Ilona Andrews

Magic Bites, by Ilona Andrews

When the magic is up, rogue mages cast their spells and monsters appear, while guns refuse to fire and cars fail to start, But then technology returns, and the magic recedes as unpredictably as it arose, leaving all kinds of paranormal problems in its wake.

Kate Daniels is a down-on-her-luck mercenary who makes her living cleaning up these magical problems. But when Kate's guardian is murdered, her quest for justice draws her into a power struggle between two strong factions within Atlanta's magic circles.

The Masters of the Dead, necromancers who can control vampires, and the Pack, a paramilitary clan of shapechangers, blame each other for a series of bizarre killings -- and the death of Kate's guardian may be part of the same mystery. Pressured by both sides to find the killer, Kate realizes she's way out of her league -- but she wouldn't have it any other way...

Oh, lawdy. I really did not invest a lot of time reading this one, and didn't get a lot out of it. Mostly that was because I spent the entire book wondering if this was the first one in the series. Because, see, Magic Bites just does not do a good job of introducing you to the characters or world. It's like that old joke: "My mother taught me how to swim by taking me out to the middle of a lake and pushing me overboard." "She wasn't trying to teach you to swim!" Magic Bites is the lake, and the authors are the mother, pushing you overboard and going, well, you'll either drown or swim, and have fun figuring out which one it's gonna be!

It might actually be better to start with a later one in the series because I read the first couple of chapters of the next book (you know how they give you a preview of the next book in mass market paperbacks). The recap of the series so far - that authors always put in the later books in the series because people have terrible memories and also sometimes don't always read the books in order - does a good job of explaining things, and talks about secondary characters in a way that's missing when you read Magic Bites. In this one, people just pop up chock full of backstory that's never talked about. For example, early on in the book, Kate's friend Jim is introduced by him showing up kinda irritated because she skipped out on a job they were supposed to do together. All we get from the scene is that Jim is a shapeshifter - we don't know what kind of shapeshifter, or how Kate and Jim met, or if Kate even likes him or not, or the job they were supposed to do together (which sounds interesting) or or or anything. Sometimes it felt like the description on the back cover was more fullsome than the actual text.

The book is narrated in the first person, so I guess it's more realistic that no, when you see someone you know on the street you're not thinking, "I first met my friend Rachel when we were both attended Our Lady of Humble Prayer Camp, during which we bonded over our mutual love of hair ribbons and clarified butter. More recently, we went out dancing together and she still owes me for the drinks." It's more like, she holds out $20, and you think, "I'm glad she brought that money, I didn't want to ask her for it. Also, her shoes are hot." And meanwhile, you all could be anything from friends to pimps relationship-wise. So yeah, maybe it's more realistic for Kate not to explain any damn thing, but that's not helpful when the character is narrating a book. Readers need context and background and without it, people are just like unmoored boats, floating around in the mire of my mind, which is not how anyone wants to read a book.

It just all seems like a lot of ideas jumbled together - I didn't hate it, exactly, but it didn't hold my interest very well, although I'm not sure that's put me off the next books in the series. More editing, more insight as to what's actually going on in Kate's head, better explication of events and world building - it's not impossible. I feel like it has potential, and I'd need to re-read it at least once more before writing it off completely. I've already forgotten most of what happens in Magic Bites, which isn't a strong recommendation, but a different frame of mind might make all the difference. I guess we'll see.



Bayou Moon, by Ilona Andrews

The Edge lies between worlds, on the border between the Broken, where people shop at Wal-Mart and magic is a fairy tale -- and the Weird, where blueblood aristocrats rule, changelings roam, and the strength of your magic can change your destiny.

Cerise Mar and her unruly clan are cash poor but land rich, claiming a large swath of the Mire, the Edge swamplands between the state of Louisiana and the Weird. When her parents vanish, her clan's longtime rivals are suspect number one.

But all is not as it seems. Two nations of the Weird are waging a cold war fought by feint and espionage, and their conflict is about to spill over into the Edge -- and Cerise's life. William, a changeling soldier who'd left behind the politics of the Weird, has been forced back into service to track down a rival nation's spymaster. When William's and Cerise's missions lead them to cross paths, sparks fly -- but they'll have to work together if they want to succeed. . . and survive.

I probably won't make a lot of sense on this post, and that is Linda Ronstadt's fault, because as soon as I look at the title, all I can hear is Ms. Ronstadt singing, "I'm goin' back someday, come what may, to Blue Bayouuuuuuuuuuuu..." It was so bad, I wound up singing it the entire day I read Bayou Moon, much to the aggravation of the people around me. I did enjoy this one more than Magic Bites, as it doesn't suffer from that same weird non-background-info-giving problem, which might be because it's technically the second in a series, or it might be because they took a different approach to writing it.

That familiar sunrise
Those sleepy eyes
How happy I'd be...

It's a much chunkier book, and switches perspectives between the two main characters William and Cerise. I dunno about you folks, but I greatly enjoyed reading all of Cerise's lines out loud in a super thick southern Louisiana drawl. It really added to the experience. That was also something Bayou Moon had going for it that Magic Bites did not: a funny, or at least sardonic heroine. I liked Cerise more than Kate, and honestly, I'm not all together sure why: both are investigating the death/disappearance of someone close to them, both deal in being kick-ass fighters who seem to be modeled after John Wayne's cowboy impersonations. I liked Cerise's sprawling, fighting family, who were vivid secondary characters. Even with the large cast of characters, I could tell who was who, pretty much. In contrast, Kate seems very much orphaned and alone, and even her relationships with her "friends" didn't feel very real. I do like a good secondary cast, and I appreciated the sense of responsibility to her family that Cerise had. Of course, that could maybe also have been because she reminds me of the lead character in the movie Winter's Bone, which I absolutely adore, who also wants to locate her parent and save her siblings and her farm.

Saving nickels, saving dimes
Working til the sun don't shine
Looking forward to happier times
On Blue Bayou

Some of the parts between William and Cerise were just too. . . much. It embarrasses me when characters in books come on real strong, I want to be like, chill. Get ahold of yourself. Especially when you finish the book, and you're like, hey, that took place over 48 hours! Yet these people met, angsted, declared their mutual love and decided to live happily ever after. It's not that fast in Bayou Moon, although it's pretty darn fast. I prefer my main pair to have some restraint, although they do alright for the first half of the book, when they're going through the Mire.

Where the folks are fine
And the world is mine
On Blue Bayou

The setting is delightful - very swampy and atmospheric, and unlike Magic Bites, I could picture all the locations pretty clearly, which aids immensely in my enjoyment of a book. I did get kinda bogged down by the end of the book, it suffered a little from the authors trying to wind up way too many storylines and surprise twists, so that the first like, two thirds felt fairly evenly (if a bit slowly) paced, then frenetic fighting all weighted down at the end. Plus, it suffers from Return of the King epilogue syndrome: just when you thought it was done, more stuff popped up to be taken care of. It felt rushed a bit, such as when Cerise's father gets found and rescued off-screen in the space of like, five pages, despite the whole point of the book being, ostensibly, Cerise's search for him. I guess we don't care about him as much as we do her mother, who is already worm food by that point.

Well, I'll never be blue
My dreams come true

All in all, I was intrigued by both books, although I definitely prefer Bayou Moon to Magic Bites. Bayou Moon is sort of a loose sequel to another book about the Edge (called, appropriately enough, "On the Edge"), so I might try that one on for size, and see if my issues with Magic Bites are because of the first-book-in-a-series problem or because I just can't get behind that particular series.


On Bluuuuuuuuue Bayyyyyyyyyouuuuuuuu

Possession

Possession, by A.S. Byatt

An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire - from spiritualist seances to the fairy haunted far west of Brittany - what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas.

I don't know if you all were present for my hissy fit a few entries back. Let me assure you, that was only a very very small taste of the complaining and bitching I performed on behalf of Possession. This book was like my albatross, hanging around my neck. Here are some words of advice: don't be like me! Don't get suckered in by an interesting description like I did. JUST SAY NO (to Possession).

See, I thought this was going to be exciting, like, a mystery! But with books, and letters for clues, and nobody shoots each other, and everybody involved is long dead, so it's more peaceful-like, which I like, because I enjoy thrillers without action, is that a crime? Because if that's wrong, then I don't want to be right. So I started Possession, thinking, you know, 'Millions of satisfied readers can't be wrong.' WRONG. I hated Possession. I loathed it. I got about 1/4 of the way in, and conveniently "lost" it, so I could take a break from it. This was just not my book. And it's not a bad book! It's not, I swear. It's just, like, the opposite of anything I ever want to read. And I had a clue, right there on the back of the book:

It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets.

...two Victorian poets.

...two Victorian poets.

...two Victorian poets.

...two Victorian poets.

I hate Victorian poetry. This wasn't like, a surprise to me. I mean, I kinda was aware that I wasn't, you know, as they say, "a fan of the Dickinson" (they don't say that), but I can tell you I certainly didn't expect that reading it would feel like torture. Victorian torture. I like poetry that one could read aloud with some measure of rhythm. I do not like ellipses, and dash marks all over my poetry, with like, crap pauses everywhere and nothing rhymes. I'm getting angry just thinking about it. [NB: Actually, if you want a really hilarious take on this type of poetry, you should read Connie Willis' short story, 'The Soul Selects Her Own Society' which is a satirical "essay" on how Dickinson fought off an alien invasion by her 'near-rhymes,' bizarre meter, and 'profligate use of dashes and random capitalizing of letters.' Basically, it takes everything I hate about Victorian poetry and makes fun of it, in a much nicer and smarter way than I myself am about to.]

Like, okay, read this snippet:

I ask myself, did Galileo know
Fear, when he saw the gleaming globes in space,
Like unto mine, whose lens revealed to me --
Not the chill glory of Heaven's Infinite --
But all the swarming, all the seething motes
The basilisks, the armoured cockatrice,
We cannot see, but are in their degrees
Why not? -- to their own apprehension --
I dare not speak it -- why not microcosms
As much as Man, poor man, whose ruffled pride
Carnot abide the Infinite's questioning
From smallest as from greatest?

If you read that and immediately feel like you're breaking out in hives: congratulations! You're allergic to Victorian poetry. I advise that you put Possession down immediately and never think of it again. If you read that and go, "Hey! What fantastic imagery! I want more!": Congratulations, you're an English teacher! Go make some kids miserable with allegories and metaphors and allusions.


So Possession is a book's book. It uses a lot of literary devices in fancy ways, and wraps everything up in layers of, you know, allegories and metaphors and allusions. The Victorian story is told through poems, letters, suicide notes, diaries, and dug-up graves. I'm about to unwrap some SPOILERS, so beware, although honestly, if you read this review and still want to read Possession, it's not like you care what I'm saying anyway.

The Victorian story is an somewhat interesting one (although not my cup of tea) if only it weren't obscured by all the. . . Victorian-ness of the medium. For instance, there is an entirely too-long section which comprises the bulk of letters between the poets, and it's stuff like this:

Have you truly Weighed --what you ask of me? Not the Gracile Accommodation of my Muse to your promptings -- for that wd be resisted to the Death of the Immortal -- which cannot Be -- only Dissipation in Air.

and this:

How shall I answer you? I have been abrupt and ungracious-- from fear of Infirmity of Purpose, and because I am a voice -- a voice that would be still and small - -crying plaintively out of a Whirlwind-- which I may not in Honesty describe to you. I owe you an Explanation -- and yet I Must Not -- and yet I must-- or stand convicted of hideous Ingratitude as well as lesser vices.

But Truly Sir it will not do. The --precious-- letters -- are too much and too little -- and above all and first, I should say, compromising.

What a cold sad word. It is His word -- the World's word -- and her word too, that prude, his Wife. But it entails freedom.

I will expatiate -- on freedom and injustice.

Ugh. Anyway, so that's a problem for me. I can't argue with the effectiveness of it, or with the accuracy of it, because it's well done. Here's the thing: Possession is well written, very well written. Byatt has a lot of balls to keep up in the air, and she does keep them up with a good deal of success. Not only does Byatt write the whole Victorian thing to a T, she also has to deal with the modern (or, well, 1980s) world, which has scholars picking everything apart, which can't have been too much easy to plot and pace and do properly. Everything is like a big spiderweb - pull one thread and you've got connections to five other things going on at once. I didn't pick up on half of them, mostly because I was just trying to keep my head down and get through it without dying, but I did notice that they were there.


Another of my difficulties with the book was caused by the characters. I didn't like any of them. I found no one sympathetic. The Victorian cast is two poets, Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte, who have an affair and break it off, but not before somehow causing LaMotte's roommate to commit suicide, and LaMotte to have a baby in tawdry fashion. I didn't like them. I hate it when people in books have affairs, it always makes me hate the couple. And here, there's this weird thing where apparently Ash's wife refused to have sex with him, ever, and I guess maybe it's supposed to make us more sympathetic to his position? I dunno, man, I still think he's a bit of a shit for cheating on her. The whole thing rubbed me wrong.

Then there's the modern parts, which has two main scholars, Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey (and jeez, Byatt, could you have made your two male characters any harder for me to distinguish between than Roland and Randolph? I could not for the life of me remember which one was which) who mimic, in some ways, the Victorian couple. That is, Randolph leaves his mopey girlfriend to trek off with this other chick. Everyone is sort of slimey and unlikeable in the modern era too, at least for the first, eh . . . 7/8ths of the book. They're all weird and awkward and grating and gross until everyone comes together to rob graves in an odd tonal shift to madcap caper, when everyone suddenly turns fun and amusing and quirky instead. Oh well, at least it leavened the loaf.

I can't speak much on the moods of the book, or its artistry. Unfortunately, as I said above, I was struggling too much just to get through it to be able to appreciate any subtleties. I know that Byatt intended at least some of it to be satirical, and not serious, but for my part, I found the humor to be very dour. I saw the ridiculousness, but I wasn't amused, merely tired. It takes a different person than me to really relish this kind of humor. And possibly, I'm still upset at how difficult it was - like trying to save some kid from drowning only to find out they'd been faking it the whole time. I mean, it's almost enough to make you want to drown them for real, isn't it?

"My friend attacks my friend!
Oh Battle picturesque!
Then I turn Soldier too,
And he turns Satirist!
How martial is this place!
Had I a mighty gun
I think I'd shoot the human race
And then to glory run!"

-E.Dick.

ARRRGH

Little Princes

Little Princes, by Conor Grennan

In search of adventure, 29 year-old Conor Grennan traded his day job for a year-long trip around the globe, a journey that began with a three month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Children's Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal.

Conor was initially reluctant to volunteer, unsure whether he had the proper skill, or enough passion, to get involved in a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he was soon overcome by the herd of rambunctious, resiliant children who would challenge and reward him in a way that he had never imagined. When Conor learned the unthinkable truth about their situation, he was stunned: The children were not orphans at all. Child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from civil war - for a huge fee - by taking them to safety. They would then abandon the children far from home, in the chaos of Nepal's capital city, Kathmandu.

For Conor, what began as a footloose adventure becomes a commitment to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but this would be no small task. He would risk his life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Nepal, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury.

I am completely biased when it comes to this book. Almost three years ago now, in 2008, although I can't actually believe it's really been that long, I spent the summer working in Kathmandu, attempting to do my part to help Nepal get back on its feet after the ten year civil war between the Maoist rebels and the monarchy debilitated the country. I have many fond and less than fond memories of my time there, including the time I attempted to find the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction despite not knowing any Nepali. If you're in need of some excitement in your life, I recommend trying to get into a guarded compound in a foreign country which has just recently had a civil war, where you don't speak the language and have to make your way around by showing random people a piece of paper where you've written what you really hope is the right name for this place and not just some random phrase that was on the website, in whatever mangled mess you've made of their alphabet. True story: one time I tried to cheer up my roommate by writing "Happy Birthday" in Russian, and she told me later that she thought a child had written it. Writing in a foreign alphabet is hard.

P.S. Isn't that website great? I love the picture of the old Ministry. I have no idea why the old Ministry was in the middle of what appears to be in a forest, on a mountain, but I appreciate their moving it into the city, because otherwise it would have been a much longer walk from my hotel.

Anyway, this is all beside the point, which is not unexpected, so whatever. The book. Little Princes is one of those books which is not so much about the writing as it is about the story and the problem, and the shedding of light on a previously dark corner. It's like Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea (and the sequel Stones into Schools), which is also about helping children in a war-torn, mountainous region in Asia. Unsurprisingly, I like both of these books, although obviously, Little Princes was more evocative to me, since I have not been to Afghanistan or Pakistan, nor do I have plans to visit in the near future, as it is very dangerous, and I would be scared to go.

In Little Princes, obviously, the problem is child trafficking and it is a heartbreaking story. Grennan does a good job of pacing the story and relating how each new circumstance brought forth the next one - from a short volunteering stint, to a longer one, to finding out the children's parents were not dead, to the discovery of the new children, and the promise made to them which was severed by the escalating violence and disruption. The book does slow down a bit towards the end - Grennan loses the urgency that powered the first three quarters of the book, and he spends a bit too much time dwelling on his burgeoning relationship with a sympathetic penpal who later becomes his wife.

What Little Princes does very well is describe the myriad and conflicting factors which surround child trafficking, and any solutions which may be attempted. Part of the problem was obviously the ongoing war, which has stopped, as have almost all acts of violence. However, during the war, getting the children back to their parents was problematic because of the risk of movement, and because parents would only want to send them away again to avoid conscription. Grennan also puts his finger on another issue: because these particular children wound up being cared for and educated and so on, the risk paid off. I would never want to be a parent and have to make that choice - to say, I can send my child away and perhaps they will be starved and left to fend for themselves or perhaps they will be found and taken care of, or I can keep them close, and perhaps they will be taken away to fight, or perhaps they will not. I can understand a parent who says: in both of those scenarios, in the worst case, my child could die, but in the best case, with me they would have to eke out a living, but in Kathmandu, they could make something of themselves, and then send them away. There are other reasons why reuniting these children with their parents does not go as smoothly and quickly as Grennan first assumes it will - the cost of travel, of having another child to feed, of reuniting after years apart.

Little Princes is poignant, as it illustrates very how just how messy war is - there are no easy choices made in this book, and even parents who send their children away with a child trafficker have your sympathy. The situation in Nepal goes unknown and unremarked too often (as is often the case with poorer countries which are not in the grips of an extraordinary violence). One of my Nepali contacts, a lawyer working with a NGO, said that things were better in 2008, yes, but that she'd seen peace before, and didn't know if it would last. I love Nepal, and perhaps if you read Little Princes you'll understand why. Or maybe you just have to go there.

(this little girl is judging you if you do not like Nepal)

For your further education:

Timeline of Recent Events

Next Generation Nepal (the organization founded by Grennan)

Pictures of Nepal (There's a menu on the left hand side of the page. I did not take these, nor do I know the person who did. But I love them, they remind me of being there. The Nepal ones basically go from Apr. 11, 2008 to Aug. 19, 2008)

Plain Kate

Plain Kate, by Erin Bow

Plain Kate lives in a world of superstitions and curses, where a song can heal a wound and a shadow can work deep magic. As the wood-carver's daughter, Kate held a carving knife before a spoon, and her wooden charms are so fine that some even call her "witch-blade" - a dangerous nickname in a town where witches are hunted and burned in the square.

For Kate and her village have fallen on hard times. Kate's father has died, leaving her alone in the world. And a mysterious fog now covers the countryside, ruining crops and spreading fear of hunger and sickness. The townspeople are looking for someone to blame, and their eyes have fallen on Kate.

Enter Linay, a stranger with a proposition: In exchange for her shadow, he'll give Kate the means to escape the town that seems set to burn her, and what's more, he'll grant her heart's wish. It's a chance for her to start over, to find a home, a family, a place to belong. But Kate soon realizes that she can't live shadowless forever - and that Linay's designs are darker than she ever dreamed.

Okay, confession time: I have been reading, I swear, only I am trying to finish all the books I still have going on before starting new ones. This is a spectacularly bad plan for several reasons:

1. I am in the middle of like, five books, so it's going to take me awhile.
2. I am in the middle of these books (and not finished with them) mostly because I don't want to read them. (Warning sign #1).
3. I keep cheating and starting (and sometimes finishing but sometimes not) new books anyway. My bad.

So, here's the thing: I have been trying very hard to read A.S. Byatt's Possession (ironically, this book has taken over my life, but in a really bad way, like the way debt creditors take over your life) but only, not really trying, because I hate it so much, I can barely force myself to crack it.
So I can't read it, and at the same time, can't not read it, so other books have been kinda getting the short straw as a result. Luckily, Plain Kate was like, two hours of nonsense, so it was a very small detour on the Possession takeover of my life.

Verdict: It was okay. I guess part of the problem was the summary I read in the NYT got my hopes up, because it sounded interesting and adventurous, but it was a lot of Kate, wandering around being stubborn, and people beating up on her. She leaves town after a mob comes after her with axes, then falls in with gypsies, ahem, Roamers, then they find out she sold her shadow, so they try to set fire to her, and then she gets "rescued" again by Linay, who then bleeds her periodically so the ghost of his dead sister can live. She takes a lot of abuse, is what I'm saying. So at least part of the issue is that I didn't empathize with her. Mostly I was just irritated by her somewhat hapless meanderings. She sort of goes through the book like a pinball, bouncing against barriers and changing directions only to hit up against something else. She's not at all a "take charge" kind of person, until maybe, maybe at the very end, but I wasn't invested in her at that point, so it was wasted.

I think, looking back, that that was my biggest peeve: honestly, after I finished it, I was like, nothing happened in that book, but really, stuff did happen, only it never felt immediate to me, I never got into the scene. It was as though I was watching the action from behind a dirty dirty window - I could see, but the effort of looking to the other side meant that I couldn't really focus completely on the immediacy of the events.

The book does "pick up" (and again, let me say, stuff happens in the first 4/5ths of the book, but it made no impact, so for me, it was very blah for awhile) at the end, but it's a bit of a jumble. FYI, total SPOILER ALERT.

First Kate's talking cat offers to die for the Cause, and they decide against it, then Linay totally wrecks havoc on this town in the name of vengeance, and then Kate tries to kill him, but he actually just commits suicide, but then his formerly dead sister comes back and then Kate's talking cat dies, and then the sister decides to die, and the cat comes back to life. But then it can't talk anymore! Phew. I will be honest, the only character I cared about was that talking cat. Rule #1: Kill all the people you want, but god forbid you kill a single dog or cat! So I was pleased that the cat lived. But in killing him and then bringing him back, it ruined the sorrow that the death had created. And perhaps Ms. Bow thought to make it a bittersweet reunion because the cat came back, but only as a dumb animal rather than as the friend it used to be, but I was just glad it came back, and cats don't generally talk anyway, so it failed on that level for me.

The setting. . . was okay. It is "clearly" set in Russia (as the dead sister is a rusalka until she comes back to life) but like, the same way that Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel are set in Europe: barely. I would have liked more flavour to the setting, more infusion of that specific time and place, more because I like reading about things I don't know very much about and learning something new than for any need to have cultural trappings in this type of tale. Although at one point Kate calls her cat a "panther" and I was all, "Did they even have panthers in Russia?" and spent like, twenty minutes on wikipedia looking at leopard habitats.

Plain Kate wasn't terrible, it just doesn't really sock you in the gut. The saddest part for me was the acknowledgments, and let me just say that if you all don't read the acknowledgments and similar in books, you are totally missing out. They're great, sort of like how previews are to movies. Anyway, that's why it was just okay.


P.S. Panthera is a genus that contains tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars. Most people (or possibly just me) think black South American jaguars when they think panthers, but those aren't really a whole separate cat, they're just jaguars, which only live in South and Central America. Panther could also mean black leopard, and leopards are currently only found in like, sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia, but they used to be all the way up to Mongolia and Korea parts. Snow leopards also live in Russia a little, mostly in the areas by the Himalayas, although I don't know if those ever get black. Also, they are FUZZY, and don't really make me think of "panther" when I see them. And because panthers are not a separate cat, but are just odd colorations of jaguars and leopards, you can have white panthers, too, although these have not been bred like the black ones have, even though it's harder to live in the wild as a white panther than a black one. The More You Know!

The Dark Divine

The Dark Divine, by Bree Despain

Grace Divine, the daughter of the local pastor, always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared -- the night she found her brother Jude collapsed on the porch, covered in his own blood -- but she has no idea what a truly monstrous secret that night held. The memories her family has tried to bury resurface when Daniel returns, three years later, and enrolls in Grace's and Jude's high school. Despite promising Jude she'll stay away, Grace cannot deny her attraction to Daniel's shocking artistic abilities, his way of getting her to look at the world from new angles, and the strange, hungry glint in his eyes. The closer Grace gets to Daniel, the more she jeopardizes her life, as her actions stir resentment in Jude and drive him to embrace the ancient evil Daniel unleashed that horrific night. Grace must discover the truth behind the boy's dark secret. . . and the cure that can save the one she loves. But she may have to lay down the ultimate sacrifice t do it -- her soul.

Before we get too much further, let me just say that this review is infested with spoilers, like ticks on a werewolf. FYI, yo.

I have complicated feelings about TDD. This is one of the many monster-themed teen novels that arrived in the wake of Twilight's success. And maybe that's part of my problem with TDD: I do not hate Twilight, but nor do I love it. I read it, and it was a non-entity in terms of books. There's a fair number of books which just do not register with me at all. Kind of like the first Harry Potter movie. I must have seen that at least four times now, and I still do not remember watching it even once. Which is probably for the best, I don't really have a yen to remember fantasy movies with poor child acting, and the book was so memorable I have no problem picturing events. It's one of the reasons I wanted to start writing these reviews - so that I could actually keep track of everything I've read, for once. Naturally, that's been almost a complete failure, mostly because if a book doesn't leave an impression, I don't want to talk about it. It does work sometimes though - The Amaranth Enchantment is one that wouldn't otherwise be taking up space in my memory banks. And to wind-up this boringly in-depth look at the way my mind works, let me finally make my point: TDD is a lot like Twilight, and like Twilight, didn't move me very much at all.

That's not to say there were no enjoyable parts or flat out ridiculousness. This is a teen fantasy novel, y'all! So: dark, mysterious, sexy young man arrives in town, unknown enough to be attracted to, familiar enough to be safe to act on that attraction. Awesome! Naturally, odd things begin happening, young romances are forbidden, promises are made and broken, and a young man kidnaps his own baby brother to um, well, not for any reason really. I guess, because he was there?

TDD is kind of a slow starter - anyone with half a brain, or enough drive to read a review of the book knows it's about werewolves, but the protagonist, Grace, does not. Even though she sometimes, sort of, does. For example, when her afore-mentioned little brother goes missing, and everyone crowds out to look at the window, she thinks:

There was a spattering of blood there, like someone had shaken a wounded hand. Or paw.

I'm sorry, the italics are my own, I couldn't resist. Considering how little Grace is aware (at this point in the story) of werewolves and such monsters, she's pretty spot-on about that whole hand/paw thing. I will admit, usually when I see a crime scene, I do not think, "Hey, this could have been done by a person. . . or a giant wolf." Sometimes the characters make random intuits of logic that jarred me out of the story. Such as when Grace is reading about this guy Gabriel, who sounds like he's in the Crusades, talking about moons and wolves:

[T]he Urbat have much greater difficulty controlling the wolf possession during the night of the full moon. As if the moon itself has power over them. Because of this, I think there may be a way to manage these beasts. Perhaps if an Urbat were ti keep a small piece of the moon close to his body, it would act as a counteragent to the effects of the larger moon, helping him keep the wolf at bay while still retaining its mythical strength. Much like how the ancient Greeks treated disease with the idea that like cures like.

I have heard tales of rocks that fall in fiery glory from the heavens. What if some of these rocks have fallen from the moon itself? If I were able to fashion a necklace from one of these moonstones - if finding one was possible - perhaps I could help the Death Dogs reclaim their blessings.

However, such a necklace would be no cure. It would only offer control.

So within the space of two and a half short paragraphs, Gabriel posits 1) The moon controls the beasts, 2) A small piece of moon would control the beasts, 3) In a good, counter-effective kind of way, 4) Rocks that fall from the sky might come from the moon, 5) If we make a necklace from fallen rocks then the beasts will be helped, and 5) The necklace will not cure the beasts, it will only preserve their strength but dampen the hunger.

That is so many leaps of logic right there. It's irritating because we the readers know all of this works, since Daniel is wearing a necklace of moon rock, which patently works. But for Gabriel to be all, the moon affects the wolves, so what we really need is a necklace made of moon rocks, and furthermore, this necklace, which I have just dreamed up, will only help them in very specific ways, but not cure them, is outrageous. Utter coincidence would be more palatable to me than this forced and twisted "reasoning".

TDD is actually kind of obnoxious about information and background. It drops hints by the truckload, but our beautiful protagonist can't put them all together until Daniel, her long-lost swain fills her in on the rest. So we, the readers, are stuck reading about Grace's younger sister watching a television program about wolves, while clueless Grace just mopes about omega wolves getting enough to eat, with no insight on her own situation, despite her earlier out-of-left-field *paw* Eureka moment. It's all very frustrating. It's like, sometimes Grace knows too much, sometimes she doesn't know anything at all. Make up your mind, Grace!

So it starts slowly, and really only gets going about 85% of the way in. Which is not a problem, the climax should be towards the end like that, but there's very little payoff happening before then, which is more of an issue for me. Despain created an interesting mythology about werewolves, but there's almost no time to explore it, since Grace receives only a few pieces at a time, so the whole picture doesn't come into focus for awhile.

The first half of the book sets up a lot of questions, some of which it just doesn't answer, such as, why do Grace's parents appear to hate each other? It's never really addressed, and I kept expecting something to be going on with her mother, but she's not really part of the resolution at all. I guess the mother was just angry that the father was helping Daniel out? And decided to be passive-aggressive about over Thanksgiving? I kept waiting for the pay-off, but her anger just sort of went away. I will say, it seems odd that Grace would hear her parents argue for the first time ever and then not follow-up, looking for signs that they're back to normal. It's a little confusing.

The romance between Grace and Daniel was one of the better done parts of the book. Grace, while obtuse in some respects, doesn't do too shabby a job at wanting Daniel while trying not to entangle herself with him. I didn't want to shake her too much for being stupid, which is high praise for teenage heroines. Although, jesus, can we declare a moratorium on violet eyes? I can't tell you how much this bugs me, it's a sloppy shortcut to making your heroine (the ladies always get purple eyes, the men always get dark flashing ones) a unique little snowflake without giving her any skills or real qualities. It's a joke, at this point, and Despain completely took me out of the story when that got mentioned. Just say she has brown eyes! Just because her nail polish is purple doesn't mean her eyes have to be too. My nails would look hideous if I matched them to my eyes. Like vomit.

So Grace is also the pastor's daughter, so there's a religious aspect involved here, too. That didn't bother me in the least, and I'm a godless atheist. It adds a convincing tension to Grace's interactions with other characters and her decisions about trying to do the right thing. Her religious background gives her terror of monsters more depth, and her attempts to be a good person more weight. She's not sanctimonious, and I actually liked the religious aspect to her character, it made her decisions more believable.

I also enjoyed the end of the book - the final denouement is a classic on-the-rooftop, battling between two creatures of darkness moment, and it works. I felt anxious on behalf of Grace, and very sorry for her when she was attacked. I will not, however, be purchasing the sequel, even if Jude's future is left hanging. TDD just had too many head-scratching moments, and characters seemed forced into odd or simply unexplained behavior to fit the storyline. And despite the entertaining finale, my patience was strained by the lead-in to it.

An inoffensive entry in the monster-of-the-week fantasy novels.

The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco

Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and an English Brother, William of Baskerville, is sent to investigate. His delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre murders that take place in seven days and nights of terror. One monk is found dead in a cask of pig's blood; another is discovered floating in a bathhouse; still another has been crushed to death after falling from a window. Rumors hum throughout the abbey, and people piously cover their tracks, hiding clues. Brother William turns detective, and a uniquely deft one at that. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon - all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and ferocious curiosity. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie secret labyrinth of abbey life. Before his task is completed, Brother William witnesses crimes beyond his imaginings and meets an enemy with the awesome features of the Antichrist...

So that was... unenjoyable. I spent a goodly sum of time on this book, and I really wish I had it all back. The book is a six hundred page monster about heresy in 1327 Italy and by golly, I soldiered through it, but I'll be gosh darned if I'd do it again. It was a frustrating and slow read. I read this over a period of seven days (well, six, really), partly because the book takes place over seven days, and there's nothing I like so much as a gimmick, and partly because each day takes up about 100 pages and 100 pages a day is all I could take. Oh, my god, I would re-read sections over and over again trying to make heads or tails of it and come up with nothing. For example, this description of the church:

And beneath the feet of the ancients, and arched over them and over the throne and over the tetramorphic group, arranged in symmetrical bands, barely distinguishable one from another because the artist's skill had made them all so mutually proportionate, united in their variety and varied in their unity, unique in their diversity and diverse in their apt assembly, in wonderous congruency of the parts with the delightful sweetness of hues, miracle of consonance and concord of voices among themselves dissimilar, a company arrayed like the strings of the zither, consentient and conspiring continued cognition through deep and interior force suited to perform univocally in same alternating play of the equivocal, decoration and collage of creatures beyond reduction to vicissitudes reduced, work of amorous connecting sustained by a law at once heavenly and worldly (bond and stable nexus of peace, love, virtue, regimen, power, order, origin, life, light, splendor, species, and figure), numerous and resplendent equality through the shining of the form over the proportionate parts of the material—there, all the flowers and leaves and vines and bushes and corymbs were entwined, of all the grasses that adores the gardens of earth and heaven, violet, cystus, thyme, lily, privet, narcissus, taro, acanthus, mallow, myrrh, and Mecca balsam.

What, I ask you, is "consentient and conspiring continued cognition through deep and interior force suited to perform univocally in same alternating play of the equivocal, decoration and collage of creatures beyond reduction to vicissitudes reduced"? It's like Jabberwocky, except without order or sense. Also, it takes itself a lot more seriously than Lewis Carroll.

Be forewarned, I fell asleep after reading TNotR and I had the worst dream, all monks and monsters, and people going up like firecrackers, and Alec Baldwin from 30 Rock and the voice of Christopher Lee the way he plays Saruman in The Lord of the Rings. And no, not all of that is TNotR's fault (I'm looking at you, Alec Baldwin), but fyi, this may give you nightmares.

Anyway, it's pages and pages of utter nonsense, interspersed with latin (rimshot!), and let me tell you, I participated in the Latin Olympics as a child, when I was young and foolish, and easily talked into doing things I didn't want to do by teachers who held my academic future in their hands, and I still did not understand a tenth of what was being said (in latin. I understood at least half of what was being said in English, although mostly I didn't care). There is a whole section about how people are sederunting and all I got out of it was that sederunt can be used as a verb even though it's a type of chant, which still doesn't make sense, like saying "Let's go hymn!"

Okay, to the plot! It's narrated by Adso of Melk, and here I was super excited when I first cracked this book, cause I was all, "Melk! I have totally been there and will be able to picture everything!" and then I found out that none of it takes place in Melk, and thus I suffered the first of many disappointments. Adso is looking back on the events of his misspent novitiate youth, where he tagged along with the 14th century Sherlock Holmes, aka William of Baskerville.
They arrive at mysterioso abbey, where someone is dead and the abbott wants William to investigate. William gets into a lot of arguments about heresy, most of which sound utterly ridiculous to me: whether or not it's okay to laugh, and whether or not monks should be allowed to take a vow of poverty. One of these is the impetus behind seven deaths and the burning of the abbey. I will let you guess which one (hint: why am I so pissed about the ending?).

As it turns out, the first monk committed suicide, apparently because he read a book? I'm still not really clear on that one. There's a big reveal at the end, but I guess the readers are already supposed to know why Adelmo died, because it does not come up. Oh, and FYI, there be spoilers ahead, because I have to get this out of my system.

So, okay, Jorge is eeeevil, and he brings this book back from his hometown or wherever, which disagrees with his most deeply held beliefs about how EVERYONE MUST BE SERIOUS ALL THE TIME, but instead of getting rid of it, he puts poison on the pages so people reading it will lick their fingers and slowly die. WHAT A GREAT PLAN! Except it IS, because everyone licks their goddamn fingers. So then, I guess, uh, Berenger, who was the Assistant Librarian, and who is shtupping Adelmo, decides he wants to impress Adelmo, so he shows him the book, and then... Adelmo checks out, somehow. And then Venantius, who may or may not have been having sex with Adelmo too (by the time I got to the end, I forgot most of what happened in the beginning) finds out about this magic book, and reads it, licking his fingers all the while. Then Berengar finds Venantius, who has collapsed in the kitchen, and he drags the body over to the pigsties and dumps him in a cask of pig's blood. What in the name of all that is holy is going on here?! They explain this by saying that Berengar does this "thinking everyone will be convinced Venantius drowned."

NO, REALLY. Berengar dumps a monk headfirst into a cask of pig's blood, thinking everyone will just assume this guy drowned.

Because that happens all the time! I can't tell how many times I've gone out for a midnight snack of semi-congealed pig's blood and wound up almost drowning. Too many to count, that's for sure!

Moving on: Berengar reads the book in the infirmary, licking his way through it, and winds up actually dying in the baths. Severinus, the infirmary man, finds the book, and tells William, but then William indiscreetly blabs this to everyone within hearing, so Jorge gets Malachi (the head librarian) to kill Severinus, by telling Malachi that Berengar (who had also been having sex with Malachi, in addition to Adelmo) was sleeping with Severinus, making Malachi jealous, and getting him to steal the book back. Whatever, man, there is a lot of sex in this book, especially considering it takes place in an abbey. Then Malachi reads the fucking thing, licking his fingers like there is no tomorrow, and he dies. Then William finally tells the Abbott (conveniently named "Abo") what the hell is going on, and the Abbott, who knows about this book...uh, somehow... goes to confront Jorge and winds up suffocating in the tower after Jorge cuts him off. Then William and Adso confront Jorge and wind up managing to not only not save the Abbott, or the book, but also kill Jorge, and get the entire abbey burned to the ground. Whole thing.

I can only describe my feelings by comparing it to that scene, in the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar, when he picks up the phone to give a burglar client some legal advice, and he screams, "Quit breaking the law, asshole!" I want to shake these guys and scream, "Quit licking your fingers, morons!" Even if the pages weren't coated in poison, that is a nasty habit, and continually moistening the pages will damage them. Although not, obviously, as much as setting the whole damned library on fire. Well played, William and Adso.

Meanwhile, the book which sets everyone off is a long lost copy of Aristotle's treatise on why it's okay to laugh. First of all, what the fuck? Second of all, why is Aristotle the end-all be-all of authority on comedy? Jorge acts like once everyone realizes Aristotle said it was okay, it would, like, destroy the church. Buddy, I have news for you: you can shit all over the peasants all you want for laughing, but that will not stop them from doing it. It's like the most futile battle in the world. Maybe it's meant to be ironic, but mostly I just felt annoyed that I read 600 pages to find out Jorge is the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.

Okay, maybe not the biggest: what is up with that "beautiful girl"? Let me explain: Salvatore, who is ugly, procures hot young ladies from the village to have sex with Remigio, who runs the larder, in exchange for food. Adso is running around the library late at night (by himself, no less, despite the fact that 1) the last time he was in the library he had a psychotic breakdown, 2) he has no idea how the library is laid out, and even with William "Sherlock" of Baskerville, they were wandering around in there for hours and 3) he has shit for brains) and runs into this girl and Salvatore and scares Salvatore off, and this girl is so wowed by Adso, and so grateful that she doesn't have to sleep with Remigio for food, that she promptly fucks Adso, then leaves her meat behind. Listen, if your family is so hungry that you are willing to sleep with an old nasty monk for some tripe, and circumstances conspire so that you are left with the food, and released of the obligation to whore yourself out, why would you then fuck someone else and leave empty-handed? It boggles the mind. Then, naturally, Adso moons about her for the rest of the book, going on and on about how much he is in love with her, and the ways that he could try to fall out of love with her (interestingly, I believe "get a grip on yourself" is mentioned, but not elected).

The other big plot point (if "plot" encompasses a lot of stuff that actually has nothing to do with moving the plot forward) is about the pope and the emperor and a bunch of monkish factions arguing about whether or not it's okay to take vows of poverty. I guess the pope is really against this idea, since it spreads the message that maybe monks shouldn't be sitting around in their fancy gold-covered abbeys counting all their money. They have clearly never heard of "live and let live". I found this to be the more tense argument about heresy, because I thought both sides had good points, but this is mostly grounded in historical events, and I have only the faintest idea of what historical events of the early 1300s were. There's a lot of infighting, and a lot of names, some whose significance is not explained for a good chunk of the book, so that the arguments were taking place without relevance to me, since until I found out who "Dolcino" was, arguing about him meant nothing to me.

So, picture all that going on, and then read this conversation between William and Adso, in which William is explicating his thought processes:

"[S]olving a mystery is not the same as deducing from first principles. Nor does it amount simply to collecting a number of particular data from which to infer a general law. It means, rather, facing one or two or three particular data apparently with nothing in common, and trying to imagine whether they could represent so many instances of a general law you don't yet know, and which perhaps has never been pronounced. To be sure, if you know, as the philosopher says, that man, the horse, and the mule are all without bile and are all long-lived, you can venture the principle that animals without bile live a long time. But take the case of animals with horns. Why do they have horns? Suddenly you realize that all animals with horns are without teeth in the upper jaw. This would be a fine discovery, if you did not also realize that, alas, there are animals without teeth in the upper jaw who, however, do not have horns: the camel, to name one. And finally you realize that all animals without teeth in the upper jaw have four stomachs. Well, then, you can suppose that one who cannot chew well must need four stomachs to digest food better. But what about the horns? You then try to imagine a material cause for horns--say, the lack of teeth provides the animal with an excess of osseous matter that must emerge somewhere else. But is that sufficient explanation? No, because the camel has no upper teeth, has four stomachs, but does not have horns. And you must also imagine a final cause. The osseous matter emerges in horns only in animals without other means of defense. But the camel has a very tough hide and doesn't need horns. So the law could be . . . "

"But what have horns to do with anything?" I asked impatiently. "And why are you concerned with animals having horns?"

"I have never concerned myself with them, but the Bishop of Lincoln was greatly interested in them, pursuing an idea of Aristotle. Honestly, I don't know whether his conclusions are the right ones, nor have I ever checked to see where the camel's teeth are or how many stomachs he has. I was trying to tell you that the search for explicative laws in natural facts proceeds in a tortuous fashion. []"

Tortuous is right. I like how William is going on and on about teeth and horns and stomachs, and in the end, he's all, I have no idea what conclusion is right! I just like long-winded examples! Dude, I know.

I will admit, there is a lot of description and symbology in the book that went right over my head. Maybe my experience would have been a richer, rewarding thing, if I had understood these symbols and signs. Then again, maybe not. It's not that I find people's actions inexplicable, merely stupid. I understand very well those who desire learning and knowledge, and those who desire censorship. There is a passage in the TNotR in which William talks about insatiable curiosity and intellectual pride, when he says, "The good of a book lies in its being read. . . This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them. This is why it has become a sink of iniquity."

TNotR is a thoughtful, exhaustive treatise on heresy, learning, knowledge, lust, politics, and monkhood. A good murder mystery....well, maybe not so much. Certainly a lot of people are very enthusiastic about it, but for me, well:

"I have many fine hypotheses, but there is no evident fact that allows me to say which is best. So, rather than appear foolish afterward, let me renounce seeming clever now. Let me think no more, until tomorrow at least."

Prince of Tides

Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

Lila Wingo - the beautiful, proud matriarch. Abused by her husband, she is the sweet and steely woman with social aspirations so great she is willing to sell her kids down the river to achieve them.

Henry Wingo - the cruel partriarch. Shrimper, schemer and loser, he is a man who will beat his sons to teach them not to cry. Now, perhaps too late, he strives to make peace with his own family.

Luke - the older son, a Vietnam veteran, a strong man of burning convictions who races towards a shocking fate while trying to save an entire town.

Savannah - the famous, gifted, and troubled poet. The cadenced beauty of her art and the cries of her illness are clues to the secret she holds in her heart. She has locked away the too-long hidden story of her wounded family. Now, to avoid destruction, it must be fully revealed.

Tom - Savannah's twin brother, the narrator. He is an unemployed football coach and English teacher with a loving wife who loves someone else. With his troubled sister and a perceptive psychiatrist, he is forced to look backward to unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment and love - and to find an answer for them all....

Woooo, doggy. This one was a doozy. I hope y'all like your Southern Gothic with a whole lotta shrimp, melodrama, and TIGERS, because that's what's on the menu tonight, folks. Now, strictly speaking, I'm not sure TPOT is Southern Gothic, since I get all my information from Wikipedia, and Wikipedia doesn't list TPOT on their Southern Gothic list. However, Wikipedia does describe Southern Gothic as:

[A] subgenre of gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South. It resembles its parent genre in that it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. . . One of the most notable features of the Southern Gothic is "the grotesque" - this includes situations, places, or stock characters that often possess some cringe-inducing qualities, typically racial bigotry and egotistical self-righteousness - but enough good traits that readers find themselves interested nevertheless.

So let's see: set in the South? Check. Ironic or unusual events? Check check. The grotesque? Uh, yeah, check. The novel begins with events already piling up in quick succession: Tom, our narrator, learns in short order that his sister has been hospitalized for trying to commit suicide (again) and his wife is cheating on him, in part because of the emotional distance between them after his brother Luke's death and Tom's resultant nervous breakdown. Phew. Have you got all that? Good, because it doesn't slow down. The story is set up as Tom is relating his family history through flashbacks to his sister's psychiatrist, who is attempting to discover why Savannah is trying to die. The basic format is Tom, present day, telling the shrink of childhood events, which are related to us in episodic flashbacks. A great SECRET lies at the heart of the novel, but the flashbacks continue after that, up to the day of his brother Luke's death, which sets up the present day retelling.

TPOT is a rollicking good read. It's chock-a-block full of fine melodrama, aching sadness and depression, and long-buried secrets of the type you drive you insane. The pace doesn't let up - the foreshadowing in the first half of the book is enough to drive you to get to the big reveal, after which it's all downhill. And I mean that. The giant SECRET which is the apex of the novel is also oddly glossed over. If you read the flashbacks both before and after that, you would be hard pressed to say that anything had happened in between. The fallout, emotionally, is not discussed, in contrast to the fallout from Luke's death, which is what drives the New York scenes.

Conroy seems to think that the ending, with the final revelation of Luke's death, will be sufficient to explain the events of the present day (i.e., Savannah's wrist-cutting, Tom's breakdown, and the confession of all to Savannah's psychiatrist). Unfortunately, I didn't find that to be the case at all. If anything, I was left cold by Luke's demise, which is a feat, since I had been so fond of him in the flashbacks. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back, but the close unbreakable bond between siblings in the flashbacks seemed to have cooled by the time Luke's one-man stand rolled around, leaving me to question just why Tom and Savannah both went so kablooey over it. That's maybe the biggest weakness of the book. The SECRET in the middle is completely unforgettable, and knits a tight bond between the family, while in comparison, Luke's one man vigilantism just seems to show how disparate and scattered the family has become. The siblings have gone on to separate lives, the mother has remarried (not a spoiler unless you are worse at picking up hints than I am). Maybe it's meant to be an illustration of how close the brothers and sister are no matter time or distance, but it just did not work for me.

In fact, the whole New York thing was complete filler for me. Part of my problem is that the people in the present day, and to some extent those flashbacks occurring towards the end of the narrative, all talk like cretins. Look, people don't talk like that in real life. I can't describe how crazy it made me to read exchanges like this between Tom and Susan, the psychiatrist:

"You make jokes about your sister's psychosis. What an odd man you are!"
"It's the southern way, Doctor."

and

"I must admit, Tom, that it irritates me every time you don your mantle of cultural yahoo intimidated by the big city. You're too smart a man to play that role very effectively."

"I'm sorry, Lowenstein," I said. "No one finds my role of New York debunker and cultural redneck more tiring than I do myself. I just wish it wasn't a cliche to hate New York, that it was a startling new doctrine originated by Tom Wingo."

I can't convey how ridiculous these exchanges sound to me (maybe they're perfectly normal and I'm the only one who found them to be as if aliens were trying to mimic actual human conversation) but let me attempt to describe it thusly: You know Life of Pi (just, bear with me)? And how in the end, people were arguing about whether or not the creatures in the boat were people or animals or just figments of Pi's imagination? It's like every character in Tom's adult life is a figment of his imagination, another aspect of him reflected in a mirror. That's why they all sound so similar. Similar and weird, because Tom is weird. And also because he's basically talking to himself.

Anyway.

The book is a glorious read, though, and Conroy has an artist's touch with the English language. And a very liberal hand with metaphor and simile. The flashbacks are ripe with description, overflowing with images:

[The undertaker] was tall and thin and had a complexion like goat cheese left on the table too long. The funeral parlor smelled like dead flowers and unanswered prayers. When he wished us a good day, his voice was reptilian and unctuous and you knew he was only truly comfortable in the presence of the dead. He looked as if he had died two or three times himself in order to better appreciate the subtleties of his vocation.

How great is that?! So it baffles me that when they made the movie, they focused more on the present New York stuff than the flashback scenes (or so I've heard through the imdb grapevine), because the flashbacks are what make this book, man. They are awesome. Every chapter has new tragedies, each presents a new evil set against the family. Every event brings us closer to doooooooooom. Or, okay, maybe not, but it sure feels like it! TPOT builds wonderfully to its violent climax, like a train wreck you can see in the making.

TPOT has too many faults to be a great piece of literature, but it's definitely worth reading, and you will probably never forget it as long as you live. The lyrical tone of the writing balances nicely the grim events of the Wingo family. Although a more ridiculous final line, I have never read. I am not even going to spoil it, no matter how much I want to, and no matter that even if I did spoil it, it wouldn't matter because it doesn't make any more sense out of context than in! (okay, maybe a little more sense, but not much).

P.S. Poll time! Greatest improbability in the The Prince of Tides: the events of the SECRET, or the fact that Savannah got her version published as a children's book?

I mean, really.

At Home

At Home, by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as found in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home." The bathroom provides the occasion for the history of hygiene, the bedroom for an account of sex, death, and sleep, the kitchen for a discussion of nutrition and the spice trade, and so on, showing how each has figured in the evolution of private life. From architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the telephone to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets - and the brilliant, creative, and often eccentric talents behind them - Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world ends up in our houses, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

This is a no-brainer. Either you like Bill Bryson, and you like At Home, or you hate Bill Bryson, and you hate At Home. Or you feel tepid about both, whatever. All your myriad complicated feelings about Bryson's other work will hold equally true here, there is no great departure of style or character from his usual. Lucky for me, I happen to like his style and character.

Bryson takes on a bit more to chew this time around - more or less European and American history from maybe the 17th to the 19th century, with a bit of older events tossed in. It's an interesting read, for sure. Bryson covers just about every topic at least once (there's a handy index in the back which runs from actuarial tables to Yellow Fever - although come to think of it, those two topics may have something in common) skipping around in each chapter to discuss things not dreamed of when presented with the heading "The Study". For example: bats. Or using the Nursery as an opportunity to talk about workhouses.

For all it's compelling and fascinating, Bryson does like to go off on tangents, and often will mention a person in passing, only to reintroduce them fifty pages later, on a side tangent for a completely different topic. It can get a little frustrating at times, the sheer amount of information which Bryson pours out makes it well nigh impossible to retain individual names and events, especially when one (me) reads the books in chaptered segments instead of in one glorious swoop. Because the information is ordered -loosely- by room, instead of chronologically, it can get hard to figure out just what happened when. Did people have telephones and lawnmowers at the same time, or were they mowing and creating landscapes before they could call their neighbors to tell them about it? Was Coade stone popular when Thomas Jefferson began his never-ending quest to build Monticello, and did he use it in his plans? Did Darwin leave with gas lights and come back to kerosene, or vice versa or was it completely different? It's all in there, but it's so mixed up in stoves and wells and Phylloxera and smog and iron and locusts and the tendency of the British peerage to marry American heiresses that I did not, let's be honest, retain much of anything at all.

But for all it's faults, it's still a very entertaining read, and no matter how long the index is, or how many important-sounding names it contains, I would call At Home light reading. Bryson is a master at the art of the anecdote, the light quip. Every page has a bit to smile at:

While showing off his [$519,750 bottle of Chateau Margaux wine] at a New York restaurant in 1989, William Sokolin, a wine merchant, accidentally knocked the bottle against the side of a serving cart and it broke, in an instant converting the world's most expensive bottle of wine into the world's most expensive carpet stain. The restaurant manager dipped a finger in the wine and declared that it was no longer drinkable anyway. [The Garden - p.279]


At one point, a single manufacturer offered no fewer than 146 types of flatware for the table. Curiously, among the few survivors from this culinary onslaught is one that is most difficult to understand: the fish knife. Though it remains the standard instrument for dealing with fish of all kinds, no one has ever identified a single advantage conferred by its odd scalloped shape or worked out the original thinking behind it. There isn't a single kind of fish that that it cuts better or bones more delicately than a conventional knife does. [The Dining Room - p.187]

During [Benjamin Franklin's] years in London, he developed the custom of taking "air baths," basking naked in front of an open upstairs window. This can't have got him any cleaner, but it seems to have done him no harm and it must at least have given the neighbors something to talk about. [The Bathroom - p.350]

Oliver Goldsmith lamented the practice [of razing villages for a better view] in a long, sentimental poem, "The Deserted Village," inspired by a visit to Nuneham Park in Oxfordshire when the first Earl Harcourt was in the process of erasing an ancient village to create a more picturesque space for his new house. Here at least fate exacted an interesting revenge. After completing the work, the earl went for a stroll around his newly reconfigured grounds, but failed to recall where the old village well had been, fell into it, and drowned. [The Garden - p.259]

It's all very amusing - I just wish I could remember it better.

My Prizes: An Accounting

Meine Preise [My Prizes], by Thomas Bernhard

A gathering of brilliant and viciously funny recollections from one of the twentieth century’s most famous literary enfants terribles.

Written in 1980 but published here for the first time, these texts tell the story of the various farces that developed around the literary prizes Thomas Bernhard received in his lifetime. Whether it was the Bremen Literature Prize, the Grillparzer Prize, or the Austrian State Prize, his participation in the acceptance ceremony—always less than gracious, it must be said—resulted in scandal (only at the awarding of the prize from Austria’s Federal Chamber of Commerce did Bernhard feel at home: he received that one, he said, in recognition of the great example he set for shopkeeping apprentices). And the remuneration connected with the prizes presented him with opportunities for adventure—of the new-house and luxury-car variety.

Here is a portrait of the writer as a prizewinner: laconic, sardonic, and shaking his head with biting amusement at the world and at himself. A revelatory work of dazzling comedy, the pinnacle of Bernhardian art.

If I could, I would write a love ode to this short collection. It is a series of personal remembrances of prizes which Thomas Bernhard collected over the years for his plays and novels. Prizes which, he reminds us again and again, he would be loathe to accept were it not for the prize money attached. Nevertheless, I can only be thankful he did deign to attend, because without it, I would not have been able to read the marvelous My Prizes.

Bernhard is acerbic, rude, and sarcastic, but also endearingly susceptible to supposed insults about his commitment to Austria, his adopted homeland, with which he has a complicated love-hate relationship. During his acceptance of the Austrian State Prize for Literature (which he prefaces by relating his extreme embarrassment to have won, given that it is only the Small State Prize, which is usually given out to young new up-and-comers, not older established writers, and that he only "came to terms with the prize" because of the twenty-five thousand schillings attached to it) the minister, perhaps unwisely, upsets him by calling him a foreigner born in Holland, though living amongst the Austrians for some time. However factually accurate it may have been, the provocation it offers Bernhard is amply repaid as he gives what has to be one of the rudest acceptance speeches in history. Bernhard describes it thusly:

[T]he theme was a philosophical one, profound even, I felt, and I had uttered the word State several times. I thought, it's a very calm text, one I can use here to get myself up out of the dirt without causing a ruckus because almost no one will understand it, all about death and its conquering power and the absurdity of all things human, about man's incapacity and man's mortality and the nullity of all states.

At this point in My Prizes, the reader knows to take Bernhard's description of his actions as calm and reasonable with a grain of salt. Luckily and hilariously, the actual speech given is reprinted in the back of the book. To be sure, Bernhard's speech does mention the State a couple of times, and it does talk about death and man's incapacity and the nullity of government. It also says:

Our era is feebleminded, the demonic in us a perpetual national prison in which the elements of stupidity and thoughtlessness have become a daily need
....

We're Austrian, we're apathetic, our lives evince the basest disinterest in life, in the workings of nature we represent the future as megalomania.

We have nothing to report except that we are pitiful, brought down by all the imaginative powers of an amalgam of philosophical, economic, and machine-driven monotony.

Before ending with:

In my name and in the name of those here who have also been selected by this jury, I thank you.

If only the state minister had stuck around to hear that last part! Graciousness itself, amirite? After causing a near-riot and clearing the auditorium, Bernhard is completely satisfied, as it means the next prize committee thinks twice about hosting a ceremony and instead just asks him to pick up the check at his convenience, which is probably best for all the parties concerned.

Bernhard writes with panache, and often the prizes and ceremonies are merely an aside to whatever more random topic Bernhard wants to discuss - buying and returning a suit:

Whoever buys the suit I have just returned, I thought, has no idea that it's been with me at the awarding of the Grillparzer Prize of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna. It was an absurd thought, and at this absurd thought I took heart. I spent a most enjoyable day with my aunt and we kept laughing over the people at Sir Anthony, who had let me exchange my suit without objections, even though I had worn it to the awarding of the Grillparzer Prize in the Academy of Sciences. That they were so obliging is something about the people in Sir Anthony in the Kohlmarkt that I shall never forget.

getting a luxury car (which he insists on buying right now, from the showroom, even though he has no idea how to drive it out of the store), his time staying in the Lung Disease Hospital attached to the Steinhof Insane Asylum (which "had seven rooms of either two or three patients, all of which patients died during the time I was there, with the exception of a theology student and me. I have to mention this because it is quite simply essential for what follows." N.B.: It isn't.), or getting ambushed by an acquaintance who will not. stop. talking ("Whenever I'm reminded of Saiko, who, as I mentioned, was the author of The Man in the Reeds, the first thing I think of is his lecture about never buying shoes before four in the afternoon and I have retained something of that lecture even today, and his four-hour lecture on what a novel is comes in second.").

My Prizes is vastly entertaining, and it's written with a sly knowledge of the author's own ridiculous behavior. Bernhard is fully realized within the pages, and he displays his foibles and eccentricities with sublime indifference of your good opinion. The reader is quickly charmed by his sardonic outlook on life and the vast machine that is prize- giving.

Bernhard is a character, and I wish only that he had been more recognized during life, that we might have more accounts of his unparalleled talent for accepting prizes.

Sunshine

Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lives a quiet life working at her stepfather's bakery. One night, she goes out to the lake for some peace and quiet. Big mistake. She is set upon by vampires, who take her to an old mansion. They chain her to the wall and leave her with another vampire, who is also chained. But the vampire, Constantine, doesn't try to eat her. Instead, he implores her to tell him stories to keep them both sane. Realizing she will have to save herself, Sunshine calls on the long-forgotten powers her grandmother began to cultivate in her when she was a child. She transforms her pocketknife into a key and unchains herself--and Constantine. Surprised, he agrees to flee with her when she offers to protect him from the sun with magic. They escape back to town, but Constantine knows his enemies won't be far behind, which means that he and Sunshine will have to face them together.

I really wanted to like this book. I've read it at least three times. Robin McKinley is just one of those writers that are just not very accessible to me. But Sunshine is even harder for me than her other books for a couple of reasons.

One: the info-dumping. Oh, god, the info-dumping. Sunshine is narrated by the titular character, a young twenty-something who is the baker in a Cheers-type bakery/cafe. And while the narration might be a good idea in some cases, as it involves us in her world quickly, sometimes it just. . . stinks. Often in the middle of conversations, Sunshine will begin thinking along a tangent, about the new realities of the post-magic world, or about demon/sorcerer mixes, or about comics she's read about vampires. It's annoying - Sunshine piles on information, without context or relevance. And it happens constantly. I will be halfway through an interrogation and someone will ask Sunshine a question and then five pages about Sunshine's regulars at the bakery will intrude before we get back to the answer. It's a lot of repetition and it drags the story down. And even with all that, there's still huge gaps in my knowledge about the world. What caused the magical wars? How did all this demon blood get mixed into the population in the first place (since even small manifestations of it are so obvious, wouldn't a full-blood demon be infinitely so?), how come everyone in the book has some heretofore unsuspected magical past? Has Sunshine really never asked her boyfriend about his unique and complicated magic tattoos, even after four years of being together?

Additionally, the mental gymnastics never seem to tend to anything. In a series, I could almost forgive the constant, seemingly irrelevant musings. But this is a stand-alone, and there is no pay-off for most of the internal questions.

For example, Sunshine spends pages and pages thinking about the possibility that she is one of the unfortunate demon blood/sorcerer crosses. We find out that 90% are criminally insane, that it manifests at puberty often, but not always, that if she is, she could go bad, etc. etc. ad nauseum, but we never find out if she actually is or not. We know that there is a demon blood test, but Sunshine never even wonders about taking it. She thinks for pages about whether the demon blood came from her mother's side, but spends maybe one sentence wondering just what kind of demon. So it's hard to care about that eternal question, "Is she or isn't she?" because Sunshine herself seems so detached about it. There's no tension there.

Two: for a magic-handler whose element is sunshine, Sunshine sure is morose.

Honestly, the biggest problem with the book is the main character. That sounds like the kiss of death, but it's not, oddly enough. Here, the world that Robin McKinley is interesting enough to suck you in, at least for a while. Plus, Sunshine's weaknesses as narrator and key character are really only terrible when she's thinking. When she simply acts or talks, she's instantly more likable and bearable, and even cool. The introspection - and there is a lot of introspection - is the weakest part of the book. If McKinley had tightened it up a lot - cut some, combined some - then even that could have been an asset, rather than a debit.

Sunshine is not wrapped up very tightly in the end. A lot of things are still open when the final page is turned. Which is to say: if Sunshine had been the first in a series, or even the first of a collection of books set in this world, I would be a lot more cool with it (assuming, of course, that the info-dump-style narration ceases with the next books). But it's meant to stand alone, and the jumble of information dispensed throughout remains just that: a jumble. This type of narrator (morose, detached) is a bad choice for a first-person story.