0316253642
9780316253642
B00GR5N2VG
3.82
8,823
1971
Dec 17, 2013
liked it
The Year of Women--in which I'm devoting 2021 to reading female authors only--continues with Daphne du Maurier. It’s been a few years since I’ve read
The Year of Women--in which I'm devoting 2021 to reading female authors only--continues with Daphne du Maurier. It’s been a few years since I’ve read and loved Rebecca and have had Don’t Look Now and Other Stories on my reading docket for some time. It contains five tales published together in 1971: Don’t Look Now, Not After Midnight, A Border-Line Case, The Way of the Cross and The Breakthrough. The very first is the very best. The law of diminishing returns applied the more I read, with the collection taking a nose dive at the end of the second story and never recovering.
In Don’t Look Now, a married couple named John and Laura holiday in Venice, recovering from the death of their daughter who suffered a meningitis infection. At a restaurant, they're beguiled by a pair of middle-aged identical twin sisters, one of which appears fixated on John. He determines that twin to be blind. Laura follows the other one into the restroom and returns to confide to her husband that the blind twin had a vision of their daughter standing behind them. She added that John also has second sight but fails to realize it. Finally, the twins issue a warning that the couple will be in danger if they remain in Venice, none of which John takes seriously.
In Not After Midnight, a prep school headmaster named Timothy Grey holidays on the Greek isle of Crete. Rejecting his chalet due to his desire for privacy and for a view of the surf so he can paint, Timothy discovers his new accommodation was recently vacated by a man who drowned while swimming at night. His only real vexation is an obnoxious American guest named Stoll and the man’s silent wife. He gradually begins to spy on the couple. Adding to the intrigue is a card he discovers in the chalet written by the drowning victim, which reads “Not after midnight” and 38, the number of the chalet belonging to the Stolls.
In A Border-Line Case, 19-year-old actor Shelagh Money has returned home to look after her ill father. She's concerned that his condition might not improve quickly enough for her to accept her first major theater role, playing Viola in Twelfth Night. Her father appears on the road to recovery, reminiscing about an old navy pal named Nick Barry who he fell out of touch with. Suddenly confronting Shelagh with a look of horror, he dies. Feeling the need to reconcile her late father’s relationship with the man he was thinking about when he died, she travels to Ireland to seek the reclusive Commander Barry out.
It's always the same when you come face-to-face with death, the nurse told her, you feel you could have done more. It used to worry me a lot when I was training. And of course with a close relative it's worse. You've had a great shock, you must try and pull yourself together for your mother's sake ... My mother's sake? My mother would not mind if I walked out of the house this moment, Shelagh was on the point of saying, because then she would have all the attention, all the sympathy, people would say how wonderfully she was bearing up, whereas with me in the house sympathy will be divided. So death, Shelagh decided, was a moment for compliments, for everyone saying polite things about everybody else which they would not dream of saying at another time. Let me run upstairs for you ... Let me answer the telephone ... Shall I put on the kettle? An excess of courtesy, like mandarins in kimonos bowing, and at the same time an attempt at self-justification for not having been there when the explosion happened.
In The Way of the Cross, British tourists from Little Bletford congregate in Jerusalem, where the vicar who was scheduled to lead their tour of the Holy City falls ill and is replaced by a young minister. In The Breakthrough, an electrical engineer is loaned out by his employer to the salt marshes near Saxmere, where he discovers an eccentric scientist is working on a project to harness the lifeforce at the moment of death.
Don’t Look Now and Other Stories is grand in that each of the tales involves a British tourist or tourists who grant themselves a much-needed change of scenery only to encounter more than they bargained for. It’s sublime packaging on the part of du Maurier, or perhaps very disciplined, considering all of the stories were published the same year. Don’t Look Now is the best, an eerie exploration of the clarity and mystery of a psychic vision, or what happens when you’re provided an answer without understanding the question. It uses foreshadowing to build suspense very well. This served as source material for an offbeat thriller starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie released in 1973.
Du Maurier establishes atmosphere and parses out detail supremely well in all five of the stories, particularly Not After Midnight, which should serve as a warning that while on holiday, never ignore local superstition. She promises more than she’s able to ultimately deliver in this story. A Border-Line Case runs off the tracks at the halfway mark rather than the very end, failing to provide the necessary intrigue for all of the build-up. The Way of the Cross is self-indulgent nonsense that goes absolutely nowhere. The ideas sifted through in The Breakthrough don’t even hold up. But the overall effect, combining psychological realism with a love of the past, is one that definitely makes me want to read more from the author.
Daphne du Maurier was born in 1907 in London, England. Her father was a prominent stage actor and theater manager and her mother—until her retirement in 1910—also an actor. Some of Daphne’s early work was published in the weekly British magazine the Bystander. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931. One of its fans, a World War I veteran named Frederick Browning who’d risen to the rank of major, wooed du Maurier and they married a year later. They had three children and Lady Browning continued to publish under her maiden name to great success. Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, Hungry Hill and My Cousin Rachel, and her short stories The Birds and Don’t Look Now would all be adapted to film. Du Maurier rarely granted interviews for print or television and resided for much of her life privately in Cornwall, where she died in 1989.
[image]
Previous reviews in the Year of Women:
-- Come Closer, Sara Gran
-- Veronica, Mary Gaitskill
-- Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Viv Albertine
-- Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier
-- My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
-- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
-- The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Margaret George
-- Miss Pinkerton, Mary Roberts Rinehart
-- Beast in View, Margaret Millar
-- Lying In Wait, Liz Nugent
-- And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
-- Desperate Characters, Paula Fox
-- You, Caroline Kepnes
-- Deep Water, Patricia Highsmith
Merged review:
The Year of Women--in which I'm devoting 2021 to reading female authors only--continues with Daphne du Maurier. It’s been a few years since I’ve read and loved Rebecca and have had Don’t Look Now and Other Stories on my reading docket for some time. It contains five tales published together in 1971: Don’t Look Now, Not After Midnight, A Border-Line Case, The Way of the Cross and The Breakthrough. The very first is the very best. The law of diminishing returns applied the more I read, with the collection taking a nose dive at the end of the second story and never recovering.
In Don’t Look Now, a married couple named John and Laura holiday in Venice, recovering from the death of their daughter who suffered a meningitis infection. At a restaurant, they're beguiled by a pair of middle-aged identical twin sisters, one of which appears fixated on John. He determines that twin to be blind. Laura follows the other one into the restroom and returns to confide to her husband that the blind twin had a vision of their daughter standing behind them. She added that John also has second sight but fails to realize it. Finally, the twins issue a warning that the couple will be in danger if they remain in Venice, none of which John takes seriously.
In Not After Midnight, a prep school headmaster named Timothy Grey holidays on the Greek isle of Crete. Rejecting his chalet due to his desire for privacy and for a view of the surf so he can paint, Timothy discovers his new accommodation was recently vacated by a man who drowned while swimming at night. His only real vexation is an obnoxious American guest named Stoll and the man’s silent wife. He gradually begins to spy on the couple. Adding to the intrigue is a card he discovers in the chalet written by the drowning victim, which reads “Not after midnight” and 38, the number of the chalet belonging to the Stolls.
In A Border-Line Case, 19-year-old actor Shelagh Money has returned home to look after her ill father. She's concerned that his condition might not improve quickly enough for her to accept her first major theater role, playing Viola in Twelfth Night. Her father appears on the road to recovery, reminiscing about an old navy pal named Nick Barry who he fell out of touch with. Suddenly confronting Shelagh with a look of horror, he dies. Feeling the need to reconcile her late father’s relationship with the man he was thinking about when he died, she travels to Ireland to seek the reclusive Commander Barry out.
It's always the same when you come face-to-face with death, the nurse told her, you feel you could have done more. It used to worry me a lot when I was training. And of course with a close relative it's worse. You've had a great shock, you must try and pull yourself together for your mother's sake ... My mother's sake? My mother would not mind if I walked out of the house this moment, Shelagh was on the point of saying, because then she would have all the attention, all the sympathy, people would say how wonderfully she was bearing up, whereas with me in the house sympathy will be divided. So death, Shelagh decided, was a moment for compliments, for everyone saying polite things about everybody else which they would not dream of saying at another time. Let me run upstairs for you ... Let me answer the telephone ... Shall I put on the kettle? An excess of courtesy, like mandarins in kimonos bowing, and at the same time an attempt at self-justification for not having been there when the explosion happened.
In The Way of the Cross, British tourists from Little Bletford congregate in Jerusalem, where the vicar who was scheduled to lead their tour of the Holy City falls ill and is replaced by a young minister. In The Breakthrough, an electrical engineer is loaned out by his employer to the salt marshes near Saxmere, where he discovers an eccentric scientist is working on a project to harness the lifeforce at the moment of death.
Don’t Look Now and Other Stories is grand in that each of the tales involves a British tourist or tourists who grant themselves a much-needed change of scenery only to encounter more than they bargained for. It’s sublime packaging on the part of du Maurier, or perhaps very disciplined, considering all of the stories were published the same year. Don’t Look Now is the best, an eerie exploration of the clarity and mystery of a psychic vision, or what happens when you’re provided an answer without understanding the question. It uses foreshadowing to build suspense very well. This served as source material for an offbeat thriller starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie released in 1973.
Du Maurier establishes atmosphere and parses out detail supremely well in all five of the stories, particularly Not After Midnight, which should serve as a warning that while on holiday, never ignore local superstition. She promises more than she’s able to ultimately deliver in this story. A Border-Line Case runs off the tracks at the halfway mark rather than the very end, failing to provide the necessary intrigue for all of the build-up. The Way of the Cross is self-indulgent nonsense that goes absolutely nowhere. The ideas sifted through in The Breakthrough don’t even hold up. But the overall effect, combining psychological realism with a love of the past, is one that definitely makes me want to read more from the author.
Daphne du Maurier was born in 1907 in London, England. Her father was a prominent stage actor and theater manager and her mother—until her retirement in 1910—also an actor. Some of Daphne’s early work was published in the weekly British magazine the Bystander. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931. One of its fans, a World War I veteran named Frederick Browning who’d risen to the rank of major, wooed du Maurier and they married a year later. They had three children and Lady Browning continued to publish under her maiden name to great success. Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, Hungry Hill and My Cousin Rachel, and her short stories The Birds and Don’t Look Now would all be adapted to film. Du Maurier rarely granted interviews for print or television and resided for much of her life privately in Cornwall, where she died in 1989.
[image]
Previous reviews in the Year of Women:
-- Come Closer, Sara Gran
-- Veronica, Mary Gaitskill
-- Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Viv Albertine
-- Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier
-- My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
-- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
-- The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Margaret George
-- Miss Pinkerton, Mary Roberts Rinehart
-- Beast in View, Margaret Millar
-- Lying In Wait, Liz Nugent
-- And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
-- Desperate Characters, Paula Fox
-- You, Caroline Kepnes
-- Deep Water, Patricia Highsmith ...more
In Don’t Look Now, a married couple named John and Laura holiday in Venice, recovering from the death of their daughter who suffered a meningitis infection. At a restaurant, they're beguiled by a pair of middle-aged identical twin sisters, one of which appears fixated on John. He determines that twin to be blind. Laura follows the other one into the restroom and returns to confide to her husband that the blind twin had a vision of their daughter standing behind them. She added that John also has second sight but fails to realize it. Finally, the twins issue a warning that the couple will be in danger if they remain in Venice, none of which John takes seriously.
In Not After Midnight, a prep school headmaster named Timothy Grey holidays on the Greek isle of Crete. Rejecting his chalet due to his desire for privacy and for a view of the surf so he can paint, Timothy discovers his new accommodation was recently vacated by a man who drowned while swimming at night. His only real vexation is an obnoxious American guest named Stoll and the man’s silent wife. He gradually begins to spy on the couple. Adding to the intrigue is a card he discovers in the chalet written by the drowning victim, which reads “Not after midnight” and 38, the number of the chalet belonging to the Stolls.
In A Border-Line Case, 19-year-old actor Shelagh Money has returned home to look after her ill father. She's concerned that his condition might not improve quickly enough for her to accept her first major theater role, playing Viola in Twelfth Night. Her father appears on the road to recovery, reminiscing about an old navy pal named Nick Barry who he fell out of touch with. Suddenly confronting Shelagh with a look of horror, he dies. Feeling the need to reconcile her late father’s relationship with the man he was thinking about when he died, she travels to Ireland to seek the reclusive Commander Barry out.
It's always the same when you come face-to-face with death, the nurse told her, you feel you could have done more. It used to worry me a lot when I was training. And of course with a close relative it's worse. You've had a great shock, you must try and pull yourself together for your mother's sake ... My mother's sake? My mother would not mind if I walked out of the house this moment, Shelagh was on the point of saying, because then she would have all the attention, all the sympathy, people would say how wonderfully she was bearing up, whereas with me in the house sympathy will be divided. So death, Shelagh decided, was a moment for compliments, for everyone saying polite things about everybody else which they would not dream of saying at another time. Let me run upstairs for you ... Let me answer the telephone ... Shall I put on the kettle? An excess of courtesy, like mandarins in kimonos bowing, and at the same time an attempt at self-justification for not having been there when the explosion happened.
In The Way of the Cross, British tourists from Little Bletford congregate in Jerusalem, where the vicar who was scheduled to lead their tour of the Holy City falls ill and is replaced by a young minister. In The Breakthrough, an electrical engineer is loaned out by his employer to the salt marshes near Saxmere, where he discovers an eccentric scientist is working on a project to harness the lifeforce at the moment of death.
Don’t Look Now and Other Stories is grand in that each of the tales involves a British tourist or tourists who grant themselves a much-needed change of scenery only to encounter more than they bargained for. It’s sublime packaging on the part of du Maurier, or perhaps very disciplined, considering all of the stories were published the same year. Don’t Look Now is the best, an eerie exploration of the clarity and mystery of a psychic vision, or what happens when you’re provided an answer without understanding the question. It uses foreshadowing to build suspense very well. This served as source material for an offbeat thriller starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie released in 1973.
Du Maurier establishes atmosphere and parses out detail supremely well in all five of the stories, particularly Not After Midnight, which should serve as a warning that while on holiday, never ignore local superstition. She promises more than she’s able to ultimately deliver in this story. A Border-Line Case runs off the tracks at the halfway mark rather than the very end, failing to provide the necessary intrigue for all of the build-up. The Way of the Cross is self-indulgent nonsense that goes absolutely nowhere. The ideas sifted through in The Breakthrough don’t even hold up. But the overall effect, combining psychological realism with a love of the past, is one that definitely makes me want to read more from the author.
Daphne du Maurier was born in 1907 in London, England. Her father was a prominent stage actor and theater manager and her mother—until her retirement in 1910—also an actor. Some of Daphne’s early work was published in the weekly British magazine the Bystander. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931. One of its fans, a World War I veteran named Frederick Browning who’d risen to the rank of major, wooed du Maurier and they married a year later. They had three children and Lady Browning continued to publish under her maiden name to great success. Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, Hungry Hill and My Cousin Rachel, and her short stories The Birds and Don’t Look Now would all be adapted to film. Du Maurier rarely granted interviews for print or television and resided for much of her life privately in Cornwall, where she died in 1989.
[image]
Previous reviews in the Year of Women:
-- Come Closer, Sara Gran
-- Veronica, Mary Gaitskill
-- Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Viv Albertine
-- Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier
-- My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
-- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
-- The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Margaret George
-- Miss Pinkerton, Mary Roberts Rinehart
-- Beast in View, Margaret Millar
-- Lying In Wait, Liz Nugent
-- And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
-- Desperate Characters, Paula Fox
-- You, Caroline Kepnes
-- Deep Water, Patricia Highsmith
Merged review:
The Year of Women--in which I'm devoting 2021 to reading female authors only--continues with Daphne du Maurier. It’s been a few years since I’ve read and loved Rebecca and have had Don’t Look Now and Other Stories on my reading docket for some time. It contains five tales published together in 1971: Don’t Look Now, Not After Midnight, A Border-Line Case, The Way of the Cross and The Breakthrough. The very first is the very best. The law of diminishing returns applied the more I read, with the collection taking a nose dive at the end of the second story and never recovering.
In Don’t Look Now, a married couple named John and Laura holiday in Venice, recovering from the death of their daughter who suffered a meningitis infection. At a restaurant, they're beguiled by a pair of middle-aged identical twin sisters, one of which appears fixated on John. He determines that twin to be blind. Laura follows the other one into the restroom and returns to confide to her husband that the blind twin had a vision of their daughter standing behind them. She added that John also has second sight but fails to realize it. Finally, the twins issue a warning that the couple will be in danger if they remain in Venice, none of which John takes seriously.
In Not After Midnight, a prep school headmaster named Timothy Grey holidays on the Greek isle of Crete. Rejecting his chalet due to his desire for privacy and for a view of the surf so he can paint, Timothy discovers his new accommodation was recently vacated by a man who drowned while swimming at night. His only real vexation is an obnoxious American guest named Stoll and the man’s silent wife. He gradually begins to spy on the couple. Adding to the intrigue is a card he discovers in the chalet written by the drowning victim, which reads “Not after midnight” and 38, the number of the chalet belonging to the Stolls.
In A Border-Line Case, 19-year-old actor Shelagh Money has returned home to look after her ill father. She's concerned that his condition might not improve quickly enough for her to accept her first major theater role, playing Viola in Twelfth Night. Her father appears on the road to recovery, reminiscing about an old navy pal named Nick Barry who he fell out of touch with. Suddenly confronting Shelagh with a look of horror, he dies. Feeling the need to reconcile her late father’s relationship with the man he was thinking about when he died, she travels to Ireland to seek the reclusive Commander Barry out.
It's always the same when you come face-to-face with death, the nurse told her, you feel you could have done more. It used to worry me a lot when I was training. And of course with a close relative it's worse. You've had a great shock, you must try and pull yourself together for your mother's sake ... My mother's sake? My mother would not mind if I walked out of the house this moment, Shelagh was on the point of saying, because then she would have all the attention, all the sympathy, people would say how wonderfully she was bearing up, whereas with me in the house sympathy will be divided. So death, Shelagh decided, was a moment for compliments, for everyone saying polite things about everybody else which they would not dream of saying at another time. Let me run upstairs for you ... Let me answer the telephone ... Shall I put on the kettle? An excess of courtesy, like mandarins in kimonos bowing, and at the same time an attempt at self-justification for not having been there when the explosion happened.
In The Way of the Cross, British tourists from Little Bletford congregate in Jerusalem, where the vicar who was scheduled to lead their tour of the Holy City falls ill and is replaced by a young minister. In The Breakthrough, an electrical engineer is loaned out by his employer to the salt marshes near Saxmere, where he discovers an eccentric scientist is working on a project to harness the lifeforce at the moment of death.
Don’t Look Now and Other Stories is grand in that each of the tales involves a British tourist or tourists who grant themselves a much-needed change of scenery only to encounter more than they bargained for. It’s sublime packaging on the part of du Maurier, or perhaps very disciplined, considering all of the stories were published the same year. Don’t Look Now is the best, an eerie exploration of the clarity and mystery of a psychic vision, or what happens when you’re provided an answer without understanding the question. It uses foreshadowing to build suspense very well. This served as source material for an offbeat thriller starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie released in 1973.
Du Maurier establishes atmosphere and parses out detail supremely well in all five of the stories, particularly Not After Midnight, which should serve as a warning that while on holiday, never ignore local superstition. She promises more than she’s able to ultimately deliver in this story. A Border-Line Case runs off the tracks at the halfway mark rather than the very end, failing to provide the necessary intrigue for all of the build-up. The Way of the Cross is self-indulgent nonsense that goes absolutely nowhere. The ideas sifted through in The Breakthrough don’t even hold up. But the overall effect, combining psychological realism with a love of the past, is one that definitely makes me want to read more from the author.
Daphne du Maurier was born in 1907 in London, England. Her father was a prominent stage actor and theater manager and her mother—until her retirement in 1910—also an actor. Some of Daphne’s early work was published in the weekly British magazine the Bystander. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931. One of its fans, a World War I veteran named Frederick Browning who’d risen to the rank of major, wooed du Maurier and they married a year later. They had three children and Lady Browning continued to publish under her maiden name to great success. Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, Hungry Hill and My Cousin Rachel, and her short stories The Birds and Don’t Look Now would all be adapted to film. Du Maurier rarely granted interviews for print or television and resided for much of her life privately in Cornwall, where she died in 1989.
[image]
Previous reviews in the Year of Women:
-- Come Closer, Sara Gran
-- Veronica, Mary Gaitskill
-- Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Viv Albertine
-- Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier
-- My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
-- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
-- The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Margaret George
-- Miss Pinkerton, Mary Roberts Rinehart
-- Beast in View, Margaret Millar
-- Lying In Wait, Liz Nugent
-- And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
-- Desperate Characters, Paula Fox
-- You, Caroline Kepnes
-- Deep Water, Patricia Highsmith ...more
Notes are private!
0
2
Apr 25, 2021
not set
May 03, 2021
not set
Sep 21, 2024
Kindle Edition
1668046997
9781668046999
1668046997
4.02
1,913
Feb 13, 2024
Feb 13, 2024
really liked it
Published in 2024, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions is a terrific filmmaking memoir by writer/producer/director Ed Zwick, who climbed from a story edi
Published in 2024, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions is a terrific filmmaking memoir by writer/producer/director Ed Zwick, who climbed from a story editor and writer on the TV series Family in the 1970s to co-creating, writing, and directing (with his creative partner Marshall Herskovitz) thirtysomething in the '80s to directing classic movies, including Glory, Legends of the Fall, and The Last Samurai.
My knowledge of Zwick's work began with Special Bulletin, a 1983 TV movie about a reporter and cameraman taken hostage by eco-terrorists in the Port of Charleston who threaten to detonate what they claim is a nuclear device unless their disarmament demands are met. It's slicker and more terrifying than The Day After. It was informative to read about Zwick's arrival in LA (from Chicago) and inconspicuous start in show business, as well as his account of projects that were nearly made, like a 1994 version of Shakespeare In Love that would've starred Julia Roberts with Zwick directing (he stepped aside to produce and won an Academy Award for Best Picture).
Zwick has great stories to tell and in a fashion that reminded me of his writing for television and film, for which the word "craftsmanlike" could apply, stays out of his way and gets to his stories, and to the characters in those stories. These include melting down at Woody Allen's New Year's Eve party after breaking up with the girlfriend we was in attendance with, Zwick's instruction by acting coach Nina Foch and mentorship by director Sydney Pollack. Zwick uses this book as an opportunity to mentor writers or directors coming after him.
He admits to pining for relationships with the movie stars he's cultivated great working relationships with, only to never see or speak to them after the show wraps. Zwick praises first assistant directors and attempts to give a job few people can really define their due. He is candid about how difficult it was working with Matthew Broderick (and his mother) and Julia Roberts, litigating Harvey Weinstein into acceptable professional and human behavior, and how producing eighty hours of television gave him the tools to make movies. Between chapters, Zwick includes little lists of advice for writers and directors, or shares show business anecdotes in which the names have been removed.
NINE LESSONS FROM NINA
The oracle speaks
1. A HELPING HAND
If an actor is nervous, tell him his power emanates from the ground, rising from the earth into the sky like lightning. If he's scared, insist "This is going to be fun." Appeal to the child in the actor, who then appeals to the child in himself.
2. BE HERE NOW
Everything is happening for the first time. There's never time in real life to think. Throw in a curve ball before a take now and then. Create an unforeseen obstacle. Watch life happen. If something is easy, it's usually wrong.
3. THE DIALECTIC
Every scene has two truths that collide and change each other. Pretty much every scene should go from dark to light, or light to dark. Try to identify the moment in a scene that a dark bird flies in and flies out. Everything else is just slight of hand.
4. THE GLASS IS HALF FULL
When we say a performance is "generous" it means the actor is constantly giving the audience little gifts. Unexpected humor, sudden rage, mysterious secrets, unflagging intensity. That's the actor you want to cast.
5. THE LUCKY ONES
The best actors can be reading items from a dinner menu and leave you breathless as you wait to hear the entrées. Some people simply appear to have more vivid inner lives than others even wen they don't. The life in their eyes never seems to dim, and the camera wants to know why. We call this Being Kissed by the Angel.
6. VINTAGE NINA, Part I
As they grow older, actors tend to become less than men and actresses become more than women. She hastened to add, "They used to tell me I didn't have enough cleavage. Now I do but it's on my face."
7. VINTAGE NINA, Part II
Cut scenes whenever you can. There are only two things that are too short: life and penises. Everything else is too long.
8. VINTAGE NINA, Part III
One evening, after a cocktail or two, Nina whispered to me. "If you've ever listened to actors talk in private, you won't let them improvise."
9. DEFAULT MODE
If the script and the staging and the set and the costumes are right, it should feel like cheating. The key to acting is to stop acting. ...more
My knowledge of Zwick's work began with Special Bulletin, a 1983 TV movie about a reporter and cameraman taken hostage by eco-terrorists in the Port of Charleston who threaten to detonate what they claim is a nuclear device unless their disarmament demands are met. It's slicker and more terrifying than The Day After. It was informative to read about Zwick's arrival in LA (from Chicago) and inconspicuous start in show business, as well as his account of projects that were nearly made, like a 1994 version of Shakespeare In Love that would've starred Julia Roberts with Zwick directing (he stepped aside to produce and won an Academy Award for Best Picture).
Zwick has great stories to tell and in a fashion that reminded me of his writing for television and film, for which the word "craftsmanlike" could apply, stays out of his way and gets to his stories, and to the characters in those stories. These include melting down at Woody Allen's New Year's Eve party after breaking up with the girlfriend we was in attendance with, Zwick's instruction by acting coach Nina Foch and mentorship by director Sydney Pollack. Zwick uses this book as an opportunity to mentor writers or directors coming after him.
He admits to pining for relationships with the movie stars he's cultivated great working relationships with, only to never see or speak to them after the show wraps. Zwick praises first assistant directors and attempts to give a job few people can really define their due. He is candid about how difficult it was working with Matthew Broderick (and his mother) and Julia Roberts, litigating Harvey Weinstein into acceptable professional and human behavior, and how producing eighty hours of television gave him the tools to make movies. Between chapters, Zwick includes little lists of advice for writers and directors, or shares show business anecdotes in which the names have been removed.
NINE LESSONS FROM NINA
The oracle speaks
1. A HELPING HAND
If an actor is nervous, tell him his power emanates from the ground, rising from the earth into the sky like lightning. If he's scared, insist "This is going to be fun." Appeal to the child in the actor, who then appeals to the child in himself.
2. BE HERE NOW
Everything is happening for the first time. There's never time in real life to think. Throw in a curve ball before a take now and then. Create an unforeseen obstacle. Watch life happen. If something is easy, it's usually wrong.
3. THE DIALECTIC
Every scene has two truths that collide and change each other. Pretty much every scene should go from dark to light, or light to dark. Try to identify the moment in a scene that a dark bird flies in and flies out. Everything else is just slight of hand.
4. THE GLASS IS HALF FULL
When we say a performance is "generous" it means the actor is constantly giving the audience little gifts. Unexpected humor, sudden rage, mysterious secrets, unflagging intensity. That's the actor you want to cast.
5. THE LUCKY ONES
The best actors can be reading items from a dinner menu and leave you breathless as you wait to hear the entrées. Some people simply appear to have more vivid inner lives than others even wen they don't. The life in their eyes never seems to dim, and the camera wants to know why. We call this Being Kissed by the Angel.
6. VINTAGE NINA, Part I
As they grow older, actors tend to become less than men and actresses become more than women. She hastened to add, "They used to tell me I didn't have enough cleavage. Now I do but it's on my face."
7. VINTAGE NINA, Part II
Cut scenes whenever you can. There are only two things that are too short: life and penises. Everything else is too long.
8. VINTAGE NINA, Part III
One evening, after a cocktail or two, Nina whispered to me. "If you've ever listened to actors talk in private, you won't let them improvise."
9. DEFAULT MODE
If the script and the staging and the set and the costumes are right, it should feel like cheating. The key to acting is to stop acting. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Apr 06, 2024
Apr 07, 2024
Mar 13, 2024
Hardcover
1250204593
9781250204592
1250204593
3.83
49,948
2018
Jun 30, 2020
My introduction to the fiction of Mattias Edvardsson is A Nearly Normal Family. Published in 2019, translated to English by Rachel Willson-Broyles, th
My introduction to the fiction of Mattias Edvardsson is A Nearly Normal Family. Published in 2019, translated to English by Rachel Willson-Broyles, this is a crime thriller about a couple in Sweden whose 18-year-old daughter is accused of murdering the 32-year-old son of a law professor. Did she do it? What lengths will her parents go to protect their child?
I abandoned this on page 49/389.
The author generates some nice, not riveting, suspense in the very early go, teasing the appearance of a father at the trial of his daughter. Then we move back in time. What is she accused of? Who did she supposedly do it to? Those questions are wrapped up within the first 40 pages and I started to lose interest.
The English translation isn't bad, just tinny more than enough times to make it evident I was reading a translation. Minor things stuck out. A handball--I didn't even know this was a sport--coach asks a parent to be his colleague. Like, assistant? Minor stuff, nothing to make me stop reading.
The narrator is a pastor. I know readers who are turned off by discussions of God in their fiction and I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone with those preferences. I didn't have a problem with the narrator's job. I just wish his job was dramatized instead of being summarized.
Summarization vs. dramatization. The reader is told about the family's weekend schedule. We're told about episodes from the daughter's childhood that suggest a sociopath in training, meaning she could either be a murderer or a CEO, either/or. We're told how the father feels about his daughter. So much telling made it easier for me to ignore the story than I would have if I was being shown character through dramatization.
The daughter, Stella, is completely objectified early on by the narrator as a precious little dove who is innocent. The fact that there is a lifetime of antisocial behavior, a tenuous relationship with the father, and very suspicious comings and goings on the night of the crime are overlooked. Stupid characters make it difficult for me to continue reading.
Nearly every chapter includes or ends with foreshadowing of the "... little did we know our lives would soon change" variety that struck me as very amateurish. These could all have been deleted without the novel missing them.
A debut novel, so no rating from me. The book appealed to readers with a sweet tooth for domestic suspense and unraveling crime, serving as source material for a six-episode mini-series on Netflix, shot in Swedish and dubbed to English, which Edvardsson did not adapt. ...more
I abandoned this on page 49/389.
The author generates some nice, not riveting, suspense in the very early go, teasing the appearance of a father at the trial of his daughter. Then we move back in time. What is she accused of? Who did she supposedly do it to? Those questions are wrapped up within the first 40 pages and I started to lose interest.
The English translation isn't bad, just tinny more than enough times to make it evident I was reading a translation. Minor things stuck out. A handball--I didn't even know this was a sport--coach asks a parent to be his colleague. Like, assistant? Minor stuff, nothing to make me stop reading.
The narrator is a pastor. I know readers who are turned off by discussions of God in their fiction and I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone with those preferences. I didn't have a problem with the narrator's job. I just wish his job was dramatized instead of being summarized.
Summarization vs. dramatization. The reader is told about the family's weekend schedule. We're told about episodes from the daughter's childhood that suggest a sociopath in training, meaning she could either be a murderer or a CEO, either/or. We're told how the father feels about his daughter. So much telling made it easier for me to ignore the story than I would have if I was being shown character through dramatization.
The daughter, Stella, is completely objectified early on by the narrator as a precious little dove who is innocent. The fact that there is a lifetime of antisocial behavior, a tenuous relationship with the father, and very suspicious comings and goings on the night of the crime are overlooked. Stupid characters make it difficult for me to continue reading.
Nearly every chapter includes or ends with foreshadowing of the "... little did we know our lives would soon change" variety that struck me as very amateurish. These could all have been deleted without the novel missing them.
A debut novel, so no rating from me. The book appealed to readers with a sweet tooth for domestic suspense and unraveling crime, serving as source material for a six-episode mini-series on Netflix, shot in Swedish and dubbed to English, which Edvardsson did not adapt. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Mar 2024
Mar 2024
Dec 31, 2023
Paperback
1250133734
9781250133731
1250133734
3.80
170,621
Jan 08, 2019
Jan 08, 2019
did not like it
My introduction to the fiction of Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen is An Anonymous Girl. Published in 2018, this is the best of the recently published
My introduction to the fiction of Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen is An Anonymous Girl. Published in 2018, this is the best of the recently published thrillers I've quit, its authors taking me to page 190/371 before I abandoned it. They equip their heroine with a fascinating job and intriguing backstory, then isolate her financially and emotionally in New York, where a clinical psychological study places her in a series of increasingly odd and perhaps dangerous social situations.
The authors do a good job establishing a compelling noir character in Jessica Farris, a makeup artist whose love of theater drew her to Manhattan, where she now makes ends meet going on house calls to give a series of poorly tipping clients makeovers. Jeopardy is introduced with her family in Pennsylvania facing financial collapse. Jess has a dark secret, too. The writing is concise, parsing out information slowly, and short chapters keep the story moving.
An Anonymous Girl alternates between the perspective of Jessica, and the point of view of Dr. Shields, director of a university study Jess gets word of while on a call and crashes for a chance at some quick cash. Her answers to a series of questions gauging her morality soon make her the focus of the increasingly unprofessional study. I tend to dislike novels that bounce between narrators and this was no exception. I didn't want to be told Dr. Shields's thoughts about Jess. I wanted to see what sort of mess Jess has to get herself out of.
Jessica isn't placed in sufficiently dangerous situations through 50%, giving the novel the feeling of low stakes. When I noticed I wasn't updating my status with writing I found special, that was a red flag. The novel felt like a short story padded to novel length, with too much intrigue piled on top of intrigue. There's good character building, strong sense of place, concise writing ... and a story that I didn't care about. I co-sign anyone who calls this a page-turner, but the stark lack of anything more than ethically questionable behavior is exhibited from the villain through 50%, prompting me to stop turning the pages.
Not a debut novel, so I have to give it the rating I do for all books I abandon. ...more
The authors do a good job establishing a compelling noir character in Jessica Farris, a makeup artist whose love of theater drew her to Manhattan, where she now makes ends meet going on house calls to give a series of poorly tipping clients makeovers. Jeopardy is introduced with her family in Pennsylvania facing financial collapse. Jess has a dark secret, too. The writing is concise, parsing out information slowly, and short chapters keep the story moving.
An Anonymous Girl alternates between the perspective of Jessica, and the point of view of Dr. Shields, director of a university study Jess gets word of while on a call and crashes for a chance at some quick cash. Her answers to a series of questions gauging her morality soon make her the focus of the increasingly unprofessional study. I tend to dislike novels that bounce between narrators and this was no exception. I didn't want to be told Dr. Shields's thoughts about Jess. I wanted to see what sort of mess Jess has to get herself out of.
Jessica isn't placed in sufficiently dangerous situations through 50%, giving the novel the feeling of low stakes. When I noticed I wasn't updating my status with writing I found special, that was a red flag. The novel felt like a short story padded to novel length, with too much intrigue piled on top of intrigue. There's good character building, strong sense of place, concise writing ... and a story that I didn't care about. I co-sign anyone who calls this a page-turner, but the stark lack of anything more than ethically questionable behavior is exhibited from the villain through 50%, prompting me to stop turning the pages.
Not a debut novel, so I have to give it the rating I do for all books I abandon. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Mar 04, 2024
Mar 08, 2024
Dec 31, 2023
Hardcover
0063204339
9780063204331
0063204339
3.70
20,469
Nov 02, 2021
Nov 02, 2021
My introduction to the fiction of Wanda M. Morris is All Her Little Secrets. Published in 2021, this debut novel is set in a legal department of an At
My introduction to the fiction of Wanda M. Morris is All Her Little Secrets. Published in 2021, this debut novel is set in a legal department of an Atlanta transportation company being picketed by Black and Hispanic activists for its discriminatory hiring practices. Ellice Littlejohn is the only Black attorney at the company and reports to work early at the urging of her white boss and lover, who she discovers dead at his desk from a gunshot wound to the head.
I abandoned this on page 71/371. At 20%, the story didn't grab me, the writing is cursory and character motivation implausible. The author moves back in time to the protagonist's childhood in Chillicothe, Georgia when she wins admittance to a school for the gifted that will get her out of town and away from her alcoholic mother. Morris sets the stage for dark secrets or past crimes coming back to haunt her protagonist. This distracts from the mystery developing in the present day.
I struggled to empathize with the protagonist, not because she was helping commit adultery, but because she made the stupid decision to sleep with her boss. Rookie corporate mistake there and if there's one thing I dislike in a novel, it's people who are lousy at their jobs. If Ellice was introduced at being really good, maybe even the best at something, I would've followed her anywhere. An inept protagonist? Mildly annoying.
The writing leans toward the superficial, but the larger issue I had is that Morris employs what Roger Ebert coined the Idiot Plot, which dictates that the story would be over in 5 minutes if the protagonist didn't behave like an idiot. Fleeing a crime scene seems like a big risk for a corporate lawyer. I don't think they teach that in Junior Law. So we begin with a protagonist who's following an ill-advised romantic choice with a potentially disastrous legal choice, because, reasons.
Morris has since published two more novels, but since this was her debut, no rating from me. ...more
I abandoned this on page 71/371. At 20%, the story didn't grab me, the writing is cursory and character motivation implausible. The author moves back in time to the protagonist's childhood in Chillicothe, Georgia when she wins admittance to a school for the gifted that will get her out of town and away from her alcoholic mother. Morris sets the stage for dark secrets or past crimes coming back to haunt her protagonist. This distracts from the mystery developing in the present day.
I struggled to empathize with the protagonist, not because she was helping commit adultery, but because she made the stupid decision to sleep with her boss. Rookie corporate mistake there and if there's one thing I dislike in a novel, it's people who are lousy at their jobs. If Ellice was introduced at being really good, maybe even the best at something, I would've followed her anywhere. An inept protagonist? Mildly annoying.
The writing leans toward the superficial, but the larger issue I had is that Morris employs what Roger Ebert coined the Idiot Plot, which dictates that the story would be over in 5 minutes if the protagonist didn't behave like an idiot. Fleeing a crime scene seems like a big risk for a corporate lawyer. I don't think they teach that in Junior Law. So we begin with a protagonist who's following an ill-advised romantic choice with a potentially disastrous legal choice, because, reasons.
Morris has since published two more novels, but since this was her debut, no rating from me. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jan 22, 2024
Jan 22, 2024
Dec 21, 2023
Hardcover
0593331540
9780593331545
0593331540
3.88
22,216
Apr 19, 2022
Apr 19, 2022
liked it
My introduction to the fiction of Sascha Rothchild is Blood Sugar. Published in 2022, this debut novel is the first person account of Ruby Simon, a No
My introduction to the fiction of Sascha Rothchild is Blood Sugar. Published in 2022, this debut novel is the first person account of Ruby Simon, a North Miami Beach psychiatrist narrating the events of her life, which have led to her being questioned by police in the death of her husband Jason, the fourth person authorities now know died within feet of the Yale grad. The story is reminiscent of James M. Cain and Patricia Highsmith, in which a gleefully sinister murderer stays a step ahead of being exposed by the polite society he's hiding in plain sight from. It's about time a woman got in on the action, but the novel lacks description and falls short of greatness due to excessive summary.
Rothchild maps out her narrator's life with the color and volume of a Thomas Guide. Much of it is compelling. Born and raised in Miami, Ruby is introduced at the age of five, pulling a 7-year-old classmate drowning in the Atlantic Ocean under the tide to finish Mother Nature's job. The boy is revealed to be a bully terrorizing Ruby's older sister, Ellie. Ruby establishes that she's no sociopath, capable of empathy and loving relationships. Nor does she seek to satisfy a bloodlust, though twice more in her life--sexually assaulted by the father of a high school friend, and later, standing on a street corner with an abusive client--rids the human race of these monsters. The law catches up with her when her diabetic husband expires in their bed.
The novel peaks as Ruby locks into a battle of wits with her fiancé's estranged mother Gertrude, who abandoned Jason at age 2, another awful human being begging for a drawer at the morgue, a psychological abuser who retains long distance control over her son. Rothchild has an imaginative dedication to murder by numbers--I love the way she uses the environment of Miami in at least two of her killings--and also lends her narrator a healthy sex life, both without writing graphic violence or sex. That she loves and understands her genre is never in doubt. While the writing is very often pedestrian and on-the-nose, Rothchild has an excellent grip on psychology and shares her perspectives on modern living through her narrator.
Since most people lie, even in therapy, even in blind studies, even to themselves, it's nearly impossible to know true average number of sexual partners. But I'm certain growing up in Miami skews what might seem outrageous in other parts of America as totally within reason. Miami is hot and steamy, filled with attractive people wearing tiny clothes, drinking rum, dancing to sultry salsa music all night long, gay and straight and every tick of the pendulum in between. There is no slut shaming in Miami. Instead sex is openly celebrated. It's the prudes who feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.
However, I did develop my own sex rule. I would not sleep with more men than my current age. There was Carlos first. Then Mikey the water polo player, Kevin the vegan. Max the professor's assistant. Plus Jake, Melody's boyfriend. And a few more over the years. When I write all their names on a list, it seems like a lot of men. But when I step back to do the math, it doesn't. I've been sexually active since I was fifteen, so by my mid-twenties, having dated on average one to three men every year, that adds up to sleeping with over twenty men. When I think about it that way, my list doesn't seem so long at all.
Unlike The Talented Mr. Ripley, in which Tom Ripley is moments away from being exposed as a fraud or murderer, Rothchild climaxes her story too soon, devoting the last quarter to Ruby's impending murder trial and the resulting media circus. Maybe the attention is important to a female killer, but remaining at large is far more suspenseful, detail after detail of a person's public life nowhere near as compelling as their private life. Rothchild also summarizes the entire book, which is the dreaded "telling" aspect of "showing vs. telling." Ruby tells about her childhood, tells about her career, tells about her killings, and tells us everything she's thinking. I didn't want a summary of Ruby's life, I wanted to experience it.
I've been wondering where the female killers, con artists, or thieves are in crime fiction, and why so many are very proper Mabels limited to exposing dark secrets like Nancy Drew. Though Ruby Simon is a compromise to lovers of both coldblooded femme fatales and proper ladies who could be invited to brunch, I was satisfied. The descriptive version of this novel would've been four stars. The Cliff Notes version here is two-and-a-half stars. Bonus half-star to Rothchild for keeping me invested--I rushed, didn't skim--and making me excited to get back to the novel. For her follow-up, I hope her agent or editor works with her on showing a story instead of telling it, but as a debut, I recommend it. ...more
Rothchild maps out her narrator's life with the color and volume of a Thomas Guide. Much of it is compelling. Born and raised in Miami, Ruby is introduced at the age of five, pulling a 7-year-old classmate drowning in the Atlantic Ocean under the tide to finish Mother Nature's job. The boy is revealed to be a bully terrorizing Ruby's older sister, Ellie. Ruby establishes that she's no sociopath, capable of empathy and loving relationships. Nor does she seek to satisfy a bloodlust, though twice more in her life--sexually assaulted by the father of a high school friend, and later, standing on a street corner with an abusive client--rids the human race of these monsters. The law catches up with her when her diabetic husband expires in their bed.
The novel peaks as Ruby locks into a battle of wits with her fiancé's estranged mother Gertrude, who abandoned Jason at age 2, another awful human being begging for a drawer at the morgue, a psychological abuser who retains long distance control over her son. Rothchild has an imaginative dedication to murder by numbers--I love the way she uses the environment of Miami in at least two of her killings--and also lends her narrator a healthy sex life, both without writing graphic violence or sex. That she loves and understands her genre is never in doubt. While the writing is very often pedestrian and on-the-nose, Rothchild has an excellent grip on psychology and shares her perspectives on modern living through her narrator.
Since most people lie, even in therapy, even in blind studies, even to themselves, it's nearly impossible to know true average number of sexual partners. But I'm certain growing up in Miami skews what might seem outrageous in other parts of America as totally within reason. Miami is hot and steamy, filled with attractive people wearing tiny clothes, drinking rum, dancing to sultry salsa music all night long, gay and straight and every tick of the pendulum in between. There is no slut shaming in Miami. Instead sex is openly celebrated. It's the prudes who feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.
However, I did develop my own sex rule. I would not sleep with more men than my current age. There was Carlos first. Then Mikey the water polo player, Kevin the vegan. Max the professor's assistant. Plus Jake, Melody's boyfriend. And a few more over the years. When I write all their names on a list, it seems like a lot of men. But when I step back to do the math, it doesn't. I've been sexually active since I was fifteen, so by my mid-twenties, having dated on average one to three men every year, that adds up to sleeping with over twenty men. When I think about it that way, my list doesn't seem so long at all.
Unlike The Talented Mr. Ripley, in which Tom Ripley is moments away from being exposed as a fraud or murderer, Rothchild climaxes her story too soon, devoting the last quarter to Ruby's impending murder trial and the resulting media circus. Maybe the attention is important to a female killer, but remaining at large is far more suspenseful, detail after detail of a person's public life nowhere near as compelling as their private life. Rothchild also summarizes the entire book, which is the dreaded "telling" aspect of "showing vs. telling." Ruby tells about her childhood, tells about her career, tells about her killings, and tells us everything she's thinking. I didn't want a summary of Ruby's life, I wanted to experience it.
I've been wondering where the female killers, con artists, or thieves are in crime fiction, and why so many are very proper Mabels limited to exposing dark secrets like Nancy Drew. Though Ruby Simon is a compromise to lovers of both coldblooded femme fatales and proper ladies who could be invited to brunch, I was satisfied. The descriptive version of this novel would've been four stars. The Cliff Notes version here is two-and-a-half stars. Bonus half-star to Rothchild for keeping me invested--I rushed, didn't skim--and making me excited to get back to the novel. For her follow-up, I hope her agent or editor works with her on showing a story instead of telling it, but as a debut, I recommend it. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Feb 06, 2024
Feb 08, 2024
Dec 17, 2023
Hardcover
0451496108
9780451496102
0451496108
3.58
1,987
Mar 21, 2017
Mar 21, 2017
it was ok
My introduction to the fiction of Melissa Scrivner Love is Lola. Published in 2017, this should've been in my wheelhouse: the power behind a tightly k
My introduction to the fiction of Melissa Scrivner Love is Lola. Published in 2017, this should've been in my wheelhouse: the power behind a tightly knit drug ring in South Central L.A. is the twenty-three-year-old Lola, girlfriend to the gang's public-facing leader. There are a lot of thrillers or mysteries about women investigating bad behavior, but a much smaller sub-genre feaaturing women behaving badly: the con artists, killers, or queenpins. Lola proudly belongs in this second class, but its summary prose and plot-heavy story had me skimming through it in a day.
The first major problem with Lola is that Love--a writer on the TV series CSI: Miami and Person of Interest making her debut as a novelist--tags a lot of her dialogue with explanations about what's going on between the ears of her protagonist, translating plot or character development like a sign language interpreter would for the deaf. I don't want to read a summary, I want to experience an author's story through dramatization. Excessive telling also kills any momentum. This is not an enjoyable novel to read.
Love has to know that the A-class of the drug kingpin sub-genre is Breaking Bad and its spinoff, Better Call Saul. The plot machinations her novel lean so heavily on are just not interesting: Lola's gang has been given territory in exchange for servitude to middle management of the Mexican cartel. Considered expendable, they're ordered to take out a rogue distributor and find out who his supplier is, but Lola's kid brother screws up the operation, giving the gang 72 hours to recover the cartel's product or they'll torture Lola to death.
Unlike Don Winslow, Love doesn't possess the punchiness or pathos to tell a compelling story in this milieu. Given that disappointing a drug cartel guarantees many fates worse than death, Lola isn't confronted with enough tests. She isn't forced to make a tough choice. She isn't tasked with developing new skills. I skimmed through to the ending, spoiled by the presence of a number in the title. As readers, we know Lola is in no danger of meeting a tragic end and if she did, the reader isn't given enough reason to care.
First paragraph: Lola stands across the craggy square of backyard she shares with Garcia. He mans the grill, rusted tongs and Corona with lime in hand, making the center of a cluster of men, their biceps bare and beaded with sweat. Crenshaw Six tattoos evident in their standard uniform of wife-beaters and torn cargo pants. If Lola were alone with Garcia, she would take her turn over the smoking meat, too, but as afternoon transform Huntington Park from light to shadow, Lola stays away from the heat. Her place now is at the center of a cluster of women, their necks craning toward any high-pitched squeak that might be gossip, each one standing with a single hip cocked, as if at any second someone might place a sleeping child there for comfort.
Memorable prose: The only people who knock on front doors in this neighborhood are cops who've exchanged their battering rams for bad news. ...more
The first major problem with Lola is that Love--a writer on the TV series CSI: Miami and Person of Interest making her debut as a novelist--tags a lot of her dialogue with explanations about what's going on between the ears of her protagonist, translating plot or character development like a sign language interpreter would for the deaf. I don't want to read a summary, I want to experience an author's story through dramatization. Excessive telling also kills any momentum. This is not an enjoyable novel to read.
Love has to know that the A-class of the drug kingpin sub-genre is Breaking Bad and its spinoff, Better Call Saul. The plot machinations her novel lean so heavily on are just not interesting: Lola's gang has been given territory in exchange for servitude to middle management of the Mexican cartel. Considered expendable, they're ordered to take out a rogue distributor and find out who his supplier is, but Lola's kid brother screws up the operation, giving the gang 72 hours to recover the cartel's product or they'll torture Lola to death.
Unlike Don Winslow, Love doesn't possess the punchiness or pathos to tell a compelling story in this milieu. Given that disappointing a drug cartel guarantees many fates worse than death, Lola isn't confronted with enough tests. She isn't forced to make a tough choice. She isn't tasked with developing new skills. I skimmed through to the ending, spoiled by the presence of a number in the title. As readers, we know Lola is in no danger of meeting a tragic end and if she did, the reader isn't given enough reason to care.
First paragraph: Lola stands across the craggy square of backyard she shares with Garcia. He mans the grill, rusted tongs and Corona with lime in hand, making the center of a cluster of men, their biceps bare and beaded with sweat. Crenshaw Six tattoos evident in their standard uniform of wife-beaters and torn cargo pants. If Lola were alone with Garcia, she would take her turn over the smoking meat, too, but as afternoon transform Huntington Park from light to shadow, Lola stays away from the heat. Her place now is at the center of a cluster of women, their necks craning toward any high-pitched squeak that might be gossip, each one standing with a single hip cocked, as if at any second someone might place a sleeping child there for comfort.
Memorable prose: The only people who knock on front doors in this neighborhood are cops who've exchanged their battering rams for bad news. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Apr 27, 2024
Apr 27, 2024
Dec 16, 2023
Hardcover
1250198674
9781250198679
1250198674
3.67
18,485
May 14, 2019
May 14, 2019
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in 2019, The Night Before by Wendy Walker is a commercial thriller in which the life of a young mom with the perfect child and perfect husband is upended when her sister disappears on an Internet date. I quit the book on page 34/310 due to telling versus showing.
Telling is summarization. Showing is dramatization. All novels have some telling in them, or they'd be 1,000 pages long. Bad novels are strictly telling. "Reggie stopped by the mini-mart for little chocolate donuts. This was his custom after a shift at the toy factory and had been for years ..." versus an author describing Reggie entering the mini-mart and grabbing his items. If his job at the toy factory or his purchases have significance, Reggie can reveal that in dialogue with the clerk. That's also showing.
An author telling me is telling. In plot-driven novels, particularly thrillers, the author can too often get in the way of what's more important: the story.
Walker's writing is very rudimentary. She clutches at her pearls over the topic of Internet dating, which is surprising considering the year this was published, but according to some people, Internet dating is still a surefire way to get yourself murdered (warn your nieces). Trivial information is imparted while vital information withheld. The characters were flat. At best, if I read another 200 pages, they'd get into thrilling situations, maybe. But the author's unwillingness to show me anything in favor of telling is so counterintuitive to good storytelling that I didn't have the patience to continue.
No rating because I picked the novel up and put it right down.
Also, I see "psychological thriller" used to describe novels like this, but other than beginning in a psychiatrist's office, I couldn't discern anything psychological about it. A woman's sister disappears. She's not imagining that. She doesn't need to see a doctor. Her sister is gone. There's nothing psychologically curious about it, like Rosemary's Baby. I'd classify these books as domestic thrillers or mystery/ suspense but then again, no one is asking me to come reorganize their bookstore. ...more
Published in Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in 2019, The Night Before by Wendy Walker is a commercial thriller in which the life of a young mom with the perfect child and perfect husband is upended when her sister disappears on an Internet date. I quit the book on page 34/310 due to telling versus showing.
Telling is summarization. Showing is dramatization. All novels have some telling in them, or they'd be 1,000 pages long. Bad novels are strictly telling. "Reggie stopped by the mini-mart for little chocolate donuts. This was his custom after a shift at the toy factory and had been for years ..." versus an author describing Reggie entering the mini-mart and grabbing his items. If his job at the toy factory or his purchases have significance, Reggie can reveal that in dialogue with the clerk. That's also showing.
An author telling me is telling. In plot-driven novels, particularly thrillers, the author can too often get in the way of what's more important: the story.
Walker's writing is very rudimentary. She clutches at her pearls over the topic of Internet dating, which is surprising considering the year this was published, but according to some people, Internet dating is still a surefire way to get yourself murdered (warn your nieces). Trivial information is imparted while vital information withheld. The characters were flat. At best, if I read another 200 pages, they'd get into thrilling situations, maybe. But the author's unwillingness to show me anything in favor of telling is so counterintuitive to good storytelling that I didn't have the patience to continue.
No rating because I picked the novel up and put it right down.
Also, I see "psychological thriller" used to describe novels like this, but other than beginning in a psychiatrist's office, I couldn't discern anything psychological about it. A woman's sister disappears. She's not imagining that. She doesn't need to see a doctor. Her sister is gone. There's nothing psychologically curious about it, like Rosemary's Baby. I'd classify these books as domestic thrillers or mystery/ suspense but then again, no one is asking me to come reorganize their bookstore. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jan 02, 2024
Jan 03, 2024
Dec 16, 2023
Hardcover
0593187733
9780593187739
0593187733
3.17
1,649
Nov 17, 2020
Nov 17, 2020
it was ok
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
The Lady Ups Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
The Lady Upstairs is the debut novel by Halley Sutton, a frequent contributor to the CrimeReads website. Published in 2020, I had high hopes for this due to its terrific cover design (by Erika Verbeck) and promise of a noir-soaked thriller about a blackmail agency in L.A.
First-person narrative, while not a dealbreaker, signaled trouble. Even when a narrator is delightfully peculiar, or wields snark like a superpower, first-person often runs its course by the 30% mark. A novel is a long time to spend in someone else's thoughts or opinions, if the author isn't bringing much else to the potluck. Sutton's narrator, Jo, is about a tenth as witty or clever as most narrators.
Jo spends most of the novel drinking with her gal pal Lou, who works with her in an employment agency that serves as a front for "the Lady Upstairs," their mysterious boss who runs a blackmail ring and who Jo has never met. A blackmail ring should inspire a harrowing paranoid filled thriller or mystery, but Sutton doesn't offer the reader much in the way of an exciting plot. Jo talks. And drinks. And haphazardly puts together honeypot schemes using other women. And it's all very boring.
The novel's irreparable flaw is telling instead of showing. An incessant amount of dialogue is accompanied by what Jo thinks this means or that indicates or what might be going on here. This overwriting completely kills whatever tension might be building in the scene. There is entirely too much editorial aside, too much of the Writer, for a novel that has a handful of characters and isn't complex.
Two stars for some well-written description and enough sleaziness to keep me engaged, though I skimmed often. I did want to find out what tragedy might befall Jo. Neither the climax or the ending are satisfying. ...more
The Lady Ups Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
The Lady Upstairs is the debut novel by Halley Sutton, a frequent contributor to the CrimeReads website. Published in 2020, I had high hopes for this due to its terrific cover design (by Erika Verbeck) and promise of a noir-soaked thriller about a blackmail agency in L.A.
First-person narrative, while not a dealbreaker, signaled trouble. Even when a narrator is delightfully peculiar, or wields snark like a superpower, first-person often runs its course by the 30% mark. A novel is a long time to spend in someone else's thoughts or opinions, if the author isn't bringing much else to the potluck. Sutton's narrator, Jo, is about a tenth as witty or clever as most narrators.
Jo spends most of the novel drinking with her gal pal Lou, who works with her in an employment agency that serves as a front for "the Lady Upstairs," their mysterious boss who runs a blackmail ring and who Jo has never met. A blackmail ring should inspire a harrowing paranoid filled thriller or mystery, but Sutton doesn't offer the reader much in the way of an exciting plot. Jo talks. And drinks. And haphazardly puts together honeypot schemes using other women. And it's all very boring.
The novel's irreparable flaw is telling instead of showing. An incessant amount of dialogue is accompanied by what Jo thinks this means or that indicates or what might be going on here. This overwriting completely kills whatever tension might be building in the scene. There is entirely too much editorial aside, too much of the Writer, for a novel that has a handful of characters and isn't complex.
Two stars for some well-written description and enough sleaziness to keep me engaged, though I skimmed often. I did want to find out what tragedy might befall Jo. Neither the climax or the ending are satisfying. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 20, 2023
Dec 25, 2023
Dec 15, 2023
Paperback
3.48
94,932
Jun 07, 2022
Jun 07, 2022
did not like it
My introduction to the fiction of Kirsten Chen is Counterfeit. Published in 2022, this novel was mentioned by a literary agent--not Chen's--I'm submit
My introduction to the fiction of Kirsten Chen is Counterfeit. Published in 2022, this novel was mentioned by a literary agent--not Chen's--I'm submitting my work to as being an example of the type of "secrets and lies" suspense novel she loves, so I wanted to read it. Upmarket fiction, complicated women, suspense where you get to know the characters, all of these boxes check what I plan to submit.
I abandoned this one on page 50/274.
Summarization vs. dramatization. The author tells the reader everything. We're told about a law school grad living in San Francisco who's given up her career to raise her tyrannical two-year-old with her nanny while growing distant from her surgeon husband. We're told about the reunion with a mysterious college roommate who invites her to join her operation in trafficking counterfeit luxury goods. We're not shown anything. The telling is so overwhelming that Chen doesn't even use quotation marks for dialogue. The novel is just a run-on recap of action or dialogue.
Several days after the Neiman's fiasco, Winnie called me to apologize. She said she hadn't been thinking straight. Dealing with Guangzhou remotely was such a colossal headache that the stress had gotten to her. She was about to pay top dollar for a shipment practically sight unseen--she cut herself off then. You've made your views clear, she said, so that's the last thing I'll say about your work. But, Ava, I want you to know that I've loved spending time with you and Henri. I hope we can remain friends.
I don't want to read Cliff Notes, I want to read the original version.
Foreshadowing indicates the main character is being questioned by police, but is glib beyond the point anyone being questioned by a detective would be, especially if she'd committed a crime. I generally dislike foreshadowing due to how amateurish it often feels, and unnecessary.
70% of the first fifty pages involves the tantrums the main character's infant is throwing. No judgment here, but I lost interest in the main character due to how incompetent she appears to be in parenting, requiring a full-time Mexican nanny to help her not quell her son's outbursts.
First World problems: Main character unfulfilled giving up a legal career to be a mother and wife, as well as grow distant from her surgeon husband, who's working surgeon hours to give them the lifestyle she covets. Can authors either pretend not everyone graduates from Stanford, marries a doctor, and hires a nanny to help them manage the household, or, make me care?
Through fifty pages, Counterfeit isn't suspenseful, so to call it a thriller would be a stretch. It doesn't present a crime or a puzzle to be solved, precluding it from mystery. It isn't funny, so it's not comic. There aren't any aliens, robots, or time travelers, so it's definitely not science fiction. What is this? Boring.
This is not a debut, it just reads like one, so I'll have to give it my usual rating when I abandon a book. This is an unpopular opinion. Chen has drawn admiration from a top literary agent who probably wishes she represented her, as well as selection for Reese's Book Club, so, more power to her. ...more
I abandoned this one on page 50/274.
Summarization vs. dramatization. The author tells the reader everything. We're told about a law school grad living in San Francisco who's given up her career to raise her tyrannical two-year-old with her nanny while growing distant from her surgeon husband. We're told about the reunion with a mysterious college roommate who invites her to join her operation in trafficking counterfeit luxury goods. We're not shown anything. The telling is so overwhelming that Chen doesn't even use quotation marks for dialogue. The novel is just a run-on recap of action or dialogue.
Several days after the Neiman's fiasco, Winnie called me to apologize. She said she hadn't been thinking straight. Dealing with Guangzhou remotely was such a colossal headache that the stress had gotten to her. She was about to pay top dollar for a shipment practically sight unseen--she cut herself off then. You've made your views clear, she said, so that's the last thing I'll say about your work. But, Ava, I want you to know that I've loved spending time with you and Henri. I hope we can remain friends.
I don't want to read Cliff Notes, I want to read the original version.
Foreshadowing indicates the main character is being questioned by police, but is glib beyond the point anyone being questioned by a detective would be, especially if she'd committed a crime. I generally dislike foreshadowing due to how amateurish it often feels, and unnecessary.
70% of the first fifty pages involves the tantrums the main character's infant is throwing. No judgment here, but I lost interest in the main character due to how incompetent she appears to be in parenting, requiring a full-time Mexican nanny to help her not quell her son's outbursts.
First World problems: Main character unfulfilled giving up a legal career to be a mother and wife, as well as grow distant from her surgeon husband, who's working surgeon hours to give them the lifestyle she covets. Can authors either pretend not everyone graduates from Stanford, marries a doctor, and hires a nanny to help them manage the household, or, make me care?
Through fifty pages, Counterfeit isn't suspenseful, so to call it a thriller would be a stretch. It doesn't present a crime or a puzzle to be solved, precluding it from mystery. It isn't funny, so it's not comic. There aren't any aliens, robots, or time travelers, so it's definitely not science fiction. What is this? Boring.
This is not a debut, it just reads like one, so I'll have to give it my usual rating when I abandon a book. This is an unpopular opinion. Chen has drawn admiration from a top literary agent who probably wishes she represented her, as well as selection for Reese's Book Club, so, more power to her. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Feb 27, 2024
Feb 27, 2024
Dec 14, 2023
Hardcover
198269467X
9781982694678
B0BXBF3PGF
3.75
55,723
Aug 17, 2021
Aug 17, 2021
did not like it
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Teres Saint
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know. Teres Saint-Marie hooked me up. Thank you, Teres!
56 Days is my introduction to Catherine Ryan Howard. Published in 2021, this novel leapt up my reading docket because it's a thriller set during lockdown. I was curious what another author would do with that scenario. I read 12%, put it aside for four days, tried picking it back up, and then decided to throw in the towel. If Howard were a debut novelist, I wouldn't have given this a rating, but she is not, and I purchased a copy on Kindle. A one-star review wouldn't ruin my day as long as the reviewer purchased a copy. For $9.99, you can call me the devil if you want to.
We're in Dublin, where there's apparently a dead body in one of the units of an apartment community in lockdown. I'm always game for a novel set in contemporary Ireland. The author then moves back in time 56 days, a red flag that nothing is going to happen for perhaps the next 50% of the book, like Who Is Maud Dixon?, baiting the reader with a crime up front.
There is a very shy woman who meets a gorgeous guy in line for coffee. She's a Mary Sue type who Has No Idea How Beautiful She Really Is. They are both obsessed with space flight, which was a bit different and kind of nice. I wasn't particularly immersed in either the place or time. This relationship could be taking place anywhere and anytime.
What turned me off is Howard switching perspectives to a cop heading to the flat of her colleague, who's been handcuffed to his bed in a sex act gone awry. This chapter goes on for so long, isn't as cute as the author seems to think it is, and interrupts the momentum with this couple meeting each other. This is a red flag that the author isn't very interested in the characters they introduced.
Chapter headings: 56 Days Ago. 53 Days Ago. I don't think I'm a dummy but I disliked having to do math at the beginning of each chapter to figure out how many days were left until the body is found.
I get the feeling this isn't a story that the author was dying to tell as much as one she wanted to ship quickly while we were in the grips of the pandemic. As slow as the publishing industry is moving these days, this one was on shelves in August 2021. It needed more time in the pot.
The thrillers on my reading docket, including three I picked up from the library today: The Lady Upstairs by Halley Sutton, Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater, The Night Before by Wendy Walker, Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins, Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li and The House Guest by Hank Phillippi Ryan. I have too many enticing books to get to and not enough time. Next! ...more
56 Days is my introduction to Catherine Ryan Howard. Published in 2021, this novel leapt up my reading docket because it's a thriller set during lockdown. I was curious what another author would do with that scenario. I read 12%, put it aside for four days, tried picking it back up, and then decided to throw in the towel. If Howard were a debut novelist, I wouldn't have given this a rating, but she is not, and I purchased a copy on Kindle. A one-star review wouldn't ruin my day as long as the reviewer purchased a copy. For $9.99, you can call me the devil if you want to.
We're in Dublin, where there's apparently a dead body in one of the units of an apartment community in lockdown. I'm always game for a novel set in contemporary Ireland. The author then moves back in time 56 days, a red flag that nothing is going to happen for perhaps the next 50% of the book, like Who Is Maud Dixon?, baiting the reader with a crime up front.
There is a very shy woman who meets a gorgeous guy in line for coffee. She's a Mary Sue type who Has No Idea How Beautiful She Really Is. They are both obsessed with space flight, which was a bit different and kind of nice. I wasn't particularly immersed in either the place or time. This relationship could be taking place anywhere and anytime.
What turned me off is Howard switching perspectives to a cop heading to the flat of her colleague, who's been handcuffed to his bed in a sex act gone awry. This chapter goes on for so long, isn't as cute as the author seems to think it is, and interrupts the momentum with this couple meeting each other. This is a red flag that the author isn't very interested in the characters they introduced.
Chapter headings: 56 Days Ago. 53 Days Ago. I don't think I'm a dummy but I disliked having to do math at the beginning of each chapter to figure out how many days were left until the body is found.
I get the feeling this isn't a story that the author was dying to tell as much as one she wanted to ship quickly while we were in the grips of the pandemic. As slow as the publishing industry is moving these days, this one was on shelves in August 2021. It needed more time in the pot.
The thrillers on my reading docket, including three I picked up from the library today: The Lady Upstairs by Halley Sutton, Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater, The Night Before by Wendy Walker, Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins, Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li and The House Guest by Hank Phillippi Ryan. I have too many enticing books to get to and not enough time. Next! ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 14, 2023
Dec 19, 2023
Dec 14, 2023
ebook
1250274257
9781250274250
1250274257
3.56
137,500
Jan 04, 2022
Jan 04, 2022
it was ok
My introduction to the fiction of Rachel Hawkins is Reckless Girls. Published in 2021, this is a partly nautical, partly tropical thriller told mostly
My introduction to the fiction of Rachel Hawkins is Reckless Girls. Published in 2021, this is a partly nautical, partly tropical thriller told mostly from the point of view of Lux McAllister, a 29-year-old housekeeper in Maui who accompanies her charter captain boyfriend on a trip commissioned by two globetrotting women--the reckless girls of the title--to a remote atoll mired in bad history. "Agatha Christie" is proclaimed on the book jacket and while I haven't read enough Christie to appraise its credit worthiness there, what started as a promising thriller turned mundane and proceeds along extremely boring lines.
The author starts strong by assigning her protagonist a working class living, one who cleans up after the rich rather than being rich herself. Lux McAllister: great name. Lux joins her boyfriend Nico, who comes from wealth and is described in too cute a manner to be trustworthy. The couple sets off on a tour with two American backpackers in tow. The son of a navy veteran, I always enjoy reading about boats and the absolute freedom of a passage like the one portrayed here. In terms of a story, anything can happen.
Hawkins allows Lux to summarize a bit too much for my taste rather than dramatize her insecurities or flaws through action and dialogue. The author also disrupts the pacing by moving back in time to acquaint the reader with the two reckless girls. The less I knew about these girls, the stronger the suspense would've been. Neither the prose or dialogue are very good. It's usually a red flag when I can't find a particularly good sentence an author conjured, and I didn't here. I did keep reading to see what skullduggery Hawkins had in store.
Lux devolves into a character who things happen to. She's nearly swept overboard in a storm, but even she acknowledges she acted on reflex and got lucky. She's followed a feckless male halfway around the world and is both emotionally and financially dependent on him, simply because he offered her an escape from trauma in her past. Yet this is a man who named his boat after his ex-girlfriend and who keeps it as such even after he gets serious with Lux. This made me lose respect for her as events develop that suggest she is in over her water skis and kind of a dumb person.
Reckless Girls might've been saved by a killer story, like Charles Williams was so gifted at spinning on the high seas. Even with rudimentary prose and dialogue I started to skim, I was prepared for something malicious to happen on the atoll or with the reckless girls. Nothing did. Of course, not everyone is who they seem, but Lux isn't skilled enough to do anything about it. She hovers around her boyfriend--who she's helpless without--watching him for warning signs that she might have listened to in San Diego before hooking up with a guy whose boat was named after his ex-girlfriend.
The title--which I'd be willing to bet underwent at least one change--is misleading, suggesting a thriller that takes place at a reform school rather than the high seas.
Two stars because I skimmed to the end and liked two and a half things Hawkins does very early in her book: protagonist as maid, protagonist with cool name, sailing. ...more
The author starts strong by assigning her protagonist a working class living, one who cleans up after the rich rather than being rich herself. Lux McAllister: great name. Lux joins her boyfriend Nico, who comes from wealth and is described in too cute a manner to be trustworthy. The couple sets off on a tour with two American backpackers in tow. The son of a navy veteran, I always enjoy reading about boats and the absolute freedom of a passage like the one portrayed here. In terms of a story, anything can happen.
Hawkins allows Lux to summarize a bit too much for my taste rather than dramatize her insecurities or flaws through action and dialogue. The author also disrupts the pacing by moving back in time to acquaint the reader with the two reckless girls. The less I knew about these girls, the stronger the suspense would've been. Neither the prose or dialogue are very good. It's usually a red flag when I can't find a particularly good sentence an author conjured, and I didn't here. I did keep reading to see what skullduggery Hawkins had in store.
Lux devolves into a character who things happen to. She's nearly swept overboard in a storm, but even she acknowledges she acted on reflex and got lucky. She's followed a feckless male halfway around the world and is both emotionally and financially dependent on him, simply because he offered her an escape from trauma in her past. Yet this is a man who named his boat after his ex-girlfriend and who keeps it as such even after he gets serious with Lux. This made me lose respect for her as events develop that suggest she is in over her water skis and kind of a dumb person.
Reckless Girls might've been saved by a killer story, like Charles Williams was so gifted at spinning on the high seas. Even with rudimentary prose and dialogue I started to skim, I was prepared for something malicious to happen on the atoll or with the reckless girls. Nothing did. Of course, not everyone is who they seem, but Lux isn't skilled enough to do anything about it. She hovers around her boyfriend--who she's helpless without--watching him for warning signs that she might have listened to in San Diego before hooking up with a guy whose boat was named after his ex-girlfriend.
The title--which I'd be willing to bet underwent at least one change--is misleading, suggesting a thriller that takes place at a reform school rather than the high seas.
Two stars because I skimmed to the end and liked two and a half things Hawkins does very early in her book: protagonist as maid, protagonist with cool name, sailing. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Mar 12, 2024
Mar 17, 2024
Dec 14, 2023
Hardcover
0593184734
9780593184738
0593184734
3.46
29,225
Apr 05, 2022
Apr 05, 2022
My introduction to the fiction of Grace D. Li is Portrait of a Thief. Published in 2022, this debut thriller follows five Chinese Americans who with s
My introduction to the fiction of Grace D. Li is Portrait of a Thief. Published in 2022, this debut thriller follows five Chinese Americans who with support from a mysterious benefactor in Beijing conspire to steal back five Chinese sculptures looted from the city centuries ago. The ringleader, Will Chen, is a Harvard senior majoring in art history. His sister Irene is a public policy expert at Duke who can talk anyone into anything. Daniel Liang is a premed student who can pick locks. Lily Wu is an engineering major who races cars for cash and acts as getaway driver. Alex Hiang is an MIT dropout and a computer hacker.
I abandoned this on page 57/369. At 15%, the conceit is stretched to the point it snaps. Five college students with financially rewarding if unfulfilling futures decide to risk their freedom and perhaps their lives because art needs to be returned to Beijing. Okay. But they assemble with a deafening level of disconnect. Their conversations with each other are low energy and their thoughts--chapters alternate between Will, Irene, Daniel, Lily and Alex in a way that hurts the pacing--are mundane. It's as if the novel were about a trip to the Apple Bar and the characters were struggling with where to eat lunch.
Li summarizes an awful lot, falling into the trap of telling instead of showing. Even a heist that Will witnesses and is subsequently questioned about by police ... just happens. Stakes feel low. Spreading the point of view between five characters hinders rather than helps the story, which would've benefited by just being about Will as he goes down the ring of fire. For Li's next novel, I'm hoping for characters who have the best possible thing happen to them or the worst possible thing, preferably both. Her debut shoots right down the middle of the road into the lukewarm. No rating because this is a debut novel. ...more
I abandoned this on page 57/369. At 15%, the conceit is stretched to the point it snaps. Five college students with financially rewarding if unfulfilling futures decide to risk their freedom and perhaps their lives because art needs to be returned to Beijing. Okay. But they assemble with a deafening level of disconnect. Their conversations with each other are low energy and their thoughts--chapters alternate between Will, Irene, Daniel, Lily and Alex in a way that hurts the pacing--are mundane. It's as if the novel were about a trip to the Apple Bar and the characters were struggling with where to eat lunch.
Li summarizes an awful lot, falling into the trap of telling instead of showing. Even a heist that Will witnesses and is subsequently questioned about by police ... just happens. Stakes feel low. Spreading the point of view between five characters hinders rather than helps the story, which would've benefited by just being about Will as he goes down the ring of fire. For Li's next novel, I'm hoping for characters who have the best possible thing happen to them or the worst possible thing, preferably both. Her debut shoots right down the middle of the road into the lukewarm. No rating because this is a debut novel. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jan 23, 2024
Feb 2024
Dec 12, 2023
Hardcover
3.48
12,422
Apr 25, 2023
Apr 25, 2023
it was amazing
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Death of a B Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Death of a Bookseller is the debut novel by Alice Slater. Published in 2023, it's a first-person account of a young bookstore clerk and true crime fan in the northeast London neighborhood of Walthamstow. Given to morbid self-intentions, she becomes obsessed with a radiant co-worker, who narrates her segments of the story as well. I can't recall which page Slater made me abandon my distaste for first-person narration or switching points of view and enjoy what she was cooking, but she does it quickly with precise and often witty writing, a fascinating milieu, and a suspenseful story that kept me turning the pages.
Brogan Roach works at her local branch of Spines, a bookstore chain whose arrival in the 1990s forced two local booksellers to shutter and in 2019, is now on its last legs. Roach lives in a flat above the bar her mother operates. She keeps a giant African land snail named Bleep as a pet and consumes true crime books, electing herself curator of that section at Spines. She dismisses the "Pumpkin Spice Girls" who flock to true crime like any new trend. A loner who surrounds herself with books and morbid explorations of death, Roach considers herself above the "normies."
Laura Bunting appears to Roach like a vision, a pretty and confident and well-liked bookseller who transfers to her branch with a new manager and the male bookseller Laura is fixated on. Her mother the victim of a serial murderer, Laura writes poetry that champions the lives of victims. Without sharing her macabre family history, Laura takes offense to Roach's gothic obsession with death. The harder her new co-worker tries to win her approval, the more Laura ignores her. Bad idea.
I have a sweet spot for any story about work and workplace dynamics. Slater doesn't stop there, identifying a favorite milieu of writers and readers alike--the bookstore--and on its most immediate level, Death of a Bookseller is a great book about books. Slater writes what I've thought about: management, perky co-workers, popular books or trending topics, and finally customers, who interfere with what otherwise would be a fun job. Her writing is sharp, substantive and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.
I've always fancied myself a death row bride. I'd rock up in black lace, a leather jacket, sunglasses. I liked the idea of writing to a serial killer in jail, striking up a friendship, finding out what made them tick. It was difficult to find cool serial killers to write to in the UK, though. They lacked the glamour of the Californian devils of the 1970s, the wry smiles and sarcastic waves to the press, the rock-star swagger, the achingly cool indifference to it all. There were loads of them in the '70s. It was like the Satanic American dream: girls with bare shoulders hitchhiked and climbed happily into the cars of strangers, housewives left their back doors unlocked, slept with their windows wide open and welcoming. But that was then. The golden age of serial killing was over, and the chances of me finding one to marry were slim.
The toxic male-female friendship in the novel is really well written. Laura's co-worker Eli enjoys the attention Laura bestows him--and his girlfriend perhaps doesn't--while Laura wastes her youth on a man who's unavailable. Neither possess the maturity to shake hands and retire to their separate corners as colleagues. Slater also associates alcohol consumption and blackout drunks among people in their twenties struggling with adulthood, depression and palpable fear of going home to an empty flat and vacant lives.
Psychologically, Slater takes all the best lessons from Patricia Highsmith. Her narrators are not very good people, but the more of their stories they told, the more empathy I felt for them. Finally, I understood them, and took a rooting interest in them escaping prison or death despite the best efforts of the other characters in the story to do them in. I finished the novel in four days, a good land speed for me, and anticipated getting back to it every day. This is the easiest five stars I've given a novel in months and recommend it highly.
The Christmas and New Year's Eve setting the novel stalks toward was an accident and made the book that more enjoyable to me, particularly as Roach shares her thoughts on the consensus best book of the year (it's not Yellowface).
The book of the year was Flower Crowns of the Arctic, like I give a shit. Another mass-market paperback with a pseudo-smart title for book clubs full of Lauras to fawn over. It was about some girl's dead mother, and climate change. Laura had written a neat little recommendation card for it: a sweeping novel about the way things can feel broken beyond repair, how things can feel ruined, and how we must heal before we can move on. Laura xox. Sentimental bullshit. ...more
Death of a B Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Death of a Bookseller is the debut novel by Alice Slater. Published in 2023, it's a first-person account of a young bookstore clerk and true crime fan in the northeast London neighborhood of Walthamstow. Given to morbid self-intentions, she becomes obsessed with a radiant co-worker, who narrates her segments of the story as well. I can't recall which page Slater made me abandon my distaste for first-person narration or switching points of view and enjoy what she was cooking, but she does it quickly with precise and often witty writing, a fascinating milieu, and a suspenseful story that kept me turning the pages.
Brogan Roach works at her local branch of Spines, a bookstore chain whose arrival in the 1990s forced two local booksellers to shutter and in 2019, is now on its last legs. Roach lives in a flat above the bar her mother operates. She keeps a giant African land snail named Bleep as a pet and consumes true crime books, electing herself curator of that section at Spines. She dismisses the "Pumpkin Spice Girls" who flock to true crime like any new trend. A loner who surrounds herself with books and morbid explorations of death, Roach considers herself above the "normies."
Laura Bunting appears to Roach like a vision, a pretty and confident and well-liked bookseller who transfers to her branch with a new manager and the male bookseller Laura is fixated on. Her mother the victim of a serial murderer, Laura writes poetry that champions the lives of victims. Without sharing her macabre family history, Laura takes offense to Roach's gothic obsession with death. The harder her new co-worker tries to win her approval, the more Laura ignores her. Bad idea.
I have a sweet spot for any story about work and workplace dynamics. Slater doesn't stop there, identifying a favorite milieu of writers and readers alike--the bookstore--and on its most immediate level, Death of a Bookseller is a great book about books. Slater writes what I've thought about: management, perky co-workers, popular books or trending topics, and finally customers, who interfere with what otherwise would be a fun job. Her writing is sharp, substantive and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.
I've always fancied myself a death row bride. I'd rock up in black lace, a leather jacket, sunglasses. I liked the idea of writing to a serial killer in jail, striking up a friendship, finding out what made them tick. It was difficult to find cool serial killers to write to in the UK, though. They lacked the glamour of the Californian devils of the 1970s, the wry smiles and sarcastic waves to the press, the rock-star swagger, the achingly cool indifference to it all. There were loads of them in the '70s. It was like the Satanic American dream: girls with bare shoulders hitchhiked and climbed happily into the cars of strangers, housewives left their back doors unlocked, slept with their windows wide open and welcoming. But that was then. The golden age of serial killing was over, and the chances of me finding one to marry were slim.
The toxic male-female friendship in the novel is really well written. Laura's co-worker Eli enjoys the attention Laura bestows him--and his girlfriend perhaps doesn't--while Laura wastes her youth on a man who's unavailable. Neither possess the maturity to shake hands and retire to their separate corners as colleagues. Slater also associates alcohol consumption and blackout drunks among people in their twenties struggling with adulthood, depression and palpable fear of going home to an empty flat and vacant lives.
Psychologically, Slater takes all the best lessons from Patricia Highsmith. Her narrators are not very good people, but the more of their stories they told, the more empathy I felt for them. Finally, I understood them, and took a rooting interest in them escaping prison or death despite the best efforts of the other characters in the story to do them in. I finished the novel in four days, a good land speed for me, and anticipated getting back to it every day. This is the easiest five stars I've given a novel in months and recommend it highly.
The Christmas and New Year's Eve setting the novel stalks toward was an accident and made the book that more enjoyable to me, particularly as Roach shares her thoughts on the consensus best book of the year (it's not Yellowface).
The book of the year was Flower Crowns of the Arctic, like I give a shit. Another mass-market paperback with a pseudo-smart title for book clubs full of Lauras to fawn over. It was about some girl's dead mother, and climate change. Laura had written a neat little recommendation card for it: a sweeping novel about the way things can feel broken beyond repair, how things can feel ruined, and how we must heal before we can move on. Laura xox. Sentimental bullshit. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 26, 2023
Dec 30, 2023
Dec 09, 2023
Hardcover
0778311554
9780778311553
0778311554
3.62
34,590
Sep 07, 2021
Sep 07, 2021
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published i Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in 2021, Vera Kurian's debut novel Never Saw Me Coming begins with the first-person account of Chloe Sevre, a freshman at the fictitious John Adams University in Washington D.C. Chloe is obsessed with a classmate named Will, which she reveals to the reader at the conclusion of Chapter 1 she plans to kill. Chloe is not only a functioning psychopath, but is one of seven psychopathic students who've been selected to participate in a clinical study at the university, wearing a smartwatch to monitor her physiology and respond to mood prompts. When a student dies of stab wounds in the psychology department, whodunit?
After 20 pages, I started skimming. I abandoned the book at page 94/389. Kurian does four things that kept me from wanting to continue reading:
1. Young Adult prose. I had to doublecheck that this book was not in fact YA and I had picked it up by mistake. After all, Chloe is a teenager. It's marketed for adults but is full of the very mundane, very superficial, Tik-Tok brain contemporary writing that is part and parcel for YA, at least when Chloe is narrating. Which brings me to ...
2. Multiple narrators. Kurian bounces from Chloe to one of the seven psychopaths--a Black student named Andre who is not really a psychopath but gamed the survey so he could get a scholarship--to the conniving shrink (is there really any other kind in a thriller?) directing the study. Multiple narrators are not a dealbreaker for me, but often make it easier for me to ignore the book.
3. Hook didn't grab me. I'll admit, it's different, and readers drawn to dark academia or collegiate novels might have far more patience than I did. Neither of these sub-genres are automatic winners for me. 20 pages in, there simply wasn't enough going on to pique my curiosity. Chloe is a psychopath seeking revenge. I shouldn't have been this bored.
4. Politics. As someone who might agree with 80% of this author's political beliefs, I really dislike it when writers caricature based on what clubs or parties a character belongs to. Membership in Greek society or the Republican Party do not make someone venal. What they do or how they treat others might make them venal. Some authors develop their characters better than others.
No rating because debut authors need all the support they can get, and if not for searching for a comp title, I wouldn't have read this one. The reviews on Goodreads are excellent. ...more
Published i Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in 2021, Vera Kurian's debut novel Never Saw Me Coming begins with the first-person account of Chloe Sevre, a freshman at the fictitious John Adams University in Washington D.C. Chloe is obsessed with a classmate named Will, which she reveals to the reader at the conclusion of Chapter 1 she plans to kill. Chloe is not only a functioning psychopath, but is one of seven psychopathic students who've been selected to participate in a clinical study at the university, wearing a smartwatch to monitor her physiology and respond to mood prompts. When a student dies of stab wounds in the psychology department, whodunit?
After 20 pages, I started skimming. I abandoned the book at page 94/389. Kurian does four things that kept me from wanting to continue reading:
1. Young Adult prose. I had to doublecheck that this book was not in fact YA and I had picked it up by mistake. After all, Chloe is a teenager. It's marketed for adults but is full of the very mundane, very superficial, Tik-Tok brain contemporary writing that is part and parcel for YA, at least when Chloe is narrating. Which brings me to ...
2. Multiple narrators. Kurian bounces from Chloe to one of the seven psychopaths--a Black student named Andre who is not really a psychopath but gamed the survey so he could get a scholarship--to the conniving shrink (is there really any other kind in a thriller?) directing the study. Multiple narrators are not a dealbreaker for me, but often make it easier for me to ignore the book.
3. Hook didn't grab me. I'll admit, it's different, and readers drawn to dark academia or collegiate novels might have far more patience than I did. Neither of these sub-genres are automatic winners for me. 20 pages in, there simply wasn't enough going on to pique my curiosity. Chloe is a psychopath seeking revenge. I shouldn't have been this bored.
4. Politics. As someone who might agree with 80% of this author's political beliefs, I really dislike it when writers caricature based on what clubs or parties a character belongs to. Membership in Greek society or the Republican Party do not make someone venal. What they do or how they treat others might make them venal. Some authors develop their characters better than others.
No rating because debut authors need all the support they can get, and if not for searching for a comp title, I wouldn't have read this one. The reviews on Goodreads are excellent. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 04, 2023
Dec 05, 2023
Nov 18, 2023
Hardcover
0062858092
9780062858092
0062858092
4.09
103,772
Jul 20, 2021
Jul 20, 2021
liked it
Looking for novels set during the pandemic, I picked up my first Karin Slaughter book. Published in 2021, False Witness is strictly a research read an
Looking for novels set during the pandemic, I picked up my first Karin Slaughter book. Published in 2021, False Witness is strictly a research read and in full disclosure, I skimmed a great deal of this so I could finish it in one afternoon. That said, I was more impressed with Slaughter's mechanics than I thought I'd be and liked enough of this novel to give it a qualified positive rating, rather than back out of the room with my hands up.
The plot involves defense attorney Harleigh "Leigh" Collier being called up to the major leagues to defend a very white and very wealthy young man accused of a brutal rape and assault. Plot twist: Leigh's client, Andrew Trevor Tennant, was the boy she and her sister Callie used to babysit before they murdered his piece-of-shit pedophile mob enforcer adulterer daddy in 1998. Andrew knows what Leigh did and intends to use it as leverage in her defense.
Karin Slaughter is known for setting her amp to 11. Her prologue unravels in a series of shocking escalations: Domestic abuse victim is actually the babysitter, the babysitter is only 14, the victim discovers her abuser has been videotaping their sex acts, the victim is then beaten to a pulp, the victim then slices her abuser's femoral artery open with a butcher knife. And that's just the half of it.
This business bypasses "lurid," starts at "stagy" and gradually works its way through various levels of "ridiculous." But having read much of False Witness, I can't say it's unsophisticated. Slaughter balances her A-storyline, the courtroom plot of an attorney in trouble, with a terrific B-storyline in which the attorney's sister, a junkie living from one score to the next, gets involved in protecting her family and putting the antagonist away.
I would've preferred a gritty noir focusing on the junkie, Callie. She's by far the most compelling character and didn't need any ginned-up childhood trauma to be so. A former cheerleader suffering from neck injuries sustained as a teen, Callie is a devoted animal lover, and Slaughter (with her research team) plot out a very sophisticated criminal scheme in which Callie scores dope through her work assisting an old veterinarian. I perked up whenever Callie came around.
As for what Slaughter wrote, she deserves props for creating two siblings who work together. Despite living vastly different lives, as close to The Prince and the Pauper as Slaughter could get, there are no lengthy scenes of Leigh and Callie arguing or litigating their childhoods. They support each other and when the family is threatened, unite quickly instead of bickering for seventy-five pages.
My major dislike here are the male characters. This is where cranking everything up to 11 goes wrong. Not only are the men in this novel bad, they're biblically vile. The only vaguely human male character is Leigh's ex-husband, who Slaughter states is a good father but despite being on friendly terms with his ex and later a major part of the plot, divorced Leigh (bad guy!). Never mind that nearly 70% of divorces are filed by women, Slaughter can't let that get in the way of painting men very poorly.
I jotted down nine notes concerning criminal justice in the time of Covid and want to thank Slaughter and her research team for providing me this expert-level information for the price of a library card. The novel is very long and very well-researched. I prefer my thrillers moody, atmospheric, down and dirty, but was surprised how sophisticated False Witness is. I cannot say I was bored. Haunted houses, if nothing else, aren't boring.
Estimated word count: 127,160 words
Adaptations: None. The Karin Slaughter novel that has been adapted to film or TV so far is Pieces of Her, which snared Toni Collette in its twisty, violent grasp as a Netflix movie in 2022.
Thanks for reading: If you love dining at Medieval Times, or any themed restaurant where your waiter is in costume and entertainment like a jousting tournament takes place, Karin Slaughter might be for you. ...more
The plot involves defense attorney Harleigh "Leigh" Collier being called up to the major leagues to defend a very white and very wealthy young man accused of a brutal rape and assault. Plot twist: Leigh's client, Andrew Trevor Tennant, was the boy she and her sister Callie used to babysit before they murdered his piece-of-shit pedophile mob enforcer adulterer daddy in 1998. Andrew knows what Leigh did and intends to use it as leverage in her defense.
Karin Slaughter is known for setting her amp to 11. Her prologue unravels in a series of shocking escalations: Domestic abuse victim is actually the babysitter, the babysitter is only 14, the victim discovers her abuser has been videotaping their sex acts, the victim is then beaten to a pulp, the victim then slices her abuser's femoral artery open with a butcher knife. And that's just the half of it.
This business bypasses "lurid," starts at "stagy" and gradually works its way through various levels of "ridiculous." But having read much of False Witness, I can't say it's unsophisticated. Slaughter balances her A-storyline, the courtroom plot of an attorney in trouble, with a terrific B-storyline in which the attorney's sister, a junkie living from one score to the next, gets involved in protecting her family and putting the antagonist away.
I would've preferred a gritty noir focusing on the junkie, Callie. She's by far the most compelling character and didn't need any ginned-up childhood trauma to be so. A former cheerleader suffering from neck injuries sustained as a teen, Callie is a devoted animal lover, and Slaughter (with her research team) plot out a very sophisticated criminal scheme in which Callie scores dope through her work assisting an old veterinarian. I perked up whenever Callie came around.
As for what Slaughter wrote, she deserves props for creating two siblings who work together. Despite living vastly different lives, as close to The Prince and the Pauper as Slaughter could get, there are no lengthy scenes of Leigh and Callie arguing or litigating their childhoods. They support each other and when the family is threatened, unite quickly instead of bickering for seventy-five pages.
My major dislike here are the male characters. This is where cranking everything up to 11 goes wrong. Not only are the men in this novel bad, they're biblically vile. The only vaguely human male character is Leigh's ex-husband, who Slaughter states is a good father but despite being on friendly terms with his ex and later a major part of the plot, divorced Leigh (bad guy!). Never mind that nearly 70% of divorces are filed by women, Slaughter can't let that get in the way of painting men very poorly.
I jotted down nine notes concerning criminal justice in the time of Covid and want to thank Slaughter and her research team for providing me this expert-level information for the price of a library card. The novel is very long and very well-researched. I prefer my thrillers moody, atmospheric, down and dirty, but was surprised how sophisticated False Witness is. I cannot say I was bored. Haunted houses, if nothing else, aren't boring.
Estimated word count: 127,160 words
Adaptations: None. The Karin Slaughter novel that has been adapted to film or TV so far is Pieces of Her, which snared Toni Collette in its twisty, violent grasp as a Netflix movie in 2022.
Thanks for reading: If you love dining at Medieval Times, or any themed restaurant where your waiter is in costume and entertainment like a jousting tournament takes place, Karin Slaughter might be for you. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Sep 24, 2023
Sep 24, 2023
Aug 16, 2023
Hardcover
1789096111
9781789096118
1789096111
4.43
8,783
Oct 19, 2021
Oct 19, 2021
it was amazing
My introduction to the fiction of James Kestrel is Five Decembers. Anyone who's been searching for pulp fiction done the right way--lurid action, disi
My introduction to the fiction of James Kestrel is Five Decembers. Anyone who's been searching for pulp fiction done the right way--lurid action, disillusioned men in search of purpose, mysterious women in need of help, exotic locales--needs to stop reading my review and read
this novel, recently published by Hard Case Crime with plaudits from Megan Abbott and Meg Gardiner among others. I went into the reading blind, unaware of when it was written or takes place, and was rewarded with one surprise after another. In short, this is a book that preserves everything I love about 1940s pulp fiction and replaces everything I don't love with a contemporary sensibility.
Published in 2021 and the first under Kestrel's name (he wrote six crime novels as Jonathan Moore), the story begins in Honolulu of yesteryear, where Army veteran and police detective Joe McGrady is summoned by his captain from the shot glass he's searching for fulfillment in. Short staffed due to Thanksgiving, bachelor McGrady is assigned his first homicide, a dead body on the land of a dairy farmer. McGrady is the first on the scene and shortly after discovering a young man cut open, confronts a man trying to destroy the crime scene and shoots it out with him. McGrady discovers a woman's body on the scene and gets the impression the criminal he shot was not working alone.
Present at the autopsy on Fort Shafter is a U.S. Navy admiral whose search for his missing nephew has come to a conclusion where McGrady's investigation begins. The detective discovers that the woman--who appears to be Japanese but has no identity as of yet--was killed after the admiral's nephew, as if whoever did it wanted her to see. McGrady is assigned a partner in Fred Ball, who's never detained a suspect he couldn't beat an answer out of, and following a lead to Guam, assures his lovely girlfriend Molly that he'll be home soon. Closing in on a suspect in Hong Kong, McGrady is caught in the city on December 7, 1941, when Japan attacks mainland China and takes over.
Five Decembers reminded me of the movie Cast Away if instead of climaxing when Tom Hanks returns to civilization, tasked his character with solving the murder investigation he was working when he was shipwrecked. Not just any murder, but one our protagonist realizes changed the entire course of history while he was marooned, including his life and the lives of those nearest to him: the girlfriend who gave him up for dead, and the daughter of the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, whose father springs McGrady from a prison camp for his help finding the men who murdered his niece, hiding him in Tokyo until the conclusion of the war.
Kestrel does everything extremely well in this novel. He paints a vivid picture of Honolulu and Hong Kong before and after World War II without bogging the reader down in historical research. He's intricate when it comes to police procedure in the 1940s while keeping a fast pace, plausibly sending McGrady across the Pacific on a killer's trail. After reading a plethora of thrillers that hinge on text messaging, it was so refreshing to read one revolving around telegrams. The dialogue is terse while containing emotional resonance. Kestrel clearly establishes the necessity each character has in their relationships with others. I looked forward to getting back to the book every time I put it down.
For a long time, the novel I'd bring up if anyone asked what I thought would make a good TV mini-series was Kindred by Octavia Butler. FX on Hulu finally got around to that. My new great book begging for an adaptation is Five Decembers by James Kestrel.
Opening sentence: Joe McGrady was looking at a whiskey.
Memorable prose: The first night in Yokohama, he could have listened to Takahashi's pitch. Then he could've walked away. Back down the steel stairs, back to his place in the line of naked prisoners. None of the other men from the ship had been given any kind of choice. They had to take whatever the Japs decided to dish out. He could have taken it, too. Maybe he'd have survived. Or maybe not. But in either case his name wouldn't have been on the wrong Red Cross list. If people asked him what had happened in Japan, he'd be able to answer with some kind of dignity.
And everything would be different. ...more
this novel, recently published by Hard Case Crime with plaudits from Megan Abbott and Meg Gardiner among others. I went into the reading blind, unaware of when it was written or takes place, and was rewarded with one surprise after another. In short, this is a book that preserves everything I love about 1940s pulp fiction and replaces everything I don't love with a contemporary sensibility.
Published in 2021 and the first under Kestrel's name (he wrote six crime novels as Jonathan Moore), the story begins in Honolulu of yesteryear, where Army veteran and police detective Joe McGrady is summoned by his captain from the shot glass he's searching for fulfillment in. Short staffed due to Thanksgiving, bachelor McGrady is assigned his first homicide, a dead body on the land of a dairy farmer. McGrady is the first on the scene and shortly after discovering a young man cut open, confronts a man trying to destroy the crime scene and shoots it out with him. McGrady discovers a woman's body on the scene and gets the impression the criminal he shot was not working alone.
Present at the autopsy on Fort Shafter is a U.S. Navy admiral whose search for his missing nephew has come to a conclusion where McGrady's investigation begins. The detective discovers that the woman--who appears to be Japanese but has no identity as of yet--was killed after the admiral's nephew, as if whoever did it wanted her to see. McGrady is assigned a partner in Fred Ball, who's never detained a suspect he couldn't beat an answer out of, and following a lead to Guam, assures his lovely girlfriend Molly that he'll be home soon. Closing in on a suspect in Hong Kong, McGrady is caught in the city on December 7, 1941, when Japan attacks mainland China and takes over.
Five Decembers reminded me of the movie Cast Away if instead of climaxing when Tom Hanks returns to civilization, tasked his character with solving the murder investigation he was working when he was shipwrecked. Not just any murder, but one our protagonist realizes changed the entire course of history while he was marooned, including his life and the lives of those nearest to him: the girlfriend who gave him up for dead, and the daughter of the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, whose father springs McGrady from a prison camp for his help finding the men who murdered his niece, hiding him in Tokyo until the conclusion of the war.
Kestrel does everything extremely well in this novel. He paints a vivid picture of Honolulu and Hong Kong before and after World War II without bogging the reader down in historical research. He's intricate when it comes to police procedure in the 1940s while keeping a fast pace, plausibly sending McGrady across the Pacific on a killer's trail. After reading a plethora of thrillers that hinge on text messaging, it was so refreshing to read one revolving around telegrams. The dialogue is terse while containing emotional resonance. Kestrel clearly establishes the necessity each character has in their relationships with others. I looked forward to getting back to the book every time I put it down.
For a long time, the novel I'd bring up if anyone asked what I thought would make a good TV mini-series was Kindred by Octavia Butler. FX on Hulu finally got around to that. My new great book begging for an adaptation is Five Decembers by James Kestrel.
Opening sentence: Joe McGrady was looking at a whiskey.
Memorable prose: The first night in Yokohama, he could have listened to Takahashi's pitch. Then he could've walked away. Back down the steel stairs, back to his place in the line of naked prisoners. None of the other men from the ship had been given any kind of choice. They had to take whatever the Japs decided to dish out. He could have taken it, too. Maybe he'd have survived. Or maybe not. But in either case his name wouldn't have been on the wrong Red Cross list. If people asked him what had happened in Japan, he'd be able to answer with some kind of dignity.
And everything would be different. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jan 04, 2024
Jan 19, 2024
Aug 11, 2023
Hardcover
0593547500
9780593547502
0593547500
3.66
22,582
Feb 14, 2023
Feb 14, 2023
really liked it
Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in 2023, Rachel Koller Croft's debut novel Stone Cold Fox sounded the cash register bell for lots of what I want in a crime thriller, specifically one about a gleefully sinister woman. It often reminded me of a '90s film noir like The Last Seduction (1994) where a diabolical femme fatale takes down everyone who gets between her and the bag. This is a book that starts slowly and haltingly, but once it gets going downhill, hooked me in the way Season 1 of a thrilling TV series might. Croft is a screenwriter. It shows. Her first novel is un-put-downable.
[image]
The story is the first-person account of "Bea," a senior business development director who's shot to the top of a big advertising agency in New York, albeit with phony credentials and references. Bea's goal is to marry wealthy and against all odds, has snared the mark of a lifetime: Collin Case, Chief Marketing Officer of a huge consumer goods company that's been in his family for a hundred years. Young, good-looking, callow, he's fallen hard for the character Bea has tailored for his desire. The more Collin's mother Haven or his smitten childhood friend Gale Wallace-Leicester protest his union to this outsider, the more committed Collin is to living his life beyond their control.
The story flashes back to a childhood Bea spent with "Mother," a self-destructive flim-flam artist who keeps the two of them moving from dope to dope. Bea tells herself she's nothing like her ruthless mother. When Gale Wallace-Leicester makes it her mission to expel Bea from the Case family, Bea returns these efforts with the backhand of Maria Sharapova. As Collin proposes to and marries her. Bea even turns what began as a rivalry with her fiancée's assistant Sylvia into an alliance, perhaps a friendship, her only one. Bea doesn't know what Gale knows about her sordid past, and can't shake the feeling that Mother is close by.
Stone Cold Fox made a poor first impression on me. First-person narratives suffer when narrators come across as insipid. Bea is crass and materialistic, appraising people strictly by their physical attributes as if they were horses, and chasing affluence. She also narrates her story in a very plain manner that reminded me of a teenager at times. She shares thoughts with the reader like, Truthfully, when I get the opportunity to dance, I take it, because it's the only time I feel like I can actually be myself. Wow, thanks for that insight, Bea. I'll alert the Nobel Committee.
Another narrative choice I'm prejudiced against is jumping around in time or swapping narrators. Croft stays in Bea's head, but moving back in time stalled the pacing a bit. After two hours of reading, I considered quitting the book. Croft checks a crucial box I ask of any author when I open their book: Do I want to know what happens next? The prose grows neither more luscious or significantly sharper, but the dialogue and interactions between the characters do. I savored watching Bea duel with Gale. Like a Patricia Highsmith novel, I had to keep reading to see if the narrator would be exposed and led away in handcuffs.
What I loved about Stone Cold Fox is how strong the felonious protagonist is. Characters who are particularly bad at their jobs or make increasingly dumb decisions turn me off. High competency gets me turning the pages. I'm learning things. Bea is good at what she does. She recognizes how pampered and inbred the wealthy are, but doesn't respond with bitterness or entitlement for what they have. She uses that to her advantage. She gets to work. She knows exactly what she wants and how much work is required to take it, whether that means hacking social media accounts or breaking into a safe. I was with her.
What initially irked me about Stone Cold Fox moving back and forth in time sets up an inevitable confrontation between Bea and Mother that was fun to anticipate. The enemies that Croft sets against Bea hail from a variety of backgrounds and are fun to watch get outfoxed. She writes a compelling male character in Collin Case, a decent man and good husband material whose shortcomings are convincingly portrayed as becoming a full-time job for Bea to manage, lest they fester and destroy the life she's carefully planned. I could visualize this novel being Season 1 of a TV series, with Sydney Sweeney and Cameron Diaz in the daughter-mother roles.
I'm looking forward to what Croft publishes next, what looks to be a vampire novel that has The Hunger vibes.
First paragraph: I decided that I would marry Collin Case after the fifth time we fucked. His performance had been consistently adequate, both in the bedroom and while we were out socially. We had been on seven dates, each more lavish than the one before it, raising the stakes suitably during our early courtship. Collin always selected an upscale bar or restaurant in a desirable neighborhood where people made no mistake about who he was, and therefore we were treated appropriately. He didn't tip like a Rockefeller, but I'd wager Rockefeller didn't even tip like a Rockefeller. Old money is old money for a reason and it's not to brighten some downtrodden server's day. So I didn't really care about Collin's standard 20 percent, since it was neither overtly cheap nor blatantly embarrassing. There was nothing blatantly embarrassing about Collin. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing terribly exciting about him either, but I knew that taking up with a man like Collin Case wouldn't exactly lead me down a path of intrigue and excitement and hot sex, which was precisely the point.
Memorable prose: I actually made it a point to care about his well-being. I knew intimately that if you couldn't rely on your own mother, you're inevitably fucked-up forever about where to go for any sort of help. You just let any and all issues fester on the inside until you explode or melt down or spiral into a deep pit of despair, like Collin. Or use it as fuel, like I did, but most people weren't like me. ...more
Published in Market research read. If anyone knows any novels published 2019 forward about women plotting to commit or caught up in crime, let me know.
Published in 2023, Rachel Koller Croft's debut novel Stone Cold Fox sounded the cash register bell for lots of what I want in a crime thriller, specifically one about a gleefully sinister woman. It often reminded me of a '90s film noir like The Last Seduction (1994) where a diabolical femme fatale takes down everyone who gets between her and the bag. This is a book that starts slowly and haltingly, but once it gets going downhill, hooked me in the way Season 1 of a thrilling TV series might. Croft is a screenwriter. It shows. Her first novel is un-put-downable.
[image]
The story is the first-person account of "Bea," a senior business development director who's shot to the top of a big advertising agency in New York, albeit with phony credentials and references. Bea's goal is to marry wealthy and against all odds, has snared the mark of a lifetime: Collin Case, Chief Marketing Officer of a huge consumer goods company that's been in his family for a hundred years. Young, good-looking, callow, he's fallen hard for the character Bea has tailored for his desire. The more Collin's mother Haven or his smitten childhood friend Gale Wallace-Leicester protest his union to this outsider, the more committed Collin is to living his life beyond their control.
The story flashes back to a childhood Bea spent with "Mother," a self-destructive flim-flam artist who keeps the two of them moving from dope to dope. Bea tells herself she's nothing like her ruthless mother. When Gale Wallace-Leicester makes it her mission to expel Bea from the Case family, Bea returns these efforts with the backhand of Maria Sharapova. As Collin proposes to and marries her. Bea even turns what began as a rivalry with her fiancée's assistant Sylvia into an alliance, perhaps a friendship, her only one. Bea doesn't know what Gale knows about her sordid past, and can't shake the feeling that Mother is close by.
Stone Cold Fox made a poor first impression on me. First-person narratives suffer when narrators come across as insipid. Bea is crass and materialistic, appraising people strictly by their physical attributes as if they were horses, and chasing affluence. She also narrates her story in a very plain manner that reminded me of a teenager at times. She shares thoughts with the reader like, Truthfully, when I get the opportunity to dance, I take it, because it's the only time I feel like I can actually be myself. Wow, thanks for that insight, Bea. I'll alert the Nobel Committee.
Another narrative choice I'm prejudiced against is jumping around in time or swapping narrators. Croft stays in Bea's head, but moving back in time stalled the pacing a bit. After two hours of reading, I considered quitting the book. Croft checks a crucial box I ask of any author when I open their book: Do I want to know what happens next? The prose grows neither more luscious or significantly sharper, but the dialogue and interactions between the characters do. I savored watching Bea duel with Gale. Like a Patricia Highsmith novel, I had to keep reading to see if the narrator would be exposed and led away in handcuffs.
What I loved about Stone Cold Fox is how strong the felonious protagonist is. Characters who are particularly bad at their jobs or make increasingly dumb decisions turn me off. High competency gets me turning the pages. I'm learning things. Bea is good at what she does. She recognizes how pampered and inbred the wealthy are, but doesn't respond with bitterness or entitlement for what they have. She uses that to her advantage. She gets to work. She knows exactly what she wants and how much work is required to take it, whether that means hacking social media accounts or breaking into a safe. I was with her.
What initially irked me about Stone Cold Fox moving back and forth in time sets up an inevitable confrontation between Bea and Mother that was fun to anticipate. The enemies that Croft sets against Bea hail from a variety of backgrounds and are fun to watch get outfoxed. She writes a compelling male character in Collin Case, a decent man and good husband material whose shortcomings are convincingly portrayed as becoming a full-time job for Bea to manage, lest they fester and destroy the life she's carefully planned. I could visualize this novel being Season 1 of a TV series, with Sydney Sweeney and Cameron Diaz in the daughter-mother roles.
I'm looking forward to what Croft publishes next, what looks to be a vampire novel that has The Hunger vibes.
First paragraph: I decided that I would marry Collin Case after the fifth time we fucked. His performance had been consistently adequate, both in the bedroom and while we were out socially. We had been on seven dates, each more lavish than the one before it, raising the stakes suitably during our early courtship. Collin always selected an upscale bar or restaurant in a desirable neighborhood where people made no mistake about who he was, and therefore we were treated appropriately. He didn't tip like a Rockefeller, but I'd wager Rockefeller didn't even tip like a Rockefeller. Old money is old money for a reason and it's not to brighten some downtrodden server's day. So I didn't really care about Collin's standard 20 percent, since it was neither overtly cheap nor blatantly embarrassing. There was nothing blatantly embarrassing about Collin. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing terribly exciting about him either, but I knew that taking up with a man like Collin Case wouldn't exactly lead me down a path of intrigue and excitement and hot sex, which was precisely the point.
Memorable prose: I actually made it a point to care about his well-being. I knew intimately that if you couldn't rely on your own mother, you're inevitably fucked-up forever about where to go for any sort of help. You just let any and all issues fester on the inside until you explode or melt down or spiral into a deep pit of despair, like Collin. Or use it as fuel, like I did, but most people weren't like me. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Dec 11, 2023
Dec 13, 2023
Jul 22, 2023
Hardcover
0812998626
9780812998627
3.29
88,120
May 16, 2023
May 16, 2023
really liked it
My 500th book review is for The Guest by Emma Cline. Published in 2023, this is the author's second novel, her follow-up to The Girls. Like that book,
My 500th book review is for The Guest by Emma Cline. Published in 2023, this is the author's second novel, her follow-up to The Girls. Like that book, its power isn't in what happens but what the reader is allowed to imagine happens or has happened. It features many of the characteristics of the so-called "hot sad girl" novel--in which a beautiful but alienated young woman drifts through her existence, often with the assistance of drugs or alcohol--but subverts tropes by making the reader an active participant in the story rather than act on us.
Alex (no last name, no ethnicity implied) is a twenty-two-year-old woman whose existence has been reduced to the favors she can elicit from men. After spending almost two weeks living comfortably with an art dealer in his Long Island beach house, Alex is expelled. With no money, no friends (or people willing to remain her friend), and an erratic ex-con she stole from texting her, Alex chooses to live by her wits for six days until she can crash her lover's Labor Day party, at which she's certain all will be forgiven.
One of the visceral qualities of The Guest is how Cline reduces Alex's world to the whims of whatever patron she's attached herself to for survival. One social miscue or errant look could mean being forced onto the street. It's never spelled out what this woman's trade is. Alex reaps all the penalties of sex work--subject to the gratitude of her clients as well as their wrath--with none of the rewards, like a bankroll, or a pimp who invests in her. She doesn't use bathrooms as much as she pilfers them, for painkillers first and foremost. It's a feral existence.
Often taking place on or near a beach, The Guest meets some of the standards of a summer or beach read, but rather than dispense candy, challenges the reader. This isn't the Hollywood version of a con woman on the make, it's the French New Wave version. Cline follows Alex around with absolute freedom, even if it leads to mundane encounters or repetitive conversations with men capable of little more. Her style is the literary equivalent of natural lighting or handheld camera: clean prose, rejection of plot, and a willingness to go off on tangents. I found this liberating and ultimately, very exciting.
First paragraph: This was August. The ocean was warm, and warmer every day.
Memorable prose: She hadn’t ruined anything. Misfortune hadn’t touched Alex; it had only come close enough that she felt the cold air of a different outcome hurtling past. ...more
Alex (no last name, no ethnicity implied) is a twenty-two-year-old woman whose existence has been reduced to the favors she can elicit from men. After spending almost two weeks living comfortably with an art dealer in his Long Island beach house, Alex is expelled. With no money, no friends (or people willing to remain her friend), and an erratic ex-con she stole from texting her, Alex chooses to live by her wits for six days until she can crash her lover's Labor Day party, at which she's certain all will be forgiven.
One of the visceral qualities of The Guest is how Cline reduces Alex's world to the whims of whatever patron she's attached herself to for survival. One social miscue or errant look could mean being forced onto the street. It's never spelled out what this woman's trade is. Alex reaps all the penalties of sex work--subject to the gratitude of her clients as well as their wrath--with none of the rewards, like a bankroll, or a pimp who invests in her. She doesn't use bathrooms as much as she pilfers them, for painkillers first and foremost. It's a feral existence.
Often taking place on or near a beach, The Guest meets some of the standards of a summer or beach read, but rather than dispense candy, challenges the reader. This isn't the Hollywood version of a con woman on the make, it's the French New Wave version. Cline follows Alex around with absolute freedom, even if it leads to mundane encounters or repetitive conversations with men capable of little more. Her style is the literary equivalent of natural lighting or handheld camera: clean prose, rejection of plot, and a willingness to go off on tangents. I found this liberating and ultimately, very exciting.
First paragraph: This was August. The ocean was warm, and warmer every day.
Memorable prose: She hadn’t ruined anything. Misfortune hadn’t touched Alex; it had only come close enough that she felt the cold air of a different outcome hurtling past. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Nov 13, 2023
Dec 02, 2023
May 17, 2023
Hardcover
0593315448
9780593315446
0593315448
4.27
14,086
Apr 18, 2023
Apr 18, 2023
really liked it
Symphony of Secrets is Brendan Slocumb's follow-up his 2022 debut The Violin Conspiracy. Published in 2023, this is a richer novel that returns to the
Symphony of Secrets is Brendan Slocumb's follow-up his 2022 debut The Violin Conspiracy. Published in 2023, this is a richer novel that returns to the milieu of Western classical music and once again is propelled by a puzzle. This would be a unique sub-genre of mystery/ suspense as is--what if John Grisham had gone to Julliard instead of University of Mississippi Law School?--but Slocumb distinguishes the book further by featuring Black protagonists. Neither the prose or dialogue stand out, but his narrative is so propulsive that after a chapter or two, I was hooked.
The story opens in 1936, sixteen hours before the death of Frederic Delaney, a celebrated American composer. Backstage, Delaney (who reminded me of Aaron Copland if his productivity and global reach rivaled Walt Disney) indulges in his normal performance ritual, opening a bottle of champagne, pouring two glasses before the show and two after. No one knows who this second glass is intended for, and the phantom does not reveal itself backstage.
In the present day, Professor Bern Hendricks of the University of Virginia, considered the foremost expert on Delaney, is summoned by the Delaney Foundation for a hush-hush commission. Bern, who grew up poor in Milwaukee and like many children who couldn't afford otherwise, owes his entry to music to the charitable work of the Foundation. He feels that Delaney was the greatest composer in the world. Among the man's achievements is the Five Rings of Olympia, an opera cycle based on the blue, yellow, black, green and red rings of the new Olympic flag, each ring representing a different region of the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas).
The first four operas debuted between 1921 and 1926, but the final opera, RED, missed its delivery date and didn't premiere until 1936. After changing his story, Delaney ultimately conceded that the delay was due to him losing his original draft. Between that boner and the spectacularly bad reception RED received when it finally debuted, Delaney became something of a joke late in his life. Bern hopes that the Foundation has found the lost version of RED and he can help restore Delaney's reputation.
Flown to New York on the Foundation's private jet and put up in an apartment, Bern learns that the long-lost RED has been recovered and that the Foundation wants him to prepare the score for a performance in six months, interpreting what are known as Delaney Doodles, whirls and geometric shapes that usually annotate the music. The recovered RED consists only of Doodles, including a new one that appears to read JaR. To help decipher the code, Bern seeks the help of a colleague named Eboni Washington, an expert in cybersecurity.
Eboni, a native of the Bronx who does not worship Delaney or revere the Foundation, pushes for access to the original document instead of a scan. She and Bern discover that "JaR" is actually JoR. They match this to a Black woman in the Delaney archives named Josephine Reed who accompanied him on his first European tour and was on his payroll. Historians have ignored her. Eboni suspects Josephine was Delaney's mistress, but tracking her people down to North Carolina, Bern and Eboni find a trunk full of never-before-seen Delaney Doodles. It becomes apparent to them that Josephine Reed wrote the music Delaney claimed credit for.
Symphony of Secrets jumps back to 1918 as Josephine Reed arrives in New York and meets a struggling pianist named Freddy Delaney. Josephine is what today would be called "neurodivergent." She is able to translate everyday sounds into colors and music. Often enigmatic, money doesn't seem to interest her and she lives on the street, but is a more skilled, instinctive jazz piano player than Delaney. Starting as his tutor, she's soon sleeping on his floor. Then she shares her ability to compose catchy tunes, which Delaney discovers he can sell, provided they keep her involvement a secret. Delaney promises to split their earnings 50/50.
The fact that I related all of this indicates the novel's strength: it's a damn good yarn. Slocumb--a former music instructor at the public and private school level and a violinist--creates very believable musicians, and their music and lyrics. I tend to dislike novels or movies that fabricate celebrities or their fake work (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and That Thing You Do! are two of the more credible showbiz films) but Symphony of Secrets is rich in these areas. Five Rings of Olympia has the feel of something incredible and Slocumb describes opera a way that was easy for me to understand.
Like The Violin Conspiracy, this is a modern faerie tale. I was actively rooting for Josephine to break out of the tower she'd been locked in and through efforts past and present, receive credit for her work. Slocumb does a supremely good job of writing a white character who starts out with good intentions, but lives under segregation and is a product of that system. Greed ultimately clouds any moral judgment Delaney might have possessed. The novel is not subtle and I would've preferred if the forces marshaled against Josephine and Bern weren't so melodramatic in their evil. But I was caught up in the tale and wanted to see how good would triumph.
By accident, this is the third book I've read (one non-fiction, two fiction) this spring that deals with masterworks of 20th century art whose full authors or contributors have been lost to history (spoiler alert: a white man received sole credit). The cover art, though it looks a tad generic, is a ring design featuring blue, yellow, black and green, with the fifth ring of the Olympic flag (red) missing, a la the missing opera RED in the novel. ...more
The story opens in 1936, sixteen hours before the death of Frederic Delaney, a celebrated American composer. Backstage, Delaney (who reminded me of Aaron Copland if his productivity and global reach rivaled Walt Disney) indulges in his normal performance ritual, opening a bottle of champagne, pouring two glasses before the show and two after. No one knows who this second glass is intended for, and the phantom does not reveal itself backstage.
In the present day, Professor Bern Hendricks of the University of Virginia, considered the foremost expert on Delaney, is summoned by the Delaney Foundation for a hush-hush commission. Bern, who grew up poor in Milwaukee and like many children who couldn't afford otherwise, owes his entry to music to the charitable work of the Foundation. He feels that Delaney was the greatest composer in the world. Among the man's achievements is the Five Rings of Olympia, an opera cycle based on the blue, yellow, black, green and red rings of the new Olympic flag, each ring representing a different region of the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas).
The first four operas debuted between 1921 and 1926, but the final opera, RED, missed its delivery date and didn't premiere until 1936. After changing his story, Delaney ultimately conceded that the delay was due to him losing his original draft. Between that boner and the spectacularly bad reception RED received when it finally debuted, Delaney became something of a joke late in his life. Bern hopes that the Foundation has found the lost version of RED and he can help restore Delaney's reputation.
Flown to New York on the Foundation's private jet and put up in an apartment, Bern learns that the long-lost RED has been recovered and that the Foundation wants him to prepare the score for a performance in six months, interpreting what are known as Delaney Doodles, whirls and geometric shapes that usually annotate the music. The recovered RED consists only of Doodles, including a new one that appears to read JaR. To help decipher the code, Bern seeks the help of a colleague named Eboni Washington, an expert in cybersecurity.
Eboni, a native of the Bronx who does not worship Delaney or revere the Foundation, pushes for access to the original document instead of a scan. She and Bern discover that "JaR" is actually JoR. They match this to a Black woman in the Delaney archives named Josephine Reed who accompanied him on his first European tour and was on his payroll. Historians have ignored her. Eboni suspects Josephine was Delaney's mistress, but tracking her people down to North Carolina, Bern and Eboni find a trunk full of never-before-seen Delaney Doodles. It becomes apparent to them that Josephine Reed wrote the music Delaney claimed credit for.
Symphony of Secrets jumps back to 1918 as Josephine Reed arrives in New York and meets a struggling pianist named Freddy Delaney. Josephine is what today would be called "neurodivergent." She is able to translate everyday sounds into colors and music. Often enigmatic, money doesn't seem to interest her and she lives on the street, but is a more skilled, instinctive jazz piano player than Delaney. Starting as his tutor, she's soon sleeping on his floor. Then she shares her ability to compose catchy tunes, which Delaney discovers he can sell, provided they keep her involvement a secret. Delaney promises to split their earnings 50/50.
The fact that I related all of this indicates the novel's strength: it's a damn good yarn. Slocumb--a former music instructor at the public and private school level and a violinist--creates very believable musicians, and their music and lyrics. I tend to dislike novels or movies that fabricate celebrities or their fake work (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and That Thing You Do! are two of the more credible showbiz films) but Symphony of Secrets is rich in these areas. Five Rings of Olympia has the feel of something incredible and Slocumb describes opera a way that was easy for me to understand.
Like The Violin Conspiracy, this is a modern faerie tale. I was actively rooting for Josephine to break out of the tower she'd been locked in and through efforts past and present, receive credit for her work. Slocumb does a supremely good job of writing a white character who starts out with good intentions, but lives under segregation and is a product of that system. Greed ultimately clouds any moral judgment Delaney might have possessed. The novel is not subtle and I would've preferred if the forces marshaled against Josephine and Bern weren't so melodramatic in their evil. But I was caught up in the tale and wanted to see how good would triumph.
By accident, this is the third book I've read (one non-fiction, two fiction) this spring that deals with masterworks of 20th century art whose full authors or contributors have been lost to history (spoiler alert: a white man received sole credit). The cover art, though it looks a tad generic, is a ring design featuring blue, yellow, black and green, with the fifth ring of the Olympic flag (red) missing, a la the missing opera RED in the novel. ...more
Notes are private!
1
Jun 23, 2023
Jun 29, 2023
May 02, 2023
Hardcover
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