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.

This book has a very long title. Also, it didn’t answer the most persistent rumors (stuff like where Jimmy Hoffa ended up). At least not in my opinion.

It’s a cute book of science questions with answers and cute drawings. Each question gets a couple hundred words devoted to it, taking about four or five pages each with the drawings. There’s nothing too deep (we aren’t explaining string theory here or anything like that). It took me about forty-five minutes to read the whole thing, spread out over two days. I’m not one hundred percent clear who the audience for this book is supposed, having never listened (or really known about) the AsapSCIENCE blog/youtube channel/whatever. A lot of the questions seem to be ones my six year old would ask (Can sneezing pop your eyeballs out? Why do we itch? Where does all the light go when you turn off the lights?) but then there are others that really aren’t kid based (The science of morning wood), so maybe the audience is meant to be teenagers? Adults with a recreational interest in science? It struck me like a book to leave out in a waiting area because everything is chicken-nugget sized.

I don’t know if I learned anything from the book though. But then again, I have a pretty solid natural science background 😉

AsapSCIENCE … by Mitchell Moffit and Greg Brown went on sale March 17, 2015.

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

I have a real soft spot for middle-grade novels. Middle grade books are the books where you see readers actually coming into their own. There’s no more of the forced level reading like in grades one and two. It’s all the kids’ choice. And no one ever became a reader because they read War and Peace or Wuthering Heights. They became readers after reading The Phantom Tollbooth and Matilda. So, ignoring the suggestion of “middle grade” inherent in the title, I’ve been reading them to Tesfa since she was four because I don’t have the patience for picture books, which seems strange considering a picture book takes three minutes to read and to read a middle-grade novel aloud takes four or five hours. I like plot because, unlike, Alice, I do see the use of reading a story with no pictures in it. Hopefully I am forcing encouraging Tesfa to appreciate plot too.

So I read The Swallow: A Ghost Story aloud to Tesfa this week. It’s full of lots of little short chapters, with most chapters divided into two sub-chapters, one from each of the protagonists’ perspectives. It was Tesfa’s first experience with a book with more than one narrator and I had to explain that type of story-telling after the first chapter. But she caught on, although every now and then she would ask me to clarify whether Rose or Polly was telling the story at that point. The book has a cute Toronto setting in the 1960s, which made me think of my mum, who grew up in Toronto in the 1960s. I don’t know if it was a book really intended for reading out loud, since sometimes the sentences were repetitive when one said them (i.e. falling into step beside me as we went down the steps, emphasis mine) but if Tesfa had been old enough to read the story quietly to herself, I doubt she would have noticed. The twist at the end surprised Tesfa, but let’s just say that if you’re my age and have seen a certain movie (clicking on the link counts a spoiler), then the reveal wasn’t as shocking as it was for my six year old.

But, what is the point of reading a middle-grade novel to a middle-grade kid without getting her opinion on it? So yesterday, when we finished, I asked Tesfa a few questions and got her to tell me her thoughts on The Swallow: A Ghost Story. There are spoilers in the answers to her questions, so stop reading here if you don’t want to find out some of the plot.

What was the book about? Polly and Rose. Two girls become friends. Polly thinks Rose is the ghost at first. But Polly is actually the ghost!

Who do you think would like the book? Not Geoff! (Tesfa’s dad, who doesn’t like scary stories) People who like scary stories.

Was the book really scary? Not too scary.

What age is this book good for? Six or seven, like me.

Favourite character? Rose, because she could see ghosts.

Did you like the ending? I liked the whole story as it was.

Do you think there will be a sequel? I don’t know.

From one to five stars, how would you rank this book? One hundred stars, no one thousand!

So, it was a good book? YES!

The Swallow: A Ghost Story by Charis Cotter went on sale September 9, 2014.

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

Road trip!

1988: I Want to Talk with the World is, as one might guess by the previous sentence, is about a road trip. Our narrator is driving across China to pick up his friend from prison. A sex-worker comes along for the ride. He thinks about his childhood. For example, he was an eye-exercise monitor in school and if there was ever any doubt that I know so little about China it is completely encompassed in the fact that their are daily eye-exercises with monitors to ensure they are being done correctly. Also, this quote from 1988: Since leaving home, I’ve seen all sorts of strange shubbery. I don’t even know what to do with that thought.

But road trips are road trips. They stop for snacks. They get in a traffic jam. They sleep at run-down motels. The rhythm of the road trip, the random thoughts and the philosophising-as-the-scenery-rolls-past, it’s all there. The universality of the roadtrip. Although, I really wish that our narrator wasn’t a john, even if he tries to paint himself as a valiant one (i.e. if he opens the door to a sex-worker, he pays her for her services regardless of whether he thinks her to be attractive or not. Um, yeah, okay.), but then he ends up kind of adorably buffoonish. I mean, it’s hard not to root for someone who ends up tossing cremated ashes into the wind and having them blow back all over him, because, basically that’s the sort of thing that would happen to me.

The prose and story veers wildly. There are trite sentiments (That nasty thing called time was passing). There are cute and affecting memories, like the story about all the kids playing marbles. There are completely ridiculous and useless coincidences (although I couldn’t help thinking of some quote I read somewhere by someone who I don’t remember basically saying that what isn’t surprising in life is coincidences, it’s how few there are given the huge number of possibilities. Maybe it was some physicist or a self-help author?). There are his memories of him trying to find his first love before he even knew her. Still, it’s really hard to know what to expect and whether some of the randomness (seriously, shrubbery?) has more to do with cultural divides or translation.

The narrator’s a rake, but he’s rather endearing. That’s the main thing I took away from this.

1988: I Want to Talk with the World by Han Han went on sale January 13, 2015.

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

Near the beginning of this book, our narrator corrects a non-native-English speaker’s English (prolixity to proximity). It’s one of the few times she (the narrator) does something, rather than simply being a receptacle for the other character’s life-stories and foibles, because this is what the narrator is in this story: an urn that all the other characters, and for such a short novel, they are legion, pour themselves into. But back to the correcting of English — it’s sort of a jackass thing to do to a complete stranger who is speaking to you in a language not his own, isn’t it? Plus, since she’s able to correct him, she understood what he meant when he said it incorrectly, so why did she do it? The novel ends with her correcting his English again. I don’t know why. I think if I did know why, maybe I would understand this book better.

Outline is like a big nineteenth century pastoral novel, except for it being twenty-first century and short and set mainly in urban Athens. But it has that feeling of weightiness and heft and importance and description. Like a nineteenth century novel, especially say a melodrama like The Woman in White or The Wanderer, a sense of disbelief is required (that or the Greek education system is just churning out wonderfully adept English speakers, which it may be). Like a big nineteenth century novel, I get the impression that if I had at least a Masters in English, I would have gotten a lot more out of it than I did. I enjoyed it. I liked reading the stories of the people baring their lives to our narrator. But I just don’t know. Am I jealous that our narrator has that sort of aura or personality or welcoming face that lets others unburden themselves to her, or do I simply not believe it? Is this even a novel? It’s like a theory of a novel, or a theory of characterization, or a theory of something. Not much happens outside the strangers’ unprompted sharing. But, as I said, I think English lit people will like it. I think people who don’t like theory will hate it. How flummoxed someone would be if he were given this book and told to make a Michael Bay-esque movie of it. That thought made me laugh out loud. Others may have looked at me.

What happens in this book: nothing. But I gave it four of five stars anyway.

Outline by Rachel Cusk went on sale September 4, 2014.

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

I really loathe the word resplendent. The Lotus and the Storm uses resplendent three times. That may be enough to tell you what I thought of the book.

There are spoilers below. Proceed warily.

The Lotus and the Storm is essentially the mirror of The Sympathizer, which I read a few months ago (also a Netgalley copy). Whereas The Sympathizer gave us the Viet-cong mole perspective, The Lotus and the Storm gives us the South Vietnamese military perspective. Okay. So we’re in and out of Vietnam, future in Virginia, back and forth. Typical immigrant/war narrative.

For me, this book had problems: Characters in the narrative seem to be talking to someone who isn’t there (one of my notes-in-the-margins is Who is he talking to?), giving lengthy explanations about background that they would already know themselves and would have no need to elaborate on for themselves. A letter detailing a death just so happens to have a lengthy and fortuitous amount of information required to advance the plot. A child uses the term “subcutaneous tissue” (although, growing up in a war zone, this might enter common parlance out of necessity). Someone is secretly a spy — revealed in as Dramatic A Way as possible.

So a whole suspension of disbelief is required from the reader throughout the entire novel. I think a lot of this story is based on the truth, but I don’t believe the story. If it’s true, if these things happened, but is written in such a way that obscures the truth, I think that’s a problem.

And the big problem (and a big spoiler here): The narrative jumps between different characters points-of-view. About two-thirds in, we are introduced to a new narrative voice, as we find out that one of the main characters has multiple personalities, and our additional narrator is one of these personalities!

Other people loved this book, the ostentatious writing style, the twists, the emotional wrenching. I did not. For me, it was a slog.

The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao went on sale August 14, 2014.

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

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, 88% done Day’s End by H. E. Bates (the preciseness of the percent via my kobo), I thought of an adjective that described the book perfectly. I leaned over towards my kobo, but then thought By the time I turn it on the kobo …. Then I kind of hit around to see if there was a pencil. There wasn’t. Now I don’t remember what the adjective was. I think it begin with an S.

This haziness with my adjectives actually ties back to the book. I’m pretty hazy on Day’s End. The book isn’t long, and it’s full of hodge-podge English pastoral where your mind goes to cozy country cottages with pink and lilac bushes out front and thatched roofs and rolling hills and then thinking of all these things, the stories themselves kind of fade away. Even calling them stories is rather generous; most are scenes detailing the small agonies of the underclass. A waitress being stood up on a date, a shepherd searches out a doctor to attend to his pregnant wife, a man with disabilities is mocked by children in church. It’s like a Vanitas painting (I had to look up the term): at first glance everything is bountiful and lively, but a second glance and it’s really a painting of fruit rotting and flowers drooping. Transient.

I’m not sure exactly why Day’s End‘s stories are collected together just now. The little blurb at the start of the book tells me that Bates died in 1974, so maybe the older stories have reached the public domain to be reissued perhaps? There’s no information as to when most of the stories were written, but a note is made that some come from the 1920s and 1930s. They don’t feel, in style, like the 1920s though, the way, for example, listening to Gershwin feels like the 1920s and 1930s. Maybe because there’s no slang. Maybe because adjectives and adverbs are used judiciously. Maybe because there’s a core of universality that runs through the stories. But even that can’t overcome the haziness. The stories feel like waves washing the seashore; they come and go and lulled me into drowsiness without making that much of an impression. The sea is still the sea. The sand is still the sand. Proust makes me feel that way too, so at least Bates is in good company.

These are stories for reading in a hammock on a lazy summer day.

Day’s End by H. E. Bates went on sale May 14, 2015.

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

Yes, I am behind in my reviews. Waaaaaay behind. I’m trying to catch up. My goal is two reviews a week until the end of the summer, and then we’ll see whether I’m any better situated.

Is there currently a glut of seniors wandering off books right now? Granted, I can only think of three, including this one (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The 100 Year Old Man …), so glut might be a bit strong, but I can’t help thinking that we are currently obsessed with old people who simply get up and walk away, because, yes, in Etta and Otto and Russell and James, we have a senior, Etta, who gets up and walks away.

We’re in Canada, walking with Etta from Saskatchewan as she attempts to get to Halifax. She makes a coyote friend. The unrequited lover follows her. The husband waits. It’s three hundred pages but there is a lot of blank space. Negative space? Non-space? Amidst the blank lines, we have the beginning, a typical 1930s, 1940s prairie tale of one room schoolhouses and tractor accidents and dust and men going off to war and flat fields with red sunrises. It’s somewhat of a disservice to call this past-part a paint-by-numbers prairie novel, but it’s a paint-by-numbers prairie novel. Of course, that doesn’t mean the book isn’t genuinely affecting, but it’s sort of like a mild soap of a book. Unobjectionable. Less jaded people would use the word heartwarming.

Interspersed with then, the book has now, with Etta walking. She walks. I don’t know what else to say about that.

But the in-between is missing, obscured by the blank lines. There is the beginning, there is the end, but the middle? What happened between 1945 and now? Nothing Hooper felt worth noting as there is nary a mention of it. As I slide into middle age myself, I worry if that’s all I have to look forward to until I turn eighty? Just blankness, not even worth remembering? How sad.

There’s a metaphysical ending. Not a fan of those, but I know other people like the uncertainty, the non-requirement of closure. I think a lot of literary first novels, of which Etta and Otto and Russell and James is one, have endings like this. Maybe it’s writers still finding their way. I wished the ending was more solid and less ethereal though. And I wanted more about Owen, who was far more interesting than Otto ever was. Otto doesn’t even go after his wife. Sort of a lump.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper went on sale January 20, 2015.

I kind of received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, in that they approved my request after the title was archived, so I couldn’t actually download it. Instead, I took a copy out of the library. I emailed Netgalley to ask what was up with that, but they never replied, so I don’t know.

Ever since stumbling upon the Katamari comic book on Netgalley, I go through their comics section every few months to see if there’s anything else that’ll grab me. Last time I was browsing through, there was Unicorn on a Roll by Dana Simpson, a kids’ comic, but I thought, why not? I can read it to my kid. She likes comics. She likes unicorns. And I like stories with female protagonists that I can read to her. Besides, I think they had the first book in the Scholastic flyer so I figured it couldn’t be awful (although since it seems like 75% of the books lately have been Lego Star Wars Vs Chimera character dictionaries, so maybe I’m giving too much weight to being included in a Scholastic flyer).

In preparation (yes, I am lame enough that I prep for reading books), I got the first unicorn book out of the library. I read it to my kid and was fairly meh. Phoebe seemed like a run-of-the-mill Disney channel brat, whiny and self-entitled (the introduction said that this was supposed to make her real or relatable or something). It isn’t like I’m a fan of the bland Jack and Annie squeaky clean characters either, but something about Phoebe rubbed me the wrong way. Marigold (the unicorn) too. So with trepidation, we moved on to Unicorn on a Roll.

And…it wasn’t half bad. Maybe exposure to Phoebe and Marigold dulled my initial distaste, or maybe they are just less irritating this time round. Whereas the first book made me cringe, the second was enjoyable, even a bit cute in parts. I love the dad playing video games. Made me wish that we had a console (well, we do have a dusty PS2 whose controllers, the last time I played for five minutes, set off the arthritis in my knuckles so I haven’t played since).

Since this is marketed as a kids’ book, I asked my kid to give me a review. So if you’d rather read her (prompted) review than mine, here it is:

Q: What is the story about? It’s about a little girl and a unicorn.

Q: Tell me two things that you remember from the story: 1. The went to a unicorn party. 2. There was a play but the day of the play Phoebe was sick and couldn’t go.

Q: What are some adjectives that describe the book?: funny, colourful, interesting.

Q: Rate this book: Five out of five stars.

So there you have it.

Unicorn on a Roll by Dana Simpson went on sale May 26, 2015.

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