Girl Detective

Post-apoca-fic (PAF) is most recognized as a sub-genre of science fiction, but end-time narratives are at least as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of Noah’s ark. Modern PAF is marked as beginning with Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, written by a woman by featuring a male protagonist.

I recently re-read the PAF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr. Published in book form in 1959, it collected 3 sections that had previously appeared in a sci-fi magazine. It centers on a monastery in post-nuclear Utah. There the monks seek canonization of the sacred Leibowitz of the title. A man of science instrumental in the nuclear holocaust of the mid 20th century, Leibowitz converted to Catholicism and advocated peace and learning. The book’s first section is set in the mid 21st century:

Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice’s Lenten fast in the desert.

The subsequent sections jump ahead hundreds of years, though there are through lines for characters and artifacts that are fun and satisfying to recognize. I found the first section with Brother Francis, the most engaging. It’s the most funny, and Francis was my favorite of the many characters in the book. As the novel progresses, though, it shifts from being speculative to more preachy and explicative. The only females are in the third section, and this book fails The Bechdel Test, which identifies gender bias in fiction, in that no female has a conversation with another female.

Since the book is set in a monastery, it could be argued that it wasn’t within the scope. Yet after I read this book, I longed for a female perspective, something like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Since I hadn’t read her most recent post-apocalypse novels, I decided to check out Oryx and Crake, the first of the MaddAddam trilogy, which was followed by The Year of the Flood and completed with MaddAddam, to be published this September.

The events in Oryx and Crake are typical of PAF: a genetically engineered plague has wiped out probably all humans except one man, our narrator:

Snowman wakes before dawn. He lies unmoving, listening to the tide coming in, wave after wve sloshing over the various barricades, wish-wash, wish-wash, the rhythm of heartbeat. He would so like to believe he is still asleep. ..

Out of habit he looks at his watch–stainless steel case, burnished aluminum band, still shiny although it no longer works. He wears it now as his only talisman. A blank face is what it shows him: zero hour. It causes a jolt of terror to run through him, this absence of official time. Nobody nowhere knows what time it is.

Snowman is not alone; he is surrounded by a variety of genetically spliced creatures. The series proceeds ahead then flashes back. Typical Atwood, she breaks every rule of how to write fiction, yet the story unspools seamlessly into a compulsively readable narrative. Although devourable, the book left a bitter aftertaste. The central characters are a love triangle: two men and one woman, who embodies several cliches, and meets a clicheed end. She never converses with another woman, so this book too fails the Bechdel test. And, for anyone expecting closure, remember: you’re reading Atwood.

I continue to puzzle over this book. What does it add to the PAF genre other than a ripping yarn typically devoid of females? Is there a deeper layer of irony that I’m missing? Is Atwood saying a fully realized female is impossible in PAF? Is this an extension of the female-suppressing world of Handmaid? Does the apocalypse somehow preclude women? Certainly, it’s provoking, though what it has provoked is perplexity and anger and disappointment at Atwood, not my usual admiration.

I found a possibly parallel question in Vanessa Veselka’s essay in The American Reader, “Green Screen: The Lack of Female Road Narratives and Why It Matters“:

Siddhartha wants liberation, Dante wants Beatrice, Frodo wants to get to Mount Doom—we all want something. Quest is elemental to the human experience. All road narratives are to some extent built on quest. If you’re a woman, though, this fundamental possibility of quest is denied. You can’t go anywhere if you can’t step out onto a road.

Left to my own devices, I’d go down a rabbit hole and explore PAF with female protagonists. Maureen McHugh has done some excellent stories and her novel Mission Child is one of the few I can think of. Octavia Butler? Sheri Tepper’s Gate to Women’s Country? Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time? YA PAF often has female protagonists, e.g., Katniss Everdeen, only to shackle and domesticate them in the end.

Alas, being part of 3 book groups, one of which I lead (hence Canticle, which sent me down this “road”) means my dance card is limited, so I’m unlikely to read up on these questions soon. If any of you kind readers have any insight, please, please, start a thread in the comments section.

Foiled by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Mike Cavallaro is a middle-grade graphic novel about Aliera, an introverted girl who fences who is ostensibly in high school, though she feels much younger to me. There’s a cute new guy at school who seems a little odd and when she tried to meet him at the train station, things become really odd. Aliera’s only friend is her wheelchair-bound cousin with rheumatoid arthritis. She just got a new practice weapon (NB: not a sword) that her mother picked up cheap from a Chinese woman at a tag sale. (I don’t like the Mystical Asian cliche).

My description of the book won’t flow, because my experience didn’t either. It also ends just as it’s getting good. While I know this is part of what a series does, I do feel that each volume should have a complete story, and I didn’t think this one did. So I had hopes for the sequel, Curses Foiled Again. Alas, this worked even less for me, as a big villain was revealed, whose identity, past actions, and motivations I didn’t buy at all.

The illustrations are strong. Aliera is smart and funny, but as a whole, this didn’t work for me. There’s little subtext, so it’s all on the page, and the story isn’t complex enough to fully engage me. Perhaps because I’m not the target market? My children, 7 and 9, both boys, loved them.

Yay! I thought when I got the weekly pile at the comic shop and it included the 7th graphic novel collection of Peter Gross and Mike Carey’s comic-book series The Unwritten: The Wound, about a Harry Potter-like guy who finds that truth and fiction have a very complicated relationship. The problem with these six-issue collections, though, is that this bunch of 6 issues didn’t tell a complete story. It doesn’t stand alone, and merely leaves me hoping that closure comes in volume 8. So, you should absolutely be reading The Unwritten, as it’s one of the best current series out there. But v7 didn’t satisfy on its own.

Also recommended? Brian K Vaughan’s Saga. I buy that one monthly; can’t wait for the collections.

A few months ago, my husband was reading something on his nook and kept laughing aloud. It was Caitlin (pronounced CAT lin) Moran’s How to Be a Woman, which he’d seen recommended by gonzo author Warren Ellis. Since his copy was an e-book, he got a hard copy for me (I’m a traditionalist, and yes, I’ve tried e-readers. Not my cuppa.)

Starting off, it reminded me a lot of Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened because it’s about growing up poor and weird far from a major city. While Lawson’s is a pretty straightforward memoir, Moran’s is personal stories pinned up around a theme of what she refers to as strident feminism, a term she knows will put some people off. And yet, she has two diagnostics that I thought were useful and to the point.

One, to tell if you’re a feminist:

a. do you have a vagina? and
b. do you want to be in charge of it?

If you said yes to both, then congratulations! You’re a feminist. (p. 75)

Another,

how can you tell when some sexism is happening to you?

Well, in this matter, what ultimately aids us is to simply apply this question to the issue: Is this polite?

The anecdotes come fast and funny, and it’s entertaining and a good reminder of other things that I, at least, sometimes forget. On underwear:

I’m pro big undies. Strident feminisms NEEDS big undies…there is scarcely a woman in Britain wearing a pair of underpants that actually fit her. Instead of having something that sensibly and reassuringly contains both the buttocks–what I would call a good pair of undies–they’re wearing little more than gluteal accessories, or arse-trinkets. (91-2)

On high heels:

“But, bafflingly, we totally accept the uselessness of heels. We accept it limply, shrugging. We are indifferent to the thousands of pounds we spend over a lifetime on shoes we only wear once, and in great pain. (196)

On bras:

“a good bra can be one of the greatest aids a woman will ever know.” (95)

(The only kind of bras she burns are the ones that don’t fit properly.)

There is also a very thoughtful and thought-provoking chapter near the end on a topic so touchy that most wouldn’t touch it, but Moran does, politely, I thought.

BUT. Here come the but’s. Somewhere around the middle of the book, when the childhood anecdotes stopped and the book became more straightforwardly a treatise on feminism, I became less engaged. Moran made huge sweepting statements and didn’t qualify them, e.g., How to Be a Woman, right up front there in the title. Nowhere does she qualify her position as a non-poor white woman. See also:

“Even the most ardent feminist historian, male or female–citing Amazons and tribal matriarchies and Cleopatra–can’t conceal that women have basically done fuck-all for the last 100,000 years. Come on–let’s admit it.” (131)

Um, no. No. I will not admit that.

Also, she draws a polar distinction between burlesque, saying that it lets “the power balance rest with the person taking her clothes off”, as opposed to strip clubs, which she finds indefensible. I don’t quite buy either extreme of her argument.

She offers two chapters: Why You Should Have Children and Why You Shouldn’t Have Children. But while it seems balanced that she included the latter, her romantic waxing on motherhood tip the scales toward the former. Additionally, this was one of many instances in which she used “you” rather than “me” and I found the slippage into second person grating, as when she keeps using “you” in the chapter about naming her vagina and breasts, which is not something I ever did or worried much about. And I was bothered by her use of “you” in the chapter on abortion. She probably did it as a way to draw in the reader and encourage empathy, but it came off to me as distancing herself from her own story.

In the end, the amusing anecdotes and helpful reminders were not enough to win me over. I spent some time reading reviews at Goodreads, and there are almost no three star reviews–they tend to 1/2 hate or 4/5 love. I would give this book 3 stars. Some good stuff, some not good stuff. Context and qualificaiton would have made a huge difference to me. Enough good stuff for a qualified recommendation, but that’s it.

The men of Bravo are not cold. It’s a chilly and windwhipped Thanksgiving Day with sleet and freezing rain forecast for late afternoon, but Bravo is nicely blazed on Jack and Cokes thanks to the epic crawl of game-day traffic and the limo’s minibar. Five drinks in forty minutes is probably pushing it, but Billy needs some refreshment after the hotel lobby, where overcaffeinated tag teams of grateful citizens trampolined right down the middle of his hangover. (1)

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was a selection for the 2013 Tournament of Books. Though it went down early, the fans of it were ardent enough to make me still want to read it. And oh, I loved this book.

Billy Lynn is one of a handful of soldiers who survived a brutal and famous skirmish in Iraq. They’re brought back to America for a “victory” tour, which ends with the Thanksgiving football game just before they’re supposed to ship back out.

Billy is such a sympathetic narrator, and one who skewers the ironies of war and yet is somehow compassionate. One of the last war books I read I can barely remember. This, though, is going to stay with me.

I am one of the few people who didn’t love Wolf Hall. I found the story boring and the use of ambiguous ‘he’ pronouns annoying. Does this reaction make me a philistine? Perhaps. So I was understandably reluctant to approach the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. Trusted friends like Amy and Kate assured me it was better than the original. Nonetheless, I put it off over all the other Tournament of Books contenders that I wanted to read. Left it for dead last.

I liked the opening. There’s some gorgeous writing. Henry the VIII’s court should be fascinating. Yet I found this book far too easy to put down. I told myself I’d give it 50 pages, yet when I got to 45, I couldn’t even see the point of forcing down those last five pages. It was non-compelling for me, and still with deliberately awkward use of ‘he.’ I read so many ToB books this year that I just loved and raced through; this one left me cold. I returned it unread, and am on to the next book. Life’s too short.

I finished Bleak House, y’all! Thanks mostly to my friend Amy at New Century Reading, who did a readalong where we did one of the serialized chunks a week, so it took us 20 weeks. I really enjoyed having a longer reading project alongside the books I read one at a time, and looked forward to reading my 40 or so pages of Bleak House every week on Sunday. I think I’m going to try to keep up the habit of one big reading project for books that I continually don’t feel I have the gumption to finish in one sitting. I’ll be doing Brothers Karamazov this summer with one of my book groups, but some other candidates are the short story collections of Alice Munro and Angela Carter, or other Dickens books.

Bleak House is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Sprawling with both funny and sad parts, a huge cast of characters (rather too many of whom die, in my opinion, yet it IS called Bleak House, so not like I wasn’t warned). Esther Summerson is our main character, a young woman told since she was young that she’s tainted with the sin of her illegitimate birth. At first, Esther seems too kind, too nice, but she becomes more complex and interesting over the course of the book, especially as we’re slowly shown that she’s not exactly a reliable narrator.

This book has something for everyone. Romance, mystery, tragedy, lost love, murder, humor, social commentary and I’m sure I’m forgetting some things. I had only a few minor concerns by the end–the over-romantic portrait of the domestic angel accompanied strangely by the condescension of others for Esther in this role, and the lonely end for one of my favorite characters, Mr. George.

Fair warning: do NOT read a character list as you go, or follow links. Spoilers abound, and there are some good ones in here.

I thought Building Stories by Chris Ware was going to be one of the books I skipped in this year’s Tournament of Books. I don’t care for Ware’s precise and ultra-iconic art style, and no matter how many times I tried to read Jimmy Corrigan, I couldn’t get into it. Ware seemed like one of those chilly, distant writers who disdain their subjects. Also, it costs $50 retail. It comes shrink wrapped, and so couldn’t be tried before the buy. When I did finally ask about it at my comic shop, they were out of stock and it was between printings. But then trusted friends like Amy and Kate said it was worthwhile, and I was in a socialist bookstore where they had it back in stock, so I took the leap.

There are 14 elements in the box, in book, strip, newspaper, and other forms. The main character is perhaps a young woman, since most of the stories center on her and her life from childhood to old age. But the conceit is that the brownstone building she lives in as a young woman tells some of the stories, so we also see into the lives of others in the building, and even into some of the local bees. It’s clever and engaging, and its also spookily insightful at times, with the main character sometimes saying things that are true but so ugly that most don’t even write them into journals. There were complex interesting women in this story and their lives were treated with compassion and respect. So while Ware’s style is chilly and distant, his storytelling was not.

Many of the commenters at the ToB advised against ending with the Bee book (NB not the Bee newspaper, but the book; they’re different.) That was good advice. I read it early, and found it amusing. Some readers speculated that there is an advised order of reading printed on the back of the box. I don’t think this is so–there’s a diagram showing where such items appear in the brownstone, but no order, which I think is the point. You can peek into and slip out of these lives, the stories go back and forward in time, there’s no exact beginning and end.

I would have preferred if the contents of the stories would have match the form of the object–like one of the old woman’s letters, the journal of the young woman, a children’s book that told the bee story. As it was, with its seemingly random pairing of story and object, this felt more to me like a “look at me, look at me, look at me now!” trick. And it IS worth looking at, and spending time with. But I was fatigued as I approached the end, and was glad to be done with it. My eyes were burning and tired from the tiny type, even though I have bifocals AND used a magnifying glass. (which would have been a useful addition to the box.) The $50 price tag is steep for a book, though perhaps just a fraction of what such an art object is worth. It does smack of white elitism to me. One of the judges enraged the commenters by belittling the work, but I did like this:

its elaborate packaging allows the thing to double as an oversized merit badge of taste and sensitivity to be displayed on the coffee tables of the McSweeney’s set.

Worthwhile, and I own it, so anyone who wants to borrow it can.

A selection for this year’s Tournament of Books, Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins was so hard to find for free/cheap that I chose to rent it from the library for $.25 a day. Even then it was hard to find a rental copy. But once started, it sucked me in and pulled me along like a riptide till I closed the book, very satisfied.

It’s told in alternating viewpoints and alternating times, yet was easy to follow. There’s a film exec, his young assistant, an aspiring screenwriter, an old Italian man who met a movie star in his youth, and that’s just in the beginning. This is a romance, Hollywood history, and mystery. The relationship between the young woman and the movie exec reminded me a great deal of Sasha and Benny in A Visit from the Goon Squad. It’s well written escapism. Loved it. Not as much as Orphan Master’s Son, but still, a lot.

A.M. Homes’ May We Be Forgiven May We Be Forgiven was a selection in this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books. Though friends have recommended Home’s books to me over the years, I hadn’t gotten around to reading her. But when I glanced at reviews, they seemed to say, eh, kinda bugged me, not her best. So as March went on, and as time to “catch up” on Tourney books became slight, I wondered if I should even bother with this 480-page tome. But since kind friend Amy lent it to me, a book in hand was better than one I’d have to pay to rent from the library, so I started it anyway. Then, I couldn’t put it down.

It’s told in short spurts with many breaks; this helps make a book more devour-able to me. I have two little boys and often have to put down my book to yell at them to stop fighting. Or, more rarely, compliment them on how well they’re playing together/practicing piano, doing homework, etc. The main character is Harold, whose bully of a younger brother, George (e.g., he insists he’s the older brother) gets in a good amount of legal trouble, is institutionalized, then gets in A GREAT DEAL of legal trouble, and Harold is left to take care of the house, kids, pets, and anything else that comes along. And a great deal comes along.

From the beginning, the excessive nature of George’s actions gave the novel a heightened feeling of reality that read to me as farce, not realism. That’s why I have trouble with the critiques of the novel that say it’s unrealistic. I think the author was pretty clear that it’s supposed to be hyper-real and weird. Beyond that, though, it’s funny while also being touching, and I found it just plain intriguing. Harry is a Nixon scholar who amused by by continuing to insist that “the story keeps unfolding.” I wanted to know what happened to these characters, and I was happy when some of them got their stuff together, including Harry.

However, it is hard to ignore the presence of a magical Negro, the white male savior, and the mythical man that every woman wants to sleep with. Was Homes using these cliches with irony? I did find it interesting that this was what a commenter in the ToB identified as a White Male EFF Up novel (WMFU), but is written by a woman, unlike other WMFU stories I can think of, like This is Where I Leave You, High Fidelity, Harry Revised, and more.

Edited to add: Also, what was with all the scat stuff? Nearly every character had an incident of uncontrollable diarrhea at some point. I wondered if this was a graphic allusion to a Jewish myth that claims the universe is something that God shat out, and our job as people in it is to create beauty in the midst of messy broken-ness.

The book didn’t make it far in the Tourney. It beat Billy Lynn’s Long Half Time Walk but went down to Building Stories (which I’m reading, or rather, squinting at, now). Apparently I’m the only person who sort of loved it, but now I’m excited to go read other books by Homes. And lucky me, there are a lot of them.

Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is the lovely story of Father Jean Marie Latour in the mid 1800’s going to New Mexico and the western territory. The book is told more in impressionistic standalone stories than in chapters. I had to re-read passages sometimes for them to “stick”.

Father Jean and his right-hand man Father Joseph minister to an ever-increasing territory. One of the surprises to me was how much and often these characters traveled. Back and forth to France and all across the west from Colorado to Mexico?

Joseph was more vibrant to me than Jean, so it seemed odd he was the secondary character. In its mix of Catholicism and Native American culture, I was often reminded of one of my favorite books, Louise Erdrich’s Last Report on the Miracles of Little No Horse. Father Jean was lovely, but he’s no Father Damien. But then, what character possibly could be?

Reading this is part of my auto-didactic, self edu-ma-cating project. I don’t think I’ve ever read Cather before. Now I’ve got My Antonia and O, Pioneers on my radar. Filling in the gaps of my reading education is like spitting in the ocean, but oh, I do love it.

I was sort of afraid to read Gone Girl. Except for one or two dissenting voices, all the reviews I’d read, and all the things I’d heard from friends were “It’s great!” I wanted to read it, sure, but had not yet got around to it, and the longer it went on, the more the hype filled me with dread. Then when it was chosen as a contender for this year’s Tournament of Books, and when it went on to be the odds-on favorite (now I can’t find the betting site, but it’s out there somewhere), I knew it was time. Of course, by this time, the library list was a gazillion people long. (OK, exaggerating a bit. Only 1000+). Then my kind husband got it for me for my birthday, and it was finally TIME. Yippee, I thought, time for a thumping good read! (with just a whisper of “I hope” after that.)

Then I began to read, and as you may know, it’s structured in alternating points of view between the husband and his missing wife. And their marriage is a train wreck, and as the chapters go on I can’t believe their marriage lasted this long, and reading about it is sort of entertaining, but also painful, and I couldn’t really be said to be enjoying myself.

Stay with it, said friends when I griped on Facebook. Then on page 219, when the book goes into its second section, things changed up. I knew something wacky was going on in those first 200 pages, but not exactly what, and then things shift, and at that point, I may have resented breathing because it interfered with me finding out how this author was going to pull off the end of the book. And she did, which is saying a lot, because this is one whacked-out book.

So to sum up (feeling v. pleased with self at lack of spoilers): first half was like a car wreck–messy, ugly but rather fascinating. Second half was like going downhill on a roller coaster. Psychological characterizations were very good–we knew why these characters behaved in certain ways. Plot was very good, especially in the 2nd half. So it reminded me of the best parts of the Tana French novels (the psyche stuff) combined with the best part of Laura Lippmann’s books (un-put-downable).

That said, I’m not sure I’d recommend it far and wide. Not everyone wants to spend time with a psychopath. Both The Fault in Our Stars and Where’d You Go, Bernadette have a wider appeal, I think. Not sure I’d pick it for the ToB win, either. I continue to hope The Orphan Master’s Son goes all the way. BUT, entertaining as all get out and well executed on many levels, and with intriguing questions about male/female dynamics. So, highly recommended.

Louise Erdrich’s The Round House. She’s a local writer, I’ve admired and enjoyed the other books I’ve read by her (particularly The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse). It won the National Book Award and the Minnesota Book Award. And it’s a contender for the Morning News Tournament of Books. Was there any way I wouldn’t read it? Nope.

As with most of her novels, this one is set on the reservation in North Dakota. It has both new characters and ones from previous books. Unlike most of her other books, it is narrated only from the point of view of one character, 13yo Joe, though told from an adult vantage point. In this way and many others, it reminded me a great deal of the film Stand by Me. It’s a coming of age novel, centering on a group of four boys, one who comes from a happy but injured family, another who is good hearted by bad reputed.

Joe’s world is upended when his mother is attacked, and what follows is something of a conventional mystery–who did it and why?–but also has the added element of Law and Order of how the crime is discovered and prosecuted (or not).

I found Joe and his friends engaging main characters, I was delighted to hear about Father Damien and Nanapush again. I was pulled along by the story, and felt for the surrounding characters of Joe’s parents, his uncle’s girlfriend Sonja, and Linda Wishkob.

What underlies this book, and elevates it in my opinion, is its foundation of social justice, and the way it highlights how powerless women on a reservation are in the face of certain crimes. Erdrich wrote an op-ed on this in the New York Times, and the recently signed Violence Against Women Act, a move in the right direction.

Opinion on Round House is mixed. Some, like me, loved it. Others think it’s middling, not engaging enough, with an uncompelling protagonist, and a preachy tone. There was a lot of contention after its match in the The Tournament of Books. To each her own. But this book will stay with me for some time, especially the ending, and the questions raised by Joe’s actions and decisions, and whether I agree with them or not.

I would not have read HHhH, written in French by Laurent Binet and translated by Sam Taylor, except it’s a contender in The Morning News Tournament of Books, and I’m so glad I did. This is a head-tippingly original and thought-provoking book.

It’s billed as a novel, but it’s not, exactly. It’s Binet’s attempt to tell the history of Reinhard Heydrich, a Nazi villain I’d never even heard of but will now never forget. It’s the true story of how two men, one a Czech, another a Slovak, were tasked to assassinate Heydrich, also known as The Butcher of Prague. Taylor pieces together documents, his own reactions, some fictionalizations, which he then identifies as fictional, into a mesmerizing taken on historical fiction. It’s unapologetically subjective, with Binet and his biases appearing regularly. He’ll write something early on, and revise it later. Perhaps my favorite example of this is how, as the story is coming to an end, he notes how difficult it is to write, and includes the dates, so we can see how long it took the author to bring this story to a close.

I could include exemplary bits, but I am tired of typing, and really, you should just go read this book. Especially if you’re a writer. Or you like historical fiction. Or WWII. Oh, just read it.

Can this series really be on its 18th collection with Fables: Cubs in Toyland? I continue to enjoy this comic-book series about a group of fairy tale characters who exist alongside the real world, disguised from it. This tale focuses again on the several “cubs” or children of Snow White and Bigby Wolf, spending most of its time with Therese (the princess-y one) and Darien (her brother the pack leader.) It is spooky, creepy, sad, and involving. As usual, the ending leaves me wanting to tear right into the next volume. Good stuff still.

I read Zone One as part of a choose-your-own-Colson-Whitehead-novel book group–Zone One, John Henry Days, or The Intuitionist. Alas, since I lead the group, I had to read all three, which was not what I would have planned if I’d remembered the Morning News Tournament of Books was coming up. But I enjoyed all 3, found them similar and different and am glad I read them all.

Zone One is Whitehead’s take on the zombie tale. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic NYC. The narrator, nicknamed Mark Spitz, is part of a civilian group of 3 sweeping the city for skels (zombies) or stragglers (people who got bitten, but didn’t turn rabid, but instead returned to a particular point where they stay frozen) missed by the mass killings the Marines did in the first waves after the plague hit.

As with John Henry Days, the main character is lacking in emotional maturity. Also similar is the commentary on our culture of shallow consumption. It ticks along at a good pace, with the beautiful sentences that Whitehead is so good at crafting. He does a good job at crafting a believable and chilling near future.

The book is structured into three days in Mark Spitz’s life (always both names are used). We get stories of his past and survival plus those of others he encounters as we go along, most of which are well spun. Two that rankled, though, was the withholding of how he got his nickname, and how the anecdote was related in Saturday’s narrative though it took place on Sunday.

One particular character’s Last Night story (about a birthday party) was chillingly all too easy for me to imagine and may well haunt me forever.

(Patience. I will eventually get to the stuff about the John Green book. But first, a long story about why I haven’t, yet.)

Have not managed to kick virus from last week. Rested. Got better. Expended burst of energy. Got worse. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Then, the morning after my birthday, which I spent congratulating myself on how not old I felt, I woke feeling woozy and congested again (see above; also, I do not drink, so it wasn’t that) and with a swollen, painful middle finger knuckle and no memory of having injured it (again, I do not drink, so the obvious conclusion did not apply.)

Oh, no! I thought. I have my dad’s arthritis. I emailed him. He told me I didn’t. (He’s a retired doctor, not just an internet diagnostic genius, as I am, so I mostly trust him. Kinda like a Medical Magic 8 Ball. FYI, best site for diagnosing yourself and not freaking out is The Mayo Clinic’s excellent site.) I left it alone. It got worse. It hurt so much I couldn’t sleep, then got up and had to eat rice cakes and drink almond milk so I could take the TWO ibuprofen I could find in the house at 1am. I missed the GIANT BOTTLE my husband had gotten earlier that day. Shoulda known he wouldn’t allow us to run out of what a former brother in law called Vitamin M.

Anyhoo, slept on couch so wouldn’t disturb husband who was looking forward to geeky sci-fi con today, then told him when he got up that he had to drive me to urgent care because my hand was so effed up I couldn’t be trusted with the car. Two hours later I was told it wasn’t broken, it wasn’t arthritis, but a swollen joint capsule. Doc asked if I did repetitive motions. Typing, I asked? No, he said, wouldn’t be just that finger.

I professed ignorance and innocence while wondering if perhaps my flipping off of my family behind their back when they annoyed me had perhaps gotten a little two vigorous. And yet, I usually give the double salute, so even though I’m (sort of) joking about this, it is just the one hand. Upon consideration, it may have been from opening a jar. I got some pain meds, and am doing much better now, thanks. Which you can probably infer, since I’m typing this. But if you could see how many times I have to edit a line, you might see I’m still impaired (handwise, I mean. Again, don’t drink anymore.) And now I have to see a rheumatologist. Maybe I’ll just stop opening jars. (And flipping off people. Maybe.)

SO, the reason I started this is to say why I haven’t blogged lately, and why, now that the story has been told, I may give short shrift to reviews as I catch up here.

I’d heard from a bajillion people I trusted that The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was A. Really good and B. Really sad. I knew I was going to read it sometime, so when it was picked for this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books, AND it finally came in at the library, it was time.

And as for a review, I like what Janet Potter had to say at The Millions, because I think we do it a disservice by focusing on the crying part, as I did in my Good Reads review that said not to read the last 50 pages in public:

It’s a sad book, to be sure, about two teenagers who meet in a support group for kids with cancer, but it’s also joyful, hopeful, wise, funny, romantic, and genuinely inspirational. So why, in my efforts to share this joy and hope with other people, did I keep saying, go be unspeakably sad for as long as it takes you to read a 300-page book?

I think that when we talk about The Fault in Our Stars, we go straight to the unspeakable sadness, out of all the emotions evoked, because we want to convey the incredible emotional resonance of the book. What we’re trying to say is: this book mattered deeply to me, I think it could matter deeply to you too.

I didn’t love this book because it was sad, I loved it because the main characters were funny and smart. I delighted in the time I spent with them. Highly recommended.

But, don’t read the last 50 pages in public.

Revival, Vol. 1: You’re Among Friends by Tim Seeley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Found myself wanting to like this more than I did. I found some clumsy visual storytelling like an text dump on a spread, and multiple characters who look too like others.

Everything reminded me of something else, so nothing felt fresh or original. Newscaster reminded me of Cersei from Game of Thrones. Main character reminded me of something by Rucka (forget which title: Stumptown?) Art and main character design reminded me of Whiteout. CDC guy reminded me of Sayeed from Lost.

Yet it says noir right on the cover, and part of noir is its embracing of tropes. In my experience, a critique of a noir work that says it’s cliche misses the point, and yet that’s what I felt after reading this. Am I missing the point? Not in the mood for noir?

It has an intro by Jeff Lemire who writes Sweet Tooth, which I love, so I feel I should love it by the transitive property. Not sure whether I’ll continue with this series.

BUT, props for the Dessa and Rhymesayers poster in one character’s dorm room!

View all my reviews

File under the heading “Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time”:

For one of my three book groups, I picked an author, rather than one book to read, so we’re having a sort of literary Colson Whitehead potluck where people could read Intuitionist, John Henry Days, or Zone One. But, as the moderator, that meant I had to read all 3 in the month before the Morning News Tournament of Books, which I’m much rather be reading nerdishly for.

John Henry Days centers on a freelance journalist, J Sutter, who goes to cover an event celebrating the legend. We’re told early on there’s a murder, and then the book hops here and there (rather in the manner that a legend accretes) telling J’s and John Henry’s and the ballad’s stories.

John Henry Days is a bigger and much more ambitious book than The Intuitionist. Interestingly, I preferred the latter. this one was a bit too big, sprawled a bit too much, and I felt like Whitehead and his editor were too reluctant to kill his darlings (edit out precious but unnecessary sentences). From Jonathan Franzen’s review at the New York Times “Freeloading Man“:

Unfortunately, in his pursuit of the exhaustive, Whitehead also serves up …half a dozen other interludes that read, at times, like the work of somebody getting $2 a word.

If Franzen says you’re too wordy, that’s something to pay attention to.

But, Franzen also says that just when you are frustrated you stumble across a sentence or passage or chapter that draws you back in, despite the rambling and un-urgent narrative. I found this absolutely true.

Impressive, often entertaining (one bit about air quotes will stay with me for life), but a little too wordy, and a little too cerebral and lacking in emotion, for me to urge it on all and sundry.

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, a selection for the 2013 Tournament of Books, is exactly the kind of book I’ve come to hope for from the tournament. I’d heard that it was good, but not until I read it myself, and it reached out and dragged me into it for 440 odd pages, did I appreciate HOW good, or how glad I am to have this book in my life now.

A boy in North Korea, who is NOT an orphan as he defensively tells people throughout his life, grows up and has improbable adventures with unbelievable coincidences. Horrible and wondrous things happen. It’s like a Dickens story set in a communist state, the details of which are so insane it reads like satire, but probably isn’t. Especially in the second half of the book, point of view and time switch suddenly and often, yet I didn’t have trouble following the narrative. This reminded me of David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, except without the bat$hit crazy magic stuff. Kim Jong Il = bat$hit crazy all by himself, no magic needed. I loved this book, and highly recommend it.