WOLF in WHITE VAN - A World of Ugly Magic that is Spellbinding

American novelist & musician, John Darnielle received a Nat'l Book Award Nom. for his 1st novel, WOLF in WHITE VAN.  This haunting & melancholy novel delves into the mind of Sean, a high school student whose obsession with survivalist video games blurs the boundaries between reality & insanity.  The perceptive writing draws you into Sean's world.  It begins as a mystery how & why Sean become so hideously disfigured.  Sean becomes a recluse after the mulitation of his face.  He creates a popular,  apocalyptic survivalist video game that quenches "the adolescent brain with its permanent thirst for blood."  Two teens fall under the video's spell with tragic results. Where does the blame lay for these games' addictions & its carnage?  In hindsight, Sean comprehends the allure, "people underestimate just how starved everybody is for some magic pathway."  I empathized with Sean's loneliness coping with his catastrophic injury.  I felt compelled to follow the chain of events which led to his pitiable state.  Darnielle's hypnotic writing conveyed the need to achieve the next outcome.  It's no mystery why this spellbinding story must be finished once you've started.  "Why is a tricky question."

Irish Author Deidre Madden's TIME PRESENT & TIME PAST

Award winning Irish novelist, Madden has crafted a luminescent novel pondering life's fleeting & grounding moments.  Fintan, 47 & a successful legal advisor is the matriach of an intriguing family of well drawn characters. He has a kind, doting wife, 2 older sons who bewilder him, a young daughter he loves beyond measure, an irascible mother, his mother's kindhearted sister & his own sister who resides  with their aunt.  The character's are beautifully drawn, yet for Fintan they remain enigmas. Fintan does categorize his family members as either hawkes or doves based on their aggressive or gentle dispositions.  Fintan, becomes fascinated with photography after sorting through old photos with his sister.  Fintan becomes drawn to the capacity photos have to "stop time" and "reconcile the past & the present."  Madden's elegaic prose is a reflection of life's swiftness, of "time racing on, racing like a palpitating heart."  Time is well spent reading this masterpiece.  It has the power to cause you to cherish  your memories and to be grateful & cognisant of living in the present.      

ONE PLUS ONE Ad hoc Families Improvising as Best They Can

British author Jojo Moyes' novel "One Plus One" takes many unexpected twists for the strewn together Thomas family, spearheaded by single, working class mom, Jess, her math prodigy daughter Tanzi from estranged husband, Marty & Nicky, Marty's son from a former relationship.  Jess became pregnant with her daughter while in high school.  She's determined to provide a loving, stable home for her daughter.   Life rarely follows a smooth path.  Obstacles abound making life's journey arduous & unpredictable.  Marty proves to be a major screw-up & soons abandon Jess & Tanzi but not before leaving Jess with his son Nicky.  Tanzi is 2,  Nicky 8, when he 1st comes to live with them. Tanzi ask's Nicky what their family relationship is, he quips "we're a family of losers."  Tanzi is a math "geek" oblivious to her social pariah status.  Nicky is all too aware of his outcast status.  He is a relentless target of vicious beatings from bullies.  Meanwhile, unflappable Jess, is working 2 jobs; barely scraping by & with barely enough time to spend with "both her children."  The love connecting Jess, Tanzi, Nicky & Norman, their wolf size lunk of a dog is endearing & resilient.  Today's families are in constant flux.  Jess is the responsible/caring parent who holds their family together.  She provides unqualified love and moral fortitude.  Jess tells Nicky & Tanzi "I've learned it's best to be honest & stand-up & follow the compass."  Their paths cross with Ed, a decent kind man except for the fact he's under investigation for insider trading.  A hilarious romp ensues in Ed's van with Jess, Nicky, Tanzi & Norman.  This joyride of a novel does not so much pontificate "to do the right thing," as it speaks to fallibility, kindness to others & the indefatigable human spirit.

A Sense of the World, bio of pioneering explorer James Holman; Sightless & Fearless

A SENSE of the WORLD is the remarkable life & travels of James Holman.  Holman (b. Britain 1786) is the 1st blind person to span the globe to every inhabited continent.  His life appears incredulous,  sightless, intermittently crippled, he traversed the seas & foreign lands independantly.  Jason Roberts (b. Amer.) is the author of A SENSE of the WORLD, which earned a Nat'l Book Award nom.  By any account, his travels & struggles should lend themselves to a riveting tale of adventure & discovery.  Alas, I was anchored down by the minutia attached to his feckless plans & wrangled means for maneuvering himself.  His impressive exploits were downplayed.  Ensued blindness was stigmatized.  The vast blind population survived as mendicants. "He was expected to do nothing but sit quietly for the remainder of his life."  Taking to the seas appeared far more appealing the young impoverished seaman rendered restless with few options.  He seemed more resourceful than courageous; an opportunist willing to travel alone relying on assistance from strangers.  I was put off by Roberts' assumptions of how blind people are perceived.  "The notion is that they spend their lives in that uncertain, unsettling state."  Roberts contends his book "documents not just a profoundly inspiring figure, but one of history's most richly lived lives."  I enjoyed the historical context during the time of Holman's travels.  The skirmishes at sea that continued to plaque Americans after the Amer. Revolution.  The British continued to abduct sailors from American vessels.  His Majesty did not acknowledge his subjects the right to revoke their British citizenship.  The barbaric medical treatments of the day were also eye opening; lancings to the eyes, leeching, scolding of skin & blood letting.  Holman relied on observations from others to record his encounters he had published with some success from 1819-1832.  I recommend skimming over A SENSE of the WORLD & glancing at Holman's own writings.      

COLOMBIAN author Juan Vasquez's "The Sound of Things Falling" Resonates

The seductive & eloquent novel by Vasquez (b. Columbia 1973) is set in Bogota during the bloody drug cartel years of the 1980's.  Drug lord Pablo Escobar reigned terror on the streets of Bogota.  People lived in daily fear of  indiscriminate shootings.  Escobar became incredibly wealthy & notorious from drug smuggling & murder.  Each generation has its defining historic events.  Vasquez somnolent prose lends a dreamlike quality to the cataclysmic, life altering events during the Medellin cartel.  The novel is devotes itself to the damaging exercise of remembering.  Antonio, a young Univ. professor befriends the elderly Ricardo & their lives intertwine briefly.  Ricardo is released after serving a long jail term for flying cocaine into the U.S.  Ricardo is killed in a drive by shooting alongside Antonio who is left physically & emotionally scarred.  Ricardo was eagerly awaintg the arrival of his estranged American wife after their lengthy separation, hopeful of a reconciliation.  Antonio obtains the cassette belonged to Ricardo containing the recording of the black box from the doomed flight with Ricardo's wife on board. The book's title refers to "the sounds of live being extinguished, the sound of things falling from on high."  Recorded messages from those trapped in the Twin Towers to their loved ones are tragic & deeply personally deserving of our acknowledgement & respect.  Vasquez quotes an  Aurelio Artoro poem written in 1929, "Unblinking, I watched it collapse and fall like a rose petal under a hoof.  Walls fell over the beloved voices... toppling like a city collapsing in screams."  This unflinching & poignant novel cautions: "There is no more destructive mania than the speculation over roads not taken." Take time to read Vasquez's award winning novel "The Sound of Things Falling."  It resonates deeply with sorrow, wisdom & beauty.

P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberly- Pitiful Plagarism

P.D. James is a British author famous for her mystery & crime solving novels.  James has received numerous Silver Dagger Awards for her mysteries.  She is an Offficer of the Order of the British Empire and Life Peer in the House of Lords since 1991.  As an American, I've surmised these honors give entitlement to plagiarize & diminish the great works of a truly great British author, Jane Austen.  I am unabashedly a Austen fan and perhaps this makes me disdainful of the improvised future between Mr. & Mrs. Darcy which is mired in a murky, melodramatic murder mystery.  Of course, the culprit appears to be Mr. Wickham who married Elizabeth's sister Lydia but remains barred from Pemberly.  Lydia turns up on a stormy night at Pemberly in hysteria.  Lydia maniacally insists Darcy & the Colonel  search the grounds of the estate for her husband whom she fears has been killed.  Wickham is discovered kneeling over the bloody body of his companion Denny, blaming himself for his friend's death.  A trial ensues with Wickham as the defendant.   The outcome for Wickham looks as bleak as the dark, wintery countryside.   Alas, there are plenty of warming fires along with a burning love between Elizabeth & her husband Fitzwilliam Darcy;his having married beneath his social class.  Therein lies the strength of the novel, social stratas, decorum and the daily "Downton Abbey" lifestyle for both the aristocracy & the servants.  The legal conventions of the time are also of interest. But, DEATH COMES to PEMBERLY is a flagrant rip-off of Austen's beloved characters in a who done it which does nothing for me.

Korean author Change-rae Lee, On Such A Full Sea

On SUCH a FULL SEA is a vast pool of story telling.  This is not necessarily praise for Korean author Change-rae Lee who has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  The genre of FULL SEA is futuristic apocalyptic sic-fi combined with a haunting love story, a strong, independent heroine and a plethora of sinister people & plot twists.  The story is set in the not too distant future in a strange new world with hierarchies as in Orwell's ANIMAL FARM & oppressive mandates similar to Huxley's 1984.  The closet comparison is McCarthy's The ROAD where self-preservation is a daily peril with the terrifying unknown around every bend.  Change-rae Lee uses an unidentified narrator from her community "B-Morph" to tell the tale of young Fan who abandons the safety of "B-Morph" where she is sheltered from the apocalyptic chaos outside their borders.  There is an omnipresent fear of being ostracized and forced out to survive (highly unlikely) on her own.  Fan chooses to leave the mind-numbing life in "B-Morph" to find her lover Reg (& father of her unborn child.)  Reg simply vanished after having been called to meet with the Charters (the privileged class.)  We follow Fan's unpredictable & disturbing odyssey as she searches for Reg & an older brother.  Lee's writers gifts casts a fetching tale that lures the reader into caring for our heroine.  However, once caught in Lee's net, I felt I was  gasping for air.  On Such a Full Sea has a mesmerizing power but its appeal lies for those who find a dystopia exciting rather than disturbing.