The Red Car - Marcy Dermansky

The prose in The Red Car zooms across the pages, not in a hurry, but careening, almost out of control. Marcy Dermansky's novel is a sort of coming-of-age tale, which I normally avoid like election year politics. But, the reader quickly gains affection for our hero, Leah, as she pings through life. The cadence of Dermansky's prose feels like Vendela Vida's first novel, which I enjoyed. But, this writing is much more free and with a good natured sense of humor. Written in the first person, the story unfolds with a lot of internal monologue. Yes, this can be an annoying affectation, but in this case works very well...We like her. Leah is living in Queens with her husband that she met in grad school, finishing her first novel on her laptop. The marriage might be a green card event. Her boss Judy, from years ago in San Francisco, dies suddenly. Leah had loved her, a confident, brash, mother figure for her, a big support system, wise-eyed, worldly. Leah makes quick plans to go to the funeral, and her husband chokes her as they argue about this...she probably needs to make some changes. Judy left her the red car she died in, a car that Leah always hated. At a mechanic's shop in San Fran, she finds her old journal under the front passenger seat with a letter from her boss taped inside, a suicide note and advice from beyond. Follow the clues, Judy tells her regarding life. And she does. She drives to a speaking engagement of an old boyfriend who is an internet success, with another college friend. By the way, the book opens with quite a scene with him at college, sorry, no spoiler. She stays at an inn that her mother had loved and edits her novel. The clerk at the inn, a beautiful young Japanese girl, a writing student, steals the red car. Leah goes back east for the bat mitzvah of Judy's niece, as requested in the letter, without going home. There are many other characters and twists along the way. Ping ping ping. Amidst this crazy journey, which is fun for the reader, Leah gains insight into herself and the confidence to follow the clues. As the book closed, I wished her well.

Thomas Murphy by Roger Rosenblatt

Roger Rosenblatt is a distinguished essayist, play-write and novelist. I had never read his work until his most recent novel: Thomas Murphy. It is a delightful book filled with insights about poetry, family, aging, and dementia. Yes, it does sometimes border on being a too-sweet dessert, but Rosenblatt always brings it back to earth. The novel is told in the voice of Thomas Murphy, an aging Irish poet who lives in New York, a widower with a loving daughter and grandson. His daughter is pushing him for tests by a neurologist for his memory problems. Murphy's dealings with the doctor, and everyone else, are priceless...and funny.

I know, it sounds like a candidate for another feel-good movie, but it's worth looking beyond the icing. Murphy's tongue in cheek monologues are free from chronology and also free from distinguishing fact from fiction, which can make them wonderful. The reader becomes accustomed to Murphy's stories woven into "the story", and one quickly doesn't care whether it is history or story or both, because it's great story-telling. His observations about life, art, love, loss, are all worth reading and considering.

OK, truth be told, I read this book when I hit a big speed-bump in my life, bang! Despite Murphy's trials, this book was a real pick-me-up, so sue me. I can imagine and hear Thomas saying, "And what could be wrong with that?"

The Last Word, by Hanif Kureishi

I'm always a sucker for novels about writers and writing. Hanif Kureishi's The Last Word hits this target from a number of angles and poses interesting questions. It is also filled with delightfully developed characters who are all colorful, without becoming caricatures. This gives the book a rich balance of pathos and humor.

A hungry and ambitious young writer, Harry Johnson, is given a commission to write a biography of a towering literary figure, Mamoon Azam. His publisher hopes to revitalize Azam's book sales & reputation. The writer has been a life-long hero to Harry. Of course, Harry opens Pandora's box when he begins his research while living at Mamoon's estate, which creates conflicts for him. Exploitative and thoughtless relationships with women and sexual hijinx are revealed from Azam's first wife's journals and an ex-lover's scathing interviews. Mamoon's deliberately incendiary commentary on all aspects of art and life are already well known, having cost him his academic career. As always, the ambition of the young can be counted on to outweigh admiration.

Mamoon's second wife, Liana, a fiery Italian, would like this biography to polish her husband's career, not paint a picture of a selfish, debauched artist. Harry's character explores the contradictions and conflicts of a biographer, in this case, leavened with his own powerful ambition. Liana quickly recognizes that the biographer has his own agenda of using this book to vault his own career, while she would like it to vault Mamoon's artistic reputation. Meanwhile, Mamoon is distant, insulting, and dismissive of Harry, and will barely grant him a conversation. Their brief, oblique discussions of writing and the artistic process, which Harry must tease out of Mamoon, lay out nuggets about art and life from Kureishi. 

To get this biography written, Harry embarks on a complex dance with all of them. On second thought, one of them might be a caricature: the hard drinking publisher, who pushes Harry & bait-&-switches him. The psychology of these, and other characters, is carefully developed by Kureishi, which gives blood to the heady ideas the book explores. A maid in the household, who has a complex history with Mamoon centered on reading, and a complex relationship with Harry, is a rewarding one. 

In an age of 240 character social media, Kureishi has important things to say about the art of writing. However, the author never takes the topic too seriously, and the novel can be quite funny at times. Highly recommend.

I'm going to borrow a phrase from my previous posting: "I don't read a lot of", in this case, thrillers. If I could find more thrillers like Charlie Huston's Skinner, I would read a lot more of them. Huston is a successful writer of edgie mysteries. His most recent novel, Skinner, is a post-9/11 thriller based in the world of the international security industry. It is a compelling story filled with exceptionally well developed characters. The story and the characters are all believable, which adds to the hook. Huston builds a complex story of a credible threat and the response by a large security firm and three ex-employees. Yes, there are good guys who are not so good, lots of double crosses, mixed alliances and a possible loose nuke. Skinner is an infamous agent with a strange resume. He is assigned an "asset" to protect, Jae, a gifted data analyst and robotics expert who is a bit fried. She has been hired to investigate a cyber attack on the U.S. power grid, which leads her to another plot involving what might be a nuke. Or...she is led to the other plot, by another former colleague from the grave. It's quite a  ride.

I don't read a lot of speculative fiction, or should I say "Victorian, historic, speculative, fantasy, steampunk" fiction. But, I am glad I read Natasha Pulley's The Watchmaker on Filigree Street. It is nicely plotted and filled with well drawn characters who orbit a mysterious Japanese watchmaker, Mori, in London of 1884. Mori is clairvoyant and might or might not be manipulative, evil, or dangerous. The workings of his clairvoyance is cleverly developed by Pulley. It brings him under suspicion for bombings by Clan na gael, a radical Irish nationalist group,and ties him to Nathaniel, a young telegraph clerk in the British government. Nathaniel is required to spy on Mori, a difficult position given his growing feelings for the watchmaker. Nathaniel becomes involved with a young physics student who does not trust Mori. Complications ensue.  There are some broad brush analogies developed between Clan na gael and the ultra nationalists of late 19th century Japan. The fantastical mechanical creatures that Mori makes, give the story a dash of steampunk. It is all quite an enjoyable and well written mix. I was easily drawn in despite my misgivings about the genre. Watchmaker is Pulley's first novel, she a is writer to key an eye on.

Submission, Michel Houellebecq. What's the excitement?

Michel Houellebecq, France’s former enfant terrible, has written another good novel, Submission. However, it’s not the novel that critics blasted as Islamophobic. Clearly those people did not read the book. Perhaps a half dozen of the 246 pages in the novel even mention Islam. Based on the outraged blurbs, I was expecting some incendiary material, but it’s not there. I would instead blast the book for sometimes boring me witless with commentary on obscure French novelists! Of course, I am exaggerating. Houellebecq offers some profound insights on universal issues of our times, or perhaps of any time.

Most of the book is quite academic. The protagonist is a French literature prof whose specialty is a nineteenth century French novelist, J.K. Huysmans. Huysmans' work, life, and eventual conversion to Catholicism are discussed and pondered at great length. Have you read any Huysmans? Neither have I. Many pages of the book are devoted to descriptions of the mechanics of the French political parties and how they interact and create winners in elections by forming alliances. Most of this was lost on me and quite dull. The link between these two topics is the conceit of the novel. I don’t have to worry about spoilers, I’m sure everyone already knows the story. Through an unusual political alliance, a Muslim, a highly skilled politician, is elected President of France. This occurs close to the end of the novel. Now, let me share some of Houellebecq’s crazy descriptions of life in France under Sharia law...except that there aren’t any. There are a few pages in the last chapter that mention one Islamic practice that is common in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and much of Africa. Islamophobic? Hardly. He doesn’t even mention the pervasive human rights abuses that occur in those countries. The critics got us far off track from what he was writing about...

I soon began to appreciate the tapestry Houllebeq wove of Huysman’s conversion to Catholicism, the protagonist’s conversion to Islam on the last page of the book, and the real story of the novel: loneliness in middle-age, detachment, self-delusion, and disillusion. Key themes also are personal faith and a society living without faith.

Recent events in France were much more dramatic than these considerations. Recall that Houellebecq’s cartoon portrait was on the cover of Charlie Hebdo the day that jihadists massacred a dozen of his friends at the magazine. Michel now lives under police protection, although certainly it’s not needed for this novel. The French love to call Americans imperialists. However, it was France, with a population of 40 million at the time, that brutally subjugated 60 million people in colonies around the world. Many of  these countries gained their freedom through bloody civil wars, such as Algeria and Viet Nam, a.k.a French Indochina. So, there might be a perverse tie between this history and Houellebecq’s theme, although I’m not sure what he would think of my preceding observation. 

Submission is well worth reading, but not for all the inaccurate headlines. His previous novel, The Map and the Territory, has extraordinary writing about art, the gallery world, loneliness, and is not good, it's great. Comments on this novel are found in this blog.

Chance: A Novel - Kem Nunn

This year I read two recently published debut novels in a row by directors of writing programs at big name schools. Both had the same edgy writing-workshop structure: the entire novel was comprised of short paragraphs separated by four lines of space. Each paragraph was barely related to the next one in terms of chronology or subject. The book blurbs were glowing, something to the effect of, "A glimmering, unforgettable construction. Read this book now." In fact, they were completely forgettable, academic exercises that would have been more likely written in the late 1960s.

Today I finished the most recent novel by Kem Nunn, a writer I would guess these literati dismiss with a wave of the hand over a "craft cocktail" at a celebrity chef's restaurant. I was delighted to find a story, well developed characters, and OMG a plot. Chance: A Novel is a contemporary noir mystery that was a compelling read and very well written. This guy can really craft a sentence, which will probably not be recognized by the ivory tower because of his genre.

In this novel an expert witness physician becomes obsessed with a multi-personality client. She is being abused by her husband who is a dirty homicide detective. Along the way, Dr. Chance meets some wonderful, well-developed, believable characters. Carl is an elderly, elegant gay black man who deals in antiques, not always above board. He has a taste for young, violent, leather-boys. Nunn's portrait of Carl is very empathetic and touching, without being patronizing. Big D reconditions furniture for Carl. D is maybe ex-military, certainly well trained in martial arts, definitely huge, and probably mentally ill. He becomes a philosophical street adviser to Chance, and a big help as Doc tries to rescue the damsel in distress. There is some great word-smithing in this noir.