BOOK REVIEW: A Drink Before War by Dennis Lehane (1994)

** Stars

Oh Dennis Lehane. How people like your books. I have to tell you I am a bit on the fence. I'll start with the good, as always, and move onto the other stuff.

Structure of the plot is really good. I enjoyed this in the movie Gone, Bay Gone as well. The false ending that wraps up the current action in a nagging yet continuous manner halfway through the book is great. It makes the third act a lot more interesting and focused. It also helped escalate the “what’s going to happen next” factor as well as show that there is more than one way to skin a cat in terms of plot devices. It shows forethought, care and a genuine interest in the art of storytelling.

As well as being a well-considered plot structure I also liked the compactness of the storyline. It did not seem like you were trying to overreach in this novel, your first published,  that you wrote when you were about 29 years old. Far out, you even one the Shamus Award in 1995 for this one.

You paid homage to genre. There was the damsel in distress who was also a bit of a femme fatale. There were all kinds of bad guys and a blurring between where the law began and where it ended. I enjoyed the headquarters being placed in church. On that note I think you got some good mileage out of that in terms of alluding to the culture of Boston as well as giving us a unique and interesting spin on private-dick conventions.

What else was in the mix? Deadpan, masculine confidence and dialogue. Check. Shoot outs. Check. Anti-heroes. Corruption on the mean streets, protagonist living hard while still possessing an eccentric yet sophisticated automobile. Check. All likeable, all well considered.You are never under any threat of being called pretentious.

BOOK REVIEW: Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (1956)

***** Stars

Palace Walk is easily one of the best, most uniquely written, books I have read this year and - no doubt - in my life. While I did not feel I was left with an in-depth understanding of Egyptian culture after reading this I was left with a picture of the tensions existing across familial and local relationships. At the heart of this book is an indictment against patriarchy and the way it was practiced in Cairo during the 1950s. This charge is then placed against the slippery issue of character and an individuals struggle to stand up for what they believe in.

Even though this is a relatively long read the narrative is essentially a micro plot that establishes itself around episodes involving each member of the family. What unifies each episode is the protagonist of the story called Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad. As the father his influence on each member of the family is total. Most of the time it is his influence as an oppressive, autocratic disciplinarian. This "ruling" of his family colours their thoughts and decisions constantly but not invariably. One of the major plot points is Yasin’s veneration of his father’s secret, hedonistic, lifestyle. Yasin is presented as a callow individual who never grows up. A corollary of this is that he is one of the only people in the family that truly respects their father. Yasin spends his life attempting to live up to his father’s pleasure seeking ways, though not his discipline.

BOOK REVIEW: Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales (2005)

** Stars

Boy, is Deep Survival an up-and-down ride. There are periods of uninterrupted travelling and the view out the window looks pretty good. The problem is that just as you get comfortable you find yourself in a different vehicle in different terrain and then before you know it you are suddenly thrust into another situation in another mode of transport. It is all over the show and in the end the lack of continuity spoils the trip.

Besides the bumpy journey there is plenty to like about this book. Unpacking the idea of “survival” and looking for universal truths is a great idea. I cannot imagine the world becoming an easier place to live so more of this can only be a good thing. Not only that, the idea of survival – for those of us who have not had to go through that hardship – is very romantic. This is a fun place to escape. Down rivers, through snow and jungles, out to sea and hurtling through the sky in an aeroplane. Gonzales takes us through all of these places and more. And I am not ashamed to acknowledge that the Boy’s Own tone, and the will of Deep Survival’s heroes, is enthralling. No matter how grim things get the author does a great job outlining the odd’s they were facing. These descriptions make you admire them as well as what we as humans can live through. 

BOOK REVIEW: Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)

**1/2 Stars

It is with zero satisfaction that I have discovered that Neuromancer is not particularly good. I’ll speculate and say that the advent of post-modernism has allowed this book - which is very big on ideas and very short on execution - to be given the attention that is has. The narrative is barely coherent and I found it a slog to get through despite its meagre 320 pages.  A mixture of genius and playful but abstruse musings. Basically, POMO. I say all this in the context of William Gibson’s own acknowledgement that producing this book was barely an enjoyable experience. He felt he was an emerging writer and the life of the book post-production surprised him. It went on to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award and the Hugo Award. 

I appreciate Gibson's thoughts on this book and give him a lot of respect for his honesty. I will also fess up and let you know that I am being a hypocrite by saying this. I have little patience for authors who try to justify themselves after a work is published. Michael Crichton’s defending of Rising Sun is an especially good example of this. The work needs to stand alone and for Crichton and Gibson this is not the case for either of these books. Nonetheless, Gibson’s reflections are imbued with humbleness and a grappling to understand what Neuromancer is and what is has meant to him while Crichton’s responses always seemed strident and didactic.

BOOK REVIEW: Plunder the Sun by David Dodge (1950)

***

Plunder the Sun is great title, you have to admit it. David Dodge also has a book called It Ain’t Hay which is also excellently named. Furthermore, I should not overlook that he wrote To Catch a Thief. Had I known I that I probably would not have picked this up.

But not to worry because this is pulp writing as it was – probably – intended.  The story has the scope of a 45 minute TV mystery and a page count to match. There are contrasting South American locations that provide the backdrop to the mystery of an antique smuggling job which inevitably leads to something much bigger. It is also peppered with characters getting guns pulled on them and others being violently assaulted. 

The brevity of the story is genuinely well matched to the novella style of the story; the plot is purposeful and Dodge gets on with the action, never wasting a page. On the negative side of the ledger I will say that his prose are flat, some of his Spanish grammatically incorrect, there is the suggestion that Quechua is a dead language which is patently untrue and his dialogue somewhat derivative. For instance, this line “I took her arm. She went for my eyes with the stiff fingers again, quick as a cat.” But this lack of flair is compensated for by the tidiness of the plot. I am happy to speculate that Dodge is a disciplined writer with a strong handle on self-editing. 

There is a good cast of characters, everyone an anti-hero except for the women who are treated very poorly throughout. I would have to read more Dodge to get a bead on this but it did feel as though this was a subtext to the story. Plunder the Sun actually ends with the most significant female character in the book choosing her own destiny and going off into the world by herself instead of opting with to be with the now wealthy protagonist. Given the decade this book was written in (i.e. five years before the Civil Rights movement), combined with the genre this seems like an uncommon note to end on and one which I like. 

Don’t get me wrong, Dodge is still a man of his times and there are plenty of bald things to criticize here also, but he deserves a modicum of credit too. There is an investment in the character development up until the very end. Without being too mawkish Dodge leaves Glenn Ford with some money in his pocket and an absence of Love in his life.

BOOK REVIEW: River God by Wilbur Smith (1993)

*** Stars

Right away I was appalled by this book. The tone is far too juvenile. The goodies are principled to a fault and there is a preternatural hero. There are villains. We are given made-for-TV deathbed scenes thrown up against an idealised Egyptian backdrop and basted with historical facts. I was getting eye strain from rolling my eyes.

Following the first 90 pages either his writing got marginally better or I settled into this style of storytelling. The 662 pages were not too long and I hand it to Smith, River God is a very entertaining adventure story. There is undoubtedly an art to writing an adventure story. While it may privilege spectacle over disinterested observation that is not a sound premise for saying this approach to writing is without merit. Or to put it plainly, being entertaining is a difficult thing to do so that deserves to be acknowledged also.

In my reading of River God the tale is kept interesting by (1) following a unique and cleverly designed narrator (2) sound world building with a diverse range of focuses and (3) a long second act that kills its darlings but doesn’t stack the odds so high that it becomes tedious and overcooked.

On the first point Smith’s narrator - ‘Taita’ the eunuch and devoted servant – is a genius and narcissist in equal parts. With his status of a slave we get to see the horrors of the age acted out on his body and his peers. With his servitude we get to develop empathy towards him and the main supporting characters. His narcissism allows for some gags and inside observations between the author and the reader and his genius leads to an array of situations which end up holding the whole story together. Actually, his extraordinary genius is comparable to the utility belt of Adam West-era Batman. Need a prophecy? Talk to Taita. Need some healing? Go see Taita. Need to escape from an impossible situation? I know just the guy, he can do it all.

To hold our interest through all this Smith produces a smorgasbord of situations and environments. On top of that he then provides us with many ways of observing that moment. Sometimes he will pull back the camera and we will be looking at the city or the desert, then he will contrast that image with well articulated actions like a sword fight or the expression on someone’s face changing. That will then be contrasted against a conversation overheard between characters and then developed further by a set piece where multiply characters are acting out there motivations in a romanticised setting. That level of detail could be followed by  an internalised observation by Taita and then we will be sent across time and space to another idealized, panoramic setting.

This is top notch world building as it requires the writer to keep shifting his gaze and exercising his imagination on different types of detail. This is all taking place against the adventure plot and the spinning plates that go along with that brand of storytelling. This is an entertaining style of writing and might even be an explanation for his ordinary prose.

This approach to world building serves Smith best in the end of the second act of this story which is very, very long. The three acts of this book are built around Taita completing a prophecy for the queen. But because of his commitment to building the world of the Diasporas Egyptians it never gets boring. For hundreds of pages they are essentially roaming around in subplots. This should be a tiresome but instead it is just plain fun.

Yes, I actually like this book. I almost want to give it four stars. I enjoyed these characters and their grand adventure and while I will not read another Smith book for a long time I will definitely consider him again. I have enjoyed discovering that escapist fiction has its merits beyond the distraction value. I should thank Smith for that lesson as well as the more plain fact that I clearly like adventure for adventures sake.

BOOK REVIEW: Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse (1927)

***1/2 Stars

I really like Hermann Hesse which is why it is a shame that I read Steppenwolf directly after Goldmund and Narziss. My own predilections got in the way of fully enjoying this book. The entire time I was reading Steppenwolf I kept battling with the feeling of 'didn’t I just come from here?' That is not to say that Hesse is a hack, obviously not. It’s just the motifs are all the same. As a reader I can't read Slaughter House Five and then Cat’s Cradle consecutively. Or Post Office and then Factotum. Or Valis and then The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I'm fickle.

Anyway, the similarities in Steppenwolf and Goldmund and Narziss range from the themes of duality and compliment, modernity and coming of age as well as his usual concerns about sex and death. All of this is told in a style which oscillates between a conversational tone and philosophical, flowery digression.

What is different about this book is that there is also some very literate prose and a progressive plot structure (i.e. a story within a story, surrealist touches and faux-academic pontificating). Almost as though Hesse wanted to make sure people knew he could write in a sophisticated, modern style. A “for the record” comment to his peers? 

The other concern present here is existential suffering. Even though I was not inside the text as much as I would like I was still touched by the way Hesse wrestled with the classic existential motif of 'the absurdity of life.' I believed he was genuinely caught up in this dilemma and authentically brought to life the tension between introspection and the job of getting on with living your life. Hesse strongly presented this dilemma and it was made all the more moving by the biographical nature of the book.

To cap all that off the ending was also solid. Just like Siddhartha and Goldmund and Narziss there is a logical ending which looks back on where the protagonist has been. So even though I did not enjoy reading Steppenwolf my respect for Hesse is intact. The book starts out with a discussion about dealing with suicidal ideation ("All suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide.") and ends with the protagonist proudly offering himself to an executioner (for atonement) which only leads to him being lampooned ("Of course! When it’s a question of anything stupid and pathetic and devoid of humour and wit, you’re the man"). This is Hesse putting his foot down and saying it is always better to go on despite yourself. And most of all, not to take it all so seriously even though all our lives we tell ourselves that being heavy is the correct way to act.

BOOK REVIEW: Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse (1930)

***** Stars

I bought this book over ten years ago. For seven of those years it was misplaced and I only just discovered it – much to my amusement – in a box in my mother’s garage. I have only read Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha previously and enjoyed the succinctness of that book and its message about the profundity of listening but was underwhelmed by the prose and the perfunctory approach to plotting. Both this book and Siddhartha are peripatetic and in the bildungsroman tradition but Narziss and Goldmund is written at least seven years later and has a sense of wonder and adventure that Siddhartha lacked.

Reading enjoyment aside the protagonist Goldmund is infallible in his chosen pursuits and this I found irksome. While there are plenty of conflicts he never seems hampered by any external forces in his quest. He wants to sleep with lots of women and immediately he is capable of sleeping with lots of women. He wants to become a master carver and from the beginning of that journey he already has the soul of an artist inscribed on his person and which his teacher acknowledges immediately.  He kills a man and while he has a moment of angst he is largely unaffected by the experience despite him being a character of feminine energy and prone to “feelings” rather than “thoughts”.

This, for all intents and purposes, can be referred to as the Harry Potter Syndrome. J.K. Rowling’s stories include scenes which make her supposedly humble character of little standing acknowledged as great without ever having to do anything (“There's no need to call me sir Professor”). I do not see the subtext to either of these stories being about the Pygmalion effect and as such find the profuse praise of the protagonist as meritless. Or put another way: contrary to the point of a coming of age story.

But Hesse is a scholarly writer and this bildungsroman is written for philosophical purposes. To focus too much on his treatment of the protagonist would be heavy handed. This story is told in episodes and each is a meditation on the oppositions in our lives. Oppositions which are simultaneously at-odds, dependent and fundamental. This story is about the struggle between the feminine and the masculine, extraversion versus introversion, dancing and feeling versus thinking and acting. The left-hand-side of the brain versus the right-hand-side.

And to articulate these sentiments you can bet uses some pretty fruity prose. For example, “Ah, the white gleam of that full-lipped smile of dying summer, around whose eyes the nameless, heavy sheen of death had played like moonbeams or autumn wind!” Can you stand it? Personally I do not usually go in for writing that is this flowery but Hesse pulls it off. For all its lyrical similes and big ideas this is a very masculine piece of writing and very entertaining. He manages this by using simple language most of the time and not staying on one idea for too long. Goldmund is constantly on the move, on a road trip, and it recalls contemporary stories like Into the Wild. Like that story this one shares a tragic and modern ending that I found both refreshing and moving. Dude, did I mention that this book is - like - 80 years old?

BOOK REVIEW: Night Without End by Alistair Maclean (1958)

**1/2 Stars

Alistair MacLean is not a good writer but he's OK at genre concept. This story is a survivalist murder-mystery. He is also a writer I have had a love affair with for years. He’s a guy who was commercially successful in his time only to have an unimpressive life in the reprints circuit. To be fair MacLean is not a terrible writer but the fact that there was never one Great Novel by him also tells you something. While his prose are frequently tight and engrossing they are also prone to inconsistent execution and repetition. And on top of all that he was egregiously unoriginal. Hitchcock promoted self-mimicry to support his own body of work but for MacLean the notion won’t float; he simply lacked the finessing. 

And MacLean didn’t only copy himself either. To get away from the maritime theme prevalent in his previous works Night Without End presents a cast straight out of an Agatha Christie novel and utilizes a cold, snow affected environment to further echo her style. There is a boxer, a pompous aristocrat, an actor, a self-effacing nurse, a priest, a trusty sidekick and a hyper-instinctual dog called Balto. OK, that last character is more like something out of boys adventure than a Christie plot but the ensemble cast and “not-everyone is what they seem to be” approach surely is.

Nonetheless, it should also be acknowledged that Maclean had no ambition to be a literary giant and I have always been happy to look past his hackneyed storylines. Especially in the ones written in the first person. His antagonists are frequently cartoonish and the protagonists always amusing, hyper-masculine, stoic and quick to express how insensitive they are at every turn. But there is also plenty of evocative description, too. For instance this line, “Tonight its desolate threnody boomed and faded, boomed and faded in the lower registers of sound with an intensity which I had seldom heard, while its fingers plucked at the tightly strung guy ropes of the radio antenna […] to provide its own whistling obbligato of unearthly music.” Pretty lyrical, especially since this is supposed to be the thoughts of a grizzled man’s-man.

The first person approach used in Night Without End also helps soften the silliness of the situations arrived at. For instance the coldness of the environment and its effect on the cast is employed throughout the story. We begin with descriptions of inhuman levels of coldness and it quickly becomes difficult for MacLean ratchet this threat up. Not that this stops him from trying. This is where the trick of a first person narrative works its magic. We don’t need the protagonist to be reliable, we just need him to be human. And what is more human than a bit of hyperbole and a lack of perspective?

In the end that was MacLean’s problem as a writer. He was far too human. Who knows what led MacLean to be so inconsistent. Maybe it was his drinking? I do wonder. There are many great moments in his books that hint that he could have been an exceptional genre-author. It is these moments - and his pulp approach to writing - that allow me to ignore his choice of characters, over-the-top-masculinity and ludicrous plot complications. Night Without End finishes with a perfect example of him being almost brilliant but ultimately delivering a terrible choice as a writer. We are momentarily given a 'what would you do?' passage that the reader should have been left hanging with. Instead he opts for a heavy handed Old Testament finale. A shame.

BOOK REVIEW: Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (1985)

*** 1/2 Stars

Fiction dubbed transgressional has been around for a while. Jean Genet got started back in the 1940s and then there is Henry Miller and of course Hubert Selby Junior, to name a few. So shocking people and challenging what we might call morals is nothing new. Brett Easton Ellis started his foray into this genre when he was only 21 with Less Than Zero. And it is this issue of maturity that colours many readers view of the book.

Personally, I have a bifurcated view on that issue. In this book there is clear evidence that he was working from a well-considered set of rules when he began writing. For instance, his sentences are short and clean and he avoids the use of adjectives to describe anything. Given that this is a book that is written in the first person this is an impressive feat. More importantly, this austere approach accentuates the protagonist’s soulless view of the world. In terms of well-considered prose I give him credit where credit is due. It's also very readable. How many people have started this book and not finished it? I'll bet dollars to donuts the ratio is exceptional.

On the other hand you cannot look past the content which is, simply put, confronting. I believe that readers end up disliking the book because of the hollowness of the characters that fill this world and I tend to agree myself. For me it is a contradiction in terms to create a work of fiction that so single minded in its vision. There is no sense of wonder here, just a description of feckless people who are prisoners to wealth, a small world view, instant gratification and its corollary addictions. There is not a single moment when the author asks us to feel sorry for these people. On the contrary the characters become increasingly profligate as the story unfolds. It is all one-way traffic.

Bottom line, I take this book as an inevitable and therefore an acceptable entry into popular culture. One of the charms of the 1980s, the period in which Less Than Zero is set, is that we embrace it for its garish fashion and unrestrained materialism. This combined with our affinity for the music of the era means there is a cartoon sensibility to everything related to the 1980s. In amongst all this someone was going to write at least one (if not a hundred) book of transgressional fiction about such an era. In my my mind it may as well have been an angry 21 year old who had a passion for concept and writing. Add to this that Ellis is clearly drawing on his own life experience to some degree or another I feel that Less Than Zero is a solid entry. 

BOOK REVIEW: Hotel by Arthur Hailey (1965)

**** Stars

I picked this book up for twenty cents at a second hand store in Te Aroha. All of Arthur Hailey’s books were in the shelf and were likable editions from the 1970s. Hailey's formula for storytelling is to study an industry and then write a human drama around that corner of the world.  To create this type of fiction he uses social observation, research and various genres including love story, disaster, procedural and mystery. This one is about a New Orleans hotel in the 1960s

In doing so, having this mixed bag approach, Hailey is surprisingly successful. Especially as this story is literally about the service industry. The experience is like stepping into a time machine with the narrative being influenced by the big issues of the era (most notably the Civil Rights Movement). By now you might be wondering how this story could possibly be interesting. At one point he is discussing how cooking fat could be going rancid well before its use-by-date. 
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Sounds ridiculous, right? Nonetheless, because of the dated tone of the book, the unremarkable prose and well-ordered telling of the story the end result is something suitably quaint. Hotel is tightly written and nothing ever gets away from the author. He does not linger on any part of the story for too long and maintains a balance between slice of life vignettes and the dramatic subplots. All of these elements are made plausible, not by wholly original characters, but by well-considered relationships between the characters. Sometimes he is a little too didactic with the vignettes but those moments are forgiven when you are quickly in a new scene and tensions between characters are being played out. For instance, the moment when the hotel thief unwittingly steals $15,000 while in a room pilfering another item. This scene is an enjoyable moment that leads to further dilemmas about greed, opportunity and unexpected pain for other characters that all fits within the logic of the story.

On a less likable side is the protagonist Peter McDermott who appears to be a cypher of Hailey himself. McDermott is pro-civil rights and Hailey puts him in a “realistic” moment where he is unable to be heroic in the face of bald racism (which must be acknowledged as appropriate, disinterested storytelling). Then on the other hand Hailey still refers to African Americans as Negroes and those characters are rarely given names like other - inconsequential, white - characters. Worst of all is when McDermott goes into the hotel basement furnace and describes the man working there. Embarrassingly, Hailey tells us how the man looked upon "McDermott" as a deity because he is the only man to have ever taken the time to come see him.

In the final assessment Hailey fills this story with a lot of characters and a lot of detail. By really caring about the way his characters interact with each other, combined with his methodical approach to writing, he manages to pull together this strange brew of genre and industry minutiae that you would not think you could possibly find interesting. Hotel is entertaining and unlike any other book I have ever read, to the author’s credit.

BOOK REVIEW: Moghul by Alan Savage (1991)

** Stars

Alan Savage is but one of the pseudonyms of writer Christopher Nicole. He is ludicrously prolific with over 200 books to his name(s). If you think that quality would be a secondary concern, for someone who writes at such a pace, then you would be right. In this book a British blood line (the Blunt’s) is used to take a violent and lusty tiki-tour through the Moghul Empire.

However this tiki-tour has more in common with the Fist of the North Star than the sophistication of a James Clavell story which is also written in the historical-adventure genre. Moghul is very readable but absurd, it is gratuitous put not explicit. Each episode is based on one of five generations of Blunt’s rise and fall within a great army. These stories, despite the centuries of history covered, are almost all indistinguishable from each other and focus on the protagonist having sexual relations, almost dying from various external forces, befriending an up and coming leader and becoming a mighty warrior. Meanwhile, the enemy - as well as people around the protagonist - are vertically impaled and woman are raped and/or “pleasured” sexually. All of this occurs in a sweeping manner and there is little detail about such titillating events.

To Savage’s credit he does have an easy writing style and, despite himself, creates some satisfying dilemmas. For example, in one episode the protagonist takes a European woman to be his wife in an effort to save her life. In doing so the protagonist, who is now of mixed ethnicities, becomes caught between the culture of the Moghul that he has grown up in and the expectations of the West. He finds he has no true place in any culture. It should also be acknowledged that Savage is not precious about his characters. He always draws the protagonists as anti-heroes and is happy to kill them off in a couple of sentences.

In the final assessment this book could have been set on Mars and had the same effect; the history behind Moghul is inconsequential. The only reason it is set in the Moghul Empire is that it appeals to Savage’s own preoccupations. In this regard it is clear he is having fun and this inevitably extends to the reader. Ultimately though, this is a silly book that has little to recommend it beyond the over-the-top soft-core violence and sex.

How to start a book club

Once you have a solid group of people together, it's time to set some guidelines for your group.

• Decide on a process for choosing books you will read.
• Make it clear to members that they are expected to plan their schedule around your set time, not vice versa.
• While the living room is the obvious choice for a place to meet, you should also consider such places as a library, restaurant, or community center.
• If the book club is small at first, don't worry about it. Invite people as you go. Some people will be more likely to join an already established book club.