White Stallion of Lipizza

White Stallion of Lipizza

By Marguerite Henry

The magnificent white Lipizzan stallions, bred for hundreds of years to dance and delight emperors and kings, captivated Marquerite Henry when she saw them perform in the Spanish Court Riding School in Vienna.

Now she makes this unique spectacle the focal point in her story of Borina, one of the most famous stallions of this famous breed.  It was Borina who, at the height of his career, took a fling in the Viennese Grand Opera.  And it was Borina who, as a mature school stallion, helped train young apprentice riders, and thus became known as the four-footed professor.

One of his pupils was Hans, a baker's boy.  Day after day Hans had watched with longing eyes the parade of Lipizzaners as they crossed the street from their stables to the Palace Riding Hall.  Impossible as it seemed, Hans felt that he must become a part of that world. He must become a Riding Master.  

I was originally struggling with a book for this prompt, since I was trying to steer clear of books I've already read (unless explicitly required) and how would you know whether a book will inspire a certain feeling unless you've already read it?  But in looking over old books, I realized a good Marguerite Henry book would fit just fine - and this one more than most, since it reminds me not only of my horse-reading days, but also of my time in Vienna (even if I do now regret never making time for the Hofreitschule, whomp whomp, although I did get to the opera - which had no horses, but was crazy nonetheless).  Nowadays though, even the Lipizzaners are online for everyone's viewing pleasure, so it's not irredeemable.

My favorite Marguerite Henry book has always been King of the Wind, which may explain some of my predilections for heavy angst and happy endings.  (Although really, once Sham dies, Agba just goes back to Morocco?? After like, twenty years, and while he's mute [and I think mostly illiterate too]? How is he going to get a job again? Why can't he just stay with Sham's kids? Why do I care so much? AND THEY MADE A MOVIE I NEVER KNEW ABOUT UNTIL JUST NOW? And it stars Jenny Agutter? Mind blown!) I barely remember any of her Misty books, but Justin Morgan Had A Horse and Brighty of the Grand Canyon - oh I remember those.  

White Stallion is pretty classic Henry.  It follows a young boy (her protagonists are by historical necessity almost always male, although I do note that two young women were admitted to the Hofreitschule in 2008 for the first time in 436 years of operation, aye yi yi) in Vienna in the late 1930s, early 1940s (and let's unpack that later, shall we?) who dreams of riding Lipizzaners instead of delivering pastries. I mean, who wouldn't? We spend probably 80% of the book focused on him before he is even admitted to the riding school, and just a couple of chapters cover his training and time in the school.  The book is more focused on his dream and his relationship with Borina, who was apparently a real-life famous horse.  Which is how I know when the book was set.  By the way, although Henry obviously wanted to write about horses, there is NO WAY she wouldn't get blasted in reviews for writing a book about a kid in Vienna in 1940 and completely ignore the batshittery going on around him, namely, THE ONSET OF WORLD WAR II.  And yes, we know when this is, because Maestoso Borina was born in 1910, and he is thirty years old in the book. Don't even holler at me.  

I do think that the story of the Lipizzaners during WWII is an interesting one  (and clearly, I'm not alone, since they made a movie about Podhajsky and General Patton saving the Lipizzaners called Miracle of the White Stallion, which now I have to see)  - what place does beauty and art have in Nazi-held Austria, and what does it say about Hans that we know only about riding, and nothing about the terrors going on in the streets? Even the Lipizzaners themselves were caught under the reign (rein?) of the Nazi regime, subject to Nazi stud farms and starving refugees and soldiers.  Perhaps the end note omitting Hans' further activities is for good reason.  

And yet, even so, White Stallion is truly nostalgic, both of a time in history, and of a period in a child's life when you can be consumed wholly by your dream, and achieve it in every measure.  It was a pleasure to discover a Henry book I hadn't read, and the version I had (I don't know if they ever published a normal trade paperback version), which is quite large, with beautiful black and white and color illustrations, was exquisite.

I know this review is chock-full of factota but here's one more to leave you with: Marguerite Henry lived in Wayne, Illinois, which is now kind of a suburb of Chicago, but they did, and still do, host annual Fox Hunts!! Like, for real, they get on horses and chase fake fox smells through the suburban forests.  What the fuck did I just read.  Incredible.


02: Book That Makes You Nostalgic
Jan 5

Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan

When New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home and quality time with the man she hopes to marry. But Nick has failed to give his girlfriend a few key details. One, that his childhood home looks like a palace; two, that he grew up riding in more private planes than cars; and three, that he just happens to be the country’s most eligible bachelor.

On Nick’s arm, Rachel may as well have a target on her back the second she steps off the plane, and soon, her relaxed vacation turns into an obstacle course of old money, new money, nosy relatives, and scheming social climbers.

Two days in and I'm already burned out on book reviewing!  This is going to be rough year.  Only 363 days left!  I actually saw the movie last year when it came out, and it was charming - full of attractive people wearing expensive clothes and steely-eyed ladies discarding men like last week's clothes.  Or yesterday's clothes.  However long you wear clothes.  No judgment here!

I hate to be this person, but my impression of the book definitely suffers from comparison with the movie. The movie consolidates people and storylines, cuts down on the cartoon-y villainy and grounds the story more.  And stylistically, the footnotes, while a fun commentary in the beginning, kinda dragged as you kept going.  I didn't need the Malay/Mandarin/Hokkein translations when it was perfectly understandable from context, and I actually skipped some of them since I didn't realize they were footnotes.  But I didn't want to skip the footnotes completely, since some of them were context as well.

The other style issue I had with the book, which is maybe resolved in the later books, is that because the chapters skip around with viewpoints, it feels a little bit like multiple stories are going on, but some of them get (extremely) short shrift.  The Nick/Rachel is obviously the main line, but Astrid's ongoing problems with her husband also come up frequently, and I know they're a big part of the next books, but they impact Nick and Rachel not at all (and see my paragraph down below for why that feels particularly egregious).  Rachel's friend Peik Lin and Nick's cousin Eddie also have viewpoint chapters, but they also feel weirdly unresolved, like there's a build-up but no climax.  I mean, we visit with an elderly doctor friend who tells Peik Lin and her father who James Young is, but it feels weirdly tacked on, not to mention how unrealistic it is that Peik Lin's father, who is a real estate developer himself, has no idea there are fifty missing acres in the middle of town.  Fifty acres is a lot, y'all.  There is no way that people are just like, ho hum, a giant private parkland here in Singapore, who cares, when the entire book is telling us how real estate crazy the place is. 

I'm sorry, but I have just beef with this book.  So the secondary story is about Nick's cousin, Astrid, who discovers that her husband faked an affair to give him an excuse to leave the family that he feels so judged and looked-down by.  And frankly, he's right.  They're all assholes to him.  Just like, in fact, they're assholes to Rachel.  How are we supposed to have any confidence that the exact same thing isn't going to happen to Nick and Rachel?? There's a throwaway line about how joining the family as an attractive man is so much harder than marrying in as a beautiful woman, but how is that comforting in any way?  To show us how difficult an "outsider" has it, five years in, and then to present us with an ending that seems to say, but everything has been resolved happily for THIS outsider is so confusing.  I guess I just didn't get a sense that Nick and Rachel have any stronger of a relationship than Astrid and Michael.  To be fair, yes, A/M's viewpoints tell us constantly that their main spark was sexual attraction.  But over the course of Crazy Rich Asians, Nick goes from not contemplating marriage to proposing, and for insight, all we have is his mother's viewpoint, which is that whoever Nick was with when he's about the age to get married is who he'd propose to.  I mean, I'll take it with a grain of salt, but I didn't get the feeling that Nick and Rachel have anything special that would overcome the obstacles, and maybe that's the most damning criticism I have. I got no sense, at the end of the book, that any problems with Nick's family had actually been resolved.  At most, Rachel's relationship with her mother was repaired, and her relationship with Nick was not in the complete crapper. Maybe it's a wink to a more realistic ending than insta-love, marriage, and babies by book one's epilogue. All I know is, nothing at the end would explain Rachel's willingness to continue to involve herself with a family which is not only insane, but also clearly incapable of leaving Nick's romantic affairs alone.

Not to mention, I'm not sure if we were supposed to be titillated by all the namebrand dropping and excesses, but it was exhausting and I think some depth and character gets sacrificed for it.  But I do have to say, despite all that, it's not a bad book, just not one that has inspired me to keep reading.  I'll re-watch the movie, which in my opinion takes the best of the book and moulds it into a more palatable romance and tip my hat to Kevin Kwan, who, if nothing else, has definitely gotten Singapore culture a wider audience, all while costuming it as gaudy escapist fantasy. 



Prompt 35: A book by an author whose first and last names start with the same letter.
Jan 1.

My Lady's Choosing

My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel
by Kitty Curran and Larissa Zageris

You are the plucky but penniless heroine in the center of eighteenth-century society, courtship season has begun, and your future is at hand.

Will you flip forward fetchingly to find love with the bantering baronet Sir Benedict Granville?

Or turn the page to true love with the hardworking, horse-loving highlander Captain Angus McTaggart?

Or perhaps race through the chapters chasing a good (and arousing) man gone mad, bad, and scandalous to know, Lord Garraway Craven?

Or read on recklessly and take to the Continent as the “traveling companion” of the spirited and adventuresome Lady Evangeline? Or yet some other intriguing fate?

Whether it's forlorn orphans and fearsome werewolves, mistaken identities and devious double crosses, or long lost lover and pilfered artifacts, every delightful twist and turn of the romance genre unfolds at your behest.

So in the great spirit of trying new things, I read a Choose Your Own Adventure romance novel! I've actually been experiencing a little Baader-Meinhof phenomenon with Choose Your Own Adventures, since I was just playing a new CYOA card game I received last week, and Netflix has a CYOA episode I just watched last night. The interesting thing about all these CYOAs popping up is that since each is in a different format, you get a real feel for the limitations and possibilities with each version. I have to say, the card game is by far the worst, as it's reading-heavy, and doesn't have much tension, since a death merely takes you back one step, and everyone playing is doing so as a collective group. CYOA is not something that's really adaptable for multiple players.

The tv show was interesting, not only for the interactivity of it (which was deliberately chosen for NYE entertainment as it kept me awake longer - alas the ravages of old age and a desire for good sleep) but also for the content itself - meta commentary on the lack of free will on the character inside, but revealing that even as you choose for the character, you yourself are bound to the choices presented. What if, for example, I merely wanted the main character to have a nice cup of tea and look into alternative job prospects? Not going to happen, we're going to be murdering people left and right whether you like it or not!

The other downside, of course, in a video version, is that you cannot simply flip back and forth through the pages, looking for the best scenarios and any endings you haven't gotten to yet. And there are happy endings a-plenty in My Lady's Choosing! It succeeds well both as a nostalgic (although apparently increasingly popular) throwback as well as a charming, pleasant romance. I followed the four main paths (which can be loosely broken down as: Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Scotsman/spies, gothic mystery, and Egyptian caper) and was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable it was.

Honestly, I don't read much romance, as I find the sex scenes generally overwrought and the emotions overwhelmingly saccharine and melodramatic most of time, but because the whole CYOA thing is pretty campy to begin with, My Lady's Choosing is perfect fit for the genre. Plus, in the spirit of the old classic CYOAs, the plot never stops for a minute, so nothing drags long enough for you to lose patience with the main character. Obviously, this is a pretty shallow pool, but if you embrace the structure instead of wanting a more traditional story, it's more than fun. I was unexpectedly charmed by the gothic section, which features not only mysteriously widowed men, burned housekeepers, sympathetic postmen, alarmingly attractive vicars, but also vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and young children. I mean, how can you not be entertained by your Heathcliff-inspired swain calling your breasts "Rent Promise" and "Raven's Wing", respectively? And don't worry if those don't appeal to you, "Grecian Urn" and "Sepulcher by the Sea" await if you make different choices.

Look this isn't highbrow stuff and it's not meant to be. At one point in the Scottish storyline, you have the option of helping a mare to foal. If you decide yes, you're told "You and Mac birth the everloving daylights out of that horse. The two of you perform the procedure with such precision, grace, and showmanship that you could have entirely revolutionized veterinary techniques of the early nineteenth century, if only someone had been there taking notes."

It's a winking, campy, breathless trip through all the tropes of regency romance, and no matter what you do, there's a happy ending in wait - even (spoiler!) when you have no other choice but the old gross man three times your age. And frankly, I was getting into the possibilities so much (which includes some lesbian romance as well as hetero, and plenty of endings that don't feature the main four love interests) that I found myself disappointed that we didn't get even farther afield with the endings, like allowing you to get multiple love interests in a single ending. The more the merrier, by the end! You definitely can't subsist only on CYOAs, but as a break once in a while, they're damn fine.


 Prompt 42: A "choose-your-own-adventure" book
 Jan. 1

Dispatches

Dispatches, by Michael Herr

From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time.

So I'm trying something new (and no, it's not "actually be faithful about doing book reviews" although it also, sort of, is) and I want to record it for posterity, i.e., my future self, who I assume has the same terrible memory that current self does.  At least, I can't imagine that my memory is going to get better.  So I'm committing myself to the 2019 PopSugar Reading Challenge, and my plan is to faithfully set down the books I choose and read, here, in my own personal corner.  As a warm-up, I've decided to post a review of the last book I read, Dispatches.  Who's up for some little light reading, am I right?!

Actually, that's not even true, and I just realized it, because I finished A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue after Dispatches and didn't remember until just now, even though it was literally the day before yesterday.  I wasn't joking about my memory.

So maybe it makes sense for me to review Dispatches then, because it truly is a book that sticks with you.  Not the plot; there is none.  It's more the sense of being in a certain time and place (here: the Vietnam War, circa 1968) and the emotions that come with it than any linear story-line or through-point. 

The book is very roughly segregated into sections, but it reads more like one continuous fever dream.  For those who loved Apocalypse Now, this guy did the narration and honestly, probably hugely influenced the feel of the movie.  Michael Herr is a master at conveying the closing distance to madness from living in these conditions, the grunts who just want to leave, the generals who can't admit that the war is failing, the correspondents who are drawn to it, not realizing yet that everything else in their life will be duller and grayer by comparison (even if they aren't literally being shot at and mangled) once they leave the war zone.

This really was an incredibly well-written book.  It's sad, incredibly sad, as you realize the futility and waste going on, the refusal to consider the human cost of things, and, in hindsight, the loss of normalcy for the soldiers who went over there.  In one of the later sections about the correspondents who went over there, Herr describes a soldier trying to show one of the photojournalists pictures of a dead posed vietnamese woman, severed heads, ears, destruction, not realizing that "every other soldier had the same pictures". There's racism, not only towards the Vietnamese, but between the white and black soldiers.  There's the sense that these kids (one of them is twenty) may be indelibly wounded from the things they've seen and done.  A long section is about the siege at Khe Sanh, the endless shelling, and immobility, and also the strange quiet when the rains lifted and support arrived, a place where you could easily go mad in hell and return weeks later to find that it's nothing more than a standard outpost, returned again to being militarily unimportant. 

I also learned that Errol Flynn had a son, Sean, who was a Vietnam War photojournalist.  I was so taken by this news, I looked him up on wikipedia and spoiled the ending of the book: the golden boy (at least the way Herr describes him) two years after the events of Dispatches, takes a bike through Cambodia in search of Viet Cong and disappeared, declared dead fourteen years later, although it's believed he only lived one.

It's not the easiest book to read (in fact, I bemoaned to more than one person that I wished it were about a hundred pages shorter) but I'm glad I read it, sad it happened, but satisfied that this record was made, to preserve the time, to give us knowledge, possibly, to avoid a recurrence.

The Here and Now

The Here and Now,  by Ann Brashares

Follow the rules. Remember what happened. Never fall in love.

This is the story of seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn’t come from a different country. She came from a different time—a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.

Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they’re from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she’s told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth.

But everything changes when Prenna falls for Ethan Jarves.   - From Goodreads

I am totally going to use this review as an excuse to tell you my deepest darkest secret:  that I actually cried a little when I read the first Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book.  I was younger, and more foolish, and did not even realize that one kid was dying (I'm also really bad at figuring out the culprit in Agatha Christie mysteries.  But I enjoy the reveal!).  But then I read the second Pants book and was like, "Meh" because my cold cold heart is two sizes too small.  And didn't even attempt any of the others.  So I kinda noticed that Here and Now was by the same author, but in no way should you be put off by that.  Brashares knows what she's doing.

So this is a pretty thin book both literally and figuratively.  For a time-travel book, it's relatively straightforward.  However, sometimes that's a bad thing, like, say, in time-travel.  It's such a common trope, and there's so many different variations out there, that being straightforward means that people are going to catch some of those holes you didn't sew up.  For example, in this book, it's never exactly explained [SPOILERS!!!!!!!]  why 

OH, sidebar!  I had to return Here and Now to the library this weekend, so I no longer have the book.  And I don't really remember anyone's names, so from now on, we will be addressing the characters as: Prenna, Ethan, Prenna's mom, Prenna's dad, the elders, the scientist lady, and that one guy who goes around giving people plague VD and kicking off the terrible future will be referred to as "Andrew".  That might even be his name in the book.

Andrew kills Prenna's dad.  Whyyyyy?  I know Prenna's dad was researching him, but did Andrew find out about it?  Was Prenna's dad just really bad at realizing the person he had been following was now following him?  And why at that (suspiciously convient, plot-wise) particular moment did he strike?  I may have been reading too quickly, but I really feel like that could have been better explained. 

And also, I love that both Prenna's dad and Prenna and Ethan's reaction to the news that this murder would set off a chain of events which would destroy the environment, kill 75% of the population, and force everyone to wear used clothes was, "Guess we just wait till May 17th and see what happens!"  How is that a plan?  Prenna's dad knew who was responsible for the murder.  He also knew who this guy was shacking up with.  Like, how hard would it have been to go track the murderer down and like, pay some guys to decapitate him?  Well, okay, maybe not that, but somehow permanently disable him.  Instead he's like, I'll just kick around for a few years, sleeping on street corners and spying on my wife and kid, while being really suspicious and dropping mysterious information to my daughter's friend.

And this is not really relevant, but I was disappointed when Prenna was all, "Ethan was the important one, not that lady scientist."  Why can't lady scientists get any love around here?  And it was never explained to my satisfaction why Ethan would have been with the lady scientist before the time shift: okay, Ethan is there, and then Andrew shoots him because he has daddy issues, and then the future is shitty and Prenna's group comes back in time, and then Ethan sees her come through the time warp and gets interested in, like, wormholes.  So if Prenna's pop-in is the basis for his interest (which it seems like they're saying it is) then why was he hanging with the lady scientist before everything got set in motion?  It just seems unnecessary to say that the impact of Prenna and his first meeting is what got him into it, particularly when it screws up the internal logic of the book.

Despite all the flaws, I have to admit that I still enjoyed it. I think mostly because I kept expecting it to be all teen-romance-y, since, like, the entire first half totally foreshadowed it, but in the end, they were like, "Well, I might give you the equivalent of smallpox blankets and wipe out human existence as we know it, so.... no."  Which was a mature and responsible (albeit unexpected) decision.  So in the end, I think we learned a valuable lesson, that maybe it's not always a bad thing to kill some kid by drowning and then claim it was an accident because he snuggled up to some outsider.  I mean, the jacket blurb and the book act like the ban on intimacy with outsiders is just crazy elders getting their despotism on, when in point of fact, intimacy is totally the cause of the plague.  I like that.  I would have been all frustrated if the book ended up being, "A bunch of older, experienced people made up these crazy laws, but the power of teen love conquered all!" 

Although, let's be real, is Brashares saying the end of human life on earth was the result of an STD? Or, well, something that is transmitted only when people live together? That seems... unlikely.  I think if Brashares really wanted to scare teen into not having sex, she should have given everyone Ebola.  Now there's a terrifying virus.  AND HAVE YOU SEEN THAT IT'S COMING FOR US? Bless the doctors and nurses and other medical and emergency personnel who are working to help those infected, because (as you may know) the idea of being infected with Ebola makes all reasonable people want to curl up into a ball on the floor and just start sobbing.  In fact, the highly likely possibility that Ebola will continue to outbreak and spread across the world in my lifetime makes me want to curl up in a ball and start sobbing.  Goodbye friends and family, goodbye cruel world. I mean, they're saying that this is the worst outbreak in seven years.  Seven years?!  That's it?!  Some people haven't even learned how to read by age 7!  You still don't know how to tie your shoes properly!    Seven years.  That's not any time at all! And this is just the worst outbreak in seven years, that doesn't mean Ebola hasn't just been gently marinating and killing people off in the meantime.  Maybe when we've gotten to ten years virus-free I'll stop worrying about dying in a soup of my own brains.  

Despite some problems, I actually didn't mind Here and Now (I see that some goodreads reviewers disagree, bless them.  That one review by Khanh, destroyer of dreams is epic) but if this type of story is what you're interested in, read Rebecca Stead's vastly superior When You Reach Me instead.  Even though it's about (and aimed at) younger readers, it's smarter, tighter, and much more moving than Here and Now. 


 

Red Moon

Red Moon, by Benjamin Percy

When government agents kick down Claire Forrester's front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is. 

Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off of it, the only passenger left alive, a hero.

Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst, but he is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy.

So far, the threat has been controlled by laws and violence and drugs.  But the night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognizable world will emerge and the battle for humanity will begin.  

Okay, since the jacket isn't real helpful, here is a brief synopsis of Red Moon: a prion (which you may remember from Michael Crichton's sequel to Jurassic Park, Lost World (or from real life, if you're into that instead of sci-fi)) infection spreads throughout the world's population, going back to the 700s or so, so that in the alternative present-day, the presentation of the disease, lycan, has led to an uneasy semi-stalemate between the two populations.  Percy has substituted key events in world history with lycan equivalents, from the settlement of a lycan-only home territory in the 1940s and 50s, to a lycan (rather than Weather Underground) Days of Rage in 1969.  Now, two young people, one the daughter of revolutionaries, the other the son of a man working towards a vaccine, and the sole survivor of a lycan terror attack on a plane (alterna- 9/11) find themselves trying to survive and navigate the impending clash of cultures. 

It's an interesting idea - looking at the birth and growth of our own world's turn towards suicide killers, revolutionaries rather than armies, and decades-long guerilla warfare through the lens of werewolves - but the book doesn't quite coalesce.  For one thing, it's all a little too pat.  Percy's substitutions - lycan Haymarket for Haymarket, lycan Tounela for Israel/Palestine and so on - act more as a sci-fi gimmick than a plausible history of his world.  Our own history happened for various complicated reasons - you can't just substitute werewolves for one half of every battle and think that's sufficient. I mean, the Weather Underground had ties to communism, civil rights, the Vietnam War, and other revolutions across the world, and in Red Moon, it's basically just...lycanthropy.  Which begs the question (never really answered) - has everything else happened as we know it have happened?  Was there a Vietnam War?  A Korean War?  What about McCarthyism?  How about the Cuban Missile Crisis?  Are we to assume that some form of those momentous US events happened, but always with lycans on the other side?  Perhaps Percy expects us to draw from our own knowledge of history the belief that this all followed and happened naturally, but given the changes he's presented, I want to know how the WUO (here called the Revolution) started in Red Moon. As Marmaduke says in one what may be one of the worst movies ever made, "How did we come to this, Phil?"

Speaking of plausibility, I may not have traveled the Pacific Northwest extensively, but I'm pretty sure it's not the sort of place where people are constantly running into each other by happenstance.  I mean, in the last fifty pages of the book, Patrick finds his father's old vaccine co-worker, then runs into Claire after like, a two year absence, right when he's about to be airlifted out with the vaccine, and then they (and the band of angry Hispanic people that - you know what, don't even ask) get attacked by the President and government agent who killed Claire's parents just happens to be along for that ride as well and tracks Claire down in a final showdown. Really?  All  those people just happened to be in the same place at one time?  I mean, that's not even counting the way that Patrick and Claire met in the first place, or the way that Patrick literally stumbled across his MIA father while walking back to his military base.  If all I had to go on was Red Moon, I would pretty much think that the West Coast (not to mention the Russian/Finish border area) was about ten square miles, and had a population of 2,000, the way people keep running into each other.  And you may think that asking for plausibility in an alternate werewolf universe is stupid, but why go to the trouble of creating this setting, and making it so "gritty" and then being like, "And now I'm going to make all my main, secondary, and tertiary characters meet up!"  And the way that, like Rasputin before them, many of his characters are absolutely immune to bullets, stabbings, and vicious animal attacks.  It's like playing a game on cheat mode.  Not that characters don't die.  They do.  But like, some of these people, *coughPUCKcough* should really be succumbing to the throat-stabbing, multiple gunshot wound injuries they're sustaining here. 

And to top it off, after all this semi-commentary on the rise of the radical within, the book ends with a pure sci-fi/thriller moment.  I guess it is not entirely out of tone, but after all the build up, you kinda expect that the denouement will be more than just some impossible-to-kill villain sprinkling poison in your corn flakes.  At the very least, let the vaccine out and get the inevitable clash of those who are poisoned with those who seek treatment.  Maybe Percy thought that would echo too much the course of the X-Men movies, which has may of the same themes (but, oddly enough, in a more appropriate fashion - at least it doesn't pretend above its station) and has the same "if we can't beat 'em, make 'em just like us" plan.  But instead, after the great battle over the vaccine, we're left watching Patrick take the last dose, and knowing that it's all going to be irrelevant shortly anyway, since we'll all be lycan in a few months.  Or, I dunno, dead, I guess?  It was hard to figure that out, since they poisoned the original lycans before grinding up their bones to make the bread, and that stuff probably really travels through the food chain.  Like mercury poisoning.  It also begs the question - why did they bomb the shit out of the Tri-Cities if they were just going to infect everyone anyway?  Wouldn't a mass-scale infection like that be easier to spread if your infrastructure hadn't just had a bomb dropped on it?  Don't we want roads and shit to be working, and the military force safely focused on another country?

Percy's writing in Red Moon isn't bad - a little too simile filled, too descriptive-heavy, for my taste, but it does the job of getting the mood across very well.  Everything is ominous - it's not just blonde hair, it's seaweed spread across the beach at low tide, all the animals are all meaty or sinewy, voices are mucousy, glass splinters, adrenaline stabs, and mountains rise like fangs.  I think that if you want to enjoy Red Moon, it needs to be read for what it is - an alternative werewolf  history/thriller - rather than what it could be - sharp-edged commentary on our own political morass.  It's fairly gruesome, but mostly earned.  I'm just wishing that it made a bit more sense. 

Heads in Beds

Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of , by Jacob Tomsky

Jacob Tomsky never intended to go into the hotel business.  As a new college graduate, armed only with a philosophy degree and a singular lack of career direction, he became a valet parker for a large luxury hotel in New Orleans.  Yet, rising fast through the ranks, he ended up working in "hospitality" for more than a decade, doing everything from supervising the housekeeping department to manning the front desk at an upscale Manhattan hotel.  He's checked you in, checked you out, separated your white panties from the white bedsheets, parked your car, tasted your room-service meals, cleaned your toilet, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&Ms out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money.  In Heads in Beds he pulls back the curtain to expose the crazy and compelling reality of a multibillion-dollar industry we think we know.

Heads in Beds is a funny, authentic, and irreverent chronicle of the highs and lows of hotel life, told by a keenly observant insider who's seen it all.  Prepare to be amused, shocked, and amazed as he spills the unwritten code of the bellhops, the antics that go on in the valet parking garage, the housekeeping department's dirty little secrets - not to mention the shameless activities of the guests, who are rarely on their best behavior.  Prepare to be moved, too, by his candor about what it's like to toil in a highly demanding service industry at the luxury level, where people expect to get what they pay for (and often a whole lot more).  Employees are poorly paid and frequently abused by coworkers and guests alike, and maintaining a semblance of sanity is a daily challenge.

Along his journey Tomsky also reveals the secrets of the industry, offering easy ways to get what you need from your hotel without any hassle.  This book (and a timely proffered twenty-dollar bill) will help you score late checkouts and upgrades, get free stuff galore, and make that pay-per-view charge magically disappear.  Thanks to him, you'll know how to get the very best service from any business that makes its money  from putting heads in beds.  Or, at the very least, you will keep the bellmen from taking your luggage into the camera-free back office and bashing it against the wall repeatedly.

Phew.  I feel like I just read the entire goddamned book again, typing that out. I think the jacket over-sells the "hilarious antics and seedy underbelly" aspect of the book.  From my end (which would be the end just having finished the entire thing and now trying to make some goddamn sense out of it) it feels more like a giant middle finger to the hotel managers, rather than trying to shock or titillate the public.  Which, I guess maybe some of it is shocking and/or titillating (although I mostly found that it was not wholly unexpected, just probably grosser) but that's not really the story he's telling here.  He's telling his own hero-journey along the bumpy path of hoteliering (not a word, don't even bother trying to look it up). 

My mother is actually the one who purchased Heads in Beds for me, because for some weird reason, she only buys me two (2) types of books: YA books that I've already read (sorry, mom) and non-fiction. Because I read so much slush (no slur, man, I love slush) the non-fiction I read is usually the non-fiction equivalent: true-crime (Death in White Bear Lake), big name books (In the Garden of Beasts), and like, travel books.  Which, I've learned so much about Iceland! Oh, and insider-y type books, you know Heat, Blood, Bones & Butter and Julie & Julia. Because I also love food, goddammit. 

I enjoyed Heads in Beds.  It has a good mix of eccentric characters, plot-line, and insider details.  Plus, Tomsky seems to understand that we don't really want to hear about how he spent a year living abroad in lah-di-da Paris, we want to hear about the time his manager called in sick to work from three floors up because she had done just a tad too much coke the night before. 

At one point, in a long paragraph of text, I found myself wanting to read it in more detail and not skim it, because I wanted to sort of...do right by the author.  Despite the petty grumbling and ostensible ickiness of the job, he endears himself to the reader, which can be a hard thing to do in a "tell-all" type book.  Given the level of snark displayed, I wouldn't have thought to sympathize with Tomsky as much as I did. Gentle readers, I will not lie to you.  I too once worked in the service industry.  And by "once worked" I mean I still do, but not in that soul-crushing see-fifty-customers-an-hour way that underpins our most basic transactions.  And it gave me a profound insight into the service industry: Don't treat your servicers like shit.  There - I just gave you one of life's most important mottos. 

There is just a relationship between the customer and the worker that people who have never worked often fail to understand.  There is an even weirder relationship between customers and waiters that I admittedly don't understand, because I do know that waiting tables is thankless, and I have been fortunate enough not to have to do it.  But people who have not worked do not realize that this is a symbiotic relationship.  Even in something as simple as a cash-for-goods transaction, you can achieve better or worse levels of service, often depending on your own behavior.  Employees are rarely shitheads to absolutely everyone.  We have favorites.  And the best way to be a favored customer is to be nice (and to be a goddamned regular, because if you're just passing through, you can handle it impersonal).  I still, even after 10+ years, remember a certain customer's name and face, so that every time he paid (by check, always) I had it in the system and could refrain from asking for ID, making his check-out just that bit faster and smoother.

This whole book is, like True Porn Clerk Stories (by Ali Davis, another great addition to the annals of the service worker, and one more true of my own experience) telling people what they should already know: be decent, and you might get some unexpected (or expected) benefits.  Everything the Tomsky (and Davis) say is true: everyone has had that terrible customer who, once gone, magically makes every following customer as sweet as honey.  Everyone has had to learn to lie, lie, lie to customers, because the truth does not always set you free: sometimes the truth just pisses someone the fuck off. 

Heads in Beds (which I am strenuously trying to avoid typing as Beds in Heads, although my fingers much prefer that version) is basically one man's Icarus flight: rising slowly ( or quickly, it's hard to get a good sense of time) through the hotel ranks only to fly too close to the sun, to give in to the urge to stick it to management just a little too much, and the subsequent fall from grace.  Here, thanks to the union (almost a deus ex in Heads in Beds, as they tend to be) Tomsky's descent is cut short, but you're definitely left with the feeling that this isn't going to take long to boil over again.  I can only hope that he's left the hotel business before he ends up murdering someone (management being more likely than a guest, because that is how the service industry works - guests come and go, but your bosses are dicks forever). 

I appreciated Heads in Beds less for the cheat-the-system advice (free minibar, free movies!) and more for the ethos.  There is an art to good service, an underappreciated art to anticipating needs, oiling the machinery and generally working the behind the scenes magic that goes undetected by the customer.  While there isn't any particular secret to writing a good tell-all (and there definitely needs to be a better description for these types of books than memoirs or tell-alls.  Sometimes these aren't tell-alls, and generally they're not lengthy/scholastic enough for me to think of them as "memoirs"), Tomsky gets the job done in fine journeyman style.  I don't know that you need it in permanent format, but if you're looking for a quick, fun read while you're waiting for a deliveryman to please hurry up and drop off this bookcase so I can maybe plan a trip to the grocery store later then I would say it's a great choice.  

EEEEEEEEBOLA! Double Header

Outbreak, by Robin Cook

A gripping medical drama that focuses on outbreaks of Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever, a deadly virus. Dr. Melissa Blumenthal, a Centers for Disease Control investigator, is thrust into the center of each seemingly unrelated outbreak. She slowly unravels the mystery of the virus and the conspiracy of doctors behind the growing crisis. (From School Library Journal)

The Hot Zone, By Richard Preston

The virus kills nine out of ten of its victims so quickly and gruesomely that even biohazard experts are terrified.  It is airborne, it is extremely contagious, and it is about to burn through the suburbs of a major American city.  Is there any way to stop it?

In the winter of 1989, at an Army research facility outside Washington, D.C., this doomsday scenario seemed like a real possibility.  A SWAT team of soldiers and scientists wearing biohazard space suits had been organized to stop the outbreak of an exotic "hot" virus.  The grim operation went on in secret for eighteen days, under dangerous conditions for which there was no precedent. 

OOooo, one of these books is not like the other!  In the sense that Outbreak is fiction, and also, not very good, whereas The Hot Zone is non-fiction, and nightmarish.  I checked out Outbreak because I was in the mood for a mystery thriller, and I guess in that sense Outbreak lived up to the hope.  But the premise collapses in on itself about two-thirds of the way in, and the terrible, horrible, no-good ending is just....awful.  But I was intrigued by the opening chapter of Outbreak, which deals with the original Zaire Ebola outbreak, so I decided to get The Hot Zone, which goes into the history of the virus in more detail, and I was not disappointed in that.  But let me back up.


Outbreak is about a woman in the CDC who gets sent on missions to contain what turn out to be Ebola outbreaks in cities around the U.S.  We meet her CDC pals, the two guys she's hooking up with, her boss, and the first victim of the outbreak.  Then all hell breaks loose.  That part is fine.  It's a mystery!  Why is Ebola infecting the index cases?  So many questions!  Then.  THEN.  It begins to go off the rails.  First, her boss sexually harasses her.  Big-time.  This guy, (Dubchek) tells her his wife is dead, then asks if she's dating anyone, and she says no, and he's all, let's get back to work, then:

That sounded good to Marissa.  She stood up and went over to the coffee table to pick up her papers.  As she straightened up, she realized that Dubchek had come up behind her.  Before she could react, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around.  The action so surprised her that she stood frozen.  For a brief moment their lips met.  Then she pulled away, her papers dropping to the floor.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't planning that at all, but ever since you arrived at CDC I've been tempted to do that.  God knows I don't believe in dating anyone I work with, but it's the first time since my wife died that I've really been interested in a woman.  You don't look like her at all - Jane was tall and blond - but you have that same enthusiasm for your work.  She was a musician, and when she played well, she had that exact same expression I've seen you get."

Marissa was silent.  She knew she was being mean, that Dubchek certainly had not been harassing her, but she felt embarrassed and awkward, and was unwilling to say something to ease over the incident.

"Marissa," he said gently, "I'm telling you that I'd like to take you out when we get back to Atlanta, but if you're involved with Ralph or just don't want to . . ." his voice trailed off.

Marissa bent down and picked up her notes. "If we're going back to the hospital, we'd better get going now," she said curtly.

He stiffly followed her to the elevator.  Later, sitting silently in her rent-a-car, Marissa berated herself.  [Dubchek] was the most attractive man she'd met since Roger.  Why had she behaved so unreasonably?

Like, what just happened here?  That was definitely harassment.  That feeling of embarrassment and awkwardness?  Is because your boss hit on you and you are now in the awful position of having to say no to someone with control over your job. The only unreasonable thing you did was not immediately get on the horn and get this sleaze written up.

THEN.  Her boss is an absolute DICK.  Since she "behaved so unreasonably," he ignores her when she's working and trying to talk over the details of the outbreaks with him, so that she can't do her job properly (which is to assess and control the situation and work out how it started), he refuses to allow her access to the lab which might answer some of her questions on the basis that she's "not qualified" (i.e., hasn't touched his dick), hangs up on her in the middle of work calls, and is a general all-around asshole.  Meanwhile, Marissa doesn't report him to HR, instead, she spends the book alternately kicking herself because that Dubchek, he's so dreamy!  Why didn't she take him up on his super offer!  And then believing that he's the one who's setting the Ebola loose, then, once she founds out (spoiler!) that he's not, she does this:

"So when will you be coming back to the CDC?" asked Dubchek.  "We've already gotten you clearance for the maximum containment lab." This time there was no doubt about his grin. "No one relished the thought of your stumbling around in there at night anymore."

Marissa blushed in spite of herself. "I haven't decided yet.  I'm actually considering going back into pediatrics."

"Back to Boston?" Dubchek's face fell.

"It will be a loss to the field," said Dr. Fakkry.  "You've become an international epidemiological hero."

"I'll give it more thought," promised Marissa.  "But even if I do go back to pediatrics, I'm planning on staying in Atlanta." She nuzzled her new puppy.  There was a pause, then she added, "But I've one request."

"If we can be of any help..." said Dr. Fakkry.

Marissa shook her head.  "Only [Dubchek] can help on this one.  Whether I go back to pediatrics or not I was hoping he'd ask me to dinner again."

Dubchek was taken off guard.  Then, laughing at Fakkry's bemused expression, he leaned over and hugged Marissa to his side.

WHOA.  I was - somewhat - prepared for this, having read reviews of Outbreak but COME ON.  WHAT THE FUCK, ROBIN COOK?  This guy deserved to be reported to his superiors for what he did, and you decide to hit on him in front of another work colleague?  Can't say you don't belong together, I guess.  PLUS, this was after she used one of her hook-ups for his connections to the lab (repeatedly) and then when he put his foot down on that (because she kept causing problems) she was like, I think you're the one who is killing all these people. Later, when they break up, and Dubchek decides to get her fired in revenge, you can't say she wasn't warned. 

God, the whole plot just didn't make sense.  The doctors were being murdered because they were HMO hospitals?  Seriously?  There's such a problem with pre-pay medical services?  Plus, if everyone else was on the corporate Board of Doom, how come (spoiler!) Ralph, her other hook-up, wasn't?  I mean, he was clearly in on it.  Was his name not in the records for any good reason, or just because it would have made the book even less suspenseful?  And how come she kept announcing where she was going even though she knew people were following her? And she would announce it to the bad guys, KNOWING they were the bad guys (as opposed to when she'd tell the guys she thought were good, but were actually bad) and then be all surprised when hired assassins show up at her next destination.

AND!  When she got hit with the Ebola gun, then couldn't get to the "antibodies" in time, so she was just like, "Well, guess I'm going to...not check in to a hospital for treatment or sequester myself, but instead travel as widely as possible so that if I am infected,  I can kill the maximum number of people."  What an asshole.

Although, to be fair, that is apparently what REAL PEOPLE do in outbreaks, too.  Let's segue into The Hot Zone! Question time!  Did you know that Ebola is approximately sixteen times more deadly than yellow fever? Did you know that it has no cure, no inoculation, no antibodies, and no treatment? Did you know that your insides liquify and you can vomit so much black miasma that the skin on your tongue starts to come off? Did you know that I had terrible terrible dreams after reading The Hot Zone?  Are you surprised by that?

The Hot Zone is a fascinating book about a real outbreak of a (thankfully, non-deadly to humans) strain of Ebola near Washington, D.C.  It's kind of an oddly structured book, since the first couple of sections are about viral hemorrhagic fevers in general, their entry into the modern world, and basically setting the stage for why we're all so severely fucked if Ebola goes airborne (which, it.. kinda already is, to some degree).

The strain that lies at the heart of The Hot Zone was, like the prior known strains of Ebola and Marburg, initially found in primates.  Once discovered in the monkey house, it's interesting to see how everyone reacted: INAPPROPRIATELY.  Hand to god, these two lab technicians sniffed a petri dish full of ebola, and then when they found out what it was they were like, "Uh, I'm not going to say anything.  If I feel sick, maybe I'll check myself in to the hospital then."  SERIOUSLY.  Reading The Hot Zone made me terribly afraid of our quarantine measures.  People who should have known better: doctors, nurses, people who work with these contagious, deadly viruses, all of them, completely disregarded others' safety in the interest of not disrupting their own plans.  Not a single person 'fessed up to possible infection even after: blood got into "space suits" (used to protect against contamination), sniffing ebola, operating on ebola victims.  The one person who was kind of thoughtful about the human race was a man who, after possibly getting infected in a Sudan outbreak, decided to stay behind and keep working on saving lives.  After he never developed symptoms, he went back home again.  But no else did.  They all decided to take the risk that this unknown strain of Ebola could infect and decimate the population.

Which, thankfully, it did not.  But it does concern me that there's this apparent tendency to just - go on like nothing's happened.  I guess some of the reasoning is that if you anticipate it, Ebola isn't as contagious in the early stages, so you can always check yourself in later.  But what a risk to take, not just for you, but for people around you.  I was discussing this with my mother, who mentioned that she read a book that said something similar happened with Typhoid Mary - she wasn't originally restrained, but simply asked not to be a cook anymore.  She left her job, but came back because she didn't like being a laundress, apparently still not quite connecting the dots that led to her killing and harming a number of people.  Asymptomatic carriers are real things, and the disregard of safety by people who would be expected to know better was one of the scarier parts of the book.

Not to be diminished, of course, by the descriptions of the disease on physical flesh.  I found this to be morbidly fascinating.  I simply had never heard of the effects and the danger of Ebola, I guess I thought it was more like, malaria, or yellow fever, or japanese encephalitis, any one of those strange diseases that you plan around when taking trips (although maybe I should have shelled out for that vaccine after all!). The practitioners and people who do work to ensure that the infected are cared for and risk their lives are to be commended.  Certainly there are brave people in The Hot Zone, who walked into a steaming zoo of Ebola to contain and prevent contagion.  It's an interesting, fascinating book, one which I have taken to bringing up in all my conversations this last week.  "Oh, you live near Washington, D.C.?  Did you know they had an Ebola outbreak?" "You know what Ebola does to you?  No?  Let me tell you!"

Good reading, and good dreaming.



  

Moonraker's Bride

Moonraker's Bride, by Madeleine Brent

Born in a Mission in China, Lucy Waring finds herself with fifteen small children to feed and care for. The way she tackles this task leads to her being thrown into the grim prison of Chengfu, where she meets Nicholas Sabine - a man about to die. He asks her a cryptic riddle, the mystery of which echoes through all that befalls her in the months that follow... She is brought to England and tries to make a new life with the Gresham family, but she is constantly in disgrace and is soon involved in the bitter feud between the Greshams and a neighboring family. There is danger, romance and heartache for Lucy as strange events build to a point where she begins to doubt her own senses. How could she see a man, long dead, walking in the misty darkness of the valley? And who carried her, unconscious, into the labyrinth of Chiselhurst Caves and left her to die? It is not until she returns to China that Lucy finds, amid high adventure, the answer to all that has baffled her.

Aha, so I was actually reading Shiver when this book arrived, and I picked it up and read, like, the first three pages, and decided, eff it, I'ma just read the whole thing in one go.  SO WORTH IT. I think it was that moment when Lucy is like, "I know that I could have one of my hands cut off for stealing, but there is no other way to get enough money to feed my little Chinese orphans.  But Ms. Prothero would be so upset.  WELP, JUST GONNA HAVE TO LIE TO HER, THEN, I GUESS." And then heads out like a boss to go thieving (and gets thrown in jail and has adventures)!  I have decided that I have a new (old) favorite archetype: the lady who Gets Shit Done.  Like, yes, you are in a sticky situation, and everything is going to hell, but you have to keep doing the best you can with what you got.  Lady, I salute you.

So Moonraker's Bride, despite it's terrible 1970s title and windswept cover, is actually pretty enjoyable.  Like, good enough that I did, for a brief moment go, "Would it be cheaper to just pay the library fine than buy it online?" because it is hella expensive.*  But then I would deprive other card members of the glory that is Moonraker's Bride.  But.  I was tempted, is what I'm saying (mostly because I am also hella cheap).

I will admit, Moonraker's Bride is not, like, the Decameron, okay?  Ain't no one going to be writing their thesis on it (I hope, geez).  But it is a stellar example of the romantic suspense category, I mean, you've got exotic settings, mysterious treasures, riddles, uptight English people, and an arranged jail marriage (which is not as gross as it sounds).  And I know this sounds like faint praise, but I thought the book would be super-racist (as many of those era are) and I did not find it to be so (note that more sensitive people may disagree). 

Hand to god, I liked just about everything about it, but especially Lucy - she plays a good martyr, and mostly tries not to rock the boat, but at the same time, when shit needs doin', she gets it done.  There's a scene in which a little boy is lost in a snow-storm, and Lucy is the only one who might know where he is, but her patronizing patron won't listen to her, and does she wail into some nice fellow's waistcoat until he goes out and saves the day?  No, she puts on her big girl pants (literally) and walks through a blizzard to rescue this kid.  Also, words cannot express my delight at the dinner scene wherein she believes that she was brought over to England to be a concubine. 

Brent's books (and I have to admit, I went out and immediately read two more after this one, Golden Urchin and Stormswift (not as good, sadly, but still a fun time)) follow a fairly basic pattern: accommodating, yet stalwart heroine, usually raised or living in a distant and exotic location, is brought back to civilization, i.e. England, and deals with people trying to kill her, romance, and overcomes an obstacle which only she, with her unique background, can surmount.  Also, any extraneous people in a love triangle (whether with the heroine or not) are summarily killed before the book ends, either because the author reeeeeeally dislikes loose ends, or he went through some early high-school trauma that has led him to believe that death is easier than facing rejection.  [Yes, apparently Madeleine Brent is a pseudonym for a Peter O'Donnell, but don't let that dissuade you]. 

So this particular book just hits all the right spots for me - I have a serious weak spot for Chinese orphans and lady missionaries who care for them after watching The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (I know, I'm embarrassed for me, too) and arranged marriages which basically start off as the strangest method of charitable donation ever, but turn out to be true love.  The book did drag a little in the middle (if by drag, you mean mysterious night visitors, feuding neighbor families, bonfires, cave kidnappings, secret butler fathers and snowy rescues) after Lucy tries to accustom herself to English life, but picks right up again after her presumed-dead husband comes back.  Then the book takes a CRAZY turn for the awesome when Lucy and her father-in-law go tramping through China in the midst of the Boxer Rebellion.  I would watch the shit out of the tv-movie, is what I'm saying here. 

Honestly, if you're not already convinced, I don't know what else to say to get you to go out and procure your own copy.  I mean, more for me, I guess.  But if you're looking for some enjoyable escapist literature, I don't think you can go wrong here. 



*(It would totally save me, like $20, but then they might take my card away.  Also, I feel like that behavior is particularly frowned upon when committed by a member of the library's board of trustees.  Whoops!)

Gone Girl

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary.  Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River.  Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge.  Under mounting pressure from the police and the media - as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents - the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior.  Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter - but is he really a killer?

As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love.  With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence.  Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife?  And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

I know everyone and their mother, or least I and my mother, has read this book, and I am very late to the game.  I blame the library hold list, and my mother, for not lending me her copy (SIDENOTE FAX: I read this interesting piece (linking to this more in-depth article) which, inter alia, says that English is to blame for all the blame going around - our language prefers the active tense of "My mother took the book" to the passive "The book was taken." THE MORE YOU KNOW.  I can't help pointing fingers, you're the one who taught me English! Also known as the Twinkie defense).  

ANYWAY, I read it and I really liked it.  It's a basic beach read, actually, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable.  This is formulaic (that formula would be, more or less, (The Bad Seed + The Good Son) x (Drew Peterson + Jennifer Wilbanks) + Elvis Costello's Watching the Detectives and a dash of War of the Roses - the 1989 movie, not the Plantagenet fights in the 1400s - Mix well, let simmer for four hours and serve), but even though it evokes all manner of associations, it never feels tired.  Flynn has created an entirely distinct body of work, one which still manages to seem (sort of) plausible, even given the outrageousness of the story.  It's suspenseful in the right parts, and manages to build through somewhat increasingly crazy plot twists without coming off as totally unrealistic. 

There really ain't no way to talk about Gone Girl without mentioning spoilers...a lot of spoilers.  So beware, all ye who enter here. 

I was (possibly more than I should have been) extremely gratified to find out that my early supposition was correct: Amy is a lot smarter than Nick.  While both are obviously fairly morally deficient, Flynn does a good job of making you root for both characters: because they're both so reprehensible, you get a thrill each time one of them gets one over on the other.

The first half of the book ("Boy Loses Girl") really draws you in - although it's much slower paced, as it details both the first days following Amy's disappearance, as well as diary entries dating back years.  You're presented with Nick, beginning to flounder in the face of his spiraling lies, and you feel not just suspicion, but also contempt.  Regardless of whether Nick did or didn't do it, you begin to think, he's behaving so stupidly he almost deserves what's going to happen to him.  That feeling is assisted by Amy's diary, which manages to juggle an almost impossible variety of goals: from Amy's perspective, the need to create plausible and yet completely fake entries, ones which tie in both what we the reader (and by proxy, the police) know and believe of Nick, and from Flynn's perspective, creating a vision of Amy which both allays suspicion against her and makes her unlikeable - and not just unlikeable, but unlikeable in such a way that it is believable and yet distasteful, and even though you kind of hate the diary-Amy, you still wouldn't want her to die.  I mean, she might be kind of a self-centered shrew in disguise, but at least she's not a mope like Nick.  And yet, that is exactly the goal of Amy herself - to make you sympathize with her, even while she admits her own faults.  I think this is one of Flynn's strongest areas, creating a layered story-line that holds up to alternate views without collapsing (even if the layers aren't all that complicated, it still took some fine maneuvering).  

I was actually sort of falling asleep in the first half of the book (it was past my bedtime) and  I have to say, once you get past that point at the end of the first half (you'll know the one I mean) the rest of it goes down like (okay, I was going to make a joke about diarrhea here, but let's just leave that to the imagination).  Smoothly, let's put it at that.  I found myself siding with Amy even more, at least while she played her cards right.  I can't resist a nice, competent, get-shit-done lady!  Even when she's a sociopath, I guess.  The tide begins to turn when she reneges on her original plan (never go back, Amy, you planned so well!) and makes two - no, make that three* - crucial errors.  Then you're back on Nick's side, hoping that he'll come out on top against his malevolent wife.

Niggling complaints:  in any mystery, there's going to be points at which you go, well, what about THAT plothole, huh, because it is much easier to criticise than to create.  Here, there's a couple of details that I'm still wondering about, since everything else was done so expertly:  How was everything purchased and delivered to the woodshed?  $200,000 of things comes to quite a bit - did Amy buy it all online, and, if so, how was it delivered?  Couldn't the UPS man have testified that he delivered a package a week to Amy alone, and never saw hide nor hair of Nick?  Or if purchased in person, wouldn't Amy have had to sign for it? Was she an expert forger, too?  So that's out there.  Another is why wouldn't they have found traces of sleeping pills in Desi?  His mother certainly seems like someone who could have put up enough stink to get an inquest, and if so, how would Amy have explained slitting the throat of a drugged and comatose man?  [On the other side, it's possible that with a "burning bed" defense argument, Amy would have successfully passed a trial anyway, and Flynn decided to skip it for narrative purposes, but it seems sort of sloppy in a book where everything else is plotted out meticulously]  And finally, Nick's decision to stay with Amy for the sake of the baby is asinine, since I'm pretty sure that living with Amy is going to screw that kid regardless of whether or not he has Nick playacting as a loving husband in the background.  CUT YOUR LOSSES AND RUN, NICK!  But he doesn't, and in the end you think that much less of him.  Gosh, you think, after you finish the last section, Nick's going to find himself six feet deep in six months, and I can't bring myself to feel bad.  Maybe Amy had a point, after all.  I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to say that even though he never does, the ending is still satisfying, since, after all, if Nick has made that bed, then he damn well better lie in it, and he does. 

Oh, and also?  Not following through on your plan to commit suicide and thus ensure that your husband goes to jail forever in some gigantic "Fuck you" which you wouldn't even be alive to see happen anyway?  Weak. I like my sociopaths to really go all out, Amy.




*Falling in with Greta and Jeff; allowing herself to get caught by Desi; falling for Nick's televised pleas; although frankly, the first is the only one that she doesn't manage to make lemonade out of lemons.  And given how Gone Girl ends, you could argue that everything wraps up just as she would want it to, anyway.