John Grisham was inspired to write this book by the Atlantic article , which revealed how predatory for-profit law schools have pilJohn Grisham was inspired to write this book by the Atlantic article , which revealed how predatory for-profit law schools have piled massive debts on students who would never be prepared to pay them back, with defaults being paid for by taxpayers.
The Rooster Bar is set in Washington, D.C., and features three of these hapless students 鈥� Mark, Todd, and Zola 鈥� who are in their final semester at the fictional Foggy Bottom Law School. FBLS is basically a scam, with bottom-of-the-barrel lawyers teaching classes to students who couldn't get into a real law school, promising them high-paying jobs upon graduation and stacking them with government-funded loans leaving them with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and a 54% pass rate on the bar exam.
Each of them is the sort of well-intentioned loser you'd expect to be taken in by a for-profit law school. Mark is trying to escape his family home with a loser of a brother who's on an ankle monitor and is facing hard time. Todd has parents who believe he's going to graduate law school soon and get a good job. Zola's parents are illegal immigrants who've just been picked up by ICE and are about to be deported to Senegal. They all believed FBLS's promises about plentiful high-paying lawyer jobs in DC upon graduating, and by now have realized that even if they pass the bar exam, they are not going to get any of those 6-figure BigLaw jobs and will be paying off their student loans forever. They are bitter, depressed, and feeling hopeless.
At the start of their book, one of their friends, a bipolar manic-depressive, has gone off his meds and his mania has driven him to trace ownership of FBLs to a billionaire who owns multiple for-profit law schools, as well as several law firms, and collection agencies. It's all part of a huge racket where the billionaire owns the law schools, owns the handful of lawyers who graduate from these schools, and goes after the students who go into collections.
I thought the book would be some sort of legal thriller where Todd, Mark, and Zola unravel the bad guy's scheme and achieve some measure of justice, if only with a big news story to expose his scheme.
This happens only at the end, and in a rather unsatisfying manner. In the meantime, they just bemoan the nefariousness of the system, and then decide the solution to their problem is to bail on law school, ditch their loans, and start practicing law without a license. They become "street lawyers" hustling clients at the courtroom, picking up desperate DUI and personal injury cases. They are ambulance chasers, and worse, ambulance chasers who are scamming their clients.
In the end, as the authorities are closing in on them, they arrange a big sting, perpetrating their legal fraud on a grander scale in a class action suit against the "bad guys." I guess we're supposed to root for them because they're targeting a billionaire and his sleazy shell corporations, but they're still just a bunch of scammers ducking out on their loans and their charges.
It was hard to sympathize with them, despite their personal troubles and the admittedly predatory nature of their law school. As they point out themselves, nothing the billionaire at the top of this scheme is doing is technically illegal, and they were adults who chose to take on these loans. If they failed to do due diligence, if they never crunched the numbers, looked at the bar exam pass rate and the legal job market, and just assumed everything would work out after they graduated, whose fault is that? Do they have any responsibility for their bad choices? And then they decide to practice law without a license. This is arguably a racket too, controlled by the bar, but they are deceiving their clients who will inevitably be screwed when their schemes unravel. (Indeed, one of the first things that happens is that a poor client who seems to have a genuine case for wrongful death of a child loses any chance for damages because they don't know enough to check the statute of limitations.)
I used to be a John Grisham fan. He's kind of the Stephen King of legal thrillers. But the last Grisham book I read was The Appeal, and that was fifteen (!) years ago. It was didactic, polemical, and flat. The Rooster Bar was a little more interesting, as I was caught up in the little dramas of our protagonists, but it still seemed to be just a vehicle for Grisham to rant about for-profit law schools, student loans, and immigration law. The writing was very flat and tell-y, like he was just writing by rote. There was no style or verve to this book, and Grisham, to me, has become just a mass producer of genre product. Not terrible, but disappointing....more
I have been trying quite a few LitRPGs lately, and most of them are so terrible I don't finish them. All His Angels Are Starving intrigued me because I have been trying quite a few LitRPGs lately, and most of them are so terrible I don't finish them. All His Angels Are Starving intrigued me because of the title, the cover, and a premise that seemed less derivative than 90% of LitRPGs. "Survival horror" set in a high school 鈥� at first I thought it would be a zombie apocalypse with stat blocks. It's not 鈥� it's something much more interesting, and it actually works. The story sucked me in and I kept reading. It's actually good!
But it really didn't need to be a LitRPG, and that was the realization I came to partway through. The LitRPG elements seemed completely unnecessary, except as a gimmick to explain how the protagonist gets powers, and in the end it was everything else that made the novel interesting, while the LitRPG part really didn't make any sense. I can't help wondering if the author was actually inspired by LitRPGs, or really wanted to write a more traditional horror novel but thought making it a LitRPG would tap a larger audience.
Jenny Huang is a high school junior. She's got a difficult relationship with her mother, her stepfather, and her younger stepbrother. The book starts with Jenny being a fairly typical teenage girl, in other words.
Then a dimensional rift opens and her high school is sucked into a void. Monstrous undead-like creatures called "Tarnished Angels" appear and start slaughtering the students and teachers. They are called "Tarnished Angels" by a mysterious system that flashes text in everyone's heads, telling them they are now participating in the Survival Challenge.
Jenny manages to survive the first onslaught, and by luck and determination levels up more rapidly than almost everyone around her. When she reunites with her still-alive best friend and stepbrother (both of whom have also kind of figured out the system and started leveling up), she's an armored badass with a magic axe. Her bestie, Susan, has become a healer with a magic helmet. The librarian has lost an eye but become an amazon with a spear.
What pulled me in was not Jenny adding to her stats and acquiring power-ups like Savage Throw, but the fighting as she tries to reach Susan (whom we come to realize she has a crush on) and her stepbrother (whom she never really cared about before). Jenny's internal monologues are angsty, adolescent, and desperate in a very realistic teen way. One of the things I found compelling about Hunger Games was that Katniss Everdeen was realistically traumatized by what she went through. All His Angels Are Starving features teenage characters but unlike Hunger Games, it is not YA: imagine a blood-drenched, R-rated Hunger Games, with cannibalism.
If you aren't into ultra-violence and cannibalism, this is not the book for you.
This is a very gory novel. Humans and angels tear each other apart in vivid, spurting, guts-on-the-floor detail. Eventually Jenny realizes that she can become more powerful by eating her enemies, and by the end of the story she's become a tentacled, exoskeletoned Gigeresque monster. And somehow she still has kind of a sweet lesbian crush on her best friend.
About a third of the way through, the story takes a bizarre turn. Initially I thought the so-called "angels" were just called that because it sounds more original than "zombies." Well, we get a lot more background on what's going on. It's weird and surreal. I'm not sure I bought it all. The worldbuilding was a little rough at times, and the writing, while good, was clearly the work of a new writer. This is the sort of book that you can only find in the contemporary indie market; it's an unpolished gem that sometimes seemed a little much, and often was a little confusing, but I kept reading.
I still think the Litrpg elements were basically unnecessary. Jenny and her opponents having stats and leveling up didn't really add anything to the story, and the clunky use of magic healing potions just seemed like a clunky plot device since the heroine keeps getting maimed and would not otherwise make it to the end of the book.
There was also a completely unnecessary intermission chapter featuring Jenny's mother's POV, which I guess is meant to make her more of a real person and help us understand Jenny's upbringing, but it just seemed like a novice writer's indulgence, since it had no impact at all on the story.
The ending is gruesome and tragic and a cliffhanger because the author is apparently working on a trilogy.
Flaws notwithstanding, I enjoyed this book and am on board for the sequel....more
Rock Paper Tiger was an unexpectedly good debut novel, and made Lisa Brackmann a crime fiction writer to look out for. I said that if she continued wrRock Paper Tiger was an unexpectedly good debut novel, and made Lisa Brackmann a crime fiction writer to look out for. I said that if she continued writing about the adventures of Ellie McEnroe I would be down for that, and lo and behold, here is a second book about Ellie. And while Hour of the Rat wraps up tidily, there were enough character issues left unresolved that more books seem very likely.
This is good, since I've liked the first two a lot, though I do fear that the Ellie McEnroe series will go the way so many crime/mysteries series do, eventually laboring under the weight of so many continuing characters and long-running plot threads that each book winds up indistinct and episodic.
So far, though, the series is still fresh. Ellie McEnroe was a medic in the U.S. Army. She got a chunk blown out of her leg in Iraq, and now she has physical and psychological issues to deal with. She settled in China, originally because her then-husband brought her there when he got a job as a "security consultant." Now she's peripherally involved with the Chinese art scene, living as a semi-permanent expat and trying to stay out of trouble.
A buddy of hers from the "sandbox" asks her to find his brother, who's somewhere in China and apparently in some trouble. Reluctantly, Ellie agrees. The brother turns out to be accused of eco-terrorism, and Ellie's hunt will bring her to the attention of powerful multinational corporations, the Chinese secret service, and an eccentric art-collecting billionaire. As with the previous book, it means she spends a lot of time running scared and getting beaten up and not knowing who exactly is after her.
There isn't much to the "mystery" 鈥� what makes the book enjoyable is, of course, Ellie's outsider's view of China. This is a modern look at China, with its odd mix of authoritarian statism and hyper-capitalism, beautiful country villages and cities so polluted that the air is practically solid. A GMO seed company is the primary villain, but there is of course the ever-present though mostly easy to pretend-it-isn't-there surveillance by various organs of the Chinese government. The Chinese characters are often more cynical than Ellie is about their country, but they are as proud and as ambitious and as nationalistic as any Americans.
Also, Ellie's mother, who drove her crazy last book with a constant stream of Jesus-loves-you emails, comes to China for a visit. Lisa Brackmann understands the value of comic relief characters.
An altogether enjoyable read. For any fan of crime fiction or expat adventures, go ahead and get started on this series now 鈥� it's my hope that it will be around for a while.
Merged review:
Rock Paper Tiger was an unexpectedly good debut novel, and made Lisa Brackmann a crime fiction writer to look out for. I said that if she continued writing about the adventures of Ellie McEnroe I would be down for that, and lo and behold, here is a second book about Ellie. And while Hour of the Rat wraps up tidily, there were enough character issues left unresolved that more books seem very likely.
This is good, since I've liked the first two a lot, though I do fear that the Ellie McEnroe series will go the way so many crime/mysteries series do, eventually laboring under the weight of so many continuing characters and long-running plot threads that each book winds up indistinct and episodic.
So far, though, the series is still fresh. Ellie McEnroe was a medic in the U.S. Army. She got a chunk blown out of her leg in Iraq, and now she has physical and psychological issues to deal with. She settled in China, originally because her then-husband brought her there when he got a job as a "security consultant." Now she's peripherally involved with the Chinese art scene, living as a semi-permanent expat and trying to stay out of trouble.
A buddy of hers from the "sandbox" asks her to find his brother, who's somewhere in China and apparently in some trouble. Reluctantly, Ellie agrees. The brother turns out to be accused of eco-terrorism, and Ellie's hunt will bring her to the attention of powerful multinational corporations, the Chinese secret service, and an eccentric art-collecting billionaire. As with the previous book, it means she spends a lot of time running scared and getting beaten up and not knowing who exactly is after her.
There isn't much to the "mystery" 鈥� what makes the book enjoyable is, of course, Ellie's outsider's view of China. This is a modern look at China, with its odd mix of authoritarian statism and hyper-capitalism, beautiful country villages and cities so polluted that the air is practically solid. A GMO seed company is the primary villain, but there is of course the ever-present though mostly easy to pretend-it-isn't-there surveillance by various organs of the Chinese government. The Chinese characters are often more cynical than Ellie is about their country, but they are as proud and as ambitious and as nationalistic as any Americans.
Also, Ellie's mother, who drove her crazy last book with a constant stream of Jesus-loves-you emails, comes to China for a visit. Lisa Brackmann understands the value of comic relief characters.
An altogether enjoyable read. For any fan of crime fiction or expat adventures, go ahead and get started on this series now 鈥� it's my hope that it will be around for a while....more
"Demon Copperhead" is the nickname young Damon Fields is tagged with as a young lad born to a teenage mother in Lee County Virginia in the 1990s. At f"Demon Copperhead" is the nickname young Damon Fields is tagged with as a young lad born to a teenage mother in Lee County Virginia in the 1990s. At first I thought it was a satire of David Copperfield, but it's not: in fact, it is a faithful, loving tribute. I am a big Dickens fan and David Copperfield, his sentimental, semi-autobiographical tale of young David's hard-life upbringing, is one of my favorites. I don't think you need to have read David Copperfield to appreciate this story of Appalachian poverty and drug addiction, but you will miss so much, as every character in the book is essentially a transposed Dickens character and the nods throughout the book are like little easter eggs for Dickens fans.
It takes some big cajones to rewrite Dickens, and Barbara Kingsolver pleasantly surprised me by not just doing a creditable job, but also writing a male protagonist in a coming-of-age story who was believably male. There are a lot of complaints in the book world about men writing women badly, but one of my pet peeves is the less-acknowledged problem of women who think they can write about what male sexuality feels like. So I was skeptical of Kingsolver doing a boy's bildungsroman, but she seemed to get it.
"Demon" (as he is almost universally known) starts out life like his Victorian counterpart, born with a caul over his head to a loving but weak-willed single mother who brings an abusive stepfather into Demon's life, and everything is just downhill from there. Demon's mother is a junkie, he's sent into foster care, which is its own kind of shitshow, and when he hits early puberty and has all the makings of football stardom, he blows out a knee and gets addicted to Oxy. He hooks up with a manic pixie dreamgirl who's more of a nightmare, because it turns out being a manic pixie is a lot less cute when she's a heroin addict.
Dickens novel was an indictment of the brutal Victorian class system, in which the lot of the poor was the poorhouse, there was no such thing as CPS, and David escaped the almost inescapable gravity of poverty only by great good fortune and some natural talents.
Kingsolver takes aim at the poverty traps of 20th century America, and especially at the devastation that opiates wreaked upon her native Appalachians in the 90s. Where Dickens pulled his punches, Kingsolver does not, and while Demon will frustrate you throughout the book with his endless series of bad, short-sighted decisions, each one is understandable from his point of view. As he explains in his first person narrative, why should he value school or expect that it will lead to anything better? Why should he think about the world outside Lee County when literally no one else in his life does? How is he supposed to have a vision for the future or a plan for his life or dreams of some mythical thing called a "career" when he has literally zero role models presenting such to him? Eventually he does get a few better examples of adulthood trying to intervene in his life, but by then the damage is almost irrevocable. Almost.
While, like David, Demon does eventually get a happy ending, Demon Copperfield is a very dark book and can be quite a downer. The misery just seems to go on and on. Every time it seems that Demon is on the verge of having something good happen in his life, it turns sour. The darkness, however, is understandable as Kingsolver's most scathing condemnation is for Purdue and all the doctors who helped turn Appalachia into an opiate-addicted wasteland.
This was a modern bildungsroman that will elicit your sympathy with a likeable protagonist despite all his dumb moves, but I do recommend reading David Copperfield too....more
This novelette by Sherwood Smith, who writes Georgian romances, Austen fan fiction, and science fiction and fantasy, is basically a literary version oThis novelette by Sherwood Smith, who writes Georgian romances, Austen fan fiction, and science fiction and fantasy, is basically a literary version of . The protagonist is a starving English major who wanted to live a Life Of the Mind with Great Works (you poor, stupid woman) and goes to a unique job interview which consists of cataloging a huge number of works that all seem to be derivations and fan fiction of her favorite classics.
She winds up literally in Austen-land, from the POV of Charlotte Lucas (you know, the chick who ends up marrying Mr. Collins).
Smith is basically showing off her literary chops here, with copious references to Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, and Baroness Orczy. There is an assumption that the reader is familiar with the world of fan fiction and terms like "." Even the title is a little pretentious. I had to look up ""; it's Greek for "proclamation" and usually is used in a Christian context to refer to the core of the Church's teachings about Jesus. In the context of this story, it seems to be a reference to "canon" works, contrasted with the universe of derived or "fan" works.
I enjoyed the story because I am familiar with the works Smith references. You'll get a lot more out of this if you've read Pride and Prejudice and The Scarlet Pimpernel. If you haven't, I guess it's just a story about an English major getting to go on her dream fantasy faction to Pemberly....more
I have always enjoyed survivalist, man-against-nature stories, and this book caught my attention because of all the seasons of Deadliest Catch I watchI have always enjoyed survivalist, man-against-nature stories, and this book caught my attention because of all the seasons of Deadliest Catch I watched. And this turned out to be a fantastic debut novel, with an unexpectedly dark twist.
Adam is a college senior. He was on a full-ride lacrosse scholarship, until he got caught dealing ecstasy. Now he's lost his scholarship and he needs to come up with 26 grand by the start of the fall semester in order to finish his degree and make something of his life. He comes to Alaska, after a hook-up from school hooks him up with a shady uncle who runs several Alaskan fishing boats. The money is good, but the work is brutal, and for a greenhorn, it's produce or gtfo. Or die, because there are lots of ways to die on the Bering Sea.
鈥淵ou know what I regret most in my whole life?鈥�
鈥淲hat鈥檚 that?鈥�
鈥淓verything I ever did for the money.鈥�
I half-jokingly gave this my "dude-lit" tag, but The North Line has many traits of dude literature; it's about a young man going forth to do something hard and dangerous, and find himself. It's a road novel, of sorts (the road being the Bering Sea), and it's a Campbellian journey, and a trip into the heart of darkness.
Adam takes well to the fishing life, despite its crudeness, its dangers, and its raw discomforts. His first trip out, with two other men, he learns a lot, gets lots of owies, and also begins to learn the ways of Alaskan fishing, which is as much man against man as it is man against nature. Because everything is about money, everyone is out to screw everyone else, and his new crewmates teach him a lot about not being the one to get screwed.
What they don't know is that Adam has already had some hard lessons. He's not just running away from a drug charge, he's running from his dead-end small town, and he's running from his father, who told him before he died in prison:
In every business dead, there's a fucker and a fuckee. Make sure you're not the fuckee.
As a fishing strike brews, Adam is presented with one opportunity after another to be either the fucker or the fuckee. If this is the story of a young man on a journey to enlightenment, it's a dark kind of enlightenment. There's a lot of introspection, a lot of psychological tension, a lot of physical danger, and a character transformation that sneaks up on the reader but suddenly becomes obvious.
If you like gritty road novels about young dudes getting deep in the shit, or you're a fan of Deadliest Catch and like being put out there on the Bering Sea where everything is cold, wet, miserable, and dangerous, you need to read this book....more
This was an odd book to tag, genre-wise. Clevenger writes in a literary style (many long and almost dreamy passages and internal dialogues). The storyThis was an odd book to tag, genre-wise. Clevenger writes in a literary style (many long and almost dreamy passages and internal dialogues). The story seems like a straightforward thriller: the main character is the son of a serial killer trying to escape his past. There's a crazy homeless guy, however, who knows who he is, and has a message for him, from the "Mother Howl."
That last character is what places this book in a strange place. Chapters alternate between the main character, Lyle Edison, and "Icarus," who is an angel who just landed on Earth in a "meat body" on a mission to deliver a message to Lyle. Or he's a crazy homeless schizophrenic. Their respective chapters are both narrated in third person limited omniscient, and Icarus's internal monologue is very consistent and plausible as either an angel trapped in a monkey-suit or a crazy homeless guy. It's never explained precisely why he needs to deliver a message to Lyle, and his chapters, after a while, fade away as some interesting secondary internal dialog.
Lyle Edison (not his real name) was a teenager when his perfectly normal father was revealed as a serial killer who had raped and murdered at least nine women. Lyle spent the rest of his childhood and teen years getting beaten up every time he's recognized. He was unfortunately a "Junior," sharing a name with his now-infamous father, so he was unable to get a job anywhere. Eventually he resorted to paying a shady forger for false identification, and has now spent his adulthood living under a forged name. In the process, through an unfortunate series of events (this guy has the worst luck in the world), he got caught holding a drug package for a "friend," which resulted in a possession with intent to distribute charge. Now he's on parole, with a pregnant wife, and a parole officer who's well written as the absolute worst and pettiest little tyrant ever.
This was a great story and I really felt for poor Lyle, who's had an absolutely shitty life through no fault of his own. Yes, buying fake papers was a mistake, and he's made other mistakes, but they were all understandable given his circumstances. He now struggles with anger issues, and when he occasionally mouths off and the reader (and later his wife) wants to strangle him for being so foolish, at the same time you can't really blame him. He's been getting kicked around since he was a kid, and it would take the patience and stoicism of a saint not to lose it eventually. Much of the book is Lyle white-knuckling it to the end of his parole, while he (and the reader) wonder if he'll make it.
Icarus's chapters, like I said, were strange and almost ethereal, and they actually could have been cut without affecting the plot too much, but I think they definitely added a touch of the otherworldly.
Inevitably, we know Lyle will eventually have to confront his father's legacy, and I think the climax was executed well.
This was an unusual book with some really sympathetic characters, and an overall theme of just how hard it is to be a little person being crushed in the gears of impersonal or malevolent bureaucracy....more
This book has a lot in common with the first book I read by Ronald Malfi, Bone White. His preferred theme seems to be guys who left their pasts behindThis book has a lot in common with the first book I read by Ronald Malfi, Bone White. His preferred theme seems to be guys who left their pasts behind and went off to the big city, only to be pulled back to their crappy hometown to deal with the skeletons buried in their closets. With hints of the supernatural that never quite come out into the open.
Small Town Horror is basically "I Know What You Did Last Summer" with Stephen King childhood-friendship-is-black-magic vibes. The main character, Andrew, is a big shot New York lawyer, with a beautiful pregnant wife. Life is good. Until he gets a call from an old friend back in his home town in Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay.
It turns out his old gang never left- one of them has become a cop, one has become a failed real estate developer, one has become a junkie, and the girl in the group has become a single mother waiting tables.
The plot revolves around a secret they've all been keeping for years, about a high school classmate who died in a tragic accident. Everyone has been carrying the guilt of what happened since they were kids, and things start unraveling. The "supernatural" element is introduced by the mother of the dead kid, who's got a reputation as the town "witch."
The plot was suspenseful even if the "secret" is pretty obvious from the beginning, and the hints of supernatural add an atmosphere of creepiness without really turning it into a proper horror novel.
I was annoyed by what seemed to be some baffling decisions by the main character, and when the reason for those decisions was revealed, I was annoyed by the fact that the author sort of "cheated" by hiding a major revelation from the reader until near the end. Big reveals should not be things that the main character knows all along but just doesn't mention until it's convenient.
That said, I still liked how it all came together in the end. It's a gloomy, tragic small town horror....more
Motherless Child is Yet Another Vampire Story, and doesn't add much new or original to vampire lore, which is actually a good thing. Vampires are nastMotherless Child is Yet Another Vampire Story, and doesn't add much new or original to vampire lore, which is actually a good thing. Vampires are nasty predatory fiends and when you get turned into a vampire, you are constantly hungry and fighting to hold onto your humanity. That's the way I like my vamps.
Sophie and Natalie are basically "trailer trash" - a couple of besties who both got knocked up and are now working low-end retail and living in a trailer park in North Carolina. When a musician known as "The Whistler" shows up at their local honkie-tonk, they think a little bit of excitement and stardom is touching their dreary lives. They wake up naked, bloody, and hungry.
The Whistler is, of course, a vampire, and for his own reasons, he decided to turn both these chicks. He is obsessed with Natalie, and turned her best friend as a sort of afterthought. Natalie and Sophie both figure out what's happened to them pretty quickly. Natalie returns home, tells her mother (another single mother working at a Waffle House) to run away and not let her find her. Her mother, without fully realizing what has happened, immediately realizes that Natalie is dead serious, and does as she says.
The rest of the book is a chase between The Whistler, Natalie, Sophie, and Natalie's mother, who has Natalie and Sophie's children. Natalie's mother is one of the best characters, as a serious and hard-working woman who's basically a case study in broken dreams and sacrificed futures, fiercely protective of her daughter, and who also knows when to let go. The Whistler is creepy and predatory and a classic master vampire, but it's Mother who steals the spotlight as the Big Bad.
Well-written and with good characterization, but I still found the story lacked a real wow factor or enough excitement to make me eager to pick up the next book (this is the first in a trilogy). As vampire stories go this is a good one, and if you want a deft portrayal of working class single mothers, the author clearly knows the milieu. There is plenty of violence and gore. But ultimately it's just another vampire story....more
I am fond of thrillers, but I tend to be more about the characters and the story than just how clever and twisty the author can be. And The Package brI am fond of thrillers, but I tend to be more about the characters and the story than just how clever and twisty the author can be. And The Package brought to light a number of writing tropes in thrillers that I have realized annoy me.
Emma is a psychiatrist who survived a serial killer called "The Hairdresser." He raped her and shaved her head, but left her alive. For various reasons, her story doesn't quite add up, leading the police and even her own husband to doubt what really happened.
Much of the story involves Emma trying to figure out what really happened, discovering one awful revelation after another, being repeatedly gaslit and chasing red herrings, and misleading the reader. There will be multiple wrong guesses about who "The Hairdresser" really is, with tragic consequences, but when the final reveal was revealed, I found myself annoyed. I won't say the clues didn't fit together, but I felt like certain characters had to do sudden unforeshadowed heel-face turns to make it make sense. When a character who's been perfectly normal throughout the book suddenly reveals that they are actually an evil sociopath who's been playing a long game, it really needs more development.
Additionally, we have the CSI trope of police departments and lawyers being willing to go to extraordinary (and expensive) lengths to set up contrived situations to try to catch a killer. The Package is set in Germany, but most of the legal and police aspects seem more or less similar to American procedurals, and I assume that the German justice system, like the American one, probably does not routinely have the resources to set up an elaborate gotcha using multiple unsuspecting participants in an ethically dubious manner.
This story was okay but just a little too Netflix-tropey for me, and I realized perhaps I am becoming more picky and critical about my thrillers and mysteries....more
It's said that every writer eventually writes a book about writing, usually with a thinly-veiled self-insert as a main character. Every writer who "maIt's said that every writer eventually writes a book about writing, usually with a thinly-veiled self-insert as a main character. Every writer who "makes it," even whose genre is usually fantasy or horror or detective mysteries, will at some point take on the publishing industry, their colleagues and frenemies, their fans, and social media in a semi-satirical novel with knives out.
This is R.F. Kuang's "writer book," and I loved it. And that's without having read any of her other books (she is best known for fantasies like The Poppy War and Babel).
I admit I was initially worried that this would be a "woke" book. Oh, come on, you know exactly what I mean. Asian female author writes a book about a white woman taking credit for an Asian woman's work just screams "330 pages of ranting about white privilege and cultural appropriation and marginalization and tokenization blah blah blah."
I was pleased to discover that R.F. Kuang is more nuanced than that, and approaches both of her writer characters - the deceased Athena Liu and the protagonist, June Hayward - with both affection and vicious skewering. It is of course a classic reader's mistake to try to project the author onto her characters, and Athena Liu and June Hayward are both obviously fictional, but I cannot but believe Kuang put a bit of herself in both of them. If so, it was done with sharp, humorous self-awareness.
Friends since college, June Hayward (full name: "Juniper Song Hayward" - her mother was a bit woo-woo) and Athena Liu are both ivy league grads living the lit life. But Athena is a hot social media darling and has become a rising star - feted, award-winning, Netflix deals, the works - while June managed to get one book out which disappeared into the publishing pond with an unnoticed plop.
June is seething with jealousy at Athena's success. So when they are at Athena's apartment one night and Athena suddenly (and perhaps a bit implausibly) chokes to death, June takes the opportunity to steal Athena's final manuscript.
(I know what you're thinking: so, is the big twist that June actually had something to do with Athena's death? Mild spoiler: no, she really didn't. Kuang doesn't let her become such an easy villain.)
Athena's rough draft was a book called The Last Front, telling the story of the Chinese-Canadians who served in World War I. June reads it, and it's good (of course) but still a first draft. Unpolished. It needs some work.
June's publisher is of course surprised at her unexpected new manuscript. And there is some initial trepidation: a white woman telling a story about the historical racism faced by Chinese people? But as the book goes to auction and it's clearly destined to be a bestseller, June gets all the marketing and support and hype she never got with her first feeble efforts. And (at her publisher's suggestion) publishing The Last Front under the name "Juniper Song." She never actually claims to be Chinese...
Yellowface does focus on all the expected issues, because they are brought up constantly. June has uncomfortable experiences at book tours and author panels when people find out that she is not, in fact, Chinese. Her friendship with the late Athena Liu is brought up, pointedly. And inevitably, rumors surface (fueled by a mysterious online antagonist) that she stole the manuscript for The Last Front.
Much of the book is June trying to cover her tracks and rationalize her actions. She faces harassment and persecution that she doesn't deserve (except that the reader knows she really does), and R.F. Kuang is pitch perfect in representing (and skewering) book-twitter and social media and the petty insecurities of authors and readers and reviewers. Athena Liu does not escape unscathed, as we find out (from June's admittedly unreliable point of view) that she was guilty of her own kind of theft.
But the best character is June, because Kuang makes her sympathetic, even though she is fundamentally a terrible person. Yes, stealing her friend's manuscript and rewriting it without crediting the source was bad, but it's the sort of desperation move for which one could (perhaps) be forgiven... but every opportunity June has to make things right, or at least not make things worse, her insecurity and jealousy and basic awfulness wins out, and as things spiral out of her control, you start to root for her take-down.
Does she get taken down? Does she get her well-deserved come-uppance? I won't spoil that, but honestly, the last part of the book was the least interesting to me. I guessed the climax and who was responsible, but I also felt like what nuance Kuang had given to June's character sort of flattened out as she became more and more unlikeable, and there was a bit of the boilerplate social justice ranting (delivered in a "villain" monologue, no less) that I was worried about, though it still came off as somewhat self-aware parody.
But June's arc as a Basic Karen and Colonizing White Woman was despicable and believable and sometimes pretty damn funny, and I very much enjoyed Kuang aiming her guns not just at Colonizing Karens, but also at self-righteous woke Asians, mean reviewers, the publishing industry, and the small incestuous world of frenemy fellow writers.
Yellowface is funny, poignant, mean in all the right ways, and great for anyone who likes reading writers unleash on other writers. Now I might check out one of Kuang's feted and awarded books....more
Generally, horror novels do not scare me. They might disturb me or gross me out or maybe piss me off, but it's hard for me to be scared by things I doGenerally, horror novels do not scare me. They might disturb me or gross me out or maybe piss me off, but it's hard for me to be scared by things I don't believe in like ghosts or vampires or eldritch horrors.
Come Closer scared me, because it hit one of my genuine, actual fears - loss of control over oneself. One of my nightmares is doing terrible things, destroying my life and relationships, and not being able to stop myself. I have always considered dementia or schizophrenia or anything else that would cause me to behave contrary to my character, in ways I'd refuse if sane and rational, to be a fate worse than death. I do not mess with alcohol or drugs because the idea of doing something while under the influence that I wouldn't do sober is too frightening.
Come Closer is about demonic possession. Eventually, the demon who possesses the main character, Amanda, becomes a literal presence in the story. But while this is a supernatural thriller if read straightforwardly, you could also read it as a story about a woman descending into insanity. Is the demon Naamah real, or is the "demon" just an excuse Amanda makes up for her increasingly deviant and abhorrent actions?
Initially, Amanda is a happily married architect with a nice, if somewhat fussy and boring, husband. Things start going wrong slowly. She hears a tapping that her husband can't hear. There's a dog outside her house that seems obsessed with her. She steals a cheap lipstick from the drugstore.
Written from Amanda's perspective, the story filled me with growing dread and existential horror, as Amanda begins to realize that she's not right, that something's wrong, and eventually, becomes aware of the demon who's possessing her and even tries to seek help to rid herself of it. And yet the descriptions of her behavior remain very much rooted in her own first-person POV. She is the one who starts treating her husband with cold anger and contempt. She is the one who engages in increasingly risky behavior at work. She is the one who starts fights on the street and has sex with strangers. She is the one who, eventually, escalates to murder. She describes these acts sometimes casually, in passing, and sometimes with self-aware horror and confusion.
It's frightening and terrible, to watch her life unravel, to watch her marriage turn to ashes, to watch her turn into a monster, and there's no single point where she goes from normal to clearly possessed, but gradually the demon has more and more control over her until she is describing herself as a passenger along for the ride. Whether Naamah is real, or just how she perceives her own psychosis, she eventually loses control completely. The spiral is dark and total. This a grim read for anyone who believes in demons or who fears going mad.
I knew of Sara Gran from her Claire Dewitt series, a clever, wild romp about a lady detective who's like Nancy Drew if Nancy Drew grew up and had a drug problem. Come Closer was one of Gran's first books, and it's an unnerving psychedelic experience like her Claire Dewitt stories, except this one was scary....more
This is a genre-savvy book with frequent call-outs to classic thrillers and horror movies, but it's not actually either. It's a mystery wrapped aroundThis is a genre-savvy book with frequent call-outs to classic thrillers and horror movies, but it's not actually either. It's a mystery wrapped around a book about fucked up people trying to be family.
Mathilda is a 14-year-old "Girl Detective" who lives with her aunt and uncle after her mom was killed by a drunk driver and her dad went to prison for running the killer over. Mathilda is a precocious aficionado of true crime stories, and is determined to prove her dad is innocent. Then, in the same week, her dad is released from prison, and Mathilda is diagnosed with the big L - leukemia.
Mathilda's father, Jack, who's built like hired muscle but only ever wanted to be a musician, now just wants to be a dad again. But the ex-cop who exonerated him drags him into a complicated scheme to blackmail a retired serial killer known as the "California Bear."
At first I thought this story was following a pretty predictable course, but it takes one swerve, then another, and soon it's a story about vengeance, redemption, copycat serial killers, and the deeply fucked up nature of the "True Crime" industry, which the author says in his afterword was his original inspiration for this book.
This book was also inspired by his actual daughter, who was actually diagnosed with leukemia (and sadly, did not make it). That made Mathilda's story poignant even before I got to the afterword and found out about the author's real-life daughter; on the one hand, she's a sassy little genius who sometimes is forced to be the adult in a room full of grown men. On the other hand, she's a dying kid with more than one clock ticking on her investigation.
I picked up California Bear because I am writing a serial killer novel of my own, and this story was not exactly what I expected, but it was still pretty good, with a mystery that planted lots of red herrings before tying it all up, and a touching if (the author can be forgiven for) optimistic ending....more
It's rare to read a book that mixes quite so many tropes and checks quite so many boxes and is quite so annoying.
Lily Wong is an American girl from LAIt's rare to read a book that mixes quite so many tropes and checks quite so many boxes and is quite so annoying.
Lily Wong is an American girl from LA with a Norwegian father and a Chinese mother. She practiced the art of Wu Shu until she was in college, when her 15-year-old sister was abducted, raped, and murdered. Thereupon Lily turns into a #MeToo Batman, training in the art of ninjutsu with a Japanese sensei so she can stalk the night, rescue abused women, and beat up their abusers.
I'll give every book a few "gimmes" in terms of suspension of disbelief. The better written, the more gimmes I will forgive. The Ninja Daughter was already pushing it with a 115-pound girl beating up men twice her size. (I'm sorry, neither wu shu and ninjutsu nor looking like Scarlett Johansson will make that possible.) The jarring cultural dissonance of a Chinese-Norwegian girl learning ninjutsu and calling herself a "kunoichi" (Japanese for female ninja) sounded like someone playing mix'n'match with a GURPS character sheet. Lily sustains herself with gigs from a lady who runs an abused women's shelter and somehow has the funds to pay Lily to go rescue women with ninja attacks.
And in between improbable fights with Ukrainian mobsters and Latino gangbangers, the heart of this book is really a women's fiction novel, with Lily trying to resolve her relationship with her tiger mom mother who just wants her to find a nice loaded Chinese-American boy and get married.
Lily gets courted by a loaded Chinese-American boy (who's all full of dutiful Confucian traditionalism, which of course sets Lily's teeth on edge even though she spends all book talking about "honoring her ancestry" and how much she loves her multiple cultural heritages), but soon the real love interest appears in the form of... a hot Vietnamese assassin named Tran.
Oh yeah, there was some kind of plot involving mobsters, politicians, and real estate schemes in Los Angeles. Aside from Dangerous Steamy Tran, Dutiful Boring Secondary Love Interest, and Lily's Norwegian baba who is a big blond Viking who cooks Chinese food like a native Hong Kong chef, basically every man in this book is a sleazeball. Lily is repeatedly leered at, groped, assaulted, and almost date raped, so much that I thought the author just liked writing about a "kunoichi" repeatedly beating up or threatening men for getting handsy. Okay, author, I get it, men are pigs and you really wish you could ninja-kick them.
I guess if this story scratches your itch for feminist revenge fantasy, you might enjoy it, but I just found it annoying and tropey, and I'm certainly not interested enough to read the next book and find out about Dangerous Steamy Tran's traumatic childhood and why he turned into such a deadly hunk who probably needs a little kunoichi lovin' to find his soft cuddly center....more
I only picked up this book because I have been reading DC Palter's Japonica publication on Medium. Palter is a venture capitalist who apparently livesI only picked up this book because I have been reading DC Palter's Japonica publication on Medium. Palter is a venture capitalist who apparently lives off and on in Japan, speaks Japanese with native fluency, writes lots of articles about Japanese language and culture, and apparently decided he wanted to write a novel. In other words, he's an old school weeaboo.
To Kill a Unicorn is a "Silicon Valley murder mystery," and one of the pleasures of reading this book for me was reading about the area I grew up in - Cupertino, San Jose, Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Stevens Creek Boulevard and Half Moon Bay - so many places I used to drive around in. It also reminded me of early (late 90s era) Salon articles and short stories, when Silicon Valley was an optimistic glittery place high on its own supply and stonks always go up. In other words, kind of like now.
The inspiration, according to the author, was Haruki Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes, and Bad Blood, the story of the fraudulent start-up Theranos and its beautiful blonde sociopathic founder, Elizabeth Holmes. To Kill a Unicorn combines a Murukami-like protagonist and a villain who is practically a carbon copy of Elizabeth Holmes.
Tatsu "Teddy" Hara is a Japanese-American computer programmer working for a FAANG company and turning into an alcoholic borderline hikikimori. He's got abandonment issues (his father drank himself to death, his mother was an angry, bitter neurotic who committed suicide) and his best friend Ryu has disappeared. Ryu's sister (who used to be Teddy's girlfriend) shows up asking Teddy to help find him, leading Teddy down a rabbit hole investigating a mysterious startup called S眉prD眉pr which is going to "revolutionize transportation." The story takes us on a satirical ride through the Bay Area's homeless problem, Silicon Valley's absurd startup culture, elephant preserves, Japantown, and every techbro trope (Bitcoin, blockchain, Soylent, gourmet ramen-topped pizza).
Teddy is a mess, and is an extremely annoying protagonist in the same way that Murakami's protagonists are annoying: he's a passive schmuck who keeps making shocked-Pikachu faces when the police don't take his stories of a billionaire using a teleportation device to murder homeless people seriously, and despite being a dweeby alcoholic loser, his hot lawyer ex is still into him.
Much of the story was a bit implausible (besides the central conceit of a working teleportation device), but it was pretty fun, and the Elizabeth Holmes expy villain was more Hollywood than the real Holmes. To Kill a Unicorn is probably more enjoyable if you are into the culture of Silicon Valley. Like many debut novels, it's sometimes over-described and the characters over-emote, but if you are willing to stretch your suspension of disbelief, it's also funny and touching....more
Nick Mamatas (famously called "a true Chaotic Neutral" by fellow writer Catherynne Valente) is a crafty writer, in every sense of the word. He leads wNick Mamatas (famously called "a true Chaotic Neutral" by fellow writer Catherynne Valente) is a crafty writer, in every sense of the word. He leads writing workshops, he writes in a lit style (I am again using that word in multiple senses), you always sense he's writing a bit tongue-in-cheek and low-key making fun of readers who don't quite Get It.
I didn't quite get this one. The Second Shooter is a strange book, set in Mamatas's stomping grounds of the East Bay. Mike Karras is a "journalist" working for a shoestring publisher, investigating the phenomenon of second shooters after mass shooting events. After every incident - an assassination, a school shooting, a shopping mall terrorist attack - there are reports of a second shooter, someone the police never caught. Karras thinks there is something to this, and he's writing a book about it.
Following leads fed to him by shooting survivors, by a crazy talk radio host, by "fans" and fellow conspiracy theorists, chased by feds and drones, Karras spends some time living rough in Oakland, California, pursuing leads from a nice Ethiopian Christian girl who survived a shooting at her church, who seems both fond and contemptuous of him, while trying to uncover... the Truth.
I really was not sure where the story was going or what it was even about. Mamatas inserts sly observations throughout, poking at the obsessions of paranoid right wingers and sanctimonious leftists, but I remained unsure what the point was. Is it about America's gun culture? About conspiracy theories? About the psychology of mass shooters? About social media derangement? About people trying to make sense of the senseless? At times the story had a bit of Robert Anton Wilson/Robert Shea Illuminati vibe.
The ending is where it gets really strange and earns the "sci-fi" label, but I cannot say I was left satisfied, or any less perplexed.
The Second Shooter is a departure from Mamatas's previous books; he usually dabbles in Lovecraftian horror, and I have to admit I preferred them. This one was just kind of weird, and seemed more like something born in a brainstorming session, perhaps inspired by some of the weird Japanese SF that he edits at Haikasoru, that never quite cohered....more
So I've decided to keep chugging through books about Israel and Palestine from various perspectives. Except for Palestine is a book from an unabashedlSo I've decided to keep chugging through books about Israel and Palestine from various perspectives. Except for Palestine is a book from an unabashedly leftist perspective, but it's a leftist ("progressive") US one, so most of the time it holds back on the more over-the-top seething resentment displayed by Palestinian writers. It was written during Trump's presidency and published shortly after Biden's election (with a foreword commenting on the authors' minimally-hopeful-but-skeptical assessment of Biden's expected Israel/Palestine policies). So the biases are very clear: the introduction asserts as givens that capitalism is bad, America is a malignant force of imperialism, anyone who votes Republican is a white supremacist, and Trump is the living embodiment of evil. If you are even a little bit doubtful about any of these premises, then you may find it difficult to wade through this much smugness and self-righteousness. Nevertheless (despite being a little bit doubtful about some of those premises) I persisted.
The target audience for this book is those same American progressives. (Clearly no one would bother trying to talk to any non-progressives, since it's taken for granted that they are irredeemable xenophobes who cannot be appealed to.) The title of the book is its argument: that progressives are "progressive" about everything except Palestine, where they suddenly fall silent about their progressive values. The authors repeatedly compare the situation in Palestine with the situation on the US/Mexican border, despite repeatedly admitting that the situations are not the same (and then complaining about how they are not treated the same).
Hill and Plitnick start by addressing "Israel's right to exist." After the pro forma throat-clearing about how antisemitism is bad and no one should hate Jews, they essentially argue that the "Israel has a right to exist" argument is bad faith and should be dismissed because no one is denying that Israel, you know, exists and no one is advocating that millions of Israelis should be murdered or displaced. Instead, the authors say, we ("we" always meaning progressives) should be focusing on what sort of country Israel should exist as 鈥� namely, one in which Palestinians have equal rights.
Which all sounds very nice, because why wouldn't we be in favor of Palestinians having equal rights? The authors argue against a Jewish ethnostate and Israeli laws that have limited the rights of non-Jews. Now, speaking as a non-religious, non-Jewish person who doesn't think anyone has an inherent "right" to their own ethnostate and who doesn't give a fuck who "owned" a piece of land 2000 years ago 鈥� sure, maybe the real answer to peace in the Middle East would be Israel ceasing to exist as a Jewish state and becoming instead a multicultural single state in which Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others all coexist peacefully. This is what many Israel critics claim was the state of Palestine before the Zionists arrived, and the "one state solution," while dismissable as a realistic solution today (for that matter, after October 7, so is the "two state solution," but we'll get to that), seems like something that Western progressives who don't care much about a Jewish state for the sake of being a Jewish state should support.
There are a few problems with that, however, and they are problems that the authors skip over entirely and which a lot of progressives will shout at you and call you racist if you bring them up, but they are very evident if, like me, you actually watch Arabic media channels and read the comments.
The first (but really, the smallest) problem is the ahistorical nature of these claims. While obviously Israel has been constantly in conflict since its founding in 1948, relations between Jews and non-Jews weren't entirely peaceful even before the British Mandate. (And yes, Jews did live there even before Zionists started arriving at the end of the 19th century.) No, Palestine has not always been a land of milk and honey and egalitarianism until the Zionists arrived. Arabs were willing to accept small numbers of Jews in the Ottoman and pre-Ottoman eras, but as soon as they began arriving in number (even when they were buying land legally), the Arabs became alarmed, and hostile. (Oddly, this fact does not figure into the authors' comparison with Americans' rejection of illegal immigrants.)
The bigger problem is that many, many Palestinians very literally and explicitly do not want Israel to exist. And by that I don't mean "They don't want Israel to have its current government" or "They don't want Israel to be a Jewish ethnostate." I mean they literally want Israel (and Israelis) to cease to exist. For all that Palestinians complain about Israeli peace offers being made in bad faith (and some of them have been), you have to be deep in denial to pretend that going back at least to Yasser Arafat, Palestinian peace offers haven't only ever been offered as a grudging acceptance of current realities on the ground (i.e., "y'all don't have the ability to destroy the Jews right now") while they prepared for their real objective, the destruction of Israel. Now some progressives will acknowledge this insofar as they will say "Sure, a lot of Palestianins feel that way in their hearts because of decades of oppression etc. etc. but a real and lasting peace would result in the next generation softening their stance"... so, I guess eventually we'd get a Palestinian population that doesn't want to literally kill all the Jews.
Even if Israel offered this 鈥� either a real two-state solution or even a one-state solution 鈥� there are many Palestinians who are pretty explicit about being unwilling to accept even that. They view Israel as stolen land, period, the arrival of Zionists as a settler-colonial project, Jews as invaders who displaced the indigenous people of Palestine, and the only remedy is to give the land back. All of it. They might be willing to allow the Israelis to peacefully evacuate, but most aren't too particular about the details as long as the Israelis are gone.
So in the meantime, Israelis have to deal with Palestinians today, and believe that the "right of return" to allow all Palestinians back into Palestine (and Israel) and make them equal citizens would de facto end Israel as a nation and probably lead directly to a very bloody civil war. Plitnick and Hill dismiss this as racist paranoia. I cannot say that I found their arguments convincing since they seem to rely entirely on opinion polls that say the majority of Palestians "prefer diplomacy over armed conflict." I mean, duh, but if you're coexisting with a population only 30% of whom want to exterminate you (and the rest will grudgingly tolerate your existence because they have to), that still seems like a pretty big obstacle to a one-state solution. (Yes, this works in the other direction too, since there is an influential minority of Israelis who, masks off, will admit that they wouldn't mind turning Gaza into a desert to be resettled by Jews.)
Except for Palestine did nothing to change my view on this and I remain unsure if the authors are just delusional or deeply, cynically disingenuous. They argue at length that Israel's repeated demands that Palestinians formally and explicitly accept Israel's right to exist are a bad faith demand for Palestinians to accept their subjugation, to forfeit all claims to their personhood and national identity, and are basically a sort of humiliation ritual that Israel doesn't demand of any other Arab nation. The authors are particularly weaselly, IMO, in claiming that the PLO accepted Israel's right to exist "to the same degree" that Egypt and Jordan did. What they mean by this is that none of them said in those exact words, "Israel has a right to exist," but Egypt and Jordan did make peace with Israel and are no longer trying to make them stop existing. There is certainly some finesse required in the precise wording of these sorts of diplomatic agreements and maybe in what Palestinian leaders can sell to their people, but the authors ignore the reason Israel is so adamant about this point: because without that explicit acknowledgment, Palestinians are always pretty clear that they don't think Israel should exist, at all, and thus any peace agreement can only be regarded as, at best, a temporary cease fire. Even the authors never come out and say they think Israel needs to be dissolved as a nation-state, but they clearly think asking the Palestinians to stop demanding that is unreasonable.
Next, Plitnick and Hill turn to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction) movement, and surprise! I agree with a lot of what they say here. The BDS movement is an attempt to put international pressure on Israel by boycotting all Israeli products, refusing to invest in Israeli companies, and imposing sanctions for their treatment of Palestinians. Israelis and many American Jewish organizations claim that the BDS movement is antisemitic, some going so far as to claim that Islamic terrorist groups are behind it all. The authors examine these claims and mostly dismiss them (while admitting that certainly there are some antisemitic groups that have joined the BDS movement), but their main objection is a peculiar kind of lawfare that has arisen in the US in recent years with "anti-BDS laws." Essentially, some states (notably Texas) have enacted legislation that punishes any company or organization that joins a BDS boycott by refusing to do state business with them. Similar legislation has been proposed in Congress.
As a First Amendment enthusiast, I actually agree with the authors here that such government actions, particularly when applied on behalf of Israel and nowhere else, are unconstitutional and antithetical to free speech. I do think the BDS movement is wrong-headed and it often is just a mouthpiece for anti-Israeli (and antisemitic) propaganda 鈥� but it's also clearly protected free speech. To be clear, "anti-BDS" laws don't actually criminalize the BDS movement, as the authors claim, but using the coercive power of the state in any way (in this case, by denying contracts and in the case of universities, threatening to cut funding) is still wrong.
That being said, most progressives seem to be on the same page about this; the only leftists I've ever heard supporting anti-BDS legislation were Jewish groups. So this hardly seems to be an example of "Except for Palestine" in the progressive movement.
The next chapter is about recent developments in Gaza ("recent" meaning up to about 2020), with the failure of the PLO and Fatah and the rise of Hamas. Here the authors are as oblique as I have found some Palestinian writers to be. They at least admit that Hamas is kind of violent and does launch the odd rocket now and then at Israel, but it's all in the context of "armed resistance" which, they take pains to point out, is recognized by International Law as legal for an occupied people. That the majority of Gazans voted for Hamas is not, they argue, because Palestinians support terrorism and Hamas's explicit goal of destroying Israel, but because they were so fed up with the corruption of Fatah, the Palestinian political party that governed Gaza previously.
This is probably true. Fatah was extremely corrupt. Unfortunately, so is Hamas, and Plitnick and Hill don't touch at all on whether Hamas represented any kind of improvement in Gaza, any more than they mention Hamas's practice of throwing Fatah supporters off of rooftops. They do kind of address whether or not Hamas is capable of actually negotiating with Israel by pointing out that Hamas has repeatedly offered truces, which have occasionally held for as long as five months(!). In fact, there is some complexity in Hamas's position; they started out as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood with the explicit goal of destroying Israel, but they have "softened" a bit in their willingness to accept 1967 borders with Israel (while not recognizing Israel as a nation, which is one of Israel's sticking points, which as I mentioned above, Hill and Plitnick argue is an unreasonable expectation on Israel's part).
Leaving aside my personal views on "International Law" (which is that it is a polite fiction that UN member nations use to pretend that there is some kind of regulatory body above any given nation-state, so that all you really need to keep wars and genocides from getting too out of hand is muster enough votes), the authors do a quick about-face when complaining that Israel and the US use Hamas's targeting of civilian populations (which they admit is true), which is also against International Law (also true) as an "excuse" to label Hamas terrorists and refuse to negotiate with them.
Of course I don't expect a detailed history of Hamas in this short cri de coeur for Western leftists, but nonetheless the omissions struck me as more evidence that the authors only ever see bad faith and "violations of International Law" going in one direction.
Finally, we get to Trump and American foreign policy. As you may recall, in 2017 President Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy there. This, predictably, enraged the Arab world and was an intentional slap in the face to Palestinians. Trump also withdrew US funding from UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) in 2018. (President Biden restored it upon taking office, until the US withdrew again after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack.) That Plitnick and Hill criticize these moves is expected; what they actually argue is that they were really just an extension, and not a deviation, of existing US foreign policy. The US had been perpetually postponing a move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for years; technically we recognized Jerusalem years ago but that was one of those diplomatic formalities that was never executed and has been postponed in the constant game of diplomatic kabuki that is Middle East politics. Until Trump blundered in and said "Fuck it," to the delight of Israelis and most American Jewish groups and the outrage of the Palestinians. Hill and Plitnick's argument that Trump basically just did in deed what the US has been doing in words for decades is not wrong. As for UNRWA, well, that's a subject about which more books could be written. On the one hand, it was a humanitarian lifeline for millions of Palestinians. On the other, after October 7, I find its critics to have been more right than wrong that it was at best an obstacle to any sort of permanent resolution to the Palestinian refugee situation, and at worst, literally just another grift to be subverted by Gaza's leadership (meaning, at this time, Hamas).
Michael Plitnick is an American Jewish writer and Israel critic. Marc Lamont Hill is an American journalist and activist. Curiously omitted from most blurbs about this book is that Hill is also a host on the Al Jazeera network. Now a lot of people think Al Jazeera is a propagandist anti-Israeli mouthpiece for the Qatari government. As someone who has watched a fair amount of Al Jazeera (both in English and in Arabic), I can tell you: it is a propagandist anti-Israeli mouthpiece for the Qatari government. That said, they do actual journalism and contrary to what you might think, they don't (overtly) call for the destruction of Israel or the death of Jews. So reading Except for Palestine was rather like watching an Al Jazeera "documentary" about Israel and Palestine. The facts are true, in rough outline, but a whole lot of context is skipped over and there is no actual interrogation of opposing perspectives. Do Israelis or Israeli supporters have any reasons for believing the things they do and doing the things they do that go beyond paranoia and hatred of Palestinians? According to Hill and Plitnick, no more than anyone votes for Trump for reasons beyond hating black people.
Except for Palestine is written by and for leftists. In fairness, it is pretty explicit about that being its intention. If you want to understand what the "leftist" view is, this book is a pretty good summary of all the talking points. If you have some broader knowledge of the history of Israel and the conflict in Palestine, even if you are left-leaning yourself, you might find yourself frequently saying "Okay, but wait a minute鈥�" as I was. This book is not meant to persuade hardcore Israel supporters or non-leftists, Will it persuade someone who is a pro-Israel leftist to reconsider? The argument is that being pro-BLM, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist requires one to be pro-Palestine. This may be true, but I found the argument to have too many internal contradictions to be persuasive. ...more
Swim Home to the Vanished, by Din茅 (Navajo) author Brendan Shay Basham, is a literary trip, and like lots of literary novels, it's more about the expeSwim Home to the Vanished, by Din茅 (Navajo) author Brendan Shay Basham, is a literary trip, and like lots of literary novels, it's more about the experience than the story. The description of the book indicates it is meant to be packed with allusions about the Din茅 creation story and the hardships of the Navajo people, but not being more than passingly familiar with Navajo myths and history, I mostly didn't get the references.
Damien is a line cook whose brother died (or disappeared, it's unintentionally unclear). Wallowing in grief, Damien packs up his things and goes on a walk. Along the way, he starts growing gills. This is just one of those things that happens, because this book is "magical realism."
Damien arrives at a small fishing village. The day he arrives, there is a funeral for a woman who died recently. The village is run by a family of brujahs (witches). Ana Maria is the brujah matriarch, whose daughter is the woman who died. She hires Damien to be a cook at the bar/restaurant she runs. Damien comes to realize there is a power struggle going on between Ana Maria and her children, while he himself is a figure of pity and suspicion to the local villagers, who fear the brujah. Everyone is actually some sort of sea creature, and Damien is slowly turning into a fish, while he struggles with his grief and mostly mopes around thinking about his childhood with his deceased/missing brother in elegiac internal monologues.
This book was full of poetic and emotional prose, but it wasn't for me. Because it is "magical realism" it gets compared to the usual suspects (Murakami, M谩rquez, etc.) but it's not like anything written by any of those authors. It's a sort of meandering collection of ganja-thoughts strung together in a loosely connected metaphorical narrative that went over my head. I could close my eyes and immerse myself in the imagery, but as a reading experience it just wasn't my thing. Swim Home to the Vanished is one of those books I can appreciate for its craft without really enjoying it....more
I guess I'm kind of a Victor Methos fan now, though he writes about two books a year and I only read one every few years. I have found that he has a pI guess I'm kind of a Victor Methos fan now, though he writes about two books a year and I only read one every few years. I have found that he has a pretty reliable formula, which means I always know what to expect. The main character is a lawyer with some issues. There will be a horrific murder, a lot of dirt to dig up in the lives of the victim and the suspects, an unsympathetic defendant goes to trial, the story will switch to courtroom procedural, and then there will be some shocking plot twist(s) at the end.
It works. It's not original and Methos's writing is very workmanlike and his characters are kind of flat and same-y. He writes punchy dialog with one-note characters and I thought The Hallows seemed particularly rushed. But I liked it. It's kind of a comfort read if you like the occasional legal thriller.
This time, his main character is Tatum Graham, a small-town kid who made it big in Miami. He's got everything: partnership in a high-end law firm, an unbroken string of victories in the courtroom, mansions and hot girlfriends, basically living the life of a big name lawyer. Then one of his clients he just got off for killing a young woman kills another, and he snaps, decks the guy, and bails on Miami and his firm.
This sudden existential crisis was the plot device to get him to the small Utah town where he grew up. I must admit I never bought it; he's been a defense lawyer for years, he's had scummy clients before. He even gets asked by other people why this one made him turn his back on everything. We eventually learn it's connected to events in his childhood, but the connection never seemed convincing to me.
Back in his hometown, his old flame from high school is now the DA, and she's trying to prosecute an ugly case while fighting a hard battle for reelection. The victim was a teenage girl, the suspects are the asshole sons of the town's richest families. Tatum agrees to join the DA's office and take lead prosecution. Now that he's batting for the other team, he goes head to head with another big city shyster brought in to defend the most likely perpetrator. Tatum chews a lot of ass as he works over the small-time DAs and the local cops who did a shitty investigation, and conducts some detective work on his own. None of this seems terribly likely or realistic, but it keeps the case humming as Tatum fights legal battles in the courtroom while uncovering one twist after another outside of it.
The ending, like several of Methos's other books, seemed to pull a twist out of his ass. These aren't mysteries where you can figure out what really happened if you pay attention to the clues. They're thrillers where you just ride along to see what happens.
Despite my criticisms of the writing quality, I will say that The Hallows came when I kind of needed a palate-cleanser that is just lowbrow page-turning entertainment. Methos has a formula, and it's fine for what it is. ...more
The Slab is a strange book that is, despite initial appearances, a horror novel. The horror starts out mundane and plenty awful: there's a gang of CalThe Slab is a strange book that is, despite initial appearances, a horror novel. The horror starts out mundane and plenty awful: there's a gang of California good ol' boys from all walks of life who have formed a very particular social club. Once a year, they go on a "dove hunt." The doves they hunt are not birds.
So you have a bunch of rapist serial-killers who grab a woman who turns out to be more resourceful and bloodthirsty than their previous victims. The hunt is on, and it's a grim survival noir tale.
One of the main characters is Ken, the sheriff of a remote part of Imperial County, California. He has jurisdiction over the Slab, an unincorporated community of drifters, RV and van life hobos, and social misfits all living rent-free (sans electricity or plumbing or any other services) on a set of concrete slabs on the edge of the Salton Sea. These are people who mostly have nothing but their guns and their beer and they like it that way. But a slick real estate agent has big development plans for the Slab, and after offering a carrot to evict the squatters, he brings in a bunch of hired muscle as sticks.
One of the people living on the Slab is Harry, an old man who seems like a lovely fellow who very much loves his elderly wife. He is quietly sliding into dementia. He is also a former member of the "dove hunt" club.
Finally, there is Penny, an Iraq War veteran who's now an environmentalist and a peace activist protesting the nearby US military bombing range.
The Slab is a complex and layered book on many levels. It was written and published immediately after 9/11, which figures as a background event that casts a shadow on events throughout the story even though it's not directly relevant. Each and every character, from the serial killers who hunt women for sport to the three "main" characters, all of their significant others and friends and coworkers, the real estate agent, his minions, everyone, gets POV scenes and is fully fleshed out with personalities that are believable if sometimes loathsome. Harry is a particularly complicated character; he's one of the protagonists, he is in most ways a good guy, he's nearly senile, and he has genuine remorse for his past actions... but his past actions are nearly irredeemable.
With all these characters and subplots set in motion, the plot begins to focus on Ken, Penny, and Harry, who it turns out have all experienced, a few times in their lives, "magic" days where they experienced a supernatural sense of possibility and incredible things happened. When the three of them come together, they all recognize the magic in each other, and that they have a mission. The mission leads them to a supernatural confrontation with evil that almost seemed like an unnecessary insertion into a book that could otherwise have been a straightforward thriller.
I went back and forth while reading this, sometimes frustrated by all the side characters whose thoughts are taking up page space and the weird intrusion of supernatural elements, and sometimes appreciating the depth of the characterization in such a tight narrative and the fact that it was never boring; there's always some bloodshed about to happen. I am still not completely convinced that it couldn't have been written without the Mushrooms of Evil, but the supernatural horror eventually paid off, kind of.
The Slab is kind of an artifact of its time, and doesn't fit neatly into a genre category, but I thought it was a nice piece of writing craft that probably deserves a wider audience. I am not familiar with the author and had never heard of this book before I downloaded it as part of a Humble Bundle, so it seems to be one of those small press books that just sort of disappeared after its initial release....more
Loading...
