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The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
I'm always interesting when a non-genre author takes on genre fiction -- Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, or Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem, have been some of my most pleasurable reads. They're my ideal books: they're brilliantly written AND they have good deep plots that grip you. So I was excited when I started hearing about The Road, McCarthy's take on a post-apocalyptic novel. There are really bad post-apocalyptic books out there (Canticle for Leibowitz, which I found unreadable) and rather brilliant ones (Riddley Walker, or Golden Days, by Carolyn See), and for me, The Road falls somewhere in-between. I'll admit I haven't read much McCarthy books, though I know he has a lot of fanatical fans in MFA programs. I've heard this book may be McCarthy toned down a little, but I still found him too stylized for his material, where the showy writing often trumped what his subject matter. This may sound like nit-picking, but I can't help myself: why not use quotation marks? Why use an apostrophe in "we've" but not in "didnt"? Why all the fragments and incomplete sentences? I found similarities between this book and The Life of Pi -- trying to survive in McCarthy's imagined wasteland is surprisingly like being shipwrecked by a tiger, where survival turns into a combination of repetition, loneliness, danger, and isolation. But where the Life of Pi too perfectly captured the repetition of a boy lost at sea, The Road is a slim quick read, the perfect length, and actually a bit of a page turner (not because of any plot twists, but I felt compelled to read on because I needed to know, do these people’s lives get any better? How?). Like Life of Pi, there is something beautifully metaphoric about this novel too. A man and his son are pushing a shopping cart across a wasteland of a road, trying to get to the ocean--and when they reach the ocean, you hope there will be something there for them, but there's not. They reach their goal, the end of their quest, and nothing happens. The real magic of the book happens in the very ending, where, in the last few pages, McCarthy somehow manages to inject a convincing amount of small beauty, hope and faith.

The Known World, by Edward P. Jones
What a mind-boggling and incredible and challenging read this it, beginning with a black slave owner who dies, and then the book expands to be about this slave owner's life and the numerous people who surrounded him and their lives too. Read this book in winter, when you’re ready to work at what you’re reading. I heard a great interview with Jones on NPR a few months ago, where Jones said, "No bad person is every born that way, and the thing you have to do is find the moment, or moments, when that person turned off the good road and went onto the bad road, and I think that when you can find those moments, and tell them as detailed as possible, then maybe maybe you can avoid the stereotype." Jones writes all of his characters (well, except one or two) with such sympathy. Even the more horrific characters in The Known World are shown being human. Most characters are somewhere in the middle, neither good nor bad, but people attempting to do good but doing bad instead, because that's the sort of world this is. The writing is beautiful and the amount of detail of these character's lives is dizzying. There are so many moments which would have formed the entire center of other novels, but in fact Jones is just mentioning an incident in passing of a minor character. Don't expect a page turner -- there's no single plot pulling you through, and the huge number of people populating this novel makes for a slow and challenging read. If you're tackling this book, make it easy on yourself and draw a chart of who everyone is before you get too far lost.

The Keep, by Jennifer Egan
This is one of the best novels I've read in a long time. It's expertly written; it's a page turner; it's both compassionate and playful; it has an thought-provoking, hopeful, beautiful ending. It's fairly short (about 240 pages), which is as long as it needs to be. The Keep begins with an atmospheric story about a castle in Eastern Europe that two cousins, who share a disturbing childhood incident, are trying to restore. The novel shifts to a prison creative writing class, where you find out a prisoner named Ray is actually writing the story about the two cousins. And in the end, there's the story about the prison creative writing teacher, looking to transform her life. Each of these three stories is incredibly more complex and rich and full-bodied than I'm making it out to be here in summary. Something about this novel reminds me of poetry -- telling a story for a reason other than the story, I suppose, which is what Ray, the prisoner, is doing when he tells the story of the Keep. In the end, like poetry, the story about the cousins and the castle is told to get at some deeper unforced truth. It's the kind of novel that makes me want to take a break from reading novels, so I can enjoy the rippling out that this story makes. I'm recommending this book to all my friends and you should read it too.

Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
Hmmmm, this book was a tough one for me to read. In reviews -- including one great one by Margaret Atwood -- people compared it to Robert Lewis Stevenson or other great ocean adventures. It's a tale within a tale, and the beginning opens playfully and thoughtfully enough, with the novel's author, in search of his next book, going to India to meet a man who knew a man named Pi who had lived an incredible story. The author hunts down Pi and then has Pi tell the story in his own words. I expected a page-turner, a mythic tall-tale. Instead, the majority of the book deals, in very precise repetitive details, how one survives in the middle of an ocean, on a life boat, with a tiger. There are lots of graphic passages difficult for this particular vegetarian to read (like how to kill a turtle with your hands and it eat -- it's a pretty bloody affair. Or how to kill a shark and eat it. Or how to kill a lot of other sea life and then eat it). The repetitiveness and hopeless and despair of being stranded on the ocean were all well captured; however, the book became, for me, a chore to read (it's hard to want to read about repetitiveness and despair). The thoughtful passages on religion and the flashbacks of the first section disappear in the middle stranded-in-the-ocean section -- the book becomes the ocean, a boy, a boat, and survival, and page after page of it. All this said, the last section, part three, in a mere 30 or 40 pages, redeemed the novel for me. In this last section, you're giving the option of another story concerning the shipwreck, which Pi tells to investigators looking into the shipwreck. This version, told in brief, is more violent, tragic, and heartbreaking, and the reader is asked not only to determine which is the truth, but also which makes the better story. For me, the better story is the version that contains both stories -- both the tiger and the heartbreak.

White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
I've been meaning to read this book ever since it came out in the year 2000. It starts with a smash opening, one of the best openings I've read in awhile, an opening that promises entertainment, enlightenment, humor, compassion, and an attractive messiness. It'd be hard to sustain that sort of energy through what begins to feel like a very long novel (450 pages), especially since Smith was in her early twenties when she wrote this book. The plot slowly loses momentum as the book nears it end, becoming more surreal, unbelievable, and unnecessary in some ways. I was also surprised, but perhaps not justified, in noting how male of a book this is -- the female characters tend to be supporting characters, wives, in the background (the young woman Irie being the exception). But still, what a ambitious novel! People have compared it to Dickens, though it didn't feel Dickens to me, maybe because the plot was so loose, and Dickens--in addition to filling his books with a lot of characters--seems a master at the cliffhangers and intricate plot twists (Smith tries this at the end, but it doesn't really ring true). Instead, White Teeth is an incredible energized meditation on exile, immigration, war, male friendship, generational difficulties, and marriage (no divorce here! Just good-natured unhappiness and stubbornness, which is refreshing in a way). For all my quibbles, White Teeth was a pretty incredible read, brilliant at times, and laugh-out-loud funny in a nice compassionate we're-all-in-this-together sort of way, a welcome change from the ironic stance a lot of young authors seem to take, where you're laughing at the characters, not with them.

The Hamilton Case, by Michelle de Kretser
I took this book on vacation, expecting an enjoyable plot-drive literary read like When We Were Orphans or Motherless Brooklyn (because the main character of The Hamilton Case likes old detective stores, because the book is named after a sensational murder case, because of a review I read which overstated the mystery plot). Instead, I found myself on vacation in the wilderness of British Columbia with a slightly disturbing book, a book with a loose plot and lots of beautiful thought-provoking passages ("The familiar, arrogant tilt of her head was merely ludicrous now, a shred of defiant scarlet still clinging to the flagpole while crowds strip the carcases below). There is a kind of wonderful poetic wastefulness in having, at the periphery of a book, a murder mystery that touches the plot but isn't the center of the novel; a mystery that seems solved--though solving it destroyed the main character's life in some ways--until the final wonderful section, where a minor character enters and explains you can't really be sure who murdered Hamilton. "History, like any other verdict, is not a matter of fact but a point of view," the character writes. How true! The whole novel becomes more than worthwhile because of this last section, a mere 22 pages or so, a thoughtful essential meditation on colonialism, writing the exotic, on history and mystery, with such a small ending that veers the novel into a completely new opening of an ending.

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
A nearly perfect book that everyone must read now. It's stunning, a page turner, and heartbreaking all at the same time. The only wrong turn that Ishiguro makes is the ending, where everything is explained in Nancy Drew fashion. A little mystery would have been just fine. But that's a small complaint -- there’s so many small and large scenes that are devastating, but most of all, the sadness of this novel comes from Kathy’s practical voice, as she details her childhood and young adulthood. Though it becomes obvious to the reader at the injustice of her life, Kathy never thinks of it in those terms. There's no bitterness, no pitying. At first I thought it odd why Kathy didn’t try to run away or break free from their fate. But eventually, I came to realize that’s only one part of the heartbreak: for Kathy and friends, it’s inconceivable to imagine a world where they have another role. I had an interesting discussion with a friend, who was both very moved and depressed after reading Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake recently. Though I found Oryx and Crake haunting, it’s hard for me to be moved by end of the world scenarios, which seem to be one more interesting plot device for sci-fi writers. I would argue that, in the end, Oryx and Crake was a hopeful book, where yes, humankind screwed up, but they’re trying to start over and do it right this time. Never Let Me Go seemed a million times more the tragedy– not about the end of the world, but about the end of humanity. Read it now!

Golden Days, Carolyn See
A fascinating book--in part because you know, from reading the inside book jacket synopsis and the hints in the narrative, that this will be a book about nuclear war. But the war doesn’t happen until 5/6 of the way in…and up until that point, it’s a book about a lot of things: female friendship, love, hope, fear, California. In our current time of irony and sarcasm, it was both refreshing, and a little difficult at first, to completely stay with the narrator as she begins to believe a self-help guru’s spiel about light, positive energy, and how what you believe will come true. In the final portion of the book though, which describes what happened after the nuclear war – all the self help speak becomes incredibly moving, and the novel really deepened for me. The book relies a lot on voice, and sometimes I wished there could be more fully developed scenes, but there’s enough specific imagery and beautiful details here and there to keep you grounded. The beginning and middle can be slow-going at times, but beneath the slowness is this incredible build-up of tension as the war nears. Written in 1986, some of the personal anger towards men seems old-fashioned in some regards–-but seen in the context of an approaching nuclear war, which the narrator believes (probably true) will be caused by men, her anger becomes more convincing.

Runaway: Alice Munro
This book contains the saddest story I have ever read ("Silence,") and it also convinced me of the power of one-word titles ("Chance," "Soon," "Passion," etc.). While I didn't love all of the stories, I loved many of them (the ending of "Runaway" is spectacularly haunting, and the trilogy of short stories that includes "Silence" is both gripping, brilliant, and so sad). I especially loved the confusion and disorientation you experience as a reader at the start of each story -- you have no idea who the people are, where you are, why people are doing what they're doing for the first several pages. And it's awe-inspiring on how Munro pushes the plot of her short stories -- a woman meets a man on a train, doesn't want to talk to him, is rather rude, and then the man jumps off the train and kills himself. That would be enough for a story, wouldn't it? But it's only the set-up in "Chance" for what happens next.

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
I had read a lot of Ray Bradbury many many years ago, but his stories really dug deep in my mind, and I remember haunting details of so many of them still. After spending several months of reading short stories (Alice Munro, sci-fi anthologies), it was wonderful to read a book organized like this: short stories, connected by prose-poem like lyrical pieces, and all of it telling a single story about humans populating, ruining, and then losing Mars. It couldn’t be a more bleak or depressing view of humanity – I don’t think humans, or really Martians, do any good in any of the stories. Much of the work is written immediately after WW-II, in the time of nuclear war scare, so I suppose Bradbury’s outlook that humans are inherently awful is justified. Bradbury’s characters never really come alive as individuals – that’s not his strength. Rather, he is able to conjure up a landscape, and a collective personality of despair, and sharply described feelings of loneliness and isolation. The shorter connecting pieces are often beautifully written—and how often does one find lyrical beautiful descriptions that go on for paragraphs in science fiction? My favorite stories: the stories of the first, second and third expedition to Mars, and how the Martians treat the humans, horrific and haunting without descending into horror (like Bradbury sometimes does, in the unbearable “Usher II” story); and “The Martian”, about an old couple who have lost their child and come to Mars to forget, but find, then lose, a Martian who can look like their child. (4/05)

Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century
Edited by Orson Scott Card
Having read mainly science fiction novels, and not short stories, I thought this book would be a good place to start, since I’ve loved other work by Orson Scott Card that I read. It’s a very diverse grouping of stories, which is admirable, and which also meant I hated some of the stories, and loved others. After reading “Sandkings” by George R.R. Martin, which won a lot of awards, but is so inherently cruel (while being ridiculous and violent in its treatment of women), I wondered why in the world am I trying to write science fiction. Even William Gibson, who I loved in my high school days, seemed so overly tech and callous in his story here, “Dogfight.” But after reading stories like “One” (by George Alex Effinger), “Snow” (by John Crowley), “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, by Ursula K. Le Guin, or “Bears Discover Fire,” by Terry Bisson, I thought ah, this is why I’m trying to write science fiction – to move people and make them think at the same time. Card’s introduction to the stories and authors was rather mind-numbing, reading as a bibliography list of published works, rather than really delving into what distinguishes author from author. And I was disappointed by the lack of women writers – three women writers total, and two of them (Lisa Goldstein’s “Tourists” and Karen Joy Fowler’s “Face Value”) seem more like re-runs of the Twilight Zone. (4/05)

The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
I’m told this is the book that started the alternative history genre. I tried to like it, but I just don’t think I’m Dick’s #1 fan. Though his ideas can be brilliant, his writing never seems to be, and he doesn’t seem to have a sense for plotting – for instance, towards the end of the novel, the book gets bogged down in pages and pages of a character’s internal philosophical struggle as he meditates on a piece of jewelry– I didn’t care about that! And I’m not sure it was the best move to fragment the narration between a handful of people living in this post world-war novel, that asks the question what if the allies lost the war, and Japan and Germany won? Not caring enough about the characters, and having the story split in so many directions, there wasn’t much pulling me through this book.

The Handyman, Carolyn See
Trying to stay on my sci-fi kick, I thought since See had written Golden Days (see above), and this novel begins with a Guggeinheim grant application from 2027, well, it must be science-fiction. It really isn’t, but it’s still an enjoyable, though sometimes troubling, read. The narrator, the world’s famous painter in his pre-fame what-I-am youth, is utterly likeable. That said, he also proceeds to sleep with a whole bunch of lonely women. I’ll admit, if this wasn’t written by a woman, I would have found it more disturbing (a revelation which is slightly troubling in itself). Written by See, the premise is just rather irritating. However, the woman and the narrator are so cheerful, and seem to be enjoying themselves. And I liked the observation that the narrator, who tries to be a handyman for a summer, voices – that he’s visiting lonely married women, and doing the work that someone else (the husband) should be doing. However, why couldn’t the women fix things themselves?

The Wizard of Oz: L. Frank Baum
I read this book many, many years ago, and then saw the movie a billion times, and was pleasantly and wonderfully surprised to pick the book up again and find it charming, funny (who thinks of the Wizard of Oz as being humorous?), sweet, with beautiful illustrations. It’s nice to revel in the forgotten details: that Dorothy wore silver shoes, that it wasn’t Glinda who met her when her house fell in Oz but the witch of the North, who was very old and had bells on her hat. That Dorothy must travel through the Dainty China Country and the Country of the Quadlings to get home. At first I didn’t want to read the illustrated version, thinking the illustrations would take away from the text, but no! The version I read, illustrated by Michael Hague, had breathtaking pictures.

Mr. Norell and Jonathan Strange, by Susanna Clarke
While this wasn’t a bad book by any means, it was a big weighty heavy disappointment-–in no small part because my expectations were high, and I've been on the wait-list at the library to get this book for 2 months. it's been billed as “the Harry Potter for adults,” and also got some great reviews and was shortlisted for some big awards in Britain. It didn't help that last year I had read Bleak House by Charles Dickens and absolutely loved that book, was awestruck by it—and Mr. Norell and Clarke seem a pale shadow of Dickens (though Clarke tries her darndest to write in a Dickens imitation style). I almost put down the book several times in the first several hundred pages because the plotting wasn't right, it plodded, nothing was pulling me along in the novel. There were some redeeming qualities to this book: it did make me laugh out loud sometimes. Out of many strings of plots, one plot in particular (a fairy who kidnaps other people’s wives) was pretty spectacular, and Clarke does write wickedly detailed and fascinating footnotes which are short stories in themselves sometimes. But there was only one moment in the hundreds of pages where I was emotionally moved--after the Battle of Waterloo where Clarke puts down her authorial voice and just lets the characters be. I read books in part to be emotionally moved, and I needed more of that to make this book worth while. The main characters bordered on being distant shells of men, in part because the authorial voice is so overbearing, casting a constant irony to everything. Dickens was brilliant in Bleak House to have his ironic social commentary sections balanced by the sincerity of Esther’s narration. Mr. Norell needs some kind of sincerity and heart to it. Its ending didn’t bring much closure, and seemed a little odd, a minor disappointment, kind of like the book, I suppose. (1/05)

Ender’s Game: Orson Scott Card
This was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in some time. A book that kept me up at night because I needed to keep reading: what greater pleasure is there in the world? It has incredible pacing, a wonderfully sympathetic lead character (the child Andrew “Ender” Wiggin), a mystery (what is happening!?!??!!) that gradually unfolds, and one of the most beautiful understated open-ended last line endings that I’ve ever read. The only fault I found with this book is a side storyline concerning Ender’s brother and sister and their plan to rule the world through postings on chat groups – it wasn’t fascinating, and didn’t seem to naturally integrate with the story. But that was minor. Like in the best science fiction, there is also a political commentary here – about what happens to children in a war-based society. It seems especially timely now, when we’re in this perpetual state of war. (12/04)

A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore, by Ursula Le Guin
Margaret Atwood visited Syracuse University to do an incredible series of lectures last year, and somewhere along the way I got the chance to ask what science fiction/fantasy books she would recommend reading. She said Riddley Walker (by Russell Hoban, one of the most haunting books I’ve ever read) , The Left Hand of Darkness (by Ursula Le Guin), and the Earthsea trilogy (the above three books), which often are located in the young adult section of public libraries. The jacket flaps and book reviews compare these books to the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, (or perhaps, I thought, Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and even the Harry Potter books). But I found these books had more of a fairy tale quality, perhaps because the characters never seemed so 3-dimensional flesh-like but rather more like characters you meet in a fairy-tale, who you never really know inside and out. I don’t mean this as a fault—it simply makes these incredible three books more myth-like. The first book (A Wizard of Earthsea), was the quietest, and simplest, and I feel like you can sense Le Guin’s writing prowess and ability to create a suspenseful narrative growing with each book. My favorite was the second, Tombs of Atuan, which had a beautiful metaphoric quality to it – where a young woman is called The Eaten One, everything is taken from her, and she’s forced to rule this underworld catacomb, a maze where light can’t shine. The scenes of her trying to find her way in the darkness are beautiful and moving, and not to get too Freudian, but it seems this book spoke in an understated way to the awakening of a young girl’s sexuality. Perhaps Ged, who we follow throughout the three books, is a little too perfect in The Farthest Shore. But Le Guin wisely chose to tell the story in the Farthest Shore through the eyes of a younger man, Ged’s partner in a long journey. And maybe it’s not the worst thing to witness a character who is completely noble and good (and a little tired too). After finishing the last book, I was devastated, and couldn’t read anything for many days, because I so missed the company of the companions introduced in this book, and truth be told, I did miss the noble presence of Ged. As in the best fantasy stories, there’s always a sadness that occurs when, after closing the book, you look up and are startled to realize you’re not in such a magical place anymore. These are all books I plan to read again. (10/04-12/04)

Tehanu: Ursula K. LeGuin
I struggled a little with this book – it didn’t have quite the same mythic quality as the earlier Earthsea books, and I felt that Tenar (who reappears from the Tombs of Atuan, a book I loved) is exaggeratedly female here. I find this sometimes with Margaret Atwood books too, which seem feminist but at the same time not the women are predictably female. Tenar is a somewhat strong character, but she also has these predictable emotional outbursts that seem more how women are portrayed in sitcoms. This idea that all men and all women are so inherently different and separate seems a little outdated to me. That said, it is a pretty darn fascinating idea, to have a woman (Tenar) who could have been a great wizard or wizardress, but who decides to be a wife instead, and have children, and live that sort of life. The last section of this book seems rushed and also seems needlessly disturbing and cruel. (12/04)

Tales of Earthsea - Ursula K. LeGuin
Book 5 of the Earthsea series – for some reason, I had this book out for weeks from the library before actually opening. Maybe my hesitation was because this was a book of short stories. Maybe it was because I had enjoyed my stay at Earthsea with the first four novels of the series, and didn’t want to be disappointed. Maybe it was the shiny metallic dust jacket that put me off. Finally, one morning, I told myself just read a couple pages of the first story, and then I found I couldn’t put it down. This happened with every single short story in the book – they’re gripping reading, and even for a novel-lover such as myself. I think part of LeGuin’s secret is creating heart-felt sincere characters that you care about by the second page. And creating a very real human drama in an extraordinary unfamiliar world (such subjects as teenage rebellion, a woman not knowing her place in the world). Oddly enough, these short stories actually felt more alive and more vividly realized than the sixth novel in this series, The Other Wind. Round, full, satisfying, complete short stories that were a pleasure to read.

The Other Wind, Ursula LeGuin
Well, I finally read all the books in LeGuin’s Earthsea series – and, though I cried at the end of this book, as I often do at the end of her novels for some reason, this one wasn’t completely satisfying. The story is a little sparse, the dialogue seemed less convincing than in previous novels, and the world didn’t seem as rich. There is a lot of waiting around for something to happen, and Tenar seems a little too all-knowing to me, while the king Lebanon is acting more childish than he had in the past few books. And okay, why does Ged continue to insist on not seeing the king? I guess there aren’t many surprises in this novel – it seems like the storyline is similar to the third book, where lines are being blurred between the living and the dead. That said, there is a touching bit of love between Adler and his dead wife, and the novel does get off to a great start. I wish the story line would have stayed with Adler, and not strayed to the king, Tenar, and Tehanu.