A Halloween Treat

Finished Tana French's latest, Faithful Place, last night.  I would have taken longer with it, honestly, and tried to savor it instead of devouring it, but I'm just one of the people who signed up to reserve it long before the book even made it to the library, so I had to return it by next Monday (so, for me, today).  Not that devouring it was hard - as with her last two books, the plot pulled me in, the pacing pulled me along, and the characters and dialogue were pitch-perfect and burrowed easily under my skin.

Also like the last (second) book, Faithful Place took a character from its predecessor as the main character: Cassie Maddox, the partner of the protagonist of In the Woods became the conflicted heroine of The Likeness, and now her "boss" in that book, Frank Mackey, is the very conflicted and very flawed star of Faithful Place. 

It's an interesting way of handling the books; they're not a series, per se, each story stands along, and stands steadily & strongly.  But if you can't - or can't if you're me, anyhow - read one and not read the others...but that is definitely more the writing than the story's.  Which is a great thing as far as evaluating the author's skill!  The second was more tied to the first, but this one, at least, is wholly self-contained.  It's funny because I read In the Woods, and was almost disappointed that the main character was being "abandoned" and replaced in the next book.  But then I read the next book, and fell in love.  And then, of course, was a little sad that she wouldn't be coming back in the third, and was sceptical of how invested I would get in Mackey's story.  And, OF COURSE, French sucked me right in...and I was not at all surprised.

As far as the story, it wasn't all that much of a "mystery," in so far as I suspected the identity of the murderer from wicked early, and a lot of the plot twists were fairly predictable, but I think the book, and the experience of reading it, is watching how the story unfolds, and how the characters navigate those twists.  I was still on the edge of my seat, so to speak, even if I wasn't shocked by anything.

On a total side note, Lauren Willig was at the Borders in Downtown Crossing yesterday, and I went and listened to her read from her latest Pink Carnation book - well, an off-shoot of the series, and got a signed copy of The Mischief of the Mistletow: A Pink Carnation Christmas, which apparently gets some Jane Austen into the mix.  I was wondering when that would happen...  Not going to read it for a while, since I am on my "only scary and/or bloody" books until Halloween kick, but should be fun.

THE Award Winner...and stuff

Howard Jacobson won the 2010 Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question just about when I was finishing it - and I think it was the right call, at least based on the four (four and a couple chapters of a fifth, out of six) short-listed books I read.  Of course, I just loved Room, and I don't know that I had as visceral a reaction to The Finkler Question, but over all I think the latter was a better book (and C and Parrot and Olivier were both great, but not in the same class, in my not-all-that-humble-opinion; and this jury of one is still out on The Long Song).  Jacobson deftly combined humor (both subtle and very, very broad) and melancholy, and "threw in" - deliberately, with nuance and gravitas - politics and the continuing, if often overlooked these days, prejudice against Jews.  It's possible I was more attuned to some of the deeper, darker, icier currents because while I was in D.C. the week/end previous I had had a couple talks with E. about present day prejudices, and violence, against Jews around the world and here in the U.S., but I think Jacobson's writing would have had the same impact regardless.  And it's a credit to his writing that you can think so hard about something so serious and a page later - or even later in the page - be snorting over a character's incomprehensible, but hilarious, obliviousness.  The book is also quite British, but certainly lots of the situations are universal.  All in all, well done, judging panel!
Interesting talk with Jacobson in the New York Times following the win; a much better review than I could give, in the same journal.

Housekeeping: my new plan is to only read "scary" books between now (well, last Friday) and Halloween.  So I finished Phil Rickman's Lamp of the Wicked over the weekend (or was it last week?  I was sick most of last week, thank you plane-ride, so that helped, too): the usual.  I am fond of the characters, the plot is pretty predictable.  But when you're waiting for the CVS-brand Nyquil to kick in, that's a pretty solid combination.  And while it wasn't exactly "scary" it was all about things that go bump in the night, and so forth.
I'm making a sort of exception to the scary books marathon for Tana French's Faithful Place.  Faithful readers of this blog (which I'm pretty sure number zero, but I can't resist the faithful/faithful) will know that I just adore French's books, so when I picked it up from the circulation desk on Friday I would have had a hard time not starting it, in any case, and in this case I have ten days to read it, so I figure it's got dead bodies (okay, one so far, but there might be more), and rats, so that is scary.  Kinda. 
I've dropped P.D. James' The Black Tower: it was hardly gripping me Sunday (although, to be fair, I was drunk/sick and on a plane), but then I finished C, and then read The Finkler Question, and by then it had been almost a week and I had already forgotten all the character's names, so I figure I can just start from scratch some time in the future.  In any case, sure as hell not reading James instead of French!

More award winners and stuff

Sick today, so a little mentall foggy on what I've read recently...
Read another of the Booker books, C by Tom McCarthy; I really liked it, but hard to cartegorize for sure,
or even really to discuss.  I got a little lost with the radio stuff early on - maybe I just wasn't bright enough to understand it, but there was a decent section of book (maybe the second fifth?) that was prettty boggy going.  I got back into it once the scene shifted to the Bavaria, and enjoyed it from there on.  The C theme was a little over-worked, but okay.  Again, the early chapters were a little annoyingly verbose, but by the second half I was in love with the way McCarthy was writing, particularly the descriptions.






I read the latest Stephanie Barron mystery featuring Jane Austen, Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron, while I was on the way to and in D.C. for the Fall Meeting.  Of course, I enjoyed it - Barron has a great character in Jane Austen, Lady-Detective, and I remain impressed by how believeable the books are, but I was not as in love with this installment as I have been with others.  Barron seemed to be straining a bit to maintain the historical "voice" - I mean, seriously, how many times in one book can you use the word "goosecap"??  I get it, contemporary flavor.  But let it go, too...  I don't know.  I still liked it, definitely, but there was this nagging, tiny voice in the back of my head telling me that things could have been better, at least, even if they weren't bad.  Having Jane go head-to-head with her fellow author, Byron, was super fun, though, and it was interesting having this book be set after the anonymous author of Pride and Prejudice is getting famous.  Sad, though, that the Gentleman Rogue was a significant, albeit dead, presence in this story, and I miss him so much!!!

Currently plowing my way through The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson: another one of the Booker contestants, which I have to finish in 24 hours so I can get it back, because someone else requested it.
I started The Lamp of the Wicked, Phil Rickman, longer ago than I can remember, and started The Black Tower, P.D. James, when I was in D.C., but I was too drunk (that includes on the plane home) to really focus on it...which is funny, because it was one of the ones I picked up for less than a song at the Harvard Bookstore one day when I was too drunk/hungover to deal with life...

Parrot and Olivier in America

The latest in my perusal of this year's Booker nominees, this novel by the prolific author Peter Carey left me a little disappointed.  Based more than loosely on Tocqueville's adventures in America, the book is told, in alternating chapters, in the voices of a young-ish French nobleman packed off to safety in America following the July Revolution and his older, English servant - who has also been sent along to spy on him.  It's possible this book just suffered by comparison, since I had just finished the phenomenal Room when I started Parrot and Olivier in America, but for whatever reason, the beginning was sloooooow going, particularly the chapters recounting Olivier's youth and his time in Paris prior to departing on a trumped-up tour of American penal institutions. 

The chapters told from Parrot's point of view were much more engaging, right from the beginning.  I'm sure part of this is because the former's voice was really rather annoying - indirect, inane, and self-absorbed.  This was clearly deliberate on Carey's part, and did a good job of establishing Olivier as a character, but I didn't like him, and I didn't find him funny or interesting enough to outweigh disliking his character.  Parrot has a more straightforward and broadly comic voice that I dealt with better, and the Dickensian adventures that shape his cynical adult personality are fun to watch unfold.

Olivier becomes funnier and more likeable towards the end (not coincidentally when his world starts cracking up a little), and downright useful in the closing passages, as Carey uses him to make the points we've been heading towards the whole way through.  The book requires quite a lot of willing suspension of disbelief, but it works (reminded me of Murder on the Orient Express - where can all these people come together but America?!), and I really enjoyed Carey's descriptive writing.

So, overall definitely positive, I guess (although it really took me 3/4 of the book to get there), but no Room, if we're ranking the nominees.

When I get annoyed with bad writing...

...my comments get briefer and snarkier.  To wit:

This one's for you, C...

Reader Reports

Jennifer Nickerson
September, 2010

[sep paragraphs refer to sep pieces]

A grotesque but compelling story of a woman anchored to her bed by a 195 lb. tumor, and what she is compelled to do when her husband and caretaker goes missing one night; this could have been – should have been – exploitative and voyeuristic, but it ended up being really rather sweet and uplifting. Needs some copy-editing, but the story is sound.

Funny, in its own grotesque way – there is an actual bearded lady. I’m honestly not sure if I “got” everything the author was aiming for (I think there might have been a layer of meaning I couldn’t quite reach), but the story is sweet, and relatable, and definitely memorable.

Nice exploration of the few minutes it takes a man to shoot some wild dogs on his property, and the lifetime of experiences that it takes to make up the way he feels in doing it.

I like the way it plays around with (dances around, maybe?) a vague Southern gothic sense (the genteel man-eaters – figurative, if not literal – of the title) but the ending bombs out quietly. I’m not sure if I either completely didn’t understand it, or understood it and just wasn’t impressed, but I don’t know if the necessary revisions would be minor enough to get past the author’s ego. Stronger in the first part of the story, then gradually slips in quality towards the end – the author starts spelling out things that don’t need to be (and shouldn’t be) spelled out.

Hits you over the head with “atmosphere” (saloon setting, saloon stock characters, saloon dialogue), but the story is interesting and engaging,.

Pretty little story about an adult woman returning to ballet; sensual, with the swish of a silken skirt and the blood and sweat dripping from toe shoes and leotards. Pretty and gritty might be a better description – the death of a dream is in the mix, too, along with all those fluids.

Quietly significant story of a new marriage tested by literally crippling disease and the struggle to build and maintain a family. Serious, but with flashes of humor, and sympathetic throughout.

Sad but pretty tale of the toll an infant’s death takes on a family.

Mildly funny with flashes of something deeper, but would need extensive pruning.

About ¼ good, ¾ pointless. The story of an wife at an excruciatingly uncomfortable business dinner could have been interesting, at least funny, and there were moments, but the boorish chauvinist character that could have been quickly and easily drawn was instead a hulking presence in nearly every other line, over-drawn well into the realm of caricature, although some of that was clearly intentional (I hope), meant to make a point.

Adventures in gentrification – nothing terribly exciting and new, but what is there is well-done. The main character is decently drawn, with believable and relatable reactions to the circumstances and events of the story.

The younger version of the characters from “I Miss My Friends,” more or less. We’ve seen it before, but the writing is decent. Something else from this author might be better.

Not entirely sure where to rank this: I liked the story (not great, but good more or less engaging) but it seemed really pretty derivative of Audrey Niffenegger’s “Her Fearful Symmetry” – the basic idea of a spirit floating around, observing her recently-deceased corpse, for sure, but also something about the tone and style. I can’t quite pin it down, but it was an immediate response, and one that makes me uncomfortable about recommending this piece too much. Maybe if the reincarnation angle were played up more it would feel different.

Decent premise and setting, but very predictable.

I can’t speak to its accuracy, but the generals are kind of funny, and ring true for a history graduate degree, certainly. The content isn’t as good as the way it’s written.

Needs to be taken apart in chunks and then pieces back together in a different order, and then it might be good.

Somewhat funny story about the desperation of suburban life – and when that desperation leads to hit men. Nothing special, but cute. Terribly boring, though; needs some clear-cutting.

Mildly amusing story about traveling by plane with babies in two. Funny, but forgettable. Semi-universal, in so far as many of us have been there or seen it, but no insights of humor that make the familiarity anything more than just that.

Utterly predictable, which might not necessarily be a bad thing, but in this case it’s also about ¾ too long, even if the grinding repetitiveness is meant to be a style.

Could have been an interesting story, but over (and none too carefully) written. Would require massive editing, and feels more like a prospective screenplay than an essay.

Boring story about two old men and their views on life, love, and literary works, that tries to hard to be something more than it is.

It’s helpful we have male authors to teach us things like all women who get divorced are castrating bitches who will continue to insist their ex-husbands are violent alcoholics even after the latter start turning their lives around. Not terrible, I guess.

Brief episode in the life of a divorcing man living on his run-down boat who learns to care because of a bird – I guess? Boring.

Trying too hard, and the “surprise” ending isn’t – but not terribly written, the author might have some promise, even if the piece doesn’t.

Should have been funny, or maybe interesting, but just dies a slow, quiet death.

Familiar and boring for the most part.

It’s hard to focus on the plot since the name of a primary character is alternately “Ray” and “Roy” throughout the nineteen pages of text. A less charitable inclined person might ask why we should bother reading the author’s story for content, since he so obviously didn’t bother to read it for typos.

Brings up lots of questions, like “is there a point in writing a story that makes pointed social commentary that has frequently been made before?” and “do characters have to have more than one dimension?”

Suggests the same questions as “[above]” but it takes on bigger issues and is even more obvious.

Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Ford Madox Ford all hanging out in France. This is a squashed fly on the wall perspective – we learn nothing and feel like we need to go find a tissue to clean up the mess.

Goes nowhere except to some strange literary graveyard where adverbs and adjectives go to die, piled up like elephant bones in sad heaps. Over-worked and over-written, with some weird affectation of writing “an” for “and” in lines of dialogue.

Sections are introduced by song quotes.

This is a introductory chapter of a non-fiction book on religion. And a bad one, at that.