Book Review: The Glass Hotel

The Glass Hotel,  by Emily St. John Mandel

    If you're into historical fiction from the early 21st Century, have I got a book for you.

    This is the tale of Bernie Madoff, writ large. But it's a slow, meanadering narrative, wandering around Canada, New York, and the high seas before reaching its climax -- then ambling off again. And yet, its main character -- a lost, lonely soul who becomes the second wife of Madoff's stand-in, Jonathan Alkaitis -- is resilient and strong enough to sustain the trek. 

    

    We first meet Vincent as a 13-year-old girl living in the remote northern half of Vancouver Island with her aunt and half-brother. Her mother is recently dead, and Vincent's father is away at various jobs. In the beginning, we are led to believe her half-brother Paul is going to the driver of the story.

    But he mostly fades away as Vincent, through a series of coincidences, finds herself working as a hotel bartender, and meets Alkaitis. She eventually moves in with him, and becomes a citizen of what she calls the country of money. She is unaware of -- and doesn't particularly care -- how Alkaitis uses his financial acumen to become fabulously wealthy. But others do, and the walls come crashing down.

    Vincent moves on. She is, shall we say, adaptable. She is a wonderful character.

    I really liked this book, despite its flaws. It's a tale of money and power, which Vincent accepts but doesn't let rule her. The story is familiar for anyone who paid attention to the business world in the late aughts. But it's well told, with perspective from the participants and the victims of the scheme.

    Sadly, all of the other characters are mere vessels. A few are given life, but not enough that we know or care too much about them. Alkaitis has some interesting traits, and seems like a nice guy who doesn't take advantage of Vincent, and we know he has led an interesting life. But we are not told enough to care very much about him. He's pretty much a non-descript, corrupt businessman.

    And Paul seems rather pointless. He pops in and out of the story -- I suppose to let us know he's still around -- but his only other life is being a drug addict and a bad musician.

Book Review: Ballad

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins

   

    This is a prequel to the Hunger Games series, and a much needed backstory to one of the characters. I would not mind seeing more of these.

    It does help to have read the original series, and from what I can tell, this prequel hews closely to the future story.

    It looks into the life of future President John Snow, and it also details how the Hunger Games grew from an unpopular killing and dying spree among unknown urchins to the much-loved extravaganza (well, at least by the Capital crowd) we see in the novels today. Hint: Snow had a lot to do with that.

    The Snow this book portrays is a sympathetic one. If you didn't know who and what he became, you might even be cheering for him at times. But then you realize who he is and what he will do, and you think, "Nah. Screw him."

    The novel's Snow is a somewhat privileged member of the elite living in Capital City. But the capital is not the glitzy, trendy place of the future. Instead, it's a city and populace still suffering from the wars, revolutions, and ecological disasters that forged Panem. You really get involved with the history of Panem, District 12, and the others, a decade or so after it formed.

    It does not reveal the beginnings of Panem, or why or how it started. Let's hope that will be revealed in the next tale in the pre-series. I could get into the backstories of other main characters, with a little bit of a creation tale.

    And, perhaps this time, a map.

Book Review: Actress

Actress, by Anne Enright

    Katherine O'Dell was one of Ireland's best-known and beloved actresses.

    But author Anne Enright relates a few problems with that in this finctional biography/memoir of O'Dell, narrated by her daughter Norah

     For one thing, O'Dell was born in England. Her acting career, while it encompassed some starring roles in the West End, Broadway, and Hollywood, was largely mythical. So she became Ireland's best-known actress by pretending to be Ireland's best-known actress.

    The eyes were naturally green. The hair was dyed the appropriate Irish color. Her agent dictated her style.

"From now on," he said, "you wear any color you like, so long as it's green." By this he meant anything from teal to emerald -- all forty shades of it. The hotel dresser arrived, pulled my mother's head gently back into the sink, and two hours later she was a flaming redhead.

    So she looked the part and played the role well. Being Irish is a character, and she was good at it. On the stage or in front of the camera, she was the familiar Irish ingenue. She pulled off the intrigue needed to keep up the illusion of her craft. She was as much the idea of an actor as she was the reality.

   O'Dell lived in Dublin in the rare ol' times, where little was as it seemed,  and where everyone kept their closest feelings close to the vest. That meant O'Dell was always performing. She was the star. 

    Norah, the narrator, reveals the stories of her mother the actress along with her own. Both their stories are similar and familiar. She reveals her mother's hopes, dreams, and fears. She mixes in tales of her own life, which paled in comparison to her mother's. But both shared bouts of drinking, days of torment, and instances of trauma and abuse.

    As the narrator, Norah speaks like a neighbor -- or perhaps, an older, wiser aunt -- telling the tale over a laminated kitchen table filled with cooling cups of tea, ignored biscuits, and over-flowing ashtrays. She would nod her head at whatever you had to say, then with a wink and a knowing smile, put you to rights. "Aye," she say, "but let me tell ya what's really going on.

    And then she'd be off. 

    There are some quibbles. Some of the minor characters are merely background noise, although they play brief but important roles in the story. But they are poorly drawn out, and thus hard to remember. And our narrator tends to jumps around in time, here and there, introducing new characters without warning, causing one to get confused.

    But overall, it's a well-told tale. 

Book Review: Hamnet

Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell

    If you're going to write about William Shakespeare and have him as a character in your novel, you had better be able to make your prose and dialogue sing.

    Maggie O'Farrell is more than up to the task. 

    Although Shakespeare is not the major character in this fictionalized biography, when he speaks, his words glisten. O'Farrell catches his cadence, his rhythms, his poetry You can almost hear the character speaking his words in iambic pentameter. You envision him upon the stage in the Globe Theater, delivering his lines to a silent, enrapted audience.

    Yet the major characters are those who surround William Shakespeare -- his wife, his parents, his in-laws, and his children, including his only son, Hamnet. It is, at its heart, a family story of Shakespeare growing up, coming of age, finding love, and trying to make his way in the world.

    It's a sad story, and at times the despair clings to the pages. The 16th Century was a time of the plague in Europe, and Shakespeare and his family were not immune.

    Still, the strongest, most compelling character in the tale is Shakespeare's wife, called Agnes in the book. O'Farrell portrays her as a feminist before her time, a healer, a strong woman who keeps her family together during illnesses and her husband's long absences. She is sometimes seen as a witch, whose unusual habits include carrying around a kestrel, keeping bees, and going off to the woods to birth her first child.

     Yet she brings magic to the hills around Stratford-upon-Avon. Whether it's the magic that promises and delivers riches and a long, happy life, or requires a steep price for wishes granted, is just one of the themes explored in this book.

    O'Farrell acknowledges her research was necessarily thin. Little is known about Shakespeare's life and times -- heck, even the number of plays he wrote is an open question -- and what is known is disputed. Yes, there was a Hamnet Shakespeare, who had a twin sister, as he does in the book. He died when he was 11. His death may or may not have had an impact on his father's plays, particularly Hamlet.

    So, O'Farrell took that information and made it her own, turning it into this wonderful piece of historical fiction.

     Her writing and her book is extraordinary. At times, especially in the early parts of the book, when she alternates between Shakespeare's youth and his early adult years, it came be a bit confusing.  But it soon comes together, into a heartfelt, heartbreaking novel of love, grief, and pain.