Third in a series, but works fine as a stand alone

The Devil's Elixir
by Raymond Khoury

As many thrillers as I read, somehow I hadn’t yet made it around to Raymond Khoury.  So, even though I hadn’t read earlier Templar novels featuring Sean Reilly and Tess Chaykin, I decided to dive right in.  Fortunately, Khoury’s enough of a pro to gracefully exposit everything I needed for this novel without spoiling past tales.  I didn’t feel like I was missing a thing.

The Devil’s Elixir opens with three brief prologues that establish elements of the story.  After that, the action takes off with a bang.  Specifically the bang of the gunshot that kills former DEA agent Michelle Martinez’s boyfriend the moment he answers the door to her apartment.  The killers then go after Michelle.  She grabs her four-year-old son, gets out, and calls the most trust-worthy person she can think of, former flame Sean Reilly.  He gets on a plane no questions asked and gets sucked into Michelle’s inexplicable nightmare.  She hasn’t worked in law enforcement in years, but these killers won’t quit. 

Of course, this is barely the beginning of what turned out to be an entertaining page-turner.  As noted earlier, there’s plenty of action, but story doesn’t suffer in service of it.  Things move at a consistently fast pace.  I won’t claim these are the most well-developed characters of all time, but they’re likable enough that I cared about their fates.

Finally, there was a major twist in the last quarter of the novel.  Ultimately, I’m not sure what I thought of it, but I didn’t see it coming at all.  Overall, it was well-handled.  This was a positive enough introduction to Khoury’s work, that I’m much more interested in reading the earlier Sean & Tess novels and will certainly consider reading future works.

There is very little about this little book that I didn't like!

The Odds: A Love Story
by Stewart O'Nan

It opens, “The final weekend of their marriage, hounded by insolvency, and, stupidly, half secretly, in the never distant past ruled by memory, infidelity, Art and Marion Fowler fled the country.”  Yeah, it’s a bit unwieldy, but it gives you the basics of the entire novella’s plot, which is this:

After decades of marriage, and deep into middle age, Art and Marion are at the end of their rope.  Both are out of work.  They’re about to loose the house.  The marriage is shaky.  The kids are out on their own, but the two of them are flat broke.  So they’ve decided to go for broke.  For their anniversary weekend, they’re heading across the border at Niagara Falls where they spent their honeymoon all those years ago.  They’ve got the Honeymoon Suite, and they’re hitting the casino.  They’re smuggling across the last few tens of thousands in cash they have left.  If they can double it, they can keep the house for a while longer.  If they can’t, they’ll loose it all.  And if so, they’ll return home and get divorced to protect what very little they may be able to salvage.

The novella tells the story of what happens that weekend, but also the story of Art and Marion’s lives together, their past indiscretions, and secrets or secret agendas one or the other may have.  Dispersed regularly throughout the book like chapter headings are statistics:

• Odds of a U.S. tourist visiting Niagara Falls: 1 in 195
• Odds of being killed in a bus accident: 1 in 436,212
• Odds of the sun coming up: 1 in 1
• Odds of a U.S. citizen filing for bankruptcy: 1 in 17
• Odds of the Cleveland Indians winning the World Series: 1 in 25,000

These statistics were a bit like a running commentary on the action, and also on the times in which we live.  (And I found myself wondering if any of them were true.)  In any case, I found them to be a delightful and often comic punctuation to the story.

I’ve never read Mr. O’Nan before, but his prose was a pleasure to read.  His characters had all the quirks and flaws of real people, and I got to know this couple and appreciate what they had together.  The spare story moved quickly, and like any story that builds up to a roll of the dice, it keeps you hanging on to the very last page.   I rooted for a happy ending.  Frankly, I was just hoping for resolution, because you never know with these things.  I left satisfied, and feeling like I’d just discovered a tiny gem of the new year.

GUEST BLOGGER POST: Finding Your Inner Bitch on Valentine’s Day by Elle Lothlorien

Let’s talk about Cadbury eggs. No, seriously.

A good friend of mine loves Cadbury Eggs. You know—those fondant crème chocolate eggs that are ubiquitous as Peeps just before Easter. Sure, I’ve seen them at other times of the year, but they’re usually relegated to a remote corner of a Walgreens, lurking on an untouched section of shelf, and covered with enough dust to give you Black Lung Disease.

So I was surprised when I walked into a grocery store right before Christmas and saw a fresh-looking display front-and-center, overflowing with dust-free Cadbury eggs. I immediately called my friend, sure she’d be excited by the news. “You’re not going to believe this,” I said in a taunting, sing-song voice. “I am staring at an entire display of fresh Cadbury Eggs right now!”

I figured that after she did a backflip and saluted the judges, she’d demand that I buy every one of them on the spot. Instead, she sniffed, “I never eat anything the Easter Bunny’s laid before the Christ Child is born.”

Okaaaaaay.

Let’s talk about Forrest Gump. No, seriously.

At a writer’s conference a couple of years ago, a group of us were enjoying a round of drinks in the hotel bar, when the topic of Forrest Gump came up. All agreed that it was a fine, funny movie and, well into our second, third, and even fourth cocktails, each of us threw out their favorite Forrest Gump platitude. There were the usual suspects: “Peas and carrots,” and “I was ruuunning!” and “Life is like a box of chocolates.”

My friend, who I will refer to as “Forrest” solely for purposes of anonymity, paused briefly before saying, “I never understood that one. ‘Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get?’ What do you mean you don’t know what you’re going to get? You’re going to get f**king chocolate!”

Oh dear.

Each of these anecdotes has two things in common. 1) Chocolate. 2) They both eventually found their way to a file in my computer called “Funny/Stupid Shit My Friends Say When Sober/Drunk That I Will Later Use in a Novel/Guest Blog Post at Some Point with Only a Minimal Effort to Hide Their Identity.”

No one is spared. To be fair to me (and I love to be fair to me), I give these people fair warning. When I meet someone for the first time and discover that they’re very funny, I tell them, “Just to let you know, anything you say can and will be used in my next book.” You can ask anyone.

It’s at this point in my guest blog posts that I usually provide a tie-in of sorts between the humorous anecdote and the business of publishing or the pleasure of reading. Now, you might think these two stories share no immediately discernible commonalities. Ah, but you’d be wrong.

As you can see, they both have to do with chocolate. Hey, it’s Valentine’s Day, it’s almost obligatory.

And…that’s pretty much it.

No, wait! There is one other thing. Let’s talk about Your Feminine Side. No, seriously.

Your Feminine Side is the part of you that you’re supposed to be “getting in touch with,” as if it’s an old college roommate you stopped calling fifteen years ago after they became richer and more successful than you.

Instead of “Getting in Touch with Your Feminine Side,” I recommend that you “Find Your Inner Bitch.”

Because your Feminine Side wonders if their significant other will buy you chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Your Inner Bitch just drives to the store and buys those dusty Cadbury Eggs for herself.

Your Feminine Side sits at home on Valentine’s Day and wonders if it’s okay to be single after all this time. Your Inner Bitch goes to a hot-tub party with other single girlfriends, and agrees with the group that if you were married/in a relationship, you’d probably be spending V-Day picking dirty boxer briefs off the floor, and telling him for the umpteenth time that him farting constantly in front of you drastically reduces the odds that he will ever bed you again (the limp bouquet of flowers he picked up on the way home notwithstanding).

So, whatever your status today, married or single, find Your Inner Bitch and just make it happen. Save Your Feminine Side for when you’re PMS-ing and reading your free copy of The Frog Prince or Sleeping Beauty, my two romantic comedies that I’m giving away FOR FREE, in the Kindle Store today in honor of Valentine’s Day.

And don’t forget to have Your Inner Bitch pick up the chocolate on the way home.
________________________________________

A “military brat,” Elle Lothlorien was born in Germany, and spent her childhood in such far-flung places as Puerto Rico, Charleston, S.C., Italy, and Washington, D.C. Sadly, the only language she ever became semi-fluent in is English. An early mid-life crisis propelled Elle Lothlorien to take a Lindy Hop swing dance class at a Denver bar. Three years (and a few ankle and knee braces) later she does a mad Charleston and can pancake like nobody’s business.


Elle lives in Denver, Colorado, and keeps two dachshunds around the house to provide comic relief.
You can find Elle Lothlorien’s romantic comedies The Frog Prince and Sleeping Beauty on Amazon. Her third romantic comedy, Rapunzel, will be released in the spring. You can read more about her and her upcoming novels at www.ellelothlorien.com, Facebook, and by following her on Twitter.

It’s about the people, not the game

The Art of Fielding
by Chad Harbach

Full disclosure: This novel forced me to acknowledge that I really had no idea what a shortstop was, beyond it being some sort of baseball position.  Because, WHY WOULD I KNOW?  So, that tells you something about me.

And I mention this because, for me, the very best works transcend what may be uninteresting subject matter.  For instance, while I am aggressively disinterested in the sport of wrestling and don’t read memoirs, John Irving’s memoir of his life in wrestling (Trying to Save Piggy Sneed) was brilliant.  I thought that The Art of Fielding was a fantastic debut novel, but it never transcended the baseball.  There’s a lot of baseball, and I’m a girl who doesn’t know what a shortstop is.

Fortunately, this is not a novel about baseball, it’s a novel about character.  Specifically, the tale revolves around an ensemble cast of five central characters.  The first two (surprise, surprise) meet on a baseball diamond.  The novel opens:

“Schwartz didn’t notice the kid during the game.  Or rather, he only noticed what everyone else did—that he was the smallest player on the field, a scrawny novelty of a shortstop, quick of foot but weak with the bat.  Only after the game ended, when the kid returned to the sun-scorched diamond to take extra grounders, did Schwartz see the grace that shaped Henry’s every move.”

On the day of their meeting, Henry Skrimshander is contemplating the end of his baseball career.  He’s graduated from his small South Dakota high school, and there’s no college on the horizon.  But Mike Schwartz sees the talent that others have missed.  And he takes action.  (“He knew how to motivate people, manipulate people, move them around; this was his only skill.")  With no authority, he promises Henry a place at Westish College, where he’s about to enter his sophomore year—and delivers on it.  By sheer force of will, he changes the course of Henry’s life.

At Westish, Henry meets the other major players…  “My name’s Owen Dunne.  I’ll be your gay mulatto roommate.”  And then there’s the college president, Guert Affenlight, and his 25-year-old daughter, Pella.  “When they spoke they spoke in monosyllables, more like characters in a Carver story than real live Affenlights.”

I’m concentrating on the characters more than the plot because while a whole lot happens, this truly is the very best kind of character-driven fiction.  These five are appealing, fallible, and so very human.  In the end, it’s not about the big game, it’s about lives, relationships, and coming of age—no matter your age.  Yeah, I could have done with a little less baseball, but even with all the sports, this book was a joy from start to finish.  And it augurs a career that many of us will be watching for years to come.

Naughty was never so nice

Smut: Stories
by Alan Bennett

I’m a fan of Alan Bennett’s wonderful plays, but my greatest affection is reserved for his charming novella The Uncommon Reader.  Coming in at a slight 160 pages, Smut is similar in length, but this book is made up of two brief stories.  In content, they have nothing in common with that earlier tale, but they exhibit the same trademark humor and warmth.  This is a writer it’s difficult not to like.  Therefore, it may be surprising to hear that Mr. Bennett is writing Smut.  These tales are about sex—at least in part.  And though it’s been years since I read them, these stories remind me of nothing so much as the “adult” stories of Roald Dahl. 

The first and longer of the two stories was my favorite.  “The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson” involves a middle-aged widow who supplements her income by acting out symptoms for medical students to diagnose.  There’s much more to it, of course, but half the pleasure here is in the discovery.  The other half of the pleasure is the loveable and very human Mrs. Donaldson.  And then the third half of the pleasure is the gentle humor.

I didn’t like the characters in “The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes” quite as much, but they weren’t meant to be as likable.  The vain Graham Forbes has several secrets he’s keeping from his new wife, but it turns out she has an agenda of her own.

Despite Bennett’s natural sweetness, these stories really do discuss sexual matters in a very frank and adult manner.  Nonetheless, I wouldn’t describe them as graphic.  I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend The Uncommon Reader to anyone who’s ever loved a book.  I won’t be recommending Smut quite as unreservedly.  I think more open-minded readers will enjoy these stories the most.  But I enjoyed them immensely, and I do recommend them.

Thanks for the memories!

Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany
by Stephen Sondheim

The first volume of Stephen Sondheim’s collected lyrics and reflections was so spectacular, all I could hope for was that he could equal it—and that’s exactly what he’s done.  Look, I Made a Hat has all the strengths of the first volume.  It has the same gorgeous photographic spreads, and the book designer must have heard all the complaints about the difficult to read typeface of the lyrics in the last volume.  This book features black print that’s perfectly legible.

It should be no surprise to any reader that Stephen Sondheim is a master wordsmith.  His precise and slightly persnickety voice comes through loud and clear.  Sondheim’s “comments, amplifications, dogmas, harangues, digressions, anecdotes, and miscellany” are absolutely riveting, and his humor peeks through as he relates his stories.  And the man’s vocabulary is absolutely staggering!  I was delightedly looking up the occasional word as I read.  “Gallimaufry” anyone?  Steve, I’m happy to learn from you any day.

It could be argued that Mr. Sondheim’s most productive years were covered in Finishing the Hat.  Still, the five major musicals covered in this volume (Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins, Passion, and the many incarnations of Wise Guys) are some of his very finest.  In the first volume, I was so excited to read about the troubled production of Merrily We Roll Along.  In this volume is was the circuitous history of Wise Guys/Bounce/Road Show—a “saga in four acts, he calls it—that I was anxious to hear straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.

There’s one more thing about this second volume that, in some ways, tops the first book for me.  Mr. Sondheim wrote about many of his most famous and classic shows in the first book, but there are a lot of resources with which to learn about those celebrated productions.  In this volume, he speaks of the musicals that were never to be, the movies, the television work, and other miscellaneous projects.  A lot has been written about Company, not so much about the unproduced musical Muscle, or the amazing television musical Evening Primrose.  In short, this is the only place you can really read about these almost mythological productions.  Yes, I’m a huge geek, but I’m not alone.  It’s thrilling!

I came of age during the years covered by this book.  I must have been 18 or 19 when I took the train to NY for the first time to see a Broadway show.  I vividly remember the sight of the giant’s enormous legs hanging over the side of the (then) Walter Beck Theater.  It was my very first Sondheim production on Broadway.  It was the first of many, and it was life-altering.  All I can say at this point is:  Thanks for the music and thanks for the memories!

VIDEO: Adam Johnson on The Orphan Master's Son

I am so pleased to be able to share this video of Adam Johnson's book launch for The Orphan Master's Son.  This was filmed on the book's release date, January 10th, at the wonderful Booksmith on Haight Street in San Francisco.  If you are not already aware of it, Adam is one of our local San Francisco talents, and it's a great pleasure to see the success he's already having with this novel.  It could not be more deserving!  (My review can be seen here.)  This book is going to be huge, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

So, the footage above consists of Adam's introductory remarks before he began reading from the novel.  Sorry about the early shakiness, it passes quickly.

The next two clips are Adam reading from the second half of the novel.  I have to admit that there's a gap of a couple of minutes between the first video and the second.  (I was changing batteries.)  This isn't that big a problem, however, because observant readers of the novel will notice that this isn't one continuous passage from the text.  Actually, he's cobbled together several different passages into one fairly linear narrative.  The missing moments shouldn't cause you a problem.








I know what you're thinking. You're wondering, What happened to video 4 of 7? Well, the audience clapped for so long after Adam finished reading that I just stopped filming after a minute and started again once the applause died down. So, that's nothing you need to see.

However the following three videos are the lively Q & A session after the reading. For those who are wondering about the truth behind the fiction, this is absolutely fascinating!  Adam talks about his research, his trip to North Korea, and more.

The other thing that makes these events such a privilege to attend is that the author's personality shines through as he answers questions. And Adam Johnson seems to be a sweet, thoughtful, gentle, and funny man. I've seen him at other Bay Area lit events, and have met him in passing before. Every time I see him he impresses me as a truly good guy.











If you haven't already picked up a copy of The Orphan Master's Son, seriously, go get it now. Even better, contact The Booksmith for a signed first edition!

NOTE:  Last week was an awesome one for lit events in San Francisco.  I also filmed some amazing footage of Tea Obreht reading from and discussing The Tiger's Wife (which made my top ten list for the year).  I'll be posting that footage to the blog next week.  Please check back!

The first great novel of 2012!

The Orphan Master's Son
by Adam Johnson

I read a lot.  I read a diverse cross-section of fiction.  And I am telling you that I have never read anything like Adam Johnson’s novel, The Orphan Master’s Son.  And I’ll cut to the chase here and tell you that it knocked my socks right off!

The novel is the story of Pak Jun Do, the eponymous orphan master’s son.  Jun Do spends the novel explaining to people that despite his orphan’s name and upbringing in an orphanage, that he is not an orphan.  Although he is not parented well, or for long. “All orphans are destined for the Army eventually.  But this was how Jun Do, at fourteen, became a tunnel soldier, trained in the art of zero-light combat."

This is merely the first chapter of Jun Do’s absolutely extraordinary life.  He’s a tremendously appealing character, who struggles to overcome the many challenges of his life with integrity and without complaint.  He literally doesn’t know there is an alternative to the harsh life he has experienced in North Korea. 

So, the novel revolves around a terrific central character, and the author has given him an epic and eventful story, but truthfully it’s the North Korean setting that makes this story so compelling.  The novel opens with the first of many propaganda bursts played from ubiquitous loudspeakers.  What it broadcasts is insane!

“In local news, Our Dear Leader Kim Jong Il was seen offering on-the-spot guidance to the engineers deepening the Taedong River channel.  While the Dear Leader lectured to the dredge operators, many doves were seen to spontaneously flock above him, hovering to provide our Reverend General some much needed shade on a hot day.”  

That is just the very tip of the iceberg.  Life in North Korea is like nothing I could imagine in my wildest dreams.  Well, nightmares.  Author Johnson spent years researching the peninsula, and actually had the rare opportunity to visit the country while writing this novel.  It is fascinating in a truly horrifying way.  I will never listen to news out of North Korea the same way again.

I could write more about Jun Do’s picaresque story, but the joy here is in watching it unfold.  The Orphan Master’s Son has been described as a literary novel, a romance, and a thriller.  It is all of those things and more.  Beneath the surface of the story, there is commentary not only on life in this oppressive realm, but in our own.  And it’s actually about the role that the stories we tell has on the direction of our lives.  It has humor, emotion, heart, and a hero you’ll root for.  This is a powerful novel and simply fantastic storytelling.  I highly recommend it for pretty much everyone.  This early in the year, I may just have read one of 2012’s best books.

NOTE:  I shot some great video of Adam Johnson speaking at the novel's book launch in San Francisco last week.  I wanted to get it posted earlier, but I've been having "technical difficulties" getting the footage uploaded.  Adam's discussion of the book, reading, and the Q & A is fascinating, so hopefully I'll be able to post it soon.  :-)

Not my cup of tea, but it might be yours

Island of Wings
by Karin Altenberg

My best friend and I jokingly rate books and films on their “Susan-friendliness,” and that’s nothing more than the completely subjective scale of my idiosyncratic likes and dislikes.  I should have known that Karin Altenberg’s debut novel, Island of Wings, wouldn’t be my cup of tea.  But that said, I don’t necessarily think that there’s a thing wrong with this novel.  It’s not my kind of story, but I think that it was skillfully and effectively told.

Perhaps most interestingly, the story here is heavily based on historical fact.  It is a fictionalized account of the life of Reverend Neil MacKenzie and his wife Lizzie.  MacKenzie, dealing with demons of his own, asks the Church of Scotland to “preach the Gospels in the most godforsaken place they could offer—he had suggested Newfoundland, where he was sure he could do a world of good.  In the end, the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge had asked him to go to St. Kilda—the furthest inhabited islands in Britannia.”

The novel, which is told somewhat episodically in eight parts between the years 1830 and 1843, has clearly been meticulously researched, and I found the author’s note at the end quite interesting.  The setting of the novel is a fascinating place with which I was completely unfamiliar.  When the couple arrives in 1830, the islanders are enjoying a happy subsistence, living exactly as their ancestors did centuries earlier.  It’s a very different, rather primitive way of life.  Altenberg does a great job of conveying the harsh beauty of this remote place, with special attention to the natural world.

What I personally had trouble with was the relationship at the heart of this novel, and the character of the Reverend.  Women didn’t have an easy time of it back then, and while I can’t say that this novel is completely joyless, it’s a harsh existence and utterly humorless.  Also, as a secular Jew, the whole idea of Christianity being forcefully foisted onto a disinterested people is distasteful to me in the extreme.  Reverend MacKenzie is not a sympathetic character and was simply not someone I wanted to spend 300 pages with.  Still, he was characterized well enough (and not as some kind of black and white monster, but as a very flawed human) to arouse strong feelings in me.

While Island of Wings ultimately wasn’t for me, I fully expect it to find its audience, and I am certainly open to reading Ms. Altenberg’s future work.

A review in 420 characters

420 Characters
by Lou Beach

These stories began as Facebook status updates, and each was limited to 420 characters—barely a paragraph.  So I began reading, and I was like, “What’s the point?”  Sure these brief stories were well-written, but there was no big picture.  Still, I kept reading, and discovered nurses named Ann O’Dyne, satires of Beatrix Potter, and openings like, “His shoot failed to open.”  They grew on me!