1980s – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.23 THE INTERESTINGS by Meg Wolitzer /2014/the-interestings-by-meg-wolitzer/ Mon, 24 Mar 2014 12:13:55 +0000 /?p=24997 Book Quote:

“The Interestings,” said Ash. “That works.”

So it was decided. “From this day forward, because we are clearly the most interesting people who ever fucking lived,” said Ethan, “because we are just so fucking compelling, our brains swollen with intellectual thoughts, let us be known as the Interestings. And let everyone who meets us fall down dead in our path from just how fucking interesting we are.” In a ludicrously ceremonial moment they lifted paper cups and joints. “

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAR 24, 2014)

The greatest gift that any writer can give her readers is providing them with a fictional world they can immerse – and ultimately lose – themselves in.

That’s precisely what Meg Wolitzer achieves in The Interestings, surely the most fully-realized and satisfying book of her career.

This panoramic saga focuses on a group of Baby Boomers from the time they meet at a camp for the creatively gifted as teenagers through middle age. The bond that draws these divergent characters together is powerful and special; they dub themselves “The Interestings.” And the bond, for the most part, is stretched, sustained, and redefined as they age.

There is Jules, the key character, an aspiring comic actress-turned-therapist who attended the camp on scholarship . Her best friend is Ash – she and her twin Goodman have lived a charmed and fortunate life – and eventually marries their mutual friend Ethan. Ethan, the creator of an animated series called Figland, becomes successful beyond their wildest dreams. And then there is Jonah, the son of a Judy Collins type songwriter, who must navigate the boundaries of attachment at the start of the AIDS era.

At the core of this novel, there is an exploration of what it means to be special. As one character ultimately says about the camp that brought them together, “It made you feel special. What do I know – maybe it actually made you special. And specialness – everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren’t talented. So what are they supposed to do – kill themselves?”

The spotlight is squarely on two couples – Jules and her ultrasound technician husband Dennis and their friends Ash and Ethan – as the lure of money and fame threaten to place them in different stratospheres. The themes center on longing and envy and self-hatred and grandiosity and failure and success…and how the definition of what it means to be “interesting” changes as life goes on. Jules says to Dennis,..meeting in childhood can seem like it’s the best thing – everyone’s equal, and you form bonds based only on how much you like each other. But later on, having met in childhood can turn out to have been the worst thing, because you and your friends might have nothing to say to each other anymore…”

The Interestings is cemented in a transformative time, touching on many of the milestones of a unique generation: the rise of feminism, the confusion and terror of being gay at the cusp of the AIDS era, and perhaps most of all, being alive during that tipping point when “portfolios” shifted meaning from art portfolios to financial portfolios. It’s authentic, it’s genuine, and it’s so good I didn’t want it to end.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 1003 readers
PUBLISHER: Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (March 25, 2014)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Meg Wolitzer
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Movies from books:

]]> LOLA, CALIFORNIA by Edie Meidav /2011/lola-california-by-edie-meidav/ Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:45:16 +0000 /?p=19758 Book Quote:

“There is the need for the interdisciplinary reading of bodies with students, for breaking away from dichotomies, ruptures that are enviable and deforming.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (AUG 3, 2011)

In this artful, cerebral novel spanning four decades and encompassing the tribal conventions and counterculture movements of the 70’s and 80’s, the reader is plunged into a cunning world of philosophy and hedonism that is best described as baroque rawness or stark-naked grandiloquence. If these terms appear to be incompatible pairings, the reader will grasp the seeming polarity as axiomatic soon after feasting on Edie Meidav’s complex narrative style. A carnal vapor infuses every provocative page of this unorthodox psychological crime thriller.

Contrary to the suggestive cover, title, and product description, this will not appeal to fans of chick lit or genre suspense thrillers. This is more in tune with Martin Amis or Salman Rushdie, with a peppering of TC Boyle and Dan Chaon. Muscular, sweat-producing, and erudite, the satisfaction of reading these pages rests on the reader’s consent to capitulate control of predetermined ideas and conceptions and enter into a contract with the author, giving Meidav permission and authority to rule the aesthetic jurisdiction, and to accede to the flow, command, and demand of its prose.

The eponymous title refers to Lana Mahler and her best friend, Rose, who meet as teenagers and form a bond that graduates from symbiotic to alpha/supplicant (Lana as alpha). They call themselves Lola One and Lola Two. Lana’s parents are both esteemed academics; her father, Vic, is a neuroscientist cum philosopher of the counterculture variety, and has his own willing supplicants known as “shaggies.”

Lana’s mother is an ethnologist/feminist who has garnered popular fame. As noted, the novel takes place primarily in California, with an emphasis on the analysis of California lifestyles and attitudes, particularly the free-thinking Berkeley. Lana and Rose parted ways many years ago, but the psychodynamics of their early relationship continues to haunt both of them.

The book opens in 2008 in the Alcatraz penitentiary. Vic Mahler is on death row, with an execution date less than two weeks away. The author takes us into Mahler’s mind, which gravitates from hearty to hallucinogenic. We learn that he hasn’t seen his daughter in twenty years, but that Rose has been writing him letters and offering her assistance as an attorney. Juxtaposed with the prison opening, the story takes us to Lana, who is on her way to a desert spa with her latest boyfriend and her twin boys, a place right out of Boyle‘s The Road to Wellville. Rosa is on the verge of tracing Lana down after a twenty-year separation.

The disclosure of Vic’s crime and fate, as well as the unveiling of the Mahler family and Rose, is gradually revealed by positioning each character in alternating chapters. They examine their lives, past and present, and dissect each other, so that the reader is shown each character through various lenses that eventually coalesce into a prism of overlapping and juxtaposed realities.

Like Chaon’s Await Your Reply, the narrative unfolds with an intricate opacity toward transparency. Meidav has a knack for shocking the reader at intervals, like the best thrillers do. Just as the Lolas once worked as strip-tease dancers together, the author unveils surprises in increments like a strip-tease act for the reader.

Lana and Rose are the locus of the novel, and the narrative forms a mosaic or tapestry of several dialogues and narratives between them and their relationship with the external world, much like Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children is a tapestry of texts and collage of languages that form a unity of what is virtual and what is real. There is a constant flux between the Lolas, and a tension between what is true and what is illusive, what is implied and what is extant.

It took me about one hundred pages to relax into Meidav’s style, the wrap-around sentences and esoterica of neuroscience and philosophy, the limbic arousal and dourness of Martin Amis.

“…people’s faces work to hold up new veils by the minute: the all-time favorite is dignity, as is the visage of sex-transcending enlightenment, a new kind of spiritual chastity armature.”

Meidav’s bare-bones plot–a crime, a perpetrator, and a fate–are less important than the characters that inhabit this dystopia of false and renegade idols. Nature, the pliable state of consciousness, and the desire to reclaim the credo of youth and supple confidence, is the plaintive hope and recursive doctrine. We are all disciples of the mind; we are prisoners of our bodies.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 8 readers
PUBLISHER: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Edie Meidav
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows

The Legacy by Kirstin Tranter

Bibliography:

]]> AFTER LYLETOWN by K.C. Frederick /2011/after-lyletown-by-k-c-frederick/ Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:20:07 +0000 /?p=19275 Book Quote:

“In his mid-forties, he feels he’s come to a pretty good place in his life, and he couldn’t have got there if he hadn’t been able to survive some of his earlier selves, forgiving, maybe, but also forgetting, even erasing. From his present vantage point, it isn’t exactly magnanimity he feels toward the passionate but confused graduate student he’d been twenty years ago. From that time onward he’s been acutely aware of the importance of chance in the affairs of human beings, and he hopes it’s given him a better understanding of people who are down on their own luck. But what he feels toward the person he’d been then is mostly relief that he’s been able to move beyond him.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (AUG 1, 2011)

It’s 1968 and Alan Ripley is a graduate student. He is definitely a man of his era, tuning in, turning on and, to some extent, dropping out. He is attending a party and the posters on the wall are of Dylan, Che and Stokely. “Like the saints in old churches, Alan thinks, the measure of our dreams and aspirations, our doubts about ourselves.” At this party, Alan meets Lily, a true revolutionary who wants to provide guns to oppressed black people.

The problem is how to get the guns. Alan is attracted more to Lily and her drugs than to her politics but he goes along with her as Lily machinates a caper designed to provide weapons to the oppressed. The idea is that some students, along with two ex-cons, will rob a gun store and give all the guns to the oppressed black population. Alan agrees to participate as a watchman. He will be in the car and be a spotter for anything suspicious going on. On the day of the heist, however, Alan feels sick and he ends up in the hospital getting his appendix out. A man named Rory takes Alan’s place. The caper fails as an off-duty policeman sees the suspicious goings on and gunfire erupts. One man is killed and the policeman is injured. Rory gets caught by the police and spends fifteen years in jail. The heist is known as the Lyletown Five, after the five participants.

Despite being caught by the police, Rory never gave them Alan’s name though he did give the police other information including the names of the other participants. Alan has always been thankful that he hasn’t been implicated in this debacle though he is not sure why Rory spared him. He never visits Rory in jail as they really didn’t know each other very well.

Fast forward to 1988, “After Lyletown.” Right after the caper, Alan spent some time in solitude in Vermont and later decided to study law. Alan becomes a successful attorney near Boston. He is a partner in a law firm that represents a housing project and Alan gets to work with both renters and tenants. He has a wife and son and is happy. He plays tennis, has a weekend home in Connecticut and is living the good life. Out of the blue he gets a phone call from Rory. Alan is scared, not knowing what Rory wants. Is it blackmail, money, just catching up, or what? He agrees to meet Rory for lunch.

Rory tells him a bit about his time in jail and informs Alan that the other Lyletown Five, have never been seen or heard from again. There are rumors that one of them died in a car crash and that Lily owns and runs a bakery in Washington. Rory does ask for some money but it’s for a “business venture” and he assures Alan he will pay him back with interest.

The novel examines who we are now and who we were in the past. Which one of our selves is the real one or are all our selves real, past and present? The parts of the book that deal with Alan and Rory are psychologically astute and excellent reading. The book flounders some in the middle when it takes a turn and focuses on Alan’s legal work which is not really all that relevant to the book.

The language is crisp and the dialogue right on. I found myself back in the sixties remembering C.O.R.E., SDS, the Weathermen and other political movements. Images of Timothy Leary popped into my head and I remember the immense allure of “flower power,” trying to make real change in the government and protesting the war in Vietnam. K.C. Frederick gets all of this along with the picture of baby boomers – their paths to the present and their lives in the past.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 6 readers
PUBLISHER: Permanent Press (July 1, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: K.C. Frederick
EXTRAS: Award winning author
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> RICH BOY by Sharon Pomerantz /2011/rich-boy-by-sharon-pomerantz/ /2011/rich-boy-by-sharon-pomerantz/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:25:49 +0000 /?p=19202 Book Quote:

“He wanted to work when other people worked, go out to dinner at restaurants that proclaimed their names in fancy gold script above the entrance and used starched white tablecloths and heavy silverware; he wanted to go to the theater and he wanted to ride in cabs as a passenger.   Most of all he wanted to go to bed when it was actually dark outside, and make love to a beautiful woman, more than one even, who wouldn’t put up with a man that arrived at seven in the morning and slept until one.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (JUL 14, 2011)

Family sagas have long been a staple among American best-sellers; the examples are wide and vast. The very predictability of the family saga genre promises an absorbing yet familiar reading experience: the once-poor yet highly attractive and charismatic main character who overcomes all kinds of adversities, goes through heartbreak and scandal, and then emerges older, wiser, and in most cases, wealthier than before (or at the very least, with enough knowledge to become wealthier).

Sharon Pomerantz mines this territory once more with Rich Boy, a novel infused with a heavy dose of melodrama combined with the realism of growing up American and Jewish in the pivotal years of the 60s through the 80s.

Robert Vishniak is a character on the rise. We meet him when he is a pre-teen, pickpocketing his rich relative’s wallet so that his father will not have to experience the shame of losing at a card game. The stage is set: we know he is resourceful and will do whatever it takes to succeed.

In the years ahead, Robert will show his resourcefulness in many ways: with his well-heeled college roommate who harbors a “shameful” (in some eyes) secret, with his unprecedented rise in his chosen law firm, with his choice of stunning women (all of whom are inevitably drop-dead gorgeous, sexually aggressive, and somewhat manipulative). He will also experience adversity with his first true love – Gwendolyn, an extremely fragile, socially conscious, vulnerable, and yes, gorgeous and doomed young woman.

Sharon Pomerantz is at her best when she delves into an exploration of Jewish-American life in the 1960s-1980s: the one-time outsiders assimilating and taking their deserved place within the social hierarchy. The clash between the impoverished and frugal world that Robert shares with his birth family and the opportunities that are opening themselves for him is crisply done. Here is Robert, reflecting on the privileged life he shares with his moneyed wife and their young daughter:

“Why now, when his daughter never needed to step inside a subway, and every major possession they owned came with insurance and an alarm, why now did he feel so nervous, as if he had woken up in the wrong life – a life lived from car windows and behind locked doors?”

The paranoia of the Nixon and Vietnam years, the real estate and commodities boom and bust, the drug culture and over-the-top parties of the affluent, the wheeling-dealing of law firms – all this is handled with aplomb. Less successfully done is the focus on his Robert’s many relationships. The women are mostly caricatures: the self-destructive and forever-remembered first love, the cold and moneyed wife, the young-and-genuine actress on the cusp of discovery…as readers, we’ve met these women before.

Still, this is a particularly American story – a Jewish-American story – of the class divides between rich and poor, rich and obscenely rich. It’s a story of  “a family built for the 1970s.” Those who like straightforward, old-fashioned, rags-to-riches sagas will likely enjoy Rich Boy a great deal.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 45 readers
PUBLISHER: Twelve (July 13, 2011)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Sharon Pomerantz
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of: 

The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud

Bibliography:

]]> /2011/rich-boy-by-sharon-pomerantz/feed/ 1 TEN THOUSAND SAINTS by Eleanor Henderson /2011/ten-thousand-saints-by-eleanor-henderson/ Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:41:53 +0000 /?p=18424 Book Quote:

“There was no induction ceremony, no melding of spit and blood. Those who tattooed themselves did it with no pressure from Jude or anyone else. The only thing they had to give was their word – no drinking, no drugs. Extra credit for no fucking or flesh eating.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JUN 08, 2011)

It’s 1987 and New York’s lower east side and alphabet city are places for the homeless, vagrants, the impoverished, hippies, some immigrants who have held out through the next generation and some younger folks who call themselves “straight edge.” Straight edge refers to teenagers who like hard rock and punk but live a straight and clean lifestyle – no meat, no sex, no booze and no drugs. Many shave their heads and are into tattoos. That’s what Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson is about – a group of straight edge teens and their parents trying to understand themselves and one another as they venture through life, a lot of it in alphabet city in Manhattan.

The book opens up in Vermont in a city that sounds a lot like Burlington. Two teenagers who live there, Jude and Teddy, are way into drugs. They smoke weed, huff, drink , do mushrooms and basically try to stay high as often and for as long as they can. They also hate school and cut out as often as they can get away with it.

Jude has been adopted by parents who are now divorced, both semi-hippies. His mother blows glass for making bongs and his father, who lives in New York, sells weed for a living. Since his parents’ divorce, Jude’s father, Les, has been living in Manhattan and has been seeing a self-absorbed ballerina named Di. Di has a daughter named Eliza who plans to visit Vermont and wants to meet Jude. Eliza is a rich girl who has been kicked out of several boarding schools for drugs and truancy.

Teddy’s mother is an alcoholic who splits town on New Year’s Eve, the day of Teddy’s sixteenth birthday and the day that this book opens. Teddy has no idea who his father is. He has an older brother named Johnny who lives in New York and is into the straight edge lifestyle.

Jude and Teddy feel like outcasts in Vermont. They hang out with each other but basically don’t have other friends. They like to hang out at a record store and play music together. They’re teased a lot and just don’t fit in.

Eliza arrives in Vermont and parties with Teddy, sharing cocaine with him after he’s already huffed freon, and gasoline, smoked weed and drank. They also have sex. The next morning, Eliza is on her way back to Manhattan and Teddy is dead by OD. Jude is in the hospital with hypothermia and getting detoxed from all the substances he’s used. It was a close call for Jude but he makes it. When Jude gets out of the hospital, he decides to go live with his father in New York.

In New York, Eliza, Jude and Johnny become like a family of three. This is intensified when Eliza finds out that she is pregnant with Teddy’s baby from their one night together. Because Teddy is dead, Johnny really wants Eliza to have this baby to honor Teddy’s memory. Eliza is into this idea as well. She is also into Johnny who does not appear to be into girls.

Eliza and Jude embrace the straight edge lifestyle which is portrayed as a hair’s width from a cult. It embraces Hare Krishna and many Hindu concepts. Johnny is called Mr. Clean because of his devotion to Straight Edge and his fanatic adherence to its principles. It becomes ironic then when he says he is the father of Eliza’s child. In their minds, the parents are more likely to let them keep the baby if the father is alive.

Eliza runs away with Johnny so that she can have the baby. Her mother wants her to have an abortion but she won’t hear of this. The parents are portrayed as distant, absent or stoned. There is not one parent who is really present and attuned to their child’s life. Ironically, at one point in Jude’s childhood, his doctor thinks he may have fetal alcohol syndrome because of his dyslexia, facial structure and hyperactivity with ADD. Despite this possible diagnosis, Jude emerges as a real hero in the novel, a good guy with empathy and strong emotions. He may not have the best judgment but he turns himself into a leader who is respected.

They form a music band and Jude becomes a natural born leader of the group. They travel back to Vermont several times during the novel and recruit others for the band and for the straight edge lifestyle. The band travels up and down the coast and is even interviewed by different zines for their lyrics and overall music.

It is interesting to imagine the Tompkins Square Park of their day – filled with homeless, empty crack vials, condoms, and violence. Now, the same park is filled with nannies and babies and surrounded by million dollar condos. The book is careful to stay true to the New York of the late 1980’s and the gen X’ers who are looking for a place to fit in and make their mark. Ms. Henderson is not judgmental about straight edge but this reader felt that it became another sort of addiction for many of its followers.

The book was fascinating. At times it was repetitive and went off on some rabbit trails. It could have been about fifty pages shorter and been stronger for that editing. However, even with the length it stands at now – 383 pages – it is a fascinating book. I’ve never read a book that caught the gen X’ers so vividly and so perspicaciously. This accomplished novel does not read like a debut novel, which it is. Ms. Henderson is a writer with a rare talent.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 10 readers
PUBLISHER: Ecco (June 7, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Eleanor Henderson and her website
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

The Bewildered by Peter Rock

Bibliography:

]]> THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY by Heidi W. Durrow /2011/the-girl-who-fell-from-the-sky-by-heidi-w-durrow/ Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:19:48 +0000 /?p=16024 Book Quote:

“On that last day Mor took us up to the roof, she had calculated the difference between what we couldn’t have and her ability to watch us want. The difference between her pain and ours, she decided, measured nine stories high.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (FEB 11, 2011)

It amazes me that The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is Heidi W. Durrow’s debut novel. It is poetic, poignant, beautiful and elegiac with the panache of a seasoned writer. Once I started it, I could not stop thinking about it. It haunted my days until I finished it. Durrow has a talent that is rare and brilliant, like the northern lights.

The novel is about Rachel, the lone survivor of a fall from an apartment building. How did she fall? What made her family go off the roof-top? Told in different voices, the story unfolds slowly and the reader is let in on family destinies, secrets, shame, and the legacy of alcohol.

The story starts off in Chicago. It is told from the viewpoints of Rachel, a bi-racial girl who is in fifth grade when the story opens and is in high school at its end. There is Nella, Rachel’s mother, who is Danish, and whose surviving diary tells her story. Roger, Rachel’s father, is a black man in the military who meets Nella in Europe and who leaves Rachel with his mother after the fall. Laronne is Nella’s supervisor at work who comes across Nella’s diaries after her death. And then there is Brick, a young man of the Chicago tenements whose stolen copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds of North America is his most prized possession.

As this haunting novel begins, Brick, a budding ornithologist, is watching for birds to fall in the alleyway of his building. He is hoping for an egret but usually what he sees are falling trash bags and detritus from the upper floors. This time, he sees what he thinks is a huge bird falling and he runs downstairs to see what kind of bird it is.

“He was certain the silhouette of the great egret had passed his courtyard window…When he finally reached the courtyard, he saw that his bird was not a bird at all. His bird was a boy and a girl and a mother and a child. The mother, the girl, the child. They looked like they were sleeping, eyes closed, listless. The baby was still in her mother’s arms, a gray porridge pouring from the underside of her head. The girl was heaped on top of the boy’s body, a bloody helpless pillow.”

This sight becomes imprinted on Brick and effects the course of his entire life.

Rachel is the only survivor of the fall and, after her hospitalization, is sent to live with her grandmother in Portland, Oregon.   With her blue eyes and “good” hair, she becomes very much aware of race. There are the white girls and there are the black girls. She fits in nowhere though she tries to make a new self after the fall. Her mother, “Mor,” had done her best to shield Rachel and her siblings from race, to see themselves as unique beings, not as a color. This was much easier to do in Europe than in the United States. As Rachel navigates the racial terrain of her new world, she is stymied over and over by the subtleties and outright cruelties of race.

Rachel watches her grandmother drink her “contributions” and sees how the amount of her drinking increases daily. Rachel is very aware of the impact of alcohol on her family’s lives. Nella was in recovery when she died and her diary begins each day with the number of days she has been sober. Roger, Nella’s father, is an alcoholic, and it becomes clear that Rachel’s grandmother has a huge problem with her “contributions.” Though Roger does not visit Rachel once she is out of the hospital, his story is told through Brick who met him in the hospital. There, Roger shared family secrets with Brick and made him promise to one day tell these to Rachel.

The story unfolds in layers, slowly and magnificently. The reader has questions answered page by page until the story of the fall, the family secrets and history, are all given to us in haunting and precious bits. This is more than a story of a bi-racial girl and her ability to adapt to a new world and the horror of her legacy. It is a story of resiliency and hope and awareness and insight. Rachel is one of the strongest and clear characters that I have come across in literature. This is a book to be treasured and re-read. It is that good.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 228 readers
PUBLISHER: Algonquin Books; 1 edition (January 11, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Heidi W. Durrow
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another “fall off the roof” novel:

Another “mixed race” book:

Bibliography:

]]> THE GORDIAN KNOT by Bernhard Schlink /2011/the-gordian-knot-by-bernhard-schlink/ Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:52:26 +0000 /?p=15402 Book Quote:

“He didn’t think of himself as immoral. One didn’t trample on the weak, exploit the poor, or cheat the simpleminded. […] It was a question of instinct, and reached only as far as one can perceive the consequences of one’s actions. There were certain things one simply didn’t do, because one wouldn’t be able to face oneself in the mirror. One doesn’t like to face oneself in the mirror when one has pimples, either, but one’s complexion is not a question of morals.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (JAN 14, 2011)

Just now and again in this novel, as in the quotation above, one gets a glimpse of Bernhard Schlink the moral philosopher who probed so deeply into the German past with his novels The Reader and Homecoming and especially the non-fiction Guilt About the Past. But readers looking to this novel for deeper insights will be disappointed. Although the publishers do nothing whatever to indicate that this is not a new novel, its references to Francs and Deutschmarks, to East Germany as a separate country, and to the still-standing World Trade Center show that the book is not of our time. It is in fact a translation of a comparatively early novel by the German author-jurist, first published in 1988. This matters little to readers willing to accept the book on its own terms, but will disappoint those expecting to follow the recent development of Schlink’s sophisticated thought.

This is an entertaining little espionage thriller, but sophisticated it is not. The hero, Georg Polger, has given up a career in law to settle in the South of France, where he earns a precarious living as a translator. Suddenly everything seems to go right for him: he is recruited by a new agency, becomes managing director of an old one whose owner mysteriously dies, and acquires a new girlfriend, an amorous but elusive young woman named Françoise Kamsky. Long after the reader suspects as much, Georg realizes that he is being used; he is surprisingly naive for a former lawyer approaching forty. But his realization brings catastrophe, and soon both his success and his mistress have disappeared.

The latter two-thirds of the book are set in America, first in New York City then moving to San Francisco for the climax. Schlink has some good descriptions of both cities, and a neat way of comparing them: “He thought one might portray San Francisco as a seductive virgin in starched frills, a virgin simultaneously flaunting and withholding her charms, while New York was an old hag, heavy and squat, sweating, steamy, stinking, bubbling incessantly, sometimes screaming.” Georg’s search in New York is somewhat arbitrary, and Schlink’s plotting seems amateurish beside the masters of the genre such as Le Carré, Forsyth, or even Clancy. But Georg’s adventures do keep you reading, as he discovers a situation that is tighter and more intricate than he had first supposed.

Towards the end, there is an interlude of comparative inaction which Georg compares to being encapsulated in a train, moving towards a place where one could once again take action, but rendering him incapable of action now. Here, the tone of the novel changes, again somewhat improbably, but at least giving Georg time for some of the reflection that will become Schlink’s strongest suit as a writer. While I doubt that this early work will win many fans for the author on its own merits, it does have some interest in showing where the present-day writer is coming from.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from X readers
PUBLISHER: Vintage; Unabridged edition (December 7, 2010)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Bernhard Schlink
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Self’s Murder

The Reader

Homecoming

Bibliography:

Self Detective Novels:

Nonfiction:

Movies from books:

]]> CONCRETE by Thomas Bernhard /2010/concrete-by-thomas-bernhard/ Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:42:11 +0000 /?p=12856 Book Quote:

“No doctrine holds water any longer; everything that is said and preached is destined to become ludicrous.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (OCT 12, 2010)

I’d read wildly different reviews of a Thomas Bernhard book. One review was overwhelmingly positive while another review thought the same book (The Old Masters) pointless. After reading both reviews and salient quotes, I leaned towards the pointless reaction, but then again, the reviewers’ reactions to the same book were so different, I was curious to try a Bernhard novel. This brings me to Concrete, and after reading it, I now understand how this author could provoke such vastly different reactions from readers.

Concrete is narrated by a 45-year-old bachelor, Rudolph who lives in the town of Peiskam, Austria. When I say narrated by I mean that quite literally. Rudolph, who suffers from sarcoidosis, hopped full of prednisolone, wants to write a book about Mendelssohn Bartholdy. He’s spent years on the project and has an entire room full of notes to prove it, but Rudolph, who’s a classic procrastinator, has a litany of excuses about why his masterpiece isn’t finished. Concrete is a 156-page rant against several of Rudolph’s pet peeves: his pushy sister, charity, religion, Vienna, pet owners, so-called “simple people,” –you name it–Rudolph complains about it. And complain he does endlessly, repetitively and utterly pointlessly. Concrete is a brilliant, brilliantly funny look at the labyrinth of one man’s peevish, petty, rambling yet repetitive obsessions, and if you’ve read Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

When the novel begins, Rudolph’s successful sister has finally ended her visit at the old family home to which she has “the right to domicile.” She left urging Rudolph to visit Vienna, and Rudolph claims to be thrilled to see the back of her. The first part of the novel is a litany of complaints about his sister, and she’s portrayed as a monstrously domineering woman who is “the excuse for every failure” in Rudolph’s life:

“Although she had gone, I still felt the presence of my sister in every part of the house. It would be impossible to imagine a person more hostile to anything intellectual than my sister. The very thought of her robs me of my capacity for any intellectual activity, and she has always stifled at birth any intellectual projects I have had. She’s been gone a long time now, and yet she is still controlling me, I thought as I pressed my hands against the cold wall of the hall.”

According to Rudolph, there’s “no defence” against someone like his sister–a woman who’s so “wretched, malignant, deceitful” her husband “fled from her stranglehold and went to South America, to Peru, never to be heard of again.” Monstrous indeed, but as Rudolph shifts from one rant to another, we arrive at the conclusion that perhaps Rudolph’s relentless sister isn’t so bad after all.

Spurred on by his sister’s suggestion that he’s stagnating in Peiskam, Rudolph decides to take a long-delayed holiday and he ends up in Majorca. His fussy preparations for the trip include dragging along a suitcase of notes on Mendelssohn–along with adequate medicines for his chronic condition.

Concrete (and the meaning of the title becomes horribly clear at the end of the book) is an interior narrative rendered by an extremely unreliable, unhappy narrator. Seclusion and illness–combined with adequate funds to allow complete ostracism from the world–combine to create a situation in which Rudolph need have very little contact with humanity. His primary unsatisfying relationships are with his sister and his housekeeper, and apart from that he keeps himself company. While this is all very funny, undercurrents within the text illustrate how chronic disease erodes self-confidence while demanding a controlling relationship from its human host.

There’s the sense that we are in the same darkened room with Rudolph as he mutters one diatribe after another, curses fate, and argues himself into the position that he hasn’t published anything because to do so is “evidence of a certain defect of character.” He’s one of those people who ramble on like broken records about the same half-dozen issues. You could leave that darkened room, come back four hours later, and he wouldn’t have noticed your absence. But since Rudolph’s agonized rants are in print, we don’t have to miss a word. (Translated from German by David McLintock.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 7 readers
PUBLISHER: Vintage (August 10, 2010)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Thomas Bernhard

Wikipedia page on Thomas Bernhard
EXTRAS: Excerpt

Guy Savage has more to say about Concrete
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Woodcutters

Wittgenstein’s Nephew

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

About:

]]> WOODCUTTERS by Thomas Bernhard /2010/woodcutters-by-thomas-bernhard/ Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:34:26 +0000 /?p=12866 Book Quote:

“You used to be in love with these ridiculous people, I told myself as I sat in the wing chair, head in heels in love with these ridiculous, low, vicious people, who suddenly saw you again after twenty years, in the Graben of all places, and on the very day Joana killed herself. They came up and spoke to you and invited you to attend their artistic dinner party with the famous Burgtheater actor in the Gentzgasse. What ridiculous, vicious people they are! I thought sitting in the wing chair. And suddenly it struck me what a low ridiculous character I myself was, having accepted their invitation and nonchalantly taken my place in their wing chair as though nothing had happened – stretching out and crossing my legs and finishing off what must by now have been my third or fourth glass of champagne.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (OCT 12, 2010)

Thomas Bernhard is a writer of semi-autobiographical fiction and satire who possesses an acerbic wit. Born out of wedlock in Holland in 1931, he was raised for several years in Vienna by his maternal grandfather, himself a writer. His grandfather introduced him to the many literati of his generation and also to Schopenhauer, who remained a strong influence on Bernhard’s life and writing. Bernhard considered Vienna his home though he maintained a love/hate relationship with it. The Boston Review cites that “In his final will and testament, Thomas Bernhard – Austria’s most infamous novelist and playwright for the past half-century, and the most outspoken critic the state has endured since Karl Kraus – performed an unlikely post-mortem disappearing act. With characteristic bravado, he banned any further production and publication of his works within his home country for the duration of their copyright.” Bernhard suffered from chronic tuberculosis to which he succumbed in 1989 at the age of 58. He speaks at great length about his illness in his novel, Wittgenstein’s Nephew.

Woodcutters, originally written as part of a trilogy, is Bernhard’s diatribe about his disgust, revulsion, loathing, hatred and vilification of the hypocrites and losers that make up the art circle in Vienna from the 1950’s through the 1980’s. In his unique style, with not one paragraph in nearly 200 pages, this novel is told primarily in stream of consciousness from the viewpoint of a writer, one not unlike Bernhard himself. The novel is in three identifiable parts – the writer sitting in a wing chair observing a dinner party, the writer discussing his relationship with a recently deceased friend, and the conversations of an actor during dinner.

The first segment of the book has almost every sentence beginning with, containing, or ending with the phrase ” …from my wing chair.” As the writer looks on at those attending the party, from his wingchair, he remembers all the reasons that he has been estranged from these very same people for the last twenty or thirty years. He remembers all the slights he received, the lies that were told about him and the hypocrisies he’s witnessed. He tries to figure out why he accepted this invitation and ruminates about it over and over, finally coming to a semi-belief that it was because his friend had committed suicide yesterday and he was feeling more vulnerable when he was invited. He recollects his history with all of the attendees, each relationship ending poorly, with the writer getting the bad end of the stick. He can think of nothing positive to say about anyone nor can he imagine why he even remains at such a despicable gathering.

The middle part of the book takes place at Joana’s funeral. Joana was the writer’s friend who committed suicide the previous day.  It is the afternoon of her funeral. As the writer recalls Joana’s time as the reigning queen of Vienna’s art scene, he describes her lovely costumes, her graciousness, and her mentoring of others. She marries a weaver, a man who creates great tapestries that are sold throughout the world. It was Joana who made him famous and created the mystique that surrounded him. When he was in his prime, her husband left her for a Mexican woman and Joana, in her grief, succumbed to uncontrolled alcoholism despite several treatments. It was not without surprise that the writer learned that Joana had taken her life.

The third part of the book is the arrival, two hours late, of the actor in whose honor this dinner party is being held. (The story goes back and forth in time as gaps are filled in about different characters and the writer’s relationships with them). We are privy to the conversations at the table and the rudeness, drunkenness, and shameful behaviors of the guests. The actor has just finished up an Ibsen play and is tired, as are the guests, as the dinner did not start until close to midnight. The writer is a listener and observer, discussing in his own mind the implications and audacities of all that he hears. He is especially disgusted at the rudeness of an egomaniacal woman writer who keeps alluding to the actor’s old age. The actor finally snaps and gives this woman a piece of his mind, an action that the writer finds stunning. While he originally had thought poorly of the actor, the actor starts speaking about how he’d like to live in the woods and be a woodcutter. For some reason, the writer finds this a lovely idea and he ends up liking the actor.

As the dinner party ends, the writer wants to be sure to leave alone. As a misanthrope, having company is one of the worst things he can imagine. He says polite and hypocritical goodbyes to his hosts creating his own self-loathing as he sees he is no better than those he criticizes for their false charms and graciousness. What he’d like to say to his hosts is that he hates them, that he has no idea why he came to this awful party, and that he hopes he doesn’t see them for another twenty or thirty years. However, he does not do this. He plays his role as polite guest and leaves in an almost manic mood. He walks and runs around the streets of Vienna alternately embracing and hating this city that is his, despite all its foibles.

For those of us who can embrace Bernhard’s unique style, he is a breath of fresh air. His writing has a post-modern feel to it as he examines everything as part of something else, yet everything having a separate and distinct context in its own right. Everything is connected and nothing touches anything else. We can wonder till the planets’ ends and still come up with more and more reasons for why any particular event, action, or thought exists. The last thing Bernhard would call himself is a philosopher, but despite his self-description, there is a lot of philosophizing going on in his book. (Translated from German by David McLintock.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 8 readers
PUBLISHER: Vintage (August 10, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Thomas Bernhard

Wikipedia page on Thomas Bernhard
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Wittgenstein’s Nephew

Concrete

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

About:

]]> QUARRY’S EX by Max Allan Collins /2010/quarrys-ex-by-max-allan-collins/ /2010/quarrys-ex-by-max-allan-collins/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:28:19 +0000 /?p=12441 Book Quote:

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“That’s almost like…almost like hearing you say you still love me, Jack.”

Book Review:

Review by Daniel Luft  (SEP 28, 2010)

Another autumn descends and another Quarry novel is on the shelf. These are good times to be a reader. With four Quarry Novels in five years, Max Allan Collins can almost be forgiven for the 20-year gap in the series from the mid 80s to the mid 00s.

This time Quarry, a former hitman for the mob who has turned freelance, is on the set of a low budget biker movie in the late 70s. He’s trying to protect the director, Art Stockwell, from an inevitable assassination attempt. He is also trying to find out who put the contract out on Stockwell’s life. Among the suspects are a Chicago mob boss and Stockwell’s nearly-estranged wife who also happens to be Quarry’s fully-estranged ex-wife. This situation proves to be the first socially awkward moment in the hitman’s career.

Like all the books in this series, Quarry’s Ex is deceptively quiet. There are no 10-car pile-ups on the interstate, no helicopter police chases and no bridges that come crashing down at rush hour. What there is is paranoia, misanthropy and violence in close quarters. Quarry is truly detached from humanity and only looks out for his own interests. This can make for dark humor and understatement as Quarry tells his own story. He is inordinately composed when he discusses brutal subjects such as his methods of interrogation:

“Cutting off someone’s fingers or shooting them in the kneecap, trying to make them talk, it’s messy and it’s inefficient. And you have to keep them alive, in case the first thing they tell you isn’t true, requiring you to go back and cut off another finger or shoot another kneecap or something.

Torture is a whole different arena. Requires training that I never got. You never know when somebody is going to pass out or even die on you. And then where are you?”

With shop talk like this it is clear that Quarry is capable of killing anyone, a mob boss, his ex wife or even the man he’s working for if he has to. With an amoral main character any plot twist is possible.

Each of the recent Quarry books is billed as possibly the last before Collins puts the series to rest so each story feels like a little gift. And “little” is an important word. Quarry’s Ex is less than 200 pages and moves at the perfect pace for a single sitting. Quarry started off in a fast-moving pulp novel in the early 1970s and the author has retained that sensibility throughout the series.

The paperback era of hardboiled writing started after world war two and stretched into the late 70’s. In that time, mysteries, thrillers and noir usually came in very small, tightly wound packages that could explode in your hands and were finished at around 200 hundred pages. It was enough space to pull a reader in all the way and a small enough space to lack digression.

Then, in the early 80s, thrillers started to get thicker and subplots began to leak in. Private detectives picked up hobbies, bad guys developed endearing quirks and minor characters began to live their own story lines. This practice amounted to multiple distractions over much longer novels. The short, sweaty action novel morphed into something softer, often flabby and less structured.

But Collins is old enough to be part of the last wave of action writers who know how to tell a story fast and unsentimentally. For him, this kind of writing in neither nostalgic nor retro, it’s what he trained himself to do. He has been successful at writing longer, more circuitous books but for nine novels (over 35 years) he has managed to keep the Quarry series pure and untainted by the fashions of publishing trends.

Editor’s note:  Although Daniel Luft’s review starts off by saying this book is “on the shelf,” technically it will not be until fall of 2011.  The parent company of Hard Case Crime has decided not to print any more paperbacks and thus Hard Case Crime  has had to move to another publisher. This review will be reposted when the book is really on the shelf.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 11 readers
PUBLISHER: Hard Case Crime (September 20, 2011)
REVIEWER: Daniel Luft
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Max Allan Collins
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Nathan Heller series:

Road to Perdition:

Quarry novels:

Mallory Mystery:

Historical Mysteries:

Eliot Ness Novels:

Ms. Tree Series:

Other:

writing as Patrick Culhane:

with Mickey Spillane:

with Matthew Clemens:

Movies from books:

]]> /2010/quarrys-ex-by-max-allan-collins/feed/ 1