The Empusium (2024) by Olga Tokarczuk

 Audiobook Review

The Empusium (2024)

by Olga Tokarczuk

   Like many English readers, I hadn't heard of Polish author and Nobel Prize Winner Olga Tokarczuk until the release of Flights in 2018- a translation from the original Polish which was published in 2007.  Since then I've kept up with her new English language releases- like many I found the similarities between Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, published in 2019(in English and 2008 in Polish), and Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh (published in 2020). No one ever got to the bottom of it! I also read The Books of Jacob- which I thought was really great but had zero and I mean zero, commercial appeal.

  The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story arrived late last month and I quickly got the Audiobook(!) version out of the library of the Libby app.  At 11 hours it was much shorter than The Books of Jacob and more in line with the standard length of a newly published novel.   Like every book I've read of hers except for Flights, The Empusium is going to appeal to a limited audience, fans of cheeky, feminist historical fiction with genre elements, provided here by the promise of a "horror story" in the title.   Perhaps unsurprisingly, the horror is ever lurking and rarely front in center.  Instead, the reader/listener is treated to lengthy dialogues between the residents of a turn of the 20th century sanitarium which I believe is located in the Czech alps- or what would be a mountainous region of the Czech Republic today or maybe Austria.   

    I've actually learned a fair amount about sanitariums over the years from history and literary fiction- they played a prominent role in the settling of southern California vis a vis the dry client being ideal for sufferers of tuberculosis.  There's also the more contemporary understanding of the sanitarium as a predecessor/forerunner of the modern mental hospital/place to stash well-off people who are incapable of maintaining themselves in society- LGBT people, for example.   This sanitarium in this book makes use both of the tuberculosis model and the developing "science" of psychiatry- which- you don't have to be a Scientologist to point out issues with psychiatry. 

    So personally, I quite enjoyed it but it's another work of literary fiction which will have little, if any appeal to people who aren't already interested in fiction about turn of the century European sanitarium culture. Those showing up for the horror story will be left wanting.

Annihilation (2024) by Michel Houellebecq

 Book Review

Annihilation (2024)

by Michel Houellebecq

  It's hard to be a fan of Michel Houellebecq in the United States- he's despised by the literary establishment, and the type of Americans who would be his fans typically aren't big fans of translated French literary fiction.  Thus, to read about Houellebecq in English language periodicals is to be subject to an endless stream of disdain with occasional concessions to his wit or powers of anticipation.  I wasn't surprised that the New York Times review for Annihilation, which is reportedly Houellebecq's last novel book?) struck this exact tone- using the cover of an opening about how an average American reader of literary fiction might become increasingly sympathetic to Houellebecq as additional drinks are consumed over the course of the evening. 

    Regrettably I agree with Dwight Garner's assessment, that this is far from Houellebecq's best work and it, in fact, frequently grim and nearly impossible to read.  The major theme here is end of life care and the issues surrounding euthanasia, interspersed with a strange and half abandoned techno-thriller angle and Houellbecq's typically fraught musings about relations between the sexes.   The inclusion of the techno thriller stuff gave me hope for at least some kind of mass market ambition, and it is impossible to know what to make of the fact that the plot line is abandoned two thirds of the way through the book.  Houellebecq's characters are, as always, hugely unlikable, that is nothing new, but there is a real lack of both wit and fun, which if you are going to put up with the rest of it, are what makes Houellebecq such a good read.

Jacob I Have Loved (1980) by Katherine Paterson

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Jacob I Have Loved (1980)
by Katherine Paterson

Ross Island, Chesapeake Bay, Maryland

 Maryland: 10/10

  I thought this 1980 YA novel about living on an island was part of the Virginia chapter, but apparently it is not.  I didn't even know people lived on islands in Chesapeake Bay!   The book is about a young girl growing up on this island during World War II, more or less.  A mysterious stranger moves into town, there is a big storm, people go off to war, come back.  Narrator does nothing, goes nowhere.  The reader does get a very real sense of what living on one of these islands was like back in the day, so it makes sense that Straight included it in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project but other than that it's standard bildungsroman stuff here.

Playground (2024) by Richard Powers

 Book Review

Playground (2024)

by Richard Powers

   I like Richard Powers but I don't love him.  In many ways he's one of the last old white men if American fiction- he's managed to avoid irrelevance by winning major literary prizes and writing fiction that is broadly appealing to the biggest possible audience for literary fiction while changing things up enough to avoid charges that he is repeating himself or running out of new ideas.  One hallmark of Powers' fiction is his repeated ability to introduce non-fiction subjects into his prose:  Ecology, AI or, in Playground, the wonders of the oceans.  The weaving together of science and literary fiction is the essence of Powers and his appeal.  For me, his books are hit and miss.  Yes, I enjoyed The Overstory, but only read it after it won the Pulitzer Prize because "Richard Powers writes about trees" didn't sound interesting.  Afterward, I didn't regret reading it but I never think about it, talk about it or recommend it to anyone.

  Similarly,  I wasn't annoyed or uncomfortable reading Playground but nor was I ever compelled or emotionally triggered by the characters or the story.  Playground isn't a book I'll revisit and I really do doubt it's going to win a major literary award.  It got weeded out at the shortlist stage by the Booker Prize this year, which makes sense to me.