Tag Archives: 4 star

Review: Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan

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crapalachia

Book: Crapalachia

Author: Scott McClanahan

Published: March 2013 by Two Dollar Radio

First Lines: “There were 13 of them. The children had names that ended in Y sounds.”

Rating: 4.25/5 calls to 911 to get the ambulance to take you to the store to buy 7-Up for your son

HOLY BALLS YOU GUYS I AM WRITING A BOOK REVIEW. Yes, yes, I actually read my ass a book and now I’m reviewing the motherfucker*.

*Apologies to Scott McClanahan and Two Dollar Radio for referring to the book as “motherfucker.” I have no evidence at all that the book fucked any mothers.

I didn’t know anything about Crapalachia when it arrived in my mailbox. I didn’t read the blurb on the back of the book. I knew two things going into it: one, that Scott McClanahan had a somewhat cheeky way of referring to Appalachia, to which I can relate, having my own roots sprawling through the same area of the world; two, as a setting, it would (or should) feature highly in the book, since the cover had “A biography of a place” as the tagline.

I have no damn idea how to sum up how I feel about this book, and that’s the truth. So, I’m not going to try to sum it up. Here are some thoughts I had about this book:

  • I didn’t get any sense of place from the book, even though Appalachia seemed to be intended to be present enough to be an additional character. I grew up in Kentucky and my mom lived in West Virginia (where the book takes place), so I admit I had some expectations; I didn’t really feel Appalachia in this book. Other than some brief references to coal miners and coal mining, it could have been set in a bunch of different places.
  • After I readjusted my brain from expecting a story about Appalachia, I thought his stories about his family were just about perfect. So much so that I actually just deleted a bunch of stuff I wrote and bumped up the star rating a half-star. No, it wasn’t the book I expected to read. But it was a book I really enjoyed reading once my brain wrapped itself around the actuality of the book.
  • I found McClanahan’s style a little jarring at first, but it smoothed out quickly.
  • People who liked Running With Scissors and/or The Perks of Being a Wallflower will probably enjoy this book. Or people who generally like books featuring fucked-up families.
  • I’m half-saddened, half-happy that McClanahan felt the need to add an appendix to the book to talk about what was true and what he had taken liberties with. Saddened for the obvious reason–has it really become necessary to strip away the magic of a book because some people can’t friggin’ figure out that literature is not the same thing as journalism? (Thank you, James Frey, for putting one over so hard on Oprah that this is now a Big Fucking Deal.) McClanahan, however, handled the appendix so well that it was a great addition to the book. I’ve read other books where the “confession” retroactively diminished the power of the story I’d read, but this one didn’t, and I was glad.
  • Reading this book directly after reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver is probably not the best idea and might have been what flummoxed my brain.

Overall: yes, I think this is a book to read. Once I stopped looking for Appalachia, the magic of the stories got under my skin and wouldn’t let go. The characters rolled off the page and tapped me on the shoulder. I laughed and I grew somber. I felt. I related. Good job, Mr. McClanahan.

Review: selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee by Megan Boyle

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Book: selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee 

Author: Megan Boyle

Published: November 2011 by Muumuu House, 96 pages

First Line: ”i could never be a sports writer, unless my assignment was to write ‘sports sports sports sports sports’ for three pages”

Genre/Rating: Poetry; 4/5 lists of your most embarrassing moments in life, dating back to age 5

Review: Confession: I don’t know how best to review this book.

For all of my love of poetry, I’m somewhat of a traditionalist. I like free verse (and it’s the form I use); I also can admire (and lust after, because I’m just not at all good at it) a well-rhymed poem with a more rigid structure.

I’m sure there’s a categorization for Boyle’s work. I’m sure someone’s come up with a name for it. I haven’t been able to find one online. Maybe this type of poetry is old hat, and therefore everyone assumes it doesn’t need to be categorized? Maybe they think there’s no need to categorize it? Maybe I’m just strange for my desire to put a name on it?

It’s part confessional blog post; it’s part prose poem; it’s part list poem; it’s part letter to a friend; it’s part text message; it’s part Tweet. I don’t know how else to describe it. She writes using all lower-case letters, very little punctuation, and very few of the poems have titles, other than a date. Is it experimental? I’d say yes, but only because I’ve personally never seen anything like it. Like I said, maybe this is happening all over and I just haven’t seen it before. I’ll be the first to admit that new volumes of poetry aren’t easy to find at my library.

It’s poetry for the digital age. It’s got the confessional feel of Sexton, but with a 21st century twist. It’s got a very off-the-cuff way about it; it’s a blog, broken into line breaks and stanzas. It’s equal parts funny, relatable, and heartbreaking. The narrator – whether it’s the author, or an unnamed narrator, it’s never specified – is very much a woman of our age: in her late twenties, dealing with technology, romance, food issues, media, family, friends, pets, work, school. It’s poetry for a generation that feels alienated from poetry. I love it for that; I love it for opening up poetry for an age that might consider poetry to not be “for” them – to hold no interest for them, to be something for an older age, maybe.

Personally, I find Boyle’s poems most successful, for me, with her list poems – her “unpublished tweets” (such as “seems…hard…to care about anything…lol…” – who on Twitter doesn’t at least have a mental list of these?); her “everyone i’ve had sex with,” detailing each and every person she’s been with since she started being sexually active; her “embarrassing moments,” listing her most embarrassing moments in life, from age 5 to now – my favorite line? the last: “email from my dad saying he’s read ‘everyone i’ve had sex with’ (age 23)” – and her “lies i have told,” both listing the lies she’s told and seeming to try, in a roundabout way, to analyze why she might have told them.

When Sexton and Plath and the like started writing their confessional poetry, the critics were horrified. Women shouldn’t be talking in such a frank way about their lives, sex, their failures, their (gasp!) emotions. This book is the child of the confessional poetry movement; confessional poetry for those with a short attention span, for those who get their literature in short bursts of light from a computer screen. “most of my time on the internet is spent refreshing the same pages repeatedly,” Boyle writes. “i wonder if they’re going to tell ghost stories about social networking sites someday”. They get graphic, sometimes, sexual, personal – but we’re the babies of the internet age, we’re used to that. Aren’t we?

The only criticism I have – and it’s minor, and it’s personal – is that the book begins to feel a bit repetitive, after a while. But that may be on purpose, and a conscious choice the author made. It’s a very stream-of-consciousness style of writing, and our minds can be a repetitive place, as anyone who’s been stuck in a rut can attest.

I don’t know if this is the future of poetry, or just the direction Boyle herself has taken, but either way, it was an interesting format, and I look forward to reading more by the author. Poetry’s constant ability to change with the times makes me happy. It’s how I know it’s going to survive long after I’m gone.

Read a Classic: Naked Lunch

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nakedlunchBook:  Naked Lunch

Author:  William S. Burroughs

Published:   July 1959 by Olympia Press in Paris; banned from the US for obscenity until 1962, when it was published by Grove Press in NYC

First Line:  “I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train…Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit holds the door back for me.”

Genre/Rating:  Postmodern literary fiction, 4.25/5 packets of bug powder

 

Sometimes when I read stream of consciousness writing, I find myself thinking, “I might understand this better if I were drunk.”  When reading Naked Lunch, though, I remember thinking “If I were drunk or high right now I’d probably start freaking out, lock all the doors, unplug the TV, and go hide in my bathtub.”

The bare bones plot of Naked Lunch is what happens to junkie exterminator William Lee as he embarks on a series of drug trips that lead him through the US, Mexico, Tangiers, and the nebulous Interzone.  As vague as this sounds, it has to be one of the most direct descriptions of the plot, because the beauty in this work is not the storyline, but the ingenuity of structure and style Burroughs employs.  In my mind, this work is the hallmark of postmodernism with its non-linear narrative structure; the vignettes, or “routines” as Burroughs called them, were designed to be read in any order.  Think about that for a second – any order.  You could read this book a million (or something, I don’t know math) ways!  Time and space are irrelevant and flexible, and letting go of those constructs makes for a freewheeling reading experience.

All that said, Naked Lunch could be a difficult read.  Who am I kidding – it IS a difficult read.  The work is confusing, blistering, unreal.  The best way to approach this text, I believe, is to just jump in and start reading.  Don’t expect to have a clear understanding of anything; nothing is constant, and you will forever be questioning if this is reality, a drug trip, a dream, or something completely different.  Also, be prepared for some seriously gross imagery and profanity.  I don’t believe these things detract from the work – they are purposeful and integral to what Burroughs is telling us – but I do want to give a head’s up for you future readers.

In 1991, David Cronenberg made a film adaptation of what was considered to be an unfilmable novel.  In a similar vein, watching the film is like watching a hallucination.  Simultaneously revolting and compelling in its exploration of human baseness, Cronenberg’s journey is not as important to film as Burrough’s work is to literature, but one has to admire his efforts to translate such a fragmented work into film

Reading Naked Lunch is as mind-bending as the insanity that Lee goes through when high.  You, as the reader, get all the benefits of many drug trips without damaging any brain cells!

 

DEATH MATCH: Fight Song vs. Damascus

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fight song tour

Has it really been a year since I did a death match? Sorry. A DEATH MATCH? Forgive me, my most beloveds, life got in the way of life. Or at least of reading. It wasn’t you, it was me. And when I say that, I’m not even using it as a cop out like your last bad boy- or girlfriend did. It totally was me. No, seriously, who would ever blame YOU? You’re as lovely as a spring daisy, you are.

Two books enter. One book leaves.

Today, our contenders: two novels by a very talented writer, Mr. Joshua Mohr. Who will prevail? Will it be, IN THIS CORNER, a book about a group of lost souls just looking to belong and connect to someone, anyone, in a seedy, down-on-its-luck bar? Or, IN THIS CORNER, a book about a man pushed to the very limit, who is also looking for something – or maybe a whole lot of somethings? This is an epic battle of battered barflies versus a man on the edge! Who will prevail, WHO WILL PREVAIL?

Book: Fight Song

Author: Joshua Mohr

Published: February 2013 by Soft Skull Press; 252 pages

Read: January 2013

First Line: “‘Way out in the puzzling universe known as the suburbs, Bob Coffen rides his bike to work.’”

Genre: Literary fiction

Bob Coffen is your average Joe: a wife, two kids, a none-too-challenging job for a man he disdains at a computer company. Even his last name is indicative of where he’s headed, possibly sooner than the rest of us. Until one day, his neighbor, the ebullient and possibly slightly touched-in-the-head Schumann, runs him off the road with his SUV. Something inside Coffen snaps. Landing in the oleanders is his wakeup call that things need to change.

I am a fan of books where the lead character is pushed to the edge and that’s when you see his or her true colors. I like to watch what happens to someone at their breaking point; what they’ll do to keep it together, whether they’ll change or do anything they can to have things stay the same. I liked Bob Coffen. I liked the characters he came across when he left his safe and staid beaten path. I liked seeing how he created his own road-less-traveled-by, and the people he chose along the way to help him carry his load. I said when I read Mohr’s first book back in March that I was looking forward to reading more of his work; I’m glad I was right that he would just continue getting better.

Book: Damascus 

Author: Joshua Mohr

Published: October 2011 by Two Dollar Radio, 224 pages

Date Read: March 2012

First Line: ”Let’s start this one when a cancer patient named No Eyebrows creeps into Damascus, a Mission District dive bar.”

You can read my full review for Damascus here, which I wrote earlier in the year. It was my first Mohr book (and I knew it wouldn’t be the last.) Mohr has a deft hand with characterization; his characters are real, and you know this because they often screw up. Colossally. And say and do stupid things. But you know what? *I* often say and do stupid things. And I like reading about characters that also do, because they’re real. And they’re relatable. And, to me, it shows a writer has been paying attention to life. Because, SURPRISE, in real life? People don’t walk around in white or black hats and have either the purest or the most dastardly intentions. They, mostly, are just trying to get by. Just trying to do their best. And I like reading about people like this, because when they succeed, it gives me hope for myself, and when they fail, I understand, because I’ve been there.

Now. Are you ready? It’s time for…DEATH MATCH.

The rules of DEATH MATCH are simple. THERE ARE NO RULES. No, sorry, that’s not true, there are totally rules. The rules are: I will score the books on an arbitrary system and, at the end, ONE BOOK WINS. What does the book win? YOU SHALL SEE.

Today’s DEATH MATCH shall be scored with: crazy bamboo uncomfortable-looking barstools, as there are bars in both books.

Fight Song:

  • Characters as real as anyone you might run into on the street (well, if you lived in a really kooky town): 2 barstools
  • A magician who can’t stop crying: 1 barstool
  • A very funny video game about…um…well, I won’t tell you, but just keep your pets inside, ok?: 1 barstool
  • A scene at an aquarium (I’m an easy sell, as I love marine life): 1 barstool
  • A love story that was realistic and sweet and down-to-earth and an organic part of the story: 2 barstools
  • Schumann messing with poor Tilda’s heart a little: -1 barstool
  • A scene near the end that made me cry, and oh, do I love to cry when I’m reading: 2 barstools
  • A number of sentences that were so beautifully written that I actually laughed out loud (or sometimes “ooh”ed): 2 barstools

Rating: 4.5/5 plaques that are also a clock (hereafter known as “plocks”) that don’t really tell the time, and are always stuck at midnight

Damascus

  • The characters, which Mohr is so good with that I kind of want him to script my life: 2 barstools
  • Shambles the prostitute who works at the bar, who is so broken she breaks your heart: 1 barstool
  • No Eyebrows’ backstory, which, when revealed, breaks your heart again: 1 barstool
  • The knowledge that Mohr understands that, when it all boils down to it, all we want is to connect with someone else, really connect, just once, before we die: 2 barstools
  • Owen, the bartender, who wears a Santa suit so people won’t make fun of him for other things he has going on: 1 barstool
  • Fish murder: -1 barstool
  • The ending, which didn’t seem fully thought-out: -3 barstools

Rating: 4/5 live catfish nailed to paintings of dead American soldiers in a work of performance art

I’m going to tally the votes. While I’m doing that, here’s something to think about: once, I was driving home and it was very dark and snowy and I thought I hit a cat? So I pulled off the side of the road and was all “cat? CAT?” and I was crying and crying and couldn’t find it and then I called BFF when I got home and he was all “calm down, it was probably not a cat, plus what if a car hit you, it’s like 11pm in the night.” And the next day there was a piece of wood there so probably I hit that in the dark and it wasn’t a cat, or the dead cat turned into a piece of wood, and that is the story. THE END.

AND! THE WINNER IS! With a total of 10 barstools to 4 barstools:

FIGHT SONG!

Hooray hooray for you, Fight Song! Please collect your prize! Today’s DEATH MATCH prize is:

A DVD of Falling Down with Michael Douglas, which I think Robert Coffen might enjoy because Michael DOUGLAS was ALSO pushed to the edge! However, he didn’t handle his crisis in such a panache-filled fashion, oh no no he did not.

Thank you for playing, and come back again for our next round of DEATH MATCH, where we will pit two more equally worthy adversaries against one another until the BITTER, BITTER END!


Review: Fakes Anthology, edited by David Shields and Matthew Vollmer

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fakes

Book: Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts

Editors: David Shields and Matthew Vollmer

Published: October 2012 by W.W. Norton, 368 pages

First line: “Disclaimer: nothing in this story is true.”

Rating: 3.75/5 fonts not used in this edition overall, but with some 5/5 apology poems from William Carlos Williams pieces in the book

(cracks knuckles) Well, I think I remember how to do this review thing, so let’s dive in, shall we?

This anthology caught my eye because of a review I read in the LARB (and by “read,” I mostly mean skimmed). The concept of the book revolves around the “fraudulent artifacts” in the title; it reminds me of a cross among blogs like Letters of Note, which contains real artifacts giving us fascinating peeks at people and situations via correspondence, pieces from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and fake Amazon reviews, the writing of which has become an art form unto itself. (The reviews for Looking For … the Best by David Hasselhoff kept me entertained for literally hours. Also, the three wolf moon shirt.)

The “artifacts” in the anthology range from an irate letter from William Carlos Williams’ “roommate” (“Will, you are a dick. You’re goddamn right I was saving those plums for breakfast”), to an essay from Lorrie Moore on how to become a writer (“First, try to be something, anything, else”), to reviews of Chris Bachelder’s beard, to a series of police reports that unfold a more personal story. Many of the stories have elements of humor, which is to be expected, given the playfulness of the idea of a false artifact; some of the stories also deeply move the reader. My breath caught more than once.

The anthology goes deeply enough into its concept that many of the usual bits of an anthology (acknowledgements, fonts used in this edition, the index, end notes, etc.) were also fakes. Some of these were good, others I found to be a bit tedious. I also had the feeling that the book was actually two separate books, if that makes any sense; continuing the fakes was a neat idea, but it also gave me the feeling that I was in a theatre still watching a play after all of the house lights had come up and people were starting to leave.

A couple of other things that I didn’t love about the volume. One was the introduction, which goes into the whole process of writing a fraudulent artifact (I like reading introductions… but not this one, I found it dry and I didn’t want to peek behind that curtain). The second thing, and perhaps this is just me, is that I felt a few of the pieces were far too long, considering they were written as concept pieces. One early piece, “From Some Instructions to My Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage, and to my Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of Their Childhood” (yeah, you can already see in the title, it’s a bit wordy), had me a tad frustrated–because I liked the piece, but when you’re reading a piece in an affected style, it can be mentally taxing if it’s overlong.

But hey, that’s one of the good things about anthologies–if a piece doesn’t suit your fancy, skip it.

I definitely recommend picking up this anthology, especially if you’re the kind of person who reads any of those sites I linked above. While I did have a few issues with it, I know that I will dip into it again and again to read the many pieces that I did like, because they were outstanding.

Review: Spark by Courtney Elizabeth Mauk

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Book: Spark

Author: Courtney Elizabeth Mauk

Published: September 2012 by Engine Books

First lines: “I have spent years going over our past, untangling memories from dreams, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when fate sealed. The easiest place to start is with the most blatant mistake: our mother, Jenny, kept the matchbooks in the junk drawer.”

Rating: 4.15/5 secret cabarets that you can only get into by invitation

(an electronic review copy was provided by Engine Books)

I had a hard time rating this book. I had to bust out The Rubric because I knew that this book was just under or just over four stars, but I wasn’t sure where, exactly, it fell. And then I had to compare it to a few other books that I’ve read this year, because this year seems to have been the Year of Troubled Female Protagonists As Written By Women, and I mean that in the best way possible. The women in these books have not so much slipped through the cracks, but are pushing themselves through with purpose. It’s been amazing to read about women who have problems other than “oops, caught pregnant!” and “ohmigosh, why can’t I just find a husband already?”

Seriously, so good.

Spark is the latest offering from the indie book world in this vein, and the first book I have had the pleasure of reading from Engine Books. I’ve been wanting to check them out for awhile now because they hit every note I could want to hear in their “about” section: serious editing. Women-friendly. Good design. Story-driven. Yes, please!

At the start of Spark, we are dropped into a situation that already contains the tension Mauk continues to ratchet throughout: Andrea, the protagonist, has had the responsibility of housing her older brother dropped into her lap. No big deal for some, maybe, but for Andrea, the arrival of her brother opens her own personal Pandora’s box. Brother Delphie, you see, has just been released from prison. He’d been in for twenty years after setting a house on fire, and accidentally (or maybe not? but he swears, accident) killing the family who lived there. Andrea, in the meanwhile, has struck out on her own and made a life for herself–one that begins to come unraveled the second Delphie shows up.

It struck me as I was digesting this book that it reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye in some ways–please, please don’t let that put you off of the book if you have no love for Catcher, as I don’t mean that in a stylistic way. I feel like this is the book Phoebe Caulfield might have written twenty years later, if and when (it’s a when, isn’t it?) she had to take Holden in. A troubled brother finally trying to put his nose down and just adjust, to finally be adjusted; the sister who is coming unraveled because she has never been able to quiet all of the echoes of her brother’s disturbance. They’ve gotten into her at a subatomic level, and his reappearance has activated them.

This novel is relentless. Mauk pulls no punches, nor does she ever slip on the rose-colored glasses to soothe us from all of the shit going down. She deals with family problems and secrets in a raw way that would make people with fucked-up families shudder in recognition.  Her characters interact gorgeously; these are characters that deeply understand their own motivations.

I did find a few parts of the novel to be a bit–mistimed, maybe? It’s hard to say which ones in a review because I don’t want to give anything away toward the end. I remember frowning at Andrea for re-asking Delphie a question on a matter that they had just extensively hashed out. Maybe I missed something subtle that made that exchange make more sense, but the re-asking of that question made the scene seem really anticlimactic. Mostly, though, I thought the execution of the story to be quite smooth.

Add Spark to your reading list. You will be happy that you did.

 

Review: Serpent’s Bite by Warren Adler

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Serpent's BiteBook:  Serpent’s Bite

Author:  Warren Adler

Published: September 2012 by Stonehouse Press, 320 pages

First Line:  “They crossed the asphalt road into the trailhead, slipping seamlessly into the alien world of the wilderness.”

Genre/Rating:  Literary Fiction; Really good

(PDF Galley provided by Greenleaf Book Group LLC)

When I started this book, I had no realization of what I was getting myself into.  I was expecting rustic adventure peppered with family secrets culminating in a bittersweet ending.  Boy was I wrong.

Serpent’s Bite had all the elements of a Greek tragedy: deadly treachery, noble characters, destructive hubris.  Oh! and incest. Lots and lots of incest!

It begins with a wealthy elderly father who wants to reconcile with his estranged son and daughter.  He tries to recreate a past wilderness getaway in Yellowstone that he and the children had taken with their late mother decades before.  The past trip is a source of fond memories, and he thinks everything is going to be wonderful once the children agree to go.  It only gets better when he finds that the guide they used on the first trip is still operating.  What luck!

Their luck sours quickly, however.  Once the background is established, every word of this story points to impending doom, and from the beginning I could tell that someone was going to die, even if I couldn’t figure out who.  Consistent foreshadowing hinted at the ending, but did not give it away, and by the time I read the epilogue, I was completely satisfied.

There were only five characters: the aforementioned wealthy father; the son, a failed entrepreneur; the daughter, a failed actress; their guide, a washed-up alcoholic; and the guide’s quiet Mexican trail hand.  Every one of these dramatis personae were fascinating and strongly developed.  The point of view shifted to put you in their heads one at a time so you could know their secret thoughts, motivations, and back stories.  I felt loathing for some and sympathy for others, but I never really liked any of them nor thought that any of them didn’t get what they deserved.

One of the characters I particularly hated, who bears special mention, was the daughter, Courtney.  She was ruthless, hardened by her determination to find success in Hollywood despite years of failure.  She was manipulative and calculating, and yet very foolish.  The story starts off from her point of view, and I was relieved when the chapter ended and I got to be in someone else’s head.

I’m usually a sucker for outdoor settings, survival in the wilderness, and man vs. nature, which is what made me pick this book in the first place.  I was expecting outdoor adventure, but what I got was a camping trip with horses.  Still, the setting’s contribution to the plot is undeniable, and the dangers of the outdoors were fuel for the tragedy.

All things considered, the story was somewhat moving, and my favorite thing about it was my response to the characters.  It was really good, but it didn’t exactly change my life.  If you want a well written classical styled tragedy (with a few typos) about interesting characters that you love to hate, this may be just the book for you.

Get the book: (Powell’s) (Amazon)

Read this book! The Booksluts Discuss: How to Get Into the Twin Palms by Karolina Waclawiak

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Book: How To Get Into the Twin Palms

Author: Karolina Waclawiak

Published: August 14, 2012 by Two Dollar Radio

First Lines: “It was a strange choice to decide to pass as a Russian. But it was a question of proximity and level of allure.”

Amy’s rating: 4.5/5 girls defiantly dyeing their hair with box colors not found in nature

Susie’s rating: 4.5/5 nights sleeping on bare mattresses because you both can and can’t stand the thought of his sweat touching you

It’s been a minute since we did a discussion post, but when I flipped over the last page of How To Get Into the Twin Palms, I immediately knew that this book would be the next one. I needed to read this book with my comrade-in-blogging Amy, even though it meant that I had to say goodbye to my lovely, deckle-edge copy (that I of all people wanted to hang onto a physical copy is telling–the printer does gorgeous work) so I could put it in the mail to New York. Womp womp.

Twin Palms follows a young woman who calls herself Anya. The book takes place during a time in her life that she might look back on in ten years and call a “transitional period.” Anya has lost her job, and, in that hazy twilight of being not-quite-employed, decides to reinvent herself with one goal in mind: to become Russian, rather than Polish, so she can go into the swanky Russian club across the street. When she makes Lev’s acquaintance, she knows it’s only a matter of time before she can gain entry. Twin Palms has resonance, humor laid over a pulsing knot of emotion, and a clear, clean voice that you’ll want to read more of in the future.

Susie: So, I’m glad you didn’t end up like, hating the book, since I basically strong-armed you into reading it.
Susie: I had all of the excitement for it.
Amy: No, it was good. Very good. I don’t think I’d 5-star it – probably 4.5 – but very very good. (And I don’t know why it’s not a 5. It’s missing…something. But I don’t know what.)
Susie: Yeah. I tend to be stingy on the five-stars anyway. Very few books are that perfect.
Amy: I think it maybe left too many loose ends for me? But then I thought, eh, life’s full of loose ends, not everything ties up neatly. So it was probably on purpose.
Susie: I didn’t get the sense of unresolved plot point rage, so I’d guess it was intentional. I liked it, actually–I would often rather a book leave some things to mystery than try to tie everything up neatly.
Amy: Yes. There’s definitely a fine line between everything being TOO neat – which I hate, that’s not realistic – and then leaving way too many danglies so the reader’s like…um…what about…and what about…WHAT HAPPENED?
Susie: I really identified with the protagonist in this book. She reminded me a little bit of Della from Zazen.. not that they are the same, but almost sisters in a way.
Amy: I like a protagonist who’s a little bit lost and a little bit searching, because that’s me, and that’ll always be me. I find that easy to relate to. And yes, I agree – this book had a Zazen-esque feel too it. Similar protagonists – both young women that didn’t quite fit in, that were doing their best. I liked them both a lot, felt for them both a lot.
Susie: And both part of very distinct subcultures. The divide between the Polish and Russian cultures in LA interested me, because as Americans, we can tend to gloss “Eastern European” into one big lump at times.
Amy: I found that interesting, too. I loved the food and the culture. And the language! I’m such a language whore. I was repeating the words in what I’m SURE was mangled pronunciation and grinning to myself.
Amy: The sensory input in the novel was fantastic. She really excelled there. You smelled things, you felt things, you saw things.
Susie: It took me back to when I lived in Anaheim. We lived there during the time that Irvine was on fire.
Amy: I’ve never lived anywhere where there was a fire, and she really brought me there. I was impressed. Loved Anya in the pool covered in ash.
Susie: It was like that, just like she described. The air was heavy and smoky.. we were a little far away to get the ash, I think. I remember we went out to get doughnuts one night–I have no idea why, since everything was on freaking fire–and we couldn’t drive with the windows down. The doughnut shop was deserted, just us and the guy behind the counter, watching the fires on the news in silence. The city was silent, for being as populated as it was. Twin Palms put me there again, fully.
Amy: I’m a firebug. I understood her need to be closer to it, her obsession with it, and her…um…I don’t want to spoiler. Fire’s cleansing. And a good way to put a period at the end of a sentence.
Susie: I thought it was a great way to set the mood for that time in Anya’s life. It feels different, when you’re near fires like that–everything feels different, like an emergency. You’re taken out of your normal life. It fit well with her circumstances.
Amy: I also loved her constant need for change. Her hair color. Me in college. Didn’t have the same hair color three months running for probably ten years.
Susie: I connected with her conflicting feelings about Lev. How she wanted to roll around in his smell one minute, and how it disgusted her the next minute. I’ve been down that road a few more times that I’d care to publicly confess (catches herself before posting a broad estimate).
Amy: Lev! I liked him, but he was also a dog. I guess he was just used to getting what he wanted from women. I loved how once she got into the Twin Palms it wasn’t what she’d been dreaming. How many times has that happened in my life? ALL.
Susie: I KNOW. And her experiences inside the club–it’s jarring when you’re involved with something that’s all-consuming and you realize there’s a completely other point of view to your actions, one that might not be so . . . pleasant.
Amy: YES. When you finally see the other point of view, you can open up enough to see it? It changes you a little. It remakes who you are, what you’ve been doing all that time.
Susie: Do you think she’ll ever run across the fireman again?
Amy: I think he represented a cleaner, better life. The American dream, I guess. And I don’t know if she’s there yet, or if she ever will be. Or if she ever even really WANTS to be!
Susie: So, two thumbs up to Twin Palms.
Amy: I do highly recommend it. I also love The Believer, and the author edits for them (it’s a publication of McSweeneys!).
Susie: She’s also on Twitter @BelieveKarolina (cos, I stalked her a little after I finished–in a non-creepy way).
Amy: Oh, will have to find her! I’ll want to know when her next book comes out. She’s one to keep an eye on, if her first book was this good.
Susie: I KNOW. I devoured it. I needed to read something that good.

I read Twin Palms weeks ago, but the story still haunts me. If I had to suggest one book from 2012 (so far) to read, it would be a very close race between this book and Dora: A headcase. What about you guys? Have you read Twin Palms yet? Do you think you’re going to read it? You know where the comments go.

(Related: a review of Twin Palms from TNBBC, for those who like more traditional reviews.)

Review: Fatty Goes to China by Royston Tester

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Book: Fatty Goes to China

Author: Royston Tester

Published: May 1, 2012, by Tightrope Books; 150 pages

First Line: “At the end of August as Zhang Xiaoya turned into a duck, or believed so, her revered grandmother’s print above the radiator began to moan.”

Rating: 4.6/5 teddy bears on a tour of the führerbunker

(Review copy provided by Tightrope Books)

I picked out this book because I couldn’t resist the name. “Fatty Goes to China”? Yes, please. I will have some of what you’re offering.

I read the first story in Fatty. Then, I flipped back to the beginning and read it again. Then, I closed the book and read the back of the book. The very first blurb said this:

“Royston Tester is no help at all, but you will love him for it.”

This statement gives a highly accurate assessment of reading Fatty Goes to China.

Fatty contains eleven stories that are interconnected, switching between stories set in China and stories set in the West (primarily Germany and Canada). The stories have intriguing titles, like “The Pink Virgin of KFC”, “Queens Take Longer, I Suppose”, and the title story. The prose style is fluid; Tester captured me on the first page:

“I live in duck, she would tell herself, exasperated. Poultry moonscape, six days out of seven. Hefty shifts, wages pity-little. No wonder I can’t sleep.”

Tester hands out understanding strictly on a need-to-know basis, and it took me by surprise, I will admit. You know those books that spell everything out for the reader? This isn’t one of them. This book isn’t one to fly through, gobbling down pages; this book needs to be chewed on, like a crusty French bread. The “what the fuck” feeling I had when I reached the end of the first story told me that I was in deeper than I expected to be. Yet, this feeling wasn’t unpleasant.  I was happy to be challenged. I read each story twice before moving on to the next.

Tester’s habit of revealing just enough information to make the story hang together makes one read like a detective; only at the end do you get a round picture of characters and events–and even then, it’s not fully complete. Just complete enough. This is especially true of the stories that take place in the West; four of them focus on the same characters, each story being told from a different point of view so that we see angles of the stories that were previously invisible. Reading Fatty is a bit like watching the film Memento; like Leonard, you piece together snapshots and try to figure out the truth, but even when you’ve reached a conclusion, nagging doubts convince you that you didn’t entirely get it right. I don’t think I have fully explored everything this book has to offer yet, and I read it twice.

Relationships take the dominant thematic role in Fatty. Tester explores familial relationships, working relationships, friendships, and love with nuance and subtlety. The uneasy relationship that China has with the West played into many of the stories, as well; many of the stories set in China allude to the Beijing Olympics, which brought an influx of westerners who were unfamiliar with the cultures and customs there: “…you marveled at the Westerners’ audacity as well as their sexy-stupid mistakes.” ”Mandarin morons,” one character describes them, who know only how to say “thank you” and “goodbye.” The peek behind the curtain was fascinating, not to mention a tad humbling for this westerner.

Maoism, the holocaust, homosexuality, arranged marriages, death–I think possibly even organ-stealing, although my context on what happened at the end of that story was shaky–all show up in Tester’s collection. Characters are restless, unhappy, uncertain. It leans dark, but it’s not without touches of hope.

I can tell I’m writing a clumsy review because I can’t find the words that will capture this reading experience. I’ll try to wrap it up with this: you can’t read this book if you’re even a little bit distracted. If you try, you might miss a tiny morsel of a crumb trail pointing the way. This seems like it would be frustrating, but, for me, it only fueled my curiosity. When you’re in the mood for a challenge–when you need to stretch your thinking muscles a bit–I highly recommend Fatty Goes to China. It’s not a perfect book, and it may perplex you often, but it’s haunting and damned interesting. I won’t forget this book.

 

 

 

 

Review: All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison

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Book: All About Lulu 

Author: Jonathan Evison

Published: July 2008 by Soft Skull Press, 340 pages

First Line: ”First, I’m going to give you all the Copperfield crap, and I’m not going to apologize for any of it, not one paragraph, so if you’re not interested in how I came to see the future, or how I came to understand that the biggest truth in my life was a lie, or, for that matter, how I parlayed my distaste for hot dogs into an ’84 RX-7 and a new self-concept, do us both a favor, and just stop now.”

Genre/Rating: Literary fiction; 4/5 mountains of mashed potatoes erupting baked-bean lava onto the plate of the girl you love

Review: I’d been wanting to read something from Soft Skull Press for a while – they have a very interesting catalog, plus how can you resist a publisher with a name like that? – but unfortunately, my library isn’t the best about stocking indie lit. I went back and forth from the Soft Skull website to my library’s website, and finally, one was there! I was very pleased. Luckily, it was this one, because it was good.

Will Miller is an outcast in his own family – his father (Big Bill) is a bodybuilder, his younger twin brothers are his father’s spitting image (and seem to share a brain between them) and his mother (his only ally) dies when he is very young. He drifts along, not fitting in anywhere, even refusing to eat meat (causing his father to almost explode: “…meat is good for you…you have to eat meat to grow. How do you think cows got so big?”) Once his mother passes away, his voice changes early in life, and he stops talking much – saying maybe ten words a day.

Until Lulu enters his life, and he finds his raison d’être.

Lulu is his new stepsister, as his father remarries his grief counselor. Will finds his voice again. He and Lulu form a bond almost immediately, and he falls head-over-heels in love with everything Lulu. He starts to keep a journal – “All About Lulu” – chronicling everything she says and does, interpreting everything, down to every small gesture, every word. They have a secret language, an understanding, it is the two of them against the world, and they agree that, because they are not related, once they are old enough, they will marry, and travel the world together…until, with no explanation, everything changes.

The book follows Will and Lulu (and their family – Big Bill, the twins Doug and Ross, mother/stepmother Willow, and their friends, each more colorful than the last) from age eight to their early twenties. It starts in the late seventies (which made me happy – Will was only a few years older than I am, and I loved the setting, because it brought back a lot of memories of my childhood). The characters are well-written and truly three-dimensional (especially, surprisingly, the secondary characters – I couldn’t get enough of Will’s landlord and friend, Eugene Gobernecki, with his American dream and his broken English, who somehow managed to not become a cliché and was a joy to read about.)

The only thing that caused me to rate it just a little less than I might have was that I somehow didn’t quite believe Will and Lulu’s relationship. I believed them separately; however, when they were together, it rang false. Something about their relationship seemed just a bit forced, just trying just a little bit too hard. Will was just a little bit too precocious when dealing with his feelings for her. Lulu was just a little bit too Girl on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown. And once the Very Big Mystery (yes, this is a book with a Very Big Mystery) came out (I’d guessed it about a third of the way in, rendering it…well, I guess, a Not-Very-Well-Disguised-Secret, more than anything) it was anticlimactic and also quite confusing as to why it would have made them act the way they did.

(And in news of the petty, this was the book that caused me to tweet this tweet. I know. I KNOW. You can’t catch ALL the typos in a book. But things like this pull me out of the action.)

But these are, honestly, minor things in a book that works this well. Read it for the characters; suspend your disbelief just a little tiny bit about the plot. I think that’ll work just fine. It’s worth it.

Get the book: (Powell’s) (Amazon)