“I am a smart guy. I recycle. Once I found a lost cat and took it to a shelter. Sometimes I make jokes. If there’s anything wrong with your car, I can tell what by listening to it. I like kids, except the ones who are rude to adults and the parents just stand there, smiling. I have a job. I own an apartment. I rarely lie. These are the qualities I keep hearing people are looking for. I can only think there must be something else, something no one mentions, because I have no friends, am estranged from my family, and haven’t dated in this decade. There is a guy in Lab Control who killed a woman with his car, and he gets invited to parties. I don’t understand that.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (AUG 19, 2011)

Special –> interview with MAX BARRY!

Max Barry’s books take a satiric look at humans within the corporate machine. In Syrup, a marketing graduate named Scat devises a new soft drink called Fukk, only to discover that he’s the victim of corporate theft when his idea is stolen by his nefarious roommate, Sneaky Pete. Max takes a futuristic look at the corporatization of the planet in Jennifer Government, and in Company, a business school graduate finds himself unexpectedly and suspiciously promoted when he questions some of the company’s peculiar business practices.

Machine Man, an off-kilter tale of a man who accidentally loses a leg and who then discovers that the enhanced replacement is more efficient than the original, seems to be the natural progression of Max’s grimly hilarious, eccentric, yet uncannily spot-on skewering of corporate culture. The novel is the tale of shy, isolated scientist Charles Neumann who works for a large company called Better Future. Since this is a company that’s in the business of scientific research and development, security is tight:

“I swiped for the elevator and again access to Building A. We were big on swiping. You couldn’t go to a bathroom in Better Future without swiping first. There was once a woman whose card stopped working and she was trapped in a corridor for three hours. It was a busy corridor but nobody was permitted to let her out. Ushering somebody through a security door on your pass was just about the worst thing you could do at Better Future. They would fire you for that. All anyone could do was bring her snacks and fluids until security finished verifying her biometrics.”

Charles Neumann isn’t particularly thrilled with his body and considers himself weak and puny. Then he has an accident that leads to an amputation–a tragedy for some, but to Charles it’s just the beginning of an obsession to build a better body.

The amputation also marks the beginning of a social life for Charles as a number of new people enter his life. First comes an annoyingly bouncy physical therapist, and then there’s prosthetist, Lola Shanks, “with a bunch of artificial legs under each arm like a Hindu goddess.” Lola is tickled to hear that Charles doesn’t care about a “natural look,” and that he’s much more concerned about function. Charles and Lola share an obsession when it comes to the performance of bodily parts, and so Charles selects the relatively high-tech attributes of the “exegesis Archion foot on a computer-controlled adaptive knee. Multiaxis rotation, polycentric swing. … The Olympics banned it because it provided an unfair advantage over regular legs.”

But to Charles, the leg needs improvement, and since he’s a scientist, he embarks on a one way ticket to bodily perfection. In his quest, he’s aided, abetted, and funded by Better Future. Better Future dabbles in pharmacological products, non-lethal weaponry and bioengineering. Suddenly the company, represented by brisk manager Cassandra Cautery, wants to provide Charles with a lab fully staffed by eager young things ready to improve the human body. The quest to improve the body becomes the latest link in the money-making frenzy at Better Future, but are there more sinister motives afoot?

In spite of the fact the book includes self-mutilation, Machine Man is extremely funny. Max Barry successfully captures the insanity of bodily perfection, meshes it with corporate greed and takes it, with hilarious consequences, to its logical conclusion. In this age of cosmetic obsession (yes, botox specials on the lunch hour, and you can finally grow thicker, longer, lashes), organ harvesting, and robotic prosthetics–a technology heralded as “an opportunity” for the multiple limb amputees pouring out of the Iraq war–Max Barry once again writes with vision, humour, and a poignant look at the humans trapped within corporate machine.

(Syrup is currently being made into a film, Jennifer Government has been optioned by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney, and Universal Pictures acquired screen rights to Company.)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 81 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage; Original edition (August 9, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Max Barry
EXTRAS:	Guy Savage interview with Max BarryExcerpt Guy Savage’s additional blog comments…
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Company Jennifer Government

Bibliography:

• Syrup (1999)
• Jennifer Government (2003)
• Company Man (2006)
• Machine Man (2011)
• Lexicon (June 2013)

“He’s been through difficult times before in his trials, his failed marriage, with his children, in his life, but never before had he completely abandoned his essential view of himself as a good man, an honest man, a man of good character.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (JAN 04, 2011)

The arch villain in John Lescroart’s Damage is Roland Curtlee, the pampered son of Cliff and Theresa Curtlee. The Curtlees are a wealthy and politically connected couple who own San Francisco’s number two newspaper, the Courier. Ro has been released from prison after serving nine years, well shy of his original sentence–twenty-five years to life. Although Ro was found guilty of raping and murdering his family’s housekeeper, Dolores Sandoval, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. This leaves the new San Francisco District Attorney, Wes Farrell, in an awkward position. The Curtlees supported Wes’s candidacy and provided him with favorable press coverage. Now they expect payback. They want Ro to be freed on bail and furthermore, they do not want him to be retried.

Damage is a searing indictment of a criminal justice system that is riddled with flaws. The District Attorney is an elected official who is answerable to the public, and he is subject to the same pressures as any other politician. He needs money and influence to win, which robs him of the independence that a DA should have in order to make sound decisions. Long story short, a loathsome and sadistic sociopath goes free on bail, and then the bodies start to pile up. Fifty-seven year old Abe Glitsky, a long-standing Lescroart character, is head of San Francisco’s homicide department, and he is no shrinking violet. He has “a flat, deathless, and menacing stare,” which he uses to good effect. Amanda Jenkins is an ambitious prosecutor who helped put Ro away and now works under Will in the DA’s office. Glitsky, Amanda, and others will knock themselves out trying to find a way to keep Ro from causing further mayhem.

This is one of John Lescroart’s most compelling legal and psychological thrillers in years. Damage has sardonic humor, strong dialogue, lively characters, and a complex but well constructed plot. An exception is a twist that the author throws in at the end. Most alert readers will see it coming. In addition, defense attorney Dismas Hardy, who has been the protagonist of many of Lescroart’s previous novels, makes a few superfluous cameo appearances. It is more than enough to observe the determined Glitsky wrestling with Wes, the mayor, and the chief of police; Farrell vacillating between doing what is right and what is expedient; and Ro and his family using their money and power to manipulate public opinion.

To Lescroart’s credit, he does not provide us with a “feel-good” story. On the contrary, he clearly demonstrates that sometimes, judges, detectives, and prosecutors—as much as they might want to do the right thing—fail in their mission to keep criminals behind bars. Damage is a hard-hitting look at what can happen when immoral individuals do battle with those sworn to uphold the law.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 76 readers
PUBLISHER:	Dutton Adult (January 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	John Lescroart
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Our review of previous books in the series: A Plague of Secrets Betrayal And a review of his stand-alone thriller: The Suspect

Bibliography:

• Sunborn (1981)

Auguste Lupa Series:

• Son of Holmes (1986)
• Rasputin’s Revenge (1987)

Dismas Hardy / Lt. Abe Glitskey Series:

• Dead Irish (1989)
• The Vig (1990
• Hard Evidence (1993)
• The 13th Juror (1994)
• A Certain Justice (1995)
• Guilt (1997)
• The Mercy Rule (1998)
• Nothing But the Truth (1999)
• The Hearing (2001)
• The Oath (2002)
• The First Law (2003)
• The Second Chair (2004)
• The Motive (2005)
• Betrayal (2008)
• A Plague of Secrets (009)
• Damage (2011)
• The Ophelia Cut (May 2013)

Wyatt Hunt / Insp. Devin Juhle:

• The Hunt Club (2006)
• Treasure Hunt (2010)

Gina Roarke / Insp. Devin Juhle:

• The Suspect (January 2007)

Music by the author:

• As the Crow Flies (2003)

“When she lay in bed at night, looking back on the past year, she realized the loss of all that money and the prospect of her children growing up poor had terrified her more than the ghastly scenarios described on the news. And Douglas seemed more afraid of screwing up their finances again and of her walking out on him than he was of terrorists.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill Shtulman  (NOV 24, 2010)

Let me say it straight out: this book is astoundingly GOOD. Page-turning, jaw-dropping, laugh-out-loud, cry-into-your-sleeves, gasp-with-recognition GOOD. It takes on nothing less than the theme of what is wrong with America today and it does it very well.

The action takes place over one Thanksgiving day with lots of flashbacks. There hasn’t been a family like the Olsons since Zoe Heller’s The Believers – with a dollop of the movie Pieces of April blended in. This family DEFINES dysfunction.

Gavin, the father, is a Vietnam vet whose career went wildly off track because of the anti-war sentiment when he returned. His wife Eleanor is a Wellesley graduate who traded in ambitions for an apron and a cookbook. Douglas, their older son, cashed in on the real estate boom – making him more successful than his old man ever was – and is now suffering the effects of the crash. His wife Denise – a one-time poor girl who has become enamored of the money – is less than enchanted with him. Ginny, the academic daughter, is emotionally closed-off and has recently adopted a 7-year-old Indian daughter, Priya,

Add to that two 17-year-olds from the housing projects – Kijo and Spider – who have a personal grudge against Douglas and break-in and enter his home while they’re temporarily away – and you have the makings of a potentially tragic situation.

The author, Jennifer Venderbes, has a clear understanding of the human condition. Her dialogue is crisp, compelling, and pithy. There are little gems throughout this book. For instance: “Men didn’t have heroes, they STUDIED heroes, as though greatness and masculinity could be transmitted through reading, as though knowing the lyrics to every Mick Jagger song…got them one step closer to playing Madison Square Garden. A woman, at most, would dress like the woman she admired…”

There is much about the emasculation of the American warrior (Ginny is writing a paper on it), and how Vietnam was directly responsible for this phenomenon; this emasculation will show up time and time again. There is much about eminent domain and how it plays out in the real world, particularly with race relationships. There is much about how we – as Americans – have lost our sense of values and have substituted it with worship of money and status.

But the book is never preachy or never pedantic. It’s filled with smart conversation, convincing characters, compassion and insights. Portions will make you laugh with acknowledgement, other portions will break your heart. In a way, this is a portrait of the “every family.” You won’t soon forget the Olsons or the world that Jennifer Venderbes has so expertly created.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 46 readers
PUBLISHER:	Scribner; 1 edition (August 3, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jennifer Vanderbes
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another family dinner book: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Bibliography:

• Easter Island (2003)
• Strangers at the Feast (2010)
• The Secret of Raven Point (January 2014)

“What does the gentleman think I will do with his extra baht?’ she asks. “Buy a pretty piece of jewelry? Take myself to dinner? I am property, yes? I am Raleigh’s.” She tosses the money at his feet. “It makes no difference if I am rich or poor. I am owned.”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (MAY 14, 2010)

Unlike much of the world, the Thai Kingdom had avoided inundation by the rising oceans. It had avoided pandemic decimation of crops and population. It had kept the global agri-corporations from accessing and either exploiting or destroying its vast and precious seed banks. It had taken drastic, isolationist steps to preserve itself while most of the rest of the world faltered into massive contraction and potential extinction.

The white shirts of the Environment Ministry enforced the official policy of the Child Queen’s regime, burning fields and villages if genetic blight or plague struck, conducting customs inspections of the expensive goods imported on dirigibles and confiscating and destroying even items supposedly protected by large bribes. And, “mulching” any windups they discovered.

Windups — also called New People — were bio-mechanically engineered creatures from Japan that could pass for human beings except that their everyday movements were jerky — reminding natural people of windup toys. Emiko was one of these windups; she had been imported to Bangkok and was, by constitution, submissive: she had been designed to obey, submit, and please. Her current “master” was neither Japanese nor Thai; he was Raleigh, a Westerner whose “club” was bar, opium den, and bordello among other things. Emiko, who in severely underpopulated Japan would have been valued and accepted, was basically a slave and “genetic trash” here.

Emiko caught the eye of Anderson Lake, a representative of AgriGen, a so-called “calorie company,” i.e., one of the multinationals that had a stranglehold on genetically modified grains and other foodstuffs which were being sold at exorbitant prices to other starving nations. He ostensibly ran the SpringLife factory that produced next-generation kink springs which were commonly used to power items that had formerly run on oil. Lake’s factory employed not only Thais and “yellow card” Chinese refugees but also, on the dangerous manufacturing floor, towering elephantine megodonts with four tusks that sometimes rampaged. Lake’s factory was more of a sham than a real enterprise, however. His true preoccupation was trying to ferret out the top secret storage sites of the Thai seed banks and to do whatever he could to shift high officials away from isolationism and toward free trade. Lake hoped Emiko could become a valuable informant, but he also found himself vulnerable to her trademark silky skin and sexual charms, complicating both of their existences.

Meanwhile, Jaidee, the Tiger of the white shirts, a fervent believer in guarding his country’s borders and long-term survival, misjudged the changing political winds in the Kingdom. Accused by his superiors of overstepping his authority, he was made a scapegoat by those aligning for a crucial showdown regarding the country’s future. The immense pressure on the Kingdom to open itself to “free trade” and to “share” its seed bank with the world might crush Jaidee, not to mention Hock Seng, a scheming yellow card Chinese employee of Anderson Lake’s, and…Emiko.

Emiko had heard rumors of a place to the north where other New People had a community of their own, and she wanted to escape Bangkok and find her own kind. But as the city became a powder keg waiting to be lit, she got more, not less, entangled with Lake, Raleigh, a genetic scientist, and other mercenary or exploitative examples of humanity. She also discovered hidden strengths (and aggressions) within herself she’d never guessed at before. Would Emiko affect the entire course of history in the Thai Kingdom? Or would that be left to others, and would she end up as a bystander, a witness to ecological disaster?

The Windup Girl vividly depicts a dystopian future ushered in by radical climate change and the reckless depletion of our natural resources as well as mismanagement and “generipping” of our crops and other food sources. Paolo Bacigalupi invents a scenario that one hopes is not too prescient but which compellingly grabs the reader and doesn’t let go. This, Bacigalupi’s first novel (he had previously written award-winning short stories), creates characters and plot with assurance that builds immediate and continued reader confidence in the integrity of the unfolding story. His characters are blemished, greedy, ambitious, and ruthless. They often act “badly” but as one might expect in their unforgiving environment. The world in which he enfolds them leaks disease and death but continues to display irrepressible human ingenuity. Bacigalupi’s future is one where science’s interference with nature has led Mankind to the brink. Emiko and the other windups represent one tangent of scientific development that might outlive human beings, and although the idea of articifial “life” surviving us isn’t a new idea, Bacigalupi’s version teams with innovative perspectives about her construction and status. Although Emiko is reasonably accused of having no soul. the author convinces the reader that she possesses an inner life and has a survival instinct at least as insistent as that of any natural person.

This novel is a 2010 Hugo Award nominee — along with five others. Looking at the list through my own bias for science fiction that deals with space travel and alien civilizations in other star systems, I noticed a trend this year with a bit of a jaundiced eye: most of the nominees were about a dystopian future/fantasy earth. I’d hoped for more subject matter breadth. But when I read the publisher’s summary of The Windup Girl, it wasn’t to be passed up. Whether it actually wins the Hugo or not, this novel is visionary, gritty, cautionary and highly intelligent. It definitely ranks in the top echelon of science fiction. Bacigalupi is a great and already polished talent, and I expect many more terrific (but maybe not quite so terrifying) tales from him.

Editor’s note:  The Windup Girl has won the Nebula Award and tied for the Hugo Award. It has also been chosen as Time Magazine’s book of the year.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 233 readers
PUBLISHER:	Night Shade Books (April 20, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Paolo Bacigalupi
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of another 2010 Hugo and Nebula Award Nominee: The City and the City by China Mieville And another 2010 Hugo Nominee: WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer

Bibliography:

• Pump Six and Other Stories (2008)
• The Windup Girl (2009)
• Ship Breakers (2010)
• The Alchemists (2011)
• The Drowned (May 2012)

“Let us use the cold impartial reason of the law to take the place of heated passion and coarse ignorance. Let evidence be substituted for gossip and fact for scandal. Let every weak link in the chain of circumstantial evidence be dissipated. If that happens, this defendant will be vindicated, and every stain placed upon her name…shall be removed.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (APR 16, 2010)

31 Bond Street, by Ellen Horan, is the address of Dr. Harvey Burdell, a smooth-talking dentist with big ambitions. The setting is New York City, seven years before the Civil War. Burdell’s housemistress, thirty-six year old Emma Cunningham, has two daughters, eighteen and fifteen, but her late husband left her nearly destitute. She fervently hopes that Burdell will take her under his wing and solve her financial woes. However, her fortunes take a downward spiral when the dentist is found slaughtered in his own home. Who had the motive, means and opportunity to commit this horrific crime? Reporters speculate that Emma was either a gold digging monster or an innocent victim of circumstance. When the authorities finally arrest her, Emma hires an idealistic and determined defense attorney named Oliver Clinton. His opponent, Abraham Oakey Hall, is an aggressive and politically connected prosecutor.

Horan, who spent many hours in the New York Public Library conducting extensive research, makes the most of a tantalizing mystery that blends fact and fiction. The author captures the frenetic pace of New York City, which in 1857 was tarnished by greed, incompetence, and corruption. People of color, women, and the destitute were marginalized and abused by the arrogant and self-serving upper classes.

Shifting between the past and the present, Horan keeps us engrossed by providing just enough information to pique our curiosity. Her characters are lively and intriguing: Harvey Burdell appears charming and urbane until his veneer of gentility slips away; Emma Cunnigham is a beautiful woman who is on the verge of panic as her resources dwindle; Samuel, Dr. Burdell’s black groom and carriage driver, possesses explosive information that could cost him his life; and the young and inexperienced Henry Clinton takes an enormous risk when he agrees to be Emma’s lawyer. If he wins, it could make his fortune, but if he loses, his career will suffer and, far worse, his client will hang.

This well-constructed novel depicts a society in which the well-to-do reside in luxurious homes while the lower classes exist in squalor. After a servant drops garbage in the street, starving women pounce on the refuse. The “women were huddled, waiting; they rushed forward, wraithlike, their cheeks sallow and bloated, their eyes lusterless, their teeth discolored, and their hair matted with dirt.” Subsequently, they “ate ravenously from the waste.”

31 Bond Street, with its undertones of scandal, avarice, violence, and betrayal, is a fast-paced legal thriller that provides a colorful look at a sordid chapter in a great city’s history. Adding to the book’s considerable appeal are its vintage newspaper clips and illustrations of old New York. This fine debut novel should appeal to readers who appreciate quality historical fiction.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 20 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper; 1 edition (March 30, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AMAZON PAGE:	31 Bond Street
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ellen Horan
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Also set in 1857 New York City: The Spiritualist by Megan Chance And earlier in the same city: Striver’s Row by Kevin Baker

Bibliography:

• 31 Bond Street (March 2010)