Feb 27 2020

Front Desk (Front Desk #1) by Kelly Yang

Welp, that’s two five-star amazing children’s books in a row for me, I honestly feel blessed.

My 8 year-old borrowed this from his teacher, so it’s been sitting, with that compelling cover, on the dining room table where we eat and study and play for a few weeks now. Jms has already finished reading it, and when I finally got a break in my work schedule, I picked it up in order to be able to discuss it with him (and because that cover is adorable!) But also I knew from the blurb that this book was extremely relevant to my interests as an Asian-American immigrant myself.

Front Desk is about 10 year-old Mia Tang, whose parents have emigrated from China to the USA in the 1980s in search of a better life, free of the vagaries of an oppressive government. Tho her parents are highly educated, the language barrier confines them to low-paying jobs which barely allow them to survive. So when they find an ad looking for someone to manage a motel, with free rent included, the Tang family thinks this could finally be the break they’ve been looking for.

The Calivista Motel is owned by Mr Yao, and from his very first conversation with the Tangs, it’s clear that exploitation is his go-to. But the Tangs, being recent immigrants who don’t know any better, accept his terms, in the same way that millions of other immigrants throughout history have accepted predatory terms due to believing that that’s what it takes to get ahead in America. While her parents struggle to keep up with the day-to-day running and maintenance of the motel, Mia works the front desk when she isn’t at school, where she has a whole other set of problems to deal with, involving popular kids and her own struggles with the English language. As she slowly becomes aware of the unjustness of the situation her parents are in, she also encounters racism, not only to herself and her parents, but also to the motel’s African-American clientele and in particular Hank, one of the weekly tenants.

This would be a complete downer of a novel — an Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for kids, if you will — if it weren’t for Mia’s belief in the power of words, especially written, to change the world. Her spirit and wit and sheer determination to do the right thing, culminating in one of the most satisfyingly triumphant endings I’ve enjoyed in a while, made for a book that was a sheer delight, even as I sobbed my way through entire, fortunately short because middle-grade, chapters. This was an absolutely tremendous book, and I’m fervently glad my kid’s teacher loaned it to him.

Probably more fervently than my actual kid. We agreed that we both enjoyed the book and had the same favorite parts, but he absolutely was not as affected enough by the proceedings to cry, due to the fact that he’s 8 and has never had to live through that kind of thing. Maybe when he’s older, he’ll revisit this book and understand why his mom loved it so much. I just hope he’ll be lucky enough to have continued to not have to live through that kind of exploitation, but that he’ll have developed an empathy for the less fortunate regardless.

Is it too much to hope that Front Desk, like The Jungle before it, will spur our society to do better, to look on its most unfortunate with compassion, to reform its laws towards more humane purposes rather than less? The current political climate is discouraging, but books like this may at least sow in our young the seeds of a brighter future. And! The sequel comes out in September!! I can hardly wait, but will try to modify my use of exclamation points in the meantime!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/27/front-desk-front-desk-1-by-kelly-yang/

Feb 26 2020

Foreign Devils by John Hornor Jacobs

Foreign Devils continues the cowboys and Romans mashup started in The Incorruptibles, a story that will conclude in Infernal Machines. I am very glad that I don’t have to wait for John Hornor Jacobs to write the third volume, because boy howdy is Foreign Devils a middle book.

Foreign Devils by John Hornor Jacobs

As the Ruman Empire strides through its 2638th year, war looms with its nearest rival, Madiera, the result of ill-fated journeys in Occidentalia that were chronicled in The Incorruptibles. Because the Cornelians were in the thick of it, the Emperor Tamburlaine commands them to return to Rume and make amends. Fisk and Shoestring, heroes of the first volume, are ordered to remain in Occidentalia’s Hardscrabble Territories and hunt down the traitor engineer Beleth, who may be going over to the Madierans and taking key secrets about Rume’s military disposition and its command of daemons to a rival power. Fisk and Shoestring have plenty of personal reasons to capture Beleth as well, although truth be told they’d just as soon shoot him on sight and probably would do exactly that if disobeying an imperial order weren’t a fast ticket to crucifixion.

Fisk is none too pleased with imperial orders, since he became very closely associated with the Cornelians at the end of The Incorruptibles and revealed most of his Past, a family history involving exile from Rume and infamy at its highest levels. Nevertheless, for the sake of his new ties he is willing to hunt Beleth across the great plains of the new world, while the Cornelian family takes a fast, demon-powered steamship across the ocean to the eternal city.

Foreign Devils has Shoe again narrating his and Fisk’s tale in the first person, and adds letters sent back via a sort of demon telegram that tell of the Cornelians’ journey, the events that transpire in Rume, and their embassy as the Emperor’s representative in far Kithai. It’s fun, pulpy adventure all around with genteel travellers in hardbitten territory, conks on the head, corrupt guards, a scheming semi-urbane spymaster, demon-infested traps for our heroes, plus much more. And that’s just what happens to Shoe and Fisk. In Rume the protagonists experience how dangerous the Emperor can be, even to his oldest friends. The journey to Kithai brings unexpected transformations to the patrician embassy party, not least to the younger sister who had been such a spiteful viper in The Incorruptibles. Both sets see the immense destructive power unleashed when daemonic energy is released in an uncontrolled fashion. Jacobs writes it as nearly equivalent to a nuclear detonation.

Events of Foreign Devils also complicate the picture of the world that was portrayed in the first book. As little as Fisk wants to countenance it, the vaettir are not all implacable killers, as Shoe’s first-hand encounters attest. Not all of the dvergar are reconciled to Ruman supremacy in Occidentalia, and some of them are organizing underground groups to assert their own interests when Rume and Madiera clash. Fisk is left with a little uncertainty about Shoe’s ultimate loyalties. I think Jacobs means for this to be a source of tension, but I would be extremely surprised if this trilogy wound up as a tale of betrayal between partners; they’re just not that kind of books.

The journey to Kithai is interesting in itself, and for me as a reader interesting also in a meta way, seeing how this portrayal of China compares to against others that I have read. There are dragons of various sorts, and junks, and a scene where the foreign emissary refuses to bow to Kithai’s power. There is also much puzzlement on the part of the Rumans when the emissary from Kithai to Rume, who is returning with them, tries to explain Qi.

Foreign Devils continues the pulpy fun that began in The Incorruptibles, though I think it might have been a better book if it had been shorter and tighter. It is also very much a middle book: the villain is not caught for good, the war is not fully started, the rebellion is still being fomented, the mysteries of the vaettir remain unsolved, and so forth. One of the stories ends with a bang, the other with a battle, and neither is anywhere close to resolution. Time to see what’s happening with those Infernal Machines, I imagine.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/26/foreign-devils-by-john-hornor-jacobs/

Feb 26 2020

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

I am not 100% sure why I put this book on hold from the library, but I’m so glad I did. Perhaps it was recommended to me as a book for people who loved the recent movie Knives Out? Because I absolutely loved both.

The Westing Game is a challenge set by millionaire (this was the 1970s: in modern terms, he’d likely be a billionaire) Sam Westing, who invites 16 heirs to compete for the chance to earn his fortune now that he’s dead and gone. It’s no coincidence that all 16 heirs either live in or have a connection to Sunset Towers, a five-storey modern apartment complex on the shores of Lake Michigan, with a view to the supposedly abandoned and purportedly haunted Westing estate. Paired off to compete in solving clues to find out who killed him, the 16 contestants find themselves growing both together and closer as strange events begin to befall them in their hunt for the truth.

I know that Turtle, the 14 year-old, is supposed to be the heroine of the piece, but Ellen Raskin does such an amazing job of fleshing out the supporting characters that it feels more like a win for everyone when the book comes to its close. I particularly enjoyed the stories of Angela, Judge Ford and Sydelle, tho honestly my heart was warmed by everyone’s stories here. And it’s weird, because it’s not like Ms Raskin really delves into any of her characters’ interior lives. She’s just so adept at sketching with dialogue and the nuance of small gestures that it’s hard not to feel the humanity of everyone involved, even when they’re being called out on their failings. Seriously, it was a welcome shock to my modern sensibilities to have this book from the 1970s be far more socially progressive than some of the contemporary stuff I read today. It reminded me, in more ways than one, of my all-time favorite children’s book, The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, which also embraced empathy and diversity while telling a ripping good mystery.

And as with all great children’s books, this is the kind of novel that survives a reader’s growth to adulthood. If you haven’t read it already, do it now! One note, tho: maybe avoid the Kindle version. It felt a bit ironic that the ebook I had included a delightful section on Ms Raskin’s obsession with typesetting and design when the preceding text clearly lacked most of what she’d insisted on, due I suppose to the vagaries of Kindle/e-type settings. Hmm, maybe I ought to buy a hard copy of this novel for my 8 year-old for his upcoming birthday. I hope he enjoys it as much as I did.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/26/the-westing-game-by-ellen-raskin/

Feb 23 2020

Dark River by Rym Kechacha

Wow, this book.

Dark River tells the tales of two women, separated by millennia but whose struggles eerily echo one another’s as they both embark on perilous migrations in the face of environmental disaster. Shaye is a Neolithic woman whose tribe is concerned at the way the waters of their plenty time place have begun to run from instead of to the ocean, fouling the water and driving away game. When an initiate of the sacred oak grove where they usually winter comes asking them to make the pilgrimage early, so they may try to appease the spirits with a grand ritual, Shaye willingly agrees, as it seems her best chance at being reunited with Marl, the man she loves and father of her son, Ludi.

In an England some decades from now, Shante is waiting for the visas that will allow her family to join her husband up in a northern city safer from the ravages of the rising seas. When the visas finally come through, she and her sister Grainne and her son Locke prepare to leave the world they’ve always known… only to find that greater danger awaits them on their path than in the crumbling city they’d left behind.

I finished reading Dark River while on a weekend trip at 4 a.m. and immediately wanted to call my husband to have him wake the kids so I could tell them I love them. Of course, since it was ridiculous o’clock and no one at home would have appreciated the gesture, I did not. Now, I am ordinarily quite susceptible to books making me want to be more loving towards my kids, but this book made my heart hurt in a new way. I imagine it’s how people who enjoyed Cormac McCarthy’s The Road felt. For the record, I thought The Road was self-congratulatory nonsense: Dark River, on the other hand, showcases the love of a person for her family, and especially her child, without turning it into an unsightly display of wallowing masochism, even in the face of terrible odds.

And that, I think, is why Dark River hurt me so much, because it drives home the fact that there are no guarantees. There are only so many things we can do to safeguard our families. So many things are out of our hands, making it even more important for us to tell the people we love that we love them while we can. And for all that, Dark River isn’t a book without hope. It’s still important to try, to use the lessons of the past in order to keep surviving.

My only quibble with the novel was with the end of Shante’s story. I was surprised that her thoughts turned to her dad instead of her son, given the circumstances. Perhaps she wanted to take her mind off her grief, but it felt like an oddly abrupt change of subject given what we knew of her. I did however very much like how the narratives weren’t entirely in lockstep, with the differences only making each character feel that much more realistic and relatable.

Dark River is Rym Kechacha’s debut novel and is just an absolute masterpiece of speculative eco-fiction. To read more about this terrific novel, check out the other sites on the blog tour listed in the handy infographic above.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/23/dark-river-by-rym-kechacha/

Feb 20 2020

An Interview with Marian Womack, author of The Golden Key

Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did The Golden Key evolve?

A. The story emerged, oddly enough, in California while I was attending the Clarion Workshop. It was the story I wrote to be workshopped the week when Catherynne Valente was teaching us. I got a lot of useful feedback there. Then I decided to develop it as a novel for my Cambridge University Creative Writing master degree. It was a slow process, we’re talking years, in which scenes and characters and events fell into place. But I have always known that I wanted to write about Norfolk, a place I have a lot of conflicting emotions about.

Q. The Golden Key is a novel that seems very much inspired by a sense of place, in this case the mysterious fenlands of England. How would you describe your relationship with this particular geography and what spurred you to write about it?

A. I went first to Norfolk in the early 2000s, and the impressions and emotions that the place inspired have been difficult to shake. I have never felt so much that I was in a place that was haunted, where getting lost would be easy. I think that was where I first learnt of the expression “being pixie-led”. As it happens, we almost lost our sense of direction when a cloudy mist descended over the Fens. That first moment of indeterminacy has stayed with me all these years, and I still think of East Anglia as a place that could be a portal to another realms. My husband’s family comes from that part of the world, so we live very nearby, in Cambridgeshire, and it is still a place that occupies a large portion of our imaginary,

Q. Helena Walton-Cisneros was my favorite character in the novel, and her wry observations regarding the sexism of the time really resonated with me as a feminist. Without trying to narrow your range, do you ever find yourself writing with a particular audience in mind? Are there any particular audiences you hope will connect with this story?

A. I write mostly for myself, I write the kind of story that I would like to read as a reader, and that would make me satisfied. I think writing for an audience is probably not a good idea.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/20/an-interview-with-marian-womack-author-of-the-golden-key/

Feb 18 2020

Light of Impossible Stars (Embers of War #3) by Gareth L. Powell

And so the Embers Of War series closes in the bright glow of conflict and its aftermath, a truly terrific, action-packed space opera that ponders as well what it means to be human, in all our splendor and sordidness.

As Light Of Impossible Stars begins, the sentient warship Trouble Dog is desperate for fuel and on the run from the Fleet Of Knives headed by war criminal Ona Sudak, who’s gleefully re-embracing her megalomaniacal past. Trouble Dog’s captain, Sal Konstanz, is still coming to grips with what Sudak’s dreadful plans have already wrought for civilization as they know it. However, Sal and the rest of her traumatized crew understand that worse still lies in the threat of the dragon-like creatures lurking at the edges of hyperspace. The one thing both the Fleet Of Knives and the hyperspace dragons seem to fear is the rent in reality known as the Intrusion, so it’s in that direction that the Trouble Dog and her passengers go in search of supplies and answers.

Meanwhile, a young woman named Cordelia Pa is coming to terms with her own upbringing on the Plates, an artificial set of habitats layered in space a short distance from the Intrusion. She and her brother Michael had grown up scavenging for ancient artifacts to survive, but a surprise visitor turned her world upside down, offering her a chance at a life less limited. When she discovers the bargain that was made in order to shape her, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about herself and her connection to the alien technology she grew up surrounded by. Inevitably, her path and the Trouble Dog’s must converge if either of them has any hope of saving humanity from the twin threats of Sudak and the space dragons (ooh, cool band name!)

There’s honestly not much else I can tell you about what happens here, because it would lessen the emotional impact of the book/trilogy. I can tell you that I cried buckets at the Penitence’s last conversation (Johnny!!!) and that I desperately want to read more books in this setting! I have a feeling that Gareth L Powell is done with Sal’s story, and possibly with Trouble Dog’s too, but I’m hoping there’ll be more in future regarding Cordelia and the Plates (slightly less cool band name.) I also want to know what happened to Sofia in all that time! There’s some really inventive stuff on display here, plus Mr Powell completely sidesteps the many pitfalls endemic to having a diverse cast. Small, happy spoiler: no gays were buried in the plotting of this book.

Splendidly satisfying space opera trilogy that builds off the promise of its first installment, through its terrific second, to tell a sweeping tale that interrogates the need for preemptive warfare while emphasizing a greater acceptance of the identity and inherent nobility of others. Also, idk how Julia Lloyd manages to make each book cover even more beautiful than the last: it’s truly astonishing.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/18/light-of-impossible-stars-embers-of-war-3-by-gareth-l-powell/

Feb 17 2020

The Golden Key by Marian Womack

If you’re looking for a book with atmosphere, The Golden Key has it in peat-filled, gas-lit spadefuls. Set just after the end of Queen Victoria’s death, it travels from the fenlands of England to the spiritualist parlors of London, where seances are once more all the rage. Samuel Moncrieff is a young man adrift after a devastating loss, trying to drown his sorrows in the excesses available to those of his station. Thus, he’s drunkenly backstage at a music hall when he first encounters Helena Walton-Cisneros, a detective who masquerades as a medium, one of the few socially acceptable ways a woman can earn an independent living in those times. Their meeting is awkward, to say the least.

Shortly thereafter, Helena is hired by Lady Matthews, a close friend of Samuel’s godfather, Charles Bale, a confirmed spiritualist himself. Twenty years ago, Lady Matthews’ three young stepdaughters disappeared without a trace. Still wracked with guilt, she wants to make one last go of finding them, and charges Helena with the task of doing so. But both Lady Matthews and Charles have secrets they’d rather not give up, even when Helena finds herself imperiled in her pursuit of the truth. When signs point to Samuel being involved not only in the decades-old disappearances of the girls, but also in the contemporary vanishing of young children in London, Helena must ask herself how far she’s willing to go and whom she can trust as she struggles to bring the lost children home.

Marian Womack weaves a rich tapestry of historical fact with spooky, Gothic atmosphere to tell her weird tale of unearthly realms and the people who communicate between them. Feminist and smart, the novel brings a much needed new perspective to the early 20th century’s fascination with spiritualism and fairies. I wish more attention had been paid to the actual plot, tho. The setting is so lushly imagined, but we only get glimpses of what our main characters do, outside of conversations and the occasional seance. The most action-filled parts of the story belong to Lady Matthews, who is a minor character: I really wish we’d been given more detail as to what Helena, Samuel and the redoubtable Eliza were up to when they were working with magic. We get so much lead up and information as to what everyone is thinking and experiencing beforehand, that to have the most crucial bits just barely described, mentioned instead of shown, feels like being cheated out of the meat of the plot. That said, I did enjoy the attempts to apply scientific reasoning to certain of the phenomena. Like Helena, I prefer to apply facts first before considering the possibility of the supernatural.

The Golden Key is Ms Womack’s debut novel (out tomorrow from Titan Books!) and I’m very much looking forward to more. Her characters are unique and the settings both beautifully rendered and unsettling. With a little more action, a little more showing instead of telling, I’m confident that her future novels, hopefully featuring more Helena, will continue to amuse and enlighten.

I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to interview Ms Womack about The Golden Key, writing and some terrific new books she’s looking forward to, so come back on the 20th to see our discussion. In the meantime, check out some of the other blog stops on the book tour!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/17/the-golden-key-by-marian-womack/

Feb 14 2020

Lies Sleeping (Rivers of London #7) by Ben Aaronovitch

I have a weird confession to make: I’ve loved every single one of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers Of London novels but I’ll be darned if I could, today, explain the plot of even just one of the first six books to anybody who asked. Okay, maybe Midnight Riot since that was the foundational text, and then there’s a book with an FBI agent and a book about Isengard and then stuff with fairies? Like, I have a general sense of what’s happened so far but I can barely even recapitulate, much less explain it all. Part of this is because the novels are so darn dense, with Mr Aaronovitch throwing big meaty ideas into the mix as our hero DC Peter Grant runs around London mostly, trying to investigate and stop magical crimes. Another is that details relevant to the overarching plot/world are included in non-book format, whether via comics or short stories (maddening, but understandable: an author’s got to make money. Mr Aaronovitch claims that you don’t have to read the extra stuff to enjoy the mains, but on this one thing I refuse to believe him.) But honestly, the main reason I can’t quite grok everything that’s going on is because lots of things tend to remain unexplained, and it is to Mr Aaronovitch’s unending credit that that is perfectly acceptable to me as a reader. He just gives you so much to think about, to be entertained by, with such confidence and skill and, frankly, realism, that it seems almost churlish to demand explanations given that our first person narrator, Peter, barely knows what’s going on half the time himself.

And THEN comes the seventh book in the series, which neatly ties everything up and finally, finally, tells you who the eff Mr Punch really is. This was a really great arc ender, dealing with the bad guy(s), tying up a bunch of loose ends but also pointing to a fresh direction forward for the series. By no means read this if you haven’t already enjoyed the first six books. I’m lucky enough to be reading this while holding an advance copy of book 8, False Value, so even my sieve-like memory won’t lose too much detail while segueing from one to the next. Is this review really just me boasting about already owning a copy of the next book in the series? Not entirely, tho I will say that readers should by all means binge books 1-7 to get a complete, satisfying story. Also, it’s rather hard to describe without giving away details. Lies Sleeping is basically about bells and ancient rituals, but honestly about so much more. If you haven’t already, start at Midnight Riot and settle in to enjoy a witty, magical police procedural set in a modern-day London that actually feels modern-day. You can thank me later.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/14/lies-sleeping-rivers-of-london-7-by-ben-aaronovitch/

Feb 12 2020

The Story of Flamenca: The First Modern Novel, Arranged from the Provencal Original of the Thirteenth Century by William Aspenwall Bradley

What a delightful thing to read in the lead up to Valentine’s Day.

Being both thrifty and impatient, I actually read the online copy for free at The Hathi Trust digital library, as the original came out in 1922 and is yet unavailable for e-reader. Since I’ve been listening to Rosalia’s El Mal Querer on constant repeat these past few weeks, I wanted to experience the text that had inspired this terrific flamenco-fusion album, or at least the most conveniently accessible English translation.

After reading the quite short novel(la?) I was genuinely surprised it isn’t more widely known. Perhaps because it was originally written in Occitan and is thus less accessible than other, more famous romances. Of course, it isn’t devoid, at least in this somewhat abridged translation by William Aspenwall Bradley, of the problems that plague other stories of the time. But even writers of our era trade in insta-love and in the diminishing of the seriousness of sexual assault. Flaws like these are almost easier to forgive in older works, because the choices of the authors and translators can be more clearly viewed through the lens of the intervening years.

Anyway, this is the story of the beautiful Flamenca, whose father, Count Guy of Nemours, would rather she live as a nearby chatelaine rather than become the monarch of a far-flung court. So he decides to marry her to Archambaut, lord of Bourbon and one of the best knights of the age. Flamenca and Archambaut meet and are impressed by what they see, so consent to marry. After a days-long wedding feast in Nemours, Archambaut rushes to Bourbon to prepare another feast to welcome his new bride home. He asks the King and Queen of France themselves the honour of escorting, with their many knights, Flamenca on her journey to him.

Unfortunately, the King proceeds to show a little too much favour to Flamenca, and by the time the royal party have left Bourbon, Archambaut has worked himself into a right fervor of jealousy. Over the next few weeks, anything she does or says is fuel for his paranoia. Soon, he has her cloistered in a tower with her two ladies-in-waiting, Alis and Margarida, letting them out only for church services. The years pass and no one does anything to help her or her ladies (thanks, Dad!) till a young knight named Guillem learns of her plight. Struck by the idea of Love, he travels to Bourbon and puts in motion a plan to meet her and win her love.

This version of the tale ends with the lovers happily fooling the awful husband. The original text in verse continues a little longer before petering out abruptly, though not before granting Flamenca a little more freedom. I understand Mr Bradley’s choice to end his adaptation cleanly, tho I still rather wish I had greater access to the original. Fortunately, Mr Bradley’s introduction is quite good, explaining his choices and scholarship, as is the story overall. The problematic bits actually stand out less than the progressive bits, with at least one really terrific part considering the nature of Fear, Shame and Love. I was honestly prepared for something much more depressing, given the themes of Rosalia’s album, but each work of art is good, and deeply satisfying, in its own way. You could do much, much worse than to check out either.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/12/the-story-of-flamenca-the-first-modern-novel-arranged-from-the-provencal-original-of-the-thirteenth-century-by-william-aspenwall-bradley/

Feb 11 2020

M Train by Patti Smith

I loved Just Kids — it was one of my very favorite books of 2014 — so why didn’t M Train do much for me?

Smith gives a bit of a warning in the book’s very first line, “It’s not so easy writing about nothing.” (p. 3) The speaker is a cowpoke who is in a dream of Smith’s that she relates. They converse a bit more about writing and whose dream it actually is before she wanders out of the dusty café and wakes up. Is M Train really about nothing? An ornery cowpoke could surely make the case. After that first dream café, Smith visits many more cafés over the course of the book, and she drinks a lot of coffee. She relates mundane details of her life, notably including a tendency to lose material objects, when she feeds her cats, and dreams she has. She also goes on quite a bit about the detective shows she likes to watch on TV.

M Train by Patti Smith

But Smith is enough of an artist that she can’t stick to the mundane. Despite considerable effort, she can’t make her life seem boring. Odd, distant, maybe even disconnected, but not boring, though at times I wondered how much she realized how different her life was from most people’s. Early in the book, she is catching up on her mail and discovers that one of the items that she has let sit idle for several weeks is an invitation to give a talk on a subject of her choice in Berlin at a meeting of a slightly eccentric club that she is a member of. She had been invited to join because she had wanted to photograph the boots of a particular Arctic explorer, whom the club commemorates. At the group’s 2007 meeting, in Reykjavik, she winds up having a clandestine midnight meeting with Bobby Fischer, at which they sing Buddy Holly songs until just before dawn. Late in the book, she decides she wants to visit Tokyo again, so she takes up what had been a standing invitation from her Japanese publisher. I suppose when you are the person Bob Dylan chooses to accept the Nobel Prize in his stead, you may view going to Tokyo on just a little more than a whim with the same equanimity as you do going to the corner café. Or perhaps the causality runs in the other direction. Who knows?

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/11/m-train-by-patti-smith/