Book Review: State of the Union

State of the Union, by Nick Hornby

Like the couple in this book, I think Hornby and I should go to some sort of counseling.

The spark is gone. At least on my part.

When I first started reading Hornby's works, they were glorious books, and he was a dedicated, wonderful writer. I loved About a Boy. How to be Good was thrilling and compelling, with great characters. Then  came A Long Way Down, and I thought Hornby had hit his apex. But he hadn't. Juliet, Naked was a fine book, in which I saw Tucker Crowe as the fictional embodiment of my musical idol, Bob Dylan.

But then ...

I couldn't get through Fever Pitch, his ode to soccer. Still, I looked forward to his next novel, Funny Girl, hoping he would be back in his grove. But I neither liked the characters nor the writing. It was a disappointment.

State of the Union is a step back up, but then, the previous books were a steep drop from his previous perfection. This short novel is told in 10 parts, as a married couple in counseling meet in a bar for drinks and chat before their counseling sessions. It's OK. At times it is witty, and it's generally well written. Both characters are inoffensive. But neither is strong enough to carry the story, and beyond them, well, there is little.

The bar setting is rudimentary. A few other characters exist, but they are of little consequence.

I understand this story has also been produced as a sitcom, with 10, 10-minute episodes. I really have no interest in seeing it. And, I hear, there are potential plans for a second season.

I have two words: Please don't.

Book Review: Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann

Take an unexpected but momentous public event. Use it as the backdrop for the stories of ordinary New Yorkers. Show that no matter what happens in the day-to-day, our private lives go on.

Such is the simple theme of Let the Great World Spin. McCann tells about the lives of those who populate New York while a French tightrope walker does the unthinkable -- strings a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center and takes a walk, and a run, and a dance. As Philippe Petit carries out his feat on a summer day in 1974 and thousands watch from a quarter-mile below, millions of others -- priests and judges, mothers and hookers, hippies and housewives -- go about their daily lives.

McCann's storytelling and writing is spectacular. His characters portray the raw emotions of  New York life in all its ugliness and triumph. He tells us the backstories of these men and women, then lets them loose to live. They are mostly good people, flawed perhaps, and struggling to understand how they fit into the world. Occasionally, they come together in times of joy and sorrow, tragedy and hope.

Philippe Petit takes a tightrope walk across the
towers of the World Trade Center on Aug. 7, 1974

McCann's breadth is superb. He gives us tales of city life from the historical perspective of the time, as the country moves away from the Vietnam War and sees the end of the Nixon presidency. Some of his best writing comes on the opening pages of the book, as he describes the city awakening to another hot August day.

Car horns. Garbage trucks. Ferry whistles. The thrum of the subway. The M22 bus pulled in against the sidewalk, braked, sighed down into a pothole.

The vivid descriptions continue. Late in the book, one of the characters, a black woman who understands the world, tells of her strategy as she writes home to her rural parents about her life on a college scholarship: "I gave them all of the truth and none of the honesty." Another talks about how to never expect life to give you a fair shake.

If you think of the world without people, it's the most perfect thing there ever was. It's all balanced and shit. But then come the people, and they fuck it up. It's like you got Aretha Franklin in your bedroom, and she's just giving it her all, she's singing just for you, she's on fire, this is a special request for (you), and then all of a sudden out pops Barry Manilow from behind the curtains. At the end of the world, they're gonna have cockroaches and Barry Manilow records. 

But the novel belies that statement. It's neither a cockroach nor a maudlin Manilow melody, but a taut and terrific tale woven from a true story.

This Week in Books, 7th Ed.

My reading list for the rest of the year is out.

I have been slumming as of late and not reading as much as I would like and should. Life has been getting in the way, and my TBR Stack is stagnant.

But on Wednesday, the  Booker Prize for Fiction -- formerly known as the Man Booker Prize -- released its longlist for 2019. It's given me back my excitement for reading. Soon, every damn one of the 13 novels should make it onto the TBR Stack.

Several already are on the TBR list: Margaret Atwood's Testaments, a sequel to her classic, The Handmaid's Tale, which has received much attention of late, what with the television series and the current political climate; Northern Ireland author Kevin Barry's Night Boat to Tangier; and An Orchestra of Minorities, by Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma.

I have raved several times about the prize, and its awarding of deserving books, now from around the world, as long as the novel was written in English -- previously, one had to be a member of a former nation of the British Commonwealth to be eligible. The expansion has just increased the breath and scope of the books and the authors, leading to a diversity of riches. The list will enhance my reading of authors of color, of woman, and of people from outside the United States.

Just listen to some of the titles and authors on the 2019 longlist: The Man Who Saw Everything, by Deborah Levy, which weaves together two stories of a similar event -- a man being hit by a car on Abbey Road in London. There's Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli, about several Mexican children on a journey to cross the U.S. Border. Then there is 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in The Strange World, by Elif Shafak, which gives life to the thoughts and remembrances of a sex worker as she lays dying after being murdered and dumped.

Let's get to reading.

Book Review: Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders

This is a strange, but ultimately compelling and readable novel. It won the Man Booker literary prize in 2017, so you know it's good.

It's only peripherally about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his 11-year-old son, Willie, in 1862. Lincoln took the death hard, and for several days, visited his son's crypt. From this snippet of history, Saunders leaps off into the realm of fantasy, hope, longing, grief, and despair.

The bardo of the title is a Tibetan word for the transitional state between life and death. It can last days, weeks, even years. The being in such a state is unsure about his existence, and throughout the book refers to the coffin as a "sickbox." It's a way that Saunders can explain how a person reviews the life, and can sometimes see images of a past that did not exist and a potential future that never came.

The novel takes the form of citations from books written and imagined, and discussions by various spirits. Those spirits watch as Lincoln visits his son; they try to influence Lincoln's actions, and they attempt to encourage Willie to move on. A young boy in such a state is unusual, the spirits allow.

They seem drawn to Lincoln's sadness, and use it to examine their own lives -- full of lost loves, missed opportunities, squandered time, and prejudices and bigotry that continue to plague them in the bardo.

It's a difficult book to get into. But once you read through a couple of chapters, the book comes into focus, and the characters grow and develop as we learn about their lives.