Review: A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

Posted by lucysfootball — April 10, 2013

Book: A Hologram for the King

Author: Dave Eggers

Published: June 2012 by McSweeney’s, 328 pages

Date Read: March 2013

First Lines: ”Alan Clay woke up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was May 30, 2010. He had spent two days on planes to get there.”

Genre/Rating: Literary fiction; 3.75/5 bottles of moonshine, drunk alone in furtive gulps long after midnight, that make you think performing surgery on yourself is a very good idea

Review: I met Dave Eggers once.

It is true! He gave a reading at one of our local colleges, and after the reading, he did a book signing. He was very polite and very kind, even though he was there forever signing books and the line was very long. He wrote something like “your beautiful smile lit up the room” in my friend’s book, and that made her so happy she beamed like the sun. I loved that about him.

I know a lot of people think Dave Eggers is a hipster god. I think he’s fine. I like him just fine, but I like a lot of authors. I think he does a lot of good work and I like McSweeney’s a great deal and know he founded it. He works a lot with disadvantaged youth. He seems like a good guy. I think I’ve only read one of his books – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – and have had The Wild Things on my to-read shelf for ages, but haven’t read it yet. I like him just fine.

Not surprisingly, I liked this book…just fine. A tiny little bit more than just fine, I guess. Just a bit under liked-it-a-lot.

Alan Clay is a consultant for an IT firm. He’s had a string of failures – his marriage, his various businesses, his relationship with his father. He thinks he’s dying of cancer. He can’t afford to pay his daughter’s tuition for her next year of college. He arrives in Saudi Arabia with his young, dynamic team of fellow consultants to present technology to the king. If this works, he will have enough money to do what he wants, send his daughter to college, take his house off the market. But in Saudi Arabia, things don’t run as Alan plans. The timeline seems to be much slower than he expects. There is no sense of urgency. Everyone is waiting for the king – but the king, much like Godot, never seems to arrive. And Alan seems to be looking at yet another failure in a long line of failures.

As a rule, I like books like this – a man pushed to the limit, at the end of his rope, a man who has to make a change or end up a casualty of life. I like them because I like to see what actions the character takes to get themselves out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves. I like to see the activity. What I didn’t like about this is there was very little activity. Which is, I suppose, more realistic – life, at times, seems to be all about inactivity – but I don’t know that I want to read about inactivity.

Alan didn’t do much. He was given opportunities to grab life by the balls and didn’t even make a snatch at it. He just let things pass him by. He seemed beaten, weary, depressed, down. And I know, this is realism. I know that. But I wanted him to fight. I wanted him to say, no, not today, I’m going to win this. And every time I thought he might – nope. Same old nothing.

That being said, the writing was beautiful. Eggers’ prose is haunting and spare and evocative. I love his words. I liked the characters, and I did appreciate the realism (even if I was wishing for a little more optimism in there.) I liked reading about Saudi Arabia – I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything about that area before.

Overall, not a book I’d unequivocably recommend, but not a book I’d steer people away from, either. It was good read, a solid one, and not a waste of time. And Dave Eggers, thank you for being so kind at the book signing. I will always remember that. We waited a very long time in line and you could have been an asshat, but you totally grinned like we were the only ones in the room.

Mine says “Do not turn away from the light!” This is a signed copy of “Giraffes? Giraffes!” which he didn’t write, but it’s a McSweeney’s book, so he signed it anyway. Also, read it, because it will make you laugh so hard you have a coughing fit.

Review: A Million Heavens by John Brandon

Posted by lucysfootball — March 24, 2013

Book: A Million Heavens

Author: John Brandon

Published: July 2012 by McSweeney’s, 272 pages

First Line: ”The nighttime clouds were slipping across the sky as if summoned.”

Genre/Rating: Literary fiction; 3/5 songs, written by the man you loved who died, filling your mind until you can think of nothing else

Review: I am an unabashed John Brandon fan.

His Citrus County was one of my favorite books of last year, and I’m still looking to get my hands on his Arkansas (my library isn’t the best at stocking indie-published novels, and the price tag is still a little steep for my Kindle, but I’m going to break down one of these days. I’m a terrible impulse-buyer when it comes to the Kindle.)

(Also, can we just marvel over this cover? Gorgeous. McSweeney’s really excels at cover art.)

I was so looking forward to A Million Heavens, and after a few initial disappointing chapters, I thought, “it will get better. It just has to hit its stride.”

Unfortunately, it never really did.

Set in New Mexico, it follows, in small, somewhat strange chapters, the events that happen to various townsfolk over a bleak winter. A young prodigy lies in a coma while his father sits by his bedside, helpless. People sit outside in vigil, for various reasons. A woman on the run from her life attempts a new start with a man with a checkered past. A lost young musician mourns the death of the man she loved, which is proving to also be the death of her muse. The mayor of the town tries to find himself through his love for a woman who is possibly off-limits. And a wolf travels through the town, trying in vain to retain his wildness in a town that’s becoming increasingly industrialized and filled with the mystery of humans.

The problem I had was that I cared about very few of the stories/characters. I found myself waiting, somewhat impatiently, for the chapters involving Cecelia, the musician, and her departed love, Reggie (who actually gets a voice and a storyline from the beyond.) They were the two characters who seemed the most fleshed-out, whose fates and outcomes I actually cared about. The rest of them, although not poorly written (Brandon couldn’t write clunky prose if he tried; the man writes beautifully) were…somewhat cardboard. Uninteresting. I was not invested in their stories, in their fates. I was reading to see what happened to Cecelia; if she would redeem herself, if she would find what she was looking for under the New Mexico stars, in the damage she found herself drawn to cause. I was reading to see if Reggie would be able to finally communicate his love for her from beyond, because he’d missed his chance when he was on earth.

I’m not flat-out panning the book. Brandon’s prose is leaps and bounds better than most people’s I read, and I will continue to read his work, and eagerly await what he publishes next. But after the wonder and mystery and magic of Citrus County, I found myself disappointed by this one. I know he’s capable of more and of better. I appreciate that he was trying something different and outside the box, and I like that he’s attempting to evolve; I just don’t think this book worked on all levels.

Rob writes a review! No Alternative by William Dickerson

Posted by TheEnabler — November 18, 2012

Book: No Alternative

Author: William Dickerson

Published: April 5, 2012 by Kettle of Letters Press

First Line: “Suicide is a universally human phenomenon.”

Rating: 5/5 Stewart Copeland Tama Signature Snare Drums

(A review copy was provided by the author.)

No Alternative is one of those sparkling little independent gems that makes you want to stand up celebrate your literacy….with cake and punch.

Perhaps I feel that way because it’s my kind of read. Or perhaps it’s just a damn brilliant little book, The subject of music in novels, particularly rock, does tend to thrill me, possibly because it delineates bits and pieces of my own experience. And possibly because it’s so rare. I can name, off the top of my head, only two other books that used rock as a theme.

Music is only a vehicle for this book. It is far less about grunge or punk or rap than it is about why this music bubbles to the surface of society the way it does, why it takes hold of you as a teen and becomes a way of life. It isn’t about the music itself, it’s about why we listen to it, how it makes us all feel a little less fragile in a great big scary world, and why we feel so fragile to begin with–ideas that Mr. Dickerson has hidden underneath his, I suspect, deliberately misleading synopsis. While the book takes place in 1994, some months after Kurt Cobain’s death, it serves only as a focal point; Cobain’s spirit serves as a sort of guide. Not in the sense that he’s a character in the book, just as something you’ll keep in the back of your mind as you read. It doesn’t really matter if you’re a child of the ’60s, ’70s, ’80′s, or ’90s, this book will speak to you. The guiding spirit could just as easily be Hendrix or Morrison. As I said, it’s not about the music, it’s about why we need it.

I wont say more than that since this is one of those books where the experience would be ruined by even the most inadvertent of spoilers. And, speaking briefly of spoilers, I should warn you that if you decide to get your mitts on this book and happen to stroll off to Amazon to acquire it, do not, I repeat, DO NOT read the reviews of it therein, unless you enjoy having the whole of a book handed to you on a plate before you even ‘go to checkout’. This is a book that would particularly suffer from any in-depth review. (Cretins. What IS the damn point of reading a book like this, a book that can so adroitly fuck with your perceptions, if some idiot ‘helpfully’ gives you a goddamn book report on it that includes the whole damn plot?) I can be only thankful that I read these silly reviews after I finished it and not before. Go into it cold, people. Trust me, you’ll enjoy it far more.

But now, let’s leave the story, and plots, and stupid reviews, and go briefly to the nuts and bolts of the book.

Characters: every one etched with the brutal clarity of a razor blade and shining as bright as a diamond. These characters breathe. You’ve met them. Convincing, compelling, they are about as real as fictional characters can get.

Humor: sad and cynical, and often painful.

Writing: direct, sympathetic, and not a little cunning. My emotions were engaged from the first line (in fact, the first line pissed me off) and didn’t let up once til the end and all without making me feel as if I were being blatantly manipulated. That’s a personal pet peeve of mine, one that would likely make a good topic for Reading Rage. I don’t like it when my emotions are being jerked around in an obvious way, which Mr. Dickerson does not do. He writes his story and leaves it up to you to feel. Or not. But I did say he was cunning, yes? You won’t notice it though, not til the end.

And when you finish No Alternative, I predict that, as I did myself, you’ll go back to page one and read it all over again.

Reading Rage Tuesday: Authors, you don’t need to yell “Fore!” to foreshadow.

Posted by greengeekgirl — August 21, 2012

The caption on Flickr for this image is “John Laing does murder to a golf ball.” JUST LIKE AUTHORS DO MURDER TO FORESHADOWING.

I touched on the topic of today’s Reading Rage a bit when I reviewed The Absolutist by John Boyne. And when I reviewed 11/22/63 by Stephen King. And (in a flattering way) when I reviewed Boleto by Alison Hagy. I realized after last week’s review of The Absolutist that clumsy foreshadowing seems to be a major pet peeve of mine.

Foreshadowing is a literary device; to foreshadow means to drop hints or indistinctly suggest future plot developments. (Wikipedia tells me that this can also be referred to as “adumbrating,” which is a cool word that means foreshadowing in a vague way, or to give a sketchy outline of something.) When done correctly, foreshadowing can create a fine sense of dread, foreboding, curiosity, excitement, lust, anticipation–all things that make you want to keep flipping pages until you get the big payoff, and then maybe have a cigarette.

This not-at-all creepy video with floating heads will explain more about how foreshadowing works.

Good foreshadowing will sometimes slip right by, unnoticed. Other times, it’s front and center, like the witches in Macbeth. (“Fair is foul, and foul is fair …”) What I find that good foreshadowing never is? Predictable and obvious, and I’ve been seeing a rash of both in books I’ve read recently.

There are times when predictable is good–in science, for example. In science, if you (and those who care to fact-check you) can test a hypothesis to the point where you can actually predict behavior based on your model, it becomes a theory–in other words, it’s considered true. Predictability in science is a win! Not so much in fiction, though, which is why people take spoilers so seriously. Would reading the sixth Harry Potter book have been such an emotional roller coaster if we already knew–SPOILERS–that Dumbledore dies, that Snape was a double agent? If Dumbledore had, before setting off with Harry to find the horcrux, visited Professor McGonagall (or whoever), and if Rowling had ended the chapter with “And it would be the last time she ever saw Dumbledore alive”–would we have felt that same punch in the gut when Snape 86′d him?

No. We wouldn’t have. We need that element of surprise to create the same emotional response to a story as we get in real life, where there are no spoilers to warn us about that car accident that’s about to happen, or that run of bad luck we’re about to have. There’s a fine line between foreshadowing and spoiling, and I’ve seen quite a few authors stepping over the lines in ways that didn’t sit well with me.

But Susie, you’re saying. Foreshadowing is hard. It must be hard if I’m doing it wrong. Can you help me? Can you help me foreshadow better?

Well, I can damn sure try.

A few ways to foreshadow without incurring my wrath:

Lay off predictions and forecasting. Imagine, if you will, a scenario where your BFF is a psychic. An actual psychic, not a “Psychic Friend.” Every time you hang out with your friend the psychic, she tells you everything that’s going to happen in advance. Sometimes, this would be really handy–”Make sure you don’t go immediately when the light turns green, someone’s going to run the light”–but I think, after awhile, it would get really annoying. “Your boss is going to bring in doughnuts tomorrow. Surprise!” “Your boyfriend is sending you flowers–roses, although I can’t see if they’re pink or read. Oh, bee tee dubs, he’s proposing.” “That waiter is going to drop all the plates he’s carrying in two minutes.” I would hate having a psychic friend if they couldn’t keep their predicting to themselves–nothing would ever be a surprise anymore, and that would suck.

Pretty sure I’d rather call the Psychic Friends network. At least they aren’t actual psychics.

Of course, if you have a character who is psychic, they would be making some sort of predictions. I think the trick here is to keep the predictions vague enough that they don’t highlight your intentions in bright neon. I just watched an episode of Northern Exposure that used this kind of prediction well; in the beginning, Maggie has a dream that she’s playing Clue with Joel. He’s anxious to leave because he has a plane to catch; Maggie doesn’t want him to go. At the end, he puts on a black fedora; Maggie warns him not to, but he puts it on anyway. This dream uses hints and symbols to create a sense of doom for Joel: they’re playing Clue, which centers around a dead body; the black fedora is supposed to symbolize the death of the person who wears it in a dream. They allude to the plane trip, but because of the context of the Maggie/Joel sexual tension, her begging him to stay comes off as more seductive than warning, especially since she’s wearing a tight red dress and bright red lipstick. Maggie wakes up, disturbed but not sure what the dream means; we feel the same until she has another dream later in the episode that gives us more clues.

Speaking of symbols, these also make good foreshadowing.

Using symbols in a novel can be tricky, of course–used clumsily, they seem hokey and forced. Symbols can, however, make for excellent foreshadowing–especially since they don’t allude directly to the events to come. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald creates an unsettled mood when Gatsby meets Daisy again for the first time:

“We’ve met before,” muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the sofa and his chin in his hand.

“I’m sorry about the clock,” he said.

… “It’s an old clock,” I told them idiotically.

I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor.

The clock, in this case, is symbolic, nestled just before talk of how much time has passed since Daisy and Gatsby have seen each other. Gatsby’s righting the clock is also symbolic–not only does he want to “right” the time that has passed in which Daisy got away from him, his careful action also contrasts with the carelessness that Nick attributes to Tom and Daisy later. The word “smashed” is used again at the end, describing the events that resulted in Gatsby’s and Myrtle’s deaths: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Symbolic foreshadowing can be oh-so-subtle but still create the proper mood or mindset for the reader. The meeting doesn’t go smoothly, and Gatsby’s story ends in tragedy.

Use a smaller event to foreshadow a larger event.

This time, I think we’ll turn to Steinbeck. In Of Mice and Men, Lennie, the mentally-handicapped man that George travels with and cares for, is given a puppy, which he proceeds to pet to death. Later, when Curley’s wife offers to let Lennie stroke her hair, our stomachs tie up in knots–we know what happens when Lennie gets to stroke soft things. Things don’t end well for Curley’s wife–who also foreshadowed Lennie’s death in her own way. She is a poisonous character, flirting with the men one moment and threatening the lynch mob in the next; when Lennie is fully taken in by her sweeter side, we know that the lynch mob can’t be far behind.

Set the mood with atmosphere and tone.

While you may not want to open a book with “It was a dark and stormy night,” using the weather, the setting, and the general tone can help foreshadow without actually giving away plot details. In Japan, seasons are often used to represent the cycle of life; a professor told my Japanese culture class (ten years ago.. eep) that autumn was symbolically used as dying. Spring would obviously be (re)birth. If I wanted to write a story about death, I might put it at the end of summer, especially if it occurred after a long illness (a.k.a, a long, hot, miserable summer without air conditioning. ZOMG see what I did there? I TRANSFERRED FEELINGS TO SET A TONE.) If you don’t want to go quite so philosophical, use a little mood-lighting, or time of day, or an appropriate setting to get your point across.

Foreshadow early.

There’s no point in introducing foreshadowing late in the game. We’re practically on top of the event by this point, so we don’t need any hints–we just need to keep going to get there.

So, readers–have you read any books with obvious foreshadowing lately? Or books with awesome foreshadowing? Does bad foreshadowing take you out of a story? Would you add anything to my foreshadowing tips? Drop those comments like they’re hot!

Reading Rage Tuesday: Sorry, crappy characters, we’re voting you off the island.

Posted by greengeekgirl — August 14, 2012

Survival of the fittest and/or the most crazy.

Also? We might set your beards on fire.

Before I begin, I’d like to let you guys know that I have been named a finalist in BookRiot’s START HERE Write-In Giveaway. You can help me win! I mean, if you want. Just go to my entry page here and click the Facebook “like” button for the post. Thanks a million, friends!

One thing that can kill a book–even more than bad or no editing, a fuzzy plot, or fire–is a weak cast of characters. When written properly, a book’s characters drive it from beginning to end. The characters make readers fall in love, fall out of love, cry, get angry, or worry anxiously–all of which fuel the need to keep flipping the pages until we run out of pages entirely.

Because brilliant characters matter so much to a book’s success, it’s hardly surprising that writing characters could arguably be the toughest part of writing a novel. Anybody can whip up a sequence of events, really–and many of us probably have practice in doing just that on a daily basis. “See, the reason that your car is dented? I was driving very slowly and carefully down the street when some TOTAL MANIAC came barreling though going A HUNDRED MILES PER HOUR being chased by five cop cars. I pulled over to the side but I think one of them must have bumped the car. Why wasn’t there a car chase on the news? Um–hell, I don’t know, do I look like I edit the news? OKAY FINE, I hit a pole in the 7-Eleven parking lot.” (Some people are more successful at this than others.) Making a sequence of events come to life, though, requires characters with deep motivations and many-faceted personalities. Juggling motivation and action, along with character interaction and dialogue, can be tricky.

I know there are legions of writers out there desperate to know whether their characters pass muster, probably refreshing this page a hundred times a day to see when, oh when, I’m going to write about this. Don’t worry, though. I have a handy list of characters that, should they sneak into your latest creative work, should be immediately banished and probably also drawn and quartered, just to set an example for the others.

The protagonist without a face

Okay, so the protagonist probably has a literal face–eyes and nose and so forth, maybe even some teeth. Figuratively, though, he or she is faceless in that we don’t know anything about the character. We don’t know what the character stands for, what he or she cares about, who he or she loves; it seems, really, like the character is a crude vessel through which the plot–which is often unnecessarily complicated–unfolds. The author might graciously bestow table scraps upon us from time to time about the character’s history or thoughts, but rarely enough to make a complete meal. (This might be the number one reason that shitty novels get fed to dogs. What, you don’t do that?)

(NOTE: DO NOT FEED BOOKS TO DOGS, I WAS TOTALLY JOKING.)

Unless you’re writing a book about existential ennui, a protagonist like this is one of the worst possible things you can do to your story. As readers, we desperately need to connect with your protagonist in some way, whether we love her or hate her. If I don’t care about your main character, I can’t care about your book. It’s like trying to love a statue.

This doesn’t just apply to your main characters, either–unless you have a specific reason that a character needs to be “faceless” or mysterious, all of your characters should be round and developed, with clear motivation, even if they only have a tiny part in the book. In Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, SK creates a character of the man who, in real life, hit him with a van. (This series is so meta.) We don’t see his whole back story and we don’t spend a lot of time with him; we do find out enough about the character, though, to make his actions make perfect sense. Hell, we even find out enough about the character that we could extrapolate his behavior in other situations, if called upon to do so. He’s in the story briefly*, but his development makes him memorable and enriches the book itself.

*Of course, “briefly” in the Dark Tower series could mean several hundred pages.

The superfluous character

I’m going to use a TV example here. I know, this is about books, but the best example I can think of comes from TV. So, I guess you can imagine that it’s a series of books instead of a TV show OH WAIT IT IS A SHOW BASED ON BOOKS, so I might be covered. I haven’t read the books, so I have no idea if they’re at all similar, but yeah. Awesome. Technically still talking about books. Unf-unf-unf.

TOUCHDOWN
Also, I just figured out how to make animated gifs. I KNOW. I can make them ALL THE TIME NOW. I know you’re the most excited about this, too.

I am–or, I guess, was is the more accurate verb, since I haven’t watched it for awhile–a fan of the show Bones. It’s not my usual cup of tea, but I really liked the characters; I especially like the main character, Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, who shares a lot of my Aspie traits (despite not being an confirmed Aspie, much like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory–digressing!). A few seasons in, the show ~~took a dark turn~~ (as I re-read this, I realize how dumb this sounds since the whole premise of the show is solving grisly murders; I’m leaving this in so you can laugh at my idiocy) as Bones and FBI Agent Booth chase after a serial killer called Gormogon. They eventually discover that the killer has been training an apprentice who works in the lab with Dr. Brennan! GASP. The call was coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE.

Everyone was pretty upset about the apprentice subplot because it meant that the character, Zack, was leaving the show. I have to admit, I was upset about it too, just because of that kneejerk “I hate change” thing that we humans go through from time to time. In hindsight, however, I can see that they made a wise decision in removing him from the show. The problem with Zack on the show was that he was a carbon copy of Dr. Brennan, but younger and less experienced: he, too, was a coldly logical genius with social/Aspergery issues who had the exact same career focus as Dr. Brennan. He practically needed to be a serial killer’s apprentice just to do something that Dr. Brennan hadn’t already done.

When you have two characters that are almost identical, you run the risk of being repetitive, if their arcs take the same paths, or of possibly cannibalizing character growth from each other as you strive to create unique circumstances for the two of them. (Heh, heh. Incidentally, that serial killer was also a cannibal, so I guess I kind of just made a pun. You probably had to be there.) If you make sure characters have enough differences between them, you won’t end up with a couple of half-assed characters that wither from lack of development.

The stagnant character

D’you ever read a book and, by the end of it, you wonder why certain characters never just manned up and took care of their shit? Or, barring that, didn’t go into a crazy downward spiral beyond salvation? It’s a little bit like listening to a married couple having an argument that you know they have had a hundred times just in the past week, or having a friend that whines about the same problems every single time you talk. Yes, that’s right. It’s absolutely obnoxious.

If nothing is happening to your character, your character probably should be 86′d–unless that character serves as a foil for your protagonist and you’re specifically highlighting how your protagonist has decided to act vs. the consequences of inaction. You could also use a “constant” character as an anchor–a mother, for example, who’s always got Sunday dinner on when her children come home from the big bad ugly world. These characters should be used in this capacity sparingly, though. If things aren’t changing, it means that repetition is occurring, and repetition is baaad, Groundhog Day notwithstanding. We can only re-read the same scene two or three times before we get the urge to swan dive off of the nearest building.

These characters don’t necessarily have to overcome their problems, either. Things just need to change to push your story along, or, swan dives.

Angels and devils

Did you know, there aren’t really any people who are 100% evil or 100% noble? And that even the most evil people you can think of had motivations besides, “Welp, I guess I’m gonna do this terrible thing because I am a harbinger of all things unholy”? The whole Good vs. Evil thing is so played out.

Let’s take the most evil motherfucker in recent history–Dan Brown. Wait, sorry, I meant Hitler. If one wanted to fictionalize Hitler, what’s a more compelling story–that he did all of the fucked-up things that he did because he was just “evil” and he just did things to be evil, or that he did all of the things that he did because he genuinely thought in his warped mind that it was the right thing to do and that he was a hero? I find the second (real) scenario far more chilling because it’s so damn humanizing. It’s easy enough to think of a time when you were wrong and convinced you were right . . . as soon as you do, boom–you have something in common with Hitler. Even if it’s not to scale, just being able to go there raises the hair on the backs of our necks.

Characters who are goody-two-shoes are, in my opinion, even worse. Oh, you’re gonna fight the powers of evil because it’s the right thing to do, are you? Is that your default autopilot setting? As we all learned in middle school when our teachers showed us poorly-produced videos about peer pressure, doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing is kind of really hard. There’s a reason that we ~~sane people~~ get inspired when we see someone stand up for what’s right. There’s a reason that Rosa Parks is a hero for something as seemingly simple as not giving up a bus seat. Deciding to do the right thing often comes after a long internal struggle, a war where morality, nobility, and conscience do battle with self-preservation, self-interest, and fear. That should be a major conflict for any “good” character, if not the central conflict; to leave that out would be to cheapen the whole idea of “good.”

Characters who only exist to make another character’s story arc more compelling

I know, this one is kind of advanced. Don’t be scared.

It may seem like splitting hairs, but there is a fine line between characters who only exist to further another character’s arc, and characters who only appear in a story to further another character’s arc. The difference lies in how the character is developed, rather than how much page time they receive or their purpose in a story. To illustrate the difference, I’m going to discuss everyone’s favorite trope, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Quick background if you’re not familiar: a Manic Pixie Dream Girl comes into a male protagonist’s life (or it could be a female, but it’s far more often male for this specific trope–females probably have our own trope for this) and fills it with joy and spontaneity and fun weirdness. If you saw the movies Garden State, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, or just about anything starring Zooey Deschanel, you’ve seen a MPDG. (The trope also appears in books–The Perks of Being a Wallflower, High Fidelity, and Norwegian Wood all feature MPDGs. Still on subject, woo!) One of the major dilemmas of this trope is that the MPDG often exists solely to help another character, generally a male love interest, make his sucky, doldrummy life better. To do this, she whips him into a chaotic, whimsical frenzy, usually just by being delightfully quirky.

The problem with this kind of character, whether it’s a Manic Pixie Dream Girl or another character that exists to spur on the protagonist’s development, is that they’re boring. Yes, boring, no matter how many times you write them screaming “PENIS!” in public places. I totally get that, if you have a protagonist, every other character in the story revolves around the protagonist to an extent just by virtue of the story being presented from a certain point of view. Those characters still need their own motivations for existing, though. The MPDG, for example, hasn’t lived her whole life waiting for you, the protagonist, to come along so she could change your life; without showing or having their own raison d’etre, the character becomes a cardboard cut-out of a real person. As I said before, it can be a fine line to walk. I think the key is that, even if the supporting cast are only mentioned in the story because they have affected the protagonist’s arc, the characters don’t only exist to further another character’s arc. They need their own motivations, desires, weaknesses, and histories.

Holy shit, I went through my stories and I had to delete every single character. This sucks.

I’m sorry. I am. It really is better this way, though.

What about you guys? What kinds of characters would you add to the list? Are there any you would take off? Do you have infuriating examples of any of these characters? Did you go vote for my entry here? COMMENTS ALL THE COMMENTS

Review: Vandal Love by Deni Y. Béchard

Posted by lucysfootball — August 9, 2012

Book: Vandal Love

Author: Deni Y. Béchard

Published: January 2006 by Milkweed Editions, 352 pages

First Line: ”Even when Jude was a boy, his arms and legs bulged, his neck corded, his muscled gut humped beneath his chest.”

Genre/Rating: Short stories; 3/5 babies born cradling their twin sisters to protect them from the dangers of the world

(Copy provided by the publisher)

Review: The press release for this book piqued my interest – it hinted at children born with genetic aberrations, a sweeping, multi-generational saga, some magic, some mystery. All things that I love. I was eager to dig in and find out what was going on in the Hervé family.

The press release didn’t lie – all of what was promised was there – but it just seemed flat, unfortunately. And isn’t that the worst? When there’s an amazing book there, and you can see it, but it just wasn’t brought to life as fully as it could have been?

The children of the Hervé family are born either giants or runts – sometimes alternating, one giant, one runt; sometimes twins, one of each born at the same time. The runts are very small, if they grow up at all (they tend to be very fragile and very ill); the giants are abnormally large and strong. The family all seem to have wanderlust and head out for what they think are greener pastures as soon as they get the opportunity. The book goes from Canada to Georgia and Louisiana and Maine, back to Canada, then to New Mexico, as it follows the line of the giants (in Book One, which is about 3/4 of the book) and then the line of the runts (in Book Two, the remainder of the book.)

I have no fault with Béchard’s writing. He writes well and has a very strong voice. I just am not sure if he knew quite where he was going with the book or the characters. Just when you thought you had a handle on a character, when you were getting to know them – that character would be dropped, and another character would be picked up. You had to learn not to get too invested in anyone, because the minute you did, they’d be swept away from you.

I also am not sure that splitting the book into two sections was the best solution. I think it might have served him better to make it two novels – that way, he could spend more time on each character, and flesh out each section more. (I also had a major confusion with the runts section – this might have been me, or might have been the writing, but I feel as if it was hinted at that the characters in the second section weren’t actually related to the Hervé family. If that’s the case, it makes no sense to have them there at all, since the book is ostensibly about the descendants of the Hervé family. I may have misread, but I did read and re-read that section a number of times trying to get a handle on it. If something you’ve written is that convoluted, it might not be the reader’s fault.)

Do I recommend the book? Well, I don’t not recommend it. I know, that’s vague. It’s not badly written. It’s got a touch of Marquez to it, to the generational saga. (He’s no Marquez, but there’s some similarity.) It’s not bad, but it’s not the best thing I’ve read lately. It wasn’t a waste of my time, but there were times I just wanted him to push it a little more, take it a little farther, see where else it could go…and he didn’t do that. So, I don’t not recommend it. But I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, either. It’s a toss-up. If it sounds interesting to you, give it a go. It won’t be the worst thing you’ve read this year. But I think you might finish it feeling like it’s missing something that could have made it great.

Review: Fatty Goes to China by Royston Tester

Posted by greengeekgirl — August 4, 2012

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.

The Author’s Guide to Social Media: Does bad publicity hurt authors?

Posted by greengeekgirl — July 28, 2012

So, there’s been a lot of to and fro lately–well, really, not just lately but often–about authors, social media, and “bad behavior.” Before I get started, I’d like to side-step for a moment to discuss why I focus so much on author behavior and not on reviewer behavior. It’s not that I want to be part of the reviewers vs. authors conflict; I love reading, and authors write books, so there’s no underlying conflict here. My focus on author behavior stems from the fact that I don’t really care how reviewers act unless it reflects personally on me–which, since I run my own site, and try to maintain a good standard here of fairness and objectivity whenever possible, it doesn’t affect me quite so much when there’s drama centered around Goodreads or Amazon reviews. People who follow my blog, or even sample the reviews, will see that it’s not the same.

How authors act, on the other hand, does affect me–it affects my buying habits and my reviewing habits. I don’t want to review an author who has publicly made a world-class asshole of him- or herself. If I review the book positively, without addressing the author’s behavior, it could be seen as an endorsement. If I review the book negatively, even if it’s a true review, it could be seen as jumping on the bandwagon of hate-flinging, which could damage my credibility. Regardless of my intention, I can’t control what readers assume or think of me when I put content out in the world. I want, therefore, to stay away from it altogether. As a consumer, I also don’t want to financially reward someone who is being a jerk.

Yeah, reviewers are jerks sometimes, too. But that doesn’t affect me nearly as much–and there’s not much leverage over a reviewer to get them to change their minds. Reviewers generally have nothing to lose unless they have a site with a following; even if I railed about bad behavior from reviewers, why should they change their habits? Because I said so? Pleeaaaaaaaaaaase. So, that’s why I focus more on authors than reviewers when I tackle these topics.

But! I started this post to talk about bad publicity. In the ongoing debates about how authors should or should not act on the internet, an argument that occasionally pops up is that there’s “no such thing” as bad publicity. Many authors who create controversy around themselves seem to think that this is the case; sometimes, the posts seem calculated to do exactly what they’ve done: make a splash, stir things up, and draw all attention to themselves. Other times, the author might try to laugh it off, claiming that they’re getting a lot of attention and it’s good for them either way. (I definitely had an author tell me this once, back before I had a blog and when the “publicity” he got from our back-and-forth amounted to about five friends of mine. He was a little bit completely out of his mind.) Many authors handling their own PR appear to be under the impression that any attention is good attention, and even negative attention will lead to an increase in sales.

Does this work? Should authors be less concerned with receiving bad publicity? Could bad publicity even be helpful to a new author who is trying to get their work out there?

In the short run, I’m sure an author who has made a stir will see a bump in traffic–maybe even a large one. People love to watch a train wreck, and in some cases, I could certainly see it leading to a boost in sales from looky-loos. I don’t view this as being a beneficial long-term option, though. The thing about watching a train wreck is that, eventually, people stop looking and go home. They forget. You become a vague name in their minds that they might remember if they see it again somewhere–if people still want to cover you after the drama surrounding you, that is. An author can only coast on publicity for a short period of time, whether it’s good or bad publicity; we consumers are getting new information every minute that crowds out the old information. We turn our attention elsewhere, often quickly.

Even Charlie Sheen, who had a very public “psychotic break” (his words, to Playboy) that resulted in him leaving his hit show, can’t ride his publicity forever. When his new show, Anger Management, debuted on FX, 5.7 million people saw the show. The next week, 3.4 million watched. Then 2.4 million; I read somewhere it finally got down to 1.25 million before leveling off a bit. People may have tuned in based on the controversy from before, but people eventually fatigue and tune out; if his ratings continue to fall, Anger Management is going to get canceled just like any other show. The publicity from before won’t prop up the show if the show itself doesn’t stand up.

“It’s so fucking stupid. I’m in a beef with a warlock society? You’re kidding me, right? How do you go from making Oliver Stone movies to being in a feud with warlocks?” Charlie Sheen, post-meltdown. Apparently, there were some negative side effects.

Any publicity you get will circle back to the product that you put out. Publicity leads the reader to you (provided it’s not the kind of publicity that makes people say, “WELL! I’m never buying that person’s books!”); your product has to take the next steps on its own. This is where it gets tricky.

Getting an audience of people who read about you, on a blog or in the news or wherever, to buy your product can be challenging even under the very best circumstances. I don’t personally do a lot of sales myself, this being a free blog and all, so I’m going to use Regretsy as an example. Regretsy had a Kickstarter project for a book of Finnish folktales (and a trip to Finland) almost a year ago. If you’re familiar with Regretsy, you know that the site has a lot of followers that frequently follow links from the blog to go clear out Etsy shops, for charity or because the shop is just damn wacky. The Regretsy audience isn’t one you’d associate with stinginess. Out of their 130,000+ followers, though, only about 1.4% took part in the Kickstarter, despite the excellent rewards that the folks at Regretsy offered them. (If you compare the number of backers to their number of Twitter followers, it bumps up to a whole 5.8%.) If I recall correctly, the project didn’t get fully funded until close to the deadline. Regretsy fans love the site, but the turnout was still low when it came to deciding to spend money–not because Regretsy did something wrong, and not because their audience doesn’t like to spend money on things, but because it’s difficult to convince people to spend money. Even if you have a huge following that loves you.

“WHAT?! We live in the consuming-est country in the history of consuming! How is it hard to get people to spend money on things?!” Our entertainment bucks don’t stretch very far these days; while we may seem like we’re spending mindlessly, buying up things like Fifty Shades like sex is going out of style, we have to make choices with our cash. If we want to buy Fifty Shades, we can’t use that same money to buy anything else. When you get beyond the infinitesimal percentage of products that get heavy media coverage, you suddenly find yourself in a zone where consumers have become a lot more skeptical about buying your product. Who are you? What is this, and why do I want it? Do I want to spend money on you? And, the all-important: is there something I want more than what you’re offering?

(I feel I should note here, Charlie Sheen had about eight million followers on Twitter before he quit recently. When he joined in the wake of his rock-star-from-mars meltdown, he set an actual Guinness Book record for reaching 1 million followers on Twitter faster than anyone ever had. By the time Anger Management hit its fourth week on the air, a maximum of 15% of those eight million were tuning in–so, it can be difficult, it seems, just to get people to spend time on you, even if all they have to do is click over to watch your show, and even if you’re super-famous like Charlie Sheen.)

Imagine how this works for indie or self-published authors trying to convince people to purchase their books–authors that don’t already have a huge platform and thousands of followers. As you start building momentum, you’re working really, really hard to catch a very small number of readers (5% per venue where your book shows up? Maybe as much as 15%?) even when blogs or reviewers say awesome things about your book. Your buzz builds slowly as readers see your name repeatedly on their favorite blogs, on their friends’ reading lists, on their friends’ social media, in the “also bought” section of online retailers, maybe in a newspaper article or two. Since building a following can take quite a bit of time–see also The Bloggess, who says it only took her ten years to become an overnight success–it seems that part of being successful would be keeping your buzz flowing in a positive direction. Giving readers any reason to turn away from your books doesn’t seem like a smart move to me, even if it boosts your visibility in the short-term.

What if, though, you do find yourself in a controversy that gets a lot of attention and leads to heavy media coverage? Wouldn’t that help more than it would hurt? Well, it could happen, but not very often–if anything, it might lead to even more people swearing not to buy your book. I’ve rarely seen “real” media covering the dramz that happen in the reading world. If you’re relatively unknown, to get the attention of the mainstream media, you have to be more than an author embroiled in some drama. This drama has to be spectacular drama, and even then, it would have go be on-going and dynamic to keep you in the public eye long enough to see sustained results. (Stop the GR Bullies has only made it onto the blogs–not the news portions–of a couple of large news outlets that I’ve seen, despite the fact that people have been losing their shit over it.)

It’s a hell of a gamble that I’d probably avoid–after all, you don’t just want to be an author for a week or two, right? You want to keep being an author, not go out in a blaze of glory, scraping up whatever cash you can from a quick burst of sales. Also, public drama means you risk scaring off the people (bloggers, reviewers, the media) who can help you build that slow burn that could sustain you over time.

For me, it boils down to this: while bad publicity may not always be a death sentence for your career, that quick burst of views probably won’t help you much in the long run. You may not even see a tremendous jump in sales in the short term, because people aren’t always quick to part with their cash even when they love you, much less if they’re skeptical about you. How your product performs depends largely on the product itself; why not, then, build your brand carefully and try to avoid bad press? This way, you don’t burn any bridges or turn any readers away from your work. Plus, it’s exhausting to get a burst of publicity, even if it’s good publicity. Dealing with any kind of backlash is even more stressful and draining–wouldn’t you rather spend that energy on making great books that people want to buy?

“WAIT! This post is part of the Author’s Guide to Social Media series. You haven’t even talked about social media!”

I know, I haven’t addressed it directly–but, let’s be real, almost every incident of non-famous author drama that has cropped up in the last, oh, practically forever (or at least, since the advent of social media), has involved social media. You don’t see blog posts like “Fisticuffs broke out at a bar last night when self-published author Dramz Attentionslut caught sight of a reviewer who had previously panned his book” or “After a heated exchange in which author Bitchy Pooperson demanded that a bookstore patron purchase her book instead of freeloading while drinking coffee, Ms. Pooperson went out into the parking lot and keyed the reader’s car” or even “Writey McAuthorpants ran crying from a movie theater yesterday when three hecklers sat behind her and threw popcorn in her hair, yelling ‘You suck at writing!’ and ‘Don’t quit your day job, bitch!’” Nay. This stuff happens on the internet; it’s great to make sure to keep your real life in check, too, but you especially have to monitor what you say in your social media. Assume that anything you put out will be interpreted in the worst possible way, and assume this will create a giant headache that you’ll wish never happened.

Assume you will go from making Oliver Stone movies to being in a feud with warlocks. It’s a downgrade.

What do you guys think? Am I crazy like a fox, or crazy like I’m on a drug called Charlie Sheen? Sound off in the comments.

P.S. I did an informal Twitter poll: “On a scale of 1–’Who?’– to 10 — ‘Stalker fanperson’ — how much attention do you devote to Charlie Sheen these days?” So far, I haven’t gotten a response above 3. If people can tune out Charlie Sheen, they can tune out anybody.

Review: Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch

Posted by greengeekgirl — July 6, 2012

Book: Dora: A Headcase

(Powell’s) (Amazon) (Kindle)

Author: Lidia Yuknavitch

Published: 2012 by Hawthorne Books; 234 pages

First Line: “Mother is cleaning the spoons again.”

Rating: 4.14 spy cams tucked inside of monkeys from the gift shop

(Review copy was provided by Hawthorne Books)

I asked for Dora when I came across it in the Hawthorne newsletter. I couldn’t resist the combination of the cover art and the fact that it was intro’d by Chuck Palahniuk. I didn’t actually read the intro, and truth be told, I’m kind of over Palahniuk as an author (if you’ve read one scene of dudes with Cheeto-dick, you’ve read ‘em all), but Palahniuk writes edgy and I generally like edgy. I like it a lot.

It starts with a teenage girl, Ida. At seventeen, she’s got a riot grrrl exterior to protect her from the slings and arrows of the classic Fucked Up Family: dad banging some friend of the family who has a tight ass, mom on enough pills to zonk herself out so it doesn’t drive her crazy that her husband is running around on her, and Ida gets carted to therapy every week to try to fix her outlandish behavior. In her sessions, she pulls a Hamlet and plays crazy, viewing her therapy not as a healing tool but as a battle to be won. She reminded me a bit of Holden Caulfield in the beginning–a young person trying to harden herself against the world, using disdain as a tool–but when we meet her friends, we see that she’s not so cynical all the time. Plus, her parents and her therapist are real asshats–since we see them in full glory, Ida becomes a much more sympathetic character. (I’ve always thought that is the main shortcoming of Catcher, but that’s another post.)

She nicknames her psychiatrist Siggy, which I thought was just a clever take on the profession as a whole . . . until I got into the book and found out that the doctor is, actually, Sigmund Freud. Then I put two and two together and realized that the novel fictionalizes one of Freud’s most famous case studies, which I would have known before I started if I were good at thoroughly reading things like descriptions of books. (I’m better at reading actual books than descriptions. I take notes and stuff. For real.) The events are modernized, though, and told from the point of view of Ida–a counterpoint to Freud’s original ideas about the real Ida and her life, which read as condescending toward the “fairer sex” at best (and often worse).

Yuknavitch turns the tables on Freud by giving Ida, who we know largely through Freud’s analysis, her own voice–sometimes figuratively, as Ida is prone to becoming mute in times of extreme stress. The author, along with many other women who have been critical of Freud’s work with “Dora,” (his alias for Ida) presents another reality: that Freud’s analysis of “Dora” was wrong. That he failed her because of his own shortcomings.

I enjoyed Dora a lot once I got into it. At first, the teenage-slangy narration made me dubious, but it wasn’t long before I was having laugh-out-loud moments. (Page 105 had me rolling.) There was also adventure and moments of tenderness and friendship. Ida/Dora wasn’t a flat caricature of a fucked-up teen, but a girl with hard edges and under-protected softness. Some of the events in the book weren’t quite realistic in terms of things that might actually happen–but then again, Freud wasn’t a psychologist in the time of cellular telephones, so one already knows that the book isn’t 100% realism. I didn’t mind, though. The characters stayed in character, and that’s the more important part, to me. Whether they could pull off some of their adventures was a stretch, but by no means an impossibility. I cheered with them when they succeeded and mourned when they didn’t.

I also liked the message of this book, whether it was intentional or just what I took away from it: that we, as women, don’t need to be held down by all of these labels and ideas projected upon us (a recent spike in the term “slut” comes to mind–and not the good kind like us booksluts). Ida/Dora found a way to survive and even thrive, despite inept probing of her female sexuality and a disastrous role model in her adulterous father; we can all overcome that stigma that somehow still exists for vagina-having humans. I like that idea a lot.

P.S. Bonus–more LGBT characters in this book. I’m reading a lot of books this year that are anything but heteronormative; I’m kind of in love with all of these writers for representing the rest of us and doing it well.

Reading Rage Tuesday: Books that I liked (until I didn’t).

Posted by greengeekgirl — June 26, 2012

If this book gets any worse, I’m going to hurl myself into traffic.

So. I have to confess, I’m not feeling very ragey today. I’m not feeling ragey at all, actually. I am feeling kind of happy. It’s a gorgeous day outside. Just for you guys, though, I will try to get myself into a proper ragey mood.

(frowns)

(clenches fists)

(thinks about all the things that make me mad, like people who get in my way at the store with their huge stupid shopping carts, or people who drive like morons and almost make me have a car accident, or, there was this one time that I was at Kroger and there was a sign at the deli that said cheese was on sale but it rang up regular price and then I told them it was on sale and it seriously took them TEN MINUTES to walk five feet over to the deli and check and then they told me it was NOT on sale, but it WAS, I read the sign, and I got so mad that I walked out and left all of my groceries at the U-Scan and then my husband and I had a fight in the car so I ragequit and walked like a mile to get home and it was hot and I was really tired. Also, douchey acoustic cover bands.)

Okay, I think I’m ready to go.

When I settle down to read, I’m making a serious time commitment. This isn’t a 30-minute television show, or even a 90-minute movie, but a book that could take me anywhere from three hours to three days to read. I’m no great finisher of books that don’t grab me; if I think a book sucks within the first few chapters, I’ll put it down and I won’t feel bad about it. No sweat–I always have a mountain of books waiting to be read, and even if I don’t, I can walk to the library for even more books. I don’t get mad at books for sucking because I have no compunction tossing it aside. I don’t get mad at all.

Unless.

Unless I do like the book. Unless it’s good enough to get me halfway through. Good enough to get me three-quarters of the way through, and then BAM! The author ends the book with a load of suckitude, usually within the last 10% of the book. Then? I’m mad. I’m super-mad. I’m Hulk-green sneaky-hate-spiral ripping-out-of-my-clothes-because-I feel-the-need-to-tear-them-to-shreds mad. This might be the thing that makes me rage the most about reading, and I get pretty ragey sometimes. In case you couldn’t tell, or anything.

It’s like this, but with reading.*

What books pissed me off in their final moments? Well, I’m glad you asked, because I have a list for you. Naturally.

NOTE! WARNING! CAUTION! ACHTUNG! HEY, YOU!

Because of the nature of this post being about the ends of books, it’s going to be spoilery as fuck. None of these books has just come out recently or anything, but if you haven’t read the book and you think you might want to read the book, do not read the bits I wrote about the book. You never know when a spoiler might ninja out of the paragraph and land in your eyeballs. Also, this post is about books that made me hate them rather than books I thought didn’t make sense. It’s an emotional reaction. I say this because I know I’m going to bitch about books that people like; I’d like to explain now that I still hate the endings even if I understand what the author was going for, so I can hopefully circumvent the “BUT YOU DID NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED!!1!” comments.

I understood. Still hate.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Someone in my book club recommended this book to me and I read it on her suggestion. I read it even though it was a doorstop and even though it had the Oprah book club logo plastered all over it, which gives me hives. Now, I thought that A Fine Balance was a fine book, well-written and all of that. In case you haven’t read it, it follows the story of several characters: a woman, Dina, a woman who has spent the past twenty years of her life doing whatever it takes not to have to move back in with her dickhead brother (who would definitely qualify for the list of characters I’d like to punch in the face); Maneck, a young college student who comes to board with Dina; and Ishvar and Omprakash, a father-and-son duo of untouchables who have come to Mumbai to seek work as tailors. As fate would have it, Dina needed to hire tailors, so they all eventually ended up living together as one big strange family. They grow to love each other, in their own ways. It was nice. I got a little verklempt.

Then, things took a turn for the worse. In fact, everything basically went to hell for everyone except Maneck, who got a job and got the fuck out of there.

And hey, listen: I know a lot of stories about India take turns for the worse, in books and in real life. I know that I’m sitting here in my couch on my fat American ass and that for me to boo-hoo about a sad story from a country I’ve never visited reeks of privilege. Even though Mistry systematically took every. single. thing. away from the characters that was at all good, and even killed a few off, I was coming to terms with it by the end. I was. I really was. Even though I hated it when Dina had to move back to her brother’s house, even though I hated it that Ishvar and Om became beggars, even though I hated it when Om lost his balls because someone cut them off, by the end, I was able to deal.

Until Maneck threw himself in front of a damn train.

Maneck had been developed the least of all the main characters. His re-entry in the epilogue, as a pair of outside eyes, served a powerful purpose of showing us the situation from an outside perspective. In my opinion? That was enough, given that the book had largely been about Dina, Ishvar, and Omprakash. I had to re-read the paragraph where he killed himself three or four times just to get it into my head that it actually happened. Really? This had to be the capper of the book? Maneck endures a sliver of the hardship that the others endured, yet he’s the one to off himself. Lovely.

I get why he killed himself, I do. Thematically, that is. I understand what Mistry was going for. I just thought it was a shitty way to end the book. The book was already depressing as hell, and I felt like he kicked me while I was down. Then pissed all over my face for good measure.

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

I am no great fan of Peter Carey. I picked up Oscar and Lucinda because, at the time, our book club was abuzz about him. Like Balance, O&L is another book where the author presumably got paid by the page, because it’s solid. It started off slowly for me, and I should have listened to my reading instincts; I could have put down the book and walked away from it, but I didn’t. Eventually, as Oscar grew up and we met Lucinda, it got its hooks in me.

Their approach-avoidance romance became terribly, frustratingly sweet as the pages flew by. Carey put one more obstacle, and one more confusion, and another and another between them as they tried so hard just to be able to love each other like two normal human beings might. The build-up became intense. Finally, the last, greatest challenge stood between Oscar and Lucinda: the delivery, through treacherous land, of the glass cathedral that Oscar had built for a man that Lucinda had been close to, thinking it would win the love of Lucinda (who, of course, loved him already). (Never mind that having church in a glass cathedral would be the most excruciating religious experience ever, especially after it sat a few hours in the sun. I’d rather have church in my car; at least there’s air conditioning. And a radio.) They made a wager concerning the whole of Lucinda’s fortune, a wager designed to bring them together in the end. A wager that Lucinda made of love.

The journey was harrowing. They arrived at their destination. The glass cathedral had been erected on a barge–I can’t remember why, I’ve rageblocked quite a bit of the ending–and it sat. A reader held her breath, waiting for the fulfillment promised by every single previous page in the book. Here it is. The moment. The verge.

In true heroic fashion, Oscar fucked and married some other woman that he just met, fell asleep in the floating cathedral, and drowned. The kicker is that, because of the wager, the bitch also inherited all of Lucinda’s cash. Shameless hussy 1, Oscar and Lucinda 0. Reader -123981723918723.

I will never read Peter Carey again.

Fuck you, Peter Carey.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

(Possible molestation trigger warning? I don’t really know how triggers work for everyone. It’s not graphic, but I don’t want anybody to feel icky from my blog.)

Boy goes to high school. Boy makes friends. Boy has first sexual encounter with his close friend; boy freaks out. Boy has a dream-memory about his favoritest aunt forever molesting him, thus explaining the freak-out. Boy goes to hospital and gets all better. Book ends.

Girl hates book.

I know, a lot of people love this book. LOVE it. LOVE LOVE LOVE. I do not. I feel like I got cheated out of the most important part of the story–how Charlie grows and changes after he has that horrible realization. We do see some character growth from Charlie during the novel, but once that bomb hits and Charlie has a big-deal breakdown, everything seems to get wrapped up a little too quickly. “Oh yeah, my aunt used to molest me on a weekly basis and stuff, but I forgive her and maybe I’ll even make some new friends at school next year! Yeah!”

REALLY?

I also have a hard time believing that the family would have told all of Charlie’s relatives so that they could send flowers and junk (although I can’t remember if they specified that they told the fam all of the details or just that Charlie was in the hospital). “Hey, remember Aunt Helen? WELL. Apparently she was a huge pedo, WHO KNEW?” Those are the kinds of things that families tend to keep private, not just out of embarrassment but out of respect for the person going through treatment. Many victims of molestation like to keep it on the down low, especially at first, because they’re still struggling with fresh feelings of humiliation, shame, and all of the other components of that wonderful emotional cocktail that arises from sexual abuse. Of course, Charlie seems to be flying through all of that at record speed anyway, so maybe it’s not an issue.

Honestly, too? The book didn’t need the molestation. At all. The best parts of the book dealt with Charlie’s struggle to stop reacting to his life and start participating in it. The feeling of being a wallflower is something that many young people can relate to, especially when they’ve just started high school. Charlie didn’t need an explanation for his being socially awkward–and if you’re going to create an explanation, Jesus, what a thing to throw out of left field. I think the molestation took away from Charlie’s story, frankly–partially because I feel it was handled so badly in the narrative, mostly because it was a distraction from the real point of the story.

I AM SORRY THIS POST WAS SO LONG.

As you can see, I have so much rage for this topic. What about you? Tell me what books you liked until you didn’t. Or defend your favorites if I put them on blast. Or tell me something that pissed you off at work this week. Leave it in the comments below!

*Image by Allie Brosh. I wanted to put the credit up there in the caption, but I felt like it disrupted the narrative flow. SORRY ALLIE. I love you. I also put it in the alt text. And there are TWO LINKS. I am crediting you so much. I hope this is acceptable.