Review: "The Savage" by Frank Bill

My love affair with the sub-sub-genre of “country noir” has kind of worn thin over the past few years. There are only so many times I can read a book about a slightly over-educated hillbilly with a conscious how overcomes the brutal rule of his family and/or the environment they grew up in (which always involves the ill effects of crystal meth) through shocking violence and casual evil. These kinds of stories are sadly a dime a dozen if you look in the right places, but a two authors who work very comfortably in that genre defy my expectations, and I am proud to say that both come from the Midwest, where I reside. One is Ohio’s Donald Ray Pollock and the other is my home state’s very own Frank Bill, whose third and most recent novel The Savage I have just finished. The life and trajectory of these two talented writers is very similar. I won’t go into the details of each of their lives (you can find that elsewhere), but each of their careers started out with a debut collection of short stories that laid the groundwork for their brutal, unforgiving fictional worlds, their first novel increased the stakes and showed noticeable growth and their third novel feels like a culmination of their talents so far, and marks each one as masters of a growing genre. Despite their similarities, The Savage is a very different book than Pollock’s The Heavenly Table. It goes in an entirely different direction, playing to Bill’s strengths as a writer of dialogue, description and a proud fascination with violence and cruelty. This is not a pretty book, or at least pretty in a traditional sense. Before reading this it would be smart to read Donnybrook, Bill’s previous novel since two out the three central characters are heavily involved and influenced by the events of that book. The setup for the novel is familiar: the American dollar has failed and has thrust the world into a heap of chaos. Among those destitute and one their own is the young Van Dorn, educated by his father in the ways of survival and right and wrong. After almost being killed by a roaming band of drug-fueled psychopaths, he becomes the obsession of the crazed Cotto, a Guatemalan immigrant with cartel ties that feels like an even wilder version of someone out of Don Winslow’s Keller/Barrera novels. He along with his band of methed-out young kids is determined to rule the whole of Southern Indiana. What neither suspect is the arrival of Chainsaw Angus into this picture, the winner of the previous novel’s tournament whose motives and ideals are somewhat hazy but are definitely in defiance of this new world order. The book burns white hot with aggression and animosity, with grotesquely violent scenes of dismemberment and death only interrupted by flashbacks to more peaceful if just as dreary time period. Bill never met a violent metaphor he didn’t like, and while some will claim it goes over the top (which they may have a point), I enjoyed its creativity and the sheer audacity to make poetry from such atrocities. This book isn’t for everyone, but if you are seeking a book that is different and plays by its own set of rules, you’ve seriously got to read this and Bill’s other fantastic books.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Troubling Love" by Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante’s debut novel Troubling Love is a sumptuous reading experience, with some paragraphs you can almost smell and even taste. Ferrante, the pseudonym of an Italian writer who wishes to remain anonymous, is a writer I know very little about, and while I would not call this short 139 page novel a slam dunk, it has at least gained my interest and has me curious about why this writer has such a large following. This novel about one woman’s almost unhealthy relationship with her recently deceased mother is never anything but charming and always had my interest over its short page count (something that I feel works in its favor since books like these work better when they don’t overstay their welcome). It isn’t always the most deep or meaningful book, with its overall themes still being pretty vague, but it is a very ambitious little book that has a lot of heart. It begins with Delia, an Italian woman of a certain age having just received news of her mom Amalia’s death by drowning (a possible suicide) off the coats Minturno Italy. Her voice is a detached one as she is a pallbearer at her mom’s funeral that, in the book’s most outrageous scene, gets her period unexpectedly. Through prose that brilliantly balances linear time and the identity of Delia and her mom, we see a complex relationship between a mother and daughter in a regretful retrospect. As I said, this isn’t a very deep book in my opinion. Nothing really happens and very little resolution is met by the end, even with a pivotal and riveting scene with he failed artist-marital cuckolded father. I struggled a bit trying to find a point to it, and with a book that doesn’t have a lot of action or drama, it can hurt a book. But it is a pretty thing to look at and be swept away in if you are tempted to pick it up.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Devil in Silver" by Victor LaValle

With his last three novels, American writer Victor LaValle has crafted an astounding trilogy of literary genre novels that are among the best I have come across in years. With ease and buckets of skill, his last three novels present situations, characters and mood that not only supply a good deal of suspense, intrigue and of course horror, but he uses these tropes in ways that brilliantly convey themes and ideas that are profound and imaginative. He did it first with his second novel, Big Machine and with his most recent novel The Changeling, but sandwiched in between those two books is the novel I just finished The Devil in Silver, the one that fits most comfortably in the category of “literary horror”, a genre that relies on mood and atmosphere rather than elaborate violence (a bit pretentious, but it fits this very unpretentious book). The book sets up a scary and frightening scenario and within that framework is able to tell a story about mental illness and how we treat those who suffer from such an ailment, the way we blame our problems on others, and just maybe the ways that might free us from the prions we create for ourselves. Think of something like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with a rampaging half-man half-bison being a bigger threat than Nurse Ratched. It begins a bit differently than the other two novels it rest between, as in there is very little backstory given. The first we see of Pepper is his arrest and, due to bureaucratic laziness, he is brought to New Hyde Hospital’s psych ward. He accepts this strange predicament he finds himself in rather well (which makes me think the events that brought him to the ward, as vague as they are, might not be all that true), and finds four friends as he tried to get himself out. But on his first full night, a creature hops down from one of the tiles in his room and almost kills him, only to be taken away by the hospital’s staff. The bulk of the book concerns his and three other patient’s search for what this monster is and how they can escape its wrath and the wrath of the ward itself. This is a very rich book with each of the four leads being well developed, my favorite being the tragic Coffee, Pepper’s roommate, an immigrant from Uganda whose calls on the ward’s payphone drain Pepper’s savings but also hide facts about Coffee that lead to the realization that he might actually belong where he is. And like all of LaValle’s novels, it has a beating heart among the grotesque happenings, exemplified by Loochie, a young girl who has spent most of her teenage life in the care of psych wards like New Hyde. It all adds up to a stunning mixture of disturbing realizations and sudden violence but also a chance for hope for those brave enough to face their own devils. This is a fun and enlightening book from an author who’s slowly becoming one of my new favorites.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Women and Men" by Jospeh McElroy

Whew! After taking a two week break, it feels kind of refreshing to be done with what I hope will be the worst book I read in what will be a shorter than normal reading year for me. I knew what I was getting into when I decided to start American book published), but I didn’t know it was going to be this bad. And bad it is. It is rightly compared to books like Gaddis’ The Recognitions and Gravity’s Rainbow for both its length and its complexity. But while those other two novels offer some enjoyment (even though I may not be knowledgeable enough to enjoy them, none of that was in this books aching pace and poorly structured sentences. Through every one of its pages, which felt like two or three, not once was I able to decipher or find a way into this books heart. But besides that, I couldn’t find any enjoyment in it as it moved along. A plot synopsis is impossible, even after looking through the book’s Wikipedia page both before and during and after reading the book, but at the very least I can tell it is about two people, Grace Kimball, a radical feminist and Jim Mayn, a journalist, who never meet but whose proximity to each other is filled with the people who make up the novel. To say this is a slog is an understatement, with many run on sentences that seem constructed to get you lost and makes you lose interest; the worst of these being the long “breather” sections, where the book’s action is observed by what I think are imprisoned angels. The shorter sections are the ones I found a smidge of entertainment value in, but overall, I found this to be a draining experience that scrambled my brain for all the wrong reason. I finished this book happy as I said at the start, not really because I read the longest American book ever published (maybe a little bit), but because I got to move on to books I’m sure are more exciting than this.  

Rating: 1/5

Top Ten Movies of 2017

Top Ten Films of 2017

From what I can tell, 2017 was a hard year for many and with rough times it is nice to go to be able to watch a movie and escape for a couple of hours. Luckily, this was a strong year for film, at least in one aspect. I can’t think of a stronger year for the horror genre without going back at least ten years. Even imperfect ones (like the heavy hitters Get Out and It to smaller movies like The Devil’s Candy and A Dark Song) were startlingly original and felt fresh all the way through. There is a reason my top 5 are filled with genre fair. Here are a few honorable mentions that I couldn’t help but bring your attention too, in no particular order:

Honorable Mentions:

*Logan, dir. James Mangold: Gave superhero movies a much needed makeover and new direction. 

* Brigsby Bear, dir. Dave McCary: Morally questionable perhaps but it was nice to see an indie film not dive headfirst dive into cynicism.

* Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, dir. Martin McDonagh: Not as good as In Bruges, but McDonagh can mix tragedy and slapstick better than almost anyone. 

*Columbus, dir. Koganada: A movie that could have been boring but becomes a hypnotic look into two people on the cusp of their dreams, with my home state as a sumptuous backdrop. 

*Radius, dir. Caroline Labrèche, Steeve Léonard: This low budget sci-fi film that is worlds better than how it looks was a grand way to end 2017. 

Top Ten Films of 2017

10. Brawl in Cell Block 99, dir. S Craig Zahler: Zahler follows up his brutal western Bone Tomahawk with this equally brutal prison flick that is an absolute blast. Zahler is constantly compared to Tarantino, and it fits, but in some ways he is a little bit better. His approach to graphic violence (a mixture of glee and apprehension) makes this movie a little weightier than normal Grindhouse fare. And Vince Vaughan gives what might be his best performance ever as the stoic Bradley Thomas. 

9. Wind River, dir. Taylor Sheridan: After writing two critically acclaimed neo-westerns, Sheridan jumps comfortably behind the camera to tell this somber story of the death of a young Native American girl. The snows of Wyoming might as well be the harsh desert of West Texas: a place where nature’s cruel indifference leads to very human tragedy. 

8. John Wick Chapter 2, dir. Chad Stahelski: My favorite movie (in retrospect) of 2014 gets a fantastic sequel that follows the titular ex-hit man, played wonderfully by Keanu Reeves, deeper into this strange world created in the first movie. It also has unexpected depth as well, as we follow John as he forced to strip away what little he had after the first movie. It leaves a lot of questions I can’t wait for the third film to answer. 

7. Lucky, dir. John Carroll Lynch: You couldn’t ask for a better final film from the legendary Harry Dean Stanton. This film about an aging atheist facing his mortality doesn’t cheapen things by providing easy answers. Instead, what we get is an odd and charming look at an impossibly small town and one man’s bittersweet reckoning with his impending death. 

6. The Florida Project, dir. Sean Baker: This film is still an enigma to me. Is it about the gulf that exists between the rich and poor just outside what is the happiest place on Earth? Is it about the unspoken limits of altruism? Either way this sometimes appalling, sometimes sad movie had me hypnotized from it’s opening to its oddly magical end. And Willem Defoe gives my favorite male supporting performance of the year as Bobby, the put upon yet saintly hotel manager. 

5. Good Time, dir. Ben Safdie and Josh Safdie: This fast-paced nocturnal odyssey of one doomed man wholeheartedly announced the arrival of an inventive new talent to watch. Mixing elements of Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out and Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, the story this movie tells is a hellish one, but one that demands and achieves our interest throughout. And Robert Pattinson gives my favorite male performance of the year as the sleazy, always unlucky Connie.    

4. Hounds of Love, dir. Ben Young: This Aussie thriller about a serial killer, his kidnapped victim and his equally captive wife is the hardest movie I had to watch this year, but got such a reaction out of me without copious amounts of gore. It approaches its subject in a way that implies the horror and never revels in the details. Also, all three characters are fleshed out skillfully, which leads to an intense and finally cathartic finale. And Emma Booth as the wounded wife gives my favorite supporting female performance of the year. 

3. Raw, dir. Julia Ducournau: While some would argue this is not a horror film, this story of one young woman’s discovery of some of her unsavory desires certainly has the violence and gore of a horror film. But it is also one of the most provocative films of the year, telling its story in a skillful way, unraveling the plot with one gruesome yet ingenious set piece after another until its jaw-dropping final shot. And Garance Marillier gives my favorite female performance of the year as Justine, the young girl who is appalled and intrigued by her new found desires. 

2. Super Dark Times, dir. Kevin Phillips: It has been awhile since we have seen a good youth-gone awry film in the vein of Kids or Mean Creek, and I was surprised and overwhelmingly happy to come across this movie of a group of teens whose youthful shenanigans lead to a horrific death and the destruction of their lives. From its somber mood, its pitch perfect evocation of the mid-90’s as well as the most brilliantly executed dream sequence in years, this confident first film is the best debut of 2017. 

1. A Ghost Story, dir. David Lowery: For all the risks this movie takes it should be terrible, but it swings for the fences and not only succeeds, but does so masterfully, creating the most audacious and original movie of the year and one I am still thinking about months after. It succeeds where others fail by asking eye-opening questions and making the audience think not only about the movie but about their own mortality in fresh but not always comforting ways, mapping out an interpretation of the afterlife that is the best since Jacob’s Ladder.  It is both the saddest and most life-affirming movie of the year and easily my favorite of 2017.