Buffalo Lockjaw review

The third and final of my pre-Winter Institute reads (since WI4 has already commenced), Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames will be available in April.  In some regard this novel is a fusion of two previously reviewed works, Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman and Stalking Irish Madness by Patrick Tracey.  Ames delivers biting humor and a frost-bitten terrain like Klosterman, while the alcoholism and a family struggling with a mother’s mental illness is compatible to Tracey’s own experience.  Beyond my reading experience, I was also able to relate to the long-suffering fans of the Buffalo Bills.  I was a Bills fan through all four of the consecutive heart-breaking Super Bowl losses and the shocking playoff loss known as the “Music City Miracle.”  Even more heart-breaking and shocking to me was the team’s outright release of Hall of Famers Andre Reed, Bruce Smith, and Thurman Thomas during that off-season.  That was the final indignity I suffered as a Bills fan.  On a personal level my mother has been an registered nurse for going on 30 years, like the narrator’s, but thankfully she is not suffering from a debilitating mental illness.  I echo the narrator’s sentiment of “Give me a good RN over a fireman or a police officer any day.”

The narrator, a recovering addict and copywriter for greeting cards, returns to Buffalo to spend Thanksgiving with his stoic father, his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother, his sister and her girlfriend.  As a nurse his mother supported assisted suicide for terminal patients, and now he’s coming home to grant the final wish she is no longer capable of expressing.  All he needs to do is avoid old acquaintances and stay sober long enough to screw up the courage to do something with his life, beginning with ending her’s.  It’s never that simple in Buffalo!

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane review

This book won’t be out for a few more months, but I read an advance copy since I will be meeting the author next week at Winter Institute. If half of the authors coming to the Institute are as interesting as Katherine Howe I’m in for a real treat! Howe is a rarity – a poker-playing PhD who writes exquisite fiction. What else might you expect from a descendant of Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor, two of the women accused of witchcraft in Salem?

What if some of those women weren’t falsely condemned, though? What if at least one of them, Deliverance Dane, was in fact a practitioner of arcane arts? That is the approach that Howe has taken in The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. She may have been a witch, and while she was not falsely condemned, she was certainly wrongfully condemned, for witchcraft, though arcane, is not diabolical in this compelling tale.

Connie Goodwin, a PhD candidate at Harvard, has her dissertation research derailed by an odd request from her eccentric mother. At her mother’s behest she spends the summer in Marblehead, Mass., attempting to resuscitate her grandmother’s vacant home into salable condition. In doing so she uncovers a new line of inquiry into a dark chapter of the colony’s history, the hysteria which produced the Salem witch trials. An antique key leads her on a path of discovery, unlocking the secrets of the true nature of witchcraft, which may not have been eradicated by the trials after all. In the first chapter Connie survives her own trial by fire: her oral exam for admittance to the PhD program. By the book’s end she faces another sort of trial, and her acceptance into an even more exclusive apprenticeship depends upon her survival. As Howe’s proxy discovers more about the mysterious practice of witchcraft it becomes apparent that Howe knows a thing or two about the practice of wordcraft.

I’m excited to meet her at Winter Institute, but I don’t think I’ll be playing poker with her!

The Yellow Leaf review

Last night I had the welcome opportunity to attend Pioneer Theater Company’s production of “The Yellow Leaf,” a play based upon the landmark meeting of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori in Switzerland during the summer of 1816. The play was written by Charles Morey, the company’s artistic director, and derives its title from Lord Byron’s On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year.  Turning phrases worthy of these giants of the literary salon is no small task, but Morey pulls it off with aplomb.  A well-appointed minimalist set is all that is necessary to present such larger than life characters.  Largest of these is Lord Byron,  who in his largesse is hosting the party at the Villa  Diodati.   Bjorn Thorstad fits into this large role rather well, prompting me to wonder if he is able to extract himself from the role as easily as he throws himself into it.   Thorstad employs the proper degree of physical and vocal affectations for the part, bringing Byron off the page and on to the stage.  His performance as an Englishman with a tremendous ego unimpeded by his limp reminded me of Hugh Laurie.  Shelley is a sensitive and sincere foil to the brazen Byron (though they have both fled from scandals in England), and Christopher Kelly plays him as such.  Ellen Adair is potent in the plum role of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley), and Lena Hurt displays a tempestuous range of emotions that echoes the squalls of that summer in Switzerland.  Giorgio Litt has the thankless task of playing the hapless Dr. Polidori, but the play would not be complete without him.  Under the direction of Geoffrey Sherman these actors give a compelling view of the momentous events of that summer and beyond.

The Kiss Murder review

This book is a departure from the previous three books I have read and reviewed (note the total lack of any type of spacecraft on the cover).  It’s also a departure from my norm: I don’t read much mystery.  I read The Kiss Murder because I will be meeting Mehmet Murat Somer at a reception at the ABA’s Winter Institute at the end of the month.  After reading the book I’m not sure what to expect at this reception.  Transvestites?  Thai kick-boxing?  An Audrey Hepburn film retrospective?  The Kiss Murder truly is a mystery!

Narrated by a computer programmer/transvestite club owner who never provides his or her names, this is a gender and mind-bending mystery.  She never gives her name, but she provides multiple names (combined with terms of respect and affection) for many of the other characters, and I found myself losing track of some in the labyrinth of Istanbul.  Like its narrator, this book is slim but packs a deceptive wallop!  Perhaps that is what I should be expecting at this upcoming reception!

The Comet’s Curse review

The Comet’s Curse is the first book in the Galahad series by Denver DJ Dom Testa.  The series has been acquired by Tor Books, which will release The Comet’s Curse on January 20th.  This is a science fiction series for young adults about 251 teenage colonists who depart Earth after particles from a passing comet pollute the atmosphere, poisoning all inhabitants over the age of 18.  With the little time remaining to the human race, a scientist leads a mission to construct a spaceship, the Galahad, capable of sustaining life for a five year journey, and to select the 251 teenagers capable of manning the ship and continuing the species on a planet in another solar system.  A global search for the best and the brightest is conducted, and a council is appointed to lead them.  The council is representative of the diversity of the crew, and are the main characters of the book.  If the ship’s five year mission and international crew remind readers of the original Star Trek series it’s probably not a coincidence!  And like Captain Kirk, the ship’s leader is involved in some romantic entanglements, but that’s to be expected from a 16-year-old girl sealed inside a co-ed space cruiser!  This is a book for teens who may or may not be fooled by the head fake Testa gives them during the first on-board crisis (I wasn’t).  It’s also a great lead off for a promising series.  The trip to their new home will take five years, but The Comet’s Curse covers only the launch and the first few months of the mission.  Testa has a steady hand with pacing, moving the story along without rushing the action, including the inevitable romances that will ebb and flow like lunar orbits.

Alcatraz is Back!

The anti-heroic autobiographer Alcatraz Smedry returns with a new supporting cast in Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones (ostensibly) by Brandon Sanderson!  There are new Smedrys with new talents – meet Kazan, the uncle with the ability to get lost, and Australia, the cousin with the gift of waking up looking hideous!  Alcatraz isn’t the only one with family members crawling out of the glasswork – Bastille’s mother Draulin is also along for the ride in the glass Dragonaut!  This motley crew travels all the way to the Library of Alexandria to face new foes, the ghostly curators of Alexandria and the ghastly Scrivener’s Bones, and to find Alcatraz’s grandfather, Leavenworth Smedry, who is on the trail of his long lost son Attica, Alcatraz’s father!  Can Leavenworth, whose talent is arriving late, catch up to Attica before he sells his soul to the curators in exchange for the stores of knowledge held in the Library of Alexandria?  Can Alcatraz escape from the insidious clutches of the Scrivener’s Bones without sacrificing one of his friends?  Can you wait for the third Alcatraz book to come out?