needs more demons?

Margo Lanagan: Red Spikes

random — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:53:27 +0000

Several of Lanagan’s spooky short stories start with deceptively simple, even prosaic, sentences, like “I arrived in moonlight; it wasn’t hard to find the way,” and “‘Well, at least it’s a fine night,’ said Mum.”

But these innocuous openings give little away. In what era is the story set? Does it take place in world like ours, or somewhere quite other? Are the protagonists human? Alive or dead? Answers to questions like these differ between these ten tales.

Lanagan isn’t one for big dumps of exposition. She demands a willingness to read a few pages before you’re quite sure what’s going on, and perhaps to re-read as your understanding grows. Her prose and structure are fiercely economical. I’ve enjoyed several of William Sleator’s books, but it struck me that if Sleator had written the opening “Baby Jane,” (which employs some of Sleator’s frequent tropes) it probably would’ve been a short novel, rather than a short story.

“Winkie” and “Under Hell, Over Heaven” by themselves would be enough to ensure that I’ll read more from Lanagan.

needs more demons? no.

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.

Jonathan Barnes: The Somnambulist

random — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:15:13 +0000

Barnes’ first novel is promising, if less than entirely satisfying, and certainly not lacking in ambition nor scope. It’s set in a fantastic London peopled by flamboyant, unlikely charactersat the close of the 19th century. Several folk are Not As They At First Seem, including the narrator, who does, it should be noted, remark in the first chapter, “in the spirit of fair play, I ought to admit that I shall have reason to tell you more than one direct lie.” The titular Somnambulist remains an enigma throughout, and although The Somnabulist’s many tall coincidences converge into the requisite big bang ending, I suspect sequels could well abound if the book finds favor in the market place.

I found myself wishing the book would commit to one tone or another. At times it seemed to be playing for broad laughs in a way that reminded me of Jasper Fforde’s “Thursday Next” books; at others it strained toward a darker, grittier mood. I didn’t find it fully convincing in either mode, and didn’t think they meshed very well.

needs more demons? Maybe. But I’m curious to see what Barnes writes next.

Nicola Barker: Darkmans

random — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:06:06 +0000

Somewhere deep in Darkman’s 800-page-plus bulk, there’s a scene in which Isodore, a character who vacillates between quixotic haplessness and menace, climbs a lighthouse where he is menaced by a small black bird that may or may not exist. He descends from the lighthouse and wanders off, in search, according to his young son (who may not be his son) of “the forrest.” He starts rolling about in the muddy sand at the waters edge, and (possibly, it’s unclear) subsequently starts humping what wood he’s able to find.

It was this sequence that sent me wandering around the ‘net to see what other folks have been making of the novel (since it’s far too new for Cliff’s Notes to have tackled). It seemed likely that this text was supposed to function on a symbolic level at least as much as literal, but I couldn’t quite grasp the key. I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that Darkmans deliberately evokes several old British Isles myths and archetypes, like Arthur and the Wild Hunt, but that didn’t seem quite sufficient.

Darkmans repeatedly feints toward several more-or-less conventional narratives: at various times it seems like it might be a magical realist novel in which the sadistic spirit of John Scoggins, jester to Edward IV, infests modern British citizens; or the story of absurd and drawn-out revenge schemes between embittered Chunnel contractors; or about reconciliation among estranged families; or the tale of a love quadrilateral in which father and son vie for the affection of the same married woman. It’s all of these and none of these. The connections between characters are so tightly interwoven, and the grounding physical detail of Barker’s prose is so precise, that it’s easy to miss (for a while) that the fragments of this book are very precisely machined to fail to mesh with one another.

needs more demons? Nah.

Steven Hall: The Raw Shark Texts

random — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:51:54 +0000

The Raw Shark Texts is an out-of-the-park homerun of a book for me, soaring over the Monster, bound for who knows where. My friend Marty convinced me to read it with enigmatic remarks about how he didn’t want to tell me anything about it, but thought I’d like it. That seems like a wise strategy. I will mention only three things:

Hall’s prose and dialogue are uncommonly vivid and lively. Even if I didn’t love what this book is about (and I do), I would admire the craft with which it’s written.
Although it starts in distinctly Memento-ish territory, it doesn’t stay there very long
The Raw Shark Texts is one of the most strikingly original things I’ve read in ages, but it did still remind me in fits and starts of Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Carroll, William Browning Spencer, Tim Powers, Charlie Kaufman, Neal Stephenson, and George Saunders — or, in other words, a whole passel of my favorite writers. And I’d recommended it unhesitatingly to anyone iwith a fondness for any of the above.

needs more demons? Absolutely not.

Tom Standage: The Victorian Internet

random — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:05:06 +0000

(Subtitle: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers)

Basically, I loved The Turk so much I’m going to read everything by Standage I can get my hands on. This book explores the meteoric rise (and precipitous decline) of the telegraph from the historical perspective. pretty much, of Web 1.0 (the copyright date is 1998).

Standage’s capable hands bring to life the colorful personalities of the architects of the “Victorian Internet” — not only Samuel Morse and Thomas Edison, but also Claude Chappe, one of the developers of the pre-electric telegraphs; William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, the rivalry-locked British counterparts of Morse, and the hapless Dr. Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse, who played a ill-starred role in the struggle to lay transatlantic cables.

Along the way, Standage provides ample evidence to support his titular conceit: that the impact of the telegraph on the late 19th century was remarkably like the impact of the Internet on the late 20th century. He provides numerous examples of how technological change caused social change in ways that will seem familiar to modern readers: increasing the pace of business, advancing egalitarianism, online dating, online scamming, government attempts to regulate cryptography with limited success, and so forth.

Standage’s balance of human interest with history and science is, for my taste, just about perfect. He provides enough technical perspective on the electricity that makes the telegraph possible that the book doesn’t feel glib or lightweight, but the narrative is fast-paced and engaging throughout.

needs more demons? Nope.

Roger Highfield: The Science of Harry Potter

random — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 10:48:09 +0000

I read this book in a continual state of bemusement about the audience for which it was written, wondering if, in fact, it exists. Presumably, people in the “buy anything that says Harry Potter” camp are supposed to pick it up. I was mildly intrigued because my biggest gripe with Rowling’s series is that the use of magic is not even internally consistent, let alone scientifically credible. A book that purported to explain Rowling’s fast-and-loose hocus-pocus with physics seemed so patently absurd that I was perversely intrigued. In fact, it’s roughly half wide-ranging popularization of current science and half a history of “magical thinking.” I found both sections fairly interesting on their own terms — I certainly learned some things I didn’t know, although it’s worth mentioning that Highfield discusses some controversial research without mentioning the controversy.

The connections to Potter’s magical universe often seemed awkward and forced to me, if not actually intrusive. Highfield makes a few specific suggestions, for instance, that Hogwarts’ Sorting Hat could have a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID for short) inside it. I suspect these will draw the same reaction from many readers as explaining the physics of rainbows to people who would rather just think they’re pretty. So if I’m correct that people who’d just as soon read a science book will be annoyed by the Potter-isms every few pages, and true Potter fans will be put off by explaining away the magic of the books, I’m really not sure who’s left.

It did, however, feature a rather unfortunate paragraph that raised my eyebrows a bit:

But if you overhear a conversation and hear the words ball, Hermione, and stranger, it could mean that Hermione either is asking a stranger to a ball or is asked by a stranger to come to a ball. Here word order is important. Indeed, the precise meaning of the word “ball” would also be context-dependent. This sort of conversation uses the grammatical structure of language to the full.

I’m a little surprised that some editor didn’t gently point out that there’s are some precise meanings of the word “ball” that might make it worth substituting an example that’s ambiguous, but not that ambiguous.

needs more demons? needs more something

Tom Standage: The Turk

random — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:58:03 +0000

(Subtitle: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine)

The Turk recounts the amazing true story of a machine that purported to play chess, and which was seldom beaten except by the top players of its era. “The Turk” and its operators enjoyed a long and colorful career that intersected (and sometimes inspired) the lives of political and scientific figures including Joseph Marie Jacquard, Charles Babbage, Ben Franklin, Napoleon, and Edgar Allen Poe.

From its inception many understood that it had to be a trick, with a human being guiding the machine somehow. But, ironically, no one fully divined “The Turk”’s secrets until the age of machines that actually can play chess.

Standage opens with some background on other automata of the era, including Vaucanson’s amazing creations, and wraps up his book with some interesting perspectives on “Deep Blue,” IBM’s chess-playing super-computer that defeated champion Gary Kasparov, and our evolving attitudes toward “intelligent machines” in general.

Standage’s style is lively and engaging. I try to balance (somewhat) “for fun” books and “good for me” books, and this one truly succeeds on both levels. Highly recommended.

needs more demons? Not a bit of it. Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, in particular, has plenty.

Charles Stross: Missile Gap

random — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:16:48 +0000

Good golly, I love libraries. I was delighted to have a chance to read Stross’s Missile Gap, a novella published in a small print run without coughing up its hefty price tag. I enjoyed Missle Gap, but truth to tell, if I’d paid the asking price, I would have been kinda bummed.

Missile Gap shares much of the Lovecraft + Cold Warrior vibe of Stross’s fiction featuring Bob Howard, operative of supersecret supernatural spy organization “The Laundry.” I think Missile Gap would appeal to most aficianados of the Laundry stories, although it’s somewhat darker in tone. In fact, I suspect that Missle Gap may have started life as a Bob Howard novella, but Stross either decided that it didn’t fit the continuity he’d established, or (perhaps more likely) wanted to play without the rules imposed by a continuing series. I also suspect that he may have tired of Missile Gap’s conceit before he turned it into a “real” novel; it ends abruptly, and leaves any number of plot threads dangling (although, arguably, that’s part of the thematic point). But even if it’s thematically consistent, I found it less than completely satisfying. It struck me as an interesting but not entirely succesful experiment.

needs more demons? incredibly, yes.

Maggie Estep: Soft Maniacs

random — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:04:55 +0000

I have mixed feelings about the merits of collections of linked short stories, as opposed to novels. A short story collection is legitimately free from the need to function as a single work. And short stories can explore multiple perspectives on characters and events in a way that’s difficult for a (conventionally structured, anyway) novel. On the the other hand, if the components of the book are short stories, not chapters, then they need to be able to stand on their own as such.

Judged this way, Soft Maniacs is partially successful. The evolving characters of Jody and Katy are explored through the first-person narration of men involved with them. The best of these stories explore the tension between naturalistic and surrealistic storytelling in lean, direct prose and dialogue. (It should probably be noted — regardless of whether you view it as an asset or detriment — that they’re also mostly pretty dirty.) Estep has a real knack for arresting openings, like

When my wife dumped me, I quite my job at the box factory, left Cleveland, and wandered for a few months. I didn’t like my wife that much anyway. And I hated Cleveland.

and

I had a rambing apartment in Brooklyn and I fucked my girlfriend Jody in every part of it. So did a lot of other people.

and

Sometimes I can’t believe the shit that comes out ofmy teeth. When I’m flossing I mean. Huge helpings of white gunk. Amazing that that kind of thing can be in there, in my own goddamned mouth, and I don’t even know about it.

But the book is let down by the concluding story “One of Us”, which revisits the territory of “Tools,” with some unconvincing twists that (it seems to me) are designed to provide exactly the sort of overall thematic linkage that a collection of linked short stories doesn’t actually need.

needs more demons? just a smidge.