Archive for mainstream

Jack Wolf – The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones [Blog Tour]

jackwolf-rawheadbloodybonesThe year is 1750.

Tristan Hart, precociously talented student of medicine practising under the legendary Dr William Hunter. His obsession is the nature of pain and preventing it; the relationship between mind and matter and the existence of God. A product of the Age of Enlightenment, he is a rational man on a quest to cut through darkness and superstition with the brilliant blade of science.

Tristan Hart, madman and deviant. His obsession is the nature of pain, and causing it. A product of an age of faeries and goblins, gnomes and shape-shifting gypsies, he is on a quest to arouse the perfect scream and slay the daemon Raw Head who torments his dark days and long nights.

Troubled visionary, twisted genius, loving sadist. What is real and what imagined in Tristan Hart’s brutal, beautiful, complex world?

The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones is definitely something different. It’s a dark and twisted tale that leaves the reader both uncomfortable and fascinated. Wolf makes some interesting stylistic choices that might be hard for people to overlook, as they can be quite alienating if one isn’t prepared for them. However, I hope that people do look past these challenges, because beyond the presentation there is a tale worth reading and some interesting questions to ponder.

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By Mieneke Published 8 May, 2013 Posted in historical fiction, mainstream, review Tagged: | 1 Comment

Sam Thompson – Communion Town

samthompson-communiontownA city in ten chapters.

Every city is made of stories: stories that intersect and diverge, stories of the commonplace and the strange, of love and crime, of ghosts and monsters.

In this city an asylum seeker struggles to begin a new life, while a folk musician pays with a broken heart for a song and a butcher learns the secrets of the slaughterhouse. A tourist strays into a baffling ritual and a child commits an incalculable crime; private detectives search the streets for their archenemies and soulmates and, somewhere in the shadows, a figure which might once have been human waits to tell its tale.

Communion Town is a city in ten chapters: a place imagined differently by each citizen, mixing the everyday with the gothic and the uncanny; a place of voices half-heard, sights half-glimpsed and desires half-acknowledged.

It’s been a while time since I’ve read a contemporary, mainstream work, that could be categorised as ‘literary fiction’, the last one was in August last year, and that one had a strong genre slant, as it was a post-apocalyptic tale. And while Communion Town certainly has genre elements, for me it falls squarely in the literary fiction section—and yes, I agree, literary fiction is as much a genre as speculative fiction, but that’s a wholly different discussion and an entirely different post. This collection of ten stories is difficult to describe in one adjective. Interesting doesn’t do it justice, because it’s more than that, it was a thought-provoking read. At the same time, I found reading it really hard work, having to reread passages quite often and generally reading at a slower pace than I usually do. But while at times a bit of a slog, it was never boring. So I find myself at a bit of a loss as to how to judge this book. Taken separately, I’d say many of these stories are quite good, while those that don’t stand as well alone are enhanced by the whole. However, I don’t know whether I’d say that the collection as such worked for me, mostly because despite all being set in the same city, I kept looking for a further cohesion between the tales, a theme if you will, which they all shared. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it, but I’m not sure whether that’s a failing of the text or me failing as a reader.

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By Mieneke Published 19 March, 2013 Posted in mainstream, review Tagged: | Leave a comment

Rosie Garland – The Palace of Curiosities

rosiegarland-thepalaceofcuriousitiesBefore Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. The star attraction is a raging lion, straight from the heart of Africa. Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps… and when Eve is porn, the story goes, she doesn’t cry – she meows and licks her paws.

When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. But as they search his pockets, his eyes crack open. A lucky escape or an act of black magic?

Cast out of Victorian society, Eve and Abel become The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in the Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever…

Hot on the heels of another book with a Victorian circus-esque flavour, I got to read an early ARC for The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland. While it is a debut novel, Garland is an award-winning author in other disciplines and it definitely shows in her first long-form offering. It’s a stunning piece of work, with strong themes of identity, acceptance of the Other, and a touchingly unique love story between two fabulous main characters. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the benchmark against which the rest of this year’s debuts will have to measure itself and it’s only the first Monday of the year. 2013 is certainly off to an amazing start.

Told in alternating chapters from the viewpoints of Eve and Abel, The Palace of Curiosities goes a step further to differentiate between the two narrative strands: both are told in first person, but Eve’s chapters are in the past tense, while Abel’s are in the present. This is not just a way to differentiate between the two; it also reflects Abel’s condition. While Abel’s otherness is left largely unexplained, one of its features is that he wakes up every day as a blank slate; he’s literally forgotten who he is, where he is, and what he is supposed to do. Only holding on to a strict routine and the fact that his best friend Alfred looks after him and tells him what he needs to know when he wakes, allows him to move through his days and slowly regain his memories, as if jogging them awake, only to lose them again when he goes to sleep. As a result, Abel lives in a continuous now, with no past and mostly no thoughts of the future, as such, his story can only be told in the present tense.

Due to his strange memory state, his continual present, Abel remains a mystery for much of the book. He’s a kind man, with sometimes surprising skills, since his body remembers what he can do – even if he can’t – but is also rather childlike in his innocence and helplessness. This makes him appealing, as he’s a sweet, vulnerable character in the harsh lower class world of Victorian London. The only times the reader is given glimpses of Abel’s past is through his dreams, which of course are more than just dreams. Through these we see his quest to discover the reason behind his endless resurrections and his numerous attempts to end his existence. They lend this strange, fathomless man some darker edges and only deepen his mystery. Abel’s continual struggle to regain – and keep – his memories is very much connected to a search for identity, to understand who he is, where he came from, and what his raison d’être is. If one doesn’t know their past, how can they know who they are? When Abel finds a way to anchor his memories, through writing them down or through Eve or Alfred, he becomes more distinct and stronger in his sense of self.

Eve on the other hand starts off strong and confident in her otherness. She refuses to shave her pelt and to conform; she regards herself as beautiful as she is, thanks to her imaginary companion Donkey-Skin. But during the novel, Eve slowly seems to lose herself, seems to be whittled down and robbed of her confidence by her husband, Mr Arroner. She loses Eve in being Mrs Arroner and in her desire to be loved and its only once she meets Abel that she starts to find Eve again. Once she starts to assert herself again, with the help of Lizzie, one of Arroner’s other Curiosities, and Abel, she frees herself and instead of being the Other that needs to be feared, creates an environment for herself where she is the celebrated Other; the neighbourhood mascot, instead of a freak.

Abel and Eve find each other when Abel is recruited by George to be part of Mr Arroner’s collection of human curiosities. In each other they slowly find their way back to themselves; in each other’s eyes they see the truth of themselves, not that which makes them different. It is a sweet romance, though due to Eve’s married state their feelings go unacknowledged for much of the narrative. I loved their slow dance and the air of danger that hangs around their gradual attraction. This unlikely courtship takes place under the scrutiny of the other freaks to be either helped, used to their own advantage or be ignored. The others in the household, mountainous, matronly Lizzie, the painted man George, who is covered in tattoos that tell the stories of Scheherazade and rubber boy Bill, are all fascinating in their own right, especially the first two who have larger role than young Bill. They are all outcasts, either by choice or by fate, and they all have different ways of coping with it. Within the household however, the one ‘normal’ person, Eve’s avaricious and cruel husband, Mr Arroner, is the outcast, disliked by all, except Eve; in this strange house, he is the odd one out.

Garland’s writing is exquisite, feeling both contemporary to its setting, without feeling dated and incredibly atmospheric. The sights, sounds, and smells of the Victorian streets are evoked in full measure, through both a keen ear for speech and dialogue and wonderful descriptive passages. My one complaint here would be that it didn’t feel set beyond Victorian Britain. The story is ostensibly set in London, but it could have been set in another large British town as easily, as it didn’t seem firmly rooted in its London environment.

The Palace of Curiosities is a curious beast; part fantasy, part historical fiction, part magical (sur)realism, it’s all parts amazing. For such a slim book, it contains a big story, with deep themes and wonderful characters. It was an enchanting read, which deeply impressed me. I think this will be one of the must-read books on 2013, though not everyone might be as taken with it as I am. The book will be released in the UK at the end of March. Be sure to pick a copy and discover the delights of The Palace of Curiosities for yourself.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 7 January, 2013 Posted in fantasy, historical fiction, mainstream, review Tagged: | Leave a comment

Anticipated Books (Winter/Spring) 2013: Fiction

2013Literary fiction, modern fiction, contemporary fiction, mainstream fiction. I always struggle with what to call the books not shelved in one of the genres in the bookstore, so I decided to go with just fiction. I know it’s silly because everything on my other lists is fiction as well, but hey, I have to call it something! So in today’s Anticipated Books post we take a look at non-genre fiction. Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for the round-up with my most Anticipated Reads!

February
Sophie Divry – The Library of Unrequited Love (Maclehose Press)sophiedivry-thelibraryofunrequitedlove
One morning a librarian finds a reader who was locked in overnight. She starts to talk to him, a one-way conversation that soon gathers pace as an outpouring of frustrations, observations and anguishes.

Two things shine through above all: her shy, unrequited passion for a quiet researcher named Martin, and an ardent and absolute love of books.

 

March
ronlyndominique-themapmakerswarRonlyn Dominique – The Mapmaker’s War (Atria)
In an ancient time, in a far away land, a young woman named Aoife is allowed a rare apprenticeship to become her kingdom’s mapmaker, tasked with charting the entire domain. Traveling beyond its borders, she finds a secretive people who live in peace, among great wealth. They claim to protect a mythic treasure, one connected to the creation of the world. When Aoife reports their existence to her kingdom, the community is targeted as a threat. Attempting to warn them of imminent danger, Aoife is exiled for treason and finds refuge among the very people who had been declared her enemy. With them, she begins a new life surrounded by kindness, equality, and cooperation. But within herself, Aoife has no peace. She cannot share the grief she feels for the home and children she left behind. She cannot bear the warrior scars of the man she comes to love. and when she gives birth to their gifted daughter, Aoife cannot avoid what the child forces her to confront about her past and its truth.

Michael Marshall – The Forgotten (Orion)michaelmarshall-theforgotten
It should have been the greatest day of David’s life. A trip to New York, wife by his side, to visit his new publisher. Finally, after years of lonely struggle it looks as though the gods of fate are on his side. But on the way back to Penn station, a chance encounter changes all of that. David bumps into a man who covertly follows him and, just before he boards the train, passes by him close enough to whisper: ‘Remember me.’

When the stranger turns up in his home town, David begins to understand that this man wants something from him…something very personal that he may have no choice but to surrender.

Meanwhile, back in New York, ex-lawyer John Henderson does his girlfriend Kristina a favour and agrees to talk to Catherine Warren, an acquaintance of hers who believes she’s being stalked by an ex-lover. But soon John realises that Catherine’s problem is far more complex and terrifying than he could ever have imagined…

There are people out there in the shadows, watching, waiting. They are the forgotten. And they’re about to turn.

peggyriley-amityandsorrowPeggy Riley – Amity & Sorrow (Tinder Press)
In the wake of a suspicious fire, Amaranth gathers her children and flees from the cult where her children were born and raised. Now she is on the run with no one but her barely-teenage daughters, Amity and Sorrow, neither of whom have ever seen the outside world, to help her. After four days of driving without sleep, Amaranth crashes the car, leaving the family stranded at a gas station, unsure of what to do next. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of a downtrodden farmer, a man who offers sanctuary when the women need it most.

April
Patrick Ness – The Crane Wife (Canongate)patrickness-thecranewife
One night George Duncan is woken by a noise in his garden. Impossibly, a great white crane has tumbled to earth, shot through its wing by a giant arrow. Unexpectedly moved, he helps the crane, and from the moment he watches it fly off, George’s life is transformed. The next day, he meets and falls in love with the enigmatic Kumiko. It is a passion that burns hot as a volcano. But this passion comes at a terrible price.

Wise, magical, romantic and funny, The Crane Wife is hugely entertaining. A celebration of the disruptive and redemptive power of love and a hymn to the creative imagination, it is a completely enchanting novel.

May
briankimberling-snapperBrian Kimberling – Snapper (Tinder Press)
“Told with precise and memorable prose in beautifully rendered, time-shifted vignettes, Snapper richly evokes the emotions of coming to adulthood. Nathan’s fascination with the physical world and with living an authentic and meaningful life, his disdain for jingoistic environmentalism, and his struggle to find balance between the cloistered liberalism of college towns and the conservatism of small towns are thoughtfully explored. All this and it’s funny, too. Whether it’s a snapping turtle biting off a friend’s finger or a borrowed dog finding a human thigh bone in a cemetery, Kimberling writes gracefully about absurdity, showing a rich feeling for the whole range of human tragicomedy. A delightful debut.”

So says US publishing bible Booklist about Snapper by Brian Kimberling, a debut novel published under Headline’s new literary imprint Tinder Press in May 2013. With shades of David Vann and Annie Proulx, Snapper is a coming-of-age story, loosely based on the author’s teenage years as a bird watcher in backwater Indiana. The novel started as a collection of short stories, but Brian’s course tutor on the Bath Spa Creative Writing Course, Tessa Hadley, saw a glimmer of something special and Snapper the novel was formed. Set in a brilliantly observed rural Indiana, ‘the bastard son of the Midwest ‘, it is a book about birdwatching, being in love with the wrong woman, and about a man’s relationship with the town he loves to hate. 

June
Anton Di Sclafani – The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls (Tinder Press)antondisclafani-theyonahlosseeridingcampforgirls
1930s America, southern high society: Part love story, part coming-of-age novel, this is the moving, raw and exquisitely vivid story of an uncommon girl navigating a treacherous road to womanhood.

Thea Atwell is fifteen years old in 1930, when, following a scandal for which she has been held responsible, she is ‘exiled’ from her wealthy and isolated Florida family to a debutante boarding school in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. As Thea grapples with the truth about her role in the tragic events of 1929, she finds herself enmeshed in the world of the Yonahlossee Riding Camp, with its complex social strata ordered by money, beauty and equestrienne prowess; where young women are indoctrinated in the importance of ‘female education’ yet expected to be married by twenty-one; a world so rarified as to be rendered immune (at least on the surface) to the Depression looming at the periphery, all overseen by a young headmaster who has paid a high price for abandoning his own privileged roots…

By Mieneke Published 23 December, 2012 Posted in article, contemporary, mainstream Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Peter Heller – The Dog Stars

Hig is a survivor. He has survived the sickness that claimed his wife and family, and the trout he loved to fish. He is coping, just, in the new wilderness of post-apocalyptic America, because he has three things to live for – his beloved dog Jasper, his aggressive but resourceful neighbour, Bangley, and his Cessna aeroplane. Thanks to the plane, he has a lifeline: he can search for food with Jasper, while Bangley keeps watch for feral fellow-outlaws. The problem is that not much fuel is left.

But Hig’s loneliness is becoming unbearable. When he picks up the distorted voice of another human on his radio, he is unable to shake the thought that there might be someone else out there. He knows he must resist looking because the journey is too risky, and there will not be enough fuel to fly back. He must resist, but he can’t. And so, one bleak day, he flies over the horizon, in search of the truth.

What follows is scarier and more life-affirming than he could have imagined.

This might be a somewhat unexpected title to appear as one of my reviews, as its connection to the speculative is tenuous at best – it’s set in a post-apocalyptic America – and it’s not historical or crime fiction either. In fact, I think this falls firmly in the mainstream fiction category. Nevertheless, when a review copy for this title came in the post I was intrigued and added it to my TBR-pile meaning to get to it sooner rather than later. Of course, it did become later rather than sooner, but I’m glad I got to it before the end of the year, as it was an interesting read. I have my share of issues with the story and the writing, but in the end I had to keep reading, just to discover how it ended.

What troubled me the most about this book and what will probably be the biggest issue for most readers is the structure and the writing. Told in a first person narrative voice, this is a voice I’ve never encountered before. Though it not a stream-of-consciousness form, it isn’t far off and at times Hig goes off on tangents and reminiscences that make for confusing sequences. In addition, Heller has Hig add random but’s and and’s into his narration, which for me where highly annoying most of the time. On top of the strange narrative structure, the book is also typographically different; it uses no quotation marks to indicate speech and when in dialogue it sometimes places alternating lines in one paragraph, so that it’s hard to distinguish between the speakers. There is also a distinct scarcity of comma’s and lots of short paragraphs with blank lines in between. While all of this makes for a unique reading experience, it doesn’t necessarily make it a smooth one.

What bothered me story wise is the fact that some elements of the story seemed illogical. I couldn’t fathom why in the nine years since the Flu there haven’t appeared any non-combative groups of survivors, other than the arguably not-so-non-combative Bangley. Similarly, would you really wait nine years to go and explore on the other side of the mountain and look for other survivors? Heller doesn’t really answer these questions, in fact he never really posits them, which I found rather strange.

Where The Dog Stars definitely succeeds however is in emotionally engaging the reader. It’s impossible not to come to care for Hig and even his grouchy companion Bangley. Their interactions and grudging friendship are beautifully addressed with surprising flashes of humour. Hig’s deep and abiding love for his dog Jasper felt genuine and at one point in the novel had me sniffling aloud. When Hig finally goes out to look for the voice behind the crackly transmission he heard and he encounters Pops and Cima we get treated to a soulful exploration of what it means to have to move on after the loss of a spouse, how terrifying and enchanting that sensation of falling in love can be and how hard it is to move beyond the memories.

The Dog Stars has left me with very mixed feelings. I was very much taken with the story and the ultimate message of hope Heller presents the reader with, but with all my issues with the structure and the writing I can’t recommend it whole-heartedly. In the end, I think, how you’ll like this book is very much dependent on the emotional connection you make with both Hig and the narrative. For me that connection wasn’t sufficient to overlook my objections, but if the premise of the story appeals, I’d recommend you give it a try as the story might work far better for you than it did for me.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 22 November, 2012 Posted in contemporary, mainstream, review Tagged: | 2 Comments

Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry (eds.) – Pandemonium: Lost Souls

Lost Souls is a collection of forlorn and forgotten stories, carefully selected by the editors of the Pandemonium series.

The anthology brings together tales of woe and angst, loneliness, redemption and humour, featuring starving artists, possessed Popes, damned kings and hopeful prisoners. Lost Souls is an exploration of what it is that makes us human – and what happens when that’s stripped away.

Earlier this year I was blown away by Jurassic London’s first two Pandemonium anthologies, Stories of the Apocalypse and Stories of the Smoke, making their two other anthologies shoe-ins for anticipated books of the second half of 2012. Lost Souls is the first of those and I can tell you the anticipation was well-deserved. As I received an e-copy of the print version, I can’t attest to the veracity of the claims about its gorgeous exterior, but I did get to see Vincent Sammy’s stunning artwork and that alone would be worth the price of entry!

It is important to note, however, that unlike their previous anthologies Lost Souls isn’t a speculative fiction anthology. Or rather it doesn’t exclusively contain speculative stories. In addition to ghost stories, a fairy tale and a myth-inspired story, there are stories without a hint of the fantastic, though they might still be horrific, especially those stories set in the First World War. The anthology is divided into five sections, each depicting a different form of lost souls. In Lost we meet the ones who lost their way in life, the homeless, the unfulfilled, and the obsolete. Power shows us how power and influence can lead one astray and to lose faith in our fellow man. Stories allows us to figuratively and literally get lost in fiction, while War details the loss of life, of innocence, and an entire generation of young men in the Great War and a wholly different fight inside a prison’s walls. But what was once lost can also be found and in the section of the same title we are shown stories of redemption, justice and love in the strangest of places.

Lost Souls contains too many stories to touch on all of them, so I’ll pick my favourite from each section and point out the ones that didn’t work for me. John Galsworthy’s Quality (Lost) is a haunting story of a cobbler specialising in boots, whose vocation is becoming slowly obsolete and who withers away piece by piece until one day he’s just gone. I loved how Galsworthy slowly severed all of the old man’s moorings until he just couldn’t hang on any more. From the second section, Power, my favourite was the first one included, Mary Coleridge’s The King is Dead, Long Live the King. This is a somewhat more traditional ghost story where the King in the title has entered into a deal with Death and learns about the true shape of his life. Coleridge, great-grandniece of the famous poet, writes of heart-breaking discoveries in a lyrical tone and while I wished the King to live to right the wrongs he’s left behind, I found the ending both fitting and bitter. George Gissing’s Christopherson, which can be found in the Stories section, is a story that any bibliophile can relate to, even if we might never put our books before our loved ones. I certainly can understand the reluctance to give away your books. But at the same time, I loved the narrator, his impatience and exasperation with Christopherson and his determination to help Mrs Christopherson escape her unhealthy situation. Marooned, Robert W. Chambers’ World War I story, was a straight-up horror story, from the claustrophobia, to the sense of isolation, to the final disastrous release of our protagonists’ desperation. And while showing many, if not most, of the emotions of those soldiers sentenced to the trenches, Chambers succeeds in showing us not just what forced inaction does to an honourable man’s psyche, but also gives us an entirely different setting in the Great War. My favourite from the final section, Found, was Amelia B. Edwards’ The Four-Fifteen Express, which is both a ghost story and a mystery. I loved the way Edwards set the mystery up and how in the end everyone gets what they deserve.

Two stories that didn’t really work for me were Calista Halsey Patchin’s The Professor and John Reynolds’ The Prisoners. Patchin’s story just didn’t grab me and the final twist just broke any suspense of disbelief for me, as I thought it would be unlikely for the widow to show up like that. Reynolds’ The Prisoners wasn’t uninteresting, but the fact that Osgood Vance had to edit it to make it readable was clear, as it still felt repetitious at times and for me the story just lost its impact after the third or fourth inmate.

With the exception of the introduction written by Shurin and Perry and the two stories adapted and written by Osgood Vance and David Bryher respectively, none of these stories was written before 1919, with the oldest of them, Benjamin Disraeli’s Ixion in Heaven first published 1853. In spite of their age, most of these stories remain eminently readable, even if at times their prose is a little dated. Taken together, this resurrection of these out-of-print stories makes for a rich reading experience as well as a reminder that love, loss, sorrow and all the other human emotions displayed herein are timeless. With Lost Souls Shurin and Perry have not only delivered another wonderful anthology, but have shown themselves to have a great eye for what makes a good story, be it speculative or not.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 2 November, 2012 Posted in fantasy, horror, mainstream, mystery, review Tagged: , | 3 Comments

David Abrams – Fobbit

Fobbit \’fä-bit\, noun. Definition: A U.S. soldier stationed at a Forward Operating Base who avoids combat by remaining at the base, esp. during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2011). Pejorative.

In the satirical tradition of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad’s Forward Operating Base Triumph. The Forward Operating base, or FOB, is like the back-office of the battlefield – where people eat and sleep, and where a lot of soldiers have what looks suspiciously like an office job. Male and female soldiers are trying to find an empty Porta Potty in which to get acquainted, grunts are playing Xbox and watching NASCAR between missions, and a lot of the senior staff are more concerned about getting to the chow hall in time for the Friday night all-you-can-eat seafood special than worrying about little things like military strategy.

Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding is the most fobbit-y of all the fobbits. He works for the Army Press Office, which is located in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and spends his days tapping out press releases to try to turn the latest army disaster into something that the American public can read about while eating their breakfast cereal. Another soldier who would spend every day at the FOB if he could is Captain Abe Shrinkle, but unfortunately for him he’s in charge of a platoon of troops. Shrinkle trembles at any encounter with the enemy and in his trailer hoards hundreds of care packages that he orders online in false names – he has enough baby-wipes, Twinkies, foot powder, and erotic letters from bored housewives to last him a lifetime. When Shrinkle makes a series of ill-judged tactical decisions, he ends up in front of his commanding officers, and Gooding has his work cut out trying to make everything smell like roses. And that’s just the start of the bad news.

Darkly humorous and based on the author’s own experiences in Iraq, Fobbit is a fantastic debut that shows us a behind-the-scenes portrait of the real Iraq war.

Fobbit, being mainstream satiric fiction, is not my usual fare, but I love M*A*S*H, so the blurb caught my attention when Stefan (Civilian Reader) mentioned picking this up at BEA and I decided to ask for an ARC on Netgalley. I’m glad I did. While the book wasn’t completely what I expected – I’d expected satire but not this biting – it was a quick and entertaining read.

The miniature community of a military compound in a combat zone magnifies human character traits, both the good and the bad. Fobbit, being a satire, tends to focus on the bad and ignoble; none of the characters are heroic, only a few are at all likeable, though perhaps some of them are uncomfortably relatable. Shrinkle and Harkleroad are downright awful. Neither of them shows much character growth; in fact their development is rather to their detriment. Shrinkle goes from a well-meaning but misguided klutz to an outright delusional liar and Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad, Harkleroad is a self-aggrandizing, dishonest incompetent. His emails home to his mother are both funny and deeply sad. I liked Lieutenant Colonel Duret and Sergeant Lumley, who seem to be cast in a far more positive light due to their active combat status. Both of them are shown to struggle with their experiences – Duret flees in fantasies of his wife and dog any time the stress gets to be too much and he is plagued by the memory of his brother-in-law who died during the 9/11 attacks – but both do the best they can despite their fears. Gooding is actually an okay guy, despite his not always very brave inner monologue, he’s not a bad guy, just one who is out of his depth and mentally bruised and battered by all the death and tragedy he gets across his desk.

The story is told through chapters with alternating viewpoints. Within these chapters we find not only straightforward narrative, but also emails, letters and diary extracts from Gooding’s diary. These extracts were my favourite, as their tone seemed sincere and somehow smoother. They formed almost a calm place inside the nervous action of the narrative. There are some passages written from the viewpoint of inanimate objects. While the first of these, from the EOD squad robot, was interesting and not as jarring, because it’s easy to anthropomorphise a robot, the later ones, especially the mortar one, just came across as gimmicky and contrived. I also struggled with the extensive use of TLA’s, though this may be because as a non-native English speaking civilian American military acronyms are largely unfamiliar to me. I liked that Abrams acknowledged the difficulties civilians have understanding these acronyms tacitly when he has Gooding coach a soldier on how to conduct an interview with the press, instructing him to avoid TLA’s as civilians won’t understand.

Despite my problems with some of the elements of the book, I did enjoy the writing and especially the dialogue. There was a lot of banter, especially between the combat troops, which was very enjoyable. Abrams creates distinctive voices for the different main characters; I was never confused as to whose viewpoint we were following at any given time. The humour is bleak, sarcastic and bordering on cynical, it’s gallows humour of the kind that forces itself to laugh to keep from crying or going mad. The book paints a dark picture of how hard it is to get through a tour unscathed mentally if not physically; it’s a sad tale of war, wrapped in a blanket of wry laughter. While funny the book is also thought-provoking as you wonder how much is true and how much satirical hyperbole. It also deepens respect for those men and women – of any nationality – who not only decide to step up and serve, but sign on for return tours as well.

The book is an easy read on a hard subject, but the end, when it came, was abrupt and rather disheartening, but that fit the tale that Abrams has spun the reader with Fobbit perfectly. I enjoyed Fobbit and read it in three sittings. As pointed out above, I did have my problems with it, but in the end Fobbit was an entertaining and thought-provoking read. The book is published by Grove Atlantic under their Black Cat imprint and will be released on September 4th.

The book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 10 August, 2012 Posted in mainstream, review Tagged: | Leave a comment

Anticipated Books (Summer/Fall) 2012: Popular fiction and Horror

The next of my Anticipated Books (Summer/Fall) 2012 is all about popular fiction and horror. The popular fiction titles are really genre benders with a lot of historical fiction/fantasy/horror flavours. I’m obviously not much of a horror reader, but I received Lindqvist’s Harbor for review last year and loved it and I’ve heard nothing but good about Little Star. The other posts will follow next Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, with the Anticipated Reads post up on the Sunday following.

Popular Fiction
September

Ami McKay – The Virgin Cure (Orion)
‘I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.’ So begins THE VIRGIN CURE, a novel set in the tenements of lower Manhattan in 1871. As a young child, Moth’s father smiled, tipped his hat and walked away from her forever. The summer she turned twelve, her mother sold her as a servant to a wealthy woman, with no intention of ever seeing her again.

These betrayals lead Moth to the wild, murky world of the Bowery, filled with house-thieves, pickpockets, beggars, sideshow freaks and prostitutes, where eventually she meets Miss Everett, the owner of a brothel. Miss Everett caters to gentlemen who pay dearly for companions, and the most desirable of them all are young virgins like Moth.

Through the friendship of Dr Sadie, a female physician, Moth learns to question and observe the world around her, where her new friends are falling prey to the myth of the ‘virgin cure’ to heal the incurable and tainted. She knows the law will not protect her, that polite society ignores her, and still she dreams of answering to no one but herself. There’s a high price for such independence, though, and no one knows that better than a girl from Chrystie Street…

Douglas Nicholas – Something Red (Emily Bester Books)
During the 1200s in northwest England, in one of the coldest winters in living memory, a formidable middle-aged Irishwoman and the troupe she leads are trying to drive their three wagons across the mountains before the heavy snows set in. Molly, her powerful and enigmatic lover, her fey granddaughter, and her young apprentice, soon discover that something terrible prowls the woods. As the group travels from refuge to refuge, it becomes apparent that the mysterious evil force must be faced and defeated—or else they will surely die.
An intoxicating and spirited blend of fantasy, mythology, and history, Something Red features the most fascinating of characters including shapeshifters, Irish battle queens, Norman knights, Templars, pilgrims, Saracens, a Lithuanian noblewoman, warrior monks, strong—even dangerous—women, and ten murderous mastiffs, as well as an epic snowstorm that an early reader described as “one of the coldest scenes since Snow Falling on Cedars.”

October

K.W. Jeter & Gareth Jefferson Jones – Death’s Apprentice (Thomas Dunne Books)
Forget about Once Upon a Time . . .

Built on top of the gates of Hell, Grimm City is the Devil’s capital on earth. A place where every coffee shop, nightclub and shopping mall is the potential hunting ground for a ghost, a demon, or any of the other supernatural entities that inhabit the Grimm City world.

Death’s seventeen-year-old apprentice, Nathaniel, comes into his own as he leads an uprising against the Devil with the help of a half-dead wraith and a giant hitman. What results is a bloody, brutal revolt that calls upon the loyalties of both the living and the dead.

Based not only upon the Brothers Grimm well-known fairy tales, but also upon their “unknown” sagas and essays, Grimm City is the first novel to be based upon the entire Grimm canon. Such a comprehensive, in-depth adaptation of the works of the Brothers Grimm has never been published before!

November

Essie Fox – Elijah’s Mermaid (Orion)
Since she was found as a baby, floating in the Thames one foggy night, the web-toed Pearl has been brought up in a brothel known as the House of Mermaids. Cosseted and pampered there, it is only when her fourteenth birthday approaches that Pearl realises she is to be sold to the highest bidder.
Meanwhile, the orphaned twins, Lily and Elijah, have shared an idyllic childhood, raised in a secluded country house with their grandfather, Augustus Lamb. But when Lily and Elijah go on a visit London, a chance meeting with the ethereal Pearl will have repercussions for all of them, binding their fates together in a dark and dangerous way…
In this bewitching, sensual novel, Essie Fox has written another tale of obsessive love and betrayal, moving from the respectable worlds of Victorian art and literature, and into the shadowy demi-monde of brothels, asylums and freak show tents – a world in which nothing and no-one is quite what they seem to be.

Horror

John Ajvide Lindqvist – Little Star (October, Thomas Dunne Books)
A man finds a baby in the woods, left for dead. He brings the baby home. The man’s son, Jerry, teaches the child music. Deciding he can’t let the girl’s uncommonly beautiful voice go unheard, Jerry enters her in a singing competition. Miles away another young girl sees the performance on television. When the two girls meet, a terrible force is ignited that catapults this duo to a top spot in the horror Hall of Fame.

By Mieneke Published 8 July, 2012 Posted in article, horror, mainstream Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment

Andrez Bergen – One Hundred Years of Vicissitude

“First up, a disclaimer. I suspect I am a dead man. I have meagre proof, no framed-up certification, nothing to toss in a court of law as evidence of a rapid departure from the mortal coil. I recall a gun was involved, pressed up against my skull, and a loud explosion followed.”

Thus begins our narrator in a purgatorial tour through twentieth-century Japanese history, with a ghostly geisha who has seen it all as a guide and a corrupt millionaire as her reluctant companion.

It is hard to quantify Andrez Bergen’s book One Hundred Years of Vicissitude. It is a strange mixture of science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction and as such may have a hard time finding its audience. To be honest, it took me quite a bit to get into this story, having to reread the first couple of pages a few times before being able to process them. In fact, I was having such a hard time getting into the story, I actually doubted whether I’d get through the story, as I just couldn’t find my footing; only the fact that I’d promised to read and review it and that I blamed my having a hard time getting with the program on having a massive head-cold, kept me from actually doing so and moving on to a new book. In the end, I’m glad I stuck it out, because while it was hard to get with the narrative voice, once the story got going and I got beyond the first twenty pages or so, when we meet Kohana, I was on board and got sucked into the novel.

One Hundred Years of Vicissitude is a rather fragmented narrative, as the story consists of Kohana and our narrator, Wolram E. Deaps, flitting from memory to memory. Although this manner of narration is quite interesting, it does tend to form a bit of a barrier to the text; due to the fragmented memories it is hard to see where we are at any given moment and it took a while and some thought to understand the point, as it were, to this story. Not that every story has to be easily understood, but this one really took some work, since it’s not a linear story. While moving through her memories, Kohana goes off on tangents, sometimes because of questions Deaps asks, other times seemingly by free association. Of course, this is how memory works; memories are evoked by the senses, by associations and by their connections to each other. However, this seemingly random recollection can be confusing, until the reader can discover a pattern.

Unfortunately, there are some loose ends: Kohana’s father, who is referenced throughout the text, but never shows his face, feels like somewhat of an unidentified cipher who, it seems, should have been confronted at some point of the story for Kohana to be able to finally move on. Similarly, there is the narrator’s daughter and his battle against established medicine. His story is tantalisingly unfinished which is both frustrating and maybe the point—this is not his story and his time to tell it has yet to come. I can just imagine him sitting in Kohana’s hovel waiting for the next soul to show up and have them accompany him through his memories and give him his own absolution and redemption.

We do not learn a lot about our narrator’s history, this is mostly Kohana’s story. And hers is a story about love and forgiveness, forgiveness of her own trespasses and forgiveness of trespasses against her. It’s only after Kohana has forgiven herself for moving on after losing her first love and losing her twin sister that she is able to move on from purgatory. Surprisingly, there is no forgiveness for her father, only a dismissal, and of her rather awful relationship with her daughter, nothing is said beyond the daughter’s conception and the fact that their relationship was very bad, perhaps due to Kohana’s regard of her. I’d have expected both these things to play a bigger role. In a similar vein our narrator needs to forgive himself for how he lived his life and the loss of his daughter.

There are a lot of allusions to different works of art, both books and films, but also other expressions of art. The author acknowledges this at the end of the book and I had a lot of fun finding them throughout the story. One Hundred Years of Vicissitude is an interesting story and according to the afterword would probably have gained more depth and clarity if I’d read his previous novel Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat. Despite this, I was quietly engaged by this story of love, forgiveness and redemption. Its author’s love of Japanese culture rose from every page of the book. If this is only Bergen’s second novel I look forward to seeing where he goes in the future. If you’re not in the mood to take a gamble and put in some work, then it would be wise to give this book a pass. However, if you like interesting, non-conventional literature, whether it is literary, science-fiction, fantasy, or any other genre, One Hundred Years of Vicissitude might be just the book for you. It is an interesting look at what purgatory might look like and how it functions and it’s thought-provoking to say the least. 

This book was sent to me for review by the author.

By Mieneke Published 19 June, 2012 Posted in fantasy, mainstream, review, science fiction Tagged: | 1 Comment

David Wroblewski – The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Caveat up front: This is a slightly edited version of the review I posted on Goodreads in the summer of 2009. While an older book, it was one that stayed with me and I wanted to include it here, as it shows another side of my reading habits ;)

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life on his his family’s farm, helping raise and train a unique breed of dog. When tragedy strikes, Edgar flees into the vast wilderness of the Chequamegon forest with three yeqarling dogs as his only companions. Yet his need to confront the events he’s left behind – and his dedication to the Sawtelle dogs – turn Edgar ever homeward.

Where to start on The Story of Edgar Sawtelle? I gave it four stars on Goodreads because despite some irritation with the narrative and the fact that I completely hated the ending, I really enjoyed this book. The last two hundred pages I just couldn’t put it down.

So what did I like? I liked the premise; a mute boy rudely ejected from his loving, warm and idyllic cocoon of an existence, forced to find himself and his inner strength and returning to conquer his demons. And of course I loved Edgar’s interaction and instinctive rapport with the Sawtelle dogs. Especially during his stay in the forest with the three pups, their cohesiveness as a unit and loyalty to the ‘pack’ is depicted beautifully.

What I didn’t like was the way Edgar handled the Claude-situation, the way he locked out his mother and shared his feelings (and suspicions) only with Almondine. After the way Wroblewski etched out the bond between Edgar and his parents, it just didn’t sit right with me. Not even dealing with trauma and grief seemed a fitting explanation.

The almost mystical experiences Edgar has, which hand him clues and which enlighten him in a deus-ex-machina fashion, irked me. In the ‘real’ world one would doubt one’s sanity, but Edgar just accepts them. Had there been an obvious speculative slant to the novel it would not have seemed so out of place as it did now.

On the whole though, the (relational) miscommunications between Edgar and the world and the mystical experiences didn’t bother me as much as the ending does. I totally hated it. It did not bring the emotional satisfaction that a good ending of a story brings. And good doesn’t necessarily mean happy, but it does mean a catharsis of sorts, the fulfilling of a promise and the tying up off loose ends. This ending has none of that, it left me angry and astonished that it could end this way. And even though the last four pages gave a little warm fuzzy feeling of hope for the dogs, it didn’t make my grumpiness go away.

So overall, I did like this book and it was worth the read, but the ending left a sour aftertaste.

By Mieneke Published 12 August, 2010 Posted in mainstream, review Tagged: | Leave a comment

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