Dept. of Speculation

I sped through Jenny Offill's slender Dept. of Speculation quickly - I wish it had lasted longer, but it's 177 pages felt like a little treasure - one I'll surely return to many times.

The book felt utterly fresh and new, despite the timelessness of the story, the trajectory of youth, dating, marriage, children, near-divorce, etc.  Offill is very funny ("I found a book called Thriving Not Surviving in a box on the street. I stood there, flipping through it, unwilling to commit.") and insightful ("The undergrads get the suicide jokes, but the ones about divorce go right over their heads."). She does some really interesting things with POV - the book moves from first person to first person plural, then to third and then back to first person plural again (I think there might be a bit of second in there too).  Somehow she makes all these transitions very smooth - you might not even notice if you're not a POV Geek like I am.

Although Offill works through a number of interesting themes, one of the big ones that stuck out for me was the simple fact that maturity leads to greater understanding - sometimes it's devastating and sometimes it gives you the strength to make it through heartache.

I highly recommend this terrific little book - it was a real joy to read.

Parable of the Sower

I've been wanting to read more Octavia Butler ever since I picked up Fledgling in Seattle a few years ago.  For book club I recommended Parable of the Sower and everyone really loved it.  I didn't know much about it, except that it's apocalyptic and Butler is awesome so I didn't really care.  It was written in 1993 but takes place in 2024 after a series of disasters both environmental and medical.  The United States still exists, but there are very few working public services and basic necessities are very expensive.  Lauren, 18, lives on a compound with her family and some other families outside LA, but they are constantly under attack from people outside the walls.

Lauren's dad is a preacher, but she's been formulating her own religion and writing down how her belief system works.  She calls it Earthseed.  Apparently Butler meant to write a number of Earthseed books but died after the second one.  (Here's an interview with Butler on the subject.)  To tell the truth, the bits re: the religion were a bit much for my tastes.  Every chapter started with a poem or something from the book of Earthseed or whatever and halfway through I quit reading them.  They were so... earnest.

Eventually Lauren's compound is attacked and almost everyone is killed, so Lauren starts walking north (up the 101!) where things are rumored to be better.  Along the way she meets people and invited them to join her if they wish and tells them about her made-up religion and doesn't allow anyone to make fun of it.  Because it's reasonable and Lauren really has her shit together, many people are willing to join her.

Despite being so young, Lauren studied survivalism and is very savvy about negotiating the road and the journey.  You see her building a new community as she walks up the freeway - it's multicultural, diverse, spiritual and strong.

Oh yeah, Lauren is a "sharer", which means she can feel other people's emotions and pain.  This is largely a disadvantage in the dystopian future because if someone gets knocked in the head and she sees it, she feels like she's been clubbed in the head too.  It also makes her really enjoy sex because she feels her own pleasure and the pleasure of her partner.  Empowering sex was a big theme in Fledgling too.  Butler really had her finger on the pulse of popular fiction but brings such an intellectual spin to the stories.

If you have a Butler book to recommend, please let me know!

Caleb's Crossing

I listened to an audiobook of Geraldine Brooks's Caleb's Crossing (2011).  Listening to a book is so different than reading one that I would hesitate to say that I "read it".  I'm a big fan of Brooks since March, which is absolutely brilliant.  I actually wasn't crazy about the reader, Jennifer Ehle.  She's an actress and really put her heart into reading this, but it made for slow going and many time I was like, Ugh, I should just read this with my EYES because it was taking so long.  That's impatience for ya.

Like a dummy, I didn't realize that Caleb's Crossing is based on a true story until the moment I finished it.  I guess I should have realized, it being Brooks.  It's about a young girl who lives on an island - Martha's Vineyard, in the early 17th century.  Martha's Vineyard had a large native american population back then.  Some white settlers came and mostly had a harmonious relationship with them, although a lot of colonization was going on. Bethia Mayfield befriends a Wampanoag boy about her age, Caleb.  He is eventually educated by her father, who is teaching her brother too.  He stopped teaching her around age 9 because girls don't need no book learnin', but she managed to educate herself by cleaning nearby the lessons.

Imagined portrait of Caleb via

Bethia is fictional (I think?) but Caleb is based on an actual historical figure, Caleb Cheeshateaumuck, who is eventually accepted into Harvard College and the first Native American to graduate there.  Bethia allows herself to be indentured in Cambridge to support her horrible brother because she thinks  it's God's will.  Despite the fact that she is the greater scholar, her brother is acknowledged as her mental and personal superior, and he makes life fairly miserable for her.  She and her friend Caleb are socially inferior, being, respectively, a woman and a "savage" - both subject to the whims of the white, male population.  Bethany is an interesting character because she's very motivated to learn as much as she can, and she's frustrated by her place in society but she's also very loyal to the confines of her Puritan religion and, as such, does not rock the boat too much.  She accepts a certain amount of futility.

Anne Bradstreet is a oblique character in the book - she's the aunt of a student in Cambridge and Bethia is familiar with her work.  I love some of Bradstreet's poetry, and even almost got a line tattooed on my arm before I wimped out.  Turns out Bradstreet is a bit of a problematic figure, in terms of her feminism or not - being very much a product of her time, that's certainly understandable.  And that's why it's practically impossible to get a tattoo.

Ultimately I wish I'd read Caleb's Crossing with my eyes, parts really dragged for me but I think that was a matter of the audio.   As usual, Brooks's language is poetic and beautiful. She utilized archaic terms in Bethia's journal-like entries which really allowed me to feel immersed in this time period I'm not very familiar with.

The Wallcreeper

Finally got around to reading The Wallcreeper, which showed up on a bunch of Best of 2014 lists.  It's by Nell Zink - a bit of a dark horse, ex-patriot living in Europe for the past 10 years.  Legend has it that she met Jonathan Franzen through some mutual bird-watching infatuation and he encouraged her to write this book.

It is small, 5"x7" and less than 200 pages.  I loved the feel of this little book in my hands - for some reason it gave me great pleasure, just the slightly difference size and that odd, odd cover art.  I stared at the book for some time before I cracked it open, enjoying the possibility of reading a great book.

Zink's voice is brilliant and hilarious - she zips around, handily tying together the seemingly disparate elements of marriage, sex, bird-watching, environmental activism and European travel.  The main character is Tiffany, married to Stephen, an ex-DJ, bird-watcher, and semi-scientist upon whom she financially depends.  Stephen says that birds' lives are all about "breeding and feeding" and Tiffany jokes that that's all she does too.  Tiffany works hard to cultivate the idea that she cannot or should not work.  "Women are ubiquitous, invasive - the same subspecies from the Palearctic to Oceania. Trash birds." However, she seems to gradually become as interested in birds as her husband, and in fact, they bring home a bird, called a wallcreeper, which they keep in their apartment until it begins to molt.  She also eventually becomes quite devoted to Stephen's environmental activism, taking it upon herself to commit an act of eco-terrorism.

a wallcreeper

Tiffany is pretty promiscuous and there is a LOT of sex in the book.  It's very funny and a bit naughty.  A wonderful review in the NY Times claims that the sex scenes are "so raunchy and obscene" there's nothing safe to quote.  I'm not sure that's true, but as I flip through the book, I can't find a good example.  (I like to follow the boss/mother-in-law rule on my blog.  Would it be ok if either of them read this?)

There are a few interviews with Zink online which show her to be a witty smartass, two very fine qualities. In one, she says, "I wanted to communicate vital topics in nature conservation to men and women in their thirties, the leaders of tomorrow, by wrapping them up in sophisticated language and conflicted sex. It worked for the first few pages. After that I had some personal setbacks and continued it as a tortured autobiography in impenetrable code."  I believe it is that reference toward autobiography that has led at least one critic to announce the advent of a new genre: the Autofiction (beware that link, there's a major spoiler).  That critic also ceremoniously declares the death of the Postmodern fiction, no less, which I find insanely premature. What he's calling Autofiction, or fiction greatly influenced by the author's own experience, has, of course, been written throughout the history of the novel, particularly if you believe, as I mostly do, that every piece of art is a self-portrait.  In the post-modern age, that is a very unpopular opinion, and most artists, especially authors of books, will go to great lengths to impress upon you that what they have written is purely fictional.  I mean, all I'm saying is that it's impossible to separate that thing which is you from work you have created.  I think there's too great an instinct to belittle work which is influenced by the author's experience, which I see as mostly a way to belittle work created by women (which is to say, that work created by men is generally seen as universal and work created by women is perceived as more personal).  I honestly hope that we're finally entering a post-James Frey world where it isn't considered non grata to be actually impacted by personal experience.

self-portrait???

Anyway, if you like this sort of categorizing and getting into literature theory and whatnot (who doesn't? Amirite?) The Wallcreeper could be described as a Künstlerroman, although the Künst doesn't come into play until like, the last two pages.

Zink has a new book coming out in 2015 called Mislaid.  It also appears to feature "breeding" as a major theme, which generally I'm not a big fan of.  Too many authors don't know what to do with women characters except get them pregnant.  But, I think what Zink is doing, at least I hope, is looking deeper into this ability and expectation of producing offspring and finding a way to broaden the possibilities of creative output of women.  In any event, she's brilliant, and I look forward to reading more of her work.

My best reads of 2014

I have quite a few Top Five book lists in Newcity's "Best of" edition - Top 5 books published in
2014, top 5 books by Chicago writers, top 5 mysteries, YA books, short story collections and apocalyptic novels.  I love lists.  Also, how awesome is that cover?  It's by Chicago artist Jay Ryan - I bought one of the screen prints, it's so awesome.

My top 5 of 2014 were:
All the Birds, Singing, Evie Wyld 
Be Safe, I Love You, Cara Hoffman 
Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? Dave Eggers 
Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart 
The Secret Place, Tana French 

But there were a few more that weren't written in 2014 that I'd like to point out.  I read some fantastic stuff this year and am unfortunately woefully behind on writing about absolutely every book I read, which I regret.  (Note to self: in 2015, review ALL books and also uhm, write own book.) For me, it's the best way to remember what I've read and organize my thoughts.  All the links below go to my own reviews.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler, just blew my mind this year.  I recommended it to everyone I know and I couldn't stop thinking about it.  Probably my all time favorite read of 2014.

All the Birds, Singing.  Worth repeating.  Love, love, LOVED this book.

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - yes! Yes! Yes!

Also, Redeployment, by Phil Klay, made a HUGE impact on me.

I really enjoyed both of JK Rowling's new mystery books under her nom de plume, Robert Gilbraith.
Finally, one of my favorite authors, Dara Horn, has a wonderful little "Kindle Single" on amazon.com called The Rescuer that I would consider a Must Read.  AND, it only costs 2 bucks.

I regret that I never got around to these books:
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
All the Light We Cannot See by By Anthony Doerr
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Death Comes to Pemberley

My Like/Hate relationship with PD James continues - I just can't seem to quit her, no matter how many stinkers I read.  I guess that's how committed I am to British Lady Mystery Writers.  So, how could I resist Death Comes to Pemberley, a story about a murder at Mr. Darcy's estate, post-Pride and Prejudice?  Also, James died at the age of 94 a few months ago so I guess I was feeling nostalgic.

Death Comes to Pemberley starts out great, with lots of hilarious little jokes about Pride and Prejudice like, "If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?"  She's obviously very well versed in Austen and easily captures the flow of her language and tone.  It's also very obviously an homage to an artist she loves well - surely the best form of flattery she could offer to connect herself to this other great British Lady Novelist - despite falling pretty flat.  Anyway, that cad, Wickham, who ran off with Lizzie's sister, whatsherface, is driving up to Pemberley in order to take the sister to a ball at the Darcy's, unannounced, because sister and Wickham are not welcome at Pemberley because they're assholes.  A friend of Wickham's is in the carriage and he leaps out and runs into the woods for some reason and is killed.  Everyone thinks Wickham did it except for Darcy and company.  There's also a bunch of business re: a ghost that supposedly wanders around the woods.

One of the things this novel really lacks is a detective.  At first I thought Lizzie would fill the role, but no one really does, and it sort of becomes a 19th century courtroom drama.  It has the kind of ending where the killer is literally someone you haven't met "in person" throughout the whole book, which I do not like.  There's also a BBC two part miniseries that was on TV recently, patiently waiting in my DVR queue for me to finish the book - it is also largely unwatchable, despite featuring dreamy Matthew Rhys (from The Americans) and Anna Maxwell Martin (from The Bletchley Circle) as Darcy and Elizabeth, and Clara Oswald (Dr. Who) as good old whatshername.  There's hardly any kissing.

There are dozens of Pride and Prejudice sequels.  I've read only Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and, of course Bridget Jones, and Austenland.  I've heard good things about Longbourn, which takes place "downstairs", with the servants as main characters.  Let me know if you have one to recommend!

Fever

I really thought Fever was going to blow up this summer, but while it seems to have a respectful following online, I haven't heard that much buzz about it in real life.  It's by Megan Abbott, of Dare Me, which also gets great reviews - I haven't read it yet.  Anyway, I thought it was fantastic, and while I think it's doing well, it's obviously not reaching like, Hunger Games proportions.

Speaking of, I just saw Mockingjay Pt 1 last night and it was, as my friend duly noted, "the Empire Strikes Back of the series" This morning I looked up what comes after a trilogy and apparently it's a ... tetrology?  I think we'd all better learn that word as Hollywood continues to capitalize on trilogies that could stretch out in a movie.  Also, in a further digression about words that sound suspicious, I took this test at work called a "strength finder" and one of my "strengths" is "Intellection".  Which I looked up immediately because I thought it was made up.  It means an exercise of the intellect.  In other words, I think I'm smart, and I may or may not be.  Also useful.

Anyway.  Fever (btw, that COVER, amirite?):  It's actually been ages since I read it, but here's what I remember:  some girls at this school are having these seizures - it starts with one girl, and then slowly spreads.  And the community and the parents get caught up in this idea that there's some environmental or, you guessed it, vaccination factor that's effecting the girls. But the lead character, Deenie, has a sinking feeling it has to do with having sex.  The repercussions of sex weigh heavily throughout the book, and in fact it begins with this conversation between girls (that sounds like it's about sex but actually isn't, but: clever, right?):

      "The first time, you can't believe how much it hurts."Deenie's legs were shaking, but she tries to hide it, pushing her knees together, her hand hot on her thigh.    Six other girls are waiting. A few have done it before, but most are like Deenie.    "I heard you might want to throw up even," one says. "I knew a girl who passed out. They had to stop in the middle."   "It just kind of burns," says another. "You're sore for a few days. I heard by the third time, you don't even feel it."

Fever is something of a mystery, and as you read, you might suspect that the unsolved seizures are related to the very mystery of girls - which, for me, both hit home and was also unacceptable.  Abbott's story is at once a fairy tale and yet 100% possible.  She really ingeniously taps into the sometimes seemingly inexplicable behaviors of girls and their parents - how both might be searching for answers in an irrational world.

Like the best YA, Fever spans genres, raises questions for all ages and would be appealing to a wide audience.  Like Tana French's latest, Secret Place, it's an intriguing and accurate representation of the lives of teenage girls.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Oh, what a great book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is!  If you thought fun vampire books were SO OVER, think again!

I read some reviews when this book came out over the summer that said how great it was, but I was like, "Vampires? Nothankyou."  But, this is no Twilight, and it's no Stackhouse either.  In Holly Black's YA novel, vampires have been discovered in the human world and relegated to "Coldtowns" - ghetto-ized parts of big cities where vampires and humans are kept behind walls - a self-sustaining and self-governed area that sustains itself on webcasts and black markets.  They're dangerous and perceived as glamourous - some humans want to go there and become immortals, but are more likely to end up dead.

Tana wakes up the morning after a "Sundown party" in which all of her friends have been killed and her ex-boyfriend is "cold" - he's been bitten by a vampire and will turn into a vampire himself if he drinks human blood.  Tana saves her ex-boyfriend and a mysterious vampire named Gavriel.  Gavriel's an old vampire, and he falls in love with Tana because she saves him - the first person to ever help him.  He's dangerous and gorgeous and old-fashioned, hence, he's smokin' hot and irresistible to Tana, but, thank god there's more to their relationship than mere attraction (ahem Edward and Bella!) Black also inserts a little covert Marxism into her story.  Tana reflects on "a bunch of professors talking about monsters" on tv, "The monster is bigger than human. It represents abundance - overabundance, the white-haired man had said, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. It has lots of eyes, extra arms, too many teeth. Everything about it is to many and too much."  I happened across this great article in the NY Times while reading the book: Dreamboat Vampires and Zombie Capitalists that helped me understand Black's not just shitting around here, I suspect she could talk some deep theory with the best.

But, whether you love Lacan or just a good old fashioned teen romance (with vampires!), this book doesn't disappoint. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a terrific read that's full of excitement, surprises and steamy kissing.

Redeployment

Redeployment, by Phil Klay, was shortlisted for the 2014 National Book Award - they haven't announced the winners yet.  After reading a glowing review, I grabbed a copy from the library and, I have to tell you, it was one of the most stunning books I've read this year.

It's a group of short stories about the war in Iraq, with each story told from the perspective different figures in the military.  Klay was a Marine (who earned an MFA from Hunter College after his service) and brings a sense of immediacy to each story making the conflict all the more real for someone like me, for whom the war is really just sort of an abstract reality.  Reading books like Redeployment and the breathtaking Be Safe, I Love You, by Cara Hoffman, provide a way for me to make the war more real and better understand the daily reality for soldiers.  It was interesting, having read those two books this year, the dramatic difference between gender roles presented in each author's book.  Hoffman's story is about a female veteran with PTSD - her story is fairly universal, however she certainly had a unique story as a woman at war.  Klay's book is definitely male-focused.  There are very few instances of women characters in his stories, and their appearances are full of meaning.  Treated mostly by his male characters as mere concepts or receptacle, Klay's integration of women comes as a shock - helping the reader realize what a male-dominated arena most soldiers live in.  In one story, for example, a woman makes a short appearance, first smelled by the narrator.

That sort of thing would normally infuriate me if it wasn't so obvious that Klay's treatment of women in his stories was so thoughtful and specific.  In "Psychological Operations", a returned soldier in college wants to unload his stories on a female classmate.  A she struggles to avoid being his emotional receptacle, he pointedly ignores her, undeterred in his new mission of relief.  Finally she gives in and listens, as if choosing to paying the price for his service - allowing herself to be the vessel he's looking for.

For me, one of the more powerful stories was "Frago", a story full of military lingo and acronyms that I could barely understand.  It further exemplified how soldiers lives are so different from civilians - so much that they have their own language.  It must be so difficult for a soldier to simply talk to someone without a military background.  "I'm across from PFC Dyer, and he's not eating much. I'm next to some Navy O4 from the BOS, and he's chowing down. when he sees we aren't exactly FOBbits, he starts talking.  I don't tell him what we're here for, I just say a little about our COP and how it's good to eat something that's not an MRE or the Iraqis' red shit and rice."

I feel fairly confident that Redeployment will earn a spot next to The Things They Carried and Catch 22 in the annals of war literature.  It will be exciting to see what Klay writes next - I would love to see a long-form novel from him.

Here's a last quote from the book which I think beautifully summarizes this incredible group of short stories:

He would have gathered all the personal effects and prepared the body for transport. Then it would have gone by air to TQ. And as it was unloaded off the bird, the Marines would have stood silent and still, just as we had in Fallujah. And they would have put it on a C-130 to Kuwait. And they would have stood silent and still in Kuwait. And they would have stood silent and still in Germany, and silent and still at Dover Air Force Base. Everywhere it went, Marines and sailors and soldiers and airmen would have stood at attention as it traveled to the family of the fallen, where the silence, the stillness, would end.

Belzhar

Review on Newcity

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Joshua Ferris impressed everyone with his debut novel Then We Came to The End - an astonishing book told in first person plural about a group of people that work in an office in Chicago.  I LOVED it.  His second book, I must admit, I forgot I read until I found, ahem, my own review. Looks like I liked it...

I just finished To Rise Again at a Decent Hour and I have mixed feelings.  While I thought the writing was superb and exciting and innovative, I must admit I skipped many a page in the second half because the plot moved so slowly.  There used to be a time in my life where beautiful prose was really all I was looking for, but, I have to say I'm pretty plot-motivated these days.  This book actually reminded me a LOT (in tone) of David Foster Wallace and John Kennedy Toole (Confederacy of Dunces) but not in a good way.... Those two writers initially blew me off my feet but also I quickly tired of them after about 50 pages.  It's like their superlative, effusive prose can't sustain a novel.  With each of these three writers I always start out like, "This is the greatest thing I've ever read!" and 50 pages later, I'm like, "Jesus Christ, give it a fucking rest!"  Causing me to look deep inside myself:  Can I not "handle" a massive prose machine or is it really too much?

The main character in To Rise Again is a fairly successful dentist in Manhattan, Paul O'Rourke.  He's from a poor family in the Midwest - in fact, his father was mentally ill and committed suicide - details of which eek out slowly in unexpected moments.  He has two ex-girlfriends that he's kind of fixated on - one was a Catholic girl from college and another is his Jewish dental hygienist, Connie.  What he loved perhaps the most about each girl was her extended family, but, as an atheist, he was never really able to allow himself to be part of their clan - he felt separated from them as if by an impenetrable barrier, and often put his foot in his mouth when trying to ingratiate himself.  I should mention that the book is really hilarious, and make me laugh out loud a lot.  He's just such an idiot.

Poet are a ponderous bunch. (Connie's a poet.) They're hypocrites, too. They'd never step foot in a church in America, but fly them to Europe and they rush from tarmac to transept as if the real God, the God of Dante and chiaroscuro, of flying buttresses and Bach, had been awaiting their arrival for centuries.  What thrall, what sabbath longing, will overcome a poet in the churches of Europe. And Connie was Jewish!

Anyway, eventually what happens is someone claims that Paul is part of this long line of peoples that have been persecuted since time immemorial and the book becomes this sort of mediation on how a person might practice or be a part of a religion without belief and whether and how couples can or should share the same belief system.  It's ambitious and messy but really admirable.  I love that he tackled this huge theme, even though it got pretty slippery.  I'm not the only one - it was short-listed for the Man Booker this year and was a National Book Award Finalist.

Secret Place

Review on Newcity!

The Good Girl

Review on Newcity!

Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

You all know I'm a big Dave Eggers fan, so you know I loved Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?  I thought he really brilliantly captured this sort of zeitgeist, as he often does, of our time - particularly regarding responsibility of the person and the state.  Told entirely in dialogue, but without traditional quotation marks or indicators of who is speaking, a young man speaks to these people that he has kidnapped and is holding in a former military base on the California coast.

At first it's kind of amusing - he has kidnapped an astronaut, and he asks him a series of questions about why the space program doesn't go to the moon anymore and how it's disappointed him in terms of giving him and basically all of humanity something to be inspired and motivated by.  And then when he kidnaps another person, that's pretty funny too.  Without giving away too much of the story, which is quite short and better experienced without knowing too much of the story, what he's trying to do is find out some answers and come to terms with this thing that happened in his life.  What's interesting, however, is the more he seems to blame various agencies for this sort of terrible thing that happened, the more you realize he's completely unwilling to take any responsibility for himself and his own actions.  So, just as you're coming around to the side of this obviously troubled young man, the pendulum swings and changes your mind.  Then it swings again.

- So when I got back I tried to talk some sense into anyone who thought going into some country on the other end of the world to exert our will would be a cute idea, and the main problem with a cute idea like that is that these plans are carried out by groups of nineteen-year-olds who can't tie their shoes and who think it's great fun to run around goofing with grenades poorly secured to their uniforms. Wars put young men  in close proximity to grenades and guns and a hundred other things they will find a way to fuck up. These days men in war get themselves killed far more often than they get killed by someone else.

For me, eventually, the young man and his kidnap-ees become less and less character and more symbols of what they represent - which I thought was rather elegant.  I'm not sure if others will have experienced it the same way so I'd be curious what you think if you've read the book - please comment!   The title really slays me too because it's a bit mysterious - like, is the young man asking this question, or are these the questions that arise from the book, which is not particularly about religion in any way but arguably about absent fathers.  So it makes me think... Dave Eggers, Is It About Absent Fathers? And the Title, How Important Is It?  I Have to Think Pretty Important, Right?  But the only place I didn't think the book worked in general was when the dialogue was a bit more Socratic and less natural - just a few times I felt like I was being held too tightly by the hand, despite the fact that I think I have quite similar political leanings as Eggers.  In any event, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? is yet another astonishing book by my literary hero and I encourage you to check it out!

Basic Eight

Most people know Daniel Handler as Lemony Snicket but his non-Lemony books are pretty great.  I would suggest Watch Your Mouth to just about anybody (less than 50).  Adverbs?  Great.  Basic Eight (2012) has been on my shelves for a while and I finally got around to reading it this year.  It's a dark YA novel about a young woman who is in prison for murder.  She's responding to all this press and a book that's been written about her and she's trying to set the record straight.

It's quite funny and really spot on - Handler writes teenagers, and women, very well.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that The Basic Eight (1999) is one of the first YA novels to come in with a twist.  Seems like every other book has a twist these days.  I just finished Meg Wolitzer's YA novel, and guess what it's got:  a twist.  Unscientifically, I'd say your top YA novels are going to have either: Vampires, Dystopia, or a wicked Twist.  (Idea for YA novel:  A dystopian world populated with vampires with a twist at the end.  Guaranteed blockbuster.)

Handler breaks up the story in interesting ways, like, he ends chapters as if they're part of a school lesson, with vocabulary lists and questions.  But the questions are like, "4. You have undoubtedly seen photographs of Flannery Culp in newspapers and magazines.  Is she fat? Be honest."  Also there are faux excerpts from TMZ-ish media about Flannery which are quite funny.

Handler can write a wicked sex scene (see Watch your Mouth) and he also manages to write about sex with teenagers that is neither creepy nor milquetoast, somehow (see Why We Broke Up).

Somehow Adam and I were talking about something: theater, I think. The line between audience and actor. I felt something warm on my neck, thrilling me. I kept talking about whether Halloween was a form of theater, if parties were a form of theater, if Adam kissing me meant I should get up and leave but it felt so nice, kissing me over and over on the same spot on my neck. It burned delicious like being branded, but as he ran his hand down my dress it turned out I wasn't such a cow at all. That's what turned me on, as much as him kissing me: feeling my own body, thin and gorgeous against him like a celebrity. Thin, even.  

Garnethill

Garnethill is the first in a series by Scottish writer Denise Mina - and I think her first book.  It's about this woman, Maureen, who wakes up and finds her therapist/boyfriend dead in her living room.  Then she ends up solving the case because the police think she did it.

The interesting thing is that Maureen was formerly quite mentally ill/disturbed.  She was abused as a child and she was institutionalized for a while.  She's mostly totally in control of her faculties now, but she still sees a therapist (or did, until he died) regularly.  She feels this sort of tenuous relationship to her own sanity, particularly when this murder happens.  The way people react to her varies depending on their relationship and whether they knew her during her psychotic period.  I really liked the bits with her family, who are mostly terrible people -there aren't many of those moments and a lot of mystery hangs over that, which I assume is explored in the other books in the series.

Too bad for poor Maureen that there are more books in the series, I guess more people get murdered around her?

It's a quite good first novel and first mystery - it won the John Creasey Memorial Award for Best First Crime Novel award in 1998 when it came out.

Dead Yellow Women

I picked up this Dashiell Hammett book called Dead Yellow Women, despite it's terrible title because it had a map of San Francisco on the back and I was feeling a bit homesick.  Also I was hoping the title was ironic or something?  It's not, it's just straight up racist.  I hate reading racist stuff, particularly from writers I like.  It's like watching an old movie you liked as a kid and realizing it's full of casual racism.  Like, Oh great, that Asian kid from Goonies is just a terrible, terrible stereotype and now I hate myself because I didn't notice it before.

I wouldn't recommend it - it's a convoluted mystery that mostly takes place in San Francisco's Chinatown and is really, really dated.

Still Midnight

In the never-ending search for my next favorite United Kingdom Lady Mystery Writer I heard about one Denise Mina who's written quite a lot of books - jackpot! I thought... but, after reading two of her stories I'm not sure she's The One for me, but probably good in a pinch.

Still Midnight is about a couple of bumbling criminals who accidentally kidnap the wrong person and make a fine mess of things.  It takes place in Glasgow (Mina is Scottish) and the kidnapped family are originally Ugandan.  There are some interesting themes re: immigration and profiling and people of color that she tackles.

Ugh, I borrowed this from the library and my loan expired and thus I lost all my notes.  I hate that.  The main detective, as I remember, is a woman who gets passed over all the time.  She's a little rough around the edges (for good reason) and has to play it real cool every time she uncovers something so her co-workers don't steal all the credit.  I like how she writes dialogue - I could really hear their Scottish accents in my head.  Hilarious ending was a nice surprise.

Broken, Karen Slaughter

Karen Slaughter is an American mystery writer that's getting a lot of good buzz on her latest, Coptown.  I didn't read Coptown but got a copy of Broken (2010) from the library.  Broken is apparently part of her Will Trent series but Detective Will Trent doesn't solve this mystery so much as these other two ladies.

We got off to a rough start with this 2nd paragraph:

The wind picked up and she clenched her fists in the pockets of her light jacket. It wasn't so much raining as misting down a cold wetness, like walking around inside a dog's nose.  The icy chill coming off Lake Grant made it worse. Every time the breeze picked up, she felt as if tiny, dull razors were slicing through her skin.  This was supposed to be south Georgia, not the freaking South Pole.

I thought I was in for the metaphorical ride of my life, but, mercifully, they quieted down a bit.  So, this lady, Sara, is visiting her hometown where her parents live and she and her husband used to live before he was killed.  She was the town medical examiner and he was the Sheriff.  But he got killed.  Sara believed that it was the fault of one of his detectives, Lena.  When a local girl is murdered, Sara consults and tries to steer clear of Lena.  Parts are told from Lena's POV and you find out she not the monster Sara thinks she is, but she's not exactly a snow-white princess either.

Will Trent is a likeable character and I wouldn't mind reading more of her series about him.  He's dyslexic and for some reason very ashamed about it and doesn't like to tell anyone.  He sends things to his partner to read because he has a really hard time.  Although, I suppose after I thought about it a while, it seemed like it could be a hard thing to manage with coworkers.

Oh, after reading Amazon, I find that this is kind of a cross-over book between a couple of series Slaughter has written.  I mostly enjoyed this book but it was one of those situations where it turns out the murder is someone you barely meet  and then you find out they've masterminded some kind of crazy plot involving medical experiments and God knows whatall. I find that very annoying.

Please let me know if you've read any K. Slaughter that you really love!

To the Power of Three

At the beginning of the year, I read some amazing books that kind of blew my mind, and also I thought I was on a roll and going to read nothing but solid gold all year.  Well, that stopped, and I've been chasing greatness for a while now.  I read a bunch of mysteries, searching for a Tana French replacement (she has a new book coming out in September (Arg! Can't wait!)  Laura Lippman's getting a lot of good press lately, so I borrowed her To the Power of Three (2012) from the library.

It begins with a young woman taking a gun to school and quickly follows with three friends getting shot in a bathroom at the school.  One in the foot, one in the chest - dead, and the other in the face - critical condition.  For some reason I couldn't keep the girls straight - I could never remember which one was dead and which one was on life support.  Their names were Kat and Perri.  (Katy Perry? I was irrationally stuck on that.  Which reminds me...  when I was in 7th grade, we were supposed to write a story on a team and my team and I wrote this epic mystery about a rich family, in our minds a kind of VC Andrews thing, and we spent DAYS thinking about what their names should be.  Finally we came up with Levi and Calvin, and then on the day we read our stories out loud to the class, my nemesis made fun of us because we picked names from 2 brands of jeans.  Ugh, I hate that stupid bitch!)

Anyway, there are some weird inconsistencies with the story shot-in-the-foot tells and the police don't believe her version of events, so, even though it seems pretty obvious that coma-girl did the shooting, you know there's more to the story.

The major problem for me was there were just too many characters in this book.   I mean, I could barely keep the three girls straight, which is on me, but then there were all the girls' parents, their classmates, their damn guidance counselor, their fucking uncles and grandparents, their goddamn neighbors, ex-boyfriends who are now in college but back in town for the summer, a whole cast of unpopular girls, the drama teacher!  etc.  My god.  Everyone knows that a good mystery needs a fair number of characters, perhaps limited, Agatha Christie-style, on an island or a train or something, so you have plenty of people to red-herring your readers with, but an entire high school full of people is too much.  And, when you have a huge number of people in your mystery, and in the end it turns out your murderer is someone who was mentioned once in the second half of a paragraph on page 38, it's goddamn infuriating is what it is.

What Lippman does capture, very well, is the language and intensity of high schoolers, not to mention ones that are experiencing a school shooting:

Others were ignoring the guidelines for a Level II emergency, holding their cell phones low by their hips, text-messaging with the ferocity of young Helen Kellers who had just discovered an accessible language.

She also brutally demonstrates the pettiness that teenage girls especially can carry around.  In their world, small slights get conflated into issues of life and death.  What am I talking about?  I'm still mad at that stupid girl for making fun of me in 7th grade and one other insult I could tell you about in excruciating detail if you could bare to listen to a grown woman describe a decades old slight.  The detective ponders:

He was a murder police, well into his third decade, and he thought there was nothing new under the sun, no motivation unknown to him, no scenario he had yet to document.  And he was right. The story Josie told, haltingly yet determinedly, had the usual elements. Jealousy, covetousness, anger of slights so tiny that it was hard to believe they had resonated for even a moment, much less years.  

Ouch.  Nails it, doesn't it?  I think she approaches the kind of animosity women can irrationally hold for one another that Margaret Atwood explores in novels like Cat's Eye.  So, ultimately, I didn't love this book because honestly I couldn't keep everyone straight, but she does get at some important issues that obviously struck close to home for this reader.