Book Review: City of Orange

 By David Yoon

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Irvington Vinyl and Books, Indianapolis 

• Why I bought this book: A blurb describes it as a cross between Station Eleven and The Road

***

    The Unreliable Narrator style, which is used in this book, annoys me.

    It makes me angry and frustrated. I feel deceived and manipulated. It makes the novel seem pointless, like the author didn't understand where they were taking the story, so changed direction. Ultimately, it's a waste of time for the reader.

    Like this book.

    Is it the tale of a man beaten and dumped in a future world, perhaps on another planet? Is it a description of a wasteland after a cataclysmic event? We don't know, and neither does our hero, who can't even remember his own name. It unfolds slowly, as we see what he sees, with vivid descriptions of horror and loss in the world he believes himself to be in.

    Yet, hints abound that all is not as it appears. 

    I'm not going to say more about the plot, such as it is, so as not to reveal any spoilers. Suffice to say it goes in a lot of directions, several of which are predictable, some of which are cliches and tropes, and few of which are original. And yes, I get the extended metaphor, but it's weak.

    Still, it has strong points: A smart, well-drawn main character whom we get to know and can identify with. Sharp writing that drags you in. A setting that is both everywhere and nowhere.

    But deep flaws overcome those positives. A  sense of evil pervades that main character. (At one point in my notes, I write: Did something bad happen to him, or did he do something bad?) Secondary character are mere bit players. The story drags, and the detailed writing can be overdone. It's impossible to tell whether the setting is real or imagined.

Book Review: Highway 61 Resurfaced

  By Bill Fitzhugh

• Pub Date: 2005

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I love old Dylan tunes

*****

    If you're going to call your novel "southern noir," it appears you should have the following themes or characters involved.

    * A kinda shady private investigator who performs the job as a sideline to his first love, which is in a dying profession that never was a lucrative life. 

    * A drugged out, wild-eyed killer who isn't very bright.

    * A rich, old, antebellum family that once ruled the roost in its small town, but since has fallen on hard times. If some of them are racist, all the better. 

    * A slightly pathetic, somewhat mangy, but still lovable pet. 

    * The plot must be convoluted and involve music -- particularly traditional, down-home music.

    * It must -- must. mind you -- have a racially-motivated injustice from long ago that is ripe to be avenged.

    * It should have guns. Lots of guns. And, if possible, a shootout.

    This sharp and sometimes comic mystery novel contains all of that, and more. Much, much more. 

    In short, the plot involves a 50-year-old murder, some lost tapes of a supposed blues recording from long ago, and a disc jockey-private investigator trying to make sense of it all. Rick Shannon, a radio DJ in the mode of Harry Chapin's W*O*L*D, has landed back in Vicksburg, Miss., at classic rock station WVBR-FM. To supplement his income, he opens Rockin' Vestigations to find missing personsand skulk around cheating spouses.

    That's how he gets involved in a case that includes several murders, lots of history and music, and the LeFleur family. The action takes him around the sweltering Delta of Mississippi, and Fitzhugh, Mississippi born-and-bred, describes its people and places well. 

    The writing is good and solid, moving the story along with ease. That story is complicated, but Shannon's steady, structured investigation, following one clue to the next one, pieces it together well.

    The result is a fun and easy read that could be used to train real investigators.

Book Review: Quantum Girl Theory

 

•  Author: Erin Kate Ryan
• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I liked the title, and the plot of a missing girl who finds other missing girls 

***

   This book tries really hard, but it turns out a muddled mess.

    Oh, it has its strong points. It's a great concept -- a women, who disappeared as a teen-ager, spends her life running and searching for missing girls. But it really doesn't know what it wants to do.

    Is it a tale ripped from the headlines of 1946? Is it a broadside against violence against women and the havoc and ruined lives it reaps? Is it a character study of how women rebel against that violence, and the harm that comes to them and society? Is it a tale of racism and questions about why some missing girls are searched for and others seem to disappear without anyone caring?

    Or is it a woman who has the gift of Sight, who can see and feel and experience the terror of being stalked and assaulted, and lives her life in fear of its  recurring?

    Yes, it's about all of them. Well, it tries to be. But over a short 257 pages, it roams and rambles, introduces new characters every chapter, mixes memory and reality, jumps around in time, and altogether just can't seem to keep a solid narrative for long.

    Indeed, it often reads like a collection of interconnected short stories. And as individual stories, they are quite good. The problem comes when you try to figure out what is happening and follow the overall story.

    It just doesn't seem worth it.

Book Review: The Apollo Murders

 

•  Author: Chris Hadfield

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Hadfield played guitar and sang Bowie in space, so I gave the book a chance.

******

    Gunfights in space! Mysterious holes on the moon! Communists literally hanging on to an American spacecraft orbiting Earth! A Russian lunar rover investigating the potential for nuclear power on the moon!

    And this is no far-fetched, Spaceman Spiff adventure in the far future. This is history.

    Well, an alternative history, with an extra Apollo mission landing on the moon with the idea to keep the Soviets in line -- with Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Leonid Brezhnev appearing in the background, and the CIA and KGB pulling and unwinding each other's strings.

    So it's not really history, but it could be. And Chris Hadfield -- retired Canadian astronaut, fighter pilot, former commander of the International Space Shuttle, a guy who has walked in space, and who sang a version of Space Oddity while in orbit around the Earth -- is just the guy who could pull it off.

    He does.

    This is a fun book. When you're able to look back on U.S.-Soviet relations and treat them as satire, you know you're having a good time. When you make plain ole trips to the moon, even spacewalks on the moon, seem tame by comparison, you've done a good job.

    But Hadfield also takes his science seriously, and does nothing that could be considered impossible. Yes, he sometimes gets carried away in the descriptions of flying and space flight, but I cut the guy a break -- he's actually been there, done that.

    In brief, Lieutenant Commander Kazimieras "Kaz" Zemeckis is a fighter pilot and wanna-be astronaut with one eye blown out when a bird got in the way of his plane. (Oops. So he can no longer fly in space.) But he knows everything about Apollo, so he gets to be in mission control, along with Al Shepard and a bunch of other real guys. (Lots of people and stuff is real in this book. It's all laid out in the end.)

    But Apollo 18 is part of the fiction. Hadfield sees it as an added mission to the moon, to do science and other things. But the Russians, who have a landed a rover on the moon and running it via a special satellite, are acting like they are up to something. So the Apollo crew are tasked with finding out what's really going on.

    A lot of other things are happening on Earth with the U.S flight crew, and when they go to space and discover the Soviet satellite actually has real live cosmonauts on it, things get dicey.

    But Hadfield holds it all together. The various real and imagined characters play well. When events threaten to overtake the American mission, Hadfield reels them back in. 

    It's a good balancing act. An exciting thriller, without the thriller problems that induce eye-rolling and a please-get-this-over-with feeling. Hadfield writes tightly and plots nicely.

    It's not Bowie in space, but it's just as cool.  

Book Review: Alternative Ulster Noir

 

•  Authors: Colin Bateman, Stuart Neville, Sharon Dempsey, Gerard Brennan, Kelly Creighton, James Murphy, and Simon Maltman

• Where I bought this book: bookshop.org (Check it out; it's like a local bookstore online.)

• Why I bought this book: It had a story by Colin Bateman, one of my favorite NI writers 

*******

    One of the difficulties of reading a short story collection by different writers is trying to get into their individual heads and attune yourself to their separate styles.

    This is particularly true when you're unfamiliar with most of the writers, and while the settings have a vague familiarity, it's not like they are outside your front door. But the idea of stories inspired by or based on songs is quite original, so you're willing to give it a shot.

    Which is a good choice.

__________________________________________________________________

Hot tip: Listen to the songs first -- they are all online. It'll get you in the mood.

 Hot tip #2: Listen again after you've read the stories. It'll give a new perspective.

__________________________________________________________________

    With that said, let me tell you: This tiny little volume (120 pages) full of short (10-15 pages each) stories is well worth your time. It's unique, contains lots of weird stuff, and is chock-a-block full of original writing and dark interpretations from a merry band of writers from Northern Ireland.

    The stories are set in Northern Ireland, and tell of crimes and other dastardly deeds, some in or around Belfast, and they may or may not have secular connotations. They are also based, some more and some less, on songs by Northern Ireland-based artists.

    For instance, James Murphy's contribution takes the title of the song How to Be Dead by the band Snow Patrol and turns into a chilling suggestion of the nature of a witness protection program. 

    My favorite story, Black Dog Sin, by Gerard Brennan, starts with a man in the throes of a grief-and-alcohol-fueled binge, and ends with a strange, dark and cynical twist. It closely follows the song by Joshua Burnside, but then takes a warped turn.

    And the penultimate story, by Simon Maltman, who also edited the collection, tells a darkly humorous tale about a serial killer who tags along on a tour -- of which Maltman is the illustrious guide -- of Northern Ireland's noir haunts in Belfast. Based on Trigger Inside, by the punk band Therapy?, it literally takes a line from the song to give insight into the killer's mind. 

Book Review: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

• Author: Heidi W. Durrow
• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington, Ky.

• Why I bought this book: The title caught my eye; the story description caught my fancy

******

    The thing about the title is it should be taken literally.

    We first meet our heroine and protagonist, Rachel, through the eyes of Brick -- then known as Jamie -- as she falls the nine floors from the roof of her Chicago tenament to the courtyard below. Jamie thinks she's a bird.

    Maybe she is. She survived the fall.

    How she came to fall -- was she pushed? did she jump? did she slip? was she thrown off? -- is the riddle of the tale. How she survives defines the story.

    Rachel is a young, mixed race girl, the daughter of a Danish mother and a Black, military father. She is light skinned, with her mother's blue eyes and her father's features. She doesn't define herself as Black or white. She allows others to do that for her.

    Who she is changes over time. Raised by her Danish mother, with a more-or-less absent father, Rachel looks, acts, and is treated white. She doesn't seem too concerned with that.

    But once her flight from the roof takes place, which kills her mother and siblings, Rachel is shuffled off to a new city and a new family. She is put in the care of her Black grandmother and aunt. In school, she is treated as an oddity, neither Black nor white, or perhaps both.

    The Black kids treated her as an interloper. The white kids see her as exotic.

    She sees herself as full of grief for her lost mother, and what may have been. She loves and admires her strict grandmother, but bristles against some of the changes in her life.

    Durrow is a compelling story teller and writer, but much like her character, Rachel, the tale doesn't reach any conclusion. The assumption is Rachel still has a long road ahead of her.

Book Review: The Three-Body Problem

• Author: Cixin Liu 

• Translator: Ken Liu

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio

• Why I bought this book: The title spoke to me, and in retrospect, the cover is cool

*****

     In the end, I think I'm just not smart enough to read this book.

   

    There is some serious science in here, and much of it is over my head, even though I have read and understand the concepts of astrophysics.

    My first concern was chapter 17, which described how a group without access to mechanical computation solved a complicated calculation by building a human computer. Literally. It used 30 million people to stand in for the inner workings: the hardware, the motherboard, and the other elements that mimicked the zero-one method of computer calculation. It sounds fascinating, but I'm not sure I understood how it happened.

    Then, in another section, it works on solving a problem by creating artificial intelligence, which in turn could force a proton to shrink from 11 dimensions to two -- and why three could not work. Again, a brilliant idea in theory, but far above my understanding.

    Like its science, the novel is complicated. It's difficult. It poses existential questions within a closed political system. 

    Now beware of this review. A spoiler alert is coming up. Fair warning -- even though it will be hidden, and you don't have to click on the link.

    Author Liu spends a lot of time introducing the characters and setting the scenes, in many different, confusing ways. The story is set in China, and we know something momentous is going to happen. Something, indeed, is happening, but we don't know what.

    The author -- and his excellent translator, who gives insight into the Chinese mindset at the time of the novel's setting -- provide us with a lot of hints. The three-body problem, perhaps, is a planet system with three stars, Or moons. Or planets. (Understanding how three bodies in space stay in a stable orbit is a pressing problem in physics.) Or it's about earth. Or it's a video games. Or it's aliens. War may be involved. Heck, even religion seems to come into play.

    OK. I can't resist. Spoiler alert    

    Meanwhile, deep in rural China, something else is going on. It's secret, and because we are in the period of the cultural revolution, it's a big secret that people will kill and die for. Or maybe they won't. Like I said, it's a secret.

    If this all sounds very confusing, that's because it is. Complicating matters is that the  characters are Chinese, with Chinese names and backstories. (For a native English reader, with a limited knowledge of the culture and history of China, it's difficult to relate to.) 

    And it jumps around in places and times. It doesn't tell a linear story. We learn about various characters over the spans of their lives.

    

    Still, once you start to figure out who is who and what may be going on, you'll find those characters are an interesting group, and their motives, once revealed, make sense. The story does come together with a (mostly) logical explanation in the end.

    But, of course, it is the first book in a trilogy. So my last question is whether I am smart enough -- or dumb enough -- to delve into the next two.

Book Review: Flight or Fright

Flight or Fright, edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent

    In 1963, the Twilight Zone aired an episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," in which an airplane passenger, played by William Shatner, saw a gremlin tearing off part of the wing. Some 20 years later,  Twilight Zone: The Movie remade the episode, this time starring John Lithgow as the passenger.

    Flash forward to TV 16 years later, when Lithgow was starring in "Third Rock From the Sun," a show about an alien visiting earth. In one episode, his boss, The Big Giant Head, played by Shatner, came to visit, thus rendering one of the best inside jokes ever on the networks.

    The Big Giant Head was asked how his trip went. His response: "Horrifying at first. I looked out the window and I saw something on the side of the plane." To which Lithgow's character responded in horror, "The same thing happened to me!"

    You can read that original story, first published in 1961 by Richard Matheson, in this uneven anthology of airplane horror stories. It ranges from a brief 19th Century story by Ambrose Bierce, to a tale of envisioned "Air Jungles" above 30,000 feet written in 1913 by Sir Arther Conan Doyle (yes, the Sherlock Holmes writer) to a 2018 tale of being on an airplane when the world ends, by Joe Hill.

    I know many people dislike short stories, but I think they hold a place of honor. A good one is hard to write -- with a few words and fewer character, a writer must tell a tale with a grab-you-by-the-neck beginning, a now-sit-there-and-listen middle, and a see-I-told-you ending. This book has some of those, but a fair amount of WTF stories that leave you empty, and a couple of tales that never get off the ground.

    There are some out-and-out horror tales, some that are more wild imaginings, and a couple of hang-on-for-dear-life adventures. One of the best is a simple detective story, with an opening that pulls you in, a middle that keeps you wondering, and an ending that is satisfying and believable. It doesn't lead you around in circles, but tell the story and gets to the point like a good short story should.

    As an added bonus, you get to read a new tale by Stephen King, a good one that reaches into the supernatural heights, but makes you wonder just how much of what he writes is true.

Book Review: My Sister, the Serial Killer

My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite

The thing you have to know about this book is that is it a well-written tale with intriguingly described and mostly likeable chracters. Except for adding a few local quirks, the fact that it is set in Nigeria is mostly irrelevant.

But all of this is spoiled by an ending that is confusing and unsatisfying. I'll avoid getting into why I think that to avoid spoilers. Suffice to say that I turned the page and found out I had just read the final chapter and was moving on to the acknowledgements page. I thought I has missed something.

Before that, though, it was a quirky, fun book. Yes, the title is accurate. The opening chapter gets started right away on why that is. The narrator, Korede, make no bones about her sister's proclivities, or her own participation in covering up those crimes.

If it were non-fiction, it would be disturbing. But as fiction it works in a bizarre, if facetious manner. Korede probes her motives in excusing her sister's actions. She has mixed feelings, sometimes justifying, oftentimes condemning, her sister's murders, but seems unwilling to actually stop them. Why? Her sister has the privilege of being pretty.

The resemblance is there -- we share the same mouth, the same eyes -- but Ayoola looks like a Bratz doll, and I resemble a voodoo figurine.

Ayoola seems blithely unaware of the consequences of her actions. She neither plans her murders, nor thinks about them afterward. She fully expects Korede to solve any fall out. Korede feels compelled, even obligated, to protect her younger sister. She enjoys literally cleaning up Ayoola's messes and organizing the fixes.

So it's kind of the saga of two sisters: One responsible; one not, both accepting of their lot in life. Or it's about being the breaker or the fixer. Or maybe it's just a story about various ways to stab men and clean up afterwards, told in two-part harmony.

Whatever, it's an enjoyable read. Just don't expect any answers.

Book Review: The Lola Quartet

The Lola Quartet, by Emily St. John Mandel

The thing about this novel is that none of the characters is likable.

There is no one to root for. The main character, Gavin Sasaki, is deluded, melancholy, and irresponsible. The others are not good people, or are not fleshed out enough to determine.

The plot involves a teenage pregnancy, a runaway, stolen money, a fired reporter's desire to track down his possible connections to the mother and the child, and the backstories on the high school times and musical interests of most of those involved.

Some of the details are overstated. Coincidences abound. For instance, Sasaki is fired from his newspaper job for what is made out to be a major scandal, but in reality is a mundane transgression. 

Frankly, I was disappointed. I have read several of Mandel's other works, and found them to be unique, thoughtful, and consequential. This one did not measure up.

Still, the book is well written, with lines such as, "She moved like a ghost through the caffeinated hours." Mandel's literary style of alternating tales of various characters is intriguing, if sometimes jumbled. The stories come together at the end, though, and most everything makes sense. 

Book Review: Wife of the Gods

Wife of the Gods, by Kwei Quartey

This is your basic detective novel, set in the west African nation of Ghana. The former makes it meh. The latter makes it worth reading -- at least for an old white guy in America, whose knowledge of African culture is, shall we say, lacking.

Now, I won't pretend this made me an expert on Ghanaian ways. But it did teach me a few things, left me wanting more, and, in the end, told a decent story.

The story introduces us to Darko Dawson, an inspector detective with the Ghanaian police, who lives and works in the capital city of Accra. He's a typical fictional detective -- good at his jobs, but with quirks and some personal problems. Dawson's quirks and problems include a quickness to violence, a fondness for smoking marijuana, a mother who mysteriously disappeared while he was still a child, and a son with a heart disease. All of these become plot-points in the book.

Ghana, on the Gulf of Guinea, is outlined in red.

The story starts with the finding of the body of a young female AIDS worker in the fictional town of Ketanu, in the Volta Region in the east of Ghana. Dawson has a connection with the area -- he grew up there, and speaks the local dialect. So the police detective is sent to investigate the potential homicide.

But his visit there is not with problems -- he doesn't like leaving his wife and young son. The assignment seems like a punishment of some kind -- and he must deal with family issues left over from his youth. And while he knows the area, he has problems with the local police chief, and with the fetish priests -- local religious leaders who actions seem more self-serving than providing for their flock. They often act like and portray themselves as gods, and have many wives, often young girls who have been awarded to the priests for various reasons.

The book explores all these issues, dealing with local and tribal customs, and with the very nature of religion and the men who use it to dominate others. It's a common enough issue that we see all around us, no matter where we live.

The problems and the solutions are universal, although the details are African.