Book Review: Project Hail Mary

 Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

    Weir's third book, like his first two -- The Martian and Artemis -- is quite good.

     But it's a bit over the top. It suffers from the lone white guy savior complex, turns into a buddy movie, and winds up as a lots-of-things-go-wrong-and-oh-no-how-will-we-fix-this-or-save-this-or-save-us-so-we-can-continue-on-our journey? thriller.

   

    OK. It's a lot over the top. But after you catch your breath and finish rolling your eyes, it's still a good read. The plot is compelling. The writing is superb. The dialogue is witty. The science, I am told, is spot on. (And it is. I think I understand time dilation now.)

    We first meet our intrepid hero, Dr. Ryland Grace, as he slowly awakens in a stupor, unaware of where he is or why. Gradually, he figures out he's in a spaceship in a planetary system that does not include earth -- the sun is similar, but not the same. And he's alone. His two  crewmates are dead.

     Uh-oh.

    We learn through his memory flashbacks what happened and why he is there. It seems that something is slowly dimming the Earth's sun, countering the effects of climate change, but then having the potential to bring on global cooling. Quickly. People will die. A lot of people will die. So the Earthlings try to fix it.

    A Dutch scientist, a woman by the name of  Eva Stratt, is put in charge and given ultimate power and authority. She's not afraid to use it. She is the buddy cop equivalent of the guy who doesn't follow the rules, because the rules were made to be broken -- or they don't apply to her. She's the ultimate libertarian, dedicated to her task and whip-smart.

    Her goal? Find a way to save humanity. Eventually, that means a trip to Tau Ceti, a solar system about 12 light years away, which seems to be the closest place humanity can go to find an answer to its existential problem. (It's also a common star system for science-fiction based travelers.) Scientists figure out a way to get there at nearly the speed of light, build a new spaceship for the trip, and blast off.

    We don't see all of this, but learn about it in the memory flashbacks. It's a decent way to round out the exposition phases and give some personality to the minor players. Stratt is a decent character, but eventually we get back to Dr. Grace. Somehow, the middle-school science teacher with a doctorate winds up as an astronaut on the trip. 

    He turns into the ultimate, if  reluctant hero; the clever man everyone admires. I hear tell  Ryan Gosling is going to play him in the movie. I don't know Gosling, but I'd bet he's young, handsome, self-deprecating, and white.

    There's another character in the book, who comes in later, and telling you more would be a major spoiler, so I won't reveal it. Suffice to say it adds a different dimension to the book, and gives Dr, Grace a separate, more personal reason -- instead of just trying to save humanity -- to figure everything out.

    So pick up Hail Mary. It's a fun read. 

Book Review: The Last Taxi Driver

 The Last Taxi Driver, by Lee Durkee

    I picked up this book because of the cover and the title: I saw it in the bookstore. I liked the cover -- it was bright yellow. I smiled at the title. I read the synopsis. I laughed. I bought it.

      It's one of the many reasons I browse in real bookstores as opposed to buying online. I never know what I'm looking for until I find it.

    Anyway. I was right about the book. It's enticing. It's funny. It's worth a read.

    Lou works as a cabbie in a small town in northern Mississippi filled with obnoxious frat boys, drug dealers, and desperately poor people. His employer is one of the last legitimate taxi companies around -- although its owner is a conniving fool who seems to dedicate her life to making her drivers miserable. But Uber is coming -- which will make the drivers even more miserable and anxious, with even less control over their down-and-out lives.

    So Lou muddles through his 12-hour shifts, shuffling drunks and meth-heads and old people on their last legs to low-paying jobs, hospital visits, and liquor runs in a city without public transportation. And Lou has his own problems: He's a failed college teacher (one semester) and novelist (one book, rarely to be found). He's looking for an excuse to get his no-longer girlfriend to move out, while narrating his lonely, melancholy life.

    He's really good at the narrating. And the loneliness. And the melancholy. And his undisguised despair at the town he lives in and how it forces people to live lives of -- as the philosopher once said -- quiet desperation.

    Consider this passage about the only Black Republican man in town -- who spends his days guarding the Confederate statute in the town square, while getting routinely beat up for his troubles.

Clem ended up meeting a Black woman at some Tea Party gathering who was also into the rebel flag -- there's somebody for everyone -- and they became a couple until one night, driving home from a rally, the two of them became convinced somebody was following their truck. Clem called the police -- 911 recorded the whole incident -- then he sped up, lost control of his pickup, ran off a bridge into the Tallahatchie River, and the two of them drowned together in that river without anybody ever writing them a song.

    Gems like that make one keep reading. So does his chapter of tips for the budding cab driver: Don't project your prejudices on the people you encounter while driving. Having a penis doesn't make one an awesome driver. Never fuck with anybody driving a Dodge Charger, Don't take selfies at red lights.

    There's more, but you'll have to buy the book to read them. Get thee immediately to your local bookstore and do so.

Book Review: The Natural

The Natural, by Bernard Malamud

    In the long, long ago, an old college friend handed me a copy of this book, telling me I should read it because it is the best baseball book ever written.

    I put the book aside, somehow ignoring it for the next four decades. But earlier this year, while meandering around a used-book store, I landed across the book. Not knowing where my original copy was, I decided to pick it up and actually read it this time.

    It was good.

    But the best baseball book ever written? I think not. I'd have to list at least five or six novels by W.P. Kinsella ahead of it. And perhaps a few others. 

    Maybe time has caught up with The Natural. It was, after all, published in 1952. It was made into a movie, with a then-middle-aged Robert Redford in the lead role, way back in 1984 -- long after an even younger Redford helped break the Watergate scandal.

Malamud is considered one of the greatest Jewish authors

of the 20th Century. Later in his writing career, he won a

Pulitzer Prize for The Fixer, his novel about anti-semitism in

the Russian Empire. The Natural is the first novel he published.

      The Natural begins with a young rube by the name of Roy Hobbs headed on a train to Chicago for a tryout with the Cubs. Something happens, and Hobbs' career stalls. Some 16 years later, Hobbs is signed as the new left fielder for the down-and-out New York Knights. Hobbs brings along his special bat, which he has named Wonderboy. He refuses to hit with anything else.

    It's unclear whether the bat has magical powers, or Hobbs just thinks it does. And while fueding with his veteran, old-school manager, Pop Fisher, Hobbs beomes the star of the team and starts leading the sad-sack Knights toward the pennant. As Hobbs gains fame and fortune, a cloud begins to surround him, and a deep, dark secret in his past is hinted.

    Each chapter of the book reads like a short story, self-contained but presenting a snippet of the whole. It's well written, and the baseball stories and tales in the dugout and clubhouse seem realistic for the era. But it sometimes falls into common baseball tropes -- the aging manager who's seen it all, the obnoxious superstar, the long-suffering fans. I also question some of the math -- in one sequence, a team is four games behind another in the pennant race, wins a four-game series, but then is just one game behind.

    But it's the magical sequences that are most problematic. Are they dreams? Mystical happenings? Or simply extended metaphors? 

    I don't know. And I am afraid the book's failure to properly deal with those is its major flaw.

Book Review: Witch's Heart

 The Witch's Heart, by Genevieve Gornichec

    Gornichec could do for Norse gods what Madeline Miller and Margaret Atwood did for Greek mythology: Rethink and rewrite them, making them accessible for a new group of readers.

   

    If you're like me, what you know about Norse mythology begins and ends with Thor and his hammer. If that's the case, this well-written and enjoyable novel is an excellent primer into the ancient worlds. An attached appendix, which you will refer to often, is an essential addition.

    Most of the characters here are from the Norse mythology. Gornichec takes their stories, re-imagines them, and tells new tales.

    But even here, gods are needy, violent, and vindictive. The witch is a counterpoint to them, although she has her issues -- which start with her being burned three times, having her heart cut out, but remembering little of who she is.

    So she -- known as Gullveig or Angrboda -- winds up retreating to a cave in Ironwood, a forest in eastern Jotunheim. There she lives her next life -- or, perhaps, a continuation of her previous lives -- as the gods seek to use her talents for their own benefits. This is all laid out in the opening of the book, giving you the background on the characters, their motivations, and their relationships. Pay attention here. It will be worth it.

    Loki, a "blood-brother" of Odin -- he's the top guy -- meets Angrboda and returns her heart. Literally. He hangs around. They have kids -- interesting kids, I might add -- and adventures, together and separately. But this is largely Angrboda's story, told from her perspective, and her loves and interests are the key to the tale.

    Many of the people and events are from the Norse mythology, which like its counterparts in the ancient world, have contradictions, discrepancies, and variations. This is another one.

    The Witch's Heart is about love and longing, about deeds and desirers, about protection and rejection. It a great tale, finely written. Whether Gornichec stays on this path as a writer and novelist is up to her. But I am eager to see more.