Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars "Now tell me about civilization and your part in it." Swords and Deviltry (1970) is the first book in Fritz Leiber's original, ironic, funny, and richly styled sword and sorcery series about the relationship between and the adventures of the antiheroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. This collection of three novellas depicts the origins of the complementary duo (giant-sized, red-haired, fair-skinned northern barbarian Fafhrd and child-sized, black-haired, swart-complexioned southern slum-boy Mouser), how they came of age, found their first loves, and became friends. The first story, "The Snow Women" (1970), depicts naïve and secretive 18-year-old Fafhrd's erotic infatuation with civilization, embodied by the "culture dancer" mime-actress-thief Vlana, who has traveled with an exotic theatrical troupe to Fafhrd's home in the Cold Wastes of the far north, where a literal cold war is being waged by the women on the men over the decadent southern entertainment. The story ends with a tour-de-force climax in which Fafhrd must choose between civilization and the south and Vlana or barbarism and the north and his controlling girlfriend Mara (who says she's pregnant with his son) and his dominating mother Mor (who'd like to keep him in her ice magic womb) in a sequence fraught with danger, female magic, fireworks, a ski jump, an ambush, and a dagger. If "The Snow Women" is Fafhrd’s coming of age origin story, "The Unholy Grail" (1962) is the Gray Mouser's, revealing how he came by his name and affinity for dark arts. Returning from a quest that is to complete his apprenticeship under the gentle white magic hedge-wizard Glavas Rho, the Mouser (still called Mouse) finds his master murdered and his cottage burnt. Detecting the agency of the magic-hating Duke Janarrl, the Mouser employs black magic against him, despite having been warned that its use strains and stains the soul. His revenge is complicated by the Duke's daughter, the “perpetually frightened yet sweet” Ivrian. The novella is unpleasant and lacks the series' usual humor, though it features a fine climax involving a torture chamber, a rack, an ant, an audience, and the "hitherto hidden . . . whole black universe." The third story, "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970), is the strongest and strangest in the book, a classic. It recounts the fateful meeting of the two young men and their lovers in Lankhmar, City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes (and hence City of the Black Toga) when Fafhrd and the Mouser separately decide to mug two men belonging to the powerful (and misogynistic) Thieves’ Guild and become instant friends. There are great comedic scenes, like the Gray Mouser inviting Fafhrd and Vlana into the "throne room in a slum" that he's set up for Ivrian with his loot, Ivrian getting drunk and acting like a Tennessee Williams’ aristocrat and calling Fafhrd and the Mouser “poltroons,” and the new friends touring Thieves' House in beggar guise, "fired--and--fuddled by fortified wine." And then suddenly--"a universe upturned." In the three stories Leiber introduces his fantasy world Nehwon (= Nowhen), its terrains, cities, cultures, magic, swordplay, and banter with which he developed the sword and sorcery genre. He complexly portrays Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as well as Vlana and Ivrian. He explores themes on civilization and barbarism (both are indicted, but for different reasons) men and women (both are "quite horrible," but in different ways), and relationships between parents and children (Ivrian’s parents make Fafhrd’s look like June and Ward Cleaver) and between lovers (the power dynamics between the two sets of lovers are shifty). And he does lots of his fine fun writing, featuring wit (e.g., "he was about as harrowed as virgin prairie"), ambiguity (e.g., "He wondered why, although his imagination was roaringly aflame like the canyon behind him, his heart was still so cold"), alliteration (e.g., "a very faint foam of fear"), and varied and vivid imagination and style, ranging from the comic to the horrible and from the colloquial to the Shakespearean (e.g., “Fafhrd won and with great satisfaction clinked out his silver smerduks on the stained and dinted [tavern] counter also marked with an infinity of mug circles, as if it had once been the desk of a mad geometer”). Leiber has been criticized for male chauvinism, and if it bothers you to call teenage boys men and mature women girls, you may wince at some things in his stories. Indeed, the scariest, weakest, or most abused people in this book tend to be women. But keep in mind that Leiber is a mid-20th century writer, that he can sympathize with the female point of view, that he writes plenty of unsavory male characters and institutions, and that his "heroes" are rogues. Jonathan Davis reads the audiobook with panache and pleasure. He gives the Gray Mouser a cocky cockney-Aussie (?) accent to make him sound more civilized than his very American Fafhrd. He does a fine East European Grandmaster thief and a creepy squeaky wizard's familiar. Readers who like elegant, bawdy, unpredictable, usually funny, and psychologically complex (if not twisted) sword and sorcery should like this book and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. View all my reviews
0 Comments
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars "The True Mediterranean" With his The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) Peter Frankopan wants to change how people see history and the world, as not having always been centered in the Mediterranean a long time ago or in America today, but as having been centered in the crossroads between east and west, in "the true Mediterranean" of the world, in Central Asia, in now mostly forgotten cities "strung like pearls connecting the Pacific to the Mediterranean." Not that he's only concerned with literal silk roads; he's telling a history of international communication and trade and conflict and influence by which different cultures in the world have always wanted things produced by each other and have traded along networks of cities, through different eras silk, furs, spices, gold, silver, wheat, oil, or rare earth. He also covers the transmission of things other than goods, like ideas, languages, religions, technologies, and plagues. Frankopan covers a lot of ground, ranging from ancient Persia to contemporary –stan countries and everything in between. He is a bit brief on certain interesting people or trends or events dealt with in more detail in other books, like about the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, the Crusades, the Mongols, the fall of Constantinople, the Opium Wars, etc. By contrast, he provides much detail on World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the current war on terrorism. Granted that there are many more historical sources the closer we approach our current era, but I would have liked more detail on older eras and less on recent ones. That said, the book is full of interesting information. I liked learning for example that much of the wealth exploited from Central and South America in the age of colonization ended up in Central Asia rather than Europe, funding for instance the construction of the Taj Mahal. The history of Knox Darcy and the British exploitation of oil in Persia and Iran from near the end of the 19th century until about the end of World War II was fascinating. It was interesting to learn that Venice became an international power largely through the slave trade--and that the Italian greeting "ciao" means "I am your slave." And it's healthy to be reminded that the nuclear technology in Iran causing such concern in the USA today was given by the USA to Iran as part of misguided efforts to prop up the corrupt dictatorial regime of the Shah. For that matter, Frankopan's depiction of the mess that the UK in the 19th and early 20th centuries and then the USA after World War II and the Cold War made in the Middle East and Central Asia through ignorance of local cultures and histories, through too much focus on the short term and not enough on the long, and through the gap between espousing democracy and freedom on the one hand and callously exercising imperial power as with torture, drone strikes, sanctions, and Guantánamo Bay on the other--is salubrious. Some of Frankopan's best lines come describing American debacles, like "The United States' efforts to diffuse the situation [in Afghanistan] ranged from the inept to the shambolic." Frankopan is into international trade and culture more than war, and he prefers listing different goods for sale in different markets in different cities in different eras to listing different kinds of soldiers and weapons and tactics used in different battles in different eras. Throughout his book, he successfully demonstrates how all peoples and cultures are interconnected. About the audiobook, the reader Laurence Kennedy is excellent when doing the base narration (a clear and engaged British accent), but whenever Frankopan quotes a historical figure like a historian or merchant or emperor or prime minister or president, Kennedy feels compelled to dramatize things by changing his voice to ostensibly suit the figure and his or her culture, donning for example a pseudo silk road (slightly Indian) accent or a generic American accent or some seasoned age or greater authority or hotter indignation or gruffer timbre or smarmier condescension, etc., all of which is completely unnecessary because the sources are full of character in their own rights. This is not such an obvious problem in the pre-sound-recording era, but as soon as Kennedy starts acting like people whose distinctive voices we know very well like Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan or Henry Kissinger or Barack Obama, the mismatch between his assumed voice and the real person's voice is jarring. I continually wished he had just read everything in his narration voice. Be that as it may, I recommend this book because it is well-written, informative, and reorients one's focus towards Central Asia, which is, as the last chapter of the book illustrates, once again becoming an economic and cultural powerhouse nexus in the world. View all my reviews
The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Suspenseful Belfast Noir Western Seven years out of prison after serving a twelve-year sentence, the ex-IRA soldier/terrorist Gerry Fegan--a respected and feared Republican hero--is being haunted by twelve ghosts. Fegan's "followers" are people he killed during the Troubles. They coalesce from shadows to appear before him "big as life," looking at him and watching him pee and clamoring when he tries to sleep so that each night he has to drink himself into oblivion. The ghosts who scream the loudest are not the British soldiers or the Irish police but the civilians, like the boy he shot and the mother and infant he accidentally blew up. The prison psychologist said that the followers are manifestations of guilt, but they are so vivid and noisy that Fegan can't understand why people around him don't notice them. One of the neat things about Stuart Neville's suspenseful Belfast Noir novel, The Ghosts of Belfast (2009), is that because we spend much time in Fegan's mind, and because his followers start badgering him to kill the men who years ago made him kill them, and because he's otherwise so sane and sympathetic (wanting to do beautiful wood work rather than kill), it's easy to question whether he's crazy or actually haunted. Fegan's followers even start hinting what he should do in certain situations, as when the mother with the infant encourages him to accept a ride from the ostracized Marie McKenna after her uncle's funeral. In addition to Fegan's point of view, Neville also writes from those of different characters, like a reluctant Minister of State, a corrupt Northern Irish politician, and Fegan's double and foil Davy Campbell, a Scottish undercover agent infiltrating the IRA and post-IRA gangs for the British government. Both Campbell and Fegan were trained to violence like pit bulls (the analogy is implied at one point), and both are intelligent, alienated, and solitary--but while Fegan feels beauty and regret and yearns for a normal life, Campbell only wants to continue his dangerous double life, unable to envision anything else. There are potent moments in the novel: Fegan going for a walk with Marie and her little daughter Ellen in the botanical gardens; Fegan remembering when he met McKenna as boys about to be caned at school; Campbell reading Fegan's letter to his mother; Fegan watching Finding Nemo with Marie and Ellen; Fegan seeing moonlight on a mirror bay and wishing his followers could see it too; Campbell being surprised in Fegan's bathroom; Father Coulter taking Fegan's confession. . . There is fine writing in the novel, like "He turned his eyes to the ground where cigarette butts and old chewing gum, things people no longer wanted in their mouths, were trampled into the path." There are telling lines in the novel, like "People have long memories, especially when it's someone else's sin." Neville also writes savory Irish colloquial speech, as when Marie says, "There was this girl, a stewardess, looked like she'd been licking piss off a nettle." The book's depiction of contemporary Northern Ireland is interesting. Some of the men targeted by Fegan's ghosts are influential political figures whose deaths would jeopardize the precarious Northern Ireland peace process below which fester long hatreds between Loyalists and Republicans, Protestants and Catholics. Money is pouring into new real estate developments, and many more cars are parked on the streets and foreigners walking around than before, but even if things change, people don't, and the violence is never really over. Even as it's specific as to time and place, the novel depicts universal problems in human nature concerning history, power, money, love, violence, and collateral damage. It's a graphic and grim book but a poignant one, as when Fegan glimpses what normal life for normal people might be. Rather than a mystery (we know the killer from the start, and there's no detective to follow), the novel is a noir western. In a central idyll Fagan watches the John Wayne classic The Searchers. And later when he thinks, "Men like him no longer belonged here," it's easy to read Northern Ireland as a frontier city transitioning from the old wild time of violence, outlaws, and might makes right to the new civilized time of trains, politicians, and peace, in which the heroic man of violence has no place. Finally, Shane must leave Joey and his mother. At first the audiobook reader Gerard Doyle sounds a little monotonous, but he turns out to be fine at building intensity when necessary and excels at reading the voices of different people: Scottish, Irish, Oxbridge, male, female, adult, child, etc. (view spoiler)[ In the climax chloroform is employed too liberally and conveniently, Fegan doesn't comport himself enough like a formidable killer advised by ghosts, and--despite the "everybody pays in the end" theme repeatedly stressed in the book--he doesn't finally pay. Maybe he will in a future novel? (hide spoiler)] View all my reviews
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
My rating: 5 of 5 stars "Like an olive, fall when ripe, blessing nature." "The clapping of hands and the clapping of tongues is without value." Hey, that's the master of the Roman Empire talking to himself nearly 2000 years ago! And it wouldn't hurt us to read his Meditations today. Meditations is a collection of mostly Stoic precepts, reminders, reflections, and exhortations written by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180) to himself as a kind of philosophical self-help diary. Hence his enigmatic references here and there to things only he would know and his addressing himself as "you." (It's often been said that To Himself would be a more accurate title for the book). He never saw his writings as forming a single work that anyone would read. The 12 books into which his writings were arranged much later don't develop different ideas into an overall argument or narrative. Their purpose was to remind him during stressful times what is important. One gets the feeling that he wrote to preserve his equanimity or to brace up his spirit while dealing with rebellious barbarians, slimy politicians, disappointing offspring, or other burdens of rule. The precepts he repeats and rephrases with an almost desperate and mesmerizing preoccupation would, if followed, make one fulfilled and productive, a positive influence on one's community and world. I found many things that I should adopt to improve my life right now--like focusing my energies around a coherent goal instead of squandering them by listening to and reviewing an eclectic (if not random) host of audiobooks. Unfortunately, I probably will not have the strength of character. But the Emperor did cleanse and calm my soul. He gave me a set of reminders for a good and healthy life as a rational social being who lives on one small speck in a universe that is a single living organism in which everything is connected and everything changing. Be aware of what composes the universe and accept what the universe gives you. It’s not what happens to you but how you react to it that defines your life and character. Resentment, fear, anger, laziness, are self-inflicted. There’s only one task in life, and that is to get a grip on yourself. Live according to your rational soul as if each moment might be your last, without missing the past or fearing the future. I suspect that Whitman (full of the divine energy of the universe, rejecting only what insults his own soul) and Thoreau (simplify, simplify) would find Marcus Aurelius simpatico. And that Trump would not appreciate him saying, "Lying intentionally or unintentionally is impious, against nature." (Trump is in all ways the anti-Aurelius.) Some things are very much of Marcus Aurelius' specific time and place (like advising one to look on the beauty of one's slave boys with chaste eyes or reminding oneself "to be neither of the green nor of the blue party at the games in the Circus.") Some things, I'm not sure I agree with, like when he says we should live without passion as if alone on a mountain. But most things he says have universal and useful application to our own lives here and now. Like the following: --We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. --Reverence and honor your own mind. --The best revenge is not to become like the one who has wronged you. --To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference. --Have you ever seen a severed hand or foot? That's what we do to ourselves when we rebel against what happens to us. --For instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker's art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating. --You have embarked, you have made the voyage, you have come to the shore: get out. --Think continually how many physicians are dead after often contracting their eyebrows over the sick; and how many astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead. . . . always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. Audiobook reader Duncan Steen's voice and manner are so appealing, so well attuned to Aurelius' words in the English translation (which seems like a modernized version of George Long's), that it is a pleasure to listen to this book. View all my reviews
The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Animal Spirits, Ghosts, Gods, History, and Romance The Hallowed Hunt (2005) begins with Lord Ingrey kin Wolfcliff (what a name!), high courier of the Royal Sealmaster, being sent to bring the corpse of Prince Boleso kin Stagthorne (!) from his hunting seat at (where else?) Boar's Head Castle back to the hallow king's hall at Easthome, along with the woman who killed him, Lady Ijada dy Castos (Holy Toledo!), so that he may be given funeral rites and she tried for murder. Ingrey soon discovers that the situation and his mission are complicated. Ijada brained the prince in self-defense with his handy war hammer when he was about to rape her (or worse) in a forbidden magic ritual, the spirit of a leopard the prince killed for the ritual has taken up residence inside Ijada, Ingrey's own wolf spirit similarly forced into him when he was a boy and suppressed for ten years is waking up, and something like a dark parasitic vine wrapped around Ingrey is telling him to kill Ijada. Will they make it to Easthome? Does Ingrey want to? Wouldn't he prefer the beautiful Lady Ijada to escape into the woods? He knows she'll likely be found guilty of murder, and he's attracted to her spirit, and he's also prone to hearing a voice say, "Kill her!" The story, Lois McMaster Bujold's third Chalion novel, occurs in the world of The Curse of Chalion (2001) and The Paladin of Souls (2003), but each of the books is stand alone, featuring different characters, settings, and stories. Here we are in the Weald, whose people practiced animal magic to infuse their warriors with the spirits of animals until 400 years ago, when the conquering Darthacans exterminated (nearly) all the spirit warriors, shamen, great beasts, and associated lore and imposed their own culture and Quintarian brand of the five-god religion (Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, Bastard) onto the Wealdings. Although 150 years ago the New Wealdings threw off Darthacan rule, they had mostly lost the "forest song" and "weirding" and spiritual animal affinity of the Old Wealdings--apart from their animal kin names. Currently most Wealdings, like Ingrey, see animal possession as defilement to burn away at the stake and reject the uncanny in favor of realpolitik to choose the next hallow king. The novel has Bujold's many strengths: convincing and compelling characters (like Ingrey and Ijada and supporting ones like Wencel, Hallana, and Jokol), coherent and textured fictional world, unpredictable plot that makes sense as things happen and revelations come, neat similes ("He paused, feeling like a man crossing river ice in winter and hearing a first faint cracking sound coming from under his feet"), thoughtful themes (about people and nature, religion and politics, time and the divine, identity and history, free will and destiny, and so on), wit ("Could youth and fury outrun middle age and terror?"), and wisdom ("Death is not a performance to rate ourselves upon, or to berate ourselves upon either"). This novel avoids violent action scenes. Though Ingrey is a deadly fighter, given to battle rages and unorthodox martial techniques, we never see him perform, but instead occasionally hear a minor character marvel at his past exploits, as when one guy says he saw Ingrey in a melee with bandits toss his sword up in the air, break a big man's neck, catch the sword when it fell and behead another guy. But in this novel Ingrey fights battles of the spirit rather than of the flesh. Perhaps Bujold's Chalion world, in which the five gods are very real, lends itself a bit too much to deus ex machina machinations (more than in her Vorkosigan universe), and she is capable of corny lines (cf the candlestick and scorching look one below), and sometimes her characters act stupidly (as when Ijada relates a vivid dream laden with portent and asks, "Do you think it might have been significant?"), and in both her Vorkosigan and her Chalion books she does fixate on aristocrats. . . But I have listened to or read many of Bujold's novels, and always find them like this one to be involving and entertaining comfort food for the mind and body. Marguerite Gavin's reading of the audiobook is good (apart from sometimes striving a bit too hard for dramatic effect by, for example, elongating some already long vowels). She speaks clearly and distinguishes subtly (maybe too subtly) among the characters, getting a little gruffer for men for instance. She's pleasant to listen to. I recommend The Hallowed Hunt to fans of imaginative, fantasy with magic (e.g., "its rumbling purr sawed through the air like some serrated song"), gods (e.g., "A warm, autumnal voice murmured, somewhere between his ear and his mind"), romance (e.g., "Ijada rose, snatched up her candlestick, gave Ingrey a look of scorching intensity, and fled up the stairs"), and bite (e.g., "I fear I feel about horses much as I feel about wives, these days. They last such a short time and I am weary of butchering them."). View all my reviews After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam (2009) by Lesley Hazleton2/8/2018
After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars "How had it come to this?" "The shock wave was deafening. In the first few seconds after the blast, the millions of pilgrims stood rooted to the spot. Everyone knew what had happened, yet none seemed able to acknowledge it, as though it were too much for the mind to process. And then as their ears began to recover, the screaming began. . . . There were nine explosions in all, thirty minutes of car bombs, suicide bombs, grenades, and mortar fire. Then there was just the terrible stench of burned flesh and singed dust, and the shrieking of ambulance sirens." Lesley Hazleton is describing the March 4, 2004 terrorist attack by Al Qaeda Sunni terrorists on Shia pilgrims to the holy city of Karbala in Iraq to commemorate the holy day of Ashura, to pay homage to the martyrdom of Muhammad's grandson Hussein and his other male descendants, who'd been massacred there 14 centuries earlier by fellow Muslims. What happened in 680 AD, less than 50 years after Muhammad died, and what happened in 2004, provoked the same question: How had it come to this? The answer is what Hazleton explores in her excellent book After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam (2009). Her book tries to explain what happened in 680 and its persisting ramifications. This is important to understand today because what happened to Hussein and his family and followers in Karbala in 680--history to Sunni Muslims, sacred history to Shia Muslims--is the foundation of their persisting division. "It has not just endured but gathered emotive force to become an ever widening spiral in which past and present, faith and politics, personal identity and national redemption are inextricably intertwined." It is, Hazleton says, an epic story. "If there is a single moment when it all began, it was that of Muhammad's death." Human nature being what it is, it is tragic but not so surprising that despite having been "the prophet of unity who spoke of one people and one God," when he died without a son Muhammad was followed by what would become the "terrible, unending, bloody legacy of division between Sunni and Shia." Muhammad's multiple widows and their fathers, his son-in-law Ali and his two sons, various clan and tribal leaders, all involved in a struggle for power and control of the faith and the people . . . Hazleton makes us care about the people involved in the history, especially Muhammad's favorite new wife Aisha, his cousin and son-in-law Ali, and his grandson Hussein, and writes so well about things she knows so well that her history is entertaining, moving, and absorbing. She presents many key events fundamental to the division that have over time become stories with their own titles, including: The Episode of the Necklace The Episode of the Pen and Paper The Secret Letter The Day at the Palace The Battle of the Camel She presents interesting details like about the origin of the hijab or the origin of Islamic fundamentalism. Or like Arabic being "a subtle and sinuous language" in which the same word can mean different things, depending on context, like jihad, which can mean an internal or external fight or struggle, and fitna, which can mean trial, temptation, intrigue, discord, or civil war, and always implies chaos. She incorporates cool quotations, like this one from a Muslim chieftain who didn't want to participate in the Battle of the Camel: "I would rather be a castrated slave herding nanny goats with lopsided udders than shoot a single arrow at either of these two sides." Or this one from a sociology scholar who partly inspired the Iranian Revolution: "Religion is an amazing phenomenon that plays contradictory roles in peoples' lives: destroy or revitalize, put to sleep or awaken, enslave or emancipate, teach docility or revolt." She herself writes plenty of neat lines, like "There is nobody as righteous or as blind to reason as the reformed sinner," or "As with Yazid in the 7th century, so with George Bush in the 21st, history is often made by the heedless." She reads her book perfectly, with a deep, husky, ironic, and compassionate voice and manner. She assumes no accents and doesn't try to sound like a man or a woman, and instead just naturally sounds wise, savory, and androgynous. The book is illuminating and fascinating, especially to someone like ignorant me who hadn't known what happened after Muhammad died, or who Aisha, Ali, and Hussein were (or why their names are so popular). I have heard that Hazleton is biased against Sunni Islam in favor of Shia, but, although she does stress the nobility of Ali and Hussein, she also admires the chutzpah of Aisha and respects the cunning of Muawiya (the 5th Caliph) and sees the whole vast tragedy with sympathetic and objective eyes. Anyone interested in the history of Islam and the division between Sunni and Shia or in compact, potent, informative, and well-written history whose personages and events connect with our own lives today, should like this book. View all my reviews
A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
My rating: 4 of 5 stars "Everything Makes Sense" Like her first Chief Inspector Gamache novel, Still Life (2005), Louise Penny's second, A Fatal Grace (2006), takes place mostly in Three Pines, the idyllic "simple backwater" village which can be found only by chance or destiny (not appearing on any maps of Quebec). Also like the first, the second begins with a catchy first line: "Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift." But whereas Still Life opens with the murder of a universally loved local Three Pines woman, Jane Neal, this second book begins with the impending murder of a universally disliked outsider, CC de Poitiers. CC is an outwardly cold, inwardly seething 48-year-old businesswoman, a cruel and insensitive person who believes that everyone is cruel and insensitive. The kind of woman who wears boots made from the skins of baby seals. She's just self-published a bogus self-help book called Be Calm, which will teach people how to find happiness by repressing all their emotions--if only the fools will realize the truth and value of her enlightened philosophy. But why did she buy the old Hadley mansion in Three Pines? CC's lover Saul Petrov, her bought photographer, detests her for having frozen his vision of himself and the world, and is planning to escape her control. In addition to this unpleasant couple, we meet again the appealing Three Pines locals from the first book: Clara and Peter Morrow, wife and husband artists (he successful, she unknown); Myrna Landers, the only black person in town, an ex-Montreal psychologist who runs a used book store; Ruth Zardo, the prickly poetess who's just won an award for her latest book I'm FINE; Olivier and Gabri, the witty gay couple who run a bistrot/B&B/antique shop. And an intriguing new trio of locals, "the three graces," three old lady friends, Kaye, Em, and Beatrice (aka Mother Bea). Taking place about a year after the events of the first book, which the locals are still marked by, the second novel delays the entrance of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec, until Chapter 8. Gamache is a fine detective character: in his fifties, he is well-read, vice-free, happily married, and able venture into the minds of other people (even murderers) as well as his own. In addition to loving his work and his team of agents, he is always appalled by death and especially senseless killing. He imparts precepts to his trainees like: always ask when you don't know; never lie to me; listen so hard it hurts; and everything makes sense. Gamache is observant, experienced, wise, empathetic, and intelligent. He is also capable of mistakes, and his debonair man-of-reason second-in-command Jean Guy Beauvoir worries that Gamache is prone to trusting untested young officers (like the disastrous Agent Yvette Nichol in the first novel) to a potentially fatal fault--and he seems to be doing the same thing with young Agent Robert Lemieux in this book. --As the first book turns on a Canadian outdoor activity/sport--hunting/archery--so this one turns on curling. --As the first book is organized thematically around a single motif, stillness, this one is organized around calm (and its opposite). --As the first book is replete with Quebecois culture, so is this one, like eating smoked salmon on X-mas Eve or fresh oysters on New Year's Day or managing extraordinarily cold winters or wondering about how uptight Anglophones are. --As the first book is well-stocked with likely murder suspects and an unexpected culprit, so too is this one. --As the first book deals with a self-contained murder mystery while introducing an over-arching back story concerning the Arnot case that nearly destroyed Gamache's career, so this one deals with a self-contained murder mystery while providing more details about the Arnot case, which is still not over for Gamache and lures readers to read future books in the series. --As the first book is read by Ralph Cosham with his appealing, unassuming, and perfect voice and manner, so too is this one. Penny is good at getting into the heads of her varied people (male, female, old, young, straight, gay, likeable, loathsome, Francophone, Anglophone, big city, small town, wealthy, poor, etc.), and rotates among many of her characters for point of view narration. Going by her first two novels, she does feel most comfortable (or want to spend most time with) creative people: artists, poets, designers, photographers, and so on. If I were to find flaws in Penny's detective and community it would be that perhaps they are too good to be true. Gamache's "mistakes" tend to be errors of trust rather than of ethics or detective work, he is almost too good at coming up with apt quotations, and he even plays a rather heroic volunteer fireman at one point, while Three Pines might be too idyllic a mystery-genre town, too full of interesting, witty, and creative people, too apt to host murders. . . But Penny is a fine writer and mystery genre fans (especially those interested in Quebecois culture and the arts) should like this book. View all my reviews
I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist by Kirk Douglas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars McCarthyism, Hollywood, Spartacus and Kirk Douglas Imagine spending a day getting drunk while talking about Spartacus as it's being made with Laurence ('Larry') Olivier, Dalton Trumbo, and Kirk Douglas--Douglas' memoir I Am Spartacus: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist (2012) is full of such entertaining vignettes. Lots of appalling details of McCarthyism: 'pompous ass' congressional committee chairmen, contempt of congress prison sentences, black listing, etc. Lots of interesting details on how movies were made in the 1950s: securing funding, securing rights to adapt novels, writing and revising screenplays, casting actors, finding directors, promoting films, worrying about entertainment columnists, costume fittings, table readings, editing, satisfying the Motion Picture Association censors, etc. Lots of snapshots of Hollywood stars: Lauren Bacall, Orson Welles, Frank Sinatra, George Sanders, Jean Simmons, etc. Lots of intriguing pieces of Kirk Douglas' biography: Russian Jewish ancestry, birth name Issur Danielovitch, beloved mother, first movie role, stardom, marriages and children, production company, etc. Lots of apt insights into human nature: why persecuted people like Jews would persecute their fellows; what kind of people name names of friends to save their careers and what kind don't; what kind of religion would be most helpful to the world; etc. Of course the book is full of interesting details about how the classic historical epic Spartacus was made: the involvement of the author of the novel, Howard Fast; the race to beat a rival studio before they could make their similarly themed epic; the efforts of Douglas to find another studio to back his movie; and the chaotic making of the picture, including the director and the female lead actress getting fired after filming had begun, Douglas breaking the jaw of another actor during a fight scene, and Tony Curtis splitting his Achilles tendon while playing tennis with Douglas, the recording of 73,000 college football fans at an MSU game shouting 'I am Spartacus' in unison, and the purchase from Franco of the Spanish army to play clashing armies in the climactic battle filmed at the last second. Douglas' depictions of the large personalities involved are entertaining: Laurence Olivier suffering the break up of his marriage to Vivien Leigh; Charles Laughton throwing temper tantrums; Peter Ustinov stealing scenes; Tony Curtis greeting Douglas, 'Hail Spartacus!' Not to mention Kubrick, the young director, rubbing everyone the wrong way with his perfectionist genius, deficient empathy, and refusal to change his clothes, and Dalton Trumbo, the Oscar-winning black listed writer, chafing at having to write yet another screenplay under yet another pseudonym, a screenplay plagued by constant requests for changes. Although the book is mostly about the making of Spartacus and the raising of the Hollywood blacklist, part of its appeal concerns the struggles of Douglass at 95 to recall his 1950s' self, not only because it's difficult to remember events from long ago but especially because it's painful to remember the man he was then: cocky, energetic, and at times possessed of an anger that pains him to realize resembled that of his 'cruel' father (as when he threw a chair at Kubrick in a rage over the scene of Spartacus on the cross being cut without prior discussion). Without pride, Douglas, mentions that Tony Curtis' description of him back then was spot on: 'A panther with a thorn in his side.' Douglas writes a lot of witty lines, like these: --'I didn't enjoy firing people. I'm not Donald Trump.' --'Nobody wrote outrage better than Dalton even in a telegram.' --'Eddie was a man of conviction. Stanley was a man of calculation.' --'His sighs and grunts and soft reproaches somewhat unhinged me at close quarters.' Michael Douglas gives a fine reading of the audiobook, his gravely voice a nostalgic echo of his father's. Fans of Spartacus or Kirk Douglas or people curious about McCarthyism or Hollywood of the 1950s should like this book. PS. For obvious reasons, people who believe that Douglas brutally raped Natalie Wood when she was 16 and or who believe that his son has been guilty of sexual harassment would probably not enjoy this audiobook. I hadn't heard about such things before listening to the audiobook, and Douglas doesn't mention anything about Wood in his book. If he were guilty, I'd have to rethink my feeling for an actor I've always admired for his roles in Spartacus and Lust for Life. View all my reviews
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars It’s been three years since Aral Vorkosigan suddenly died. Since his death his wife Cordelia, who with Aral dragged the Barryaran Empire into the Galactic community, has been attempting to deal with her loss by fulfilling her many duties as Vicereine of Sergyar, one of three planets in the Empire. Her partner in keeping the colony of 2,000,000+ inhabitants on Sergyar functioning and thriving on the backwater still new world has been Admiral Oliver Jole, the man in charge of the space fleet. One of the early interesting developments of Lois McMaster Bujold's Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2015), the latest entry in her long-running, intelligent, character-driven space opera Vorkosigan saga, is that Oliver was left at least as bereft as Cordelia at Aral's death, because he had been Aral’s secret lover for over twenty years. It turns out, in fact, that Aral, Cordelia, and Jole had been living in an off-the-record three-partner marriage in all but name, Cordelia and Jole sharing the great man, and that since his death they’ve been like a pair of planets deprived of their common sun. As this novel opens, they love each other as old friends (in all their years together with Aral, Cordelia and Oliver made love to Aral separately and never to each other), but then Cordelia drops a bombshell on Oliver, impelling their relationship into a new phase. Cordelia informs him that she has ten genetic lottery tickets: six frozen zygotes (Aral’s sperm in her eggs) that she’s hoping to turn into six daughters and four frozen gametes that she’s offering to Oliver so that he might add his own Y chromosomes to Aral's X chromosomes inside Cordelia's enucleated eggs ('egg shells') so as to have, in effect, sons with Aral. Oliver, who has never married or fathered any children, is at first stunned and then attracted by the possibilities. The novel depicts the pair's romance against the backdrop of Cordelia's attempts to move the capital of Sergyar from a terrible location next to a restlessly dormant volcano to a more sensible one despite the opposition of vested interests, and of Oliver's attempts to deal with his impending fiftieth-birthday party and a great job offer that would take him back to Barrayar. Those plot strands are complicated by the surprise visit of Cordelia and Aral’s son Miles Vorkosigan and his wife and six kids, because Miles is curious and keen (and an Imperial Auditor for whom a hint is like a stick in the hands of a boy by a wasp nest). How will Cordelia and Oliver let him know about their plans to become parents and about their new relationship and Oliver and Aral’s old one? The story is not complicated by any of the hitherto de rigueur Vorkosigan series nefarious plots or empire threatening dangerous developments. It is a novel about love ('What is love but delight in another human being?'), transience ('While you can, take delight'), parenting ('Parents don’t make children; children make parents'), and happiness (what do Cordelia and Oliver want to do after retirement?). This is all fine, because Bujold's characters and world are so appealing and her writing so witty and the reading experience so comforting and familiar. It is a mostly funny and often moving book. There are some great scenes, especially involving one-on-one conversations, like when Cordelia and Oliver have lunch early on, or when Cordelia shows her grandson some of Aral’s sketches, or when Oliver and Miles talk after the birthday party. It is good to learn more about Aral through Cordelia and Oliver's memories of him. And there are some neat descriptions of the Autumnal romance, as, for instance, when Jole is 'Squinting into the light till the crow's feet seemed to wink at her.' And Miles gets some good lines too, like 'I know I had issues with being an only child, but really mother, NINE siblings?' That said, it all seems a little too easy compared to other Vorkosigan books. Thanks to the technology of Cordelia's homeworld, Beta Colony, it is easy in Bujold’s sf future to do things like live healthily past 100, to fully enjoy a 50-year-old lover at age 76, to become a mother (multiple times) after age 76, to make babies (artificial conception and uterine replicators mean that women no longer need to conceive, carry, and bear babies), and so on. Another mild kvetch might be that Bujold's seemingly bold move in writing at least half her novel from the point of view of a bisexual character is actually rather tame because Oliver's relationship with Aral is a thing of the past and because he's currently so in love with Cordelia that he seems heterosexual. A more challenging story for Bujold and her readers would depict some or all of the twenty-year period when Oliver and Aral were lovers. . . And Bujold badly uses or under uses the relatively new flora and fauna of Sergyar too much for an sf novel. Grover Gardner reads the audiobook and continues to be the only person I can imagine reading the Vorkosigan series. He reads with perfect clarity, emphasis, and understanding. He never does accents, whether Barryaran or Cetagandan, etc., which is both a blessing and a pity. A reader like John Lee would be trying hard to give the different cultures different accents based on earth's (Russian, American, etc.), which would probably distract from the story. On the other hand, it's a little disconcerting when Cordelia's broad Betan accent is rendered in the same American English as every other character's. I noticed that Gardner, like all of us, is aging, and that his golden voice reading this book has a new huskiness. Was it his aging voice or the (relatively) quiet plot that made me wonder if the sun powering Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga is finally running out of energy? Veterans of the Vorkosigan series would like this book, while new readers should begin with earlier novels like Shards of Honor or Warrior’s Apprentice. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
This blog is for book reviews. Please feel free to comment on any of the reviews! Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
Jefferson's books
by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
|
My Fukuoka University