Month: September 2013

Killing Floor by Lee Child
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lee Child writes in short sentences. At least he does in this novel. This is the “first” Jack Reacher novel. Why did I read it. Why not, I guess. I saw the Tom Cruise film, was told it’s not like the books at all. I accept that books and movies are different. Like baseball and football. I’m being serious. But at least the movie intrigued me. You know, another one of these super-bad-ass types. Figured I’d read the book. It was sort of what I expected.

Bad-ass type accused of murder. And then it becomes personal. Lots of violence. Justified violence and sadistic, gut-turning violence. Conspiracies. Explosions. Some sex. A “thriller,” you know, a hard-boiled genre for men like “romance” novels are for women.

But let’s get back to those short sentences. Jack Reacher spends a lot of time inside himself. He’s a loner, and he wants us to know it. He saw things as a military brat, and then as a military cop. He can handle himself in a fight. He won’t hesitate to kill a man. Honestly, I think Lee Child might have wanted to write a noir-ish detective novel, but it turned into a thriller instead.

I have no idea what the hell the title is supposed to mean. The phrase “killing floor” is used once in the novel, almost in passing. It really has nothing to do with the story. Chalk it up to some publishers pushing pulp. “Killing Floor” and a bloody handprint on the cover.

A bit slap-dash, like the novel’s style. Not necessarily a bad thing. Not sure if I’ll bother with any sequels, though.

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Killing Floor by Lee Child
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lee Child writes in short sentences. At least he does in this novel. This is the “first” Jack Reacher novel. Why did I read it. Why not, I guess. I saw the Tom Cruise film, was told it’s not like the books at all. I accept that books and movies are different. Like baseball and football. I’m being serious. But at least the movie intrigued me. You know, another one of these super-bad-ass types. Figured I’d read the book. It was sort of what I expected.

Bad-ass type accused of murder. And then it becomes personal. Lots of violence. Justified violence and sadistic, gut-turning violence. Conspiracies. Explosions. Some sex. A “thriller,” you know, a hard-boiled genre for men like “romance” novels are for women.

But let’s get back to those short sentences. Jack Reacher spends a lot of time inside himself. He’s a loner, and he wants us to know it. He saw things as a military brat, and then as a military cop. He can handle himself in a fight. He won’t hesitate to kill a man. Honestly, I think Lee Child might have wanted to write a noir-ish detective novel, but it turned into a thriller instead.

I have no idea what the hell the title is supposed to mean. The phrase “killing floor” is used once in the novel, almost in passing. It really has nothing to do with the story. Chalk it up to some publishers pushing pulp. “The Killing Floor” and a bloody handprint on the cover.

A bit slap-dash, like the novel’s style. Not necessarily a bad thing. Not sure if I’ll bother with any sequels, though.

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The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m a Pratchett fan, like most of the people who’ve read The Long Earth. Not so much that I’ve scoured the world for every scrap of his writing, but enough that if I see something with his name on it, I’ll pick it up. Not so much with Baxter. I wound up with a free copy of one his books on my e-reader, and I just couldn’t get into it. And since free means easy come easy go, I didn’t make it past page 10.

But I figured I’d give The Long Earth. After all, even though I can’t seem to get into Neil Gaiman either, I like what Pratchett and Gaiman did with their collaboration. So for this novel I guess everything was resting on Pratchett. And I guess it wasn’t enough.

Either that or there was some horribly deep metaphor here that I just never picked up on. I liked the concept of the ‘Long Earth’, and even liked the way the “technology” was discovered… but after that, all everything else was just spread too thin. Lobsang’s airship was too convenient. The natural steppers were just too convenient. The Gap, and the very Buddha-like meta-mind was too convenient. The terrible thing that happens to Madison at the end was really very too convenient. I was unmoved by any of it. I wasn’t sure what the plot was all about, if there was one at all. None of the characters resonated for me.

I could tell where Pratchett’s hand was writing the words, his light but skillful way with language, like Bach playing around on a clavichord. So it wasn’t all bad. But it wasn’t immersive enough. Pratchett’s characters (and yes I’m thinking of Discworld here) are usually so dynamic and interesting. But in The Long Earth: flat.

It’s tempting to “blame” Baxter for the things I didn’t like, but that’s too easy. Instead, I’m going to blame the collaborative process. Yes, I said I’d liked Good Omens, so it’s not that the collaborative process is guaranteed to fail. But this time, I think there was more cancelling out than augmentation.

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The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World by Nancy Jo Sales
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What struck me most about the people and the incidents in The Bling Ring was alien it all was. Here’s a book that reports on a series of crimes, and contextualizes it all with some pop-sociology: discussions on fame, voyeur culture, teenage sexuality, the changing tides of fashion, and so on. None of it could I relate to. None of it. This was as familiar to me as any gossip rag or celebrity bio-pic.

But then, I’m a 41 year old middle-class white guy with a literature degree, a job, and a house in Seattle.

Nevertheless, Nancy Jo Sales has done a good job building as much of a narrative as possible out what’s really not much of a story at all. Some kids robbed some celebrities. I just don’t care—so why did I read it? Was it schadenfreude? Some kind of catharsis? Probably it was just the architect lover in me- I like seeing the structures behind the stories. Crime rings and the mafia and the complication of long, drawn-out political maneuvering. It’s all intrigue.

And since I plan on seeing Sofia Coppola’s film version of these events, I wanted the back story.

The thing of it is, though, there really isn’t much back story. Some kids robbed some celebrities, I said above, and that’s pretty much everything. So Sales’ book isn’t interesting for the intrigue, but for that alien aspect I also mentioned. I don’t feel sorry for Paris Hilton, nor am I glad that anything happened to her. Reading this was like watching a child poke a stick in an ant hill.

Interesting, though, how the kids got away with it while they did: none of the celebrities though to secure their belonging, and they didn’t even know what all they’d had that had been stolen in the first place. I’m not saying this justifies the theft. But it certainly suggests why I have no empathy. It shows how I can’t relate.

Indeed, my wife and set an alarm on our house when we leave, because we know it will make us feel better if we are robbed—if someone is so motivated as to overcome our best efforts at security, there’s larger forces in play than just random victimization.

You see, we all seek meaningfulness in things—and random kids stealing designer shoes from celebrities has no real meaning at all.

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Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If The Last Werewolf was a novel about love as antidote to ennui, than Talulla Rising is a novel about motherhood as antidote to feminism. I’m not trying to suggest feminism is bad or wrong. Rather, I’m suggesting that the contexts which require a feminist approach can be mitigated by motherhood. In an ideal world, would there be feminism? Would people be, perforce, defined by gender at all? That’s not an easy question to answer. However, biology requires a difference between the sexes, and so, if that division results in inequality, feminism is an attempt to reassert equality. Motherhood, too, asserts the necessity of sexual difference.

Which is not to say a woman is not useful unless she gives birth. Rather, a person need not be defined by genitals until reproduction is at stake. The female werewolves—and vampires—in Duncan’s two werewolf novels are in no way the weaker sex. Their desires and capabilities are no different from men’s. Until, that is, motherhood is their main identity. This makes them vulnerable—but it also gives them the strength and perseverance to overcome any will that would otherwise thwart their desires.

The question that Duncan raises: is the motherhood desire innate, or is it also a matter of will? Talulla’s lacuna would seem to free her from the obligations of motherhood. But she chooses to overcome them, chooses motherhood. The kidnappers of Lorcan use her motherhood against her, and she chooses to use her motherhood to recover her son. And in the process, she defeats the forces that would dismantle her. Talulla uses reproduction as a weapon.

This is how Duncan is able to write a thriller, filled with sex and gore, philosophical musings, and witheringly self-indulgent self-awareness, without coming across as trite or hackneyed. Talulla Rising is a hell of a ride, but also a deep meditation on how feminism and motherhood are necessary in a world that would use a woman’s sex as a means by which to take away her free will. At its core, Talulla is a tender, uncompromising, inspiring.

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The Abomination by Jonathan Holt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Feminism and war crimes and politics, conspiracy theories and cyber space and corruption, Venice and Croatia and a tiny haunted island, the mafia, the Catholic church, and sex. The Abomination has it all.

I saw the cover of this book in a shop, was intrigued by a blurb that said it was about hackers in Venice, put it on my to-read list, and was surprised when the library had it ready for me almost immediately. The point is, there was some momentum involved in getting me into the book before I had time to know better.

Because for all those subject I mentioned above, The Abomination doesn’t really go very deeply into any of them. It’s a meager treatment of any of them at all, although Jonathan Holt, to his credit, balances them all out and makes them work together.

As thrillers go, The Abomination nearly satisfies. It’s sort of like Dan Brown mixed with Stieg Larsson. But with better sentence craft than Brown and fewer sexual deviants than Larson. And it’s the first book in a trilogy, so for book-eaters looking for a drawn-out feast, as least there’s that.

Personally, I’ll probably pass on the sequels. Maybe I’ll watch the film versions when they come out.

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The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second reading of The Last Werewolf. The first time I read it took me a month. This time, four days. That’s still too long—this book should be devoured in one sitting. I blame only myself, a recent minor illness breaking up my ability to concentrate.

Hopefully I am back in the saddle, as I have the sequel to read, Talulla Rising. Indeed, that’s why I reread The Last at all, so I could better appreciate Talulla.

Duncan is a writer to be reckoned with. His literary style is dense, flowing, beautiful. The kind of writing that’s almost too excquisite—I found myself shaking my head more than a few times, thinking “damn, this guy’s good,” which unfortunately took me out of the narrative. Again, I blame myself. Otherwise, Duncan’s writing style is immersive.

And he handles the subject matter with so much grace and wisdom it defies classification as any kind of genre fiction. This is not horror (although there’s horror). This is a literary novel that has as its subject a man who turns into a beast, and revels in his own self-hate and bloodlust.

There’s an additional layer, too, to The Last, a kind of tongue-in-cheek humor that pokes fun at genre fiction in general, vampire fiction in particular, and post-empire British ennui. This thread is not overt, and can be ignored if you like. But obviously, Duncan’s got more to offer, for those who want it, than just a monster feeding on viscera.

However, if you like, there’s plenty of offal as well. Dig in.

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