The Fugitives by Christopher Sorrentino

The Fugitives by Christopher Sorrentino is a sort-of mystery thriller that takes a literary deep dive into identity in today's world, as well as its dance with friendship & betrayal. Sorrentino treats these issues with a prose that is light and fun. Sandy Mulligan is a successful novelist with writer's block. He's a likeable bumbler who leaves his failing marriage & family, and heads for the hinterlands to recharge...and hopefully write. His publisher & editor are hounding him for some progress. He's not making much. 

Sandy becomes fascinated with John Salteau, a native Ojibway storyteller who performs at the local library. Sandy is intrigued with the freedom of John's art & process, a sharp contrast to his own stall. However, John does not look like an Ojibway or sound like one. A relentless reporter from Chicago, Kat Danhoff, takes an interest in John, but not as a story teller. She believes he might be a mob courier who fled the local Indian casino with a large pile of cash. She has several interviews with a sharply dressed "consultant" who has a vague assignment at the Ojibway casino. These exchanges are great cat & mouse exercises that thrust the issue of identity further under the lens of the book.

Needless to say, no one in the story is who he or she appears to be. Not quite...Sandy & Kat are exactly who they slowly reveal themselves to be: totally damaged human goods. A doomed affair shakily begins between them. The more we learn about Sandy, the less likeable he is. In fact, my only disapointment with the book, is that in the last few pages this picture becomes quite harsh. This is not surprising, but disheartening none the less. Forget that! The this book is a romp, a fun collision between satire and big existential issues.

So Much Blue by Percival Everett

So Much Blue by Percival Everett is a wonderful read: well written, empathetic characters, and deep insights. The prose moves from brainy to irreverent to humorous with ease. Everett has penned many books and in different genres. I have read that he might take a genre that he's never written & dive in, usually with success. In this case, I'm not sure what genre one would call Blue, but he's written with great humanity about family, friendship, art and secrets.

Blue is told in the self-deprecating first person voice of Kevin Pace, a 56 year old successful painter who seems mystified at his success. His self-absorption keeps him mystified about much of life, which he readily admits: his marriage, his relationship with teenage children, the art world. Kevin's candor about this gives the book much of its charm. Many passages about this are beautifully written. The one thing in his life that Kevin seems to have a solid footing with is his longtime friendship with Richard, that goes back to college days.

There are three story lines that are told in alternate chapters by Pace. Sometimes I'm not crazy about this structure, but in Everett's hands it works well. In each strand there is a secret that is slowly revealed. In the present, Kevin is struggling with his relationship with his wife, Linda, & two children. He is working on a huge painting in a separate locked studio that he will allow no one to see. This is not well received by Linda or Richard. They see it as Kevin's aloofness made tangible. Also, Kevin is asked to keep a secret that creates a very difficult situation for him. In his college years, he accompanies Richard on a search for his brother in El Salvador, as the country moved into civil war. This becomes quite dangerous & is evoked with the bumbling foolishness of youth. Kevin keeps a secret from this trip for over thirty years from Richard & Linda. The third strand is a bit less fulfilling. It is the story of a brief affair with a much younger watercolorist in Paris, Victoire. This is affair is a secret, but, secrets are also revealed for the first time, to Victoire. This seems believable because Kevin likely feels safe doing it there: they both know that the affair will end quickly & is so separate from their real lives. In the end, the three strands intertwine nicely, and secrets are revealed that might help Richard and Linda strengthen their relationship.

I'm a sucker for books about painters and novelists. Most of the time I am disappointed, but not in this case. Kevin's bemused attitude toward the frothy verbiage of gallerists critics, and towards his own success, is delightful. His reaction is basically: I'm just a painter, I put paint on a canvas.

If this novel were written by a lesser author, it might have been three times as long, and not a better book. In an age of unedited 500-700 page novels, I love it when a writer has the chops to tell a story cleanly, & get the message across elegantly, with no excess baggage. Everett has done this in Blue, & I highly recommend it.

2084: The End of the World by Boualem Sansal

This is the book that Michel Houellebecq should have written instead of Submission.That novel and the author were lambasted by reviewers and commentators for anti-Muslim content, but clearly these critics had not read the book. Submission was quite tame and barely mentioned Islam until the last 20 pages. The rest was a cure for insomnia about obscure French philosophers. Please see my blog post. I can't be too hard on Houellebecq, whom I respect greatly, please see my post on The Map & the Territory. His friend Stephane Charbonnier was murdered along with 11 others by radical Muslims at the office of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, on the day Submission was published. A caricature of Houellebecq was on the cover of the magazine.

2084, The End of the World was written by Algerian author, Boualem Sansal, at great risk to his life. He poses the story in a fictitious country, governed by a fictitious religion, after a fictitious global holy war and conflagration. The fiction approach reminded me of comments by Jackie St. Joan at a reading from her book, My Sisters Made of Light, which is about honor crimes in Pakistan, please see my post. She is a lawyer and former judge, with a focus on family violence. She did much research in Pakistan about honor crimes against women and was going to write a non-fiction account of this. She was advised to put the information in the form of a novel to protect the people she had interviewed. They told her that their lives would be at great risk if she wrote a documentary account. So, it seems that to keep his head attached to his shoulders, Sansal sensibly made his story completely fictitious. Reading between the lines, it could portray life in many countries today, including his home Algeria. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism after the assassination of President Mohamed Boudiaf lead Sansal to begin writing at the age of 50. 2084 won the Grand Prix of the French Academy in 2016. Sansal won the Prix du Roman Arabe in 2012. However, the prize was withdrawn because he spoke at the Jerusalem Writers Festival. He has won other literary prizes in France & Germany.

The story of 2084 occurs in Abistan, a country ruled by a religion based on the Gkabul, a holy book transmitted to Abi, the Messenger, by Yolah, the iron fisted God of this religion. The story follows the life of Ati, a poor soul buffeted by powerful & violent religious forces. He lives a simple life of poverty, keeping his head down, like most of the population. Individual thought, non-religious learning, free will and memory are forbidden. Time begins in 2084, the year the Gkabul was written, there is no history before that. Their lives are heavily leavened with fear of being tagged by neighbors or various moral authorities for transgressions against Abi and Yolah. This would take one quickly to a stoning in a stadium. Ati is unaware of most of the things we take for granted in life, from the concept of freedom to free will. The people are ignorant of any world beyond Abistan, and there might not be one.

The topic of 2084 is grim, but the prose is often light and satirical, sometimes comical. It was heroic for Sansal to write it, and it is well worth a read.

Days Without end by Sebastian Barry

This comment was tricky to write. Usually my book blogs come pouring out, since I only write about books that I enjoyed. I did enjoy Days Without End, but this is a complicated one for me. I bought this book because I think that Irish author Sebastian Barry is one of the finest living wordsmiths in the English language. Please see my post On Canaan's Side. But, I had two hesitations.

The book is written in "cowboy dialect", for lack of a better word. I have difficulty reading novels in any sort of dialect. Second, much of the book is set during the American-Indian Wars and the Civil War, and neither is my cuppa java. But, Barry did not disappoint. The dialect prose was often wonderful, without being over-written. I was struck that Barry's use of this language also gives the reader great insight into the mind of the mid-19th century immigrant, regarding nature, friendship, and the manner in which people related to one another. This aspect was often quite striking. The voice of the novel is in the first person of immigrant Thomas McNulty.

The novel opens as Thomas, a young, starving, illiterate Irish orphan, and a new friend, John Cole, find refuge in a minstrel show in a mining town. The hook is that Thomas is dressed as a girl, a theme that recurs throughout the book. Thomas and John Cole become lovers and life long friends. This is slowly revealed in the story, concealed there as they concealed it in their lives. Their time in the army, another way to avoid starving, occurs first in the far west. The military's treatment of native Americans is frankly described, without being gratuitously violent. This was a hard life, often cold, still hungry, and frequently not quite sure about what they were ordered to do.

The Civil War brings them back into the Army, and again, a brutal life. The plot loops back to their Indian days, in a terrible, but believable twist. The aftermath of this brings Thomas to an unfair judgement. The resolution of this incident left me with a deep exhale. Barry is not just a great wordsmith, he spins deeply human stories.

Michael Chabon's Moonglow

Somehow I missed Michael Chabon's dozen novels and Pulitzer Prize. I know now that this is my loss. His most recent novel, Moonglow, is a delight to read. It is a cross between a novel and "speculative" biography. It reads like great story telling. Theoretically, it is the life story of his normally taciturn grandfather told from his deathbed. Some is real, and much is undoubtedly from Chabon's fertile imagination. I don't care if this came from his grandfather, his uncle, or Chabon's own noggin. I read this as fiction and it's wonderful.

There are powerful hooks for readers of Chabon's age, or any age: from his grandfather's love of rocketry and the future of space travel, to the difficulties of loving complicated people. There are fun footnotes, and more information than I ever dreamed of about our nation's favorite rocket hero, Werner von Braun and his dirty Nazi secrets of the slave labor Mittelwerk V-2 factory. There is also an often humorous dose of well deserved existentialism after his grandfather's experiences in World War II. Do not fear, while WW II is an important back story, it is a small part of the book. The novel is really about passion, love, hidden truths and lies, selective revelation, and protecting love. This is all told with compassion and humor.

You don't need childhood memories of rockets and dreams of spaceflight to enjoy this book. It is great storytelling all on its own.

All the Dead Yale Men by Craig Nova

Craig Nova often writes about good, but flawed, people, who get in jams with very bad people. This happens through his protagonists' human frailties in situations the reader can imagine, but would rather not get stuck in. All the Dead Yale Men is vintage Nova. I sometimes squirmed in my seat in sympathy for Frank Mackinnnon, the all too human attorney at the center of the novel. The title is misleading, there's very little about Yale, and only two dead men, one from a heart attack. So, it's not a blue blood mystery. The novel is about people juggling parenthood, family conflict, & love. Parenthood is seen from Frank's dual vantage point as the son of a very flawed father, who we meet as an elderly, slippery former CIA agent, and as the parent of daughter Pia, who is coming of age & with rebellion in full bloom. In an effort to protect Pia from a manipulative street conman, Frank gets sideways with some small time Russian crooks, who are ready to blackmail him. This is not a good position for a Boston district attorney. Frank is a reader of Roman philosophers, and quotes from them are juxtaposed against the mess he has created with his more or less good intentions. The story unfolds in Franks voice, and in Nova's usual spare and eloquent prose.  He has written eleven other novels, and I've read and recommend most of them. This one is a good place to start.