Author Archive
Alexia Tarabotti is a hopeless case. Half-Italian, outspoken and–at the advanced age of 25–too old for marriage, she’s hardly presentable in fashionable Victorian society. Of course, it doesn’t help Alexia’s tactfulness that she’s entirely soulless, a preternatural being in a London filled with werewolves, vampires and ghosts living side-by-side with normal human beings. Thanks to her assiduous reading of Greek ethics, no human is the wiser to her soulless state, but Alexia’s status brings her to the attention of BUR (Bureau of Unnatural Registry), since all preternaturals have the ability to turn supernaturals into humans by touch.
Of course, supernatural beings or not, decorum must be maintained. Alexia is annoyed when a vampire accosts her at a ball and even more put out when she accidently kills it with her brass parasol. A BUR investigation reveals the vamp was a new creation, even as reports of registered supernaturals mysteriously vanishing begin to trickle into headquarters. With the begruding aid of Alpha werewolf Lord Maccon and the flamboyant vampire Lord Akeldama, Alexia uses her special talents to find out who is behind the new creatures and why. But she has to do it while fending off shadowy figures prepared to manhandle her person into dark carriages–and increasingly from Lord Maccon’s attempts to manhandle her, although she’s growing to tolerate his attentions.
There really isn’t any good way to categorize Gail Carriger’s new novel Soulless. It’s a sort of paranormal romance steampunk-fantasy alternative history screwball comedy that conjures up images of Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossed with a foul-temptered Mary Poppins. Alexia’s conscious efforts at tactfulness coupled with her willingness to wield the brass parasol keeps the action tripping along blithely. And while Soulless definitely follows many of the tropes of romance novels (there’s no shortage of rustling taffeta and untied cravats), Carriger writes it all very tongue in cheek. Like a good treacle tart (Alexia’s favorite dessert), Carriager’s new series is one of those delights that has one wishing for seconds. The next installment, Changeless, is due out next March.
November 3rd, 2009
Katie H.
Readers are perpetually frustrated people. Is there any other pursuit more hopeless than that of the reader, manically consuming novels, nonfiction and any other scraps of writing that comes along, all with the knowledge that every day there are more books published, yet more to read and the despairing sense that one can never get to the bottom of that to-be-read pile. Why do we do it? And where can one find more good book suggestions?
Nick Hornby feels your pain. He’s a busy man: novelist, music critic, dad, sometime movie screenwriter/producer and full-time Arsenal football fan. He can be excused for not reading. Yet he too has succumbed to this madness and even managed to write some pretty good articles for The Believer magazine. And, he too has problems getting through all the books he has bought. He’s one of us!
Hornby stopped writing his article in 2008, but luckily for posterity, his essays are collected in three easily digested volumes: The Polysyllabic Spree, Housekeeping vs The Dirt, and his latest, Shakespeare Wrote for Money. They’re all fairly solid essays - even in the months that Arsenal duty kept Hornby from finishing any books - although the last few essays in Shakespeare suggest a writer who is ready to move on. But still there is plenty here to amuse, recommend and perhaps even enlighten. Hornby lets his books take him to other titles as they will, and his discoveries and rediscoveries (and in the earlier essays, his pans) are something that all readers can relate to. Luxuriating in the world of a Dickens novel? Learning that many young adult novels being published today are not only modern classics but are, as Hornby puts it, written like their authors want them to be read? Readers, do not your toes tingle at the very thought?
All Hornby’s criticism is short enough to be perused during the commercial breaks of your favorite televised sporting event. The books themselves are skinny enough that I’m reasonably certain that even if one were to check out all three, their combined heft would not be enough to topple that tippy to-be-read stack. Good thing too, as that pile is unlikely to get any shorter.
October 19th, 2009
Katie H.
There are some books that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, inspired by the goodness of humanity and hopeful for the future. And then there are James M. Cain’s novels. Written in the 1930s and 1940s, Cain’s terse, bleak crime novels portray people as hard as the times in which they live. But for all the darkness at the heart of Cain’s tales, it’s hard to deny the brilliance of his writing and the deep seated humanity it invokes in his people. In a scant paragraph, Cain can sketch out a drifter’s wariness, a housewife’s prejudices or an insurance salesman’s patient plotting. Dialogue takes on a distinctive rhythm, with slang and attitude masking characters’ distrust and vulnerabilities. When the betrayal comes, it is as sharp as a stab.
In his first successful novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain tells a simple story: Frank, a drifter, comes upon a California roadside diner run by a Greek immigrant and his wife. Cora and Frank fall in love, but their efforts to dispatch the Greek prove difficult (for all their cool plotting, the two prove to be rather nervous when it comes to the actual deed). While the murder of an endearing figure (one that even Frank says he liked) is disturbing enough, it is the mix of violence and sexuality in Frank and Cora’s relationship that riled enough critics to have the book tried for obscenity in Boston.
In his later (1943) novel, Double Indemnity, Cain’s narrative feels a little more polished, as does the murder methodology. Insurance salesman Walter Huff pays a sales call on an oilman’s wife. But Phyllis has a special purpose for her husband’s new life insurance policy, and Walter willingly goes against his better judgment in plotting a convenient accident that will allow them to collect a sizeable settlement and run away together. Based on a true story, most people are familiar with Cain’s novel through the classic 1944 Billy Wilder-Raymond Chandler film adaptation. It’s worth reading the book even after seeing the film, as Cain’s ending is more satisfyingly ambigious. Of course, Walter and Phyllis may get exactly what they want, but is it really love when it’s bound up with murder and greed? Cain isn’t read as often today as his comporaries Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but his style is the sort that continues in today’s books by authors like Walter Mosley and James Ellroy. Just the perfect sort of cozy writing to curl up with before bed.
October 5th, 2009
Katie H.
If you haven’t read Suzanne Collins’ book The Hunger Games, be aware this review will have spoilers in it.
A year ago, Suzanne Collins came out with the first book in her new trilogy, The Hunger Games. I remember picking up the book as a quick filler read for the weekend, only to spend the next twenty-four hours gripped by Collins’ compelling, frenetic story. In the first book, Katniss barely survives the annual Hunger Games, besting nearly all of her opponents. Defying the Capitol, she fights to let Peeta, her fellow tribute from impoverished District 12, survive. Playing on the popular perception that she is hopelessly in love with Peeta, Katniss emerges the victor not only of the Hunger Games, but in her rebellion against the authority of the Capitol.
The sequel, Catching Fire, has Katniss on a victory tour of Panem following the games and unrest and discontent among the districts is palpable. Katniss isn’t happy either: upset over her ‘romance’ with Peeta, Gale keeps her at arm’s length, and a marriage to Peeta has been mandated by the Capitol. But after witnessing the terrible consequences of resistance during the tour, Katniss comes to the relization that her stand in the arena has sparked a wider revolt against the cruelties of the Capitol. And as the symbol of that resistance, she has become the principle target in the Capitol’s efforts to crush dissent.
I can’t go into more of the story without giving away too much of the plot, but for those who enjoyed the first book, Catching Fire continues Katniss’ story at a breathtaking pace. The world Collins created becomes more focused, as Katniss sees first hand the plight of other people of Panem. There’s also a better sense of the people surrounding Katniss, including Haymitch’s backstory and District 12’s history with the Hunger Games. But the star of the story remains Katniss. Her blend of courage, stubbornness and resourcefulness makes for a protagonist that’s definitely human but one readers really want to see succeed.
It’s true that a lot of the story takes place away from the arena, but with more people depending on Katniss the pressure is even greater. There’s a definite sense of the story snowballing to the final book, as Collins leaves the story in (if possible) an even more gripping cliffhanger than the first title. Collins is currently in the process of writing the third book in the trilogy, and for fans, the completion of Katniss’ story can’t come quickly enough.
September 21st, 2009
Katie H.
It’s apt that the only image Dave Cullen’s harrowing account of the 1999 Columbine school shootings is the cover photo: the school framed low on the cover, ‘Columbine’ superimposed over it, against a cloudy sky. It begs the question: what is Columbine? Is it the literal image of a high school, and by extension a community just like thousands of others scattered across the nation? Do we see Columbine as synonymous with tragedy, the word that comes to mind with each school shooting, ‘another Columbine?’ Or is it proof of an evil that would drive two promising young men to indiscriminately kill for no reason whatsoever?
Cullen has covered Columbine since the shooting for Salon and other publications, and his continued familiarity with many of the key players and documents gives Columbine as complete a picture of the shooting as has yet appeared. It’s a complicated, emotional book, and (inevitably) has its flaws. Given how well-documented almost every aspect of the shootings were (victims inside the school were able to watch SWAT teams attempt to rescue them live on CNN), almost everyone has a notion of what happened.
Cullen writes of investigators’ struggles to overcome tainted witness accounts, erroneous press conclusions and the public’s unwillingness to shake preconceived notions of why the killers went on their rampage. Probably the most controversial aspects of Cullen’s book deal with the surprising amount of warning signs the boys exhibited before the deaths. Concerned parents’ complaints, arrest records and copies of Harris’ hate-filled website were in police hands long before April 1999–a fact that was blatantly covered up by authorities. Cullen’s other conclusion–that Eric Harris was a psychopath with little hope of rehabilitation–is one that many people, especially parents, have a hard time coming to grips with. With no truly guilty party left alive and no tangible reason for the crime, the emotional toll continues to be felt by survivors.
It’s tough to avoid the sense of voyerism that comes with books about tragedies, and Columbine in particular. Cullen tries to give a sense of the killers’ thinking, sprinkling in phrases presumably meant to be taken from Harris and Klebold’s point of view, but which only seem to break the flow of the narrative. On the whole, however, Cullen treads the emotional tightrope deftly: the scenes are graphic but never gratutious. Depicting the shooting first, Cullen later shifts back and forth between the ‘after’ (the investigation and the grieving families) with the ‘before’ (Harris’ acquisition of weapons, Klebold’s obsessive journal entries about love). The effect is chilling and sometimes maddening in presenting the aftermath along with so many missed chances for intervention.
Regardless of your feelings on faith, gun control, parental responsibility, press coverage or police incompetence (all of which are impossible to ignore here), Columbine requires a high level of emotional hardiness and a scrutinizing eye towards its journalism. But ultimately, the key to truly understanding why Columbine happened may remain out of reach.
August 3rd, 2009
Katie H.
I’m rarely completely turned off by a book. There’s usually some element I can grasp on to, some certain factor I can point to that appeals. But after reading Jane Hamilton’s latest novel, Laura Rider’s Masterpiece, I find myself regarding it with a sour taste in my mouth.
Hamilton, a Wisconsin author, usually writes longer novels dealing with the nuances of family issues. Masterpiece is a complete departure, a farce about the writing life, how the general public relate to celebrity and the deliciously absurd conviction many people harbor that they have a story to tell. Like most farces, Hamilton uses a bitingly ironic tone, never leaving any doubt that she’s pulling the strings that put her characters through their paces.
Laura Rider, the proprietor of a landscaping business between Madison and Milwaukee, is utterly smitten with the host of a Milwaukee public radio show, Jenna Faroli. Happily for her, Jenna is now an inhabitant of the same small town. A chance encounter between Jenna and Laura’s husband Charlie sets up the development of a love triangle between the three–with Laura penning Charlie’s amourous emails to the lonely Jenna. Soon, Jenna and Charlie are romping in the woods, strolling through fields of lavender, and meeting up at the Kewaskum Inn. That Laura plans to write a romance novel with similar characters striving towards ‘a higher consciousness’ in their love affair happens to be a coincidence–right?
The set up here is more interesting than the conclusion, as it’s pretty obvious where this is headed. But the problem here lies more in the characterization than the plot. Hamilton’s characters are easy targets, stereotypes that make play out the farce easily enough but which few readers would be able to make any sort of connection. Laura is conniving, using her husband ruthlessly while naive enough to think she understands great writing from repeated viewings of Pride and Prejudice. Dim bulb Charlie would be loveable but for his absolute blindness of how much he is being manipulated by both women. And Jenna seems the easiest mark of all. With her spare time filled with French-language Scrabble with poet friends and a husband whose obsession with gourmet cooking is matched only by his compulsive reading, Jenna’s character hits on all the tired markers of upper-class liberal intellectual smugness. Farce requires a healthy dose of acerbicy, but Hamilton crosses the line into spitefulness. The whole book has the sense of a mean joke at which everyone feels compelled to laugh, but feels guilty about afterward.
July 14th, 2009
Katie H.
A. D. 1156, and it’s the end of the world. Or at least that’s what it feels like when an earthquake rips open the earth around Glastonbury Abbey, long reputed to be the site of Avalon, King Arthur’s final resting place. In the chaos, a terrified, dying monk sees mysterious figures burying two bodies in a fissure, bodies he is convinced are those of Arthur and Guinevere.
Twenty years later the abbey has burned, revealing the coffins of the reputed Once and Future King and his lady. With Welsh rebels waging war in the name of Arthur, King Henry II wants to prove once and for all that Arthur is dead. And only Adelia Aguilar, the Salerno-born, throughly unconventional Mistress of the Art of Death can unravel the bones’ history.
In Grave Goods, her third book in her Mistress of the Art of Death series, Ariana Franklin adds an element of the Gothic to her fast-moving plot. Once Adelia arrives at the blackened ruins of the abbey, she immediately senses that the near-deserted town and its wild surroundings hold real evil. Sick with worry over the disappearance of her friend Emma in the nearby countryside, Adelia and her Arab assistant Mansur try to uncover the truth in the lawless hillsides. The mutilated skeleton of Guinevere haunts Adelia’s dreams, goading her to find the murderer. But the mystery of a long-dead king and queen hold terrible danger for the living, threatening to claim someone dear to Adelia. Astute mystery readers might guess some of the plot twists, but Franklin’s strength lies in her characters, especially Adelia’s supporting cast of misfit companions, as much at odds with their constricting medieval society as she. In its denoument, Grave Goods suggests some unfinished business and tough decisions that promise a strong continuation to an already entertaining series.
May 14th, 2009
Katie H.
With the sixty-fifth anniversary of the D-Day invasion rapidly approaching, the number of books published on ‘the good war’ shows no sign of abating. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority present the reconquest of Europe from the Allied forces point of view, giving little attention to the liberated lands once Allied tanks rumble past. Historian William I. Hitchcock offers a different view of World War II, one that picks up where most war histories leave off. In The Bitter Road to Freedom, Hitchcock considers the civilian side of the liberation and its lasting repercussions.
It’s not a pretty picture. Hitchcock focuses mostly on northern Europe and Poland, regions particularly familiar from films and historical studies. Drawing on civilian memories and regional records, the image of an orderly conquest and welcoming crowds is replaced with scenes of utter devestation, created as much by inaccurate Allied bombing as German shelling. Hitchcock details the wretching decisions by Allied commanders to bypass Nazi-occupied Holland in favor of a war-shortening drive into western Germany, leaving millions of Dutch to face starvation. Eastern Europeans, trapped between the retreating German army and a Soviet army trying to exact revenge after from its own brutal invasion, hardly had a sense of liberation as their lands fell under Communist rule. And the Jewish victims of Hitler’s death camps continued to suffer under terrible conditions for months as the hoped-for exodus to Palestine became a political hot potato among British authorities and Jewish groups.
Hitchcock doesn’t mince on details, and the descriptions of camp life especially are very graphic. Puzzlingly, Hitchcock almost entirely avoids discussion of Italy’s liberation, instead concentrating on the efforts of the UN’s early efforts to provide aid to displaced civilians. It’s perhaps a topic that has recieved little attention in the past, but the gap in coverage is annoying in a work that purports to cover all of Europe. However, Hitchcock’s blend of anecdotal personal accounts with analysis of the larger forces at work makes for really readable history, and the sprinkling of photos and maps puts visuals to the story.
May 1st, 2009
Katie H.
Lin Enger starts out his first solo novel* with a bang-literally. Within the first fifteen pages of Undiscovered Country, seventeen-year-old Jesse Matson, out hunting with his father, hears a single shot and realizes something is terribly wrong. Scrambling through the frozen woods, he discovers his father sprawled below his hunting stand, the top of his head missing.
The authorities rule it a gun accident, tragically common in the bleak landscape of northern Minnesota. But Jesse can’t shake his suspicion that his normally stable, reassuring burly bear of a father would opt to end his life without any warning or note. When Jesse, gripped by grief, sees the bloodied figure of his father appear late one night, he is convinced: Harold Matson was murdered, and his uncle Clay is the killer.
If it sounds a little familiar, it should. Updating Hamlet to 1990s Minnesota, Enger uses the isolating bleakness of a northwoods winter as his Elsinore, the disillusioned, lovely Genevive takes up the role of Gertrude and Christine, an immigrant from Mexico whose love for Jesse tempers his rash decisions, makes a resiliant yet vulnerable Ophelia. But Enger strays enough from the original play to keep readers guessing as to what the outcome will be, and writing from Jesse’s perspective adds to the suspense as Jesse questions what his responsibilities are to his dead father versus his remaining family.
Like a lot of first time novelists, Enger sometimes succumbs to clumsy ‘literary’ effects (labored descriptions and metaphors, as well as a curious absence of quotation marks). After the initial death, the first part of the book moves at a glacial pace, apt for the setting perhaps, but frustrating for those more accustomed to a faster narrative. Much like Per Petterson’s novels (an author whose work I kept thinking of as I read Enger), the heart of the novel isn’t so much the characters and their actions, but the landscape. Enger’s wintery world presses down on its inhabitants, the fierce snowstorms are literal embodiments of the confusion Jesse feels. It is the dream-like, isolating atmosphere that plays on the pyschological landscapes of the characters, slowly building the suspense that pushes the novel towards its inevitable conclusion.
*Enger has trod the north woods before in mysteries he co-authored with his brother and fellow novelist Leif Enger.
April 17th, 2009
Katie H.
On a given weekday, a woman’s day begins by seeing her husband off to work, getting her school-aged children out of bed and dropping them off at school, and then she spends the day running errands or doing chores. After picking the kids up, she will help them with their homework or take them to piano lessons, make dinner and finally greet her husband after his long day at work. Tomorrow and the day after she will have the same routine.
It sounds like a scene out of the fifties, but it’s not an unusual scene in today’s neighborhoods. Forty years after Betty Friedan wrote of the creeping depression of many housewives in her epochal work The Feminine Mystique, journalist (and mother) Leslie Bennetts writes that a new generation of women are moving back into the household, with potentially disastrous results for them and the workforce in general. In The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? Bennetts’ resounding answer to her own question is yes.
Bennetts considers many examples of women, often highly educated and well-off, who decide to give up their careers either permanently or temporarily in exchange for raising their children. Opting out of their career, their focus shifts to home life, volunteering and domestic pursuits, leaving the husband to earn the paycheck. Bennetts interviews stay-at-home women who cite the women’s revolution as giving them the choice to stay at home, and consider themselves as much as feminists as working mothers.
Bennetts sees this as false security, and her book is filled with examples of women who have regretted staying home. Mainly, her concern is economic independence; even women married to men with high-paying, stable jobs can see their incomes plummet following a divorce, health crisis or other calamity. Earning potential lost during a hiatus of several years to raise children can never be recovered, nor, as Bennetts points out, can the experience gained through continuous employment, making job hunting at a later age difficult. She expands her argument to the psychological effects joblessness creates in the family, including the added pressure on husbands as sole breadwinners, micromanaged children and anxiety rooted in the loss of work colleagues and a set schedule. In the end, Bennetts asks, is it really a smart decision for a women to bet her entire future on her husband’s paycheck, in return for what is essentially the temporary job of childrearing?
It’s an intriguing question, and one which has been getting a fair amount of attention recently. Bennetts states early on that she isn’t interested in getting involved in ‘mommy wars,’ but her tone reflects a condescending view towards women have chosen to take a different track than her own. Worse, Bennetts’ research seems limited to women married to wealthy professionals, largely residing in New York City or well-to-do Connecticut suburbs–hardly an accurate slice of today’s workforce. It’s a pity, as the economic problems women face are a major concern (and as a recent Time article noted, are becoming acute in a tightening economy). Despite its flaws, however, The Feminine Mistake is worthwhile reading for anyone concerned about the future of gender equality in the U.S., and demonstrates how much remains to be done.
Looks like I agree with Lisa on this one.
March 29th, 2009
Katie H.
It’s apt that Carrie Fisher’s new memoir/one-woman show Wishful Drinking features her iconic image of Princess Leia on the cover. Just as Leia occupied a galaxy long ago and far away, the real Carrie Fisher knew only one world from birth, more bizarre than any galazy occupied by wookies and giant mobster slugs–the world of a Hollywood daughter. It’s the sort of place where normalcy is relevant, and in her breezy account, Fisher makes light of dark aspects of growing up famous.
Before she was Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame, she was Carrie Fisher, daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds and the much married singer Eddie Fisher. Their tortured marriage saga, complete with shoe barons, beauty queens and questionable remarriages (helpfully charted by Fisher) is the source of some of her best material. Out of this colorful background, Fisher herself doing the normal thing (for Hollywood)–enrolling in drama school, auditioning for a space saga and seriously discussing with George Lucas the ramifications of underwear in space (she was for, he against). Add in some surreal experiences as Mrs Paul Simon (great for songwriting, bad for a stable marriage), too many drugs and undiagnosed mental illness, and even Cary Grant has to get involved in the effort to save Carrie.
Wishful Drinking, basically a print version of Fisher’s one-woman show, reads as quickly as a comedy routine (it took me about two hours cover to cover). The impetus for the book was Fisher’s struggles with manic-depression, drug abuse and drinking–all of which she frankly addresses and weaves in and out of her narrative. Still, for all of Fisher’s off-the-cuff humor and wisecracking one-liners, there isn’t a lot of substance, and little sign of editorial oversight. Fisher has the material, but Wishful Drinking would be more memorable in a longer-length autobiography. As it is, there isn’t much to this routine.
February 18th, 2009
Katie H.
Every so often, newspapers and television reports will break stories 
revealing shocking hazing at college fraternities or reports of sexual assults on campus, prompting outrage, questions and calls for reform. On a lesser level, parents worry about ‘hookup’ cultures among college-aged men, or shake their heads in disbelief when confronted with the amount of time their sons spend playing video games instead of attending classes. The final straw comes as college educated men return to their childhood homes, much to their parents’ disbelief. In all these cases, a common refrain emerges: What is wrong with these guys?
The answer, writes SUNY-Stony Brook sociologist Micheal Kimmel, lies in the little understood world of Guyland. Guyland, Kimmel writes, is a homosocial culture that men in their late teens and early twenties create in an effort to transition into the responsibilities of manhood. Advocates consider it a rite of passage, but Kimmel points out that Guyland’s culture of silence and conformity helps nurture cruel behavior, foster debasing images of women, promote violence, and leads to just plain stupidity.
Why the bizarre behavior from seemingly intelligent, well-adjusted young men? As Kimmel writes, much of Guy behavior is driven by insecurity: other men are perceived as having more sex, able to tolerate more alcohol or simply having more fun then most, pushing men to chase a non-existant pacesetter. And much has to do with a sense of entitlement: as women and minorities have made strides in both education and employment, Guyland offers a spot where guys (whom Kimmel’s reveal are almost always white) are insulated from political correctness, challenges from women and the repercussions of violence that seem to threaten their particular definition of maleness. It blithely divides the world into a dichotomy of those who play along with Guys rules versus those who don’t (and therefore don’t matter in Guyland). While most guys grow out of the stage without any lingering negatives, the fact that the darkest aspects of Guyland occur at all means that more men (and other college groups) need to put aside the ‘boys will be boys’ attitude and find the courage to speak out against abusive cultures.
Kimmel, a specialist in gender studies, conducted scores of interviews with young men, college administrators, coaches and young women in his research for Guyland, and he presents an engaging and readable argument. But there’s also plenty to argue with here as well. I believe Kimmel’s book tends to present Guyland’s lifestyle as the only option for college men, a fact made more noticeable by the lack of any perspective as to how many men actually succumb to the worst excesses of loutish behavior. And Kimmel never fully addresses how so many men can navigate the same school environment and avoid such problems. But like a lot of other books that try to decipher the peculiar behavior of the sexes, the appeal is as much in sparking conversation or following up footnotes as it is in reading. In that respect, Guyland is an accessible road map into the strange territory of the American Guy.
January 2nd, 2009
Katie H.
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