I thought I was busier in December, but can’t tell it by the number of books I read. (As always book descriptions are taken from memory — often, I no longer have the book at hand; many of them came from the public library — so I may get the occasional detail or name wrong.)
Devil’s Dream by Madison Smartt Bell. Novel about Nathan Bedford Forrest, the guerrilla fighting Rebel. Much is told from standpoint of a Haitian who somehow becomes a member of Forrest’s retinue. Book is thus sort of a fantasia — it’s not even clear our Haitian is a real person. Book’s a bit of a muddle; it did make me want to read a real biography of Forrest. The novel was unsatisfying.
Invisible by Paul Auster. A metafiction about a brother, a sister, a European writer, his wife, and a lover. And a writer who’s a friend of the brother and who has written a narrative about his frightening encounters with the European writer. Taut and often thrilling, until the baffling ending that pulls the rug out from under the reader.
Total Oblivion, More or Less by Alan DeNiro. A YA about a girl and her family in an America turned upside down by the leakage of people and cultures from other eras and timestreams. At times, the book isn’t believable (OK, OK, I know it’s fantasy, but versamillitude, people!), mainly because the girl narrator knows more (including her vocabulary) than I think a 16-year-old is likely to know. But story builds up steam and by the end I wanted more. (I suspect a sequel’s on the way.)
The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave. The Aussie rocker’s second novel is about a British door-to-door cosmetics salesman, a philanderer, who comes home to find his wife has committed suicide, leaving him with a young boy to raise. Bunny’s already struggling and these events start him into a downward spiral that leads him, of course, to his doom. The book’s a cautionary tale about men’s animal appetites; it’s a feminist work, tho’ I fear many feminists will be weirded-out by the whole thing.
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. A smoothly reading multi-character story about people who find their lives connected in the wake of a famous stunt in 1974 — a Frenchman stretches a line between the Twin Towers in New York and walks across. It is well written and the individual stories are affecting, but I’m not sure it comes together as a strong whole. If this is best novel of year (as the National Book Award folks say), then it was a bad year for novels. Eh.
Europeana by Patrik Ourednik. Subtitled “A Short History of the Twentieth Century.” That’s pretty much what it is, in 122 pages. A litany of wars and man’s inhumanity to man. It’s quite an achievement in miniature — and ends with a great joke about the end of history, which Francis Fukuyama proclaimed in the late ’90s. As author pointed out, most people in the world hadn’t heard of Fukuyama and thus didn’t know future had ended and thus kept making it.
Slammer by Allan Guthrie. A British noir about a prison guard who is blackmailed into smuggling drugs for a gang of inmates. He’s too young, 22, already married with a child nearly 6. In most such novels, he would find his way out. In this, it turns out he skims off some of the drugs he smuggles and uses them himself. He’s deeply troubled, we learn. It ends in disaster for him and his family.
Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale. A more traditional modern noir, from the East Texas master of such. A new Hap and Leonard novel. Our pals rescue a young woman from a group of drug dealers (they did this for her father, an old friend), but she didn’t want to be rescued, and they humiliate the dealers in the process. They retaliate, and Hap and Leonard destroy them, using so much violence they come to the attention of the FBI, which has some dirty work it needs done for a mobster under witness protection. As the shit piles deeper, they encounter Vanilla Ride, a master hitman, or hit-woman. Our boys survive to fight another day, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Ride.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower. Story collection by a young writer of great skill, with fairly broad subject matter. Title story, about Vikings and their rampages, written in modern argot, is getting a lot of attention. Quite good collection, but I liked Peelle’s and Mueenuddin’s better.
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon. Strong novel about identity theft, and identity thieves. Brings together three sets of characters and three storylines in a very believable way (unlike what McCann does). Has strong dark thriller elements, like Stephen King or, especially, Peter Straub. At times it suggests a supernatural influence, but never quite goes there. One of my favorite recent literary novels.
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Terrific audiobook telling of Franzen’s Oprah-approved social novel. In all the hype about the book way back when, I don’t recall anyone talking about how funny it is. And the reader has to grab onto the funny, because the characters are all fairly ridiculous. At times it feels like Franzen is biting off more than he can chew. There’s a sci-fi subplot about a medical process that might be able to reverse the father’s Parkinson symptoms, but it comes to naught. Readers can have fun trying to figure out which of the three children — Gary, Chip, or Denise — is the most fucked up. Despite her rising to the challenge with her parents in the end, I think Denise probably wins the prize. There are nods to David Foster Wallace — much of the book about depression — and Thomas Pynchon — the scene on the cruise ship with Albert and the talking turd. A fine novel, but not quite the landmark the author and pals imagine it is.
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Debut novel by a sci-fi writer who has already gained notice for his short fiction. This work establishes him in the top rank of the field. Novel’s set in Thailand after years of genetic plagues that have left parts of the world unable to grow crops. Fossil fuels are running out and people are having to find other sources of energy — besides biofuels, there’s an industry devoted to machines that run on windup springs. Hence the title character, tho’ that’s misleading because while she’s a genetic mutant (bred to be a perfection servant/love toy, but she’s much much more), she doesn’t run on a spring. But her makers designed her to move in a herky-jerky fashion, as if she’ is a windup toy. Story is driven by intrigue about getting hack-resistant gene stock for crops and complex mechanations by competing groups within government and without, leading to a revolution. Explicit, bloody novel with a conclusion that’s bleak and redemptive at the same time.
Books read in December: 12
Total read for 2009: 95
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