Top Ten Books of 2019 and Announcement

With my new full time job I was not able to read as much as I wanted, but still got in 50 books. And with a new decade coming up, I think it is time to make some personal changes. I'm thinking of suspending my reviews for the foreseeable future to focus on some more personal endeavors, things I've wanted to pursue in the past but for whatever reason, I could not put all my focus on. So this might be my last list, at least for now. I've divided it up by 5, half old books released pre-2019 and books released this year.

Old

5. The Third Hotel by Laura Van Den Berg: Berg did not impress me with her short story collection The Isle of Youth, but she sure did with this creepy, cinema-infused look at loneliness, paranoia and walking ghosts. She keeps it vague throughout, open to whatever interpretation you want and it is the better for it.
4. Found Audio by NJ Campbell: House of Leaves produced a lot of imitators, but this is one of the best. Short but with a dark heart as vast as books three or four times its size, it creates a lingering sense of dread, underscored by a sense of wonder about the world around us.
3. The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter by Kia Corthron: From something short to massive at nearly 800 pages. This big-hearted yet intimate look at the cross section of two sets of brothers across mid century American feels fully formed and necessary, its length giving time to craft four distinct wounded individuals, prisoners of time and victims of circumstances and unraveling the complexity of urgent issues.
2. The Known World by Edward P. Jones: I've been wanting to read this for a long time, and I finally realize why this book is considered one of the best of this young century. Starting with a startling (but historically accurate) premise and going back and forth in time, sometimes at the same time, this book earns its high prize and feels important and relevant nearly two decades after it was published.
1. Night Hawks by Charles Johnson: Along with Voodoo Heart and 20th Century Ghosts, this is my favorite short story collection. It is a perfect example of what I look for in the art form, from the O. Henry inspired "Occupying Arthur Whitfield" the Harlan Ellison-esque "4189" to its surprising title story, its running theme seems to be a respect for the short story and really, really great writing.


New

5. Big Bang by David Bowman: While not an original idea, Bowman's posthumous novel of mid 20th century madness is among the best of its kind simply for what it does not do. In refusing to let famous historical figures be symbolic in nature or snarling villains and instead let them be human, he creates a historical novel that feels like an emotional gut punch.
4. The Border by Don Winslow: The final book in the Art Keller trilogy ends the story in thrilling and gruesome fashion, proving Keller's fears right that the monster does not die when you cut its head off, but there is still a since of finality here, and the proceedings are imbued with a hope for the future missing in the other two.
3. You Know You Want This by Kristin Roupenian: The best short story collection of 2019 is also the creepiest book I read this year as well. With stories like "Sardines", "Biter" and the infamous "Cat Person" forcing me to look at the horrors that swirl underneath even the most innocuous of human interaction.
2. Goulash by Brian Kimberling: What Kimberling did for bird watching in Snapper he does for the Czech Republic in his second novel. Barely 200 pages long, it turns the everyday world into a place full of history and possibility, even it that possibility is short lived, evidenced by the book's pitch perfect ending.
1. Hold Fast Your Crown by Yannick Haenel: The most unique and best book to come out in 2019. It's fervent narrative structure, it joyous obsession with cinema, alcohol and Michael Cimino make this a one of kind joy that lies somewhere in between Michel Houellbecq and Herman Koch. 2020 might be the year I focus more on fiction translations, and if they are as good as this, I'm making the right decision.

Top Ten Movies of 2019

This was an excellent year for movies and out of the fifty I saw this year, here are my top ten, starting with a few honorable mentions: 

*Relaxer, dir. Joel Potrykus: This year I tried to see more movies on VOD, and I’m glad I did because it was unlikely that this weird, gross out end of the world black comedy would be playing at the local theater where I live. It takes a ridiculous premise, injects it with pathos and sticks the landing in a brilliant way. It has to be seen to be believed

*Knives Out, dir. Rian Johnson: One of the year’s most purely entertaining films, Johnson eschews any recognizable franchise after directing The Last Jedi to do something original and no less fun, giving us a timely story of twists, turns, scumbags and heroes and one of the best times at the movies in 2019. 

*An Elephant Sitting Still, dir Hu Bo: A somber, meditative swan song about live in modern China, Bo first and sadly only film, at four hours, feels like a summation, a cry for help and a kind of suicide note all in one. It also might be one of the defining movies of the decade. Only time will tell. 

*The Head Hunter, dir. Jordan Downey: Admittedly a movie I praise more for how it got made, looking like a million bucks when its budget was measly $30,000, this is still one of the best horror films of the year, taking a simple premise and creating something ethereal and engaging in the process 

10. Waves, dir. Troy Edward Shults: With three films, Shults' has established himself as one of the preeminent chroniclers of the family breakdown, taking cues from the greats like Polanski and Cassavetes to present very real dysfunction through the lens of a paranoid horror film, and this one, using interesting, destabilizing camera movements and frenetic editing to bring the audience to the depths of despair and finally to something resembling hope. I cannot wait to see what he does next. 

9. Uncut Gems, dir. The Safdie Brothers: Following their breakout hit Good Time, this is another tightly wound race against the clock thriller, immersing us in a story that frays our nerves and tests our patience with a morally questionable character who we hope finds a way out. It is helped by Adam Sandler, who gives a career best performance as the eccentric jeweler who teeters on the edge of success and ruin. 

8. Avengers: Endgame, dir. The Russo Brother: A beautiful capstone to a decade plus story a lot of people grew up with. It is so good that it is really hard to see what else the superhero genre can do (more on that farther down) and where they can go from now. Viewing this as the actual “end” made the whole experience sublime.

7. Diane, dir. Kent Jones: You’d think film critics would not make good filmmakers, but Kent Jones proved me wrong with this somber tale of an ageing woman and the dwindling social resources in her life. At different points during this 90 minute movie I was reminded of the books of Richard Russo and Bergman at his most bleak, especially that ending. And Mary Kay Place gives the best female performance of the year as the weary title character. 

6. The Nightingale, dir. Jennifer Kent: The best horror film of the year, and not surprisingly the hardest to watch, with multiple graphic scenes of sexual assault and appalling violence and one of the most despicable movie characters in a couple of years, but at the heart of it is the relationship between two crushed spirits and their search for kindness in a world in short supply of it. 

5. John Wick 3-Parabellum, dir. Chad Stahelski: Who would have thought, five years ago that John Wick would spawn what is possibly the best action movie series of all time and in turn rekindle the career of Keanu Reeves, making him one of the biggest stars in the world, but there is something about these movies that keep getting better, building on an interesting universe and delving deeper into what could easily be a one-note character, making us feel his plight even as we cheer on action set piece after brilliant action set piece. 

4. The Last Black Man in San Francisco, dir. Joe Talbot: I guarantee you did not see another film this year like this one. It’s a weirdly wonderful story of friendship, a celebration of a city and an elegy for a collective past that is no longer there. When I was not awe-struck by the directions this movie took, I was moved by the friendship at its center that felt truly authentic despite whatever otherworldly events take place. 

3. Joker, dir. Todd Phillips: It is appropriate that this and Endgame came out in the same year, because I feel this is the direction comic book movies should take, discarding crossovers and telling singular, contained stories that stand on their own. This is a truly caustic film, downbeat, violent but mesmerizing as well, distilling our politically fraught landscape into the sad life of a man who can’t stop laughing at it. It’s tough to watch but that does not take away from its greatness. 

2. Parasite, dir. Bong Joon-ho: It took almost 16 year, but the Korean boom we witnessed after 2003’s Oldboy is finally gaining mainstream success in 2019, and it is all directed at a movie that truly deserves it. Using the subject of class division to tell a story of deception and quietly building resentment, Ho’s film, bolstered by the best script of the year, subverts every expectation while still remaining in the realm of plausibility and gives us a poignant story that brings into questions some of our most deeply held values. This film felt like the biggest event of 2019, and it delivered everything it promised. 

1. The Standoff at Sparrow Creek, dir. Henry Dunham: I said earlier I tried to watch more VOD releases this year, and this is part of the reason why, because even though I saw this all the way back in January, I still can’t stop thinking about it. With a simple premise, a fantastic script and stirring performances from a handful of character actors we all recognize, Dunham crafted the most compelling film of the year. Evoking such influences as David Mamet plays and John Carpenter’s The Thing while still feeling relevant in its plot and quietly revolutionary in the way it presents its situation and characters, this film, from its tense interrogation scenes to its poetically devastating ending, felt like the best this year had to offer. 

Review: "Survival Math" by Mitchell S. Jackson

In a past interview with Mitchell S. Jackson in which he talks about his debut novel The Residue Years, he talks about how most of his fiction is autobiographical due to his lack of imagination (paraphrasing, of course), but thankfully, he has led an interesting life and that made that novel feel authentic without sacrificing its narrative drive, a quality his new book, the quasi-memoir Survival Math does not. While genuine half of the time (and very much not the other half) this excoriation of self handily misses the mark multiple times, feeling less like the confessional I think Jackson intended it to be and feels more like page after page of humble bragging, reveling in his various misdeeds while simultaneously condemning them from some unearned moral high ground. Like the other nonfiction book, I read this year, Bunk, it is impossible to talk about it separate from its obvious political bent. The book catalogues Jackson’s life, from his relationship to the various men in his life, from his hustling uncle to his mother’s long term boyfriend, whose compassion for Jackson hides a deep rooted tendency to subjugate the women in his life, laid out in the chapter “The Pose”, where Jackson lists his own sexual misdeeds in a way that makes us want to admire him, shame him, or pat on the back for how far he has come. It comes off as rather patronizing.  The best chapter is the one on his mother, a crack addict whom Jackson views through lenses of pity, awe and deep love, but the chapter also highlights another problem, which is Jackson’s tendency to extend metaphors to comical lengths. He walks the tightrope flawlessly, but the utility of the act is questionable. Sprinkled throughout are “survivor files” second person accounts of people Jackson interviewed whose pictures make up the book’s cover. Even the worst of these have a haunting quality and brings a much needed humble face to what sometimes comes off as a rather disingenuous book. 

Rating: 3/5

Review: "Big Bang" by David Bowman

Nothing about David Bowman’s posthumous novel Big Bang feels new or original. It follows a very well-worn path by writers who were more famous than he was in his lifetime, creating cult like followings through their eloquent vivisections of 20^th century history. But of all the books that this large 592-page novel will be compared to (not helped by some of the cast of fictionalized versions of real people Bowman sprinkles through the book) I do not think that they are as good as the final book Bowman wrote before his untimely death in 2012. It cribs from authors as varied as DeLillo and Coover (its structure is nearly identical to Underworld and it shares tonal DNA with The Public Burning) and even James Ellroy and his Underworld USA trilogy, but this novel, as long as those others I mentioned, eclipses them in wonderous and imaginative ways, some of which I can put my finger on and some of which I don’t think me or anybody else will be able too. The plot, if you can call it that, concerns the time period of 1950 and 1963 and culminates in the assassination of John F. Kennedy (trust me, that is not a spoiler) and is made up of real people and possibly real history, if you can trust Bowman to tell the truth (you’d be smart if you keep things such as the truth at arm’s length while you read this book). It has no central characters, but it does have a few people who frequently and a few that could be considered the heart of the book. One in particular is Howard Hunt, CIA spy, novelist and one of the people responsible for the Watergate break-in. He is an elusive figure, caught up in strange times and stranger histories that are much bigger than he is, but he plays a role in a lot of the major happenings of the time period the book covers. The heart of the book is easily Jackie Kennedy, whose dreams and desires are dashed in much the same way her husband was so swiftly gunned down in Dealey Plaza (this is not a book obsessed with conspiracies, something else that sets it apart from others like it). While not a tragic figure, she, much like Hunt, must contend with her small place in the world at large despite her celebrity. As I mentioned, what makes this book better than the giants before it is not what it does so much as what it leaves out. It is not concerned with history as a great agent of change as DeLillo sees it, a farce as Coover sees it or a lies told by the real villains as Ellroy sees it, but much like the title of the book, Bowman sees it as pure chaos and any meaning that might be found in it, like connecting Kennedy’s murder with that of Burroughs killing his wife, Mailer stabbing his or Hemingway killing himself, is purely incidental and we are helpless against it, at the mercy something absurd and total. I have not begun to scratch the surface of this brilliant book, and it IS a tragedy that Bowman is not around to offer a follow up. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Suicide Woods" by Benjamin Percy

While a lot of the stories in Benjamin Percy’s new story collection Suicide Woods present themselves structurally as horror stories, their makeup is something else entirely and that is not always a good thing, While his advice is invaluable (Thrill Me is an excellent writing tutorial) and he is able to craft scenes of intense and unnerving horror, too much of the time they feel overwritten, maybe the product of adhering too religiously to techniques learned in MFA programs. It makes for a rather beautiful arrangement even as blood flows and body parts start to fly, but I sensed a lot of the time in these and the majority of Percy’s other writing I hid the fact that the stories, in their essence were not very original. They were good, sure, but I have seen them executed better in stories by other writers and with a lot more originality too. This is not a bad collection by the way, some of the stories are better than others and I do not think of any of them as stinkers. The opening story, “The Cold Boy” where an uncle saves his nephew from drowning in a frozen on only for the boy to come back as something not of this world is a highlight. Percy is an expert at rich descriptions whether that is the human like gash on the wrestling mannequin in the strange “The Dummy” or the way glass sticks out of a man’s belly in the novella “The Uncharted”. But just like in his collection Refresh, Refresh, the title story is the book’s best offering, a story of a group of severely depressed people finding solace in the odd therapeutic practice of their doctor, who likes to take them out to the woods and confront their trauma head on. It’s not only the best story in this book, but among the best pieces Percy has given us. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Deep River" by Karl Marlantes

It’s been a little while since I have read a book as immersive as Karl Marlantes’ Deep River and at 716 pages, it better be. Thankfully, there is enough in this book to keep even the most disengaged reader busy and entertained, offering a story of late 19^th/early 20^th century Finnish immigrants who carve out their piece of the American Dream that has the epic feel of something akin to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Although its core message is not nearly as left wing as that book’s (a little more on that later). Marlantes has put a lot into this book, having researched his own history as well as that of the region and it really shows. There is nothing about this book that does not feel inauthentic, from the culture and customs of the Koski’s homeland in Finland, to the tools used for logging and even the feelings of unrest as the world around three siblings changes dramatically, leaving some familiar faces behind. The book begins at the tail end of the 19^thcentury and finds the Koski family in the throes of grief as they watch helplessly as three of the six children die from cholera. It is this event that casts a long shadow over this close-knit family, as it takes something this terrible to set the three remaining children on a path to America, more specifically the Pacific Northwest, barely explored and totally untamed in that time period. The oldest, Ilmari, at the dawn of the 20^th century leaves home and travels to America to work as a logger. The two others, Aino, arguably the center of the book and Matti, her younger brother get caught up in the dangerous political climate in their home country. It is Aino, who is most active, becoming obsessed with the idea of a socialist revolution after a local teacher staying at their house gives her a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Matti, on the other hand, is passionate in other ways, quick to romance and even quicker to violence, evidenced by when he pulls a knife on a Russian officer who brutally kicks the family dog to death. A series of events take place, highlighted by a betrayal whose ramifications and poignancy echo rather deep into the book, that lead Aino and Matti to America, Aino bringing her left-wing ideas to obviously unwelcoming logging companies and Matti his desire to make something of himself. The Koski family can’t help getting caught up in the shifting waves of history, such as Aino’s relationship with socialist martyr Joe Hill and Matti’s involvement with bootlegging during prohibition, but the greatest influence over their lives is the personal realm, the quiet moments at home, the not so quiet moments at dancehalls and bars, the loss of life and the creation of it. It would sound corny in any other book, but here, it is totally earned. Another part of the book I found interesting and refreshing was its treatment of Aino’s revolutionary attitude. In any other book, especially now, she’d be regarded as a hero, but here, it begs the question as to whether or not her actions are noble and necessary or selfish and short-sighted. It’s just one of the many qualities that makes this book special

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Nothing to See Here" by Kevin Wilson

The one thought I could not escape while reading Kevin Wilson’s third novel Nothing to See Here was that of his recent short story collection Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine and the short story within titled “Wildfire Johnny”. It is the best thing Wilson has written and it is just as high concept as this story of flaming children, but it is so, so much better. There is rarely a paragraph in these 254 pages that does not feel derivative or a turn of phrase I have not seen done better somewhere else. Besides the relationship between the two central women in the book, every character feels thinly drawn plot devices and in one case a single dimensional villain, so when it tries for an emotional payoff. It totally does not earn it. I do not think if this were a short story rather than a full-length novel it would change anything, but it would be a start. Taking place in the mid-90s (seems like a pattern in 2019 book) it opens with Lillian receiving a letter from her former friend Madison. Lillian is a woman on the verge of her 30’s who has been beset by a series of external miscalculations stemming from when Madison, a daughter of a wealthy family. Had her take the fall for a stash of drugs while they attended boarding school. Now, Madison, now married to Jasper Roberts, a presidential hopeful, asks for her help in babysitting Jasper’s kids from a previous marriage who just so happen to burst into flames when they have a tantrum. It is never explained, and in a good story it would not have to be so here it feels shoehorned in and takes time away from Lillian and Madison’s story and how much (or little) their relationship has changed. And the eventual actions of Jasper seem predictable and kind of lazy, making for a swift novel that still, somehow, overstays its welcome. 

Rating: 3/5

Play Review: "Prospect Hill"

If you find yourself around the Mass Ave, area in Indianapolis this coming weekend and you hear the sounds of a hammer smashing into a liquor cabinet, the bounce of an oversized yoga ball or cloying discussion of Joseph Campbell’s 6 part PBS documentary, they are most likely coming from the nearby Basille theater as it will be the second week’s run of local playwright Bruce Walsh’s play Prospect Hill, put on by Fat Turtle Theatre and directed by Aaron Cleveland . Utilizing only three characters and one setting the audience will be taken on a wild journey through addiction, guilt and the precarious balance between faith and desire and overcoming the worst aspects of ourselves. The show opens with Jacob Stichter, played with a frayed intensity by local actor Zachariah Stonerock, sitting in his apartment while his boyfriend, Rex Isaak, played by Craig Kemp, is busy trying to renovate the house, the drill he holds being a shifting motif in the play, a tool for both change and destruction. Jacob is a therapist but a very successful one we sense, and it would not surprise us if Ethan, a troubled Pepsi employee played with skittish aplomb by Evren Wilder Elliot, is his only patient. Throughout the course of the play, events such as Jacob’s pleas for his father’s acceptance through Skype calls, Ethan’s false promise for a better future and Rex’s confidant but scatterbrained advice bounces off the three characters in a series of escalating emotional intensity that feel raw and authentic. Stonerock is a joy to watch in his quest for the courage to change his disappointing life, as is Elliot, who acts as his mirror image of Jacob as a person who is smart enough to talk themselves out of recognizing their own shortcomings. The only real loose piece of this puzzle is Rex’s character. Kemp is having fun with it, whether he is (accidently) dropping his power drill or challenging someone to an arm-wrestling contest, and in doing so, the audience has fun to, with his scenes getting the most laughs in this drama. But on closer inspection, his character is not really well-defined within the plot. For instance, it was really hard for me to figure out who he was until his relationship with Jacob is brought up most of the way through the first act. Maybe it was the uniform he wear while drilling holes in the wall, or my recent Hulu subscription, but I was getting Janitor from Scrubs vibes from him early on, thinking he might be a total figment of Jacob’s imagination. This is really a criticism of the writing and not of acting, as the play came alive during his scenes, as did the audience I saw it with, and provides a bit of levity to contend with the play’s more somber moments. By the end, the problems of three may not be solved, but the complexities of their lives and the possible ways they can fix it are laid bare, with the help of a clever script, Cleveland’s pared-down direction and a trio of delightful performances.  

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Northern Lights" by Raymond Strom

Raymond Strom’s debut novel Northern Lights is the kind of self-assured debut novel we get about once or twice a year. Loaded with skill that is easily seen by anyone who reads it and with the one of the year’s most incredible and memorable leading characters at its center, it is an easy book to like and get behind despite some of its glaring short comings, which I will get too. While reading it and thinking about the things I did not like about this book (which there were very few instances of), I kept reminding myself that it is supposed to take place in the late 90’s, a fact that helps this book in the short term but overall hurts it as well. Thankfully, most of the time those feelings of apprehension are quelled every time we are in the presence of Shane Stephenson, the fraught, sensitive youth at the novel’s center. As the book begins, he is reeling after the death of his father. His grief, and a rather cold goodbye from his uncle, bring him to the town of Holm, Minnesota in search of his mother who abandoned him and his father when Shane was very young. Androgynous, asexual and non-binary long before that term was popular, Shane is not an easy fit for the failing small town, but finds a job at a local breakfast place and a familial bond with the town’s outcast, the main one of which, Jenny, provides him with the love he is seeking after the death of his father. As I said, the time period helps explain some of the clunky interactions, especially with the book’s defacto villain Sven Svenson, as one not and unoriginal as his name. But when I thought of its time period, it made me realize how informed the book is by the here and now and it took me out of the story. It’s last hundred pages, which include Shane’s nightmarish and sad reunion with his mother and the predictable but gut-wrenching finale, make this a rather memorable debut novel. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Machines Like Me" by Ian McEwan

I think I am more familiar with the work of Ian McEwan than with any other author with the exceptions of Paul Auster and Haruki Murakami, although I do not have the love and appreciation for his books as do for the two that I mentioned. With the exception of Enduring Love (his best book, in my opinion) and Atonement, with special mention of his first two novels during his Ian Macabre phase, there is very little he puts out that I find great or even good, so I approach his work out of duty and with great apprehension. Sometimes they are forgettable, like Sweet Tooth, dismal like his most recent novel Nutshell and sometimes they are pretty good like his most recent novel Machines Like Me. This is another strange leap forward after the failure of Nutshell, dealing with an alternate Great Britain where Alan Turing is alive, and robots can purchase for large but reasonable amounts of money. The focus of the story is Charlie Friend, a 30-year-old man whose prime duty in life are wild schemes and even wilder failures. He is in love with Miranda, a student ten years younger than he is and once Charlie comes into a sum of money, he buys Adam, a human like robot with a tight moral compass that comes into conflict with both Charlie and Miranda. The bests parts of this book are the small scenes between two or three characters, whether it is the three central ones where an odd love triangle blossoms, with Mark, a foster child Miranda becomes attached to or Gorringe, a man from Miranda’s past who hold the key to a horrendous secret. The alternate history reads like microwave directions for anyone not familiar with what really happened, but the profound truths McEwan touches on with Adam and a late scene with Turing are among the richest McEwan has achieved. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Polyglot Lovers" by Lina Wolff

It is the coincidence of the year that the book I read in place of the translation of the new Michel Houellbecq novel so thoroughly eviscerates his character within its pages. I knew nothing of The Polyglot Lovers, the second novel of Swedish writer Lina Wolff to be published in English, but according to my rigid reading standards (which I will relax once the new decade rolls around) it filled the void and I’m really glad it did, because as much as I appreciate Houellbecq and his heterodox views, I’ve never liked his books as much as I liked this one, which is thought-provoking without being preachy, intriguing and funny at the same time and leaves no sacred cow of literature intact. On the back it is described as a “contribution to feminism” and not to sound like a broken record held over my previous review, it was hard for me to identify with any of that within this pages, which does not seem to take a side, even in its extremes cases. Funnily enough, much like the French literary bad boy it eloquently skewers, its ambivalence toward its subject matter, whether that be modern relationships, high art versus low art and lack of responsibility that usually comes with the onset of recognition, it is easy it mistake this book for taking a side. Its 244 pages are divided into three section which we learn only later one are working backwards. In the first section, and the best part of the book, we are introduced to Ellinor, slowly creaking toward middle age and desperately lonely, so desperate, she thinks, that she has sunk so low as to try online dating. On the site she meets Ruben, a meek literary critic who woos the chilly Ellinor with his apparent kindness only to turn into something else during a brutal sex scene that verges on becoming a rape. Unusually though, she begins a courtship with him, even after she finds out about his blind psychic wife Mildred. She finds the manuscript belonging to Max Lamas, a writer Ruben is obsessed with and written extensively on and as a sort of petty revenge, she burns the manuscript, of which there is only one copy of, in the fireplace (not the worst thing that happens to it). We then meet Max himself, a character straight out of a Houellbecq novel: smart enough to justify his overactive libido as something more profound, such as his search for the book’s namesake, which he thinks he finds in a put upon receptionist whose boss feels like the funhouse mirror image of Max. The third section focuses on Lucrezia, whose noble family is slowly crumbling and whom Max finds callous inspiration in. Despite a really cool ending section, told epistolary style, the sections do not fit that well together, but on their own they are still a lightning rod, a brutal takedown of elitism, a certain kind of chauvinism and the lies we tell ourselves when we knowingly pursue wrong. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The Topeka School" by Ben Lerner

Don’t listen to most reviews of Ben Lerner’s third novel The Topeka School. They will most likely describe it as it pertains to its political merits and make it something it is clearly not. This last-minute addition to my reading year of 2019 had me worried before I even opened it, even though I really enjoyed Lerner’s previous two novels, Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04. It seemed from a distance like the kind of book I have been trying to avoid since you know what happened at the end of 2016, but thankfully it is much more than that. It is by far Lerner’s weakest outing especially from a stylistic standpoint, but I found this book’s approach to its subject matter (multi-faceted and almost politically ambiguous to an aggravating degree) to be refreshing, although I might not suspect that was the intent Lerner had in mind when he wrote it. Taking place at the tail end of the 20^th century a time not as simple as we’d like to believe in 2019, we find Adam, the star debater on a Topeka, Kansas high school debate team, at an odd point in his life as he tries to navigate the masculine roles thrust upon him in his proximal male hierarchy. This is complicated as we learn about the past of his mother Jane, a famous feminist author on the hitlist of the nearby Westboro Baptist Church and his father Jonathan, a psychiatrist with long list of infidelities but with a special knack for getting young boys to open up, one of which is Darren, the loner at Adam’s school whom he has brought into his group of friends. It’s many shifts in time period bring about the book’s most memorable scenes, such as an incident Adam had as a toddler with chewing gum, but they create a dense fog over the proceedings of the book, and by its confusing end, I was still left wanting for more concrete resolutions or enough intrigue to nullify them. A book more interesting than it is actually good. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "King of Joy" by Richard Chiem

It is a strange feeling when a book feels both too long and too short, but Richard Chiem’s first official novel, King of Joy, feel exactly like that. With a hypnotic and strange beginning, a thoroughly dull middle and a captivating end, this physically short (at 174 pages) novel never really gains its feet and becomes something more than an off-kilter writing experiment, but there is enough here for a profoundly moving portrait of the whirlpool of grief one can find themselves in after the sudden death of someone close to them. Chiem’s prose feels like it is swimming at times: through events, conversations and even dreams and it’s never quite clear what is what. I can see some people finding this an aggravating part of the book, but I found it quite mesmerizing and not nearly the book’s biggest problem. The book opens with Corvus; the main character in the throes of what we later learn is a deep, deep depression. She is working for Tim, a creepy pornographer with a strange approach to his craft (evidenced by a disturbing scene where he filmed his mom’s death). After a confrontation, she and Amber escape his grasp and find themselves guest at a mansion filled with zoo animals reclaimed from Pablo Escobar’s estate. It is only after a startling reveal that we learn what broke Corvus. She fell in love with a playwright named Perry and something happened to take that away. This and other parts of the book could be argued to be presented as pure fantasy, as Corvus has a habit of disappearing into cinematic delusion. It both works, in the context of Perry not being real as well as the book’s great ending (although it is too quick), but it overstays its welcome and becomes tired and repetitive very quickly. Still, I don’t think you’ll find another book like this in 2019.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Goulash" by Brian Kimberling

Goulash seems like a needlessly goofy title for a book but after finishing the charming and thoughtful second novel from American author Brian Kimberling, it is a pretty appropriate title. Doing for the city of Prague what he did for bird watching in his debit novel Snapper, Kimberling undertakes the unenviable task of distilling complex human emotions through painstaking specifics, charting one young ex-pat’s journey through a foreign land very much unlike his own and reaching enlightenment, or something like that. The book’s plot of gloriously loose and broken up into digestible chapters so it can be gorged in one sitting (not hard with its brisk 205 page length) or savored one chapter at a time with its themes being crystalline. Like its protagonist, an extended tourist trying to be anything but, it is not a book that is in a hurry and its playful tone makes some of the more serious aspects of its narrative feel as hearty as the beer that flows freely from the Golden Lion bar. The narrator at the center of the book is Elliot Black, a student from my home state of Indiana who has traveled to Prague to teach English. He is 23 and fresh faced, but the city itself is in a state of flux. It is the 90’s and he Czech Republic is moving (more like stumbling) from underneath the weight of communism into the three-ring circus of early capitalism. On his first night there, he gets his shoes stolen and finds them weeks later installed in an art exhibit. Thanks to a hilariously rude gallery employee, he becomes friends with the artist Mr. Cimarron, one of the book’s brightest spots among a serious of effervescent characters. Of these, at the center of Elliot’s world is Amanda, a British transplant in the same boat as Elliot. Their romance is predictable, with familiar beats, but there conversations about their uncertainty, art and rather intense subjects that come up after a neighbor of their falls to his death from his apartment balcony are like music to the ears much like Richard Linklater’s Celeste and Jessie. The loose plot allows for many interesting asides, such as Ivan, one of Elliot’s students, whose life might be different if he were not so prone to violence, Milan, another one of his students burden with the thought that he might have killed his brother as well as many historical asides, like the ghosts of totalitarianism within many of the buildings surrounding the ancient city (many of which get used in big Hollywood movies) and a giant statue of Joseph Stalin, crumbling in an abandon part of the city which has become a stomping ground for the creeping Western influence in the country. Towards the end is where this book’s spell felt strongest, with a hilarious visit from Elliot’s mother and an epilogue set years later, where the histories of both Elliot and Amanda are laid out, or at least they are in Elliot’s mind. This is charming, big hearted novel, just like Kimberling’s last book. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Phantoms" by Christian Kiefer

Phantoms, the new novel from American author Christian Kiefer, is a novel you have seen countless times before, and I got the sense throughout that it was okay with that and in turn, the reader has a chance to feel okay with that too. It hits all the right beats you’d expect from this kind of story, but does so in a very comprehensive and engaging way and never slacking off for the duration of the books 227 pages, which fly by rather quickly and effortlessly. If it has one glaring flaw it is that it feels small but wishes it were bigger, with its profound moments throughout the book going unearned at some points and feeling numb to scenes of grave importance. For a book as short as it is, there are quite a few characters and even the character that is supposed to be viewed as the main character feels more like a background character than anything else. The book begins at the end of WWII, where Ray Takahashi comes home to his small California town to find his childhood home rented out to strangers and his family long gone. We do not find out the whole story until the end, and in between we are introduced to John Frazier, a drug addicted Vietnam vet who stumbles onto the story through distant family relations and a somewhat obsessive need for literary inspiration, which he finds in the interconnected lives of Evelyn Wilson, whose husband rented the land to Ray’s family and Kimiko Takahashi, Ray’s mother. This book feels like a lesser example of Kia Corthron’s The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, right down to the big violent catalyst of the story. That book did it better, but this story of two families torn apart by a country’s simmering hate (and a half-baked love story) is an engaging and pleasurable read.

Rating: 4/4

Review: "Orange World" by Karen Russell

I feel bad saying this about a writer who was nice to me when they signed copies of their book for me, but after three short story collections, I simply do not get the hype surrounding Karen Russell. I recall enjoying her debut novel Swamplandia, but the three collections she has put out, all lauded and heaped with praise have failed to impress me. They always seem well thought out and put together competently and look good on a sentence by sentence basis, but the ideas have always seemed very shoddy to me, either not well thought out or too on the nose in its use of genre as a means of social commentary, so something that should be interesting on its own becomes a little too didactic for me, a real problem for some of the stories in this collection. While I found a lot of these stories lacking the wow factor, something not helped by their sometimes languorous running time, but I did not hate any of them and I liked a few. It opens up rather brilliantly with “The Prospectors” a story of two gold-digging young women who take the wrong ski lift up a mountain and wind up at a party of ghostly men who died in an avalanche. It dolls out the proper amount of sympathy for both the grifting duo and ghostly guests and maintains a palpable sense of dread while slyly commenting on the fraught nature of male-female interactions. Like “The Graveless doll of Eric Mutis” in her previous collection, this is the book’s lone standout, followed by the clunky yet entertaining title story. But most, like “Bog Girl: A Romance”, The Tornado Auction and especially “The Bad Graft” (where a woman becomes something like an endangered Joshua tree) have big ideas but never rein them in to create something interesting. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Hold Fast Your Crown" by Yannick Haenel

It is highly unlikely that I will read a more interesting and unique book as French writer Yannick Haenel’s novel Hold Fast Your Crown, and that is partly due to its last minute addition to my reading list. I picked it up having read no reviews or heard any press about it and it proceeded to wow me over the course of 332 brisk and enlightening pages. From its rich yet light prose, credit of which goes partly to translator Teresa Lavender Fagan (I don’t talk too much about translators in my reviews and I feel I need to remedy that), its loose structure and the constantly shifting ideas and enigmas that lave the reader guessing like the most hardboiled of mystery or crime thrillers, this is easily the biggest surprise of 2019. The book is told as a flashback with the unnamed (as far as I can tell) narrator recalling a time when he was crazy by introducing us to his obsession of choice, which is massive and most likely unfilmable screenplay about the life of American literary giant Herman Melville. Not a single producer is interested and his pitch about examining the “honeycombed interior of Melville’s head” does nothing to help sway them in his direction. And then Pointel, one of his contacts gives him the number of American film director Michael Cimino, known for winning big with his breakout film The Deer Hunter, losing big with his epic gaffe Heaven’s Gate and then falling off the face of the Earth until his death on 2016. Of course, the narrator thinks that Cimino is not only the best fit to direct his great white whale of a script, but is the only director who can do it justice. He manages to get a meeting with Cimino in New York City, where they share a night on the town, trade in esoteric worldviews and ending with Cimino’s promise to direct the movie. That is the bare synopsis of this scatterbrained enigma of a book. We learn of the narrator’s habit of watching movies in search of a holy deer, finding something close to that in repeat viewings of Cimino’s films and Apocalypse Now (which he watches at least once a day) his relationship with Tot, his neighbor, Sabbat, Tot’s Dalmatian, Pointel and Lena, who might just save him from himself. Thematically, I was reminded of various books, such as those by Herman Koch, whose undercurrent of menace flows through here as well and oddly enough Tim Lucas’s Throat Sprockets in how the book lays out cinematic obsessions that lay outside of respectable society. On the surface this looks like a dark book, evidenced by a grim seen near the end involving Tot and a hunting trip, but by the end I think it is a hopeful one, with a scene at the funeral of Lena’s long suffering and deeply religious sister being the book’s high point. And even if the writer is still crazy by the end, I get the feeling he has some newfound clarity. 

Review: 5/5

Review: "Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?" by Brock Clarke

I have been circling the novels of Brock Clarke for more than a few years. I’ve read two of his short story collections and his four novels have been in my collection for as long as I can remember but I have never read them, but I think his new novel Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? is a good representation of his work in the long form. Like his short stories, they possess a cozy sense of whimsy that I have come to associate with any writer hailing from New England (even Stephen King): larger than life portraits of quaint, quirky folks with undercurrents of tragedy and screwball comedy woven into the fabric of every sentence, and presented to us by a narrator both baffled by and an accessory to the strange story that follows. The eponymous narrator at the heart of this story fits that description to a T. Calvin, named after the religious icon his mother wrote an extremely popular book about, is 47 still living at home and reeling from the recent deaths of both of his parents. He has little time to mourn though because at the funeral, his mom’s twin sister Beatrice, whom Calvin does not remember at all, trick him into going on a trip throughout Europe that involves espionage, gerbil porn, an obsessed fan of her mothers and a chair belonging to John Calvin. The one thing you can’t call this book is boring. For a book I described as quaint there is a lot of action and wild scenarios, which I will not reveal here and while they are fun to encounter, they come really close to crossing the line of believability, especially toward the end as it pertains to one of the book’s big twists. But this is still a really entertaining book, shot through with bright, sincere optimism to go with its large heart. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill" by James Charlesworth

The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill, the debut novel of author James Charlesworth that works both in spite of and because of it’s glaring flaws. It is overwritten but beautiful because of it, its timeline is confusing but creates a strange sense of mystery to the book’s proceedings, and its central, eponymous character is so ghoulish, so outside the realm of reliability or sympathy that it works to the book’s advantage, making this trek across the middle of the 20^thcentury and the four battered lives of a relentless, merciless American man feel less like an indictment of traditional masculinity (as the book’s blurbs consistently point out) and more something to akin to the recent spat of art house horror films where nothing is more perverse or terrifying than the idea of family. I’ve read a few reviews not so kind to this book, but its oddball qualities and its dreamlike progression to an inevitable final act had me beguiled and consistently searching for answers, to the dark crazy heart of this dark and crazy story. The first fifty pages, where the life of the title character is laid out are the best part of the book, where we learn about GBH’s sad beginnings, the pressure his father put on him to always be acting, to always looking for a way to get ahead, his first marriage to the failed beauty queen Mary, the birth of his first two sons George Jr. and Jamie, Mary’s shocking act of self harm that signaled the end of their marriage and the chance encounter in the backroom of one of the first ever fast food restaurants that he, and everyone he told, feels is the key to his future success. It is the one section where we get to know GBH deeply and his Charlesworth only attempt to understand the character’s pathologies. The majority of the book takes places in the ashes of 9/11 as GBH’s four children, George Jr., Jamie and the twins from his marriage to Annabelle, Max and Maddie, navigate their shattered world as they are all headed for a collision course with their monstrous father, whose own well publicized immoral business measures have been temporarily forgotten in the wake of the towers falling. George Jr. is reeling from a divorce and the death of his daughter, Jamie is caught between a world of make believe and very real horror in sections riddled with paranoia and events and people who may or may not be real, Max, a pilot in Alaska, lives a lonely life in the wake of not one, but two separate manslaughter charges and Maddie eeks out a living as a Vegas hustler, still waiting for her friend, who disappeared a decade earlier, to come back. There is a mysterious package, a gun in a baseball bat carrier and lots of regret and resentment boiling to the surface as both past and present intermingle and the reader is left with a vague sense of what is going on but can easily feel great undercurrents of longing and hope in every phrase, even the corny final line. This might be a personal favorite, but it comes highly recommended from me. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Inland" by Tea Obreht

Inland, Tea Obreht’s second novel came out this year nearly a decade after her debut The Tiger’s Wife came out in 2010 and you can really see the years of hard work that went into this period novel where two separate storylines converge in a brilliant finale at the tail end of the 19^thcentury. It is beautifully written and never once feels inauthentic or read like a cheap knockoff and its best quality which I will get to in a little bit, in other hands would crumble quickly in lesser hand but here becomes its best feature and what I am sure will be what most people take away from it. Having heaped praise on it, it is not a perfect book, with the two sections never feeling complimentary narrative wise (although they do thematically) and the plot gets overloaded with details that get lost inside each other. The two main characters of the story that takes place in the untamed Southwest of 1893 are Nora, a woman trying to hold her fractured family together on a constantly threatened parcel of land with a missing husband and soon to be missing sons and Lurie, an orphaned immigrant from Turkey whose wild life, from grave robbing to bank robbing and finally becoming a fugitive on the run from the law. It is clear they both share otherworldly qualities in their ability to talk to the dead, with Lurie followed by those he’s known who have died and one he killed on accident, and Nora by Evelyn, her daughter who died young but has grown into adulthood in her mind. These stories are interesting on their own, but until the payoff near the end of the 370-page novel they rest side by side in unharmonious fashion. But that aside, this is one of the most interesting novels of 2019 from an author I’m glad I reacquainted myself with. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "We Cast A Shadow" by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

It was really hard for me to fully grasp the ideas and themes behind Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s debut novel We Cast a Shadow, but one thing I was absolutely positive of was that I enjoyed the hell out of it. In fact, it is this very ambiguity that makes it so interesting complex and at various times disturbing. It is not as clear-cut as some critics might approach it and is thankfully treats its subject matter in a non-didactic way, which allows the characters became real and not just ciphers for a specific point of view and helps the reader buy in to some of the book’s more outlandish elements. Through the eyes of an unnamed black male narrator, a lawyer living in the near future, we see a skewed, cracked mirror version of our own world, with progressive ideals and historical hierarchies stacked on top of each other, colliding and creating a horrific mish mash of a culture where the top and bottom are indecipherable from each other, and no one knows if they are going backwards or forwards, least of all our tortured confused narrator, whose insecurities and cynicism he lays on the shoulder of his mixed race son Nigel. You know this book is offering something different in its first scene, where our narrator attends a company wide costume party, where he and the other two black employees subject themselves to various types of humiliation in order to save their job and get promoted. It is here where Ruffin’s brilliant eye for satire comes into play, how this world not unlike our own thinks it is moving forward, but here is ample evidence that it is not. Our narrator ends up keeping his job after a staggeringly humiliating action which he thinks might cost him his job, but he keeps his job and becomes entangled with Octavia, the head of the firm, a black woman who would be the paragon of success in any other book, but Ruffin perverts this ideal in brilliant ways with minor details, like the getaways she takes at an old plantation or keeping candy corn in an ancient African mask. Hesitant, our narrator accepts his new position and task to convince a local medical hospital to become a client of the firm, because it would mean he is one step closer to “helping” his son by getting him “demelinazation” treatment for his growing birthmark. In any other writer’s hands, this aspect of the novel would feel contrived and sloppy, but Ruffin takes a different approach, never referring to it in racial terms, and offering up valid points, at least in the mind of the narrator as to its desired outcome. The plot is loose, but it offers looks into the narrator’s past and why he thinks this way, a shady terrorist organization that once again would seem like the heroes in a different story but in this book their virtue is nebulous at best. Ultimately, though, this a novel of family and the sacrifices we make for them as well as a sort of hidden ode to individuality in a society that is always trying to put you in one box or another. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Rag" by Maryse Maijer

One thing is crystal clear within the first few sentences of any story author Maryse Meijer writes and that is her skill at creating a certain unique mood that infects every word of the story and, in turn, the reader. Her worlds are ones where the pathway from boredom to horror is scarily narrow and nothing is more terrifying than something not said or a feeling not acted upon no matter how grotesque. Her most recent short story collection, Rag, feels a little bit like a step down from her debut collection Heartbreaker, and falls too easily into traps these kinds of stories usually fall into: a structure that feels like an outline for something much greater than the finished product and vague prose too often mistaken for a sense of mystery, but even the flattest of these stories have the tendency to crawl up the base of your spine like a noxious insect and give you nightmares. As always, I will pull out a few of my favorites t discuss here, the first of which, “Her Blood” is easily among the best, detailing the obsession that comes over a virginal young pizza boy and the woman who has a miscarriage in his store’s bathroom. It’s the first of many in this collection that mines the perversity of attraction in a graceful way, others include “Brother” where one siblings attraction to another’s girlfriend causes a horrific outcome and “Jury” where a widower is drawn to fellow juror who happens to be a cutter. But my two favorites are the brief “At the Sea” where a man might have kidnapped his maybe daughter and “The Rainbow Baby”, that takes a ridiculous premise familiar to those who have read Thomas Tryon’s The Other and makes it work with empathy and pathos. Uneven at times, but never boring, this slim collection of off-putting yet mesmerizing fiction will delight readers drawn to the strange and weird. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Old Drift" by Namwali Serpell

The author who I thought of most while reading Namwali Serpell’s brilliant epic of a debut a debut novel The Old Drift was David Mitchell. The way she weaves a wondrous world both ancient and futuristic, informed by our distant past and our near future but still wonderfully original reminded me of his best work and even some of his lesser quality work which, like this book in very few places, is still fascinating to look at, interpret and think about. It manages to exist wholly within its two worlds, running smoothly through the bulk of the 20^thcentury and into the great unknown of the 21^st, presenting a world informed by past mistakes, present failures and hopes for a brighter future, all within the microcosm of the Republic of Zambia, a country that only gained its freedom a little over 50 years ago. It offers a wide range of characters through the years, with both victims and victimizers thoroughly fleshed out with murky motivations and hidden desires, along with very cool running themes that recur throughout the book. It begins at the start of the 20^thcentury, where a seemingly innocuous event at a luxury hotel at Victoria Falls, a scuffle between a white businessman that leaves another man knocked imbecilic, draws in the lives of three families, black, white and brown, and follows their ancestors as to the near future where the world presented at the beginning feels unrecognizable but with its same prejudices and feelings of want and desire. Like Mitchell’s work, Serpell crafts a world that is fantastical but realistic and it is easy for the reader to by into the more ridiculous aspects of the novel, such as the character of Siballa, whose hair grows at a rapid enough rate that she resembles Thing from the Addams family (hair is one of the book’s recurring themes, such as its powers in both growing it and shaving it off) or the character of Grace, a background character in most of the lives of the three families as they converge who does not see to age over the course of several decades. One of the main themes I found that appears at the turning points of each section is the somewhat pessimistic look at progress in both history as well as politics, like what happens to the sisters Matha and Nkuka, both of whom fall under the spell of the cult like Nkoloso, whose failed Zambian space program would be funny if it did not indirectly cause the death of the girl’s mother at the hands of the government. The book takes a delightful if hard left turn when it focuses on the grandkids, Jacob, Joseph and Naila, and introduces hi-tech smart devices that are implanted in people’s fingertips and near microscopic drones that might be the swarm of mosquitos that narrate small pieces in between sections, but it swings for the fences in its daring final few pages, and it is easy for me to respect that for a debut novel so thick, complex and intricate. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead

I’m always interested in the follow-up to a great success, whether that be of the cinematic variety or the literary variety, so when I heard Colson Whitehead was publishing his follow-up to his awards sweeping novel The Underground Railroad, I was immediately interested. The Underground Railroad lived up to its hype, telling an engaging story of alternate history in all its ugliness, beauty and complexity and is surely to be one of the high points of 21^stcentury literature as the years roll on. But what was he going to give us next: more of the same or something totally different? It could have been anything for a writer with varying interests like Whitehead and his new book The Nickel Boys offers something new from him, but with the same attitude, eloquence and grandiosity his fans have come to expect from him. It reminded me a lot of the trajectory of the Coen Brothers after No Country for Old Men swept the Oscars, giving us the screwball Burn After Reading and the proudly esoteric and brooding A Serious Man. Whitehead has already accomplished more than most writers can do in a handful of lifetimes, and while this books is sure to have some detractors, I am not one of them. It is up there with his best books, a notch below John Henry Days and his preceding awards collector, but it might be his angriest and most cynical book, a tale of wronged young boys, victims of a system whose carelessness bred the monsters who tried, and succeeded a depressing number of times, to destroy them. Based on a harrowing true story of a reform school that operated in Florida, gives lurid headlines a tragic human face with Elwood, a young man at the dawn of the 60’s who finds himself the victim of despicable injustice and sentenced to hell, as he likes to think. We first meet him as he haunts the hotel where his Grandma works, barred from certain sections because of the color of his skin. He has a relatively stable life: college bound and inspired by the burgeoning Civil rights movements. But an offered car ride in a stolen vehicle gets him sent to The Nickel Academy, a place meant to shape young boys into men, but, as Elwood finds out on his first trip the “White House” is a hellish prison where abuse, physical and sexual, are the norm and where boys disappear “out back” and never return. It is a familiar story, but Whitehead adds layers of intrigue and subtext in the books slim 210 pages, like how injustice seems to follow Elwood (his first trip to the White House was because he tried to stop a fight), and his ambivalence toward the hopeful future he hears Dr. King preach about, given more credence and poignancy in the book’s shocking and brilliant epilogue, which I suspect will divide audiences. At times this is a hard book to read (and it seems to know that, spending scant time with the villains and focusing wholly on their victims), but it feels like an important book for our troubled times. Plus, it is a damn good book from a damn great writer. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Triangulum" by Masande Ntshanga

I’m beginning to see a pattern with the types of books Two Dollar Radio publishes. Thankfully, that is not a knock against them because what they put out is unique, memorable and always unlike anything else being put out, as is the case with South African writer Masande Ntshanga’s second novel Triangulum, a brilliant if overstuffed book that provides little in the way of substance but is really, really cool to look at.  It might be because I read it earlier this year, but there is a striking similarity between this novel and R. J. Campbell’s debut Found Audio, also published by Two Dollar Radio, if not in themes but at least in how the novel is layered House of Leaves style where the main story is at the center of a cursory story given to the reader first hand, so we are in fact the third layer of the story being told. Here, the story is told from the perspective of an astronomer in the middle of the 21^st century who has been given a manuscript of recordings and a memoir that has accurately predicted a series of events leading up to the end of the world. The majority of the book is the manuscript itself, detailing in audio recordings and journal entries the life of an unnamed woman, from her life as an adolescent, filled with sexual discovery and dread as a series of disappearances, including that of her mother, her romance with a mysterious woman named D. and her involvement with a terrorist group, all of which is accented by her mysterious vision of a triangular machine, whose significance is revealed in the book’s best part. As I said, there is very little of substance in the story, which seems drained of emotional impact, but it is never, not once, a boring read and filled with interesting ideas, cool scenes and mysteries that are more powerful left unsolved.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Border" by Don Winslow

I don’t much go in for book series’, with my reading habits making it hard to latch onto arcs over multiple books (I do not read more than one book by a certain author during a calendar year), but a few have made their way into my heart. Two come immediately to mind: one is Justin Cronin’s The Passage Trilogy and the other is Don Winslow’s drug epic, which I like to call the Art Keller Saga, beginning with The Power of the Dog, continuing with The Cartel and ending with this year’s The Border. I was entertained, horrified and deeply moved following the story of this flawed man who was there at the beginning of America’s misguided drug war and stuck with it as it evolved and morphed into a more ravenous and merciless monster with Adan Barrera as its head. If you have followed it too, you will enjoy this final part of it, the longest at a massive 716 pages, pulling from the headlines, narco hearsay and Winslow’s vivid and rhythmic imagination as Art Keller, exhausted, spent and pieces of his soul picked away like rotted flesh, still having hope that all of it will be worth it. It begins, like the other three with a prologue of things to come before stepping back to the end of the first novel where (SPOILERS) Keller walks out of the Guatemalan jungle, the Zetas finally defeated and Keller finally ridding the world of Barrera. After this, one of those who financed the covert mission to destroy the Zetas invites Keller to head up the DEA. He takes the job, knowing that even though Barrera is dead (despite the signs that crop up claiming he is alive) the vacuum left in the Sinaloa Cartel will be quickly filled, this time by the sons of those who started the whole bloody empire. And much like The Cartel, the book is not only focused on the story of Art Keller battling the cartels but stories completely separate from this blood feud, featuring a junkie undone by opioid addiction, an immigrant trying to avoid gang life as he makes his way from Guatemala to New York City and of course John Dennison, the pale horse candidate of the 2016 election, vowing to make America Great Again and build that wall, even though it is his own party who find themselves in the pocket of the cartels. Like all of Winslow’s books, it has a propulsive pace, with action scenes that feel authentic and over the top at the same time, under laid with a great passion for the subject ta hand; it’s ecstatic highs and horrid faults. If the Power of the Dog was about regret and The Cartel was about forgiveness, I’d surmise The Border is a book about hope, a hope that stems from the worst circumstances, a hope that stays a live and well lit when everything else seems to be falling apart. Winslow believes in this deeply, I think, and so do I. If this is the last book I will surely miss Art Keller and hope he has found some peace. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "You Know You Want This" by Kristen Roupenian

A book like Kristen Roupenian’s debut book of short stories, You Know You Want This, was published this year to great anticipation, with the story “Cat Person” being published in the right place (The New Yorker) and the right time (in the midst of the MeToo movement). I tend to steer clear of books with a clear political message, so when a friend bought me this book as a birthday present, I was both interested and a little hesitant as to whether it would live up to the hype or simply be an artifact of our current moment. Thankfully, I do not feel that is the case and found this book to be a little bit more complex than your average feminist screed. These are some of the creepiest stories I have come across in a while, reminding me of the work of Ottessa Moshfegh and Marina Enriquez’s Things We Lost in the Fire but instead of Mexican history Roupenian is more preoccupied with how modern people fail to connect with one another, how things like paranoia, selfishness, our need to be loved and our overriding fear that we do not deserve such a thing take us down dark roads that we only realize lead to ruin and horror long when it is far too late. There is not a weak story here, although some I like more than others. The first story, “Bad Boy” about a couple who find that they get off watching their male friend drift in and out of a toxic relationship and can only have sex in the process of humiliating him is a good primer for what is too follow, the banal horror of the situation Roupenian deviously crafts only showing its ugly face when we are too far to go back. The stories take a welcome strange turn with “Sardines”, about a lonely divorced woman, her daughter and the results of her daughter’s birthday wish has echoes of Clive Barker’s “In the Hills, the Cities” in its grotesque ending. I also feel I have a differing view on a handful of stories than other readers might, such as “The Good Guy” about the inner thoughts of a man whose sexual shame, pitiful submissive nature and failure to be honest with himself turns him into a callous monster, “Biter” about a woman’s obsession with biting one of her male co-workers which has the book’s best ending and the aforementioned “Cat Person”. Far from casting women as victims or men as villains or worse, foils, Roupenian uses the aberrant relationships in these and the rest stories to interrogate modern romance, its focus on selfish need and instant gratification and frames it as the kind of horror story Shirley Jackson would right which makes you question every misinterpreted sexual encounter, every awkward first date, every affectionate gesture from the opposite sex as something sinister, masking one’s darker desires that they have talked themselves into justifying. This is the kind of incendiary, thought provoking and original short story collection that reinvigorates my love for this lost art form. 

Rating: 5/5