Review: "Screamin' Jay Hawkins' All-Time Greatest Hits" by Mark Binelli

I am going to assume that for people of my generation, their first interaction with the musician Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was through the movie Hocus Pocus, where the Sanderson Sisters put a spell on the parents of Salem with a rendition of Hawkins’ most famous song. It was hard not to see Bette Midler, decked out in witch garb belting out this tune while reading this novel by author Mark Binelli, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins All-Time Greatest Hits. But even with those images floating around my head, along with images from a handful of Jim Jarmusch films, added to the wonderful inventiveness of this slim novel, which effortlessly blends fact and fiction until you not only can’t see which is which, but by the end, simply don’t care because the story is so rich and magical. It takes a mythic figure like Hawkins, who was part Robert Johnson and Part Alice Cooper, whose legend preceded him by a country mile, and does its best to dissect such an incredible person and story. It is not a perfect book, but with a story such as the one that is told, that really doesn’t matter. To begin, I will discuss a few of the details of Hawkins early life. He was born in 1929, and was soon adopted by a Native American couple who named him Jalacy. Other than those few facts, which come up within the first few pages, the bulk of this novel is a series of vignettes that attempt to describe the origins of a lot of Hawkins’s stage and personality quirks. These scenes sometimes don’t form a linear trajectory (the book itself is far from linear), but they are quite fun. There is a scene early on involving Jay’s grandfather hunting squirrels which, along with his burgeoning interest in horror films and a Great Lakes ballerina show, cemented his love for macabre subject matter and led to his outlandish stage acts. We also get glimpses into his time in the army, where an otherworldly experience with a tribesman during World War II inspired his signature look, most importantly the thin bone attached to the bottom of his nose. The most memorable vignette about his stage person involves the skull on the staff he’d carry to the stage, who he called Henry, and claimed was a monk who fell prey to Satan. The story also has sad moments, such as his many loveless flings, characterized perfectly through the eyes of one of his illegitimate children (of which there are reportedly 75), who, listens to the songs of his father and is depressingly unimpressed. The most indelible images I will take from this novel are two sections, the first of which is a virtuoso rendering of a ghost of a former musician Jay replaced who died of an overdose. The scenes are rendered with great ennui, forsaking profound or horror elements, and are quite funny. The other section is the last section, where Binelli speculates on the origin of “I Put a Spell on You” his most famous song, in a scene of longing and rejection. Don’t let this book slip past you. It is a smaller book, but very deserving of your time. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Dear Mr. M" by Herman Koch

The novels of Dutch writer Herman Koch are not for everyone. To some, he can be the literary equivalent of someone who picks a scab, watches it heal and then picks it again. His stories are usually brutal, both in the story’s actions and then thoughts of the characters. He has a true gift for staring into the abyss that can sometimes form when humanity is pushed to its breaking point: the damage we do to ourselves and others, the pettiness that seems to effortlessly move toward the horrendous after a few swift fateful movements. Some will find these qualities unpleasant and become dismissive toward his books. If you can’t tell already, I am happily not in that camp of people, because over the course of three books, Koch had become one of my favorite international writers, blending human pathos and narrative intrigue seamlessly, with a few well-placed twists hidden within his books that are nothing short of kicks in the teeth. His first translated novel, The Dinner, was simply as good as everyone said it was, begins over a mundane dinner and ends with a startling and horrifying example of unreliable narration and the lengths we go to protect our family. His second, Summer House with Swimming Pool, while not as good, still packs a punch and leaves the reader pondering the characters’ casual cruelties. But this new novel, Dear Mr. M, is not only his most complex, but is also easily his best. It unfolds a tapestry of four different stories that over the course of the book’s 400 pages converge in violent and menacing ways that left me nearly out of breath. It begins as a letter written to M, a successful writer who is on the downturn. His most successful book, titled Payback, was based on a true story of a teacher who went missing when he confronted a student he’d had an affair with and her new love interest. The writer of the letter tells us that he is a neighbor of M’s and at one point follows his wife to their country home. The perspective of the story switches frequently, from this letter back to the time of the supposed crime where we meet Laura, the beautiful daughter of a TV personality, and her group of friends. In this group she meets Herman, a man whose unsightly teeth mask a charming and anti-social person, whose favorite pastime is filming cruel pranks he plays on teachers and laughing at the footage. We also get the perspective of the teacher, a horridly unfaithful man whose cowardice is hidden by his good looks. All these stories crash violently together, and I won’t spoil what happens, but I will say that this book does require patients that books like these sometimes don’t require, but once everything is in place, and when two writers are attempting to beat each other to death after a gala, and with two disturbing twists (one on the second to last page) and the book’s final bleak line, you won’t soon forget this caustic book, whether you liked it or not. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Sweet Lamb of Heaven" by Lydia Millet

Sweet Lamb of Heaven, the new novel by Lydia Millet, hold within it a very weird and unexpected story of paranoia, friendship and the places we go when the world gets to dangerous and scary, elements I did not expect from reading the synopsis on the front flap of the hardcover edition. What presents itself as a rather straightforward thriller of a lover gone mad and the woman hiding from him turns into something deeply philosophical and almost magical, if my intuitions about what was actually going on are true. Most thrillers of this nature are not as vague or dreamlike as this book, a quality that both keeps a lot of this book’s intent at arm’s length, but also creates a world that is intoxicating, a narrator who is fascinating and shows the complexity of the book’s plot and narrative. At the start of the book Anna and her daughter Lena are on the de-facto run from Ned, Anna’s husband and Lena’s father. They are holed up in a motel in Maine called The Wind and Pines during its off-season, which is strange since the hotel seems full. They are hiding from Ned, an uncaring sociopath who is charming and using that charm to run for office, the reason he wants Anna and Lena by his side. Not a lot happens until the rather chaotic ending. Instead, the bulk of the book introduces us to people who may or may not be figments of Anna’s depressive, crumbling psyche, such as Don, the hotel owner, Kay, a former doctoral student, two girls named Linda and Will, who Anna eventually falls in love with. I was close to finding out what was at the heart of this book, but even though I was unsuccessful, I found the experience enriching and rewarding. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Innocents and Others" by Dana Spiotta

Despite some really cool premises she concocts (which is a nicer way of saying that they are idiot proof), I find the work of writer Dana Spiotta to be very uninteresting and very far down the American literary ladder, and her new novel, Innocents and Others, is further proof of that. Even with some really cool movie references, and an intriguing first chapter, Spiotta fails to tie it all together in a way that is cohesive or even interesting or skillful. The fragments of these three or four story threads are nice by themselves, but when they are brought together, the stitching that binds them is very rough and ugly, and for a novel, I find it imperative that whatever fragments are brought forth must make sense by the end. And here, they simply don’t. At the center of this novel are two female friends turned filmmakers, Carrie and Meadow, who bond over their love of film in New York city in the 80’s but drift apart as the years go on and find different kinds of success in the film world. What brings them together is Jelly, a sort of faceless woman who cold calls famous and powerful people and listens to their wants and needs. What ties these three stories together is sloppy and weakest angle of the novel and the book’s other more interesting aspects, like the aforementioned first chapter, overshadow it where Meadow, it is suggested, has a brief affair with Orson Welles before his death. Like her previous novel, Stone Arabia, I don’t think I will take much from this novel. It looks like she is trying here with some of the book’s more inspired syntactical choices, but this book plummets quickly down a mediocre hole, and the reader is left with a boring narrative they can’t wait to get through. At least the movie references are fun.

Rating: 3/5

Review: "Perfect Days" by Raphael Montes

Perfect Days, the first novel to be translated into English by Brazilian author Raphael Montes is something of a milestone for me. It is the first time I have read a book by an author who is younger than me. It is an experience that leaves me feeling old, a little behind, but also hungry and motivated to do more with my life. I just wish that this milestone occurred with a better book. I’m giving this book a rather generous review, since it is exciting just by its premise, which left me intrigued even as it disappointed me again and again, and its weirdness will appeal to some, but I didn’t really like this book. I found it derivative with the amoral landscape it treads being picked over and explored by more interesting and skilled hands. It begins with a rather great first chapter as we enter the interior world of Teo, a medical student with little interest in people or pleasure. The first chapter focuses on his weird obsession with a medical school cadaver, that of an old woman he names Gertrude. He is the only one who isn’t grossed out by it or makes jokes about, and when the class is over, he is genuinely sad knowing he will not see it again. It is a fascinating, rather pitiful look at this man, which makes his newfound obsession, Clarice, an art student, seem very false and unbelievable: he begins to stalk her after offhandedly getting her number. When she discovers this and rejects him, she knocks him out, and by convincing his invalid mother as well as Clarice’s parents that he is her boyfriend, he takes her on a trip she was going to go on, and forces her to write her screenplay she’s been neglecting. I would have forgiven this book if it were going where I thought it was (which I will be mum about), I would have been more forgiving, but since it went the straightforward way, it was hard to forgive this book’s more outlandish elements such as the murders, and what eventually happens to Clarice. This book is a great time killer, perfect for beach reading, but don’t expect it to be “great” great.

Rating: 3/5