Frame of Reference

I’ve been struggling to find a frame of reference for my review of Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem. One of the themes of the book is the very transmutability of frames of reference, which makes it all the more difficult to apply one to the story. I even attempted to read Psmith in the City by P.G. Wodehouse, an author who is repeatedly cited in the text, but did not profit from it. I was able to identify a suitable song by U2:

I was lost between the midnight and the dawning
In a place of no consequence or company
3:33 when the numbers fell off the clock face
Speed dialling with no signal at all

“Unknown Caller” is a good fit, but it requires its own frame of reference rather than providing one. Chronic City is replete with pop culture references, but they have been distorted to the point of being barely recognizable. Lethem is holding a mirror to New York City, but the mirror is warped. Chronic City also contains an abundance of drug references, primarily to marijuana. Some are implicit, such as one possible interpretation of the title, while most are explicit use by the point of view characters. This only heightens the surreal “through the looking glass” sensation. I felt agitated while reading it, as if Lethem’s writing is itself a form of illicit stimulant. Like a dealer, Lethem is guilty of possession with the intent to distribute!

Chronic City follows Chase Insteadman, the former child actor, through his life-altering acquaintance with Perkus Tooth, a former counterculture soothsayer. Chase and Perkus share fixes and fixations with Richard Abneg, a former activist turned fixer for the mayor. Rounding out this expansive social circle is Janice Trumbull, an astronaut stranded in orbit who is only present in the letters she writes to her fiance (Chase), and Oona Laszlo, a ghostwriter who is not present in her writing. Each character negates their own identity, casting off frames of reference along the way until the baffled Insteadman finally comes to terms with his relation to the people around him. Lethem writes the story so brilliantly that we are left wondering which is more warped, the city or its reflection?

The Song Is You review

The iPod plays such a prominent role in The Song Is You by Arthur Phillips that I kept mine on while I read (it’s on at the moment). Like the main character, Julian Donahue, I set it to shuffle, leaving the song selection up to the digital wheel of fate, allowing it to offer up songs to fit the moment. Picking a U2 song to fit this book was a cinch; the inevitable choice being “Angel of Harlem.”

Lady Day got diamond eyes
She sees the truth behind the lies

Billie Holiday, Irish singers in New York – the song is a lock. And it did come up on my shuffled songs. But no one song can sum up a book any more than a song can sum up a person. What about a complete playlist? Without direct access to Julian’s iPod and Cait O’Dwyer’s music, could I create a playlist to accompany my reading? Some of these songs came up on shuffle, some I sought out, and some were suggested to me (special thanks to Anesidora):

1. Angel of Harlem, U2
2. Raining Again, Staind
3. Sorrow, Flyleaf
4. The One I’m Waiting For, Relient k
5. Naked, Avril Lavigne
6. No Line on the Horizon, U2
7. Angel Standing By, Jewel
8. I Will Possess Your Heart, Death Cab for Cutie
9. Torn and Tattered, Joss Stone
10. Look Around, Blues Traveler
11. Promises, the Cranberries

To my ear and mind this list seems to be an excellent fit, but I would have to re-read the book while listening to it to be certain. Phillips writes rich prose that warrants slow savoring. I particularly enjoyed his hybrid words such as “moodicidal” and “divorcistan.” Originality is his strongest suit, and it is his character’s strongest longing.

Julian Donahue is a commercial director with a peculiar acuity for predicting the lifespan of a model’s beauty. This is an asset in his line of work, but a detriment in his personal life. Every interaction is analyzed down to the arc it will follow; if it is an arc Julian has already traversed, the beauty is lost to him. Already lost to him are his wife and son, but none of his interactions promise an original arc until he happens to hear Cait O’Dwyer sing. Her performance is not perfect, but he is able to project the arc of her career. He becomes her behind-the-scenes anonymous adviser and her music revives the dormant beauty in his life.

Julian strives for originality, and it is that originality that catches the attention of Cait, the star on the rise. They dance around one another, intriguing and inspiring in turn, but never touching. Near misses mount until each partner is beguiled to the breaking point.

Unfortunately the breaking point in their unconsummated intimacy is also the breaking point in the story. The ending of the book is as abrupt as the silence after a rock concert. That much is inevitable, but for an encore Phillips tacks on a disonant digression that detracts from the lyrical story he was telling. An unexpected twist in the arc, perhaps, but an unsatisfying one at that.

Physick Book display

The long-awaited release of Katherine Howe’s The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (see review posted 01/09) finally arrived last week! It is the #1 Indie Next Pick for June, and is presently #4 on the Indie Bound Bestsellers List for hardcover fiction! We set our display in a prominent location using a subtle pentagram formation. Along with the hard cover and audio versions of the book we are promoting I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Conde (University of Virginia Press, $16.50), Grimoires: A History of Magic Books by Owen Davies (Oxford University Press, $29.95), and Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $18.95) and a selection of Wicked themed books.

Visit the book’s website, the author’s Facebook page, or read Katherine Howe’s guest blog on Powell’s.com for more about this tremendous debut!

Warbreaker review

Even a casual observer of my blog’s tag cloud will notice a pronounced disparity between the name Brandon Sanderson and all the other authors whom I’ve listed. This is primarily due to the timing of when I started my blog; Warbreaker is the seventh book by Brandon Sanderson I have read since I first met him in 2006. It is fitting therefore that my 100th post should happen to be about the latest release from one of my favorite authors, the world making and breaking Brandon Sanderson.

As big of a fan as I am, I chose not to read Warbreaker as it was made available on Sanderson’s website. I’m not a fan of reading on a computer screen, so I waited for the recent release of the handsome hard cover from the publisher Tor, and I’m glad I did. I own all of Sanderson’s books thus far in hard cover, so I would have bought it anyway, even if I had read it in its digital format at no charge. For more on why Sanderson decided to post the book as he worked on it, refer to the author’s explanation.

For more on the book itself, here goes: one of the things I like the most about Sanderson’s books is the practically-based magic systems he devises. In Warbreaker the system is known as BioChromatic Breath, a combination of color and life force that is transferable from person to person or person to organic object. I found this magic system harder to buy into than those used in his other books, although it does provide some spectacular imagery and terrific plot twists, two of the other elements I find so enjoyable in Sanderson’s writing. Initially I wasn’t really drawn in by the main characters, but that changed as they did in the progression of the story. Vivenna and Siri are sister princesses from Idris, a conservative country that broke away from Hallandren, the seat of power and those segments of society corrupted by power. Hallandren is ostensibly ruled by Susebron the God King, a man who Returned from death as a divinity endowed with so much BioChromatic Breath that he poses a threat to his own kingdom. Under his auspices the kingdom is actually run by groups of priests who ensure that he and the other Returned like him are kept occupied by indolence and indulgence. In order to perpetuate their means of governance the priests must see to it that the God King produces an heir, preferably one from the royal lineage that broke away and founded Idris. As stipulated by a treaty, the king of Idris must send his daughter to wed the God King and become the Vessel for his heir. It does not indicate which of his three daughters he must send, however.

Vivenna has been trained in court politics and etiquette all her life in preparation for this union, but imminent war between Idris and Hallandren causes her father to reconsider. In her place he sends Siri, the youngest and most free willed of his daughters to submit herself to the God King. This sister switch upsets the balance of the Court of the Gods and pushes the two countries closer to war rather than uniting them together. Lightsong the Bold, one of the Returned who does not believe in his own divinity, further upsets the balance by trying to undermine his own reputation of uselessness, and everything topples with the reappearance of the mysterious Vasher and his baneful black blade Nightblood.

In some respects Warbreaker is the antithesis of Elantris, Sanderson’s first published book, in which godhood has become corrupted into a curse. Here we have a pantheon of powerless gods living a privileged life where sacrificing their own BioChromatic Breath, their own life force, is the only true power they wield. As in Elantris, a complex religious structure and a seemingly inaccessible magic system combine with traumatized yet undaunted characters to yield a satisfying surprise solution to a masterfully perplexing entanglement. Unlike Elantris, this does have a serialized feel to it owing to the way it was released, reviewed, and revised through his website and lacks some of the depth I have come to expect from a Brandon Sanderson novel.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet review

There has already been a good deal of buzz about The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen, and deservedly so. It’s an excellent debut. Larsen is only 16 years senior to his 12 year old protagonist, and their impressive accomplishments at a young age are comparable. This book manages to be personal, regional, and universal, and I for one would love to see a map depicting that phenomenal coincidence.

Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet lives on a ranch in Montana with his rancher father, scientist mother, older sister, and the memory of his deceased younger brother. T.S. Spivet is a map-maker, and not only in the traditional sense of cartography. He maps out everything from possible sequences in a game of Cat’s Cradle to the novel Moby Dick. He is also a gifted scientific illustrator whose drawings have been published in multiple scientific magazines and journals. When he is selected for the Smithsonian’s prestigious Baird Award he embarks on an expedition that will take him beyond any of his carefully cataloged drawings.

The book is filled with a selection of these drawings and quirky asides. I’m a fan of marginalia, and I thoroughly enjoyed these sidebars. It’s a remarkable blend of empirical information and charming personality. Among the wide array of details proffered I found many personally endearing, and I’m confident that there is at least a  little something for everyone from railroad enthusiasts to bathroom attendants in these pages. I strongly recommend it. While reading this I went on a camping trip to a state park that abutted one of the freight train stations mentioned in the book (although not one that T.S. passed through) and received some instruction on maps and compasses, which also helped me to identify with young T.S. Spivet. I met Reif Larsen at Winter Institute and I would relish another opportunity to engage him in a conversation as wide as the Montana range!

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún review

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún is an eminent addition to J.R.R. Tolkien’s preeminent body of work. Here we have two marvelous tales from Norse mythology, the Lay of the Völsungs and the Lay of Gudrún, retold by a renowned philologist. These are no mere translations; indeed translation is not possible when the extant sources are piecemeal variants and prose summaries. Tolkien painstakingly recreated these tremendous poems much like Regin reforged Gram, the sword Sigurd used to slay the dragon Fáfnir. Written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza, these lays are illuminating. A hero who was more highly anticipated for his prowess in the after-life than in mortal life, Sigurd is thus descried by a sibyl:

“On his head shall be helm,

in his hand lightning,

afire his spirit,

in his face splendor.

The Serpent shall shiver

and Surt waver,

the Wolf be vanquished

and the world rescued.”

Reading Tolkien’s poetry is like reading him for the first time again. His son and faithful editor Christopher Tolkien once again provides foreword, midword, and afterword. Yet unlike the insightful commentary he provided for The Children of Húrin (see review posted 02/08), here his notes are overly thorough and clutter up the work. These may be the very challenges that his father overcame in writing the lays, but he performed that feat in order to spare others from the ordeal. The exhaustive notes point more to a need to add length to the book than they do to an understanding of the story being told. I read them all and gleaned some gold from the dross, but I wouldn’t do it again. I would gladly read the lays many times over and I’d be a better storyteller for it.

Blood And Ice review

In his writing workshops Brandon Sanderson talks about strange attractors.  This entails taking two familiar yet dissimilar story elements and combining them to create an original story that is still accessible.  The best examples are movies: think The Lion King meets Gladiator.  Are you not entertained?  Blood And Ice by Robert Masello is another excellent example.  Vampires at the South Pole.  Is that a strange attractor or what?  A journalist (like Masello himself) is sent on assignment to a research station in Antarctica.  While there he inadvertently discovers two people, a man and a woman, frozen in the ice.  The couple is brought back to the station for examination, but all is not as it seems.  Though they have been frozen for over a century, they aren’t dead.  They’re undead.  They are also primary characters, with full histories and psychologies.  Even vampirism is approached scientifically at a research station, and this adds another interesting angle to the vampire mythos.  Ranging from the British Empire to the Crimean War in the past to the Pacific Northwest and ultimately to Antarctica in the present, this is a well researched vampire tale.  An editor should drive a wooden stake through some deplorable phrases of the “it was a challenge, and he liked a challenge” variety, but this is an interesting and entertaining story of the vampire variety.  ‘Blood And Ice is a good yarn’ may sound a bit strange at first, but then most strange attractors do.

And In The Third Book He Arose

The third book in my recent spate of men brought back to life books, A Madness of Angels: Or, The Resurrection of Matthew Swift was just as “dark fantastic” as The Dark Volume and The Watch. In The Dark Volume blue glass alchemy brings a man back to life, whereas in A Madness of Angels blue electric angels do the trick. The Watch reminded me of lines from U2’s “No Line On The Horizon;” A Madness of Angels reminds of these lines from “Breathe”:

Nine 0 nine, St. John Divine, on the line, my pulse is fine
But I’m running down the road like loose electricity
While the band in my head plays a striptease

The band in Matthew Swift’s head are the blue electric angels, incorporated with him upon his resurrection, and their tease is “come be we and be free.”  Swift is an urban sorcerer, one who draws upon the power of the city around him, but returning to mortality two years after his murder is not the work of any of his spells.  Someone has summoned him back, and the blue electric angels have come with him. The spectre that killed him before is after him again, but this time it has competition from both the blue electric angels as well as other factions that want to subject or destroy the angels for their own purposes.

Kate Griffin, otherwise known as YA author Catherine Webb, breathes life into an eclectic, electric debut.  I was so drawn into this story that I missed my bus stop.  When I belatedly stepped out into the rain I felt like the air was charged with power that could be tapped.  Swift tells his comrades in arms that sorcery is just a different point of view, a unique way of viewing the world around them,  and there just may be something to that.  This book is certainly unique and unpredictable, and there is certainly something to be said for that.

The Page Rule

I don’t subscribe to a page rule, be it 50, 75, or 100 pages.  I’m fairly meticulous in my selection of reading material (go ahead and call me a book snob, I won’t mind), so I don’t need a strict rule on the number of pages I will allow a book to engage me.  That said, a page rule would have saved me some time on my most recent read.  I gave The Stranger by Max Frei around 250 pages before I dropped it.  That was about five times the number of pages to which I should have subjected myself.

This book has been a sensation in Russia, so naturally I was curious about it. After reading half of it the only sensation I felt was drowsiness, and its popularity is a curiosity indeed. Sleep is a recurring theme in the book, as Max dreams his initial contact with Sir Juffin Hully, who then transports him to the magical realm of Echo, where he is frequently assailed in his nightmares. Max’s narration had a magical somnolent effect on me, and reading this book felt like one of those nightmares wherein you attempt to run but cannot move your feet.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this edition suffers from a poor translation. The language is colloquial and cliche, preventing the English reader from appreciating the whimsical story. I could try to read it in the original Russian, but I’d rather spend my time on other promising books instead.

The Dark Volume review

Gordon Dahlquist’s second book The Dark Volume is accurately titled. Like the great airship that crashes on the Iron Coast at the end of the first book, it lacks the lift of its predecessor, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters. Instead of the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso format of The Divine Comedy Dahlquist begins with the Ascension, followed by the Descension. Will the third book be the Rescension?

Miss Temple, Cardinal Chang, and Doctor Svenson have survived their confrontation with the cabal on the airship, where Miss Temple slew her former fiance. He and the majority of the cabal were destroyed, but some of their opponents took drastic glass-related measures to survive.  The artist-alchemist who discovered the properties of the blue glass was not among the survivors, but his knowledge was captured in a glass book before he expired.  This is the highly sought after dark volume, and new alliances are formed and fractured in the pursuit of its resources.  When it is at last obtained by a party with the power to employ it it is found to be corrupted by the man’s death and no one gets what they wanted from it.  I didn’t get quite what I wanted from reading The Dark Volume on the heels of the luminous first book, but that is often the case with second books.  I look forward to the Redemption of the third book.