My last few reviews, I feel like I’ve had something pithy with which to start off. I don’t have anything pithy here. This isn’t a novel of levity that I can summarize with a few bon mots (or a Tom Lehrer song). This is an earthy tome of a family deep in Pakistan’s tribal region. We are given three brothers, each of whom is sketched only enough so that we understand that one is The Collaborator, one the The Avoider, and the final one The Revolutionary. They are such chosen to ultimately to make the point that it is meaningless to pick a role within a corrupt system; such a system, no matter the choice, grinds everyone in it to dust.

And so, the brothers in The Shadow of the Crescent Moon make lofty speeches to each other, interrupted by an omniscient narrator eager to explain away some points. Motivations are simplistic because, in a struggle to survive, the characters lack the privilege of debating philosophy and nit-picking details. So that works. But then the simplicity and shallowness worms its way through the plot. An example: The characters are Shia and against the military Pakistani government. The Revolutionary has blown things up, targeted politicians, etc. Their cause is presented as, not just exactly, but understandable. But in an encounter with Sunni Talibs, the novel almost ridicules them and their anger. You could draw something out of that, these parallel yet separate revolutions, but nothing is. We have a novel where things are told and shown to you but it’s all shadows; nothing underneath. We have been given lyricism without depth.

The novel ends, somewhat abruptly, with one of those vague, cloudy, endings seemingly preferred by first-time novelists (does Hayat know was is going to happen?). That’s it? I thought. Times I was reminded of Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, with the ending that is that maybe shouldn’t be and the lack of markers of time. Not for the core of the novel, which takes place over the first morning of Eid, but for the past. I could never get a grasp on when exactly anything before this first day of Eid happened — a few days, a few weeks, a few months? Like in Dead Souls, with how long was Chichikov in the village, how long ago did the father die in The Shadow of the Crescent Moon? Is it important? Does it matter? It adds to the feeling of ethereality, of incredulity of the novel.

A timely novel, but a little uneven.

The Shadow of the Crescent Moon by Fatima Bhutto went on sale March 24, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I knew you would.

Is it strange that I am describing a book about a dead teen restricted for fifty years to an afterlife reserved exclusively for thirteen year old Americans as just as peppy as The Periodic Table of the Elements Song? (Although perhaps anything set to the tune of I Am The Very Model of a Model Major General would be peppy. Let someone record Eichmann In Jerusalem to it and we’ll see.) Of course, this comparison is set off by the fact that Oliver, the protagonist and ghostly spiritual successor to Christopher from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, has memorized the periodic table of the elements and the chapter headings are each little element boxes from the chart. But I stand by my peppiness. We have a surprisingly peppy novel.

Now I’ve looked up peppy in a thesaurus because I should probably move onto another adjective, but I don’t like any of the synonyms listed. Pep. A novel that should be as dour as not allowing yourself to kill yourself until your dead son’s cat dies is almost life-affirming instead. It’s kind of odd. Or amazing. Or odazing (my new portmanteau!). But basically, whatever it is, it works really well as a novel. The third (I never know to divide books into acts the way fancy reviewers do, so I’ll just say from around page 259 in my copy of 292 pages, which is a relatively useless measure to anyone not with my kobo) act falters slightly, knocking us down from five to four and a half stars, but that’s hardly a strike against a first novel. I’m sure Neil Smith is hardly going to shed tears because unknown-me knocked half a star off. I can’t even write my first novel. His first novel gets an A+, with a big gold sticker since he doesn’t drag out the revelations all to the end so he can have a big bang, shocked you senseless, who cares about all the character development, ending. It’s a progression that trusts the reader to keep going. I like it when writers trust me enough to let me be and don’t spend their time trying to fool me unnecessarily. Each new piece of information is unexpected but expected both. My kobo notes at the front give my guess as to what happened. They were right. But I didn’t mind as it all rolled out. I enjoyed finding out the plot.

Plus it looked like someone actually tried to make the ePub look pretty, rather than just ran a Word file through a converter. A nice change for once.

Boo by Neil Smith went on sale May 19, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Once, long ago when we were young, Geoff told me about an article on T.S. Eliot’s influence on Shakespeare. That is, even with Shakespeare coming chronologically first, one reads T.S. Eliot, one reads Shakespeare, one’s feelings on T.S. Eliot can influence one’s thoughts on Shakespeare. What supercedes what? Does it even matter?

And so we come to The Art Fair, a re-release of a book from 1996, and if a publisher is going to re-release a book from 1996 in 2014 (yes I slacked on reading this and getting the review out; it’s like a year late) about a boy and his mother in New York City at the core and, more often, at the fringes of the art world, it’s hard not to see this a cynical grab at getting The Goldfinch‘s readers’ attentions and money. Even though, obviously, The Art Fair‘s original publication date predates The Goldfinch‘s by a decade.

(T.S. Eliot? Shakespeare? I’d link to that article if I could find it. I mentioned it to Geoff yesterday. He remembers telling me about it too.)

So we have The Art Fair, a muddle of an author’s first attempt at the Great American Novel:

• a lyrical and ethereal childhood so rudely interrupted;
• a wunderkindness in the narrator’s voice;
• attempts at bettering one’s social station;
• an uneasy relationship with his father;
• the mother as a concept; and of course
• a confused male narrator meant to be every man.

We may as well keep adding bullet points for first novel problems:

• complete disregard for POV, with Richard, our narrator, narrating things that happen far outside his line of sight;
• thousands of vaguely identical characters (all of whom are clearly slightly fictionalized versions of people from the New York art scene of the seventies and eighties, not that I have any knowledge of that scene or know who anyone was supposed to be). For awhile, I searched through my ePub when names came up to remember who they were. Then I stopped. Having a decent idea of who these people are doesn’t matter at all to the plot;
• the first fifty percent, almost exactly (don’t you love those percentages in your e-reader), takes place over twenty-one years. The last fifty percent over two days. Like background, then action, a short story that got stretched out into a novel.

In short, we have a book all of potential, nothing in execution. I mean:

In all the time I have known her …

is a phrase Richard applies to his mother. In all the time he has known his mother? Do people in New York really talk like that? It’s a phrase used for an acquaintance, not a blood relative you’ve been with since birth.

In any case, Joan, the mother, gets into the art world by mimicking the style of another artist. This book mimicks, and badly, The Goldfinch, even though I know that it can’t really be doing that at all. But, read a book about the cynical art world, that cynicism is going to leach out of me into my review I suppose.

The author hung out with DFW, so I love him for that. I think his later writings will be a treat, but this is just too sticky and lumpy to really want to have a go on.

The Art Fair by David Lipsky was re-released on sale August 26, 2014.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Do genre writers think they are genre writers? If you write mystery or crime novels, do you think of yourself as a mystery or crime writer? Or just a writer? Do you consider what you write as literature or entertainment? Both? Neither? An unholy union? What did Val McDermid hope to accomplish with The Skeleton Road? A mystery novel that had some sprinklings of literariness? Or a literary novel that also had a mystery edge? Or just a book she wanted to write, so she sat down and did it? One shouldn’t just throw in the Balkan conflict of the 1990s, which is the underlying structure of this book, without serious thought. So which is it.

Well, The Skeleton Road has all the trappings of a contemporary mystery novel — mysterious first chapter, cliff-hanger chapter endings, jumping between multiple characters, all with something to hide. As each character is introduced, the narrative stops so we can get a full-on physical description (height, weight, hair style, fashion sense, glasses frames, colour of underwear, etc.). People are conveniently, but unremarkabled-upon-ably, bisexual, to add that sexual dimension.

But then, still, the Balkans, which makes me think that McDermid really wanted this to be more than an airport thriller paperback novel. Except the characters are all defined by their relationships to each other, rather than any pool of depth within themselves. Except the characters are a bunch of standard mystery tropes (the weary academic, the sultry lesbian, the mystery man from behind the Soviet Bloc, the hard-as-nails cop, the dumb strong man) who spend most of their time talking at each other, so that we, the readers, can get at the information we need for this to be a mystery novel. Except that the idea of can you love someone even if, that would have been the central focus of a true literary novel, is shoved to the last fifty-or-so pages, with really no introspection on the parts of any of the characters; accordingly, the answer is yes. You can love someone even if. You don’t even have to think about it. BAM!

As for the mystery: predictable, but enjoyable enough that I wanted confirmation that I was right. It’s a decent mystery novel. It’s definitely not schlock, but it’s not high art either, even if it does try to reach up towards it at times. It’s an above average mystery novel. The writing is not outstandingly literary but neither is it like trying to read your thirteen-year-old cousin’s emo blog.

But the Balkans. I can’t feel comfortable with that choice, because I just don’t think McDermid’s run-of-the-mill mystery novel is deft enough, has enough tact to handle, to contain, such a brutal force without its inclusion being somewhat, unintentionally, disrespectful.

The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid went on sale December 2, 2014.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.