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Book Notices | Run by Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch, Run

Amazon   Blake Crouch's Run was originally self-published in 2011 and has now been re-released by Ballantine in 2024. (This publishing history unfortunately is not apparent in the description of the book on Amazon.) So it's an earlier novel and not the product of the writer that Crouch has become in the more than years since Run first appeared. Back then, while I enjoyed some of the author's books, my impression was that he was too focused on gore for my taste. I actually gave up reading him for a while because of this, and to my astonishment, when I looked again at what he was writing some years later, he was producing great novels like Recursion and Dark Matter. Anyway, Run is a product of that earlier time, and it is indeed a bit gory, but not as gory as some of his other early stuff. The book starts out slow, with a great deal of description about the burned-out towns and barren countryside through which our protagonist and his family are traveling as they try to survive a sort of murder plague. This opening part can seem endless, and maybe some of it could have been cut, but eventually the story takes off and the book becomes more interesting. And I'm willing to believe that maybe that less interesting stuff early on helps put readers in the right frame of mind to appreciate what Crouch's characters are going through. In short, this is definitely not one of Crouch's best books, but it's an okay read. Just don't abandon the author if you don't like this one, because his newer stuff is quite good.

Book Notices | Summer Frost by Blake Crouch / The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz / The Answer is No by Frederik Backman

Blake Crouch, Summer Frost

Amazon   Blake Crouch's Summer Frost is a an entertaining short read about a not-too-distant future in which artificial intelligence has the potential to become life, or at least to approximate it very closely. So what happens when an NPC in a video game strays from its programming? Well, Crouch has come up with a readable account of one potential outcome.

Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Sequel

Amazon   I read and enjoyed Jean Hanff Korelitz's book The Plot back in 2021 (my review), but by the time this sequel came along, I had to refresh my memory: A professor of writing steals a killer plot from a dead student to write his own bestseller, and trouble ensues because the plot wasn't all that fictional. And the bad guy in that book was...well, I had to be reminded of that too, but I won't give it away here. Okay, so the protagonist of The Sequel is—I'm trying hard here not to spoil the plot of either book—someone who's done a lot of bad things in the past and who racks up more of them in this book. This character is presented as a sort of Tom Ripley, the eponymous antihero of Patricia Highsmith's series that started with The Talented Mr. Ripley: Tom is a complex character who winds up having to commit a number of murders, but usually for understandable reasons. Despite disapproving of his behavior, readers are invested enough to root for him and worry that he may not get away with it. So Korelitz sets out to create her own Tom Ripley. (In fact, that professor from the first book taught writing at Ripley College.) Unfortunately, it just didn't work for me. Unlike Tom, Korelitz's protagonist is unlikable and unsympathetic and, for a supposedly clever criminal, makes a lot of stupid mistakes. Nor is the book suspenseful. The story just rolls forward from one unlikely scenario to another without ever creating any buildup of tension, at least for me. Not the worst book in the world by any means, but only a so-so sequel after The Plot, which seemed for a time to be a darling of the book world.

Frederk Backman, The Answer is No

Amazon   This Amazon Original Story by Frederik Backman is about a happy loner named Lucas who just wants to continue to live his peaceful, solitary existence. Unfortunately, he is dragged into the politics of his apartment building by a series of unrealistically quirky characters. The plot is unrealistic too, and kind of stupid, and just in general the whole thing is trying too hard to be cute. It wound up just being cloying and irritating. Imagine Gilmore Girls in book form but even more annoying.

Book Notices | Twisted Lives by Tim Tigner / 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Tim Tigner, Twisted Lives

Amazon   Tim Tigner's latest thriller tells the story of a federal air marshall, Felix Sparks, whose career and family life are upended after an incident on a plane with an entitled Chinese princeling. Sparks is framed for murder so convincingly that he feels it's imperative to avoid arrest in order to find the real killer himself. The plot sometimes strains credibility, and events sometimes feel too rushed. Also, a scene or two in which great emotions are expressed didn't ring true to me. But it's nonetheless an exciting page-turner that I don't hesitate to recommend if that's the sort of book you're in the mood for. The real surprise is that this crazy plot is apparently based on something that happened to the author (presumably not in every detail), a story told in his book What New Hell Next?: One Thriller Writer's Personal Horror Story, which I have yet to read.

Joe Hill, 20th Century Ghosts

Amazon   I read Joe Hill's Kindle short "The Ushers" one night recently just before bed. It hit exactly the right spot: a good length, nothing too serious, kept me off my phone so I could fall asleep at a reasonable time. The experience was very much like reading an episode of The Twilight Zone. And because that was such a pleasant experience, I ordered the author's 20th Century Ghosts, a collection of short stories first published in 2005. This too hit the spot. The edition I read contains 15 main stories plus another hidden in the Acknowledgments. I enjoyed some of the stories more than others, of course, and I'll remember some more than others. Some qualify as horror and some do not, but all of them depict a world where things aren't quite right—a boy wakes up as an insect in "You Will Hear the Locust Sing," another builds creepy cardboard forts in "Voluntary Committal," an old man runs a museum in which the last breaths of the dead are collected in bottles. "The Black Phone," which was made into a movie a couple years ago, and "Abraham's Boys" are among the most memorable of the stories, in my opinion. And I'll certainly remember "Best New Horror"—in fact I'd like to forget it!—because it totally creeped me out.

Handler, Daniel: And Then? And Then? What Else?

  Amazon  

In his newly released memoir—the title of which is from a poem by Charles Baudelaire (to whom, yes, the author’s Baudelaire orphans are an homage)—Daniel Handler writes about his “canon,” the words and music and art and incidents that have taken up space in his head over the years. He is evidently fascinated by the juxtaposition of things that don't ostensibly fit together, how they bump along beside each other, in his case waiting for their chance to be expressed in his writing. I like this idea a lot. Each of us has a unique collection of such sticky bits—in my case, for example, deep-cut Harry Chapin lyrics alongside an explanation for subliminal messaging (name that Columbo), bouncing next to this line from the novel Hannibal, which for 23 years now has seemed to me a perfect description of the amorphous but pregnant state of one’s mind prior to an aha moment:

“Dr. Lecter was well aware that all the elements of epiphany were present in the policeman's head, bouncing at random with the million other things he knew.”

That bouncing around of bits sounds similar to what Handler writes about, which may be why it’s popped into my head just now.

Handler’s prose in this book feels like it’s replicating the experience of having a head full of flotsam. You’re carried off in each chapter to swirl around in a slurry of unexpectedly juxtaposed ideas and song lyrics and memories. You could almost believe that there's no plan to it—you're floating downriver, just going where it leads, and the author’s just chatting—but of course there's a plan, because ultimately the writing hangs together perfectly, making sense of the slurry.

In his final chapter (the 13th, of course) Handler writes more about this canon and the reason we read, and I find it kind of beautiful:

“The reason we read—the reason you’re reading this book—is because some other book enchanted you, earlier on, and before that another, and before that another. This is the real literary canon, not some hegemonic pantheon, adapted and debated over time. We each have one, a literary canon, and we make it ourselves, not out of what is respectable or prestigious or prominent or lasting or moral or even well-made. We make it out of enthusiasm, out of what we love.”

Maybe that will inspire you to read the book. If not that, then perhaps this bit of wisdom will, which sounds like it might have come from Lemony Snicket rather than his representative: “Every café has a tragic flaw….”

Anyway, it should be clear that I've enjoyed this book. I loved Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events—the origins of which we read about here, and which I read aloud to my older daughter back in the day. And I loved The Basic Eight—which I hadn't realized was Handler’s first novel, and which he initially had trouble publishing, he says. I now also love this memoir.

Book notices: Your Inner Hedgehog by Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith, Your Inner Hedgehog

Amazon   Your Inner Hedgehog is the fifth book in Alexander McCall Smith’s delightful series focusing on Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, renowned author of the masterwork Portuguese Irregular Verbs and senior scholar at the Institute of Romance Philology in Regensburg, Germany. As usual, the story focuses on the small irritations and points of pride that motivate von Igelfeld and his colleagues. McCall Smith helpfully begins the book with a breakdown of the characters who populate the Institute. Among them is a relative newcomer, Dr. Hilda Schreiber-Ziegler, deputy librarian under the tedious head librarian, Herr Huber. The first sign of trouble is when Dr. Schreiber-Ziegler fails to recognize the accepted protocols surrounding access to the Institute’s Senior Coffee Room—the rarefied air of which place is not for the likes of mere deputy librarians. The resulting clash sees von Igelfeld and his compatriots fighting against progressives who would throw open the coffee room doors, et alia, and generally disrupt the Institute’s “current way of doing things.” This installment in the series was published in 2021, a full ten years after book four (Unusual Uses for Olive Oil) appeared. (The first three installments were originally all published in 2003.) This fifth novel differs from the others in that it tells a single story, while the previous books are collections of related stories. It's a shame there aren't more von Igelfeld books, but I suppose McCall Smith has his hands full with the numerous other series he keeps updated. These are favorites, though.

Book Notices | The Armor of Light by Ken Follett

Ken Follett, The Armor of Light

Amazon   The Armor of Light is the fifth novel in Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series, which started with the publication of Pillars of the Earth in 1989. The book spans about thirty years in the history of Kingsbridge, from 1792 to 1824, and focuses on the city's cloth trade—its millworkers and clothiers and the issues of the day that impacted their lives: the adoption of labor-saving machines, the rise of Luddism, anti-union policies, a corrupt justice system, press gangs, and the Napoleonic wars. As usual with Follett's novels, the cast of characters includes strong female leads and men who abuse their powerful positions, and good people are abused but ultimately find true love. Also par for the course is that the book is—for the most part—extremely readable. But there's a big chunk in the last 20% of the novel that could have been edited down. Follett describes the war against Napoleon in excessive detail, using his characters' participation in events as an excuse to write history rather than allowing the history to form the backdrop of the characters' lives. It also struck me as implausible that so many of the book's main characters would find themselves overseas and involved in the major events of the day while also by chance often finding one another amidst the chaos of military actions. So a good read, but with that caveat.

Book Notices | In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

Amazon   I'm late to the party reading Truman Capote's true crime classic In Cold Blood. Most people are probably familiar with the basics of the story, either from the book itself or from the film that was made of it (which I've not yet seen): In 1959, four members of the Clutter family were murdered in their farmhouse in Holcomb, Kansas, a crime that initially baffled investigators. Capote traveled to Holcomb (with his friend Harper Lee) to interview the townspeople and investigators and write about the case. His book, which was published in 1966, covers the events that preceded the murders, the crime itself, the investigation and trial, and the imprisonment and execution of the culprits. It ends with a lovely and surprisingly moving epilogue, which made me realize that the author had succeeded in depicting the Clutters as real people whose deaths can still feel tragic 65 years later. Capote's prose is at times beautiful, particularly at the beginning of the book when he is describing the remote Kansas landscape that forms the backdrop of the story. But elsewhere too, I was struck by the quality of the prose. Reading his account, I got a sense of Capote being on the scene in the aftermath of the murders, talking to people and soaking in the feel of the place, and yet he never explicitly inserts himself into the narrative. (After finishing the book, I was curious about the circumstances of its composition and so read this 1966 interview of Capote by George Plimpton. It's an interesting read, and it's very clear from it that Capote was a very intelligent and thoughtful writer.) I've seen In Cold Blood described as frightening. I may just be numb—and I do think I lack imagination when I'm reading, so that the film version of this story might have a different effect on me—but I didn't think it frightening in the least. Sad, tragic, unnecessary, all that: I can certainly regret the evil or lack of humanity or wretchedness of the human condition that propelled the two killers toward Kansas and the utterly unnecessary, unprovoked murders they committed there. But no, I wouldn't classify the book as a scary read.

Book Notices | Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris

Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion

Amazon   I've lived most of my life in or around New Haven, Connecticut, which means that the names Dixwell, Whalley, and Goffe are etched in my brain (alongside the locations of the best pizza places). They're the names of three main thoroughfares linking downtown New Haven with its suburbs. I've always been aware that the streets were named after the three regicides who fled here from England and hung out for a time in Judges Cave on West Rock. But that's about all I knew. Robert Harris's fictionalized account of the regicides—mostly Whalley and Goffe, with a smattering of Dixwell—follows their years on the run in New England and the efforts made to catch them. Now, a lot of Harris's story is made up. There's only so much that is known about what the regicides were up to, and the author had to fill in some blanks. So you can't allow the novelized account to settle as fact in your brain (which may be easier said than done). After finishing the book I read the following summary of events to help in that regard: https://www.ctexplored.org/the-legend-of-dixwell-whalley-goffe/. Although one has to be careful not to accept the whole story as gospel, I found Act of Oblivion a really interesting read, although honestly somewhat depressing: So many years passed in hiding—away from family, staring at attic ceilings—seems pretty dismal. But perhaps the reality wasn't as miserable as portrayed here. I'm happy to have read this one!