Recital

Our first house concert was not elegant chamber music, but rock/blues/jazz offered by...me. Twenty-two good sports came to hear forty-five minutes of my compositions performed on piano and electronic keyboard. I was quite nervous, so I cannot say that I had fun playing the music from memory. But, hearing people's reactions was indeed fun. No one had any idea what to expect, especially those who had heard Debbie's concerts. The pieces had diverse moods and a wide range of sounds from the keyboard, and I think this is what most people reacted to. For example, the recital began with a slow, dark jazz piano piece that evoked its title, Film Noir. This was followed by a few short vignettes that showed off the keyboard's sound banks. Then, rocking electric guitar, jazzy electronic harpsichord, blues piano, and what one guest described as "science fiction music"! I've taken a break from the keyboards and performance anxiety since then and have been painting. 

J.M. Ledgard's Submergence

I finished my 2013 reading with a strong novel, J.M. Ledgard's Submergence. It is a tightly told double-helix of a British intelligence officer in east Africa and a biomathemetician who works on ultra-deep sea research. They meet on a brief vacation & fall in love, an emotion which is unusual for both of them. James More is then kidnapped in Somalia by Jihadists and begins a long period of brutal captivity. Danielle Flinders prepares for and begins a dive in a submersible to the abyssal deep of the Greenland Sea. They have both been loners in their worlds of espionage and advanced mathematics. In their journeys in the story they are both quite alone again. This gives Ledgard a platform for their reflections on many global issues, from Jihad to long-term ecological concerns. Ledgard has been a foreign correspondent for The Economist in Africa since 1995. 

This is definately not a spy novel.  There is very little time spent describing More's life in intelligence before the kidnapping. His treatment during the rest of the book is not remotely martini-glamorous. Ledgard's insights into the men and boys who are fighting the Jihad are subtly made, when he could have been heavy handed, a nice touch. His observations and speculations about the nearly-alien life forms in the deepest seas are thought provoking. Submergence is a short ride that will stay with you for some time to come.

David Gilbert: & Sons

David Gilbert's second novel, & Sons, is a gift to readers of novels: good story, insights and characters, all painted with great writing and a deft touch. This novel is chock full of wonderful one-liners that display playful word-smithing while bringing meaning to the passage. Gilbert keeps the gloves off and the prose is never over-written. & Sons is the story of two families, fathers & sons, husbands & wives, friends, love & meanness, and...writing. The aging A.N. Dyer is a hugely successful novelist, and a not very good father or friend. His lifelong friend, Charles Topping, loved him, and was dominated & hurt by Dyer. Their children are more or less dysfunctional or bruised, each in their own way. They are lovingly and honestly drawn by Gilbert in all of their frailties & faults. Some of these characters are more aware of their own brutality, others blind to it, and some of their love and need. It is not a coming-of-age novel, thankfully, and has none of Jonathan Franzen's sophomoric vignettes of childhood & parents, thankfully again. Each year I read many novels, snooze through too many and am captured by a very few. In 2013 there were two highlights: The Dinner by Herman Koch,  a very dark and very human story, and & Sons, a very human and unblinking story of fathers, sons & friends.

The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion

Most of the books I have read this year did not involve a lot of chuckles, for example Herman Koch's The Dinner, reviewed in July. However, The Rosie Project brought many smiles. It is the story of Don Tilman, a geneticist working at an Australian University, a man who has never been on a second date. He has less-than-zero social skills and possibly has Asberger's. This conceit could have easily become ridiculous or annoying, but former IT consultant Graeme Simsion handles it with such empathy that it works well...in fact, the reader quickly becomes quite fond of Don. Also, we realize that in many ways all men are like Don, and this is perhaps part of the book's appeal. Don applies his scientific skills to his entire life, including finding a wife. He develops a long questionnaire to eliminate bad matches, The Wife Project. He soon begins to help one of his very unlikely matches find her biological father. Their time together is often hilarious, as are Don's run-ins with the university dean. Rosie is a short, fast read, which might remind you of many people you know!

Take Shelter & Michael Shannon

I watched Take Shelter for the second time and was impressed again by the work of two young artists: actor Michael Shannon and director Jeff Nichols. Shannon here brings to mind a young Robert DeNiro, only with a slight Kentucky manner instead of New York. His acting is understated and at the same time very intense. In Take Shelter he plays a blue collar family man who begins to have terrifying visions that he believes warn him of a natural catastrophe. The hook is that his mother was institutionalized at a similar age with schizophrenia, and he wonders if he is on the same road. He keeps these troubles a secret from his wife & friends, which provides a platform for the power of his acting. I recently was impressed by him in The Iceman, a very dark and convincing portrayal of family man who is a contract killer. 

Take Shelter was Jeff Nichols' second feature film, and is very accomplished for such a young director. His pacing of Shannon's descent into madness or premonition was done with a deft touch. He did not allow the brief & vivid visions to distract from the very human story. The final scene of the film has an elegance that is quite memorable.

Deboarh Levy's Swimming Home

Deborah Levy's Swimming Home is a tale of obsession, poetry, long-in-the-tooth love, & families, with just a dash of creepiness that sneaks up on you. Levy's quietly lyrical, dispassionate prose neatly captures all of the foibles of her very human characters. JRH, a highly regarded British poet, vacations with his family near Nice, along with two friends. An unexpected visitor is invited by his wife to stay in a spare room. His often absent war reporter spouse might have an ulterior motive here. The young woman is a would-be poet and completely unstable. It appears that her arrival is not an accident. I'm not sure about the ending, although it allows the understated prose to slowly build toward a climax. However, the postscript, in the voice of his daughter a decade later, is wonderful.

Fuminori Nakamura's The Thief

Fuminori Nakamura has a new book out, which inspired me to read his first novel translated into English, The Thief. This is the story of a Tokyo pickpocket, told in nihilistic-zen-noir. Nakamura captures perfectly the psyche of the pickpocket and his felt sensations as he steals. In Camus style, he falls into the web of a criminal boss who enjoys randomly manipulating the lives of others. I will likely read his new novel, Evil and the Mask, which was released in the US in July. Nakamura was born in 1977 and his first novel, The Gun, won the Shinco Newcomer's Award in 2002. The Thief was awarded the Oe Kenzaburo Prize in 2009.