A Hologram for the King

Dave Eggers
A Hologram for the King

McSweeney's, 2012

54-year-old Alan Clay arrives in Jeddah of Saudi Arabia as the leader of a group of three people - representatives of the IT-company, whose mission is to show holographic presentation to the King Abdullah. For Alan, this project is the final straw, the chance to get out of life’s crisis. He owes a large sum of money to friends and partners, he’s been unemployed, he can not even sell his house to pay debts and college tuition for his daughter Kit. He has long been divorced from his wife, Ruby, who was smarter than him and wanted to change the world. Alan his whole lige has been involved in the production. He started at a young age in his home state to make a brand’s bicycles. His business was going up the hill, expanded, until it was times like these that bicycles (and everything else in the world) has become much cheaper to produce in China. Alan had to close his business, he had nothing to sell.

In Saudi Arabia, the company which represents Alan and his team has a goal to sell the latest IT-equipment for the King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC). Meanwhile, the site of a developing place is a huge desert, with a business center and a number of service buildings on it.

On the first day Alan misses the shuttle, which takes the group from the hotel to the site, Alan can hardly call a taxi. Talkative taxi driver turns out to be an Arab named Yousef, who had studied for some time in the States, and is now taking business courses in SA. Before getting into a taxi, Yousef examines a car: the husband of one of Yousef’s former girlfriends suspects that she is cheating on him with Yousef, and the taxi driver fears that the jealous husband could kill him. Arrived at the place Alan is a bit stunned by what he has seen: his group is not placed in the building, but in the tent. Young employees, including one man and two women, complain that inside the tent the Internet connection doesn’t work: there is no cable connection, and Wi-Fi is very weak. Nothing has instructed the group. Alan and his team for a long time will be waiting for the arrival of the King.
If you do not know what to write a book about, simply put a protagonist in a hotel room in another country, and the story will tell itself. That’s a piece of advice to young writers. Eggers is far from a newcomer, but he did not disdain to use this scheme. How many novels have been written about how the middle-aged men, desperate, lost, lonely, are a thousand miles from home in search of answers to vital questions? Hundreds. Does Eggers discover new land? No. Does this mean that his book «A Hologram for the King» is bad? On the contrary. Egger’s novel turned out a strong one: catchy, funny and sad. If previously Eggers was famous for his baroque style, five hundred pages and more novels, this one is an example of conciseness and brevity. The author has thrown everything superfluous out, removed unnecessary fat from the bones of the book, leaving the bare necessities. His prose has nothing hip and hipster now, just man's cold prose, prose that not afraid to point to human wickedness.

Mot so much is going on in the novel, or even next to nothing, just waiting (the epigraph is taken from Beckett), driving between the tent in the desert and the hotel. The novel though is not boring. Pages fly no worse than in any thriller. Eggers fills slow 'now' with the protagonist’s memories of the neighbor’s suicide, the failure of the business, swimming in a river with crocodiles, pulling his wife out of jail. Alan, though his life seems to be falling apart, never wonderes "what if? '. He can not even imagine that once at a certain part of his life he could try to change himself. Move to another activity, find another wife, save money for a rainy day. All of this speaks not only of Alan as incurious, but that he looks forward. He did not intend to surrender, ending the novel points to this too.

This novels is rather comical, the situation itself which Alan and his team are in is causing a smile. After the first half the novel becomes more profound, but more uneven. Journey to the castle with Yousef (a reference to Kafka) reads quite strange, the story sags a bit, the book slips. But the ending redeems all.

What else impresses in «A Hologram for the King», is the fact that this is a story of not just one person, but the whole Western civilization. Eggers tells not just the story of a man whose life is falling apart, but of civilization, which also goes by the wayside. The Western world has become a nation of cats, which are curled up on the couch, not wanting to do anything. The Western world is now producing only holograms and the websites that you can not touch. All the rest is produced in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Western world has become hostage to the East. Eggers does not predict what will happen to Western civilization, but we see Alan as a victim of the coming changes.

This novel is a lively, full of emotions and feelings, the one that you can touch. It’s a real thing, not a hologram.

Alpha

Greg Rucka
Alpha

Mulholland Books UK, 2012

Jad Bell, a former military man, who fighted in wars in the elite U.S. troops, now unemployed, remained without a job not a long time. From the head of one of the secret services Jed gets an offer - to become a consulting security manager in one of the largest entertainment parks of the country. Bell feels that something is wrong, but accepts the offer, and the management of the park happily takes Bell to work as an undercover. The park is similar to Disneyland: thousands of visitors every day, billions dollars profit every year, maximum what can happen is one of the kids falls down and scratches his knee. The only thing that gives a signal to the alarm is a dead body of one of park employees found next to a park, and there are serious concerns that a man was killed in the park.

In parallel Rucka tells the story of a young man from Odessa, recruited by a terrorist organization, which makes a young man an American, transporting him to the United States, sending to serve in the American army, and then to university. The Ukrainian, whose real name is Matias, will be a leader of the capture of the park, and Bell will try to neutralize the terrorists, especially since on the day of attack in the park comes Jad's ex-wife and his daughter Athena.

The book has been compared with “Die Hard”, and they do have similarities. The resemblance is superficial, as in "Die Hard" not for the first time the plot about the release of the hostages by a tough guy has been used. Bell, as the military (even then, probably, the word "former" is superfluous), leads a team of soldiers, all of whom serve in the U.S. Special Forces. The point is, a team of terrorists was trained in the same Special Forces. Rucka surprises, when makes Bell’s daughter deaf: Athena and her classmates come to the park from the school for deaf children.

Rucka will surprise the reader a lot of times, especially you here will be tormenting by those questions: who are these terrorists and what they need. Although Rucka also tells the story from the bad guy’s point of view, it does not make the situation clearer. The novel will be read in two sitings, as the pages will fly.

But still: «Alpha» is a good commercial fiction, but not just a good fiction. Too many cliches here, too much calculated, and you can see, how an editor and writer have work on the plot. There is the violence there, but it is harmless. There are twists, but not too much, so that the reader won’t be confused.

Last year, Mulholland Books published two books by Duane Swierczynski, «Fun & Games» and «Hell & Gone». So Swierczynski played with cliches and patterns far more successful, he much less worried about what reader would love and what not. His books are more fun and more original.

«Alpha» is a book from that category, so it is impossible to close the book before the ending, but I hoped it would be something more than this.

Arcadia

Lauren Groff
Arcadia

William Heinemann, 2012

Bit Stone, the protagonist of this book, is the only son of Abe and Hannah, one of the founders of a commune under the name of Arcadia. A small society, Arcadia was organized in the fields of western New York State. Members of the commune created a system of efficient production, so that they provide themselves with everything necessary for life, not going beyond the community. Free People, they make decisions on the Council of the Nine, eat plant foods, do not keep animals, and have several wives and husbands. The nominal leader of Arcadia is Handy, hippie, rock musician of the 1970s, in the winter leaving to tour with a support group on their own bus, and all money raised at the concerts Handy brings to the commune. Arcadia is constantly replenished by the hippies, Darwinists, followers of the Buddha and other marginals seeking true freedom of spirit and body, but, however, often do not stay in Arcadia for long.

Bit at the beginning of the book is five years old, he was the first child born in the commune. Bit was the subject of unconditional love not only by their parents but the whole Arcadia. Bit never had been in the outside world, he knew about it only from what newcomers told him. Bit sometimes helps adults build something, and often plays with other children, Ike, Helle, Leif and Eric. Women work in Arcadia as well as men. People want to quickly finish the Arcadia, a large house, to move into it. But the commune is constantly having problems: with food, materials, lack of heating. Little Bit only later began to realize that his entire life in Arcadia he went half-starved, froze, and adults around had the bulging ribs and their skin was burned with the sun and almost always dirty because there was no place to wash, too.

Free People support their existence also with grass which grows in the fishing line nearby. The police often search the place, looking for the drugs, fugitives, who is really there, because nobody asks about someone else's past.

This novel consists of short chapters, each of which is a sort of short film, culminating in darkening, and after the blackout comes next chapter, usually not extending the previous directly. These short lyrical episodes in themselves are almost works of art; they are so fragile, precise and touching. And the novel itself is the same: it is not so much the view of utopia as a story of man, broken, but not discouraged and who doesn’t give up.

Near future in the book describes in a very conventional way: some virus is spreading, but the children are learning at schools, read books on e-readers, live in families, all remain the same. Bit for all the time he had lived in the outside world, it seems, and hadn’t felt happy, except the time when he just got married and his daughter was born. Even the circle of his contacts had not been expanded; he still maintains some kind of friendship with his peers from Arcadia.

Bit as a child has noticed a lot and drew some conclusions and, becoming a teenager, already understood how the world works. But Bit was raised in a world striving for complete freedom, and it prevents him from acting. He is seeing everything, but doing nothing. The action may damage the universe. Outside of Arcadia, naturally, he also finds no rest. His marriage to Helle initially could not lead to a successful union, but Bit had chosen it, because Helle was also from his past.

Returning in the in Arcadia, Bit can no longer remains in the new Arcadia, too much he saw, too much he lost. Model of a brave new world is no longer available to recover.

«Arcadia» is a book about how people who once lived in paradise, invented by themselves, are no longer able to leave this paradise. I wish there were more books like this one.

Istanbul Passage

Joseph Kanon
Istanbul Passage

Atria Books, 2012

World War II is over. In Turkey, which was neutral during the war, several spy organizations worked undercover, but their time has passed, and the staffs are gradually withdrawing their people home. Leon Bauer is a middle-aged American who was not a spy, but was engaged in business in Istanbul, doing some errands for the local residents of American intelligence, helping, without attracting attention, to ship the right people in the right places. Leon's wife Anna during the war was traumatized and has lost her mind, shutting in, and now she is kept in the clinic. Leon constantly visits his wife talking to her (the doctor advised, considering that it can help), and on Thursdays he visits Turkish prostitute Marina.

Tommy King, head of the local residency, working as a businessman, asks Leon to meet him to to discuss Leon’s last job. Tommy himself is recalled to Washington, where he will take good place in the headquarters of intelligence. Tommy promises that things will be simple: Leon’d need only meet one man at night on the dock, take himto a safe place for a day or two until the aircraft is prepared and then delivers a man to the airport. Leon has repeatedly done something like that, and he accepts the job.

The following night Leon and his Romanian friend Mihai waits in the car for the arrival of the boat. Mihai often helps in such cases to Leon, but Leon never told Tommy that he used help. When a person is brought in, Leon sends a man to the car, taking the bag from the fisherman, and promising that the fisherman will soon be paid. Suddenly, someone starts to shoot at Leon and Mihai. Friends fire back, and later by the scream and the sound of a falling body Leon figures that he killed the assailant. Slightly wounded Mihai drives to his place, and Leon with a stranger at first get rid of possible surveillance. Leon leaves Alexei at the apartment, promising that he would find ways to safely take Alexei out of the country.

«Istanbul Passage» combines the two sub-genres, spy novel and "the average person in extreme circumstances." The mixture turned out a really explosive, Kanon chose the correct proportions.

The author aptly chose the time and place. On the one hand, the war is over, but it ended just like yesterday, and the atmosphere is more tense between all countries (the book only lacks some nasty Nazies). On the other hand, the place is also non-standard choice, you do not often see a book about spies from that region.

All attributes of a decent spy novel are on the spot. There are residents, and agents, and fake passports, betrayals, loneliness of a spy - all very colorful. But at the same time, Leon is far from an ordinary spy, or rather he is not a spy at all. He is a businessman, an ordinary man who helped people during the war, and his wife organized the removal of the Jews, helping the embassy. He knows how to hide a person and get away from tale, but that's it. He does not run and shoot like Bond and Bourne, and has no experience and position as Smiley. He does not rely on anyone, he knows a small number of friends and has no relationship with Washington. And when Leon is embroiled in a dangerous intrigue, he behaves like a little man. He panics, he seeks a way out. He does not care about the honor of the country or protects the interests of the state. He is concerned about people, not the country.

Leon also here not only acts like an ordinary man caught in a big trouble, but also as a tragic figure. He still loves his sick (I think, forever sick) wife, he becomes the victim of betrayal of a close friend, a man whom Leon trusted. He is a man of honor at a time when the war seems to have consumed the whole honor from the people.

The novel is very intense, entertaining, written with love to a man and contempt for the public edifice. As with any good spy novel, about a third or even half of the spy intrigue remains unclear, but it should be so. For a person who is far from the intelligence it’s hard to understand the essence of all things hidden.

Probably in a few years «Istanbul Passage» will make a list of classic espionage books. It deserves it.

The Brass Rainbow

Michael Collins
The Brass Rainbow

Open Road Media/Mysterious Press, 2012 (digital)
(Originally published in 1969, by Dodd Mead)

Sammy Weiss, a small-time gambler and a loser, asks private detective Dan Fortune for help: the detective has to make a false alibi for Weiss, who in turn promises to pay. Fortune turns down the offer, but decides to check the story told by a fat gambler. The case takes a serious turn when a man whom Weiss’ve had a skirmish with because of the card debt is found murdered. A wealthy businessman is murdered, a suitcase with 25 thousand dollars in cash is lost from the apartment, and Weiss has gone in running. Fortune, though he does not like Weiss, suspects that the gambler is innocent and was framed. Detective's suspicions grow when he learns that the affair is mixed in a rich family, mobsters, the owner of a casino, professional "girlfriends of the rich men." Fortune will try to get to the truth, and the police will suspect that the private detective is harboring a fugitive.

Dan Fortune is a one-armed private investigator, and this is the second book in the series about his adventures. Fortune lost his arm not at war, but when he was a petty thief. The details are unknown. With only one hand, the detective is limited in his possibilities, so do not expect that he would beat someone to a pulp and shoot with both hands. But this does not mean that to Fortune will solve the case without leaving your office. Private eye will have to run, and fast, he will be shooting and chase suspects, but there will be logical interpretation of the information, too.

Fortune is not a joker, like Marlowe, he is not such a loner, either (here he will get help fro the police captain and morgue’s night watcher). He has a keen sense of social inequality, but he understands that it is impossible to deal with the rich. Fortune hekps Weiss with no money, just because they are on the same level of society - the poor, barely able to scrape a living (which does not interfere with Fortune’s words noted that prison cries for such men as Weiss, even for less crime than murder).

Collins writes firmly and without sentiment. The author gave his character a unique voice: Fortune is not Superman, not melancholy wise guy, just a lonely man in a big city.

It is impossible to guess the killers (and a few corpses there will be here), and the number of surprises and twists here is such that 90 percent of today mystery novels will seem primitive one-dimensional books.

«The Brass Rainbow» is not a rainbow novel, but like a rainbow after a long rain – such a joy.

The Killing

David Hewson
The Killing

Macmillan, 2012

We already know who killed Nanna Birk Larsen. First, the murderer was found in the Danish (original) version of the TV series "The Killing," and then in the American remake (girl's name was changed to Rosie Larsen). British Hewson penned the novelization of the series, designed to attract a larger audience for the series and expand the original universe, but I can not say that he succeeded.

To accommodate 20 hour episodes in a book? This alone seems impossible, and Hewson had to compress all that can be compressed - book has turned out 700-page. And the quality of the novel suffers from such compression, of course. Where in the series we could leisurely look at and think about some of the scenes, to assess the atmosphere, look closely, how a cameraman worked, to see Denmark at night, in the book we can not see all this. The author has to drop even the tiniest "stopping places". He accelerates the pace, because if he starts to add something else, the book will make a volume of three. Thus a large part of the atmosphere is lost, exactly what, Hewson went to Denmark for. So, it turns out the bare plot, and nothing more.

The book on one hand is a page-turner, on the other - if a book is reduced to a rapid page turning, whether you need to read it at all? Those who watched the show will definitely catch and rethink those moments that may not be understandable from the TV screen. Hewson faithfully follows the TV screenplay; the book has all that was on the show. Reading the book once again you can follow the thread of the investigation, with fresh eyes to look at the Lund and Meyer’s mistakes, pretend that we do not know the killer, and once again try to guess who he is.

Those who have not watched TV series, but will first read the book probably will want to watch the entire season in one sitting. They will be curious to see how the characters look like, what actors have been picked up for filming, perhaps they will be deprived of suspense as the killer would have known, but in any event, new fans of the show will appear.

Those who are going to read "The Killing" as a stand-alone book is unlikely to receive the dose of pleasure, which they had hoped for. The political line on the screen is weak, but in the book is even weakier, closer to the final we even ask ourselves: what all these politics do here? And the volume of the novel is unlikely advantage. Hewson added the humor in the book. Meyer and Lund even more or less jokes, I do not remember that they were joking on the show. Another flaw, which makes the book not a good one, is its structure. In the series, there are three story lines, and they are often switched. For a TV show it is a suitable structure, for the book you need something else. In the book there is confusion, as if looking at it fast forward. You need to stay with characters a little longer to feel them, but – no time for that. The volume is running out, you need to hurry, because a lot of second- and third-rate characters are not represented. In general, fans of the book mysteries will find a better book. By itself, the book does not work. I would prefer to Hewson wrote a detective story in the universe of "The Killing", but not straight novelization.

Hewson slightly modified the ending. Does this alternative ending change something? No. This is nothing more than unnecessary improvisation.

The book is definitely for fans of the TV series, and for those who are about to see the series.

Joy

Jonathan Lee
Joy

William Heinemann, 2012

Joy Stephens is a young successful lawyer. She is going to become a partner in a law firm and on that day before her welcoming speech falling from a height of several tens of meters on the marble floor. Throughout the novel, we will live this day, the usual Friday, along with Joy, trying to find out why the woman fell from a height. In parallel, in the even chapters, the author presents the monologues of several people who knew Joy, in which they will slightly open the secrets of their relationship with Joy and the secrets of the firm, where Joy worked. Only if the chapters, tracing the movement of Joy on that fateful day, are written in third person and in real time, the chapters from point of view of the other heroes are written in first person and are already taking place after the fall of the woman.

The night before Friday Joy returnes late from work and finds that the door to their house is not closed. She lives with her husband Dennis, a teacher and a writer. Above she hears the strange sounds, and Joey is afraid that the house is likely to have been penetrated by the robbers. When she cautiously takes the stairs, she finds her husband having sex with a call girl. Joy, however, is not angry. As explained in later chapters, every Thursday Joy and Dennis call a prostitute to have threesome. This way a couple saves their relationship out of boredom and routine. That evening, Joy was delayed and did not warn about the cancellation of the meeting, so Dennis decided that since a prostitute had already arrived, it was necessary to use her service.

«Joy» is a novel about how hard it to get pleasure in our lives. There are no happy people in the novel. All they are looking for joy out of life, but searching for something rare ends with success. Joy, the heroine of the novel, despite all the hardships, too, was looking for some joy, some clue that would give her a reason to linger in this world. Was looking for until something clicked inside her: the search is over, and happiness is not found, it only will be worse.

The baroque structure of the book really gives the result here and leads to success. Gradually, from different angles, from different times, different people’s point of view develops a complete picture of how a person comes to a point. Despair, fatigue, uselessness, disappointment in oneself and others do not pile up at once, and the portions add daily in thin layers, until eventually the total layer does not press down so that there is no escape, it's time.

Especially gratifying to see how Jonathan Lee uses an unreliable narrator. Buried in the depths of despair, tormented character of this tragicomedy gradually cease to distinguish between her own thoughts and desires with reality. Was the nephew lost due to the fact that Joy was distracted by Peter, or did Joy really check her email? Did she throw the phone in a taxi driver, which is why he lost control, or to blame the driver himself, exceeding the speed? Had Joy fall from weakness, losing consciousness, or in her head was born in the last minute a plan, plan C, of suicide in the face of hundreds of colleagues?

"Damaged goods", Joy asks a reader to trust her and understand her. See, I have suffered so much, do I not deserve to go? Look who's around me, am I going to live among them all? Lee is so enchanting with his story that we really want to believe her. Even when in the monologues-chapters, we learned the facts, calling into question some parts of Joy’s narrative; we still want to trust her. After all, the company employs liars and traitors, says Barbara, Joy’s co-worker.

This book is full of bitter and rather comic moments. The office world is always an object of satire, and the British see and understand that. Barbara gets angry when she before retirement receives the oil bath as a present. Peter’s, dressed as a superhero, having sex in the locker room. Samir’s hunting for runaway lizard. Joy, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, asks the taxi driver to tell her anything about Seneca. You will not be laughing out loud reading those scenes, but they complete the picture. Even when someone on your eyes is falling from the top floor, life does not stop for those who have not fallen. All are shocked and are undergoing rehabilitation, but office life flows.

Sometimes Lee makes his characters talk too long, but in general he keeps the proportions. His characters speak in various ways: reading the monologues-chapters, you unmistakably recognize the voice of Barbara, or Dennis, or Peter.

You should feel this book. And anyone who can do that will get great pleasure.

Theft

BK Loren
Theft

Counterpoint, 2012

The story of Willa Robbins begins with her childhood. In 1980, Willa lived with his elder brother Zeb, the father working three jobs, and the mother who had Parkinson's disease. In order to somehow maintain a sick woman in her condition, her husband works nights and days, and children are constantly making forays into homes across the county, stealing everything that can be sold to buy drugs.

The initiator of repeated thefts is always Zeb, Willa doesn’t like stealing, but she realizes that these thefts have a good cause. So in the fist novel scene, when the brother and sister climbs into another house, whose owners had gone for a while, Willa thinks that there is someone in the house and now they're caught. But the little thieves (although they are not quite so small children) walk free, and Zeb and Willa come up with a ridiculous story for the police.

Now Willa is working like a tracker, tracking the wild animals and help them move to other areas. She had long left her native Colorado, moved to New Mexico, where she’s helping the population of Mexican wolves, endangered species. She had not seen her brother since she left home, almost 25 years ago. Suddenly, Willa receives a call from Colorado police, with news of Zeb. He sent the police a written confession to the murder, but did not surrender voluntarily and set off running. Zeb knows the area well enough that the police simply can not track him. Prior to that, for many years, Zeb made numerous thefts, but he’d never been caught and did not leave evidence. Now it is much more serious crime. In search of the killer police will gather all the resources. The police know that Willa is a master tracker, and asks Willa to help keep track of Zeb. With Willa there is a chance that Zeb would be taken alive, without Willa a police will have permit to shoot to kill. Will has no choice, and she agrees to come soon to Colorado.

Accuracy and vividness of writing make this book a pleasant surprise. Novels about animals and trackers, it would seem, are something awfully boring, just for the fans, but Loren splash with new colors a set of methods covered with mold. There are no tear passages like "Let's save our smaller brothers", and no tedious descriptions of nature, animals and animals in nature. «Theft» is a book about people, about how they are integrated into the wild world, how people haven’t gone far away from wildlife. What is spectacular: none of the main characters of the novel have a family, children. Family is something artificial, unreal, and the distance from civilization does not contribute to finding a life partner. The heroes of the book helps to accustom the animals in their natural habitat, but they themselves are not adapted to the world. However, they are unlikely to suffer from it. The author gives no reason to believe that Willa and Zeb, and Brenda feel themselves as flawed.

Loren achieves an amazing evenness of style when jumps from one time period to another. The chapters written in 1980 are more poignant, but those that occur in the present are more informed. Time of the murder is also described quite reasonably.

The same can’t be said about the alternation of narrators. Chapters from the Zeb’s point of view turned out far more constrained than the Willa’s chapters.

«Theft» in general is nothing extraordinary, strong prose, cut above the standard filling the shelves books, but it is neither a must read.

The Lay of the Land

Richard Ford
The Lay of the Land

Vintage, 2007

Richard Ford's novel is plotless, and the same is so full of events. The action of the book fits in three days of the life of the protagonist Frank Baskombe, but in those three days Frank manages to tell almost the whole story of his life. «The Lay of the Land» is 500-page monologue, 500 pages of mind of Frank. How one day in the life of man can be ordinary, so ordinary Ford makes it, but adding a few unusual episodes. Everyday life could ruin any book, but just not this one. It would seem that in any book there are moments that you simply browse through, there are lines that you miss, but in «The Lay of the Land» it is impossible to miss a word. This novel is like a song, really, words can’t be erased from here.

The novel takes place in autumn of 2000, Thanksgiving is nearing. Clinton left the White House, the whole world is in anticipation of the Millennium. The life of 55-year-old Frank Baskombe, the owner of real estate agency, is stuck, as he calls it, he is in "the Permanent Period". Ann, Frank's first wife, left him after the death of their son, Ralph, and then Frank married Sally Caldwell and moved to the town Sea-Clift that on the Jersey Shore. But after eight years of marriage, Sally is also moving away from our protagonist. Sally's first husband, Wally, once wandered away from home a few days after the wedding and went missing. He was not found nor alive nor dead, and Sally has long ceased to look for him, but one day Wally’d returned, after, it turned out, life in Scotland, and Sally once again reunited with Wally, leaving Frank.

Frank has two children, 27-year-old Paul, once a problem child who grew up in an eternal rebel and debater, and works in Kansas City as a "writer" of business cards, and 25-year-old Clarissa, bisexual, who is adoring father. Frank is waiting them both on Thanksgiving Day, as well as his first wife, Ann, though later he has regretted that he had called her.

Frank is also in limbo because of his health. He has prostate cancer, and he is being treated with radioactive substances.

From the first pages of the novel we see how Baskombe rides along the coast, carrying out his daily routine affairs. During the three days of life of Frank you’d know about it as much as if you had known him all his life. It seems like you ride with him in the passenger seat, listening to his monologue for three days. Baskombe, despite his position in society, despite his not too successful life, is hardly a type, he does not look like an ordinary Joe, he is a full-fledged character. He is witty, intelligent, kind, closed, decent, tolerant, but by the end of the third day you are not sure that Frank is such a good man, he is beginning to annoy you. He is perhaps too confident in his right, sometimes too cold.

Despite “the americanost” of the novel, the book is absolutely painless passed on to the rails of another country. This is not a universal story, but the universal language, the universality of the Ford’s gife, his hyper-detailed vision of the world. Ford makes a world of his novels not three-dimensional, but even four-dimensional.

The writer, who writes so smoothly and so multifaceted, must create such outstanding books as «The Lay of the Land».

The Family Fang

Kevin Wilson
The Family Fang

Picador UK, 2012

The whole life if the Fang family is the continuing art. Caleb and Camille Fang from an early age forced their two children, Annie and Buster, against their wishes to take part in carefully-planned installations. The novel dives back and forth in time: Wilson shows childhood of Annie and Buster, and the main story lays in about our days, when children have grown up and live separately from their parents.

Annie has become quite a popular actress, not a superstar, but a rising star. At the beginning of the novel, she appeares in another film where she has a major role. A few minutes before shooting the next scene Annie finds out that she needed to be shot topless, though in scenario, there was nothing said about it.

Buster became a writer with two published novels, and he’s earning a living freelancing in journalism. The editor of a men magazine offer to Buster to write an article about the soldiers, inventing weapons, shooting with potatoes. Buster has flown to Nebraska, where he’s met the four veterans of the war in Iraq - the inventors of potato weapons. Soon everyone in the life of Annie and Buster goes awry, and they have to return to the parental home.

«The Family Fang» is a novel fragile and funny, but Wilson’s humor is timid, based on half-tones. The beginning of the book is particularly charming, highlighting key points: theparents are freaks, and children, too, turned out to be weirdos. Theme of fathers and children here is politely filed. Parents with their despotism, irrepressible desire to shake the world, to make art out of life have poisoned Annie and Buster’s childhood, deprived them from communication with peers, deprived them of choice, but caused hate to them. But at the same time they helped the children to step into the world of art. Children, of course, went in the opposite direction, choosing "dead" art, but the childhood trauma gave them a good push.

Wilson also affects another topic: Does freakness excuse tyranny and cruelty, even in part? Does the artist has right to evil, if it is evil for the good of art? Caleb and Camille believe that they have that right.

The writer of the book outlines the most colorful characters, and children, of course, are much prettier than their parents. We see Annie and Buster's at the peak of their career, and then when their lives on the contrary, go downhill. The novel is called «The Family Fang», but as a whole family the characters never appear before us. Fangs is a kind of feeling, a state, but not a single unit of four.

Wilson, with the ability to create a haunting atmosphere where parents vanish, leads us to wonder what has happened. But the second half of the book is weaker than the first. In the final, you want something explosive, a Bang! But instead of a bang Wilson gives us a soft clap. The final doesn’t fit to the whole narrative.

Nevertheless, Wilson has written a very moving novel, full of strange humor and memorable characters. Definitely, I will keep an eye on this author in the future.

two books on homicide

John J. Miletich
Homicide Investigation
An Introduction

The Scarecrow Press, 2003

David Simon
Homicide
A Year on the Killing Streets

Canongate, 2009

Popular culture strongly altered our perception of the police murder investigation. Since the 50s of last century in fair amount of output TV police dramas appear on the television screens. Films about homicide investigative work appeared even earlier. It is now difficult to find someone who was not even superficially familiar with the work of a police detective. Awareness of a person in homicide investigation seriously affects the reading of books, in the center of which is murder, whether it is fiction or nonfiction.

Anyone who watched not even “CSI”, but something more pop, is unlikely to be interested in the «Homicide Investigation» by John Miletich. The book seems to written for those who live in a parallel world, and never have seen a murder investigation on the screens of the TV or in theaters. Here Miletich writes a whole chapter about collecting evidence, and we already know about it in some detail. Here Miletich describes the types of weapons, and there is nothing new for us. And there Miletich writes how detectives cope with the daily violence in their work. Anyone who watched the high-quality TV shows about city homicide already knows about it.

Miletich too dry expounds the familiar facts, repeating what has long been wound into our heads. At the same time when the author comes to something not too well-known for the mass culture products consumers, it still is not very interesting. The book, however, is not completely useless. Miletich gives an interesting statistic, but the most exciting chapters foresight is at the top of the book - chapters about the murders in the criminal world. Hired killers, open contracts, the destruction of evidence, the destruction of the body etc - not that it had been a secret, but to read once again spread out on the pages this information is always useful.

Plenty of examples save the book, illustrating the dry theory. Miletich tried and strewn the book with detailing all sorts of murder and subsequent investigation, not often successful.

Can you become a homicide investigator after reading this book? I doubt it. When you wait too long that Miletic now will reveal the secret initiation into a detective, the book suddenly ends, leaving us high and dry.

«Homicide» by Simon is quite opposite of «Homicide Investigation». «Homicide» reads like a novel. David Simon has packed into his book so much that it can be enough for twenty novels. However, we face only one book, of a thickness of 600-odd pages. But this is the case with thick books when you’re enjoying all 600 pages, and then you want another 600, and then another 800. You really live with this book. It read slowly, so that you’re living one year in the deadly streets.

Moreover, «Homicide» is a book the least about the homicide, but it is about everything else. About «Homicide» it is impossible to say what it is about. About whom as well. About the lieutenants, sergeants and homicide detectives? Yes. Or about the dead yos, murdered children, the stupid or merciless killers? And about them, too.

Reading this book, you ask yourself the question: where is Simon? Was he that entire year invisible, was he a ghost wandering in the department and collecting information? How does he know all the details, because he's never got in the frame of his own camera? Epilogue provides an answer to these questions, but it's still a phenomenal job. So much to merge with the department and still remain an observer.

After reading «Homicide», of course, you can’t just become a detective, but you can feel what it means to be a detective, feel the relationship between dead and alive. Everyone has a right to know his murderer, as everyone has a right to know his parents.

«Homicide» is a unique book, but despite this, you’re still dreaming about something like this to become a yearbook: «Homicide '89», «Homicide '97», «Homicide '2012». For the past two weeks that have passed, as I finished reading the book, every day I keep hearing how bodies fall on the pavement. Incredible.

American Hardcore

Steven Blush
American Hardcore
A Tribal History (2nd edition)

Feral House, 2010

I should start with that: this book is an absolute must-have for all fans of hardcore. Stephen Blush did a great job, took more than a hundred interviews, listened to hundreds of records, found hundreds of flyers, compiled a detailed discography of American music of the suburbs.

The book consists of four parts. In the first author tells about the birth of hardcore movement, the second one focuses on the groups themselves, by region, in the third section the book reveals the principles of the DIY-culture, and the final one tells the different versions of why the hardcore ceased to exist in the form in which it was originally. As I’ve written above that Blush "tells" I was cunning. Fragments of text written by the author there are minimized. Blush just writes short «glue pieces», as if leading the participants to their stories. Book by 90 percent consists of fragments of interviews with musicians, promoters, artists, fans who did hardcore in the early '80s. Juggling quotes are always a dangerous thing, but there is no criticism to the author.

The book not only tells "how it was" through the eyes of the participants, but also helps to understand some important things about the hardcore.

Punk is not equaled hardcore. If British punk bands played daring music at the time, they somehow belonged to the music industry. Punk bands had a team of producers, they were signed to major label, promoters of the record companies booked tours for them. Hardcore was completely DIY. Musicians themselves recorded and sold their music, without the producers went on tour, barely scraped for gasoline and for food.

Even the most hardcore stars at the time were little known outside of the subculture. The names of Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, GG Allin etc which now seem loud, but when hardcore was born and grew, a hardcore group did not gather stadiums. The group played in front of 15 fans, and it was fine. Over time, the emphasis has shifted, and those groups that were the most famous and influential became half-forgotten, and less popular in the early 80's bands became popular now.

Hardcore was not only music, it was a movement. The book details the idelogy, the stylistic divisions between hardcore fans, and the constant feud between members of the movement.

Hardcore came from the suburbs, and the movement embraced not only the centers of culture, but also all the major states. Regionally hardcore was very different, and the «American Hardcore» opens your eyes to it. You have to understand the specifics of the region to understand the music that was created in the region.

After the release of the book Steven Blush had a lot of complaints, mostly related to the fact that he spoke disparagingly of those groups that have ceased to play hardcore and started playing something else. We should understand the author: if you had been in an subculture from the very roots, and then you saw how it all had broken down, you are inevitably drawn to something familiar, to that you once loved.

Of course, some bands in the book are devoted whole chapters to, and some only a paragraph, but the book is not rubber, it is impossible to please everyone, and it is impossible to add everything. It is difficult to say whether the book will interest a person who was never in hardcore, but for hardcore fans, this book is indispensable. «American Hardcore» has become my reference book for a long time.

Who is Mr Satoshi?

Jonathan Lee
Who Is Mr Satoshi?

Windmill Books, 2011

Robert Fossick, or just Foss, at the very beginning of the novel becomes a witness to his mother’s stroke in the yard of her home. Once a successful photographer, Foss still can not recover from the death of his wife during their trip to Greece. Mourning, our hero firmly hooked on all sorts of pills to calm his own mind, and now his mind is in a constant fog. He has a slow reaction; he does not leave home for weeks, and he has long abandoned photography, living off the royalties for reprinting his old photographs.

Before her death 80-year-old Foss’s mother Alice casually blurts out that after she dies, he’ll need to deliver a small parcel to a Mr. Satoshi. There is an address in Japan, but it is incorrect. Foss hasn’t not attach much importance to his mother’s words, but at the funeral the photographer is approached by a woman named Freddie, a friend of the deceased, and she reminds Foss about Mr. Satoshi, noting that for Alice this is very important. Foss still has to fly to Japan, where to find Mr. Satoshi a Japanese girl Chiyoko will help our protagonist.

This fragile history, something reminiscent of the S. Coppola’s film, "Lost in Translation", sometimes is almost slipping into melodramatic fiction of not too high quality, but the sense of language saves Jonathan Lee. Plot-wise the film and this book has some similarities: both take place in Japan where a man and a woman with a difference of age meet each other under not normal circumstances, between them some feelings flash but they are afraid to identify these feelings. In the novel Foss and Chiyoko don’t lose themselves in translation. Chiyoko even better speaks English than English protagonist.

Dialogues in the book are one of the most powerful elements there. Meeting of slowliness and taciturn of Foss with the mobility and ardor of the Japanese girl gives birth to hilarious examples of dialogue between the characters. Thу plot line of the relationship between Foss and Chiyoko adorns the novel. But the main storyline – the search for Mr. Satoshi – is somehow predictable and melodramatic. Finding of love of the last one of relatives is a theme quite beaten and not worthy of such an excellent stylist like Lee. He feels the episode, he finds the necessary consistency of style when he wants to portray the dope in the head of the main character, he is able to convey emotion in one sentence. The style of the author is a steam locomotive pulling for a worn-out plot.

The fragility of relationships and emotional rehabilitation, these topics Lee reveals with all possible grace. Looking for Mr. Satoshi, the hero of the novel at the same time seeks an answer to the question of who he is himself and he is the man as he was several years ago.

This book is not without flaws, but Lee masks them with elegance.

Canada

Richard Ford
Canada

Ecco, 2012

For the Parsons family everything began not with a crime, but one crime has forever changed their lives. Dell Parsons was a 15-year-old boy at the time when major events of the book happened. He remembers every detail of the events of that summer, when he is already 65 years old.

From the first page the narrator tells us what has turned his life and the lives of his twin sister and his parents upside down. Della's parents, Bev and Neeva, robbed a bank, although, according to Dell, they were probably the last people on earth, of whom one might have thought that they would be armed robbers.

Della's father, Bev Parsons, was a military pilot, participated in the Second World War, and after 1945 was transferred to a desk work, in the rank of captain. Della's mother, Neeva, was the daughter of Polish immigrants, a teacher with a Jewish appearance. Together with two children twins Parsons did not stay anywhere for long. They lived in small towns, where military bases were located, and where he Bev served. The family was so used to wandering, and that no one really thought that they would settle in one place.

Dell’s sister, Berner, was the opposite of his brother. She was taller that him, with boyish good looks, intelligence and self-willed. They never had friends; they were friends only among themselves. The family stopped in the town Great Falls in 1956, where they lived until the spring of 1960, when the central events of the novel happened.

This is a great book, not crumbling under its own weight. Richard Ford paints his picture slowly, but the main part is known from the beginning - an armed robbery would be committed, and will forever change the lives of one family. Thus, here is more important "how" and "why" rather than "what will happen next." Details, that is what matters, and Ford is just a master of details. The protagonist Dell recalls the smallest details of that fateful summer, with such precision and certainty, as if it was he who kept a diary, not his mother.

The narrative about the past from the present results here for a stunning effect. 15-year-old boy at the time knew nothing, understood nothing and didn’t know what to think. This ignorance is what Ford transfers matsrefully. But at the same time telling the story, as a 65-year-old man, the protagonist knows the causes and consequences and adds in the narrative a judgment from adult’s point of view. What then seemed a trifle, and there wasn’t obvious, 50 years later it is quite obvious. So, uncomplicated adolescent mind is clouded with doubts and regrets of an elderly person. At the same time, 65-year-old Dell does not allow sentimentality and anger in his story. He does not play the game "what if ...". There is no if, for all that had happened, it is already happened. Dell has never been the kind of person that changed his own fate.

Looking at Dell and his sister, we can easily view the differences between them. She is more experienced, close to the living, sentient life, but not tending to the material side of life. Dell is a much more passive, obedient (in response to his father, he always calls him "sir"), he is interested in bees and chess, those things, which are unlikely to ever be useful to him in life. When after his sister’s escape he is still waiting for a mother’s friend, he has no hope for the best; he just gives himself to the discretion of fate. However, in the final part, we see that no matter how different are brother and sister, how they seem dissimilar, their fate is about the same. According to Ford, the fate is God, from whom there is no escape. We try, wrote Ford in the final sentence. We try, but all happens how it’s needed to the fate. We can only try. It’s ineresting to see that neither Dell nor his sister had any children. Childhood trauma has left its mark. Brother and sister did not take responsibility for future generations.

Ford chose such method of storytelling that allowed him to reveal the possible motives of his characters. The author first describes an episode from the point of view of 15-year-old Dell, so much remains a mystery in each episode. And almost immediately, Ford once again describes the same scene, already with all the details that the 15-year-old boy could not have known. This structure keep a reader always in tension (the main thing here is motive, detail, depth of style), and gives the author place to think about fate.

Canada in the novel is a kind of metaphor. Dell’s escape was against his will, Remlinger’s escape was a conscious choice. But they both are the same people as they were before Canada. "Canada" is a state of mind, an internal runaway. But on whatever side of the border a person stands, he remains what he was. People do not change because they do not govern themselves. They are in the hands of fate.

This story is so emotionally gripping that it is hard to imagine anything more perfect. Ford actually had given the name "Canada" to hitherto not named state of the soul, and for this we should be grateful to him.

The Land of Decoration

Grace McCleen
The Land of Decoration

Chatto & Windus, 2012

Imagine a book written from the point of view of a girl, whose mother died in childbirth and whose father a member of Jehovah's Witnesses. This will be this novel by Grace McClean.

Ten-year old Judith Maclean creates in a room in the house where she lives with her father John, The Land of Decoration. The girl builds in the room improvised miniature city in the image and likeness of one, which she lives in. Judith is building houses, roads, animals and people. It is the end of the summer, and the girl has to go back to school and she does not want that. She imagines there will be heavy snow, and throws a toy snow to the Land of Decoration. In a day really heavy snowfall begins in the city.

Father of Judith is a sectarian. He and his daughter regularly go to meetings, read and discuss the Bible, make all the instructions, give up all life pleasures, and often go from house to house, handing out leaflets and urging people to change cheir minds until the end of the world begins. Judith, too, believes in God, but because she is still a child, she does not understand many things and asks many questions. When the same way snow fall again with her desire, Judith begins to think that she has a gift and God uses her to perform miracles. When a girl tells her father about it, the father is angry and tells her she to not invent incredible things. A few days later, the girl for the second time causes the snow. She truly believes that she has made a miracle, but the father does not want to hear about it. Judith seems that her father does not love her. He really does not hug his daughter, does not walk with her, holding hands, does not to say that he loves her. John is still traumatised by the death of his wife, who agreed to give birth and save a child and give up on her own life.

Judith soon begins to hear a voice in her head. That voice is none other than God. God asks her to help him to become his instrument on Earth, and Judith, of course, agrees.

The choice of the protagonist in the role of a ten years old girl has allowed the author to kill two birds with one stone. Actually, this choice and keeps the whole novel. It is extremely entertaining to get inside the family of sectarians. The naive child, while blindly believing in God and at the same time calling into question many of the seemingly obvious to all adult things related to religion, lives with her father, whose way in religion is similar to the way of her daughter, at the end of the novel casting a voice of God out of her head. They both eventually realize that religion entangles the human mind and requires a person to adapt to the faith, and behave not as a life situation demands, and both of them refuse to religion. To behave with dignity is possible without religion.

We see how the girl thinks that she creates miracles, and this creates additional suspense: the reader almost til the end can only guess whether this is her gift or just a series of coincidences. Cut off from the outside world in large part because of religion, Judith replaces the real world so that she created her own. Judith, in essence, is a god herself - the god of the toy city, as to confirm that later in the book, she begins to hear God's voice in her head.

In «The Land of Decoration» by the end takes place the transformation of the two main characters. It's real people, not pale shadows of people. The girl’s father, John, repents, that all this time he has been trying to bury his grief after the death of his wife in God, not paying enough attention to his daughter. Judith in a little time in her life has become aware of many adult things including her father’s life: she’s thought that he did not love her, but his life was just so damn hard to him.

The novel is written not without humor. The author makes the reader smile in those cases when little Judith faces the world of adults and does not understand anything in it.

A memorable light novel.