Review: "Whiskey" by Bruce Holbert

Over the past few years, I have read enough books within the genre of country noir that I can confidently tell you I’m an expert of the genre: I can recognize familiar beats in stories, certain character types and a certain home grown, gritty style indicative of the genre well enough to notice deviations in a tired or true method and judge it good or bad. The genre has its high points, like Daniel Woodrell’s masterpiece The Death of Sweet Mister and Donald Ray Pollack’s The Heavenly Table and it’s lesser works like David Joy’s Where All Light Tends to Go and really, anything else Daniel Woodrell wrote. Bruce Holbert’s third novel Whiskey, rests somewhere in between. He possess Woodrell’s gift for rich yet humble prose that gives grace to savage and sadistic people but its narrative is too jumbled, too compact to really be as interesting beyond Holbert’s skilled use of language. The novel focuses on the lives of two brothers, Andre and Smoker, who, in 1991, are forced to travel in search of Smoker’s daughter when a familiar religious zealot kidnaps her. Spliced in with this account, which includes a trapped bear (which verges on the ridiculous to be honest) and a blown of finger mended with the barest essential is the story of Andre and Smoker’s lives before the book’s events, such as Andre’s tender yet caustic courtship of school teacher Claire, the ugly relationship between the brothers which gives poignancy to the book’s present day events and the violent relationship between their parent’s Pork and Peg (whose names, put together sound funny in a way I JUST noticed) which contains the stories most powerful section, which offers clues as to the book’s ending and shares similarities between another FSG MCD title (I let you find out). While it lacks a certain drive I expect from these stories, this novel is a real piece of work and a beautiful exercise in finding the fine line between beauty and ugliness. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine" by Kevin Wilson

Quite recently I was thinking of authors who are well known for both their novels and their short stories that I see has better at the latter rather than the former. Names like Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell and Joe R. Lansdale came to mind: authors whose work in the short form greatly outweighs their longer books (I found this more true with horror authors than literary ones). I can safely add author Kevin Wilson to that lost after reading his newest short story collection Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine. I have read three of his four books, the other two being his novels The Family Fang, which, despite its awful title I recall giving a glowing review of and Perfect Little World, which was cute but disposable and easily lost in the shuffle of similar themed books but both, I must say haven’t aged well and come off as bland and very forgettable. There is nothing forgettable about this collection, which brings to mind the two collections of author Tom Perrotta, who excavated similar material in the short form. These incredible stories are filled with familiar people with familiar desires, problems and disappointments, but somehow, Wilson, always willing to give even the sorriest character a sense of dignity and hope, pushes these stories in the strangest, darkest yet charming directions that unload the characters pathos in surprising and heartbreaking ways. I will talk about a few of the stories here, but all of them are good and even the few that in retrospect rest in the shadow of the really good stories still impress me. One of them, “Scroll Through the Weapons,” is about a shaky couple that is forced to watch over the feral nieces and nephews of the woman. Narrated by the man, it is charming and engaging but has little substance. It is a good example of what some might not like about Wilson, which is the plausibility of the situations he puts his characters in. This, along with other plot points that take center stage, like an ice cube fight in “No Joke, This is Going to be Painful” and a spontaneous home video horror film in “The Horror We Made” may be hard to swallow for some, but Wilson’s skill and empathy make them work. The first real standout is the story simply titled “A Signal to the Faithful” about a young altar boy who is suffering fainting spells who’s given the opportunity to travel with his parish priest to help in officiating the priest’s aunt’s funeral. It would have been easy (and lazy) to take an obvious jab at a timely subject, but the story is more complex and the priest ends up being the story's most tragic figure. The same kind of subversion can be found in the title story, where a failed rock musician moves back in with his widowed mom, with an ending brave enough to turn one character's success into the other character's doom. But the best story here is “Wildfire Johnny” about young boy who finds a razor that allows him to travel one day in the past if he slits his own throat. It is a silly device used brilliantly to talk about such topics as race relations and pitiful white guilt. It is damn near perfect. It is a collection like this that reinforces my love for the short form, and I hope it does the same for you.  

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Death Notice" by Zhou Haohui

It might be because it has been quite a while since I have read an honest to goodness, break neck nail you to the wall type thriller, but it is hard for me to conjure a better time reading experience this year than the one I had reading Chinese thriller writer Zhou Haohui’s debut English language novel Death Notice. Since I have slowed down my reading load, cutting it in half really earlier this year, I’ve approached the act with a keener eye, noticing subtext more often, finding hidden meanings and playing around with the themes in venues like this. With this book, I didn’t have to do anything like that. To quite Stephen King in his praise for Justin Cronin’s The Passage, I was lifted up on the wings of story and let the real world disappear. I wasn’t searching for what this book really meant. I was just enjoying it; it’s little tricks, its scheming plot and its vast array of engaging characters. This is the kind of book that will appeal to fans of Jo Nesbo and Steig Larsson as well as other international crime writers. The book and its author does for China what those authors and books did for there respective countries, which is present a thrilling and familiar plot elements in an unfamiliar setting with enough local flair and customs to create a unique kind of tension. Set in the year 2002, a few years removed from astronomical advancements in technology in Chengdu, China it opens with police officer on a few routine visits who, in the very next section, is found murdered in his apartment. This crime drudges up more than few closeted skeletons, the most prominent and the one that really connects them all, is the cyber vigilante Eumenides, who boldly announces the deaths of his intended targets before killing them, most of whom have committed crimes they can’t be charged for or crimes they got off light for committing. It sounds like a well worn narrative device (and it is), but the scenes of tension, about four or five in total are so well executed and relayed in such a smooth way that it makes for an almost unbearable reading experience (in a good way). There are scenes set in a mine, outside an office building and one taking place in a restaurant where one person holds another person and unveils their master plan that are chilling in how helpless the characters are and how helpless you feel as a reader.  There are really no central characters, with the points of view being split, but by the end the character we identify with most of Pei Tao, whose sad story ties him directly with the disturbing crimes and is, as typical of characters like him, much smarter then he lets on. The ending, taking place in a crowded airport, where something that happens that is brilliantly executed and something impossible is pulled of in a way that is not so cheap or cheating, beautifully wraps up this intense 300 page book and has me begging for its sequel to come out sooner rather than later. This is the perfect kind of thriller you didn’t know you needed so bad until you pick it up. 

Rating: 5/5