Review: "Your Face Tomorrow Vol 1. : Fever and Spear" by Javier Marias

I really hate to give a subpar review for a novel by Javier Marias, especially one that is supposedly his magnum opus. I loved his breakthrough novel, All Souls, a rare campus novel without any condescension, and his novel A Heart So White, while lacking interesting plot elements, was a feast of funny quips and delightful prose. But after finishing the first novel in his Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, Fever and Spear, I am left shaking my head and a little tired trying to mine the book’s density. I still feel Marias is one of world literature’s unsung heroes, producing accessible works of fiction that challenge the reader but never bullies them, even with books like this. He is obsessed with the past, and the ways in which our words can rewrite to fit whatever notion makes us feel better. This novel is no different, although its intent is never entirely clear. Its focus, and the focus of two subsequent novels, is Jacob Deza, a kind of personality hacker: he is able to look past the masks people put on in everyday life, and tell if what they are saying is not only the truth, but also sincere, a kind of safecracker with honesty and emotion. He is brought into to a secret government sect from his native Spain by Peter Wheeler, an old gentleman who seems to match Deza in knowledge. Along with a doctor named Tupra, Wheeler allows Deza to use his skills for the government, with eye-opening, sometimes nefarious results. The problem with this book is how it switches timeframes so quickly without indication. And this is not helped by Marias prose this time, at its maximum density, making it hard to decipher what is going on. The one bright spot is the conversations had between Wheeler and Deza, which feel like they are being had by two people who only understand one another. By no means a bad book, the flaws I see may be remedied by the next installments, so I hope this is just a great story trying to gain its wings. 
Rating: 3/5

Review: "Indecision" by Benjamin Kunkel

I guess I have calmed down in recent years, since my reaction to a book as self-indulgent and shallow as Indecision, Benjamin Kunkel’s only novel, is less volatile and more apathetic. It is the kind of book written by someone with too much of an education and hasn’t really read anything that doesn’t validate their false sense of intelligence. But for some reason, reading it, I didn’t feel anger but instead, felt a kind of glee knowing I was in the hands of someone who totally did not know what they were doing. Kunkel was not remotely interested in engaging the reader, making them feel any kind of welcome or sense of balance. He is more interested in pontificating on how smart he is, and doesn’t care if he leaves you in the dust. I am surprised that it doesn’t bother me more, but I wasn’t angry through this book, just bored and motivated enough to finish it. It is a similar to the affliction of the novel’s horribly self-centered narrator Dwight Wilmerding, a temp for Pfizer who can’t seem to make any kind of decision to improve his life. He rooms with four equally listless males and for some reason he has a girlfriend (the trope of losers somehow having girlfriends always sadden me a bit, for personal reasons). He gets a prescription for a drug named Abulix which is supposed to cure his indecisiveness. He begins taking the medicine, and before he knows if it working or not, takes a trip in search of his lost love, Natasha, and ends up forming a rocky relationship with Brigid. As stated, this book is a little too preoccupied with its own cynicism to approach anything that looks like a true emotion. Its characters, especially its narrator, are symbols for a bored generation as complacent as they are uninteresting. I don’t have much good to say about this novel. Except that it is harmless if you do decide to read, but if you want to enjoy a book, don’t waste your time. 

Rating: 2/5

Review: "Bad Haircut" by Tom Perrotta

I don’t think that I will find a more surprisingly rewarding reading experience this year that tops Tom Perrotta’s first short story collection Bad Haircut. I have gone to great lengths to praise Perrotta, an underrated auteur of white, middle class suburban boredom and disappointment. From his highly controversial Little Children, the tumultuous original love story at heart of The Abstinence Teacher, the extreme success of The Leftovers and his oddly uplifting collection, Nine Inches, he plumbs the depths of everyday life, and comes back with golden nuggets and rotten cores, sometime indistinguishable. But all the books I have listed are from his later period, where he dealt with bigger ideas, became less solipsistic with his stories and broaden his range as a storyteller. I didn’t dislike his earlier books; Joe College was amusing, and Election, while read almost five years ago, still stick with as much as the movie does. I came into Bad Haircut with low expectations and came out floored as usual. It might not be as good as Nine Inches, but man, is this a really great, underrated collection. It deals with the same themes and emotions as his other book, such as the uncertain future of your average high school kid, the first time you learn adults are not always as smart as they say they are, and the heartbreak and despair we feel when we are betrayed being a catalyst that helps us grow up. These stories are rich in detail, and everyone can find at least one thing from their own lives in these stories. Like all great collections, some stories are better than others, but none of them are bad at all. The opening story, with the unfortunate title “The Wiener Man”, a funny story that is actually quite eye-opening, concerning a boy whose mom takes his boy scout troop to the local strip mall to meet a hot dog mascot, who turns out to be played by one of the mom’s old flames. On the surface, it is about how strong some ties can be, but as I looked deeper, it had a more bittersweet lesson about how hard work sometimes doesn’t pay off, and being a good person doesn’t guarantee success in life.  “Snowman” is perhaps the weirdest story that Perrotta has written, going to weird dark places you’d never expect from the story or even him, from an irrational bully bloodying the narrators nose to one lost soul of a boy taking the narrator on a homicidal hunt for said bully ending in a weirdly sad way. I’m not sure what the lesson is in this story, but I loved it. “You Start to Live” is another story that deals with disappointment, this time in young love taking place during prom night, ending with one boy who learns that the definition of love is much more than sexual conquest. And the final story, “Wild Kingdom” about the funeral of one boy’s neighbor who once showed him graphic pornography, delves deeply into the unnoticed awkwardness we all feel during somber moments. With the exception of the same boy likely being the center of all the stories (makes it feel a wee bit self-indulgent), I have no complaints about this book. It is great intro into Perrotta’s brilliant work, and crafts grand feelings out of the little moments that make up our lives.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "We Sinners" by Hanna Pylvainen

As much as I love new writers, and have a bit of self-serving pride in the fact that I am drawn more towards new writers I haven’t read than ones that I have, sometimes, they do not really offer very much, which is the case with We Sinners, the debut novel of Hanna Pylvainen. It is a weird case in actuality. While on the surface, just by reading the descriptions on the back, you’d think it would be a derivative piece, harking back to many immigrant stories and novels that came before it. But it really isn’t that. Not once was I thinking of another writer while reading this, which might be a back-handed compliment. It just doesn’t really feel like anything, even though the themes, which aren’t new, are looked at in a different way. The book, having finished it only a few minutes ago as I write this, just kind of left me feeling empty. It is less a novel than a series of vignettes about a large eleven person family who belong to a strict religious doctrine, where pretty much anything fun is forbidden, from the obvious, such as sex and drugs, to more constricting laws limiting how you interact with someone who is not of their faith. We watch as the children grow some rebel against their faith and want to live their own lives while some stick within the tight-knit community the religion provides. Those that stay are filled with regret, but those that leave are thrown into a world where they were not provided with the skills to survive, and hurt themselves and sometimes others. As I said, this book has very little lasting value, not so much boring as painfully inept at grasping at anything that might make me want to find out what happens to these kids. It is a short novel, about 189 pages, and could be read in a sitting, but don’t feel guilty if you pass it up for longer, challenging and more rewarding books.
Rating: 2/5

Review: "The Strange Library" by Haruki Murakami

While not the most accomplished story Murakami has put out, his interesting, illustrated short story The Strange Library is still a vibrant, imaginative yarn that, while maybe not worth buying, is still worth a download on a mobile device. My affinity for Murakami is well-known, so I won’t go into it much. He is a grand storyteller whose fame is well deserved. This small story, maybe taking up about 25 pages if it were published normally, is Murakami simply having fun. It doesn’t take a lot out of the reader, nor does it carry an initial emotional weight to it. It is a light story that you can easily read in one sitting and still feel rewarded for doing so. The story deals with an unnamed boy on his way to the local library. He is returning some books, but wants to check out more so he could satisfy his need to learn about what kind of taxes were paid during the Ottoman Empire. He weaves his way through a labyrinth of hallways and book-filled nooks until he finds a cramped room with an ugly, surly old man who gives him three books on the subject, who tells him he must read them here since they cannot be checked out. He follows orders, despite his misgivings, and ends up the man’s prisoner, who promises to let him go if he memorizes all three books. He learns from a man dressed as a sheep, that the man will likely eat his brains to gain the kid’s knowledge. With the help of the sheep man, and a mysterious mute girl, he plots his escape. All the tropes are here: the sheep man, the mysterious beautiful girl, and the odd doors the imagination opens into our daily lives, with a quota that is bitterly sweet. It might not be worth the price I paid, but this story is never not delightful and bizarre. 
Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Farther Shore" by Matthew Eck

I would have liked to have said at the top of this review that the debut novel of Matthew Eck, The Farther Shore, is a real hidden gem, but it really isn’t. But it really is just a well-written novel whose themes, setting and style have all been improved on greatly with a number of higher profile publications. It may have been one of the first novels to discuss, in depth, war after 9/11 when it came out in 2007, but since then, almost ten years ago, we have had novels like The Yellow Birds and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, brilliant, subversive pieces that are wholly original fictional accounts of an ongoing war that leave this 172 page novel in the dust. I don’t dispute that it is accurate, since Eck served in the military, or it’s straightforward quality, unadorned by literary pyrotechnics, but in 2015, I have seen this done better. The setup is simple, a quartet of soldiers are stationed in coastal Africa and are separated from the rest of their unit. They are a young, scared group of soldiers, which is a volatile mix going through a hostile area, hoping to make it out alive. It is short, but Eck really gives each of them an identity, even if they are vastly similar. This isn’t a boring book, but as I keep saying, simply one I have seen a million times not only in print but on the big screen as well. One character is described as a deeply religious virgin, so you know what is going to happen to him. And towards the end, there is a scene involving desert spiders that is way too similar to scene in All Quiet on the Western Front involving rats and shovels. Even with a surprising brutal twist at the end, it was hard not to think of better books while I was reading this one that came to the party a little to early.

Rating: 3/5

Review: "Mystery" by Peter Straub

I am walking away from Peter Straub’s Mystery, the second novel in his famed Blue Rose Trilogy with a much deeper respect for his talents as a creator of worlds. I still felt left out from a lot of the ideas Straub was presenting, but never was I bored or felt like I’d rather be reading something else. The first Straub novel I read was his most recent full-length novel (if you can call 5 years recent) A Dark Matter, and I loved it. I didn’t like Koko, the first novel in the Blue Rose Trilogy at all since it was a dense and boring experience. This novel falls in the middle, but I commend Straub because all three books are different from each other in all possible ways. A Dark Matter felt like King’s It with painfully realistic events, Koko, felt like a wartime thriller with a demonic edge. But this novel is almost a pure mystery, with most of the plot dealing with a decades old murder that affects a small island town called Mill Walk in the 1960’s. The main character is Tom Pasmore, a young, extremely smart kid whose life changes after he is almost killed in a car accident. While recovering, he becomes obsessed with a murder that has just happened with a strange connection to the one that involved his Grandma in the 20’s. It is through this research that he befriends an old man in his neighborhood, Lamont von Heilich, a brilliant amateur sleuth who, along with Tom, is determined to uncover many of the secrets that have plagued Mill Walk for years. It is twisty, complex tale that I don’t think I’ll ever get a grip on. It is also one that is a little too silly to feel any kind of fear for the villains once they are revealed. But one thing this book isn’t is boring. It is full of wit and some unexpected depth in describing Tom’s loneliness amongst the bourgeois town and the solace he gets in his love for classmate, Sarah Spence. Straub is a master at literary genres, and this book is a great example of his skill and imagination.

Rating: 4/5