Review: "The Luminaries" by Eleanor Catton

Since I have been reading at an accelerated pace, I have been getting books done quicker, but I have been spending more hours of the day reading than I ever have been, making some books much harder to get through. And that is the case with Eleanor Catton’s mega-bore fest The Luminaries, easily the worst book I have read this year that is not actually the worst, and one of the most head-scratching prizewinners in recent memory. Not to sound trite, but if this book wasn’t as long and not written by a female as young as Catton, I doubt this book would get the praise. It is overstuffed, needlessly confusing, and doesn’t even have the decency to be interesting as it continues to fail page after page. This is essentially a literary stunt, and I don’t mind those: some soar like House of Leaves, some don’t like The Kindly Ones, but I haven’t seen one that has fallen from such a height as this. The story revolves around a man named Walter Moody, who comes to the New Zealand village of Hokitika to find his fortune in the goldfields, there, he finds himself immersed in a weird series of events involving a murder, a suicide and twelve men who each somehow represent phases of the moon. Some will call this book inventive, and it is, but it is not much else. It is a series of events that somehow connect, but I was too bored to notice. I’d compare my feelings of this book to those of another Booker Prize-winning novel, Wolf Hall, in that it works best if you like the time period. The only scene in the book that stuck with me was a conversation about an séance in a house that revealed a well-hidden murder. Other than that, this was an 800-page drive through an empty literary highway that I don’t recommend at all.

Rating: 2/5

Review: "The Robber Bride" by Margaret Atwood

I am very surprised that one of the most moving, personal and engaging books I have read in the last half of 2014 is by a writer who I had essentially written off. A few years ago, I read Margaret Atwood’s most famous novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, and found it tedious and boring, little more than some proto-feminist gobbledygook that seemed to only have been written to take up space in one of Time Magazine’s rigged lists of greatest books ever written. But after reading The Robber Bride, one of her lesser-known books, I can say with pride that I was wrong, and she is so much more than that. This long book, at 520 pages, goes to some really dark places, but never loses its humorous edge. Another thing that this novel with never ever be called is “feminist”. Not to say that it is necessarily anti-women, but the novel shows, in great lurid and painful detail, a trio of women whose flaws and shortcomings come to dominate their life, and it all comes in the guise of one of the most awful and reprehensible characters that I have unluckily come across in literature. Through this person, the problems of the three women come to represent many broader ideas than just female ones. The novel touches on our need to validate ourselves through unviable means such as our past, our careers or even our significant others, and the real unsolvable mystery as to why some people can’t help but ruin others, and the somewhat positive side effects that occur when we are smart enough to learn our lesson. The lesson in this book is represented by Zenia, a literal human viper that seems hell bent on using and discarding all the ideals the three female leads hold sacred. One day, the three women; Tony, a cold professor of war, Charis, a vulnerable clerk at a New Age shop and Roz, a hotheaded editor of a feminist magazine, meet for lunch as they do once a month and spot Zenia as she is leaving. They thought she had died years ago, and her presence immediately brings them back to the times in the past where Zenia had come into their lives, wreaked havoc, and left without a care in the world. We learn of the hold Zenia had on the men in their lives, some with worse stories than others, and how this affects them now. It is really cool how Atwood connects every thread of the story in a way that adds layers to Zenia’s heartless manipulation. Do these women really despise Zenia for taking there man away, some of whom they didn’t really love to begin with, or do they hate her because she is kind of a mirror that is held up to all of their shortcomings that need to change if they want to be happy? We learn about there neglectful childhoods, again, some worse than others, but all long before Zenia entered there life. And as the book’s epigraph states, she does teach them about the need for independence and surrounding yourself with love, with an ending that is a bit tacked on, but still quite beautiful. Check this book out, a hidden gem from an author who has much more to give past her hype.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The Angel's Game" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I don’t think I have ever read a quicker 500-page book than Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s second entry in his trilogy of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, The Angel’s Game. It moves rapidly, with a cool number of plot twists at the very beginning, with an engaging story and characters that are cool and interesting to follow when they are being equally good or equally bad. It’s sharpness and wit make it the perfect kind of book to take to the beach with you. Having said that, it is a flawed book, with many problems keeping it from being a full-on masterpiece, which I think Zafon has in him. After a good opening, it follows that with a rather large section of the book that is very bland and never goes anywhere interesting, instead focusing on a conspiracy that is less interesting than the initial conflict, filling this plotline with interchangeable characters that I didn’t even bother to care about. But the opening, as I said is strong. The novel focuses on writer David Martin, whose sad childhood and existence is only outweighed by the worthlessness of his current job. He wants to write great works, and marry the girl of his dreams. But both are elusive creatures: he makes most of his money writing awful “penny dreadfuls” that he doesn’t take credit for, and the girl, Cristiana, refuses to marry him. After a laughably cruel twist of fate and even more laughably betrayal involving a writer he admired, a mysterious stranger approaches him and commissions him to write a religious text, which throws him in the middle of a cover-up involving the last tenant in the decaying mansion Martin is living end. This plotline is too big to ignore, and really slows things down after a killer first section, with David’s backstory only intensifying his loneliness at the beginning. It saves itself at the end with a heartwarming conclusion that works more on an emotional level than a logical one. Zafon is great writer and storyteller who deserves the international praise he gets.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell

No matter what book of his you read, you will always get something completely different when you pick up a David Mitchell book, and reading his latest novel The Bone Clocks, not only does it offer a different experience than Number9dream, Cloud Atlas and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, it is also arguably his best novel to date, bringing all of his wonderful attributes together in an endlessly mesmerizing decade-spanning epic that is filled with equal parts mysticism and human drama. The former is where I think David Mitchell succeeds most. If you read my reviews, you know that I am not a fan of science fiction or fantasy, since I find them too idea-heavy and flat out boring. That is not the case with the kinds of metaphysical details Mitchell puts in his novels, this one in particular. It deals with a complex battle fought between two powerful groups of mystics, and if handled by a lesser author it would have been a mess, but here, Mitchell handles it as well as any writer I have had the pleasure of coming across, with the details of these centuries-old race of people being coming across easily and smoothly without for once sacrificing their intricacies or their importance. This is bolstered by the fact that what surrounds this story are some of the most engaging, hilarious and heartbreaking human stories I have had the pleasure of reading this year. The main thread of this story, which has many that you will be thinking of days after reading, is teenager Holly Sykes, who after a fight with her mom and a betrayal by the man she loves, runs away from her home and into the English countryside, where she finds herself embroiled in a war between two types of mystics when she interacts with an old woman named Esther Little. What we know is that these beings will come later in the novel, but we do know that once they die, there souls are soon transported to another being, with all of their memories intact. Some are thousands of years old. Holly finds herself in someway connected to this after a confrontation with one of the “bad” ones leaves two people she has befriended dead. After this, she goes to work for a farm, only to find out that her much-loved younger brother, Jacko, has gone missing as well. He is never found and through the coming years, Holly’s encounter with Esther becomes a huge catalyst that affects everyone she meets, from a suave, Patrick Bateman-esque school boy in the mountains of Sweden, her husband, who is a war-addicted journalist, and a bitter writer, who commits a heinous act against a colleague. This novel goes to amazing places within its pages, from the shallow sincerity of the literary elite, to the weird underworld of old mystics, to the eventual collapse of the world economy once everyone loses power, it is all astounding, and rendered impeccably by a master stylist. I can say with great confidence, that this is the must-read book of the year, and I suggest you do so soon.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Dirty Work" by Larry Brown

While it has taken me a few days to collect my thoughts and finally sit down and write about the late Larry Brown’s first novel Dirty Work, I can say with great enthusiasm that all of my thoughts are positive. I first began to take notice of Larry Brown when I heard his name mentioned a few times among the names of authors I have liked, such as Donald Ray Pollock and Frank Bill, but really began to seek him out when I saw the movie Joe earlier this year. I loved the movie, and quickly picked up Dirty Work, and was blown away by its simple, humble nature that held some giant real world truths within the tiny framework of a hospital room. Unlike a writer like Woodrell, there is nothing fancy or overwritten in what Brown writes. He uses language that is deeply heartfelt to write about people who struggle to with complex dilemmas and rough issues, but it is never hard to understand. You can tell Brown leaves it all on the page: every unmet desire, every need to escape and every failed chance at redemption are fully formed with a deep emotional core that is not phony or ironic. And in doing so, Brown doesn’t only question the cost of war on an intimate level, but he touches on broader topics, like the meaning of life, and what faith and religion mean in a world where cruelty has brought two seemingly innocent men to such cruel stations in life. The two men in question are two veterans of the Vietnam War. Braiden, a black man who lost both arms and both legs in the war, has spent about twenty years in the hospital, relying on fantasies of being an African prince to escape such squalid conditions. One day, another patient is admitted to the hospital, Walter, a man with a chewed up face and a sniper bullet lodged in his skull after stepping into crossfire, who seems to have something that Braiden has been looking needing for a long time. The novel, written in short chapters, gets inside each of these characters heads and dissects their desires and memories as they try to make a connection out of their shared suffering. We learn about Walter’s past with a violent father and mother and his possible sweetheart waiting for him once he gets out, as well as the Braiden’s first experience with death in combat. Brown’s direct approach to the subject matter creates a few memorable, harrowing scenes, such as the first question Walter asks Braiden, which is so direct it feels like a slap, to the revelation of why Walter is in the VA hospital, and what Braiden really wants Walter to do for him, which, in the context of the story, a context I hope readers will understand and keep an open mid about, is an act of love. This is a powerful novel to say the least. Not a violent one, but one that will leave a mark on you for the better.

Rating: 5/5