Book Review

 Smart Baseball, by Keith Law

• Where I bought this book: Volumes Bookstore, Chicago
• Why I bought this book: I read a few opening pages of several chapters and liked them

*******

    Baseball is like physics. The concepts are getting more esoterical, and the math is getting harder. But that math is proving many of  the old beliefs to be myths, and those new statistics to be correct.

    Actually, the major flaw in this book is that it is five years old -- and this edition was updated in 2017. Thus, keeping with the physics analogy, it's operating in an earlier dimension from what is happening now. Still, Law says the major explosion in data and its uses came about as he was writing the book, and the future changes will be more incremental, not expotenial.

    Its major point is how the statistical analysis in baseball -- and the sheer types and amount of data that are becoming available -- is changing the very nature of the game. The old stats, easy to compile or calculate, and simple to understand, were just plain wrongheaded and at best useless. At their worst, they measured things that didn't matter, or left out large parts of the games.

    For instance: RBIs, once thought as an ultimate measure of a player's offensive worth, in reality favored players who had teammates who got on base in front of them. Wins and losses, once seen as being the definition of a starting pitcher's importance, instead gave one man credit based on what others did on the field.

    The great benefit of the old stats is that they were simple to understand, readily available, and intuitive. The new ones are a bit more difficult: Not everyone has access to or can understand the data, the calculations can be difficult, and they must be explained. 

    But they are immeasurable better: On-base percentage and slugging percentage are far superior to mere batting average, which leaves a lot out of the equation and can mislead about a player's worth. New pitching stats give a better indication of a pitcher's performance, unlike, say, the save, which is worse than useless and ruined the game for the last 40 years. (Law's takedown of the save and how it was used is a major reason I bought this book.)

    These new stats are here to stay. They give greater insight in what players do and what they can do. The collection of information is staggering, and still being evaluated. They have lead to a revolution in the use of fielders. They may be able to predict -- and thus prevent -- injuries. 

    Teams are hiring entire staff -- many with doctorates in analytics -- to think about, gather, and use the numbers now available. Coaches, managers, and front-office staff are becoming better attuned to hard data. Players are recognizing the benefit to their games and careers.

    It's time for the fans to come along, and learn to accept -- and even love -- the numbers. Dump the save. Embrace WAR. 

     

Book Review: Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever

Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever: Mostly True Stories, by Ed McClanahan

• Where I bought this book: Kentucky Book Festival, Lexington
• Why I bought this book: McClanahan is Kentucky's best unknown writer

*********

    I first fell in love with McClanahan's writing soon after I moved to the commonwealth some 40 years ago, and a colleague suggested -- nay, insisted -- that I read The Natural Man, McClanahan's first novel.. 

    I did. I was hooked.

    McClanahan has led an extraorinary 20th Century life. Born in Brooksville, the seat of rural Bracken County, he was a part of the pre-war generation -- too young for World War II, and smart enough and pacifist enough to avoid the Korean War. McClanahan is a contemporary of the legendary Kentucky poet and author, Wendell Berry, along with Pulitzer-prize winner Larry McMurtry and beat/hippie author Ken Kesey. He ran with the Merry Pranksters. He was an author, professor, and lecturer under the moniker, "Captain Kentucky." Along with Mason, Berry, James Baker Hall, and Gurney Norman, McClanahan was part of the group called the "Fab Five" of Kentucky literature.

    In Not Even ..., McClanahan pens a ragtag collection of tales stretching from his boyhood days to his current elderly strolls around Lexington. The result is funny, yet touching, a feeling that you are listening to an old man in the latter years of his life lightheartedly recalling his earlier days of glory. He explores his relationship as the hippie, ne'er-do-well son of an upright, businessman-father who brokers little nonsense and was unusually proud of the cut of his nose.

The nose, my father firmly believed, is composed of certain pliable matter that one can mold and shape over time like a lump of gristly modeing clay, if -- if --one develops the proper habits of life and sticks to them assiduously. Such as: When said olfactory apparatus itches, son, do not scratch same by rubbing it with the heel of your hand as if you want to smear the gaddamn thing all over your counternance. Rather, delicately grasp it between the thumb and forefinger, just below the bridge -- thus; yes; just so -- and gently pull forward and down, thereby addressing the offending itch while simultaneously helping the nose to become all that it can be, which is to say a nose not unlike the paternal beezer itself.

    Some of the stories may be true -- one he claims to have video proof he found on the Internet. Others, like the one above, he admits, might be a teensy bit exagerrated.  There are those he says are true to the best of his recollections. A few, perhaps, might just well be, perhaps, merely allegorical. 

    It's a memoir in the best sense of the term -- self effacing, forgoing sentimentality if he chooses, grumbling about memory loss if it provides a convenient escape hatch.

    It's short, and sweet, and funny as hell. Go read it.

Book Review

That Old Country Music, by Kevin Barry

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: Kevin Barry may be Ireland's best current writer

**********

   

    To get a sense of Kevin Barry's Ireland, read two successive stories in this collection -- Who's-Dead McCarthy, and Roma Kid.

    The first revolves around death and is light and funny. The second is about life but is sad and melancholy. Both, however, are classic illustrations of the art of writing a short story, and quintessential examples of Barry's exquisite work.

    In his latest collection, Barry gifts us 11 tales of Irish life by featuring the character at the center of the story. The title story, for instance, is told through the thoughts of a 17-year-old pregnant girl as she awaits in a decrepit van -- and "clawed at the greasy vinyl of the seat" -- for her older finance to return from robbing a local gas station. "It was the second Monday of May. She was little more than four months pregnant. ... (He) was 32 years old and it was not long at all since he had been her mother's finance." 

    You can learn a lot about someone in 14 pages.

    Barry is in a class by himself in the present age. Within Ireland's history of world-class writers -- James Joyce, Anne Enright, Oscar Wilde, Maeve Binchey, William Butler Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, among others -- Barry has written himself into the pantheon.

    In stories that are less than 20 pages, Barry introduces, presents, and concludes the essence of a life amid hard times. In Who's-Dead McCarthy, an old man who has a preoccupation with death sets himself up as a town crier to inform his small town who has passed on -- with wit, charm, and tears. 

You'd see him coming on O'Connell Street -- the hanging jaws, the woeful trudge, the load. You'd cross the road to avoid him but he'd have spotted you, and he would draw you into him. 

    In Roma Kid, a young immigrant girl leaves her family in despair and travels the country looking for food and a new life.

Her mother had told her nothing but the girl knew that soon the family would be sent home again and she would not go back there. She was nine years old and chose for her leaving the red pattern dress and zipped her anorak over it.

    Both are narratives and character sketches, tightly and extraordinarily written, that leave you laughing our loud and crying in hope and despair. You intimately know these people, their dreams, their desires and their fears.

    In most of the writings here, the actual story is limited or is pointless. What is important is Barry's style, his descriptions, and his characters. His words are meticulously chosen, sculptured with care, and with preternatural sense. He shows a variety of voices, yet his characters are familiar as a favored aunt or hated uncle.

    Read this book. Savor it. Re-read it again and again and discover anew the sheer pleasure of great writing.

Book Review

Under the Whispering Door, by TJ Klune

• Where I bought this book: The Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, Colo.
• Why I bought this book: I enjoyed his previous novel, The House in the Cerulean Sea

* * * * * * *

    The main transfer station in the afterlife is a tea shop. With scones and a baker who enjoys blasting punk music on the radio.

    I can live (or die) happily with that thought. And Klune's novel, while a bit long-winded in parts, truth be told, is an  uplifting story about how we can overcome what life and death may throw at us. 

    Charon's Crossing Tea and Treats is a homey, if unnerving place. You are taken there after death by a reaper to meet people whose stated purpose is to help you cross over. But to where? That they don't say.

     You're upset, scared, and disbelieving. Eventually you meet the proprietor, one Hugo Freeman, who is mellow, soothing, and gentle. He offers you a cuppa tea, and calmly explains what happens next. You may or may not believe it. You may or may not need more time to figure things out.

    For Walter Price -- a meticulous, prideful, and implacable attorney in his life -- Hugo doesn't make a good first impression. Walter demands an end to the nonsense, and insists on leaving. When he does flee, he discovery why he should listen to those who know more..

    So he returns and winds up spending time with Hugo; Nelson, Hugo's wisecracking and wise ghost of a grandfather; Apollo, grandad's ghost dog, and Mei, the reaper who found Walter at his own funeral and brought him to Charon's Crossing. She's also the punk fan and scone-maker at the shop, and the force who holds everything together.

    We learn a lot about them, their lives, their loves, and their fantasies. A potential gay romance. Other characters come in and out, and while they add to the tale, their asppearance could have been shortened and written tighter.

    Walter is in the middle of all this -- sometimes exasperated, sometimes accepting, sometimes questioning. In life, he was a lawyer focused on the prize. In death, he's trying to figure it all out.

    And that's the genius of this novel -- like Walter, you'll yawn and wish you could slip past the parts in the middle. But by the end, you'll be wanting more. 

Book Review: Days Without End

 Days Without End, by Sebastian Barry

    At one point in reading this painful novel, I was thinking of putting it aside forever. But I ploughed through, and eventually, it was worth it. But beware this is a depressing, violent, and traumatic book. 

    The plot, such as it is, is secondary to the descriptions of the scenes and the settings. And while the writing is evocative, it can be incessant at times. And some of those vivid descriptions deal with long passages about slogging through rain, snow and mud, or with hatred, fear, and slaughter. 

    The voice telling us all this comes from the main character and protagonist, one Thomas McNulty. He is a remarkable person to tell this story of the wild west, the Civil War, and the attempted genocide of the Native population. He is an Irish immigrant whose family died in the Great Hunger, a soldier, and a gay man who is gender fluid. He enjoys dressing as a woman, for a job, in the theater, and in his personal life. His loving relationship with John Cole, another male character, is a constant throughout the book.

    Barry gives McNulty a voice in the style of an uneducated person of the mid-19th Century. He uses language, terms, and expresses ideas that likely were common for the time, although considered offensive, if not derogatory and unacceptable, today. Yet, the gay love and transgender issues are treated in a matter-of-fact manner. While the two men often hide their love from others, they are sometimes accepted as a couple. In a passage late in the book, McNulty describes how he is comfortable with being gender fluid.

I am easy as a woman, taut as a man. All my limbs is broke as a man, and fixed good as a woman. I lie down with the soul of a woman and wake with the same. I don't foresee no time where this ain't true no more. Maybe I was born a man and growing into a woman.

    The story follows Thomas, or Thomasina, from about the time he is 12 when he and his partner, often called Handsome John Cole, run away from their orphanage and set out to explore the country. They get jobs as female dancers in a mining town, which is otherwise without women. It's not a sexual thing, but about companionship, and it is an enjoyable experience for Thomasina.

    The pair then join the cavalry. This is where the book bogs down. Pages and entire chapters are dedicated to their travels and travails though the mountainous west, the intricacies and politics of army life, and the murder and dehumanization that occurs during the Indian Wars.

    Then we read similar tedious descriptions about the battles of the Civil War.

    Eventually, John Cole, Thomas, sometimes as Thomasina, and a Native child they have adopted settle in Tennessee with an old Army buddy and a few others. But even that life does not go smoothly, and there are more long-winded tales of unpleasantness.

    But for the most part, it is a satisfying ending worth getting to.

Book Review: Migrations

Migrations, by Charlotte McConaghy

    Franny Stone is forever seeking, searching, and surviving.

    The budding ornithologist is of Irish-Australian heritage, but she doesn't feel at home in either place. In fact, she rarely feels at home; she only is comfortable in or by the sea -- preferably alone, in the cold, deep ocean water.

    Set again the backdrop of an earth in the throes of a full-blown extinction crisis -- most land animals are gone, birds are disappearing, and the seas are being emptied of fish -- Migration follows Franny as she chases a flock of Arctic terns on perhaps its last migration. She tells us the terns are known for their record-shattering flights.

   That is true. The Arctic tern, a small bird about a foot long with a 2 1/2-foot wingspan, regularly travels the length of the Earth to its breeding grounds. They start up as far north as Greenland, and criss-cross down the Atlantic Ocean in a S-curve, thought to take advantage of the prevailing winds. They can travel some 44,000 miles on their journey. 

    Franny wants to follow them, and oddly, she persuades a fishing boat to take her. A vegetarian and conservationist, Franny dislikes fishermen, blaming them for the destruction of aquatic life. Her pairing up with them and their craggy captain, Ennis, is one of many contradictions in her life. 

    Others include her love for her husband as she always runs from him. She searches for her family, but shies away from releationships. She survives her own reckless life as she follows extinction.

    The story's main arc is the pursuit of the terns and the tale of  her voyage with the raggedy crew she meets and mostly befriends. But pierced throughout are flashbacks to other episodes in her life, which somewhat explain why she is always so antsy to leave those she loves. Some of those revelations can be startling -- those of the "Wait ... wait ... What?" variation. You find yourself re-reading certain passages just to ensure you understood it correctly.

    That is the allure of this sometimes depressing but mostly uplifting novel. It is stunningly beautiful in its story, in its descriptions, and in its warnings about how our actions are killing the planet. Franny is a wonderfully drawn character, with the flaws and fervor of the great heroes and wanderers in literature.

    It's more than a good read. It's a great read.

Book Review: Rockaway Blue

 Rockaway Blue, by Larry Kirwan

    It's almost three years after the 9/11 attacks, and the Murphy family remains in turmoil.

    Police Lt. Brian Murphy lies in his grave. His widow Rose and young son Liam remain lost in their big house by the ocean, unable to live up to the memory of the man who is revered as a martyred hero. His younger brother Kevin, a firefighter, still lives and works in his Rockaway neighborhood, fending off adulthood and his brother's shadow.

 

   His parents, NYPD Detective Sgt. Jimmy Murphy, retired, and childhood sweetheart Maggie, find themselves floundering, their Irish Catholism hanging heavy on their souls; growing old, growing apart, and unclear of both their futures and their pasts.

    Into this steps Kirwan, himself an Irish emigrant who moved to New York in the 1970s, and lived the authentic immigrant experience. 

    Kirwan is a polymath. He's a singer and songwriter, the founder and force of the Irish American rock band Black 47. He's a playwright and novelist. He wrote Paradise Square, a musical about the convergence of Irish and African music in the mid-19th Century, which is opening in Chicago. He is the host of Celtic Crush, a widely popular radio program on SiriusXM.

    In Rockaway, Kirwan wants to write of the Irish community's falling apart, losing its ethnic sense, and no longer dominating the city's police and fire brigades. But the overwhelming novel tries to do too much. Its themes run the gamut -- questions of faith and family, of community and identity, of the changing definitions of manhood and womanhood, of love and marriage, of the shifting cultures, even of the rivalry between the Mets and the Yankees.

    Still, it centers around a single, burning question: Why was Brian -- who died a hero because he ran back inside after leading people to safety -- at the World Trade Center before the first plane hit? Detective Sgt. Murphy's unofficial investigation raises the hackles of his former tribe as he delves into the issues described above. and his efforts at easing his family's guilt and heartbreak sometimes makes them worse.

    It's an uneasy tension that careens through the book, showing that life, tragedy, and death isn't always as clear-cut as it seems.

Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire

 

   If you are seeking a world to fit into, look for a door. It likely won't be an ordinary door, or you may not recognize it as one. But go to it, and twist what passes for a knob. If it turns, step inside.   

 

   This is your place. It's real, and it should make you happy. 

    Such is a message from Doorway, a strange tale from strange writer. 

    But its message is also acceptance, a plea and a command to welcome  others as they are. Don't judge. What you may think of as others' demons, their quirks, or their differences, may merely be their means of getting by in this world. 

    Doorway is a small, short book -- the first in a series of many, which was first published in 2016. I just discovered it last month.

    It's set in an unusual school in the wilderness somewhere. There, children who have found but returned from the doorways to their worlds -- whether it's a tiny fairy door set into their bedroom wall, or a retangular hole slashed into the air -- are sent to cope and struggle through their desires and the reactions to them. Most want to return, but they cannot find their doors again.

    So they try to make the world they are in their world, and seek to adjust to their differing realities. 

    These children, Nancy, the narrator; Jack and Jill, twin sisters who need each other; Christopher, who came from a world of skeletons; and Kade, a transgendered boy whose parents think should return only as the little girl they wanted; and several others, all go to Eleanor West's school. Miss West, of an undeterminate age, also wants to return to her doorway, and her world. But she cannot find her door -- or perhaps doors are only for children -- so she has created a world of her own, as well as for others.

... her family had owned the countryside for miles around, and now that she was the last, every inch of it belonged to her. She had simply refused to sell or allow developments on any of the lots surrounding her school. ... Some of her greatest detractors said she acted like a woman with something to hide, and they were right, in their way; she was a woman with something to protect.

    So, on this land, with these children, there is an adventure, and a murder mystery, along with sadness and despair. But at times it's light-hearted, warm and fuzzy, and it will leave you with a good feeling. You may not like or enjoy each character's emotions and reactions, but you will come to understand and accept them.

    That's a credit to McGuire's imagination, her kindess, and above all, her outstanding writing.

Book Review: The Elephant of Belfast

The Elephant of Belfast, by S. Kirk Walsh

    Amid the bombs and destruction of life during World War II, a young Northern Irish woman tries to preserve what she can.

    Her family is troubled; her few friends are floundering, and her job as a part-time zoo worker is underwhelming. So Hettie Quin tries to save a young elephant from suffering as mankind wreaks havoc.

    It's a fine book, with a decent if depressing story, but just a tad bit overwritten. Some of Walsh's passages go on far too long, with an amount detail that simply does not add to the tale. 

    But Walsh captures pre-war Belfast -- already an old industrial city split between its Protestant and Catholic citizens -- as it crumbles before our eyes. Hettie tries to save the city's soul partly by saving her small part of it.

    

    Her life is a mess. Her beloved older sister recently died in childbirth. Her mother has fallen in a deep depression; her father has abandoned the clan, and her brother-in-law is finding solace in joining the IRA. At 20, Hettie is thinking of her own future -- trying to escape the Irish pressure to get married and start a family. She wants a job, but also find herself attracted to a co-worker and her brother-in-law. A female co-worker urges her to live out her dreams, but also to spruce herself up to find a man.

    Meanwhile, the German bombs are falling on the ciy's docks and industrial center, near the zoo and Hettie's home. The Protestant half of the city curses the Germans, while many in the Catholic neighborhood see an opening in the English-German war to re-unite the long conflict for Irish freedom and unity. Hettie, again, is caught in the middle -- while she is Protestant, her sister married a Catholic, and thus her in-laws and her infant niece are Catholic.

    But her key struggle is to save the young elephant that recently came to the zoo, and is in danger. Neighbors who live near the zee fear the bombing might allow the animals to escape and threaten their lives.

    Walsh captures Hettie as a confused but kind woman, dealing with her own issues while her neighborhood contends with the ancient Irish Troubes and her city with its very survival. 

Book Review: The House in the Cerulean Sea

     

   

    

The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune

   Chock full of metaphors, with a delightful mix of characters and exquisite writing, The House explores life's inequities in a fun, colorful way. 

   This is a gay friendly book, in every new and ancient definition of the word.  

    It takes on, sometimes bluntly, sometimes figuratively, power and control, homophobia and bias, abuse of children, anti-immigration -- but sets a path to right them, with  kindness, love, acceptance, magic. 

    And a cat.

    Linus Baker is a working drone who does what he is told and follows the rules. He leads a lonely life, but he tells himself he is happy. He grows sunflowers -- the only spot of color in his drab life -- and loves listening to early rock 'n' roll on his Victrola. He's a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, and we first meet him while he is on an assignment checking out one of the orphanages under the department's control.

    He is thorough. He tells himself he cares, and he kinda does. He is methodical. But he is disinterested in what happens after he files his reports -- it's not in his job description. Linus is a good person. But he dares not go outside his comfort zone. It's against the rules.

    That is, until the day Linus is called before Extremely Upper Management and given a unique, classified assignment -- to check out a secret orphange on a distant island and see if the children there are perhaps too magical and too dangerous. Oh yeah, and check out the Master of the House, one Arthur Parnassus, to ensure he is following the rules.

    The metaphors continue as Linus leaves his dreary life in the city on a rainy day -- he again forgets his umbrella -- to take a long train ride to the island on the edge of the ocean. The rain lets up. The clouds disappear. The sun breaks out. The grey sky brightens into a cheery cerulean. He can smell the salt in the air and hear the waves in the ocean. "Then lights began to shine at his feet. ... They were soft and yellow, like a brick road."

   
    There he meets the children. There's Talia, a girl gnome who loves tending her garden and threatening to bury Linus. Phee is a forest sprite with a special relationship to trees and flowers. Theodore is a wyvern, and Sol is a shapeshifter with anxiety problems.

    Chauncey is -- well, no one is quite sure what Chauncey is. He's an airy creature, with his eyes on stalks, kinda like Oblina from Real Monsters, but less dense. He hides under beds because he's been told that's what monsters are supposed to do. But he cannot bring himself to scare anyone. His dream is to become a bellhop.

    Then there is Lucy, short for Lucifer, a six-year-old boy who is literally the son of the devil. Lucy is proud of his heritage, but suffers from nightmares. Lucy is an intriguing, if over-the-top character, treated with wisdom and humor and compassion. 

"Regardless of his parentage, he is a child," Arthur, the house manager, tells Linus. "And I refuse to believe that a person's path is set in stone. A person is more than where they come from. ... Behind the eyes and the demon in his soul, he is charming and witty and terribly smart."

    In addition to Mr. Parnassus, a magical, mystical guy himself, adults include Zoe Chapelwhite, an island sprite who watches her island and sometimes the children. And there's Merle, the grumpy ferryman who delivers people to and from the island.

    Lucy is wonderfully compelling. As the son of the devil, he is always threatening death and destruction, and predicting he will wind up as everyone's overlord. But he is six years old, and pictured as a tousle-haired, rambunctious orphan who craves attention.

    The key to the tale is that as Linus begins to observe the children and Mr. Parnassus, he takes notes and writes reports back home in his usual style. But he soon gets sucked into their lives and individual needs, and must keep telling himself to remain objective. He also becomes enamored with Mr. Parnassus, but can neither explain nor understand the attraction.

    His struggles of understanding are the heart of the story. And the metaphors become clear as we move along and open our hearts and minds to all of the story's characters.    

Book Review: The Midnight Library

 The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig

    Imagine, if you will, a young, drab British woman named Nora Seed. She is depressed. She lives a sad, lonely life. Her music career fizzled out, and she cannot make it as a music tutor. She is stuck in a dead-end job she hates. She lives in a ratty apartment. She regrests dumping her latest boyfriend because she has no other prospects. 

    Oh yeah, and her cat just died.

     So she decides to end it all by taking a handful of sleeping pills and crawling into bed. But instead of dying, she wakes up in a library. An unusual library with row-upon-row-upon-row of books. The neverending tomes stream by at various speed. Sitting at a nearby table is a woman who looks suspiciously like her childhood school librarian, Mrs. Elm.

    Nora soons learns she did not die, but instead is visiting the Midnight Library, a place between time and space. The books contain the story of every one of her possible lives, changing like butterflies with every single decision she has made.

    So she picks a book, reads the first line, and enters an alternative life.

    Which is a cool idea, and opens up a whole timeline of changes, possibilities, and adventures. But its realization has  two severe flaws.

    One is that Nora jumps into a new life with all the memories of her old life, but having no idea what she was getting into. For instance, in her first jump, she finds what would have happened if she had married her beau and moved with him to buy a pub in rural Ireland. This happens in other jumps -- her being a rock star on stage without a clue as to what comes next, as a wife and mother who doesn't know who the child in her room is, and as a scientist with no knowledge of her speciality. So she has to fake it.

    The second problem is that Nora whinges. A lot. Some of her whinging is passed off as part of her depression, and some is part of her learning experience. But jeez, she is not a likable character.

    But the story does draw you in. You wonder in which life Nora will be satisfied. You enjoy the interludes at the library, where philosophical discussions with the Mrs. Elm lookalike bring exposition, background, and deep thoughts.

    It's an intriguing, well-written book, which gives insights to the bizarre yet conceivable ideas of time bending and alternative realities.

Book Review: Church of Marvels

 The Church of Marvels, by Leslie Parry

   

    I loved the story, just not the way it was told.

    Set in Lower Manhattan and Coney Island at the tail end of the 19th century, Church of Marvels tells of a family of carnival workers, and then of an abandoned baby recovered by an underground prize fighter, along with an undertaker who regularly visits the city's opium dens. 

    I think.

    It's all very confusing. The novel drifts from one tale to another, abruptly changing characters, locales, and narrators. It's tough to keep up with the stories when you forget who is who. You spend too much effort trying to figure out how each person relates to the others in time and narrations. 

    And whatever you think is happening, or has happened, is probably wrong.

    Ostensibly, the tale circles around Belle and Odile Church, who with their mother, Friendship, perform at and run a carnival sideshow -- the Church of Marvels of the title -- on Coney Island. Alternatively, we are introduced to Sylvan Threadgill, who cleans out privies on the Lower East Side, and somehow finds a baby girl in a dark alley. There is Alphie, a makeup girl and sometimes prostitute -- who turns out to be one of the most intriguing characters in the book -- whom we first meet while she is babbling a confusing, perhaps fantastical, story while trapped in an insane asylum.

    Other characters come in and out, and it takes a while to figure out who everyone is and how they relate to each other. But just as you think you are piercing together the tale, it jumps off into another place with new people we haven't met before.

    Confusing, yes. But it is well written, and it is nicely wrapped up in the end by one of the characters who explains pretty much everything. I just wish more of the book was as expositive.

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: Shade

 Shade, by Neil Jordan

    A ghost who sticks around to relive and review her life is the focus of this novel that reads like a movie script.

    Not that it is lines of dialogue. But the writing -- the descriptions, the settings and shifting of scenes, the lengthy thoughts and soliloquies -- shows Jordan's background as a playwright and screen-writer.

    As you get into the book, you can almost see the images on a screen.  It's a commendable style, but its takes a while to get used to. 

    Jordan shifts the narration from character to character, sometimes jumping around in time, other times telling simultaneous stories from different perspectives. The characters may be in different places at different times in their lives, with the alternate stories overlapping.

    As a movie or play, one might follow along without fail. But as a novel, it can be confusing because when a new story begins or returns, it's difficult to tell who is speaking and whose tale is being told. An unseen narrator simply begins.

    When we first meet Nina Hardy, she had just been killed by a childhood friend, who cut off her head with a pair of garden shears and dumped her body in a cistern. (None of this is a spoiler; it's all told in the opening pages.) She exists as a spirit, able to return to various points in her life and witness the days she lived, and able watch her friends and family in a new light.

    We see her loving father and unhappy mother. We meet her small group of friends -- the half-brother she first met as a young teenager, the strange but sensitive boy who wound up killing her, and that youth's small and relatively inconsequential sister.

    Nina's early years are set in rural County Louth, along the River Boyne, in an Ireland torn between Catholic and Protestant, with the desire for independence amidst loyalty to the king. It continues through World War I and beyond.

    Their stories jump around in time and space in the early going, and while the tales continue to meander at times, they eventually join to form a cohesive narrative. It's a about loss, and love, and family. It's about war and peace. It's about independence and loyalty. 

    It's about friendships, and saving lives, and avenging death.   

Book Review: Clay's Quilt

Clay's Quilt, by Silas House 

    If you want to know Kentucky, you have to live Kentucky.

    But for those born and live outside the commonwealth, know that it has spawned an extraordinary group of native writers. One of these is Silas House, born in Corbin, the heart of Laurel County, and reared in nearby Lily, a town of some 3,000 people. House was schooled at Eastern Kentucky University, and Lousiville's Spalding University. He currently teaches at Berea College.

    So he has a taste for the soul of the state, an ear for its finely turned music and  language, and an eye for the dignity and exuberance of its people.

    That talent is on firm display in Clay's Quilt, the first of three books that showcases the coal country and mountains of Southeastern Kentucky. The trilogy is not a series, although it is related in charcters and story lines.

    In House's debut novel, Clay Sizemore is a good-ol'-boy but a righteous one. He has a job in the coal mines, a hankering for country music, and a rowdy best friend. But he's a youth adrift and uncertain about his future. He yearns to know more about his mother, who died when he was a toddler. But his loyalty to his family, and his sense of place, gives him something to grasp and aspire to. But he struggles to find more.

    The writing in this tale is superb. You can hear the Eastern Kentucky accents in the voices and the setting. House is a master of storytelling, and the book reveals its secrets in every chapter.

    The setting explores the creeks and hollers of the mountains, and the breadth of Eastern Kentucky culture. It's all there: the diverse and beautiful music, the sometimes smothering nature of its religiosity, its joys of home and community, its random, often brutal violence.

    House tells it all without fear or favor. It's his culture, so he knows its strengths and lives with its scars.

    It's a portrait that only an honest and loving native son can paint.

Book Review: Later

Later, by Stephen King

    You read Stephen King for the writing, of course. His is elegantly simple, using a working class language of good, useful words and descriptive phrases. It's not a style in which you pause and savor every word, but it gets the job done.

    And you read King's books for the stories, and the plots. Sure, sometimes he repeats anecdotes or plays with different perspectives of the tale, but it's always a story where he pulls you along and has you eager to get to the end. 

    King is typecast as a horror writer, but that has rarely been true. And now that he's often switching genres -- he's really gotten into detective and mystery tales recently -- it's even less true. He is, as one critic wrote, just a guy who puts ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances -- usually with a twist of the supernatural, or tearing a hole in reality to show another dimension.

    But mostly, you read King for the characters. One never tires of, or forgets, King's characters. Sometimes, they come back.

    I won't deny he uses tropes -- the magical Negro, the disabled child with mental superpowers. But he has has a cast of characters that often look like America -- and he is getting better at that. He shows strong people who are good, and evil people who are bad. Mostly, though, you can identify with his characters because you know them. They are based on regular people, with their thoughts and fears and biases

    And sometimes those ordinary people have a mystical or supernatural power. It's a King thing, OK?

    Which gets us to Later. It's about a boy who sees -- and can hear and talk to -- dead people. We first meet Jamie Conklin as a young child, but it is his older self telling the story. He introduces us to his mother, Tia Conklin -- a white woman of privilege and single mother who had fallen on hard times. We also meet her lover, Elizabeth "Liz" Dutton, a police officer with questionable ethics.

    This being King, we can probably tell what is going to happen -- someone will want to exploit Jamie's abilities. But that's something King can tell us, better than I could, and better than most writers.

    It's a short book for King, clocking in at less than 250 pages. 

    So pick it up and enjoy. You know you will.

Book Review: Buck O'Neil's America

The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America, by Joe Posnanski

    Buck O'Neil is a story teller.

    Joe Posnanski is a listener.

    Together, they created a book that is many things -- a pleasant read, a learning experience, an emotional tour through the United States from the eyes of a Black man who experienced the best of the country and the worst of its racism.

    In the end, it's an uplifting story, one of hope and happiness migled with meloncholy. It shows the heights Black men reached while leaving the tantalizing potential of what could have been.

    One scene, which occurred in 2005, has O'Neil and Willie Mays taking a tour through the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. They are talking about Oscar Charleston, who from 1915 through the 1940s was a center fielder and manager in the Negro Leagues, and who many consider the greatest player ever.

"How good was Oscar Charleston, Buck?" Mays asked the old man standing next to him.

"He was you before you," Buck O'Neil said. 

Mays nodded as if he had heard that before, and he looked again through the chicken wire at the bronze statues of mostly forgotten men who had played baseball in the Negro Leagues. They had played at a time when Black men were banned from the Major Leagues. Segregation was an unwritten rule and mostly unspoken.

    Throughout the 1990s and until his death in 2006, O'Neil was the living, breathing embodiment of Negro Leagues baseball.

     He wasn't the greatest to ever have played the game, but he was pretty damn good. He was a first baseman and manager, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. He was known as a fast runner and a decent hitter, who twice led the Negro American League in batting. In his later years, he became the representative of a group of men who were finally getting their recognition as players equal to those in the Major Leagues. O'Neil played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues museum.

   But mostly, O'Neil was chosen because, as he told Posnanski at the time, "I'm alive."

    In 2005, O'Neil, at the age of 94, planned to tour the country as the Major Leagues began to promote the history of the Negro Leagues in an effort to right some wrongs. Posnanski, then a columnist at the Kansas City Star, asked to tag along. O'Neil's response was, "Don't be late."

    This book is the result. It's a road trip story, the tale of a youger white man and an older Black man traveling the country, talking baseball and life and jazz, another of O'Neil's passions. Mostly, O'Neil talked. Posnanski listened. and took notes.

    One of the stories told has O'Neil talking with Monte Irvin, perhaps the only man to be a star in both the Negro Leagues and later in the Major Leagues. They sound just like what they were at the time -- two old men talking, kinda lamenting how things had been.

"I'm not complaining," Irvin said. "I mean, I lived a good life. Better than most guys in the Negro Leagues. I got to play in the Major Leagues. I got to play in the World Series. I'm not complaining. It's just that people used to tell me how good I was, and I would tell them, 'You should have seen me when I could really play.'"

"I saw you, Monte," Buck said.

"And?"

"You could really play."

"That's all I was saying," Monte said, and he smiled too.

    The book is not a biography, but there is a lot in there that tells you about the man Buck was -- and also makes you want to search out more about him and his life. While on the tour, and right up to his death in 2006, O'Neil still felt he had a lot of work to do, and he wanted to do it.    

    So O'Neil told the stories of the Black men who played the game, and the lives they lived. He was proud of his playing days. He knew he and his teammates could have played alongside the white guys on any Major League team. He rejected the notion that the players were a ragged-ass bunch of clowns playing pickup ball. He knew they were professionals who worked hard and played hard, and who were as good as -- often better than -- any of their white contemporaries.

Book Review: Kissing the Witch

Kissing the Witch, by Emma Donoghue

    The best way to read this book is to forget your previous images of fairy tales, and with the author's help, let your imagination run wild.

    Donoghue's rewritten fairy tales are extraodinary. She ties them together with wee little blurbs at the end of each story and the beginning of the next. She twists them a bit to give them a sense of freshness.

    I suspect many people's knowledge of fairy tales comes not from reading the originals, but from watching Disney movies or other cartoon animations. Such treatment often infantalizes the stories to simple tropes. Donoghue returns then to their truer nature -- part of a mythology that tries to explain the world and why things happen or may go wrong.

    The writing here is superb. The characters are new but familiar, often redrawn to fit Donoghue's feminine perspective. The stories are written in keeping with the old style, She uses her love and understanding of language to invigorate each tale, and weaves them to create a loosely tied longer tale.  

    As someone who is not an expert on fairy tales, I am unsure if these are rewrites of older tales, brand new legends, or both. Some seemed familiar, while others did not.

    All but one were absolutely wonderful.

    I could not get through The Tale of the Cottage, which was written as by one with subpar language skills -- perhaps an animal? -- but in a collection of 13 stories, one miss is allowed.

    To make up for it, there was Tale of the Voice, about an introverted woman the community sees as a witch. She is not. Instead, she observes and advises. She doesn't cause the curses people suffer through as the price they pay for their desires, but rather she understands and informs them what would be the consequences of their actions. It's a subtle but too often ignored distinction.

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.