perspective, especially how much he hates the poor Mexicans, without knowing who it is until the end. Although it adds some suspense to the story, in a way it is a distraction to the what is really a story of Duffy’s adventures in Las Vegas – the Russian boxer, the Latino boxers he befriends, the relationships with the brothel prostitutes and of course his usual friends who are there primarily for humor and to help him out when he gets in trouble.

I picked up a copy of this book as part of my book bag at Bouchercon this year in Albany. Tom Schreck lives in the Albany area and this series typically takes place there, so it made sense that they would give out a lot of these books. Unfortunately,  I didn’t get a chance to meet Schreck or attend the panel he was on.

I’ve never read any of the other books in this series of which this is the fourth; I certainly did not have any trouble following along with the story. I’m sure I would have picked up a little bit more on Duffy’s friends and how and why they acted the way they did and maybe had a better understanding of Duffy’s interests, but I didn’t feel slighted. I will, however, read some of the prior books in the series as I really enjoyed Duffy Dombrowski, Schreck’s style and all the various new and recurring characters in this book. Of course, this book and presumably all the books in the series are based a lot on boxing and that may be a turnoff for some readers. However, with Tom Schreck being a world championship boxing official, he’s very qualified and is certainly writing about something he knows well. He also provides the accurate detail without boring even those who have no interest in boxing.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 108 readers
PUBLISHER:	Thomas & Mercer (May 15, 2012)
REVIEWER:	Check Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Official website for Tom Schreck
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More boxing: Rust and Bone by Craig Davidson More as Vegas fun: Dice Angel by Brian Rouff

Bibliography:

Duffy Dombrowski – Ghetto Social Worker:

• On the Ropes (2007)
• TKO (2008)
• Out Cold (2009)
• The Vegas Knockout (2012)

Also:

• Planter’s Punch (2009) (written with J.A. Konrath)

TJ Dunn:

• Getting Dunn (2012)

Anthology:

• Duffy to the Rescue (2011)

“Oren Dessens leaned forward as he drove, perched on the wheel, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, open can of beer between his knees. He’d come apart before, a couple three times, maybe more, depending on how you counted. The way Katie figured—every fistfight and whore, every poker game and long drunk—he was always coming apart, but Oren didn’t think it was fair to count like his ex-wife did. Up to him, he’d only count those times he was in real danger of not coming back. Like that morning on the carrier.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (NOV 27, 2013)

The world isn’t kind to the characters in Jess Walter’s collection of 13 short stories. Each of them is a loser, living in a “frontier of stale and unfulfilled dreams:” careless fathers, scam artists, ex-cons, gamblers, incestuous brothers, drug abusers.

These aren’t people you’d want as your neighbors or your friends. They are, however, people you want to spend some hours with – and it’s all because of Jess Walter’s great skill as a words craftman and his incisive ability to create a wave of emotions with a few well-placed descriptions.

The short-shorts – and there are a few in this collection – didn’t work for this reader half as well as some of the longer stories, which pack a wallop. A few of these stories are true stand-outs.

Take the “Wolf and the Wild,” which begins this way: “They fanned out in the brown grass along Highway 2 like geese in a loose V, eight men in white coveralls and orange vests picking up trash.” One of these men, Wade, is in prison for white-collar theft; when he emerges, he is assigned to a pilot program tutoring elementary schoolers. One of the little ones, Drew, requests the same book every time until Wade brings along a sequel. The last five pages contain no words and these are the pages Drew likes the best. This poignant scene – a young boy snuggled into the lap of a stranger, feeling safe through the power of storytelling, is beautifully rendered.

Another, “Helpless Little Things,” is a page-turning story of a scammer and drug dealer with a small network of teens whom he uses to solicit funds through fake Greenpeace offerings. But who is really the scammer and the helpless thing? This “turn-about is fair play” story is another winner.

The lead-off story, “Anything Helps,” focusing on a panhandling dad named Bit who goes to great lengths to buy his son the latest Harry Potter book and the eponymous story “We Live In Water” – about an adult son who attempts to learn what happened to his down-and-out father – are also noteworthy. In the latter, Mr. Walter writes, “The fish just swam in its circles, as if he believed that, one of these times, the glass wouldn’t be there and he could just sail off, into the open.”

No one can sail off, of course; most of these characters are, indeed, swimming in circles, no matter how hard these men strive for acceptance or redemption. And, for this reader, a couple of the stories didn’t work; “Wheelbarrow Kings,” for example, strives too hard for “attitude” and lost me along the way. A possibly personal story – “Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington” may well be the factually-based key to a couple of the stories. This isn’t an upbeat collection – it’s not meant to be – but it does reconfirm Jess Walter’s abundant talents.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 128 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper Perennial (February 12, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jess Walter
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Beautiful Ruins The Financial Lives of Poets Land of the Blind

Bibliography:

• Over Tumbled Graves (2001)
• Land of the Blind (2003)
• Citizen Vince (2005)
• The Zero (2006)
• The Financial Lives of the Poets (2009)
• Beautiful Ruins (2012)
• We Live in Water: Stories (February 2013)

Other:

• Every Knee Shall Bow: The Truth and Tragedy of Ruby Ridge and the Randy Weaver Family (1995)

“The Kid reminds the Professor of Huckleberry Finn somehow. Here he is now, long after he lit out for the Territory, grown older and as deep into the Territory as you can go…and there’s no farther place he can run to. The Professor wants to know what happened to the ignorant, abused, honest American boy between the end of the book and now…[H]ow did he come years later to having ‘no money, no job, no legal squat’? In twenty-first-century America.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (SEP 27, 2011)

The main character of Banks’ new novel, a twenty-two-year-old registered sex offender in South Florida known only as “the Kid,” may initially repel readers. The Kid is recently out of jail and on ten-year probation in fictional Calusa County, and is required to wear a GPS after soliciting sex from an underage girl. Ironically, he is still a virgin.

The Kid cannot leave the county, but he also cannot reside within 2,500 feet from any place children would congregate. That leaves three options—the swamplands, the airport area, or the Causeway. He chooses the Causeway and meets other sex offenders, a seriously motley crew, who consciously isolate from each other as a group. He befriends one old man, the Rabbit, but sticks to his tent, his bicycle, and his alligator-size pet iguana, Iggy. Later, he procures a Bible.

These disenfranchised convicts are enough to make readers squirm. Moreover, in the back of the reader’s mind is the question of whether authorial intrusion will be employed in an attempt to manipulate the reader into sympathizing with these outcasts. It takes a master storyteller, one who can circumnavigate the ick factor, or, rather, subsume it into a morally complex and irresistible reading experience, to lure the wary, veteran reader.

Banks’ artful narrative eases us in slowly and deftly breaks down resistance, piercing the wall of repugnance. It infiltrates bias, reinforced by social bias, and allows you to eclipse antipathy and enter the sphere of the damned. A willing reader ultimately discovers a captivating story, and reaches a crest of understanding for one young man without needing to accept him.

An illegal police raid on the Causeway, provoked by hatred and politics, disrupts the Kid’s relatively peaceful life early on, and now he has nowhere to turn. Subsequently, a hurricane wipes out the makeshift homes of the inhabitants. The kid becomes a migrant, shuffling within the legal radius of permitted locales. At about this time, he meets the Professor, who the Kid calls “Haystack,” an obese sociologist at the local university who is the size and intellect of a mountain, an enigmatic man with a past of shady government work and espionage. He is conducting a study of homelessness and particularly the homeless, convicted sex offender population.

The Professor offers the Kid financial and practical assistance in exchange for a series of taped interviews. He aims to help the Kid gain control and understanding over his life, to empower him to move beyond his pedophilia. They form a partnership of sorts, but the Kid remains leery of the Professor and his agenda. The Professor’s opaque past, his admitted secrets and lies, marks him as an unreliable narrator. Or does it? Later, perilous developments radically alter their relationship, a fitting move on the author’s part that provides sharp contrasts and deeper characterization.

Sex offenders are the criminal group most collectivized into one category of “monsters.” Banks takes a monster and probes below the surface of reflexive response. There is no attempt to defend the Kid’s crime or apologize for it. We see a lot of the events through his eyes, and decide whether he is reliable or not. He acquires an undernourished, skulking yellow dog and a crusty old grey parrot with clipped wings and a salty tongue. His relationship with these animals is rendered without a lick of sentimentality, but it bestows the most resonant and powerful feelings in the reader compared to anywhere else in the book. The care and feeding of dependents bring out the Kid’s protective instincts and help keep him focused.

The book is divided into five parts. Along the way, Banks dips into rhetorical digressions on sex, pornography, geography, and human nature, slowing down the momentum and disengaging the tension. These intervals are formal and stiff, although they are eventually braided into the story at large. However, despite these static flourishes, the story progresses with confidence and strength.

Most characters, whether stand-up citizens or sex offenders, have a moniker, which deliberately mechanizes them, but between the author and reader, humanization occurs between the pages. There’s Shyster, the pedophilic, disbarred lawyer and ex-Senator; Otis, the Rabbit, an elderly, disabled member of the tribe; and a Hemingway-esque character, the Writer, who incidentally resembles Banks himself; and others who personify their names.

Overall, the languid pace of the novel requires steadfast patience, but commitment to it has a fine payoff. Readers are rewarded with a thrilling denouement and a pensive but provocative ending. It inspires contemplation and dynamic discussion, and makes you think utterly outside the box.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 112 readers
PUBLISHER:	Ecco (September 27, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Russell Banks
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: A Permanent Member of the Family And other: Blame by Michelle Huneven The Last Secret by Mary McGarry Morris Undiscovered Gyrl by Allison Burnett

Bibliography:

• Searching for Survivors: Stories (1975)
• Family Life (1975)
• The New World: Short Stories (1978)
• Hamilton Stark (1978)
• Book of Jamaica (1980)
• Trailerpark (1981)
• The Relationship of My Imprisonment (1983)
• Continental Drift (1985)
• Success Stories (1986)
• Affliction (1989)
• The Sweet Hereafter (1991)
• Rule of the Bone (1995)
• Cloudsplitter (1998)
• The Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks (2000)
• The Darling (2004)
• The Reserve (2008)
• Lost Memory of Skin (2011)
• A Permanent Member of the Family: Stories (November 2013)

Nonfiction:

• Invisible Stranger (1998)
• Dreaming Up America (2008)

Movies from books:

• The Sweet Hereafter(1997)
• Affliction (1999)

“Have you thought about the question? Why we’re keeping you in a cage like an animal? Why you have to be put through all of this? Have you come up with a solution, Merete, or do we need to punish you again? What’s it going to be? A birthday present or a punishment?”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (SEP 10, 2011)

Danish Detective Carl Morck is a walking tormented shell of his former self. Recently returned to work, he is living with post-traumatic stress disorder following an incident that ended with the shooting death of one of his colleagues and a shot that paralyzed his friend, Detective Hardy. Morck was also injured by a shot to the head. So far the perpetrators have not been found and Morck lives with survivor’s guilt. He is difficult to get along with, often late to work, and no longer has his heart in his work.

To deal with his attitude, his supervisor, Superintendent Jacobsen, assigns Carl to head Department Q, a newly funded police department, and he stations it in the basement so that Carl is out of eyesight from his colleagues who are sick of his negativity and attitude. Department Q has been funded by parliament in order to solve dead cases, especially those that involve persons of interest or famous victims. Carl’s idea of a perfect work-day is to lounge around with his feet on his desk, napping or watching television. “In his end of the basement there were no people, there was no daylight, air, or anything else that might distinguish the place from the Gulag Archipelago. Nothing was more natural than to compare his domain with the fourth circle of hell.”

It’s not long until Carl realizes that Department Q has been funded to the tune of five million kroner. The money is all being channeled to the homicide division and hardly any of it is going to Department Q. Carl approaches Jacobsen and requests his own car and an assistant, letting him know that he is wise to the side-channeling of his funding. He gets what he wants.

As the book opens in 2007, we find out that Merete Lynggaard, a once promising Danish politician, has been kidnapped and held in captivity since 2002. She has no idea why she has been kidnapped. She only knows that she is in an empty concrete cell with two buckets given to her each day – one for her waste products and the other with barely edible food. Each year, on her birthday, the atmospheric pressure in her chamber is cranked up two notches. This will happen every year until she is able to answer her captors’ question: “Why are you here?” Of course, Merete has no idea.

There is a case file for Merete on Carl’s desk and the theory is that she jumped or was pushed overboard on a ferry while on vacation with her brother Uffe. However, no body was ever found and no reason for her to commit suicide was ever ascertained. Uffe, who was disabled in a car crash that killed their parents, is very close with Merete and she cares for him with a deep and abiding love. She is also a rising star in her political party.

Meanwhile, Carl is assigned an assistant named Assad. He is a man of many abilities, strange though they may be. He makes strong coffee, drives like a maniac, can take a lock apart in a second, knows people who can decipher encrypted words and numbers and is a mystery to Carl. He is Syrian and ostensibly is hired to clean Department Q and keep it neat. Carl makes the mistake of giving Assad a book on police procedure – Handbook for Crime Technicians. Assad reads the book and then gets antsy for Carl to start working on cases. He prompts Carl to start working on the Merete Lynggaard case and together they get a start on it.

Carl tries to find out more about Assad but he keeps his past close to his chest, alluding to difficult and bad times. He keeps a prayer rug in his office and kneels to pray to Allah during the day. He also plays Arabic CD’s and has only a passing knowledge of spoken Danish. He gradually becomes Carl’s partner, leaving his cleaning duties in the background.

The novel is noir, filled with great characterizations and action, and also comedic at times. Carl’s wife, Vigga, from whom he is separated, has gotten Carl to help subsidize a gallery that she is starting with one of her many young lovers. Carl is also raising Vigga’s son from another relationship. Vigga doesn’t believe in getting another divorce so Carl is stuck with her. Vigga has the uncanny act of calling Carl’s cell phone at the most inopportune times. Carl also has a boarder who pays him rent and is like a housewife to him. His name is Morton and he collects play animals and is a great cook.

Carl suffers from physical symptoms of his Post-traumatic stress disorder including chest pains, anxiety and panic attacks. He is attracted to his department’s psychologist and sees her for treatment. However, he spends most of the time trying to pick her up and she’s wise to him, telling him to come back when he can be honest with her.

This is a book filled with great writing, telling a page-turning story. I could not put it down. It has everything I’ve come to expect from the very best Scandinavian writers – an angst-driven hero, dark situations that confound the mind, characterizations that are stunning, and action-packed scenes. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen is definitely one of the ten best books I’ve read this year and certainly the best Scandinavian mystery I’ve read, bar none. It is excellently translated by Lisa Hartford.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 381 readers
PUBLISHER:	Dutton Adult (August 23, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jussi Adler-Olsen
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbø The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Bibliography:

Q series:

• The Keeper of Lost Causes (2007; 2011 in US) (originally called The Woman in the Cage)
• The Absent One (2008; 2012 in US) (originally called The Pheasant Killers)
• The Conspiracy of Faith (2010; May 2013 in US) (originally called Message in a Bottle)
• The Purity of Vengeance (2009; December 2013 in US)

“I was a young man. Strong. Tight. White. And ready to love.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  AUG 11, 2011)

Crude and hilarious, Ladies’ Man from American author and screenwriter, Richard Price is a week in the life of Kenny Becker, a thirty-year-old college dropout who works as door-to-door salesman selling crappy cheap gadgets. It’s the 1970s, and Kenny lives in New York with his girlfriend, “bank clerk would-be singer” La Donna, a good-looking, marginally talented girl whose big night revolves around a cheesy talent contest at a hole- in-the-wall club called Fantasia. Kenny has a series of failed relationships in his past, and when the book begins, La Donna’s singing lessons, according to Kenny, appear to be placing a strain on the couple. On one hand, Kenny understands he’s supposed to support La Donna, but he also resents the time she is devoting to her singing lessons. Their sex life isn’t as hot and wild as it used to be and with Kenny’s rampant libido largely unsatisfied, he tends to blame the singing lessons for turning La Donna’s head. He sees her night at Fantasia as a potential disaster, but he feels unable to confront his doubts. For one thing, discussing La Donna’s singing is like handling dynamite, and for another, Kenny knows that keeping the peace is the surest way of getting laid:

“I wasn’t going to say dick. I couldn’t. In the beginning we could say anything to each other, but now it was too dangerous; if we started cracking on each other with truths at this point we would inevitably get to the bottom truth, which was that we had no damn right being together anymore, and I for one was scared to death of the alternatives. So I settled for the bullshit low-key rage of two people going through the motions of a relationship, a life; and I couldn’t let her humiliate herself at Fantasia in the name of not rocking the boat even though the boat was capsizing fast, and I would even have the stones to call it being supportive.”

While Kenny, who’s the glib narrator here, argues that he’s trying to protect La Donna from humiliation and a greedy, lying voice coach (a woman he insists on calling Madame Bossanova), it’s clear to the reader that Kenny’s “protectiveness” is rooted in other things. His own insecurities, fears, and possessiveness all play a role in his begrudging, resentful attempts to support La Donna’s Big Night at Fantasia. Kenny is the classic unreliable narrator; we see his world through his eyes, and Kenny, a self-styled ladies’ man, isn’t quite honest about his relationship problems:

“I must have lived with four La Donnas in the last six years and sometimes I thought I was destined to have twice as many in the next six. I seemed to float from one bad, heavy relationship to another, like a trapeze artist swinging from one suspended bar to the next with no net below.”

As Kenny’s week unfolds, the narrative vacillates back and forth between Kenny’s personal and professional life. His mornings begin in a diner with his fellow Bluecastle House salesmen–men who are older than Kenny–older, heavier, and not as handsome, so it’s easy for Kenny to reassure himself that he’s better than them and that the sales job is temporary–just until something better comes along. But Kenny’s at the age when it is becoming harder and harder to kid himself that he’s going somewhere.

Kenny’s relationship with La Donna inevitably implodes, and when he becomes “Kenny Solo,” his desperation grows as he pursues a series of meaningless sexual encounters–each one more degrading than the one before. With a flagging self image, an obsession about his abs, and with his life spiraling out of control, Kenny seeks meaning in his life through sex. While he stalks the neon bars, greasy, sordid whorehouses, and stroke booths of New York, it becomes obvious that Kenny is terrified of being alone, and that his attempts to fill the holes in his life conversely only serve to expose the hollowness of his existence. Author Richard Price establishes one incredibly-staged scene after another–the humiliation of meeting a high school loser who’s now affluent and happy, a late night talk show that draws frantic, lonely losers, the desperation of a singles bar, and the stroke booth where girls hype men into masturbation.

As an unreliable narrator, Kenny is at times the last person to “get it,” and that also means that we aren’t supposed to take his view of life without some skepticism. Kenny may think he’s special, but he’s just as desperate as the guy in the next stroke booth. Here’s Kenny in a singles bar:

“For the next hour I sat at the bar, drinking rum and pretending to watch a basketball game which had orange guys against green guys. People started piling in. I was having a hard time getting rolling so I continued watching the tube. A lot of guys watched the tube, leaning against the bar or the room divider, their drinks tucked under their armpits like footballs. There was no sound on, but we all watched that fucking game with a burning intensity like we were politicos and the screen was flashing election results. I didn’t even know who the hell were playing. My elation was taking a bath. Around me guys swamped girls like pigeons after croutons, blurting out lines so transparent and tacky that even I was offended. No wonder nobody ever got laid. I watched. I listened. I was an observer. A girl nearby, the brittle remains of an almost-melted ice cube floating on top of her half-hour-old drink, listened politely.”

Ladies’ Man is slated to become an American classic. This is a study of one man’s search for meaning and fulfillment through the neon lights of an emotionally barren landscape, and in Kenny’s case, he arrives at his destination with a new uncomfortable knowledge of his weaknesses and his limitations.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 10 readers
PUBLISHER:	Picador; First Edition edition (June 21, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Richard Price
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Lush Life

Bibliography:

• The Wanderers (1974)
• Bloodbrothers (1976)
• Ladies’ Man (1978; June 2011)
• The Breaks (1983)
• Clockers (1992)
• Freedomland (1998)
• Samaritan (2003)
• Lush Life (March 2008)

Movies from books:

• The Wanderers (1979)
• Clockers (1995)

“My poor family was in shambles.

It had not always been thus. Ten years before, we’d been a solid unit, dollhouse style, mother, father, boy, and girl.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (AUG 1, 2011)

The Astral, by Kate Christensen, gets its title by way of its namesake, the Astral building in Brooklyn, New York. This building houses the protagonist of this book, an aging poet named Harry Quirk. His last name befits him and his family. They are interestingly dysfunctional in many ways.

Harry was once a somewhat well-known poet, teaching poetry workshops and writing his lyrical poems in rhyming and sonnet style. His publisher and mentor has moved to Europe and his style is now out of favor in the United States. His wife, Luz, decides after thirty years of marriage that Harry is having an affair with his best friend, Marion. Despite Harry’s pleading innocence – and he is innocent – Luz does not believe him and she kicks him out of their apartment in the Astral. It is true that Harry did have an affair twelve years ago with a young poetry student, but since that time he has been true to Luz.

Now homeless and without a job, Harry gets a room in a local flophouse and spends his days drinking at a local watering hole named Maureen’s. He finally lands a job at a Hasidic lumber yard through his crack-smoking Hasidic musician friend, Yanti. Here Harry works in accounts payable and is able to rent a one room apartment in the Astral. He figures that if he lives in the Astral, he’ll be closer to Luz and better able to keep an eye on her comings and goings. He is unable to accept that things are over with Luz and he is determined to win her back.

Harry’s daughter, Karina, is a freegan – she believes in getting all of her possessions for free. She gathers discarded things from the curbside, dumpster dives and goes to supermarket and restaurant trash bins to pick up food. She is very clear that the food she picks up consists only of tossed items with expired dates or unused edibles.

Harry’s son, Hector, is living on a commune and mired in a cult called Children of Hashem. They believe that the Messiah will be coming soon or is already here. Hector is being groomed as the new messiah and also is preparing to marry Christa, the cult’s leader. Karina and Harry want to do an intervention, hoping to get Hector out of the cult.

This is, in its way, a parody of today’s life and also a mirror of what is going on within a certain group of people. These people all live in a little area in Brooklyn and have been friends since the 1970’s. Despite Brooklyn being in New York City, this neighborhood is its own little enclave with everyone gossiping about everyone else. The friends are all interconnected, to the point of all of them seeing the same therapist. The novel makes a big deal of this and the unethical practice of Helen, the therapist they share.

The novel reminded me of what Zoe Heller does so well in her writing and what Christensen tries hard to accomplish but doesn’t quite succeed in pulling off. The parody comes off as stilted and without subtlety. For good parody to work, the reader must be able to see him or herself, or someone they can identify with, in the characters or culture. This doesn’t happen here. The characters are very black and white without hues of gray. For instance, Harry is a complete atheist and Hector and Luz are absolute believers. Things are described as either right or wrong. Luz is a moralistic bully while Harry is a moderate and giving guy. There is a lot of repetition of subject matter as if the author is not sure that the reader remembers what has transpired earlier.

Despite its flaws, Christensen can draw a good description and give frailty to the characters she creates. There is pathos, narcissism, stupidity, and a distinct humor to some of the characters and their situations. Though the book didn’t work for me as well as I’d have hoped, I think that a lot of readers would appreciate it more than I did.

I am a fan of Christensen’s and loved Trouble and The Epicure’s Lament. I continue to look forward to her writings.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 26 readers
PUBLISHER:	Doubleday (June 14, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Kate Christensen
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read a review of: Trouble The Great Man

Bibliography:

• In the Drink (1999)
• Jeremy Thrane (2001)
• The Epicure’s Lament (2004)
• The Great Man (2007)
• Trouble (2009)
• The Astral (2011)

Nonfiction:

• Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites (July 2013)

“It was frightening, though, how little time you got. You only became yourself when you were twenty-three or twenty-four. A few years later, you had an old man’s chest hair. It wasn’t worth it.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (MAY 15, 2011)

The thirteen stories in the collection Bullfighting from Irish author Roddy Doyle examine various aspects of male middle age. Eight of these stories first appeared in New Yorker, and in this volume the post-boom stories collectively offer a wry, bittersweet look at the years past and the years yet to come. We see middle-aged men whose wives have left them, middle-aged men whose children have grown and gone, stale marriages, marriages which have converted lovers into friends, the acceptance of disease and aging, and the ever-looming aspect of mortality. Lest I give the wrong impression, these stories are not depressing–instead through these marvellous stories Doyle argues that middle age brings new experiences and new emotions–just when we thought we’d experienced all that life had to offer.

In “The Photograph,” Martin tallies up the pros and cons of aging:

“Getting older wasn’t bad. The balding suited Martin. Everyone said it. He’d had to change his trouser size from 34 to 36. It had been a bit of a shock, but it was kind of nice wearing loose trousers again, hitching them up when he stood up to go to the jacks, or whatever. He was fooling himself; he knew that. But that was the point—he was fooling himself. He’d put on weight, but he felt a bit thinner.”

As Martin faces his first serious health issue, he recalls the recent death of Noel, a friend from his youth. Martin tries valiantly to make light of his own health problem with mixed success.

In “Funerals,” middle-aged son, Bill starts ferrying his elderly parents around to funerals. What begins as a one-off favour turns into a weekly habit. Bill discovers that his parents actually look forward to funerals and that they view them as outings to be followed by a trip to the chip shop. Instead of feeling burdened by becoming their regular chauffeur, Bill finds himself fascinated by their behaviour and pleasantly comfortable in their company, yet at the same time some sort of seismic shift has occurred in the relationship:?

“He could enjoy their company and listen to them flirting. They weren’t his parents any more; he wasn’t their son. He was a middle-aged man in a car with two people who were a bit older. Once or twice, in a rush that made him hang onto the steering wheel, he was their son and the car was full of himself as a boy and a stupid, awkward young man, hundreds of boys and men, all balled into this one man driving his wife’s Toyota Corolla and trying not to cry.”

Bill isn’t sure why he wants to spend so much time with his parents, but he does know that he’s beginning to feel uncomfortable with his own crowd:

“He stayed clear of the local funerals, the old neighbours. He didn’t want the conversations. What are you up to these days? How many kids is it you have? He didn’t want to talk to men he’d once known who’d lost their jobs so recently they still didn’t understand it. Great, great. Yourself? There’d be too many middle-aged women who used to be girls, ponytailed men he used to play with, a mother he’d fancied–in the coffin. Fat grannies he’d kissed and–the last time he’d gone to one of the local ones–a woman with MS, shaking her way to a seat in the church, the first girl he’d ever had sex with.”

Bill finds his parents child-like, and there’s a comforting sensation to the day trips he takes with them as they attend funeral after funeral. It’s as though Bill is a parent once again–after all his own children are grown and no longer need his care.

If I had to pick one favourite story in this stellar collection, it would be “Animals.” In this particularly poignant story, George, the middle-aged narrator, whose children are now grown and gone, recalls his life as a family man through memories of the animals the family owned. At one point, George tells how he once colluded with the local pet shop, Wacker’s over a lost canary. The canary, Pete, escaped from the cage, and George returns home to find “four hysterical children in the kitchen, long past tears and snot, and a woman outside in the back garden, talking to the hedge.” The woman is George’s wife, Sandra and she’s pretending that the canary is in the hedge:

“–Listen, he said.—I’m going to bring the kids to Wacker’s, to see if Pete flew there. Are you with me?
Sandra looked at him. And he knew: she was falling in love with him, all over again. Or maybe for the first time—he didn’t care. There was a woman in her dressing gown, looking attractively distraught, and she was staring at George like he was your man from ER.

–While I’m doing that, said George,–you phone Wacker’s and tell him the story. You with me?
–Brilliant.
–It might work.”

Some people measure their lives by the holidays they’ve taken, the jobs they’ve held, or the homes they’ve lived in, but George measures his life as a husband and father through the family pets. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that middle-aged George finds that his loyal companion is a dog.

The stories include some gentle humour as we hear of one man who brags about picking up 57-old-twins. Another story tells of a couple whose relationship devolves into insult slinging (“Four decades of arse parked inside a piece of string”) in some sort of aging contest. Doyle’s characters, while sketched lightly, are fully realized individuals who cope with the various problems and disappointments of middle age: loneliness, illness, failure, and boredom. These stories examine middle-aged life from all angles, so we also see that middle-age is a mixed bag with consolations in unexpected places. Bullfighting, a rich mature collection from Doyle, shows us a writer at the top of his game, and Doyle’s stories are infused with generosity and wisdom–even as they examine, so excellently, the foibles of human nature.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking Adult (April 28, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Roddy Doyle Wikipedia page on Roddy Doyle
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Dead Republic Paula Spencer

Bibliography:

• Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993)
• Wilderness (2007)
• The Deportees: and Other Stories (2008)
• Not Just for Christmas ( 2008)
• Bullfighting: Stories (2011)

Barrytown Trilogy:

• The Commitments (1987)
• The Snapper (1990)
• The Van (1991)

The Last Roundup Trilogy:

• A Star Called Henry (1999)
• Oh. Play That Thing! (2004)
• The Dead Republic (2010)

Paula Spencer Novels:

• The Women Who Walked Into Doors (1996)
• Paula Spencer (2006)

Children’s Books:

• The Giggler Treatment (2000)
• Rover Saves Christmas (2001)
• Meanwhile Adventures (2006)
• Her Mother’s Face (2008)
• A Grey Hound Girl (May 2012)

Nonfiction:

• Rory and Ita (2002)

Movies from books:

• The Commitments (1991)
• The Snapper (1993)
• The Van (1997)

“He’d thought about fire a couple of times some months ago, fire being, after all, his metier. A lot of softwood in that house, it’d go quickly. He’d have to get a burning permit. What, while the forest fire warning gauges all screamed Extreme? No, he’d come here for this, to tear it down. Fire was for his work, which was pleasure. Tearing down the house was a responsibility. Tartarus took his responsibilities seriously.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (MAR 16, 2011)

Jack Tartarus comes to his family house on Crab bent on destruction. What follows instead is a reconstruction of his life on this small island near Vancouver, a reuniting of family and neighbors, a closer understanding of those who have died, and the forging of new bonds.

The book begins in a cold anger, as Tartarus, a famous artist working with photography and fire, picks away at the siding of his well-built house with a crowbar — in revenge, he says, for the death of his parents. The opening has an awkward energy to it, as clumsy as the book’s title and as jagged as its cover. Well before the novel is over, though, “Tartarus” and “Crab” have become fully rounded portraits of a person and a place, and the cover no longer fits at all, requiring rather an atmospheric seascape or watercolor of a fine old wooden house standing proud in a clearing of tall pines. This transformation to warmth and understanding more than once brought tears to my eyes, though I wonder looking back if the trajectory was not a little too predictable, too easy.

Because Szanto has a way of setting the reader in the middle of the action and filling in the back story later, this is a somewhat difficult book to follow at first, as characters are introduced without pedigrees and past incidents surface in cryptic references only to sink out of sight until later. This also makes it difficult to summarize, so I will confine myself to the first few chapters. We hear first about the losses. Jack’s parents, both dead, though we do not yet know how. His wife Maureen, obviously deeply loved. His sister Natalia, not dead, but moved away to the mainland with her musician daughter Justine. Jack’s closest friend, a former teacher named Don, had once been Natalia’s lover; he still lives on the island, in a small house near the water, his life almost fully occupied with looking after his father Frank, whose mind is going quickly. There is also a wild disheveled young woman who emerges from the woods, clawing and biting Jack in her desperation to halt the destruction; she too will turn out to be a figure out of Jack’s past, though he does not recognize her at first.

All these people, alive or dead, we meet in the first chapter. The second chapter, surprisingly, steps back from the main story and follows Don on his nightly errand for a volunteer group called Friends in the Night, making a round of the local restaurants to pick up unused food for the local soup kitchen. The chapter will eventually further the story, because the owner of the last restaurant on the list, a vegetarian establishment called Eating Thyme, is a former hippie called Etain, who is well on her way to becoming Don’s acknowledged lover. But the chapter’s main purpose is to build a sense of the island as a living community, where people know each other’s business and care for one another. There is a similar section a few chapters later, about a store clerk nicknamed Turtle, a kind of ecological vigilante who sees himself as the guardian of the island’s balance. Although the cast of named characters in the book is relatively small, this sense of community is important to the regeneration that will touch almost all the principal figures before the end.

Yes, there are flaws. The plot depends upon our belief that Jack’s desire to tear down the house is implacable, and this does become difficult to sustain. There is also the question of his professional obsession with fire, which certainly works as a metaphor, but less easily as a literal ingredient in the plot. There are some awkward moments near the end when the novel flirts with becoming a ghost story, then shies away again with perhaps one too many rational explanations for things that might better have been left untied. But all of the characters grow and continue to grow in reality and warmth, their relationships develop as satisfying and believable, and the island of Crab emerges as a very pleasant place to live. Only I would change that book jacket!

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Brindle & Glass (March 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	George Szanto
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another from this publisher: Catch Me When I Fall by Patricia Westerhof

Bibliography:

• Friends and Marriages (1994)
• The Tartarus on Crab (March 2011)

Conquests of Mexico trilogy :

• The Underside of Stones (2005)
• Second Sight (2005)
• The Condesa of M. (2005)

Islands International Investigations (written with Sandy Frances Duncan) :

• Never Sleep with a Suspect on Gabriola Island (October 2009)
• Always Kiss the Corpse (October 2010)