Review: "Affections" By Rodrigo Hasbun

Reading Affections, the English language debut of Bolivian author Rodrigo Hasbun is one of those total joys you get when you go out of your way to read a writer who is either fresh or new or from a totally different area of the world (and in most cases, the book fits perfectly into both of those types of descriptions). It is a new book from an author unfamiliar to those in America and with a few blurbs from authors such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Andres Neuman and Adam Haslett to draw readers in; those who take the plunge with this new face in English fiction will be greatly rewarded. It is a brief plunge though, since the book is only 132 pages long, but I know time is precious to some, but this little book is totally worth it. It is easy to see why one of the blurbs on the back cover compared it favorably to Roberto Bolano. What it lacks in the size and scope of what I think are the two cornerstones of his legacy (The Savage Detectives and 2666), it did make me fondly recall his smaller works such as By Night in Chile and Distant Star (which this book is superior to). Like those, it crams a lot of drama, action and emotion into a tiny space that you can finish in a single day if you wanted too and feel like you have experienced a fully thought out story without any filler. The book tells the fictionalized story of Hans Ertl, who was the cameraman for Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. After the war, he and his family move to Bolivia, and Hans’s untethered spirit manifests itself in his hunt for the lost city of Paititi. And while the expedition to find that city is at the heart of this novel, it is really not the focus of the book’s events. Instead, what this book is more interested in are the stories of his three daughters and the different paths their lives take. Monika, the oldest that inherited her father’s reckless spirit, Heidi, whose romantic obsessions lead only to disappointment and Trixi, whose contentment hides a deep seeded loneliness and a rock lined path to regret and disappointment. Told in alternating chapters, which focus on different individuals in the story, including Reinhard, whose shares Monika’s thirst for social change but who is never able to reach her heart and Inti, a political prisoner whose section only becomes important as the book goes on, whose life is destined to be short and legendary, the novel tells a dark story about desires unmet or gone sour, the real reasons for why people join revolutions and those we sometimes have to hurt in order to obtain a sliver of happiness. I am struggling to find the heart of this book because so many memorable sections seem to hold within them deep truths about what the book is trying to say. This is a large hearted epic of a novel disguised as something small from a writer I hope to hear more from in the future.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Ultraluminous" by Katherine Faw

Some kinds of stories you just outgrow and don’t have the same effect on you at 29 that they did when you were 19, as is the case with Katherine Faw (Morris)’s second novel Ultraluminous. Her first novel, Young God, is a startling debut of immense power; written in short bursts detailing one young woman’s fight for survival in a brutal back country world is a quick read but leave a lasting impression. For her second novel, Faw takes quite a step down. While never boring, this novel about an unnamed girlfriend experience prostitute feels very immature and I don’t think a lot of work went into it. It shares a similar layout to her previous book, with an immense number of chapters, themselves broken up into seemingly unrelated and directionless scenes, but there is very little in the way of plot, and it is impossible to really care about anyone or anything described in the brief 196 pages of this novel. As I said, there really isn’t a linear plot. Over 52 chapters, we get a harsh glimpse into the world of a woman who trades in sex with rich men in Manhattan. They don’t have names and are described by what they do with, for and too her (Calf’s Brains Guy for his obsession for weird food, Art Dealer Guy, Junk Bonds Guy, Guy Who Buys Me Things, etc.). The one person she sleeps with is an ex-Army Ranger whose only different from her other clients due to his lack of wealth. This book reminded me a lot of Bret Easton Ellis’ Glamorama, from its setting, to the extreme and comical descriptions of sex acts and drug use, to what is eventually at the heart of what the unnamed prostitute wants. And like that book, it is engaging and dare I say fun, but as a work of art, it’s not something I think of that highly.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The City Always Wins" by Omar Robert Hamilton

There is a moment early on in Omar Robert Hamilton’s debut novel The City Always Wins that I think, quite possibly, be the hidden center of the story that is being told. In the one review I read for this after I found, it did not bring it up and talked about the book in a way that I thought kind of misrepresented what it was. Here it is: early on during one of the first riot scenes, amidst the threat of chaos, violence, torture and death, a man walks into the fray carrying gas masks which he intends to sell. He shouts about their availability as if they were bales of cotton candy being sold at a baseball game. It is a striking image that I think holds the key to the rest of what might be one of the most covert pieces of satire I have come across. In talking about the 2011 uprising that occurred in Egypt, Hamilton, whether he intended to or not, offers a brilliant critique of the revolutionary mindset that affected many of those involved in the events and, quite possibly, events around the world as well. I’m a bit worried to pontificate on these themes because I am not so sure they were intentional. If they weren’t then this book and this review are first for me, and I will try to talk about them coherently and offer my reasons for liking this book so much. At the center of this novel are two young people whose souls are aflame with rage and motivation. Khalil, an American born Muslim and the son to a wealthy father and Mariam, the daughter of an equally revolutionary minded doctor, run an underground network of artist, bloggers and podcasters called Chaos. They set up illegal radio and internet feeds where they show videos of the state’s violence and espouse their own revolutionary ideas. The book is very episodic, with riot sequences and quieter scenes taking place in beds, internet cafes and hidden meeting rooms almost being piled on top of one another. It is confusing but the book has an energy that makes up for it as well as some memorable sequences that are aesthetically pleasing. What is very apparent, especially after the scene I described earlier, is that the two central characters, as well as side characters, my favorite being the aspiring filmmaker Hafez, are painfully naïve, there drive and passion outweighing their thoughtfulness. It is an interesting trick (if it is a trick at all) that Hamilton pulls here in how separated these young people are from their actions and the world around them. It works in obvious ways, when one of the side characters admits to filming Mariam when she was close to death during a botched protest, to more subtle instances, such as the sections where the parents of those who died get spotlight in text that reads like newsprint. In these short sections you see the true cost of what Khalil and Miriam are fighting for, of which they remain blissfully unaware in their world of social media and an almost pornographic obsession with the idea of revolt, which leads to a sort of quiet, almost Kafkaesque ending showing the uselessness of it all. I really hope I am right about this book, because as I see it, this is a brutal look not only at the idea of fighting back against tyranny, but what happens when you lose your humanity in the process. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Ghosts of the Tsunami" by Richard Lloyd Parry

Richard Lloyd Parry is like the Roberto Bolano of nonfiction, but swap out Chile with modern Japan and the fictional stories with ones that are painfully, scarily true. And while his new book, Ghosts of the Tsunami, lacks the cataclysmic gut punch of his previous book, People Who Eat Darkness, this catalog of victims of a natural disaster is just as haunting. Parry is really good at exposing how human folly and ignorance can lead effortlessly toward an unimaginable tragedy. He did that with the murder of Lucie Blackman in his previous book, and he does that here with the 2011 Tsunami in Japan, and more specifically one village that experienced loss that is well beyond comprehension. It begins with an account of Parry’s experience with the first minutes of the earthquake that caused the Tsunami. His relative safety contrasted with the devastation he will catalog throughout the rest of the books is glaring and obvious. The village in question is the Kamaya Village on the Sanriku coast of Japan. What happened there during the tsunami is the stuff of nightmares: one school, Okawa Elementary, due to circumstances that will always be a little murky, lost 74 students to the disaster. Parry, with grace and dignity, chronicles the aftermath of such an amazing loss of life as well as the trial that followed once a few pertinent details emerged about why there was such a loss of young life in this one school and no others. My one complaint with this book is that it is actually too short for the kind of story Parry is telling. You get glimpses of the horror experienced by the grieving families, such as that of Miho, whose loss rings harshest by book’s end, but I felt most of it was kept at arm’s length, while his previous book made me think the horror was in the next room. But still, this is a powerful and passionate account of a world upended and torn apart and the dignity a community somehow kept when they were trying to put it back together.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Stranger in the Woods" by Michael Finkel

The story Michael Finkel tells in his new nonfiction book The Stranger in the Woods is, as someone in the book says, a true once in a lifetime story to tell. On one hand the story is simply about Christopher Knight, a Maine resident who, in 1985 when he was just 20 years old walked into the woods near North Pond and stayed there, pretty much undisturbed until 2013. But delving deeper than that, it is about our relationship to the world around us, the push-pull dynamic of society and social interaction and what happens to those unfortunate few who don’t fit in to society at large. It is at times an exciting book a fascinating one and ultimately, I believe a sad one. It is both an account of an anomalous person who did something that most of wish we could do but are too afraid to attempt, but it also acts a strange funhouse mirror of the public at large or anyone who picks up the book. It is very easy to put ourselves in Knight’s shoes, and some people, me included, will come away from the book envious of his position and what he is capable of, but after a while the cost of us making the same decision as Knight did makes it an impossible one to make. The book begins with a few chapters detailing Knight’s capture and arrest in 2013. The people who catch him find his story hard to believe initially, but they are soon convinced that what Knight said is true. In 1985, he drove to North Pond from his home in Massachusetts, parked his car, through his keys on the driver’s seat and walked into the woods with only what he had on him. For almost 30 years, with the exception of one brief exchange with random hiker, Knight did not speak a word or interact with another human being. He survived by breaking into summer houses on the weekends, stealing unopened food, the right clothing and whatever books he could find. He had a makeshift campsite only a few hundred feet from where he could here other people. This story fascinated Finkel, a journalist living in Montana, who becomes determined to tell Knight’s story, even though his reluctance, which walks a fine line between plain rudeness and hostility (both unintentional on Knight’s part), makes it a challenge for Finkel. The book tells briefly of Knight’s home life, which was solid but eccentric and seemingly fostered his need to leave society behind. When Finkel isn’t dictating Knight’s story, he explores the idea of hermits through other pieces of literature, such as the Tao Te Ching and Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. I won’t spoil what happens to Knight after he gets arrested, but I will say it doesn’t leave much hope for his future. While not a total indictment of modern society, Finkel does pontificate on what kind of place people like Knight have in this world. Unfortunately, he doesn’t come up with a solid answer. This is an amazing book on a truly fascinating subject, one that should be talked about, discussed, dissected and ultimately understood. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "South and West" by Joan Didion

I will try not to judge Joan Didion’s nonfiction so harshly after reading her new book, South and West. My instinct is that her longer books, such as Slouching Towards Bethlehem, the book which she is most known for and her most recent memoir Blue Nights are better and a better look into her writing than this book, which reads like a notebook full of ironic musings with little need or want for coherence. My only other experience with Didion is not through her nonfiction but through her fiction, having read her most famous novel and second most famous book Play It as It Lays. That book’s style is very similar to this one, although (most) of the setting is different. I didn’t really like it then, with its brief chapters making for easy reading but little in the way of emotional attachment, and I can’t say it has aged will in this even smaller and even quicker 126-page read. The book is really two essays, the first one being the longer and the better of the two, “Notes on the South”, cataloging the trip Didion and her late husband John Gregory Dunne took in 1970 across the Southern states with little in the way of direction. The essay is amusing at times in the descriptions of vibrant Southern life through a rather fatalistic eye. A cool motif throughout is how wherever small town they are visiting, the movie The Losers always seems to playing on a double bill at the local theater. The second essay, “California Notes” seems like a hopeless add on that should have been published somewhere else, with the details of the Patty Hearst case being excised for more less charming musings. What gets me about this book is its utter detachment from the events, which can be done well in the hands of a funny writer, but here I struggled to figure out if Didion cared at all. Again, I won’t write her off quite yet, and hope her big books live up to the hype. 

Rating: 3/5

Review: "The Unholy Trinity" by Matt Walsh

After reading noted conservative pundit Matt Walsh’s first book, The Unholy Trinity, I think I am done with books on politics for a while, if not forever. And that is not because I identify as a liberal and Walsh is a Christian conservative. Walsh, for all we disagree on, comes off as a principled person with strong beliefs that are above all else consistent, as noted by his podcast episode on the death penalty, which is what made me interested in him in the first place. I think my general malaise comes from my inexperience in the realm of politics, which I only got into a few years ago, which is now akin to becoming a passenger on a sinking ship. The book is not terrible: Walsh is a very smart well-read person who doesn’t slip into evangelical preaching as much as some might think. But that doesn’t mean the experience wasn’t a draining one. The book is split up evenly, with Walsh discussing a wide variety of topics based around the ideas of life, marriage and gender, as the books subheading suggests. It seems unavoidable, but I will try not to give my full opinion on the topics in questions: this is not hat kind of review blog and I am simply not that kind of person (I’d rather espouse on them in person then to write about them online). Where Walsh shines brightest are in his chapters on abortion and the gay cake controversy, the former topic being where Walsh is at his absolute best and where he offers up on of the two best secular pro-life arguments I have seen put forth, the other belonging to Ben Shapiro. I did come away disagreeing with Walsh more than I thought, especially on more broad topics like self esteem and suicide, with him coming off as someone who hasn’t experienced the kind of feelings he is being critical of, and so his arguments ring a bit hollow. This was a good book, written by an intelligent, well-intentioned person whose views I might disagree with but who still makes me think. That doesn’t mean I want to make reading books like this a habit.

Rating: 4/5