Spotlight

Saga #2

Had last month’s column not been waylaid by end of semester chaos and other roadblocks to productivity it would’ve featured Saga #1, from Image Comics, as my Spotlight read. That I’ve selected Saga #2 as my Spotlight book for April shouldn’t be read as a consolation prize, or a way to make up for last month; I would’ve happily celebrated the first ever back-to-back Spotlight pick for the Pull List, had last month gone according to plan. It’s a brilliant title, unlike anything else on the shelves and well worth discussing at length. And if it’s brilliant again next month and I have to rename this column “Saga and Some Other Comics” then so be it.

What Saga does best is open up the science fiction adventure story, filling it with ideas and trusting to reader to follow along. Whereas a lot of sci-fi comics follow the Blade Runner model, where the entire fictional world seems to grow out of a single design choice, Saga feels more like Star Wars, filled with weird creatures and technologies that don’t necessarily make sense together but we accept them as a whole because the story never stops to let us figure out how the giant gangster slug fits with the admiral who looks like a prawn. The characters in Saga (and Star Wars and Blade Runner, for that matter) are rich and complex enough that I don’t really care about the how – I only want to know what they’ll do next, and what the consequences of their actions will be.

Saga’s main story concerns Marko and Alana, alien soldiers from opposite sides of a war who have fallen in love and deserted. Saga #1 opens with Alana giving birth in hiding, just before the pair are tracked down by Alana’s former confederates. They escape, and begin searching for something called the Rocketship Forest that they hope will take them far away from the war where they can raise their daughter in peace. Along the way we meet Coalition officers with humanoid bodies and televisions for heads, giant turtles with laser eyes, and bounty hunters with names like The Will and The Stalk, the latter of which is the principle threat in issue two. Alana and Marko are also humanoid, but are distinguished by a pair of wings and a set of ram’s horns, respectively, which are the unique characteristics of their particular races. Writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples understand that a well-constructed story will sweep that quantity of detail along and use it to set-up even more sophisticated plot points, and that readers are more likely to appreciate the richness of everything than to complain that everything and everyone looks too weird.

All of that oddity would mean nothing if the characters weren’t relatable and interesting, though. Marko is an awkward new parent, nervously optimistic about their chances of escaping the war but also slightly a bit of a bumbler, while Alana is more collected and pessimistic. When The Stalk (a bounty hunter with a forked, weaponized tongue) stabs Marko and tells Fiona to hand over the child, Alana points a stun gun not at the monster, but at her own daughter, deadpanning that she’ll do anything to keep her away from the powers that are hunting her family. Even The Stalk is shocked, and as a reader I found myself in the strange situation of relating to the ruthless professional killer. So far, Saga is made up almost entirely of quiet character moments like that, with a smattering of action sequences mixed in. When the action does inevitably pick up, the stakes will be even greater because we’ve come to care about Marko, Alana, and even baby Hazel, who narrates the story from some point in the future.

Outside of the clever plotting and rich character work, Saga is notable in that it represents Vaughan’s return to comics. A critical darling of the 2000s, who built a loyal fan following around titles like Y: the Last Man, Runaways, and Ex Machina, Vaughan was celebrated for his deep plotting and dynamic characters, which made him a natural to make the transition to screenwriting, most notably three seasons writing for Lost. It’s too early to speculate about how that time away might’ve changed his writing, but nevertheless it’s good to have a gifted writer, especially one capable of drawing a non-traditional comics audience, working in the medium.

That said, the star of this series is clearly Staples. She broke through with Mystery Society (written by Steve Niles) in 2010, but Saga is the first in hopefully a string of high-profile gigs for the artist. Her linework is a bit sketchy but still clear, and suited to rendering all of the detail necessary for the kind of world-building she and Vaughan are up to. Staples particularly excels in acting – her characters are expressive, not only in their faces but in postures and gestures. When Prince Robot IV enters in issue two he is upright, striding as his position would dictate, but as soon as he learns something new about Alana his confidence is shaken and he takes this stance, somewhere between petulant defiance and a slouch, that tells us everything about Prince Robot in a single panel.

Staples’s backgrounds don’t quite grab me, though. They’re rendered digitally, and appear hazy and soft, whereas the foreground figures (also, I suspect, rendered digitally) are clear and defined, outlined in black lines. The result is a cel-animation feel, which is interesting in some ways but seems to rob the story of some of its depth and richness.

I never would’ve suspected this would happen, but Image Comics has been slowly taking over my pull list in the past few months. I’m reading more Image titles than ever, and gradually dropping Marvel and DC books. I still enjoy superhero titles, but I’m finding that books like Saga are making me all the more excited to visit my local store (Boston’s Comicopia) every Wednesday.

Solid Reads

The Manhattan Projects #2

Speaking of Image’s ascendance, The Manhattan Projects #2 by the Red Wing team of writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Pitarra, was very nearly the Spotlight pick. Hickman seems to be throwing all of his Big Science ideas into this title, which is a “what if” story about the real Manhattan Project, but peopled with comic-ified versions of historical figures. For instance, the man posing as Robert Oppenheimer is actually his schizophrenic evil twin, who murdered and cannibalized the original Oppenheimer and is now tormented constantly by the good and evil sides of himself. Harry Daghlian, a physicist who was accidentally irradiated in an accident at Los Alamos, appears as a radioactive skeleton contained in a yellow body suit with a glass dome head, his skull peering through. Issue two introduces Richard Feynman as the everyman, reader-access character, relatively normal (outside of being a super genius physicist) and tossed in with a lot of other brilliant mad men, all working with the military to develop super-science weapons. Hickman has a good feeling for comedy, and is able to play Feynman’s discovery of a roomful of dead Nazi scientists for both fright and laughter. Artist Nick Pitarra’s craft has grown from his work on The Red Wing, with even stronger, more expressive characters and framing techniques. This book could easily be very heavy and dense, but Hickman’s casual attitude towards the mad concepts makes it a lot of fun, well worth picking up.

Secret #1

Yet another Hickman/Image Comics collaboration, Secret launched this month. Where The Manhattan Projects is anarchic, Silver Age madness, Secret is much more of the moment. Its protagonists are high-dollar security contractors who do business with Goldman, Sachs types, and who are apparently gaming them by playing both sides of the threat/solution equation. This first issue features well-structured storytelling with a nice final-act reveal, and Ryan Bodenheim’s pencils are solid, but it feels just a little flat. I was more interested in Michael Garland’s color scheme than in the story – he color-codes the entire issue, so that distinct plot elements are rendered in green, or yellow, or purple. I haven’t put it together yet, and perhaps it’ll turn out that it’s more about feeling than encoding, but it’s still a provocative choice. I’ll give Secret #2 a shot next month, but if I had to choose between them Manhattan Projects is the obvious winner.

Dynamite Entertainment is something of a licensed-property warehouse, so it’s no surprise that The Shadow found a comic book home there. The pairing of the character with writer Garth Ennis, best known for titles like Preacher, Hitman, and Punisher, is inspired. I wouldn’t necessarily have pegged Lamont Cranston as a typical hyper-violent Ennis hero, but the cruel wit certainly fits. And Ennis is more than capable of dialing down his id to craft slow-burn stories that make the ensuing violence more meaningful. The opening scene of The Shadow #1 is pitch perfect – The Shadow interrupts a gang and explains that he is only concerned with two men he has some connection with, but ends up slaughtering the entire lot when they resist. It begins with the feeling of a radio drama, lots of speech making and dramatic framing courtesy of artist Aaron Campbell, but quickly descends into grindhouse territory. The rest of the issue is plot set-up and features Cranston in his gadabout disguise, aloof with acquaintances, and downright remote with a loved one. I find Campbell’s inking too heavy for the quieter scenes, but they give the nighttime action sequence a proper theatrical feel. I’m on this for at least the first arc, hopefully more if the quality stays this high.

Grant Morrison brings his first Action Comics arc to a close with issue eight. Scheduling hurt the pacing of this title – the two previous issues told an excellent Morrisonian time-travel story but didn’t seem to directly impact the story of Superman saving Metropolis from the Collector (a.k.a. Brainiac) – but Morrision still brings the story of Clark Kent becoming Superman to a satisfying end. He even manages a somewhat reasonable explanation for the terrible new costume design (though if you squint you can almost pretend it’s the classic design – you know, the one that was perfect and didn’t need to be updated). What I’ve always liked best about Morrison’s Superman is how he saves the day not by punching his way through swarms of enemies, though there is sometimes a bit of that, but rather by being smarter and more humane than his opponent. It’s all over All-Star Superman, and shows up again in Action when Superman defeats Brainiac by using the rocket that delivered him from Krypton to Earth, miniaturized in the villain’s plot, as a micro-bullet. Where the issue falls down is the art – there’s a platoon of pencilers and inkers on this title, and from page to page the character designs are erratic. This is no one’s best work, not even Morrison’s, but it delivers on the promise of the initial issues and, better still, puts pieces on a game board for Morrison to play with in the months to come.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents vol. 2 #6

Finally, we say goodbye to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents with issue six of the second volume. Issue two of the first volume was one of my first Spotlight picks, and I’ve enjoyed this book every step of the way. Writer Nick Spencer takes a lot of deserved criticism for excessively slow pacing, but the second volume was largely free of that issue. He built a conspiracy plot about the Underworld war and used it to reveal the weaknesses in the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. concept, thereby allowing his government-agent characters to effectively rebel against their masters. Following Toby’s death in last month’s issue, Colleen goes rogue, first taking revenge by killing the SPIDER agents who set them up, and then allowing No-Man to destroy T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s central computer in a suicide mission. Spencer closes everyone’s story, and even allows Toby a final say via a “final letter from the dead” scene that could’ve been obvious and cliché but, instead, turns the story on its head and offers a moving final line. Both CAFU and Wes Craig, series artists for the first and second volumes, respectively, are on hand to usher the story out, and both do typically excellent work. Michael Uslan and Trevor McCarthy’s Undersea Agent back-up story is tonally on a different planet than the main story, and I wish DC had let that be a digital offering, or a bonus for the trade. But ignore those pages, and this is a perfect ending.

One-Shots

Saying that All-Star Western #8 is paced extraordinarily well seems like faint praise, but it’s a feat that writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray are able to weave three storylines together so well, pushing the story along without giving any of the plots short shrift.

Buddy Baker finally gets angry in the emotionally draining Animal Man #8 and which features a violent scene that’s only slightly less disturbing than young Maxine’s brutal death and resurrection – this is one of very few comics not afraid to overwhelm the reader from time to time.

The Court of Owls brings the fight to Wayne Manor in Batman #8, and though writer Scott Snyder gives Bruce plenty of action in the main story, he saves the best moments of the issue for the back-up featuring art by his American Vampire partner, Rafael Albuquerque.

Writer Peter Tomasi brings the slightly long-in-the-tooth Nobody arc to a close in Batman and Robin #8, and while I think it was somewhat unnecessary to pour yet more blood on Damian’s hands, I did appreciate the father/son moments at the end, and particularly the last panel of Damian and Bruce running after the bat-signal.

Amy Reeder’s art in Batwoman #8 is as good as ever, but the story is slowing down, and the gimmick of following six plots at once and weaving back and forth in the timeline that seemed fun in the first issue of this arc has become a bit dull – Reeder’s impending departure from the title makes it even easier to drop this title next month.

I bid a fond farewell to Blackhawks with issue eight – not a perfect comic, but writer Mike Costa was developing interesting characters and had finally found a sympathetic art partner in CAFU just as the title was canceled. It’s a credit to both creators that they eased the story to a conclusion rather than burning through a few meaningless issues just to be done with it.

Captain Atom continues to cover surprisingly emotional territory with issue eight, which sends the Captain into the future and raises questions about morality, responsibility, and identity.

Catwoman #8 is a fine story with fill-in art by Adriana Melo, but the title suffers without series artist Guillem March and writer Judd Winick doesn’t do much to hide the fact that he’s just marking time before the big Batman crossover begins next month.

Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan wrap up their adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “Queen of the Black Coast” story with issue 3 of Conan the Barbarian, which matches the previous issue’s savagery with a bit of introspection as Conan finally gives in to Belit’s unique charms.

Daredevil shipped twice this month, but neither issue demonstrates the title’s usual strength – issue 10.1 is one of Marvel’s infamous “catch-up” issues that are meant to draw in new readers, and issue 11 is the third part of a crossover with The Punisher and Avenging Spider-Man. Mark Waid writes both issues, and both are good stories but 10.1 gets the upper hand on 11 thanks to guest art from Koi Pham, who does a remarkable Paolo Rivera impression in these pages.

I dove once more into the Dark Horse Presents pool in April, picking up issue 11 because I wanted to sample Francesco Francavilla “Black Beetle”, which was excellent. I also enjoyed Evan Dorkin’s “Milk and Cheese” strips, another installment of Carla Speed McNeil’s “Finder,” and John Arcudi and Jonathan Cases’s “The Creep.” And yes, Neal Adams’s “Blood” remains a regular feature, and yes, it’s still awful.

Demon Knights #8 is another catch-your-breath character-focus issue, this time exploring Madame Xanadu and her convoluted relationship with Jason Blood and his alter-ego, the demon Etrigan – writer Paul Cornell makes it into a game, telling the “truth” one way, then doubling back to tell the exact opposite, leaving us no closer to an understand of what Xanadu is up to, but a greater appreciation for the complexity of her character.

It’s getting a bit redundant to comment on the horrific elements of an issue of Fatale, since they’re all grisly and terrifying, but it’s worth singling out how artist Sean Phillips frames the murder that closes issue four, and how the victim’s expression is more upsetting than any of the blood spilled in this series so far.

The Flash #8 gets deeper into the mechanics of the Speed Force, but I was more impressed with how the story cuts back to reality to explore how Barry’s social life falls apart when he’s stuck in the other dimension; it’s a rare superhero comic that acknowledges the passing of time that way.

Irredeemable #36 is the penultimate issue of the series, and while it focuses on a last showdown between the Plutonian and Quibit, there are still other plots in the works that writer Mark Waid will have to bleed into next month’s finale in order for the story to pay off. Meanwhile, Incorruptible #28 is the second to last issue, but offers a much clearer sense of how the story will end – in each case Waid is being a bit coy, but that’s been his inclination in these books to begin with.

Justice League #8 is easily the most entertaining issue of the series so far, as writer Geoff Johns plays with reader expectations by telling a jokey story about Green Arrow’s attempts to join the league; the real treat, however, is the short epilogue about the Martian Manhunter drawn by Ivan Reis that demonstrates how provocative and surprising the New 52 reboot can be, even eight issues in.

The action sequences in Peter Panzerfaust #3 are briskly paced and effective, and, if the introductions of Captain Hook (a Nazi officer, naturally) and Wendy into the story are a little too on-the-nose, it’s a minor complaint for a consistently fun title.

Tom Taylor and Colin Wilson’s wartime story in Rocketeer Adventures 2 #2 is the highlight of the issue, and probably of this volume so far, but there’s also fun to be had in Paul Dini’s story about Betty’s acting career, and Walt Simonson’s Judy Garland fanfic.

Saucer Country #2 is a little less elliptical than the first issue, and is structured more like a soap opera than I’d anticipated – I think that’s in the story’s favor.

The Shade #7 wraps up the second major arc with a big action sequence that takes a turn towards the melancholy in the middle, as Shade’s feelings of regret and guilt and loss allow him to fully utilize his powers in a stunning sequence made all the more affecting courtesy of Javier Pulido’s art.

The details of exactly what happened on Mars that led Orson to his current state become clearer in Spaceman #6, which also includes a heartbreaking moment when Orson and the orphans he’s befriended craft a plan not to become rich and famous, but just to be part of a loving family.

I decided not to drop Stormwatch after Paul Cornell left the book because I wanted to see what other writers could do with the characters – Paul Jenkins’ brief fill-in run, which concludes this month with issue eight, was fine but not extraordinary, and I suppose I’ll give incoming writer Peter Milligan a shot before I let it go.

Artist Yanick Paquette revels in the chaos and violence of Swamp Thing #8, which follows up on last month’s promise that the transformed Alec Holland would bring war to the Rot.

Brian Azzarello’s and Cliff Chiang’s vision of Hell in Wonder Woman #8 is a psychological-horror take on London that genuinely gave me the creeps – I would never have imagined Wonder Woman as the ideal character for a horror book, but Azzarello makes it work by placing her in this realm of gods that’s ruled by emotion and impulse, and therefore difficult to process.

Looking Ahead to May

Night of the Owls begins in earnest, the return of Obama-Superman in Action Comics, and the sure to be stirring conclusion of Irredeemable!

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The Last Natural, by Roy Miech. Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley (Washington Post).

He’s been in the bigs for less than four weeks, but it’s already pretty clear that Bryce Harper, the Washington Nationals’ uber-hyped new outfielder, is on a trajectory to superstardom. Still, that doesn’t mean he deserves a biography quite yet. Yardley agrees. He’s pretty harsh: “‘The Last Natural’ is an absolutely preposterous title and Miech, a longtime sports writer, is at best a pedestrian stylist.” He does give Miech credit for doing his homework, but the writing appears to be unforgivable. Maybe when Harper’s been around long enough to mature as a player, he’ll get a biography to match.

Find it on Goodreads.

The Amateur, by Edward Klein. Reviewed by Janet Maslin (New York Times).

Man, this review is pretty awesome. Maslin lays into this guy–who actually has a fair amount of cred–pretty heavily. Even without Maslin’s commentary the book sounds like a hack-job tea party cash-in. Maslin lays on the sarcasm right from the get-go:

“The Amateur” by Edward Klein is a book about an inept, arrogant ideologue who maintains an absurdly high opinion of his own talents even as he blatantly fails to achieve his goals. Oh, and President Obama is in this book too.

I’m really excited for this election.

Find it on Goodreads.

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The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, by Christopher Healy. Reviewed by Susan Carpenter (Los Angeles Times).

This book, which “challenges every presumption readers have ever had not only about Cinderella’s savior but about the nameless princes who brought enduring bliss to other fairy tales’ forever-young heroines,” sounds pretty cheeky, but could also be pretty charming (pardon the pun) if pulled off right. A send-up to classic fairy tales? I’m at least intrigued. And it sounds like he sneaks a little scholarship in the back door. Worth a deeper look.

Find it on Goodreads.

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Quickly: Houghton-Mifflin files for bankruptcy–now I don’t feel so bad about them not hiring me. Jonathan Franzen’s Farther Away. A brief library of libations. My Struggle is a pretty loaded title for a memoir. David Ulin on Are You My Mother, which Nico loved.

Author: Jenny Lawson

2012, Putnam

Filed Under: Nonfiction, Memoir, Humor

Find it on Goodreads

Jenny Lawson is an insane person. It’s a wonder her husband hasn’t drowned himself. Of course, when you’re talking about a memoir by someone who has zero historical impact on the world, insane is good, because insane is entertaining.

Here’s the plot of Lawson’s book: she grew up, went to college, got married, had a kid. She and her husband both work from home in Texas. And occasionally she’ll do weird things like buy a giant metal rooster welded together from oil drums. She’s got a thing for taxidermy (note the dead rat Hamlet on the cover). There aren’t any lessons to be learned from her, or deep insight to be gleaned. Luckily, she is very funny. Lines that seem to come out of left field are plentiful, like this:

I just bought a fifty-year-old Cuban alligator dressed as a pirate.

Lawson’s humor is right up my alley, it’s acerbic and sarcastic. Moreover, lines like that alligator bit in fact play smoothly into the subject at hand. Many of the episodes described in this book are awkward situations she bumbles or word-vomits her way into due to severe social anxiety. She does an excellent job of laying out her weird logic as she retells it, making each vignette compelling and entertaining.

On more than one occasion my panicked rumblings were so horrific that everyone was rendered speechless, and the silence got more and more palpable, and in desperation I just blurted out my credit card number and ran to the bathroom. I did this both because I hoped yelling random numbers would make baffled spectators suspect that I must be one of those eccentric mathematical geniuses who is just too brilliant for them to understand, and also because I felt a bit guilty for making them have to listen to the whole “I may or may not swallow needles” story, and if they wanted to charge their wasted time to my credit card then they now had that option.

I found this book pretty hilarious from start to finish, even if the earlier chapters outshine the balance of the book. The story of Stanley the Magic Squirrel in the third chapter, which recounts a time as a young girl when her taxidermist father woke up Lawson and her sister with a talking squirrel in a cracker box, is never exceeded. (The squirrel turned out to be a piece of roadkill her dad rigged into a grotesque puppet.)

As the memoir goes on, topic matter gets a bit more serious–miscarriages for one–but the strength of Lawson’s storytelling keeps the mood in check. If you like the sort of nonfiction that David Sedaris is known for, or enjoy things like The Moth, you’ll find this book fits in nicely with your preferences. Similarly if you’ve ever felt yourself feeling like an outsider in what ought to be fairly commonplace situations, Lawson’s perspective will certainly make you smile.

Similar Reads: Open-Eyed Sneeze (Martin), Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Sedaris), Running with Scissors (Burroughs)

Author: George R.R. Martin

2005, Bantam

Filed Under: Fantasy

Find it on Goodreads

“Disappointing” best summarizes the fourth installment in A Song of Ice and Fire. I was thrilled by the previous book and delighted to see that Martin was finally starting to tighten up the plot lines. He focused his story within the broad boundaries that he’d established and poised the reader for a strident and exciting resolution. The forces of fire and ice were drawn together in what promised to be the burgeoning climax.

Instead, A Feast for Crows is predominantly an unwelcome tangent. New characters are introduced in the prologue, which is Martin’s normal pattern. However, where previous prologues have served to heighten and focus the main story line, this one opens a doorway to a continuously expanding world and endless possibilities.

Martin’s style has never lent itself to a riveting pace. He usually advances his story incrementally and adjusts the pacing to heighten the drama in certain moments. However, this book is flat. Very little advancement occurs along the main plot. He ties up a few loose ends from previous installments, but generally he just plods along, focusing on characters that have been to-date mainly incidental. I assume some of these characters will  play bigger roles in future installments, but that’s not enough to satisfy the readers anxious to follow their favorite characters.

Almost in recognition of the shortcomings in this book, Martin’s letter drafted in 2005 indicates the material he drew from to create A Feast for Crows derived from something so sprawling it would have to be delivered in two tomes. He sought some balance that was never achieved. An attempt was made to provide a cohesive structure to the book, but it only goes so far. The symmetry between the beginning and ending of the book provides only the illusion of structure and the wandering nature of the material between only exacerbates the sense that this symmetry was contrived.

Worst of all, the principal characters are left out entirely: Jon Snow, Daenerys, Stannis, Melisandre, Varis, and, yes, even Tyrion. (With the previous installment ending so dramatically, leaving out Tyrion in this story is simply criminal.)

Overall this is a story of Martin’s women: Arya, Alanye (Sansa), Arianne Martell, Brienne, and Cersei Lannister. Samwell is given a fair amount of attention and Martin devotes numerous chapters to the internal fighting for leadership among the Ironborn. This latter story would have likely been better received had it been woven into the context of advancing the main story line.

Alayne Martell, the ambitious princess from Dorne has a compelling story. But much like Martin’s attention to the Ironborn, one can’t help but wonder if her story is yet another tangent. We follow Brienne, who while unique as a character, is never really developed. Brienne’s issues and struggles remain constant. The reader merely follows her on her quest, which is an unsatisfying one at best. Arya Stark is given a good deal of attention, and while Martin continues to develop her character successfully, her story line advances only marginally over the length of this book.

Cersei dominates this story; however, despite all the time invested, she never is developed into a complicated character. Instead she remains a flat, evil queen. Granted, Martin does a great job of portraying her follies and setting her along a course of ruin, but the fact that she remains such a shallow character detracts from any satisfaction we may feel as she gets her just desserts. Jamie Lannister, her brother, plays a much bigger role in this story and he’s really the only saving grace in this otherwise dull installment. Martin finally starts to put some meat and depth into his character. The more  I read his story the more conflicted I feel about his cruel actions against young Bran in the original installment.

Still, it’s a shame Martin faltered with this volume after delivering so many pages of solid entertainment in the build up. But hope remains for the next book. In the same 2005 letter, Martin’s indicated much of the second part of this two-part volume was already written. So, why then, would it take six years to deliver the next installment? I can only hope Martin learned from the folly of A Feast for Crows (or a stern developmental editor was brought on board).  All the excitement that I carried from the end of A Storm of Swords rots on the vine in this book.

Most readers who have invested the time will likely read this story. So, in a sense this review may serve only as a means to temper the expectations of the loyal fan. I certainly wish mine were tempered. A Dance of Dragons will benefit from my expectations being low, but if the story line doesn’t find better direction, then I fear his readers may start to fade as once did the dragons of Westeros.

Similar Reads: A Game of Thrones and A Clash of  Kings(Martin); The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien); Eye of the World(Robert Jordan)

Author:

2012, The Dial Press

Filed under: Literary, Historical

Find it at Goodreads

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that began with a more aptly chosen pair of epigraphs. Lurking in the front pages of Jennifer duBois’s debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, you’ll find these two gems:

All of us are doomed, but some are more doomed than others.

–Vladimir Nabokov, from Ada, or Ardor

And if in this wide world I die, then I’ll die from joy that I’m alive.

–Yevgeni Yevtushenko

The novel’s action takes place at the extremes of optimism and pessimism expressed here. Everyone in this book is doomed (some more so than others), and yet the main characters never give up on trying to make something out of their inevitable descent, looking for answers to long-buried questions, looking to leave a mark, however faint, on history.

In 2006, after Irina’s father dies from Huntington’s disease, a debilitating genetic disorder which she is predisposed to develop as well, she finds an old letter he sent to the Russian chess world champion, Aleksandr Bezetov, back in the 80s. In the letter, her father asks “what is the proper way to proceed” when playing in matches “that have been lost from the start.” He never received a reply from Bezetov.

Approaching the expected age of onset for her inherited disorder, Irina decides to spend what time she has left seeking answers to her father’s question. With a half-hatched plan, as selfish as it is romantic, Irina cuts ties at home in the United States and takes off for St. Petersburg to track down a chess master turned presidential candidate.

Written with a humbling emotional intelligence, A Partial History of Lost Causes contrasts personal struggles against historical conflicts. While Irina is searching for a broader narrative for her life, something to which she can dedicate her remaining days of cognizance, Aleksandr is locked in a political prison of his own choosing. Campaigning against the “democratically” elected Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr receives regular death threats for his opposition to the autocrat’s reign. Unable to leave his apartment without a small army of bodyguards and handlers, he finds little relief from a marriage gone stale and regret as fresh as a first love.

“You haven’t lived in a place unless you have at least one major regret there,” Aleksandr’s old friend Ivan tells him in the Soviet days of their youth, in the city that was once Leningrad. It’s one of my favorite lines in the book for the way it encapsulates the issues of tragedy and ownership that link and animate both Aleksandr and Irina. Presences from their pasts haunt them as they progress into their joint future, making nostalgia for lives that never were into the enemy of the present. Personal regret, it turns out, isn’t nearly as regrettable as the effort to banish it by sacrificing the lives we are leading, while there’s still so much to do, while history still races on.

Irina and Aleksandr make an intriguing if unlikely pair of lost causes. The plot staggers somewhat from the effort required to crash their storylines together, but it recovers for a surprising and surprisingly thrilling set of closing chapters, and thematic echoes between the dual narratives remain strong throughout. For anyone interested in chess or Russian history, or prone to profound musings that border on the uncomfortably comic, this is an easy read to recommend.

If that doesn’t sound like your particular shot of vodka, you might keep your eye out for Jennifer duBois anyway. She’s a young writer making an ambitious debut, and I’m sure readers everywhere can look forward to more from her in years to come.

Similar reads: Super Sad True Love Story (Gary Shteyngart), There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby (Ludmilla Petrushevskaya), The History of Love (Nicole Kraus).

A Naked Singularity, by Sergio De La Pava. Reviewed by Paul Ford in the Slate Book Review.

This is a quirky little piece from the brand-new Slate Book Review. It contains a few oddities like a big block quote in the early going, and a bar graph detailing how many pages the main character spends at different activities. These quirks befit a massive (600+ page) debut novel full of lists, anecdotes, asides, court transcripts, and other digressions. Another peculiarity: De La Pava self-published this book in 2008, and it was only recently picked up by the University of Chicago Press (more on that here). That alone makes it worth a look. Find this book at Goodreads.

Making Babies, by Anne Enright. Reviewed by Judith Newman in the New York Times.

Newman kicks off with this eye-catching opening line: “No subject offers a greater opportunity for terrible writing than motherhood,” and then proceeds to explain that writing well about children is hard because child-rearing is so mind-numbingly boring. On the shortlist of qualities I prize in book reviews, “acerbic humor” might be at the very top. Find this book at Goodreads.

In One Person, by John Irving. Reviewed by David L. Ulin in the L.A. Times.

Ulin finds Irving’s latest—which follows the life of a bisexual man over the course of four decades—good, but too familiar and ultimately unbelievable. His meditation on the modern-day role of sexually political novels like this one is well worth reading, shame that Irving’s novel does not seem the same. However, Jeanette Winterson, in the New York Times, takes a more favorable outlook. But then Ron Charles breaks the tie on Ulin’s side. Find this book at Goodreads.

The Vanishers, by Heidi Julavits. Reviewed by Buzzy Jackson in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Julavits’s latest mixes a pitch-black tone with a markedly silly setting: a liberal arts college for psychics. Sounds like it has enjoyable passages that don’t quite cohere. Oh, and a completely inappropriate cover. Find this book at Goodreads.

In brief: Christopher Buckley’s latest political satire, reviewed in the NYT. … A nice remembrance of Maurice Sendak at the BN Review. … The Seattle Public Library hid books all over their city for young people to find. … Flavorwire protests libraries banning Fifty Shades of Grey by offering other books to ban? Uhhh… And finally, James Patterson “produces” (i.e. doesn’t write) 12 books a year, and now authors are pressured to write more, instead of better.

Author: George Mann

2008, Snowbooks

Filed Under: Mystery, Historical, Sci-Fi

Find it on Goodreads.

If you’d listened to our most recent podcast (you didn’t, because the recording got messed up, so you might never hear it at all), you would have heard me say this was a Sherlock Holmes-y book that was sort-of-but-not-really steampunk. I was half correct; full of airships and clockwork automatons and laudanum benders and Queen Victoria on an artificial lung crafted from bellows, it’s squarely steampunk. But to define it as that would be to sell it really short. Rather than relying on the setting, Mann writes a good story, leaving the setting to seep in around the edges.

Before we go any further, I have a confession to make. There’s a blight on my reader’s record, a mark of shame I really need to correct. I’ve never read any of the Sherlock Holmes books. From what I’ve picked up (thanks mostly to Gregory House), this book shares a lot in common with Doyle’s beloved mysteries.

Maurice Newberry is a detective and an “agent of the Crown.” He’s not an actual cop, but is good chums with the head of Scotland Yard in addition to packing royal credentials as a sleuth. He lives alone, and spends long hours in his study, often reading books on the obscure or occult, and his hobbies include laudanum and deductive crime-solving. His Watson is a Miss Veronica Hobbes, a sharp and fairly courageous woman, who compliments Newberry nicely. (Her character is fairly nuanced, and quite possibly the strongest in the book.)

In the novel’s early going, there are three primary plot lines. Firstly, there is some sort of plague brought over from India. It is ravaging the slums, and is effectively a small, but obviously hazardous, zombie outbreak. Secondly, there as been a string of murders in Whitechapel, seemingly perpetrated by a glowing blue policeman’s ghost. Thirdly, an airship crashes catastrophically, killing 50, and no sign of the brass automaton pilot is to be found.

It’s fairly obvious of course, being the sort of book this is, that these three strands will eventually be braided together. The fun is in following Newberry and Hobbes as they solve the case(s). So I won’t spoil any of that. As it plays out, this book delivers from every angle. The characters are well rendered. The dialogue has a decorous, almost too-proper politeness to it, one that any fan of Victorian literature will probably find as charming and funny as I did. There are plenty of exciting action scenes, as well as cerebral “Aha” moments. The writing fits the novel’s historical motif well, never underwhelming but rarely going over the top either. The sci-fi elements are plentiful, but don’t overstep their welcome–or worse become so over-concerned with plausibility as to drag down the tone.

This is a fun, engaging book that I think may be criminally underlooked due to genre. Don’t let the steampunk setting repel you, the setting is crucial to the story, but in no way the reason for its success. If you like mysteries and adventure stories, you’re almost certain to enjoy this book.

Similar Reads: The Map of Time (Palma). Also, check out this cool Kickstarter project Nico came across.

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Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson. Reviewed by Christopher Kelly (New York Times).

I actually picked this book up last week, based on this funny blog entry by Lawson (a pro blogger who calls herself The Bloggess). I’ve only read the first twenty or so pages, but I already know I’m probably going to like it. She’s got a sort of bitter playfulness to her sense of humor. Kelly certainly seems impressed, comparing her to David Sedaris. I’ll have my own review in a few weeks and I’ll tell you where I come down.

Find it on Goodreads.

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Bring Up The Bodies, by Hilary Mantel. Reviewed by Katharine A. Powers (Barnes & Noble Review).

People sang the praises of Mantel’s last work, Wolf Hall, from the rooftops. It won the Man Booker Prize, amongst others. I started this novel about the court of Henry VIII, but it never grabbed me so I abandoned the pursuit. But in her review, Powers makes a compelling case to why you should read both Wolf Hall, and this, its sequel.

Find it on Goodreads.

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Winter King, by Thomas Penn. Reviewed by Nick Owchar (Los Angeles Times).

If that’s not enough monarchic politics for you, here’s a book on Henry VII. Owchar makes repeated reference to the Game of Thrones show on HBO (as well as Martin’s books), with regards to political maneuvering. But the line between GoT and the War of the Roses was one originally drawn by Martin, so I suppose it’s apt. (This is a double review, also touching on a graphic novelization of GoT, so that’s the incentive for Owchar’s connection.) The Penn portion of the review is heavy on the history, as the book surely is, but it’s certainly interesting if you’re into this kind of thing.

Find it on Goodreads.

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Leonardo’s Lost Princess, by Peter Silverman. Reviewed by T. Rees Shapiro (Washington Post).

This is my third pick in a row with somewhat musty subject matter, but it’s also rather fascinating. It documents an art collector’s quest to prove a painting he purchased was actually painted by perhaps the most famous artist in history. There appears, however, to be a bit more depth than you might expect from such a book, with Silverman relating his own compulsion to exert “much effort, and lots and lots of money, into what is in the end a very expensive hobby.”

Find it on Goodreads.

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Quickly: RIP Maurice Sendak. An interview with Alison Bechdel, whose Are You My Mother? Nico really liked.

Author: Micky Spillane (with Max Allan Collins)

2012, Titan

Filed Under: Mystery

Find it on Goodreads.

Max Allan Collins, it seems, is making a habit of rewriting “lost” manuscripts left to him by deceased crime writers and releasing them with his name ahead of the original author. A little weird, but to his credit, this is the second such work of his I have read, and the second that I enjoyed.

Lady, Go Die! (it’s a cludgy reference to Lady Godiva, let’s get that out of the way) is a sequel to the very first of Mickey Spillane’s famous Mike Hammer books–I suppose the former sequel is now the third in the series. As you might expect, it’s a hard-boiled gumshoe mystery, full of gansters and goons, underground casinos, pretty women with chips on their shoulders, and murder. This book walks the genre line faithfully, so don’t expect anything groundbreaking or revelatory, but if you want a quick-to-read mystery full of fistfights and cheesy wisecracks, this certainly delivers.

For instance, it’s full of lines like this:

I went to my bed where I had tossed my suitcase. I opened it, and slipped the .45 Colt automatic out od its sling where it slept like a baby on my clean underwear. But babies can wake up screaming…

Hammer is on vacation on Long Island, trying to pull himself out of an alcohol-soaked depression in the wake of the events of the first book (which I haven’t read). Trouble just seems to find him though, as he stumbles upon three cops “interrogating” (with their fists and boots) a homeless man in an alley, asking him about a missing woman he may have seen. Poochy is his name, and Hammer comes to his rescue. The next day the missing woman turns up dead, naked, and bloated, draped on the back of a horse statue (hence the title).

The woman, it turns out, was in bed with the mob, and running an illegal casino in her dead-husbands mansion. Hammer finds himself in the middle of a tangled conspiracy full of mobsters, crooked cops, and a possible serial killer mixed in. Saying more than that will spoil the fun.

You know if you like these kinds of books or not. If you like to relax with this sort of mystery now and again, Lady, Go Die! will keep you happy for a few hours.

Similar Reads: The Thin Man (Hammett), The Comedy is Finished (Westlake), No Rest for the Dead (Gulli, ed.)

[A review was requested and a review copy provided.]

Author: Alison Bechdel

2012, Houghton Mifflin

Filed under: Memoir, Graphic Novel, Literary

Find it at Goodreads

This impressive graphic memoir is a great book, but not in any way I think I’ve read before. The bulk of the novel consists of Bechdel’s therapy-related endeavors. She remembers episodes from her childhood in terms of various infant-development theories, she recounts her own therapy sessions as an adult, she interprets her dreams, she recounts conversations with her mother, and she quotes frequently from academic papers about psychoanalysis. In fact, the act of creating the book itself might have been therapeutic for Bechdel, because, as she says, “for both my mother and me, it’s by writing… by stepping back a bit from the real thing to look at it, that we are most present.”

Are You My Mother? is not funny, and the events it recounts are never earth-shattering—especially not compared to the central events of her first book, Fun Home, about her father’s closeted bisexuality and his suicide soon after Bechdel herself came out to her parents.

Instead of relying on these more traditional elements of story, Bechdel indulges her considerable talent for eliciting Nabokov-like patterns from the randomness of the world. She weaves a web of interconnected narrative tidbits—plucked from the entirety of her own life, as well as the lives of her parents, the memoirs and novels of Virginia Woolf, the work and life of Donald Winnicott, and many others—that echo and expand the smallest narrative hiccup until it ripples across the entirety of her existence.

Here’s a small example. One passage finds Bechdel discussing her mother’s affinity for Norah Vincent, a right-wing lesbian stunt-pundit who had begun to draw cartoons and had once beaten Bechdel for a prize. Bechdel finds herself paralyzed by jealousy, and expounds on this jealousy. On its own, that’s a small, somewhat overblown moment.

But later she recounts her mother’s pregnancy with her, how it might not have been planned—she notes that the pill was approved by Congress six months after her conception. Reading her father’s letters to his mother, she finds him a doting, generous man, with big plans to travel with his young wife as soon as he got out of the Army. This is nothing like the man she remembers, seen most frequently in this volume delivering cruel one-liners or in the marks he’s left on the house from throwing things during his rages.

Bechdel remembers a conversation she had with her mother, and surmises that her father might have asked her mother to get an abortion—children would’ve ruined their plans for travel. This moment, she hypothesizes might have crystallized her mother’s pro-life philosophy… the philosophy that, all those years later, led her to gravitate toward a pro-life lesbian thinker that her daughter hated and envied. It’s this kind of whorl, performed over and over through the book, that makes it special.

Bechdel also repeatedly uses themes beyond therapy. She plumbs the lives of Virginia Woolf and Donald Winnicott, noting various ways in which they were linked—geographically and by publishing house, for starters—though they never knew each other. Bechdel also returns to touchstones as varied as the theater, the transitional object, her habit of retouching her cheeks in pictures to make them appear pinker and healthier, and the practice of evacuating children from wartime London to houses or hostels in the countryside where they would be safe from bombs.

She peppers the narrative with informational tidbits about each of her hobbyhorses (the Narnia series began in a countryside child-evacuation house, Winnie the Pooh was the archetypal transitional object, etc). But the book really becomes something special when Bechdel braids all these themes together in certain twisting passages.

One of them begins during a flashback, when Bechdel (then 26 or so) goes to pick up her longtime girlfriend, Eloise, who’s a mechanic. Bechdel has just begun therapy, having that day returned from her first session with her new favorite therapist, a woman named Jocelyn who has essentially relieved her depression in one visit. Bechdel subsequently went out and bought the book The Drama of the Gifted Child, by Alice Miller, which will not only change her thinking but will also lead to her decades-long interest in psychoanalysis, and it introduces her to the work of Donald Winnicott, one of the load-bearing columns of this book.

This is what the next two pages looks like (click any image for a full-size version):

Beyond the discovery of Winnicott, these pages begin Bechdel’s search for her own “true self,” another major theme. Winnie the Pooh is a transitional object, and reading that book will lead to Narnia, from which Bechdel jumps into a discussion about the practice of evacuating children from wartime London to children’s hostels in the countryside. As it turns out, Winnicott worked as a therapist at such children’s hostels—a later anecdote gets into that.

Additionally, Eloise and Bechdel call each other “Beezum,” after Bechdel’s childhood teddy bear—another transitional object. And Bechdel’s refusal of sex and ignoring Eloise in the first page (even as she’s reading about the true self’s “state of noncommunication”) foreshadows their messy split.

These kinds of nested connections can continue in patterns for pages at a time, and the result is captivating.

Even so, this book is far from flawless. Bechdel has a tendency to over-intellectualize a lot of what happens, and she can be wincingly self-indulgent and dramatic at times, like this two-page spread about the guilt she feels when her mother calls her old number one night and can’t get ahold of her:

In fact, Bechdel might be the least likeable memoirist whose memoir I’ve really liked.

As for her drawing style, she says of it, “The kind of drawing I do has to be meticulously planned, every line has to convey some information.” I can see that, but the subject matter in this book does not often lend itself to such meticulous planning. There are hundreds of panels of her talking on the phone or to a therapist, panels that could be virtual Xeroxes of each other. Only a rare few are really beautiful or eye-catchingly creative.

In a sense then, this book is riveting, unique work. In another sense, it’s the dry whining of an overprivileged suburbanite with few real problems. I found it to be the former, but I couldn’t argue hard against the latter.

In the end, Bechdel’s whirling, braided tangle of patterns and connections won me over. A narrative continuum like this, so precise and intricate, so creative and yet so logical, is a wonder to behold. And perhaps that wonder is caused more by beholding Bechdel’s indirect effort—the years of her journal-keeping, the hours of transcribing her conversations with her mother—than by real enjoyment of the story at hand.

Still, even if it’s not for everyone, it’s a remarkable book.

Similar reads: Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli; Blankets, by Craig Thompson; Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel; Big Questions, by Anders Nilsen