Books I Read February 5th, 2020

I know it's been a while. You've been waiting, 'more patient than a Browns' fan.' But I got shit I got to do, boss. I write things and such. I talk to people. You know how it is. Maybe it's occurred to you I don't get paid none for these brief, semi-informed views on novels that came out a long time ago and no one else really wants to read. Still, as my brother texted me last night – 'quit tweeting about the homeless and do more book reviews.'

Ask, and ye shall receive. The following are the books I read since the turn to 2020.

The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald – An Englishman in Moscow during the waning days of the Romanov Dynasty is abandoned by his wife, contemplates the absurd improbability of the Russian character, human existence. I've come around on Fitzgerald, a subtle and funny writer, even if her neatly wrapped narratives can come off a little twee.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman – I liked the mean ones.

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala– An orphan is forced to become a child soldier by a sadistic, pedophiliac martinet. It's grim, it does what it sets out to do, I was never absolutely mind-blown by the depth of thought or the excellence of the prose. It's a heavy premise and I kinda thought that did a lot for it. Take that as you will.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky – A starving student pays for taking Nietzsche too literally. What can I say about this justifiable classic of world literature? You read Dostoevsky to watch mammoth expressions of contradictory sentiment clash across the page, and not for like, coherent plot mechanics. He's his own genre, unique even 200 years on, and it must have been absolutely staggering to read him back in the day. I'm kind of embarrassed it took me 35 years to get to this one, but if Raskolnikov taught me anything it's that confession is good for the soul.

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill – A collection of nightmarish short stories. I came in bluntly skeptical but there's some strong stuff here, Hill's got chops and generally does a good job of navigating between genre scares and broader literary concerns. I liked the one about the kid and the cardboard box fort, and the Cape, which is straight nasty.

The Gathering by Anne Enright – The expectedly unexpected death of her miscreant brother forces a woman to reflect upon the failings and tragedies of her large, Irish family. I've got nothing bad to say about it but it failed to stick around in my head to any degree.

Beasts by John Crowley – In a broken America, a leonine crossbreed becomes a symbol for humanity's redemption. At once a striking and original adventure story and a brilliant allegory for our increasing divorce from the natural world. Crowley is a master.

First Love and Other Shorts by Samul Beckett – Beckett's neurotic, miserable, possibly insane everyman considers his lost love and miserable childhood, plus a couple of wackily incoherent shorts that I likely lacked the literary understanding to appreciate. The eponymous story is excellent, however.

The Judges of the Secret Court by David Stacton – A fictionalized history of the events surrounding the death of Abraham Lincoln, with particular though not exclusive focus on the Booth clan. An engaging and evocative thriller about the roles we play, and our complicity in the show that unfolds around us. Very good.

By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar – (Full disclosure—every couple of years Lavie and I end up in the back of a bar saying mean things to one another, so I can't pretend to be entirely unbiased here) A re-telling of the Arthurian legend serves as Tidhar's opportunity to shove all his genre interests into one violent, funny, absurd epic, with Guinevere as a cold-blooded hitwoman and Lancelot a wuxia master. Tidhar remains an utterly original voice contemporary fiction, a pulp master striking out boldly in unexpected directions.

The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz by Russel Hoban – A middle-aged cartographer, disappointed with his life and family, flees his village for the city, pursued by his son and an invisible though not imaginary lion representing the vigorous potency of existence and its helplessness in the face of implacable death. I became convinced this month that Russel Hoban is one of the mpre original and underappreciated voices of 20th century literature, and this is exhibit A. Magical realism at its finest, strange and evocative and beautiful. A strange delight, worth savoring.

Lancelot by Walker Percy – A southern lawyer laments sexual modernity, the consequences of his wife's infidelity, while locked in an insane asylum. A funny, bleak, tortuously nasty insight into what would now be called toxic masculinity, peculiarly prescient given these incel heavy days. I really liked it, but its ugly.

Mr. Pye by Mervynn Peake – A would-be saint gets caught between heaven and hill, and the consequences of righteousness and sin, while trying to bring happiness to a small Channel island. It's weird, it's funny, it was nice to read something by Peake which didn't mostly involve descriptions of rumbling masonry.

Novelties and Souvenirs by John Crowley – A nearly universally excellent series of shorts by maybe (probably?) the best living fantasist. Excellent, well worth your time.

Pilgermann by Russel Hoban – A castrated Jew meets Jesus, joins the first crusade. A spiritual, one might even say mystical novel, about sin and God and meeting God and meeting characters from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. Didn't really do it for me but it certainly demonstrates the man's range.

Mr. Rinyo-Clacton's Offer by Russel Hoban – An infidelite (I made up that word but it should exist) sells his death to a sadistic billionaire. Weird! Dark! Obscene and disturbing! Like Ian McEwan if Ian McEwan didn't kinda suck.

The Mark of the Warrior by Paul Scott – An officer trains the younger brother of a soldier he lost in battle during WWII, contemplates the essential qualities of the warrior archetype, in this short novel by the author of the Raj Quartet. Scott was a great talent, with a distinct genius for illuminating the side corners of great human events. Good stuff.

Remake by Connie Willis – In a sci-fi Hollywood that never came to be (or hasn't yet), deep-fakes of old actors are digitized into new movies, and a hack editor falls in love with a would-be dancer. Both a prescient satire of the Hollywood machine and a clever whodunnit, my favorite thing I've read by Ms. Willis thus far. Weird and fun.

McGlue by Ottessa Moshefegh – A brain damaged alcoholic in 1851 tries to figure out if and why he murdered his best friend and lover. Lots of body horror and descriptions of the Dts. Skillfully written and deliberately horrid. I confess I don't really understand the literati's affection for repulsion, which seems not that difficult a reaction to evoke in a reader, but what do I know. At least it was short.

Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino – Some Calvino hits me and some don't, this was the latter.

The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville – A revolutionary struggles to survive in a ravaged Paris in which a supernatural Nazi plot has raised the devil and brought to life surrealist imagery of the age. I think probably my favorite thing I've read by Mieville. A fast paced, tightly written genre exercise full of fabulously weird visuals and free of any bloat (except to the epilogue which didn't really add anything.) Lots of fun.

The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat – A second-generation Nigerian grows up in Boston, becomes embroiled with a charismatic conman. A solid and engaging examination of the immigrant experience—the depiction of Ayale, the eponymous attendant and all around hustler, was particularly strong, a character I feel like I've met a couple of times in real life but never saw so well illuminated in fiction. Good stuff.

Your Republic is Calling You by Young-Ha Kim – A North Korean deep-cover spy operating in Seoul is given twenty-four hours to return to his homeland, comes to realize he's always been playing a role and so has everyone else in his life. There are a lot of books that try to do this sort of thing but not many I can remember doing it as well. Even in translation Kim is a strong writer, and has a rare talent for broader human examination without abandoning the genre tropes that give this story of story its structure.

The Deep by John Crowley – An alien amnesiac crash lands in a medieval world. In two hundred pages Crowley limns an epic fantasy then upend it. Fabulous stuff, Crowley (as I've mentioned earlier) is one of our best. Both this and the earlier Beast are fascinating in that they show his range as a writer, eschewing the pageantry of his later writing in favor of a style which seems boiled down to its barest essence, telling in a few pages what could plausibly be expanded to five or ten times its length. Excellent.

The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata – The adopted daughter of a kimono wholesaler meets her twin, searches for love. Didn't do it for me. Lots of descriptions of flowers and festivals about flowers.

A Way of Life Like Any Other by D'arcy O'Brien– The son of an ex-Western star and a mercilessly selfish dilettante grows up too quickly, learns to hate his parents. A very funny depiction of neglect. One of my new favorite books about my adopted homeland.

The Dying Gaul and Other Writings by David Jones – A rambling collection of essays by the author of In Parenthesis. I have no idea why I read this.

In Hazard by Richard Hughes – A merchant ship gets caught in a terrible storm, the crisis illuminating the characters of its diverse and peculiar crew. Disaster stories don't do a ton for me but Hughes utilizes the set-up for a fascinating series of digressions about the various shipmates, sketching their histories in vivid if brief detail, then wrapping the whole thing up in deceptively unsatisfying fashion. You can tell I liked it.

The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories by Yasunari Kawabata – Several lovely stories about youth, yearning, love and disappointment, and a bunch of strange, short parables. I was gearing up to not like this because the Old Capital wasn't really my jam but I was happily disappointed. These were varied and excellent.

Four Freedoms by John Crowley – The lives of a handful of idiosyncratic shop workers in an airplane factory during WWII. Crowley is a beautiful writer, the prose is a joy and it has a strangely effective eroticism. It didn't really seem to quite go anywhere, though.

The Flemish House by Georges Simenon – Obese, discourteous detective Maigret (I've gotten really good at coming up with two line descriptions of him after writing so many of these reviews) investigates a possible murder by a family of shady Belgian bourgeoisie. I've kinda come around on the Maigret stuff, they're breezy but also pitilessly mean.