Karen Russell — Swamplandia!

Swamplandia! is the tale of the swamp-dwelling Bigtrees, owners of a small island where they wrestle alligators for plump tourists, all still grieving the loss of their matriarch in their own ways: Ava by attempting to fill her shoes, Osceola by dating ghosts, Kiwi by plotting his escape, the Chief, their father, steadfastly pretending that nothing is missing or wrong. Each of them will embark on their own epic journeys.

Very impressed with this debut novel. Her writing is lovely, and plays with language in such fabulous ways. The child protagonist avoids the trap that many authors fall into–making them either too precocious, or too annoyingly childish. Ava’s voice straddles the line nicely but remains convincingly her age. The magical realist journey that she embarks upon in Florida’s nightmare swamps is drawn in language that causes you to feel, to taste and smell the landscape vividly.

Scattered throughout were gorgeous lines that stuck in the memory. For example:

Loving a ghost was different, she explained—that kind of love was a bare branch.

I found myself constantly highlighting passages that I wanted to return to later. I found myself most interested in Ava’s story, less in Kiwi’s, narrated in sarcastic third person and populated by ridiculous cartoon character mainlanders. But Ava’s incredible journey is impossible to put down. My one qualm with it was that a traumatic event is brushed over rather quickly and I didn’t feel adequately addressed, but other than that I really loved Swamplandia! unabashedly. I’ve seen the words “quirky” banded about in other reviews, and “quirky” always seems to have some negative connotations. Not so here. The characters are odd, to be sure, but in their own strangely logical ways.

Recommended.

Emma Donoghue — Slammerkin

It came to Daffy then, how easily the worst in oneself could rise up and strike a blow. How even the most enlightened man had little power over his own darkness.

That quote alone, from the pages of Slammerkin, is a good, succinct summary of the book’s themes: a number of people each affected by their own darknesses. Set in 1763, this book follows the tribulations of Mary Saunders, a young girl whose desire for a red ribbon in a harlot’s hair sends her on a self-destructive path that will wreck her own life and the lives of those around her.

This is the kind of historical novel that I wish I could write. The prose reads both modern and grounded in the past, it flows beautifully, with the smallest observations making sentences so evocative, an unexpected turn of phrase making a reader stop and re-read (“Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth”). And in the book are so many different themes woven in cunningly into the story so that you don’t even notice so much while you’re reading, but only after you have time to consider the book as a whole: freedom of various sorts (Mary’s desire for liberty, while Abi, a slave, considers her not to be a free woman), beauty, ambition… it’s really masterful how Donoghue pulls it off so seamlessly.

It’s obvious that she’s done her historical research though again, the details are woven into the cloth of the story and don’t stand out obnoxiously. Together they give an extremely vivid picture of life in both London and Monmouth: the riotous chaos vs. the more staid but no less treacherous for it. Especially the story of Mary Saunders, based loosely on a real girl’s tragic tale. Mary in the book is a curious character: there’s a selfishness and violence to her, that was there before life turned hard–but one could also argue that even with her mother, life was hard for her. Mary is a girl who longs for beauty, stifled by the drab of her parents’ existence. Even though she has so many unsympathetic qualities, though, Donoghue manages to make her likable and even sympathetic: there but for the grace, etc. And she has a dry wit and an energy that is captivating even on the page. The other characters are, similarly, flawed but with tiny kernels of salvation, that are just ignored.

This is not a happy novel; it’s quite wrenching, but beautiful. I’m seriously envious that she could write a book like this, and also like Room, so totally different in voice and structure but both so beautiful and impressive in their own ways.

C. J. Sansom — Dissolution

Three weaknesses in one: English history, mystery novels, and the law. It seemed as though C. J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake novels were tailor-made for me, featuring the adventures of the titular character, a hunchbacked lawyer in the employ of Thomas Cromwell.

The first book of the series, Dissolution, is set during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the Catholic monasteries from 1536-1540. Shardlake is sent to the monastery at Scarnsea after the commissioner sent to attempt to convince the Abbott to surrender the grounds is murdered most brutally. Once arrived, Shardlake and his assistant, Mark, are plunged into a treacherous atmosphere where the murders continue and anyone in the closed community could be the killer. And Shardlake might be next.

Sansom is another lawyer turned author and of course I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for those guys. I thought generally it was quite a good debut; the historical research was done well and thoroughly, and he certainly had an eye for the small details that make period pieces believable. The mystery, too, was a twisty one, and I’m always pleased when I can’t figure out the killer but after the “reveal,” remember hints that if I’d been paying attention would’ve allowed me to get it. It’s not out of left field but it’s still a satisfying surprise.

It’s obviously a first novel and while the prose was mostly decent there was an obsession with detailing the weather on almost every chapter (sometimes multiple times per chapter) that was a bit of an amusing writing “tic”; similarly, some of the dialogue came across as stilted and somewhat unbelievable. That’s always a fine line to walk with medieval characters, you don’t want to make them sound so ridiculous as to be unbelievable, but using words and phrasing too modern and casual can throw you out of the story. It mostly worked, though there were a few instances where I rolled my eyes just a teeny bit (there were also a few redundancies and awkward descriptions).

What I enjoyed the most about Dissolution (besides the history!) was Shardlake himself. He’s a really interesting hero: flawed both physically and emotionally; introspective but blind to his own faults, and a clever and engaging narrator with a dry sense of humor that the reader can follow alongside. And just as the mystery concluded, Shardlake’s emotional epiphany at the end of the book was equally satisfying.

So while it wasn’t a perfect read I quite enjoyed it, and I’m happy I took out Dark Fire, the next book in the series, at the same time–so I won’t have to wait.

Jonathan L. Howard — Johannes Cabal the Detective

I know I had read and mostly enjoyed Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (although it was a while ago and for the life of me, I cannot remember anything about it, and it was too late to grab it from the library when I picked up this book). Luckily, although it does help to have some familiarity with the first volume, this sequel can also function as a stand-alone. Howard’s world is vaguely like our own (there are Englishmen and pork rinds, for one thing…) but different enough: the countries the character traipse through are all fictitious, there are zeppelins and vaguely steampunk explanations for their structure, and of course, magicians have the ability to raise the dead (as a rather hilarious scene involving a newly revived Emperor proves).

Picking up where Johannes Cabal the Necromancer left off, The Detective finds Cabal in Mirkarvia, a vaguely Germanic country known for its rare steaks and heavy beer, caught stealing a tome on necromancy. He escapes, of course, and ends up on a zeppelin, fleeing the country, where he just happens to run into Leonie Barrow, also en route out of Mirkarvia. While in the air, a murder occurs, followed by more suspicious circumstances: after Cabal investigates, an attempt is made on his life, and other dangerous happenings are afoot. It doesn’t help that the sociopathic Cabal is being his usual self, attempting to stay one step ahead of everyone else and escape with his life and as much money as possible.

The plot moves quickly and the mystery is intriguing, and Cabal is one of those rare characters who is totally unsympathetic but yet entertaining all the same. It’s an enjoyable, fluffy book with all of the ends tied up neatly. There are certain little touches in addition to the writing that I liked; the summaries of the chapter titles (i.e. “In which Death awaits and a Plot is Hatched”) are clever and reminiscent of Victorian novels; the little illustrations accompanying them are also cute. After every chapter is a chart depicting some kind of airship and accompanying explanations, in period-toned voice, providing some context and amusement.

Issues: while Howard is very funny, occasionally I found myself wishing that he would give it a rest. There were so many bons mots and snide narratorial asides that it was a little too much for me. While I laughed a few times, I was also taken out of the story–I found myself putting the book down and picking it up again many times. Also, this might be a ridiculous complaint, but I counted at least three uses of the phrase “hoi polloi,” which is at least two uses too many. It’s one of those things that is an interesting word choice the first time, and becomes successively more annoying any times following. It’s not common enough to go unnoticed and it’s not uncommon enough to justify using it quite that many times. A minor nitpick but something that stuck out.

Mark Charan Newton — Nights of Villjamur

I’m late to the party on this one, as I often am with fantasy… So I’m just adding another redundant voice talking about this book (hence the shorter review). Villjamur is the largest city at the heart of the Jamur Empire in a world that is settling in for another 50 year ice age. Jamur Rika is on her way back to the city after the death of her father, the Emperor. Her younger sister, Jamur Eir, is causing trouble on her own. Inspector Jeryd is investigating a mysterious murder… and at the heart of all of this are the undead, cultists, secret religions and conspiracies, and refugees crowding outside of the city, terrified of the impending Freeze.

It’s certainly a lot to absorb, but Newton has a lot of interesting ideas, and I liked that the world was so different–although Dying Earth isn’t a new concept, the impending icy freeze still felt fresh, and Villjamur had real character. The prose was a little awkward at times, but really readable at others–there was never anything so bad that I stopped reading (like that ‘best wetboy ever’ line in the Brent Weeks trilogy), but it does feel like there is some room for editing or improvement (dialogue, especially, was often redundant or stilted). Still, there were more than enough flashes of innovation, originality, and characters to keep it interesting, and piquing my interest in the rest of this series.

Brent Weeks — The Way of Shadows, Shadow’s Edge

I enjoyed The Black Prism so I went back and tried to read the Night Angel Trilogy. I say “tried to read” because I gave up about halfway through Shadow’s Edge. I think this is partially because Weeks has definitely matured as a writer since these books–there were phrases in them that set my teeth on edge. In a vaguely medieval world of assassins and thieves and high kings, seeing a phrase like “Durzo Blint was the best wetboy ever” just seemed out of place. Little things like that–phrases that were somehow a little off popped out at me constantly throughout the one and a half books that I read. The world building was not as developed as in The Black Prism; there were hints here and there, but with everything that was going on in the plot (and the plot was CONSTANTLY going) and the scattered nature of those hints, it was sometimes hard to build a coherent picture of the world of The Way of Shadows.

A brief plot summary for anyone who hasn’t heard of this trilogy (though I’m fairly sure most fantasy readers have). Azoth is a young “guild rat” (i.e. a street thief involved in the organized crime of the city of Cenaria), trapped in a hard, violent life. His ticket out is to apprentice himself to the legendary wetboy (a magical assassin) Durzo Blint, the best of the best. In the background of all of this is political intrigue of the most violent and deadly variety, a looming invasion by the villainous (almost cartoonishly so) Khalidor, and the threat, of course, that Azoth, now known as Kylar Stern, will lose everything he has come to hold dear.

I eventually just gave up because of the plot, though. It was certainly exciting, and with a lot of twists and turns, but the crushing misery and constant deaths of everyone involved in the book just turned me off. (Also, the love scenes were cringeworthy.) For all that there was talk of hope, it was hard to see any. And while I do enjoy “dark” plotting and depressing literature, by the middle of Shadow’s Edge, it almost just felt pointless to me. It’s frustrating because there were a lot of things about the trilogy that interested me, a lot of things that were a little cliche but well done anyway or with a little twist, but it just wasn’t enough to keep me reading. I’m looking forward to the next book in The Black Prism series, but I can’t say that I’ll be revisiting The Night Angel again.

Hans Fallada — Every Man Dies Alone

I’ve been reading this one slowly, not just because it’s fantastically well-written, but because it’s just extremely powerful and depressing and inspiring all at once. I don’t normally read books written by Germans under the Nazi regime, mostly because the dissidents were either killed or fled, and the remaining works are not something that I have any desire to delve into. I made an exception for Hans Fallada and I wasn’t disappointed.

Every Man Dies Alone depicts the actions of a few Germans living in the Nazi state; some of them clinging to the last shreds of their decency, some of them awful people to begin with. Anna and Otto Quangel are spurred to rebellion after their only son is killed in France, leaving little anti-Hitler postcards all around the town. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a supremely terrible idea–almost all of the cards end up in the hands of the Gestapo, and of course they are eventually caught–but it is their moral and spiritual journey that provide some small redemption both in themselves (and in the choices of some of the other characters), and, as Fallada attempts to depict, for post-Nazi Germany as well.

This is a book that I could only read in little spurts, because it so evocatively depicted the paranoia and terror that even “regular” Germans faced from all around them, and because you fear so for the decent people, that the creeping feelings of dread that intensify throughout the novel are almost overpowering. His scathing indictment of the regime and the types of men who support it is equally intense–you can feel his scorn burning through the pages. Fallada’s writing style, though conversational, occasionally sarcastic, has a flair for the poetic, with the simplest words and actions (particularly the continuing love between Otto and Anna) striking at the heart.

Just a really good, affecting book from a perspective I don’t often consider.

Henry Roth — An American Type

The Judge who teaches my Evidence class caught sight of the cover of this book and got excited. “Roth?” he asked. “Not Philip,” I clarified. We talked a little bit about the two Roths; I told him about Call it Sleep and admitted that I’d never really liked Philip Roth. The Judge laughed and said that it was probably a generational thing. And to some extent I think he’s right–I’ve always enjoyed reading books by and about other Jewish people; there’s a certain familiarity to them even when I’ve never picked up that author before. Philip Roth, though–reading his books is sort of like the literary equivalent of the reaction I get when I see something embarrassing on TV or in a movie–cringe-inducing, empathetic embarrassment and the urge to run.

Anyway, enough of that detour about Other Roth. Henry Roth’s first novel, Call it Sleep, is justifiably a classic of immigrant and New York literature, a behemoth recounting of a confused and disturbing childhood written in torrents of lyricism, almost flagellatingly confessional. It was his first novel, published in 1934, and then a 25 year silence until he published Nature’s First Green, then a “composite” in the late 80s, then the four volume Mercy of a Rude Stream in the mid 90s. He died in 1995, and then the manuscript for An American Type was discovered in 2005. Quite a story in itself, but then again Roth’s life story has always been the foundation of his own work–Mercy picks up where Call it Sleep left off, and An American Type continues Mercy.

Ira Stigman, Roth’s alter ego, is living with his older lover, a poet and a teacher, in New York City in 1938, and suffering from intense writers’ block after the publication of his first novel four years previously. He goes to a retreat in upstate New York in an attempt to jump start his writing, and there he meets M., blonde, cool, WASPy, his total opposite. She is a talented pianist and their unlikely romance forms the thrust of the book. It’s a surprisingly sweet romance, given what Roth wrote of his childhood in previous novels, and his own neurotic leanings. The two of them, both passionate in their own ways, balance each other perfectly.

In the meantime, however, there is the Great Depression to contend with; and with Edith, his former paramour and teacher–she doesn’t take Roth’s defection well, and in his stilted dealings with her we see another honest, unpleasant side of his personality. His trip across the United States, in a beat up Model A and even trainhopping, forms another quest to find an American identity in any way that he can. To be honest, however, the parts I enjoyed most were the prologues and the epilogues, in which Ira is an old man dealing with the loss of his beloved M.–these were the parts where all of the tricks were stripped from the writing, where the pained lyricism really came out, even in the small details of their relationship. The small things that an elderly couple is confronted with in the last days of their lives.

It’s a fitting coda to a turbulent life.

Emma Donoghue — Room

Somewhat exhausting to read, Emma Donoghue’s Room (the first of her books that I’ve read but certainly not the last!) is the story of five-year-old Jack and his Ma, a closely knit little family unlike most others… for Jack’s father, who he calls “Old Nick,” has imprisoned Ma in an 11×11 shed that is the only world Jack has ever known, the titular Room.

The novel’s narrator is Jack, and the fact that Donoghue has given him such a believable and unique voice is one of the book’s real triumphs. Jack has known only the room, and only Ma, for his entire short life, and sometimes his words reflect that. They are mostly correct, and he knows vocabulary beyond his years like omnivore, but with the added layers of in-jokes and isolation, sometimes it almost seems like he’s speaking a different language. It’s another way to view, obliquely, the reality of the situation: we hear Ma’s words filtered through Jack’s perception. For him, Room is a comforting place, with toys made of broken eggshells, a track to run around the bed, and friends like Meltedy Spoon to keep him company. To Ma, however, looking up through Skylight only serves to remind her of the freedom that is just out of reach.

Old Nick is a truly vile character, and even though Jack doesn’t understand quite how bad he is, the reader cringes whenever he enters Room, or finding out that he has surrounded the ground underneath the shed with wire fencing, so that Ma can’t even dig her way out.

It’s not really a spoiler to say that the first half of the book takes place in Room, but the major concern is Ma and Jack’s adjustment to the outside world when they do eventually escape. It’s heartbreaking to see Jack reacting so intensely to simple things like rain, bright lights, and stairs. The main concern of the novel is rebuilding, even with the broken and imperfect (but still mostly loving) relationships that Ma had with her family before she was kidnapped. And even characters like Leo the “step grandpa,” whom Ma writes off at the beginning, have their own insight (maybe more so than even Ma and her own mother) into what Jack needs in order to grow past his ordeal. Ma herself is a wonderfully complicated character, damaged by her ordeal but resilient in her love for and desire to protect her son.

All in all I have never quite read a book like this one, and I was really impressed at the way in which Donoghue managed to pull everything together. While some moments might have seemed to stretch one’s disbelief, the human feeling at the heart of all of it was spot on.

Thomas Harris — The Silence of the Lambs

Reading this is nothing new but it’s still as spine-tingling as it was when it was first published. Thomas Harris might not be a world-class author but he definitely knows how to create some memorable characters.

The plot of The Silence of the Lambs is so well known by now (thanks partially to the excellent movie adaptation) that it almost doesn’t seem worth it to outline. A serial killer known as Buffalo Bill is hunting young women. Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a famous cannibal psychiatrist, is trapped in a secure mental institution with the loathsome Dr. Chilton. Jack Crawford is an FBI agent attempting to hunt down Buffalo Bill before he can kill his next victim, and his protege Clarice Starling might be the key to getting Lecter to talk, giving them some information they can use to catch the killer.

Again, Harris’ writing isn’t anything special. The prose is serviceable occasionally evocative, but mostly form follows function here. What is special are the characters. Obviously there are few villains quite so well-known as Dr. Lecter, and for good reason–he’s a chillingly creepy creation, a cultured, urbane aesthete who can also rip your face off as quickly as you get within range. But it’s Clarice Starling that really made me appreciate this book the first time I read it–she’s a pretty fantastic creation as well, a a believable male-written female law enforcement agent (sadly rare). But her combination of bravery, smarts, and caring make her an appealing, sympathetic protagonist.

The psychology of the profilers is meticulously researched and maybe stretching belief a little bit, but it works in the context of the story. A classic thriller for good reason.