needs more demons? » a-title

Jonathan Evison: All About Lulu

random — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:32:15 +0000

I had very mixed feelings about All About Lulu. There’s a lot to like: Evison’s prose is fresh and vivid, with lots of unusual metaphors (the first chapter, “The World Is Made of Meat,” is a stunner). The dialogue is crisp and credible, and Evison gets compellingly deep into his narrator’s head. I loved how the Cabazon Dinosaurs figured in the story (and also loved learning that they really exist).

On the other hand, this is a pretty creepy book. Narrator Will crushes hard unsurprisingly, on his step-sister Lulu in adolescence. Initially she seems — to him, at least — to reciprocate his unsiblingly feelings, but after the set-up chapters it becomes clear — to everyone except Will — that she doesn’t anymore. And Will. Does. Not. Let. Go. He’s gripped by the fallacious notion that there’s some magic formula that will rekindle Lulu’s affection for him. It leads him to do some pretty shitty stuff, and at times it was difficult for me to ride along in Will’s head. (Narrator Will is looking back from an unspecific older/sadder/wiser vantage point and frequently reminds the reader that he’s “not proud” of this or that; I read this as an attempt on Evison’s part to ameliorate Will’s unsympatheticness, but it didn’t quite work for me. And maybe I should admit that I’m not a stranger to the “find a way to make her love me again” myth, because that probably impacted my gut emotional reaction to Will’s transgressions.)

It made perfect sense to me that one of the novel’s back-jacket pull-quotes was from Tim Sandlin. All About Lulu has a slightly similar dynamic to Sandlin’s Skipped Parts, particularly that the viewpoint character is dramatically less emotionally mature than the more worldly crush object. My reaction also followed a similar dynamic; I was initially charmed by Skipped Parts, but found it (and the following books) increasingly disturbing as they progressed.

I’m curious to see what’s next from Evison; I hope he explores some different thematic territory.

needs more demons? I actually felt there was a demon surfeit, although maybe that’s in part because the book woke up some of my own.

Chelsea Handler: Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea; My Horizontal Life

random — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:12:08 +0000

I enjoyed these books more when I stopped thinking of them as literal, factual memoirs, and more as fiction in the uncomfortable-funny vein of Michael Scott or David Brent. Handler’s character is less a poster-girl for bad decision-making (although there’s some of that for sure) than a celebration of unchecked id. I suspect for much of the books’ intended audience that includes some aspect of wish fulfillment — I could do that if I weren’t quite so civilized and imagine the look on his/her face when I did! Sometimes Handler gave me a weird, smug buzz like the ones I get from watching The Wire or Breaking Bad — I’m so glad I’m not a drug dealer/junkie/meth-head/person Handler slept with for a chapter. But too often for my taste, Handler’s id-gratification seems just plain mean, as when she arranges a regifting exercise to humiliate both the original gift giver and the new recipient. These books also repeatedly tripped my liberal knee jerk response; I don’t find sweeping generalizations about men and women, black people, Jewish people, etc., less sexist or racist if they’re partly or even mostly positive.

I liked My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands much better than the other one, partly because it’s raunchier, but mostly there’s something approaching character development. I also thought it was funnier.

needs more demons? I do find it kind of amusing to imagine a smallish demon horde materializing at one of Chelsea’s parties and giving her more significant challenges to overcome than a shortage of Ketel One vodka*. And you know what? I think she might think it was funny, too. That is, if it happened to somebody else.

Hopefully she got some free cases for all the product placement.

George Mann: The Affinity Bridge

random — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:10:51 +0000

The Affinity Bridge sets some derring-do and a Sherlock Holmes-ish mystery in an alternate history where England had much more sophisticated technology under the Victoria’s reign (some of the tech, in fact, extends Victoria’s lifespan farther into the 20th century). Sometimes it seems like Mann is juggling a few too many plot threads — a zombie plague, clockwork airship pilots, and a serial killer who resembles a ghostly glowing bobby all figure — but ultimately the elements tie together satisfactorily.

I found The Affinity Bridge not un-entertaining, and although the reveal in the epilogue wasn’t too much of a surprise, it suggests a multi-novel story arc that I’m curious to see how Mann evolves. So I may read more. (The Affinity Bridge resolves as a stand-alone novel, but it is unambiguously the first of a series.)

On the minus side, Mann’s characters are flat and cartoonish. I had suspension-of-disbelief problems several times, most notably with iron as a structural element in lighter-than-air vessels and Mann’s depiction of the physics of railway carriages. Mann seems to struggle both with the rhythm of the prose and the blocking of action sequences (I assumed it was his first novel, but it’s not, so perhaps he is still seeking the right balance of faux-Victoriana and modern prose construction). I was less bothered by this when I started envisioning the fisticuffs shot in the clunky and often unintentionally humorous style of Tom Baker-era Doctor Who. A typical sample:

[The other man] got to his feet, careful to keep his pilot’s chair safely between the two of them. He smiled slyly. “Indeed we do.” He lashed out as he spoke, sending his fist flying toward Newbury’s face. Newbury ducked quickly out of the way, feeling the fist brush his cheek, ever-so-narrowly missing its target. He thrashed back at the other man, connecting hard with his sternum and causing him to stagger backwards, banging against the control panel. It wasn’t a graceful move, but it was certainly functional.

needs more demons? not as such, but a little more care in the writing would not have been amiss.

Robert Sheckley: The Alternative Detective

random — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:49:23 +0000

I saw it opined in several places that the third of Sheckley’s mysteries featuring Hob Draconian was so good it would make me want to go back and read the first two — and since I’m a “save the best for last” kinda person, I opted to read them in chronological order. I found The Alternative Detective enjoyable in a low-key way — I wouldn’t say it’s great, but neither am I sorry I read it. Here’s one of my favorite passages to illustrate its flavor:

I have noticed that private detectives do not spend much time discussing the injuries incurred in the line of duty, or whatever it is they call their work. They alll seem to have this incredible ability to shake of serious beatings, sometimes with blunt objects, with a remark to the effect that they were a little stiff the next day but a good shower and massage would take care of it
…
I’m not like that. I bruise easily. The contusions I suffered from that fall in the warehouse in Bicêtre left ugly yellow and purple blotches. I’d probably have them for months. And they hurt. I won’t mention it again, but I did want you to know.

Much of The Alternative Detective’s pleasure is meta-textual — it assumes you’ve read enough hardboiled PI fiction that you will appreciate how it honors some of the time-worn genre conventions and inverts or undermines others, like the more-or-less invincible protagonist. The Alternative Detective also riffs on some of the shopworn plot elements of the genre, perhaps most explicitly on The Maltese Falcon-styled tales. For my taste, The Alternative Detective never got quite so silly that I stopped paying attention to its plot entirely; nor did it ever get so serious that I gave it the kind of scrutiny I give to Dashiell Hammett’s fiction.

I was a little bugged by the narrator’s hippie-ness (worse, actually: ex-hippie-ness) — but that’s mostly a personal problem on my part, and anyway I wasn’t bugged enough to stop.

needs more demons? I’ll go with “no,” though it’s a close call.

Doug Dorst: Alive in Necropolis

random — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:50:46 +0000

The book jacket description and a handful of pull quotes (from writers with ties to the McSweeney’s camp, mostly) were enough to get me to read Alive in Necropolis, but the novel exceeded the expectations I had of it. It sounds perhaps a bit silly in capsule form: emotionally fragile rookie cop Michael Mercer rescues Jude, a kid who’s been running with a crowd a little bit badder than he can really handle, from a wild night that almost wound up with his death. In the course of trying to find Jude’s assailants, Mercer gets entangled in his predecessor’s final case, in which the late Sergeant Featherstone worked “the graveyard beat” more literally than Mercer can first accept.
But the description doesn’t convey the subtlety and sureness Dorst brings to the material (I would never have guessed this was a debut novel). In a brief interview at Devourer of Books, Dorst acknowledges a debt to Stewart O’ Nan’s The Night Country, another novel about a troubled cop (his troubles include relating to teens and to dead folks). But although I liked The Night Country a fair bit, I think Alive in Necropolis is a better, and far more surprising book. Dorst’s prose is also liberally salted with descriptions so incisive I had to read several aloud to my wonderful girlfriend, and his dialogue positively crackles. (In most years this would probably be my favorite fiction book of the year; it’s Dorst’s rough luck that I also read The Raw Shark Texts.) It’ not perfect; toward the end the parallels between Jude and Mercer are just a smidge oversold. But it’s awfully good.

needs more demons? no, but Dorst needs to write more books.