Sherman Alexie is one of my favorite authors. I'd read his grocery list. So when I saw War Dances in the bookstore, of course I bought it. I've had it for a couple of weeks now, and finally picked it up to read at a time when I was in need of serious distraction.

Let me start by saying that Alexie is writing at a level most authors only dream about reaching. When I offer a criticism, I'm still talking about levels of good.

I'd need a week at least to put together the kind of review this book deserves and I'd have to read through it two or three more times -- which I will do, I'm quite certain (the reading, not the review). But I don't have a week, so you get this one draft review.

When I was in grad school and reading Faulkner, Roth and the like, I kept wondering to myself who, today, is the future canon? The writer who just keeps getting better and better until you start to get chills. I've been hard pressed to come up with a name. So many of the literary writers today feel so self-aware and stultifyingly precious that, to be honest, I don't give a hoot. Really.

If he keeps writing like this, and there's no reason to believe he won't, if there's any justice in the world, Alexie is that writer.

I thought War Dances started off good but not Great. I read one of the pieces in substantially, but not exactly, the same form The New Yorker (here, the title story War Dances) It's at this point that the collection really pulled me in. As I progressed through the poems and stories, I start taking in the themes and questions Alexie leaves us to face -- the various narrators' interior lives are fundamentally different from the culturally dominant worldview. We are constantly shown that maybe we don't understand quite enough.

The poem On Airplanes was the first one to make me say, oh. at the end. From that point forward the stories and poems were transformative. Ode to Pay Phones made my breath catch. Ode to Mix Tapes is in a similar class. The story Fearful Symmetry is Alexie at his "turn you around" best. Where you start this story and where you are when it ends are two different worlds, and in between Alexie puts you through a transformation. The last story Salt and the final poem Food Chain were wonderful and so very lovely.

If you love writing, if you're in love with words, if you just want to say you read a great writer before he was writ large, read War Dances

Labels: Authors, Book Review

Angela Robbins was the winner of the ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of Ava Gray's November release, Skin Game. Herewith is Angela's wonderful review. You won't be able to resist!

Skin Game, Ava Gray, ARC, Publication date: 11-03-2009

Ava Gray prefaces her book by telling us that Skin Game was a glimmer and a "what if" brainstorm session with her assistant. Fortunately, for all of us Ava's glimmer to write a paranormal romance was more than just a fleeting flash.

Kyra, the heroine possesses a gift, and that is with a touch of her hand she embezzles someone's strongest skill and uses it against them. Reyes, hired by someone in Kyra's recent past to track her down and bring her to justice, is a cold, calculated mercenary who discovers that when it comes to Kyra she has the ability to steal from Reyes more than just his skill. The concept alone is clever, but Skin delves us deeper into the heart and motives of the characters than simply asking us to take a back-seat ride into a string of cons, revenge and romance.

This book is sharp, fast and filled with dead-on characters I could bump into (though some of them I may not want to) on the street on any given day. They are witty, current and highly memorable. Kyra is not your typical heroine, nor is Reyes your everyday hero, yet I was rooting for them all the way. Both have a dark, gritty side that makes them more than just believable and gives them a special connection.

Ava's writing captivates. Her vivid action style kept me turning the pages and wanting more, more, more. In fact, I literally did not want to put the book down until it was finished. I recommend Skin Game to anyone who enjoys a fresh, clever, and very sexy story with a tight action-packed plot of danger and paranormal intrigue.


Angela Robbins
Reader

Labels: Authors, Book Review

I picked up Josh Bazell's Beat The Reaper at Copperfield's, my local independent on the day of the Books and Chocolate Extravaganza a couple of weeks ago. I finally got a break and was able to read it.

Note: Hmm. Dr. Bazell does not seem to have a website. I'll assume he's too busy saving lives over at UCSF to get himself a website. But come on!



Disclosure: Hachette is also my publisher. And, what a small world, my son was born at UCSF (University of California at San Francisco) where Bazell is now a resident. But enough with the disclosures. I didn't know we had the same publisher until I was reduced to going to the Hachette website to find out if there was a link to a website for him and an unadulterated image of his cover. (No and yes.)


How much did I enjoy this book? This much:

It is well known by many who know me that I LOATHE books written in the present tense. I was unable to read The Yiddish Policeman's Ball because of this and that's despite everybody saying it's brilliant. I wouldn't know. It's in present tense and I hate that.

Much (but not all) of Beat The Reaper is in present tense. It's first-person present tense and I think that's what made the difference. That and a protagonist who is amazingly rendered on the pages. Still, I was far more comfortable with the past tense chapters. But I loved the present-tense ones too.

What's that sound? It's hell freezing over because Carolyn actually read and enjoyed a book written in the present tense. I took hell (pretty much literally) in grad school for saying, in a writing seminar, that I couldn't fairly judge a classmate's submission because it was in present tense. I read it any way and gave my best effort at critique, but well, let's just say the prof had to intervene in the literary bloodbath that followed my confession. Apparently hating present tense isn't allowed among grad students. Shrug.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil any of the wonderfully timed revelations about the the protagonist except to say that what you think of him on page one isn't what you think of him on page two or page 10 or even the last page. The hero is a resident at a hospital in NY and that's all I'm going to say. You know a writer is brilliant when at one point you feel it's impossible for the hero to turn on his best friend, but when it happens some pages later, you're nodding your head, saying, well, yeah!

Bazell writes in a very breezy style that makes you forget while you're reading just how hard it is to be funny and light and serious all at the same time.

I gave it to my dad to read. He's a retired physician and I figured he'd really enjoy the medical setting, which, from what I've heard from my father and from friends who are physicians, is a pretty accurate depiction of what it's like to be a med student, intern and then resident.

Sure, I have a few nitpicks, but they're nitpicks and I really don't care about them. Fun, funny, fascinating and even heartbreaking story.

Highly recommended. Rush out and buy this book.

Labels: Book Review

Review of The Survivor's Club, the Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life
Author: Ben Sherwood
Non-Fiction
Grand Central Publishing
January 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-58024-3



The Survivor's Club is a fascinating collection of stories about people who survived disasters with subsequent analysis of a question that should be of interest to just about everyone; is surviving a disaster more than luck and, if so, is there a way to quantify what it takes to survive?

The book details several disasters, some of them well known, and the people who survived them; from plane crashes to animal attacks as well as accidents that could happen to anyone. These chapters, riveting and extremely well written, are interspersed with analysis that calls on expert opinion, advice and explanations that will have you itching to take notes and, quite likely, vowing to change a few habits. I will, for example, never again wear sandals on a plane. Lest you think only hale and hearty young men with extensive and specialized survival training are club members, Sherwood includes in his case studies several examples of normal men and women who found themselves thrust into overwhelming and potentially fatal circumstances and yet survived.

I found the book to be surprisingly uplifting given that the subject matter is things that went horribly wrong. In the course of presenting these disastrous situations, Sherwood is, of course, analyzing what went right. I very much appreciated the nod to that fact that some disasters are simply not survivable and no amount of preparation or personal fortitude will change the outcome. For all other cases there are indeed some commonalities for those who survive, some of which should come as no surprise. Keeping calm, the ability to quickly analyze and react and some form of personal faith. Others were surprising, such as the chapter on how fear can save your life. It is comforting to know there isn't one and only one type of survivor. The lack of one or two of the commonalities Sherwood identifies in no way consigns you to certain death in the face of disaster.

I thoroughly enjoyed the opening chapters of this book. They were well written and completely engaging; riveting, in fact. The expert opinion and analysis was fascinating as well. The section on the role of faith was by far the weakest. There was scant acknowledgment that a belief in God is not a requirement for the kind of faith that can pull a person through an ordeal. Sherwood openly confesses his own religious conversion as a result of his experiences and his research for this book. Whether that affected what I feel is the weakest portion of the argument set forth here I can't say. However, this section contains conclusions that are simply not supported by the evidence and examples cited. The studies put forth as proving the role of religious faith lacked control cohorts. Without those, the conclusions made are not logically permissible. Despite my troubles with the logical flaws of this section, I have no issue whatever with the notion that personal faith can be and frequently is a source of personal strength.

The final section of The Survivor's Club is a web-based section that permits readers to take a quiz that analyzes their personal survival traits. This was not available to me with the Advanced Reader Copy I had but will, of course, be available to people who purchase the final book.

The Survivor's Club is a fascinating and well-written analysis of the traits of people who survive disasters. Highly recommended.

Disclosure: As you probably know if you're reading this, Grand Central Publishing publishes my paranormal romances.

Labels: Book Review

I'm finally off deadline enough that I can make some progress on my To Be Read pile. Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle was a book I was anxious to read. Now, I admit while I've been busy writing, there's a truckload of stuff I haven't been paying much attention to. I knew these things about The Gargoyle; People were talking about it -- it had push from the publisher; It had an awesome cover and a great title. If I'd known more about the story line I might have waited to buy it. I'm glad I didn't, though I could have, since it's been sitting in my TBR since I bought it, like every other book I've bought. Oh, right, I also knew it was a debut novel that got a HUGE advance. And, though I cringe to admit it, I had this vague idea there was an actual gargoyle in the book. I was too busy to pay enough attention, all right?

So, finally, I turn in my last contracted book and I can start reading stuff that somebody else wrote. The Gargoyle was my first choice.

Pretty much from page one, this book was difficult to read. The words were gorgeous. Wonderful, evocative. There's no question Andrew Davidson can write. Fortunately, I have an MA in English and I understand about Books That Are Difficult To Read, having been forced to read a lot of them and even actually ending up being glad. To be clear: I am not glad that I had to read Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure but the last line of James Joyce's The Dubliners is so heartbreakingly poetic that reading everything that came before that line was worth all the hard work of getting there.

So, I'm reading and wondering to myself whether I am having a Jude The Obscure sort of experience or a The Dubliners experience and in either case whether I can stomach continuing. I put down Chuck Palahniunk when I got to the part about the guy who got his intestines sucked out through his ass, so let that be a guide to my tolerance level. But really, the decision to keep going was not Does Carolyn want to get through at least one Palahniuk novel just because but whether I was reading something that would be worth the pain by the end. Because that experience is transcendent and Davidson writes well enough to make you think he might.

The ONLY reason I kept reading despite the ugliness of what happening on the pages was the beauty of the writing. I kept thinking there had to be a payoff for this kind of horrifying description. I did keep reading.

I have begun to suspect that Literary Fiction is so afraid of being gasp! commercial, that it runs as fast as it can (in the other direction) at the first sign of a plot. What a bunch of rank cowards, the lot of those literary writers. Let me point out to you folks that Toni Morrison's Beloved has a plot, so it's not like it can't be done. The Gargoyle has a plot, too, which was a major relief.

Eventually, The Gargoyle moved out of the relentlessly horrifying and I stopped thinking that I totally supported the protagonist's plans for suicide.

The gargoyle, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, is more metaphorical than literal. The plot of the book is actually kind of shopworn. Beauty and the Beast is an obvious trope crossed with lovers reincarnated through time until they get it right. To be honest, the latter sort of story has never made much sense to me. If the love is so Great, why are they doomed to repeat it like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day?

A great writer always rises above the shopworn, which is why those popular frameworks will never die. Someone is always good enough to show us how it's done. Is The Gargoyle that book? Almost.

Damn. Just almost. Before I continue, let me say that there is a difference between pointing out the flaws of a book that basically sucks (Jude the Obscure) and pointing out the flaws in a book written by someone with an amazing talent who one expects to read more of.

The ending of The Gargoyle was touching, but there were missteps along the way that undermined the moment. The conception of the novel was, in my opinion, flawed, and not even the lovely prose could save the story from moments of bathos instead of pathos. When a story begins at such a horrifying low, then the ending had better take you to a terrifying high, and that means the author needs to understand the underpinnings, if you will, of both the lows and the high.

The book is supposed to be a love story. But it's lopsided. There is ample reason to understand why the protagonist, from his original incarnation to the last, loves the heroine. There is less to none for understanding why the heroine, in any of her incarnations, loves the hero. She is, at heart, the typical Doormat with a Too Stupid To Live moment -- a circumstance saved only by the fact that she does not, in fact, live.

There is a long and fairly painful history of Canonical Works written by men who do not understand what it means to be a woman at any time of history. The woman sacrifices .... um.... because? And this book's flaws are directly related to that inability to really see what it means to be a woman. Steinbeck nailed the Depression for men. He totally screwed up with Rosasharn. He got a Nobel anyway. Yes, he deserved it, but I'm right about Rosasharn. Steinbeck wrote her for a man.

At this point, I'd like to point out again that The Gargoyle does not suck.

But the not so subtle subtext of the iterations of the story told is that women sacrifice themselves and their lives (in every sense) for the man they love. Because God forbid she actually gets to be happy. The men go on doing their brave man thing and mostly live on afterward. And it really bugs me. It does.

Still, I recommend this book if you're not squeamish. The first third to half was really hard to stomach. Writers who keep on writing only get better, so I'm looking forward to seeing what Davidson does next.

Labels: Book Review

Lynne Spears with Lorilee Craker
Through the Storm
Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Nashville, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59555-156-6
Memoir 206 pages.

I should start off by admitting that I don't pay much attention to pop stars. If the radio is on, it's usually tuned to NPR so I rarely hear popular music. I also don't watch T.V. Therefore, my exposure to the phenomenon of Britney Spears has been fairly limited. I do not, however, live under a rock. I know who she is, and like just about everyone else, I've heard the stories reported about Britney's troubles and triumphs. Yes, also I heard about the Jamie Lynn's pregnancy and recall the ironic and/or sarcastic connections made between this upcoming book and the parenting skills, or lack thereof, of Lynne Spears.

One thing Through The Storm is not is a book on parenting, so get off that dead horse right now. It's more a mother’s explanation of her family, albeit her very notable family. Mrs. Spears recounts her life and marriage and, as you might imagine, the birth and raising of her children. She touches on the large moments in their lives, but keeps the focus on her perceptions and reactions to the events. To its credit, Through the Storm is not a Tell-All in disguise, and it does offer a perspective of events that I suspect is absent from the frantic reporting on the Spears family. And yet, the book is still very much about Britney Spears and, to a lesser extent, Jamie Lynn.

The story is, in essence, both inspiring and tragic. A young woman from very humble beginnings ends up with a daughter whose talent changes all their lives, and not always for the better. There is indeed a dark side to what was a fairy-tale rise to fame. As to any claims that Mrs. Spears pushed Britney into her career, I can only say that long before Mrs. Spears attempts to address the issue, it was plain to me that Britney Spears was one of those children who did not need to be pushed. There are simply kids who are like that. From an early age, they burn with passion, whether it be for writing, football, science, or, even, singing. Given what she had on her hands, Mrs. Spears did a remarkable job.

That said, I had a lot of trouble getting through this book. It was often painfully difficult to read. Thankfully, it's not very long (206 pages). This book offers no personal insight whatsoever, no sense that its author has thought deeply about anything. It's written in such a simplistic manner that by the end of chapter one I wanted to tear out my eyeballs. That didn't change until the final two chapters, which were quite riveting despite there being massive logical gaps in the narrative.

There's no meat to this story. It's vapidly written and even more vapidly told. If Mrs. Spears has anything but superficial insight into herself or her children, it's not presented in these pages. Both girls are held up as idealized, sparkly and numbingly saccharine Stepford-esque daughters. You'd think her children were nothing but sweetness and light during their entire childhoods. And how could that be? They grew up in a house with an alcoholic father, where money was tight and their mother was doing whatever it took to keep them together financially and spiritually. Everyone involved in such a family pays a price, fame or no fame. And that's without the incredible stress of Britney's notoriety.

Through the Storm offers a perspective missing from the sensationalized reports of the Spears family, but unless you don't mind reading a book written at a fourth-grade level, this is a pass.

Labels: Book Review