Review: "Crimes in Southern Indiana" by Frank Bill

This collection of stories made be proud to come from Indiana, and really inspired me to try and take initiative to give back to the state that I have called home all my life. I read an article on Frank Bill in the Nuvo, an arts paper we have in the Indianapolis area, and was struck by the fact that he has made it on his own by getting a book deal with FSG without going to any big publishing city. Many people I know who want have literary aspirations, who, quite erroneously, bash Indiana, and desperately want to move to a big city. I know it is the sexy thing to do, especially since Indiana isn’t well known for its creative output. But I think that route is simply overrated, and quite lazy, since these people just want their city to give them and experience, prepackaged, instead of trying to create their own and try to do something good for their town. But enough of that let me tell you about the awesome collection Crimes in Southern Indiana. This book is quite the barnburner, and has enough violence, depravity, and unsavory characters that it simply cannot be a fun as hell ride into dangerous literary territory. Bill is a mix between Lansdale and early Palahniuk, in that his stories recount extremes in behavior without humor and judgment, and simply presents a life-changing day in the lives of these fringe dwellers. Most of the stories can be placed in the country noir category of mystery, in that things like meth and dog fighting play a role in it like gambling and the mob play a role in more clean cut mysteries. After reading this, I can safely say there is not a dud in the bunch, some are better than others, but none will leave you bored or unshaken. From the first three stories, which share a narrative arc about a grandfather, pimping out his daughters to a team of sociopathic siblings to settle a drug debt, to the story “The Need” about a man who finds the courage to kill people like he so desperately needs to in the high he gets from smoking amphetamine, these are gritty dirty stories that show the human element in those that commit unspeakable acts of violence, and shines a lens on those places that is free of moral commentary. They are not for weak stomachs or soft heads, but they are as interesting as can be. Also, in a more subdued story like “The Old Mechanic” about a young boy who somehow reconnects with his brutal grandfather, who he has been shielded from because of his propensity for domestic violence, he is able to show how not everything in Southern Indian ends in blood shed, and that even something heinous can be forgiven as long as there are sincere intentions. A great collection, full of thrills, intensity and enough violence to satisfy any fan of hardcore fiction, Crimes in Southern Indiana is a wild ride through the dark Midwest.

Rating 5/5

Review: "Freezer Burn" by Jo R. Lansdale

I love Joe R. Lansdale, and it makes me mad that he is not as famous as he is. Him along with Haruki Murakami, are two writers who I think do not get enough love by the book loving public here in the states. He writes as if Flannery O’Conner watched too many episodes of The Dukes of Hazard and too many exploitation films. His stories always contain this mean-spiritedness that you have to laugh at, because it is sometimes too appalling to look at. Even with a book that is not so good, like this one, Freezer Burn. It is simply a wild bull ride every time you open a Lansdale book. The main character Bill is a typical Lansdale good ol’ boy. Bill is a total idiot and doesn’t really make up for it by being a rotten bastard who lets his mom’s decomposing corpse lie in her bed long after she dies of natural causes. He is trying to forge her social security checks, but sucks at that as well. If he were good at it, we’d hate him, but since he is a total loser, we sympathize with him. After a botched robbery of a fireworks stand (which leads to the death of two of his friends, and a hilarious police officer who keeps yelling COCKSUCKER as he searches for Bill) ends with him crashing into a swamp, Bill, now with a face swollen from mosquito bites, happens upon a traveling freak show. It only gets worse for Bill from here, as he meets a wide range of freaks from a retard pair of Black Siamese twins, to the beautiful wife of the freak show boss Frost, who is pretty obviously playing Bill. Granted it is mediocre Lansdale, but it is still Lansdale, and that is never a mistake to me.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Tiger's Wife" by Tea Obreht

I am blessed to have been alive in 2011 to see the debut novels of two very talented young women in Tea Obreht and Karen Russell. Each (both were featured in the 20 Under 40 book, which all but two of the new authors I read for the rest of the year will have been featured in that book) carves out their place in the landscape of new fiction with passionate zeal and ferocious originality. Seriously, these ladies do not mess around, and I feel sorry for those who won’t recognize them when they sneak up behind them in a few years with new books and become literary superstars. They demand and deserve recognition. Now Obreht, the youngest author in the 20 Under 40 collection at only 25, brings to us a novel that is steeped in mythology and the magic that stories, no matter how outlandish they may be, bring us that makes us better people and more aware of our beautiful blue planet. The Tiger’s Wife starts out in an unnamed Balkan province trying to rebuild itself after years of war. Natalia, a young doctor, is on a mercy mission to an orphanage by the sea. On her way there, she hears of her grandfather dying under mysterious circumstances, which leads her to recount all of the fantastical stories that her grandfather used to tell her. As her stay in this strange village gets weirder, with a family digging for bodies of long dead relatives and the town hiding something from her, the stories she is remembering offer insights into her situation and a better understanding of her grandfathers odd ways. For someone who is only a few years older than I am, Obreht writes like an old pro, by weaving a web of mystery around these mystical stories that get weirder and weirder, but also become more entertaining as we near the end. Natalia recalls the story of the deathless man her grandfather keeps meeting in different places suffering from strife and death. Easily the highlight of these recollections, they are poignant in how they highlight our fears of death and what attitude we inhabit as we face its inevitability, and also just plain creepy, because we do not really know what to think of this man who can survive drowning and headshots, and who offers a weird, accurate way to predict your death. We later learn that he may be the nephew of death who has to live forever as punishment for an indiscretion, but I can’t help but be creeped out by him and his presence in the novel, which reminded me of William Sadler as Death in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. The other main story involves a tiger loose in the grandfather childhood village and those who try to hunt it. This is where the novel gets its title from, and where a lot of the mystery of what shaped Natalia’s grandfather’s life is answered. Simply put, The Tiger’s wife marks the arrival of a great new talent, who we will be talking about in years to come.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The Tesseract" by Alex Garland

What a glorious mess this book is: a mess of plot, a mess of character, and a mess of storytelling. The only reason I don’t give this book a one star review, is that it is very fast paced and would make a good movie (which exists, and star Jonathan Reyes-Myers) and I really like Alex Garland. If I had it my way, he would be the benchmark for the kind of writing we need to see more of in a time when television and movies offer stiff completion to books. He is someone who has seen more movies than he has read books, and realizes that a book has to rival the entertainment value that television and movies offer the viewing public. And better than that, he can create plotlines that have the reader burning through pages, but he does so without sacrificing the introspectiveness books can offer, but movies and television cannot. I loved The Beach, which was a cool take off on the difference between our fantasy lives, and the way other perceive us, as well as one the first books to embrace video game culture. So why do I think this book is not very good? For one, it steers away from the linear, easy to follow plot of The Beach, and instead experiments with this idea of one event taking place over 200 pages, which recount the lives of all involved. It is interesting and could be done well, but in the hands of someone as erratic and on fire as Garland, it is simply a mess. Its story of a drug deal gone wrong, which claims a few innocent lives, was lost on me, and besides a few scenes of cool gore (like the hand amputation), it simply doesn’t cut it. Read The Beach, and skip this one.

Rating: 3/5

Review: "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This book was a pleasant surprise, and since I came into it with really low expectations, it makes it that much better. I was not very familiar with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie when I started reading this, and her short story in 20 Under 40 didn’t impress nor depress me. She seemed like an okay writer, granted someone who was following too much in the footsteps of past writers who wrote about life in Africa. But sometimes and okay writer is all that is needed to weave an intricate story over 500 pages that was more entertaining than I thought it could be. It centers on the Biafra-Nigeria civil war that raged on in the late 1960’s (I think). I am really not that much into the historical notions that are in novels like this, and too be honest, my grasp of history is very rudimentary. So since I do not get caught up with historical accuracies in novels, a book like this that so relies on impact and validity of these past events, I am worried I am not going to see the book in all its glory, and I will not grasp its full potential and miss things that would make the read more enriching. The fact that I liked this book despite the fact shows how well the story shines through the facts that can bog a reader like me down. It centers on five different characters. We first meet Ugwu, a thirteen-year old house servant to Odenigbo, a smart, passionate, yet elitist university professor. He has a mistress, the beautiful Olanna, the daughter of a wealthy Igbo tribe leader, who is caught in her own culture war. Her sister, the distant and cold Kainene, is the object of desire for Richard and Englishman who is in Nigeria trying to write a book, which is one of the main arcs throughout the novels time passage. All these characters intersect in this tumultuous time, and face the hardships of being uprooted, and the mystery of whether their friends are alive or dead. It is definitely a story and subject that has been dealt with before, and the scenes of violence are of course heartless and jarring to those who witness it and the reader who reads it. But the real treat here is how well these five people interact with each other. Ugwu becomes somewhat of a moral base camp for the other four, he has his own (sometimes perverted) desires, but he never does takes a side in any of the petty arguments that occur when the two relationships go sour. The twins are polar opposites, Olanna being the caring if misguided one, while Kainene rarely acknowledges any kind of love for her prettier sister, but we somehow care for both when tragedy strikes. Odenigbo is the most knowledgeable, but is so arrogant about his beliefs; we question his bias and his knowledge. Finally Richard is the white man in the jungle, desperate to fit in, but unprepared for the horrors ahead. As the war rages closer to their lives, things get tense and turn violent and manipulative, until the real war shows up to change their lives. Again, nothing new here, but a damn fine book that I like and must recommend.

Rating: 5/5