Endless Falls Up

Hell & Gone

2012-01-26T02:53:00.000+06:00

Duane Swierczynski
Hell & Gone

Mulholland Books UK, 2011

Write about the second part of the Charlie Hardie trilogy about «Hell & Gone» is pretty hard. Those who have read the first part, «Fun & Games» (and are there those who have not read it? Then you should be ashamed of: it is one of the best novels published last year. Mistakes should be corrected: buy this book immediately!), had lots of fun and they do not need any advice, they will buy «Hell & Gone» for sure. Because after reading the first book, one can’t not read the second one.

If you still assume that those who have not read the first part do exist in nature, they would hardly need to read a review of the second part: the fear of spoilers does not allow them to read even a review of the first part. Respectively, those remain who have read this book already. For them, perhaps, all of the following is written.

Charlie Hardie, the protagonist of the trilogy, «had been nearly drowned, shot in his left arm, shot in the side of his head, and almost shot in the face at point-blank range», but is still alive. Now he falls into the hands of Accident People - those scoundrels, who unsuccessfully tried to kill him in the previous book. Accident People, a secret organization with immense possibilities, decide to keep Charlie's life. Modern medicine is capable of anything (especially in the hands of scum), and now Charlie darned, sewed and brought into consciousness. Our hero has been waiting for a brutal massacre on him, but Accident People surprise him. Charlie is left alive and placed in a secret underground prison. Moreover - Charlie is in charge of the prison, where in addition several dangerous criminals serve time. Getting out of prison is not possible: if someone tries to escape, everybody will die. Meanwhile, Deke Clark, an FBI agent and the only person whom Hardie trusts, at the end of the first book has got a message for help from Charle, and now tries to figure out where his friend is gone and who is behind his abduction.

With sadness we have to admit, but this book is not as good as the first part. After the first book, which was one continuous action, you do not expect that the action will stop, and vice versa - will turn into an anti-action, because what the prison is if not restriction of movement? I would be glad, if «Hell & Gone» would appear a prison novel. But «Hell & Gone» combines with prison novels only that there is also a prison in it. Why dangerous criminals of the world (actually comical characters) were not immediately killed, but placed in the prison from which there is no escape anyway? Motivations, given by the author, I find not convincing. If Accident People wanted to use these prisoners, they would have used them and not held for several years in prison. In addition, the characters gathered in a secret prison are all dumb. There would be no use of them.

Swierczynski has gone too far in this book with coincidences and melodramatism. The first book was strong because the plot was such that a coincidence had no place in it, but you couldn’t find melodramatism there even if you tried hard.

The book is written in the same style as «Fun & Games». In the first book the style combined with the plot successfully: chopped phrases and non-stop action, - but in the second book prison isolation and darkness require long sentences, slowing down the language, but Swierczynski left the patter of the first book, breaking the line between style and plot.

Despite its flaws, the book definitely has something to enjoy. The novel has a great beginning and an unexpected ending. We learn more about Charlie's past life. Fragments of a book on the relationship between Hardie and his late partner are the most stunning here. And the plotline with Deke Clark delivers.

«Hell & Gone», if considered as a bridge to the third part, is a not bad book, but if we consider the novel as a standalone product - it is close to failure.

Whatever it was, I’m looking forward to the third part.

A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism

2012-01-24T21:25:00.000+06:00

Peter Mountford
A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism

Mariner Books, 2011

November 2005. Gabriel de Boya, half-Russian, half-Chilean, but educated as American, arrived in La Paz, Bolivia's de facto capital, as freelancer journalist. In fact, Gabriel is working on unscrupulous hedge fund Calloway. Trip to Bolivia is the first task for Gabriel. Stimulated by the $20,000 monthly salary, Gabriel, without giving himself away, must ferret out insider information for Calloway, thanks to which fund will be able to make the necessary transactions, leading to the enrichment of the company. Calloway actively expands in Latin America, looking for any loopholes. Bolivia, with its rich oil and gas reserves, is in the presidential election. The future of the country's industry will depend on the personality of the president.

In the first days in Bolivia Gabriel meets with the 40-year old journalist Fiona, covering the political life of South America for the Wall Street Journal. Acquaintance quickly turns into a sex relationship. However, neither Gabriel nor Fiona do not bind themselves to any promises or declarations.
Gabriel has accidentally got this job. After graduation he worked as a journalist in business magazines, had the experience. He sent resume - and got a positive response. Gabriel realizes that if he does not pass the first test, he will be fired immediately after his return to New York. Not having some sort of attraction to money, but having lived in poverty, our hero wants to work for Calloway for a few years, accumulating millions of dollars, then to once and for ever forget about financial unrest.

This is a strong debut novel with seemingly not too fresh topic, "What has more power, the money or feeling?", but topic really is fresh. Money there has scale, they’re not domestic. There are millions at stake there, plus the stability of the state's economy.

Mountford makes a call to the reader with his main character. Gabriel is a young man, not too experienced; not a predator, greedy for millions; not a villain, ready for any wickedness; nor schemer. He is a home boy, beloved by his mother and raised in kindness and love. Gabriel is just a little man. Fragile cog of the capitalist system. He wants to get rich, but not in order to become rich and enjoy the incredible luxury. He had suffered in his time. He feels the Chilean blood in his veins, blood mixed with the poor. And this feeling of inferiority does not leave him. Getting involved in big financial game, he still does not realize what transformation can happen to him. Maybe he is aware of it - but he did not stop. And his manipulation by rumors leads to quite unexpected results.

The author pumpes the suspence, and we expect that Gabriel is about to make a mistake. He will be disclosed, he will fail, and he’s waited for the shame and oblivion.

And he makes mistakes, but only in the other way: the way of the senses. He, long before fraud, crossed the line that can not be crossed, and did what you must not do. He knew where it all might lead. And now Gabriel is doomed to loneliness.

Mountford makes an experiment on the reader: can a reader feel for Gabriel, sympathize with him? Who is the hero, the lost souls or dark genius, amoral and descended? The reader, of course, will decide himself.

Author of the book does not provide answers to complex questions posed in the book. Does a lot of money exclude love? How far is a man willing to go to become a millionaire? What causes a person to money, genetic predisposition or education? Human being is an intricate structure. And the economy is arranged no less difficult.

Mountford not only got under the skin of capitalism, but also managed to build a tight plot that spans only a few weeks. Transformation of Gabriel performs in a short time. All the characters are in place, every detail helps to reveal a character. Stylistically, the book reminded me of «Snowdrops» by A.D. Miller (there are similarities in composition as well).

It’s a great book about economy and human feelings.

best books of the year: comics

2011-12-31T15:49:00.000+06:00

When I looked at the list of comics and graphic novels that I'd read this year I wasn't happy with myself. I wish I read much more, but in the second part of the year I didn't have enough reading time. All time I had was dedicated to reading fiction. Some comics that made my top were published this year, some were published before.

Best graphic novel of the year:

Eamon Espey
Wormdye

Runners-up:

Kevin Huizenga
Ganges #2

Joshua Hale Fialkov (writer), Noel Tuazon (artist)
Tumor

Stephane Blanquet
Toys in the Basement

Willy Linthout
Years of the elephant

Gummbah
Meanwhile, Between Two Eternities of Darkness

Solipsistic Pop #3

Stripburger 54

Derek McCulloch (writer), Greg Espinoza (artist)
Pug

Eric Hobbs (writer), Noel Tuazon (artist)
The Broadcast

best books of the year: poetry

2011-12-31T15:32:00.000+06:00

I can't imagine my life without poetry. However, I've read only a few poetry collections this year. All of them made my top:

Matthew Zapruder
Come On All You Ghosts (review to come)

runners-up:

Robin Robertson
The Wrecking Light

Jennifer Grotz
The Needle

best books of the year: non-fiction

2011-12-31T03:19:00.000+06:00

I'm cheating there: I've read only two non-fiction titles this year, and this couple made a list.

Gary K. Wolfe
Evaporating Genres

Anne R. Dick
The Search for Philip K. Dick

best books of the year: fiction (published before 2011)

2011-12-31T03:15:00.000+06:00

12 great reads: they were published before 2011, but I read them for the first time only this year.

in no particular order:

Gar Anthony Haywood
Cemetery Road

Roberto Bolano
The Skating Rink

Vicki Hendricks
Florida Gothic Stories

Raymond Carver
Beginners

Mark SaFranko
God Bless America

Jeff Vandermeer
Finch

Allan Guthrie
Two-way Split

Matthew Sharpe
You Were Wrong

Jeff VanderMeer
The Third Bear

Richard Aleas
Songs of Innocence

Ryan David Jahn
Low Life

John Harvey
Cold In Hand

best books of the year: fiction 2011

2011-12-31T03:06:00.000+06:00

That was a good year for reading. I don't want to mix books from different categories in one list, so I'm going to compile individual lists for the following categories:
best fiction books that was published in 2011
best fiction books that was published before 2011
best poetry books
best non-fiction books
best comics

I've selected 20 best books for two fiction lists, but it won't be 10\10. I decided it'll be 8\12. Strange, but original, I think. I've linked the titles to my reviews.

in no particular order

Neil Jordan
Mistaken

Beryl Bainbridge
The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress

Anne Enright
The Forgotten Waltz

Doug Johnstone
Smokeheads

Declan Burke
Absolute Zero Cool (review to come)

John Dalton
The Inverted Forest

A.D. Miller
Snowdrops

Duane Swierczynski
Fun & Games

The Art of Fielding

2011-12-19T14:56:00.000+06:00

Chad Harbach
The Art of Fielding

Little, Brown, 2011

A high school student from South Dakota Henry Skrimshander begins his studies at Westish College in Wisconsin, where he is invited to learn and play baseball by Mike Schwartz, a senior, the team captain and coach’s right hand. On one of the matches Henry impresses Mike, after which he tries to persuade not only Henry to study at Westish, but as well Henry’s father, who all his life wanted that his son instead of studies worked as a mechanic. Mike knocks out a grant for talented shortstop, and Henry settles in a dorm room with another student, Owen Dunne, who representes himself as a gay mulatto. Henry at once acquaintes with his teammates and the coach. Mike sees for Henry a great future, and therefore helps Henry later. Henry also engages in baseball Owen, who was always more on the literary side, but he manifests itself well on the field.

Another plotline of this book is connected with the college president Guert. He began an academic career as a Melville’s researcher, who once even went to Westish. Affenlight became famous in 1987 when he wrote the book «The Sperm-Squeezers», a study on homosexuality in the American literature of the XIX century. About the same time Affenlight’s daughter Pella was born, and three years after the girl's birth her mother dies in an accident. Now the 60-year-old, Affenlight is in love with one of the students, Owen. He occasionally attends games of the team to look from afar at Owen. When, during one of the game an incident happens (Henry gets the ball to Owen in the head), Owen with a strong tremor is taken to the hospital for a long time and is eliminated from the tournament. Affenlight shows an unprecedented concern for the student. He regularly visits Owen, checks that the student has been provided to all.

It’s a “baseball” novel in which - paradoxically - baseball is the least interesting thing. First of all, part of the book about baseball is hard to read. Other plotlines are far more interesting. The story about a teacher \ director of college and the student is already a cliche, but Harbach approaches gently gay love without melodrama, but with a keen attention to detail. The author is not overdoing, leaving outside of the book explicit scenes between the student and the director, and evokes sympathy for both characters. Given that this was not defilement, then affair between Owen and Affenlight is a reminder that pure love is still possible in this world (even if not between a man and a woman, but between a man and a man).

The relationship between Pella and Mike is a more complex. And if the old man's love to the young mulatto-gay causes tenderness, Pella’s love, corrupted and almost lost a girl, with Mike raises awareness. Attraction to older men, which she explains as a need for someone who'd replaced her father, is gradually passing away, and Pella is aware that her past life was full of mistakes, but now is the time to begin to correct them. Mike is the first step to improvement.

If the beginning of the book is slightly prolonged and tedious, the final otherwise, sharp and puts everything in place as the bat hit the ball. Fear of each of the characters to grow up, to look at oneself in a few years after graduation in Westish, passes. Whether the old man's death to blame, or the unexpected victory of the team in the league, but all the heroes suddenly realize that you can not always live in the same day, you need to make decisions, whatever they would be. And everyone at once throws depressive mood and start acting. The director chooses death for his own peace and the future of her daughter. Mike realizes that he is a good coach and why does not become a coach. Henry starts to play again for the team. Pella decides to dig the grave of his father and fulfill his last wish.

Miracles happen, and it seems that Westish is a place of miracles. College is like a magic academy that attracts everyone. Affenlight did not want to leave college. Pell left to study here. Mike began working here, and Henry does not want to play for the Cardinals, but wants to continue playing for the local team. Campus life is described quite realistically, and indeed all parts of the book, which describes not the baseball field, but the campus, are the very best here.

Not a bad novel, but to call this the book of the year? It would be exaggeration.

Time Break

2011-11-28T22:54:00.000+06:00

There will be no reviews in the next two weeks. After vacation I plan to review lots of books. Stay tuned.

Trouble

2011-11-27T16:49:00.000+06:00

Jesse Kellerman
Trouble

Putnam, 2007

Kellerman tries himself in psycho-neonoir. Jonah Stem is a medical student in the surgical department of a hospital in New York. After a hard day at the clinic, John returnes home to get some sleep and then go to the hospital again. Suddenly he hears a scream and sees a black man stabbing a young woman, asking for help. Instead of calling the police Jonah intervenes in the conflict, fights with a man, and then loses consciousness. When he awakes in the hospital, he learns that the man is dead and the girl recovers from injury. Jonah finds out from the newspapers of the other participants of the incident. Assailant was a man named Raymond Iniguez, a 36-year-old former teacher and a mental hospital patient. The victim was Eve Gones, 31, a teacher of dance therapy in the same hospital.

One day Jonah comes home, where Eve waits for him. They go out to dine in one of the restaurants nearby. Jonah is surprised when he finds out that Eve went to Yale and graduated at the same year with Jonah’s sister Katie. The unexpected news comes from Jonah’s lawyer Belzer: Raymond Iniguez’s brother Simon hired a nosy lawyer and is going to sue Jonah in court. Soon Jonah's life will become a one big trouble.

After the first fifty pages I want to say "wow." Kellerman takes the best from neonoir and uses it to the maximum. Honest and unsullied hero is accidentally drawn into trouble wanting to do something good. After that, troubles continue to stratify. Of course, it's all flowers compared to what lies ahead of Jonah. Later, he will regret not only that he intervened in the fight scene, but also about the fact that he was born.

The hero is about the same as in other Kellerman’s books: a young intellectual, from a decent and moderately wealthy family. Open, honest, friendly, but too soft, with no negative experiences. It is because of his character he finds himself in trouble.

And if the first half of the book is closer to neonoir, the second is safe to add the prefix psycho-. Psychopaths are in all Kellerman’s books, they just have different forms of mania and behavior. Here again, as in his other books, there are people who give themselves for others. In the beginning, when Kellerman puts beacons that should alert the reader that something is wrong with Eve, but where the author will lead, you can only guess.

On the emotional tension «Trouble» overtakes «Sunstroke», but inferior to "The Executioner." There will be death, and until the very end you’ll be sitting on pins and needles, wondering who is going to die.

So, muttering "wow" throughout the book, we come to the finale - which is disappointing. It is disappointing that the protagonist was not disclosed. I was waiting that Jonah finally will show himself, will make a move that will allow us to judge about the hero, who is he: a coward, a murderer, superdoc, a victim of circumstances.

Good novel about how easily accents are displaced (self-defense is murder; man is always rapist; and laws are delicate things), about that no one is immune. But the finale is a trouble.

Cemetery Road

2011-11-23T15:41:00.000+06:00

Gar Anthony Haywood
Cemetery Road

Severn House, 2010

The narrator of this story Errol Handy White arrives in Los Angeles for the funeral of his childhood friend R.J. Burrow. Burrow has been found dead in a stolen car full of drugs, with two bullets in his head and two in the back. Burrow, White, and O`Neal Holden, now mayor of nearby Bellwood, in their youth committed a crime, which led to a series of tragic consequences, and the guilt is still gnawing at each of them after 26 years. After the crime the three friends from the hood swear that will never communicate with each other. Now Burrow dies of a mysterious death, so that even the family of the deceased, his wife and daughter, does not believe in the police version that the death of Burrow is the result of drug deal gone wrong. Holden, who became mayor, seems to have engaged in illicit affairs. Handy White believes that that what he can do for the childhood friend now is find out who killed Burrow and how his death connects with a secret from the past.

The classic beginning in no way leads to predictable results. Handy White, now a mechanic in one of the towns of Minnesota, over these 26 years that have passed since the time when the three friends made a major mistake of their lives, became a wise man, although time has not healed his wounds. «Cemetery Road» is a book written by a wise man. Almost every chapter begins with a lyrical introduction. I want to cite and cite:

«It's not a problem young people have to worry about, but right around the time he hits his middle forties, a man starts giving serious thought to dying well. In his sleep in his own bed, or in the course of a street fight meant to settle something meaningful. His end doesn't have to be poignant, just devoid of indignity.»

«No matter how it comes upon you, no man is ever adequately prepared for fatherhood. It is too inexact a science. »

«... There were many paths a man could take during his time on earth, but sooner or later, they all brought him down the same one: cemetery road.»

The lyrical component, however, does not mean that «Cemetery Road» is devoid of cruel and brutal truth. Handy White gradually recalls the bloody story from the past, which drugdealers and psychopaths were involved in, parallel closing to solving the death of Burrow. White knows that the truth will hit him in the stomach, and the past woudn’t be fixed, but White goes to the end. There are mistakes that can be corrected; there are mistakes that can not be corrected, and there are mistakes, the correction of which leads to new mistakes. Haywood's book is just about the last type of mistakes.

Haywood writes like so few people today do, he also wrote a book with impeccable storyline. All there is interconnected, and yet in a novel there are three plot lines and two finals, one more powerful than the other.

«Cemetery Road» is almost a perfect book about no matter how much a man strive for perfection, he still can not get rid of his weaknesses and can’t wash away all his sins.

new chapbooks from Nightjar Press

2011-11-23T15:16:00.000+06:00

GA Pickin
Remains

Christopher Kenworthy
Sullom Hill

Nightjar Press, 2011

The next couple of chapbooks from Nicholas Royle’s Nightjar Press. These two stories are quite different: one tells of what happens inside of a person, other of that from the outside.

In «Remains» unnamed narrator with a torch in his hand goes through the woods, hurrying to the house to meet friends with whom he meets every year. Close to the final point, torch goes off. The hero can not move in complete darkness. He expects that friends will help him to find the right way, knowing that he is late. The hero here is faceless and nameless. The author is interested not in this particular traveler, but in the relationship between man and nature in general. People change what surrounds them, but the environment changes people, too. There is no question in what direction who changes who. The question is, what forms of communication can be between man and nature?

How does a person change inside? - Christopher Kenworthy asks in his «Sullom Hill». The narrator recalls the story of childhood, and the main character in this story is a neighbor boy Neil Kingsley:

«Usually they called him a bit slow, rather than stupid. Other kids called him backwards or mental or a spastic, even though there wasn't much physically wrong with him. To look at, you might think he was normal, apart from his lips. They were enormous, as though the rest of his face had shrunk and filled them out. There was always wet spit and dried spit and bits of wafery skin on his lips. He looked like his mouth was frosting over.»

Strange relationship between the three youths and a shocking secret make this story unforgettable.

These two stories only have in common that they both end with a kind of fliping on the nose. What's behind the door, asks a reader. It is better not to know, answer both writers.

BOOK GIVEAWAY: Luther: The Calling

2011-11-14T17:45:00.000+06:00

OK, everyone loves free books. I have one copy of Luther: The Calling, first in the series of novels featuring DCI Luther, written by Neil Cross. Who's Luther? You don't know? You didn't see brilliant UK TV series Luther? Well, in that case, you can read the book first and then watch the series. (Season 1 is better than Season 2, actually.) Luther: The Calling will tell you the story how Luther became Luther.

Description from the publisher:

DCI John Luther has an extraordinary clearance rate. He commands outstanding loyalty from friends and colleagues. Nobody who ever stood at his side has a bad word to say about him. And yet there are rumours that DCI Luther is bad – not corrupt, not on the take, but tormented. Luther seethes with a hidden fury that at times he can barely control. Sometimes it sends him to the brink of madness, making him do things he shouldn’t; things way beyond the limits of the law.

Luther: The Calling, the first in a new series of novels featuring DCI John Luther, takes us into Luther’s past and into his mind. It is the story of the case that tore his personal and professional relationships apart and propelled him over the precipice. Beyond fury, beyond vengeance. All the way to murder…

“Neil Cross has created such a compelling character”
Idris Elba, star of Luther and The Wire

So what should you do to enter to win a copy:

Follow my blog (on the right panel Join this site)

Once the number of the followers would become 50, every follower will be entered in the competition.

I'll pick randomly one winner from 50 followers.

Competition is open world-wide.

Spreading the word about this giveaway is welcome.

Sunstroke

2011-11-10T17:10:00.000+06:00

Jesse Kellerman
Sunstroke

Jove, 2006

The heroine of this debut novel, Gloria Mendez, is a 36-year-old secretary at the firm for the sale of souvenirs. She is Mexican in origin and is in love with her boss Carl Perreira, who is 20 years senior and, although he treats Gloria with great sympathy, does not share her romantic feelings. When Perreira goes to Mexico on vacation, he gives time off for Gloria as well. The book opens with a scene of the earthquake in Los Angeles. While the whole city is in panic, Gloria behaves calmly, can not sleep and goes to work. In the office, she finds a note from the boss and unintelligible message on the answering machine from which Gloria understands that Charles have been in an accident. American and Mexican police react sluggishly to Gloria’s request for help. After a dozen calls Gloria gets through to the police in the town of Agua Vivas, where, presumably, something happened to Perreira. Local police chief named Fajardo says that far from the city really there has been a car accident with the injured American on "Honda" with California plates. News for Gloria's disappointing: Charles is dead. Sudden death and call home rise Gloria’s suspicions. She wants to know whether her boss died, and if so, under what circumstances. Gloria goes to Mexico.

Kellerman confirmed that he is an excellent storyteller, and «Sunstroke» is really well told story. The novel, of course, is too slow and "literary" to be called a thriller, and stylistically too easy to qualify for membership in the "great literature" but this does not in any way interfere with enjoying the book. The book, in spite of the plot, in the first place is character-driven. For every hero the author creates a whole story. Kellerman gradually reveals to us how Gloria has become what she’ve become, and how her old boss became for her the most important person in the world and how she actually knew nothing about him. The hardest truth about herself Gloria realizes at the very ending of the book: she has done this double journey to Mexico, the digging into the past of Charles not because she loved Charles and cared for him, but simply out of boredom. She was lonely; she was nobody, and all her care of the deceased was only an attempt to stir herself.

Kellerman, however, sometimes talks too much by introducing third-rate characters with whole stories that do not affect the development of the plot. He inserts the anecdote for anecdote, in order to simply tell an interesting story. It was not that great sin, but sometimes you need to learn to shut up.

That's really great debut. Son surpassed the mother and the father.

Irma Voth

2011-11-10T16:42:00.000+06:00

Miriam Toews
Irma Voth

Faber & Faber, 2011

Irma Voth is 19-year-old girl living in a Mennonite commune in a Mexican desert. Mennonites is a religious group that rejects all worldly: things of earth are the enemy of heaven. They often migrate, work hard, and avoid contact with non-Mennonites. Irma's father is an imperious man, he keeps cows. Irma's family: her sister Aggie, two little brothers, mother and father - suddenly moved to Mexico from Canada. In Mexico, Irma meets Jorge, a young man who, among other things, stores drugs at the home. After her marriage to Jorge, Irma’s father banishes her from the house, separating her to the house with her husband in exchange for that Irma and Jorge would help the father with the cows. Already in the opening scene of the novel we see as Jorge moves away from Irma, accusing her of being a bad wife. Irma on the verge of despair: she does not know how to rectify the situation with my husband. Suddenly, the film crew comes to the desert headed by director Diego, planning to shoot in the desert a film about Mennonites. Diego hires Irma in the group as a translator: she knows three languages, English, Spanish and German dialect spoken by the Mennonites. Irma is the responsibility of explaining to the actress Marijke, a German with Russian roots, in German that is required of her by the director or operator. For the fact that Irma works on strangers from the cast, father and other Mennonites despise and hate her.

At first glance it may seem a simple-minded story, but it is actually a multi-layered and fascinating story about eternal values. Toews does this in the first place because she was able to give the main character a unique voice. Irma, both naive and already very experienced, is all the while as if in motion, as well as her thoughts. She's all like the light, but her life has a mystery, and we learn about the death of Irma's sister Katie only in the final. Mennonites are far from the art, and even the arrival of the crew almost does not change anything, because Irma is not involved in the shootings themselves. But the girl herself is artistically by nature. She makes notes in a notebook, in the head plays scenes from the life that can not happen, repeat to herrself fragments of not even books but scraps of letters. And if Irma’s sister Aggie quickly and painlessly flowed into the city life, Irma constantly tortures herself by questions and doubts, which made it quite difficult for her to get away from the old life. Irma in the soul is a Mennonite, unearthly, not of this world, but she lives on earth and have to arrange her life under the earth's rules. That's why it's so hard for her, and her diubts bring misfortune to the others.

The novel is full of unusual and easy humor, especially in that part of the book where the action takes place with the film crew. The clash of two different cultures always leads to comic results. This does not mean that the book is light-weight. In places it is very dark, because conscience does not let Irma throughout the novel, is she actually guilty of something or just feels guilty.

The novel sags a bit after the departure of Irma and her sisters from the desert to the city. The author seemed a bit removed from his character, and we lose the intimacy with the narrator. By the final Toews is very good again: emotions are running high, and Irma will have to make a difficult choice.

Apostle Rising

2011-11-04T22:36:00.000+06:00

Richard Godwin

Apostle Rising

Black Jackal Books, 2011

Detective Chief Inspector Frank Castle once could not find a serial killer, the man responsible for so-called Woodland killings. Everything pointed to Karl Black, but the investigation has failed to prove his involvement in the brutal killings. Black remained at large, and Castle was trampled. He’d been humiliated, lost his wife, was treated for depression. Now, many years later, a copycat kills people in a similar manner. Castle thinks that the killings are committed by a person who well studied original killings. The inspector and his partner Jacki Stone suspect that Black once again implicated in the killings, but detectives still have no leads. Black is now the head of the secret and powerful sect, and murders are clearly ritual. The situation is complicated by the fact that killings are commited by, perhaps, two maniacs. One kills prostitutes, the other - politicians. Castle will do everything to find a cruel copycat. Or two.

The fact that Black comes up in the second series of murders already indicates his involvement in the killings. Black’s sectarianism and violence homicides give s reader first puzzle: whether will there be a rational explanation of the crime or there will be the intervention of supernatural forces? Nevertheless, the chapters, in which we see the actions of Black, are the most tortuous and they’re almost not moving the events. One chapter is similar to another so that as you listen to an interesting story told by a stutter: interesting, but too ductile.

The investigation is moving, albeit slowly. The killer always is one step ahead. Castle, which once again is humiliated by the press for his impotence, uses help of not only Stone, but also psychologists, establishing motives and psychological portrait of of the killer. After a few sagging middle the book pleases unexpected plot twists.

Ironically, the most interesting character in the book is not Castle or Black, both of them are full of cliches, but the partner of Castle, Jacki Stone. Her role in the investigation is not exactly clear, but what makes her interesting is her relationship with her boyfriend, Don. Stone is definitely not as dependent on the investigation as Castle, but spends nearly all her time at work. The storyline with Stone and Don are not carried through, and ending suggests that perhaps we’ll see a sequel.

«Apostle Rising» is an entertaining book, but unnecessarily prolonged. The novel would be definitely better if it’d shorter by a half.

The Sound of Gravity

2011-11-02T00:06:00.000+06:00

Joe Simpson
The Sound of Gravity

Jonathan Cape, 2011

The second novel from a professional alpinist. The book opens with a shocking scene: a man named Patrick, the main character, wakes up because his wife catches him in an attempt to save herself from falling off a cliff. Patrick and his wife made the ascent in the Alps, stopping for the night. But at night Patrick’s wife gets out of her sleeping bag and her lifeline failes. The woman begins to fall and manages to grab Patrick's hand. He tries to pull her, but he was not secured by lifeline. Because of that the woman decides to fall to save at least the life of her husband. They barely have time only to tell each other "goodbye." Later, from the conversation of two men from the mountain village, it becomes clear that Patrick was found. He was very weak, barely moving. He was taken to the hospital.

The second part of the novel begins 25 years after the accident. Patrick lives and works in a small hut right in the mountains. He helps the other climbers, who can rest or spend the night at the hut. One of them is Karl, a German. In the mountains, he falls and breaks to death. The team of rescuers from the village comes for the body. However, the storm is approaching, and the body is needed to rescue fast. The next day the body is taken away and brought to Patrick’s hut. In here rescuers decide to leave the body near the hut, fasten it to the frame and throwing snow on it. Big storm is coming. This time, Patrick will have to save the life of another woman named Cassie.

The imbalance between the first and second parts of this book is the main flaw of the book. The first part begins suddenly and very promising. But after a thrilling beginning the novel bogges down and starts marking time. The book is very reliable, since the author himself is an experienced climber. But the description of multi-day struggle for life during a storm begins to tire a reader quickly. Too viscous text; you need to climb in it as in a rock to not to lose interest. The struggle for life, of course, is a thing in itself not very interesting: it’s no entertainment, if you know that you can die, - but the book would have won if Simpson had cut the first part in half.

The second part is read perfectly as a standalone work. Very lyrical, piercing style; simple but strong story; again a high level of realism. The author masterfully describes the dynamics of the relationship between Patrick and Cassie. Simpson changes the angle of view, and we see how Patrick begins to thaw a little after difficult for him 25 years, full of silent mourning for his wife. Cassie gives him new hope. The more symbolic that the new love in Patrick’s life also appears in the strongest storm in the same place, but 25 years later. To avoid repetition and thoroughly disclose the nature of Cassie, the author shows the events of Patrick’s past through the lens of the woman. How she saw that situation, how she assessed the actions of Patrick, how this case had changed her life.

«The Sound of Gravity» is generally meditative reading, but the second part is a much more dynamic. The first one could not disclose the nature of man, because Patrick remained alone with the rocks. In the second part the character interacts with others, and we begin to understand the depth of his drama.

It is a book well worth reading, with the first flawed part.

Cold In Hand

2011-10-27T23:20:00.000+06:00

John Harvey

Cold In Hand

William Heinemann, 2008

Charlie Resnick, an aging cop and hero of numerous novels of John Harvey, lives with a young woman Lynn Kellogg, also a detective, and is preparing to retire. On Valentine's Day the youth gangs dispute, and Kellogg is trying to prevent it. As a result, one girl is killed, another wounded, and Kellogg, which used the body of a murdered girl as a shield, receives minor injuries. Resnick persuade the authorities to allow him to investigate this incident with a partner. The father of the killed girl makes explicit threats to Resnick and Kellogg, believing she’s guilty in his daughter's death. When Kellogg recovers from an injury, she returnes to the stalled case, involving the illegal gunrunning and human trafficking from Eastern Europe. Witnesses in this case, two women who worked as prostitutes, fear for their lives, and Kellogg begins to suspect the connection between a police officer from the department of serious crimes and the Eastern European mafia. Resnick is busy with his investigation and does not yet know what a nightmare his life will soon become to.

Crime novels in the genre of "police procedurals" can rarely boast of originality and freshness. Their structure itself is so well established that you do not need to invent anything, everything has already been invented, you need only one cliche replace by another. Most often, the inspector in years drinks heavily and walks on the women, while investigating for weeks one and the same thing as if the criminals in this period generally disappear from the face of the earth and do not commit crimes that are actually also need to investigate. And it’s good, if the author has come up with an original twist in the ending or can write well in his/her native language, then so a book can deserve some attention. So «Cold In Hand» by John Harvey is an outstanding police procedural for several reasons. For once, there are two detectives, but they do not work together. Resnick does not drink heavily or sleep with anyone, but listens to jazz and takes care of his partner. Here are a few crimes, and the inspectors have to cope with several things simultaneously.

Harvey also gives an idea of how the police work in Britain: how departments interplay between themselves, how internal investigations are conducted, how the security of important witnesses is provided. Yes, all of these are the technical details, the theory, but the author knows practice too. Knows how win over a reader, knows how to surprise with an unexpected clue in the end, knows how to deploy a novel half-way and return it in a different direction.

«Cold In Hand» definitely shows that it’s early to give up on police procedurals.

The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8

2011-10-06T21:12:00.000+06:00

The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8
Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

Constable & Robinson, 2011

This thick volume includes more than 40 stories. I want to just say "wow!", but is it plus to a book with such a volume, when the title has the word «best»? On the one hand, ut’s a definite plus: the editor Jakubowski read a lot and carefully, selecting stories for publication, from anthologies and print magazines, as well as from online zines and chapbooks. Accordingly, there are masters of the genre, who have a few awards on the shelf, but there are newbies as well who have no published books. The variety is almost always good, but variety does not mean quality. Are all the forty stories the best? Or there are the best, those that are worse, and those one about which people usually say "read and forgot"? Yes, those there are here too. With this number of stories it’s impossible that all the stories were equally good. If the book will be of ten stories, it would be really best of the year, but it turned out the best and a lot of good. Read the best is necessary, 10-15 stories here are good, the rest are for another reader, maybe. I will look at the top ten only (in the order they appear in the book).

«Dolphin Junction» by Mick Herron is definitely one of the best stories in the book. The plot is that a husband finds a note from his wife stating that she was leaving and that he didn’t try to find her. The police treat him calmly: adults converge and diverge, anything can happen, - but the husband feels that his wife was not gone somewhere by herself, but she was kidnapped. He starts to find her. This story has everything that makes a story good story: an unexpected turn, tense plot, secrets of the past, and retribution for them in the present. «Affairs of the Heart» by Kate Atkinson seems at first a humorous story, but the end is dark as in the «Dolphin Junction». Feelings can not be trusted, especially when they associate with a family, where women are called Faith, Patience and Constance.

«And that was why, on a cold night in February, Duncan Milne was up to his neck in shite. Literally. » - thus begins the story of Stuart MacBride «The Ballad of Manky Milne ». And it really reads like a ballad about a loser who got involved in shit in the literal and figurative sense.

«The Circle» by David Hewson is the only story in the collection that develops the theme of terrorism. The author leads the reader by the nose until the very end. In «An Arm and a Leg» Nigel Bird presents to his hero an upbringing class (Bird himself is a teacher), so only punishment will be far more serious than a blow by ruler on the wrist. «Homework» by Phil Lovesey is a story in the form of composition by a girl named Judy Harris. A girl studying in the school "Hamlet" and finds many similarities between Shakespeare and the history of her own family. Children had never yet convicted criminals with such care and knowledge in the literature. («Homework» has won this year's "Dagger" for best short story.)

«Unhappy Endings» by Colin Bateman is a postmodern mystery about the writer. Very funny and very dark. As I hear in Bateman the echoes of John Barth. «Run, Rabbit, Run» by Ray Banks is a simple but catchy tale of cowardice, responsibility and high self-esteem.

«The Hard Sell» by Jay Stringer begins as a screenplay for a heist movie a la Ocean's 11. Resourceful crooks have come up with a good scam, just did not take into account that experience was sometimes more important than youth. The anthology ends, as well as begins with a story of Ian Rankin. «Driven» is an ingenious blend of crime storiy and sermon. Rankin, who has dozens of novels behind, has shown that he is in great shape.

After this collection, you can easily find who in British crime and mystery are worth reading in the first place, and enjoy the finest selection by Jakubowski.

Ganges #2

2011-10-06T02:01:00.000+06:00

Kevin Huizenga
Ganges #2

Fantagraphics, 2008

Glen Ganges returnes in the second volume of «Ganges». This collection includes two short stories. The first is a computer game. The player himself, though, will not appear, before us only the screen with a strange toy on it (and indeed it is not clear, is there player at all). After the hieroglyphs we see a choice of players, and the hero is someone like a hedgehog, but with long human legs. This hedgehog-man begins to hit other obscure characters. The meaning of this story in general and its inclusion in this collection may well have remained a mystery if it were not for one thing. The thing is that you do not need to look for a meaning there, when you can see what figures Huizenga draws. The figures, which are built from computer characters, are similar to figures of the Aztecs, the structure of a human cell and a key to unraveling the mysteries of the universe, at the same time. You have never been under hypnosis? So Huizenga’s art proficiency hypnotize you, just try it.

The second story in the book, «Glenn Ganges in Pulverize», is an unexpected continuation of the first one. This computer game is the game that all the office staff, where Ganges works, plays. In the late 90's an Internet start-up begins, something like Yahoo, pre-doomed to failure, and Ganges and his colleagues tried to make money on the internet. And just a whole day (and staying at work past midnight) the entire office was playing a computer game on the network. There were not hedgehog-mans, it was something like a shooter where players only shooting at each other. "Pulverize" gradually began to replace reality for Ganges. About this comic a lot can be said like "our whole life is a game», and this will be true, but more true to saywill be that all good things must come to an end, you’ve played, and that's enough. And the moral is simple: not work joins people together, but fun.

Truth Lies Bleeding

2011-10-01T16:21:00.001+06:00

Tony Black

Truth Lies Bleeding

Preface Publishing, 2011

Detective Inspector Rob Brennan after the murder of his brother spent six months in a psychiatric hospital, recovering from the shock. Returning to work, Brennan rips right from the chief right to investigate the brutal murder of a young girl whose body was brutally mutilated. The body can not yet be identified, but the Brennan suspects that the girl was a local, as the killer, trying to disguise with the cruelty ordinary murder after rape. At the same time, the local crime boss Deil McArdle (the Deil, as he is called) agrees to crank a small crime, working with German mobsters, and Barry Tierney, a small criminal, brings a baby into the apartment of his drug addict girlfriend. In addition to investigating the murder of a girl, Brennan also must deal with the murderers of his brother.

Tony Black, who has written four novels about Gus Dury, for a time abandoned his serial hero and launched a new series of police procedurals about Inspector Brennan. Of the two novels about Dury what I read, one was good, one was bad, and «Truth Lies Bleeding» did not become too successful start of the series. Black writes the same scathing prose, and Brennan is a worthy successor to Dury. He is sharp on the tongue; he is always displeased with something, with troubles in his personal life. The first half of the book is good because you can enjoy the leisurely development of events, savoring some moments: the dialogue between criminals, Brennan’s rudeness, insider’s police wars. The good thing about «Truth Lies Bleeding» is the way Black writes intrigue within the police department. It is interesting to watch how the inspectors are fighting for a particular investigation, how the inspectors are trying to curry favor with his superiors, how the authorities urge their subordinates. And Brennan, of course, is not the one who is easy to handle:

«Brennan hadn't wanted the leave; the Chief Super had insisted on it. She'd wanted to put him out because he wasn'ta yes-man. Galloway was a typical careerist: she surrounded herself with the types that were no challenge to her. People like the boy, Stevie McGuire. He was a no-hoper, perfect material for promotion in Galloway's ranks. More like McGuire beneath her and her ascent was assured, carried high on their shoulders. Providing she could keep the likes of Brennan in check, that is. She still needed to rely on someone providing the clear-up rates if she was to get the Chief Constable's job»

The second half of the book is disappointing in that Brennan does not think hard, and the killer himself finally comes into his hands. And the background of murder and all subsequent events seem ridiculous and absurdly false. Everything too easy comes to happy ending.

Let's hope in the next book in the series Tony Black makes Brennan sweat.

Every Shallow Cut

2011-09-30T23:37:00.001+06:00

Tom Piccirilli

Every Shallow Cut

Chizine Publications, 2011

The unnamed narrator, once quite a well-known writer in a narrow range, even received several literary awards, remains alone without a home (taken by the creditors), wife (ran to a lawyer), money (books are selling very bad), with only his faithful dog named Churchill. Gathering a few own things in the car, the writer wants to take them to the flea market, helping a little money. Three street robbers who want easy money attack the narrator on the street. The writer sees no reason to live, having lost everything, but something inside him snaps, and now he is fighting back the young scum, seriously beating them and taking money from one of them. Selling possessions and adding the money from the pocket of the beaten punk, the narrator buys a gun, and he does not yet know why: whether to self-defence, or to make a suicide. Alone, driving through the country, the writer goes to his brother living in New York, again without knowing why: whether to see him at last, or to start a new life.

Piccirilli, until this book having reputation of excellent plotter, this time dropped the plot altogether aside, writing an excellent jazzy prose. This is, in general, a poem in prose, stanzas about despair, anger and fall into the abyss. The hero has no name, face, desire and reason to live and flies into the abyss, yet less than a week ago he had almost everything you need for life. The unnamed narrator has no face, because instead of it is a mirror in which everyone will see one’s own reflection when will also fall into the abyss.

Something inside of the writer still does not allow him to say goodbye to this world, perhaps a desire to finish the last novel. One of the best scenes of the book, when the author visits his agent, wanting to know the situation with his unsold manuscripts, ends thus:

«I thought of pulling the piece and putting one in his thigh. The underworld heroes of my stories often shot each other in the thick meat of their thighs. It was a way of saying that they were bad but not too bad. That they could handle violence with ease but still kept life in some kind of high regard. I put my hand in the rucksack and got my fist around the revolver. I started to sweat. His laughter made me sick to my stomach. I glanced at the bookcase and wondered which of the names on the spines of the books he was in love with at this moment.
Toppling the bookcase across his office might make a bolder statement than shooting him in the leg, but the case was bolted to the wall.
I walked out past his girl and said goodbye. She wasn't doing anything. She wasn't reading or typing or texting or checking voice mail. She was just sitting there, lost inside herself. She didn't look up. I almost kissed her.»

This novella cuts like the sharpest knife.

Fun & Games

2011-09-21T02:01:00.001+06:00

Duane Swierczynski

Fun & Games

Mulholland Books UK, 2011

Lane Madden, third-rate actress, drives on Hollywood highway to unwind and breathe the air, when a psychopath begins to pursue her. Miraculously surviving the accident, Madden seeks salvation and gets into one of the empty houses in Hollywood Hills. By coincidence, soon in this house arrives Charlie Hardie, an ex-cop, now a man with a curious profession – he is a housesitter. Hardie, for a few years after the massacre of his partner and his family by Albanian mobsters, has been flying across the United States, guarding expensive houses of the rich, while they are away. The next gig is also not going to be anything extraordinary, just watch old movies and drink beer all day. But in the house Hardie meets an intruder - Madden, armed with a mic stand. The actress thinks that Hardie is one of Them, and almost kills him in self-defense. THEY are The Accident People. When the housesitter has still convinced the actress that he is not one of Them, but simply has come to watch the house during the absence of the owner, he understands that these professional hitmans will not leave alive neither him nor the actress.

If you've read once about a book that it is a page-turner and endless action, then it was a lie. Because compared to the «Fun & Games» other books may seem a snail runs. The action begins with the first page and does not stop at all. The heroes of the book have an opportunity to think only on the run, on the walk, crawling on all fours, in a jump, in the car chase. By heroes, I mean not only Hardie and Madden, but The Accident People as well. The narrative changes from Hardie’s point of view and from The Accident People’s point of view. And the mysterious killers have to come up with more and more ingenious plans to assassinate an actress, along with Hardie, that is him who puts a spoke in the wheel of well-functioning mechanism.

You might think «Fun & Games» is just another shooter. And it's true. But what is wrong with this shooting, if the author has one hundred aces up his sleeve and he is a crooked gambler. Moreover, «Fun & Games» is a science-fiction crime novel, and it is possible that the final book of the trilogy will show us that that it is not even sci-fi, but fantasy. There were quite a lot of successful hybrids of crime and fantasy in recent years, but this hybrid is absolutely original. Fantastic elements allow Swierczynski invent more and more new plot twists. Here, indeed, there is fun and games. Swierczynski is able to make his characters run. The fact that this is only the first book of the trilogy says only that the author has shown not all of his possibilities.

Hardie himself is far from original. He is an ex-cop who after the shooting of his partner and his family, refused to contact with his own family, safely hid it, so that what happened to his partner, has not repeated with Hardy. But what happens with Hardie and how he has managed to end up in such a story, this is a highly original and sometimes extremely funny.

People should build queues in shops to buy «Fun & Games».

Triple Crossing

2011-09-19T22:31:00.001+06:00

Sebastian Rotella

Triple Crossing

Mulholland Books, 2011

Valentine Pescatore, after got into trouble in his native Chicago, moved closer to the Mexican border in San Diego, where he began to work as a Border Patrol Agent. Pescatore’s supervisor Agent Garrison is a dirty cop and carries out assignments for the serious people from the cartel. American government has long been dreaming to expose Harrison, but he is very careful and does not make mistakes. When Pescatore violates the law by crossing the border with Mexico, it offers big troubles for. American female agent Isabel Puente investigating the affairs of the influential members of the cartel, offers Pescatore to go undercover, rubbing in the credibility of Garrison, which can lead to the top of the cartel - Junior Ruiz Caballero. This way the agent may avoid prison. Pescatore, a rookie, agrees, but also manages to sleep with Puente. And if beautiful Puente entirely trusts Pescatore, then one more important character of the book - Leo Mendez, a former Mexican journalist and now head of anti-corruption unit in Tijuana – believes that Pescatore is an unreliable source that can work on both sides. Mendez is not only famous for his probity that even causes fear among dishonest: he also heads the so-called The Diogenes Group, which includes the most proven people of Mexico, and two aides of Mendez are called Athos and Porthos.

When Garrison is killed in a shootout, Pescatore is embroiled in a web of intrigue, working for the cartel. The undercover agent after a certain time is cut off from Puente and Mendez. Now, for him the most important thing is to survive.

Rotella is a journalist, who have been writing for decades about the US-Mexican border. He know what happens at the junction of the two states. Because of that the novel seems at times more non-fiction, than fiction. Human trafficking (and not only from South America but also from Asia and Eastern Europe), drug trafficking and piracy, arms smuggling, lawlessness in Mexocan prisons - all that Rotella describes as a matter of course. The author digs much deeper and dedicates the reader in the whole corrupt scheme, linking Americans and Mexicans. Subordination of the Federal Police to Mexican cartel and the city police to corrupt officials, close cooperation between U.S. senators and psychopath of the Mexican cartel. These schemes works in novel’s plot. The plot, by the way, is rather disingenuously made. Part of the intrigue is predictable, but the other part will present surprises.

Of all the heroes of the book the most interesting is Pescatore (Puente is nothing more than a faceless, but pretty representative of American power, and Mendez is roughly described fighter for justice), as the most hesitant and unsure of himself and others. He is caught between two abysses - between the thugs of the cartel and Mendez who hating the agent.

Style of Rotella immediately gives us impression that the author is a journalist. He writes dryly, at length, sometimes there is mismatch between the fast scenes and "slow" language. Here the author describes Puente: «She advanced with lithe, sure-footed strides, grinning playfully. She had her hair pulled back today like a flamenco dancer, bringing out the feline bone structure, the wide-set eyes. She was diminutive, athletically well proportioned, wearing a snug gold turtleneck and matching corduroy pants. The belt holster peeking out of her down vest was empty; US agents were forbidden to carry firearms on Mexican soil. But Méndez suspected that she was packing her second gun, a short-barreled automatic, in one of her knee-high suede boots or the bag over her shoulder.» And this is Pescatore after using drugs: «What did he remember about her? Her name: Marisol? Soledad? The tops of her breasts swelling out of a leotard. Extra heft in the hips and thighs. Turning, posing on the dance floor, swaying against him in knee-length leather pants. Marisol-or-Soledad was from Calexico. Said his accent in Spanish was cute, reminded her of this South American singer on MTV Latino. She was one of the platoon of women waiting when the homeboys arrived at the ranch. The place was fancied up for a party: mariachis, an outdoor bar, a disc jockey on the gazebo spinning tunes. Oldies for cholos: "Always and Forever," "Who's That Lady?," "Lean On Me." But the mood was less than mellow because Pelón wandered around firing one-armed volleys at the stars with his AK-47."

Perhaps in his next novel Rotella will be more concise and give up on his love for excessive descriptiveness.

«Triple Crossing» is certainly a fascinating and dangerous journey to Latin America, and Rotella in his debut novel shows that he is capable of much.

The Third Bear

2011-09-17T01:13:00.000+06:00

Jeff VanderMeer

The Third Bear

Tachyon Publications, 2010

This collection of short stories (one original, other 13 were published in one form or another in magazines and anthologies) by Jeff VanderMeer can confound all those who believe that the format of the short story had died. After reading «The Third Bear», it becomes clear to anyone that the story is alive and is not going to die for a few hundred years more at least.

«The Third Bear» is a shooting gallery for the reader. The book is populated by huge numbers of animals and the creatures that pretend to be animals, and when the eye-gun hits the target, then as a gift you take a story about an animal.

In «The Third Bear», which after the first page seems the standard fantasy, but then turns into something more sophisticated and unconventional, a kind of monster that people call for the convenience The Third Bear, attackes the village of Grommin, abducting people and devouring them. The Third Bear, of course, is not a bear, and got his nickname because of the consonance with Theeber. The village already is in a mess, but the monster eats strong men, placing the existence of the entire community at risk. Head of the village at any price has to stop the dangerous animal. You can’t find in the story typical clashes between conan-villager and man-eating bear; powerful wizards; king defender, guarding his citizens. Vandermeer does not give the answer where the bear came from and for what purpose. Author does not give an answer to the question, what kind of world is this, as well. This well may be the Earth in feudal times, this may be another planet, another world. And is it so important when you stay cut off from the world, with your village in front of the forest with the most terrible creature, which you ever saw?

VanderMeer leaves unanswered the appearance of the speaking rabbit in the story «The Quickening». Parents of 12-year old Rachel died in a car accident, and now she lives in a house with his aunt Etta. One day a stranger near the pond gives the girl a rabbit and says his name is Sensio. Sensio soon begins to talk to the girl and tells her that he is not a rabbit. The Aunt Etta, having learnt about the abilities of the beast, at first gives him royal honors, and then decides to make money. To some people the fabula of «The Quickening» may seem unoriginal: how many times we've read about talking animals? But Sensio is anything, but not an animal. This is a story (not without a bit of black humor) about the blackness of the soul and tyranny, about the narrow-mindedness and breadth of meanness. «The Quickening» could be written by Updike or Carver, if they came up with the story of a girl, her despot aunt and a creature in the guise of a rabbit.

«My manager was extremely thin, made of plastic, with paper covering the plastic» - so begins «The Situation», very weird office farce. Conspiracy is building up against the protagonist, his Manager every day asks whether he loves her, colleagues mutate. The expression "office plankton" should be understood literally. Very weird.

Each story in this collection is not what it seems. «Fixing Hanover» is more than steampunk. «Errata» is more than a postmodern story on how to write a story. «Shark God Versus Octopus God» is more than a story based on a myth. «The Surgeon's Tale» is more than the retelling of "Frankenstein."

Vandermeer has everything that a good storyteller should have: he is original, he knows how to build a structure of a story, and he can change style depending on the story. Read this book, or you will be eaten by the bear.

Speedloader

2011-09-15T19:33:00.001+06:00

Speedloader
Ed. by Sandra Ruttan and Brian Lindenmuth

Snubnose Press ebook, 2011

This collection of six stories, which the publisher calls an anthology, looks like a sampler than a full anthology. The authors presented in the book are probably not familiar to the reader of popular fiction, while you can’t call them newcomers. Nik Korpon, Richard Thomas and Jonathan Woods have published books, Nigel Bird has released two self-published collections of his stories in an electronic format, Matthew C. Funk widely published his stories in various magazines. Nevertheless, they did not become the authors of bestsellers. These writers are not alike at all, and you should pay close attention to some of them.

Stories by Nigel Bird and Jonathan Woods are complete opposites. «You Dirty Rat» by Bird is too simple. This is a story of revenge of soldier to his officer after the Second World War. Bird also writes in simple, abrupt sentences, designed to show anger and sense of purpose of the French soldier. Bird is capable of more; this story is not his most successful thing. «Crash & Burn» by Woods on the contrary has too complicated plot. The author in the final brings together several plot lines. But the story is told too quickly, causing the heroes seem flat, and you do not empathize them. Woods, it seemes, wrote complex mathematical equation, where the only interesting thing is the answer, but not the solution process.

The best stories here are Korpon’s and Thomas’. Stylistically, they are most interesting, despite the almost complete absence of plot. «Mori Obscura» by Nik Korpon tells the story of a journalist with a criminal past who is facing a difficult choice: break the law again or refuse tempting offer and stay law-abiding. Thoughts of the hero of the story, from whose view the story narrates, are confused, and we will not know what choice he makes.

If the story by Kopron only lasts about half an hour of real time, then «Herniated Roots» by Richard Thomas is stretched over a longer interval. Michael, alcoholic cut off from the world and has been for 6 years trying to stay sober, meets a woman in a supermarket. Alcohol almost ruined Michael’s life some time ago: «When he first quit drinking, he gained a lot of weight, needing to do something with his hands, to drink something else-water, iced tea, soda, juice. He was slightly overweight now, but you wouldn't know it from looking at him. He had nobody to tell him that his gut was an eyesore... No woman had seen him naked in a long time, and this was also part of his plan». Michael’s plan is at all costs remain sober. But meeting with a charming Sandy could start the journey to hell for him. Thomas paints in the dark colors the existence of a single man on the edge. How long Michael would be able stick to his plan, here's a question we get the answer to after reading.

Help Yourself

2011-09-13T17:10:00.001+06:00

We all started to buy and read ebooks. They're great. Part of us, writers, realized that ebooks is a great oppurtunity to bring back in electronic formats out-of-print novels, collections, novellas, to bring together stories from different anthologies and magazines. Now writer shouldn't wait when publisher will decide to finally publish short story collection of non-commercial author. Part of us, readers, now can buy cheap books and no longer track used bookstores trying to find expensive out-of-print copy of some book.

However writers not only bring back old titles, but publish new self-pubbed novels and collections as ebooks. That's great, too. A lot of experimental works can reach readers now. A lot of good books refused by traditional publishers now will get their readership. But it seems not all self-pubbed writers realize that they have to not only upload their books on Amazon, but have to bring information about their books to reader.

If you start to browse on Amazon among self-pubbed works, you can see that lots of books don't have proper information. You click on Amazon page of some title, and all you see is a couple of sentences on book. How a reader could decide should he buy your book or not, if you don't give him proper info what this book is about and who are you, a writer. Reader just clicks on another book with proper info and buys it. You sales remain the same.

Now I want to give some advises to writers who upload their works on Amazon/Smashwords. I hope they will help your sales.

1) Post on your book page proper info about plot. It's really important. Not a couple of words: a couple of paragraphs. Covers on Amazon are small, and they don't really matter. Proper info is far more important.

2) If your book had been published by traditional publisher on paper somewhere, say so. Maybe a reader after finishing your ebook will decide to hunt and find this out-pf-print title.

3) Get some blurbs from good writers. Maybe not so famous, but good. Writers you like. Blurbs are important too. You wrote a book and couldn't make a good writer read it? It's a shame. Blurbs make readers feel that you are good: writer X praises you!

4) Small bio would be good. Yes, maybe you don't have awards, you hadn't been published much, but you wrote a great thing. We read not bios, but short stories and novels.

5) If it's possible, include in description your website link.

Interesting but even books published by Amazon imprints don't have proper description.

If you want that your book haven't been lost among a thousand of different titles, spend an hour to write a decent description to your book. You spent 2 years on your masterpiece and can't spend an hour to write a description? Well, in that case no one will read your masterpiece.

Songs of Innocence

2011-09-05T23:33:00.000+06:00

Richard Aleas
Songs of Innocence

Hard Case Crime, 2007

A former private investigator and currently the administrator of the course «Creative Nonfiction» at Columbia University, John Blake once lost his beloved and barely survived himself. 30-something-year-old Blake, himself attending a course on creative writing, moves closer to Dorrie Burke, who also attends the course. When Dorrie found dead in her apartment with a bag over her head and a book «Final Exit» next to her, the police do not doubt that she committed suicide. Dorrie's mother is not so sure of it and hires Blake to conduct an investigation of suicide and show to her that it was murder. Dorrie trusted Blake, and he knew her secret that she kept from her mother. Dorrie worked in massage parlors like sort of a prostitute and once took Blake's promise that if it something’d happen, Blake would have to remove all traces of the second life of the girl. The PI removes all information from Dorrie’s laptop that may reveal her secrets. On the Internet Blake looks for clues, how he would find people with whom she Dorrie worked. Among them is a dangerous mobster, a Hungarian by birth.

It is difficult to say who has written this book so well, Richard Aleas or John Blake. Aleas cleverly combined the two professions in Blake, a private detective and a writer, and this is what explains why this Blake not only knows where and whom to look for, but how apply words to each other, but still with such grace. There are enough detective writers in the world literature, Aleas is not the first in there, but he successfully solved the problem, which troubled many readers of detective stories about private detectives, written from the first person view: why do these men who shoot well and hit in the face (and are hitted themselves not less) well tell their stories so good? Here the answer is obvious: Blake has the literary talents.

Blake, however, is not demure and not a homebody. In his past as a private eye he had lost any kind of innocence, and because of that the tour to massage parlors of New York (and «Songs of Innocence» is exactly this trip), with its meetings with the lower social classes, dangerous criminals, strong prostitutes, does not scare or surprise Blake at all. He has already seen it. He already has passed it.

Aleas not only writes well, he's a masterful plotter, with each chapter throwing new puzzles. The novel is built by the canons of 30-50s pulp fiction, and if not the sudden appearance of a laptop in the first chapters, one would think that the action is taken place in our time. However, «Songs of Innocence» is a story of today, with mobile phones, laptops, Internet, e-cards in the subway. It should complicate the task for a writer, because he must take into account new elements added to the classic story. And here Aleas manages to be original: not revealing the plot, I will note only that modern technology plays a key role in the highly twisted plot.

This is a book about the irreversibility of the secrets and mysteries of the people; about that always there is a line that under no circumstances must not be crossed. Already closer to the finale Blake recalls that he once has been told by a detective from the NYPD:

«You work like a bastard for days and days and nothing makes any sense. You're lost, you're confused, you've got no answers and you're wasting your client's money. You're a fraud, you've always been a fraud ... one day, you think of something. Or you see something. Or someone tells you something. And suddenly, everything that didn't make sense does. Only here's the thing: nine times out of ten, you wish it didn't. You wish you were a fraud again. Because the things people hire us to figure out are the ugliest fucking things in the world».

For the same reason we read books: to get to the dark corners of human soul, to look at these ugliest things, to be a little different after reading. And songs of innocence no longer play in your head.

Kiss Her Goodbye

2011-09-04T23:17:00.000+06:00

Allan Guthrie

Kiss Her Goodbye

Polygon, 2006 \ Hard Case Crime, 2005

Joe Hope works on an Edinburgh loan shark named Cooper. If someone owes money to Cooper, Joe (with baseball bat) pays a visit to a debtor. When his daughter, Gemma, commits suicide, Joe blames for this her boyfriend Adam, who did not keep up with Gemma. Furious, Hope flys to the other side of Scotland, where Gemma was living in the complex for writers and screenwriters, organized by Adam. Upon arrival Hope is arrested on suspicion of murder of his wife, Ruth, with whom he had a hard relationship. But Hope did not kill Ruth:

If Joe had killed her that's how he'd have done it. But he hadn't, had he? At the time he was - well, he didn't know where he was. Fuck it, he knew nothing. He didn't even know when she'd been killed, did he?

Someone has framed him. Having fake alibi, Joe comes to freedom. And while he has time, he must find the real murderer.

If the action of «Kiss Her Goodbye» was put twenty years into the past, it would be almost perfect revenge novel. But events in the book occur in the middle of 00s, and it hurts credibility of the book. Wanted for the murder, a man walks through the streets of Edinburgh, uses his cell phone, doing everything to get caught. But for the plot Hope should remain out of prison, and all the modern technology remain in the past. Plot instability is compounded by simplicity of the final, although both ends meet, Guthrie is a professional.

Despite the flaws of the plot, «Kiss Her Goodbye» is a very good as a portrait gallery of the lower classes in Edinburgh. Hope, the muscle with a university degree who hates his wife, but not able to fully cheat on her. Hope’s lawyer, a young professional, selflessly helping the fugitive. Cooper, greedy on bodies of young girls. Tina, a prostitute, often at night welcoming Joe, the only one whose services he used. All of them are somewhat broken down, all with their flaws, but Guthrie makes them attractive to a reader. Anyone who falls once, not necessarily the fallen man.

There is enough of violence, justified or not, but violence does not shock anyone here, it is everyday life of the heroes of the novel. Whether the book has more elaborate plot, it would become one of the best examples of modern neo-noir. But so - kissed it goodbye and forgot.

Low Life

2011-09-02T02:06:00.001+06:00

Ryan David Jahn

Low Life

Macmillan, 2010

Loner-accountant Simon Johnson goes to work even on weekends to kill time in his worthless life. In the evenings, he gets drunk to fall asleep faster and not think about nothing. The whole social life of Simon comes to communicating with two colleagues during the lunchbreak. On the road from work, Simon occasionally calls in video shop to watch a porno movie in the booth. Simon’s meaningless life is over one night, when someone breaks into his apartment and wants to kill Simon. Not getting lost in the darkness, Simon in self-defense kills the stranger, who looks exactly like Simon. Thinking that the police won’t understand the situation, would it be self defense or not (and Simon almost smashed the head of the attacker), Simon puts the body in a bath filled with ice. All that now remains for Simon to do is find out who the attacker is and why he wanted to kill Simon.

If the previous novel by Ryan David Jahn «Acts of Violence» was solid, but undistinguished thriller, this is quite outstanding one. Very entangled plot, rising till the end of the books suspence, pressing reality of the situation, the psychopath protagonist, the inexplicable cruelty - all this is enough to get a quality reading. But Jahn does not stop there. He tells the story not as an omnipotent author who knows what will happen to the hero on the next page, but as a counterpart of Simon, who knows no more about what is happening than the protagonist. Simon is not a great detective with excellent logic, not a man with connections. He can not untwist cleverly woven network of puzzles withing a few hours. He is a sociopath, a loner, a little man, who only with his own assertiveness can solve his problem.

Simple style is for a simple man, and the author achieves high level of paranoia in the first place because of his style. Simon thinks of simple sentences, speaks simple sentences, and acts simply but well.

The answer will be terrible, but Simon knew it from the moment when decided to leave the body of the stranger in his own bathroom.

You Were Wrong

2011-08-30T23:05:00.000+06:00

Matthew Sharpe
You Were Wrong

Bloomsbury, 2010

26-year-old math teacher Karl Floor returnes home when on the road two of his students beat him up. In the house, which Karl received after the death of his mother on the condition that he would take care of his stepfather, a beatiful robber waits Karl. A girl named Sylvia Vetch, which is obviously hiding something from Karl, selects what she might take, and Karl, who for all his life barely spoke to girls, offers to help to choose together. Later, with some things taken out of the house, Karl and Sylvia travel to suburban squat inhabited by strange hippi commune. Karl on the same night gets drunk, wakes up in the morning without his hat and wallet, and among all of yesterday's party people he finds one strange guy with no less strange name Arv. Back home, Karl barely restrains while listening to a lengthy speech of his stepfather Larchmont Jones, can not let go Sylvia from his head and has no idea that soon he will make a lot of unpleasant discoveries.

«You Were Wrong» is, no less, almost perfect novel. A perfect novel probably does not exist in nature, so this one is almost perfect. It can be shaken inside out, cut to the individual letters, but you won’t find a significant flaw. The first reason for the almost-ideal lies in the enigma of the book. It is possible to find a single layer, or ten layers there, but as soon as you start to think that it is this one, a single layer of novel is the most important, Matthew Sharpe imperceptibly will wink to you and make a nod to the title: you were wrong. The reader was not right and did not see another layer, which was the most important one. Although it’s awkward to write about importancy: all parts of the novel, all the layers are equal, as equal fingers on the hand, with each performing its own function.

Prose of Sharpe is uncomfortable, as if you are reading the proposal, written backwards. One could say that this could be written by a math teacher (it’s a profession of the main character), but it would mean that the author's style is too prudent and dry, but when it’s on the contrary, natural, but difficult, as the most artfully arranged snowflake. Sharpe, of course, does not open new possibilities of language, but he works on the stylistic fields that almost no one used.

Sharpe is a worthy successor to John Barth, but more elegant (though perhaps less funny). «You Were Wrong» is a kind of detective story, the story of conspiracy, too. If the writers can be divided into stylists and plotters, Sharpe is a plotting stylist. And it says that the book is never boring. Each chapter ends with cliffhanger. There is a scene of the strangest "murder", an episode of pedophilia; there are numerous trips between New York and its suburbs.

The protagonist of the novel Karl Floor, whose life is rushed headlong head over heels after beating by his own students, until now was afraid to come into contact with the surrounding reality. Karl, in whom unknown, stirring him feelings conceive, realizes that he may experience these feelings only being in contact with the world. World is far more complex and difficult than most difficult mathematical problems. Karl is a debutante (there are a lot of things he had never seen in his life, for example: He had never seen the man with eyes closed.), Which in his debut wants to be first, but so far he only makes mistakes and mistakes. Incipient love of Karl to Sylvia is awkward, and Sharpe finds a good way to express their relationship:

«They did not kiss so much as their mouths exchanged brief, pensive, tactile communications.»

«Her slow dabs were so smooth, warm, and moist that he suspected she was making them with her tongue, but did not seek to verify.»

«You Were Wrong» is also a satire on contemporary American society, which breaks the fates of people like Karl, at first by making them helpless, confused, passive, but sensual, honest and fair.

Matthew Sharpe can often be found in the lists of underrated writers. So, if you have not read him or even never heard of him, you were wrong.

The Wrecking Light

2011-08-28T02:19:00.001+06:00

Robin Robertson
The Wrecking Light

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

This collection by British poet Robin Roberston consists both from his own poems and translations. Among those who Robertson translated, there are names such as Baudelaire, Ovid, Neruda. And if translations are often ploted, Robertson’s own poems are plotless (except for those that are based on myths.)
Robertson's eye is the photographer’s eye, how accurately he captures some part of the nature. Nature, everything that surrounds us, according to Roberston, is ominous and sometimes dangerous. But the poet finds those words that even at the most terrible you look at least with curiosity.

I go to check the children, who are done for.
They lie there broken on their beds, limbs thrown out
in the attitudes of death, the shape of soldiers.
The next morning, I look up at my reflection
in the train window: unshaven, with today's paper;
behind me stands a gunman in a hood.

Roberston is often contemplative, but not a participant. And to contemplate, it is necessary to step back, refuse to contact. Because of that the lyrical hero, sometimes present in the poem as "I", sometimes as a spirit standing behind photocamera, just pushing on the button of the camera, that seems a lonely and sympathetic, hiding his secret desire to get into nature, into the nature of things.

I remember the tiny stars
of her hands around her belly
as it grew and grew, and how
after a year, nothing came.
How she said it was still there,
inside her, a stone-belly.
And how I saw her wrists
bangled with scars
and those hands flittering
at her throat,
to the plectrum of bone
she'd hung there.

When the lyric hero finds himself in his own image as he becomes part of a sinister world, the hero does not experience the illusion of his own purity and integrity. He is as grim as the world around: No light shining back at me, just shame.
Robertson’s poems are not loudly; on the contrary - often full of ominous silence: If you're absolutely silent and still, you can hear nothing but the sound of nothing.
You want to remember by heart the poems from this book, to pronounce privately, but not out loud.

Hating Olivia

2011-08-27T19:53:00.001+06:00

Mark SaFranko
Hating Olivia

Murder Slim, 2005

The beginning of the 70s. Max Zajack (story about his childhood years can be found in the novel «God Bless America») still hopes to become a famous writer like Henry Miller, so that he can live on the big fees. Now Max is far from such a carefree life: he rent a room, is barely able to scrape together money for rent, working as a loader at the post office and periodically meets with the wife of the district attorney. Life changes drastically for the future writer (and he thinks that for the better) when he meets Olivia. The girl, too, sees in herself the hidden literary possibilities, and Max and Olivia begin to live together, to indulge in love and in between write brilliant prose.

But life gives a good kick in the ass to young lovers, without giving them relax. Max changes one job for another, later Olivia goes to work too without stopping long in one place. Lovers could barely make ends meet, and Olivia begins to go mad. Max’s life becomes hell.

«Hating Olivia» is a very strong novel from the author of «God Bless America» with the same main character. Loser since childhood, Max Zajack and in adult life does not suffer from an excess of luck. The only time fate turned its face to Max - he got a job at the phone company, where he was just sitting in a room with a partner, but Max could not stand that either. He nearly died of boredom, so he’d quit. In his failures Max was not alone. It seems that he is surrounded by similar losers. A neighbor, whose ear cockroach crawled into. Colleague, drinking from boredom who almost killed his girlfriend. And Olivia is in the same company too. Max and Olivia are infantile, irresponsible, lazy couple, never thinking about tomorrow. Thus, one month Olivia bought so many expensive clothes, not caring about the cost and not thinking how she would pay for purchases in a month, but when the bill came through, it was infinitely surprise for her: «There isn't a penny in my checking account. I thought maybe you'd toss in something to help ». While Olivia knew perfectly well that Max hadn’t even a dollar in his pocket. Most time novel's heroes are hiding from collection agencies.

Love had come to an end too soon. Olivia was in hysteria, locked at night in her room, and later began to have affairs with different men. Max also put himself in a favorable light, as if he was trying to save a relationship. He put his negative emotions on paper, and even wrote a novel. This love \ hate to Olivia helped him to finish the manuscript for the first time and feel like a real writer. (Needless to say, that Max was happy not so long.)

«Hating Olivia» is a first-class novel.

Ganges #1

2011-08-25T16:49:00.003+06:00

Kevin Huizenga
Ganges #1

Fantagraphics/Coconino, 2006

Glenn Ganges - the protagonist of the first volume of the series «Ganges» - is a dreamer, an eccentric, a loving husband, but first and foremost a restless man. Meaningless details do not give rest to him, he makes a mountain out of a molehill, and his fantasies replace the reality. Five stories under one cover are the five pieces of a day in the life of Ganges. These fragments were not worth any attention to, if their hero was someone else, not Glenn Ganges. Ganges goes to the library. Ganges returns home. Ganges sits next to his wife while she works at the computer. Ganges goes to sleep. Ganges is asleep.

But Huizenga splash with something each of these individual stories (although the book is done in only three colors: black, white and shades of green). On the way to the library Ganges moves in time. Then he sees the cyclist, throwing trash on the road, and moves ahead in the future of the cyclist. Then he argues with his wife because of the song. Then he goes to bed and thinks what love is. Ganges himself steps into the background, replacing himself by his own imagination. And all those themes and issues that Ganges raises in conversations with his wife or, more commonly, with himself, how serious they wouldn’t be, you can’t take them seriously. Last, night, part of the book, when Ganges and his wife go to sleep, is the most sophisticated in terms of art. There is no division between the panels, Ganges’ ideas are moving and moving, not letting him fall asleep, and the darkness are enveloping here, but not sleepy.

I’d like to meet this Ganges.

The Inverted Forest

2011-08-24T14:39:00.001+06:00

John Dalton
The Inverted Forest

Scribner, 2011

1996. At summer camp in the U.S. state of Missouri for a few days before the opening several people fired. One night the owner of the camp Schuller Kindermann caught part of counselors: young boys and girls, swimming and running on the beach, were strip-naked. Kindermann, an old man, brought up as a Catholic, is experiencing shyness in front of the female, so he could not tolerate such behavior. Almost all of the junior staff was fired. The next day, Kinderman finds that for two days he is to find a replacement and hire a new staff, 14 new employees. Linda Rucker, director of summer camp, sends announcements, watches summary, and a new team is recruited. However, one feature has been withheld from the new staff: newcomers were promised that they will work in a camp with children, but the first two weeks in the camp there will be disabled, mentally retarded people.

Among the counselors is Wyatt Huddy, with a deformed face, too little retarded - or at least he has such an opinion. He works at the store, and when he’s given the opportunity to get out of town and try somewhere else, Wyatt gladly accepts the offer, supported by Captain Throckmorton, owner of the shop. Wyatt is put in the charge of a dorm 2. He must accompany guests to and from the dorm and at the evening to lay everyone in the bed and then his free time starts.

This novel is reminiscent of Philip Roth's recent novel Nemesis. Also summer, also a limited number of people, too, one day-event that changed life forever. Only Roth rose the theme of confrontation of God and a man, in this book this theme is not presented.

The book is written from a third person view, and the story comes from those three characters: Harriet, Kindermann and Wyatt. They all share a disability - everyone has their own - and some uncertainty. Harriet suffers because of her skin color, Wyatt from external deformities and in addition he is certain that he is mentally retarded, Kindermann - because of the tyranny and the lack of women next to him. Each of them in their own way blame themselves for what happened. Every one of them, looking back, sees their mistakes, ready to go back and change everything, but it is impossible to implement. Dalton picks the perfect tone: he does not let the reader inside the character, but not looks down on him. We empathize with the characters of the book, while being on the minimum distance from them.

Dalton, selecting the site of action as the camp, closed space with a limited number of participants, wins there as well. A small number of characters lets describe them in more detail, to give every background, choose to focus on specific scenes in the camp. Changing at the end of the book temporary layer and transferring to 15 years ahead, Dalton thereby allows himself and the reader to look at past events with cold eyes. Passions had subsided, but the ones whom the murder really changed do not forget about it ever.

Perhaps the book would be even better, if the author reduced the volume. There would be more dynamic and tension that the book sometimes lacks. Nevertheless, Dalton has written a serious book with memorable characters and authentic details.

The Cat’s Table

2011-08-24T13:31:00.002+06:00

Michael Ondaatje
The Cat’s Table

Jonathan Cape, 2011

It is the story of an 11-year old boy Michael (or as he is called - Mina) on his three-week trip aboard the "Oronsay" from Sri Lanka to England. In the book the protagonist Michael and Michael Ondaatje itself (according to Wikipedia) has much in common: the writer, too, like the protagonist of this age, has left Sri Lanka, also lived in England, became a writer, lived in the States, in Canada. But this is hardly a fictionalized memoir of the writer, the book is taken as fiction.
”Cat's table” from the title of the novel is a place where passengers from the lower strata meet. Among them is Michael, two of his friends, Cassius and Ramadhin, Michael’s cousin Emily, and dozens of other characters, about whom we learn from the narrator. To somebody Michael devotes several chapters, for someone a couple of pages. In England, the boy is waited by his mother, who left Sri Lanka four or five years ago, so the boy himself does not even remember what she looks like and when she left. Michael is taken care by one of his aunt (the so-called aunts and uncles are all adults on board, so this woman has no real kinship with Michael) in the first class, but they rarely see each other, so that the boy is traveling alone.
The three boys quickly become friends, get up with the crack of dawn, meet each other and spend all day in the overall company. The first surpsise on the ship for them is the fact that at night on the deck a criminal goes for a walk who goes to court in England.

Ondaatje’s novel is a kaleidoscope of fates, and the most interesting is that time there is essentially condensed to three weeks, and the place at all to the size of the deck. The novel is written in clean English, so clean that you think that it is well rinsed in seawater. Although the book's title refers to a place where people of so-called second-class gather in the novel, there is no opposition between rich and poor, higher and lower classes. Those, who gather at the Cat’s Table, have interesting fates, sometimes full of secrets, the rich yet seem to be the object of study rather than jealousy. The narrator almost never have to face aristocrats on the ship, so terminally ill Sir and Michael’s aunt are the least deep characters in the novel, they are even more cartoonish.

The world of childhood is full of puzzles, and Ondaatje adds to the book as individual subplot real mystery, with a convict, murder, secret intrigues. This does not hurt the book: it does not appear that the author added the detective elements just to amuse the reader.

The narrator, in his memoirs about post-Oronsay period, says reader\viewer should not be considered novel’s characters stupidier and worse than himself. These words can be assigned to Ondaatje: the book is written with such love for its characters that the reader can not help but love them.

However, it should be remembered that at the heart of the book the memoirs of eleven-year old boy, and therefore you should not trust everything he says. Certainly, there was something exaggerated, something the boy hid, but the cast of the memory of the three-week journey from one life to another one is delight.

You’d Better Watch Out

2011-08-19T16:11:00.001+06:00

Tom Piccirilli
You’d Better Watch Out

Crossroad Press e-book, 2011

Father of 11-year old boy is a brutal Brooklyn cop who works for the local mob. When on Christmas the police officer suspects that his wife cheats on him, he bites her tongue. Woman dies, cop goes to jail, and the boy is sent to foster parents. There he falls in love with their daughter and then kills their psychopathic son. The boy starts to do little jobs for mobsters, gradually becoming the most brutal killer in Brooklyn. A young man prepares to avenge for his mother and for myself when his father is out of prison.

This novella is not exactly the best work by Piccirilli. Plot-wise the book intersects with other Piccirilli’s books. Here again there are a cruel cop, working on mob, a complex relationship between father and son, past mistakes again are in the center of the story. «You'd Better Watch Out» is a psychological novella about revenge, which is a dish which is served hot - damn hot. Aggressive and tight, author's style does not match the rickety plot. The middle of the book - all that part, which describes the transformation of the protagonist from a young boy to a tough killer - apparently slacks.

Fast, solid reading, but you’re expecting more from Piccirilli.

The Burning

2011-08-18T12:33:00.001+06:00

Jane Casey
The Burning

Ebury Press, 2010

Brutal maniac beats young girls to death and then burnes their bodies in the London parks. In the first chapter, young party girl takes a friendly cabbie for a murderer and stabbes him several times with a knife. As it turns out later, an elderly man is not even a maniac, but a girl have gone too far from self-defense. Soon, however, police find another one, the fifth, victim of serial killer. Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan in middle of the night goes to the murder scene. But Kerrigan has suspicions that a fifth victim of serial killer is not even a maniac’s victim, but an unrelated murder disguised as The Burning Man, as the media call him. Kerrigan begins in parallel to investigate the death of the fifth victim and seek to the ill psychopath.

Strangely enough, but the most interesting storyline of this book was abandoned in the first chapter. Casey began her novel unexpectedly: a girl cuts the well-wisher almost to death, and for excess defense goes to jail (as we already know in the ending of the book). Whether such a beginning was intended to shake the reader's emotional, or to knock him off, but the unpredictability is over and then begins a standard mystery in "British police procedural"-style. Detective Kerrigan, of course, solves problems on the personal front, grabs the investigation, "instinctively feels," that "something is wrong here." The storyline with a maniac invokes at least confusion. Casey gradually takes the intrigue of a maniac to the murder, which was disguised as a maniac’s killing. But the poor fellow The Burning Man turned out mannequin too: he kills, when the author needs it, he’s caught, when the author needs it. In the end, the maniac is forgotten. Casey after all could not balance the two storylines. I do not care, have read and forgotten, but that fans of books about serial killers will be terribly disappointed.

The Night Sessions

2011-08-17T13:17:00.002+06:00

Ken Macleod
The Night Sessions

Orbit, 2009

2030s. Because of the endless wars for the faith at the beginning of the XXI century religion is not entirely banned, but believers become silent and weak minority. People no longer say about god that faith will not overcome by the mind and the soul of man. But someone suddenly starts killing people associated with religion. In Scotland, a local priest is blown off and then bishop is shot, and it becomes clear that these murders are linked. Detective Inspector Ferguson and his team must find who is responsible for a series of murders committed. The lives of thousands of people are in danger.

If the near future, which is described in Macleod’s novel, seems not too convincing, the plot - the police investigation - redeems this defect. Ferguson is quite a standard inspector, he is not engaged in self-destruction, not committing unfair moves, he is an exemplary family man, without drinking problem by the way. Investigation of the murders brings Ferguson and his team to a sect of robots, and this is the gusto in this book. Robots in the book are more humane than people. The detective and his men are described by the author with such reluctance, as if all the people are boring. That's why Ferguson in entire novel behaves exactly like a robot: he is almost devoid of feelings, not even showing a peculiar desire to complete the investigation. Robots, on the contrary, they feel and show their feelings a lot more than people. Macleod describing robots uses most delicious details, robots here face moral choices. And indeed the protagonist of the novel can be considered a leki, a small Tripod robot working with Ferguson in the pair.

«The Night Sessions» can not be called a perfect novel. Mystery line is fascinating, but too slow. The future is in the book in general is unbelievable, but it is inventively in detail. Certainly robots will like this book.

Dr. Seuss & Co. Go To War

2011-08-15T12:40:00.003+06:00

Andre Schiffrin
Dr. Seuss & Co. Go To War: The World War II Editorials Cartoons of America’s Leading Comic Artists

The New Press, 2011

The sequel to the collection of Dr. Seuss «Dr. Seuss Goes To War». What is interesting is that this collection of The World War II caricatures and cartoons, so this is the fact that it contains not only cartoons by Dr. Seuss, which became known mainly through his children books, but by also other artists of that time, who published the cartoons in newspapers and magazines.
Cartoon is a type of art that should immediately cause a smile (and even better laugh), but at the same time cause embarrassment. This is a sign of good cartoons. Ironically, the works of the doctor Seuss are not impressive. Whether they are too parochial, understandable only to the Americans, and even then not to all, or graphics are clumsy, but the fact is that the drawings of Dr. Seuss do not raise either smile or embarrassment. Despite the extensive commentary by Andre Schiffrin to each section of the book, explaining the situation in the U.S. in the late 30's and early 40's and the government's attitude to U.S. military operations in Europe and the Pacific ocean, these comments are still no substitute for knowledge of the inner and foreign U.S. policy in wartime.

Nevertheless, the book is a success, thanks to the work of other artists of the forties. Cartoons drawn by Saul Steinberg, Melville Bernstein, Al Hirschfeld, John Groth, Eric Godal are far wittier and more inventive visually, than the pictures by Dr. Seuss. These cartoons highlight the inner life of States and the war with Nazi Germany. They are simply easier to understand for Europeans, and even without commentary. Caricature is the same joke, and if you begin to explain the effect is lost. Especially there is worth mentioning the work of Saul Steinberg. He is a true master. In the book he is represented by single cartoons and short comics. He draws in a number of pictures Hitler so fun that you laugh to tears. He has a very simple drawing style, but he feels a joke on a subconscious level. Every one of Steinberg's cartoons are fun.

The book covers the period from 1941 to 1945-th, and there makes fun of everything, from Stalin to Japanese kamikazes. «Dr. Seuss & Co. Go To War» is an excellent tutorial on the history, and most importantly - very funny one.

Evaporating Genres

2011-08-11T15:57:00.002+06:00

Gary K. Wolfe
Evaporating Genres

Wesleyan University Press, 2011

"Evaporating genres", this is the title of this book, a collection of essays on fantastic literature. In there in the introduction to Part I Wolfe writes that ««genre» is used largely as a term of convenience», thus there is meant that the genre as such does not exist, these are labels that are glued, but the literature has no clear boundaries. However, the book's title has the word "genre", and therefore, as if we did not want to abandon the genre, and simply divide the literature on good and bad (for example), we can’t do that. To show and prove that the genres evaporate and diffuse, we first need to recognize that the genres exist, otherwise there would be nothing to prove. And therefore this book should not have to exist.

Speaking of genres, you'll notice another feature of the book. In his essays, Gary Wolfe often lists those authors who are now working between genres, Michael Swanwick, Kelly Link, China Mieville, Jeff Ford, etc etc. But as it is easily to see that these authors tentatively are referred to as “genre authors”, they are published by genre imprints and publishing houses, their works are criticized in the genre magazines and blogs, all of these authors are on this side, that is clear. Wolfe, would he wanted or not, pulled his favorite authors on his side - the side of science fiction (fantastic literature). But in the book there are almost no references to other authors, those who are commonly regarded as "mainstream".

To understand the book, it is necessary to understand the author. Wolf is a critic who is between a reviewer and an academic. In his essays, he often uses a historical approach, noting the evolution of the author, genre, subgenre. Wolf is the critic-cartographer and critic-historian. He is one of that breed of critics that can determine the location of the author in literary history, to find parallels between one author and others, to trace the roots of a given work. He sometimes digs in breadth, not depth, but the width of his scope is staggering. Wolfe knows how to lay out literature on the shelves, but can see the depth in novel as well.

His essays are exactly like the maps, extensive, where sometimes there are too many objects to focus on one particular.

Wolfe has his favorite writers (it's all the same Ford, Rickert, Link). Like any critic, he tends to exaggerate some of figures. Thus, in his essay «Evaporating Genres» in part «The Construction and Deconstruction of Horror», the author writes about the development of the horror genre, placing for Stephen King half-paragraph, and for Peter Straub several pages (in the book there is also a whole essay on Straub’s books), while to me Straub seems a phony figure.

Genres are evaporating, and Wolfe with this book helps to their evaporation.

Snowdrops

2011-08-02T11:36:00.001+06:00

A.D. Miller
Snowdrops

Atlantic UK, 2011

Nicholas Platt (Russian friends call him Kolya) is 38-year-old lawyer from London who works in the middle of the noughties in Moscow. Foreign bank, which employs Nicholas, gives loans to the oil business. In the metro Nick accidentally helps two Moscow girls to frighten away a handbag thief. Twenty-something girls, presented as sisters Masha and Katya, seeing that Nick is foreigner, find an interest in him, and Nick thinks that he’s falling in love with one of them, Masha, the older one. They exchange phone, and three weeks later, when Nick had almost forgotten about the strange meet, Katya calls Nick and designate a meeting at a restaurant. Girls tell that they came to the capital from Murmansk in search of happiness. After learning that Nick is not only foreigner but also a lawyer, although not specializing in real estate, the girls show more interest in Nick.

At the same time in mid-September, when Nick met Masha and Katya, the bank, which employs Nick, begins to work with a new client, known as the Cossack. He connected with Narodneft and wants to open his oil tower. The bank begins to prepare the documents.

During a meeting at the restaurant the girls tell Nick that they have family in Moscow - "Auntie" Tatiana Vladimirovna. A few days later the girls with Nick named visit Tatiana Vladimirovna, an elderly woman who survived the siege of Leningrad. The old woman wants to exchange her appartment at the center to the apartment in the new (but still unfinished) house in Butovo with an additional charge. In Butovo they meet with Stepan Mikhailovich, the owner of a house under construction. The developer shows an old woman her future apartment, promising that the house is about to be ready. Nick does not know yet where this story will lead him to.

On the one hand, "Snowdrops" is a predictable novel almost from the beginning, and it will open nothing new to a Russian reader. The author lived in Russia, and he knows Russia. There are many Russian transcribeded words, explanations about the Russian culture and Russian life style, which will be incomprehensible to a foreigner. The author does not take up the global height, does not construct a conspiracy theory, he builds the story on the example of the little man and on the example of a simple and banal story shows what modern Russia is. And even being a Russian, you still read this novel with great interest. You nod while reading, yes, this is so, yes, we live that way. And the story is indeed trivial: two girls trick an adult man for money, using him in addition to trick other people. And such stories happen in Moscow perhaps a few dozen per day.

But, as the hero of the novel Nick states, this story is not about Russia but about the person. Miller was able to give its hero's unique voice, melodic and calm. In this story, only he does not seem to understand what all this about. Fled from too prevailing life in England, Nick here, in Moscow, finds his happiness - short and deceived him. The novel is written from first person, but with the transition to the second - as if Nick addresses to his future wife, repents of all sins. It’s hard to believe that such a person could afford to drive his nose, and possibly even cause the death of an old woman, Miller made Nick too honest. But conscience still will not give rest to the end of Kolya's life. My snowdrop was me, said Nicholas by the end of the book already knowing what would happen is something inevitably bad, but it kills the conscience within. These half-year with Masha, Tatyana Vladimirovna, old neighbor is the best time of his life. And this is the worst, most shameful period in his life as well. Nicholas saw what Russians worth, but he thinks that he is no better and even worse. No matter what country you are in, you decide for yourself and answer for yourself. You self is in inside, not in outside.

This novel is worth your love even for its honesty.

The Search for Philip K. Dick

2011-07-27T21:37:00.002+06:00

Anne R. Dick
The Search for Philip K. Dick

Tachyon Publications, 2010

Memoirs of the third wife of Philip K. Dick, who lived with him for six years, consist of three parts. The first part describes life with one of the most influential writers of the second half of XX century. This is the most vulnerable point of the book, but, perhaps, the most interesting as well. The relationship between then married on his second wife Dick and recently moved to that town where he lived, Anne Dick, a young widow with two children, started easy. Ann and Philip have been interested in each other, and Anne also had a passion for writers (her late husband was a poet.) For Ann’s sake Dick without any problems divorces his wife, and his new wife becomes Anne. During these six years of life Dick’d written Confessions of a Crap Artist, Martian Time Slip, The Man in the High Castle, The Game Players of Titan and other books. Dick often included scenes from his life in his own books. Anne was also the prototype for many of the heroines of the novels of Dick. During these years there has been one of the most critical moment in Dick’s literary career:

Phil's agent submitted the Confessions manuscript to Knopf. Alfred Knopf personally wrote to Phil saying he was interested in publishing the novel if Phil would rewrite the last third to make the female character more sympathetic. He compared Phil's writing to that of Salinger, Roth, and Mailer, the three top novelists of that time. We were both thrilled - but Phil said, "I can't rewrite this novel. It's not that I don't want to, it's that I'm not able to. "This is a big clue to Phil's writing. At the time I was disappointed that Phil wouldn't or couldn't take advantage of this fantastic opportunity, but it was his novel, his career, his decision. Of course Knopf didn't buy the novel.

Perhaps, if Dick then would sell the novel to Knopf, we would not see The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Valis, but we would see another Dick.

Anne initially admired prolificity of the husband and was proud that he was quite well-known writer, but later everything started to change. Dick's novels became more and more anxious, gloomy, and the writer himself has changed, gradually losing control of himself. Anne tried to save the marriage, but saving the family could cost Dick a part of himself. And because of this you should not trust everything that is written in this book. It's the memories of hurt women, left behind and abandoned. Anne takes a firm stance here: I was right in everything, the family split up due to the fault of Phil. And emotions often obscure the truth.

We should not believe Dick as well, who was himself a master of invention. He made his life like his books and his books like his life. More objective in the book are the next parts of the book where Anne Dick, based on interviews and documents, restores the childhood of Dick and the life after her divorce with him. The author covered a large number of sources, including interviews with other wives of Phil, to show the reader the most plausible picture of events. After the divorce from Anne Dick's life, however, takes the shape so surreal that the remaining two-thirds of the book reads more like fiction than like non-fiction.

At the end of his life, Dick has become a mockery: he suffers from various types of mental illness, becomes paranoid, inconsistent. A great writer, lost soul, he becomes the hero of his own novels. However, he lived as he wanted. And we finally learned what was the life of the great creator.

The Needle

2011-07-26T14:19:00.003+06:00

Jennifer Grotz
The Needle

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

In her second collection of poems Jennifer Grotz looks at people and urban landscape of the modern city. In an interview Grotz noted that she’s tried to make this book more objective. Indeed, the poet is almost merges with the world. In the first part of the book most of the poems are about a city, and in them there is almost no "I". City in Grotz’s poetry is not mythologized, it remains what it has in a very material sense: the walls, roads, the smells, the colors, of course, people.

The city would begin as slowly as the old man in a brown fedora
making his way down the street, a walking stick in one hand
and the arm of the elderly woman beside him in the other.

The author has traveled extensively, and this is reflected in Grotz’s poems. Icons, Town Square, a nun, break-dansers, street theater - all this the author brings with her from the travel, putting into verse.

I can't make out their words, but I'm thinking about an actor
who bequeathed his own skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company
to serve as Yorik's in the graveyard scene,

wanting perhaps to serve later Hamlets in this modest way,
having spent many nights holding up a plaster copy
and looking deep into the empty eye sockets, open jaw.

The second part consists of poems about the deseased brother. Grotz writes about it without any strain, with love sometimes not even sister’s but mother’s: «I mothered you, I protected you, you were my baby, my toy». Together with memories of the brother the memories of childhood come. Serenity (not coldness) of poems of Grotz also is in the selected rhythm. Almost all the poems here are written in long lines, with correct, complete sentences. Grotz’s world is not broken, it is too beautiful, though at times is painful, to break down, roll into individual words.

Grotz’s poetry is natural poetry, the poetry of life and prosperity. But the poems in this book were written even with that degree of intelligence, when you look at clouds and see a cat's face, but understand that this is primarily just a cloud.

God Bless America

2011-07-25T12:27:00.001+06:00

Mark SaFranko
God Bless America

Murder Slim Press, 2010

A small American town Trenton. The postwar years. Childhood of a future writer Max Zajack. Scandals between parents, losers-relatives, stupid neighbors, racism, school lessons, household duties. Everything that surrounds little Max, he hates. Max tells the story not from the perspective of a young boy, yet not really knowing the world, but from the perspective of an adult who knows too much. In the story there is no innocence, hope and joyful rose-colored glasses, which seem to be inherent in all children. But not in Max. He, it seems, from the first day of his life knew there would be no good for his life. Yes, and how we can hope for something, if you are surrounded with a loser father, until his death called to work on the most impenetrable work, and his psychic mother, obsessed with cleanliness, drunken relatives, idiots classmates. America itself is rolling slowly into the abyss together with the people inhabiting it. If in the U.S. there is a paradise place, then Mark SaFranko does not know about this. His America is the land of immigrants and blacks.

Little Max has no delusions about himself as well. He is so passive that even after being beaten and robbed, he did not care. Max realizes that he is not far gone from his clueless father and a nervous mother. He goes with the flow and he does not care much where he will be: «I did nothing, nothing ever happened, and nothing was ever going to happen. But life went on. Even if you were miserable, life always went on».

SaFranko is a master to build excellent individual scenes. The whole book is divided into small chapters, and each chapter is almost a complete story, stand-alone story. Despite the monotony the life of Max is a full of events. All of them are usually tragic and comic at the same time.

«God Bless America» is probably the funniest book I've read this year. There are so many idiotic situations, so much stupidity, so much light-heartedness. Without this sinister laughter, the book would be totally bleak.

This Mark SaFranko is a great talent and his «God Bless America» is a small masterpiece.

Gun

2011-07-23T12:30:00.001+06:00

Ray Banks
Gun

Self-published e-book, 2011

Richie, after 18 months in jail, is back on streets. Not wanting to work like all law-abiding citizens, Ritchie in search of work appeals to Goose, the one-legged crime boss, for whom Richie received the time. Goose does not even remember who Richie is, but throws up job for him: to pick up a gun at the address and brought it to Goose. Richie agrees. The difficulties begin as soon as Richie gets a gun.

Ray Banks in the image of Richie presents us a loser of that breed, which attracts trouble like a huge magnet. The novella is written in the third person, but the author uses the method that the boundary between the first and third person is almost erased. Because of his bad luck Richie is so embittered at the world and himself, it seems that his curse is directed to a reader: «A lot of thoughts running through Richie's head, the same old story about a lost leg on Goose Green when everyone knew what really happened - stupid bastard mainlined an artery. But you never said that to Goose. He might've been a fucking cripple and nose-deep in his own product, but Goose had a rep that stretched back since before the riots. And that rep was what brought Richie over today».

On the example of Richie we can clearly see a contemporary life of the lower classes in England. They are too proud to work, not educated, often dumb, but Richie takes what he needs to take with his aggressiveness.

«Gun», that is also important to note, is a work not only speeding, but still very funny. And despite the fact that we are simpathizing with Richie in the course of reading, we also think, 'All of this is his own fault".

This "Gun" is a deadly thing.

The Fever Kill

2011-07-23T11:52:00.000+06:00

Tom Piccirilli
The Fever Kill

Crossroad Press e-book, 2010

Crease, an undercover cop, so got used to a role that even his boss, drug lord Tucco, considers him his right hand and perhaps the best friend, returns to his hometown. Crease knocked up Tucco’s girlfriend, almost left his family with several adopted children, and now runs from its own present to a dark past. Crease’s father, a local sheriff, ten years earlier participated in the liberation of kidnapped a little girl but the girl was killed and a ransom was never found. Sheriff then drinks himself to death, and Crease, not endured humiliation from the townspeople, runs away to New York and becomes a cop, like his father. Returning to his hometown, Crease investigates kidnapping of that little girl, meets old friends and waits for arrival of Tucco thirsting for revenge.

Piccirilli is especially good at characters such as Crease. They are broken down, riven between past and present, they do not really know what they want from life, but not because they did not see life, but because they saw too much. Crease also can not really explain his visit to his hometown: «It wasn't to make amends to the old man. He could never do that and wouldn't bother trying. But he'd come back here for some reason and he figured this might be a part of it, and anyway, he had a day or two until Tucco showed up». Crease, without knowing why, begins to question relatives, neighbors of the killed girl, and let the mystery part there is not so sophisticated, «The Fever Kill» is an excellent mestery among other things.

«The Fever Kill» is also modern Western. Knowing the ability of Tucco’s using of knife, Crease also readies cold arms, realizing that the fight with the boss can not be avoided. Returning to his hometown is the last chance to atone for his sins (and the sins of the father) and, if you are lucky to stay alive, to decide where to go.

This short Piccirilli’s novel is a real pleasure.

Cavemen in Space

2011-07-21T17:10:00.003+06:00

Joey Weiser
Cavemen in Space

Self-published, distr. by Adhouse Books, 2010

A scientist from the future takes away some prehistoric cave men and places them in his spaceship «The Wheel». With the help of special techniques the scientist works on brains of people from the past, raising their level of intelligence. Chief of the cavemen - a tall man in an animal's skin with the name Washington - is the principal assistant of the scientist. Each of the cavemen do what they do once in the past, but this time more consciously. To the spacecraft with an unexpected tour comes an alien race with outwardly friendly intensions. But the aliens are more insidious than they appear, and the team of cavemen will beat off the alien hordes.

«Cavemen in Space» is a funny story in the spirit of science fiction of 40-50th with a mixture of "Flintstones." Subject of jokes here are the future technology and the past of the cavemen. Do not expect from a novel infinite action. The battle with the aliens begins only at the end of the book, and the battle scenes are drawn in cartoon style. Weiser carefully looks at the problem of adaptation of cave men in the world of the future. Washington and his friends feel the new features, feel the need in them, they like to help a scientist, like to develop, but their origin is not extinguish. For all the sophistication of the brain inside each cave man still Cro-Magnon sits, whose survival instincts trump everything else. And so the most important task for the cavemen is not to fight with the aggressive aliens but to choose his true purpose: to go back and be himself or to stay and feel his own inferiority to the end of days?
Weiser in his seemingly young adult book asks not children's questions.

Finch

2011-07-21T14:28:00.002+06:00

Jeff Vandermeer
Finch

Corvus, 2010

In the city of Ambergris, half rotten and lying in ruins, in an apartment two dead bodies are found. One of the bodies belongs to the man, the other to a gray cap, a representative of fungus race, enslaved people. Grey caps captured Ambergris six years before the described events. Fungi have used the war between the royal houses, and now hold the men under his control, having caught on its side apostates – the partials: they are people whose bodies are irrevocably changed under the influence of fungal spores used as drugs. However, the gray caps are not all-powerful, and to find the killer of a man and a gray cap, a gray cap named Heretic orders the detective John Finch to investigate the murder. Murder is extremely strange, in the apartment gray caps did not find any evidence, any possible clues, not even the slightest idea who the murdered were. On the body of the fungus was only a memory bulb. After eating it, you can get access to the memories of a dead man. Finch’s boss Heretic tells the detective to solve the crime as soon as possible, otherwise Finch will be sent to a labor camp. In the city, however, units of the rebels are still operating, plotting to overthrow the plan of gray caps, until it it too late. And when Finch realizes that the murders are somehow connected with the rebels, his life is hanging by a thread.

«Finch» is called a "fungus noir", and this is only half of the true. Fungus here does play an important role, but book is called noir by mistake. Yes, there is a dark atmosphere, there is a detective, betrayals, but these features are not unique to noir only. «Finch» is a police procedural in the world of George Orwell's "1984" with a fair amount of Philip Dick. Finch in the novel is not doomed hero. He is clever and rather relies on its head, not the heart. Finch is tired man, tired of himself, of his helplessness, of total despair. He is a fighter, but the enslavement breaks even the most persistent. In the life of Finch, there are women who could be considered femme fatal as yet another feature of noir. But women are not selfish, greedy, fallen, but also tired of trying to survive under the weight of fungus race. They are not heartless ladies, each of them loves Finch. A lump of events that is about to lead to disaster, suddenly turns into a completely different direction.

Does that mean that «Finch», erroneously been called noir, is a bad novel? Certainly not. This is exciting novel. Primarily due to the fact that Vandermeer managed to create a distinct character in Finch. Finch, all these years living under oppression and working for someone else's race, pushes his past as deeply as possible into himself. His past is his salvation and his death. He was once a soldier, now an accomplice to the gray caps. Finch despises himself to work for the invaders to stay alive. And when the investigation takes the detective on the rebels before Finch faces the most difficult choice in his life.

Fungal mold in the book is a metaphor for decay and rot. Above the town is filthy smell, all enmeshed in a cobweb. And it seems that this will never end. Inside people hope rots. Many sit on the drug, changing forever. (Thus, another detective, Stark, under the influence of mushrooms becomes just inhuman and asks Finch to kill him.)

Vandermeer deceives the reader several times, first offering a police investigation, then a spy novel, and after all partisan chronicles. The author masterfully weaves intrigue, there are a lot of plot twists. Fantasy ambiance refreshes a detective story.

Stylistically Vandermeer successfully demonstrated that level of fear and despair that fill the city. Residents of Ambergris are afraid to say too much and think too much, and Vandermeer also removes all the excess from a sentence: «Back in the hotel. Near midnight. Didn't know for sure. Approached the landing below the seventh floor. Heard Feral hissing at something. Saw a flickering, golden light that projected a circle of fire. Elongated and slanted down the hallway. Distorted further by the fungus on the walls. A rank smell, like too-strong perfume».

Vandermeer has written a masterful, wonderful novel, and we can only applaud.

The Language of Dying

2011-07-20T14:47:00.001+06:00

Sarah Pinborough
The Language of Dying

PS Publishing, 2009

«There is a language to dying. It creeps like a shadow alongside the passing years and none of us can avoid oit taste in our mouths. Whether we are sick or healthy it finds us eventually. It is a secret hushed thing that lives in the whisper of the nurses' starched skirts as they rustle up and down our stairs. They've taught me to face the language a syllable at a time, slowly creating an unwilling meaning from it ». So begins this story about dying. In the family the father dies, and five his children gather in the home to be with his father the last few days before his death. The story is told by one of the daughters, who took care of his father, while everyone else went away and minded their own businesses. The story tells from the first person view, but with permanent patches of the second person, this is a kind of monologue, addressed to the dying. Coming father's death is not only the death of one individual, but also the death of the family, its disintegration. A few days before his death it’s the last chance for children to stay together, reunite, solve problems, to forgive one another, and then again to return to their lives, not particularly good ones (especially for the three brothers).

A reader of the novella is also supposed to become a member of the family as an equal surviving parent's death. Inside everything stops, you are a little shaking, throat dry. In such cases, the death of someone else always seems worse than your own.

Before his death, a person leaves all too much, and no one is between here and there. So reading this book, the reader is left alone with a book - with pain, fear and hope.

Popgun Vol. 4

2011-07-19T14:28:00.002+06:00

Popgun Vol. 4
Ed. by D.J. Kirkbride, Anthony Wu, Adam P. Knave

Image Comics, 2010

How to define the compilers of this anthology, «Popgun» is a mixtape. Completely different styles, different stories, different characters. If we continue to compare the book with music, something there sounds out of tune, something is too loud, somewhere there is nice vocals (art), but the music (the plot) is so-so. 500-plus pages of colors and you can’t like all of that.

To start, there is too much escapism in the book. People from our world are faced with another world, and the parallel world, however beautiful or dangerous it was, is always better than our world. Sci-fi here is in all its forms, from fantasy to neocyberpunk mystery. And if art is most often very good, the stories are always too flighty, with no internal logic. Almost always there is interesting complication of the plot, but not a solution. However, a number of works in «Popgun» proved to be equally successful in terms of art and in terms of plot.

A realistic story of Stephanie Ramirez «Thinking Out Cloud» reads like a YA fantasy. In the «Agent Orange» by Darren Rawlings robot private detective exposes dishonest businessman, knocks-out a few robots and saves the world from an ancient curse. «Family Reunion» by David Brenion and Joe Flood tells about what happened to the heroes of cartoons and books after they lost their former glory. Authors create a funny satire on Superhero stamps. «The Eye» by Jeremy Tinder starts as a typical story about a private eye with a big eye instead of a head, but later the story turns into something bigger (and with large portions of the black humor). «Rusted: Faded Signal» by Nick Tapalansky and Alex Eckman-Lawn attracts the attention first of all with a wonderful art, you get the impression as if you read the yellowed parchment. The story unfolds in a desert, where, after some catastrophe, a girl tries to find a radio tower to get the help. Completely insane is «Sasquatch» by Nick Edwards. Children go into the woods for a picnic, and one of the boys, bespectacled Nigel, becomes so teased that he runs away to the river, looking for solitude, but instead meets sasquatch. They become friends, and here you can begin to laugh. Hilarious story.

One of the few realistic graphic stories here is «Hamburgers for One» by Frank Stockton, it is also one of the best in the book. Plump clumsy young man takes out the trash, feeds rat with a candy and goes to fast food cafe. In there his attention is attracted by a pretty brunette cashier. Stockton is unhurried, attentive to details; sometimes the artist achieves photographic autenticity in panels.

We should also mention a number of single-page strips by Erik Larsen «Reggie the Veggie». First and foremost this is a very clever and funny comics, as comic strip about a legless cripple can be funny.

Graphically «Popgun» is an almost ideal anthology, bright, bold, diverse, but it lacks good storytelling.

Lemon Styles

2011-07-19T14:01:00.003+06:00

David King
Lemon Styles

Sparkplug Comics, 2010

We often perceive comics as moving pictures - with the obvious plot complication and denouement - as opposed to art books, where the drawing deliberately stopped in time. «Lemon Styles» is a mix between a comic and an art book, with the clarification that this art book drawn by a comics fan and a man with a good sense of humor. This slim book is a collection of single-page strips with a repeating set of characters. They are three of them: the blonde with pierced ears, balding bespectacled man with a bow tie instead of a tie and long-nosed curly man with larhe eyebrows. On each page, they play some scene from everyday American life. This is King's neighbors, as they are represented to us by the author.

Each page is divided into four panels, and that is plays obtained in four acts. In each of the plays at first glance, there is a plot, but I did not in vain called «Lemon Styles» art book as well. It’s good to keep on the coffee table and read a page a day, otherwise all the pages will be merged into one. David King on its pages captures something elusive, that moment between intention and the rejection of the action. And if you read the book in one read, important component of the book will disappear. The author has excellent sense of humor, but he applies this sense here in the opposite direction. When you read from page three panels of the four, it is clear that the fourth will be a gag: gag is that there is no gag. Behind this book we can see a great aptitude of David King, the next time I want to see how he can use his strange sense of humor in a large project.

plug for Locus magazine

2011-07-18T13:38:00.002+06:00

Locus magazine
01’2011
02’2011
03’2011

I wrote about "Locus" last year, since in the magazine some important changes have been made. The most important of them is that the magazine is now distributed in digital form. Now it's fast and cheap (foreign subscribers receive digital version for free). If earlier you would have to wait for weeks, now the magazine can be read on the first day of sales. The second major change is the interviews. Previously, "Locus" mainly publishes interviews with writers. But fandom is not just writers and, accordingly, readers. It is also artists, critics, editors, podcasters etc etc. All these figures were often unnoticed. Now you can read in a magazine interview, for example, with the editor Sharyn November (02-2011), and in the January issue the main theme is e-books with dozens of interviews in the magazine.

What I always liked in interview in "Locus" is the fact that they were not short-term. Today interview with the author often turns into a way to just make a PR for a book, reduced to combinations of the samequestions. How did you write this book, what are working on now, who you are influenced by - these plus some other questions are compiled, and interview is done. The interviewer will not go deep, and the author does not want to strain (especially if the author after the book is out this month has to give several dozens of interviews). So, what lies deep in the interview - a conversation - disappears, replaced by a quick chat, not binding to anything. In "Locus" a figure of interviewer is generally removed, there are no questions, only a monologue of the interviewee, but in this monologue you can see an interviewer carrying on a conversation. One interview is never like another. Interview in "Locus" is something like an interview in science fiction The Paris Review.

In addition to the interview in the magazine, of course, there are lots of news, obituaries, the results of the year in the February issue, as well as reviews.

"Locus" as it was as remains the most influential magazine in the world of SF and fantasy.

On the Nickel

2011-07-18T12:49:00.001+06:00

John Shannon
On the Nickel

Severn House, 2010

Private detective Jack Liffey (the hero of a series of novels) after the prior case is confined to a wheelchair, having lost the gift of speech. Liffey’s friend calls for help, asking to find the fugitive 16-year-old son Conor Lewis. Daughter of the PI Maeve, unbeknownst to his father, takes up the case, playing a young sleuth. The investigation leads her to the Los Angeles area, the Nickel. Soon Maeve herself disappears, walking into the trouble. Liffey himself and his wife, Gloria Ramirez, a policeman, go to save Maeve and runaway youngster Conor.

The novel’s interest lays in that we see the mechanism of slums of Los Angeles. Developers (aka half-gangsters) want to take more and more land. Homeless people live in half-ruins. There even shoes will be stolen from invalid. Small gangsters show persistence and perseverance in the small business. And in this festering sore on the body of Los Angeles a young man who dreams of becoming a musician and a girl who dreams of becoming a detective get there, and he and she both are from good families. Shannon illustrates Nickel’s life not only by the plot twists and individual characters, who live here, but also the statistics at the end of each chapter.

«On the Nickel» is a book for young adults, pretending to be a book for adults. The main characters are maturing children, not Liffey and his wife. Maeve and Conor must fend their lives for themselves, and Liffey comes to the rescue closer to the final, becoming deux ex machina.

Teens will read a book with a great pleasure, adults will be confused by this book.

Vicki Hendricks kindle stories

2011-07-18T12:10:00.001+06:00

Vicki Hendricks
Dangerous Sex: Two Stories
Tender Fruit

Self-published e-book, 2011

No one writes neonoir like Vicki Hendricks. Her collection «Florida Gothic Stories» was almost perfect, with one drawback: it has included not all the stories written by the author. A few stories from the anthologies remained uncollected. These stories have since not been republished, but now you can buy them in versions for the Kindle. Three stories, which became the subject of this brief review, are unlikely to be attributed to neonoir, they fit the definition by Hendricks herself – violent erotica.

If the author's noir stories also had enough sex and violence, but the focus was on violence, in the erotic stories the emphasis shifts toward sex. In the strongest story of the three «Tender Fruit» Ronnie is a typical loser, and troubles chase him at every step. If Ronnie’s friend, Don, is ok with the girls, then Ronnie is always a fool. Perpetual loser also wants not just sex, but also a great love. Ronnie does not know how his quest for a unique and desirable one will end. The story is not so much erotic, but there are a tense atmosphere, the inimitable voice of the author, the doomed hero of noir.

The other two stories, «Be Very Afraid» and «Penile Infraction», are less successful, primarily because of the not so strong plot. «Be Very Afraid» is stylistically very rich, but can not stand the seriousness of intent. The story can be read only as a parody of a pornomovie. «Penile Infraction» is a satirical sketch of a strong - by character and by body - woman with a penis.

These stories are not for everyone’s taste, but if you're a fan of Vicki Hendricks, you must read it.

Two-way Split

2011-07-13T13:56:00.001+06:00

Allan Guthrie
Two-way Split

Polygon, 2007

Robin Greaves is a frustrated musician, who became an armed robber. He suspects that his wife is cheating on him with his partner. When private detective shows Greaves the direct evidence of affair, a burglar breaks the detective's nose. Greaves plans to avenge his partner, but before they have to rob a post office, which employs the mother of another hero of the book, Pearce, recently released from prison, where he’ve been for murder. Private eye with a broken nose and his subordinate Kennedy follow Greaves, hoping somehow to revenge. And none of them do not yet know what result the post office robbery will have.

A good book - not just a mystery, but in general any book - can often be identified by its unpredictability. So in «Two-way Split» in the graph «unpredictability» is 100%. How would be another: how can we predict plot in the book if there are three psychopaths (including Greaves’ wife) and two greedy private detectives there? All characters in the book are on the brink. They often despise themselves, but it's strong people, hard people, and with hatred and contempt for themselves, they live in, driving these feelings inward. It is impossible to imagine that Pearce, Greaves and even Kennedy can think like ordinary people. They probably are not under control of the thoughts and feelings, but some pulses in their head: «He gritted his teeth, squeezed his fists. When he closed his eyes, bars of orange flashed behind his lids. Maybe Ailsa was right. Maybe she should be scared of him. Women who were close to him seemed to have a habit of dying ». Guthrie chose the best description of the style for people such as Pearce and Greaves – it is entirely the impulses and movements. Short, abrupt phrases are the linguistic embodiment of such impulses.
Guthrie plays «two-way split» from the title on each of the three main characters of the book. Pierce is broken in half, breaking into a man who loves his mother as a three-year old child and able to selflessly defend the offended, and hard man who can kill with ease. Greaves breaks in half when he has a split personality after he stopes taking prescribed medication. A pair of private detectives, too, is divided in half: if Kennedy is more risky, with feelings, then a detective with a broken nose, as more experienced, finally lost his conscience.

«Two-way Split» is Allan Guthrie's debut novel, and it's hard to believe. The book is so masterfully written, so there is lots of energy here, that it can be seen: the author is a great writer. Very, very good book.

For the Dogs

2011-07-12T15:25:00.000+06:00

Kevin Wignall
For the Dogs

Simon & Schuster, 2004

(Full disclaimer: I’ve read this book in Russian translation.)

Unknown assassins shot the whole Hatto family at their home. Only Ella Hatto, daughter of Mark Hatto, vacationing in Italy with her boyfriend, stays alive. When another assasin tries to kill Ella, the girl is saved by hitman Lucas hired by her father. Lucas devotes a safe place to frightened lovers, hoping to get through to Mark Hatto to take further instructions. Found out that his employer is dead, Lucas, conscientious hitman, who also has a daughter of Ella’s age, takes responsibility for her Hatto’s daughter. And when the boyfriend after what had happened breaks up with Ella, she asks Lucas to help her to find the killer of her family and take revenge on him.

I should immediately warn you that if you approach this novel as a realistic one, it can disappoint you. The author does not go into detail, the killings are committed too easily, the police, it seems, can not find not even a criminal, but even their own toothbrush in the morning. But if the novel is read as a parable about revenge, cruelty and punishment, this is a powerful book. At the beginning of the novel Ella and Lucas are the antagonists, the exact opposite: she is an innocent and defenseless girl, he is professional killer, with his own rules, but still a killer. Wignall gradually shows how the essence of Ella and Lucas begin to penetrate each other. Lucas, already burdened with a conscientious and complexes, derives from the girl love for friends, learns the importance of relationships and begins to look at his life from a different angle. Ella, while living with the killer some time, as if passes all human what she has inside to Lucas, becoming more hardened, and all the feelings inside her becoming dull, there is only a desire for revenge. Wignall depicts this transformation as a gradual phenomenon, like a tumor growing inside the human body.

Greed, envy, anger, meanness - it's all filling “For the Dogs”. Sometimes dogs are more human than people - and Kevin Wignall wrote about it this beautiful book.

The Seventh Black Book of Horror

2011-07-11T15:55:00.001+06:00

The Seventh Black Book of Horror
Ed. by Charles Black

Mortbury Press, 2010

Anthologies, themed or not, almost always is a cat in a bag. If the collection has at least half of successful stories, then this book is successful. And it does not depend on big names on the cover: the same failure can be obtained from an anthology of small press and from large publishing houses. Previous collection edited by Charles Black, The Sixth Black Book of Horror, included high-quality stories, and this year, another anthology is not worse than last year’s one. Nine short stories (and this is bigger part of the book) here are if not masterpieces, then the strong work of the short form most writers wouldn’t be ashamed of. Accordingly, «The Seventh Black Book of Horror» can be called a good anthology.

The trend, which can be seen in the collection this year, is that a number of successful stories here are completely devoid of supernatural elements. They are not horror stories, there is more appropriate definition, and it is not even strange prose, but a wild prose.

Falls into this category, for example, the story of John Llewellyn Probert «It Begins At Home». Paul Reynolds is a photographer on the verge of despair: the family is sitting with no money and is about to be evicted from the house, - he no matter how should get an order from a large firm. But the manager does not like photos of the starving and suffering children - «The child isn't crying enough». Paul does not know what sacrifices he would have to go to get the job. Probert masterfully constructs the story, creating homage to the horrors of the 80s, but not using otherworldly forces. David Williamson's story «Rest in Pieces» could well be in an anthology of crime or neonoir, if the author would change the style of the narrative. This is the story of a pathologist, who develops a daring plan. You can’t read the story in all seriousness because black humor can be seen there a mile away. «Ted's Collection» by Claude Lalumiere can be attributed to the horror; it's just such a wild prose. This is the story of how cruelty and pain replace all the rest of emotions inside the people. Craig Herbertson in his «New Teacher» combined elements of old school horror, crime, dystopia, sprinkling it all with black humor. Biting story.

Joel Lane is as always lyrical. Here he presented with the story «Morning's Echo» about a detective who finds a missing person with the help of dreams. There are of course zombies in the book. In David Riley’s «Romero's Children» cause of dead walking was medicine of immortality. The ones who took the untested drug became zombies. In a story there is an unusual ending, though, this already stands out in a series of colorless zombie stories. The best story in the anthology was «Swell Head» by Stephen Volk (after this story, I sincerely believe that Volk probably is the best storyteller in Britain). It’s a grotesque story about a boy, whose head eventually is growing rapidly in size, and the body remains almost infantile, it is a perfect illustration of the phrase "we are responsible for those who we have tamed." The older brother of big-head freak sacrifices his life for the needs of the giant head. Volk is accurate in detail, and in the end gets an ace from his sleeve.

Do not be afraid of the word "horror" on the cover, it's just a collection of different stories of high quality.

Tumor

2011-07-11T15:34:00.002+06:00

Joshua Hale Fialkov (writer), Noel Tuazon (artist)
Tumor

Archaia, 2010

Washed-up aging private detective Frank Armstrong unexpectedly receives a client in the face of the local drug lord. He asks to find his missing daughter. Armstrong wants to give up at first, but then sees in this business opportunity to earn money and somehow rehabilitate itself. The only thing that prevents the PI from doing his job decently is a brain tumor. Starting search for the girl with her boyfriend, Armstrong finds him in his own apartment - murdered. There appeares armed mobster hired by the father of the girl, and then suddenly appears disappeared girl, with a gun in her hand. Before Frank manages to do something, he loses consciousness from a brain attack. Thus, turning out between a hospital bed and in the street, leading the investigation, having lost the difference between past and present, Frank saves the gangster’s daughter and unravels the murder of his wife, committed several decades ago.

We have already seen a fair amount of amnesia noir, now we have a new, previously unknown kind – onko-noir. The tumor in Frank’s head gradually kills him, taking away the opportunity to think and live proper life. Detective loses his sense of space and time, not knowing where he is and what year. More frequent attacks lead to Frank coming again and again to the hospital, runs away from there thinking that next attack will definitely be the last for him. Events of past and present have become for detective a single entity. A reader can distinguish them only by art. Noel Tuazon blurs those panels, where the action takes place in the past, and conversely, uses dark lines, if it is present. Tuazon’s style makes this story very old-fashioned: it is a good illustrated pulp-novel, in which you never guess that the action takes place not in the 50s or 60s, but almost in our days. So suddenly you become surprised when there are mobile phones and internet in the book. It is not a believable story; it is a typical PI novel. Much more interesting is how the Fialkov weaves two plot lines in the end, allowing Frank defore the death to correct the mistakes of the past, not allowing history to repeat itself twice.

I should also mention the design of this hardcover (graphic novel was originally released in Kindle-version): between the chapters there are single page insertions, illustrating Frank’s headaches - pain, comparable to the shot in the head; in the end there are sketches, interviews with the creators and bonus story about Frank’s pat.

Fialkov and Tuazon in tandem have created an excellent novel.

Inherent Vice

2011-07-08T17:51:00.002+06:00

Thomas Pynchon
Inherent Vice

Vintage, 2010

The ex-girlfriend of a private detective from Los Angeles Doc Sportello, long disappeared from his life, then suddenly appears, telling him of a plot to kidnap a local landlord billionaireWolfmann. A little later, Doc gets the client named Tariq Khalil, who asked to find Glen Charlock, one of the bodyguards of the billionaire. In search of Charlock Sportello turns out on one of the Wolfmann’s developments, where the investigator is beaten to unconscious. LA police detective, known as Bigfoot, later tells Doc that Charlock is killed and Wolfmann disappeared without a trace. In a nightclub musician Coy Harlingen tells Doc about the existence of schooner "Golden Fang", suspected of bringing mysterious goods into port. On the same schooner Shasta and Wolfmann has been seen. On the day of death, Charlock changed shifts with a Puck Beaverton. A possible reason for the disappearance of a billionaire is a version that Wolfmann wanted to atone for his sins by donations. Toward the middle of the novel plot becomes more and more twisted.

While reading this book you feel yourself the director Hawkes, who during the filming of «The Big Sleep» called Chandler and asked who had killed such and such a character, and you want to call Pynchon. Toward the end of the book the story just becomes cloudy, but you can’t call it a book’s flaw. If Pynchon would write only stylized detective story about the private sleuths, he would have been hissed and scattered with the eggs. But Pynchon writes novel-portrait of America of late '60s, a time when all from young to old smoked pot, when psychedelia rapidly penetrated into all aspects of life, when, no less, appeared the first beginnings of the Internet. All investigation takes place in a cloud of marijuana smoke, and no wonder that a hero and a reader lost in there. It is interesting to look at how Sportello as a hero of so-called PI novel. Doc is not Lew Archer, he does not help crumbling families, does not rake up the clients’ past, excavating old mysteries: in the novel he in fact had not a client at all, he goes on a wave, om an infinite groove. Dock is not like Philip Marlowe, Sportello is not a knight, he does not even have to solve a moral dilemma. He's too passive. But Doc is not a nameless detective from stories and novels of Hammett. He doesn’t have meanness in himself, doesn’t want to capture an extra piece. Groove, is what Doc needs.

Smoke oozes from the pages of «Inherent Vice». And this smoke smells of separation, pain, and bit pot. Yes, the pot, too.

Smokeheads

2011-07-08T14:51:00.000+06:00

Doug Johnstone
Smokeheads

Faber and Faber, 2011

Four thirty-something-year-old friends go to spend the weekend at a remote Scottish island Islay. Adam is obsessed with whiskey snobish loser who wants to show the rest of them the place, which produces the best whiskey in Scotland and the friends all together can taste all whiskeys. However, the purpose of the trip for Adam is not only fun, he also wants to ask his friend Roddy to loan him million pounds to buy a deserted place on Islay to start there the manufacture of whiskey. At the bar four friends meet with Molly and her sister Ash. Molly is a guide there and remembers Adam from his previous visits to the island. Adam would not mind to start a relationship with Molly, but there is one problem - Molly's ex-husband, a psychopath and at the same time policeman Joe, who makes chaos on the island. When Roddy refuses to invest money in Adam’s idea - «Adam, you're one of life's losers, you always have been and you always will be. You're almost forty and still working in a shop, for fuck's sake. You've spent your whole life being petrified of taking a chance on anytning. That doesn't necessarily makes you a bad person, but it sure as shit doesn't make you the kind of person who runs a successful business either. You never take risks, it's that simple, so you'll always be one of the also-rans. You're a beta male through and through», - Adam gets mad and starts to insult Roddy in the car. Adam beats Roddy, and the latter loses control and crashes the car into a ditch. And this accident is only the beginning of the horrors that four friends and Molly will see.

Do not be confused by such a beginning, in which the original part appears only the presence of whiskey, but otherwise - like a mix of two dozen not the best horror movies. This book is the highest grade. It really is a horror without supernatural elements, and brilliant novel of black humor, and an essay on "how I spent the autumn", and 290-page sobering. «Smokeheads» has all the qualities of a good bottle of whiskey. This bottle hits you over the head so that long you can not recover, but at the same time, this bottle is not an empty container, within the novel - burning moisture. Johnston did not write a regular cliched novel with psycho cops, cocaine sniffing, burning people alive, but a book about the people on the edge, about that hangover happens not only from whiskey, that some events in life will not be able to forget, even get drunk in trash. For the loser Adam this trip to the island could become a turning point in his life. It has become to him but not as the way as he expected it. Roddy is more flippant, he is thinking less and doing more. Th most courageous there is Molly, it’s stranger, that Johnston describes her very sparingly, not letting even suggest what she experienced after what had happened.

«Smokeheads» is certainly a page-turner with the brilliant dialogues. Reducing the description to a minimum, Johnston practically with dialogues only reveals the characters. Gallons of black humor help to move rushing story. Convulsive laughing and absorbing «Smokeheads» to the bottom, to the end of the novel you at the same time are getting drunk from pleasure and sobering from what’s happening in the book.

It is recommended to drink this novel at one sitting.

A Razor Wrapped in Silk

2011-07-06T19:21:00.001+06:00

R.N. Morris
A Razor Wrapped in Silk

Faber and Faber, 2010

1870. From school for poor children, working by day at the plant, several teenagers go missing, among them Mitka Krasotkin, favourite pupil of school founder Maria Petrovna. Maria Petrovna, the society lady and daughter of a wealthy father, concernes that the worst thing could happen to children, and appeales for help to Porfiry Petrovich (the same one investigator from Dostoevsky's novel). While Porfiry Petrovitch and his assistant, Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky are just beginning to look for missing children, when in Naryskin Palace during the theatre performance in the dressing room a society lady Elena Filippovna Polenova, recently engaged to Naryshkin Jr., has been murdered. The servants have seen former lover of the deseased Captain Mizinchikov running from the dressing room, smeared in blood, and the sister of Elena, Aglaia Filippovna, first sees a dead sister, and from what she’d seen she becomes ill, falling into unconsciousness. Police search for Mizinchikov and find in his apartment love letters between him and the deseased. Elena Filippovna asked Mizinchikov and then Naryshkin to kill her, but both denied it. Porfiry Petrovitch begins to doubt that the killer is Mizinchikov, but finds that the missing children and murder of a society lady somehow link.

Porfiry Petrovitch, moved from "Crime and Punishment" on pages of novels by Morris becomes a hero in already the third book of the British writer, and this is the final case for the investigator. Porfiry Petrovich is no longer master of interrogation one by one, but the master of the "field" work - he examines the headless bodies, pressed the dirty police to nail, almost dares the Emperor himself. A look at this novel from Russia, of course, will differ from the view from the UK, but we have to admit, despite some factual errors (such as the introduction on the novel the tsar, when the Tsars have been "renamed" to the Emperors), Morris caught the atmosphere of St. Petersburg of the second half of the XIX century. There are also a carriage, and fog, and the western industrialists, and secret police - and the level of authenticity is pretty high. Even the Socialists, and they have played their part in «A Razor Wrapped in Silk».

What did not work in Morris’s novel, it is to move the style of Dostoevsky to Morris' novel. Where Dostoevsky has verbosity, but such one that you cannot throw a word from a sentence, Morris has redundancy:

«The painting before him showed the skeletal structure of a dilapidated amphitheatre, golden in the light of a dying sun. The few isolated human figures were dwarfed by the great stone remains, which stood to remind them of the vanity of human ambition. It answered his souls's craving for an irrevocable solitude. Sometimes he believed that it was only the presence of other people, with their inconvenient desires and clamorous demands, that prevented him from being happy».

This style slows down the action, though Morris is very good at plot. The author hides a few aces up his sleeve, balancing between the historic police detective and the so-called «locked room mystery». The secret police wedged in the investigation, and one of the suspects became the son of the emperor, even, these surprises, perhaps, brighten a bad combination of style and plot.

The book will especially please those who have never read Dostoevsky.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

2011-07-05T13:05:00.001+06:00

Aimee Bender
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Windmill Books, 2011

The story of Rosie Edelstein and her family begins when the girl at the age of nine opens a possibility to feel during the meal the feelings and emotions of a person who prepared the food. Throughout the novel we will go the way with Rosie aged nine to twenty-two years old Rosie.

An unexpected gift (or vice versa, the curse) appears when Rosie eats a piece of lemon cake, prepared by her mother. In the cake the girl feels emptiness and desire to be loved. Rosie's mother works in the office, but after a while finds a job in the studio for the production of designer furniture. Rosie's father is a decent family man. A favorite in the family is brother of Rosie, Joseph. Joseph is a good student, steeped in science, but he speaks almost no one, he does not have friends, sometimes even the mother has to ask him to go for a walk.

Rosie is initially discouraged by her new feelings; she can not understand what it is. Food becomes her uncomfortable. The girl tries to explain something to the parents - something wrong with the food - but they blamed on the strangeness of her imagination. Rosie also explaines about the gift to best (and only) friend of Joseph George and George promises to help her.

This is a family story with elements of fantasy, fairy tale and satire on modern society leaves a pleasant aftertaste. Fantastic premise - an opportunity to feel the feelings of the people through food - in general is small and not too original, but the whole story is written so deeply, and the plot is built almost perfectly that delight quickens your breath. The book is successful because of unique style of the author, who managed to create a volumetric image of Rosie. The girl sees the world with naïve look, uncomplicated with adult problems and prejudices. Suddenly awakened gift plunges Rosie into the world of before unknown feelings and emotions. It’s interesting as the way a child sees her family from within, as the daughter notices the characters of their parents, as it reasonably relates to family problems - the gift of a great deal had taught her. «The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake» is also a book in a special genre called "freak family." Here is the ability of each family member, but not all of them open in their entirety. Rosie's grandfather knew people through the smells - and walked with a clothespin on his nose. Rosie's father had never been in the hospital, because he's afraid to go there: his gift has something to do with medicine, but the father does not want his ability to open. Joseph literally merges with the furniture and has gone forever from this world.

Bender saturated her novel with feelings, so it is impossible to remain indifferent to Rosie and her family. In the second half of the book, however, the gift of Rosie goes by the wayside, and even looks like excess. Bender concludes that even feelings in the world today will eventually be expressed in material goods. People are so baked onto the world of things that, if some kind of strange things appear, it knocks them out of the material world, they are lost and do not know how to behave. For example, Rosie's father is afraid to open his gift, because a gift can prevent him from working and earning money. Rosie's mother does not receive warmth and love in the family, and she more and more time spends creating things.

It's really sad book, you’re feeling like you’ve eaten a piece of lemon cake, cooked by Rosie’s mother.

8 Pounds

2011-07-04T16:11:00.001+06:00

Chris F. Holm
8 Pounds

Self-published e-book, 2010

Chris F. Holm’s self-published collection includes eight stories, most of which has a solid weight, making the book, despite its name, much heavier than eight pounds. Holm writes in different genres: horror, modern neonoir, so-called "dark fiction." The word "dark" is suited the best to describe the entire collection of short stories.

Theme of childhood is very close to the author, and two story, opening and closing, are built on this theme. In the «Seven Days of Rain» in town for several days it rains non-stop, washing away everything in its path - including the secrets of the past. The protagonist of the story Eddie and his friends, when they were kids, played together, when their friend Timmy had an accident. The boys hid the body so that no one has found it. But the terrible flood washes away the remains of a body of the boy. One of his friends invites Eddie to go to the police and tell about what happened. But the secret of childhood days is even grimmer.

In the closing story «The World Behind» adult narrator at hot night can not sleep and remembers what happened to him twenty years ago, when he was a boy. His past keeps secret. The neighborhood boys teased him and mocked him. The boy began to seek refuge in the woods, where he meets a strange man who helps the boy to change his life forever.

«The Toll Collectors» tells the story of Ray McDaniel, the man of violence. For the first time in a fight in a bar, McDaniel felt a passion for violence and later went to work for bad people doing dirty jobs. For the cruelty they paid him good money. But here's the killer flees, hoping to start life over again, but go from himself is not easy, and the past catch up with McDaniel in the most unexpected way.
The best in the collection are the story with the title “8 Pounds”. It's brutal, exploding story about two best friends - and better to write no more about this story, so not to spoil the great fun.

In addition to excellent stories an advantage can be attributed, and it’s the price: it is not 8 pounds, it’s much much less.

The White City

2011-07-03T14:28:00.001+06:00

Elizabeth Bear
The White City

Subterranean Press, 2010

The immortal vampire detective Don Sebastien de Ulloa, together with his companions – court - Lady Abigail Irene and Phoebe Smith, at the beginning of the XX century is coming to Moscow to heal wounds, but almost immediately gets caught up in the new plot. De Ulloa seeks a meeting with the artist Irina Stephanova, which was close to de Ulloa’s friend Jack Priest before Priest’s death, but instead the detective finds in Irina’s apartment a murdered woman's body. Not having to leave the room, the vampire is caught in the flat by local police. Learning of famous detective’s arrival in Moscow, the police receives help from de Ulloa in the investigation. In addition to fresh crimes, the vampire has yet to unravel the six years old case, abandoned because of corruption among the capital's police. The detective will have to face the thing much older than himself.

Bear breaks the time fabric of this novella (short novel) into small pieces, alternating stories about Jack Priest and his acquaintance with Irina Stepanova and immortal vampire’s seeking the murderer. In the chapter about Jack, we meet with a small circle of Russian artists, painters and sculptors. Gradually the picture opens the relationship between Jack and de Ulloa and Irina. Moscow, which the author devotes much attention, has been described here with all the care and respect to detail. In addition, plot takes place in an alternate universe, which differs from ours not only in the presence of vampires, but in the geopolitical situation.

Mystery is masterfully built here, in the finale we meet with even greater mystery.
Bewilderment after reading the book is caused just by awkward dialogues. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Bear was trying to combine the style of the transfer of Russian and English speech. The dialogues sound unnaturally, sometimes entering into confusion.

I am glad that Russia has become the scene of this exciting novella.

Collected Fictions by Gordon Lish

2011-07-03T14:07:00.003+06:00

Gordon Lish
Collected Fictions

OR Books, 2010

The collection by Gordon Lish «Collected Fictions» includes 106 pieces of his prose. This is exactly fictions, prose pieces, which can not be called short stories, as well as diary entries, blog posts. You can still pick up a comparison: anecdotes. Collection of anecdotes, as ridiculous it may sound.

Despite the complexity (and sometimes transcendent) Lish’ fictions are the very oral stories, excerpts from life that can be called anecdotes. It may be objected that people do not talk like Lish writes, so his stories can not belong to the oral genre, transferred to paper. People probably do not talk like that, but Lish, better known as an editor, not a writer, does.

«My wife says, «Look at you. Just look at you. How can you look like that? Why don’t you take a good look at yourself? Look at me, don’t you have any idea of what you look like? What do you think people are going to think when they look at you? Tell me, how can you go around looking like that? Do you know what you look like? You couldn’t conceivably know what you look like. Who would believe anyone who look like this? I cannot believe what you look like. It is hard for me to grasp it, a man who go around looking like what you look like. What is the matter with you, don’t you know what you look like? You probably don’t have the first idea of what you look like. You act like you are completely oblivious to what you look like. Don’t you realize people are looking at you? Have you no conception of the fact that there are people who are looking at you? Why are you so utterly unaware of the fact that you cannot go around looking like whatever you happen to feel like looking like? Take a look at yourself. Just go ahead and just take just one good look at yourself.»»

Approximately the prose of such saturation fills this book. Lish does not give words to relax, and not just words - the whole proposals. Lish in his monologues looks like a sort of carefree old man, at times even seems silly, immersed in the everyday stuff. But this is a sham, because the author is working with a word, scrolls language through a meat grinder, and there is no question about any relaxation.
There is no relaxation for the reader as well. To read Lisha is like to comb a corn: an unpleasant, sometimes painful, but sometimes what a pleasure.

The beauty of this book is not on the surface, but it is worth reading all 600 pages to dig up this beauty.

(Books published by OR Books are not sold in stores and are available exclusively through the publisher’s website.)

The Blood of the Wicked

2011-07-02T15:29:00.001+06:00

Leighton Gage
The Blood of the Wicked

Soho, 2008 (hardcover\paperback)\self-published e-book

When Dom Bishop Felipe Antunes landed in helicopter in order to address the assembled crowd, he has been killed by an unknown sniper. The Director of Brazilian Federal Police sends to Cascatas, where the murder occurred, the Inspector Mario Silva, and his nephew, Hector Costa, to investigate the important case - «You can't just murder a bishop. This is Brazil, for Christ's sake. Brazil, not some little Central American pesthole». A murder of a priest does not end there. A few months earlier in the same town there have been several murders of local farmers, and after Silva’s arrival in town someone kidnapes the son of the biggest landlord, who keeps in his pocket the entire region. Silva and his nephew also understand that the investigation will have to rely only on themselves, the local police led by Colonel Ferraz is mired in corruption and carry out the orders of moneybags. Silva gets caught in the middle, when long-standing enmity between those who own the land and those who believe that the land is owned illegally flares up.

Leighton Gage plunges us into the abyss of Brazilian life from the very first pages. The author is unlikely to deliberately trying to shock the reader, showing what the Brazil as it is, Gage just does not cover defects. And there are a lot of defects. The priests enjoy boys, trading their bodiesbody. Police officer to conceal the crime is ready to kill at least ten people - and he knows that he will go unpunished. At night you can not stop at a red light: you can be simply pulled out of the car, your wife raped, and you get to look at it. There you can be fired if they see how you talk to the police. Gage knows inside out of Brazil and he is not particularly optimistic: no matter how many criminals are caught, new ones will appear and reappear, like weeds.

The inspector Silva, remaining relatively calm throughout the book, has an interesting fate, he decided to become a police officer after a couple of young bastards killed his parents and the police did not even look for criminals, telling Silva quickly forget about what had happened.

Gage has written not only (and not so much) the social novel, but also a mystery of high quality. The author has placed under one cover a thriller with lots of violence with a very old-fashioned detective story. In the middle of the novel, these components do not look very organic, and despite the high passions, the author and his characters are like a little indifferent to what is happening. Let's hope in the next books in the series Inspector Silva will show himself as more emotional character.

Acts of Violence

2011-07-02T15:14:00.001+06:00

Ryan David Jahn
Acts of Violence

Pan Books, 2010

Ryan David Jahn's debut novel by is based on real events that happened in New York in the 60s. Katrina Marino came back from work at night, when at the yard of her home she was attacked by a maniac with a knife. After leaving the girl bleeding on the pavement, a man has gone. Several neighbors hear cries for help, but none of them do not even call the police and do not go down to help a wounded girl. All the neighbors have their problems, bleeding neighbor is not on first place in their list of priorities. A young man discusses with his dying of an incurable disease mother draft in the army. Two married couples exchange partners in order to experience new feelings in sex. A black man comes up with a plan to hide the fact that his wife hit by a car a child. A man wants to commit suicide. While the neighbors themselves are on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Katrina is crawling on the pavement, hoping to reach her own flat, the killer realizes that his job is not finished and returnes to the scene.

Jahn in his novel uses a narrative technique, which successfully at one time director Alejandro González Iñárritu employed in his films: short chapters tell stories of each of the characters from the victim to the murderer, and the reader is waiting for a dozen different fates finally interwine, but this does not happen. All the neighbors, as well as the victim and the murderer, are united only by one house and one night, but there is no explosive effect, linking all the characters. The book's characters are linked not by action, and inaction, non-action. But these "good neighbors" (this is the American title of the book) won’t have to regret what happened. The events of that night will quickly erase from their memory. This did not happen to them, this happened to someone else. Jahn has enough skill and intelligence to not teach a reader a morality, the author is already reticent. He takes away all the unnecessary from the text, leaving the pain, fear and darkness.

In this gloomy book, Jahn shows how much damage can bring inaction.

Selling rights to a Russian publisher? Make a right choice

2011-06-23T15:10:00.003+06:00

Since I'm based in Russia, I know some internal information about publiishing business there. If you're a writer and have a possibility of being published in Russian translation, be careful and pay attention.
Bad and barbarian times when Russian publishers published translated works without copyright permission are gone a long time ago. (Once a publisher denied to send me a review copy afraid of a book will be xeroxed and copied and sell cheaply. There never have been there such cases. English there is not first and even not the second language. Most people barely read in English. It would be unprofitable.) Now it's all legal. You or your publisher (in case the publisher owns the rights) is approached by a Russian press and a Russian press wants to buy rights and publish a book. And it's mutually profitable. A writer gets payment for the rights and royalties, and if a book sells well, a writer may sell rights for his other books. A Russian press as well gets money selling newly translated book. All happy? Well, maybe. But before selling the rights, a writer have to do the right choice.
Yes, you can sell the rights to any publisher or the one who offers the highest sum. It's usually a big publisher. It seems everything's fine. You receive the money and spend them on whatever you need. But highest sum is not always the right decision. Big publishers there in Russia usually make no publicity, no ads, don't care about selling a book. They just make an awful cover, bad translation within a month or two, pushing a book in faceless series. You'll get no reviews, no readers, and your book will stop its way in stock. The only thing you'll get is you payment for the rights.
But if you think better and make right choice, you'll get good publicity, good translation, pretty cover, new readers and possibility of selling rights of your other books. Yes, you can get $500-1000 less on the start, but then you get a chance of decent sum of royalties and new readers who will love your books.
I recall a recent example of good change of publisher. Craig McDonald, author of Head Games, Print the Legend, One True Sentence etc etc, in 2009 had published Head Games in Russian translation. It was a big publisher. The book had no success at all. It gets no reviews and no readers. I plugged the book on my Russian blogs, it helped a little, but that was all.
Then this year in May the translation of Print the Legend had been published. The novel has different publisher, small press. The novel already got 3 reviews in major newspaper and culture magazines. The book got 5000 copies' print run (against 3000 of Head Games). The book sells well. And it will sell more and more.
And that was just a right choice. So be careful. If you like not only money but your readers, think twice and make a right choice.

hard time

2011-06-22T21:24:00.003+06:00

It's been a while since I last time posted reviews on this blog. There were some problems with my PC and Internet connection. Now it seems everything's almost OK, so a bunch of reviews will be posted very soon. I'd read a hell lot of books since begininng of the summer. Stay tuned.

(Later I'll write a blogpost for writers whose books may be published in Russia.)

99 cents books: cheap, but not that cheap

2011-06-22T20:48:00.003+06:00

Often you can see on twitter or Facebook plugs and recomendations (sometimes it's self-promotion) of 99 cents books. Buy, it's cheap! - a recomendations call. And yes, it is really cheap - a book with under-dollar price. In Russia even with 600-800 month income you can afford 30-40 ebooks every month. And it's only for 30-40 dollars.
But here is one not so little problem. Amazon, most popular online ebook retailer, charges two extra bucks if you buy ebook from outside of US of A. Yeah, if you live in Europe, Africa or South America, you must pay for 99 cents book $2, 99, not 0,99.
Do the math. You have the same 30-40 bucks and with 2,99 price you can buy only 10-13 books. And if you wanna buy 30 ebooks, you have to pay 90 bucks. And in Russia it's not that cheap.
Now you have 3 options:
1) buy less books
2) try to cheat Amazon, but it's illegal and not too simple.
2) use other retailers, such as Smashwords, they don't charge extra money. But these retailers don't have such selection of books that has Amazon.

So if you a writer, place your ebook not only on Amazon, think about your foreign readers. And don't shout "It's cheap". It's cheap, but not for all.

Short Ride To Nowhere

2011-05-31T14:47:00.003+06:00

Tom Piccirilli
Short Ride To Nowhere

Crossroad Press, 2010

When Jenks finally goes on the trail of his friend Hale, he was already dead - killed himself in a madhouse. Jinks and Hale were neighbors before their lifes were almost simultaneously crashed. Both were on the street, without a wife, children, home, work and money. Both earned a living that way they could afford. But Hale was suddenly found rugged with the blood all over him with the murdered girl. The police have no clues who and how could commit a crime. Detectives even suspect that the girl could have been killed by Hale. Police had no time to interrogate him: the man kills himself. When Jenks met with the police, he understands that he should not wait for some sort of investigation: lifes such as his and Hal’se are not worth anything, they will die and no one will notice. Jenks himself begins to find out what happened to his neighbor. The chain of questions leads Jenks to a homeless shelter.

Despite the fact that this novella (noirella, if we use the definition of the author) in length is only 60+ pages, you have the impression that you have read the novel, so fleshy Piccirilli prose is. «Short Ride To Nowhere» is a dark, very male thing. Human life can cost a few dollars, and the American dream turns to sand within several minutes. The voice of Jenks is often the voice of Piccirilli himself: people are mired in sins, basking in the luxury and spitting on other people's problems. Human qualities are no longer valued, survive as best as you can. Jenks for entire novel is on the verge of anger and despair, for themselves and the world, he almost kills those who did not harm him.

From the viewpoint of the mystery is all very well plotted. Piccirilli really gave a reader a short ride to nowhere. This trip is not a pleasant one, but I'd still ride.

(This is digital-only novella, never published in print form.)

Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened

2011-05-31T14:17:00.002+06:00

Postcards: True Stories That Never Happen
Ed. By Jason Rodriguez

Villard, 2007

This comics anthology had an interesting concept, but the final result was not impressed. The essence of the project was to invited authors and artists have painted the detailed stories, based on the old postcards. The failure of the project, perhaps, is that the authors had too little space, so that did not work to create a decent story. All the postcards at the same time belonged to the first half of XX century or second half of XIX century. Because of that is the monotony of the times and characters.

Most often in the course of reading of «Postcards» I admired the art, but remained totally cold to the stories themselves. Only two stories-postcards art and plot story had a resonance. In «Homesick» by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Micah Farritor husband and wife, escaped to Paris during the Great Depression in the U.S., go through the city streets hoping to find a new life in a new place. The wife suffers from a cold and misses home, her husband does not intend to return. For him, France is a paradise. «Quarantined» by Jason and RJ Rodriguez and Seamus Heffernan is a story of a father and daughter. Plague stalks a small town, so that the girl's father treats patients, holding the child at home under lock, trying to protect the baby from the deadly pestilence. But once a girl leaves home and goes to the ward for the sick. Heffernan accurately depicted the metamorphosis that has occurred to the girl: before the disease she is a big-eyed curly child, when she is infected, she looks like a small death with the abyss in the eyes.

The subtitle of the anthology reads: ten stories that never happened. It would be not bad if they really did not happen.

The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress

2011-05-29T18:04:00.000+06:00

Beryl Bainbridge
The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress

Little, Brown, 2011

Posthumous novel by Beryl Bainbridge begins with how Washington Harold awaits the arrival of Rose, woman from England and friend of Dr. Wheeler, with whom Harold is familiar too. The entire novel is essentially a road movie, the pursuit of a kind of phantom, Dr. Wheeler.

Both the heroes of the novel are familiar with a doctor, but the reader, except fragmentary memories of Wheeler, did not meet the doctor at all. Motives for characters in a novel are hidden somewhere under the weight of their past. Rose wrote a letter to Harold, who hardly know each other, indicating the purpose of the visit. Harold invites, once it has relation to Wheeler, Rose in the U.S., paying for a ticket and living expenses, although Rose is almost unknown to him. Harold himself does not seem very eager to meet with a doctor, but that their trip with the Rose did not look as if Harold accompanies Rose out of some sense, providing comfort to her, pretends as if he, too, need to see Wheeler. The chase for the doctor - closer to the end of the novel we begin to suspect that there are no doctor at all - turns into a chase, or rather escape from oneself.

This Bainbridge’s novel is a surprisingly old-fashioned thing. Despite the fact that it was written last year, it seems that the author actually wrote it about 50 years ago, but now only pulled out a drawer. And this old-fashioned style is what makes the novel truly outstanding. This book is the highway to nowhere, back to the future. The past of two heroes of the novel, Rose and Harold, - this is what they live in, but in their past there is no joy or indeed something that could pull them back, though the past does not leave them, so that the reader gets the first puzzle: why are they so obsessed with the past? Their past is elusive Dr. Wheeler, the man seemed to define their lives, especially Rose, but really Wheeler is only stain on their memory, and both of them from time to time doubted the importance of doctor for their lifes. So they try to catch up with the past, and they would not succeed.
Between Rose and Harold throughout the novel sparks and discharges fly and such electicity keeps novel in tension. For Harold Rose replace his deceased wife. For Rose, Harold replace Dr. Wheeler, he is a reminder of Wheeler, the opportunity to be with someone who knew Wheeler in the situation of the absence of Wheeler. We are from different backgrounds, said Harold. This is so, they are quite different people with different past, but they are united by one figure from the past, and this is enough to attract them to each other. The relationship between Rose and Harold can hardly be called love, but it is sparkling relationship.

On the background of a travel of lonely souls, we also see the life of the U.S. at that time. The murder of King, Negro’s strikes, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the assassination of Robert Kennedy at the end of the novel. Why do Americans kill each other? - Asked Rose Harold. Before us is a portrait of the collapse in the country. On the example of Rose and Harold, we see that in their souls is emptiness. The same is happening with the country.

Final seems to be open, but it is frustrating and confusing. Was Harold killer of Robert Kennedy? And if so, what was the reason? And what Rose felt when she saw the murder? The novel was left unfinished. These questions will be a long time to simmer in head after reading this very exciting novel.

Wormdye

2011-05-29T17:32:00.002+06:00

Eamon Espey
Wormdye

Secret Acres, 2008

«Wormdye», a collection of interconnected stories of the same world, starts out as a family chronicle with a fair amount of violence: two brothers put their cat in a microwave oven, heated, and then throw the corpse into the toilet. In the next episode we see how these same brothers, their mother and sister standing at the grave of the father. The father, however, is not dead, but in the post-mortem travels gets all the pleasures of life that he has not had time to get in his time. In the next episode we see crime scene, when the scientist conducting the experiment on mutants (people-larvae), is killed by a group of masked robbers, who then kidnapped the mutant girl.

Such oddities can lasts and lasts, and they are not going to end. Among the other defendants in the events - the Pope, eating spaghetti with worms, wolf devoured the woman, puking children, the aliens. Eamon Espey has a great imagination. Imagine Bosch, who had read Philip K. Dick, the ancient legends and had seen enough of reality shows - this nuclear mix will be called «Wormdye». Plots of stories often are legends remakes - with Romulus and Remus, the Vatican, the ancient Greek voyages. But the classic stories change under the influence of modern culture. This is an ancient world, but with a TV and microwave, postcards and aliens. You won’t understand the nature of this world after reading the book, so I think, as the author himself. Espey certainly is the chronicler of strange times: between the novellas in the book often there are pages in the form of the ancient wall maps. It is not only a world map of Wormdye, it is maps of the entire universe. These huge paintings, which occupy page or two, dispense with the plot as such, but contain a bottomless pit of information. Emon Espy saturate the page with so many small details, from people to the quaint lines, that you can not look away a glance from a page for a few minutes - an abyss of information is mesmerizing.

Espey’s art is in harmony with the wild and crazy world of «Wormdye». The art is both primitive, simple, full of small details. When you look at the picture, you do not believe that it has drawn by a human, our contemporary. Likely to believe that this is done by someone from another civilization that lived long before us.

«Wormdye» is an artifact from another world and another time. This is a world that can be admired on paper, but you do not want to be there for a moment. And is this not the best compliment to the book.

Ribstallments

2011-05-29T15:53:00.002+06:00

Noel Tuazon
Ribstallments

Self-published, 2010

This small book is a collection of short comics written and drawn by Noel Tuazon. All of them are drawn in usual Tuazon’s style - black and white sketch-y illustrations. Tuazon usually acts as an artist, but in this book he shows himself also as the author of the plots. All the stories collected here are delicate stories with a touch of fantasy.

The most successful of all turned out, oddly enough, the first and last stories. In the first one, «Door», a person gets into some cave and sees the front door, entirely composed of human heads. No way out, and we can only guess that the heads in the door belong to the same, like this man, strangers who find themselves in a cave - and stayed here forever. The last story in the book, which has remained without a title, is much easier and more fun (although it only seems so, the last panel changes everything). In a post-apocalyptic world, a man in sunglasses and a little Asian girl somewhere go in the desert, hoping to find refuge. The man is clearly not the father of the little girl, but worries about her. The girl also keeps dangerous secrets.

The author without the use of color creates a very old-fashioned stories, with thick lines making drawing more convex. In «Ribstallments» Noel Tuazon established himself also as a fairly good writer.

The Broadcast

2011-05-25T18:43:00.002+06:00

Eric Hobbs (writer), Noel Tuazon (artist)
The Broadcast
NBM, 2010

In 1938 Orson Welles’ radio show «War of the Worlds» stir among many Americans. In a small town in Indiana, this show led to the massacre. When at night a terrible storm begins, residents think that the Earth was indeed attacked by aliens. People can hide in a shelter in the house of a local rich man, but a place of refuge is limited: only 5 people can be saved. The serious struggle for a place begins. In this situation, all the discontent open, conflicts erupt. Gavin, a worker on a farm, propose a rich man's daughter Kim Shrader, but the father of the bride even does not want to hear that his only daughter will be married to a beggar. Shrader once raised the city, but after that has enslaved all his employees. And here is another conflict: workers do not mind to get rid of a tyrant. Later there is another character, a wounded negro Eli, and Gavin’s father helps him. Others begin to look suspisionly at Eli, and Shrader, guessing that the Negro is associated with gangsters, uses the man in his intrigues. All they want to survive, to save their loved ones and not lose the human face, but doing it will be extremely difficult.

«The Broadcast» gets you for the throat from the first page and do not let go until the very end. This is partly melodrama, part crime thriller, but because of the "War of the Worlds" even want to add – partlu science fiction, all ingridients are well mixed. The story reveals the major conflicts of prewar America, social, racial, class. Portrayal of the characters of the book turned out not quite impressive. For example, the daughter of wealthy Shrader is a writer, but we only at the very beginning see how she prints on a typewriter, but otherwise she remains the only daughter of her father. Eric Hobbs makes not the most original story a much more tense by adding a storyline with a black gangster Eli implicated in a double murder near the home of Shrader. Eli enjoys the hospitality and hides in a house together with everyone, but Eli is a hesitant gangster, incapable of meanness.

Art of Noel Tuazon is veryfitting to the raging weather. Blurry black-and-white sketches give the impression that the heroes of the book are always in the rain, even when they are indoors. Incompleteness of the picture does thr narrative more emotional, so that you can feel that all participants in this event are very nervious. Nuazon never gives close-ups, keeping the reader at a distance and not doing anyone special: it is not specific Shrader, Gavin, Eli, etc., they are a rich farmer, a rural worker and a gangster as such. Blur of the picture gives to the story surrealistic features.

Brilliant work.

Mineshaft #26

2011-05-25T18:09:00.002+06:00

Mineshaft #26

The new issue of the small magazine Mineshaft is better than the previous one. If Mineshaft number 25 suffered from an excess of strange materials, are often so bizarre that it was hard to even understand what it was and for whom it has been written, in this issue the proportion is observed: half of the issue is weird pieces, while the other part is comics - and a very high quality comics.

Definetely, the best material there is a single strip, for some reason, unsigned, titled «Batman and Robin Meet the Great Depression». Batman and Robin are depicted there as a couple of homeless people, who beg, steal, sleep on the benches, and spend money on booze and cigarettes. Incredibly funny.

In his autobiographical comics by Dennis Eichhorn and David Collier «The Geriatric Comic» protagonist is an old stand-up comedian with a cane and a cape, and he is far better than younger comedians. Another comics in this issue, too, is partly autobiographical - «August 1976" by Nina Bunjevac. Her art almost entirely filled with black color accompanies the text between the panels: it’s two letters, first from the father to his wife and daughter, and then from the daughter to her father. This seems to be a quiet story but with high voltage, preparing the reader to something tragic.

A good number, but there is no limit to perfection. We’ll wait what happen in the next issue.

Florida Gothic Stories

2011-05-24T14:06:00.003+06:00

Vicki Hendricks
Florida Gothic Stories

Kitsune Books, 2010

Nowhere on the cover of this book states that it is a collection of noir short stories, so Vicki Hendricks is called the queen of modern noir. And rightly so, that it is not specified. Vicki Hendricks is not queen of noir, she is queen of neonoir: Now, when the term "noir" clings to all the books and movies, where there is murder, it had already lost its original meaning and actually depreciated. Period of film noir was - and passed. On his shift neonoir came, so it's fair to replace queen of noir to queen of neonoir.

And it's really the royal collection. Typically author’s collections and anthologies are vulnerable because in them one half is good stories, the other one is bad stories. And I think I first saw the author's collection, where there is no bad story. That is, in general, not one at all. All the 11 stories collected here are damn good (some of them reprints, there are a couple of originals).

All three words in the title of the book could not better describe what the full collection is. Florida in stories exists on an equal terms with the heroes of stories, becoming a full participant in the events. Crocodiles, tornadoes, beaches, ocean, luxury homes, monkeys - Florida is rich in exotics. Not all stories are realistic, and in general, noir has never been a separate genre, and often contained in itself the elements of different genres, from science fiction to melodrama. In «Stormy, Mon Amour» heroine, tired of the bad boyfriend, gets bonded with a dolphin and becomes pregnant by him, and later hopes to escape with a dolphin. A loser and a married man, Gregory Waxman is left by his wife and gets cold-blooded mistress - an iguana, in the «Cold-Blooded Lovers». Too intelligent and sexually preoccupied chimpanzee named Big Man takes the former master into the sex slavery, in «Must Bite!».

But above all - Hendricks can tell a good story. Catchy, original (the elements of the old film noir are the same, but the new scenery of the old stories so refreshes a story that you forget about the original), tough and brutal. Heroes of the stories in this book are most often women. They can be cunning, deadly dangerous, resourceful, independent, but they all at heart want to be affectionate and want to have a little wealth, if only in their lives was a man. However, the men these women often choose are not ideal: spoiled, rude, cruel, power, recognizing a woman not as fully human being, but merely a sex toy. In «Gators» wife plans to frame her own husband for killing the husband of his sister:

«It was a goddamned one-armed alligator put me over the line. After that I was looking for trouble».

In «Must Bite!» as a means of revenge it’s chosen a giant ape, for a meal ready to devour the man. In «The Big O» to get rid of the boyfriend a woman against the backdrop of an approaching tornado pits boyfriend with a local drug-dealer.
Finals of stories are often instructive: If you use illegal methods to fix your life, life most likely will use a forbidden method in relation to you, too.

Incredibly good book.

Abolisher of Roses

2011-05-24T13:57:00.001+06:00

Gary Fry
Abolisher of Roses

Spectral Press, 2011

Peter is a man of business, the holder of the factories and he is not interested in art. But his housewife Patricia has interest in art, recently got into a bohemian jet. While her husband makes money by covering all costs, including the whim of his wife, a woman stands at the canvas, painting a picture. When the exhibition is arranged by the forest, Peter accompanies his wife only because he does not want to seem like a bad husband. But at the exhibition, husband and wife quarrel, and Peter goes into the woods for a walk. He does not know yet where this will lead.

Good story, in which first and foremost it is worth noting an excellent style of Gary Fry and his ability to create a credible character. The author convincingly shows what type of people Peter belong to. He is a materialist, who knows the price of money, but not knowing inestimable value of the art. Fascination of his wife, whom painting has changed dramatically, he sees painting as yet another whim, and this maggot still needs to be paid.

«Abolisher of Roses» is a delicate story, not able to scare, but able to get to think about. I always enjoy reading fiction by Gary Fry and was happy to read this story. Recommended.

Toys in the Basement

2011-05-24T13:33:00.003+06:00

Stephane Blanquet
Toys in the Basement

Fantagraphics, 2010

At a costume party for young children a boy sits on the couch alone: instead of a pirate costume his mom bought him a costume of pink bunny, and now the other kids laugh at him. Another boy, a bespectacled cock with a comb on his head, complains that he has a broken leg and asks the Rabbit-boy to come down to the basement to check his girlfriend dressed as a cat, she somehow delayed. When the Rabbit comes down to the basement, the Cat-girl shows him to dump toys. Basement is full of old broken toys for destruction. Toys, however, begin to move, and the green bear, without one eye and with damaged head, takes a boy and a girl for real toys, not the costumed children. The bear and the other toy, armless superhero, say the children that they need to be rescued and they all dig a tunnel to crawl back to where all broken toys hide. Children are in a big danger.

This slim graphic novel is nominally novel for children, but the art of the Frenchman Blanquet takes a children's story to an unexpected level. Costumes worn by the boy and girl, are as if one whole with the children so that children look like more as an animals capable of violence without explication. Not without reason toys are so afraid of children: a mangled dolls know who made them disabled, who scoffed at them. All faces of those heroes of the novel, both children and toys, has some wild expression, both horror and disgust.

For children who are reading this book, toys have been brought in a completely different light than they are accustomed to see them. They live and they have an instinct for survival, too.

This surrealist book by writer-artist Blanquet brings to the young reader a simple message: retribution will come, and you never know from which side.

The Forgotten Waltz

2011-05-04T17:27:00.002+06:00

Anne Enright
The Forgotten Waltz

Jonathan Cape, 2011

It all started with a child: a girl Evie sees her father kissing Gina, the narrator, while girl’s mother cleans up after the guests. Continuation of the story, however, does not begin with this scene, but several years earlier.

First time Gina saw Evie’s father, Sean, in the garden of her sister. Numerous relatives, friends and children gather in the garden of the new home of Gina's sister Fiona, to celebrate a housewarming. 2002, Gina has recently returned home from Australia to Ireland, she is on a party with her husband, Conor. At that time, Gina is in love with her husband. And at that time Conor seems perfect man for her. The next time when Gina saw Sean in the yard is 2005. Again, the nature and children, Sean and his wife Aileen and their daughter Evie. Gina feels that it is something wrong with the girl. Evie is not like Megan, Gina’s niece, even though the girls are the same age. Maybe it's because of the fact that Evie is unusually fat, Gina thinks. When the two couples, Gina and Conor and Sean and Eileen, swim and sunbathe on the beach, Gina and Sean steal glances at each other's bodies.
The sudden meeting between Gina and Sean happens at a conference on Internet technology in Switzerland. They know each other. So Gene and Sean begin an affair.
Actually, any retelling of the novel does not convey a tenth of his charm. It can not be retold, because the best part of it hid not even between the lines, but between the letters. The book is very lyrical, intentionally repeats some inexplicable tenderness in the language. Enright put into the mouth of his protagonist Gina a truly unique voice.

This seems to be a quiet novel (and in fact it really is, almost no high tones and high-sounding words) and it begins in his own shocking way and ends shockingly, too. We read the same story twice in fact. The first time we do not yet know what happened to Evie. The second time we look at the story of the relationship between Sean and Gina - and Ivy - already knowing the so-called history of the disease and how it has affected. At all - on the girl's father, her mother, Gina herself. The whole story here is how we see through a prism, whose name is Evie. This is key to the whole book, to all relationships. Girl herself remains a mystery, but it becomes the answer for everything else. Evie is an angel in the guise of the devil and the devil in the guise of an angel.

«The Forgotten Waltz» is not a novel about adultery, but nevertheless this is the best novel about adultery since the "The End of the Road" by John Barth. «The Forgotten Waltz» is not a novel about fathers and children, but this theme there is very well served.

Not being a thriller, the book still holds in suspense until the very end. This waltz will never be forgotten.

Best New Horror 21

2011-04-28T16:34:00.001+06:00

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21
Edited by Stephen Jones

Robinson, 2010

Quality of anthologies of the best of the year is always determined by taste of the editor. When the book reaches the reader, the taste of the editor is divided into reader's taste, and that is determined the degree of pleasure from a collection.
Long-term anthologist Stephen Jones tends to old-fashioned horror stories, with their roots in Gothic fiction of the XIX century. Such devotion to tradition shows the inextricable link between horror literature of the past and the present, but most often harms a story. Because of its archaic story becomes predictable and suffers from disrepair style. In this book, there are several such stories. They are readable, not without some pleasure, but we should not expect some quality break from them. Fortunately, the book has some good stories, psychologically adjusted, often with an unexpected ending.

If the above-described type of a story is usually based on the type of story in story, when the protagonist in the now listens to the story occurred once, and this story contains elements of the supernatural, then in the most successful stories of the anthology narrator is here and now, and all the events happen to him in present tense.

There are not so much stylists among the authors of the collection, just two. Nicholas Royle in «The Reunion» elegantly tells the story of a meeting of medical graduates in a huge old hotel. Royle is able to twist the intrigue, sowing doubts in the head of the reader and his hero, and the final just baffles. Australian Terry Dowling writes with the French ease, too. In his story «Two Steps Along the Road» the author describes the case of modern exorcism in an exotic background. The scientist-exorcist at the beginning of the story seems to calm and know his business, but later he nearly becomes the victim of dark forces. I had read almost a year ago the story by Michael Marshall Smith «What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night», and after re-reading it gets even better. Smith brings life to all the worst fears of a man by throwing him to meet evil that has no explanations. This shocking story, however, has a bit of black humor.

Zambian miners and the spirits of Zambia become heroes of the story of Simon Kurt Unsworth «Mami Wata». Office manager flies to Africa to find out the reasons for sudden drop in production at one of the mines the company. The hero does not believe that all the fault is on otherworldly forces, while he is not facing them himself. In «Cold to the Touch» Simon Strantzas religious scientist arrives on the territory of the Far North, to find the cause of unexplained changes in climate. Two local residents help the scientist. Strantzas not quite manage to create a convincing image of the scientist who believes in God, but the story itself is full of horror and pain.

«Granny's Grinning» by Robert Shearman is perhaps more science fiction story than a fantasy one. Children receive gifts for Christmas from his parents: costumes of werewolf and zombie who literally grow into a person, making him a werewolf and a zombie, respectively. Grandmother after the death of her husband decides to celebrate Christmas with the family of her son. You will do everything for a loved one - even become a zombie. Very powerful story. Screenwriter and novelist Stephen Volk presents us unusual world in «After the Ape». This is indeed the world after the ape: King Kong was killed, and his beloved actress is suffering from the loss and stays for a week in her hotel room. Volk showed here his best skills: cinematic style and a world full of sex and violence (only this time without paranoia).

Lyrical and truly chilling story is told by Barbara Roden in «Out and Back». In an ordinary story about an abandoned place Rhoden adds unprecedented depth. Father and son King, I mean, Stephen King and Joe Hill, wrote a story «Throttle» about a gang of bikers. This is not the best story for King and for Hill, but it’s written in a fairly briskly, and the theme is suitable for the authors: the relationship between fathers and sons.

A decent collection with a handful of excellent stories.

N+1 magazine #8 (Fall 2009)

2011-04-27T22:41:00.004+06:00

N+1 magazine
#8 Fall 2009

This issue was published just in the midst of the crisis, and because of that some of the articles were dedicated to it. Now, two years later, these crises materials are outdated, but they reflected two things. Firstly, it is clear that in the midst of the crisis in the U.S. there was serious panic, the world for every American almost tumbled into the abyss. Secondly, the magazine showed his citizenship: its pages splashed with despair, anger and hope in their country.

The best articles of this issue are those to whom the financial crisis did not have relations. Gays are our utopian heroes. So begins the article «On Repressive Sentimentalism», balanced analysis of gay movement and its possible future. What can cause a general lack of any bans on gay marriage? Why do more and more people opt for same-sex unions? How far does sex without consequences determine human behavior in today's world? These and other issues Mark Greif raised in his article.

«So Little To Remember» is an essay by Philip Connors in the form of a diary, which at first I take for a piece of fiction. The author alternates between diary entries that he experiences after the suicide of her brother, with quotations from the books.
Digression into the film industry of Mozambique has been taken by Emily Witt in the «Cinema E Luxo». Mark Roth sees another death of the novel at the peak of so-called neuronovel. In his article «The Rise of the Neurovel» Roth examines the books in which the work of mind is replaced by the work of the brain, then there are novels where the protagonist suffers from any disease of the brain. Among these novels - McEwan with "Saturday" and "Enduring Love", Haddon with "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", Lethem with "Motherless Brooklyn" etc. Roth found an interesting new angle on those books, but his final conclusions are not convincing. End of the novel was predicted for hundreds of times, but the end never came, by the same the total amount of neuronovels is very small to talk about some dominance.

We should also mention fiction component of the magazine. Juan Villoro in «Among Friends» mixes the criminal plot with kidnapping with descriptions of the reportage of Mexico. What immediately gives Villoro a South American, so it's genuine sadness and his sociality. On the cover of a magazine Villoro is named the best untranslated Mexican novelist, after that short story, we can already say that it is no exaggeration.

N +1 is the best source of intelligent reading which I know about.

Nazi Literature in the Americas

2011-04-22T16:36:00.001+06:00

Roberto Bolano
Nazi Literature in the Americas

Picador, 2010

This novel finally confirmed that Bolano is a great fabulist. Imagine a directory of encyclopedia articles, written by a sensitive and well-educated scholar who has never read the encyclopedia, but read a lot of science fiction (and not only by South American writers) and watched European films. The book has through characters, but each article-chapter is a separate article and is devoted to a fictional writer. Among them are poets, novelists, but most often it is the writers - those who write: from plays to the letters. There are those who write all his life until death, there are those that released in a lifetime only two books of poetry.

Nazi literature from the title of the novel is something that unites all very different writers in this book. Though there are not Nazi literature by and large in the book, but in the fate of every writer there is a vital episode associated with the Third Reich. For Bolano the use of "Nazi Literature" in any case is no way outrageous, but the formalities necessary to give the seemingly banal encyclopedic compilation in novel form some mystique.

To understand the humor of Bolano - and appreciate it - you have to be bookworms and bibliophiles. Humor begins with the title of the novel. And anyone who tries to take the book seriously will be disappointed.

The merit of Bolano is not only his boundless imagination and a subtle humor, but also a sense of proportion. He knows when to get bored, and chooses the correct volume for the book. No matter how different writers’ stories are, sooner or later the author begins to repeat himself- and ends the book. Bolano himself appears in the final chapter, thus placing himself in a number of imaginitive writers. I made you up, and I, too, am made up by someone else, Bolano implies.

Well, probably so.

Beginners

2011-04-22T16:08:00.001+06:00

Raymond Carver
Beginners

Vintage, 2010

«Beginners» is a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver, which was released in its original form, as it is conceived by the author. Earlier this book was known as «What We Talk About When We Talk About Love» and was a collection of the same stories, but in the editing of Gordon Lish, who is credited as a discoverer of Carver as a writer. In the book there are some notes which briefly give the basic differences in the stories between the versions of Carver and Lish. Such comparisons with a limited amount of space in the book do not give a complete picture: to compare the original version and edition of Lish is only possible if you have before yourself the full versions of stories. So to say what version is "better" is difficult; moreover, both have remained in the literary memory. And that's a matter of academics, to compare and comment. The reader, of course, will simply enjoy reading.

And there is a lot of enjoyable stuff here. Carver is a phenomenal storyteller, often not even at the level of plot, not on a level as something happens or has happened, probably on a level as something never happened. Carver primarily is a storyteller on the level of feelings and emotions (again - not shown feelings and emotions), and the story serves as a sort of escalator.

Beginners, this is all the characters of Carver’s stories. They are not new to life, these people are already with life experience, but they are all beginners to the level of feelings. And in those stories that the author tells, his characters as if for the first time are experiencing real feelings. And often from such an emotional shock - resulting, in general, for the first time - they are lost, not knowing how to go on.

First-class writer, first-class collection.

The Blue Light Project

2011-04-20T00:36:00.001+06:00

Timothy Taylor
The Blue Light Project

Soft Skull Press, 2011

Eve Latour is a star. She is Olympic champion in biathlon and is known around the world. Latour became famous primarily because during the competition a cracker-sniper shot her in the leg, but Latour gave no sign, hidden injury and completed the race and won gold medal. She was bathed in glory, gave interviews, went around the world, was going to marry, but because of his father's death postponed the wedding.
Latour now works on TV and runs in the mornings. The reason for these workouts is the missing brother of Eve. When she returned from a trip to Europe, Latour discovered that her brother Ali was gone. Ali painted graffiti, filled his pictures in the most remote places of the city, so that Latour runs through the dark streets in hopes of finding his brother or at least someone who can give her any information on the whereabouts of Ali.

When Eve, along with Nick, who has not yet become her husband, watching television, they learn that someone took hostage an entire building with the children who starred in the TV show «KiddieFame», something like the "Minute of Fame" for the children.

Taylor introduces another important protagonist of the book as soon after the scene of hostage-taking. It is Rabbit, he is twenty-six. He partly is graffiti painter, partly parkur, partly implementer of a strange project. Rabbit, adding the device to selected of the roof of buildings, works on an installation.

This is a strange novel. He is superbly written, especially its second half. Taylor has charming style, he is very accurately conveys the tension, confusion, and hopes.
Time of the story is the future, 2014, the city has remained anonymous, but the author does not write science fiction, there is no change compared with our time there. Despite the seemingly serious subject that requires a correct approach, the author hadn’t written depressing novel, there are no anger, hatred, hopelessness, conversely, Taylor selects the protagonist of the novel light itself, and the author earned himself a hundred points with that, he is the author of hope.

The novel turned out metaphorical, not rudely embedded in reality. City’s name does not appear there, any historical names never appear in the text, the state machine is never called such. There are references to the terrorist attacks in Moscow and Beslan, but this is such beacons, which do not play a big role. Taylor seems to be not tied to the details, but it applies only to the details around terrorist attacks: everything else is very plausible, all the characters, their inner world, are three-dimensional; they are not puppets on the author’s string.

What, however, doesn’t quite work in this book, is incongruous inclusion of some storylines. The entire plot line of champion Latour doesn’t work at all. It is bound and serves only as sort of a lever, to somehow tell and fully disclose Rabbit and his project. The very story with the search of her brother, a worldwide fame at times are even annoying. Even the style of the author when he writes about Latour, is as if getting worse towards simplification.

And only that, perhaps, does not let to name the book excellent.

White Heat

2011-04-19T23:46:00.002+06:00

M J McGrath
White Heat

Mantle, 2011

The plot of this novel takes place on the Craig Island, near Canada, near Greenland. Edie Kiglatuk, an experienced hunter and guide, accompanies on hunting two men who wished to be in the extreme conditions of the polar north. But the hunt goes awry: one man is shot dead. His team-mate because of poor visibility hasn’t seen who shot Wagner. When the wounded man is brought to the hospital of Autisaq, the city where Edie lives Wagner is dead. Andy Taylor in the situation reveals himself not with the best side: nervous, panicked. In order not to raise the hype and not to call police with big land the mayor of the town decides to stay on a version of the accident: Wagner shot himself by a ricochet bullet.

Edie between two jobs is applied to alcohol and watches silent comedies. She and a local policeman Derek Palliser, who dreams of a major crime which he would have been able to uncover to win the heart of his wife, suspect that something is wrong associated with the death of Wagner, but both decide not to go against the Council of Elders.

If you take a look at the style of this novel, you never say it's debut in fiction. McGrath has a smooth style, not the Arctic cold, quite the opposite - full of energy and internal heat. Because of the stylistic elegance, this book certainly falls under the definition of "literary thriller". The main dignity if it, however, not even the style, bur well chosen surroundings. It’s incredibly interesting to see how people live near the polar circle. Because of constant cold, not only the daily life of a person changes, but his train of thought. Because of the remoteness from the mainland, in this case from the civilization as such, social structure of the Inuit is different from way of life of Americans and Canadians. With one hand, people living in the north, are not savages, but in general, normal people enjoying the benefits of civilization, not barbarians, not the pagans in their expression of extreme. On the other hand, the Inuit live only in their terms, do not like strangers, still retain the ancient traditions. All this allows the author to create an atmosphere for the reader unfamiliar, placing in the center of the plot a criminal story, not forgetting to create the complex background.

Mysery component, respectively, is largely determined by the environment: guide and hunter Edie, a lonely, but strong-willed woman who must not only unravel the crime, but also in parallel deals with natural conditions. The novel keeps in suspense until the last page, though detective plotline is the weakest and the most unconvincing. In the story there are vile Russian oil businessmen, fragments of meteorites, intelligent life from Mars, the fight for gas and almost a world conspiracy theory. All this looks like an awkward conglomeration of ideas, little related to reality. If you start to disassemble these waves simply from the standpoint of logic, the majority of composite lines will no make sense. The part of the mystery puzzle that relate to daily life of Inuit and quite a mundane motives, look much more authentic, perfectly fitting into the overall picture.

Though the author has not quite got to weave a perfect mystery in the picture of the created world, «White Heat» still is a very beautiful novel. And McGrath has already written a sequel.

The Skating Rink

2011-04-12T15:29:00.003+06:00

Roberto Bolano
The Skating Rink
Translated by Chris Andrews

Picador, 2010

Roberto Bolano wrap around this short novel according to its title. The story is on behalf of three male heroes who change each other in short chapters. Thus, the reader moves in circles, like on a skating rink.

In the center of the story the girl Nuria Marti, figure skating champion, which unexpectedly due to reorganization of the national team has been expelled from the team and lost the grant. Nuria, famous after his victories, is deprived of the most important thing in her life. Local official Enric Rosquelles, overweight, unattractive, not very popular among women, is charmed by Nuria. The only possibility of being closer to beautiful Nuria, even though in purely platonic way, is to help her again to do skating, to continue training. Had not committed any crimes before Rosquelles makes a risky move that could cost him everything: an official on the public money behind the Mayor’s back built in the old stadium the new rink specifically for Nuria. On evenings they come to the rink together, and while Nuria trains, Rosquelles just sits and stares at her.

Two other heroes of the book, a Mexican drifter and poet, who turned out in the tourist town of Z, Gaspar Heredia and businessman and friend of Gaspar for the old days in South America Remo Moran are also drawn into the story around the rink.
Everything ends with, of course, murder, and the novel has even formal features of mystery: an investigation, unclear motives, several suspects, the double ending. But do not think that Bolano was writing this novel, keeping in mind only the detective.
Bolano is generally a big dreamer. Invent the idea of a skating rink to win a girl – onlu this already says a lot. By and large «The Skating Rink» is a novel about love, and a skating rink is a metaphor for love. It hides, becomes a secret, but when the senses go out, it is often too late, only blood on the ice remains.

Bolano is not only a visionary but also a big humorist. There are no jokes as such in the book, but then, that, as a writer collects different cliches and features from the romances, detective stories, black humor prose and then just lays out these cliches, gives a clue to the reader that all this is certainly an ingenious invention, despite the fact that book is very sad.

This Bolano’s book, but like his other books, of course what is commonly called the poet's novel. This is indicated in style of the novel, sliding, but full of Spanish (even though most Latin American) heat, and the novel's characters are poets. Moran and Heredia, they are that kind of character that all the time in dreams, nostalgic for the old days - and the old places - man, broken, but without strain, in search of the senses, but not letting his own feelings goes free.

Whether it's a bad novel, it would be finish this review with Bolanesque joke, quote from a radio – «We are all united by a stadium». But this is a good novel, but the same joke comes to mind. I think Bolano would appreciate the humor: we are all united by a rink.

The Suicide Collectors

2011-04-12T14:49:00.001+06:00

David Oppegaard
The Suicide Collectors

St. Martin’s Press, 2008

After the Despair killed almost the entire population of the United States, in a small town in Florida only Norman and Pops survive. At the beginning of the novel Norman’s wife kills herself, and when the Siucide Collectors come for her body, Norman does what no one before him did: he kills with shotgun one of the collectors.
Having lost the last close person, Norman ponders the fact that situation like this can not continue more. During the five-year epidemic people stopped to see a purpose to his life and made - one by one - suicide. Mysterious Collectors has always appeared for their dead bodies and somewhere took away the dead. Remembering that one crazy man get to their town news about the scientist in Seattle, who works on a cure against the virus, Norman offers Pops to fly to Seattle on an old airplane. The old man had nothing to lose, just as Norman, and they decide to take on a dangerous flight. Fly to Seattle does not work, the plane breaks down, so that the rest of the way Norman, Pops and a girl with the name Zero goes on the ground.

In this novel there is a very good beginning and a very good end, all that is in the middle turned out not so well. Beginning, with scenes of rural life, with shocking scene of murder of the Collector, an evening drink of Norman and Pops, aptly reveals the state of the loneliness of those who are still alive and do not attempt a siucide. Norman, protecting the body of his dead wife, looks not like a superhero, but like an ordinary man who has recently been taken away all he got. Oppegaard chosen the narrator with a success. The novel is written from a third view, and the author does not allow us to look deeply into head of Norman. Something that becomes clear from his recallections, some from the phrases and actions, but in the rest of Norman - an enigma, and for himself as well.

The middle part sags: too much of cliche action, making the novel begins to seem like a novelization of the comic book. All along the way to Seattle villains are one-dimensional, their actions (and actions by Norman and co) are predictable, there is no tension, the chapters all the more boring and more boring, because you know that Norman would get up to Seattle.

The mystery of origin of Collectors, too, seems not very original, in general, even tortured, but in the end Oppegaard turn everything upside down. Before that «The Suicide Collectors» reads like dystopia mixed with horror, then in the end the novel resets all genre labels and beacons, becoming an incredibly powerful journey into the heart of darkness, when a man with essentially hollow inside is in an infinitely long tunnel full of darkness and a same emptiness. In the darkness, you forget who you are and where you are. In emptiness you see something you have never seen before.

After the death there is always a birth, and David Oppegaard managed to write about this not ideal, but a fascinating novel.

new Nightjar Press chapbooks

2011-04-06T18:23:00.003+06:00

Christopher Burns
Lexicon

Tom Fletcher
Field

Nightjar Press, 2011

«Lexicon» and «Field» are two new books from Nightjar Press, which last year published very strong stories - on the edge of horror and dark fiction. The stories of this year are no worse than what we read.

If Christopher Burns debuts in Nightjar, then Tom Fletcher in the past year have already written the chilling «The Safe Children». His new story «Field» is written in a very different way. «The Safe Children» was science fiction with elements of horror, «Field» is pure horror. Fletcher in his story creates a world where there is no rational and irrational. It's the same thing. When a person is left alone with a black hole (figuratively speaking), you does not need to guess who will win in the end. Fletcher does not explain what and why, he throws a hero (as well as a reader) into the mouth of the vast nothingness. If you want to live - run. It does not matter that the field has no end.

Christopher Burns in his «Lexicon» deals with the more delicate matters. The hero of his story is a refined killer enticing victims to his home. Burns is playing with archetypes, and there is some connection between the sins of the past and present. Evil is continuous, it is transmitted, but not by inheritance, but through the elements of culture.

Recent stories by Nightjar Press again did not disappoint. And Tom Fletcher must now enter the premier league of British horror.

Mistaken

2011-04-06T17:00:00.001+06:00

Neil Jordan
Mistaken

John Murray, 2011

This, as critics say, Gothic, although it is absolutely realistic, novel begins with the funeral. One of the two who is constantly confused is dead. The one that remains alive writes a long letter (which became this book) to the daughter of the deceased.

Two boys are confused since childhood. Kevin Thunder, the protagonist, lives next door to the house where once lived the author of "Dracula" Bram Stoker. The boy often seems that he is constantly watching vampire, sometimes even talking to him in the dark. Kevin begins to understand that he is mistaken for someone else first, when he was caught in a comic book store: another boy stole something and the seller accepts Kevin a thief and tells him get out. Then again, Kevin is mistaken for another boy, when one of the high school boys offers him a cigarette: the last time you smoked, says senior. So, Kevin begins to suspect that there is another boy from another school, so like him that they are almost impossible to discern. Once in the queue for ice cream a girl calls out Kevin and wonders why he did not call, even though he had promised. Kevin does not tell her that he is not who was supposed to call. Kevin pretends for weeks, walking with a girl on a date, he even likes to be so different.

Kevin first meets with his counterpart, when high school students take away pocket money, and Kevin defends mistaken boy Gerald, who later became a writer. They are both in awkward situation: they are often mistaken. Kevin advises Gerald to call the girl, which he once has not called.

Despite all the realism, the novel actually reads like something mystical. Jordan has a distinct style, which successfully blends into the narrative while giving away cold, but and the same time waking-up emotions. The author then started a triple play: there are three writers here – Jordan himself, Gerald and Kevin. And Jordan skillfully uses this twist, affecting issues of writing, sometimes merging with the protagonist, sometimes pulling away from him.

The narrative is divided into two layers: in one Kevin remembers his past, in another he meets the daughter of the deceased twin and tells her about her father, helps her to deal with personal life, replacing her father thereby. Twins’ fate was such that each of them thinks his life as a failure, living in vain and for nothing. But each of the two dreams that it appear they are on-site each other, then things would have been much better. Everyone would get what he wanted. They both want to live someone else's life, forgetting that one should live his own life.

The culmination of the novel can be considered the murder of Loretta, Gerald's mistress. Jordan, as expected, could not do without murder here. But the murder in the novel is completely in place, interspersed here not to just add suspense, which is already enough here.

«Mistaken» last but not least is a novel about jealousy. Brothers frankly envious of each other's lives, but because of the fiber of a character, none of them does not openly show his envy.

Jordan took up the challenge - to write an unbanal novel about twins. He won. Perhaps the main fault of this book can be attributed only to the final, when the reader learns the mystery of twins. Version that the brothers have been adopted and that in fact they are the sons of cyrcus woman seems even vulgar on the general background of the novel. The author prepares the reader to the mysterious riddle, increasing tension with each page. And then we learn about some twin brothers of dissolute mother. It's like a Gothic facade of the building in which someone threw a rotten egg.

It would have been a brilliant novel if not that end.

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris

2011-04-06T15:59:00.002+06:00

Georges Perec
An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
Translated by Marc Lowenthal

Wakefield Press, 2010

In this novella (although it is rather a separate genre under the name "stapled sheets of scratch pad") a French classic Perec, author of the translated books "Things","Life A User’s Manual”, etc., attempts to describe the indescribable. Perec actually is not a writer, he is describer, fixator. During three days in October 1974, the writer sat in cafe and wrote down everything he saw, everything that came within his field of vision.

Perec finds rhythm in emptiness, finds consistency in the daily nature of things, challenging time. Time, by Perec, is not measured for years and minutes, but for buses, boys with a dog, a man in a tie, pies eaten on the go. Perec is aware that it is impossible to fix everything that happens: in a second there are so much microevents that even the human eye can not see everything. Nevertheless, the writer exhausts place. It's funny that the title of the novella consists the word «place», though the book seems to be about time, not a place. But without the space time does not happen, and vice versa.

In the best moments this book is reminiscent of free verse, in the worst - optional clippings from old newspapers.

«A mailman with satchel
Two meter maid-to-orders
Two dogs, brothers, Snowy type
A man in a beret, looks like a priest
A woman in a shawl
A granny with baby carriage
A man in a Russian fur hat (it’s the same one, he’s come back)
A priest in a beret (another one)»

Perec does not write, he describes, but his description of time and space leads to the sad thought: in our life there is actually much more emptiness than we think.

Meanwhile, Between Two Eternities of Darkness

2011-03-16T13:52:00.003+05:00

Gummbah
Meanwhile, Between Two Eternities of Darkness
Translated by David Colmer

De Harmonie, 2010

I should start with the fact that it is insanely funny book. You may not be a fan of comics, but if you are a connoisseur of good jokes, this Gummbah’s book will become a pleasure for long couple of hundred pages. On every page here there are two panels more often, and not funny ones among them can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
However, after this it is worth noting another fact - humor here is very politically incorrect, sometimes openly rude, and more - all the jokes are very strict.

Everything is under attack: unsuccessful writers and pedophiles, homosexuals, and dildos, religion and sex. It can only be confusing at first, until you start to delve into the image of the world created by the author. Despite the fact that all the panels are completed on its own, however, each of them belongs to the same world. People in it are ugly and not attractive. There are no children (nominally there are children, but they are all drawn in the form of adults). They just do nothing but fuck, laugh at other people's shortcomings, insult each other, go to the doctor, rape animals. Gummbah, however, created the world that does not look real: seemingly so, almost everywhere it is drawn: families, conversations between friends, picnics, trips by transport, in general, everything that is natural, what people are and do all the time but you feel that it is rather dark fantasy, not in vain here often appear gnomes (from the comics Smurfs), Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck. By introducing these characters into the narrative, Gummbah, firstly, shows the grotesqueness of the world: even where there is no Mickey Mouse there, we see that the world upon Gummbah exists under other laws. Secondly, Smurfs and Mickey Mouse show that the author sees a connection between his own work and the European and American comics.

Gummbah’s art is grotesque – grotesque-realistic: the artist often draws in color, but sometimes there are black and white panels, and sometimes the author has resorted to a collage, which is funny too, but they drop out of the aligned series of characters. Focusing on people and relationships between them, the artist neglected backs, often drawing the characters on a background of bare walls or solid color fills. It is difficult to attribute to the flaws, still Gummbah does not aim at full representation of the world, he is just joking.

In two words: an impressive book.

Solipsistic Pop #3

2011-03-05T14:52:00.001+05:00

Solipsistic Pop #3
Edited by Tom Humberstone

«Solipsistic Pop» is an anthology of British comics, published twice a year. The theme of this issue is wonder. There are a lot of wonders indeed. Part of the comics is made for younger readers, some for grown-ups, but even those comics who seem to be quite childish in style and art, will please fans of comics of all ages.

The first thing that catches your eye when you start flipping «Solipsistic Pop» is this is a colorful book. There is no black and white works, and among all the colors red predominates. Already a saturation of only red staggers and prepares for a heap of wonders.

«A Joke» by Tom Smith is accompanied by a poetic text. Poems here are as a voice-over to the surreal story: a young man goes to drink at the bar, and there he is met by the animals. The reader knows in advance that the entire story is a joke, but here's a young man about it yet to learn. Darryl Cunningham is represented in the book with three single-page stories, in each of which he exploits the same technique: the main character, which is easier to describe in two words «unknown animal», finds application to intangible objects in the picture, making them tangible. This animal uses the cloud and the so-called bubbles with words and thoughts. Cunningham comics are very simply painted, very funny, but jokes apart they still have genuine feelings of sadness, joy, and loneliness.

«The Torturer's Garden» by Rob Davis is a much more sophisticated. Davis experiments with the framework panels, alternating black humor with cruelty, and in the end uses postmodern trick. Philippa Rice in her «Interdimensional Treehouse Party» uses the most unusual artistic means. Two bored hero, like everything else in this comic, are not just painted, but carved out of paper, thus Rice makes something middle between a traditional animated film and a comic book. On the one hand, it narrows the artistic possibilities (too much static), on the other - the opposite of expanding. At least this reads very funny.

Octavia Raitt in «Molly vs. The Wondertaker» united in her short work two styles: the usual manner with a realistic three-dimensional on the description of the monster, the Wondertaker. In fiction narrative about a bored little girl, the author also put in pseudodocumental story about a monster. Fiction-like part often looks more organic, but the whole story together is a pleasure. Andrew Waugh in his «Teething Problems» uses the minimum number of words, but the picture conveys subtle humor stories. At the heart of comics is the relationship between suffering from excessive love for the master robot and a man. The story is full of gags, it has a very funny ending, but the author conveys to the reader one simple truth: we have a responsibility to those we have tamed, even if it's a robot.

«The Elephant of Surprise» by Faz Choudhury is like an illustrated story by Edgar Allan Poe with the elements of weird. Art of Choudhury is full of dark colors, details. «Sardines» by Becky Barnicout is drawn in indie-style, a style recalling Robert Crumb and co. This is a story of indifference, where in each panel, we look at abomination. Very strong work.

«Magic and the Man» by Kristyna Baczynski is a two-page comic drawn in a mirror manner: on one page we see the magician is at home, on the other - at work. That’s funny story, with impeccable design. «The Haunted Barb House» by Mark Oliver is a great example of how to paint a surreal story. The author not only invented a strange world filled with strange characters, he also added a few stylistic highlights: for example, answers of one of the two comic book heroes do not appear in the cloud, as it is customary, but directly on the face, making the man faceless. «The Egg» by Luke Pearson is another strange story about a boy and a girl. Power of Pearson in the first place is in his art: The picture is very realistic and at the same time it is something dreamy.

I was not very impressed with the plot of «Fruits Delamer» by Warwick Johnson Cadwell, but his artistic style charms. The author seems to admit negligence in the casting and working with color, but it works on the picture: art seems faded, lines are coarsening, and the picture begins to match the story, which is already several hundred years old.

«Solipsistic Pop» is 80 pages of continuous enjoyment. There is enough room for wonders for a year-old child and for one hundred years old.

Stripburger 54

2011-03-05T14:09:00.003+05:00

Stripburger 54

If the previous issue of "Stripburger" was a disappointment for me - too many pictures and too little comics - that this, number 54, dedicated to Brazilian authors, is a delight.

In the issue there is an interview with one of the Brazilian artist Marcelo D`Salete. In this interview, D’Salete complains that nobody takes seriously comics in Brazil. Artists do not publish books because there are no comics publishers, readers do not read, because there are no comics and nowhere to learn about them, publishers do not want to hear about comics, making an exception for illustrated books for children. If you like to draw comics and be published - do comics for children. Such a situation recalled the situation in Russia, one to one similar to the Brazilian. If you do comics, just look for the opportunity to be published in the West, at home you could onlu get mockery. D’Salete in an interview remarked that comics in Brazil, made for adult audiences, have social background. His own strip in this issue is one of the strongest stories here. At the heart of D’Salete’s strip is a story about a girl who has lost her mobile phone. On the small number of pages of his work the artist tells us about the social life of Brazil more than we could learn from the Wikipedia articles or from news reports. Unsightly houses, barred windows, open spaces, the dark train, cowboy hats, petty criminals - the author doesn’t focus on this account, the reader himself notes the elements of urban life. D’Salete has lyric black and white art. Alternating panels on people and elements of landscape, the author demonstrates the inextricable link between the inner world of man and the place where he lives. Open ending does not contain harsh sentencing of Brazilian society, leaving hope for the best.

Allan Sieber, also from Brazil, is far less serious. Characters in his strip «Sorry, Olivia» are the couple drawn in the form of cats. The husband has a drinking problem and severe, the wife is tired of suffering. In brutal two-page comic «Car-Boy's Family» by Max Andersson from Sweden children's cruelty finds sometimes bizarre forms and it is aptly portrayed by Andersson.

In Rafael Sica’s works there are a lot of marginals. People in his comics are ugly, miserable, and full of despair. Sica often loops narrative in his short strips, thus speakingyou can not escape from your nature. In the comics of Laura Teixeira the time stops. Artist dispenses with plot, but her art is the story. Teixeira catches not a moment, but what happens between moments.

Art of Mateus Acioli in his comic strip «Prick» seems to have originated in North America, but the story is purely Brazilian, with elements of magical realism. Work of Acioli is about a moment, too, that moment almost doesn’t live and then die at once and it is impossible to capture.

It turns out that Brazil is full of excellent comic authors and «Stripburger» has done a great job to convey to the reader the best of Latin American artists.

Sharker, The Forgotten

2011-03-05T02:18:00.002+05:00

Sam Spina
Sharker, The Forgotten

Self-published, 2010

This small comics book is a science fiction story about a man who turned into a shark. The beginning of the book is in the spirit of stories about monsters and wrong turns with pulp element: a man named Sean Kerr does not want to go fishing, but at the insistence of his girlfriend after all fitted out boat, and now three of them (the third one is girlfriend's father) has been in a boat sailing in search of a good bite. But the premonitions do not lie to Sean, the storm begins, and the boat is sinking. Girlfriend and her father get out on the beach, but Sean is swallowed by a shark, which strikes of lightning. After having fought for his life in already inside the shark stomach, Sean calms down. When he wakes up, then he discovers that he is alive and can breathe underwater. His companion soon becomes a shrimp, nicknamed Shrimper. Sean also because of the consonance gets his new name - Sharker.
Sharker still does not know who he is, and the time elapsed since the transformation has resulted not in a couple of hours but as much as four years.

This story at first seems not so original, then delirious, but due to a combination of old school elements of horror and black comedy this comics reads like a homage to good old-fashioned science fiction with non-obvious ending. «Sharker, The Forgotten» is primarily a story of a man ceases to be himself and not knowing what to do now.
Black and white art of Sam Spina organically looks with a story, it turns out, as if watching a series of old black and white tv series. The only thing that seems boring is the addition to Sharker a talking shrimp. The depth of relations between friends in adversity is not observed, the humor of shrimp is flat, so that the shrimp can not be avoided.

Sam Spina has his own voice. It would be interesting to see what he can do in a larger form.

Death-Day (Part One)

2011-03-05T00:58:00.003+05:00

Sam Hiti
Death-Day (Part One)

Laluz Comics, 2010

Since the first pages of this comic it is clear: we face something big. We see grandeur of sweep of the author at least in an increased size of the book and in panels on half a page. The choice of larger format allows the author to draw a giant canvas and the reader to closely examine the content of a page.

«Death-Day» is so pure sci-fi, where it is unclear whether action takes place in our world of future, or on another planet, or in a parallel universe, or all at once, because one does not negate the other. Already in the prologue (and the book besides the prologue made of four chapters - "episodes"), we see a huge battlefield where the army of people and army of orbs (six-fingered monsters, they seems stupid, but taking a number) prepare to attack. Each episode is a separate story line, but closer to the end of the book crossing between subplots becomes clear.

In the first episode, despite its seemingly large scale, the action is mainly concentrated in the headquarters of the Earth officers, who command the earth's army, following instructions of the Mother-0, the computer intelligence. Attempts of officers in different ways to stop the advance orbs lead to nothing, the army of the Earth suffers a defeat.

In the second episode, the central in the book, the main protagonist is a cyborg, one-armed man, scarred, with a mental disorder. He becomes the new captain for the squad of six men, whose previous captain died under mysterious circumstances. The new captain is not very ceremony with the soldiers, telling them to forget their names, and instead assigning soldiers to call signs, ranging from the X-1 to X-6. Under the leadership of the mad cyborg squad hunts for the Black Orb. In the third episode their adventures continue, and in the fourth again we are transported for a few years ago, where the battle between humans and orbs is at full blast.

Art style of Sam Hiti in some episodes becomes the main weapon of the author, in others - the main drawback. In large-scale battle scenes, when in the large panels we're looking at crowds of people and fight with the monsters, when scenes appall with their greatness, and fighting people and monsters are so mixed together that sometimes it is difficult to understand who is who in this battle, made in black and white, viscous, the style of art of Hiti is his main strength. Our eyes bury themselves in the battle, and it’s possible that you can look at a panel for a few minutes. This style makes a world three-dimensional. Such a world does not need color, it in itself is dim, this world of death, war, world of men. If there face are shown in large scale, they are either riddled with pain, or thirst for death.
But in other episodes, where the panel contains small number of characters with no special actions, such voluminous style sometimes interferes with focus on the moment. Art blurs the single episode, so do not even always clear what is depicted on the panel. This, for example, prevents in the second and third episode to get acquainted with members of the military detachment: a soldier sometimes is too similar to another one.

«Death-Day» is a multi-layered work, where the emphasis is in world building, not in some kind of hero in particular. Hiti apparently hid several cats in a sack for the subsequent books in the series, but just the first book tells us much about the scale of author’s creation.

Pug

2011-03-05T00:08:00.004+05:00

Derek McCulloch (writer), Greg Espinoza (artist)
Pug

Image Comics, 2010

Writer Derek McCulloch and artist Greg Espinoza do not hide in their afterword that the creation of this graphic novel was influenced by their passion for old black and white noir films. The story of former boxer, who quit the sport and forced to make a living by helping the bad guys, actually originated in the 30's of last century, but what even until the plot is striking because is the art of the book.

«Pug», as a film noir, is drawn in an old-fashioned black and white style. By removing all unnecessary, the authors brought their work closer to reality. In the novel there are no beautiful scenes, no broken noses in public, no girls undress in front of a hero, it all remains outside the page.

Jake lost an important fight a few years ago. At the same time his wife with his son left him, and a former boxer now lives with a stripper named Kitten, surviving on a one time job, then another. Drinking in a bar, Jake meets with one guy who is offering Jake a permanent job almost for free. Already at the first working day Jake realizes that the work is not dusty, but not of his type: with a blad man in glasses they go from house to house, knock out debts from gamblers. The pug does not tell Kitty about it: he is ashamed that instead of the normal work he received a dubious job of a muscle at a loan shark. Desperate, but not lost his conscience, Jake comes into conflict with his weasel-employer.

«Pug» is a generally very chamber story, you can count the players here on fingers, and the main action takes place inside Jake: Does he break under the pressure of circumstances, or not? What looks flimsy here it's flashbacks, from which we learn how Jake lost the fight that put the cross on the pug and why he still suffers from the leaving of his wife and son. Past is shown too messy, it has more action, and it does not allow us to see what's going on in heart and mind of Jake.

The pug, if not to take the episodes from the past, until the very end does not even use force, main battle is in his head. And the entire novel, in fact, says one simple truth: if you can, avoid a fight to the last. But if the time has come, then fight to the last. Do not lose in second time, as has already happened once.

The End of the Line

2011-02-17T23:48:00.001+05:00

The End of the Line
Edited by Jonathan Oliver

Solaris, 2010

What could be better than to pick up an anthology of British horror and read it a little every night? And if the authors of this anthology are horror dream team? The presence of star names, however, does not guarantee one hundred percent satisfaction from reading the book. Some authors confirmed that they are masters regardless of what they write. Another part moves only on the surface, not down there in the subway, in the dark tunnels of fear, in the trains full of despair and powerlessness.

All the stories in this anthology in one way or another connected with the subway. Topic is extremely interesting: subway, despite the level of technological development, the perfection of the security of the metro passengers, continues to keep dark secrets. It's worthy noting that there are no poorly written stories in the anthology (remember: all the authors are professionals, all famous writers), but some of them do not have enough depth. Fear is always hiding inside, not outside, and those writers who are not digging in, not sink into the ground, provided good stories, which, however, can hardly be called outstanding.

The first strong story in the collection - «The Lure» by Nicholas Royle. This is also most complicated story in a book, full of silences, omissions, secrets - secrets that we hide inside ourselves. The action of the story takes place in Paris, and Royle writes ease with the French. His story smells of French perfume, but it's not the smell that you want to inhale. «The Roses That Bloom Underground» by Al Ewing is much more straightforward, but appealing with ease and ill-concealed black humor. Candidate for mayor of London offers three weeks for completely renovation of the subway, if the people elect him. There is absolutely no dirt in the renovated subway, doors close silently, seats are not broken, subway inspires people a sense of happiness: you bet - it even smells like roses. But for the convenience you always have to pay.

Ironically, in the second half of the book there are much more outstanding short stories than in the first one. The best of them «In the Colosseum» Stephen Volk. Volk, like no one else succeeded in the short story to show how people go crazy and what this person feels. To get a good order, Marcus agrees to take part in the party, which his future boss organizes. Marcus and others from the party go down to the underground and locked themselves in the room, where the monitors are installed by security cameras. And what is displayed on these monitors, it is not something that every one of us would like to see. «In the Colosseum» is a story- mirror in which the author invites us to look and see what lies within us and those who are close to us. Michael Marshall Smith’s «Missed Connection» reveals the characteristic feature of the human: we are looking to the last of a logical explanation, even if everything does not fit in the usual course of things. Hero of the story comes out in a subway station, hoping to quickly get to the store to buy a family Christmas gifts. But not a soul around him, escalators don't work, so that the protagonist seems that the station is just shut down for repairs. «Siding 13» by James Lovegrove is rather a nice joke, but still creepy. «Crazy Train» by Natasha Rhodes exploits bored theme «death and rock 'n' roll», but it does so not without grace. The narrator of the story is committed suicide bassist of rock group, which have been woken up near the bar by a woman, suggesting the dead go to a concert. Musician is stunned, but agrees to travel on a crazy train. He does not know who this girl is and what this trip will lead to. Joel Lane in «All Dead Years» tells the story of two women - therapist Val and her patient Helen. Helen suffers from mental disorder: as soon as she descends into the subway, she becomes ill, she gasps, and she sees corpse remains in the walls. Desire to help the patient leads Val to strange consequences. Lane's prose is imbued with compassion and suffering. In this story, he showed how people can stay alone with the emptiness.

«The End of the Line» is very high-quality anthology of short stories in which a third of the outstanding, and the rest just good.