Review: "Everything Matters" by Ron Currie Jr.

Everything Matters, the debut novel of Ron Currie Jr., is a book that I have very few problems with, and overall liked despite what it does at the end. But most importantly, I liked how this books core message was one that was a positive one, and did not resort to easy cynicism in the face of its existential plotline, and it did so without forcing sentimentality down our throats. I liked his first short story collection, God is Dead, for a similar reason, where it takes a concept like god dying, which, in the hands of someone who is arrogant and cynical, would turn into something very depressing, and somehow made it life affirming. It is nice to come across a writer whose sense of warmth and optimism outweighs his need to seem cool, ironic and pessimistic. I can tell that Currie is a great humanist, and too some that may be too wholesome, but I find it to be a trait lacking in the intellectually astute of today. The novel tells of the birth of Junior Thibodeau, who, from the moment of conception, knew that the world was going to end when he was 36 years old. Throughout his life, Junior must decide if everything he does is really worth it, from his family where his brother is a baseball savant thanks to a youthful coke addiction and his parents are addicted to alcohol and work respectively, and the love of his life, Amy, who he met during the Challenger crash and who relationship is with Junior is irrevocably changed when he tells her of the end of the world. It is a novel full of suspense and great human interaction, despite the ending section, which goes back in time unnecessarily to give Junior another lifetime. Having read it, it is a very moving book that I hope you enjoy.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Citrus County" by John Brandon

This book, Citrus County by John Brandon, is a very different book to come out of the publishing house at McSweeny’s. Usually, they publish offbeat novels that do not adhere to conventional novelistic trappings like a linear plot or narrative, and instead have a stylish flare about them that is very but very hit or miss with your average reader. A good example would be The Children’s Hospital by Chris Adrian, which was very difficult and hard to remain interested in, but was nonetheless a one of a kind novel that you do not always see. This is the total opposite of what to expect of McSweeny’s style of fiction, and may be a sign of a new direction for them, having published the epic John Sayles novel A Moment in the Sun, which, from what I have read is a straight-forward novel. Brandon’s novel has more to do with Lansdale than it does Barthelme, telling a nourish tale in the old south of Florida. We first meet Toby, as he expounds on life and death while a little kid listens, from there, we see how little he cares about life and what he is capable of. He comes in contact with his teacher, Mr. Hibma, who cares very little about teaching, and more about how to murder one of his co-workers. He finally meets Shelby, who seems to be the only one who cares about life, that is until Toby does something horrendous that turns the town upside down, and brings into question each characters moral ambiguity. Think of this as the prequel to life of Lou Ford in Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, albeit with a lighter edge. A slightly flawed work, that verges on self-absorption, but is interesting and caring enough not to go that route, John Brandon is a new talent to watch.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine" by Thom Jones

Going from a book that was hard to write about one that I cannot wait to talk about, Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine by Thom jones is staggeringly good. I read his first collection, The Pugilist at Rest Last year and still find it to be one of the best collections of short stories that has come out in the last thirty years. And I am happy to say that this collection is much better than that one. Jones writes like a double tough Hemingway minus all the posturizing macho cynical bullshit. Instead of hunting and World War I and II, it is boxing and the Vietnam War that become obsessions throughout these eleven magnificent stories. The characters in Jones’ stories always suffer horrible twists of fates either before or during the stories events, but they always find some way to weather them, even if the antidote for their despair is frighteningly counterproductive or painfully brief and short term. For these characters, nothing could be worse than death and defeat, and it is better to go forth into an uncertain future than too fall too your knees. With the exception of maybe one story, everyone in this collection is as good as any short story you are likely to read. The first story, which is the title story, deals with a young boxer whose upcoming fight to a guy he lost too last year is his only solace from an indifferent family life and the real world, which he knows will destroy him once he cannot box anymore. The ending is quite sad, but there is a strange sense of heroism in the way the fighter finishes the fight. Next there is a trilogy of stories surrounding a troop of Marines in Vietnam, which ends with the sweet little story “Fields of Purple Forever”, where the only way a surviving member of this troop can survive after the war is by constantly pushing himself to the zero-point of life, this case, by swimming the English Channel. Another great story is “I Love You, Sophie Western” where one young man’s journey toward actual love ends in violence and forced sexual favors. These stories infuse a lot more sex and gross-outs than The Pugilist at Rest, but it adds to the relatability in some strange way. Finally, the longest story here, which closes out the collection, is “You Cheated, You Lied” which tells the story of two clinically insane lovers who take a trip to Hawaii that will make even the loneliest person thankful they are single. These stories are more honest and thoughtful than almost anything Hemingway wrote, not too mention that Jones; prose would run circles around Hemingway’s. It is a shame this was the last thing Jones has published to date, because he is a true original and one of America’s best practitioners of a seldom recognized art form nowadays. Pick up any of his books and I promise you will find something great in them.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The Borrower" by Rebecca Makkai

The Borrower by Rebecca Makki, above all else, is just a plain book that does not realize that it is a plain book. It tries to be great in many ways, ways in which I like and some that I do not like, but it never reaches past anything but a book that is read out of a faint sense of curiosity and is forgotten almost as soon as you place it on the book shelf (or if you are like me, sell it at Half Priced Books in order to make more room for books you may want someday). There is very little I know about Makki, but judging from her writing style and, superficially, her author photograph, she seems like a smart confident woman who may verge on the wrong side of smugness, but, giving her the benefit of the doubt for this review, she seems nice and I will not be too harsh, because this book is not bad, just generic. The main character in this novel is a young librarian who becomes fast friends with an eager young boy enchanted with the world of fiction. Seeing this boy, who shows latent signs of homosexuality, become the subject of his parents psychological abuses (which involves taking him to a sexual reassignment camp, if that is what they are called), she submissively engages in his plan to run away, leading a journey that unlocks secrets in her past. If this was a straight-up road novel, I could see myself enjoying it. The Family Fang was nothing new, but I really liked that. This book tries to be profound when it should have stuck to the entertainment and suspense. Stops that involve the librarian’s parents and their move to America, which reek of second rate Malamud, really derail this book, making the journey of reading it prolonged and boring. Not much to see here sadly.

Rating: 3/5

Review: "Girl in Landscape" by Jonathan Lethem

I try not to have many rituals as far as my reading goes, but I still do, like alternating my book reading between authors I have read before and new authors I have not, and picking out one short story collection to read once a month. Another one I do regarding specific authors is reading one Michael Chabon book and one Jonathan Lethem book a year. So far, I have only read three books by these two authors that I thought were any good, those being Wonderboys by Chabon and Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude by Lethem, and all of them I consider to be some of my favorite books. I have yet to recapture that magic of those three, and the Lethem book I read this year, Girl in Landscape, is sadly not any different. It is not as bad as Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, but I was not very into this one, which I bought simply because it was the only book of his not in the library system here. I gave a chance despite its goofy premise of a girl leaving her mother to go to a different planet where an alien hermaphroditic life forms where plants control the climate, but it was just too much for me. I have said before that I cannot really get into science fiction, despite my favorite English class of all time was on the subject. It is just hard for me completely immerse myself in a world that is not like my own in anyway. I am not against escapism, and find the breadth of imagination in some of these works to be staggering, it is just not written for me. If you like that, you may have a blast with this novel, but I’m the farthest thing from an expert when it comes to science fiction.

Rating: 3/5

Review: "The Family Fang" by Kevin Wilson

Despite the shitty title, which may be one of the worst that I have ever seen, The Family Fang is anything but, written by newcomer Kevin Wilson, who seems to possess a great talent for creating weird situations that are ironic but far from being annoying or grating on the readers ears. He steers clear of making things seem too cool or hip for their own good, and even infuses a great deal of emotion into characters, even as they are doing some pretty ridiculous things. He even goes on to make a great point about the line in which some artists can cross that is real poignant and right on point as to how they really think and feel. The story seems very convoluted (and by the title, which I must reinforce how awful it is, people might think its about vampires) and it should be, but Wilson takes things seriously, and the reactions of the characters are real. The Fang family is obsessed with creating art, at least the parents Caleb and Camille are, but thinking art that stands still is not worth anything, and instead decide that spontaneous art is the only true art form. They demonstrate this by pulling pranks on the innocent public, like entering a boy into a beauty pageant, having a fake proposal that ends in rejection, even manipulating a performance of Romeo and Juliet to enact incest. And for this ride, they force their kids Annie and Buster (Child A and B) to be a part of it, mostly against their wishes. These two grow up ill affected by their parents performances, which has made them famous in the art community but alienated them from their children, and leave the nest to pursue other artistic endeavors, with Annie becoming a failed movie actress and Buster becoming a failed writer, after a series of events they return home, where their parents try to once again force them into creating their art. The attempt fails, with Caleb and Camille clearly showing their age. Soon after they disappear, leaving behind clues that they might have been murdered, but Annie and Buster are not convinced. From there, they try to find out what happened, and how deeply their parents’ art is worth to them. This book says something really profound about the line between art and decency, and how cruel one can be when creating art is more important than being a good parent or a nice person. It doesn’t matter that I think what the Fangs call art is really stupid bullshit, but what does is how the people involved are victims of their selfish need to create and shine a spotlight on their own egos. Their stunts go from silly to really disturbing (like when they relish in filming a little girl crying during their beauty pageant stunt), painting these two in a really despicable light. I know a lot of creative people, and most are okay, but some really tread that line, although not as much as Camille and Caleb do. They seem to speak out against what they see as a hollow society, but they themselves are also hollow, filling an empty personality with flashy behavior, and their own selfish need for art. This book does an awesome job of expressing those ideas on creativity, while also being an emotionally complex and fun book to read. This one is a winner, despite that damned title.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Bag of Bones" by Stephen King

All it took were few months off from visiting the fictional land of Uncle Stevie for me to come back and read Bag of Bones, which is a book that I consider to be a late masterpiece of his much like Dream Catcher and Under the Dome. The last two books of his I read, which were Christine and Insomnia were very much lesser books, with Christine being too dark and Insomnia being to weird for even King’s most hardcore fans. I’ve probably expressed my love for him so much, it almost makes me sick to write and review something that is so blatantly obvious. Reading a book by Stephen King when he is in top form is simultaneously like comforting bedtime story from a loved one and a wild campfire tale that make the noises you hear while listing to it the work of some horrific beast. Not many writers can do that, whether they are popular or not. Some argue that he has lost some of his steam heading into the new millennium, and the case could be made that that is true, but I think he may have got his smile back (to use a wrestling term) over the past couple of years, churning out a book like Under the Dome, which ranks right up there with The Stand, or his most recent book 11/22/63, which I have not read, but seems to be getting him the best reviews in quite awhile. This particular book, which also got a lot of good reviews, is no less supernatural than what has come to be expected of him, but really grounds the story in a very real world where pain and loss and fear of the future are the white sheeted ghosts that haunt people, and that take a little more than an exorcism to get rid of. Mike Noonan, a famous novelist, loses his wife to a freak aneurism in a Derry parking lot (no clowns or balloon strings here). He mourns like any other widower would, but when he tries to write again, he gets physically ill. And he is dreaming about his summer home in an unnamed Maine town called Sara Laughs. Thinking these two things are connected, he goes there in order to be cured from his writing woes, only to fall in love with Mattie Devore, a girl much younger than him and being threatened by terrifying millionaire Max Devore, her father-in-law and discovering a long ago murder that seems to connect everyone in town back to the place where Sara Laughs sits. There are some points in the novel where the characters enter a dreamlike world, and King has never been good at that in my eyes, and it takes some of the venom out of the story, but it is made up for in spades by everything else, from the plot, to the weird characters we only seem to find in Maine, and an unexpected death near the end. A semi-non-genre novel even the harshest critics cannot balk at, this is a good example of what a master can do as he grows in age and wisdom.

Rating: 5/5