A mixed bag of genres, before I start my usual "Month of Horror" reading:
287. The Fall of the Moon by Jay Lake, from the October 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy. In a world that seems to be in the future of our own (based on the use of certain words and the way characters refer to what used to be), a young man realizes that the insular, despondent life of his family's village is not all there is -- and that taking a risk (even if it is a risk prophecied by a book he finds under a bed) to see what's beyond the horizon is better than staying miserable. Jay Lake's short tale of Hassan and the boat he builds is rife with great details that reveal a world turned extremely dangerous (ocean tides bring in a flood of rodents, but also a flood of predators), but Hassan himself is what propels the story to its open end. Well done.
288. Twins by C.E. Morgan, from the June 14/21, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. This is one of those stories that I really can't figure out what to say about. I didn't hate it, I didn't dislike it even, but I also can't say I liked it. It's the story of very young twin brothers, one light-skinned and one dark, the progeny of mixed parents. It's told with a focus on the darker, less daring, brother and his interactions with more his more daring twin, their smothering single mother, and their distant father. It's full of physical detail that evokes the industrial area of Cincinnati, an area I've passed through and could picture. But I didn't click with the characters or the point of the story.
289. Torhec The Sculptor by Tanith Lee, from the October/November, 2010 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. I'm going to sound like a broken record if someone goes back and rereads all of my Tanith Lee reviews in succession, but I love how she creates alternate Earths that are just a tweak or two away from our own. Is this story far in our future or in an alternate dimension? I don't know, and I'm not sure it really matters. The story is really about the ephemeral nature of art and the ever-lasting nature of man's pride and his doubt. The title character is an artist who creates, and then destroys. He does not sell collectors. Until the "multinaire" Von Glanz names a price high enough. Torhec and Von Glanz are opposite sides of "playing God," one destroying and one preserving. Or are they really all that different? Great story.
290. Death and the Countess by Win Scott Eckert, from The Avenger Chronicles. Another fun foray into the Wold-Newton Crossover Universe by Eckert, this one centering on Richard Benson, the gray-faced Avenger of the pulp magazines, and his team Justice Inc. They are drawn into a conspiracy in which a mysterious Countess is demonstrating a deadly new weapon to be auctioned off to the highest bidder -- and every major nation on the Allied and Axis sides of the soon-to-be World War Two want to get their hands on it. I won't spoil the fun of figuring out just how many other pulp (and other) literary figures Win manages to reference, since that's half the point of the story. A fun, easy read.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Order of the Phoenix
I actually finished "re-listening" to this three weeks ago, and just have not gotten around to writing my review. (Part of that was, honestly, my goal of making the second half of September "Non-Genre Fortnight," and thus wanting to hold off on this review until those books' reviews were written and posted. Which they have now done.)
Book 59: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling, read by Jim Dale, isbn 9780807220290, 870 pages / 23 cds, Scholastic / Listening Library, $13.95 / $75.00
If I were hard-pressed to list the Potter books from favorite to l east favorite (understanding that even "least favorite" is still very much enjoyed), OotP would probably place 3rd from the top. PRISONER OF AZKABAN will always be my favorite, and I think GOBLET OF FIRE will always come in a close second. ORDER OF THE PHOENIX and DEATHLY HALLOWS probably tie for third, with OotP just slightly edging out the series finale if push comes to shove.
That said, the book is still not perfect. Listening to Jim Dale perform it on cd, it becomes very apparent where the book slows down and almost terminally loses me: Hagrid's flashback. Please note that I'm not saying Hagrid's flashback is a waste of space: it is important that Harry & company learn where Hagrid has been, what he's been attempting to do both for Dumbledore and for his own purposes; it's important that we the readers know what Hagrid's been up to so that we understand just why it's so important that Dolores Umbridge not know what Hagrid's been up to. But still, for all the importance of that chapter -- it is slooooowww going even with the best of readers. I thought, when I first read the book, that it was my own problem, but listening to Jim Dale showed me that it's the chapter itself (and friends who are Potter fans have largely expressed the same problem). Thankfully, that's one of the few problems I have with the book.
Overall, despite the 870-page length, I find ORDER to be a tightly-plotted book that just keeps moving towards a conclusion we see coming long before Harry does. Even on my initial read of the book the week it was published, I could tell early on that Voldemort had figured out how to use his connection to Harry to manipulate our hero and knew that the trip to the Ministry was not going to end well. No, I did not (probably could not have) predict(ed) Sirius' death in the climactic scene; but I knew something horrible would happen. How could it not, with the tension and dread Rowling builds up in the preceding 700 pages? Of course, people had been predicting "an important character's" death for months before the book came out, and Rowling expertly teases us just before the halfway point with the near-death of Arthur Weasley. Harry never quite, in the books, comes to view Arthur as a father figure the way he does Sirius and Dumbledore, but Arthur's near death should have been the warning sign to all of us: in order for Harry to grow into the role prophecied for him at the end of the book, he needs to grow beyond what his father-figures can provide for him. Arthur, being not quite a father figure, survives his encounter with Nagini (and that wretched Muggle invention, "stitches!"). We should have known that Sirius and Dumbledore would not fare as well.
Rowling uses the animosity she's developed between Harry and Snape (as well as Snape and Sirius) to good advantage in propelling this story. Had Harry taken Occlumency lessons from just about anyone else, he might have been more successful. Had Snape been teaching the skill to just about anyone else, he might have come up with a better method of teaching it. (It's my opinion that Snape isn't actually a bad teacher, when he concentrates on his chosen subject(s). It's his mentoring side that is lacking, probably because he didn't have very good mentors when he was a kid. One wonders exactly where Dumbledore was during the school-days of the Marauders and "Snivellus.") And of course it is Snape's taunting of the house-bound Sirius that contributes, at least a little bit, to Sirius' willingly to chance being caught just to be out and doing something. (To be fair, it's also Sirius' nature -- Remus would never let Snape's taunting get to him, whereas Sirius just uses Snape's taunts to justify doing what he wants to do anyway.)
Rowling does an interesting thing with the Sirius/Harry relationship in this book: she allows the other characters to call Sirius and Harry on the dynamic that has developed between them. Molly Weasley is not the only character to point out that Sirius is trying to replace James and make up for all the years they didn't have together to get into trouble and raise hell. It makes me wonder if, once he was married, James became so much less of a wild-child that Sirius was already feeling the distance growing even before James and Lily were murdered. And Harry, of course, just wants a father who loves him so badly that he's willing to let Sirius egg him on to do the un-wise/un-safe thing -- the thought of disappointing Sirius pushes Harry to not really think through the consequences of his actions.
The revelation of not only the existence of the Prophecy but also its exact wording (as well as the revelation that now only two people in the world know that exact wording, since Sybil Trelawney apparently blacks out when she makes prophecies) is of course what the whole book leads to. Coming as it does after the emotional death of Sirius, it's almost an anti-climactic moment. Yes, yes, we know -- Harry is destined to face down Voldemort, and one has to kill the other. We sort of had that figured out once we realized Voldemort was the behind-the-scenes bad-guy of the first five books (he's barely seen in PHOENIX, despite being mentioned every other page, so he counts as "behind the scenes"). Again, it's an important moment, but it can't compete with the death of Sirius for sheer punch-in-the-guts power.
Voldemort may be behind-the-scenes, but Rowling's true gift to the readers in this book is the creation of a character who shows you don't have to be the Ultimate Evil to still be a menace. Dolores Umbridge, Senior Under-Secretary to the Minister of Magic, Hogwarts High Inquisitor and Defense Against the Dark Arts ... teacher is not the right word, is it? A woman who truly believes she is doing the right thing by setting Dementors on "out of control liar Harry Potter," by dumbing-down the curricula of the DADA class to "protect" the children as well as the Ministry, by inflicting bodily harm on her charges in the name of "discipline," Dolores is that every-day sort of evil that lurks in all of our lives: the horrid teacher, the petulant boss, the distant spouse. She is as big a threat to Harry's well-being as Voldemort. To me she is the scarier of the threats, because the last time I checked there were no Dark Wizards running around the real world, but there are hundreds of people just like Dolores Umbridge.
I could go on and on, as I could for just about any book in the Potter series, but I have to stop typing sometime and press "post." Final analysis: despite the occasional slow spot, ORDER OF THE PHOENIX pushes along at top speed, sprinkling some great character background and some great comedic moments in with a ton of tension and action. Well worth the read.
On the audiobook side, I do have one question that will probably never be answered: what made Jim Dale and his directors decide to give Bellatrix and Narcissa BLACK (married names: LeStrange and Malfoy) French accents? It seems clear in the books that Bella and Cissa grew up in England just as their cousins Sirius and Regulus did -- Bellatrix's French last name is her married name. Radolphus and Rabistan LeStrange should have the French accents, not Bellatrix.
(and one final note to those who disagreed with my stance that Hermione's House-Elf Crusade in GOBLET goes nowhere -- thank you for not pointing out just how much it bears on the action of PHOENIX and eventually PRINCE. Any one of you could have not-so-gently reminded me that Hermione continues her crusade in PHOENIX by leaving knitted caps all around the Gryffindor common room, a move I'd completely forgotten about. One of you did point out that Hermione's treatment of Kreacher is an outgrowth of her SPEW movement, but I'd forgotten just how much it plays into the center of this book.)
Book 59: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling, read by Jim Dale, isbn 9780807220290, 870 pages / 23 cds, Scholastic / Listening Library, $13.95 / $75.00
If I were hard-pressed to list the Potter books from favorite to l east favorite (understanding that even "least favorite" is still very much enjoyed), OotP would probably place 3rd from the top. PRISONER OF AZKABAN will always be my favorite, and I think GOBLET OF FIRE will always come in a close second. ORDER OF THE PHOENIX and DEATHLY HALLOWS probably tie for third, with OotP just slightly edging out the series finale if push comes to shove.
That said, the book is still not perfect. Listening to Jim Dale perform it on cd, it becomes very apparent where the book slows down and almost terminally loses me: Hagrid's flashback. Please note that I'm not saying Hagrid's flashback is a waste of space: it is important that Harry & company learn where Hagrid has been, what he's been attempting to do both for Dumbledore and for his own purposes; it's important that we the readers know what Hagrid's been up to so that we understand just why it's so important that Dolores Umbridge not know what Hagrid's been up to. But still, for all the importance of that chapter -- it is slooooowww going even with the best of readers. I thought, when I first read the book, that it was my own problem, but listening to Jim Dale showed me that it's the chapter itself (and friends who are Potter fans have largely expressed the same problem). Thankfully, that's one of the few problems I have with the book.
Overall, despite the 870-page length, I find ORDER to be a tightly-plotted book that just keeps moving towards a conclusion we see coming long before Harry does. Even on my initial read of the book the week it was published, I could tell early on that Voldemort had figured out how to use his connection to Harry to manipulate our hero and knew that the trip to the Ministry was not going to end well. No, I did not (probably could not have) predict(ed) Sirius' death in the climactic scene; but I knew something horrible would happen. How could it not, with the tension and dread Rowling builds up in the preceding 700 pages? Of course, people had been predicting "an important character's" death for months before the book came out, and Rowling expertly teases us just before the halfway point with the near-death of Arthur Weasley. Harry never quite, in the books, comes to view Arthur as a father figure the way he does Sirius and Dumbledore, but Arthur's near death should have been the warning sign to all of us: in order for Harry to grow into the role prophecied for him at the end of the book, he needs to grow beyond what his father-figures can provide for him. Arthur, being not quite a father figure, survives his encounter with Nagini (and that wretched Muggle invention, "stitches!"). We should have known that Sirius and Dumbledore would not fare as well.
Rowling uses the animosity she's developed between Harry and Snape (as well as Snape and Sirius) to good advantage in propelling this story. Had Harry taken Occlumency lessons from just about anyone else, he might have been more successful. Had Snape been teaching the skill to just about anyone else, he might have come up with a better method of teaching it. (It's my opinion that Snape isn't actually a bad teacher, when he concentrates on his chosen subject(s). It's his mentoring side that is lacking, probably because he didn't have very good mentors when he was a kid. One wonders exactly where Dumbledore was during the school-days of the Marauders and "Snivellus.") And of course it is Snape's taunting of the house-bound Sirius that contributes, at least a little bit, to Sirius' willingly to chance being caught just to be out and doing something. (To be fair, it's also Sirius' nature -- Remus would never let Snape's taunting get to him, whereas Sirius just uses Snape's taunts to justify doing what he wants to do anyway.)
Rowling does an interesting thing with the Sirius/Harry relationship in this book: she allows the other characters to call Sirius and Harry on the dynamic that has developed between them. Molly Weasley is not the only character to point out that Sirius is trying to replace James and make up for all the years they didn't have together to get into trouble and raise hell. It makes me wonder if, once he was married, James became so much less of a wild-child that Sirius was already feeling the distance growing even before James and Lily were murdered. And Harry, of course, just wants a father who loves him so badly that he's willing to let Sirius egg him on to do the un-wise/un-safe thing -- the thought of disappointing Sirius pushes Harry to not really think through the consequences of his actions.
The revelation of not only the existence of the Prophecy but also its exact wording (as well as the revelation that now only two people in the world know that exact wording, since Sybil Trelawney apparently blacks out when she makes prophecies) is of course what the whole book leads to. Coming as it does after the emotional death of Sirius, it's almost an anti-climactic moment. Yes, yes, we know -- Harry is destined to face down Voldemort, and one has to kill the other. We sort of had that figured out once we realized Voldemort was the behind-the-scenes bad-guy of the first five books (he's barely seen in PHOENIX, despite being mentioned every other page, so he counts as "behind the scenes"). Again, it's an important moment, but it can't compete with the death of Sirius for sheer punch-in-the-guts power.
Voldemort may be behind-the-scenes, but Rowling's true gift to the readers in this book is the creation of a character who shows you don't have to be the Ultimate Evil to still be a menace. Dolores Umbridge, Senior Under-Secretary to the Minister of Magic, Hogwarts High Inquisitor and Defense Against the Dark Arts ... teacher is not the right word, is it? A woman who truly believes she is doing the right thing by setting Dementors on "out of control liar Harry Potter," by dumbing-down the curricula of the DADA class to "protect" the children as well as the Ministry, by inflicting bodily harm on her charges in the name of "discipline," Dolores is that every-day sort of evil that lurks in all of our lives: the horrid teacher, the petulant boss, the distant spouse. She is as big a threat to Harry's well-being as Voldemort. To me she is the scarier of the threats, because the last time I checked there were no Dark Wizards running around the real world, but there are hundreds of people just like Dolores Umbridge.
I could go on and on, as I could for just about any book in the Potter series, but I have to stop typing sometime and press "post." Final analysis: despite the occasional slow spot, ORDER OF THE PHOENIX pushes along at top speed, sprinkling some great character background and some great comedic moments in with a ton of tension and action. Well worth the read.
On the audiobook side, I do have one question that will probably never be answered: what made Jim Dale and his directors decide to give Bellatrix and Narcissa BLACK (married names: LeStrange and Malfoy) French accents? It seems clear in the books that Bella and Cissa grew up in England just as their cousins Sirius and Regulus did -- Bellatrix's French last name is her married name. Radolphus and Rabistan LeStrange should have the French accents, not Bellatrix.
(and one final note to those who disagreed with my stance that Hermione's House-Elf Crusade in GOBLET goes nowhere -- thank you for not pointing out just how much it bears on the action of PHOENIX and eventually PRINCE. Any one of you could have not-so-gently reminded me that Hermione continues her crusade in PHOENIX by leaving knitted caps all around the Gryffindor common room, a move I'd completely forgotten about. One of you did point out that Hermione's treatment of Kreacher is an outgrowth of her SPEW movement, but I'd forgotten just how much it plays into the center of this book.)
Other Rooms Other Wonders
The book is a collection of 8 loosely-interconnected stories that take place in Pakistan in the present day. I've read three of the eight stories and reviewed them here in previous years (in fact, this was my third reading of the opening story, "Nawabdin Electrician"). The stories, all together, paint a picture of a society in which the Old way of doing things still hangs on and in which the younger generation struggles to fit, as well as a society in which status still matters greatly. Most of the stories have a very "traveling storyteller" tone to the narration, as I noted in my original review of "Nawabdin Electrician."
I liked each of the stories individually, but felt that perhaps there was a bit too much repetition when all grouped together. The stories "Saleema," "Provide, Provide" and "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" all basically tell the same story from different vantage points and with different main characters. All three are about beautiful but poor young women who see the possibility of securing a better future for themselves by creating romantic/sexual connections with powerful older men. Yes the details of the stories are different but the basic point of the stories is the same. In fact, the basic point of almost all of the stories in this collection might be summed up as "no matter how much you plan and scheme and think you're making the right decision in the moment, nothing is ever 100% certain and life often twists in unexpected ways."
The sameness of the lesson from story to story is the book's only negative. The positives are: a writing style that feels part medieval troubadour, part travelogue; a depth of sensory description that can only be described as "sensual" regardless of whether the author is writing about the weather, the food, or the sex; and a mosaic quality that enables you to see the connections between even the most peripheral of characters. In fact, some of those peripheral connections had me wondering what had happened to certain characters "between the scenes," so to speak, and I wonder if Mueenuddin has other stories with these characters in mind.
I liked each of the stories individually, but felt that perhaps there was a bit too much repetition when all grouped together. The stories "Saleema," "Provide, Provide" and "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" all basically tell the same story from different vantage points and with different main characters. All three are about beautiful but poor young women who see the possibility of securing a better future for themselves by creating romantic/sexual connections with powerful older men. Yes the details of the stories are different but the basic point of the stories is the same. In fact, the basic point of almost all of the stories in this collection might be summed up as "no matter how much you plan and scheme and think you're making the right decision in the moment, nothing is ever 100% certain and life often twists in unexpected ways."
The sameness of the lesson from story to story is the book's only negative. The positives are: a writing style that feels part medieval troubadour, part travelogue; a depth of sensory description that can only be described as "sensual" regardless of whether the author is writing about the weather, the food, or the sex; and a mosaic quality that enables you to see the connections between even the most peripheral of characters. In fact, some of those peripheral connections had me wondering what had happened to certain characters "between the scenes," so to speak, and I wonder if Mueenuddin has other stories with these characters in mind.
Mueenuddin Short Stories
During the second half of September, I made a concerted effort to read more "non-genre" fiction, both book-length and in short story form. For the short stories, that meant at least trying to catch up on several months worth of stories from The New Yorker (partially successful), One Story and Library of America's Story of the Week (not successful on either front). It also meant finally reading Daniyal Mueenuddin's IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS. The book is a collection of 8 loosely-interconnected stories that take place in Pakistan in the present day. I've read three of the eight stories and reviewed them here in previous years (in fact, this was my third reading of the opening story, "Nawabdin Electrician"). The stories, all together, paint a picture of a society in which the Old way of doing things still hangs on and in which the younger generation struggles to fit, as well as a society in which status still matters greatly. Most of the stories have a very "traveling storyteller" tone to the narration, as I noted in my original review of "Nawabdin Electrician."
279. Nawabdin Electrician The lead-off story centers on the poorer strata of Pakistani farm-town society, and the wealthy land-owner KK Harouni and his family are only briefly seen (and only in the role of bestowing a motorbike on Nawab to help him get around). Almost every time I reread a story I get something different out of it. In this case, what I really noticed this time was the sensory detail of Mueenuddin's writing. Whether he's writing about the weather, the food, or actual sex (which we don't see in this story, but do in others), Mueenuddin's writing has to be described as "sensual." The story's moral, that sometimes it is impossible to forgive or forget, still comes across full force and the final scene is still brutal.
280. Saleema The second story in the collection brings up more detail of the household of KK Harouni, but still primarily from the staff / servants perspective. It's also the first story in the collection to address the theme of social mobility in Pakistani society. Saleema, suffering with a husband who is a drug addict, comes into the house employ and first sleeps with the cook Hassan, but eventually sets her sights on the older Rafik, the household's major domo. Without giving too much away, there are developments that make Saleema think her place in the world is set. But if there's one thing Mueenuddin seems to make a repeated point about in his stories, it's this: nothing is ever set and guaranteed regardless of your station in life or who you build "unbreakable" connections with.
281. Provide, Provide We don't really see much of KK Harouni in these stories despite his being the main "rich" person in the book. But we do see how his actions and decisions affect others. This story focuses on a former manager of some of Harouni's properties, who buys up land Harouni is forced to sell off to pay off business debts. Chaundrey Jaglani becomes a farm-owner in his own right and by all accounts is a good one. As happens in Saleema and in the title story of the collection, Jaglani falls in love with a girl initially hired as a servant. He becomes torn, later in life, by this decision. She, of course, thinks her life is set because of her connection to Jaglani. The regrets the main character expresses towards the end of the story (and the travails of those he leaves behind) really express again that idea that the decisions we make have repurcussions we cannot always predict.
282. About A Burning Girl This is the only story in the collection narrated in the first person. The narrator is a judge in the Lahore High Court, and the story largely seems an indictment of a corrupt judicial system as well as a corrupt police system. The judge's wife's favorite servant goes home to visit his brother, and is arrested for the immolation-death of the brother's wife. The Harounis are again peripheral characters, the servant's father having been cook for various Harouni family members (including the "nephew with the American wife" introduced in "Our Lady of Paris"). There is almost a detective-story aspect to this piece, but it never really feels like a "whodunnit," and the judge is way too ineffectual to be a convincing series detective (although his assistant could probably be the focus of a sharp detective novel).
283. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders The title story is a companion piece to "Saleema" and "Provide, Provide," in that it centers upon a young woman facing hard times who sees her chance to secure her future by becoming the companion of a more powerful man. In "Saleema," that powerful man was the major domo of KK Harouni's household. In "Other Rooms," the powerful man is Harouni himself and so we finally, halfway through the book, get a more detailed look at the powerful businessman and representative of the "old school" upper-class of Pakistan. KK is near the end of his life in this story and Husna, the young woman, doesn't at first seem predatory at all -- but opportunity goes to her head. Again, the story is about false pride and the assumption that nothing can ever go wrong. Saleema and Husna, in these two stories, mimic each other without, it seems, being aware of the other's existance.
284. Our Lady of Paris This story introduces us to KK Harouni's nephew Sohail and the young American woman he falls in love with. Taking place in Paris, I actually expected it to feature KK's estranged daughter mentioned in earlier stories but she fails to put in an appearance. Instead, what we get is a tight little family drama: Sohail has avoided having his parents meet his girlfriend until this story when they insist on journeying to Paris with him, although his mother is smart enough to rent separate apartments in a different part of the city. Helen, the girlfriend, and Rafia, the mother, begin a not-so-delicate dance to see where Sohail's ultimate loyalties lay and how they will be able to co-exist should Sohail marry Helen. Sohail's father figures into the picture as well, but mostly as a foil for the women. This is the story in the collection that feels the freshest perhaps because it is the only one that features a true change of scenery. With the Pakistani characters out of Pakistan, there is less emphasis on the running of households and more emphasis on the characters. It is also perhaps the only story in the book besides "Nawabdin Electrician" that features characters who are all of the same social status.
285. Lily The Harounis are even more peripheral in this story of a rich young girl who wants to make a change in her life after a devastating car accident. She meets a fellow disaffected rich youth at a party, and he begins the slow dance of courting her. Ultimately, the story asks if we can really change who we are -- or perhaps it asks why people go so far overboard in changing themselves. Every relationship is about compromise in some sense, but Lily falls prey to what the Canadian band Motion Picture Ending calls "the superficial science / of changing all you are" to fit someone else. Lily wants so badly to escape herself and her social circle that she is willing to follow her suitor to his remote farm, which does not turn out to be the solution she thinks it will be.
286. A Spoiled Man The last story in the collection nicely book-ends with the opening story. In this tale, poor Rezak comes to work for Sohail Harouni and his American wife on their farm. He is a man accustomed to fitting everything he has in a small portable hut in which he also lives. Where Nawabdin, in the opening story, needed to find ways to support his large family, Rezak wants very little (in fact, needs very little) to support just himself but his possessions grow as the Harounis pay him far more than his previous employers. The story, it struck me when I first read it, is about how little we really need to survive and how we become dependent on the things we have. And, as with every other story in the collection, Rezak's tale is also about how the decisions we make seem sensible at the time but lead to places we never expected them to.
279. Nawabdin Electrician The lead-off story centers on the poorer strata of Pakistani farm-town society, and the wealthy land-owner KK Harouni and his family are only briefly seen (and only in the role of bestowing a motorbike on Nawab to help him get around). Almost every time I reread a story I get something different out of it. In this case, what I really noticed this time was the sensory detail of Mueenuddin's writing. Whether he's writing about the weather, the food, or actual sex (which we don't see in this story, but do in others), Mueenuddin's writing has to be described as "sensual." The story's moral, that sometimes it is impossible to forgive or forget, still comes across full force and the final scene is still brutal.
280. Saleema The second story in the collection brings up more detail of the household of KK Harouni, but still primarily from the staff / servants perspective. It's also the first story in the collection to address the theme of social mobility in Pakistani society. Saleema, suffering with a husband who is a drug addict, comes into the house employ and first sleeps with the cook Hassan, but eventually sets her sights on the older Rafik, the household's major domo. Without giving too much away, there are developments that make Saleema think her place in the world is set. But if there's one thing Mueenuddin seems to make a repeated point about in his stories, it's this: nothing is ever set and guaranteed regardless of your station in life or who you build "unbreakable" connections with.
281. Provide, Provide We don't really see much of KK Harouni in these stories despite his being the main "rich" person in the book. But we do see how his actions and decisions affect others. This story focuses on a former manager of some of Harouni's properties, who buys up land Harouni is forced to sell off to pay off business debts. Chaundrey Jaglani becomes a farm-owner in his own right and by all accounts is a good one. As happens in Saleema and in the title story of the collection, Jaglani falls in love with a girl initially hired as a servant. He becomes torn, later in life, by this decision. She, of course, thinks her life is set because of her connection to Jaglani. The regrets the main character expresses towards the end of the story (and the travails of those he leaves behind) really express again that idea that the decisions we make have repurcussions we cannot always predict.
282. About A Burning Girl This is the only story in the collection narrated in the first person. The narrator is a judge in the Lahore High Court, and the story largely seems an indictment of a corrupt judicial system as well as a corrupt police system. The judge's wife's favorite servant goes home to visit his brother, and is arrested for the immolation-death of the brother's wife. The Harounis are again peripheral characters, the servant's father having been cook for various Harouni family members (including the "nephew with the American wife" introduced in "Our Lady of Paris"). There is almost a detective-story aspect to this piece, but it never really feels like a "whodunnit," and the judge is way too ineffectual to be a convincing series detective (although his assistant could probably be the focus of a sharp detective novel).
283. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders The title story is a companion piece to "Saleema" and "Provide, Provide," in that it centers upon a young woman facing hard times who sees her chance to secure her future by becoming the companion of a more powerful man. In "Saleema," that powerful man was the major domo of KK Harouni's household. In "Other Rooms," the powerful man is Harouni himself and so we finally, halfway through the book, get a more detailed look at the powerful businessman and representative of the "old school" upper-class of Pakistan. KK is near the end of his life in this story and Husna, the young woman, doesn't at first seem predatory at all -- but opportunity goes to her head. Again, the story is about false pride and the assumption that nothing can ever go wrong. Saleema and Husna, in these two stories, mimic each other without, it seems, being aware of the other's existance.
284. Our Lady of Paris This story introduces us to KK Harouni's nephew Sohail and the young American woman he falls in love with. Taking place in Paris, I actually expected it to feature KK's estranged daughter mentioned in earlier stories but she fails to put in an appearance. Instead, what we get is a tight little family drama: Sohail has avoided having his parents meet his girlfriend until this story when they insist on journeying to Paris with him, although his mother is smart enough to rent separate apartments in a different part of the city. Helen, the girlfriend, and Rafia, the mother, begin a not-so-delicate dance to see where Sohail's ultimate loyalties lay and how they will be able to co-exist should Sohail marry Helen. Sohail's father figures into the picture as well, but mostly as a foil for the women. This is the story in the collection that feels the freshest perhaps because it is the only one that features a true change of scenery. With the Pakistani characters out of Pakistan, there is less emphasis on the running of households and more emphasis on the characters. It is also perhaps the only story in the book besides "Nawabdin Electrician" that features characters who are all of the same social status.
285. Lily The Harounis are even more peripheral in this story of a rich young girl who wants to make a change in her life after a devastating car accident. She meets a fellow disaffected rich youth at a party, and he begins the slow dance of courting her. Ultimately, the story asks if we can really change who we are -- or perhaps it asks why people go so far overboard in changing themselves. Every relationship is about compromise in some sense, but Lily falls prey to what the Canadian band Motion Picture Ending calls "the superficial science / of changing all you are" to fit someone else. Lily wants so badly to escape herself and her social circle that she is willing to follow her suitor to his remote farm, which does not turn out to be the solution she thinks it will be.
286. A Spoiled Man The last story in the collection nicely book-ends with the opening story. In this tale, poor Rezak comes to work for Sohail Harouni and his American wife on their farm. He is a man accustomed to fitting everything he has in a small portable hut in which he also lives. Where Nawabdin, in the opening story, needed to find ways to support his large family, Rezak wants very little (in fact, needs very little) to support just himself but his possessions grow as the Harounis pay him far more than his previous employers. The story, it struck me when I first read it, is about how little we really need to survive and how we become dependent on the things we have. And, as with every other story in the collection, Rezak's tale is also about how the decisions we make seem sensible at the time but lead to places we never expected them to.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Robin And Ruby
Book 57: Robin And Ruby by K.M. Soehnlein, isbn 9780758232182, 276 pages, Kensington, $24.00
When I finished reading Soehnlein's THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS back in 2000, I was satisfied with the ending to a book I absolutely loved and was moved by. I knew the characters must go on to live their lives, but I wasn't clamoring for a sequel. So when I found out Soehnlein had written ROBIN AND RUBY, my first thought was "did you really need to go back to that well?" Upon reading the book, I'm glad he did.
R&R finds Robin MacKenzie now 20 years old, a college student working his summer away in Philadelphia alongside his childhood friend George and knee-deep in a relationship with a slightly older man that you know right away is just not working out. Robin's sister Ruby is now in high school, dating a boy who also doesn't seem quite right for her. She accompanies him to a party house on the Jersey Shore and a chance encounter with a boy from her past sets her off on a path that brings Robin and George to the Shore to find her.
Soehnlein does what I think is a wonderful job summarizing the earlier book, which took place when Robin was fourteen. The events of that book, surrounding Robin's homosexuality and the injury/death of his younger brother Jackson, haunt this book. We are never really free of our past, and Soehnlein works that idea into the novel without letting it completely overwhelm the story. Robin and Ruby's thoughts drift back to how Jackson's death affected them, how they've never really gotten out from under the shadow of being "Coma Boy's" siblings, how far apart their family has drifted thanks to divorce after Jackson's death. But the story itself propels on something completely different: the lives Robin and Ruby now lead, the fears and hopes they hold. At it's heart, ROBIN AND RUBY is a relationship drama: sexual relationships, creative relationships, familial relationships, and friendships. Robin's break-up with Peter and the changes in best friend George interweave with Robin's connection to Ruby's scriptwriting rich boyfriend Calvin; Calvin's connection to Robin reveals things about his personality to Ruby; the weekend at Calvin's sister's rented Shore house show Robin things about both herself and the life she would lead if she stayed in love with Calvin. And then there's the mystery boy from Ruby's past who brings memories of who she was after Jackson died compared with who she has become. NORMAL BOYS was told exclusively from Robin's point of view; Soehnlein rightly alternates sections of this book from both Robin and Ruby's points of view, the switching-back-and-forth happening more frequently as the book moves towards its conclusion.
Soehnlein also has a nice attention to period detail. I remembered that from NORMAL BOYS, where he sprinkled enough late 70s pop culture references to firmly root you in the era without being over-the-top. He does the same thing here for the early 80s: songs heard on the car radio or in the club bring back, for me at least, memories of where I was in those years.
I actually now find myself hoping, in a few years' time, that Soehnlein will write another book with these characters, showing us where they are as they move into the 90s.
When I finished reading Soehnlein's THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS back in 2000, I was satisfied with the ending to a book I absolutely loved and was moved by. I knew the characters must go on to live their lives, but I wasn't clamoring for a sequel. So when I found out Soehnlein had written ROBIN AND RUBY, my first thought was "did you really need to go back to that well?" Upon reading the book, I'm glad he did.
R&R finds Robin MacKenzie now 20 years old, a college student working his summer away in Philadelphia alongside his childhood friend George and knee-deep in a relationship with a slightly older man that you know right away is just not working out. Robin's sister Ruby is now in high school, dating a boy who also doesn't seem quite right for her. She accompanies him to a party house on the Jersey Shore and a chance encounter with a boy from her past sets her off on a path that brings Robin and George to the Shore to find her.
Soehnlein does what I think is a wonderful job summarizing the earlier book, which took place when Robin was fourteen. The events of that book, surrounding Robin's homosexuality and the injury/death of his younger brother Jackson, haunt this book. We are never really free of our past, and Soehnlein works that idea into the novel without letting it completely overwhelm the story. Robin and Ruby's thoughts drift back to how Jackson's death affected them, how they've never really gotten out from under the shadow of being "Coma Boy's" siblings, how far apart their family has drifted thanks to divorce after Jackson's death. But the story itself propels on something completely different: the lives Robin and Ruby now lead, the fears and hopes they hold. At it's heart, ROBIN AND RUBY is a relationship drama: sexual relationships, creative relationships, familial relationships, and friendships. Robin's break-up with Peter and the changes in best friend George interweave with Robin's connection to Ruby's scriptwriting rich boyfriend Calvin; Calvin's connection to Robin reveals things about his personality to Ruby; the weekend at Calvin's sister's rented Shore house show Robin things about both herself and the life she would lead if she stayed in love with Calvin. And then there's the mystery boy from Ruby's past who brings memories of who she was after Jackson died compared with who she has become. NORMAL BOYS was told exclusively from Robin's point of view; Soehnlein rightly alternates sections of this book from both Robin and Ruby's points of view, the switching-back-and-forth happening more frequently as the book moves towards its conclusion.
Soehnlein also has a nice attention to period detail. I remembered that from NORMAL BOYS, where he sprinkled enough late 70s pop culture references to firmly root you in the era without being over-the-top. He does the same thing here for the early 80s: songs heard on the car radio or in the club bring back, for me at least, memories of where I was in those years.
I actually now find myself hoping, in a few years' time, that Soehnlein will write another book with these characters, showing us where they are as they move into the 90s.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Short Stories
This entry will be a mixed bag, and some of the reviews may be a bit short as I'm trying to catch up before tomorrow's flight home.
271. Better Lessons by Aaron Polson, the June 6, 2010 entry on Every Day Fiction. As usual, I found myself really enamored of Aaron Polson's ability to tell a full story in under a 1,000 words. I can't seem to manage it. This is one of his less SF/Fantasy entries, although there is a slight touch of the fantastic. It's about a street-rat who teams up with a rather personable Macaque to pick pockets among the tourists, and the relationship between the two has a strong effect on the man's life. Well written.
272. The Young Painters by Nicole Krauss, from the June 28, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. I liked this story, but I can honestly say I did not like the main character. The story is really about where writers get their inspiration, and what happens when you draw (perhaps too closely) from the lives around you. The narrator does this several times, and does not seem at all bothered by how her stories and books might affect those from whose lives she has drawn. She directs her story to someone called "Your Honor," and that adds a level of mystery to her tale: is she recounting this as part of a divorce proceeding? As a witness at a trial? Or is she not really directing her words to a judge at all -- is she just pretending to do so while really addressing us? I'm not sure we'll ever really know, and in this particular case, I'm okay with that.
273. Blue Water Djinn by Tea Obreht, from the August 2, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. I will be shocked if this story doesn't turn up in at least one "Best of" anthology in the coming year. It would be eligible for Best American Short Stories 2011, and honestly I think it would also deserve placement in Best American Mystery Stories 2011. A young boy, the son of a hotel owner, watches as the adults around him try to find out what happened to a French guest at the hotel who has gone missing. Jack is both overlooked and overprotected by the adults in whose care he has been left while his mother is off attending a conference; he is able to get close up to the proceedings as long as he does not get close to the ocean. The connection between boy and missing man is implied early on, and I was happy that the story did not go where I almost immediately thought it was going to. Obreht feeds the tension of the story out on a tight line and lets the tide of the story pull you in. One of my favorites of the year, I think.
274. The Landlord by Wells Tower, from the September 13, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. My first impression of the story was that it's about yet another clueless American middle-class business who doesn't know how to do business. I feel like that's a stock character type these days -- the guy who thinks he knows how to make a million but can't manage to manage his own office. In glancing back over the story, I hit on a few key phrases that made me rethink that assessment. The narrator of this story may seem dense and self-absorbed, but he really does understand how his life has spiraled out of control and how it's his own disconnectedness that has cost him not just his business, but his relationships with his daughter, his tenants, and his workers. It's actually a great first person character study, and I can easily picture my friend Dave making this work as a monologue.
275. The Science of Flight by Yiyun Li, from the August 30, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. This story seems to bookend nicely with Nicole Krauss's. In Krauss's story, the main character steals from real life to create her fictions. In Li's story, the main character creates fictions to mask the real life she's embarrassed to tell people about. Zichen's fictions threaten to over-take her much as Krauss's narrator's stories do. Li really captures that sense of getting caught up in a lie that last for years and becomes the truth.
276. The Pilot by Joshua Ferris from the June 14 & 21, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. The main character of Ferris' story is a self-absorbed writer who second guesses every move he makes socially, who reads too much into every word spoken to him (and every silence as well) and who can't bring himself to finish the pilot script he's been working on. Okay, who let Ferris into my own head? There are some key differences between myself and the main character -- I'm not writing a tv script and I'm not a recovering alcoholic. I also don't live in LA and don't get invited to lavish "end of season wrap parties" where I can awkwardly attempt to shop my wares. Another main character I can't say I liked, but that might largely be because of how much of myself I saw in the character.
277. Captain Midnight At Ultima Thule by Win Scott Eckert, from The Captain Midnight Chronicles (published by Moonstone). If I'm being honest, this was not my favorite Win Eckert story. The story had two strikes against it, one my own fault and one the publisher's. For my part, I admit that I know next to nothing about Captain Midnight; I'm far more familiar with other pulp characters and felt through this story that I didn't really know enough about the character to understand why he does what he does. On the side of the publishers, Win's story seems to be the only one in the book that is marred by proof-reading errors -- odd printer's marks and symbols where there should be normal punctuation; it was a bit too distracting. However, on the positive side the contains Win's usual plethora of literary references that cross-connect and build on Philip Jose Farmer's Wold-Newton concept, and that kind of story is always fun to read. Win always makes me feel like a literary detective, trying to figure out what's a reference to a previous work and what isn't. And of course there's a rock-em, sock-em fight and heaps of sexual tension.
278. Captain Midnight Meets Airboy by Chuck Dixon, from The Captain Midnight Chronicles The Eckert and Dixon stories are the reasons I bought this book. Dixon's tale of two classic aviators meeting for the first time had great tension and action, and managed to get into Midnight's head a bit. I don't know how much of a departure Dixon's characterization of Captain Midnight may be from the classic pulp version, but his Airboy is of course dead-on. So good to have him back writing a character he made me love twenty years ago, and plenty of good gun-fighting and old-fashioned pulp fisticuffs as well.
271. Better Lessons by Aaron Polson, the June 6, 2010 entry on Every Day Fiction. As usual, I found myself really enamored of Aaron Polson's ability to tell a full story in under a 1,000 words. I can't seem to manage it. This is one of his less SF/Fantasy entries, although there is a slight touch of the fantastic. It's about a street-rat who teams up with a rather personable Macaque to pick pockets among the tourists, and the relationship between the two has a strong effect on the man's life. Well written.
272. The Young Painters by Nicole Krauss, from the June 28, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. I liked this story, but I can honestly say I did not like the main character. The story is really about where writers get their inspiration, and what happens when you draw (perhaps too closely) from the lives around you. The narrator does this several times, and does not seem at all bothered by how her stories and books might affect those from whose lives she has drawn. She directs her story to someone called "Your Honor," and that adds a level of mystery to her tale: is she recounting this as part of a divorce proceeding? As a witness at a trial? Or is she not really directing her words to a judge at all -- is she just pretending to do so while really addressing us? I'm not sure we'll ever really know, and in this particular case, I'm okay with that.
273. Blue Water Djinn by Tea Obreht, from the August 2, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. I will be shocked if this story doesn't turn up in at least one "Best of" anthology in the coming year. It would be eligible for Best American Short Stories 2011, and honestly I think it would also deserve placement in Best American Mystery Stories 2011. A young boy, the son of a hotel owner, watches as the adults around him try to find out what happened to a French guest at the hotel who has gone missing. Jack is both overlooked and overprotected by the adults in whose care he has been left while his mother is off attending a conference; he is able to get close up to the proceedings as long as he does not get close to the ocean. The connection between boy and missing man is implied early on, and I was happy that the story did not go where I almost immediately thought it was going to. Obreht feeds the tension of the story out on a tight line and lets the tide of the story pull you in. One of my favorites of the year, I think.
274. The Landlord by Wells Tower, from the September 13, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. My first impression of the story was that it's about yet another clueless American middle-class business who doesn't know how to do business. I feel like that's a stock character type these days -- the guy who thinks he knows how to make a million but can't manage to manage his own office. In glancing back over the story, I hit on a few key phrases that made me rethink that assessment. The narrator of this story may seem dense and self-absorbed, but he really does understand how his life has spiraled out of control and how it's his own disconnectedness that has cost him not just his business, but his relationships with his daughter, his tenants, and his workers. It's actually a great first person character study, and I can easily picture my friend Dave making this work as a monologue.
275. The Science of Flight by Yiyun Li, from the August 30, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. This story seems to bookend nicely with Nicole Krauss's. In Krauss's story, the main character steals from real life to create her fictions. In Li's story, the main character creates fictions to mask the real life she's embarrassed to tell people about. Zichen's fictions threaten to over-take her much as Krauss's narrator's stories do. Li really captures that sense of getting caught up in a lie that last for years and becomes the truth.
276. The Pilot by Joshua Ferris from the June 14 & 21, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. The main character of Ferris' story is a self-absorbed writer who second guesses every move he makes socially, who reads too much into every word spoken to him (and every silence as well) and who can't bring himself to finish the pilot script he's been working on. Okay, who let Ferris into my own head? There are some key differences between myself and the main character -- I'm not writing a tv script and I'm not a recovering alcoholic. I also don't live in LA and don't get invited to lavish "end of season wrap parties" where I can awkwardly attempt to shop my wares. Another main character I can't say I liked, but that might largely be because of how much of myself I saw in the character.
277. Captain Midnight At Ultima Thule by Win Scott Eckert, from The Captain Midnight Chronicles (published by Moonstone). If I'm being honest, this was not my favorite Win Eckert story. The story had two strikes against it, one my own fault and one the publisher's. For my part, I admit that I know next to nothing about Captain Midnight; I'm far more familiar with other pulp characters and felt through this story that I didn't really know enough about the character to understand why he does what he does. On the side of the publishers, Win's story seems to be the only one in the book that is marred by proof-reading errors -- odd printer's marks and symbols where there should be normal punctuation; it was a bit too distracting. However, on the positive side the contains Win's usual plethora of literary references that cross-connect and build on Philip Jose Farmer's Wold-Newton concept, and that kind of story is always fun to read. Win always makes me feel like a literary detective, trying to figure out what's a reference to a previous work and what isn't. And of course there's a rock-em, sock-em fight and heaps of sexual tension.
278. Captain Midnight Meets Airboy by Chuck Dixon, from The Captain Midnight Chronicles The Eckert and Dixon stories are the reasons I bought this book. Dixon's tale of two classic aviators meeting for the first time had great tension and action, and managed to get into Midnight's head a bit. I don't know how much of a departure Dixon's characterization of Captain Midnight may be from the classic pulp version, but his Airboy is of course dead-on. So good to have him back writing a character he made me love twenty years ago, and plenty of good gun-fighting and old-fashioned pulp fisticuffs as well.
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