Reading 'Long Bright River' by Liz Moore has left me with a lot of mixed feelings. The book itself is awesome! The subject matter, to me, boils down tReading 'Long Bright River' by Liz Moore has left me with a lot of mixed feelings. The book itself is awesome! The subject matter, to me, boils down to how bad parenting happens, basically, showing though a fictionalized realism the many varieties of social and family messes that lead to family disintegration and/or failure. I felt the story very accurate in it's depiction of the harm of addiction and mental illness. Families that somehow pull through the darkness, though damaged and broken, is kind of a minor miracle. The novel is a dark detective mystery about the murders of prostitutes - but it is mostly about the murder of families.
I have copied the book blurb as accurate:
"Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different.
Then one of them goes missing.
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.
Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit--and her sister--before it's too late.
Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate."
I suppose most readers will takeaway a message of hope, feeling the ending is one of making lemonade from the lemons of family misunderstandings; from the powerfully sour lemony harms of patriarchal culture; from the crashing and burning down of one's life because of addiction.
But I think most readers who have lived through situations similar to those described in the novel will be alternating between hopelessness and anxiety for the main narrator, Michaela 'Mickey' Fitzpatrick. She is a person who makes a lot of mistakes as a new Philadelphia police officer. Some of them are because she is a rookie, and some of them are because she has little support from her male bosses, particularly Sergeant Ahearn. A lot of mistakes are made because she is seeing through "a glass darkly" about her childhood with her grandmother Gee, her heroin-addicted sister Kacey, her failed relationship with detective Simon Cleare, a lover, and in the overwhelming task of taking care of a young boy, her son Thomas, by herself without much help.
Mickey is also closed down, trusts no one, and judges everyone harshly. She finds it impossible to do small talk or reach out, and is more than a little paranoid. Whenever anything which isn't a noir situation at all starts going down, she seems to have the knack of turning it into the darkest noir, creating enemies unnecessarily. I wanted to force her to see a mental health counselor! But of course, this is America. We don't permit anyone without upper-tier health care benefits to be able to afford mental health care. But given the lower-class environment Mickey was raised in, even if she had had the money or health care insurance, she would have felt admitting to any kind of mental distress to anyone would be a shameful weakness. So instead her fears and anxieties are dissolving her alive from the inside out, chapter by chapter, as if she drank pure acid for breakfast everyday. I suspect some readers will find Mickey exasperating. I did.
The author has created characters who did not in the least seem fictional fantasies to me. Every one of them reminded me of real people I have known or met in my life. The situational dilemmas, the emotions, the wreckage of lives - the book could have been taken for an autobiography instead of a detective noir mystery. I highly recommend it, but I already know some readers probably won't like the hyphen-styling used for punctuation for the dialogue. Or the realism....more
'Blacklist' by Sara Paretsky is the 11th novel in the Chicago private detective V.I. Warshawski series. She is a hardcore person physically, never per'Blacklist' by Sara Paretsky is the 11th novel in the Chicago private detective V.I. Warshawski series. She is a hardcore person physically, never permitting the dangers to her life or limbs slow her down! Long time readers will know what I'm talking about. I don't know how many scars she has on her fortiesh-year-old (?) body by now, but I bet the number of little white scarring stripes she must have everywhere on her skin must be near a hundred. One of the things she resents is any assumption she is 'only' a woman. She IS smart, tough, and very very good at her job!
Her primary focus, and what kind of jobs she takes, are those investigating financial crimes. She was a law student in college. However, she often finds herself dealing with very rough-and-tumble people, you know, like entitled and extremely wealthy people, and the lowlife thugs, as well as pink/white-collar minions, the rich folk hire to kill Vic (Victoria). Police have never liked her except for the honest seeking-real-justice ones. Her progressive ideals get her into a LOT of hot water, too. She never knows when to stop digging into secrets! But she does know when she has to let justice go because she can't fight City Hall or the wealthy. She bides her time, though.
I think the books should be read in order. If you begin the series, start here: Indemnity Only.
'Blacklist' was published in 2003. Every Warshawski novel involves current events of the year, and this one follows the pattern. Her journalist boyfriend is in Afghanistan, and she becomes involved with protecting a Muslim kid falsely accused of being a Taliban or Al-Qaeda terrorist. What he actually is is a dishwasher working to send money to his family.
In another plot thread, Warshawski finds the body of an African-American journalist, Marcus Whitby, when a wealthy client, Darraugh Graham, hires her to check out why lights in a deserted mansion keep coming on. Darraugh's mother, Geraldine Graham, ninety-one-years-old, keeps an eye on the mansion Larchmont Hall. She once had close friends who lived there. What was Whitby doing to get himself, well, dead? When Darraugh wants her to stop investigating (why?), Whitby's family hires Warshawski to continue her investigation.
The plot threads become tangled and convoluted, and the dogpile of possible players piles up! Hatreds are uncovered which stretch back to the 1950's when many artists, college students and leftists were being destroyed by political witch-hunts looking for communist sympathizers to - here it comes gentle reader - blacklist!
It is a wonderful spiral staircase of secrets Vic uncovers, chapter by chapter. The author must have used a conspiracy wall to figure out where she would lead her fictional detective next, omg. Expect to flip back to earlier chapters, gentle reader! Or build your own conspiracy wall......more
'Tripwire', the third book in the Jack Reacher series, is a touch more weighted down on the mystery side of the scale and much lighter on thriller vel'Tripwire', the third book in the Jack Reacher series, is a touch more weighted down on the mystery side of the scale and much lighter on thriller velocity, but it will do.
I copied the book blurb below, and it is accurate. However, it also is remarkably DOA descriptive writing. What happened to Lee Child's PR for this novel? Not much scene chewing here.
"Jack Reacher, ex-military policeman relaxed in Key West until Costello turned up dead. The amiable PI was hired in New York by the daughter of Reacher's mentor and former commanding officer, General Garber. Garber's investigation into a Vietnam MIA sets Reacher on collision with hand-less "Hook" Hobie, hours away from his biggest score.
The blurb gives the impression this novel is a only a proforma Reacher novel! Ok, ok, it is, if perhaps a little too much reliance on traveling about calmly doing research without death constantly stalking our hero. Anyway. It's fun to read about an ex-military guy who never fails. The Brits have James Bond ...more
'The Paradox Hotel' by Rob Hart is a mind-bending noir mystery! It also is a science fiction thriller!
At first, the story is all about meeting a larg'The Paradox Hotel' by Rob Hart is a mind-bending noir mystery! It also is a science fiction thriller!
At first, the story is all about meeting a large cast of characters - hotel staff and guests of the Paradox Hotel. Then weird wibbly wobbly timey wimey cracks in the timestream, maybe, begin to happen in the Hotel. Late Cretaceous dinosaurs are suddenly hunting people down in the hallways! Yikes! Good thing they are babies. But how did they get to the year 2072? The hotel is shielded from the radiation given off from the time-traveling timeport, the Einstein, which is next door, so no one can figure out why, or if, leaks might be spilling over into the hotel. It turns out a wealthy guest brought in the dinosaurs after his paid round trip to the past.
The Einstein timeport is restricted to only wealthy trillionaires who have agreed to follow the rules for a safe voyage. Traveling in time has been made safe, so safe it's a lucrative business now. What can go wrong?
The book blurb I copied below is spot on:
"An impossible crime. A detective on the edge of madness. The future of time travel at stake.
January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.
Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past.
Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls.
None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see.
On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.
January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders.
There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once.
But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own."
Memories of loving Mena and losing Mena to an accident a year ago have devastated January. She runs towards danger and away from her friends, an underlying rage poisoning her. She can't talk about Mena's death. Her usual dark wisecracks have become harsh. She sometimes is afraid she will lose her job which is the main reason, maybe the only reason, she has been working at controlling herself and her temper. She and Mena lived and loved at the hotel. If she is forced to go away, she will be leaving Mena and her memories behind, too. Figuring out why the timestream might be going sideways and leaking helps her forget her almost overwhelming grief. She hopes after the hotel is sold to new owners she can keep working there. But her health is a problem. She has an ability because of her affliction that makes her a good detective, but staying sane is getting harder. Working with the demands of the super-rich, who all have a powerful sense of entitlement, push her to the wall.
Solving the mystery is her best distraction. She's going to do this even if it's the last thing she ever does...
I highly recommend this fast-paced noir mystery/speculative science-fiction novel! It has a lot of heartwarming touches which lift it up into the kind of book that is difficult to put down....more
'The Night Shift' by Alex Finlay is one of the best mysteries I've read this year! The twists and turns keep readers spinning and confused. He did it!'The Night Shift' by Alex Finlay is one of the best mysteries I've read this year! The twists and turns keep readers spinning and confused. He did it! No. She did it! Oh no, don't go in there! There is a killer waiting!
The novel is high octane once the denouement nears, but first we are introduced to some doomed teen characters who will not be long on the stage. They are employees of a VHS video rental store, or rather, were. Their bloody corpses are discovered the next day. Police believe they know who the madman was -a boyfriend of one of the teens. He disappears shortly after being released for lack of evidence.
Fifteen years later, a number of psychologically damaged people, among them a survivor of the mass-murder carnage from before, begin to follow the news carefully. It appears that either the killer has come back to repeat his terrible wicked ways, or there is a copycat. This time, it is a bunch of teen employees at an ice cream store who are murdered.
Over the next three hideous days, two characters once again have been dropped into a waking nightmare each thought was all over.
Ella Monroe was the lone survivor fifteen years ago in the video store killings. She became a therapist, but she never thought she'd be called in to counsel another lone survivor of a mass killing exactly like the one she suffered through. But Jessica "Jesse" Duvall, the survivor of these new murders, is a foster kid who needs the best possible therapist. Who else could possibly know what being the last girl alive is like? Ella is more than a bit sickened by the memories of her own ordeal coming back at her. Can she do this? She must.
Chris Ford is a public defender. The news about the murders shock him! His adoptive parents, May and Clint, are worried about him. They took him in when his brother Vince Whitaker disappeared after being released by the police. The bruises on Chris' body told the story of a vicious abusive father. He couldn't believe his brother had killed those people at the video store. Vince always tried to protect him from their dad! Is his brother back? Maybe. Did he kill people again? He needs to find out the truth.
Sarah Keller is an FBI agent. Her husband Bob hopes she will be careful on this case because she is almost near her due date. Carrying twins, she is very very large. Still, she wants this assignment. It's possible a serial killer is involved. She needs to be careful, and not only because she is pregnant. Although Vince is still wanted for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, a federal crime, the murders are a state-law crimes. She will need to defer to Joe Arpeggio, the chief detective in Linden, Union County and his detective assigned to the older video store case, Atticus Singh. She can do this. A serial killer!
The plot doesn't thicken, gentle reader. It weaves and feints and zigzags! I was unable to guess who did it or why despite the huge cast of unsavory bad guys. I think the book is a very very good mystery!...more
I LOVED 'Sandstorm' by James Rollins! It is pure old-fashioned adventure much like the Doc Savage series by Lester Dent.
Reader, if you love thriller I LOVED 'Sandstorm' by James Rollins! It is pure old-fashioned adventure much like the Doc Savage series by Lester Dent.
Reader, if you love thriller novels which combine adventure, fantasy, and black-ops excitement, I beg you to read once in your lifetime the Doc Savage series beginning with Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze! If you can. Amazon shows these novels are out of print, alas! They are also not politically correct. I don't care! But I digress..
I have copied the book blurb about 'Sandstorm', which IS a politically correct novel:
"An inexplicable explosion rocks the antiquities collection of a London museum, setting off alarms in clandestine organizations around the world.
And now the search for answers is leading Lady Kara Kensington; her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's brilliant and beautiful curator; and their guide, the international adventurer Omaha Dunn, into a world they never dreamed existed: a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert.
But others are being drawn there as well, some with dark and sinister purposes. And the many perils of a death-defying trek deep into the savage heart of the Arabian Peninsula pale before the nightmare waiting to be unearthed at journey's end: an ageless and awesome power that could create a utopia... or destroy everything humankind has built over countless millennia."
Almost every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, much like the serials of the 1930's. Omg, gentle reader, I'm in fricking heaven! I'm so glad I have discovered these books! Omg, I hope the rest of the series are like 'Sandstorm! I will be absolutely devastated if they aren't. This novel, anyway, is a throwback to matinee serials like the one starring Buster Crabbe, star of Flash Gordon and the fictionalized novels of other comic books. What others you ask? Ok, nobody is asking me, but I'm going to show you anyway.
Needless to say, they ALL are politically incorrect, but when I was able to get my hands on one of these pulp comics or novelizations I went out of my mind with joy! This! This! This!
*ahem*
Sorry. But these dime novels were the start of my adult love affair, so to speak, with reading, once I found them with torn covers, missing pages, and stained with coffee cup rings in the damaged paperbacks bins at my local Salvation Army store. Originally, it was novels like The Complete Sherlock Holmes series and The Black Stallion series that were my elementary school loves, but it was the silly 1930's pulps which cemented my adoration of reading, discovered when I was in junior high (or middle school to non-baby-boomer generations).
'Sandstorm' was printed in 2004, and it involves an up-to-date team of competing scientists and military teams, but it also includes what are to me the absolutely delightful touches present in the movie 'Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark'
I hope my library has the next one in the Sigma Force series, Map of Bones! I haven't felt this happy since I read Relic!
I love early pulps! And the radio shows, too! Like "The Shadow" , "Adventures by Morse", "The Creaking door", Arch Obeler plays, "CBS Radio Mystery Theater", "I Love A Mystery" - to name my favorites! No, I wasn't born when these shows were on the radio except for CBS Radio Mystery Theater, but there was, and is sort of a cycle of bringing them back every fifteen years or so. A lot of these are available as podcasts today. However, warning they often are not politically correct.
Don't judge me. My life is small.
P.s. Many of these early pulps are terrible, awful. I laugh and laugh!...more
‘’Then She Was Gone’ by Lisa Jewell is an amazing thriller! It’s the kind of book which is difficult to put down once you start it, especially for the‘’Then She Was Gone’ by Lisa Jewell is an amazing thriller! It’s the kind of book which is difficult to put down once you start it, especially for the last few chapters.
‘Then She Was Gone’ is primarily a domestic story in the first half of the novel. It shows how a mother, Laurel Mack, copes ten years after her favorite daughter, Ellie, who was fifteen years old, went missing while walking to a library after leaving home. Laurel’s marriage to Paul fell apart. Laurel’s relationship with Hanna, her other daughter, is not ok at all.
In the second half the mystery begins to be solved. The chapters alternate between characters from ten years ago, including Ellie, and now, as Laurel learns what happened to Ellie.
I have copied the cover blurb as it is accurate:
THEN She was fifteen, her mother's golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.
NOW It’s been ten years since Ellie disappeared, but Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter.
And then one day a charming and charismatic stranger called Floyd walks into a café and sweeps Laurel off her feet.
Before too long she’s staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter.
Poppy is precocious and pretty - and meeting her completely takes Laurel's breath away.
Because Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie when she was that age. And now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.
What happened to Ellie? Where did she go?
Who still has secrets to hide?“
‘Then She Was Gone’ is a terrific beach read! I recommend it. The book is exceptionally well written!...more
‘The Anomaly’ by Hervé Le Tellier is deliciously, quietly, sneakily absurd! The novel is a slow-burner domestic thriller, so it wasn’t until the midpo‘The Anomaly’ by Hervé Le Tellier is deliciously, quietly, sneakily absurd! The novel is a slow-burner domestic thriller, so it wasn’t until the midpoint of the story I found myself smiling in incredulity. With a quarter of the novel left to read, I was laughing out loud! Perhaps with a tinge of some knowing bitterness.
I read a translated version of ‘The Anomaly’. Adriana Hunter translated from the original French to English. She did a wonderful job!
The anomaly plays out over a few months, from March to November, 2021. The book follows a number of characters, each with their own chapters. They are a diverse group, seemingly unconnected to each other.
Blake is a contract assassin. He hides his real work behind the front of being a French restaurant owner. He and his wife Flora have two children.
Victor Miesel is a French writer admired by literary critics but almost completely unknown by the general public. He lives by translating. He has had many love affairs, but none of them worked out.
Lucie Bogaert is a director of photography, well respected and in demand. She began a relationship four months ago with a man, Andre Vannier, an architect. They met three years ago, but he finally interested her enough recently. He is several decades older than she is, infatuated, and she is beginning to feel smothered by his overwhelming love for her after these four months. She has a young son, Louis.
David is dying from stage 4 cancer. His brother Paul, an oncologist, just told him. David is married to Jody and has two children.
Sophia Kleffman is a six-year-old little girl, daughter of April and Lieutenant Clark Kleffman. April has become afraid of Clark’s rage, stoked by his experiences in Afghanistan.
Joanna Woods Wasserman is a lawyer and Black. She is hyper-aware she has to work within a system that keeps people of her gender and color out, even before the stigma of being a lawyer. Her sister Ellen has a chronic health condition which requires a hundred thousand dollars a year to keep her alive. Her husband Aby Wasserman is a cartoonist, and they are pregnant.
Femi Ahmed ‘Slimboy’ Kaduna is from Lagos, Nigeria, and until recently, only a local singer popular with Nigerians in London. However, he has written a hit song! A tour of the UK went very well, but in Lagos he is hounded by a journalist asking him about his views on homosexuality. Nigerians have been known to burn homosexuals alive, along with other killing-slow tortures. Slimboy is in the closet.
Adrian Miller is a brilliant mathematician and Princeton professor, and he was part of a team that designed an emergency protocol, called Protocol 42, for American security after 9/11 years ago. After his work on that team was finished, he moved on and forgot about it. He is not usually very serious about politics or national security in the least. Trying to get laid is more his style. However, he suddenly is asked to go to the White House. NOW.
A very unusual crisis has occurred. Very, very, very unusual.
The plot accelerates into wibbly wobbly timey wimey territory! Fantastic! I love this book! It’s pure brain candy! But, gentle reader, beware - it’s not a gentle read. It’s a toss-up of terror between types of shocking and horrific craziness whenever a book integrates genuine real-life social craziness into a fictional creation! Seeing ourselves as others see us….well. As prophesied by The Lady of Shalott, the mirror sometimes cracks....more
‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ by Laura Dave is a great mystery read! I couldn’t put this intriguing book down for hours! I finally stopped reading a lit‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ by Laura Dave is a great mystery read! I couldn’t put this intriguing book down for hours! I finally stopped reading a little more than halfway done simply because this was the second night in a row I wanted to finish a book I had begun.
Note to self: the body needs to sleep….
A well written mystery sucks me in every time! I’m a ridiculous person, gentle reader. People wreck their health in all kinds of dumb ways, but I appear to be doing so by trying to read 24/7!
So many good books, so little time.
Below is the cover blurb of ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’:
”We all have stories we never tell. Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her.
Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.
As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.
Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated.”
Choices are made in this novel I wouldn’t have made, but nonetheless, I can see the reasoning behind the main character’s. The book is a thriller! I recommend it as an interesting beach read.
(view spoiler)[I would not have been in the least forgiving of what Owen did. I know my love for someone who did what Owen did would not have survived his huge, ultimately utterly self-serving, lies. I would have felt I was somebody whose future, whose life, MY life, he was willing to sacrifice if it went bad after he had satisfaction for HIS current needs - seeing his daughter grow up, having a normal married life for awhile, working at a challenging job - with no consideration of how his deception would ruin my happiness at having a loving marriage and a future I would have preferred, instead of one where I was afraid of a drug cartel forever. (hide spoiler)] ...more
‘Die Trying’ by Lee Child gave me a serious chill of déjà vu!
The plot: a right-wing militia is secretly preparing to take down the American governmen‘Die Trying’ by Lee Child gave me a serious chill of déjà vu!
The plot: a right-wing militia is secretly preparing to take down the American government because they think the country is in danger of a takeover by the United Nations - which they believe is the front organization for the One-World Government. They have established a secret camp in Montana to train up militia wannabes, consisting of ex-soldiers and others. Their women and children are made to obey to rigid security rules and learn absolute military obedience to the men. The leader is a charismatic personality who gives daily talks about the United Nation conspiracies surrounding them that are destroying America and the real Americans - white men. The leader is also a strict disciplinarian, resorting to torture punishments of anyone who disagrees with him, not just simply for any disobedience, of his beliefs as well as his commands. He is ordering missions to steal money from banks and guns from everywhere but especially the American military camps. The Montana militia is stockpiling food.They have taken over other militias who were also hiding in and around the Montana valley, disappearing other leaders. The valley is almost inaccessible except by one road. Except for the militia and scattered preppers who have been preparing for Armageddon for decades already, hardly anyone else lives there. People live off the grid because of their fears of the government, so they were easy targets for the leader and his militia.
They believe the United Nations is plotting to take over all governments and install a world government. Their leader told them vaccine jabs are really the way GPS trackers are being installed inside their bodies. They believe voting doesn’t matter because the system is rigged. They believe foreign countries have invaded America already, planting soldiers here through secret immigration, waiting for the word to take over. They believe forty-three concentration camps have been secretly built by the United Nations in America to enslave white Americans when the takeover happens. They believe all babies are getting a secret microchip implanted when they are born in hospitals. They believe United Nation satellites are watching all of the American militia camps and listening to all communication systems. They believe the leader when he says he has proof of everything he is teaching them, documents taken from secret files to which he got access, in his office safe. They all wear camouflage fatigues. And they are going to destroy the powers of the American government, The President, Congress and the military, whom the militia leader is certain are all controlled by the United Nations, before it takes down the militia! They are certain the one-world government attack will happen soon, so the militia will attack first!!!
Is this about January 6, 2021? NO. The book was written in 1998!
O _ o
‘Die trying’ is the second novel in the Jack Reacher series. It can be read as a standalone, but if one wants to read book one, of which Amazon has made into a current Prime Video series, start with Killing Floor...more
'The Echo Wife' by Sarah Gailey is flawed, yet brilliant! The book is a dark literary satire! The novel symbolically takes on all the ways that parent'The Echo Wife' by Sarah Gailey is flawed, yet brilliant! The book is a dark literary satire! The novel symbolically takes on all the ways that parents (whether planned, accidental or adoptive) program/design their progeny (whether the children are naturally born babies or are cloned adults in a lab). The dark comedy is buried (literally) for quite awhile in the book, gentle reader, because the author's intentions are serious and they write in the 'show, not tell' style.
I believe this novel could be a good Broadway play as well, given the plot's, perhaps somewhat allegorical, broad strokes! The author plays it straight, but I thought there was a LOT of dark comedy going on.
On the surface the book is about many subjects: the social impact of cloning people if cloning was a scientific business; the lifelong effects of a bad childhood; how a bad marriage can alter one's path; horrible moral decay that is invisible to society because of normalized familiarity; and patriarchal selfishness. But clearly, the themes of the novel, some overt, some not, will cause a lot of arguments on a lot of levels! -scientifically, culturally, on the insidious ways that moral-values rot can happen, etc.
I've copied the cover blurb below:
"I’m embarrassed, still, by how long it took me to notice. Everything was right there in the open, right there in front of me, but it still took me so long to see the person I had married.
It took me so long to hate him."
Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be.
And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband.
Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up.
Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.
My number one advice to readers is to ignore any conversations about the accuracy (or not) of the specific activities on the cloning process in the book since that particular plot point is clearly a pure speculative plot device! Every cloned body supposedly being manufactured in the novel is a science fantasy! The author obviously, on purpose, has vaguely described the cloning process! Don't get sucked into that conversational black hole about the author's cloning process accuracies. How cloning is really done was not the focus of this story.
At first, the presentation style of Evelyn's narration by the author irritated me. She is telling the story to you, gentle reader, of what happened, and she is also partially revealing her epiphanies in the moment at the same time. It is a VERY annoying manner of telling a story when it happens page after page. However, I got accustomed to Evelyn's speech pattern. But when I finally realized this novel was actually a dark satire, I began to relax and enjoy the ride! I had picked up the book as a book club recommendation, and I hadn't really known what it was about. It's gruesomely funny! And awful. And mean. I am recommending it! ; p
(view spoiler)[What I took away in finishing the novel was how the programming of brains was the key to all of the drama. Evelyn’s father and mother ‘programmed’ her emotional and intellectual development through abuse and example, and so did her marriage. We call it out often as PTSD and experience and emotional scars, but it’s also programming, sure enough. Martine was programmed too, but it was openly acknowledged, unlike Evelyn’s programming. Nathan’s programming was in his display of patriarchal selfishness.
The human clones were dehumanized by everyone primarily because they are an openly programmed being - which is a dark joke I suspect, because all beings are programmed by DNA and environment, unrecognized as this might be. Evelyn finally recognizes that she couldn’t be what Nathan wanted her to be, and the marriage had always been doomed.
If-then-else programming modules are by nature limited to those modules that have been written into the schema and Evelyn wasn’t equipped with the if-then-else branching modules Nathan wanted to be there in her programming:
- If woman marries, then she will want a baby. - If she gets a baby, the woman will run the housewife routines mechanically. -If Nathan gives a command, then his wife obeys happily without questioning.
Evelyn begins to see Martine is actually a person with growth potential because of education, but she decides to restrict Martine’s possibilities of growth the same as any patriarchal man because that makes Martine more useful to her. The abuse in Evelyn's childhood by her father has programmed her into accepting a comfortable schema. She has become her father, the powerful controlling mentor instead of choosing the weak personality, her mother, in the marriage of her parents. She doesn't have the capability of thinking outside her schema.
To me, this novel is as much about the effects of child abuse as it is about how many societies’ patriarchal hierarchy structures around the world are similar to programming modules. Social programming = C++ or Basic or JavaScript or Assembly or Pascal or Python …. (hide spoiler)]...more
'Gun Street Girl' by Adrian McKinty is number four in the Detective Sean Duffy series. Duffy, a Catholic Northern Ireland "peeler", is doing his job o'Gun Street Girl' by Adrian McKinty is number four in the Detective Sean Duffy series. Duffy, a Catholic Northern Ireland "peeler", is doing his job of solving murders during a civil war between Protestants and Catholics. It is difficult, to say the least! Duffy has to check his car for bombs whenever he drives. A lot of neighborhoods are designated as either Protestant or Catholic, or poor or wealthy enclaves, and police need to drive armored vehicles generally in the Catholic and poor areas. They always have to add hours to their drive time due to numerous checkpoints. There are a LOT of bombings, riots and protests every day, so murders of individuals are a murky business of detection. Every dead body has an added layer of political weight for everyone. Whose toes will be stepped on if the death is investigated - MI5? -the American CIA? -British aristocrats and politicians? -the dozens of Provo or IRA militias? A lot of people have hidden affiliations, including the journalists. Every organization has been infiltrated by spies working for the other side, whomever they may be today.
I copied the cover blurb below:
"Belfast, 1985, amidst the “Troubles”: Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), struggles with burn-out as he investigates a brutal double murder and suicide. Did Michael Kelly really shoot his parents at point blank and then jump off a nearby cliff? A suicide note points to this conclusion, but Duffy suspects even more sinister circumstances. He soon discovers that Kelly was present at a decadent Oxford party where a cabinet minister’s daughter died of a heroin overdose. This may or may not have something to do with Kelly’s subsequent death.
New evidence leads elsewhere: gun runners, arms dealers, the British government, and a rogue American agent with a fake identity. Duffy thinks he’s getting somewhere when agents from MI5 show up at his doorstep and try to recruit him, thus taking him off the investigation.
Duffy is in it up to his neck, doggedly pursuing a case that may finally prove his undoing."
I am really enjoying this dark noir mystery series! Interested readers should begin with book one, The Cold Cold Ground....more
'In the Morning I'll be Gone' by Adrian McKinty is a terrific novel, the third, in the Detective Sean Duffy mystery series! The books have continuing 'In the Morning I'll be Gone' by Adrian McKinty is a terrific novel, the third, in the Detective Sean Duffy mystery series! The books have continuing threads about Sean's personal and professional life, so I recommend readers begin with book one, The Cold Cold Ground.
Duffy works as a police officer in Northern Ireland. The books take place in the 1980's during Northern Ireland's civil war between the Catholics and the Protestants. The series is heavy with the atmosphere of an urban guerrilla war, beautifully interwoven into the other, more police-type, mysteries. At the same time the British were wavering uncertainly between plunging in like bulls in a glass shop to support whoever they thought could stop the terrorism and pulling out of Northern Ireland completely. The dozens of terrorist gangs fighting each other and the British, and all of them killing supposed collaborators, made the job of ordinary police work the same as wrestling someone unknown in a bog in the middle of a maze designed with shrubbery consisting of nettles and thorns, with the occasional mine hidden here and there, and no light except maybe that reflected by the moon. Northern Ireland was a dystopic Mad Max wasteland, literally.
I have copied the cover blurb as it is accurate:
"A spectacular escape and a man-hunt that could change the future of a nation - and lay one man's past to rest. Sean Duffy's got nothing. And when you've got nothing to lose, you have everything to gain. So when MI5 come knocking, Sean knows exactly what they want, and what he'll want in return, but he hasn't got the first idea how to get it. Of course he's heard about the spectacular escape of IRA man Dermot McCann from Her Majesty's Maze prison. And he knew, with chilly certainty, that their paths would cross. But finding Dermot leads Sean to an old locked room mystery, and into the kind of danger where you can lose as easily as winning. From old betrayals and ancient history to 1984's most infamous crime, Sean tries not to fall behind in the race to annihilation. Can he outrun the most skilled terrorist the IRA ever created? And will the past catch him first?"
I love this particular blurb because while accurate, it gives nothing away of what has been going on in the previous novels or much of what is happening in this book in 'The Troubles' trilogy. I also love the cynical Sean Duffy, who is both Master and Blaster (Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome movie reference - hehe) when required....more
The Maid’ by Nita Prose is a delightful mystery! This isn’t the first novel I’ve read where the narration is voiced by a main character on the autism The Maid’ by Nita Prose is a delightful mystery! This isn’t the first novel I’ve read where the narration is voiced by a main character on the autism spectrum. I have discovered the reveals usually happen in two dimensions - one in which the narrator observes things but does not comprehend fully what actually is happening, and the other is the reader seeing the obvious between the lines. The anxiety I feel for the narrator increases because I see the danger that she (all of novels with an autistic main character I have read, except one, have had a female protagonist) does not!
I have copied the book blurb below because it is accurate:
”Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.
Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life’s complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.
But Molly’s orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what’s happening, Molly’s unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black—but will they be able to find the real killer before it’s too late?
A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.
The book is a cozy with an edge. Normally I find cozies too unbelievably distorted from ANY reality because of the hardcore censoring of all scary or mean stuff no matter what. Using an autistic narrator gives the author an opportunity of freedom to write with the elements of a cozy while at the same time showing enough action/dialogue for the readers to surmise the harder edges which are occurring! I find this very interesting. Plus, it is good when the ending is one where it works out with characters sticking the landing successfully by the last page! ...more
'I hear Sirens in the Street' by Adrian McKinty is book two in the The Troubles Trilogy featuring Sean Duffy, Detective Inspector in the Carrick RUC. 'I hear Sirens in the Street' by Adrian McKinty is book two in the The Troubles Trilogy featuring Sean Duffy, Detective Inspector in the Carrick RUC. It's a tough time to be any kind of copper in Northern Ireland as there is a full-blown religious/political civil war going on - it's the 1980's. Much of this IRA/British/Protestant "Troubles" background is brought forward in the first novel in the series, The Cold Cold Ground. 'I Hear Sirens in the Street' is more of a straightforward noir mystery, but extra fun because of great writing, the interesting atmospheric setting of Northern Ireland and a lot of wisecracks. However, I did like the previous novel a little better.
This is an awesome series! The plots are twisty, Duffy sees a lot of black humor in his job of solving murders in between dodging paramilitaries, terrorists and various British secret service organizations. He is collecting a lot of scars because of the James Bond tactics he often indulges in! Love it!
I have copied the cover blurb below because it is accurate:
"Sean Duffy knows there's no such thing as a perfect crime. But a torso in a suitcase is pretty close.
Still, one tiny clue is all it takes, and there it is. A tattoo. So Duffy, fully fit and back at work after the severe trauma of his last case, is ready to follow the trail of blood-however faint-that always, always connects a body to its killer.
A legendarily stubborn man, Duffy becomes obsessed with this mystery as a distraction from the ruins of his love life, and to push down the seed of self-doubt that he seems to have traded for his youthful arrogance.
So from country lanes to city streets, Duffy works every angle. And wherever he goes, he smells a rat... "
I plan to continue with the series, especially since the novel ends with a particularly suspenseful cliffhanger!...more
Whenever I read novels like 'A Lonely Man' by Chris Power, I feel a cultural gap between English literary writers and maybe general American literary Whenever I read novels like 'A Lonely Man' by Chris Power, I feel a cultural gap between English literary writers and maybe general American literary readers like myself. It's in how long it takes for an author to reveal to a character and readers what is really happening in a literary novel, if knowingly self-discovered by the character, or not. Japanese novels are sometimes like this too - plots which carry on for hundreds of pages about unclear maybe dangers, unresolved puzzles, unexamined emotions, muddy conclusions. However, the characters persevere despite a lack of inner examination or understanding, a point being made by the more knowing author.
When I read The Sense of an Ending, a novel I was reminded of as I read 'A Lonely Man', I experienced a frustrated sense of there not being enough energy or meaning in the plot for me. This is of a type of book the English literati (as well as east-coast American literati) swooned over passionately. What the books have partially in common I think is they are about the characters' internal emotional space being revealed as supposedly shocking in some way to the character and is the biggest surprise to him in the novel. It might result in a feeling of vulnerability or confusion or sometimes straight-up fear in the character in these literary character studies. But often the emotion in some of these recent English literary novels is processed incompletely or remains beyond comprehension for the character, and sometimes the reader, and might result in nothing much being resolved or in having been judged as not important by the character ultimately, which is the lesson learned. Sometimes when any of the foregoing was the message, well, it's meh for me, sometimes.
These usually obtuse emotions (sometimes maybe they resonate with some readers) and uncertainly understood and maybe duplicitous motivations behind actions power forward some of the recent English literary plots I've read. At least it has in a few of the literary English novels full of educated characters or artists. This type of book often ends 300 pages later in a fog of mysteries never solved or not emotionally resolved by the last page, all action aborted and leading to a sound of a cricket, or perhaps meaningless or shallow (to me, anyway) revelations which leave me, gentle reader, wondering if I wasted my time reading a book about yet another modern Englishman unwilling or unable to fully crack open and challenge his inner demons.
'A Lonely Man' does have the unusual virtue for a literary (? - this book is in between a literary novel and a domestic slow-burner thriller it seems to me) English novel - the plot has an explosive resolution. Life becomes full of clarity to the main character. It takes 301 pages to arrive though. Imho, this novel should have been at most 200 pages. It would have had more energy. I finished it because all of the professional critics hinted there is a resolution to these beautifully written chapters of mostly domesticity, which at a point were seemingly endlessly going over and over the main character's journey of myopic self-centered ambition to write a Great Novel at the expense of other people. Unlike some other readers, I did not think the insertion of the main character Robert Prowe's draft novel into the main plot was smoothly done, either. I did like the subtle commentary/contrast on an author writing a fictionalized noir crime novel about the Russian robber barons created under Boris Yeltsin's administration ('as told by') and his 'real' life of family, kids, writing problems, and other general domestic issues. Robert was definitely not writing of what he knew.
I copied the cover blurb because it is accurate:
"Two British men, both writers, meet by chance in Berlin. Robert is trying and failing to finish his next book while balancing his responsibilities as a husband and father. Patrick, a recent arrival in the city, is secretive about his past, but eventually reveals he has been ghostwriting the autobiography of a Russian oligarch. The oligarch is now dead, and Patrick claims to be a hunted man himself.
Although Robert doubts the truth of Patrick's story, it fascinates him, and he thinks it might hold the key to his own foundering novel. Working to gain the other man's trust, Robert draws out the details of Patrick's past while ensnaring himself ever more tightly in what might be a fantasist's creation, or a devastating international plot.
Through an elegant, existential game of cat-and-mouse, Chris Power's A Lonely Man depicts an attempt to create art at the cost of empathy. Robert must decide what is his for the taking--and whether some stories are too dangerous to tell."
These English literary writers, or wannabes, or in-between genres like this novel, are writing as male characters who can only manage a single dimension of self-consciousness. Meanwhile, the character does go on to express beautiful poetic sentences or uses wonderful phrases that capture a child or a moment perfectly, or describe the physical landscape the characters are traveling over in a way readers can easily admire. (Women characters in novels are definitely more in touch with themselves, though, generally, even when the author who created the characters is male.)
American writers might prefer illustrating the same points in this novel with a dysfunctional domestic family and an evil boss when writing literary lit about writers, writing and their possible existential blindness or lack of empathy to real dangers and problems in real lives. In my personal opinion, Americans tend to use exaggeration to illustrate literary themes while the English tend to downplay, sometime too much downplaying, of plot points in illustrating literary themes. Imho....more
'Murder at the Mill' by M.B. Shaw is a cozy crime novel, the first in a series. Iris Grey, the reluctant sleuth and main character of these novels, is'Murder at the Mill' by M.B. Shaw is a cozy crime novel, the first in a series. Iris Grey, the reluctant sleuth and main character of these novels, is an award-winning portrait painter who is in demand from wealthy patrons all over the world.
Iris's marriage to husband Ian McBride, a London playwright, is wobbling, so she feels it necessary to get away from London to clear her head. She decides to rent a cottage owned by a wealthy author in the little English village called Hampshire.
The cottage is in the middle of a beautiful country landscape next to a mill and a river. The author, Dominic Wetherby, and his wife Ariadne, live nearby in a gorgeous main house with one of their children, Lorcan, who is a teenager with Down's Syndrome. Their other two children are adults. One of them, Billy is a ne'er-do-well who recently has been released from prison for stalking. The other, Marcus, is a successful lawyer, married to Jenna. They have a couple of little kids.
Iris doesn't really want to be drawn into whatever family dramas that are going on with the Wetherby's - she has enough ongoing personal misery in trying to decide whether she should divorce her husband - but inexorably she is pulled inside the main house with its secrets. On the surface, the Wetherby's are a perfectly lovely success story! But Iris accidentally sees a disturbing scene between Ariadne and her son, Billy. Later Iris hears gossip when she goes to the village for groceries that she can't unhear. Then, when she is invited to the Wetherby's for a Christmas party they are famous for in literary and celebrity circles, she cannot find a reasonable excuse to not come and meet the important folks who might want her to paint them. She becomes aware of tense undercurrents, but she also meets a man who is really attractive!
The next morning, Christmas day, Lorcan begins screaming and screaming and screaming. The Wetherby's and Iris rush to Lorcan's side! He is at the river! There is a body, a dead body, floating in the water...
Yikes!
I thought the book good enough - it kept my interest and aroused my curiosity. However, it seemed to me, like many first novels in many new series, to have extraordinarily revealing exposition by many of the characters when they are each accused by Iris of wrongdoing or murder! But this isn't the first 'first of a series' novel I've read with this failing. Most writers get better, and I believe Shaw will too. Two-and-a-half stars....more
My brain exploded like it was a firework in the middle of the finale of a fireworks show when I finished Chapter 38 of Sharon BoltWait. What? WHAAAT?
My brain exploded like it was a firework in the middle of the finale of a fireworks show when I finished Chapter 38 of Sharon Bolton's 'Little Black Lies'!!!!!
I need to breathe for a bit. I guess I held my breath too long during those final four chapters! It could also be because I've been reading the book for four hours without any break!! I did not see that coming!
Wow. I mean, WOW.
This mystery is a slow burner in the first half, but it begins to speed up when a child's body is discovered. By the last few chapters, gentle reader, the story has twisted itself into a pretzel!
I have copied the book blurb:
In such a small community as the Falkland Islands, a missing child is unheard of. In such a dangerous landscape it can only be a terrible tragedy, surely...
When another child goes missing, and then a third, it’s no longer possible to believe that their deaths were accidental, and the villagers must admit that there is a murderer among them. Even Catrin Quinn, a damaged woman living a reclusive life after the accidental deaths of her own two sons a few years ago, gets involved in the searches and the speculation.
And suddenly, in this wild and beautiful place that generations have called home, no one feels safe and the hysteria begins to rise.
But three islanders—Catrin, her childhood best friend, Rachel, and her ex-lover Callum—are hiding terrible secrets. And they have two things in common: all three of them are grieving, and none of them trust anyone, not even themselves.
Catrin Quinn has lost her equilibrium. Her rage has cost her her marriage to Ben. When their two boys were killed in an accident, Catlin couldn't let it go. She narrates the first part of the book and the depths of her anger is clear. Her life has been destroyed by the deaths of her children three years ago. So when a little boy visiting the Falkland Islands with his family as tourists goes missing, she feels nothing. She wants to appear sympathetic, but there is a coldness where her heart used to be. She tries to act as if she feels normal. She continues to work at the Falkland Conservation, a charitable trust established by Catlin's father to preserve island wildlife, but a cold hate is eating her from the inside out.
Callum Murray picks up the story as the search for the vacationing boy begins to involve more and more people, including the tourists from the big leisure cruise ship from England. Callum is a former Second Lieutenant with the Parachute Regiment. He is originally from Scotland, but he moved to the Falklands because of his desperation to mitigate his PTSD. He had fought in the Falklands War between the British and Argentina in 1982. His war memories are wrecking him, causing occasional blackouts. It now is 1994, but he never knows when the flashbacks will take over his mind. Especially the one where he shot an Argentina kid-soldier in cold blood.
Rachel Grimwood was Catrin's best friend until the accident she caused killed Catrin's children. She has three boys of her own, with Sander, her husband. She misses Catrin's friendship, but she knows no one, especially herself, can ever forget what she did, even after three years have passed since the accident. She is not ok. Rachel's narrative concludes the book - and what an electrifying conclusion it is!
The personal lives of the three main characters are bleak, gentle reader! Can anything in their violent pasts be resolved between them?
The author's descriptions of the Falklands paint a vivid picture of the islands in the mind's eye. However, there are maps included to aid visualizations! The landscape of the Falklands is truly the fourth character in 'Little Black Lies'. The islands appear to be mostly wild lonely places of rock and ocean, harsh yet beautiful, with a small population of mostly Brits living there. After reading this book, I would like to visit the Falklands.
Below is a Wikipedia link about the Falklands war:
Imho, the Falklands War is more interesting than 'Little Black Lies'. However, the mystery, with its twists and turns, is certainly more entertaining! I'd never heard of Sharon Bolton before I read this novel, but she will be an author on my favorites list from this point on!...more
Whether Jim Thompson is writing about a smart serial killer (Pop. 1280) or not ('The Killer Inside Me') it seems to me always a vile novSelf-Indulgent
Whether Jim Thompson is writing about a smart serial killer (Pop. 1280) or not ('The Killer Inside Me') it seems to me always a vile novel pandering to the serial killer's point of view. It sucks a lot of readers into the con game. In Pop. 1280, it is "reader, you are loving this novel so you are as bad as me! Hehe!" This one is, "yes, I love to kill and hurt. Poor me. I need to be saved and cared for." Neither kind of psychopath would hesitate to indulge himself over and over given the chance.
A book club I belong to selected this which is why I read it....more
'The Plot' by Jean Hanff Korelitz has so many wonderful tongue-in-cheek moments about the ecosystem of being a writer of novels I knew this mystery wa'The Plot' by Jean Hanff Korelitz has so many wonderful tongue-in-cheek moments about the ecosystem of being a writer of novels I knew this mystery was a crafty satire immediately! I started chuckling when I recognized a certain autobiography that supposedly a character in 'The Plot' had lived. The book is a slow-burner mystery, but for certain, imho, the mystery is not really where the fun in reading this book is. I guessed almost everything about the identity of a character when I got about 2/3rds into the book. Despite this premature identification of a murderer for me, I enjoyed reading 'The Plot'.
Below I have copied the cover blurb:
"Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he's teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what's left of his self-respect; he hasn't written--let alone published--anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn't need Jake's help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then... he hears the plot.
Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker's first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that--a story that absolutely needs to be told.
In a few short years, all of Evan Parker's predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.
As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his "sure thing" of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?
Hailed as breathtakingly suspenseful, Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.
I did not think the book propulsive, but it was suspenseful as a light dramedy for me. Jacob isn't particularly likeable - he's too narcissistic. But he represents a type of person which I thought spot on and very funny! Did I see a bit of myself in the character of Jacob, perhaps? Not telling.
*ahem*
The novel is full of ironic sotto voce information about writers, writing and becoming a famous author! The plot is more about the variety (a sad and inadvertent comedy) of people who want to break into the New York City literary world, and what happens when they do. It's also about the anxiety of creating an "original" story without having echoes and restatements of other book plots and characters, which after two thousand years of storytellers writing stories is truly an impractical idea, basically. The chapters alternate between the fictional book Jake has written and Jake's 'real' (fictional) life, as well as the fact Jake's book is based on the life of another 'real' (fictional) character in the book cribbed from another writer/character, while we readers are reading about all of this in the fictional novel 'The Plot' - well, you see the fun the author was having, gentle reader! The writing is very good too....more
aPriL does feral sometimes
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