While the library lost its stand-alone copy of See You Later, I discovered that all was not lost:

See You Later is in a Christopher Pike omnibus that the library does have! I got it on inter-library loan last week and read it all and now I have re-read See You Later and my life is complete, if by complete I mean pretty much exactly the same as it was before.

The book was not as awesome as I remembered. Not even close. The first story in the collection, Spellbound, was pretty terrible (it has a magical negro so you can pretty much guess how subtle the rest of the story is). The stories have been “updated” in that characters talk about DVDs and Blu-Rays, yet they don’t seem to have cellphones and they are still buying video games at Future Shop-type places rather than Steam or EB or any of the other places people buy games. I don’t know what about See You Later lodged itself in my mind over any of the other Christopher Pike books I read – maybe because the protagonist designed computer games and I played computer games? Maybe how the love story plays out? I remember being so impressed by the depth and literariness of the novel at age twelve, which demonstrates how sheltered I was when it came to literary quality.

Still, every now and then I see a Christopher Pike book at a thrift shop or a yard sale and I contemplate picking them up as I see them for when Tesfa’s older. Maybe she’ll enjoy them or maybe she’ll just be confused as to why the main character didn’t just text whoever is being threatened by the ghost/spirit/were-creature/vampire/alien/etc. to warn them.

Pakistan: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

Synopsis: (from amazon) From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the boldly imagined tale of a poor boy’s quest for wealth and love . . .

His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world’s pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation—and exceeds it. The astonishing and riveting tale of a man’s journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over “rising Asia.” It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a striking slice of contemporary life at a time of crushing upheaval. Romantic without being sentimental, political without being didactic, and spiritual without being religious, it brings an unflinching gaze to the violence and hope it depicts. And it creates two unforgettable characters who find moments of transcendent intimacy in the midst of shattering change.

Thoughts: I picked this book up because I had read The Reluctant Fundamentalist in one setting way back in January 2008. This one, I would pick it up, be entranced for a few pages, then lose the thread. Maybe because of the style (second-person singular) and me very much not being the “you” in question (male, south Asian, Muslim, etc.), I had trouble relating. The novel takes place over sixty or seventy years, but at the same time always in the present, which sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it ingeniously did (perhaps something I’ll steal and try out myself this month).

I just feel like I’m almost loving books lately, but I just can’t seem to get the whole way there. I wanted to like this book more than I did.

Rating: 3/5

Previous Readings Around the World.

Netherlands: The Dinner by Herman Koch

Synopsis: (from amazon) An internationally bestselling phenomenon: the darkly suspenseful, highly controversial tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives — all over the course of one meal.

It’s a summer’s evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse — the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Thoughts: I’ve complained enough about Breaking Bad and how it seems we’re now equating repulsive with depth and interesting. Maybe if I wasn’t tired of the male, jerk protagonist, I’d have more patience for this book. You know where something can be done well, but you’re just so sick of similar things, that’s how I feel about this book – a pop song you loved the first five or six times, but after the thousandth you are so sick of it you want to throw the radio out the window (or just never listen to the radio in the first place as I do with my radio-hatred). I guess unreliable narrator too, I’m just a bit bored with that.

I also didn’t really find the wife Claire believable, but I guess that’s sort of the point: how much of this is real versus in Paul, the narrator’s, mind.

Goodreads has a good convo going about the ending the ending of The Dinner for those interested. Reading through some of the ideas made me appreciate the novel more, but I guess I was expecting the novel to be a lot heavier than I found it.

Rating: 3.5/5

Previous Readings Around the World.

Switzerland: The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker

Synopsis: (from amazon)

August 30, 1975. The day of the disappearance. The day Aurora, New Hampshire, lost its innocence.

That summer Harry Quebert fell in love with fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan. Thirty-three years later, her body is dug up from his yard along with a manuscript copy of his career-defining novel. Quebert is the only suspect. Marcus Goldman-Quebert’s most gifted protégé-throws off his writer’s block to clear his mentor’s name.

Solving the case and penning a new bestseller soon blur together. As his book begins to take on a life of its own, the nation is gripped by the mystery of “The Girl Who Touched the Heart of America”.

But with Nola, in death as in life, nothing is ever as it seems. Joël Dicker’s phenomenal European bestseller is a brilliantly intricate murder mystery, a hymn to the boundless reaches of the imagination, and a love story like no other. Nothing you’ve read or even felt before can prepare you for The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair.

Thoughts: From above, nothing could prepare me? Yeah, I’m pretty sure every cheap thriller from the past thirty years has prepared me for The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair.

This is a book about America by someone I’m not convinced has ever been to America. It seems like a book about America by someone who has watched Die Hard and read a great number of John Irving novels, which would give someone a very skewed view of America. This book was on the shortlist for the Prix Goncourt, which baffles me as it is not a very good book. It isn’t a bad book, but it’s an airport paperback thriller at best, unless a great deal is lost in translation. The excerpts from the “masterpiece” within deserve the quotations I put around masterpiece; the book within a book, the one written by Harry Quebert (there is more than one book within a book in this story), is flat and trivial.

I read this book and I read to the end to see what would happen. It is a good thriller and characters do things that only make sense within the world of thrillers, but I keep seeing this presented as some sort of literary piece of art and for me, it was not that. Good for the beach, good for summer, good for me reevaluating the Prix Goncourt, but otherwise, sort of a tepid sort of book.

(I’m considering this under Switzerland since it was written by a Swiss author, which seems as good a reason as any.)

Rating: 2.5/5

Previous Readings Around the World.