November, 2021 Readings "November always seemed to me the Norway of the year." (Emily Dickinson)

Started November with WHAT STRANGE PARADISE by Omar El Akkad.

Pretty bloody amazing so far.

The quote illustrates how leading a sheltered life leads to misapprehension. Everyone knows that November in New England is way worse than anything Norway has to offer. ;^)

>2 Limelite: To be fair, Cliff in the middle of Canada experienced a much worse winter than I did here in central Sweden, despite him being ten degrees south of me.

It's been a VERY mild autumn so far--last year, around this time, the brass monkeys were singing lovely soprano harmonies in the trees outside my office window.

With my dodgy hip and lower back, not looking forward to shoveling snow this year but we'll manage, somehow.

>3 iansales:
Emily Dickinson. Sheltered life. Never left Amherst, MA. What could she know about Norway other than what might have been in a mid-19th C. travel brochure? English speaking Norwegian pen-pal maybe?

>5 Limelite: Not the point I was making. A winter in New England might well be worse than one in Norway (not the far north of Norway, obvs).

Finished Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, a surprisingly bitter book, although nothing like Olivia Manning's The Doves of Venus. OTOH, I wasn't around in the fifties, when the latter book was set, but have dim memories of the early seventies, when Taylor's novel takes place. Elizabeth Taylor is worth reading - a much under-rated British writer. Likewise Olivia Manning.

Read Whatever, Michel Houellebecq's first novel. Now, that *was* bitter. Not as successful as his later novels, and reading his books always leaves you feeling a bit soiled - but I still think they're very good.

Love in a Cold Climate follows on from The Pursuit of Love, with the same narrator, but focusing on a different young woman during the mid-war years. An odd experience as it references the earlier book a lot, but no mention is made in that earlier book of the family at the centre of Love in a Cold Climate. Leaves you feeling like some chapters were missing from the copy you reads. Good, though. These later, first-person narrative novels are much better than Mitford's earlier Waugh-esque Bright Young Thing comedies, although her humour was less cruel, and her novels less racist, than Waugh's.

A re-read: The Killing Machine, Jack Vance, the second book of the Demon Princes quintet. I had thought the villain this one was the villain in the fourth book, The Face, so that made for a confusing read. Definitely an improvement on the first book in the series, though.

Now reading Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford, whose previous works I thought very good.

Took me a day and a half, but I finished Colson Whitehead's latest, HARLEM SHUFFLE.

This dude is amazing: he can write speculative fiction, horror, historical fiction, crime novels and distinguish himself, regardless of genre.

Amazing author, great read.

Giggled my way through Spike Milligan's MUSSOLINI: HIS PART IN MY DOWNFALL.

Volume 4 of Spike's war time memoirs and it concludes with the incident when he was mortared and suffered "shell shock', which affected him for the rest of his life.

Funny, sad and harrowing. But mainly funny.

SENSATION MACHINES by Adam Wilson.

A fictional look at a very depressing near future, only this time it isn't the climate catastrophe that's front and center but surveillance capitalism and virtual reality.

Downbeat and utterly convincing.

Highly recommended.

Light Perpetual was excellent, and much recommended. A book that does not seem to be about anything in particular but proves to be an intelligent commentary on UK history post WWII.

Purgatory Mount was a disappointment. It opened as a book of the discovery of an alien mega-edifice, then abruptly changed to Yet Another Near Future US Civil War. I wanted to read the former, not the latter. Which is not the say the latter was not done well. A final section returns to the initial alien monument. Which is never explained. Nor, indeed, are some elements of the near-future narrative. I get what Roberts was trying to say - helped, obvs, by his afterword - but I don't think it works.

Now reading both Winter's Heart, which is awful and awfully padded, and The Dark Side of the Sun, which I last read in the early 1980s and which even for Pratchett is pretty forgettable stuff.

Hermit in Paris by Italo Calvino. A collection of random autobiographical texts written for different occasions. The texts are mostly about Calvino's intellectual evolution. There are many repetitions and many essays that were of little interest to me. In the most impressive text Calvino explains his support of Stalin during his communist period, an error he acknowledges without easy excuses but with honesty and intellectual rigor. Other than that it's a "meh" book.

Bossy Pants by Tina Fey. Fun, smart, entertaining, and very well written.

Lincoln Michel's THE BODY SCOUT, a romp of a book.

Set in a science fictional near future, where baseball players are (legally) juiced, their genes manipulated. The major league teams are owned by Monsanto and Big Pharma and the fans don't give a good goddamn about maintaining the purity of the great American past-time.

SF, to be sure, but with a healthy dose of noir thrown in, the book getting darker as it progresses and the ending is satisfyingly downbeat. Sometimes you can't change the world, you can only save what little of yourself remains.

Recommended.

THE SATURDAY NIGHT GHOST CLUB by Craig Davidson.

I'm a big fan of the author's work but this novel is one of his weaker efforts, feeling an awful lot like a Stephen King offering (indeed, in the Afterword he mentions both King and Judy Blume, not exactly a winning combination for this reader).

This seems like a "drawer" novel that was dusted off after his other books had achieved some level success--not nearly as powerful as his best efforts (RUST AND BONE and CATARACT CITY).

Wrapped up Helen Rappaport's account of the Russian revolution, CAUGHT IN THE REVOLUTION.

Well-researched, but the author relies entirely on foreign eyewitnesses, including diplomats, journalists, nurses, etc. No Russian voices are heard, which I found puzzling.

Concrete Rose – Angie Thomas
Audiobook performed by Dion Graham
4****

In this prequel to The Hate U Give, Thomas gives us the young Maverick Carter, a 17-year-old gang member struggling to find his path to manhood.

I really liked her debut novel, but I have a problem with “prequels / sequels.” That’s my issue and I recognize it may be unfair, but Thomas’s sophomore effort had that hill to climb for me. And she did it marvelously well!

I can really see how this young man, hardly out of childhood, is being influenced – by his peers, by his parents, by other adults in his neighborhood and school, and by the expectations of society. The pressure on him to “be a man” is intense, and the conflicting ways in which this is evidenced or proved to others is at the core of Maverick’s difficulties.

On the one hand he honors the respect shown his father (who is incarcerated for crimes committed) by other gang members and the reputation Maverick feels he needs to live up to as “little Don.” On the other hand, are the messages he’s getting from his mother and neighbor Mr Wyatt about being responsible, and thinking for himself rather than following the crowd. On the one hand is the sense of belonging and camaraderie he feels with his fellow gang members, on the other is the love he feels for his girlfriend Lisa, and the obvious disdain shown him by her brother and parents because of his gang affiliation. I particularly liked the conversations he had with Mr Wyatt, owner of the local grocery, who gives Maverick a part-time job and some sound advice on setting goals and working to achieve them.

Maverick’s only seventeen, and for all his bravado and pronouncements about “being a man” he is not yet an adult. Teenagers make mistakes – sometimes serious mistakes – often based on the emotion of an instant rather than a coherent plan. Some poor decisions threaten to completely derail this young man’s path to adulthood. Having read the debut novel, I know he’ll survive, and yet some of the scenes had me so afraid for Maverick, my heart was in my throat and tears flowed freely.

Thomas writes about a realistic urban environment for many families, with brutal honesty and empathy. She does not shy away from the serious social issues facing these families, nor does she offer platitudes or pat answers on how to address these issues.

Dion Graham does a marvelous job performing the audiobook. He really brings these characters to life and his changes in vocal style, and inflection make it easy to understand who is speaking.

The Weight of Heaven – Thirty Umrigar
5*****

Frank and Ellie Benton have lost their only son to a sudden illness. Reeling from grief they accept an opportunity to relocate to Girbaug, India where Frank will run his company’s factory. Their hope is that distancing themselves from the memories that surround them in Michigan will help them heal and forge a new life. But Frank becomes attached to the son of the caretakers of their company-provided cottage.

This is the third book by Umrigar that I have read, and the third time I’ve rated her work 5-stars. It is an intense and heartbreakingly real story. The grief and recriminations are so palpable they almost make my stomach hurt. Frank is clearly the more fragile of the two. He cannot let go of the anger and grief he feels and seems unaware of how obsessed he is becoming over the boy Ramesh. Ellie’s training as a psychologist is little help to them. She is too close to the issue and has her own grief, regret, and anger to process.

The cultural differences, far from distracting them from their grief, only compound their distress. They do not understand the culture and Frank, in particular, seems incapable of seeing anything in a different light. Ramesh is certainly a bright and inquisitive child, but his parents cannot possibly provide him with the advantages that Frank dangles before him. This added tension between Prakash and Frank over the affections of Ramesh spills into each of their marriages. Edna, Ramesh’s mother, is eager for the opportunities Frank provides, and gets angrier and angrier with Prakash over his “jealousy.” Ellie is more and more concerned about Frank’s obsession with the boy but voicing her concerns only strengthens Frank’s resolve and makes him more secretive about his plans.

The tragedy of this couple’s story is inevitable though none the less shocking.

LOST GIRLS by Andrew Pyper.

A crime novel involving two missing teenagers in northern Ontario. A bent lawyer is despatched by the senior lawyers in his law firm to defend the accused, the girls' former English teacher.

A nice sense of place to the novel, but there are far too many dream sequences (I HATE dream sequences) and too many revelations tying up the ending.

A summer beach read, not much more.

City of Secrets – Stewart O’Nan
Book on CD narrated by Edoardo Ballerini
3***

From the book jacket: In 1945, Jewish refugees by the thousands set out for Palestine. Those who made it relied on the underground to shelter them; taking false names, they blended with the population, joining the wildly different factions fighting for independence. This book follows one survivor, Brand, as he tries to regain himself after losing everyone he’s ever loved. Now driving a taxi provided – like his new identity – by the underground, he navigates the twisting streets of Jerusalem as well as the overlapping, sometimes deadly loyalties of the resistance.

My reactions:
I really like O’Nan’s writing. I like the way he gets inside the character’s psychological makeup, how he reveals his characters strengths and flaws, hopes and fears through the action of the story. This book is a very contemplative one. Brand – or Jossi Jorgenen as he is known in Jerusalem – is forced to think through the various possibilities each time he’s given a task. Is this simply a taxi fare? Or is there a coded message in the destination or time of pick up? Can he trust his landlady? What about Eva, the woman he loves and who professes to love him? Are the leaders of the resistance confident in his loyalty to them? Or will he be taken into the desert and shot, his body left for the carrion eaters to dispose of?

This is a slim volume but full of information about the time and location. I found myself searching google for more details and for pictures of the city to better understand what was happening and where the action was taking place.

All that being said, it was perhaps too intense for me, at least at this time. Yes, there is plenty of action, but I was left feeling tense and ill at ease. I’ve got enough of that in real life these days.

Edoardo Ballerini is a marvelous voice artist and narrator. I think I would listen to him read anything, even a receipt for dry cleaning.

Srecko Horvat's AFTER THE APOCALYPSE.

A unnerving and pessimistic (non-fiction) look at the future the human race has consigned itself to. It's not Horvat's role to offer a happy depiction of what's to come but, deep thinker that he is, instead shares a perspective where some kind of viable life is still possible, if we think in the longterm. Happy to say, he plugs the dystopic fiction of the great J.G. Ballard and insists the our struggle to survive and prevail in the coming decades will ennoble us even if, in his view, we really are doomed for extinction.

Finished Winter's Heart. I'd remembered it as massively padded, but that may have been a later book. This one wasn't too bad, and actually moved the plot forward. The writing is terrible and the characterisation really bad. Enjoying the new TV adaptation, though. It seems to be making a better fist of the plot than the book did.

Piranesi was good, although I wasn't expecting the direction it eventually took. The world of the book was well-described and did not over-stays its welcome. Recommended.

Return to the Enchanted Island popped up on Kindle for 99p and since it's apparently only the second novel from Madagascar to be translated into English, I decided to give it a go. An interesting insight into Malagasy history and culture - although the names were of a pattern so unfamiliar to me they looked more like something out of a fantasy novel. Not a great novel but an interesting read.

Enjoyed Utopia Avenue, but I do have a soft spot for the music it describes. Mitchell laid on the personal tragedies a bit thick, and some of the characterisations of real-life people didn't feel quite right (Zappa, for example). Also, while most of the musicians mentioned were real people, a lot of other celebrities weren't, which seeemed weird. And I know Mitchell wants all his novels to slot together, but sub-plt which linked back to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet felt out of place.

Now reading Titus Groan.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror – Robert Louis Stevenson
Digital audiobook performed by Scott Brick
3***

Classic horror from a master of Victorian gothic fiction.

I appreciate the atmospheric nature of Stevenson’s writing. The reader can feel the dampness of a foggy London night, smell the freshly turned earth in the graveyard, hear the clip clop of a horse’s hooves on cobblestoned streets, clearly see the horrific images of a mutilated body, and taste the bile that rises as a result of all the above.

The title story is an exploration of man’s baser instincts. Can a potion be created that will change a generous, kind, proper individual into a fiend? And once the gentleman has “tasted” the freedom from inhibition that results, can he go back? Will he want to? Of course, Dr Jekyll’s alter-ego changes physical appearance as well, further confounding those around him.

The other stories in the collection had similar psychological / ethical themes, though I didn’t like them all quite so much. The Bottle Imp explores greed and regret and selfless love. Stevenson shows that true events can be as frightening as fantasy in The Body Snatcher, which is based on the real practice of trafficking in bodies needed by medical students for dissection that happened in the 19th century. And the remote setting of The Merry Men make the ghost ships seem all the more real.

Scott Brick does a marvelous job of narrating the title story. But bear in mind that the audio version is limited to this one short story.

Two books in the past few days:

QUICKSAND by Emmanuel Bove
BASED ON A TRUE STORY by Norm MacDonald

The former I received by accident. I made an inter-library loan request for Junichiro Tanizaki's QUICKSAND and ended up with a novel by the same name by Bove. Never mind, Beckett was a fan of Bove's and that's good enough for me. The story of a man caught up in the bureaucracy of Vichy France; a bit Kafkaesque at times and a feeling of doom hangs over the whole book. Bove survived World War II but not by much, dying prematurely not long after completing this tome.

Norm MacDonald's "memoir" is a blast, not a word of it true, madcap and brilliant at times, predictably weird.