This is one of those situations where a book that sounds great on paper turns out to have, in fact, nothing going for it except its synopsis. A (female) private investigator is charged with tracking down the missing teenage granddaughter of a client, and in order to do so, enlists the help of a terrifying piece of (female) debt collection muscle known as The Hyena. Continue reading Apocalypse Baby
Look, I’ve tried to like PD James. I’ve tried really hard. I’ve read at least four or five of her other books, including a range of older and more recent, Adam Dalgliesh and Cordelia whatshername. And I just don’t get it. As detective stories I find the solutions arbitrary; as novels, I find them boring and badly-developed. BUT. I recently watched the BBC miniseries adaptation of this book, and really liked it, and since the first episode aired the day after the author died, I thought it was only respectful to give her one last chance.
This book report will contain spoilers, because I’m pissed off and I don’t really care if I ruin this book for anyone. It’s going on my Do Not Read list, which I just created for the purpose of saying that.
After all the Serious Literature I’ve been reading lately, I thought I’d reward my brain with some literary fast food in the form of a classic spy thriller. I should have been more careful what I wished for. The gentility of the main characters combined with the looseness of the structure somehow makes the suspension of disbelief utterly unattainable; I don’t think it’s any more preposterous than most spy novels, but evidently it’s easier to believe in a highly trained killing machine with amnesia being hunted by various hostile governments than to believe that a person wanted by the police traipsing through the Scottish moors could encounter quite as many benevolent strangers as populate this book. Continue reading The 39 Steps
In the second of two American shortlisters for this year’s Booker Prize, Paul O’Rourke is a dentist, atheist, and Red Sox fan. His atheism is, however, constantly overpowered by his desire to belong to some kind of community, and he habitually dates women from large religious families (WHICH religion doesn’t particularly matter) into which he attempts to insert himself. Then, one day, a patient drops hints about a displaced race of people from Biblical times, the Ulm (Ulms? Ulmites? I don’t quite know). Shortly thereafter, someone begins impersonating Paul in various online locations, posting streams of jargon and obscure ancient texts about the Ulm…ians.
I rarely read short stories, because I usually find (unless they’re linked together somehow, by more than just a theme) that it’s a lot harder to sink my teeth into them; however well-expressed, the ideas in them just can’t be developed to the same extent as novels. (There are exceptions, and my taste runs South American; Borges and Cortazar in particular.)
In a plot that strains the limits of credulity, an elderly failed composer takes up DNA splicing as a super-fun hobby and ends up wanted by federal authorities on charges of bioterrorism, following a most unlikely incident involving his dog. Credulity snaps altogether when, after the feds first pay him a visit, he then goes online to research biological warfare techniques, just out of interest. Despite having a daughter who works in data mining and has taught him to speak basic internet paranoia.
In theory: cultures clash in the Moroccan Sahara when an Englishman runs over and kills a young Berber man. In practice, it seems like the author spent 90% of his time sketching out the plot, then filled in the gaps with words chosen by letting a dictionary fall open and pointing with his eyes closed. It’s a charity to suggest that this novel contains anything as sophisticated as “characters”: the people in it don’t seem to act in accordance with any internal values, but just react to the plot in whatever way is most convenient to the author at that particular time, while having thoughts that are some combination of xenophobic, homophobic, or sexist. Also, I’m pretty sure I had an audible eye-roll on the train during its one sex scene. Quite a relief to have the whole thing over with.
Additionally? The author tried to tell me that ichthyosaurs lived during the Devonian period (relevant because the dead man was a fossil-seller). NOT EVEN THE RIGHT ERA. Don’t skimp on the paleo research with this audience, mofo.
It seems like wartime England is the current It-theme for new releases. (Possibly, I only think this because I’ve read a couple of others recently.) So I guess if you’re going there, you need a hook. Here, a young English girl comes to be trapped in a house with a German soldier in a mysteriously deserted Suffolk village. From an intriguing premise, it sadly wanders through unobtrusive prose to some predictable conclusions, without taking advantage of the few surprises it manages to inject along the way. More entertaining than doing nothing at all, but not worth it if better options are available.