Resurrected Reviews No. 2

Ya Gotta Believe, by Tug McGraw and Don Yaeger

This is the second installment of Resurrected Reviews, where I dig up and revive a pre-TBR book review. This is a memoir of one of my favorite ballplayers while growing up. I  finished the book on Feb. 1, 2017.

One of the bad things about reading a memoir by one of your childhood heroes is finding out what an asshole he was. 

McGraw rushing off the
field after winning the
1973 National League
championship.

McGraw was the guy I copied when I pitched during softball games. He slapped his glove on his thigh, a move the 16-year-old me thought was so cool, so I did it as well.

He lead the New York Mets to the 1973 World Series with his extraordinarily great play, optimism, and exuberance.  He coined the phrase, "Ya Gotta Believe," which he had the whole city screaming out, and which has lived on.

But in this book, he describes how he used women, rejected one of his sons, and basically did as he pleased throughout life, regardless of the consequences to others. 

His only redeeming personal quality was that he told it all in this book, written as he was dying of brain cancer. 

It's a decent, if sad and disheartening, read.

Resurrected reviews

Spill Simmer Falter Wither, by Sara Baume

The TBR Stack is premiering a new feature, where I dig up and revive a pre-TBR book review. For the opening post, I selected my review of one of the best-written books I have read, which I  finished on April 9, 2016.

I read this short book slowly. I wanted to savor its every word. It is beautifully written, with splendid  rhythms and word selection. It enhances the story like a blue-ink fountain pen complements cream-colored note paper.

But the plot itself? Meh.

It's a tales about a man and his dog, neither of whom is very likable. The man, unloved or scorned in his small Irish town because he's a fearful hermit, adopts a dog to keep him company after his father dies.

The dog can be vicious -- attacking smaller dogs and snapping at children -- so the pair take off and travel around Ireland to avoid the consequences. The story tells of their life on the road, struggling to survive and living out of his car for weeks on end.

Its title is a hint to the structure of the story, which revolves around the seasons of the year. It starts in the spring, a time of regrowth, and ends in the winter, when life tends to shut down.

The ending here, though, adds much to the story, and puts the human character in perspective.

The dog, not so much.

Book Review: City in the Middle of the Night

The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders

One of the enticing things about science fiction is that it lets the writer explore fundamental questions, such as: What is the nature of time?


The Earthly emigrants in this imaginative novel have moved to January, a world far away that is tidally locked to its sun. Thus, it has two sides -- one facing away from the sun, in eternal darkness and cold, and the other always facing the sun, in blistering heat and everlasting, blinding light. The human settlers have found the middle ground, literally -- they have conquered what for them is the thin habitable zone between the two extremes, and founded two diverse cities.

This leads to one of the basic conflicts in the book: Is it better to enforce an artificial time of day and night -- forcing the residents to move inside, close the shutters, and sleep for designated period -- or have limitless outdoor activities and allow people to find their own sleep cycles without any help from nature?

______________________________________________________________________________

Things you should know:

• Argelo: One of the two major cities on January.
• Ankle skirts. Skirt-like bits of fabric women wear around the ankles. Never explained. Weird.
• Gelet: Known colloquially -- and insultingly -- as crocodiles, an intelligent, native species who live on the dark side of the planet and have amazing talents.
• Light sickness: An illness -- similar to migraine headaches -- that some people get when exposed for too long to the bright side of the planet.
• Mothership: It brought humans from Earth to January.
• Sea of Murder: A dangerous ocean one must cross to travel between the two cities.
• Shadow jumping: A children's game in which players attempt to jump from shadow to shadow, never exposing themselves to the full sun. If you're good, you can play it with your eyes closed, because without the sun rising and setting, the shadows never change.
• Xiosphant: Another of the two major cities on January.
• Young Father, Old Mother: Mountain ranges around Xiosphant that separate the habitable zone from the light side and dark side of the planet.

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Another strength of science fiction is that it's a great way to use space exploration, encountering new worlds and life forms, as metaphors for life on earth. Often, as is the case here, those metaphors are not subtle. Anders uses her new world and the humans who inhabit it as sort of a second chance to fix the problems that forced them to leave earth, which are hinted at but never explained. Suffice to say that several generations traveled through space to reach January, and they tried to use the time  to unify themselves into a cohesive group.

But once on January, they went their separate ways, moving to and creating different forms of society in the two cities and the lands between them. She explores how the humans interact with and affect the native flora and fauna, which becomes another major story arc. She has one character note that whenever two intelligent species interact, one winds up dominating the other.

Even if that is inevitable, it's not always deliberate; sometimes, it's just a matter of not knowing -- or recognizing -- the full consequences of one's actions.

The story is told by two of its major characters. But though each has a specific role and point of view, this method allows for varying perspectives as we alternatively follow each character's narrative. It's a heavily feminist book, with most of the main characters female, and it contains hints of a variety of sexual orientations, none of which appears to cause any problems or dissents.

Overall, it is an interesting if uneven tale. It takes awhile to get into the new world, some of which is left unexplained. But the story is well done, and the writing is concise and colorful. The one thing  I would have loved to see is a map of January and its cities, which would have gone a long way toward making the world easier to understand.

Book Review: Patsy

Patsy, by Nicole Dennis-Benn

This is not your stereotypical novel of an impoverished immigrant moving to the United States, working hard, and rising to the top rungs of society, all the while remembering where she came from and keeping in touch with her common-folk heritage.

Far from it.

Rather, it is a far more realistic, if depressing, book about a girl growing up, poor and abused, in the ghetto of Pennyfield, Jamaica, and dreaming of a way out. Cicely, her best friend, has moved to New York City and writes letters about her wonderful life and how they can be together, happily ever after.

The book is well written, moving, and an important profile of immigration. It brings us into a world mostly unknown and unexplored. It's depressing nature comes not from a fear of immigrants, but the fear of being an immigrant -- the fear of not fitting into a new culture, of losing your self-identity, of being a failure in a new world for reasons beyond your control. Patsy sees or experiences all of this, and the book explores her struggles and reactions.

Patsy has several strikes against her as she dreams of leaving Jamaica for a life in Manhattan. One is a five-year-old daughter she doesn't love and cannot connect with. The second is the visa system in her home country, which makes getting a flight to the United States difficult. But eventually she makes it, landing at JFK, ready to meet and renew her love with Cicely.

It's both easy and difficult to judge Patsy. How could a mother leave her child behind, promising to return or send for her, with no intention to do so? How can her dreams be so common yet unrealistic Still, we root for Patsy and respect her decisions, hoping she can find joy and tenderness in Cicely's arms, and success in New York.

Not to give away the tale, but it's not that simple.

We see that Patsy's early life is not grand, and when she gets to New York, the story gets even more depressing. We learn about her sad and lonely life in the city, stuck in menial and degrading jobs, living in tiny, dumpy apartments. Patsy tries, but the Devil's Cold -- her own bouts of depression -- weighs heavily.

We also learn about her daughter's difficulties growing up back in Jamaica, abandoned by her mother, and being raised by her previously absent father, who doesn't understand her.

Dennis-Benn is unflinching it her portrays of the troubles -- and the growth -- of both mother and daughter. Her writing skills are up to telling this difficult yet engrossing tale.

Book Review: Echo's Bones

Echo's Bones, by Samuel Beckett

I picked up this book because I want to read more traditional Irish literature, and Beckett is nothing if not traditional. (Old joke: The difference between James Joyce and Beckett is that Joyce leaves nothing out of his stories, and Beckett puts nothing in.)

Then I learned this short tale was meant to finish off Beckett's 1934 collection of short stories, More Pricks than Kicks. I've read that compilation. I think. I do have it in my library, but I can't honestly say I remember anything about it.

Echo's Bones isn't in the collection. The publisher asked for a final story to finish off the group of 10 short stories, to sort of sum them up and top them off.  Beckett submitted Echo's Bones. It was rejected, with the publisher calling it "a nightmare" that will cause readers to flee. "People will shudder and be puzzled and confused; and they won't be too keen on analyzing the shudder."

After reading it. I can see why it wasn't published until 2014.

The story is bewildering. Supposedly, every line in the book is taken from another classic story. I know this because the critic, Mark Nixon, who tries to explain the story, said so. He also left us with 57 pages of annotation -- for a story that is 48 pages long. So there's that. 

Nixon tell us the story has been called bizarre, undisciplined, a struggle. It's a tale of the immediate aftermath of the death of a character in many of the short stories. It's told in three parts, comprising three separate but squished-together tales about Belecqua's afterlife. 

None of this, by the way, makes any sense. It's what Nixon describes in his introduction. I trust he knows more about Beckett than I do. 

Here is one example of the mess that Beckett wrote about Belecqua:

He sighted a submarine of souls on the sea, hove to, casting -- no, drawing up a net. He counted the fish as the Alba, coiled up on the conning tower, sporting the old flamingo, gaffed them and brought them on board, one by one. One hundred and fifty-three iridiscent fish, the sum of the squares of Apostles and Trinity; thrashing and foaming on the gaff. He closed his eyes, intending to have a vision, but felt so marooned when he did so that he opened them again quick. The boat was gone. The significance of this apparition was what he could not fathom. No, nor could anyone else.

It goes on in this vein. It's more like the story of a man who died on an acid trip.