The Holy Thief

William Ryan
The Holy Thief

Minotaur Books, 2011

In a normal working day, Captain of Moscow Militia Alexei Korolev goes to his office in the building at Petrovka, where the statue of Commissar Yagoda is removed and ready to be replaced with a statue of Yezhov. In Moscow, 1936, no one is protected from NKVD, even the investigators of the Criminal Investigation Division. Yesterday’s Stalin's loyal assistant Yagoda becomes an enemy of the people, and cleaning can hurt anyone. A colleague of Korolev ckracked jokes about Stalin, and now no one knows where the joker has gone, and the Korolev’s chief General Popov, responsible for his subordinates’s long tongue, may soon go to the camps as well.

Korolev is in good relations with the authorities; he does not talk much, reveals complex cases with unusual zeal, supports the party line and believes in God, which, of course, hides from everyone. When at the church a disfigured body of a young woman is found, Popov gives the case to his best detective. Murdered woman is a foreigner, and it interests chekists. The colonel of NKVD Gregorin does not take the case himself, but asks Korolev to report to him in detail. Gregorin also throws up to Korolev the information on the identity of the murdered: she was not only an American (with Russian roots), but also a nun. Soon after that the body of a Thief is found, killed and disfigured in the same way as the American nun. Korolev concluded that the two murders had a connection. Captain seeks help to Babel, the very same author of "Odessa Tales" and "Red Cavalry" who is close to the criminal world, to help him to establish the identity of the Thief who was murdered. Korolev will have to reveal a very tricky conspiracy and stay alive.

Ryan, a Londoner, who studied in Ireland, suddenly has written a successful book on the Moscow of the 30s. If the cover stood a Russian name, probably no one would have guessed that it’s written by an Englishman. Englishness of the novel only gives the charm to the book. If you do not take into account the interrogations in the basement of NKVD (because no one really knows what and how exactly was happening there), then the book has almost no factual errors (although I'm generally not an expert on the era). Several times not so young characters are called by their pet names and vice versa, young police officer is called by name and patronymic; camps are called the Zone, though, I think, this name of places of deprivation of liberty came later, but the rest looks all right. Heroes smoke papirosas, eat blinis, sometimes Ments are called Ments.

The British origin of the author affects humor side of the novel.Humor here is typically British. Only Korolev’s skirmish with neighbors in kommunalka and gatherings at Babel’s are very funny. Anyway, it is impossible not to smile (and I even laughed), reading the dialogue like this:

«Are you a football fan, Comrade? Spartak also?»

"I'm sorry, Comrade Starostin - Dinamo."

"No reason not to support them, they're a good team. I toured with some of them a few months back and a nicer bunch of lads you couldn't meet."

The real historical figures, such as Babel and Starostin, enhance the effect of humorous books. The novel, which, in general, in the opinion of the publisher was to show Russia choking with fear, produces such effect not due to the atmosphere of fear. Instead, William Ryan presents another surprise. His book is "The Master and Margarita", passed through the prism of Dostoevsky and the British surrealism. «The Holy Thief» is not about fear at all, but about how lonely a man becomes entangled in his life and can not find the exit. Fear all the time is inside’s feeling, not outside’s, but inside of Korolev there is no fear, only a confusion. Around the middle the book turns into a series of surreal episodes, so you finish it, with your mouth open. Meeting with the Thief Kolya, looking over all Moscow; Babel-cat-Behemoth; football fans’s brawls; interrogation in the basement of Lubyanka; the Bible under the mattress, reading "A Hero of Our Time"; a good chekist. All of this can not be reality; it’s a dream of unconscious Korolev. The fifth dream of Alexei Dmitrievich.

A very strange book.

The Uninvited Guests

Sadie Jones
The Uninvited Guests

Chatto & Windus, 2012

In the center of this tragicomedy is the Swift family. At the beginning of the XX century in a small village in England the Swift family owns an estate in the two houses, the New House and the Old House, as the owners call them. Widowed, three years after the death of her husband, Charlotte Torrington married a lawyer Edward Swift, one-handed, but a with good heart, a real gentleman who loves Charlotte, as she does him as well. The financial affairs of the family, however, are not so good, and to preserve the estate, Edward will have to take a large loan, and he is not sure he will get it. The older children of Charlotte, Emerald and Clovis, 19 and 20 years respectively, do not like his stepfather, but they see his love for their mother. The youngest daughter, Imogen, or Smudge, as everyone calls her, often dwells alone, forgotten by everybody. The mother loves her very much, but not always finds time to spend with her daughter. The girl grows a little bit strange.

All the events of the book actually take place in one day, and it is Emerald’s birthday. On the eve Swift goes to the city for apply for a loan, and the family slowly begins to prepare for the birthday. Emerald waits for the arrival of her guests: her girlfriend Patience Sutton and her brother Ernest, who should come out of the city, as well as a wealthy gentleman, John Buchanan, still unmarried, living nearby in his own estate.

While maids help the birthday girl to smarten up and cook, Clovis, who met brother and sister Sutton at the station, has returned with unexpected news: there has been a railway accident, the locomotive derailed, and dozens of people can not continue their journey. Luckily nobody has been hurt, but the security guard at the railway station has asked Clovis to accommodate all the people who were traveling by train to the Swift’s house. Servants start to bring up the victims.

And soon, people in small groups, mostly not rich, but rather poor, who were traveling in economy class, begin to fill the house.

It's really a very nice comedy with some tense scenes and a handful of fascinating characters, but, perhaps, it is nothing more. Sadie Jones harness for a long time. The first one hundred pages, even before the general assembly of guests,invited and uninvited, comes to a dinner, have stylistically all the flaws of the so-called serious prose. A rich family, but on the verge of bankruptcy, strained relations between children and step-father, marriage of convenience on a rich neighbor, a child with oddities. Taken from different places, these components are already fairly worn out to give them any significance. In addition, putting novel’s action in the early XX century, you have a risk becoming a pale shadow compared to the authors who wrote at the time. The second part, in fact, birthday itself, is livelier, with growing intrigue. And if the comic part of it is a success (the girl Smudge and her horse are worth much), the psychological one not quite. Charlotte’s past, risen to the surface, remains an unsolved problem. The children, initially stunned by story of the mysterious visitor, do not know how to behave now with their mother. But later they are together again, happy family, although this transition should not be so smooth. Jones, however, dismissed from the looming conflict: laughter, supposedly, solves all problems.

The book is not without a happy ending, but it is here on the right place. The tone of the novel sets up that everything will be fine. And indeed, a close-knit family will overcome all adversities, and you can’t tell your heart what to do.

Norumbega Park

Anthony Giardina
Norumbega Park

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012

Still young enough Richie Palumbo and his family - his wife and two children - are going to celebrate Thanksgiving, but in the dark Richie gets lost, and the family travels to the town of Norumbega, near Boston. There Richie immediately falls in love with a house and decides that the house should belong to him. Later Richie buys the house.

Richie is one of the top managers at a defense plant. He recently has been promoted, but the war in Vietnam is nearing to the end, and the company should move to a peacetime production. Richie in the midst of changes buys the house from the owner, an elderly widow, at an inflated price.
Thus, we trace the fate of the Palumbo family for nearly forty years, from 1969 to 2007. In the next part Giardina gives us a closer look at the children, Jack and Joannie. Jack graduated from school and must apply for a college or university, but Jack, a gifted, the most gifted person from school, according to his father, is not very eager to study and does not submit an application in any university. Jack is popular among girls and dates with one of them, Ellen. But later at the dance, Jack leaves Ellen and switched to a modest Christina.

Later, Christina goes to the University of Massachusetts, and Jack goes New York to live from the saved-up money. Thus begins a free life of Jack away from home.

At the same time, Jack's sister Joan, who has always been a religious girl, closed and unsociable, goes the other way. She decides to become a nun.

«Norumbega Park» is a very complex novel. Simplicity of plot (the usual family saga, a temporary walk from point A to point B) is subject to the greatness of style and charm of the composition. Heroes do not make as much action as they analyze his actions, repeatedly and from different angles. Each family member of Palumbo family considers the causes and consequences of brief but important episodes in their lives. Giardina raises an important question in the book: how fragments of our lives, mini-events, affect the general course of life, our destiny? Each hero has a few such episodes, and each seems to them the turning point. Stella, Richie's wife, finds her reasons for excessive physical desire first in severe son’s birth, and later in the scene when she sees her son sleeping naked next to a girlfriend. Jack has even more those episodes, from a date with Christina at the lake to oral sex with one of his gay roommates. For Richie new life in Norumbega began when he saw the skaters on the ice pond. The novel ends with his daughter and her husband skating as well.

Each of these microevents is like a lymph node in the novel. To the reader they are emotionally intense and give reason to think: do these episodes really change the life of the novel’s character or is it just the imagination of the character.

Each character is chasing by the past and stays in the past almost always, and no one even tries to escape from the past. Past has a life; there is something elusive in it, what is missing in the present. All Palumbo are passive, they are more likely to think what they have done wrong in the past than to do something in the present.

«Norumbega Park» is a book of mistakes. The one that does not tell us that mistakes should be corrected, but the one that says that the mistakes of the past are need to think about. Full of nuances, the characters are the happiest people on earth and the unhappiest at once.

Giardina is a brilliant stylist, and the novel is brilliantly written, 95% of 100%. The imperfection of the novel lays only in the fact that in a family saga you can not give equal attention to all. If the male characters are very complex there, the women do not have enough space. Joan’s decision to become a nun is not convincing, the author told a little about the girl’s growing up Torment of Stella, her struggle with husband’s loneliness, too, are described briefly.

Such book as this proves that the genre of a family saga is still alive and capable of much.

Guilt by Association

Marcia Clark
Guilt by Association

Mulholland Books UK, 2011

A Deputy DA Rachel Knight walks home along the dark streets of Los Angeles when he hears the sounds of fire sirens. Out of curiosity, Knight, taking advantage of an acquaintance, steps on the police cordon area to take a look. From the cheap hotel where has been a fire, the coroner’s assistants come out with two bodies, and in one of them she recognizes her colleague, also a DA Jake. When later it appears that the second victim was a young boy prostitute, Knight can not find a reason what Jake would do in a place like that with a male whore. Jake as Knight knew him was sweet and kind person. FBI starts an investigation, working a theory that it was a murder/suicide: a pedophile Jake first killed the boy and then himself. Knight does not believe in this version and, risking his ass, tries to lead an independent investigation. The main case in this novel becomes another investigation: rape of the daughter of a rich doctor, holding a few clinics in LA. After the death of Jake his working cases have been spread out to other prosecutors, and Knight gets not the easiest one of them. Knight uses help of LAPD Detective Bailey Keller in searching for criminals (rapist and Jake’s killer). Soon Knight gets more threats, and what was obvious, becomes no longer obvious.

A former prosecutor herself, Marcia Clark knows how the justice system works. Knowledge of the inner game is a huge plus of the novel. We have read many books where the detectives conduct their own investigation against orders. And in these books, everything goes quickly and smoothly. In «Guilt by Association» Clark describes in detail the danger of interference with the investigation, which FBI is involved in. Knight then actually risks not only her career but also her freedom, risking ending up behind bars.

Both cases investigated by Knight are not the easiest, with a minimum of clues, but impudence and connections help the main character and her partner press to nail one suspect after another.

Despite the fact that Knight works in «Special Trials, the small, elite unit that handled the most comlex and high-profile cases», she has to deal with not high-ranking officials and corporate owners, but with the petty criminals: bangers, drug addicts and thieves. «Guilt by Association» has a very tight plot, no rabbits out of hats.

The main character Rachel Knight is not quite an original character, though. She is hard outside and soft inside. When she sees the body of her colleague, she almost loses consciousness. Several times throughout the book, the woman barely holds tears back. At the same time, Knight shows the hardness of the decisions and actions. To achieve justice and restore the honor of the late colleague for her is more important than losing a job.

There are also a few comic moments, such as the gang leader, who flirts with the prosecutor, which almost puts murder charges on him, or a police lieutenant who lives at the expense of what he and his brother used to come up developed a popular computer game.

Sometimes the novel gets too women-ish: Clark pays too much time choosing clothes for the heroine, and chapters begin with Knight’s mornings. Actually, you can immediately get down to business without having these details.

On the cover James Ellroy's blurb suggests that it is «a damn, damn, good thriller». It is difficult to argue with it.

The Best American Noir of the Century

The Best American Noir of the Century
Ed. by Otto Penzler and James Ellroy

Windmill Books, 2011

James Ellroy in the old interview had said about noir this: «Film Noir died 1959-1960. We love it. It's never going to come back. That's that, dig it. You can't go back. You cannot disingenuously go to tiki lounges and drink those big drinks, think that it's cool and it's not gonna kill you. You can't smoke unfiltered cigarettes in cocktail lounges all day, every day. It's over. The seduction of the past is just that. It's the past. We know more now and you can't go back. Film noir circumscribed an era and was fueled by the morays and repression of the era. You can't go back. You can imitate it and if you imitate it, it had better be something other than a stylistic and thematic imitation of film noir. L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia ape noir, they're historical novels. They trade on film noir but they're not film noir. Noir is over.» In the introduction to this collection Ellroy writes: “The subgenre officially died in 1960. New writer generations have resurrected it and redefined it as a sub-subgenre, tailored to meet their dramatic needs ... Noir will never die - it's too dementedly funny not to flourish in the heads of hip writers who wish they could time-trip to 1948…”

Ellroy is controversial as always, but by and large he’s right: noir is dead, but it will always live. What today is called noir, it is scarcely noir, or rather it is not noir at all, but noir is so rooted in contemporary culture that is sometimes difficult to say if this is not noir, then what's this then? Although from the collected 35 stories in the book, only 12 were written before 1960, all other have features of noir as a subgenre. This is, perhaps, not quite honestly, that this book is called «Best American Noir», but the title «Best American Noir, Neo-Noir, Post-Noir» would be too long and awkward, so just forgive it.

Even the earliest examples of noir literature, such as «Spurs» by Todd Robbins or «Pastorale» by James M. Cain, are not dated, but rather look here perhaps better than another stories. They are dated because of their language and their subjects. The later stories are often more elegantly constructed plotted, but bear the shade of a secondary nature: the story is old, but the details are new.

This is an incredible collection, even though there are a few missteps. Stories by Gil Brewer and Mickey Spillane are written as if only for the final twist, the Lorenzo Carcaterra’s story is overly schematic, and «Iris» by Stephen Greenleaf, in my opinion, and is not noir at all.

On the back cover the publisher writes that the book includes «many page-turners». For me, noir is just the opposite of a page-turner. When you read noir, to flip a page is not desirable. The body is paralyzed, because then lay the darkness, the abyss, the gas chamber and infinity.

All human vices, all the dark corners of the human soul, all fallings into hell, and all the terrible repetition of the darkest moments of life - it's all there in this book. 615 pages of falling into the abyss, from which there’s no exit.

Osama

Lavie Tidhar
Osama

PS Publishing, 2011

Joe, a private detective, lives somewhere in the back of Asia, smokes a lot and drinks whiskey. When once he returns from the bar to his office, he is suddenly visited by a woman with a soft voice. She doesn’t reveal her name and asks Joe to find Mike Longshott, a man whose name is written on covers of a popular series of pulp novels with the main character with the name Osama Bin-Laden. A woman leaves a credit card to pay for expenses, says she will contact the investigator, and evaporates.

The publisher of Longshott’s books, Medusa Press, is located in Paris, but «the address was merely a post office box, not a street address». After talking with a bookseller friend, Joe finds that Mike Longshots is a pseudonym. From the same seller the detective discovers that Medusa Press publishes all sorts of pulp, from thrillers to softporno. «Filth. Utter junk, of course. Wonderful stuff» - says about these books the seller.

Joe immediately books tickets for a flight to Paris, but before leaving, someone attempts to kill him. To solve the client’s case, Joe will have to go to London and New York, meet with shady characters who work for the state, a mysterious private investigator, booksellers and opium dealers. His entire journey, Joe will be reading Longshott’s books, trying to get closer to unraveling the truth.

World of Joe is a world in which we haven’t lived, a world without terrorism. Explosions of buildings and airports, 9\11 - this never happened in the world of «Osama». And you begin to undersand it only some time since the beginning of the book, when Joe reads Longshott’s novels, and we know that he reads books about the bombings and deaths of thousands of innocent people as fiction. He reads and wonders: in his world, it was nothing like this. Joe travels around the world, but perhaps not as a private detective, but as a universal consciousness. Terrorism covers all countries and nations, even those there terrorist attacks have never been. And Joe is just the invisible element that unites the nations, though Joe himself has no idea about it.

Yes, the protagonist here drinks hard, sometimes is trying to crack jokes, falls in love with a client, whom had seen only once, but it is all the formal signs of what «Osama» is not, namely, a PI novel. If Tidhar’d make Joe not a detective with a license, but simply "a master of all trades", this would only make the book better. One can hardly believe in Joe’s detective skills, but he does not pretend to be able to find someone. Joe's more comfortable to sit at the bar and sip alcohol, walk through the streets of capital cities, than in solving the case. Joe, and this is obviously, is one of those who are looking for himself, not for others. Tidhar is lucky that with the search of himself, Joe finds what he was looking for, otherwise the novel would fallapart.

Lyrical style of the author alone is at odds with a pace of a thriller, who then serves as a screen. But behind the screen is just lovely Tidhar’s prose, with its accurate descriptions of urban landscapes and the ability to capture the sadness of man in a bar with a glass in his hand (Tidhar sometimes overdoes lists, it should be noted):

«The air felt humid, feverish, but not of the tropics: a city's smell hung on it like limp laundry, a smell of pavement slabs and concrete blocks and cars and fumes and smoke and food and urine and spilled alcohol and spilled tears, it was a smell of many lives».

It is difficult to say, has Bin-Laden turned over in his grave after this novel or not (even harder to say is Bin-Laden alive or dead), but who cares about Bin-Laden? Just read «Osama».

Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded

Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded
Ed. by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Tachyon Publications, 2010

In the introduction to this collection the VanderMeers do not give a clear definition of what is steampunk. In the last paragraph of the introduction the editors, however, notice that «steampunk is alive and well and manifesting in a myriad of different ways». This is where the editors are right. After reading «Steampunk II» you are unlikely to become clear what steampunk is, but the diversity of the stories will give an idea how wide the scope of this subgenre.

Steampunk’s grandparents had sci-fi roots, but it does not mean that the whole steampunk is definitely SF. There are stories here that in spirit and entourage tend toward fantasy, there are those that can be called science fiction, and there are simply examples of "weird fiction."

The strongest stories here «Dr. Lash Remembers» by Jeffrey Ford, where an unknown virus that causes disease blur the line between reality and fantasy, «O One» by Chris Roberson, a fantasy in which the action takes place on Chinese soil. Among the representatives of the weird fiction stands out David Erik Nelson’s «The Bold Explorer in the Place Beyond», where the first-person narrator tells of the clash of two worlds. «Tanglefoot» by Cherie Priest is a bit lightweight, but Priest puts the best from Victorian prose in her story of a mad scientist.

Three more stories related to the theme of the South. In «The Steam Dancer (1896)" Caitleen R. Kiernan tells unusually touching story that could happen in our world in the Wild West, but the presence of elements of science fiction helps to better describe the character of the heroine of the story, a dancer from the title. Wild West is the entourage of another story, pure western, but with robots, «The Cast-Iron Kid» by Andrew Knighton. Steampunk-western is even better than Spaghetti Western! «Machine Maid» by Margo Lanagan takes place not the Wild West, but it could happen there. Noirish elements are heard in this tense tale of the maid and her master.

This is not an ideal anthology, there are some mediocre stories. But «Steampunk II» by its very existence proves that if a genre has borders, they are very fragile.

Defending Jacob

William Landay
Defending Jacob

Delacorte Press, 2012

The book opens with an interview before the grand jury a year after the main events of the books. Andy Barber, whose is the narrator of the story, answer the questions to the prosecutor Logiudice, but the narrotor hides from us what this grand jury is about, returning us to the history of events in April 2007.

In the town called Newton 14-year-old boy Ben Rifkin is found murdered. He was killed in a park near the school with three stabs of the knife in the chest. The lessons in the school are cancelled, and on the place detectives attached to the case arrive with the prosecutor – assistant district attorney Andy Barber. He is 50-year-old man, experienced, who often takes the resonant cases. Barber immediately assumes that this case will get much publicity. Barber is not confused that Rifkin studied in the same class with Barber’s son, Jacob, because there is no indication that the killer is one of the children. No evidence has been found on the ground, no weapon, too, and five days after the murder, the police still have no suspects and versions. There is one clue, however: on the ground a fingerprint has been found.

When Barber receives an anonymous e-mail with a link to the facebook group "Friends of Ben Rifkin," created after his death, on the wall Barber reads an entry written by a friend of Jacob, Derek, in which Derek says that Jacob has a knife. Later, Jacob is arrested on suspicion of murder, Andy is suspended from work, and the family starts to prepare for trial.

This novel, unlike Jacob, do es not need to be defended, so good it is. It needs to be praised. «Defending Jacob» is very realistic novel. The multi-faceted, exciting, intense, knocked down. The premise seems to be simple: the prosecutor's son is accused of murder, and father has to defend ot not defend his son. And the child needs defendung because he is your son, you are responsible for him, you raised him, and then gave him a "murder gene", even if it's just speculation. Andy Barber within all the book length tries to convince himself and all others that Jacob is not guilty, but deep down he just does not doubt that his son is a murderer; Barber's actions give him away. He finds a knife and throws it away without giving the examination. He deletes the information from Jacob’s computer. He argues with his wife, accusing her of that she sets herself against her son, comes up with things.

But the thing is that the author really does not point who is the killer. The choice of the narrator here is perfect: who killed the boy, may know only Jacob, but from him we learn nothing, so we can just as his father, wonder, had he killed, or hadn’t? Landay has built a book around a slippery case. It seems that there are facts, and they show on Jacob, but if you look closely, it's not even the facts, not even evidence, they are just speculation and doubts. And the jury is not sitting there in the courtroom, on the pages of the book, we are the jury, we are here to judge.

It’s interesting to see Logiudice in the book, who is acting as the dark half of Andy. Again, the author leads the reader on a slippery slope. What Logiudice is so actively trying to put Jacob behind the bars, can be regarded as a personal grudge against Barber. This is an attempt to drown the son, and at the same time his father, to remove a competitor. But Barber sees the situation in that way, he is generally can not be trusted. Loguidice asks all the questions which Barber asks himself. Logiudice is a worm of doubt, the devil on Barber’s shoulder.

The book really knocks down, but not by some individual moments, but by the whole complex. How does it feel to see your son before the trial, and you do not know he is guilty or not? What is above, the blood or the law? Is a father responsible for a son and grandson for his grandfather? «Defending Jacob» raises these questions and more in full growth. Here are collisions between speculation and science, law and justice, the father and son, society and the individual.

Reading the book, one can’t not to get into Barber’s skin, it is impossible not to feel fear when the day of trial approaches, it is impossible not to simpatize - not to the boy but for father. Landay describes with the great delicacy the entire proceedings, interrogations, legal tricks. This is a pleasure to watch how Barber follows the battle of the prosecutor and attorney, noticing mistakes, lucks, the reaction of the jury.

The hero of the book Andy Barber is a good man; this is not going to argue. After all, what makes a person good person? A good man and good father would believe his son to the last, will defend him to the last. But are you a good man if you defend the criminal, your son criminal?

«Defending Jacob» is a portrait of justice, a portrait ugly but honest.

The Locked Ward

Dennis O`Donnell
The Locked Ward

Jonathan Cape, 2012

The author of this book, Dennis O`Donnell, is a former hippie, an English graduate, a short, balding man. Not a fighter, as he says about himself. Not a fighter he is, in the sense that he has never fought and doesn’t and can’t fight. In fact, because he is not a fighter, O`Donnell never thought that he would work as a nursing assistent at the intensive psychiatric care unit. But when position is opened, the work is offered to him. "I don’t need fighters. I need people who can listen listen", says the Charge Nurse to Dennis.

And Dennis agrees. The author of this book had enough experience. When he was a student, O`Donnell worked in a mental hospital in the summer, helping the staff. The work was physically very hard. 13 hours on feet, constantly in motion, because the patients are always in need of something. And because patients often can’t do anything themselves, the staff must help them get dressed, feed them, wash, clean up after them, lay sleeping.

After that summer O`Donnell for 30 years worked on some work, adding only that in the end he hated that job, so why he decided to go into psychiatry. He’s taken position of a nursing assistant in a Psychogeriatrics ward. He’s worked with elderly men whose memory is gradually fading, at first short-term - up to a certain point in the past. Every day for such patients is no different from the previous one. As the author notes, “They were living Groundhog Day”. The work has been exhausting: 13 hours per shift, continuous client care, as they are known nowadays. Dennis, vicious by nature, yet always found common ground with patients, he knows how to listen. The author continues his gallery of characters. Anyone whom the author remembered, he describes the way that even the most incidental character on a certain amount of time becomes the protagonist of the book.

Nevertheless, Dennis takes the position of a nursing assistent at the intensive psychiatric care unit. After a course of Control and Restraint, O`Donnell starts work there. He gradually becomes acquainted with his colleagues, both men and women. The job at the new location has its pluses and minuses. In Ward 25 mainly young people are treated, men and women, there are no frail elderly people here. Among the disadvantagesof new work: the aggressiveness of the patients. An elderly man who can’t walk without help is not a threat, in contrast to the 30-year-old thug who suffers from schizophrenia and passionately does not want to take his medicine. In a Locked Ward you can’t relax at all. Any omission may result in a series of unpleasant events. These unpleasant events filled the second half of the book.
Actually, O`Donnell’s book is not only a gallery of characters, always colorful and memorable, but also the history of diseases. A story about one of the patients is accompanied by a description of his or her illness. Whatever the disease is, the author never allows himself to coarse remark against some of the patients or the mockery of a patient. The author not only doesn’t allow this to himself, but he doesn’t write about any cases when someone from the staff abused a patient, no matter how many problems this patient delivered. "Do not forget, he is sick", often nurses say to each other.

The absence of ridicule on patients does not mean that «The Locked Ward» is a book written with a grim seriousness. Quite the contrary. There is no such chapter which would not have caused a loud laugh. Sometimes, even while reading you’re risking tore your stomach, so ridiculous situation O`Donnell writes about. The reason to this is the author’s ability to notice small but important details that make a character alive. For example, the author describes a patient named Gilbert, a 50-something-year-old man, a schizophrenic, who considers himself a lord, and asks to call him only as Lord Gilbert. To show the true nature of this "Lord", O`Donnell shows Gilbert in conversation.

”"Gilbert! Teatime!
”Lord Gilbert, if you please. And if you insist on addressing me simply as Gilbert, you odious little cunt, you shall kick your fucking shitpit in.
”Okay, your lordship. Tea or coffee?”
”Tea, please. Do you have any Darjeeling?”
”Sorry, no. Sweeping of the factory floor in teabags only.”
”Well, my boy, you know what you can do with that effluent. You can stick it right up your fucking hole. Toodle pip.”"

The book is full of such gems, like the dialogue, you can quote pages. The sense of humor does not leave O`Donnell even in those situations where it is supposed to be no laughing matter. When two police officers have brought in a schizophrenic named Robbie, he refuses to take medication. Dennis at the mere sight Robbie is sick: "When he looked at me, my sphincter puckered so far into itself that, if I’d stuck a straw up it, I would have emptied a pail of dandelion and burdock via the back door." The O`Donnell’s colleague has gone somewhere, and only Dennis and two police officers have left, three to one, Robbie, handcuffed, and they do not feel safe. After all, now becomes a moment when you have to remove the handcuffs and put a drugs shot into Robbie, and Robbie refuses to accept "this poison." Dennis has already imagined tomorrow's newspaper headlines: "Meek hippie grandad killed at work," "Devout coward slain by madman," "Garotted with his own underpants."

Humor here is situational (and truly there’s no end to funny stories here) and verbal. O`Donnell is able to insert the desired comparison, to answer with a joke on an awkward question, that’s why it is often patients do not like him and his jokes.

The author is an English graduate and it’s visible to the naked eye. Each chapter offers an epigraph from the classics, whether it's Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Coleridge, and so on. In describing himself or the patient the author can insret a literary comparison: «Like Shakespeare's Don John, I am not of many words», «So far as looks went, he might have been Dylan Thomas ...» O`Donnell sometimes read the work of patients and finds their literary endeavors very talented.

O`Donnell without didacticism debunks myths about mental illnesses and the mentally ill people. He seems to be saying: there are ill people, there are well people, everything in life happens. We learn about the true nature of disease and the true nature of the patients.

O`Donnell did not hide the fact that after seven years he had made friends with many patients and that this work, no matter how hard it was, brought him satisfaction and joy. «The Locked Ward» is an incredibly funny book about human nature, about the thin line that separates healthy and sick people.

Zona

Geoff Dyer
Zona

Canongate Books, 2012

240 pages about Tarkovsky's film "Stalker". Simultaneously, it’s memoirs, essays about everything, film history analysis, travelogue, but at the same time, not a collection of all the above, but something still not hasn’t been seen before. A novel about the film. Or this: a novel around the film. A new kind of film criticism. That you can write about a movie like that, everyone seems to understand since the birth of cinema, but nobody, however, hasn’t thought that it is still possible. Shot by shot analysis of the film, which was originally conceived as a film shot by one shot, but it’s a literature analysis. The transmission of each shot through the prism of your own "self."

The book begins as, in fact, the film does: with a description of the bar, where a visitor enters to. After that, Dyer suddenly jumps to a description of the phenomenon of the Zone, a place where the meteorite fell. And then Dyer jumps next, comparing Tarkovsky and Antonioni. These three very different fragments give an idea of the three main vectors of the book: Meditation and a retelling of what is happening in "Stalker", an essay on the abstract theme, inspired by the film; cinematic analysis of the film and its connection with European cinema in general. It is difficult to believe that 250-page book about a film can be read at one, but it is.

The excitement of "Zona" lays in a good composition of the three main components. The author does not go too far in favor of one of these components. Analysis of film history is replaced by inserting memoir, memoir by retelling of the film, it in turn by an essay, for example, on the topic of labor camps, and essays - by the story of the filming of "Stalker". Dyer juggles these components, entertaining the reader, but "entertaining" is not quite the right word. Dyer is still not a street circus and not a clown who uses tricks, and hard to find entertainment, once again, in a 250-page book about a film. However, Dyer manages to entertain with no very easy material. Dyer tries on different masks - what the reader will be closer to. To film lovers Dyer offers a deep analysis of the effect of "Stalker" on other films of that time (and the movies of our contemporaries), the intersection between all the films of Tarkovsky, the history of film. For fans of Tarkovsky Dyer offers reflections on the incarnation of Tarkovsky in the form of Stalker, on Tarkovsky-man and Tarkovsky-director. To a simple reader Dyer appears in the image of the swell guy: he jokes about group sex, drinking at the bar, the writers' craft and a backpack as a gift. All jokes, it should be noted, are funny, intelligent cast, and some flow in or derived from clever and subtle reflections on life.

His knowledge of the topic Dyer shows in copiously sprinkled throughout the book footnotes. Recently, I have not seen a non-academic book, which would have at least one footnote. Footnote here can take four pages, and some are a couple of paragraphs long.

Do you need to see "Stalker" before reading this book? For example, I have not seen it, but it does not interfere with the perception of the book, because "Zona" is also a novel. Dyer describes the film shot by shot: the picture appears before the eye of the reader.
The final of the book is in a particularly striking. Dyer seamlessly replaces a book about the film to a book about human desires. The room where wishes come true, remains for the stalker - and for the author - unattained.

The only flaw of this book, perhaps, is that the Strugatsky brothers, on whose novel "Roadside Picnic" was written the screenplay, had been just left on the roadside. The film, of course, is very different from the book. All the sci-fi components had been removed from the screebplay. And yes, this book is about Tarkovsky and "Stalker" and not about Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, but I still feel the injustice, because the immediate source was left beyond the scope of the book.

In general, it is clever and profound book - and in many ways unique.

Hell & Gone

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

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

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

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

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