Dedicated to classics and hits.

Monday, December 20, 2021

A Planet for Rent (2015) by Voss


Book Review
A Planet for Rent (2015)
by Voss

   Voss is the pen name for Cuban author Jose Sanchez Gomez. A Planet for Rent is the first book in his series about a post-contact Earth where humans are junior partners in a hyper-capitalist galactic civilization.   Like third world countries today, the Earth is exploited for its mineral resources, raw materials and labor.   I saw A Planet for Rent on a list of post-apocalyptic  literary dystopias, and it doesn't quite match that category, being more of a negative take on what an actual intergalactic civilization might be like.  I think, if you just look at the history of the Earth, people usually don't spend a ton of time and money going to someplace new to just show up and be like, "Hey, you guys are awesome let's hang out."  Either they need someplace new to live, or they are trying to expand where they live, or they need something we have or they have some kind of important cultural principle that impels them to reach out across the galaxy.

  Which is all to say that the hyper-capitalist world of giant lizard men and sentient jelly fish that Voss depicts- one part Blade Runner, one part Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, is worth getting to know, and it's an interesting example of non-English language science fiction.   Most of the books that could be classified as science fiction that are translated into English tend to be more literary fiction or experimental fiction than straight forward genre work.

The Eye of the Heron (1978) by Ursula Le Guin


Book Review
The Eye of the Heron (1978)
by Ursula Le Guin

   Le Guin has been a huge beneficiary of my gender equality efforts.   She writes in an accesible genre, she has a lengthy back catalog and plenty of Audiobooks are available with little or minimal wait in the library app.  The Eye of the Heron is perhaps unfairly relegated to "minor work" status because it is a stand alone effort, not part of a larger universe.   Thematically, it fits with the general parameters of the books in the Hainish cycle, perhaps in a period before galactic civilization encountered Earth but after Earth achieved crude interstellar travel.  Here, the action takes place on the planet Victoria, populate solely by two separate exile communities from Earth.  The first, older group are a bunch of criminals and undesirables who seem mostly to come from Latin America.  The second, newer group are the survivors of an international peace movement who were imprisoned by the North American government of a Canada equivalent. 

  The first group literally lords over the second, who are familiar to contemporary readers as peace-loving non-violent anarchists.  The original inhabitants are in the midst of an attempt to feudalize the second group, which the second group resists through the tactics of non-violence.  Cementing the narrative is a Romeo and Juliet-ish scenario between the daughter of the local caudillo and the young leader of the peace lovers.  There's no magic, no aliens (not even a well described alien flora and fauna), the applicable level of technology is the middle ages of Europe.   I keep thinking I'm going to run out of adult Le Guin titles, and indeed I think this may be it. It's been a ride! I do prefer the Hainish cycle to the Earthsea cycle, but I understand by Earthsea might be the more enduring series.

Actress (2020) by Anne Enright


Book Review
Actress (2020)
by Anne Enright

   My attempt to achieve gender equality in my 2020 reading list appears doomed to failure.  With under two weeks in the year, and close to two hundred books either read or listened to in Audiobook format, the ratio is 55 percent male to 45 percent male.  Actress is another example of my attempt to force gender equity onto my reading list.  It's the most recent book by  former Booker prize winner Anne Enright(she's Irish).  Most importantly the LA library has an Audiobook edition available, and as I've often noted, if you want to read non-American authors your wait time for electronic editions goes way down in the Los Angeles Public library system. 

  Norah, the narrator, is the daughter of Irish actress Katherine O'Dell, a woman in the grand actress tradition of Judy Garland or Norma Desmond, but Irish. It's a dense, sophisticated gloss on a familiar theme. Enright is known for her emotionally sophisticated family interactions but here that view is expanded to the world outside mid 20th century Ireland, as Norah recounts Katherine's adventures abroad before her return home and long decline, witnessed, first-hand, by Norah.   

   

Friday, December 03, 2021

Termination Shock (2021) by Neal Stephenson


Book Review
Termination Shock (2021)
by Neal Stephenson

   Always excited by a new Neal Stephenson novel.  I've dipped in and out of Stephenson's oeuvre over the decades.  Certainly read Snowcrash (1992) in paperback close to when it came out.  Cryptonomicon (1999) is part of the 1001 Books project.  I read Fall; or Dodge in Hell (2019) just because it sounded interesting, and it was, though also a mess.  And the rest of it- the apps- the collaborations, the three volume Baroque Cycle- I've skipped.  Termination Shock is another conventional novel- maybe he is finally settling down in that regard.  It is a barely science fictional plot about a crazy Texan who decides to fix global warming by himself by shooting sulfur into the air using a huge cannon he has built on his ranch in west Texas.  The very Stephensonian case of characters includes Red, a part-Comanche, part-African American ex-military, former farmer, current feral hog klling specialist, Saskia, the Queen of the Netherlands, Wilhelm, her part-Papuan all gay protocol assistant and Big Fish a Canadian-Sikh twenty something who travels to the Punjab to rediscover his identity only to find himself wound up in a Neal Stephenson plot.

   It should go without saying that there is plenty of exposition by the various characters, making parts of Termination Shock read like a New Yorker article.  The central conceit, that a crazy Texas billionaire could single handedly try to counter global warming by starting up an enormous sulfur cannon seemed so plausible to me that it barely required the suspension of disbelief I commonly associated with science fiction genre work.  Rather it is the behavior of the characters, who often seem like marionettes in a puppet show, where suspension of disbelief is required.   Regardless of weaknesses in the character development, I tore through Termination Shock- couldn't listen to the 27 hour Audiobook fast enough. which should tell you I loved it.  

The Morning Star (2020) by Karl Ove Knausgaard


Book Review
The Morning Star (2020)
by Karl Ove Knausgaard

   There are two major camps when it comes to Norwegian author and international auto-fiction sensation Karl Ove Knausgaard:  Those who have read one or more of his books, probably from the My Struggle cycle of six books, and love him and those who have HEARD of him and read ABOUT him and find him totally insufferable.  The number of people who have actually read one of his books AND find him totally insufferable seems to be pretty small.  Draw from that observation what you will, but I am with the the first group.  I LOVED My Struggle- all of it- even the last book with the 200 page essay about Hitler.  

    So I am very excited about The Morning Star, the first volume in what seems to be a multi-volume series modeled after, and I know this sounds strange, the works of Stephen King.  There's no reason that Knausgaard would be naive about the potential international sales appeal of his books and The Morning Star, which combines Knausgaard's characteristic grousing about the minutiae of day-to-day existence in contemporary Norway and Sweden with the possibility of the imminent arrival of some kind of supernatural demon, does indeed accomplish its goal:  Expand the international audience for Karl Ove Knausgaard.   Ironically, it seems like more of a critical success than a popular one. 

  Maybe the second volume, which seems to promise the kind of well described literary bloody mayhem you might associate with American Psycho, will generate the sparks necessary to elevate the popular profile of both books, but I, like other readers, was struck by just how little actually happened in The Morning Star.  I mean I did love every page, but still.

Intimacies (2021) by Katie Kitamura

American author Katie Kitamura


Book Review
Intimacies (2021)
by Katie Kitamura

  Intimacies by American author Katie Kitamura netted a National Book Award Longlist nomination this year.   It's a novel about a woman who was taken a year long contract to work as a French interpreter at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands.  While there she experiences the vicissitudes of interpreting for defendants accused of War Crimes (it's draining!) and has an ambivalent relationship with a separated but still married Dutch guy.

   My main attraction to Intimacies were the chapters dealing with the work of being a court interpreter at a court handling war crimes, probably the heaviest duty type of crime you could possibly work as a court interpreter.  In my work in Federal Court, I deal with court interpreters every day and  I know that they are incredibly proficient in what they do but that they have their own perspective, different than that of prosecutors, defense attorneys, court staff and security staff.  No one ever asks what an interpreter thinks about what they are interpreting, but surely they must have interesting thoughts.

  In that sense, I found Intimacies incredibly interesting, in the depiction of the Americanish expatriate translator and her Dutch boyfriend, less so, but overall it was an interesting listen, clearly deserving of the longlist nom.   Did you know she is married to Hari Kunzu?  Isn't that crazy.  If anyone reading this has read both Kitamura and Kunzu, they will get how crazy that it.  What fun they must be at dinner parties.
   

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

The Souvenir Museum (2021) by Elizabeth McCracken


Book Review
The Souvenir Museum (2021)
by Elizabeth McCracken

  Only two more books left for me on the 2021 National Book Award Fiction longlist.   McCracken, a short story specialist has three longlist nominations starting with her story collection The Giants House in 1994.  I wonder if her failure to progress from the longlist can be explained by her decision to write short stories.   I've tried to grapple with my dislike of the format, particularly as I've tried to introduce more diversity into my reading list;   McCracken is a very New England author, she lives there, and most of her stories are set there, although large chunks of the stories in The Souvenir Museum are set in the UK and one takes place mostly in the Netherlands. 

  McCracken is funny, and her characters ring true, but mostly they sound like well educated, middle class or upper class white New Englanders who have some sort of issues in their interpersonal relationships and/or unresolved issues in their personal history.  Oh, wait did I just describe every collection of short stories published in the United States this year? Maybe not all of them, but most.

Sankofa (2021) by Chibundo Onuzo


Nigerian author Chibundo Onuzo
Book Review
Sankofa (2021)
by Chibundo Onuzo

   Genuinely loved this novel by Nigerian author Chibundo Onuzo, about a mixed race British woman, raised by her white mother, who discovers that her husband is the liberator and "Big Man" (and Dictator) of a fictionalized West African nation that combines elements of many different African experiences.  Anna Graham is the narrator and protagonist, 50ish, separated from her white husband.  Her white daughter is a workaholic who struggles with bulimia.  Anna struggles with her own pain, that of growing up in a London council flat in the 1970's with a Welsh Mother who refuses to acknowledge her race in an attempt to "protect" her.   The mechanics of the plot are set into motion when Graham, cleaning out her Mother's flat after her recent death, discovers the journal kept by Francis Aggery, an African student who stayed as a boarder in her Grandfather's house when he was studying in London.

    Aggrey returns to his fictional home of Bamana when his Mother falls ill and ends up leading the liberation struggle and becoming the dictator of the small, diamond rich country.  Graham's first trip is to the library, where she reads up on her absent dad.  Her reading reveals some good- Aggrey- the liberation struggle, years in prison followed by his post-independence elevation to the Presidency, and an early  Presidency that evokes much of the hope that followed African independence; some bad- Aggrey eventually becomes a dictator for much of his reign before stepping down; and some ugly- the state sponsored murder of five students- the Kinnarko Five.

  After that she becomes determined to travel to Bamana and meet her Dad, an adventure that takes up the rest of the book.  Onuzo writes with style and aplomb, she has a sense of humor for sure, and Onuzo's experiences in Bamana manage to combine the perspective of an African with the impressions of a Londoner.  I highly recommend the Audiobook version so you can hear the accents of the characters.

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

The Book of Mother (2021) by Violaine Huisman

French author VIolaine Huisman

Book Review
The Book of Mother (2021)
by Violaine Huisman

   The Book of Mother calls itself a novel on the cover, but even if you know nothing at all about the author, French writer Violaine Huisman, after reading The Book of Mother you will be left contemplating the difference between auto-fiction and the novel.  I guess it is not technically auto-fiction in that half the book actually tells the story of mother herself, Maman, and her own mother, in that the personal history involves the circumstances behind her (Maman's) own birth,. 

   In the end, The Book of Mother is a closely observed depiction of the consequences of a life afflicted by mental illness, with Maman following the familiar pattern of a high-achieving mentally ill woman who manages to marry and have children in a somewhat normal fashion only to break down over time from a combination of dependency, bad choices and unresolved emotional trauma.   It's hardly a narrative specific to France, but Maman does self destruct with the kind of elan you only see in the French.



Friday, November 19, 2021

Familiar Things (2018) by Hwang Sok-yong


Book Review
Familiar Things (2018)
by Hwang Sok-yong

   One way I keep myself stocked with books to read is by checking other books put out by the same publisher whenever I read an Ebook or Audiobook via the Libby app.  Chances are with the smaller publishing houses that if I like one title I will find other interesting titles available on the app.  Such was the case with Familiar Things, the 2018 book about South Korean trash pickers that very much reminded my of Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri, the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature winner, that was about a homeless man living outside a subway station in Tokyo.  Both books deal with the human detrius of the late 20th century rush towards capitalism experienced in both societies.   Both books weave magical elements into their down-and-dirty depictions of what it is like to be homeless in Japan or to earn a living scavenging in the dumps outside Seoul. 

   I did enjoy Familiar Things, even if there were some moments, mostly centered around meal preparation and eating in the dump, that made me want to gag.   I wouldn't consider South Korea as a place where people live in a trash dump, to me that is more associated with real third world/undeveloped locations in countries like the Philippines, Bangladesh or Latin America.  I suppose like the moments that made me gag, the whole point is to convince you of the reality of this existence, and in that sense, Familiar Things is a total success

North of Dawn (2018) by Nuruddin Farah

Farah in 2010 before a lecture at Simon Fraser University.
Somali diaspora Nuruddin Farah
Book Review
North of Dawn (2018)
by Nuruddin Farah

   I usually think about Somali author Nuruddin Farah once a year right before the Nobel Prize in Literature is handed out, Farah being oft-cited year after year as a potential winner of the prize.  He came pretty close this year, losing out to Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian-British writer who has a similar profile in terms of writing from a position of self-imposed exile in the West.  Gurnah, a professor in the UK, Farah presently working as a professor in the Minnesota. 

   Anyway, I loved North of Dawn, about the life of a Somali diplomat living in Norway after the Somalian collapse, and his wife, and the wife and children of their deceased son, a jihadi who blew himself up on behalf of Al Shabab.   I was genuinely excited to find that an Audiobook had been commissioned by the publisher- Farah's only available Audiobook despite decades of novels. 
  
   The book is about the diplomat's wife honoring a promise to her dead son, that she would look after his wife, a refugee camp party girl turned observant Muslim with two teenage stepchildren.  Those expecting a plot that revolves around some kind of race based injustice have come to the wrong place, the Norwegians as portrayed by Farah are scrupulously fair and I wouldn't characterize any part of the plot as concerning injustice suffered by immigrants at the hands of their host.   True, one of the minor children is murdered in the book version the Anders Breivik youth camp massacre in 2011, but she is the only Somali victim among the 75 people killed that day.

   I would gladly read another Farah book, and it is too bad he doesn't have more Audiobooks available.
    

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Hell of a Book (2021) by Jason Mott

Jason Mott, Author of Hell Of A Book | About the Author
American author Jason Mott
Book Review
Hell of a Book (2021)
by Jason Mott

   This National Book Award finalist nomination  win for Hell of a Book was a huge break through for American author Jason Mott, who has previously authored more or less conventional works that traverse genre fiction, the bestseller list, and literary fiction.   Mott almost uncannily combines a book tour milieu reminiscent of recent Pulitzer winner Less by Andrew Greer with the sharp edged satire of Booker winner Paul Beatty to produce Hell of a Book, the 2021 National Book Award winner for fiction.   Mott's protagonist is a best-selling author on a book tour of America's great and not-so-great cities.  Originally, from North Carolina, he is haunted by the ghost (or is he?) of a murdered African American child from his home town.   The great achievement is Mott's troubled protagonist who manages to be deeply feckless in the midst of a very meaningful plot, like something you would expect from Martin Amis.  Mott's narrator protagonist has deep bouts of almost disassociative imagination, something he describes almost as an occupational hazard of a writer.   It gives the most prosaic moments unexpected panache, and helps the plot leap free of the mundane realities of a 21st century book tour by a succesful author of "serious" literary fiction. 

    And it is again worth pointing out that Mott has several works in different genres and areas of literary fiction that have sold well, so kudos for him for making the leap to major prize winner mid career.

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Crying in the H Mart (2021) by Michelle Zauner

Making music in hopes of healing, as Japanese Breakfast
Musician and Author Michelle Zauner
Book Review
Crying in the H Mart (2021) 
by Michelle Zauner

  Does Michelle Zauner read all her online press? It is very much not beyond the realm of plausibility that I might come face to face with Zauner back stage at a music festival, so this review certainly falls into the category of, "don't say anything you wouldn't say to the subjects face the first time you meet." or at least to assume that whatever you say will be accessible to that subject.  Zauner, of course, is the performer beind Japanese Breakfast- I'm still unclear if there is anything to the band aspect besides people Zauner has picked up.   I don't listen to Japanese Breakfast, but I was intrigued both by the cross-cultural aspect, Zauner is Korean-American, with a Korean mom and white American Dad, and by the main story being about Zauner's mom dying of cancer while she was still struggling to put together her career in the arts.  That mirrored the story of Kristin from the Dum Dum Girls- she talked about her mom in interviews but didn't write a book about it.   I'm always intrigued by young memoirists- another one I know is Moshe Kasher- who is the younger brother of a long time friend.  It just seems crazy to put such personal information about yourself out there.   I'm sure I could never do that. 

    Anywho- if Michelle is actually reading this- wow- I could never! Just, the bravery of it all. And I think it is very much a positive that Zauner doesn't try to portray herself as some kind of virtuous angel- it's a wards and all situation, and as someone who grew up with artsy people on the west coast who ended up going to Bryn Mawr (Zauner is from not-Portland Oregon, I grew up in the Bay Area a decade before her), I feel her.  I wish I could have read this book when I was in high school, since I knew plenty of Asian and half-Asian students and had little insight on their perspective. 

   I listened to the Audiobook edition, narrated by the Author, which I highly recommend, since the tone of the writing suits the Audiobook format, and the author herself reads it to you.

Stranger to the Moon (2021) by Evelio Rosero


Book Review
Stranger to the Moon (2021)
by Evelio Rosero

    Stranger to the Moon is another bizarre Spanish language translation that has made it to American bookstores. Evelio Rosero is a well known and prolific (18 novels published in his native Spanish) Colombian author- he also writes poetry and children's books.  Stranger to the Moon is a disturbing allegory that recalls (in the words of the publisher New Directions, "Both Kafka and De Sade." I would add Italo Calvino to that list.   The world of Stranger to the Moon is contained inside one house where "the naked" live in a state of abject degradation, naked, with no access to the outside world- or with such access so limited that to go outside is to court death, they are occasionally visited by "the clothed" who abuse them sexually and otherwise serve as their captors and tormentors.   Stranger to the Moon is quite clearly an allegory, though what, exactly, is the subject or topic of that allegory seems to be up for grabs.  

  At 96 pages, Stranger to the Moon won't keep you waiting around for an ending, basically you get the set up, one thing happens, and the book is over.  It makes sense for a book that is set entirely inside a single "house" but it reads more like a short story or novella than a novel.

Rabbit Island (2021) by Elvira Navarro


Book Review
Rabbit Island (2021)
by Elvira Navarro

    This collection of short stories by Spanish author Elvira Navarro was longlisted for the National Book Award prize for translated fiction.  Like many works of Spanish language short fiction that make it on the longlist of English language prizes, there is a heavy element of the bizarre and surreal.  The title story, about a weirdo who tries to control the bird population on an island in the middle of a river near Madrid by releasing 20 rabbits, takes a macabre and disturbing twist.  In another story an animal paw grows out of the ear of the narrator.   Strange, disturbing, that is the vibe.

The Cabinet (2021) by Un Su Kim


Book Review
The Cabinet (2021)
by Un Su Kim

   I really enjoyed The Plotters, which was the first book by Korean novelist Un Su Kim to be translated into English.  The Plotters was a crisp, stylish work of crime-fiction, a book obviously inspired by the conventions of the noir genre but rendered eerie by the Korean locations and the writing style of Un Su Kim.   The Cabinet is not a work of crime fiction, though the third act contains some bloody surprises which are sure to delight those familiar with his previously translated book.  Mr. Kong, the narrator and protagonist, is a listless office worker who finds a sideline minding the client files of Cabinet 13, a bunch of genetic mutations who require constant attention from Kong's mentor.   When his mentor dies, Kong becomes the subject of attention for different shadowy forces who seek to profit from the secrets of Cabinet 13. 

   Part social satire, part...something else, The Cabinet is just as rewarding as The Plotters, and it won the Korean Pultizer- the Munhakdongne award as well.  If you start The Plotters, make sure you stick around for the third act, you will not be dissapointed.

Sunday, November 14, 2021

Immobility (2013) by Brian Evenson


Book Review
Immobility (2013)
by Brian Evenson

   I saw this book on a list of post-apocalyptic lit on a book blog, though I can't precisely remember which one.   I do like a good book blog list, even if it seems to me like most book blogs are trying to way too hard.  They are all better than mine, of course.  I'd never heard of author Brian Evenson before, which now seems borderline strange since he occupies that narrow space between genre and literature that interests me.  Immobility is also Evenson's only  library available Audiobook.

   Evenson paints a super bleak scenario for what comes after the fall of man.  It is a barren, lifeless landscape poisonous to humans.  The narrator is something other than human, no one is really sure what, except that he doesn't die when exposed to the toxic atmosphere or earth, and he is basically immortal.  Nothing really gets explained beyond that level, and the post-collapse society that Evenson draws in this novel is more sophisticated by an order of magnitude that what you typically see in work in this creative space. 

Monday, November 08, 2021

The Vorhh (2015) by Brian Cartling


Book Review
The Vorhh (2015)
by Brian Cartling

  This book was recommended to me by a friend. It's what you would call a low fantasy, it's a recognizable version of our actual world, set in a faux-German colonial outpost in late 19th century Africa.   The city sits at the edge of an ancient forest, which is called, for reasons unexplained,  the Vorhh. 

  Cartling introduces a dozen major characters including real life French surrealist Raymond Roussel and famous English photographer and orthological eccentric Eadweard Muybridge.  There is also a horny cyclops and myriad eccentric and supernatural denizens of the forest primeval.  And a couple of strong female characters who are involved with said horny cyclops.

   What is it all about? It's hard to say. Rare indeed when a work of fantasy leaves me scratching my head over the broad contours of the plot, as was the case here.  Colonialism is certainly a theme, racism, as part of that.  The Bible and Christian eschatology are in there but again I couldn't exactly say how.   Certainly Catling is miles away from a conventional fantasy plot revolving around a quest for a hidden ring and such, although there are elements of the hero's quest as one among the many threads.  The Vorhh is the first book in a trilogy, and I presume the story becomes clearer the further you read, because after the first volume, I had little idea what lay ahead.


The Serfs are Putting Out a Record Next Year, Touring Now...

The Serfs are a band from Cincinnati Ohio


Event Preview
11/9- Memphis, TN @ Hi Tone*
11/10- Nashville, TN @ Third Man*
11/11- Cincinnati, OH @ Lambda Research*
11/12- Cleveland, OH @ Little Rose Tavern*
11/14- Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club*
11/23- Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle*
2/25-San Diego @ The Whistle Stop


       Vinyl production has been a total pain in the ass since I began making vinyl records, but it is particularly bad now.   Dream Recordings is putting out the new Serfs LP next February- it's a record that was paid for in January of this year.  The production factories won't even put you on calendar until you pay in full, and then you wait for a year or more.  It's crazy! What are you supposed to tell bands?  How are you supposed to plan for the future?  Anyway I am super excited about this band and I really think they have what it takes to go far down whichever path they choose.   Can't wait for them to hit the west coast next year, but if you are located in the midwest or north east or south keep your eyes peeled for additional dates, and try to make these dates, because the live show is tops, I've heard.

Event Preview: Cathedral Presents Mvtant, Mannequin and More!

 


Event Preview
Cathedral Presents
Mvtant (San Antonio, Texas)
Mannequin (San Diego)

Bricks Rock Bar 
3626 Fruitland Ave.
Maywood CA. 
Venmo: CathedralLA Code: 2465: Put Note: Mvtant
Limited advance tickets $10, Day of $20

     One of the long term things I've learned writing this blog is that nobody was interested in local music adventures, or at least in mine.  People were interested in local music gossip, to be sure, but publicizing local shows and bands is a gig best left to either professionals or no one.   Then, as I actually managed to put out a record by an artist that obtained national/international attention, interest actually dropped, and there was no long terms interest.  Vs. there very much is continued interest in book review I wrote about 18th century novels six years ok. 

    But I never really stopped being involved with putting out new music, I just stopped writing about it.  The other thing that happened is my partner works in the "real" music industry, and for the past several years almost all the shows have been at her invitation, as the guest of her companies' artists or the promoter.  It's hard to be honest and impossible to be funny or mean, which, frankly are the three joys of writing about music besides shining a light on unknown artists.

   Of course, like everyone, the past two years have been cause for much re-evaluation regarding those and other positions, and I can safely say that I miss local shows, even at the lowest levels, which is where someone like me is ALWAYS going to begin with artists, because any artist who isn't at that level would not contemplate putting out a record on a label I control.

   Mario Orduno started his label Dream Recordings a decade ago, and a couple years ago he invited me to be a partner.  We put out this Mvtant record- Gore + Mirrorshade- which was originally issued on an Austin area tape label, on digital and vinyl.  The record came out smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, making it impossible for Mvtant to tour, which was frustrating, but par to course for Dream, which hasn't made any kind of a national impact and only a limited local impact, entirely through the efforts of Mario.   It's clearly part of the dark wave underground- whatever you want to call it.

  Several of Dream's artists are playing the Substance 2021 Festival: O/X, Some Ember and Spike Hellis, a band we were supposed to put out but had to rethink during the pandemic.   I'm sure Dirty Beaches would be playing Substance if Alex was still around doing stuff under that name (he is not.)
I love the looks of this DIY show called Cathedral, where I'll have my first chance to actually see Mvtant live. 


Sunday, November 07, 2021

The Harlem Shuffle (2021) by Colson Whitehead


Book Review
The Harlem Shuffle (2021)
by Colson Whitehead

   What more can Colson Whitehead, a winner of consecutive Pulitzer Prizes for his last two novels, accomplish?  I guess that would be a Booker Prize, which seems possible or a Nobel, which seems less likely but still not impossible where Ishiguro is a recent winner.  
   The Pulitzer and National Book Award must have breathed a sigh of relief when they heard that Whitehead's new book was going to be a work of historical crime fiction. Exciting, as would be an announcement for any new Whitehead title, but not, you know, a book that is likely to merit a third Pulitzer, simply by virtue of genre.  I haven't checked, but crime fiction doesn't win any prizes outside of those exclusive to the genre. 
   Like Zone One, Whitehead's zombie book,
The Harlem Shuffle is both a work of genre, observing relevant genre specific rules, and a work of literary fiction, using authorial skills of character depiction and plot mechanics to create something separate from a strictly genre work.  

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart


Book Review
Earth Abides (1949)
by George R. Stewart

   I recently read an article about American author George R. Stewart (1895-1980), a Berkeley CA based writer who wrote widely across genre, with a good deal of popular success but little lasting critical impact.  Today he is remembered for two books: Storm, which is about, well.. a storm, and is credited with being the inspiration for naming hurricanes after people to tell them apart.  Storm just got a New York Review of Books reprint in August of this year.   His other famous book is this one, Earth Abides, which is widely credited as being the direct or indirect inspiration for a generation of post-World War II post-apocalyptical fiction.

    Earth Abides is at times hilariously out of date, like all books of science fiction it is much a reflection of the actual times of the author than any work of imagination on his or her part.  For example, the main character continues to smoke tobacco cigarettes from "before the fall" for decades after the collapse (caused by an unidentified virus, with minimal societal disruption), while his after the fall community in Berkeley California never mentions marijuana. 

    Stewart's apocalypses is a relentlessly PG affair, with none of the horrors that contemporary readers associate with the genre.  The single act of violence in the book is the murder/execution of a diseased drifter with ill-intentions at the hands of the community.  The infrastructure of pre-collapse, specifically, running water, continues to operate for decades after the fall.  

 Isherwood Williams, the protagonist, is an intermittently interesting guy prone to paroxyms of guilt over his failure to lead his burgeoning community past a semi-parasitic existence of hunting the abundant free roaming cattle and eating out of still-good cans of food.  I mean, you would think these people would be able to get a vegetable garden going.   There are horses available, but they choose to rely on dogs for their limited travel needs.  They are a profoundly unambitious bunch by the standards of the genre and their world is basically a paradise.   It's all very mid 20th century. 

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Peach Blossom Paradise (2021) by Ge Fei


Book Reviewg
Peach Blossom Paradise (2020)
by Ge Fei

  Ge Fei is the pen name for Chinese author Liu Yong, well regarded as one of the preeminent writers of "experimental" writers in China for the past several decades.  Fei is little known in English- Peach Blossom Paradise, originally published in 2010, is only the second book from his bibliography to receive an English language translation.   Part of a trilogy,  Peach Blossom Paradise mostly tells the story of Xiumi, the neglected daughter of a wealthy land owner growing up in turn of the 20th century China.
Xiumi is married off, only to be kidnapped by by bandits.  Her family refuses to ransom her, and she ends up the sex slave of a coterie of bandits.  Eventually freed as a side-effect of inter-gang warfare, she makes her way back to her ancestral village and begins a program to revolutionize the people.  Xiumi is not a Communist, rather this refers to the pre-Communist revolutionary activities of a coalition of intellectuals and criminals who acted through secret societies. 

    It's hard to say why this would be considered "experimental" literature in any language, it's more like a straight forward historical novel than anything else. Like many works of Chinese fiction in translation, it can be hard to pick up on the reference points.  For example, this entire book is a reworking of the well known Peach Blossom Paradise myth, but who is going to know that in the English speaking world?  Peach Blossom Paradise is nominated for the National Book Award for Translated literature shortlist, but it would seem like a longshot to win.

Monday, October 18, 2021

The Animals in That Country (2020) by Laura Jean McKay


Book Review
The Animals in That Country (2020) 
by Laura Jean McKay

   The Animals in That Country, by Australian author Laura Jean McKay ticked several boxes that made me want to read it.   First, it's a prize winner from another English speaking country that won an international award (Arthur C. Clarke) as well as a domestic award (Victorian Premier's Literary Award.)  At this point, with a well publicized release in both the UK and the US, it counts as a borderline literary/science fiction cross-over sensation.  And did I mention the original publisher was a small press in Australia?

    It is always a fair bet that if you even hear about a book from another English language country getting a wide release in the United States, it means that book has what it takes to be a hit with both critics and audiences.  Otherwise, a publisher wouldn't even bother.  This is a different phenomenon then when books published in other English language countries get released in the US without a separate campaign- that's just a dumping, or cross-posting situation.

   The idea of The Animals in That Country is that a virus infects the population and allows them to understand what animals, and eventually insects, are saying.  One might naturally suppose that this means that humans can "talk to animals" but that isn't really the case- the reality turns out to be much more horrifying, as humans face the consequences of their casual cruelty to most of god's creatures.  The narrator- is Jean, a washed-up, alcoholic grandma who ekes out a living as a hanger-on at an outback wild life park in Australia, serving at the sufferance of her daughter-in-law (now separated from her son), who runs the park. 

   The plotting is conventionally genre, but the writing is not, and anyone who doubts that McKay is a writer of literary fiction trying to make a name for herself in the kiddie pool might consider that the name of this book comes from a poem by Margaret Atwood, who knows something about the line between genre and literary fiction.   What isn't conventionally genre is the writing, particularly McKay's deft handling of the animal voices.   The Animals in That Country is deeply unsettling and worthy of the international audience it has obtained. 

Monday, October 11, 2021

The Twilight Zone (2021) by Nona Fernández


Book Review
The Twilight Zone (2021)
by Nona Fernández

    The Twilight Zone, written by Chilean author Nona Fernandez, is a finalist for this years National Book Award for Translated Fiction.  Fernandez is one of two Chilean authors on National Book Award shortlist, the other being Benjamin Labutut, nominated for When We Cease to Understand the World.  Unlike Labutut's book, The Twilight Zone is actually about Chile, specifically the aftermath of the post-Allende anti-Communist dictatorship, which paired mid 20th century Fascist style police-state repression against Leftists with a thorough implementation  of international-trade friendly neo-liberal economics as advance by University of Chicago Professor Milton Friedman and his acolytes. 

    Where does all that leave Fernandez? Her book is squarely in the post-reconciliation genre of recovery literature that finds kinship with 2015 Nobel Winner Svetlana Alexivech.  Fernandez is, after all, free to publish The Twilight Zone inside Chile, something that couldn't be said for many Spanish language writers in the 20th and 21st century. Chile is also an important enough literary market to get her a translation deal in the United States, where Graywolf Press, the well-regard indie, put the translation out. 

  There is great power in Fernandez's musings about the vagaries of vile human rights abuses and the consequences (or lack thereof) to those who perpetrate them.  The focus of this book is a member of the Chilean police who comes forward about the abuses committed by the Government against his people.  The Twilight Zone consists of the narrator coming to terms this man's existence and his status as a valued witness.  

    It's funny- I can't think of any Nazi's who turned "state's evidence" in the Nuremberg trials, although I suppose there must have been engagement with the non-Nazi parts of the German military.  The whole institutionalization of post-atrocity "forgiveness" possesses a macabre quality, which, I think is the point of calling the book The Twilight Zone.  It strikes me that this could very much be a winner of the National Book Award for Translated Fiction this year.

The World Gives Way (2021) by Marissa Levien


Book Review
The World Gives Way (2021)
by Marissa Levien

   This book caught my eye because it is a well-reviewed (NYT) work of genre fiction (science fiction) by a woman.  Added bonus, it has literary fiction cross-over potential.  And it was available from the library as an Audiobook with no wait, so, slam dunk for me.  The World Gives Way takes place on a cosmos crossing Generation Ship (second mention of this concept in two days on this blog, see Cloud Cuckoo Land for the other.)  Levien's Generation Ship is a luxe model, that sounds more like a cross between Las Vegas and Disneyland than the grim, bare bones structure depicted in Cloud Cuckoo Land.   Populated in equal parts by wealthy patrons who bought their way on and permanently indentured servants who have traded their freedom and the freedom of their children (and their children's children) for a ticket off the dying Earth,  The World of The World Gives Way is part post-scarcity economy part Handmaiden's Tale.

  Myrra, an indentured servant working as a nanny for a wealthy power couple, splits protagonist duties with Tobias, the child of two paid passengers who turned to life of crime, now working as a police investigator.  When Myrra's employers turn up dead and Myrra goes on the run, Tobias fears the worst, etc.  The hook is that the reason Myrra's employers commit suicide is because they know that the ship has suffered a hull breach and is in imminent danger of implosion.  Escape is impossible.

  That's the set up.  I liked parts of The World Gives Way, and other portions I found tedious, but there is no denying the inventiveness of the scenario, and Levien is an above-average writer, more like a writer of literary fiction than a genre hack.

Sunday, October 10, 2021

Zorrie (2021) by Laird Hunt


Book Review
Zorrie (2021)
by Laird Hunt

   The 2021 National Book Award finalist designation for Zorrie by Laird Hunt has the feeling of a career achievement nod, Hunt being the author of six previous novels, most on a small press.  Zorrie was published by Bloomsbury, firmly placing him in the big leagues of marketing attention. Perhaps that has something to do with the National Book Award achievement. I'm not sure how else to explain the recognition for Zorrie, a Alice Munro-like portrait of the life of a woman who is born, lives and dies in a  part of rural Indiana.  She marries, does not have children, her husband dies in World War II and then she stays single for the rest of her life. 

    Of course, there is something extremely impressive about managing to capture an entire life in 128 pages.  It is hardly a life filled with incident, but isn't that the point? This is an excellent piece of domestic fiction, written about the American Midwest, about the life of a character who is underrepresented in the literature of that time and place.

Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) by Anthony Doerr


Book Review
Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021)
by Anthony Doerr

  I literally did not know who Anthony Doerr was before a chance conversation with a fan this summer.  Doerr has one previously published novel, the huge hit All the Light We Cannot See, which was published in 2014 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015.  I'm not a big fan of the Pulitzer format- they don't have a longlist/shortlist format, they just announce the prize and then give you a couple runners up.  The winners are never a surprise- just find the three top selling works of "serious" literary fiction and look for the book that has the most widespread critical acclaim, tie breaker to the author with the higher profile, that's your winner.  Doerr published two books of short stories before he published Cloud Cuckoo Land, so that's like a classic ascent for an American writer of literary fiction working in the 21st century.

   Seven years later, we've got Cloud Cuckoo Land, his first book of any kind since All the Light We Cannot See.  Along with many others, I noticed the similarities between Cloud Cuckoo Land and Cloud Atlas (2004) by David Mitchell.  Beyond both books having "Cloud" in the title, both titles reference "imaginary" books as a unifying principle- there is no Cloud Atlas in Cloud Atlas, and Cloud Cuckoo Land references a fictional lost text by an ancient Greek author.   Both books combine past, present and future.  Here, the past is represented by a girl street urchin living in pre-Ottoman Constantinople and a Slave farm boy living outside the city.  The present is represented by the residents of a small town in the Pacific Northwest experiencing suburban sprawl.  The future is a girl living on a star-travelling generation ship that has escaped a dying planet Earth. 

    Cloud Cuckoo Land is already a certified hit- Number 3 on the Amazon sales list for "Fiction" and a National Book Award finalist.  I'm not a fan of Cloud Atlas or David Mitchell, so I'm not going to harp on Doerr for knitting a similar tapestry.  Nor would I expect the large audience for "fiction" on Amazon to care about whether the two books seem particularly related, I mean obviously, Doerr and the publisher must have considered it during the editing and publishing of Cloud Cuckoo Land.  I am surprised by the near universal critical acclaim.  I haven't seen a single takedown, and really I didn't read anything in the run-up comparing the two books. 

   Well, I'm not going to crap on Doerr's parade. If Cloud Cuckoo Land can be a National Book Award Finalist it can win a second Pulitzer.  If it wasn't such a big literary event, I probably wouldn't powered through it in a week like I actually did, but having done so, I didn't feel like there was a great pay off. Of course, Cloud Cuckoo Land is good, but I wasn't wowed.  And I couldn't make it half way through All the Light We Cannot See when I gave the Audiobook a spin last month.

Thursday, October 07, 2021

When We Cease to Understand the World (2021) by Benjamin Labatut


Book Review
When We Cease to Understand the World (2021)
by Benjamin Labatut

   Chilean author Benjamin Labatut scored a rare triple for this blog.  His novel, When We Ceast to Understand the World was published by the New York Review of Books and nominated for the shortlist (and potentially the winner) of both the International Booker and the translated fiction National Book Award.  When We Cease to Understand the World is a novel about advanced physics and mathematics, and the quirky lives of those actual pioneers.  Personally I think there is a strong argument to be advanced that physics is *the* primary scientific metaphor of the 21st century, in the same way that biology/evolution dominated the 19th century and electricity dominated the 20th.   Unfortunately, unlike biology and electricity, advance physics makes, at a very basic, level, no fucking sense.

     It was a genie that Albert Einstein let out of the bottle and then spent the rest of his life trying to capture: The idea that there was no solid reality and that matter is just a collection of empty space and tiny, unpredictable particles forming waves of energy. What is so amazing about these pioneers of advanced physics is that they conjured this stuff up in their head- there are few if any actual experiments in the early history of advanced physics, and then decades later the entire world spent billions and billions of dollars to build enormous particle accelerators which then proved that these early pioneers were right on the money.

     Any work of fiction that seeks to tackle some of these ineffable mysteries is a worthy effort, and I think Labatut handles these subjects better than most- and in a spare 190 pages.  This is the kind of book that wins international literary awards. 

Palmares (2021) by Gayl Jones


Book Review
Palmares (2021)
by Gayl Jones

  Gayl Jones is a legit 20th/21st century literary enigma.  She burst onto the scene in the late 1970's after being sponsored by Toni Morrison.  She published two novels in the late 70's, one book of short stories in both the 1980's and the 1990's, and then two novels at the end of 1990's, and that was it until Palmares was published last month.  There is much to love in Palmares, a sprawling (500 page) picaresque about the adventures of Almeyda. Almeyda is born a slave on  a Brazilian plantation in the 1600's.   Slavery in 17th century Brazil was a different institution than the ante-bellum slavery of the American south in the 19th century.  The oppression Jones depicts is just as virulent, and in many ways more violently repressive, but less succesful at controlling resistance than the American institution that evolved centuries later.

   Thus, the title, Palmares, refers to a settlement of escaped African slaves and free blacks that really existed between 1604 and 1694.   Almeyda spends half the book trying to get there, gets there, survives an extinction level attack by the colonialists and spends the rest of the book looking for her lost husband, Martim Anninho, a free black Muslim who is equally interesting.  Much of the length of Palmares is due to so many characters having a chance to tell their story, often in subchapters titled "So and so tells their story,"  The plot, which is itself complicated, twists itself around the different monologues.   I loved listening to the Audiobook version- which is something like 25 hours long- but I also would have liked to read a physical copy to see all the names and places written down. 

   Anywho, big thumbs up for me, Palmares is just the kind of book I like to read.  Looking forward to more of her work being published, and going back and reading her prior books.  The fact that I hadn't already heard about her is borderline embarrassing, but her twenty years away from the game is a pretty good explanation.

Tuesday, October 05, 2021

Waiting for the Waters to Rise (2010) by Maryse Conde


Book Review
Waiting for the Waters to Rise (2010)
by Maryse Conde

   Maryse Conde is a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature (which is  being announced later this week.)  Like many non-English language writers with top international profiles, her record of being translated into English is spotty.  Take Waiting for the Waters to Rise, originally published in French in 2010, the English translation came out last year and got nominated for the National Book Award for translated fiction longlist (it didn't make the shortlist, announced this week.)  I'm baffled by the shortlist omission- I thought Waiting for the Waters to Rise was a real banger.  Babakar, the protagonist, is an obstetrician living in the French overseas (Caribbean) territory of Guadelope,  As the book reveals, he has an interesting history, born in Mali to a mixed Malian/French couple, he moves to Mauritania to practice as a doctor, only to be sucked into a civil war.  He relocates to Guadelope, where the beginning of the book finds him spontaneously adopting the orphaned newborn of an illegal Haitian immigrant who dies in childbirth.

  Eventually he finds his way to Haiti, where Conde does an amazing job of portraying the day-to-day life in a place where day-to-day life seems quasi-unimaginable to the average English language reader.  It was hard not to read Waiting for the Water to Rise without thinking of V.S. Naipaul- and maybe the similarity is what kept Waiting off the National Book Award shortlist.   Fingers crossed for the Nobel announcement- I think she would be a great pick.

Friday, October 01, 2021

New Teeth (2021) by Simon Rich


Book Review
New Teeth (2021)
by Simon Rich

    I actually thought Simon Rich was English, maybe because the narrator of the New Teeth, Rich's new collection of short-stores, has an English accent.  Turns out he's not, but rather an enfant terrible of American comedy, with "youngest writer ever on SNL" and "son of New York Times columnist and writer Frank Rich" prominently featured on his Wikipedia page.   Anyway, credit where credit is due, New Teeth made me laugh, repeatedly even though you would think some of the themes (a baby detective investigating the disappearance of his younger sister's toy, A half man-half ape city-rescuing superhero asked to work a desk job in the city bureaucracy) sound too much like other contemporary culture products to be interesting.   Fact is, I loved the story about the baby detective and I loved the story about the half-man, half-ape superhero reckoning with his obsolescence(Clobbo.) 

   And so, even though I try to avoid books of short-stories by American Humorists if at all possible, I liked this book of short stories by this American humorist.   I highly recommend the Audiobook, which was a great format for this book.

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

An Inventory of Losses (2020) by Judith Schalansky


Book Review
An Inventory of Losses (2020) 
by Judith Schalansky

   I've appreciated the recent increase in English language attention to works of literary fiction translated into English.  First, the Booker revamped its every-so-often recognition of a translated author to a yearly prize with the same format of its other awards(longlist/shortlist).  That was followed in short order by the National Book Awards announcing a new category for Translated Literature, which presumably should consist of all their formats, but seemingly omits poetry and children's literature in favor of a longlist that resembles the English language longlist in fiction.

   Something I've noted about both the National Book Award for Translated Literature and the Booker International Prize is that the authors tend more to the experimental/"High" literature than the English language longlist, which typically favor bangers written by proven commodities or first-novels written by promising new comers.  Experimental fiction tends to be relegated to maybe one or two titles for each English longlist, here it is the reverse.  The only non-experimental "banger" type book I've encountered so far on either longlist for 2021 is  Waiting for the Waters to Rise by known commodity Maryse Conde, a perennial Nobel Prize contender and actual winner of the one-off alternative Nobel handed out a couple years ago when the actual Nobel took the year off. 

  The New Directions Publishing product listing for An Inventory of Losses cites W.G. Sebald and Bruce Catwin- which are both good comparisons.  Also Rebecca Solnit, who I haven't read.  Those familiar with Scalansky's last book, An Atlas of Lost Islands, should know what they are getting into, those who aren't familiar with Atlas are probably not going to like An Inventory of LossesInventory has discrete moments of joy- like when she describes the lost objects at the beginning of each chapter, but the actual chapters themselves are hard to connect. I honestly couldn't tell you what each is about without going back and referring to marked passages and notes, which I didn't bother to keep for this book.  It was like looking at a book of interesting photographs more than reading a book.

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Strange Beasts of China (2020) by Yan Ge


Book Review
Strange Beasts of China (2020)
by Yan Ge

  Reading contemporary Chinese literary fiction is interesting because...if it comes from China, it means that the text has passed the censor's pen and been granted permission to be published by the Chinese Communist Party.  But what does that mean?  It's not a blanket prohibition on criticizing Chinese party because many of the Chinese language books I've read can be easily interpreted as a critique of contemporary aspects of Chinese society, materialism for example.  Criticizing the impact of capitalism or "business culture" on workers seems to be all right.   

  Mostly what you get is oblique allegories where it is impossible to determine what secret more or political truth is being described.  Some of the difficulty stems from inability to directly criticize the Chinese Communist Party and I think some of it comes from the collection of ideas that can be described as "things lost in translation." 

   The gently surreal world of Strange Beasts of China is one where everything is basically the same with the exception of different tribes of human-like monsters who co-exist under difficult circumstances with their human counter-parts.  I was hopeful for Strange Beasts of China, but everything is just so oblique.  I honestly don't know what to make of it.

So Long, See You Tomorrow (1979) by William Maxwell


Book Review
So Long, See You Tomorrow (1979)
by William Maxwell

   In August, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott published a lengthy article on American author William Maxwell as part of his series of "The Americans"- artists who help to define what is to be American.  The whole idea is to revive interest in "overlooked or under-read" authors (his formulation).  So far he has published essays on Wallace Stegner, Edward P. Jones and Joy Williams.   This process of artistic revival is very much at the heart of this blog- seeing how, if and when it works to bring an Audience to an author who is either non-canonical or canonical for other types of work besides literary fiction.  

  Answering the question of why William Maxwell came to be "overlooked or under-read" seems pretty easy, he wrote about an unfashionable part of the world (the American Midwest) during an unfashionable time, the middle part of the 20th century, after all the slots for canonical writers from the Midwest who wrote about the eartly 20th century/late 19th century, were filled.

  So Long, See You Tomorrow was his last novel by about 20 years, his second-to-last novel appearing in 1961 and this first appearing as a New Yorker short story (split into two parts) in 1979 before being published as a book in 1980.   A reader for looking for reasons Maxwell is "overlooked or under-read" might point the timeline of his bibliography:  novels published in 1934, 1937, 1945, 1948 and 1961.  Short story collections in 1956, 1966, 1977, 1988 and 1992.   That is not the kind of productivity meant to inspire the cultural-industrial complex to do it's best promotional work. 

  Next, you might consider his subject matter Wikipedia calls it "domestic realism," which, really didn't come into vogue as a subject of literary fiction worthy of canonical status until the 1970's, and didn't fully arrive until decades after that.   I've noticed that domestic realism penned by American authors from and about the Midwest seems to be a favorite for re-issue houses, probably on the grounds that republishing an American author has a better chance to catch on than publishing non-American authors. 

      So Long, See You Tomorrow recaps the events leading to a murder in a small town as experienced by various participants- a couple of broken marriages, allegations of infidelity, a divorce trial, back before you could just get divorced.  The events take place in the 1920's,  and I'm not sure I would be able to guess that it wasn't written back then- Maxwell has a style heavily influenced by the high modernism of Virginia Woolf, and everything about So Long, See You Tomorrow, feels like high modernism from the early 20th century.

Monday, September 27, 2021

Matrix (2021) by Lauren Groff

Author Lauren Groff on the Trips That Have Inspired Her Books: Women Who  Travel Podcast | Condé Nast Traveler
American author Lauren Groff
Book Review
Matrix (2021)
by Lauren Groff

  I loved, loved, loved this new novel by American author Lauren Groff, which is nominated for the National Book Award this year.   I liked Florida (2018) and Fates & Furies (2015) and I was excited for her new book even before I learned it was the reimagining of the life of a nun during the pre-Black Death Middle Ages.  Her protagonist, Marie de France, is the bastard child of a French noblewoman (a rape at the hands of an English royal during hostilities in France.)  After her beloved Mother expires, Marie spends three years undetected pretending that her Mother is still alive.  Discovered, she is packed off to England "Angle Terre" to revive a decrepit Nunnery in the English country-side. 

   While it isn't exactly a cheery place, the Middle Ages before the upheaval of the Black Death was relatively stable. Groff seems well versed on recent development in scholarship on this period of history, because Marie's nunnery doesn't seem like a such a bad place to land, especially after Marie starts taking care of business.  Also, at 220 pages, Matrix isn't a slog- it's actually quite unlike a normal work of historical fiction, where the author seems set on making darn sure that the reader knows how much the author knows about the period.   Can a television version a la The Favourite or Catherine the Great on Hulu.

Bewilderment (2021) by Richard Powers

Book Review
Bewilderment (2021)
by Richard Powers

   Is Richard Powers a potential Nobel Prize winner?   It might have seemed highly unlikely before The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018.   Before that he had only some longlist/shortlist nominations and a single National Book Award for The Echo Maker.   Now he's got the National Book Award, The Pulitzer and a legitimate shot at the Booker Prize this year after Bewilderment made the shortlist.   I was surprised by the shortlist pick, if only because nominating an American writer with a large popular audience for the longlist as a way to drum up interest in the lesser known writers seems like a very Booker thing to do.

   I think if Powers actually wins a Booker he'd have to be considered as a Nobel Prize contender.   Surely, if a novelist is picked because of the importance of novels and their relationship with the hard sciences, Powers would be one of a select few.  Historically, the Nobel seems to favor "political" or "socially conscious" writers over those concerned with science, but perhaps the times are changing. I mean really, after handing the Literature award to Bob Dylan, it really feels like anything is possible.

   The elevator pitch for Bewilderment is "Richard Powers does Flowers for Algernon."  Flowers for Algernon is the famous and oft read short story turned novel about Charlie, a "retarded" janitor who receives life changing intelligence boosting surgery.   In Powers' take, the narrator is the single father of a "neurodivergent" pre-teen boy who suffers from non-specified differences that combine aspects of ADHD with Austism/Aspergers syndrome.  Powers is scrupulously aware of avoiding labels, probably because he understands how distracting the labelling process can be in the course of attempting to tell a story.

   It's obvious that there is a slot for neurodivergency in the canon, presumably to be meted out either to an Author who is actually nuerodivergent themselves or some kind of cross-over writer who first nuerodivegency and some other slot- gender/sexuality seems like a likely pairing.  Alas, that writer has not emerged, leaving the field to interpreters of neurodiversity like Powers.   Speaking as the older sibling of a neurodivergent child, I think that Powers gets it right.  

   It should come as no surprise to anyone that the flag-wavers in the neurodiversity movement  tend to be otherwise socioeconomically privileged individuals.  Specifically, the overlaps between parental/societal expectations that a specific child should "do well" in school and the failure, for whatever reasons, of said child to do so frequently leads down the path depicted in Bewilderment, whereas less advantaged children simply stop going to school or even up in alternative scenarios.   Just speaking from my own personal experience, the overriding obsession with the special needs of a neurodivergent child to the exclusion of all other concerns seems to be the prerogative of a very particular (white, well educated, financially secure) type of parent.

   So in that way, Bewilderment, with it's tenure level Astrobiologist single father is par for the course.  Although the narrator himself is the child of a schizophrenic mother and the husband of a deceased life who struggled with serious depression, he never appears to question the wisdom of having a child in the first place, and seems genuinely surprised with how everything turned out.   My experience is that, even when the raising of a neurodivergent child goes well, it's basically a life ender, in that the parent ends up just spending the rest of their life dealing with it.  It's enough to put you off wanting children, but not this guy. 

Second Place (2021) by Rachel Cusk

Book Review
Second Place (2021)
by Rachel Cusk

  Rachel Cusk is another good example of an author who I read because she gets a nomination to the Booker longlist, as she did this year for Second PlaceSecond Place comes hot on the heels (relatively speaking) of the completion of her Outline Trilogy, which wrapped up in 2018 with KudosKudos was very much on my radar screen in 2018, but I just couldn't muster the energy to go back read the first two books in the trilogy.   

  I quite enjoyed Second Place, narrated by an unnamed woman who invites a notorious painter to her out-of-the-way estate.  Listening to the Audiobook, the painter sounded like a cross between Andy Warhol and Lucian Freud.   The truth is that I didn't want to enjoy Second Place, but I most certainly did.  I honestly can't get enough listening/reading to novels that revolve around artists and their behavior.  I can see why it didn't make the shortlist- it's not a signal masterpiece and the ending isn't fantastic- but it isn't some kind of experimental odyssey that makes no sense. 

Thursday, September 23, 2021

A Town Called Solace (2020) by Mary Lawson


Book Review
A Town Called Solace (2020)
by Mary Lawson

   Here is another Booker longlist title that didn't make the shortlist cut.  Canadian writer Lawson picked up another Booker longlist nomination in 2006 for her second book, The Other Side of the Bridge.  It's clearly central to the Booker Prize to throw at least one longlist nomination to a Canadian writer, you could call it a "slot" alongside slots for African writers, writers from South Asia, writers from Aus/NZ, the English spot, the non-English UK slot, the Caribbean slot and the American slot.  I guess you would call Lawson a regionalist, the region being "Northern Canada"- is that the suburbs of Toronto?

   A Town Called Solace is a classic Booker longlist pick, a quiet book about little lives in a small town in Canada with some interesting themes and a well developed plot. If you actually pick up A Town Called Solace, sit down and read it, you won't be sorry, but getting started might be tough.  It's impossible to explain without spoiling aspects of the plot. 

The Sweetness of Water (2021) by Nathan Harris

The power of Oprah!
Book Review
The Sweetness of Water (2021)
by Nathan Harris

  It is not every year that an Oprah's Book Club selection makes the Booker Prize longlist, but here we are, a genuinely in-stock, best-sellng American novel that also made the Booker longlist.  Not the shortlist, which was announced last week, but considering The Sweetness of Water was already a sales success, the lack of shortlist status shouldn't matter in the least for Nathan Harris.  The Sweetness of Water is a work of historical fiction, set in the Faulkner-esque Southern town of Old Ox in the aftermath of the Southern defeat in the American civil war.   Harris provides characters of both races, genders and sexuality, with a melting pot mentality I found rewarding (and often lacking in the sometimes binary world of literary fiction)

   I liked The Sweetness of Water, but didn't love it.  Ultimately Harris pulls up short in bringing the events to an unforeseen or deeply significant ending- maybe this is why he Booker jury didn't pick him for the short-list.  Or maybe it's the Oprah Book Club thing.


Friday, September 17, 2021

No One is Talking About This (2021) by Patricia Lockwood

First time American novelist Patricia Lockwood made the Booker Prize shortlist with No One is Talking About This
Book Review
No One is Talking About This (2021)
by Patricia Lockwood

     Congratulations to all the Booker Prize short-list nominees!  I feel like making the short-list is huge for most authors- almost as good as wining, whereas making the longlist is only a so-so experience, heavy readers like me are way more likely to take your book for a spin, but a longlist nomination doesn't do much for the general Audience, like in the United States, straight up nobody gives a fuck about the longlist titles.   I was surprised to see No One is Talking About This made the shortlist- one of three American books next to the forthcoming Bewilderment by Richard Powers (which also made the National Book Award longlist- announced today) and Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead- another surprise to me.

  I had been hearing about No One is Talking About This here and there for months, basically in headlines that announced it as  "The Great Internet Novel" or questioning that idea.  Knowing that I was going to read it eventually, I skipped the debate.  The truth that No One is Talking About This is half internet novel, half novel about a difficult childbirth, I think the two portions are literally split in two as in "Part One" and "Part Two." 

  I didn't love the plot- it seemed pretty maudlin to me, which I think is probably the point- moving beyond the internet and cynicism to find real meaning in the horrors of everyday life, but as a criminal defense attorney who spends most of his time defending indigent defendants from the vagaries of the Federal criminal justice system,  I am well acquainted with the emotions Lockwood describes.  I just can't imagine this is going to win the Booker Prize, but the shortlist is huge, and it really sets up her next book.

   Also, the Audiobook is great, narrator Kristin Sieh really nails a narrator who could be hyper annoying in Audio form, but is not.

Friday, September 10, 2021

Great Circle (2021) by Maggie Shipstead


Book Review
Great Circle (2021)
by Maggie Shipstead

   Great Circle is another 2021 Booker longlist pick, written by American author Maggie Shipstead.  At 569 pages, Great Circle puts the "long" in longlist but fortunately it's a fast ride.   Shipstead skips between past and present as she tells the intertwined tales of Marion Davies, a 20th century aviatrix with LGBTQ tendencies and Hadley Baxter, a contemporary actress who is enlisted to play Davies in a feature film after she gets terminated from her star-making Twilight-esque role in a YA fantasy franchise.  Also along for the ride is Jamie, Davies' artist-twin brother as well as a host of secondary characters- enough to fill two basketball teams.    

  Other than the late developing LGBTQ angle, it's hard to pinpoint the attraction of the Booker panel to this title as a longlist contender.  True, they love an epic work of historical fiction (See 2013, The Luminaries by Elanor Catton and the two wins by Hilary Mantel for her Thomas Cromwell trilogy.  It's nice to see a book on the longlist that can plausibly be described as a "fun read" or "page turner" but again, at 569 pages it had damn well better be.   I thought her depiction of contemporary starlet Hadley Baxter was particularly clever but even after I finished I was left asking questions about the relationship between the two characters.  I believe the idea is that the same actress would play both roles in a movie/tv version (which would be a movie/tv version of a book that is essentially about the process of making a movie based on a book...trey meta.)

  The short list gets announced next week on the 14th.   Excited to see who makes the cut!

Wednesday, September 08, 2021

The Promise (2021) by Damon Galgut

Damon Galgut – Movies, Bio and Lists on MUBI
South African writer Damon Galgut, will the third time be a charm for the Booker prize.
Book Review
The Promise (2021)
by Damon Galgut

   You'd have to consider The Promise by Damon Galgut a favorite for Booker shortlist status since he's already made it twice before (but never won.)  I'd say he's also a top pick for actually winning the Award- if he makes the shortlist how can they not give it to him.  So far I've read six of the Longlist titles and The Promise is certainly shortlist worthy.   Is The Promise an out-and-out winner? No, but the Booker winner criteria seems to change with each successive jury.

   It's impossible to discuss Galgut to a general audience for literary fiction without comparing him to J.M. Coetzee, specifically as a potential successor (awkward because Coetzee is still writing novels) or heir to Coetzee's legacy.  In the Booker related interview I read in the Guardian, Galgut (who must be sick to death to Coetzee comparisons to the point where it must be extremely bad form to bring it up to him) talked about his respect for Cormac McCarthy- to the point of once trying to psych himself up to knock on the door of his house when he was in New Mexico. 

  Andddd... I guess I can see that influence in The Promise though I can' entirely put aside Coetzee. Can anyone out there blame me?   I didn't love The Promise, it's one of those books that is so well drawn that it is awkward to read.  There is no experimental structure but he does manage to write the tragic history of this South African family in a way that rewards a reader who makes it to the end.   That is a sign of a good author and a good book- it makes the reader think it is one thing and then it turns out to be another. 

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