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March 27, 2014 · 9:45 am

Review: Transmetropolitan (all)

Transmetropolitan V. 1-10Transmetropolitan V. 1-10 by Warren Ellis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Transmetropolitan is a comic book, and anyone remotely interested in dystopias needs to immediately stop what she is doing, go buy all these books, and read them before continuing with life. Yes, it’s that good.

This is a review for ALL 10 collected volumes. I’m going to write the review in the style of the comics, so if you’re ridiculously sensitive to explicit language, you’d better stop reading now. (But it’s really your loss.)

To say Spider Jerusalem is a muckraking journalist is to put it lightly. No–Spider does not just rake muck; he wallows in it while tripping on sixteen kinds of heroine pumped directly into his veins through the City’s sewers while he ejaculates into the ensuing muck. He is dirty, foul, horrible–and the only goddamn person left in the entire City who has the balls to take on the corrupt government and the injustices of a city of the future.

He is a despicable, low-down uncaring asshole because he cares too much to let the city (and the country) destroy itself through ignorance and petty distractions.

So: Transmetropolitan follows journalist Spider Jerusalem as he gets reacquainted with the City, a (not far enough) far-future metropolis swarming with all the problems of real cities, if the problems were turned to 11 and injected with a form of swarming AIDS. In the style of many brilliant authors before him, Ellis is working with hyper-exaggerated features of the real world to show us the many problems with our own–and it’s unnerving.

First, be impressed with the level of deranged thought Ellis has put into his City: of course there is porn for children! And people commonly eat the meat of endangered animals–or heck, try out some food from Long Pig (don’t worry, they’re only clones!). “Maker” technology allows you to create pretty much anything at home, and journalists sometimes employ “source gas” to record info from unwitting sources while still managing to make it past security. While you’re enjoying the future, make sure you get one of the many DNA splices–try the one that allows you to take massive doses of drugs and alcohol without dying. Or maybe you’re totally past the human experience–why not join the Transients and splice with alien DNA? Or really embrace the cloud and become nothing more than a bunch of floating molecules. Groovy.

It’s amazing, and immersive, and simultaneously plausible and disgustingly far-fetched.

Much like Spider Jerusalem. It’s like the Deadpool of journalists, seemingly throwing normal tactics out the window. But really, he’s just good. In fact, I know journalists like him. Spider is, if anything, alarmingly realistic. He’s devoted in a time when many reporters seem like shills. He’s dogged and willing to take risks. He has a gift for it, something that can’t really be taught and must come from some burning fuel within. He’s addicted to the thrill of the chase–and sometimes that puts people he talks to in the line of danger. But mostly, that makes people want to open up to him. Because he loves them, even while he hates them to the core.

In other words, Spider Jerusalem is my hero. I want to give Warren Ellis a hug for writing something so transgressive, so daring and truly sickening, and I want to make this series required reading for EVERYONE. The world would be better for it if more people paid as much attention to goings-on as Spider does.

Go buy these books. You may find it hard to read them sometimes, but don’t you dare fucking stop. You need to take your medicine, world.

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March 20, 2014 · 9:23 am

Review: MaddAddam

MaddAddam (MaddAddam Trilogy, #3)MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Margaret Atwood clearly enjoyed writing the conclusion to her most recent post-apocalyptic trilogy. Her enthusiasm is sometimes palpable. There are mini-jokes and obscure references, and at times you can almost hear her snort with amusement at a turn of phrase. It’s a fascinating conclusion to a possible future, but the story is uneven and ends with a fizzle rather than a bang. (Perhaps that’s the way a story about “life finding a way” should end, however.)

MaddAddam completes the story begun with Oryx and Crake and continued with The Year of the Flood. The post-human creatures known as the Crakers are developing in ways their mad-scientist creator hadn’t anticipated, but they are still fundamentally helpless against hostility and don’t truly comprehend fear. The group of former cult members known as the God’s Gardeners and the big-brained MaddAddam scientists who helped create the Crakers are the only (known) humans left: except for the delirious Jimmy and two less-than-human Painballers, men who survived a man-eat-man prison game and now feel nothing but a need for violence.

The story mostly follows Toby–the ultra-practical former God’s Gardener to whom the Crakers gravitate–and Zeb, the man who bridged the gap between the God’s Gardeners and the MaddAddamites. Frustratingly, even though this feels like it truly ought to be Toby’s story outright, much of the interesting action is left to Zeb. The reader finally understands (most of) what happened with Jimmy and Crake and God’s Gardener leader Adam One.

It turns out that the day-to-day mechanics of survival are pretty mundane, and though that is the part o the story left for Toby to recount, there’s just not a lot that hasn’t already been covered. Besides, unlike Jimmy/Snowman in “Oryx and Crake,” Toby and Zeb are pretty good at basic survival. Though it isn’t glamorous, the basic needs are met. That leaves Toby with little to actually tell the reader.

Zeb, on the other hand, turns out to be a bountiful mine of information, as he (beyond believability) was present for just about every critical juncture in the Story of How The World Bit It. Zeb is not just Adam One’s right-hand man; he’s his brother. From their twisted abusive childhoods up through the discovery of super-genius Glenn/Crake and the founding of the God’s Gardeners cult, Zeb knows everything interesting, and he recounts his life story to Toby as they slowly allow themselves to fall in love.

For an otherwise intense and compelling story, the touches of romance between the two come off as cloying and unnecessary. Toby frets over “does he love me or not” more than I cared for. Frankly, it seemed a bit unlike her–though of course that could be the point. It felt like the romance was not there because it developed naturally, but because Toby needed something else to talk/think about beyond “are we going to survive today?” (Personally, survival alone would have been enough reason for me to read more.)

The best parts are undoubtedly when Toby recounts watered-down versions of Zeb’s stories to the incredulous and trusting but incredibly naive Crakers. Here we see one way myths could have been founded: trying to understand something that is beyond our scope. These parts are hilarious and frustrating and awe-inspiring all at the same time.

(Some spoilers below)
Personally, I’m frustrated with the way historically feminist writer Margaret Atwood handled the female characters. Sometimes it seems like Toby is the only useful female in the whole story, and that, apparently, is only because she is post-menopausal and otherwise, apparently, useless. Rebecca, who–while certainly a secondary character–at least had a distinct personality in “The Year of the Flood,” was reduced to scenery. Ren and Amanda are vehicles for other peoples’ trauma; they were not only assaulted by the Painballers, but raped by the Crakers, in a confusing scene that is later referred to only as a “cultural misunderstanding.” I didn’t even BELIEVE a rape had actually happened until Amanda turned up pregnant; some clearer, less vague, writing at that pivotal scene would have been helpful. And then, in a final affront, when it comes to the critical battle, ALL the women–except for Toby, who as we said “did not count”–are excluded because of concerns over their well-being. It is ridiculous, to me, that so many would have spent their time getting pregnant, and all at roughly the same time.

And after the final battle, the story just…sort of stops. Toby loses all her voice, and the story shifts over to one of the Crakers, a character who grows from a boy to a man during the novel. While this transition is perhaps inevitable, as the Crakers represent the “next phase” of humanity, it is unsatisfying. This is Toby’s story, and for it to be passed off without her even having a say in it feels incomplete and unfair. Rather than the “drop the mic” ending we got in “Oryx and Crake,” this ending feels like sneaking offstage while the audience isn’t looking. It feels like Atwood just didn’t know what to do so she just…stopped.

The book isn’t bad–certainly not–but I admit to being a touch disappointed in this final story in this rare post-apocalyptic survival story. I’d give it 3.5 stars.

This book could probably be read alone, but you’ll get a lot more out of the series as a whole if you read them in sequence. Or you could just read “Oryx and Crake” and be satisfied; that’s the best of the series, anyway.

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March 6, 2014 · 10:15 am

Review: South Beach Diet Supercharged

The South Beach Diet Supercharged: Faster Weight Loss and Better Health for LifeThe South Beach Diet Supercharged: Faster Weight Loss and Better Health for Life by Arthur Agatston

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don’t read a lot of diet and fitness books, so I’m approaching this review not as an expert but as a ‘regular joe’ reader. I started the diet as a New Years’ resolution at the recommendation of a doctor. I’m glad I had the book because I referred to it many times, but you could probably get away without buying it if you were already pretty dedicated.

It’s divided into three sections: first, an explanation of why this diet is supposed to work. Second comes a breakdown of the three phases of the diet, with an explanation, food list, and sample menu. Third is a workout routine, with drawings of how to complete the workouts and generally why it’s a good idea.

I found the first section, the explanation, sufficiently detailed to convince me that Arther Agatston is a real doctor who believes in the science behind his diet. The nerd in me would have liked some annotations of studies to look up research on my own, but Agatston used medical terminology where appropriate and made the language relatable but not overly simplified. I like that. I found the argument mostly compelling and had confidence that South Beach was not some crazy fad diet but was a plausible way to eat for a short period of time for weight loss purposes.

The actual breakdown of the three phases of the diet was helpful. I liked the sample meal plan in particular, even though it was quickly apparent that there was no way I was going to have that much diversity in my diet: if I made a snack one day, odds were good that I was eating that snack for the next four days, so I had better like it. So I wouldn’t say the sample was necessarily realistic or practical, but it was a good model to work off of. The three phases are broken down well, easy to understand, and I really appreciated that Agatston goes out of his way to insist that the most restrictive phase, while the fastest at inducing weight loss, is no practical way to eat all the time. Indeed, this gave me a lot more faith in him as a doctor, too.

I mostly ignored the exercise portions. It quickly became obvious that the target audience for the book as a whole was middle-aged people who had never performed exercise and who were much more overweight and out of practice than I am. Because I had already completed a Couch to 5K running program in addition to weekly dance classes, I feel like I’m advanced pretty far past this baseline group and the exercises were not relevant or useful to me. So I skipped that whole section.

Also, the book is shiny. This was probably floated as a great marketing idea, because it certainly draws attention, but if you’re like me and a little embarrassed to admit that you’re on a diet, this basically means you don’t want to take the book anywhere or read it in public because it is SO eye-catching that everyone is sure to know. I have the paperback version, and that nicely fits in a purse or maybe even a pocket, so I took it to the grocery store once, but the distracting cover made me self-conscious and uncomfortable.

As for the diet itself: I found it was successful, but difficult. I did not “cheat” in the critical first phase, but that also meant I spent far more than my normal food budget in order to prepare the approved foods and was not able to eat at any restaurant. Even in the later phases, eating at a restaurant is ridiculously challenging and it’s hard to not inadvertently “cheat.” While that’s plausible in an ideal dieting world, in real life a lot of social interaction happens in restaurants. Not eating there meant skipping a lot of social time.

It also meant devoting a great deal of energy and focus on what the heck I was going to eat. I had to plan more intensely for every single meal; there are no shortcuts on this diet. Be prepared to spend a lot of time chopping vegetables. In fact, this diet is the one thing that has made me really want to get a food processor. I struggle to imagine what this would be like for someone who also had to cook for a family.

That’s my other criticism of the diet: though Agatston claims that it is workable on any budget, I have a hard time believing that is true. I blew my typical grocery AND restaurant budget out of the water on grocery items alone, and that was even when I looked for bargains. For some things, you practically are required to shop at a store like Sprouts or Whole Foods just to find something (please, no one makes wheat tortillas. That’s just crazy, man), and those types of stores are not cheap.

It may be plausible in theory to stick to this diet on a low-income budget, but you’ll be eating the same thing every single meal, which doesn’t sound like a recipe for success to me. This is very much a diet dreamed up by a middle-aged, wealthy man. Who maybe as a personal chef to spend all day laboring over difficult to prepare, multi-step recipes. Or at least has an hour to cook a lunch from scratch rather than trying to pack something.

I have found the diet successful and am mostly continuing on phase 2 until I meet my goal, but after completing the initial 8 weeks I broke and let myself eat a burger. And it was delicious, proving that Agatston’s premise that food from “before” wouldn’t be as appealing is absolutely crazy. Besides, I needed a mini “food vacation,” just to relax from some of the rigor of trying to maintain such a restrictive diet. I’ll continue, and it was successful, but I don’t know that I’ll worry about following it to the letter.

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February 27, 2014 · 10:52 am

Review: The Assassin’s Apprentice

Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, #1)Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read most of Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders/Rain Wilds series (and was eager to finish it, but it wasn’t completely written at that point!) years ago, and when I was leaving on a trip I thought I’d pick up another series of hers and take a little “fantasy vacation,” too.
I’m glad I was reading this one on a plane; otherwise, I might not have finished it.
In fact, I am not sure if I’ve read this one before or not, which maybe isn’t the best sign.
It’s not a bad story at all; it’s full of court intrigue and a light dusting of magic. Characters are relatable, I enjoy the castle keep setting, and I was pulled along to reach the end.
However, compared to the Liveship Traders series, (or at least my memories of it) this book was pretty dull.
I kept having the thought that, in the hands of another writer, this same story would have been more enlivened. As it was, it was like the narrator couldn’t decide if he was being unreliable or not. At first this is forgivable: it starts with our hero–a bastard son of the king without a formal name (awkward!)–as a young child. He has a child’s perspective and it makes sense that he wouldn’t necessarily recall some things.
But as the kid grows up and becomes the titular assassin’s apprentice, I just kept finding myself wanting more. More details about training to be an assassin, about how to kill, about his childhood training and his relationship with the others at the keep. Instead, things are mentioned frequently in passing, and more time is devoted toward side stories that frankly I never got particularly invested in. The end result is that I liked the book but feel like there was a lot of dithering and wasted time. It felt more like a book I was reading just because I was trapped on a plane than something I was really drawn to keep going with. The moments that seemed like potential for incredible action descriptions I found myself daydreaming about–how would I have written that? What could have happened on that misadventure? What greater depth could that scene show?
I read this on an ereader, so I don’t know page numbers, but I do know that the really exciting and interesting stuff–I’ll have to leave it out in case you decide to read it anyway–didn’t show up until I was 90% through with the book.
Then the action was over before I could blind and it turned out the last 5% of the book was filler, so that wasn’t a lot of room for a denouement, either.
Part of me is still curious about the rest of the trilogy, and though I mostly had figured out the twists in this one before they happened, it was still an interesting courtly intrigue type plot, so I’m curious as to what might happen next. But I wouldn’t rank it as engaging fantasy and I don’t feel pressed to immediately pick up the next book. Maybe it can wait until I need to wait in an airport again.

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February 11, 2014 · 10:00 am

Review: The Shipping News

The Shipping NewsThe Shipping News by Annie Proulx
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book is proof that personal taste will vary–dramatically. I have not labored so long on a book I so utterly disliked in years. I have to be missing something, though, because it won a Pulitzer Prize and it’s one of my fiance’s favorites (the latter is the only reason I kept reading at all).

But I just don’t get it.

First, the book offended my editor’s sensibilities. Proulx clearly is well-versed in how to write, and yet she insists on crafting whole paragraphs of sentences without subjects, for example. Were I her editor, I would have thrown my hands up in frustration (as her reader, I still did!) Sentences could not be read on their own but had to be read as part of the whole. It took me several chapters to realize the sentences were more about rhythm than paragraphs–the sentences flow like waves. In. Out. In. Out. Constant little swells to remind you this is a story tied to the ocean. Then at least I understood, even if I didn’t like it.

While reading, it also struck me that, by all the standards agents claimed were essential, The Shipping News should never have been published. The story starts with the very beginning of the character’s life, completely without offering any enticing action, without even a likeable character. The story is vague at best and it’s hard to see the point. There is plenty of symbolism for your 9th grade English teacher to dissect though, so it’s got that, I guess?

And yet it was, so let that be hope to all you aspiring authors out there–you may not only prove them wrong, you may win a Pulitzer for it!

Like I said, I just did not get this book. It is the story of Quoyle, a guy who is a newspaperman because he’s terrible at all other jobs and is mediocre at this one. He is enormously fat and basically just a giant sad and possibly retarded sack. He has two kids who are ill-tempered and is married to Petal, the first woman who would look at him. Petal is a horrible person in every way and openly cheats on Quoyle. She even tries to sell off the kids as sex slaves! The first several chapters make sure you are fully aware of how pathetic a person Quoyle is in every way.

The inciting incident is the completely deus ex machina death of Petal, death of Quoyle’s parents, and firing from his job. Completely untethered, he and his overbearing closeted lesbian uptight aunt take the kids to their ancestral home in Newfoundland.

The biography for Ms. Proulx says she lives at least some of the time in Newfoundland. With that information, you’d think perhaps she likes it there. That’s impossible to tell from this book, which has both made me think about Newfoundland for the first time ever and then promptly made me think I never ever ever want to go there.

According to The Shipping News, Newfoundland:

-is bitterly cold
-is overrun with sexual deviants and child molesters
-is completely boring and devoid of anything to do
-offerings nothing but disgusting-sounding "cuisine"
-is dirt-poor
-is going to find a way to drown you
-hates the rest of British Columbia
-has absolutely nothing to offer

Sounds like a nice place, amiright?

Anyway, so Quoyle moves there, and the rest of the book is him very slowly discovering that the rest of his ancestors are horrible people, falling in love with another sad sack, and gaining some kind of professional capability not because he has a talent for it but because he is another warm body.

I never could answer the “Why should the reader care?” question that is supposed to be so significant in a successful book, so I don’t know why you should read this. Maybe to figure out what the heck I was missing that was supposed to make it enjoyable or at least worth contemplating? The message, as far as I can tell, is that sometimes you are dealt a raw hand and with time and a good bit of magical plot devices, you can work your way all the way to a moderately decent but actually not all that wonderful life. So just settle for the lives you’ve got, you sorry excuses for human beings.

Not my cup of tea, like I said. Can’t account for taste, I guess.

I’m just glad to be done with it.

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January 7, 2014 · 9:25 am

Review: Fortunately, The Milk

Fortunately, the MilkFortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Bring a smile to your face, and go buy Fortunately, The Milk. This is a book that EVERYONE needs to enjoy. It is delightful, in every sense of the word.

Fortunately, The Milk is ostensibly a children’s book, in the same vein as Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book or anything from Doctor Seuss. It would be good to think of it as the best combinations of both these literary gems. Not quite a chapter book but longer than a picture book, the hardcover edition has images on nearly every page, seamlessly interwoven with Neil Gaiman’s text. You’ll want to read it aloud; you’ll pore over every beautiful scribble by Eisner-winning artist Skottie Young**; you’ll laugh at the absurdity; you’ll ponder the ending with reverence.

This book is pure distilled happiness, and you need to have it.

I had the privilege of hearing Neil read from Fortunately, The Milk when it was still a twinkle in his publisher’s eye, at the book tour for The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Sure, everyone, reader and critic alike, is fawning over Ocean, but my favorite part was definitely Fortunately. It was just so fun.

It is a book that exalts fathers, and children, and, most of all, vibrant imaginations. The premise is sacchrine-simple: A family runs out of milk just before breakfast, and father goes to get some. He is gone what seems like an awfully long time. When he gets back, his hungry children wonder where he has been, so he answers them. The story involves pirates, piranhas, time-travel (someone is a Doctor Who fan, for sure!), a volcano god, the invention of the button, aliens, and more, because I’m probably forgetting someone or something.

You won’t be able to look at your everyday errands the same way.

Buy this book, then snuggle up to your kids (or your special friend, or your sweetest pet, or even just a really cozy blankie), and read. Make sure you do all the voices; that’s the way it really should be done.

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**This is amazing, but I have gotten to meet both Skottie and Neil. Neil at the aforementioned book tour, and Skottie at ComicCon, the day he won the Eisner. So wonderful, both of them!

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November 16, 2013 · 9:42 am

Review: The Queen of The Damned

The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, #3)The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am not really a horror reader — I once got scared in a haunted house during the day, when it was empty and deactivated — but I wanted to get into the All Hallows Read spirit.
Because I’m not really experienced with the genre, I can’t tell if this shouldn’t be a horror book or if the things that were supposed to be scary didn’t age well in the CSI TV era, but never was a shiver to be found.
(I also didn’t realize until I had bought it from the bookstore that it was the third book in a series. Luckily, Rice put in enough ‘reminders’ of things from previous books that I don’t think I missed anything, but that also may have impaired my reading.)
Instead, The Queen of the Damned was an intellectual musing on vampires, immortality, the failings of humanity and our reliance on religion. Most of the things that may have been supposed to be chilling were really just philosophical questions — Are there supernatural beings? Is there a God? Would the world be better off without men in it? Could and should an immortal creature deceive humans into believing she was god? — that the characters end up literally sitting around a table to muse about in the big climax.
It all adds up to a bunch of questions that would have been interesting to talk to Anne Rice about, but weren’t exactly heart-pounding to read.
That’s not to say Rice isn’t an incredible writer. She has definitely earned her place as a top novelist. Her characters are distinctive, human but also otherworldly as they take on the vampire change, possessing logic but still ultimately flawed. Her descriptions of place are vivid on more than a detail scale, imbuing everything with emotion. Her storytelling is effortless, pulling the reader gently along.
Because it was written in 1988, it was fun to imagine how this book would be different if it were written today. So much would be the same, but the things that were different — the internet, cell phones — could have dramatically changed the course of the story. Then again, it is tragic to see those things that are the same — war in Afghanistan, deprivation in Haiti, starvation in India. In fact, that ended up being the most profound part of the book for me, that it has been 25 years and these problems remain.
Ultimately, this was a book that would be a pleasure to dissect and to learn from, but the menace was gone. It’s not my usual fare, and I wouldn’t recommend it as a scary read either.

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October 15, 2013 · 10:06 am

Review: The Subversive Copy Editor

The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago by Carol Fisher Saller

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up this book when I was first really starting But I am very well aware that not everyone is as privileged to be taught that fundamentals of editing from experienced professionals who also happen to be professors, as I was. (Shout-out to Maggie and Jake at Mizzou!) For you, I say: Read this book!

Saller tackled the difficult task of talking about a fairly dry subject while making it accessible to folks who knew nothing as well as folks who know a lot. And kept it interesting.

There are two parts: 1) How to work with the text in the readers’ best interest and 2) How to work.

The first section (How to work with the text) lays out the “subversive” approach Saller advocates: basically, do no harm… even if that means not adhering completely strictly to the stylebook. (*cue communal gasp of shock from the true pedants*)

This is my philosophy, and it’s great! I think it’s the best way to keep a story true to the author’s vision while making the story comprehensible to the reader.

But it’s tricky when you’re a new copyeditor, because it more or less requires you know all the rules and then willfully choose to ignore them when it is appropriate to the book. (There’s a big difference between not changing something because you don’t know it’s wrong and not changing something because it’s wrong but it makes sense for the story.) This means acknowledging that every story is different and will have distinct needs.

Personally, I think that’s a beautiful thing, but not every editor or writer will agree with me.

The second part–how to do the business stuff–was what I was really reading the book for, and that’s the half that earned this book only 4 stars instead of 5. It told me a lot of what I already knew here, too, but the difference was that it said stuff that I figure most business people should know. Things like “don’t pick needless fights,” and “be nice to others.” I realize that’s probably idealistic of me to think most people already know that kind of thing, and it certainly is good advice for the utterly clueless, but that wasn’t really what I was coming to the table for. Aside from the one chapter on freelancing, there wasn’t a lot that I found truly applicable to my career–especially as it is increasingly unlikely that publishing house jobs will continue to exist in the future (but I’ll knock on wood, anyway). And the freelancing chapter didn’t match the kind of freelancing I actually do, so even that wasn’t ideal.

That being said, this book was great. I think it might be particularly good for a writer who is fearful of handing her manuscript over to a copyeditor or doesn’t really understand why she should bother. (We can help, I promise! In fact, we LOVE to help!)

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September 24, 2013 · 10:31 am

Review: A Long Way Down

A Long Way DownA Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the best book about four people not dying that you’ll ever read.

I didn’t know what A Long Way Down was about before I picked it up based on a recommendation. Now that I’ve read it, I’m struggling to describe it. It’s a book about suicide, but it’s not very depressing; it’s also not deeply inspirational–it is very real. It’s a good book, and I think you should read it, and maybe that’s enough of a description.

A Long Way Down centers on four people who each independently decide they would like to kill themselves by jumping off a tall building on New Year’s Eve. Except their individual sojourns are interrupted when the others have the same idea, and they all agree to come down from the building that night. But that’s not really a happy thing; now they’ve even failed at suicide and don’t know what to do with themselves.

It was purely by coincidence that I read this book during Suicide Prevention Week. While I found this book to be an excellent portrayal of deep sadness, it does have its funny parts. That being said, that doesn’t mean suicide is a funny topic, and if you are feeling like ending your life, please seek help. I hesitate to suggest that this book would help you if you were feeling that way, but it might.

Now an aside for writers: Stop what you are doing and pick this book up NOW. You’ll get a look at realistic characters like nothing else. I worship Nick Hornby for this skill. He created four completely individual characters who have very little in common and who feel completely separate.

You’ve got: a narcissistic former TV personality who can’t stop himself from being a screw up; a teenager who is decidedly unhinged and drug-addled; a sad-sack older woman who really needs to get out more; and a wayward American musician who has lost track of his life’s purpose. And it’s amazing.

Another brilliant portion of this book is the way Hornby gives voice to each character, as it is told from four distinct perspectives. This allows the reader to ‘hear’ what a character thinks of himself…and what everyone else thinks of him. It’s genius, and incredibly revealing.

And that says a lot, because I’m struggling to think of much that actually HAPPENS in this book. It never drags–on the contrary, I always looked forward to reading the next page–but an action-filled drama this is not. It’s amazing that so much story could be packed into so little motion. Great swaths of this story take place with people just sitting around a room together awkwardly, and it’s brilliant and perfect.

A Long Way Down is a rather unexpected book, but it provides a great lesson in empathy. In fact, I think that’s the biggest thing I got from this book: the deep and abiding selfishness of suicide. All teenagers and self-absorbed persons should have to read it to learn what this kind of navel-gazing looks like from the outside. It’s marvelous.

A Long Way Down is a great book and I’d recommend it to anybody. I can’t imagine, however, that a non-famous author could ever have gotten this book off the ground–how do you pitch a story about people not dying? Luckily for us, Hornby managed it

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September 3, 2013 · 11:00 am

Review: The Forgotten Garden

The Forgotten GardenThe Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Forgotten Garden is a contemporary attempt to blend fairy tales with rich realistic backgrounds–and so struggles to do either well.

The writing in this behemoth of a book is so good–the descriptions are vivid and thoughtful, the flavor of the words changes with the location, and there is a tapestry of (female) characters (more on that in a moment)–but the plot is so clunky as it strives to wind together a history over four generations of women while also incorporating fairy tale elements that it overbalances itself and becomes pedantic and predictable.

The Forgotten Garden is about the search for heritage spanning generations and time. Cassandra is the main character, the modern incarnation of a streak of women with tragedy lacing their lives. Struggling to find a sense of meaning in her own life after her sudden tragedy, Cassandra takes up the quest begun by her grandmother 30 years prior to find her grandmother, Nell’s, lost family. How was a small child left alone on a ship to Australia? Who would abandon a sweet child with just a book of fairy tales and a white suitcase on a voyage across half the earth?

But the mystery traces back even further, as Morton shows us the delicate familial situation of Nell’s mother and cousin, and the tragedy that pulled Nell’s grandmother from her place of wealth and power.

Got that?
1860s-Woman leaves rich family, has kids
– Woman is dead, daughter Eliza is rescued by wealthy uncle
1913-Child is found all alone in ship that berths in Australia
1975-Child, now grown and known as Nell, seeks to find out her past; gets interrupted by her own family struggles
2012-Granddaughter of Nell, after her grandmother’s death, seeks to understand all of the prior mysterious history

When I realized that there were no major male characters in this book, that it was literally a rare bird of a story that highlighted women, I desperately wanted to like it. It is almost certain the author pulled her concepts from sweet-but-tragic children’s stories like A Little Princess and The Secret Garden. I love those stories, so I loved those aspects I recognized in The Forgotten Garden, but it’s just too much and the story feels forced.

Perhaps it’s a consequence of the overlapping nature of this story, which flits between women and over eras as the tale unfolds, but the “mysteries” turned out to be pretty predictable–I knew the ending by the halfway point, but still had to slog through the rest of the story–and it was frustrating that, in a non-Gothic modern story, “circumstances” would frequently pop up to answer long-dormant questions. Oh, you happen to enjoy art? Well I happen to have these totally rare sketches on hand, today only! And two pages later, BOOM, you’re related to the artist.

And that kind of thing happened ALL THE TIME.

It’s just too contrived. That kind of magical circumstance would have been great if this story had just embraced itself as a fairy tale, but it insisted on remaining mundane and realistic. You can’t have both frequent miraculous occurrences and realism without both falling short.

This was also a stupidly tragic book. I recommend most of the characters get counseling; does everyone seriously need a deep and painful tragedy to haunt them their whole life? Maybe it’s the genre, I don’t know, but I found it unnecessary. Even in the end, I’m not convinced of anyone’s happiness.

I also have a beef with two of the main “villain” characters. To be fair, the author did try to contextualize and rationalize at least some of their personalities, but it just wasn’t enough. These two were chronic bitches. They were poisonous to all around them–even at the sake of their own happiness. It was so frustrating, and also so shallow. It made the Victorian Aunt, in particular, a one-dimensional meanie. I hoped, the whole time, that someone would push her out a high window (and then, when her “comeuppance” DID come, it was so trite and otherwordly that I just rolled my eyes).

I was hopeful for this book, but ultimately it was a disappointment.

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