Tag Archives: first novel

October 6, 2011 · 9:56 pm

Knots and Crosses: Smoking Kills

         So I’m reading a proper novel right now (stay tuned for the report), but in the interest of my pressing reading schedule, I downloaded the audio book of Ian Rankin’s Knots and Crosses to listen to while cooking, commuting, and doing chores. In discussion with N. last night I argued that listening to the audio book is *not* cheating in 10-10-12 both because I make the rules in this absurd contest and because and audio book isn’t abridged or fiddled with as a movie adaption might be, and it takes just as long (or longer, I think) to listen as it odes to read. So there.

Guilt assuaged, let me tell you what I gleaned from the book: Edinburgh is an exceptionally safe city for tourists, women are sexy tarts unless proven otherwise, and smoking may kill you, but you’ll enjoy your life more because of it.

I wasn’t much taken with Inspector Rebus, maybe because the only thing that humanizes him is his addiction to smoking. We know he’s divorced, but not why; we know he has challenges with his daughter, but not what those challenges might be. I accept this is the first book in a series, and so I’ll allow that his character development might take place over the course of the series, but as it is, I found myself largely indifferent when his daughter is kidnapped. I like to think I’m a better person than indifference at a 12 year old girl being kidnapped (though my reaction to The Lovely Bones suggests otherwise…), so I’ll hold the narrative responsible for discouraging my interest in either Samantha or Rebus.

As for the “mystery,” it’s not really much of a mystery. More that Rebus is a detective. The reader could not follow clues and guess who the killer is because the narrative doesn’t leave any clues, it just reveal all when Rebus is hypnotized. Yes, that handy plot device where the Inspector knew everything all along, he just had to be put under to remember – as in a dream! – what he already knew.

All this makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy Knots and Crosses, which isn’t strictly speaking true. In fact, I enjoyed it a great deal, and am perhaps struggling against admitting this by demonstrating the manifold ways the book fails. So why did I like it? For the same reasons I like Law & Order, I guess. I like watching the forces of law and order methodically, if ploddingly, go about the business of protecting the status quo. I like plot lines that are reassuringly simple, that promise without the shadow of a doubt that everyone (save the first four murdered girls…) will be just fine. That a neat resolution will be reached. And it was. Am I a shallow or weak reader for liking the book for these reasons? Maybe. But it’s a welcome dose of predictability when set against some of the other books I’ve read. Including the book I’m reading right now. More on that to come. Soon.

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September 27, 2011 · 12:05 pm

The Night Circus: Magic(al setting)

                    I read The Night Circus on the recommendation of a glowing review in The Globe and Mail and because Erin Morgenstern is coming to read from it tomorrow night (!). The Globe review suggested the book reminded her of reading the best novels of her life – the experience to be savoured and indulged like so much rich food. And while I enjoyed The Night Circus I’m not yet prepared to say it’s in the same room with the best books of my life (what are these books?).

So what are my problems? The story relies too heavily on the magic of the setting. An odd complaint perhaps from a book about magicians, a magical duel, a magical midnight circus, but the setting is just so. well. done. that when the characters remain somewhat flat and unpredictable (when do the two protagonists fall in love? you don’t know either? neither does the novel…), the plot holds inexplicable (and not ‘magic realism’ inexplicable, but just perplexing) elements and the writing is unremarkable. In a a tone that recalls Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, or the tv show Carnivale the story feels like it’s missing a certain authenticity that I’m having trouble explaining or justifying, but is there nonetheless.

That said, I lack the range of synonyms for “incredible” and “awesome” with which to praise the setting. The circus is so enjoyable to wander, so full of surprises, creativity and, well, magic that I loved the book despite my other concerns. It’s well worth the read if you care at all about magicians or, if you’re like E. the circus.

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August 27, 2011 · 3:55 pm

A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True: Sentimental

                          Brigid Pasulka’s first novel, A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True, alternates two chronological settings by chapter. The “long, long time ago” follows Pigeon and Angelicia in Poland just before and during World War Two in third person omniscient, and the “present” is narrated in the first person perspective of ‘Baba Yaga’ (a poorly explained nickname with little apparent significance). It isn’t until a good way into the narrative that the relationship between the two chronologies becomes clear, and even later into the narrative that the relationship between Angelicia/Pigeon and Baba Yaga is explained. I suspect this mystery is meant to be intriguing; however, for this reader it was only frustrating and confusing.

Perhaps I missed the pay-off of the big reveal of how the two story lines relate because I was preoccupied with working out how the writing in the ‘long long time ago’ sections could be good, while the writing in the ‘presen’t could be terrible. What circumstances allow the same writer to simultaneously write well and write terribly? I’m going to hazard that it’s point of view that got in the way. The first person sections couldn’t sustain the kind of magical, fairytale quality aimed for (and achieved!) in the “once upon a time” of “long long ago,” and instead fell somewhere between dull and convoluted. Without the motivation to care about Baba Yaga I found myself plodding through her chapters, waiting to return to the intrigue and romance of the world war two narrative. And when the two chronologies eventually merge (as we know from the beginning they are bound to do, because it is that kind of story) the whole thing falls to pieces, as Pasulka can’t seem to find a unified point of view to allow the merged chronologies to read as anything other than stilted.

So… what did I find redeeming? I suppose there’s something to be said for a narrative that takes a longer view of history and introduces readers to the temporal scope of suffering experienced by ordinary villagers between the outbreak of World War Two and the fall of the iron curtain (do we capitalize Iron Curtain? Maybe it ought to be Iron. Curtain. Or Iron! Curtain!). Makes me think of the new history out – Bloodlands – that aims to capture just this kind of prolonged suffering. In any case, I admire the ambitious scope, even if I find the writing itself terribly uneven and without a decided thematic focus (rather a frustratingly contradictory thematic interest: is this a book about breaking from the past? about making choices? about confronting and learning from history? about accepting the immeasurable affect/effect the past has on individual decisions in the present? about the need to commit to one’s history or the need to disavow it?).

(Or are all of my disparaging remarks a consequence of my current scepticism about soul mates?)

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August 13, 2011 · 9:46 pm

Player Piano: Meh.

     In one of the more awkward chapters of my adolescence, my dad started to read me Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, which if you haven’t read before, or if it’s been awhile, you ought to know opens with graphic (literally) descriptions of beavers – animal and otherwise. While I knew enough to be mortified, and my dad knew enough to immediately stop reading, I couldn’t help but recognize something addicting about an author who wrote in such a sacrilegious tone, with such disregard for the pretensions of readers. And so later, under the covers and lit by the hallway light, I read Breakfast of Champions, and decided that Mr. Vonnegut was okay by me.

Now, decades (!, well, a lie, just a decade) later I’ve read Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano, and I’m reluctant to report that it’s… not very good. Not bad! (I’d rather not post at all if it meant besmirching the good name of one of my better, favourite authors) Just, not very good. The novel follows Paul Proteus as he sorts out what it means to be human in the age of machines, and what it means to be smart/wealthy (smalthy?) in the age of mass unemployment and ignorance. His journey (a short one) to the climatic not-epiphany takes us through farming, summer camp, and nights at the bar. His not-epiphany? Art might make us human; hierarchies, while troubling, might ultimately be for the greater good. Always might.

To what do I attribute my dissatisfaction? Well, Paul, despite his ostensible ideological journey, doesn’t evidence any noticeable character change – I’d just as easily believe he swears allegiance to the company as to the radicals (is this the point? maybe…) and the symbols bear down on this reader like too much bread and potatoes.

Why does it still count as not bad? Well, expert in tone, Vonnegut delivers in the first novel the same wry tone you’ll know and love in later novels, as well as the simplest of questions – what makes us human? – explored as it ought to be, through a fiction we recognize as true (enough).

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