Review: "Time's Arrow" by Martin Amis

This is the fourth book I have read by Martin Amis, and it has sadly been a mixed bag, with some books being good but not great (I still feel Money is the best book he has written) and very mediocre (I found Dead Babies to be plain, as well as London Fields, which saddens me because I had heard so much about that book). I find his writing style to be very convoluted, which paints a rather unpleasant portrait of Amis himself. Judging from his books, he has a definite ego problem, and seems to graphically describe sex and racism simply to get attention and piss people off. He is like a relaxed version of French writer Michel Houellebecq, who has a similar distaste for modern culture, but who can laugh in the face of the end of the world. Which is good way to describe Time’s Arrow, a short novel that not only moves backwards seamlessly, but also actually pokes fun at the Holocaust. We are introduced to Dr. Tod Friendly, by something that might be his conscious, as he ruins relationships before they start, ends up with more money after buying things, and harms patients before he makes them better. It is pretty weird, but after looking up the synopsis on Wikipedia, it was fun to read this first part. Tod switches identities, and it appears he is going backwards in time, to the point in history when the Holocaust occurred, so he might be able to save some lives. Luckily, this book is only 165 pages long, so just as this gimmick gets old, it ends with a rather goofy image of a reverse birth. Again, Amis has never really impressed me all that much, but this trick he pulls is quite something, and it only lasts as long as it can, and only overstays it’s welcome slightly. But some people like entering Amis’s bawdy, amoral, and confusing landscape, and this book will surely please them.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Here We Are In Paradise" by Tony Earley

At its best, Tony Earley’s Here We Are in Paradise is solid collection that may not be a classic in its own right, but its main accomplishment of introducing you to a new talent who you are eager to find out what he does next. Early does not seem to have a gimmick, he is just a classic American writer chronicling a time and people he loves dearly in the way he sees it, and like those before and during his time, he is very good at what he does. The people in these stories all seem to have secret desires that will either destroy the person if kept inside, or destroy those around them if they let those desires be known. As a wrestling fan, it was nice to see it play a role in the story “Charlotte” where a wrestling promotion’s downfall brings about a man’s courage to declare his affection for the woman he has loved for so long.  But the two shining stars in this book have to be the title story and the story that closes out the collection, “My Father’s Heart”. The title story really hit a note with me. It is about a woman who is losing her second battle to breast cancer, and is trying to find a way to tell her husband that she is sick of him and that he has never really tried to understand her. It shows how loving someone and having the tools to love them back are not always codependent on each other. Her husband loves her, but rarely did the wife ever feel that the relationship was anything more than two pathetic souls coming together out of mutual loneliness. “My Father’s Heart” is the history of one man’s family, who began as moonshiners, and the shell that man has become today. It is just a good story that will entertain almost everybody. Here We Are in Paradise is good introduction to a great talent that will leave you hungry for more.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Light at the End" by John Skipp and Craig Spector

If I were to pick, out of all the books I have read so far this year, this one, The Light at the End by John Skipp and Craig Spector, would have to be the most disappointing. I had high hopes that I was going to love this book and put high atop my list of favorite horror novels I have read this year. I mean, I would like it, if I was back in high school, when I thought Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk were the height of what fiction could be, and while I still consider Ellis to be a top-notch word smith who has shown he can adapt with the times once the eighties is a distant memory, I lot of my views back then are widely different now, as is the case with most people. That was what this book reminded me of. It was a book that was truly in skilled hands, but the audience for it is very limited. It starts out with a shocking scene of violence that takes place on a subway, which, no mater what age you are is seriously cool. The plot from there revolves around Rudy, a self-absorbed artist, who has now been possessed by an ancient demon vampire. He prowls the subways looking for victims, and it is up to a motley group of hipsters and punk rockers to save the day. While it does have it moments, as all books do (like when one of the female characters discovers her rather loose friend after Rudy has killed her), it really lacks in the scares department, which is sad around Halloween time. It relies too heavily on its punk rock attitude, and I am sure most people who don’t have an interest in that subculture will get much out of this book, even with a serious, poignant ending that contrast with the abrasive narrative. No wonder splatter punk is not around anymore. This book is simply a curiosity piece from a bygone era.

Rating: 3/5

Review: "Let The Right On In" by John Ajvide Linqvist

Rarely do three different versions of story offer both gripping stories that are equal in greatness, and many different character perspectives that act to deepen the heart of a story. I am sure most people have seen the Swedish version of Let the Right One In and the American version Let Me In (which I liked a little more because of its focus on the children’s relationship), and know that they are some of the best vampire stories since Near Dark and The Lost Boys. The novel is just as great, and fills in many of the blanks for those wanting more of this wonderfully haunting story of a troubled boys (Oskar) relationship with a young vampire girl (Eli). Linqvist brings a kind of heart to his genre-based stories and uses the conventions to deal with many of the trials and tribulations we must go through as we live our lives. Handling the Undead, which I read last year, used zombies to show the hardship and courage it takes to let go of loved ones who have died. Here, he uses vampires and eternal life to talk about young love and how our relationships to those people we knew when we were young are the most important, and sometimes the briefest. I won’t recount the plot, because I know most people have seen the one of the movies, or at least caught the trailers at sometime. I mainly want to talk about the differences between both. The book, as always, has a lot more information than the movie. We see the many illicit pedophilic exploit of Haken, which are described in almost unwanted detail. It makes his character turns both vile and sympathetic at the same time. We also become intimate with the people who live in Oskar’s apartment building. It can get tiring towards the middle, but it pays off in the end. We also have brief glimpse at the life of Jonny, the kid who cruelly bullies Oskar at school and makes sure he goes home feeling worthless. Smartly, we only see a little bit of him, which makes his actions still seem reprehensible and sickening, but we see enough to know there are worse people than he is. It is also more violent, as expected, with Haken’s acidic injury being described endlessly, and his death, which is not the same one in the movie, being truly grotesque. The differences in story are pretty abundant, (like how Haken is caught and Eli’s final meeting with him) but they only add to the story that is being told three different ways, and does not take anything away from the cinematic adaptations we know and love. The death of one of the residents in the apartment complex is still sad, and Oskar’s final showdown with the bullies is still gripping and terrifying to bear witness to. All in all, a book deserving of it’s many accolades and coming from a non-vampire fan, it says a lot in how much I love this story, no matter what medium.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Animal Crackers" by Hannah Tinti

After finishing Animal Crackers by Hannah Tinti, my first reaction to it was to ruminate on how cute it was. It is a whimsical story collection, with talking animals, and stories that twists the boundaries of cause and effect. These stories reach out to the reader and try to tug at the heartstrings and at the brain stems of its readers, but do fall slightly short of greatness. The best thing I can say about this collection of stories is how eager it made me want to read Tinti’s only novel The Good Thief, which I will do next year. With recommendations by Dan Chaon and others, along with a really cool story line, it looks like it will kick a lot of ass. Now, the collection I just finished did have a few really good moments that made me glad to have run across her name randomly in the bookstore. The title story on paper seems lame, but the idea of giraffes pretending to be dead during a zoo’s opening hours to protest their condition actually comes off as being very original and very funny as well. She switches gears for her next story, Home Sweet Home, which starts out with a seemingly coldblooded shooting of a couple during dinner preparations, until Tinti turns the story inside out, revealing how everyone involved is not so innocent, and how actions reverberate the most to the ones closest to us. Many of the other stories, some of which involve animals that are just as smart as humans, range from being good at best, and forgettable at worse. It is a solid collection that is a very good introduction to Tinti’s style and should, like it did me; inspire others to read The Good Thief. Not a great book, but I can still recommend it.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt

First off, I really do love this book. It is one of those that will always stay fresh in your mind even weeks and months after finishing it. It is a book that actually accomplishes the rare feat of the books quality actually surpassing its importance as a famous book. Donna Tartt” The Secret History is rightfully one of the most well-known famous books from the nineties, and the reasons it still (I hope) eagerly read are based solely on how good it is, and not how famous it is, as is the obvious case with books like On The Road and Everything is Illuminated. It covers similar themes that early Bret Easton Ellis novels cover, but some of those books are now only curiosities of a bygone era, and don’t have the staying power of this book. It is a story narrated by Richard Papen, who is unhappy with his life in California and enrolls in an elite prep school in Vermont. There, he falls into a crowd of classic students who separate themselves from the rest of the student body and who are under the tutelage of the smart, yet hallow Julian. He becomes great friends with these people, all of which have similar problems and remain unaware of Richard’s humble upbringing. Later, as the novel goes on, his dealings with this group he admires endlessly turn darker and darker, eventually leading to murder and betrayal. A lot of the fun in reading this is to see these people become monsters, having started as simply arrogant classics students. It reminded me again of characters from the novel Less Than Zero, how their personalities are so infected with their senses of entitlement, which are bolstered by the morally ambiguous Julian, that they can justify murder, incest, and other morbid acts in their borderline sociopathic minds. This is where the book becomes something more to me in how it dissects the idea of admiration and goes to great lengths to show how that can lead to pure evil. In the character of Julian, it does not really matter to himself or his students that he is really has no personality or recognition of other people around him, they just care that he knows a lot about Greek. I have seen these kind of people, having done some theater work, although none of them were murderous or amoral, but I did see in them a very shallow lifestyle when you looked beyond their talent, and even worse, a striking sense of elitism and disconnect and from those around them who were not part of their group. It really bothered me how people flocked to them like they were unending bastions of knowledge, when they were really phony as all hell. I see that with Julian and many other characters in this modern day version of A Separate Peace, which shows the harsh world of the intellectually elite, and the consequences of associating with those kinds of people in exchange for your identity. It is an engaging and haunting work that is still relevant, and it gets my full recommendation.

Rating: 5/5