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By Mike Beeman, on August 31st, 2010 [Mike had to read this book and review it because of reader votes in Junk Novel Roulette. Find more JNR here.]
 Author: Liz Carlyle
2007, Mass Market
Note: [We're not scoring or filing JNR books as reviews--that's just too mean]
Despite the deceptive title, a duke is in fact deceived by a dashing damsel in distress in this dreadful Dickensian drama. Antonia Warneham somehow deceives duke Gareth Lloyd (perhaps by forgetting to spout her back story immediately, in everyday conversation, as all the other characters do) and, boy, does she ever pay the price.
Apparently, the book is Carlyle’s warning against the damning deception of dukes, because Antonia suffers greatly for her deceit. If you deceive a duke he will do terrible things, like have sex with you while you are sleepwalking on the rampart (which is considered rape by most) and later say things like, “Let me feast my eyes on your pure English beauty” when the consensual sex actually occurs. (“Let me feast my eyes on your pure English beauty” is what a serial killer says to someone he is keeping tied up in his basement.) So take warning. After deceiving a duke, you will be subject to both his cringe-inducing constant narrative and the awkward sex that nearly, but not entirely, interrupts his babbling. And, of course, a healthy amount of “throbbing” and “thrusting.”
Along the way through the authors plodding, maddenlingly-predictable plot, Carlyle shoe-horns in themes of the time’s antisemitismby with the subtly of a jack-hammer, casually mentions Gareth’s teenage rape at the hands of some scurrilous sailors, and fails to set off even the most basic love triangle. If you were playing a drinking game to this novel by taking a sip of beer whenever you found a romance stereotype, you’d be passed out or sick in less than an hour.
John Fowles’ great novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman is, for all intents and purposes, similar to Carlyle’s novel. Both books are set in Victorian England, both concern romance between star-crossed lovers thwarted by the aristocracy and a rigid class system, and both feature main characters rebelling against their era. What’s missing from Never Deceive a Duke, though, is the character of Fowles himself. In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles’ narrator often deliniates to educates the reader on the customs of Victorian England, not only setting the story’s place in history but also countering the social sniping and stuffy Victorianism with a modern voice of reason reflecting on a socially confused time. Together, both reader and narrator shake their heads at the plight of poor Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, and see them as they are: casualties of Victorian England’s moral hypocrisy.
In Never Deceive a Duke, the reader is left to provide this voice of reason for him (or, much more likely, her) self. Maybe all that’s really missing is someone to look pityingly on the two dunces in this novel, and giggle at the author’s abysmal prose. With a narrator like Fowles’ elucidating the conventions of the Romance genre, pointing to the myriad clichés as they arise, and cringing, as any modern reader does, at the mystifying dialogue, Never Deceive a Duke could be enjoyed not for the romance that it fails at conjuring, but for the unintentional comedy that so often succeeds. “Come along with me,” such a narrator might say as she takes out her scalpel to dissect this awful novel. “Let us feast our eyes on this pure B-rate beauty.”
By Sean Clark, on August 31st, 2010 Whoops! We forgot to do RiH for July. Just got too caught up with that sexy anthology. We’re back on track for August though, so enjoy the tiny, orderly wrangling of this months reviews.
poet talks too much
“very tall, very texty”
still worth the reading
.
August’s first Great Read
billed as a novel–it’s not
top-nitch short stories
.
partly a good book
the music stuff didn’t fit
give it a B+
.
another Great Read
a very unique novel
you should read this book
.
Parkhurst writes quite well
structured like a wet noodle
book comes close, but no
.
this Abe’s a badass
structured like a good bio
plus undead slaughter
.
good Russian product
these short stories: harrowing
love the damn title
.
a publishing spoof?
this book is bad on purpose?
that sounds frustrating
.
By Kat Setzer, on August 30th, 2010 [A new entry in our "I Loved This Book When..." series will appear every Monday through September. To keep up with this series or any other, check out our Special Features page.]
 I loved To Kill a Mockingbird when I was twelve years old. I read it for the same reason most twelve-year-olds do: it’s standard fare in middle-school literature classes. A compelling look at the south pre-Civil-Rights, it focused enough on outsiderness to trick my nerdy twelve-year-old self into believing it was just as interesting as the X-Men comics filling my bookshelves. Because, you know, they were the bar for judgment, not that silly Pulitzer Prize nonsense.
I just plain skipped school for most of seventh grade, feigning migraines to get out of going to the mid-sized North Georgian junior high that I despised. As a result, I was “homeschooled” for eighth, which generally meant my parents left me alone in the house with an Algebra 2 textbook and a mail-order encyclopedia on world history. My father would suggest books for me to read, ranging from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to The Stranger. We didn’t really have a system in place for judging my reading comprehension; instead, my parents, both math types, liked to regale me with stories of their own high school English classes, where they read the first and last chapters of books and nothing else. (Note that I believe these tactics are generally frowned upon by serious homeschoolers.) …
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By Nico Vreeland, on August 30th, 2010 [In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]
 Lights Out in Wonderland, by DBC Pierre, reviewed by Alan Warner (Guardian)
I’m unspeakably excited for the new DBC Pierre novel. I loved his debut, Vernon God Little, and I was one of the few who liked his sophomore effort, Ludmilla’s Broken English. So I didn’t read this review past the subhead (“Alan Warner is impressed by DBC Pierre’s fast and furious satire on contemporary decadence”) in the interest of not spoiling a single bit of the book. This profile of Pierre is pretty safe, though. The only bogey on the radar: Wonderland still doesn’t have a release date in the U.S.
Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership, by Lewis Hyde, reviewed by Robert Darnton (New York Times)
A few weeks ago, I got in a Facebook fight about the recent rash of library closings around the country—I argued that free access to all the world’s knowledge should be considered a human right in any industrialized nation. Hyde, in Common as Air, goes a step further: he uses the writings of America’s founding fathers to argue that all “knowledge is ‘common property.’” Hyde digs into intellectual property law and the thorny issue of copyright, Hollywood and Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Mickey Mouse. It’s an excellent review of what sounds like an excellent book.
The Nearest Exit, by Olen Steinhauer, reviewed by Paula L. Woods (L.A. Times)
Woods says, “Olen Steinhauer makes another bid to be the espionage writer for our times with ‘The Nearest Exit.’” Strong words, and while the premise seems a bit familiar (hero searches for X amidst shadows), there are a few inventive details, like the “Department of Tourism,” which is really a division of the CIA. The real power of the novel, Woods says, comes from its willingness to ask deeper questions about the people who are asked to sacrifice—and sometimes to do horrible things—for “the greater good.”
Phantom Noise, by Brian Turner, reviewed by Courtney Cook (Washington Post)
The Hurt Locker was based on a poem? Evidently yes, and its writer is back with another collection of wartime poetry. Cook says this of the two collections: “Taken together, these books are an unusual two-part portrait of a decade of war: its strength, its wounds, its fantasies of home and, as it happens, the strange beauty of a stubbornly foreign culture.” Sounds good to me.
City of Veils, by Zoë Ferraris, reviewed by Diane White (Boston Globe)
Some of my favorite mysteries are set in far-off lands with exotic, entirely foreign cultures. The last few of these I’ve read—this one set in Thailand, and this one set in India—have disappointed, but even when the mystery is crap, you’ve at least got an interesting semi-travelogue. Ferraris’s new mystery—her second—is set in Saudi Arabia, with its brutally strict laws and savagely misogynistic attitude. White calls Ferraris “a formidably talented writer,” and says her characters are “utterly human.”
By Sean Clark, on August 27th, 2010 [Find previous installments of JABBIC here. You can suggest covers we should use, or volunteer to write a blurb, by emailing us here.]
 JABBIC is kind of like Balderdash with book covers. Based only on the cover at right, four of our contributors made up a one-paragraph premise for this week’s contestant, The Interrogative Mood, by Padget Powell. Can you reverse-engineer their fabrications and pick out the book’s real plot? (The answer will be posted in the comments later today.)
1.) Peter Grey had a back like a question mark. No one ever thought he would amount to anything. But one day Gray decided if you can’t beat it, embrace it–or rather de-brace it. Upon throwing away his back brace and any attempt at improving his physical condition, Grey does what would have never occurred to anyone who ever saw him: works manual labor in the tight spaces of a Pennsylvania coal mine. Knowing his fellow workers are not built for the narrow mines like he is, he spends the little off time he has not building a family, but fighting for the rights of his fellow miners. Peter Gray becomes the greatest labor advocate of the Twentieth Century that no one ever heard of. In the end, there is no question about the upright nature of Gray.
2.) All Sam can remember is that she has a family, somewhere. But who then is she living with now? She knows she has lived and worked where she has for years; she has memories. Yet each morning she awakes beside a husband-stranger with an ineffable feeling that the life she lives is not her own. How can one even begin to search for the impossible?
3.) Are your emotions pure? Are you leaving now? Would you? Would you mind? Thoughtful, cajoling and absurdist, Powell’s book of random non sequiturs are not without their method, sounding some tenderly recurring themes, such as a middle-aged ruefulness for simpler times, a longing for more elegant forms in clothes, tools, cars and looks and a tenderness for elephants, dogs and children. Are you bothered by your cowardice? Hilarity, irony, and sheer perverseness vie to question essentially what we know and how what we know makes us what we are.
4.) It’s a matter of inflection; with the right emphasis, facts become questions. Jasper Carl owns an art gallery in Greenwich Village, a proven testing ground for young up-and-coming abstract painters. Now, pressured by divorce, financial ruin, and a mysterious art dealer pushing his unheard of client with soft threats, Jasper must wrestle with some hard questions he has tried to ignore for years, questions about how he rose to his present place in life, and how he staid there.
5.) Is there a book by Padget Powell written entirely in hypothetical questions? Will it chronicle the intellectual and emotional awakening of one New York City Town Clerk as she begins to question her world? What will she discover as she interrogates her friends, family, former lovers, and even her own memories? Where will these questions, and their answers, lead her? And just who is leaving the notes underneath her door each night, prompting her interrogation with the riddles posed in each? Why are the questions taking on a terrifying menace as they become more personal, and threatening? Can she survive The Interrogative Mood?
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By Nico Vreeland, on August 26th, 2010 [This is the second installment of Armchair Detective, a C4 column about reading mysteries. Follow it here or follow all our ongoing features here.]
 In the past few years, I’ve noticed more and more so-called literary writers crossing over into genre fiction. Crossover has never been all that rare, but literary writers used to separate their genre work: Mike Beeman discusses Graham Greene’s “entertainments” here, and here’s a Washington Post piece about the pseudonyms that writers once used (at least partially) to write in different genres.
These days, the crossover is more condescending and less satisfying. In “mysteries” like The Missing and The Nobodies Album, authors attempt to elevate genre formulas with literary sensibilities, but they succeed only in creating hollow mishmashes, prettily written but horribly plotted.
I think I know why. …
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By Sean Clark, on August 26th, 2010 It’s my turn. Go ahead and punish me. Vote below for which of the 5 remaining books I need to read and review for C4. Betcha I get my done before everyone else, too.
Which book must Sean read?
- The Main Corpse (22%, 19 Votes)
- The Cereal Murders (8%, 7 Votes)
- Hellion (14%, 12 Votes)
- The Godmother (46%, 39 Votes)
- The Queen of Darkness (45%, 38 Votes)
Total voters: 85
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| NAME |
BOOK |
ROUND |
REVIEWED |
| Mike Beeman |
Never Deceive a Duke |
1 |
yes (read it 8/31) |
| Marcos Velasquez |
Miss Wonderful |
2 |
not yet |
| Nico Vreeland |
A Sorcerer and a Gentleman |
3 |
not yet |
| Sean Clark |
??? |
4 |
n/a |
| Aaron Block |
??? |
5 |
n/a |
| Eric Markowsky |
??? |
6 |
n/a |
| TBA |
??? |
7 |
n/a |
| TBA |
??? |
8 |
n/a |
By Nico Vreeland, on August 25th, 2010  Author: Adam Langer
2010, Spiegel & Grau
Filed under: Literary
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
5 |
| Depth..... |
3 |
The Thieves of Manhattan has been getting a fair amount of attention recently, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it’s formulaic hackery.
It begins as a familiar story about a young writer living in New York, working a crappy job while fantasizing about literary stardom, and dating a perfect girl he doesn’t deserve (and knows he doesn’t deserve). In Langer’s iteration, the young writer is Ian Minot, who works at a coffee shop, and writes “small” literary stories in which characters never do much.
Just as this is taking its first predictable turn (Ian’s beautiful, Romanian girlfriend leaves him and he gets fired from the coffee shop), a strange man approaches Ian and outlines a plan to even the score with the asinine honchos of the publishing industry. The man, Jed Roth, is a bitter ex-editor for a major (fictional) publisher; he’s written a novel about stealing a copy of The Tale of Genji worth millions of dollars. He wants Ian to claim that the novel is in fact a memoir about Ian’s life.
This is when Thieves begins to morph from a familiar, mediocre story into a more complex and bizarre commentary on the publishing industry. In the end, the butt of the joke is you, the reader of Langer’s novel. …
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By Sean Clark, on August 24th, 2010 [In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]
Percival’s Planet, by Michael Byers, reviewed by Suzanne Berne (New York Times)
 Ms. Berne’s review is mostly plot and character summary, but luckily Byer’s plot and characters are quite interesting. The novel is a work of historical fiction telling the story of a Kansas farm boy who discovered Pluto. Berne’s description–”Mr. Byers reminds us that whether we’re gripped by desire for a new planet or for another human being, that yearning has dignity and its own strange logic”–makes this sound like a maybe-too-literary book, but the characters seem quirky enough that that may not be the case.
A Not Scary Story About Big Scary Things, by C.K. Williams, (Publisher’s Weekly)
PW doesn’t credit their reviews, which are only about 100 words long. It be faster for you just to read this review yourself. (Excerpt: “A boy lives near a ‘regular, ordinary, standard sort of forest,’ except that along with the usual perils of cliffs, bears, snakes, and wolves, there’s also an actual, awful monster with a penchant for scaring children.”) This is a children’s book so 100 words is probably sufficient anyway; I wish I could have found an example of the illustrations on the internet.
The Four Fingers of Death, by Rick Moody, reviewed by Troy Patterson (New York Times)
In what seems to be a work in the tradition of Breakfast of Champions and Pale Fire, Rick Moody’s new novel is told by “a long-winded ham” and “sci-fi horror hack” named Montese Crandall, writing in a dystopian 2025. The Four Fingers of Death is presented as Crandall’s novelization of a 2025 remake of a real B-movie from 1963. When I read Patterson’s decription of Crandall as “a figure far more baffling than an unreliable narrator: an anti-reliable author,” I knew I wanted to read this book.
The Lady Matador’s Hotel, by Cristina Garcia, reviewed by Carolyn Alessio (Chicago Tribune)
Ms. Alessio’s well-written review does a fine job of describing how this novel “captures many of Guatemala’s funny and grim contradictions, and probes their often freighted origins.” The book takes place in an upscale hotel, during a time of political instability. Garcia’s strentgh seems to lie in her characters. The few Alessio deems “cartoonish” she asserts are countered “through her more complex guests at the hotel and use of a clever chorus.”
Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen (Wall Street Journal)
Franzen’s name (and photo) has been everywhere this week, and Freedom is getting a lot of hype. The Corrections was pretty great, so hopefully this lives up to expectations. The WSJ (in a short article credited to “WSJ Staff”) rounded up a bunch of choice review quotes, so I linked to that. C4 will have its own review in a few weeks.
By Arthur McCulloch, on August 23rd, 2010 [A new entry in our "I Loved This Book When..." series will appear every Monday this summer. To keep up with this series or any other, check out our Special Features page.]
 Fantasy. After three years of grinding out an MFA, and reading all the literature that entails, a fantasy book reinvigorated my passion for books. The concept behind “I Loved This Book When…” must have already been knocking around in my head when I came down with pneumonia this spring.
Pneumonia. An old man’s disease. Lying in a hospital bed, an asthmatic just trying to breathe, I found the situation almost laughable. Like when my wife broke her hip two summers ago. An old woman’s debilitation. What are the odds? I thought. But that’s just the kind of lucky couple we are.
In the hospital there wasn’t much to do except read. I could have turned to any number of books. Or I could have re-read the last book I finished prior to attending graduate school: Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. It would’ve been a kind of book-end to the experience for a middle-aged man now three years older.
Instead of Joyce, I chose Roger Zelazny’s Great Book of Amber: a 1,200 plus paged behemoth of a book that contains all ten novels of a series. Heavy and cumbersome, the base of the spine dug through my Johnny and into my gut as I settled in to read the first novel: Nine Princes In Amber. …
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Author: Liz Carlyle
