After the wise and charming Where’d You Go Bernadette? I really wanted to delve into this author’s back catalog and be as similarly enthralled. Alas, Maria Semple’s debut novel This One Is Mine lacks the wit of WYGB, instead drawing on a cast of unlikeable characters who spend most of the book being mean or stupid or selfish, or some combination of the three. There are glimmers of the compassion that’s such a large part of WYGB, but the way this novel is written strips the characters of pathos, and makes it read a bit like The Corrections-lite (which some people might consider a good thing, ech.) I get the Anna Karenina homage, and like the idea of it as an updated version of that sans the long digressions into agriculture, but I don’t think it works on its own (and regular readers know my opinion of AK, which doesn’t help this book any either.)
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/11/this-one-is-mine-by-maria-semple/
Sep 08 2015
The Once And Future King by T. H. White
When I first started reading this, I was so completely taken aback by the Boys’ Own, jolly-good, public school vibe of the writing that I honestly wasn’t sure whether I was going to like it. The first part was, thus, slow-going for me, used as I was to depictions of Arthurian romance that were a lot less grounded in reality than this was. But as the book progressed, as we got to Excalibur and Morgause and Lancelot and Guenever and the Grail and Mordred, it became readily apparent that the entire point of stripping the earlier part of the fantasy of the romance of it all was to allow T H White and, by extension, the reader to examine the enduring legacy of the Arthurian legend in how it changed, for good, how the English moved from Might Is Right to a legal system in which no one was exempt. And I know it’s a bit disingenuous to say that it was Arthur himself who, if he wasn’t entirely fictional was likely far less important than the literature he inspired, ushered in the concept of civil laws: I’m well aware that Mr White was likely using the legend to fit his own meditations rather than the other way around. But by God, it’s a convincing, compelling use of the Arthurian story, to ask the reader to consider humanity and civilization and justice and what it means to be great and good, through this familiar literary lens. Mr White pulls together all the disparate strands, popular and obscure, of the legends and lays and fits them into a coherent narrative that feels fresh and, even after nearly a century of the book’s writing, contemporary in its consideration of the human feelings that propel the narrative. My only complaint is that the book ends before the actual death of Arthur: I would have loved to see how Mr White would have handled that!
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/08/the-once-and-future-king-by-t-h-white/
Sep 04 2015
Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson
Just shy of halfway through Life Among the Savages, Shirley Jackson relaxes and lets her characters — her immediate family, for this is a memoir — tell their stories without too much authorial interference. Before that, the set pieces feel a bit like set pieces, and it has a sense of an author putting on her best story to sell to the slicks.
That’s perfectly fine; it’s the style of the era she was writing in, and she was aiming for the top of the market. Further, there are probably many authors who would give their eye teeth to write a book as good as Shirley Jackson when she’s trying too hard. The book’s most famous episode — when her eldest child goes off to kindergarten and reports on the anarchic doings of one Charles — is from this section of the book.
Once she lets the characters take their natural courses, she mixes hilarity, generosity and insight in recounting the early years of her first two children, the birth and toddlerhood of her third, and the arrival of her fourth.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/04/life-among-the-savages-by-shirley-jackson/
Sep 01 2015
The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins
I think I would have liked this book more were it not marketed as the next Gone Girl. On its own, it’s a decent mystery novel with an excellent framing device, but I was expecting something far more diabolical and cautionary than the “don’t marry a psychopath” takeaway which, while good advice, is also fairly obvious advice (as opposed to Gone Girl’s “yep, this is what marriage can be. Beware!”) Also, everyone in The Girl On The Train kinda sucked. All of the main characters were fairly awful, and I found Tom and Scott to be nearly interchangeable. I loved the beginning and the way pronouns were flung around for maximum mystery whilst still avoiding outright confusion, but by the time I’d figured out whodunnit etc about 75% of the way through (tho I figured at about the 60% mark the pattern, so to speak, of the murderer’s psychopathy,) I didn’t really care any more because everyone was such a selfish, self-defeating mess. I can root for you if you’re either but it’s really hard to do so when you’re both.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/01/the-girl-on-the-train-by-paula-hawkins/
Aug 31 2015
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I gained an incredible amount of depth and nuance from re-reading this book as a minority member of American society with African-American friends and neighbors and co-workers, with firsthand experience now of their culture and struggles, as opposed to my first encounter with To Kill A Mockingbird when I was a 13 year-old member of an Asian majority. Back then I thought this was an amazing book about injustice and prejudice and how to handle oneself with grace: now the pain that underpins the novel is no longer an abstract. To Kill A Mockingbird is an impassioned plea for social justice, self-reflection and kindness, and I’m almost afraid to read Go Set A Watchman now (tho I’m sure my Ingress bookclub will help carry me through!)
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/31/to-kill-a-mockingbird-by-harper-lee/
Aug 28 2015
Pack Of Strays by Dana Cameron
After the verve and uniqueness of the first book, this installment of the Fangborn series was a definite let down. Too much happens to Zoe too quickly, with only the sketchiest of explanations: whereas the globe-trotting of Seven Kinds Of Hell felt exotic and fast-paced, everything that happens here just feels rushed and jumbled. While that’s an apt mirror for all the chaos our heroine endures, it doesn’t make for a pleasant, or even very interesting, read. I’ll still give the last novel a try, tho I’m hoping it returns to the form of the first book and isn’t a continuation of this confusing mess.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/28/pack-of-strays-by-dana-cameron/
Aug 26 2015
Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson
Raising Demons is perfect. There are two other books I can think of that I regularly describe as perfect – Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera — and now I have a third. It is possible that if I took out my jeweller’s loupe, I could find an imperfection, an infelicitous word here, an unnecessary phrase there, but I very much doubt it.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/26/raising-demons-by-shirley-jackson/
Aug 24 2015
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross
Charles Stross’ Laundry series began as an unholy mashup of H.P. Lovecraft, The Office, and spy thrillers, told through the eyes of an initially low-level functionary. Bob, as you know, is Bob Howard, a systems administrator who stumbles onto the secret congruencies between higher math and applied magic. Paraphrasing Clarke’s Third Law, in the world of the Laundry sufficiently advanced mathematics are indistinguishable from magic. In fact, working sorcery is a branch of math and computation. For most of human history, this has meant that it was accessible only to a select few, but as both math and computation became first commonplace and then ubiquitous over the course of the twentieth century, sorcery was first institutionalized and then bureaucratized. In the books’ backstory, this parallels the trajectory of intelligence agencies in our timeline.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/24/the-annihilation-score-by-charles-stross/
Aug 23 2015
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
It is so very difficult for me to review Marilynne Robinson’s works, because I always feel like my own prose is inadequate to describing hers. I cried a lot reading Lila, because I understand what it feels like to fall in love with someone even when you don’t trust love or people or existence, when fear and shame are your mainstays and hope feels like an unattainable luxury, or something you deny yourself because it’s better that way, safer. I cried because this novel mirrored the fierce tenderness I feel every day as a mother, the gratitude I have for the sweetness of my children, the appreciation of every closeness they allow me. I cried because unfailing kindness always makes me cry, and unfailing kindness is the undeniable basis of religion in this book, never mind that it isn’t and will never be my religion, though they do share convictions. Lila wasn’t as good as Gilead, but that is asking too much of any book, that it outdo that masterwork. It is, however, an excellent novel on its own, and one to treasure on its own merits. Now I need to go lie down, I’m so worn out, but in a good way, from the experience.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/23/lila-by-marilynne-robinson/
Aug 21 2015
In The Woods by Tana French
There was a lot I enjoyed about this book, but I had two very large problems with it, both to do with Rob Ryan. The first is fairly spoilertastic, and less to do with his character than with what I felt was a strange choice on the part of the author. Essentially, you never find out what happened to him as a child. I can perhaps understand this if Tana French intends to eventually tell us what happened in the course of the series, but it makes this installment feel unfinished. There’s also then the issue I had of wanting to be done with Ryan (in fact, the only reason I’m interested in reading the next book is because it purportedly focuses on Cassie) which is the second problem I had, that Ryan is incredibly tiresome.
Again, I don’t know if Ms French’s characterization of him is deliberate, if we’re supposed to find him so insufferable, and I do appreciate the fact that, right up until he makes the incredibly poor decisions that destroy his relationship with Cassie, he actually seems about average, if not outright likeable. Yes, he’s under a lot of stress, and yes, he’s reliving his childhood trauma, but I don’t for an instant believe that what he did is more a result of those than of a carefully nurtured flaw in his character whereby his is the most important, if not the only pain that matters to him. And I’d even find his egotism forgivable if he weren’t also so remarkably stupid. There’s one obnoxious passage where he breaks the fourth wall and talks about what a liar he is and how we, the readers, must have been just as hoodwinked as he was, and I just wanted to shout, “No, you useless excuse of a homicide detective, I knew the answer about 40% of the way in because I’m not a fucking moron!” And then just the stupid, stupid thing he does that compromises the entire case, and no, I’m not talking about keeping quiet about his true identity but just common attention to detail. Unbefuckinglievable.
This book would have worked fine as a character study of a deeply flawed individual, but as a police procedural it was horrendous. The saving grace was Cassie, and even then I felt a little uncomfortable at how close she came to being objectified as the “cool girl” (see: Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which has only improved in my memory) by the sad sack narrator who done her wrong. You’d think for once that my Personal Issues would have me take some sort of satisfaction in what mirrors, at least emotionally, an episode from my own history, but it felt… self-serving, as if Ms French was trying to understand and excuse a toxic personality while simultaneously beatifying his victim. It always bothers me when a book forces an agenda at the expense of the story, and I’m afraid that that’s just what Ms French does with In The Woods.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/21/in-the-woods-by-tana-french/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire