The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng

US release:
Weinstein, 2012
9781602861800
352 pp


First and foremost, I would like to thank Ed at Myrmidon for taking pity on me and sending me a copy of Garden of Evening Mists, and I'd like to thank Tan Twan Eng for emailing me and bucking up my spirits when all the pb shop nonsense was going on.   The edition pictured to the left is the US edition; I received the UK edition pictured below:

9781905802494, Myrmidon Books, 2012

I finished the book the week before last, but last week my house was in an uproar and just chaotic over the death of my best friend's mother, so I never got the chance to set down my thoughts about it. Life is starting to settle down again so here we go.

A few years back, Tan Twan Eng's novel The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and I remember thinking how very not cool it was  that it didn't go on to make the shortlist. That was the year that Anne Enright won for her The Gathering, which I didn't really care for; it was also the year I was introduced to the work of Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and Lloyd Jones (Mister Pip), two authors whose novels I've really come to like.  When I read The Gift of Rain that year, I definitely hoped it wouldn't be the last I saw of its author, so this year I was happily surprised to see his newest on both the Booker longlist and then the shortlist. Frankly, I would have bought it anyway even if it had not made it as a judges' selection.

 As the story begins, Yun Ling Teoh has just retired as a judge on Kuala Lumpur's Supreme Court after serving for fourteen years.  The sole survivor of imprisonment in a Japanese camp at the age of nineteen, after the war was over she worked for a time with the War Crimes Tribunal, and she received her law degree before returning to Malaya to work as a Deputy Public Prosecutor.  Now she is making her way back to the mountain highlands after a long time away to the home bequeathed to her by a once former gardener to the Japanese emperor, Nakamura Aritomo.  The home and its surrounding gardens are called  Yugiri -- "Evening Mists."  She is there to meet with an historian who is interested in Aritomo's woodblock prints and other works of art, but she also has plans to fully restore the Garden of Evening Mists.  Yun Ling is suffering from oncoming aphasia, which will eventually wipe out her memories.  As she notes,

"I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void. Once I lose all ability to communicate with the world outside myself, nothing will be left but what I remember. My memories will be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide. In time they will become submerged, inaccessible to me. The prospect terrifies me. For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.”

When she relays her fears to a long-time friend, he convinces her that she should write down everything, and so she begins to record all of her memories.  Her story begins in her twenties, when she makes her way to Aritomo, who lives next to the tea plantation owned by friends of Yun Ling's family.  She has come to ask Aritomo  to fulfill her now-dead sister's dream and create a garden dedicated to her memory, but Aritomo refuses. Instead, he  makes Yun Ling an unprecedented offer: he will take her on as apprentice until the return of the monsoon.  Despite her ongoing, intense hatred for the Japanese, the beauty of Aritomo's work at Yugiri leads her to accepts his offer.  While she works with Aritomo, they slowly begin to discover that despite their differences, they have a great deal  in common other than gardens.  Her account of the past winds its way through the Japanese occupation of Malaya which led to Yun Ling's imprisonment in a Japanese prison camp, the sister she left behind, the ongoing hope of nationalists for the country's independence from the British, and  the communists who are attacking plantation owners during the Malayan Emergency. It all adds up to an unforgettable story of  two very different people who have carried their ghosts around with them for years -- and what they discover about themselves and each other in the Garden of Evening Mists.  It is also a story about memory and forgetting, loss, guilt and survival.

There is so much to love about this book, especially  in Tan Twan Eng's descriptions.    As Yun Ling explores the garden, she discovers Aritomo's focus on the ancient art of "Shakkei," or "borrowed scenery," and the reader is right there along with her. Through the author's descriptions, the reader, like Yun Ling and other visitors to Yugiri, is invited to stop at different points of the garden to appreciate the perfect framing of the sea or the turning of a waterwheel, or even to ponder the distance between stones.

Kyoto garden which "borrows" Mt. Hiei in the background.

  But it's not just in Aritomo's garden where the richness of place comes alive -- the jungles, the tea plantations, the beautiful homes with their wide verandahs, the villages, even the  prison camp hidden somewhere in the mountains  -- the author makes them all real so that at times it's easy to imagine hearing the sound of birds or to feel the lush grass beneath your feet.

The characters are also carefully constructed.  The pasts surrounding Yun Ling and Aritomo are uncovered little by little, creating an aura of mystery around their characters. But there is also something to love about what is not in this story: there is never any sort of apology from Aritomo to Yun Ling regarding the abuses she and her sister suffered at the hands of the Japanese; and it is clear from the outset that there has never been any kind of forgiveness from Yun Ling.  There is also no perfection in the characters; instead they are shown to be human with their flaws and vulnerabilities, even as the reader follows them throughout their individual transformations.

There are many reviews of this novel that point to a number of formulaic similarities between this book and The Gift of Rain -- and there might be a little something to this idea, and there are places where the book gets fluffy in terms of writing style, but in the end it just doesn't matter. I'll leave the critiques of mechanics, style, and other elements to the experts, but from a casual reader's perspective,  Garden of Evening Mists is an elegant book with an incredible woman at its center. It is certainly the most emotionally powerful of the books (read so far) on this year's Booker Prize shortlist, but whether it wins or not, it is definitely one not to miss. 

Chinaman, by Shehan Karunatilaka

9780224091459
Jonathan Cape, 2011 (UK)
397 pp.
(hardcover)



There is a Sinhalese expression "Konde bandapu cheena," which translates as "ponytailed Chinaman,"  and connotes someone gullible -- someone who will believe anything.   A "Chinaman" in cricket terms is (according to Wikipedia) "a left-handed bowler bowling wrist spin (left arm unorthodox). For a right-handed batsman, the ball will move from the off side to the leg side (left to right on the TV screen). "  The question asked by the narrator of this novel is this:

"Is this a story about a pony-tailed Chinaman bowler? Or a tale to tell a pony-tailed Chinaman? That is for you to decide." 

Whatever your choice may be after finishing this novel, Chinaman is one of the best novels I've read so far this year.  I know jack about cricket, which features heavily throughout the story; no surprise there, considering Americans are far more involved in football, baseball and basketball.  Strangely enough, my lack of knowledge was not a drawback in any form.  The mix of Sri Lankan history, contemporary politics, humor, the characters and the author's prose all come together to make this book an unforgettable experience.

"There is nothing more inspiring than a solid deadline," notes  retired Sri Lankan  journalist WG Karunasena,  and after a long career of both sportswriting and serious drinking, he has been given  his last one.  His doctor has given him about a year to live if he does not stop drinking;  if WG  cuts down to two drinks a day, maybe a year or two at most.  He decides that it's a good time to do a "halfway decent documentary on Sri Lankan cricket", and is obsessed with a cricket player named Pradeep Mathew, who he says, is Sri Lanka's all-time best cricketer.  Mathew was a "top spinner...," "Chinaman, googly, top spinner and that amazing arm ball that god rid of the Aussie captain."   Along with his friend and fellow cricket fanatic  Ari Byrd, WG begins to gather information on Mathew, who has long-since disappeared from the cricket scene, official records  and also from Sri Lanka, seemingly vanishing into thin air.   As they start the documentary project, which will later evolve into a book project for WG, they run into several people who claim to know something about Mathew, and they run into others who do not want WG to go any further with the project. Is there some conspiracy at work here?  As WG and Ari embark on their at times rather strange quest, WG's obsession with Mathew and his discussions about the game of cricket become a vehicle for exploring Sri Lankan politics and history, and life in contemporary Sri Lankan society.  

But there are other considerations at work in this novel as well, both on and off the cricket field  -- relationships within families;  friendships;  politics and money that get in the way of sportsmanship;  old age; the sadness and regret of wasted lives; the inescapable power plays --  all presented in a style that fits well into the story without ever getting overly preachy.   There's WG's old nemesis, once a rival for WG's wife Sheila, who may or may not have had six fingers and who  may or may not have been Mathew's school coach ; a midget who claims to have had an underground bunker and to have secretly taped damning conversations on the cricket field; a friend  of WG who may or not be a pedophile; and there's WG himself, the very center of the novel -- should anyone even believe his ramblings,  considering his alcoholic bent toward self destruction and considering the characters that populate this novel?   The story is punctuated throughout with definitions of cricket terms, diagrams of different cricket techniques, parts of the field etc, largely to help the reader and to move the story along. .  There are also fuzzy photos here and there that may or may not lend credence to WG's search for the truth about Pradeep Mathew. 

Chinaman is funny and downright sobering at the same time, which given the seriousness of the history of ongoing problems in Sri Lanka is a good juggling act, keeping the reader entertained on one hand while exploring the problems of this nation.  And then there's the sports aspect: the author clearly brings out the "magic" moments of sporting events that tie people together:  "sport can unite worlds, tear down walls and transcend race, the past, and all probability.  Unlike life, sport matters." As WG notes,

"In thirty years, the world will not care about how I lived. But in a hundred years, Bulgarians will still talk of Letchkov and how he expelled the mighty Germans from the 1994 World Cup with a simple header."

As an American who knows little to nothing about the sport of cricket, at first the book was a bit daunting, even though the author lays out the basics and then throws in bits about different throws or batting techniques.  When I realized that this could be problematic, I went to the internet for help in getting a quick rundown on how this game is played -- problem solved.  Cricket  might be a sticking point for some readers in this country, but ultimately I discovered it didn't really matter -- the overall story is so good and is so well told that my lack of cricket knowledge was only a momentary glitch that really did not distract from the narrative.   The ending may be a bit gimmicky for some readers, but  the book's good points are so numerous that they outweigh any negatives. 

Whether or not you care about cricket, I definitely and highly recommend this book -- it is that good, offering its readers a glimpse into life in another country, and into one man's journey of discovery  in his last months of life. It's a beautiful book, and I hope it finds other Americans to cheer it on.

addendum: One of my online book friends informed me yesterday that this book is going to be published by Graywolf Press under the title of The Legend of Pradeep Mathew. According to Graywolf's page (linked under the title), it will be coming out May of this year. 

*On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

9780140042597
Penguin Books
1976
307 pp.



"...as saith Ecclesiastes, "It is your portion under the sun."


And that "portion" is to be seized (as in "carpe diem") ; the how and why of it all drives this story.  Narrated by Kerouac's alter ego -- writer Sal Paradise, who comes to realize that: "life is holy and every moment is precious,"   On the Road is a novel that chronicles Sal's journeys across America in the last years of the 1940s, beginning in 1947 when "bop was somewhere between its Charlie Parker Ornithology period and another period that began with Miles Davis."   It's sort of like a travel diary on steroids, a narrative of a what back then would have amounted to a limited sort of anarchy that takes place in a time that is well in the past, and in an America that no longer exists.  It's the story of two friends, Sal and Dean (who is in real life Neal Cassady, friend to such beat-generation icons as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, etc. etc.)  who live for the now, always looking for "It" ... who wait for some prophet to come along and deliver the Word -- which ultimately turns out to be  "Wow!"

  To "know time " was the main goal of these journeys -- and to do this, they had to cram so much of life into each possible second of living. They travelled through the backroads of the country either in cars going between 90 and 110 mph, hitchhiking, or traveling from bus station to bus station; they often found themselves or otherwise down at heel, having to take on crap jobs to make enough to eat, but none of that mattered as long as they stayed open to every possibility life had to offer.  If that included women, beer, parties, pot and sex, it also implied freedom and independence, the stuff that sometimes youthful dreams are made of -- the ever-present dream of the beckoning open road with no restraint, no purpose -- just the journey and the people they meet along the way.  Whether it be a jazz musician blowing the almighty Bop in LA or New York or over the high-powered radio waves that carried their frenetic sounds through the dark desert nights or in all-night, hyped-up jazz jam sessions; or a lonely old man known as the "Ghost of the Susquehanna, continually wandering through the wilderness of Eastern America; individuals hitching across the country; cowboys from Montana; Mexicans in California's Central Valley who picked grapes and lived in camps, toiling in the hot sun during the day and  playing music into the lateness of the night;  the black-sooted hoboes who rode the rails or wandered nomadically across the country; or even the prostitutes in a certain Mexican whorehouse --  to Sal and Dean, these were the people who seemed to really live life to its fullest -- the people they respected most. As Sal notes: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awwww!"


For some readers, On the Road is the ultimate non-conformist manifesto that signified the heart of the beat generation, gave rise to the hippie movement, or caused people to hit the road in search of freedom.  For me it's a great slice of Americana that relates the dreams, life, and the rebellious spirit  of  a group of people just after World War II -- a period piece about living the American dream on one's own terms -- not those defined by the generation before -- and about friendship that should definitely be read and understood in the context of its times.

Don't read the book with the expectation of finding a "great revelation" at the end of it all -- there is none. I think this is one of those  novels where you either get something out of it or you don't.  People who are looking to get some kind of message from this novel may be disappointed, as will people who are looking for writing with a specific plot behind it all, or for redeemable characters who act in accordance to our 21st-century sensibilities.  The prose is lively, at times going off into a form of stream-of-consciousness writing and then changing into a more manic pace and traveling back again to a normal tone. Somewhere I read that Kerouac borrowed some of the crazy energy and rhythm from bop jazz and inserted it directly into his work; as a maniac for bop and for Charlie Parker, I almost believe it. The original version of this novel had real-life names in it -- so I may go back someday and read it.

I personally think it's a good  book, not great (and I must confess to liking Kerouac's Dharma Bums a lot more) and it is a very intelligent read, one that does take a bit of consideration and reader involvement.  I wasn't around during the beat or later hippie generation, but do have an affinity with the idea not being trendy or living based on others' expectations, doing my own thing and finding my own personal sense of freedom in life, so there's something about this book that appeals to me. It's also quite entertaining, and I'm a huge fan of backroad  car trips and the unusual and quirky people and things in life, so it speaks to me on several levels.  Comments about this novel range from "shallow" to "a work of genius," so it's basically like any other novel out there where each reader takes away something uniquely his or her own.  But it's definitely not for everyone.

Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes

9780802119285
Atlantic Monthly Press/Grove Atlantic
March, 2010
592 pp.

You've got to understand what we do here...We fix weapons...Right now you're a broken guidance system for forty rifles, three machine guns, a bunch of mortars, several artillery batteries, three calibers of naval guns, and four kinds of attack aircraft. Our job is to get you fixed and back in action as fast as we can.

Matterhorn is a novel set in 1969, only a few years before the end of American military involvement in Vietnam. The book focuses on a group of Marines -- Bravo Company -- who fought in that war, but the action centers around Waino Mellas, a young Ivy Leaguer reservist who finds himself deployed with Bravo Company out in the bush. Mellas' story is a journey unto itself -- he  is completely green when the novel begins, but as the missions of Bravo Company progress, he becomes transformed -- not so much by war itself, but by the people with whom he lives, eats, and comes to depend on for survival.  And while the novel is fictional, what happens is based largely on many of the author's own experiences, or those of others he knew in Vietnam. In that sense, Marlantes adds his point of view to those of others who've written about Vietnam, such as Philip Caputo, Tim O'Brien, John Del Vecchio, and a host of others. However, unlike his predecessors, Marlantes had to wait several years to get his story out.  His original novel was some 1600+ pages, but over the years after several rejections and continually whittling down the size of the book, his publisher finally gave him his opportunity. 

 For this book, his first, the author won the Colby Award, which "recognizes a debut work of fiction or nonfiction that raises the public’s awareness of intelligence operations, military history, or international affairs."  Matterhorn is a multi-faceted novel, but largely it is a novel based on conflict. Obviously, the Vietnam War itself fits that bill, but there are other forms of conflict at work as well on a human level. For example, in the ranks of Bravo Company there is contention between some of the enlisted men and their commanders, there are racial issues, there is a demarcation between new Marines and the more seasoned vets, and there are even collisions between those who make the Marines their career and those who are there for the short term.  It's also a story of ambitions, especially among the colonels running the show, who care mostly about body counts and how the latest numbers are going to serve them well in their respective careers.  Then there are the officers directly beneath them who spend part of their time thinking about the moves they should make to get in good with the upper echelon.  For the war literature buff, there are also many horrific battle scenes along with the inherent blood, guts and gore and an almost Band of Brothers-type feel at times.  But overall, it's a story about all of the people involved in carrying out the day-to-day operations of battle.

The Matterhorn of the title is a mountain in the thick of the jungle, near the border of Vietnam and Laos, which Bravo Company is ordered to take and hold. They are then ordered to  abandon it, then comes a reversal and the Marines are ordered to retake it, -- this last order coming while Matterhorn is controlled by a group of NVA forces who have plenty of time to keep the exhausted Marines pinned down under heavy fire. This novel is the story of those missions, along with a look at the men who are out there on the ground, not knowing if each minute could be their last.   Each phase of these actions has heartbreaking consequences, as friends lose friends, or as the soldiers of Bravo Company find themselves cut off from being resupplied or without air support in bad weather. The novel traces how this slice of the war plays out, from HQ on down the chain of command to the officers who lead Bravo Company, and from them down to the regular field grunts who carry out the orders on the ground. Marlantes graphically depicts the physical terrors of war in the Quang Tri jungle, including leeches, tigers, stinging ants, "immersion foot," being bombarded with Agent Orange (a nuisance of the job) and other horrific details.  He also doesn't hold back on describing the horrors inherent in any war: death, injury, and loss of friends and companions.  The hill becomes a symbol of the utter futility of this war as human limits are pushed to extremes in an effort to survive.  The men of Bravo Company, many of them in their late teens, must not only push past the ordeals of the jungle, but they also find themselves in the midst of some very human obstacles.  For example, some of the black Marines are questioning the America to which they will return, showing sympathy with the Black Panthers and trying to recruit other black soldiers to their cause. Race issues rear their ugly head several times throughout the novel, once in particular with devastating consequences.  Yet via his characters, Marlantes makes the point that even within the black soldiers there are conflicts -- that while some preach black power and react against the all-too-real prejudice of whites, there are other black Marines who don't want to support their tactics. Marlantes also pulls back the curtain on how war is played out through the chain of command, often detailing the upper echelon's misunderstanding of what's really taking place out in the jungle.  In one instance, Marines on the ground are left hanging -- without food, water or ammo -- because of some of the decisions made by superiors back at their headquarters, whose understanding of the conditions in the bush is practically nil. They give the men impossible deadlines on fulfilling various parts of their missions, often based solely on how much ground they feel could be covered in a given amount of time, judged solely from their interpretations of a map.   While Mellas is angered enough at one point to try to kill one of his COs,  thinking that his dead comrades are nothing more to his superior than pawns in a game of ambition and politics, the author also makes the point that the higher-ups are also under a great deal of pressure -- and that in the end, everyone is involved in a situation over which they ultimately have zero control.

There's very little sentimentality to be found in Matterhorn -- it is a gritty story about the realities and ugliness of war. The book is especially good at detailing the human toll of conflict, and I don't mean just the number of deaths or injuries sustained in this war. It is so well written that I literally could not put this book down until I had finished it, and that's no easy feat, considering it's well over 500 pages. I'm not a huge fan of war novels, especially the kind where the author gets into the nitty gritty of specific battle details, but this novel is different. The characters are real, portrayed without the author having to resort to stereotyping, and the key questions of this book are ones which I've been contemplating for some time.  Why did we really get involved in Vietnam when it wasn't our war to fight?   Was it worth losing so many lives? 

I very highly recommend this book.  There are some negative reviews floating around, but use your own judgment. This isn't a book for everyone, and not everyone will read it in the same way -- it will mean different things to different people. Don't let the thickness of this novel deter you. It reads very quickly and you will find yourself sucked in from the first page.

The Civilized World, by Susi Wyss

9780805093629
Henry Holt
2011

Many thanks to Christine at Henry Holt for offering me this ARC. I really have to apologize for the length of time it's taken me to get the review done -- I actually finished it some time ago.

 The Civilized World is really a set of short, interwoven stories that together examine the lives of six women, both in Africa and in the United States. These women have issues that threaten their sense of personal security and safety in the "civilized" world, and try to deal with them the best way they can. Many of the individual stories have been previously published as standalones, but here they come together, glimpses into different cultures are shared, and women try to understand the world in which they live.  Sometimes that's not such an easy task, and each of the main characters has several obstacles put in their respective ways that make things even tougher.

The main characters of the book are an American woman, Janice, and an African woman named Ajoa. Ajoa works for Janice as a masseuse behind the walls of Janice's Ivory Coast home.  She's also a twin, and she and her brother Kojo are living away from their homeland of Ghana. Ajoa dreams of opening a salon where women can come, relax and feel safe in each other's company.  While Ajoa works, Kojo is in with the "wrong" sort of people, and has decided that money will be made faster through theft.  Janice is single, and has lived in Africa for a while, very trusting at first until a break in at her home leaves her feeling vulnerable.  While Janice sorts out what and who will make her feel happy and safe  in Africa again (including a desire to adopt a baby), Ajoa eventually makes her way as a businesswoman, but she discovers a terrible secret that threatens her happiness. In and around these two women's stories, other women have their own issues with finding peace and safety in their own lives, both in the US and in Africa. 

It's very easy to see that there are trade-offs to be had, and while someone like Janice has been around Africa for years and in fact, is often viewed as a kind of expat know-it-all, other American women there just don't get it. Nor do they really want to, as in the case of Ophelia.  But on the flip side, there's Comfort, one of the African women in the story, who goes to the US to visit her son and his family.  She doesn't get why her son's wife Linda doesn't make his favorite foods, or doesn't stretch the baby's head in the way African women do theirs.  You get the impression that Linda doesn't feel that her baby is safe with Comfort around, but she can't take the time away from her job to be with her new infant.  The question of what is considered "civilized" bridges both cultures, and this theme is also one that runs throughout the story.

To be very honest, I'm not a huge reader or fan of women's fiction, but I do like stories set in other countries among various cultures.  I liked the way this novel was structured in terms of the short stories in which the characters crop up throughout each other's chapters. The African scenes, in terms of landscape, seemed realistic, and it's obvious that the author not only feels at home there, but loves the country and its people.  That is not surprising, since she spent a number of years there.  The political situations, the poverty, and the uncertainty of Africa's future were all touched on, but only very lightly.  In fact, this entire book seemed rather light in tone. It's quite easy to read, moves quickly, and can be finished in a matter of a couple of hours. My only complaint, really is that the author really made the African women seem so much stronger and more alive than  the American women, who in general seemed to be dull as dishwater, cranky or in Janice and Linda's case, smug and superior. I don't know if this was the author's intention, but that's how it felt to me, and I felt as though the author was moving into a stereotyping zone, not a good thing.  

I think readers of women's fiction would really enjoy this book. The author has a very quiet style of writing that might appeal to many  readers of that genre, and it's not too complicated to get through in terms of topic and theme.  I thought it was okay -- I'm one of those people who likes to get more into the politics, the poverty, the results of warfare and basically all of the seriously problematic issues, so this was much more of a gentler read than I normally prefer.  Having said that, I'm seeing 4 and 5-star reviews of this novel, so it's obviously a hit with many readers.

*Pym, by Mat Johnson

9780812981582
Spiegel and Grau
2011
322 pp.

There are just some books that have the power to take you out of the real world for a while so that all there is is the story in front of you, and Pym is one of those.  This book fits the bill of that old phrase "a rollicking good yarn," while simultaneously offering its readers the author's ruminations on the issue of race.  Trying to pigeonhole this metafictional novel is not a simple task: it's got it all -- alternative history, fantasy, adventure, satire, and above all, comedy.  I think there were only a few moments when I didn't laugh while reading this book.

The story begins when Christopher Jaynes fails to gain tenure at the university where he's teaching.  Jaynes is the only black male professor on campus, and was hired to teach African American Literature.  But he would rather teach American lit., and because he believed that early American literature (including his favorite, Edgar Allan Poe) held the "intellectual source of racial Whiteness," and "the twisted mythic underpinnings of modern racial thought." He  offered a course called "Dancing With the Darkies: Whiteness in the Literary Mind" to explore his ideas.  He believes his work is helping to discover why America has not yet become a postracial society, and also that his work is helping to find a cure. As he explains to the bow-tied university president,  "If we can identify how the pathology of Whiteness was constructed, then we can learn how to dismantle it."  And Jaynes believed that Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (and some of his other works, but he is somewhat obsessed with Poe's Pym) was a key source in understanding the source of the assumptions of Whiteness.  But these classes were poorly attended, one of the reasons given to him for denial of tenure, as well as the unspoken reason that Jaynes refused to sit on the school's diversity committee. 

Jaynes also collects antiquarian texts, and one day shortly after leaving the university, finds an item in a catalog for a "Negro Servant's Memoir," from 1837.  As it turns out, it's not really a slave narrative, but rather a major find: an African American work written before the Civil War. As he begins reading, to his very great surprise, he finds that what he has is nothing less than the autobiography of Dirk Peters, the "half-breed" companion of Arthur Gordon Pym from Poe's novel.  Jaynes has an OMG moment where it comes to him that Pym's narrative may not have been fiction after all, and the proof is in his hands.  So if The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is true, then Jaynes realizes that

...Tsalal, the great undiscovered African Diasporan homeland, might still be out there, uncorrupted by Whiteness. That there was a group of our people who did achieve victory over slavery in all its forms, escaping completely from the progression of Westernization and colonization to form a society outside of time and history. And that I might find them.

Jaynes decides to go to Antarctica, using his cousin Booker and a crew completely composed of African Americans  to get him there. And this is where the story really takes off, so I won't add any more of the plot to avoid spoiling it for anyone who might be interested.  

Pym is one of the best novels I've read this year. The author's writing comes off naturally so there's no contrived feeling in his prose.  His characterizations are what make this book -- you will instantly recognize various character types as you read, making it all the more real.  Jaynes' best friend Garth is enamored of paintings done by an artist named Thomas Karvel (think Kinkade), and loves Little Debbie Snack Cakes, which he packs by the caseload for the stay in Antarctica. His cousin Booker is a civil rights activist, and constantly spouts off about white people and the system when it suits him. There's also a gay videographer who runs a video website, along with his partner; even in the worst of spots the camera is rolling.  Another character is an entertainment lawyer, who often stops the Antarctic action in debates about what they'll find and who will have the rights to it.  And along the way, the author provides his insights and commentary on other works that followed The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, for example, Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness and a sequel to Poe's work by Jules Verne, besides delving into Poe's novel itself.

The action gets a little odd toward the end, but overall, if you're up for a great read, Pym is it. It satisfied my reading thirst for quirkiness, for comedy and satire and for a good story. Keep in mind though that it veers toward the fantastical, so if you can't suspend your disbelief, this isn't the book for you.   You don't have to read Poe's original work to get it, as the author does a great job of presenting the story in his novel, but on a personal level, I'd suggest doing so. I got a lot more out of Johnson's novel having read Poe's first -- the style is purposefully similar to the original and there are little nuances from Poe that Johnson also captures in his book without explanation to the reader.  It's definitely not a mainstream read -- and even though it's part fantasy,  it's also an excellent commentary on race and human nature all wrapped up in one of the funniest stories I've ever read.  While you're laughing, you're also learning.

*The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, by Edgar Allan Poe

9781409948483
Dodo Press, 2011
originally written in 1838


I bought The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket because I wanted to read Mat Johnson's recently-published book Pym (now finished) which is based largely on parts of this book.  Poe's novel is the story of a young man who eventually winds up stowing away in the hold of a ship called The Grampus -- and who gets much more than he bargained for.  It's not Poe's usual short horror fare, nor is it a novel of detection. It is at once a metafictional  adventure story and fantasy, serialized in The Southern Literary Messenger in the 1830s.  That it was written as for serial publication shortly becomes obvious as you delve into the book.

The plot revolves around the adventures of the title character, and the book purports to be Pym's narrative of a series of strange occurrences at sea.  A preface authored by Pym tells of how he was encouraged to offer his narrative to the public, and Pym's subsequent refusal to do so in fear that he would be ridiculed by the public. In short, he felt like no one would believe him, because what happened would be construed as so far fetched as to be impossible -- and that perhaps the reading public would see his story as mere fiction.  So, a Mr. Poe of the Southern Literary Messenger talks Pym into letting him publish it in this magazine "in the garb of fiction" -- allowing Pym's story to finally be told.  The subtitle of this novel is as follows, probably the longest I've ever encountered.

" Comprising the Details of Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on Board the American Brig Grampus, on Her Way to the South Seas, in the Month of June, 1827. With an Account of the Recapture of the Vessel by the Survivers; Their Shipwreck and Subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine; Their Deliverance by Means of the British Schooner Jane Guy; the Brief Cruise of this Latter Vessel in the Atlantic Ocean; Her Capture, and the Massacre of Her Crew Among a Group of Islands in the Eighty-Fourth Parallel of Southern Latitude; Together with the Incredible Adventures and Discoveries Still Farther South to Which That Distressing Calamity Gave Rise."

Young Pym hatches a plan with his friend Augustus Barnard to stow away on the ship The Grampus, which is captained by Arthur's father. The two concoct a fake two-week visit to a relative's home in New Bedford, thinking that after the Grampus is safely away at sea, Pym would send news to his parents of his whereabouts via a passing ship.  The plan is launched, and Pym finds himself in the hold, safely stowed with provisions until Augustus can get back to him later.  But it's a long time until Augustus returns -- and as Pym is in trouble down below, the situation becomes a bit desperate for him. Eventually Augustus returns and  informs him that a mutiny had occurred on the ship and all is not well.  When Pym eventually is able to come up from below, things go from bad to worse -- an adventure involving storm, shipwreck, starvation, sharks and a rescue.  But wait -- rescue is a relative term in this case -- and Pym and his remaining companions from the Grampus find themselves aboard the schooner Jane Guy, heading down to the Cape of Good Hope and eventually  toward Antarctica. Somewhere around latitude 83 degrees 20', longitude 43 degrees 5' west, the Jane Guy sails into an inlet on the hitherto-uundiscovered island of Tsalal, where the crew encounters some natives who've never come into contact with the outside world, and the strangest and most fantastical adventures of all begin.

The story is told via the means of first-person narrative along with a number of journal entries. Part adventure story, ongoing travelogue, scientific exposition (although it's really obvious much of the science is in Poe's head), and definitely part fantasy, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym  is also a glimpse into the pre-Civil War southern white mindset, most especially in terms of white superiority. Frankly speaking, this aspect of the narrative just doesn't let up, and pretty much anyone not white is given less than honorable treatment.  For example, the worst of the mutineers ("a demon") was the black cook.  Upon the Jane Guy's arrival at Tsalal, everything, including the landscape, is black. The natives there  tremble with fear at the sight of anything white, they are black down to their teeth, and Poe affords us the image of the sneaky and ruthless savages who can't be trusted and speak gibberish.  Even one of Pym's companions throughout his adventures is known throughout the story as a "half-breed," and I could go on.  While I understand completely that this was typical of the time, and I'm not making any judgments here, it's quite obvious that Poe had an agenda.  He pushes it to the point where the message at the end comes through loud and clear:  salvation comes by virtue of  one's very "whiteness." But this is impossible to explain without giving away the show, so I'll leave it up to other readers to figure it out. And before I forget, there's also the issue of the superior white man exploiting other lands for resources, which seems to have been status quo in the mid-1800s as well. 

I've seen this book described in Amazon reviews as a book of horror -- this it is definitely not, so if you were expecting a horror story, don't pick this one up.  It is still worth the read, because a) it's kind of a fun adventure story and b) it's spawned a number of other works from later authors -- none the least of which is HP Lovecraft's most excellent At the Mountains of Madness.  As far as the racist component, well, I'm someone who likes to think in context of the times and this book definitely puts you there. Not that it's correct, but it was what it was, and that's just a fact.   I have to admit skimming through some of the book, for example, the long-winded descriptions of the Galapagos tortoise, the brief but tedious history of Antarctic exploration and so forth, because frankly it was quite dull and sometimes downright laughable; Poe seems to have read a bit on each topic and filled the rest in with his imagination. There are also a few plot holes that you can't help but notice.  But when all is said and done, if nothing else, it's a great book for a rainy day -- recommended for Poe fans, for fantasy readers and for those interested in a good old seafaring adventure story.

*On the Yard, by Malcolm Braly.

Tranquility in balance again, time to get back to work.  Every so often I just have to take a break from everything, slow down, take time for myself and then come back.  That old saying about "when it rains it pours" pretty much sums everything up over the last few weeks.  But things are easing up, I feel better and am ready to turn the computer back on, just in time to end the month with four books from NYRB classics. There were others I finished this month, but they can wait a couple of days.

So let's get on with it, yes?


On the Yard, by Malcolm Braly
094032296X
NYRB Classics, 2002
376 pp.

Originally published 1967, Little Brown and Co.

To be quite honest, I'd never heard of this book before I went looking for NYRB titles to read.  Another NYRB title I'd read earlier, Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter, also dealt with life in prison, but it examines the causes of why the main characters went to prison, what happened to them while they were there, and then what happened after they were released.  Unlike that novel, the action in  On the Yard occurs nearly completely within prison walls, and the story is told through the voices of a group of prisoners as well as by people who work there.  As a matter of fact, the author, Malcolm Braly, had written three earlier novels while incarcerated, then started On the Yard while doing a stint at San Quentin. He had to do it in secret since it was based on his own experience and he was threatened with revocation of parole if he continued to write it, forcing him to write in secret and to then delay its publication.

In this book, the characters run the show and drive the narrative  -- the author often floats from character to character, as noted by Jonathan Lethem, who provides the book's introduction:

...moving...through the minds and moments of dozens of characters, some recurrently, some only for a sole brief visitation which nearly always proves definitive. Three or four of these are into the minds of the prison's keepers, including that of the morose, long-enduring Warden. The rest are a broad array of prisoners, some "hardened" repeaters, some newly arrived at San Quentin, some floating in between and trying to measure the rightness and permanence of their placement inside those walls.

Lethem's assessment is quite accurate.  How these people deal with the stultifying sameness that is their life day after day is one of the main themes of this novel.  For example, there's Billy Oberholster (aka Chilly Willy), imprisoned for several armed robberies, who made his way to the top of the food chain so to speak on the inside by being at the head of several operations: he runs a usurious cigarette loan business, has the corner on nasal inhalants (which the prisoners use to get high on amphetamine sulphate), and runs a tidy black-market business that offers him a great many advantages while serving out his time. His influence is spread everywhere, down to his ability to maintain a cell with no roomies.  He is the king of the yard - and uses others for his dirty work, keeping his hands clean. He counts among his friends Society Red and Nunn, a repeater back only after half a year of freedom.  Then there's Stick, a sort of Neo-Nazi who survives through creating scenarios in his head with himself as the centerpiece -- constantly staging "new myths" in which he plays the major part, imagining himself as  vampire and deliverer.   Another most interesting character is Lorin -- an intelligent 22 year-old, in for stealing a car, spending his time trying to fend off the attention of another inmate who has a thing about shoes.  When he's not dreaming about Kim Novak, Lorin works on his poetry writing. One of the most interesting characters is Paul Juleson, who's been incarcerated for the murder of his wife, and who wants nothing more than to be left on his own, often living in favorite fantasies, trying to steer cleer of the other inmates,  "watching the animals from a distance and taking every precaution necessary to keep free of them in all essential ways."  He spends his days mostly reading and visiting the library on his lunch break; the only person on the outside who still keeps in contact with him is his aunt, who sends him $5.00 each year on his birthday.  When Juleson decides to spend his not-yet-received birthday cash on cigarettes, he runs afoul of Chilly Willy when the money fails to arrive, leading to one of the major plots that runs throughout the novel.  Each character's worst points are carefully revealed rather than soft soaped, yet the author provides them with a fair amount of points with which the reader finds him or herself showing some empathy -- including those outside cell bars: the psychologists, guards and even the warden and his servant. For readers who are more interested in plot, there are several stories at work that will keep you actively engrossed in the story. But it is Braly's characters, each brought to life (if even only for a few lines in some cases) that will draw the reader's attention on a deeper level.   

While its content may seem tame to modern readers, considering what goes on in today's prisons, On the Yard is still a solid read.  Kurt Vonnegut's blurb on the back cover notes that this book is "Surely the great American prison novel." In my case, it would be difficult to agree with his statement since I don't have a lot of reading experience in that area, but I did find On the Yard to be quite engrossing once the cast of characters was introduced. It seemed a bit slow at first (as character-driven novels often can be), but as I started the getting the picture of what happens within the prison walls (how the hierarchies play out, the interplay between prison officials and the prisoners, and among the prisoners themselves), I couldn't put this book down.  The author, Malcolm Braly, spent a large part of his life behind bars in different prisons, so he knows what he's talking about and this is exemplified in the book's realistic and gritty tone.  Obviously, the subject matter might not be for everyone, but it is one of those novels that you won't soon forget after putting down, not just because of the story, but because of the writing and Braly's mastery of characterization.

Four December titles -- and greetings from the Pacific Northwest

This post is brought to you by the letter "d", especially as it is the first letter in distraction. And distracted has been my middle name for most of the month. First at home, with various family issues, getting ready for the holidays and getting myself ready for travel; now away (hello from Seattle!) with little writing time at my disposal, the rare moments available for penning my thoughts have been relatively few and far between.  Even today I have only a brief window of time (stolen while others are busy playing with the Wii) -- enough to jot down a list of definite "yesses" in my world of books lately.

The first up is The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, (Knopf; 0307268934, 2010, 352 pp) by John Vaillant. The Tiger is a simply amazing work of nonfiction, detailing the hunt for an Amur tiger responsible for killing a man in the far east of  Russia, in Primorye.  While this is the central story in this book, around this narrative Vaillant provides a look at the environment, ecology, and history of the area, as well as an examination of the cultural make-up of the people who inhabit this place and its boundaries. Throughout the book the author details how perestroika and the fall of the wall in 1989 changed this sparsely-populated area, often not for the better.  But it's the story of the Amur tiger that will keep you turning pages -- well worth every second of time you invest in it.

Next: Yellow Blue Tibia, by Adam Roberts (Gollancz; 0575083581, 2010, 488 pp), is a novel that will be appreciated by sci-fi fans who are into quantum physics & alternate time lines as well as conspiracies, put together in a rather humorous fashion.  Again, the setting is modern-day Russia, but the novel begins back in Stalin's USSR, when a group of science fiction writers are summoned to a countryside dacha by the evil dictator himself.  Their task: to create a believable scenario of attack by aliens (the intergalactic kind) to bring together the people in a common unity against an enemy.  Konstantin Skvorecky is one of these writers, and he and the group have just started writing when suddenly the project is cancelled for no reason.   As the writers are being sent home, they are sworn to secrecy -- in fact, told that their little conclave never happened.  But in 1986, he is drawn back into the whole UFO thing when he is placed at the center of two competing groups of conspirators: both believe that the Earth is in the midst of an alien invasion and both want his help to further their own agendas.  Yellow Blue Tibia is literate and funny -- yet also reveals that we are not alone in our American fascination with the UFO phenomenon.  This little paragraph does not do the book justice, but if you like your science fiction on the witty side, you'll enjoy this one. It's one of those books I'd label as "not for everyone," but it's really quite good and you'll find yourself sucked into your own private vortex as you read it.

The Redeemer, by Jo Nesbo (CCV; 0099505967, 2009, 592 pp) picks up where The Devil's Star left off.  Harry Hole, Nesbo's awesome yet angst-ridden Norwegian detective, is back -- and this time he's investigating a cold-blooded murder of Salvation Army officer Robert Karlsen in Oslo. The man was killed at point-blank range and the killer left behind no evidence. The police are stymied -- but on his way home, the killer realizes that he's killed the wrong man and botched the hit he was paid to make -- and must stay until the job is completed correctly.  Nesbo's done it again (he's undoubtedly ranks among my top three Scandinavian crime writers) with a great storyline as well as a mystery which will leave you scratching your head throughout the novel as you try to figure it out. Beyond the mystery the author examines what makes the killer tick, as usual, going back a bit into the past to put some relevance into the present. He also looks at the machinations of wealth and power -- and of course, delves more deeply into Harry's psyche as he attempts to reroute his life.  My only issue with this novel is that I wasn't enthralled with the whole Salvation Army bit but it wasn't enough to make the book any less of a good read. Highly recommended, but do read these novels in the right order -- putting The Redbreast, Nemesis, and The Devil's Star before this one keeps the underlying Harry Hole story flowing.

Last but definitely not least is  Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory (Crown; 0307453278, 2010, 416 pp). I just finished this one, actually, and I have to say it's one of the most fascinating books of history I've read in a very long time.  You don't even need to be a WWII buff to appreciate it -- I'm not -- but it's simply amazing. The basic story is this: it's 1943, and the Allies have plans to invade Sicily to get a foothold in Europe and defeat Hitler.  But since Sicily is the most obvious place for an Allied landing, Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley (it's pronounced "Chumley") of the Naval Intelligence section of the Admiralty decide to dupe the Germans into thinking that Greece is the actual target -- and with the help of a fiction writer, a plan is born. The British Navy will ferry a dead body in the guise of a Navy officer carrying misleading documents to the coast of Spain, where the body would be found and the documents leaked to German spies there and hopefully believed.  The idea is that the Germans will redeploy a large percentage of their military forces currently on Sicily elsewhere, saving countless Allied lives. How the plan was conceived and how it was put into action is an amazing story in itself, but Macintyre does so much more -- he manages to infuse the story with a bit of suspense and delivers human portraits of all those involved, including the Germans, rounding out this remarkable story.  The drawback to this one is that often the story gets bogged down with a little too much detail (like the description of an entertainer doing his show), breaking up the flow of the narrative, but otherwise it is definitely one of those stories you won't soon forget.

That's it...back again with my list of favorite books before the year's out.

*The Sentimentalists, by Johanna Skibsrud

9781554470785

Gaspereau Press Limited, 2009

218 pp.

The Sentimentalists is not a long book, but within its 200+ pages, the author examines the relationship between fathers and daughters as well as friendship and the often intangible and little-understood consequences of war. However, the main theme that carries through all of these topics is the imperfection and frailty of memory -- and the role played by the passage of time and circumstance in how and what we remember.

The basic story follows the narrator, a woman whose father can no longer live on his own.  She and her sister take him from his Fargo, North Dakota home, a structure "pieced together from two and a half aluminum trailers and deposited in a lot" to the home of Henry, the father of Owen, a childhood friend, in a small town called Casablanca in Ontario, "just twenty miles from the border of New York."  This little town was where the family spent many summer vacations when the narrator and her sister were children, and the group referred to Henry's residence as the "government house," after the flooding of his boyhood home caused by the course of the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the late 1950s.  In the present, for reasons of her own, the narrator/daughter has come back to Casablanca to stay with her father, where she attempts to gain some understanding of this man about whom she knows so little -- a man whose complicated and unspoken past in Vietnam interrupted the lives of his family, and who spent years trying to connect back to a more simple, less complicated past and the dreams that were part of it.

The first half of the novel is the basis for the main story, which doesn't really appear until about just past the halfway point of the book, at which point things began to get really interesting. In the meantime, there were several paragraphs scattered throughout the novel that made me have to stop, put the book down, and take some time to parse and mull over what I'd just read. After doing this way too often and getting frustrated at the lack of narrative flow this created for me, it dawned on me that I was seeing the poet rather than narrative writer in Skibsrud, especially in the ways she often opted for a more metaphorical bent:

Overall, I would have to say that it had come as a disappointment to live within the particularities of a life; to find that the simple arithmetic of things -- which I thought I had learned by rote, but was now unsure from whom, or what is was that had been learned at all was not so simple. That it was not, in fact, combination alone that increased the territory of living in the world. And that love did not, of its own accord, increase with time...And that there was nothing to do when it left you but bite your tongue and wait for its return. As though it were a small bird, which sometimes thought to wing itself across the city -- but would, almost always, thinking better of it, arrive again in a rush, to the sill. Oh, I would have waited like a dog for seven lifetimes for that bird to appear, if I knew that it would continue to come!  If I knew that it would continue to look in again with fondness at the small room, which it had thought to leave behind; at a life of knowing; of closeness, and foibles. Of regrets, misdeeds, and small, personal ecstasies.

This is not to say that I didn't like this book -- because I did, especially the last part. It's not that I don't appreciate the beauty of the English language in the hands of talented authors, because I do,  but I think this book would be most fully appreciated by an audience inclined to the more complex aspects of the writing craft, quite possibly by people who are writers themselves.  As for me, although I always ponder whatever it is I'm reading at the moment, sometimes the reading process in this case was just a bit more work than it needed to be, although I will say that toward the end of the novel, things picked up and became a little more straightforward, using less of the detail that tended to bog down the first half of the novel in parts and less effluvient language. One thing that still puzzles me is that I'm still not sure exactly why the author chose to set up the epilogue of the book the way she did -- it was quite an abrupt change -- but it is what it is. If anyone has figured it out, maybe you can clue me in.

Overall -- it's a fine first novel, sometimes a bit bogged down with what I would consider superfluous detail and metaphor, but one still worth the time you put into it, and one I'd recommend.   

sidebar:

I consider myself quite fortunate to have bought my copy early on in the book's lifetime (drawn in by the Vietnam aspect of the novel) before Amazon sellers brought the prices up exorbitantly.  Now, as it turns out, there's going to be another run to help keep up with the demand (from today's issue of Shelf Awareness): 

Douglas & McIntyre is publishing a trade paperback version of Scotia Giller Prize-winner The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud, which has been in short supply since it won the award last Tuesday. Gaspereau Press, the novel's publisher, prints and binds its books in-house, a process that cannot keep up with demand for The Sentimentalists. The first printing was 800, which is sold out, and the second printing of 2,300 is spoken for....Douglas & McIntyre plans to ship 30,000 copies of the new edition of the book by this Friday, November 19, from printer Friesens in Manitoba. Another printing of 20,000 will follow immediately. The book will be priced at $19.95.

The article goes on to say that the book is already available on the Kobo e-reader, and that Douglas & McIntyre is also planning to make it available for other e-reader formats as well.  So for those of you waiting, it shouldn't be too long.  

Room, by Emma Donoghue

9780330519014

Picador

2010

--warning-- this review may contain spoilers -- so beware



Jack is a five year old boy who lives in an 11 x 11 space with his mother that Jack calls "Room." Not only is this place their home, Room is the only world that this child has ever known.  He has never been outside Room, and although he and his mother (Ma) have a television, Ma has told him that what he sees on the tube is not real.  The door to Room is always locked.  Although Jack doesn't know this, Ma has worked very hard to make life as normal for Jack as it possibly can be given the circumstances -- Jack and Ma eat, sleep, exercise, play games, sing songs, have lessons and conversations all within Room's confines.

We learn about life in Room through Jack, who narrates the story.  The routines differ only sometimes at night, when the man that Jack has dubbed "Old Nick" occasionally shows up and Jack needs to go inside "Wardrobe," where he has to sleep, until Old Nick is gone again. Jack doesn't like Old Nick and instinctively feels something rather sinister about the man's presence; at the same time he knows that Old Nick is the one that he and Ma depend on for food, clothing, and the occasional "Sundaytreat."  Jack's observations of Room, his world view within this space, and his conversations with Ma are often surprisingly adult in nature, considering he's only five, but at the same time, the reader is still very conscious that Jack is just a little boy, still learning about and trying to make sense of things in his world, just like any other child his age.  But then one day, Ma decides to tell Jack the truth about some things, and makes plans to leave Room forever. The rest of the novel (which is not really giving anything away if you just look at the chapter headings) describes their escape from Room into a world Jack has never known, as well as its aftermath -- leading to collisions between what Jack has always believed was  real and what people are now telling him is real. And, just when you're comfortable thinking that this is only a work of fiction, FYI, Room is based on true events from Austria, the famous Kampusch kidnapping case.





I liked this book, but didn't fall in love with it the way most people who've read it have. At its heart,  it's a good story with a fresh premise.  Making Jack's eyes the ones through which the reader sees the Room world was a good idea -- there's much more immediacy to the story, making the reader wonder why they're there and what's going to happen.  Even though Jack's credibility often seemed a bit strained as a narrator due to his precocious and adult-like vocabulary, the fact that Donoghue also showed his child side makes this work.  The fact that Donoghue did not roam into the realm of the tawdry, either about the abduction or especially during Old Nick's night-time visits is to her credit -- doing this would have only cheapened the story to the point where I would have probably put the book down. Yet at the same time,  the second half of the book doesn't quite manage to hold on to the taut and clever construction of the first part, which had me reading nonstop. I won't say anything more specific, because I do not wish to give away the entire show.  


I predict that when this book hits the US next month it is going to sell big time. It comes on the heels of several widely-reported cases of kidnappings and victim rescues. It is designed to tug at heartstrings, and the author does that well. Finally, quite frankly, it's very reader friendly.   There isn't a lot of flowery prose, it's easy to read, resonates well with the fears of modern-day parents, and is generally suited to a wider audience of readers than most books that show up on the Booker Prize longlist.  I think it will do very well. That's not saying I think this is a great book, but I think it is going to be quite successful.

-interlude - Asia Hand, by Christopher G. Moore

Asia Hand, by Christopher G. Moore
0802170730
Grove Press/Black Cat
July 2010

Having stumbled upon this series of novels completely by accident with a random choice of The Risk of Infidelity Index while on vacation last month, I fell in deep like with the main character of this series of books, Vincent Calvino, and wanted more. So my thanks go to Grove Press for sending me an ARC of Asia Hand, which will be published in the US in July of this year. And of course, I have to thank the author, Christopher G. Moore, who I think took pity on me after I offered to lobby in person to have more of his books published here to satisfy my Calvino cravings. After reading Risk of Infidelity Index (9) and now Asia Hand (2), I finally got around to buying the first book in the series Spirit House. As I noted in an earlier post, this is a huge deal because I am currently under a self-imposed book-buying moratorium (to deal with the nagging guilt eating at me to read more of what I already own) until the end of this month. But Calvino is worth the added sense of guilt in breaking my promise to myself. Sigh. Oh well, I digress as usual.

Asia Hand is a well-crafted piece of modern noir fiction set in Bangkok, the home of ex-pat and ex-New Yorker Vincent Calvino. Calvino makes his living as a private investigator, and he finds himself embroiled in a crime that starts with the death of one his American friends, Hutton.  Hutton is a young free-lance cameraman, a loser who doesn't get much work thrown his way, so when he is offered the chance to work on a movie at the border of Thailand and Burma, he jumps at it.  Soon afterwards, Hutton is found dead in a lake at Lumpini Park. There is only a single clue left at the scene:  a necklace made of several amulets. Calvino is summoned by his friend Pratt (Col. Prachai Chongwatana, a high-ranking police official fond of quoting Shakespeare), and thus begins his investigation into Hutton's death which  leads him down some dark alleyways and closer to home than he ever thought possible.

The crime is well plotted, intricate and intelligent, weaving up and down different paths that all ultimately converge into a clever solution.  However, what makes this book work is Moore's insights into the interactions between ex-pats/ foreigners (farangs) in Thailand and the Thai people -- not just at the level of officialdom, but also down at street level with the bargirls. There are also several funny moments in this book, especially in the chapter with the explanations of the differences between first and third shifters. I must admit that I laughed out loud reading this part.

Calvino's character is well fleshed out, considering that this is only book two of the series. While he's a very no-nonsense kind of detective, and will stick to a problem like a pit bull, he also has a heart.  Calvino lives by a set of laws (for example, this one: "Whenever someone says 'you must believe me,' the chances are greater than 50 percent he's lying through his teeth.") and he has been in Thailand long enough to understand the way things work there even though life in Bangkok is filled with contradictions.

What I've read of the series is great and beats the pants off of most crime fiction sitting on the shelves of my local bookstore. It's also very different from a lot of what's out there which is definitely a plus.  If you like noir fiction, or if you enjoy intelligent crime fiction set in an exotic locale, you might want to try this one when it's released. You also have the side benefit of learning something about Thailand its people, culture and politics from someone who lives there.  This author can write and he does it well.  I will say that if you have a problem with alternative names for human body parts or with the use of 4-letter words in books, you may not want to pick this one up. Nothing cutesy here...just down and dirty gritty crime in a steamy climate.

and now...let's get those other books published here!