Review: "Forest Dark" by Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss is a talented writer with lots of skill, a fact that is evident while reading her new novel Forest Dark. It has some really interesting and vivid scenes sprinkled throughout it that are engaging at worst and mesmerizing at best. I only wish she would put those talent to use in more interesting ways. This book and Great House, the only other book of hers that I have read, read less like fictional stories and more like academic essays with a flair for the dramatic and a desperate need to show off. They are dense in all the wrong ways and I can say with this book that I felt all of its 290 pages. It was a quick read but rarely a fun one besides a few sections that I thought Krauss exceled at her intended goal. The novel tells two stories that are thematic and stylistic twins, but the stories do not converge in any earthly ways besides location. Told in alternating characters, the first story introduces the reader to Jules Epstein, a contentious and vivacious layer who, at the age of 68 and grief-stricken after the death of his parents, he undergoes a change in personality. He leaves his job and travels to Tel Aviv where a mysterious man claims he is a direct descendent of the biblical David. In another story, an unnamed novelist suffering from writer’s block also travels to Tel Aviv and also meets a mysterious figure with an odd proposition, this one dealing with undiscovered details of the life of Franz Kafka. The Epstein section reads like Philip Roth, with the setting and storyline feeling like a pretty good imitation of Operation Shylock. The first person section feels a little too confessional for my tastes, with Krauss’ former marriage to Jonathan Safran Foer adding a lot of messy context to the storyline. Eventually, each finds themselves on a strange movie set, but the book doesn’t go anywhere, but despite the shiftlessness, some scenes really shine, like Epstein’s backstory, and a really strong and haunting final image. While there might be a lot to slog through here, this is far from a failure.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Taduno's Song" by Odafe Atogun

Much like my experiences with most European literature and most Latin literature, I have had fantastic experiences with most of the African literature that I have come across. It is always different enough to feel fresh and new but familiar enough to hit all the rights spots so certain feelings and emotions the book conveys do not get lost in translation (although in fairness you can say that about most international literature, at least for the kind that is good). And Taduno’s Song, the debut novel from Nigerian author Odafe Atogun, is another gem from a faraway world. Its front flap describes it as Kafkaesque and it has some stylistic similarities to A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass, another novel taking place in Nigeria, but what sets this apart from that book, and the label itself is how filled with hope the story is and its focus on the power of the human spirit instead of its weaknesses and corruptibility. It is a very jarring technique that truly elevates this book and makes you believe in what is happening despite some of the more nightmarish incidents that occur in the book. Just now as I am writing this, if there was any recent book I can compare it to, it would have to be Jonas Karlsson’s The Invoice, itself a small book readily handling large themes and one that takes a premise that would fall to easily and conveniently into cynicism and use it to tell a story filled with humanity’s unlimited potential. It begins simply enough as Taduno, exiled from his country for making troublesome music, receives a letter from Lela, his girlfriend back home. She has been kidnapped by the government for radical activity. This forces Taduno to return to his home country, but when he does, he figures out rather quickly that no one remembers him. It is not a case of waning relevance though: his closet friends, his producer, his girlfriend’s family, all of them have not a clue who he is. It is from this nightmarish reality that Atogun balances most of the stories power on. It is a haunting premise, one that is milked and explored in great detail, every bit of which hits like an psychological gut punch. But through it all, the reader is never quite able to forget about the power Taduno holds, even as his situations, fluctuates, gets better, gets worse and finally reaches unimaginable levels of suffering. It all leads to a final few pages that contain and immense power. It doesn’t shy away from those involved and although it is sad, it is ultimately uplifting and a victory for the book’s hero in its own strange way. Filled to the brim with rich characters (something a lot of books described as “Kafkaesque” tend to sorely lack), memorable scenes and a deep passion for living, all this despite its slim 233 page length, do not let this book’s quaint humility fool you. It and its writer are dealing with themes and ideas that are large and magnificent. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The King is Always Above the People" by Daniel Alarcon

After reading his new book, the short story collection The King is Always Above the People, I have read every one of Daniel Alarcon’s books (not counting his graphic novel City of Clowns) and it is hard to think of a more vanilla writer. From his debut story collection War By Candlelight, to his two novels Lost City Radio and At Night We Walk in Circles, I am struggling to recall any details about either of those three books, and it looks like I will have a similar feeling about this one in a few months, or even a month from now. This book is far from being bad (in my experience, bad books announce themselves loudly and proudly early on), but it is further away from being good, and what it does do good I have seen many writers do better with a much shorter page count. That is the real problem with these 10 stories, which range from a brisk 10-15-page length to an arduous 40-50-page length. Sure enough, the best two stories here are the ones in the former category, with “The Ballad of Rocky Rontal”, a second person account of a gang members journey from the streets, to prison, to freedom and leaves us the reader on the cusp of his revenge, being the best one here: it presents a concept and when it’s novelty wears off the story ends. It is easily the best story here. I can’t say the same for the longer stories, such as “The Provincials” and “The Bridge”, each a story about families that overstay their welcome by 20 pages. And don’t get me started on “Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot” a story that tries and fails to do what Wells Tower did with Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned”.  This isn’t an offensively bad book, but it is middling at best, it’s best parts in the short bursts amongst pages and pages of dead weight.

Rating: 3/5

Review: "The Blind Owl" by Sadegh Hedayat

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, perhaps the most popular novel to come out of Iran, is not really the best book to be reading while on a plane. I started and finished this 130-page book while waiting for my flight back home from Vegas and on the plane home. I was able to absorb most of it in the less than stellar setting, but it is a book much more suited for well-lighted and less noisy places. While it is a short book, it packs a lot of ideas into its short page count, a lot of creepy and bleak ideas. This book is obviously in line with a lot of shorter books just like it such as Notes from the Underground and Nausea, but it is very much a novel of horror and it approaches this feeling through the main character’s sadness and impossible longing for a woman who might not even exist. I read somewhere that this book isn’t so much about an experience but is an experience itself, and in that it succeeds. There is not really much of a plot synopsis, because it is never made clear what is real and what is a dream, or better yet a nightmare. It follows an unnamed pen case decorator who views the most beautiful woman through a hole in the wall of his house and spends the rest of the book talking about his fleeting happiness and his embrace of life’s meaninglessness and the specter of death. What this book gets right is a certain feeling that most of us have felt: the feeling of seeing someone out in public whose so beautiful you can’t approach them. You remember that person forever but never see them again. This is not a good feeling in Hedayat’s eyes. It is one of nightmarish proportions, it is a feeling that gets our character laughed at, to reflect on his regrets and too be trapped in a nightmare. This isn’t the happiest book, (with Hedayat eventually committing suicide), but it is filled to the brim with passion and insight that is not easy to dismiss, even if we desperately wanted too.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Force" by Don Winslow

I have come to expect quite a bit of greatness out of author Don Winslow. The Power of the Dog and The Cartel, which put together I like to call the Keller/Barrera saga, is an astounding achievement on all fronts: of storytelling, of relevance and of monumental character arcs that treat its subject with the respect and gravity of a Shakespearean tragedy. They are meticulously researched with narratives laid out in one long immaculate line. The books are violent, with some scenes put forth honestly and with a willingness not to look away that some may find gratuitous. But I’d argue it serves a purpose and is never gratuitous. Like all great literature, the characters and scenes still rattle around in my brain, being easy to recall and reflect on months and years after finishing the book. And his new novel, the cop drama The Force, is just as good as those two other fantastic books. It is a smaller novel, clocking in at only 479 pages (The Power of the Dog and The Cartel being 560 and 625 respectively), but it is has all the qualities of both of those mammoth titles: it is heavily researched, with a list of names at the beginning of the book, all cops, who helped Winslow out with some of the more nuanced details of being a cop being a few pages long. And being shorter, it is a much tighter story and being set strictly in New York City, it is a much more relevant story. Denny Malone, the cop at the center of the novel, begins the story sitting in a jail cell and the weight of an entire city resting on his shoulders. Denny, along with his four man Task Force, run their prescient, and walk a fine line between protecting the city they live in and making moral compromise after moral compromise in trying to keep the city safe and make a little bit of money on their own. The majority of this book is about how all that slowly, tragically and horribly falls apart around Denny, from his team, more loyal than most brothers, Claudette, his newfound love and the stash of drugs that hold the promise of a better life and the key to his destruction. It is hard not to look at the Task Force and not see the Strike Team lead by Vic Mackey on The Shield, but the comparison is one of admiration and not criticism. Denny is a much more malevolent figure than Vic: he continually justifies his actions, and we even cheer him on during some of the more noble pursuits, but deep down, like most of the people in this book, he is bad person. Through the many plot twists, which floored me time and time again, this book asks much needed questions about the role of police in our lives, being both critical of the power they possess and the wrongs they can commit and being sympathetic to an impossible and impossibly hard job that is slowly becoming harder and less popular. But the story here is what makes this book special, as we watch Malone rise and fall, crumble and rebuild and try to save as much as he can. It is a staggering feat of storytelling, and another homerun from Winslow.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The Accusation" by Bandi

In the addendum to The Accusation, a new collection of short stories written by an unnamed writer still living under the threat of persecution and death in North Korea, the process Bandi, the penname the writer choose to use (it means “firefly”), used to write these seven stories was to use real events and recount real actions, which was difficult to combine with “literary excellence”. It describes very truly what this work represents. There is an amazing story here with the publication of this book, one of artistic triumph, bravery and perseverance that, as an American and someone who calls himself a writer, cannot even begin to envision. The thought of what I do and essentially what I think being controlled by a governing body is something I can’t comprehend, and for that reason alone I think it is important to give this book your attention. It is a fresh experience that I assume was felt by those who first read One Day in the Life of Ivan Deniscovich. But having said that, this book feels less like a collection of short fiction and instead an angry but useful screed against an all encompassing evil. It is this anger that takes away some of the literary and narrative merit of the book. The stories can be a tad repetitive at times, with the structure of each being similar at best and interchangeable at worst. The stories in this book that are told in second hand by characters are too numerous among the handful of stories here. But I did have a few favorites, such as “Record of Defection” a story that reads like the story of how this book escaped its’ entrapped homeland and “So Near, Yet So Far” where a final image of a broken bird cage and a fresh telegram tell you all you need to know about the horror and sadness a dictatorship can bring on an individual. I’m happy these stories got out, and I will be even happier once Bandi, whomever he is, is able to pursue his artistic endeavors in a free and open society.

Rating: 4/5