Dec 23 2017

Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians #1) by Kevin Kwan

I really liked this book, with one huge exception, which I’ll get to in a minute. It’s a very accurate depiction of life among the jetset in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, which I grew up lifestyle-adjacent to as an upper middle-class kid in Malaysia. Much has been written about how South and Southeast Asia have become the epicenter of Georgian-era, Austen-esque marriage plots in real life due to their structures of economies, class and morals, and Crazy Rich Asians continues in the tradition of exposing this fascinating lifestyle. Kevin Kwan nails the society to the wall, parading out perfect approximations of real-life people and taking the reader on an evocative and eerily accurate tour of their environs and lifestyles. He does all this with wit and style, making for a thoroughly entertaining read. Yes, it occasionally drags when he’s busy piling on brand name after brand name (and his Malay is definitely off) but overall the book is quite well-written, especially when it comes to Astrid and Charlie. I love Charlie so much, and I can’t wait to see Harry Shum Jr play him in the upcoming movie.

Speaking of the upcoming movie reminds me of my main problem with this book. Apparently, the studio floated the idea of having the ostensible heroine, Rachel, be a white girl instead of a Chinese-American. After reading this book, I honestly don’t think that was as offensive a suggestion as it is without context, since Rachel is such a basic bitch that it doesn’t even matter to the text if she’s Asian. Honestly, if I could trade her at Dave Chappelle’s Racial Draft, I totally would. Aside from her racial heritage meaning incredibly little to her (which, honestly, is the least of her problems,) she is AWFUL. She refuses to date Asian men on “principle” before meeting Nick; she admits that she doesn’t relate to most Asians, American or otherwise; she’s condescending to new people (seriously, I cringed at her responses to Araminta’s friendliness when they were first introduced); she’ll dump a guy over an ex-girlfriend from half his life ago; she says the shittiest things to the mom that she’s supposedly super close to: she’s such an asshole that we keep being told is “charming” and capable of adapting to new situations, when she’s clearly not. I agree that Nick should have told her beforehand that his family is really, really wealthy and private but I can understand why his upbringing made that really hard to do. What I can’t understand is why I’m supposed to like this nothing heroine who is a collection of attributes entirely devoid of being an interesting, much less charming, personality. I don’t understand why Nick likes her, and I don’t understand why Peik Lin is so kind to her (Peik Lin is also one of my favorite characters and I’m rather glad Mr Kwan did not turn her into a rival.) I can certainly understand why Eleanor dislikes her tho!

Anyway, I’m waiting on the sequels from the library and hoping that either Rachel gets better fast or that we’re spared more of her whining mediocrity. I want more Astrid and Charlie and Peik Lin and Oliver and Fiona and, quite frankly, Eleanor and Su Yin (I’m also interested in seeing how far Araminta will go with her newfound dislike of Astrid.) I’d be perfectly happy for Rachel and Nick to ride off into the sunset together so I don’t have to read about her any more, as long as I can keep reading about the rest of the actually interesting characters and settings and food (because also this book is literary food porn at its best.)

Oh! And for people not from the area who say Henry Golding shouldn’t play Nick because he’s not actually Chinese, you can go fuck yourselves. He’s an Asian guy indigenous to the region who’s lived most of his life there and you fuckers don’t understand how culture is as important as race when it comes to being a Singaporean or Malaysian. I am as proud to be American as I am proud to be Malaysian but I really hate it when morons from either side pontificate on shit they know nothing about. It is far, far more offensive to a SEAsian for some person not from the region to play a native than for a local to play a person of another local race. I understand that it’s different in the West and that’s fine, just don’t force your cultural sensibilities on others under the pretense of moral outrage: it’s a worse look than the book’s Shaw women’s tackiness.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/23/crazy-rich-asians-crazy-rich-asians-1-by-kevin-kwan/

Dec 22 2017

Wrapping Up

Time for some short takes, to mostly clear the desk for the coming year.

The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest. In the fourth of her five Clockwork Century novels, Priest takes a stab at telling her story mostly from the point of view of an unsympathetic narrator. Rector Sherman is an addict, hooked on the “sap,” a distillation of the strange gas that has blighted frontier Seattle and turns people who breathe too much of it into zombies. Priest also hints, as she did in Ganymede, that the same fate awaits people who take sap for too long. The action of the book turns on two developments behind the wall that has contained the gas and turned Seattle into a strange half-alive place, with monsters above ground, human settlement below, and zeppelins shuttling in and out with their illicit cargo. First, criminals from elsewhere have heard of the demise of Seattle’s previous kingpin and are trying to move in on the territory. Second, a new kind of monster has appeared on the streets, bigger and more fearsome than the zombies. Priest brings the action, even if I figured out the mystery well in advance. I also liked the artistic stretch of telling this kind of story through a character who’s basically a jerk. It’s not easy to pull off, and she does it well.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. Some of George Orr’s dreams come true. Not in any trivial sense, but in the sense of the whole of reality reshaping itself around his effective dreams. When he was younger, an aunt stayed too long at George’s house. He dreamed that she had died in a car accident, and woke up into a world in which she had been buried six months previously, after a crash, and had never come to visit. Only George remembers the previous reality, and that only dimly sometimes. Fearing his power, trying to suppress his dreams, and losing his sanity, George goes to a psychiatrist who specializes in dream and sleep. The doctor has no such fears and no scruples. He uses hypnosis to steer George’s dreams, and he uses George’s power to reshape the world, alleviating overpopulation, eliminating racism, and more. Dystopias ensue. In its approach to sleep research, drugs, and mental health The Lathe of Heaven is a very 1970s book. Overpopulation as a major concern is also very much of the era in which it was written. On the other hand, the considerations of unlimited power, of human relationships, of what makes a good world are perennial questions, and the situation that Le Guin has set up lets her cut directly to the heart of these matters.

The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith. In this tale of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mma Ramotswe is persuaded to take a holiday. She takes a few days away from her office, but like many founders and owners of a small business she finds it difficult to believe that things can go well in her absence. Events appear to bear out her worries, as one of the staff comes to her in confidence, saying that the acting director has saddled him with responsibility but not the means to undertake his appointed tasks. Of such seemingly small things are these lovely books made, populated with characters that readers cherish, enmeshed in the natural conflicts of being human in a complicated world. Some appearances are deceiving, while others are not but the characters do not wish to see what is plainly in front of them. Some characters make mistakes, and they may or may not learn from them, as depends on their nature. I love the warmth of these books, and while I suspect that a parody of them would be hilarious, I cannot bring myself to be cynical about them. I have two more to go before I am fully caught up, but I suspect that Smith may write another before then, and that is perfectly fine with me.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/22/wrapping-up-2/

Dec 16 2017

The Frangipani Tree Mystery (Crown Colony #1) by Ovidia Yu

So, full disclaimer, Ovidia Yu sent me this herself as we’ve developed a quite friendly professional relationship. I super love her Aunty Lee mystery series, feeling it’s gone from strength to strength as the series progresses, so I was quite thrilled to receive the first in Ms Yu’s new series. The setting is terrific — I am always partial to books that do justice to the region I come from, and Ms Yu writes about Singapore with both skill and love — and Su Lin is a wonderful heroine. The mystery is also well done: I suspected but wasn’t sure of the identity of the murderer till the very end.

But. I don’t know why the writing bothered me so much. I know Ms Yu is an excellent writer (please, everyone, read Meddling And Murder, which is one of the best books to come out of Singapore ever) so I don’t know how to explain how weirdly underwritten The Frangipani Tree Mystery felt in parts. It didn’t flow well at all, and while I liked Su Lin, I didn’t feel immersed in her experiences at any point in the book. Given how immediately sympathetic I found her, this was a very strange position to find myself in. There are parts of the book that are very good, usually having to do with Su Lin’s family or her interactions with other locals, but most of the scenes with white people felt stilted and unnatural (also, poorly edited. Most glaringly, how did Dee-dee know Su Lin’s name at the beginning?) Which reminds me of the (few) weaknesses of Ms Yu’s debut mystery, Aunty Lee’s Delights, and leads me to wonder whether TFTM reads so oddly because the white people are inescapable in it, and perhaps Ms Yu is uncomfortable in her fictionalization of them (tho again that wasn’t so much a problem in Aunty Lee’s Chilled Revenge, so I don’t even know.)

Anyway, I’m very eager to see where we go next with this series because so much about it is promising, and I know Ms Yu can deliver. If you just want to immerse yourself in a historical mystery tho, in a time and place that isn’t often (if ever?) covered by the genre, this isn’t a bad book for it. I just know Ms Yu can write better than this quite entertaining, if somewhat stilted, novel.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/16/the-frangipani-tree-mystery-crown-colony-1-by-ovidia-yu/

Dec 13 2017

Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons, #1) by Leigh Bardugo

If this novel were about, say, Donna Troy, I would be all in. It’s a fun exploration of the Amazon myth, about a young Amazon who doesn’t feel she quite belongs on Themyscira, who feels like her mother spends more time being queen than being mom, who sets out to prove herself and maybe save the entire world in the process. It travels from Themyscira to modern-day New York City to a bloody showdown in Greece, blending ancient mythology with all too human hijinks and foibles. Some of the characters are brattier than others, but overall it’s a great coming-of-age tale that emphasizes the power of friendship and belief.

What it is not is a Wonder Woman story. For starters, it has us believe Diana is a teenager in 2017 and that’s just a hell nope. This book is in no way, shape or form canon, right? Because I can be happily flexible with timelines and such (having been a comics fan for over three decades now, I have to be) but this book just throws a middle finger at everything ever written on the subject of Diana’s chronology. And while I was reluctantly okay with this version of Themyscira being a global women’s Valhalla (it’s admittedly a cool concept but kinda negates the whole “outsiders bad!” vibe: granted, the newcomers are “reborn” as Amazons but eeeeeeh, I thought the near-hysterical xenophobia was overdone considering this new origin story,) I did not like the introduction of Tek or the idea that there were Amazons so small-minded as to belittle Diana’s birth (and that Hippolyta let them get away with it for years!) If anything, I could see Amazons looking at Donna Troy and being “for real, you’re part of the royal family now?” and getting all snarky about it, but I cannot see them getting away with the open hostility Leigh Bardugo has them displaying to an actual Amazonian princess born and raised on the island, pre- or post-52 origin. And may I add here for the thousandth time how much I haaaaaaaate the new origin story, that DC then used for the movie, but at least they’re consistent in their wretched canon, which is why I’m hoping this book is like an alternate dimension Wonder Woman.

I was also less than thrilled at the way Diana’s powers were depicted, particularly one bit where she’s eviscerated but heals, and I thought Alia was way more of a brat than she needed to be, but I really enjoyed Nim and Theo, and I’m glad Ms Bardugo went the way she did with the story overall. I just didn’t enjoy this as a Wonder Woman story at all. It doesn’t fit anywhere in the greater body of Wonder Woman stories and feels pretty disrespectful of all the groundwork laid before it. It would have been a thousand times more fun to read if it had been about any other Amazon than Diana.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/13/wonder-woman-warbringer-dc-icons-1-by-leigh-bardugo/

Dec 10 2017

Stand Still, Stay Silent: Book 1 by Minna Sundberg

Again, I’m somewhat mystified by why my husband thought this book would be my kind of thing.

I mean, it’s definitely entertaining! This first volume provides an intriguing set-up: a horrifying virus causes the Scandinavian countries to shut their borders, often violently, against all comers. Ninety years later, a ragtag team is sent out from the “safe zones” into a land filled with monsters (really horribly mutated creatures, some of which were possibly once human) in order to salvage books. Stand Still, Stay Silent is filled with quirky characters, gentle humor, terrific art and some genuine scares. That said, the full cast has yet to assemble by the end of the book, which is a weird editorial decision (tho I haven’t read the webcomic, so maybe it takes chapters and chapters more for the girl with the long braid to actually join the team: it’s just weird that she figures so prominently on the cover and in the promo art but only shows up as a silent figure in dream sequences in this volume.) Anyway, it’s an interesting post-apocalyptic story that has a lot of cool Scandinavian elements and themes.

What it doesn’t have is non-white people, and not even non-white people but non-ethnically-Scandinavian people. “But, Doreen,” I can hear some of you say. “It’s set in Scandinavia! That’s mostly white people!” Well, yeah, but it’s not a completely homogeneous region any more. There are plenty of ethnically Eastern European, Middle Eastern and African citizens there now, and have been for at least two generations. The idea that only ethnic Scandinavians survive the virus, in the future no less, is an erasure that bothers me. If it doesn’t bother you, then you’ll likely enjoy this book without reservations, but I’m uninterested in reading a post-apocalyptic fantasy world populated solely by white people, no matter how charming they are. Someone let me know if the rest of the webcomic deals with this issue, as otherwise I won’t be returning to this title: there are so many more interesting things to read out there right now that I don’t have time to spend on a book that has obliterated everything but Nordic whiteness in its characters.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/10/stand-still-stay-silent-book-1-by-minna-sundberg/

Dec 08 2017

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

What has stayed with me in the months since I read The Ballad of Black Tom? The sense of teeming New York in the 1920s, the deft characterizations of the divides among black and white, the delicious irony of seeing an H.P. Lovecraft tale told from a black point of view.

The story is eventually one of cosmic horror and personal tragedy, but there is plenty of humor along the way. “Dad played guitar and Mother could really stroll on a piano. It was only natural that Tommy Tester ended up drawn to performing, the only tragedy being that he lacked talent. He thought of himself as an entertainer. There were others who would have called him a scammer, a swindler, a con, but he never thought of himself this way. No good charlatan ever does.” One of the many ironies of this novella being that he is brought into a role because he is a good charlatan and winds up doing things that are far more real than either he or his hirers expect.

Tommy’s con is that he doesn’t play the guitar very well, but he definitely looks the part. Looking the part gets him hired to play a very special party thrown by an eccentric but wealthy elderly white man who lives far out in Queens. Riding out to that borough, Tommy increasingly stands out among the passengers, and draws extra attention from the conductors. Fellow riders pretend not to hear his exchanges with the conductor, but he can tell from their nonchalant alertness that they are in fact very interested in what he is up to. The walk from the station to his would-be benefactor’s house is another obstacle course for Tommy to navigate, and that fact says plenty about race relations then and now. “Becoming unremarkable, invisible, compliant — these were useful tricks for a black man in an all-white neighborhood.” Mm-hmm.

Tommy picks up a little money in more esoteric matters, too. “This is how you hustle the arcane. Skirt the rules but don’t break them.” The combination connects him to Robert Suydam, who lives “in a mansion hidden within a disorder of trees.” As the story progresses, there is more hiding, and more disorder, and more than almost anyone bargained for. By the end, readers have plenty to chew on about monsters and justice, cosmic presences and simple human dignity.

The Ballad of Black Tom was the first bit of Hugo reading I completed this year, and the last one I will be writing about as such. I am looking forward to finishing Too Like the Lightning and Words Are My Matter, both of which I ranked very highly on my ballot because I could see where they were going and where they stood compared to the other finalists. I was pleased, honored, and satisfied to be a Hugo voter this year, to give back a very small part of what the works recognized by the award have given to me over the years.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/08/the-ballad-of-black-tom-by-victor-lavalle-2/

Dec 07 2017

Conversations with Stalin by Milovan Djilas

Listening in on Conversations with Stalin involves stepping back into numerous vanished worlds: one in which Communists were imprisoned by kings’ secret police forces; where Communism is new and for large numbers of people a source of hope; where the inner workings of the Soviet Union are largely unknown; where Yugoslavia exists as both a country and an ideal; one in which the Second World War still rages across Europe and a delegation from Belgrade has to travel to Moscow by way of Bari in Allied-liberated southern Italy, British-ruled Cairo, and Teheran. It is also a world in which the official gifts for Stalin from the delegation of Yugoslav Communists reflected the state of the country they planned to rule:

“The Supreme Command was located at the time in Drvar, in Bosnia. The immediate surroundings consisted almost entirely of gutted villages and pillaged, desolated little towns. Nevertheless a solution was found: to take Stalin one of the rifles manufactured in the Partisan factory in Uzice in 1941. It was quite a job to find one. Then gifts began to come in from the villages — pouches, towels, peasant clothing and footwear. We selected the best among these — some sandals of untanned leather and other things that were just as poor primitive. Precisely because they were of this character, we concluded that we ought to take them as tokens of popular good will.” (p. 10)

When the delegation eventually arrives in Moscow, they find that the high levels of the Party surround themselves with plenty — plenty of vodka, plenty of meat, plenty of caviar, plenty of everything that was in such short supply in Yugoslav poverty, where the delegation’s new uniforms had had to be made from the cloth of uniforms of captured Italian officers. The contrast in living is one of the first among many such gaps between Soviet rhetoric and practice. Far from finding fellow fighters for a common future, the Yugoslavs in Moscow discover the rulers of a great power, jealous that a small country has made revolution without its assistance, and incredulous that the smaller land should have the temerity to make demands on the larger.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/07/conversations-with-stalin-by-milovan-djilas/

Dec 07 2017

A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson

In A Taste of Honey Kai Ashante Wilson tells a love story spanning decades in a fantastic world that looks much like the ancient Mediterranean. One of the lovers is a soldier from an empire that resembles Rome, the other is a young member of a noble house in a North African polity. (I don’t know Maghrebi history well enough to say if Wilson is using a particular model.) The African society is rich and cultured; the imperial visitors from across the sea represent a rough, almost barbaric society, but one that is pragmatic above all. Both are men.

In Daluz (the not-Rome) such a relationship is not unusual. In Olorum, it is distinctly frowned on, to the extent of endangering the protagonists’ lives. A Taste of Honey is thus also a story of star-crossed lovers, constrained by the people around them and forced to show their love in secret. Aqib’s high position in Olorumi society and Lucrio’s as a soldier in an embassy mean that exposure would have diplomatic consequences as well.

It’s a lovely tale, briskly told. The contrasting societies are only sketched, but it is clear that there are layers supporting this and other stories in the same world. There are various kinds of magic that are neither extravagant nor uncommon, but simply shaping the way the world works. It’s a setting that feels fully lived in, one that shapes the protagonists rather than being bent to their story’s needs. Aqib and Lucrio start as an unlikely pair, as is to be expected when the relationship starts with a soldier calling out to someone he thinks is pretty, but there is quickly more than just physical attraction at work.

The magic of this world also plays an important part in the novella’s ending. I did not expect A Taste of Honey to end the way it did, yet it makes logical sense is emotionally satisfying, causing me to reflect on all of what had gone before and see it in a different light. I liked A Taste of Honey enough that I immediately bought Wilson’s other novella set in this world, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps.

A Taste of Honey was the twelfth bit of Hugo reading that I completed this year, and the eleventh I have written about.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/07/a-taste-of-honey-by-kai-ashante-wilson/

Dec 06 2017

Premature Evaluation: Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

I first came to Vasily Grossman via excerpts in Ivan’s War, Catherine Merridale‘s amazing book about how ordinary Soviet soldiers experienced the Second World War. That prompted me to pick up A Writer at War, dispatches and stories that he wrote while working as a journalist near the front. I thought it was one of the best non-fiction works I read in 2006. Some years after that, I decided to pick up one of his major works, and this year I finally plucked Life and Fate off of the to-be-read shelves. No need to hurry with a gigantic Russian novel, right?

The title, size, sweep and subject matter all invite comparisons with War and Peace, and in my view, halfway through the book, Grossman more than holds his own with Tolstoy. Grossman chose the battle of Stalingrad as the centerpoint of his novel, and he evokes the months of devastation leading up to the turn of the tide, showing what relentless combat has done to both city and soldiers. He spends considerable narrative time in a house near the legendary Tractor Factory, where the Wehrmacht wave finally broke against Soviet resistance. Grossman details the soldiers holding out in a house that is surrounded by the German army, yet never gives in. He shows how little their resistance had to do with any great ideals, let alone Soviet ones (a political commissar sent to instill Bolshevik discipline is sent back wounded in a stretcher after just one night, with Grossman strongly implying that the Soviet soldiers grazed his head with a bullet) and far more to do with stubbornness and not letting one’s immediate comrades down. He shows how both cruelty and unexpected humanity existed side by side, sometimes mere moments apart in the same person at the front.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/06/premature-evaluation-life-and-fate-by-vasily-grossman/

Dec 06 2017

The Sinner by Petra Hammesfahr

Y’all that was messed up.

I’m a fan of mysteries from way back and have read or watched nearly every type of depravity imaginable, and the reason why Cora Bender, innocuous middle-class housewife, slashes the throat of a stranger on a crowded beach still strikes me as fuuuuuuucked up, even as it is thoroughly convincing. I can totally see why Petra Hammesfahr is considered Germany’s Patricia Highsmith: there is a savagery in their prose and their plots that is morbidly fascinating. I cannot imagine how the USA network (and Jessica Biel! Milquetoast Jessica Biel! I’ll spare you my gossipy opinion of her otherwise, but it has definitely improved after learning that she read this book and wanted to bring it to the screen as executive producer and star) managed to bring this story to life for the consumption of American audiences. From the trailers, you can tell that Cora’s husband treats her a hell of a lot better than he does in the book, and I’m kinda… not cool with that. This book is shocking and perfect as it is, and dumbing it down, making it prettier for Americans, just makes me think less of our general viewing public.

Tho, perhaps, it isn’t just our viewing public I have a dim view of now given how, according to Ms Hammesfahr, the German justice system is shockingly more humane than our own. According to the chief investigator:

“The law obliged him not only to investigate Cora Bender but also to gather any evidence that might exonerate her.”

I cannot imagine that happening in America, and that is a tragedy, that this sort of zeal for truth (and its inevitably accompanying belief in compassion) isn’t institutionalized into our justice system. The Sinner was an eye-opener both for this and for how much human depravity I still hadn’t been exposed to. It isn’t the best-written book in the world — there’s a lot of unnecessarily opaque prose about two-thirds of the way through — but it’s a compelling murder mystery that I just could not put down.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/06/the-sinner-by-petra-hammesfahr/