February

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare, 2007

In the wake of the phenomenally popular Harry Potter series (followed by the similar successes of the Twilight books and The Hunger Games trilogy), imitators have popped up everywhere. The young-adult market is totally flooded with thick fantasy sagas hoping to be the next massive success. Obviously, a lot of them are good books in their own right, and a lot of them are derivative copies of whatever is working in the genre. City of Bones, the first volume in the Mortal Instruments series, starts out as one of these, and over the course of the novel, turns into something else.

For someone like me (who has read a lot of this kind of thing over the years), the first few chapters of City of Bones are agreeable enough, but awfully familiar: a normal teenage girl, smart and mildly geeky without being aware of her own beauty, stumbles onto a strange world hidden just beneath the surface of her own. Turns out that there are monsters, demons, vampires, werewolves and warlocks living in NYC, concealed from ordinary humans by magic. There are, of course, huge secrets in the protagonist's home life, an arch-villain thought long dead, and, perhaps most importantly, a sexy, sarcastic demon hunter named Jace to serve as a love interest.

To say that Bones starts out as a cookie-cutter Potter clone is almost an understatement. The three most obvious influences on the novel are the Harry Potter books (style, story structure, world-building), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (dialogue, characterizations, supernatural concepts) and the Twilight saga (breathless romance, writing style). At times, the book's opening chapters feel like such a hodge-podge that there's little room for any kind of originality. Thankfully, once past the standard "call to adventure" segments, the book starts to get really, really fun.

You can tell that Clare is eager to get into the meat of the story, and for all that it's a little derivative, it's a solid one. Bit by bit, she fleshes out her fictional universe, which gets more interesting and unusual as the mythology develops. The concept of the Shadowhunters is actually fairly original, and the way she ties in various different myths and legends from all over the world is impressive. There is a lot of exposition in the book, some of it on the clunky side, but I enjoyed it anyway. Clare is not a great writer or anything; she got her start in Internet fan fiction (not that writing fan fiction is bad or uncreative), and it shows in her style: overuse of adverbs, plentiful, awkward similes, lots of clichés and near-clichés. Her secret weapon is her dialogue, which is usually snappy and fun, with a Joss Whedon-y flair for quirky humor.

Her characterizations overall are good. Clary is your standard YA heroine, although she gains a little dimension towards the end of the book. She's not irritating to read about (except when she conveniently forgets that her mother is being held hostage by an evil warlord), which is pretty much all that I ask. The other two points of the central love triangle are way more interesting. Jace is definitely the most well-realized character in the book; while some parts of his personality seem cliché, he's actually quite well-rounded--and genuinely funny, too. Simon, Clary's best friend, is not just the fifth wheel to Clary and Jace's budding romance, but a real character in his own right. The supporting cast, while not especially colorful, are a pretty well-developed bunch, too, with intriguing little internal conflicts of their own. The Big Bad, Valentine, is something of a let-down, though. When he finally shows up, he's your standard mustache-twirling Magnificent Bastard;

The plot is not especially creative (in fact, it's standard), but the pacing is lightning-quick and once past the halfway mark, the action comes fast and furious. By the end, a surprising amount of tension has been created. The climax is more a set-up for the rest of the series than a proper ending, but it's still tremendously entertaining, with a twist that I found genuinely shocking. Sure, the next book will probably find a way around it, but that doesn't diminish the immediate impact. Overall, I enjoyed the book more than I expected to. It's a fairly typical piece of post-Potter YA fantasy with just enough originality and verve to make it worthwhile. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to the next volume.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, 2006

Serial killers are bad. I think everybody pretty much agrees about that. The dastardly, mass-murdering psychopath is one of the classic fictional archetypes, and there are few permutations of the character, even in today's literature. Until I read Darkly Dreaming Dexter, I assumed it would pretty impossible to have a psychopath as the hero of a series of mystery novels. Certainly not a likable one.

Well, I was wrong about that. Dexter Morgan, the charming, wry narrator of the novel, is definitely one of the most unique protagonists I've ever read about. On the surface, he seems like a normal, affable guy. He works as a blood-spatter analyst in Miami, he's close with his foul-mouthed sister, Deb, he has a sweet relationship with his long-term girlfriend. But he's also a serial killer who spends his free time tracking down victims and chopping them up.

The masterstroke on Jeff Lindsay's part is this: Dexter has a code, instilled in him by his foster father, Harry. He only kills bad people, like rapists, pedophiles and other serial killers. Now, this doesn't mean he's a dogged vigilante, trying to rid the world of evil. Far from it. He's not much different from the people he kills. He's a true psychopath who loves murdering others and gets great pleasure from stalking his prey and then torturing them to death. Yet his deadpan humor, dry self-awareness and odd flashes of humanity make him bizarrely likable, even sympathetic. Dexter's narration is ingenious: funny, chilling, subtly off-kilter. There are sentences that elicit both a chuckle and a shudder, moments where I was torn between rooting for Dexter and hoping that he gets caught.

The book's main plot concerns a copycat serial killer operating in Miami who seems to be leaving clues specifically for Dexter. As the cops close in, Dexter is torn between helping his sister Deb solve the case and finding the killer himself so he can join in the fun. As good as the title character is, the book's actual story is a little thin. The mystery is straightforward and kind of dull, right up until the end, when it really starts to pick up steam. I'm not gonna lie, the climax is some fine white-knuckle tension, and very nicely structured around the question of just how much humanity Dexter has in him. That said, the identity of the Ice Truck Killer is more than a little far-fetched, and the use of prophetic dreams to push the plot along is overdone.

As is often the case with books as protagonist-centered as Dexter, the supporting characters are not especially interesting. Deb is the most developed, and while I liked her well enough, she's pretty two-dimensional. Lindsay is good at describing a character in an interesting way - LaGuerta is beautiful, ambitious and stupid, Doakes is obsessed with justice and suspicious of Dexter - but then doesn't really follow up with any kind of development. This is Dexter's novel; pretty much all of the story's conflict and color comes from his own internal narrative. Dexter's lack of analytical ability when it comes to "normal humans" would probably make it difficult to have a three-dimensional supporting cast anyway.

Despite the less-than-top-notch plotting and a supporting cast that didn't do much for me, there's no doubt that Dexter is an effective thriller, both hair-raising and thought-provoking. Dexter himself is one of the most striking and memorable protagonists in a long time. Is it wrong to root for him? Is he truly a monster, like he himself thinks, or is there a decent human being somewhere inside him? The novel never tells us outright (although there are some strong hints), which just makes the mystery more fascinating.

January

Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer, 2012

I've been a fan of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series for years; at its best, these books are light, terrific fun with really endearing characters and goofy, James Bond-meets-Brothers Grimm plots. The first few installments are definitely the best ones; the series has been getting progressively weaker for a long time now, so I was rather pleased to hear that Colfer was finally wrapping up the series with Guardian. And I was even happier when Guardian proved to be a smart, satisfying conclusion to a sometimes troubled saga.

The plot revolves around the apocalypse, Fowl-style. Naturally, the engineer of this cataclysm is Artemis's arch-enemy, Opal Koboi, who escapes from prison using a brilliantly diabolical and bizarre trick. Her next step is unleashing ancient fairy magic that will destroy the world, if Artemis, Butler, Holly, Foaly and Mulch can't stop her in time. It's a something of a boilerplate plot for the series, but Colfer makes it clear from the get-go that the stakes are higher than ever. The action is completely relentless, and it's the classic mixture of exciting and entirely absurd that fans have come to expect. I mean, any book that has the Abominable Snowman pushing a small plane down a runway with a dwarf on his back, being pursued by fairy warriors possessing forest animals has to be awesome, right?

Colfer is not a phenomenal writer by any means; he never has been. There are plenty of awkward sentences and plenty of cliches, but there's generally enough genuine wit to counterbalance it. Gotta love the dialogue, too, even if it's often more cheesy than snappy. And hey, Colfer doesn't go too far with his usual ecological tangents, either, which is certainly a mercy.

The important thing about a finale, of course, is wrapping up character arcs, and for most of Guardian I was afraid that Colfer would shortchange Artemis (I was also a bit afraid that Artemis wouldn't have an opportunity to out-think his final foe). For the series to be at all satisfying, Artemis's redemption arc has to come full circle. Thankfully, Colfer makes the last few chapters one last classic Fowl gambit, with an emotional twist. For someone who's followed Artemis's journey from villain to hero for years, the ending has real impact. Everybody else gets a chance to shine, too, particularly Foaly, who gets his own subplot for the first time. And yes, Artemis's final sacrifice really got to me (I may have cried just a tad). It was a near-perfect conclusion to the series, as was the final line, where Holly, telling Artemis's clone his own life story, finishes the series with its very first sentence.

 

Let It Bleed by Ian Rankin, 1996

Let It Bleed is, in my opinion, the best John Rebus novel since Tooth and Nail. It's the longest in the series so far, a dense, intricate tale with both shocking intimacy and stunning scope. This is probably the most complex plot Rankin has yet attempted, but it's also one of his crispest and most logical. More important than the plot, of course, is John Rebus, and he's in fine form here--which is to say that he's an utter mess of a human being, and yet impossible not to love. Let It Bleed is the work of an author at the top of his game, and it's glorious.

As is usual with Rebus novels, the plot is impossible to succinctly describe, since it's tangled and twisted and looped back on itself. Suffice it to say that the novel opens with a stunning car chase that ends in tragedy and sparks an unofficial investigation that leads Rebus to the highest level of the Scottish government. As usual, his search for the truth could easily cost him his job, if not his life. The strands of plot, which are many, all tie together neatly here, something which caused Rankin trouble in previous books. The story may be devilishly complex, but it all comes together well (a couple of slightly over-stretching moments aside).

A blurb on the back of my copy compares Rankin to Charles Dickens, and it's an astonishingly insightful and apt comparison. Rankin, like Dickens, tells vast narratives that encompass people from every level of the socioeconomic strata. He keenly observes not only what makes them different, but what makes them similar. Rebus--and Rankin--is above all an observer of human nature, and he's a brilliant way to tell a story about people from all different backgrounds through just one narrator. Rebus is contemptuous of everybody; he's an equal-opportunity snarker.

His own life has perhaps never been worse. Not only has he broken up with Patience, but his estranged daughter Sammy is now living with her, complicating two already terrible relationships. His arch-enemy Flower is trying to get him off the force, and may know more than he's letting on. On top of everything, Rebus's alcoholism is getting steadily worse. Rankin's portrayal of Rebus's quiet desperation and whiskey-soaked melancholy is genuinely haunting. Though he fights against it, ennui and loneliness are always close to consuming him. The only thing that helps is his work, and yet even that only serves to drive him further into depression. Anybody who's read my reviews of Rankin's previous novels will know that I have been crazy about John Rebus since day one, and he remains one of my favorite literary detectives ever. He's an incredible character, period.

In a very real way, Let It Bleed's main dramatic action is not Rebus hunting down a murderer or a terrorist, but Rebus going head-to-head with a far more powerful group of opponents. He's never been more isolated or more out-classed, but instead of giving up, he digs in and puts up a fight. Choosing the side of the angels is hard, however, when you seem to be surrounded entirely by demons. Ultimately, Rebus doesn't defeat all that's wrong with his screwed-up world (not even close), but he does the best he can and has to hope that that's enough.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, 1999

I sort of wanted to resist The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Its reputation as a "banned book," its supposed wisdom and beauty, its popularity among teen readers, all of it kind of turned me off to it a bit. I imagined the book being gimmicky and cliched, the kind of YA novel that gets acclaim without being very good.

And then the book made me sob my eyes out. So, yeah. I misjudged it from the outset.

Perks does a lot of difficult things very, very well. It's a virtual minefield from start to finish, and Chbosky navigates it with incredible confidence. A YA novel narrated by a quirky, innocent protagonist (in epistolary format, no less)? A main character whose sunny outlook on life is an inspiration to others? A narrative about the first year of high school, complete with first dates, lunchroom fights and all-important dances? And let's not forget that the novel deals with a laundry list of hot-button social issues, like abortion, homophobia, date rape, mental illness and sexual abuse. These are the ingredients for disaster, or at least generic blandness, when it comes to a novel like this.

Perks is not a disaster. It's actually kind of a masterpiece. It gets to the heart of adolescence better than just about any book that I can think of off the top of my head. It's straightforward without being pedantic, simple without being simplistic. Its main character, Charlie, is an endlessly kind and sensitive boy and he should be completely irritating. But instead, he's one of the most beautifully realized characters I've read about in a YA novel. Even a last-minute revelation about his past is a genuine gut-kick rather than a hokey device. Writing a character that good had to have been incredibly difficult, but it completely works.

Charlie's commentary on the more cynical world around him is both incredibly insightful and endearingly naive. One of Chbosky's most effective concepts is peopling Charlie's world with complicated, multi-faceted characters that he doesn't fully understand. The reader only gets to truly understand the supporting characters gradually; Charlie is not an especially reliable narrator, even with his moments of startling insight.

Complaints? I really don't have any. It takes a while to settle into the novel, but that's more because of the idiosyncratic nature of the narration than any fault in execution. There were a few moments that reminded me of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief: beautiful and well-observed, but a tiny bit manipulative, as though the author knows just how thoroughly he's grabbed hold of your emotions, and takes the opportunity to twist the knife a bit. Still, it's pretty hard to accuse an author of manipulating your emotions too successfully.

In a lot of ways, Perks is not a complex novel. The story is not the point; the book has little plot, and even the central framing device of Charlie's letters goes entirely unexplained. What it is is an enchanting character study, and a look at the messed-up ways in which people relate to each other. Charlie makes observations about families, friend, love and growing up that are understated and simple, but sometimes gut-wrenchingly true. How many first kisses have I read about in novels? A lot. But how many are as sweet and gorgeous and memorable as Charlie's first kiss with Sam? Very few.

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman, 1989

My second foray into the world of comic books was trickier but ultimately more rewarding than my first. The Sandman is one of the few comic book sagas to have a distinct beginning, middle and end. Unlike most others, it's actually possible to read it all the way through. The first eight issues, collected in Preludes and Nocturnes, are sometimes a little awkward, as you can see Gaiman getting his footing. By the end of the collection, however, the series starts to take form, and I realized that I was in for quite a journey.

Preludes and Nocturnes is a charmingly mixed-up narrative, hopping around genres, tones and locales with merry abandon, while keeping the main thread front and center. Some issues read like straight-up horror, others like elegant fantasy, others like DC superhero tales. The Sandman, Morpheus, is not a character nailed down to anything in particular; as is fitting for the Lord of Dreams, he is fluid and complex, and can pretty much end up anywhere, a storytelling device that's both handy and downright inspired.

The collection follows Morpheus as he escapes from a long imprisonment and returns to his realm to find that things have fallen apart in his absence. In classic form, he must go on a quest to reclaim three of his lost treasures, items that will give him back his power. This relatively simple frame enables Morpheus to travel to Hell, ally himself with a paranormal detective and go up against an escaped supervillain planning to take over the world.

For my money, the more down-to-earth material is where Gaiman really shines. Cosmic metaphysics are all well and good, but I prefer the genuine characterization to the nutty comic-book action (call me crazy, but I prefer stories where people actually interact to stories where every other pages has BOOM or KRSHEESH). Luckily for me, there's plenty of Gaiman's trademarks: dry wit, smooth narration, brilliantly off-the-wall imagery. The series' main character, Morpheus, is obviously a tricky one to write: he's a literal force of nature, as well as a person in his own right. Overall, I found him interesting--detached, but not unkind, ballsy, but ultimately insecure--and I look forward to more development in the future. The last issue, and the best, introduces his sister, Death, who's easily the most interesting and poignant character in the book. Their interaction is absolutely fascinating; I can't wait to see more of the Endless (they must have some interesting Christmas dinners).

The standalone elements are more hit-or-miss for me. Dream's trip to Hell left me pretty cold, and the Doctor Destiny storyline (while creating a nice framework for the book) ends rather anticlimactically, despite some great moments along the way. The "24 Hours" vignette is a particularly chilling interlude, like a Stephen King novel compressed into just a few gruesome pages. Doctor Destiny definitely has his moments as a villain, but like I said, the end of the storyline basically amounts to "Okay, everything's fine again due to comic-book physics." The final issue, however, is what has me really excited to get my hands on the next collection: it's a spare, surprisingly sweet tale about moving on, in various ways. It's very funny in places, and moving, and it's drawn with an impeccable eye for mood and characterization. Hopefully, as the series moves on, it will continue to mature in new and astonishing ways. With Gaiman at the helm, it seems impossible that it wouldn't.

Best of 2012

Best of 2012

Hello, faithful readers! If anybody out there has been paying attention, they will have noticed that I haven't been posting reviews for quite a few months now. I've got quite a few drafts stored, but I haven't gotten around to posting. To tell the truth, writing full-length reviews has gotten to be a bit of a chore. I've loved writing this blog, but it's started to be more time-consuming than I would like. Much as I enjoy writing reviews, it's gotten to be too much work to write an individual review for every book I read.

This does not, however, mean the end of this blog! Instead, I'm going to change up the format a bit. At the end of each month, I'm going to post a list of the books I read that month, with a capsule review of each one, which should be quite similar to the reviews I've written for the past few years. This will keep the blog running with as little change as possible, while still keeping me from having to write a new review every week or two.

Before we get to the traditional end-of-year awards (God, I sound pompous), here are the books I read during the end of November and December of 2012:

All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, 1963

Dense, hefty and lyrical, All The King's Men was not an easy read. It's not an inviting book, in the sense that it has no easy hook. It's the story of the complex politician Willie Stark, but it's truly the story of his pressman, Jack Burden, and Burden's relationship to his troubled past. It's a political novel, a philosophical tract, and a family saga, with dashes of romance and noir. It's a difficult book to encapsulate, because it's far too ambitious to be straightforward and too tightly constructed to be sprawling.

Warren's writing has a fascinating quality to it, difficult to pin down. His dialogue is sharp and keenly observed, and yet much of the novel is internal, the thoughts and recollections of Jack Burden. Warren's prose can be luminous, or bleak, or wryly comic. You never quite know what to expect. I was particularly fascinated by some of the philosophical concepts that Burden comes to believe in, and the way that Warren handles his ultimate conclusion.

Even more fascinating is Willie Stark, a character so perfectly drawn that I can see him even now in my mind's eye. Willie is a classic antihero: he's not a good man, not truly, and yet I rarely felt contempt for him. His journey up from poverty is characterized by lying, cheating and dirty tactics, yet there's something oddly admirable about it, too (although his long-suffering wife would certainly disagree).

I had problems with some parts of the novel. The Cass Mastern interlude, while illuminating in many ways, can be a hard slog, and I found Jack's endless longing for Anne incredibly dreary after a while (in general, I would say that Warren was far more comfortable writing three-dimensional male characters than three-dimensional female ones). These flaws are pretty minor, and do little to overshadow the brilliance of Willie Stark's descent into corruption and Jack Burden's search for a truth that he can live with.

Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, 1988

I've always been a little wary of the comic book medium, especially when people claim that it's an art form on a par with film or fiction writing. I've read very few comics (and most of the ones I have read are the genially goofy superhero comic books of the fifties and sixties), so I'm really not in any position to judge. It's easy, from an outside perspective, to write off comic books as cheesy and their devoted fans as shortsighted nerds. I knew that I would eventually have to read a graphic novel and see what it was like.

While I don't know much about comic books, I am pretty familiar with most of the major superhero characters thanks to the glut of movies based on them (superhero movies are one of my guilty pleasures). My all-time favorite movie superhero, hands down, is Batman (I'm a huge Christopher Nolan fangirl), so it made sense to start with him. Even though I'm fluent in the basics of the Bat-verse--billionaire, murdered parents, Gotham City--I decided to start with the beginning, or at least with the most highly-regarded retelling of the beginning.

And all I can say is, wow.

Year One may be a comic book, but it's not inane, ridiculous or juvenile in the least. It's a red-blooded crime story, with clipped, noir-ish writing and some genuinely beautiful artwork. While the comic format took a little while for a virgin like me to get accustomed to, soon I was flipping pages without thinking about it. The way the action moves between panels is a work of art, the timing incredibly precise. Mazzucchelli's art is gorgeous--moody, dark, classic. He draws people who--for the most part--look like people, rather than caricatures (I especially like the way he draws Gordon for some reason). The level of detail present in the artwork is sometimes astounding, and I particularly liked the way Mazzucchelli uses little details to set a scene, provide characterization and sometimes to foreshadow the plot.

Miller's story, split between Batman and James Gordon, is a terrific piece of crime writing. I was actually shocked by how suspenseful and exciting I found it. Some of the set-pieces, like the showdown between Batman and a SWAT team in a derelict building, are truly gripping, thanks to the marriage of Miller's terse narration and Mazzucchelli's art. I particularly enjoyed the way that the internal narrations of both protagonists manages to be authentic and distinct, without becoming cheesy or overly explanatory--although I will say that I don't care for comic writers's need to make every other word of dialogue bold. It's a device that seems clumsy and outdated, especially in a comic book as sophisticated as this one.

The influence of Year One on the Nolan film trilogy is clear. This isn't the jokey Adam West Batman; this is a young man with some serious demons--in one of the comic's most harrowing scenes, he comes very close to essentially committing suicide. Gordon, too, is a far more interesting character than he usually is: an essentially good cop struggling against the corruption and evil that surrounds him.

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, 2012

There is no doubt in my mind that no author had a bigger impact on my formative years of reading than J. K. Rowling. The Harry Potter series is, gun to my head, quite probably my favorite piece of writing of all time. And no, I'm not crazy enough to think that it's a masterpiece of beautiful wordsmanship, but Rowling is an incredible storyteller. She's actually a much better writer than she gets credit for, too; she does some truly amazing work in the final chapters of Deathly Hallows. Naturally, I was thrilled by the news that Rowling was releasing a new novel, and a standalone literary novel for adults, no less. Like a lot of Rowling's fans, I was slightly bemused by the fact that the book was a low-key piece of black social comedy with no speculative elements. I was also a bit discomfited by the fierce love-it-or-hate-it dialogue that popped up immediately after it came out. It would have been a huge disappointment for me if Rowling had messed up her crucial first step into standard fiction.

Most of my fears were assuaged once I got a hundred pages or so into Vacancy. Reading Rowling's tart, clear-eyed prose again is an almost physical pleasure for me after a few years with no new Potter, and it didn't take long until her skill at drawing you into a world had me engrossed. Vacancy is a pleasingly complex novel, a mature, entertaining and thoughtful book with some deep flaws and a troubling conclusion, but overall it's an impressive work.

The plot is almost shockingly quiet and low-concept: beloved family man Barry Fairbrother dies of a hemorrhage one evening, sending the provincial town of Pagford into disarray. Barry's death leaves an empty seat (a 'casual vacancy') on the parish council, sparking a massive power struggle between the town's two principal factions. Pagford's residents are a pretty sorry bunch, from jolly tyrant Howard Mollison to new-in-town social worker Kay Bawden. All of them are struggling against private demons, and by the end of the novel, none of their worlds will ever be the same.

The thing that hits you first about Vacancy is just how many character perspectives there are. The Harry Potter novels are almost entirely limited to Harry's POV, but Vacancy switches between narrators like a Stephen King doorstopper. Rowling has always been adept at characterization, and it's a skill that serves her well here. Her cast is big, but distinctive; it's easy to remember who everybody is. Sure, some of the characters are a bit thin, but it's a forgivable flaw with a story this sprawling.

Unfortunately, Rowling can't quite stick the book's ending; while it works thematically, it comes off as mawkish and contrived. Rowling has some interesting and thought-provoking points to make, but she uses a jackhammer to make them when a light tap would have been more effective. The conclusion of the character arcs are likewise a mixed bag. There are some surprisingly satisfying resolutions, and some extremely unsatisfying ones. Still, I enjoyed the book as a whole, which is well-written, acidically funny and sometimes surprisingly moving, even if it doesn't come together perfectly. It's no Harry Potter, but then, what is?

Horns by Joe Hill, 2011

One of the many things I liked about Horns is how difficult it is to classify. Heart-Shaped Box, Hill's first novel, was a pretty straightforward supernatural thriller, at least as far as the plot was concerned. Horns defies any easy labels. It is, at its core, a character study infused with religious theology and a streak of pulpy horror. It's at times a supremely uneven read, with the individual segments stitched together almost haphazardly. But it's also fresh, scary, exciting and diabolically clever.

The premise--a man wakes up with horns--sounds like an old Twilight Zone episode, and at first it seems like the novel will be a surreal black comedy about perception and honesty. Then, the plot twists again, and seems to set up a murder mystery. This conceit gets tossed out pretty quickly, too, as we learn the identity of the killer quite shortly.The book's final stretch reads like a hybrid of gory revenge thriller and theological treatise (I'd be hard-pressed to decide which element is more entertaining).

Hill is a very strong writer, capable of writing sentences of surprising beauty, and some that raise the hair on the back of your neck. Once in a while his prose can become a bit pretentious, and there's the odd bit of clunky dialogue, but these are the exception to the rule. The two segments I had the most trouble with are both flashbacks--the lengthy discursion about Ig as a child and a sequence from the perspective of the main villain. Both sequences run too long and have too little new information in them to justify their length. Interestingly, the only time I actually thought about Hill's parentage (Stephen King is his father) was during the childhood flashbacks; there was a strong flavor of "The Body."

Once the slightly clunky expositional segments are out of the way, though, Horns gets far better. The novel's final third or so is a seriously intense revenge thriller, with much bloodshed and savage humor. Like Hill's last protagonist, Judas Coyne, Ig is a character with a whole lot of layers. Is he ultimately a good guy gone bad, or a bad guy gone good? Does his transformation into a devil (a very literal transformation) represent a descent into evil or a rise from powerlessness to empowerment? It's a shame the novel's antagonist doesn't make for a more complex foil for Ig. The third main character, Merrin, has been murdered before the novel begins, but the reader gets to know her through flashbacks. In one of Hill's neatest narrative tricks, we find out who Merrin is in bits and pieces, only getting the (shocking) full picture at the very end.

What surprised me most about the novel in the end was how moving it was. The book's tone jumps around so much, particularly at the mordantly funny beginning, that the emotional power of the final stretch comes as a bit of a shock. For a book that is basically about evil, it has a surprisingly humanistic streak to it. Yes, humans do horrible things to one another, but they have a surprising ability to redeem themselves, too.

*

 

Okay. On to the best-of list.

 

Anyone following this blog could see that there was a steep drop in the number of books I read this year versus last year. Last year, I read forty-five books. This year, I read twenty-one books, less than half (and a lot of the books I read this year were short). For various reasons--and I'm ashamed to admit that one of them is a Netflix subscription, I just haven't spent as much time reading this year, something that kind of makes me sad, to be honest. One of my New Year's resolutions is to make 2013 a more productive year, book-wise.

 

But while I may not have read many books this year, I read plenty of good ones. Here are the top six:

 

6. The Magicians by Lev Grossman

In my review of The Magicians, I made it clear that I had mixed feelings about some of Grossman's choices, both plot and stylistic. I still am, to an extent, but boy, this is a book that stays with you. Grossman has some occasionally profound things to say about fantasy, young adulthood and growing up, not to mention the fact that The Magicians breathes life into tired tropes like the school for magic and makes them feel fresh again. The Magician King is definitely on my reading list for 2013.

 

 

5. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

Like I said above, ATKM is not an easy read. It is, however, an enriching and fascinating one. Warren's meditations on morality and accountability are sometimes spellbinding. Plus, it's a finely honed political novel with a subtle wit, written with enormous talent.

 

 

4. Mission Canyon by Meg Gardiner

A near-perfect thriller, in my humble opinion. Evan Delaney is a terrific protagonist, and the novel is a synthesis of everything great about the genre: hilarious, scary, twisty and exciting as hell. More than that, though, the novel is a remarkably nuanced and sympathetic portrait of a relationship put through extraordinary circumstances.

 

 

3. Macbeth by William Shakespeare

It's by Shakespeare; they'll revoke my Pretentious Reader card if I don't include it on the list! But seriously, this is an amazing play, even if it's not one of my favorites. Nobody does tragedy like Shakespeare.

 

 

2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

TBT is not just a beautiful and daring YA novel, it's a beautiful and daring novel, period. The fact that it is, technically, aimed at kids is astounding. Its complexity and thoughtfulness is as striking as its playful, ghoulish wit. The ending may be engineered to make you cry, but it certainly works, doesn't it? Beautifully written, and hauntingly illustrated, too.

 

 

1. The Code of the Woosters/The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

I will contest to my dying day that P.G. Wodehouse is one of the most under appreciated geniuses to ever put pen to paper. His talent is absolutely mind-boggling. His sentence construction alone ought to be studied with the same reverence afforded to Shakespeare or Keats (and let's not forget his incredible gift for dialogue). Code and Inimitable are two of his finest Jeeves-and-Wooster books (I especially adore the episodic pacing of Inimitable). I definitely didn't read any other books this year that were both this brilliant and this much fun to read.

 

 

Honorable Mentions: Horns, Smoke and Mirrors, Savages, Mockingjay, The Shadow Rising.

 

 

Well, that's it for 2012! Hopefully 2013 will be even better. Keep checking in for my January report, which should be up soon!



The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

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The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, 1898

I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets. "Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It's quite too horrible." This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: "It's beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it."

"For sheer terror?" I remember asking.

He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. "For dreadful--dreadfulness!"

"Oh, how delicious!" cried one of the women.

He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw what he spoke of. "For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain."

"Well then," I said, "just sit right down and begin." ---- (page 4)

Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898), like many classics of apprehension and horror, relies on uncertainty and shadowy, mysterious occurrences to wind up the story's tension and suspense. The novella begins as a fairly straightforward Victorian ghost story, following familiar patterns (the uneasy young governess, the mysterious old mansion in the country, the hushed-up family secrets) to the point of being a pastiche. The main narrative is even framed by a prologue in which the story is read aloud at a Christmas gathering devoted to the telling of horror stories. Although the first sighting of a ghost certainly takes the protagonist by surprise, the reader knows exactly what to expect. James has lured his audience into a certain level comfort and complacency; at first, the story's suspense comes not from the question of whether a supernatural threat will be revealed, but when it will be revealed.

As the tale progresses, however, it becomes increasingly clear that it is no simplistic bump-in-the-night horror story. The governess at first appears to be merely a sensitive, slightly daffy young woman with a strong sense of drama, but as time passes, her narration becomes dense, claustrophobic, paranoid, almost breathless in its sense of rising terror. The central question of the novella only emerges towards the end: is the governess simply insane, is she truly seeing the ghosts or is she perhaps the one terrorizing the children herself?

James offers no obvious answers; the conclusion of the novella is entirely ambiguous. Miles, the small boy in the governess's care, dies in the very last sentence, after a conversation that the governess sees as a battle between herself and Peter Quint for possession of his soul. The governess seems to attribute Miles's death to Quint's influence leaving his body, but it's an entirely subjective analysis. Likewise, Miles seems to finally see Quint's ghost at the end of the story, but again, this is just the governess's reading of the situation. Nearly all of the novella's text is the protagonist's own narration of the story; only a small fraction is dialogue, and the dialogue that is related can be interpreted in any number of ways, assuming that the governess's point-of-view is unreliable. Depending on which way you read it, Miles's words could be those of an innocent, carefree little boy, or thinly disguised threats from a malicious fiend. Either version fits in perfectly with the evidence presented in the text.
 

Another example of James's refusal to spell anything out is the novella's constant sexual references, innuendo and insinuations, none of which are explicitly stated. The thinly veiled references to Quint and Jessel's inappropriate relationship, the governess's embarrassing and unrequited crush on her new employer, the sinister hints about Miles's behavior at school and, worst of all, the possibility that one or both of the children were sexually molested by one or both of the ghosts. The atmosphere of unhealthy, perhaps perverted sexuality permeates the story, and yet the theme is so cloaked in Victorian manners that it's almost possible to imagine that it's not there. But it is, and James perhaps intended the work to be a bit of a satire of the sexual repression of the age. Would the governess have been able to more effectively deal with the situation if she had been able to admit to herself that there was a sexual element? Could her own repressed attitude towards sex (shown by her unwillingness to openly acknowledge her attraction to her employer) be playing some role in the events—for instance, could her belief that the children's innocence is being destroyed be some commentary on her own view of sexuality? There are even some subtle suggestions that it is she, not the ghosts, who is corrupting and terrorizing the children, possibly in a sexual way.

The actual text of the novella offers no solid answer to any of these questions; what makes the tale frightening is the uncertainty, which James has no intention of clearing up, even at the climax. Both readings of the story (that the governess is crazy, or that she's right and no one believes her) are horrifying in their own way, which is what makes it effective. Whichever side you take—and readers have been taking sides since the novella was published—the end result is unsettling and sinister.
 

Personally, I think the governess truly is seeing ghosts, and that they do have some sort of hold over the children. Her narration and interpretation of events is, of course, entirely unreliable, but there are several solid pieces of evidence that she is truly seeing something supernatural. For instance, she is able to perfectly describe Peter Quint to Mrs. Grose without having any way to know what he looks like. Douglas, the guest in the prologue who reads the story, seems genuinely disturbed by it, and describes the governess affectionately (perhaps because he is in love with her), which isn't something he would likely do if he thought she was insane. And to me, the idea of a normal, albeit quirky, woman being driven crazy by something no one else will acknowledge is even more insidiously frightening than if the governess was simply psychotic.

The point of the story, of course, is that we are entirely dependent on the governess's deeply subjective version of events. In her own eyes, she is a hero, selflessly protecting the children from the hellish influence of unnatural spirits. James gives us no other window into the situation, no other point of view to see the story from. It seems that the question of whether the governess is good or evil or either is up to the reader to determine. That uncertainty is the core of what makes the story frightening. To be honest, I found analyzing the novella after the fact more interesting than reading it. The dense, gimmicky prose is a bit boring after a while. This is one classic that, in my opinion, is more interesting to discuss and consider that it is to read.

NEXT UP: One of the hottest books of the fall, J. K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy.

The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

 

The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse, 1923

I don't know if  you know that sort of feeling you get on these days round about the end of April and the beginning of May, when the sky's a light blue, with cotton-wool clouds, and there's a bit of a breeze blowing from the west? Kind of uplifted feeling. Romantic, if you know what I mean. I'm not much of a ladies' man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something. So that it was a bit of an anti-climax when I merely ran into young Bingo Little, looking perfectly foul in a crimson satin tie decorated with horseshoes.

'Hallo, Bertie,' said Bingo.

'My God, man!' I gargled. 'The cravat! The gent's neckwear! Why? For what reason?'

'Oh, the tie?' He blushed. 'I - er - I was given it.'

He seemed embarassed so I dropped the subject. We toddled along a bit, and sat down on a couple of chairs by the Serpentine.

'Jeeves tells me you want to talk to me about something,' I said.

'Eh?' said Bingo, with a start. 'Oh yes, yes. Yes.'

I waited for him to unleash the topic of the day, but he didn't seem to want to get going. Conversation languished. He stared straight ahead of him in a glassy sort of manner.

'I say, Bertie,' he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter.

'Hallo!'

'Do you like the name Mabel?'

'No.'

'No?'

'No.'

'You don't think there's a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree tops?'

'No.'

He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up.

'Of course, you wouldn't. You always were a fat-headed worm without any soul, weren't you?'

'Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all.'

For I realized now that poor old Bingo was going through it once again. Ever since I have known him - and we were at school together - he has been perpetually falling in love with someone, generally in the spring, which seems to act on him like magic. At school he had the finest collection of actresses' photographs of anyone of his time; and at Oxford his romantic nature was a byword. ---- (pages 10-11)

It's difficult to find anything new to say about The Inimitable Jeeves that I haven't already said about others in the series. P. G. Wodehouse is one of the most brilliant writers I've ever read, and the Wooster saga has to be one of (if not the) funniest pieces of comedy writing ever produced.

 

I can't say I've ever read a bad Jeeves book, but there have been weaker entries (generally the ones written later in Wodehoue's career). The Inimitable is definitely not one of the weak ones. As I've said before, the short-story format is perhaps best-suited for Wodehouse's gifts; his plots, if expanded to novel-length, can sometimes become a little labored. Inimitable is, ingeniously, composed of a dozen or so short stories that are linked together. The overall effect is like that of a season of television, composed of episode rather than chapter. It's a format that work brilliantly for Jeeves and Wooster, and the result is a fantastically enjoyable book.

 

The common thread running through all of the stories is Bingo Little, Bertie's haplessly romantic school chum. Over the course of the collection, Bingo falls in love with girl after girl, always with some bizarre obstacle impeding their union. Bertie inevitably ends up roped into some half-witted scheme, and naturally, Jeeves is the only person who can save his employer's best pal from catastrophe.

 

I've always enjoyed Bingo's presence in the Wodehouse 'verse: he's hilariously described as "the hero of a musical comedy who takes the centre of the stage, gathers the boys round him in a circle, and tells them all about his love at the top of his voice." No one can write a well-meaning, but ridiculous buffoon like Wodehouse, and Bingo is in rare form in The Inimitable. The thing I enjoy most about his presence is that he gives Bertie a chance to (occasionally) act as the voice of reason rather than the source of lunacy. Wooster's habit of calling his friend "young Bingo" is not just an affectionate figure of speech; it's a reminder that Bingo is one of the few people that Bertie can legitimately feel superior to. It's quite an accomplishment to be more insane than Bertram Wooster, but Bingo manages it. I think it was the false beard that put him over the edge.

 

As usual, other recurring characters from Wodehouse's stable pop in at various points in the book. Bertie's fearsome Aunt Agatha makes a particularly memorable appearance when, during a trip abroad, Bertie gets a rare opportunity to put her in her place. His tirade is a goofy, glorious masterpiece and probably the closest he's ever gotten to being triumphant in a struggle against his diabolical aunt.

There are some truly brilliant comic setpieces in the book, including an uproariously disastrous Christmas pageant with Bingo at the helm that brings to mind Gussie's iconic prize-giving scene from Right Ho, Jeeves (1934). The sequence where a group of bored small-towners begin betting on the lengths of their pastor's sermons is another gem. And let's not forget the interlude where Bingo joins up with a group of radical Communists. The whole book runs like a Wodehouse highlights reel. The fact that the main storyline is artfully and hilariously tied up at the end is just icing on the cake.

NEXT UP: Henry James's classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw.

 

Savages by Don Winslow

Savages by Don Winslow, 2010

Lado and Hector take them to a big date farm out near Indio and put them in a shed where they keep tractors and shit. The two sit on the dirt floor leaning against the corrugated-tin wall and they develop verbal diarrhea. Keep shitting on and on about how there were two of them, a shotgun and two pistols, real pros. . .

Lado already knows they were pros-- they knew when, where, and what, and they knew to look for the GPS.

"Two of them? You sure?" Lado asks.

They're really sure.

Two tall guys.

Lado thinks that's interesting.

Wearing masks.

"What kind of masks?"

Yanqui television hosts.

Jay Leno and. . .

"Letterman," the driver says.

The other one got the car make and license plate.

"It's a wonder," Lado says, "that neither of you two got hurt at all."

Very fortunate, they agree.

Yeah, well, that ain't gonna last. ---- (page 182)

Savages is a wickedly twisted and brilliant piece of crime fiction, and a sick little experiment on readers to boot. I love amorality and antiheroes, novels where good and evil are varying shades of gray. To say that Savages' morality is gray is to a massive understatement. I'm not sure I've ever read another book where every single main character is, to some extent, a villain, or at least someone who has made terrible choices. Winslow's style can only be described as unique and his plotting is brutal, intricate and complex. Here's a book that you have to chew on for a while before you can decide how you feel about it.

The protagonists (not heroes, but protagonists) of the novel are Ben and Chon, best buddies who run a massive marijuana ring in southern California. Their aim--well, Ben's aim, really--is to run the most peaceful operation they can. When a powerful Mexican cartel looking to expand its business instigates a hostile takeover of their business, Ben and Chon are faced with a choice: give up or wage war against a far larger and more powerful enemy.

The plot quickly becomes much more twisted than that, as both sides begin a riveting game of chicken in order to feel the other out. Dirty tactics, power plays and some highly spirited negotiations ensue. Winslow gives every character dimension and complexity, from the brutal head of the Baja Cartel to a corrupt and pathetic DEA agent. As hard as it is at first to root for a band of marijuana dealers, Ben and Chon are hard not to empathize with, even as they are forced to be more and more ruthless and cruel. O, their shared girlfriend and a pot-smoking hipster, is likewise both difficult to like and difficult not to like. Winslow is damn good at that--forcing you to understand or even admire some truly bad people. Grey morality is the name of the game in Savages.

Winslow's prose is bizarre: a hybrid of gonzo poeticism, clipped Elmore Leonard-style dialogue and terse, action-movie bursts of violence and action. Some chapters are only a word or two long (seriously), and some are in script format. And the amazing thing is, it works. Sure, there are a couple of times that Winslow goes too far into stylized nonsense and comes off as pretentious, but for the most part the story and the style complement each other perfectly. Winslow can be a damn funny writer, too; his humor is as dark and sharp as the rest of the story.

The climax, when it comes, is moving, riveting and oddly graceful. The biggest plot twist is completely terrific-- surprising, but obvious in retrospect. By the end, Winslow has elevated the novel into a surprisingly affecting tragedy. Ben, Chon and O are not heroes by any means, but they were people looking for some modicum of peace in a savage world.

NEXT UP: Plenty of new reviews coming, starting with a brand-new Jeeves novel.

Tripwire by Lee Child

Tripwire by Lee Child, 1999

The danger had ebbed and flowed like a tide for years. He had spent long periods certain that it was about to wash over him at any time. And then long periods certain it would never reach him at all. Sometimes, the deadening sensation of time made him feel safe, because thirty years is an eternity. But other times it felt like the blink of an eye. Sometimes he waited for the first call on an hourly basis. Planning, sweating, but always knowing he could be forced to run at any moment.

He had played it through his head a million times. The way he expected it, the first call would come in maybe a month before the second call. He would use that month to prepare. He would tie up the loose ends, close things down, cash in, transfer assets, settle scores. Then when the second call came in, he would take off. Immediately. No hesitation. Just get the hell out, and stay the hell out.

But the way it happened, the two calls came in on the same day. The second call came first. The nearer tripwire was breached an hour before the farther one. And Hook Hobie didn't run. He abandoned thirty years of careful planning and stayed to fight it out. ---- (pages 2-3)

Tripwire is the earliest Jack Reacher novel I've read so far (only the third), and although I have yet to read a bad Lee Child thriller, it's in the top tier of the series. It's not Child at his most rip-roaring, but it features perhaps the finest villain he's written yet, a huge chunk of character development for Reacher and a plot that, while not lightning-fast, ramps up the tension to nearly unbearable levels.

The story begins with Reacher digging pools in the Florida Keys, saving up money and enjoying his anonymity. When a private investigator named Costello comes looking for him, Reacher's inclination is to hide. Until Costello turns up dead. Feeling responsible, Reacher follows Costello's trail back to New York, where a woman from his past, a deadly secret and a vicious, hook-handed moneylender await him.

Child's plots are usually big, sprawling and complicated, but he tries a somewhat different approach with Tripwire, which has a basically simple structure with only one major twist. A big piece of the book is told from the perspectives of characters other than Reacher, so the reader is nearly always in the superior position. Instead of intricate plotting, Tripwire winds up the story like an old-fashioned noir thriller, the suspense generated by the strong undercurrent of menace and unpredictability that comes from the book's villains.

Hook Hobie, the sadistic, intelligent, one-handed villain, is definitely the most memorable thing about Tripwire. It's nice to see one of the more over-the-top villains again, since the later books in the series have had more generic baddies. Hobie is anything but generic: he's both terrifyingly larger than life and strangely human. Most importantly, he feels like a genuine threat, which is hard for Child to pull off with a hero as infallible as Reacher.

While I initially had my reservations about the lengthy subplot in which Hobie abducts and terrorizes a CEO and his wife, I ultimately found it to be an excellent way to make Hobie seem powerful and competent. Many thriller villains spend the entire novel always just failing to kill the hero or carry out their wicked plot; Hobie spends the book succeeding at nearly everything due to his common sense and meticulous planning. Child seems to almost admire his efficiency and ability to get things done. He's not afraid to make Hobie just a tiny bit sympathetic, too. The sequence in which he narrates Hobie's one-handed routine for getting ready in the morning is absolutely devoid of any obvious appeals to pity, but it's impossible not to see Hobie as a human being rather than a cardboard psychopath.

Reacher sort of does his own thing for most of the novel, crossing paths only rarely with the villains. His main arc has to do with his increasing discontent with the drifter lifestyle. Tripwire takes place only two years after he left the service, and he's not quite as disconnected and solitary as he is in later installments. His relationship with Jodie Garber, the daughter of his commanding officer, shows him a new option: stability, normalcy, an ordinary life with a car and a job and a lawn. The romantic subplot--which is, as always, inevitable--is fine, and I would probably have enjoyed it more if I hadn't already read what feels like the same storyline half a dozen times. Jodie is the usual Reacher love interest: intelligent, mature, spunky, beautiful (I'm starting to suspect that Lee Child himself has a type), and most importantly, a good foil.

What sets the Reacher/Jodie relationship apart is the way it gradually becomes more normal and open as the book progresses, eventually culminating in a shocker ending of sorts: they stay together at the end of the book. That is correct. Jack Reacher ends the book with a house and a steady girlfriend that he cares about. While this state of things obviously doesn't last, it's still the first major break in formula that I've encountered in a Reacher novel. Between the spellbinding final duel between Reacher and Hobie (one of the most intense scenes in any Reacher book ever) and the cliffhanger-ish ending, Tripwire has one of the strongest conclusions to a Child novel that I've read yet. I can't wait to find out what happens next, even though it'll all eventually end up the same as always. There's something comforting in that, I think.

NEXT UP: Things have been slow around here, and will probably continue to be a bit slow; I've been busy writing my own novel and haven't had much time to read. But the next book up is an interesting one: Don Winslow's Savages.