The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell (audio)

Posted on November 19, 2011 by pagesofjulia

My experience with Scandinavian thrillers is very limited, and no, I have not read any Stieg Larsson. Henning Mankell is reputed to be a standard of the genre that Larsson dominates these days. I was curious and hoped to find a new thriller/mystery author so I picked up this audiobook.

Mankell’s serial character, Kurt Wallander, is a detective in the Ystad police force in Sweden. When the book opens, he’s on leave, trying to recover from the experience of having killed a man – justifiably, in self defense, but still. He has just decided to retire permanently when an old friend, Sten Torstensson, appears, begging Wallander to look into his (Sten’s) father’s death. Gustav Torstensson’s death was ruled accidental – a car crash – but Sten believes he was murdered. Wallander refuses to rejoin the police force – until Sten is killed just weeks later. This convinces our detective, and he comes back to work to investigate the two deaths, and the crimes that spiral on from there.

I am not terribly impressed. The case is rather convoluted, but not convincingly so; I am not enraptured by the twisting threads of guilt and intrigue; I am not held on the edge of my seat. The investigation of the crime is drawn out; many pages pass in which relatively little happens. I was impatient at some point to get the thing over with, especially since the reader knows who the bad guy is from the beginning, thus killing the suspense. (Sometimes this is done well, but not here.) Wallander is somewhat developed as a character, but I felt that we were told more than made to feel his trauma, his personal demons, the difficult family relationships he struggles with. (I’m willing to allow that it might help to read the whole series, or to read in order. But then again, I feel that any individual novel should stand alone, too.) There was a certain amount of… well, it sounded like whining to me.

One detail I struggled with: I know that guns are far, far less prevalent in Scandinavia than they are here in my native USA (and my native Texas in particular). But I still have trouble believing that a Swedish police officer, when approached by a man brandishing a pistol – not aimed at him, and with assurances that he means well – would faint. This and other details felt unrealistic to me and took away from my ability to get lost in the story. That, or the Swedish police are wussies?

In one of the final scenes we supposedly learn all the details and backstory and tie up the loose ends, but the explanation of all those loose ends wasn’t convincing to me; it felt unfinished. And forgive me for being jaded – maybe I’ve been exposed to too much hyper-violent stateside crime drama – but Wallander’s deep shock at the depravity of the crimes in this story felt a little bit extreme to me. Again – this is a police officer? Is this really the worst he’s ever seen by an exponential factor?

Sorry for being harsh, Mr. Mankell; I understand you have a devoted following. But either I missed something, or I need to steer clear of Kurt Wallander in future.

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Soulless by Gail Carriger

Posted on November 17, 2011 by pagesofjulia

My friend Amy told me about the Parasol Protectorate series, and I was intrigued. It took me a while to find a copy of this, the first in the series, but it was worth finding!

The cover asserts that this is “a novel of vampires, werewolves and parasols,” and so the uniqueness begins. The series is set in Victorian London, and combines the genres of paranormal romance and steampunk along with, I suppose, alternate history. And there is a mystery as well. Most interesting.

Alexia Tarabotti is a confirmed spinster of the advanced age of twenty-six. There are several setbacks to her marriageability: her father is both dead and (was) Italian; he gave her a swarthy complexion; her nose is rather large; she is tall; and her personality is far too assertive and prickly to make her a decent wife. Furthermore, she is a preternatural – meaning, she has no soul. In Alexia’s society, werewolves and vampires are well-integrated into society (if not entirely accepted in all circles). To become a vampire or a werewolf, one must have an excess of soul; Alexia’s total lack thereof means that she can, with a touch, neutralize supernatural qualities. At the opening of the book, a vampire attacks her and in defending her, she accidentally kills him. The werewolf authority sent to investigate the death is a peer, one Lord Maccon, with whom she has tangled in the past. As new vampires begin appearing where they shouldn’t, and known vampires (and werewolves) fail to appear where they should, Alexia comes under suspicion. The clever and not-to-be-daunted Alexia, with her preternatural abilities to help her along, works on solving the mystery, further motivated on repeated attempts to abduct her. Lord Maccon works on the mystery because it’s his job. The two have some personality clashes but are also drawn to each other (cue the classic romance-novel device).

There is no arguing against the absolute silliness of this book, but it is oh! so much fun! I really enjoyed the romance that develops between Lord Maccon and Alexia. They struggle with understanding one another’s culture in their courtship: his involves pack dynamics that she’s unfamiliar with, and hers involves chaperones and proper proceedings that Alexia herself is not terribly comfortable with, being such a spinster. Carriger writes some very funny scenes; I giggled aloud. The mystery is engaging. The steampunk background was totally new to me and didn’t necessarily add anything to the appeal, other than being a layer of interest, something shiny to look at between steamy scenes.

I am surprised at myself, because I haven’t liked any paranormal romances yet; but despite the vampires (Lord Akeldama is great fun!) and the werewolves (Lord Maccon is really a sexy beast) this was an engaging, entertaining, clever story with a very likeable main character. I think I’ll seek out more of the Parasol Protectorate series! I wonder if we’ll ever learn more about the incident involving the hedgehog?? Thanks Amy for a very strong recommendation!

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Posted on November 16, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Oooh, spooky! Just that cover alone, are you kidding?? I have been hearing about this book mostly just on the blogosphere for a while now (how come I never heard about it in real life, I wonder?) and was so excited to finally find time for it! Yum! My first lightbulb moment was in reading (on the cover, in the blurb, somewhere) that Shirley Jackson also wrote The Lottery, that hair-raising short story we read in school. Aha! Scary stuff, indeed.

This was a delightful little book, and I read its 146 pages in a day – not in a sitting, mind you, but over breakfast, lunch, dinner, and before bed. I didn’t want to let it rest any longer than I had to! I loved the way that Jackson meted out details; I just knew there was something waiting for me around the corner that was going to blow the whole story wide open, if I just turned one more page…

Our narrator, Mary Katherine or Merrikat, opens the book with her last trek into town for groceries and library books. It seems she used to make this trip twice a week; but after that last time, no more. In that prior time – the whole book is told in flashback – Merrikat lived in the big family house with her sister, Constance, and their Uncle Julian, an invalid. The townspeople hate them. It gradually becomes clear why, and only as the story continues to unfold do we learn why the past tense, and what’s different about the present.

Merrikat is a delightful narrator. She sees things her own way, which is the perk of living with two well-loved relatives and a cat (Jonas) and no one else. She has her own system of controlling her world, by burying charmed items, assigning special powers to special words (melody! gloucester!), and concentration. She tries to make Cousin Charles (an unwanted visitor) go away through her own brand of witchcraft, by removing and replacing items in the room he’s staying in. She is also a delightful narrator because her reliability must be questioned.

I don’t want to give any more plot details away. You must read this book! There is a whimsical tone, and a whole new set of rules. I really enjoyed learning how Merrikat viewed the world, what items had significance to her. There was definite suspense. Believe the hype, friends. Shirley Jackson will draw you into her world and tickle the back of your neck and you’ll love it!

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Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Posted on November 14, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I enjoyed this book, but I finished it still unsure of what actually happened in the story.

This was my first experience with the acclaimed Louise Erdrich, and she writes beautifully. I easily got lost in each chapter’s character and events; she creates a world, a culture, seemingly without effort and so completely. It was a lovely experience. This book is a series of vignettes, or character studies. Each chapter is told in first person by a different character, or even several different characters within a chapter, which to some extent added to my confusion; but they had pretty distinct voices. All the characters are related by blood, marriage, and/or life events, so there is a cohesion to the book as a whole; it’s not a collection or anything. But I’ll be honest. I sometimes lost track of how the characters were connected & who was who, exactly. Sometimes I flipped around trying to resolve things but mostly (especially as I moved further into the book) I just let myself float around a little bit confused. It worked for me this way. If you do a better job than I did of keeping things straight, I’m sure you’ll find a very enjoyable sum of all parts; but even if you take it in as I did, I think you’ll find a string of remarkable evocative stories.

The characters come from several families of Native Americans (American Indians? I’m not sure what’s correct) in North Dakota. The families overlap and merge, through marriage, the production of children both in and out of (and across) marriages; and in local politics and interactions. Their culture – as Native Americans on “the rez” as well as in each distinct, and indistinct, family unit – is one of the framing elements of the book, and I found the cultural examination very interesting. Their relationship with the “outside world” of white Americans was an important feature, too. Mostly, though, the stories feature relationships between our characters: mothers & children, spouses, lovers, aunts & uncles and neighbors. Love is a theme, and sex, and the question of parentage comes up rather frequently. There is lots of heavy drinking and battling with alcohol.

There is sadness in most of the stories, and death, but there is hope and such a great deal of humor, too. Erdrich succeeds in placing me in a place and a culture and making me feel what her characters are feeling. Her writing is beautiful, musical. And so often funny! I pulled a few passages for you that describe one of our matriarchs:

She agreed, taking alert nips of her perfectly covered slice. She had sprinkled a teaspoon of sugar over it, carefully distributing the grains. That was how she was. Even with eights boys her house was neat as a pin. The candy bowl on the table sat precisely on its doily. All her furniture was brushed and straightened. Her coffee table held a neat stack of Fate and True Adventure magazines. On her walls she’d hung matching framed portraits of poodles, kittens, and an elaborate embroidered portrait of Chief Joseph. Her windowsills were decorated with pincushions in the shapes of plump little hats and shoes.

“I make these.” She cupped a tiny blue sequined pump in her hand. “You have a girlfriend? I’ll give it to you. Here.”

…several pages later, still talking about the same woman:

Lulu was bustling about the kitchen in a calm, automatic frenzy. She seemed to fill pots with food by pointing at them and take things from the oven that she’d never put in. The table jumped to set itself. The pop foamed into glasses, and the milk sighed to the lip. The youngest boy, crushed in a high chair, watched eagerly while things placed themselves around him. Everyone sat down. Then the boys began to stuff themselves with a savage and astonishing efficient. Before Bev had cleaned his plate once, they’d had thirds, and by the time he looked up from dessert, they had melted through the walls. The youngest had levitated from his high chair and was sleeping out of sight.

See, isn’t that funny and evocative?

I found Love Medicine a unique and enjoyable read, if unorthodox in its structure. I recommend it.

For those who have read this book: did I space out somewhere, or did anyone else have trouble holding the family trees together? Does it matter?

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The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (audio)

Posted on November 12, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Margaret Atwood is a master of world-building. This was a great experience: disturbing, thought-provoking, funny, frightening, and completely real.

In The Year of the Flood, we check in with Toby and with Ren, both weathering out the aftermath of the “waterless flood” that seems to have almost entirely wiped out humankind. We’re also treated to a series of flashbacks to their lives before the flood. In that dystopic world, the CorpSeCorps rule a sinister corporate/business/police state, and the Gardeners preach the gospel of the flood to come and their own brand of “green,” vegetarian, wacky Christianity. Toby was an Eve in the Gardeners, and Ren, a former Gardener, was a sex worker in a high-end club. I don’t want to say much more about plot; the constant discovering of new surprises was very special and I want to preserve that for you.

One of the unique aspects of this audiobook was the songs that accompanied the sermons preached by Adam One, the Gardeners’ leader. For one thing, various narrators are employed, which is always interesting; Adam One has his own narrator, so we hear his sermons in his own voice. I found them creepy, but the hymns were creepier still. Music on an audiobook is a great use of the format, and one I’m mostly unfamiliar with. In this case, they helped set a tone that I found overwhelmingly… disturbing. I’m a little alarmed by organized religion to begin with, and pretty sympathetic to vegetarian-hippie-feel-good systems of thought; but this combination of the two was definitely a little bit cultish and perverse. There is an eerie other-worldly feeling to the pre-flood dystopia. And then of course, our flashbacks to that world are interspliced with tidbits of the lonely experiences of Toby and Ren in the frightening new world, where liobams (lion-lambs) and rackunks (raccoon-skunks) run wild.

And speaking of creepiness, can I mention this? One character is a refugee from Texas, which was made unliveable by a hurricane, which of course wins prizes for believability but the flip side of that coin is it’s a little close to home, Ms. Atwood! She does paint an alarming picture of the-world-as-we-know-it, but different.

There are several qualities that make this book special and remarkable. Toby, Ren, Zeb, and Amanda are all such real and fully-developed characters; they live and breathe. The pre-flood world of the CorpSeCorps and the Gardeners is both fantastic and wild and foreign and also startlingly close to home; this may very well be what we’re headed towards, you’ll think as you read/listen. It, too, is well-developed, fully-realized, frighteningly realistic and possible. The pacing of the story builds the tension perfectly; new tidbits are discovered at just the right moments; the tension grows. At the start of the story, we meet both Toby and Ren, each in her respective hiding place and suspecting she’s the last living human on earth; as the flashbacks unfurl, we learn how each ended up where she is. The jumpy chronology adds to the disjointed feeling the book inspires. It’s really just masterfully done. And the audio was extremely well done, too.

I don’t feel I’ve done this book justice. I don’t want to say too much; but maybe too I’m just not up to the task. I recommend Atwood and, as Valerie pointed out, you should read Oryx and Crake before this one as it is a sequel of sorts; although I think it is very satisfying on its own, too. (I did read the former but have mostly forgotten it…) I also want to direct you to Kerry’s review, also of the audiobook, as she did a great job. (Maybe I’m just having trouble following her!)

This is a creepy-crawly, perfectly executed story about the dystopian future we might be headed towards, and the audio is A+.

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The Broker by John Grisham (audio)

Posted on November 10, 2011 by pagesofjulia

It’s been a few years since I read any Grisham. (As a kid I remember repeatedly rereading The Client and loving it.) He may not be a genius of proper “high” literature but he can be relied upon for a solid legal thriller every once in a while. In fact this one was rather short on the legal part, more of a proper thriller with elements of international intrigue. It made for a great road trip “read” for Husband and I.

Joel Backman was known as “The Broker” in his former life as high-powered Washington, D.C. attorney, lobbyist and power broker. He had connections, he had the big firm, he had the BIG money, and he was known to be rather unscrupulous in the pursuit of the mighty dollar and his clients’ victory. But when the story opens, he’s six years into a prison sentence, serving in isolation. The outgoing president is convinced by the CIA in the final moments of his presidency to pardon Backman – but not for his own good. The CIA is still trying to answer all the questions relating to the Backman case, and they hope that upon his release, they’ll get to sit back and watch who assassinates him, thus resolving a question of national security.

I’ll leave the international espionage parts vague for now – I could spend all day trying to detail this fairly complicated case. If you go check out this book yourself it will all be explained. For now you should know this: Backman is shipped overseas by the CIA and set up with a new identity as Marco Lazare, an Italian raised in Canada and thus just now furiously studying the Italian language. He eventually ends up going on the run, escaping his CIA handlers, dodging possible assassins of a variety of nationalities, and fleeing back to the US to blow the cover off the security concern involving spy satellites and jamming software.

The techies among us will, I daresay, be dissatisfied with the tech details of the case; I think it’s fairly simplistic and a little dated by now. But if you can put this aside (it’s not sci fi, after all), it’s a fun story of intrigue. We have to wonder along with Backman/Marco where the threat is coming from, who he can trust, and what he should do with the information he carries. What he once hoped to make a fortune off of now endangers his life, and The Broker for the first time is concerned with Doing The Right Thing rather than Making The Buck. The greatest sort of plot development is in Backman/Marco’s growth from The Broker into a decent human being.

Husband was disappointed that there wasn’t more blow-em-up gore and bad-ass action (in other words, Backman is no Jack Reacher). But this is just a slightly different kind of book, that’s all. I found it engrossing and entertaining; it did its job. It’s light reading but as such, I thought it was successful.

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Stationary Bike by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on November 9, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I’m going to call this one a short story, at only an hour and a half, unabridged. It made for a nice short entertaining story during our drive up for a bike race a few weeks ago.

Richard Siftkitz is a freelance commercial artist, making his living by drawing and painting commissioned works for advertisements, pamphlets, movies posters, record covers, and the like. He’s 38 years old when the story opens, and his doctor is concerned about his cholesterol level (Richard likes to eat a lot of fast food). The doctor explains the issue with a metaphor: he tells Richard that there is a little team of workmen, of the hardhat-and-work-boots variety, living inside his body, working hard to keep his arteries clear of the junk Richard is putting into them. If they are made to work too hard for too many years, they’ll get tired, start doing sloppy work, and eventually quit or be overcome.

Richard takes this concern to heart, and goes out and buys… that’s right, a stationary bike. He sets it up in the basement of his apartment building and paints a mural on the wall, of a road through a forest. This road represents both the road he pretends he’s riding down, and one of the roads that his little tiny interior metaphorical workmen are keeping cleared for him. He pins up maps on the wall and considers himself to be riding down real roads in upstate New York, eventually achieving the Canadian border and riding onward deep into the Canadian forests. Richard’s very active imagination simultaneously creates full lives for the team of four men he envisions working inside his body. He gives them names and backgrounds and families.

Without ruining too much for you, I will say that Richard’s imagined workmen take on lives of their own, and his imaginary ride through the Canadian woods takes on proportions larger than he meant for it to have. He finds himself in danger.

I found this short audiobook entertaining and spooky. The tension built nicely. There were little clips of music that played in between chapters; it started off sort of Musak-ish, but as the story got creepier, the music got creepier, growing with the mood. It was well done. Luckily (since I’m not real good with horror!) it wasn’t unbearably scary but it did give us some creeps. I liked it.

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Black Sun by Edward Abbey

Posted on November 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I love Edward Abbey for Desert Solitaire, and for his reputation (compounded of course by my love of Fire Season too). My Pops has gotten into him this year, and has brought me quite a few of his books, and I’ve been excited to pick them up. I confess I chose this one for its setting as I’m now working on completing the Where Are You Reading? Challenge, and it covers Arizona for me. But oh! this book has value all on its own. Those 3-4 other Abbey books that are sitting on my shelf right now just moved up the list a little bit. He wrote more nonfiction than fiction, and his best-known novel is The Monkey Wrench Gang; this lesser-known novel involves a fire lookout, which was my attraction (see again Fire Season).

The story is this. Will Gatlin has abandoned his life as college professor and husband to become a reclusive fire lookout in the Grand Canyon National Park. He is mostly alone up there, but does get a few visits and letters from his friend Art Ballantine, who still teaches college but expends more energy on chasing women. To say he is obsessed with sex, breasts, the female anatomy (he uses the c-word), young girls in every application, would be putting it mildly; his letters are raving and silly and self-deprecatingly intellectual. And very funny. In between Ballantine missives Will does his fire-lookout work, observes nature – these parts are poetic, loving and appreciative – and carries on a love affair with a girl named Sandy. I’m not sure we ever learn Will’s age, but he is probably old enough to be nineteen-year-old Sandy’s father. She is a virgin when they meet, and engaged to another man, but none of this stops them from cavorting the wilds (desert, river, canyon and forest) in the nude, wittily teasing one another and having wonderful sex. Here Abbey falls into that lamentable and oh-so-distinctive habit that older male writers sometimes fall into (Papa included!) of creating nubile young beauties who want nothing more than to have endless sex with old men. It’s unfortunate in that it seems to give away the author’s own dirty-old-man fantasies (I don’t know this about Abbey in particular but it is my reaction to the cliché). But if we can move past this issue, Will and Sandy have a great time running around the wilderness, la dee da. That is, until Sandy disappears and her fiancé shows up to accuse Will of disappearing her and punches him in the face.

Abbey writes beautifully, lyrically about nature and about love or at least attraction. The letters from Ballantine (and others) are amusing. The story is tragic, but it requires a certain overlooking of the older man’s fantasy before we could really sympathize with Will’s sense of loss. If you can move past this, it’s a beautiful little story with flora and fauna of the Grand Canyon painting the background. I was only partly successful in that requisite overlooking, but enjoyed it all the same. I have great hope for the other Abbey books waiting on my shelves.

I thought I could clearly see connections in Abbey’s writing style and subject matter to Keruoac, as well as Philip Connors, who in Fire Season acknowledges the debt. I recommend Black Sun, unless of course you’ve had too much euphoric losing of teenage virginities to much older men, in which case perhaps start with Desert Solitaire and I’ll let you know how the rest of them go, too!

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Into the Silence by Wade Davis

Posted on November 6, 2011 by pagesofjulia

An epic history of adventure and adversity, of one man and a nation’s quest for redemption.

In Into the Silence, Wade Davis (The Wayfinders, The Serpent and the Rainbow) portrays several attempts to climb Mount Everest during the 1920s within the context of the state of the British Empire after the First World War. With the benefit of new access to primary sources, he begins with visceral descriptions of the Great War in all its horrifying violence, as seen through the eyes of several players in the later Everest drama, and then follows these men through the postwar numbness of a Britain that had lost the bulk of a generation. Davis makes a convincing argument that the assault on Everest was “the ultimate gesture of imperial redemption.”

George Mallory was the star of three successive attempts to summit a mountain that was at the time a complete mystery–its weather patterns and geography entirely unknown, the cultures that surrounded it viewed by the British with a misguided paternalism. Along with a host of fellow climbers, adventurers and scientists, Mallory was driven toward an accomplishment that the nation came to grasp as an outlet for its frustrations and a hopeful liberating triumph. While he was the principal character in the eyes of his contemporaries and in history, the other explorers also receive well-deserved and detailed attention in Davis’s account.

Into the Silence is a book about mountaineering and a respectable adventure epic with all the alpinist details, but it’s also so much more: a heartbreaking portrayal of war; the story of more than a dozen individuals whose lives were rocked by a war and a mountain; and finally, a history of a nation watching its own imperial era come to an end.

This review originally ran in the November 4, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

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Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris (audio)

Posted on November 5, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Definitely Dead is a Sookie Stackhouse book from the Southern Vampire Mystery series. Yes. Southern Vampire Mystery Series. The television series True Blood is based on these books. This is not my standard reading material, but (this is becoming a theme) I picked it to cover Louisiana for the Where Are You Reading? Challenge, on rhapsodyinbooks‘s recommendation. I like James Lee Burke for Louisiana normally, but took this opportunity to expand my knowledge (if not my reading loves) – for professional reasons as a librarian, if for no other reason. One of my first pleasant surprises was the narration; Johanna Parker’s southern accent is fun. (Her Irish accent, for Father Riordan, on the other hand, is a travesty. Luckily we don’t hear too much from him.) The redeeming features didn’t end there; Sookie is a pleasant, likeable enough protagonist. She’s a little bumbling, and she struggles a little bit with her sense of self-worth, but she’s not whiny; she’s just human. Ha – that’s a joke, as her being human makes her fairly unique in Bon Temps, Louisiana, a world full of supernatural beings: were-wolves, were-panthers, were-tigers, vampires, goblins, and sundry shape-shifters.

In this book, Sookie is being attacked by various enemies: one, the family of the Pelt girl that she apparently killed in an earlier book, and two, okay I won’t give it away just yet… The vampire Queen of Louisiana (what a funny phrase, it made me smile every time) marries the King of Arkansas (even funnier!) in a political match, but Sophie’s cousin Hadley is the Queen’s real love. Hadley has just died, and when Sookie goes into New Orleans to clean out her apartment she finds a dead werewolf in the closet – and the intrigue just increases from there. Meanwhile, Sookie begins to date a sexy were-tiger, Quinn; he’s there with her when she’s attacked on several occasions, so they bond while fighting various supernatural beings. There is an unusual sex scene between the two of them that I am still contemplating and finding unlikely, but I’ll let you discover that one on your own.

It’s an odd world that Harris builds here; a number of phrases got me giggling just for their oddity (I wish I’d taken better notes here). It was strange enough to me that the novelty was rather amusing, although I guess regular readers of paranormal whatnot are beyond this. Sookie is relatively charming, and Quinn is an attractive character; I found myself entertained once I got into things. But this book is no literary feat. The dialog can be awkward, and I found enough grammatical errors to be distracting.

In the end, this wasn’t a painfully bad book to listen to. (Well, the cd’s in my audio copy were badly scratched and sometimes that got a little painful, but I don’t hold Harris or Sookie responsible for that.) It had its moments, but it failed to make me care deeply; the world Harris built was more silly than interesting. Unfortunately I don’t care what happens to Sookie next, although I wish her well.

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