“Had Its Moments, But Mostly a Disappointment”

The Testament by John Grisham

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this. Someone told me that anyone familiar with the law would see how poor Grisham’s books were, legally speaking. I’ve only had a year of law school, but I didn’t notice anything glaringly wrong with the legal material. All of the problems were with everything else.

The story starts out interestingly enough – an eccentric billionaire commits suicide and leaves nothing to his spoiled children. He leaves everything to an illegitimate daughter who is working as a missionary in South America, but who wants nothing to do with the 11 billion dollars. What ensues is a legal battle for the ages.

The best parts of the story are all about the legal maneuvering. There is a 20 page span concerning the depositions where Grisham hits his stride. Essentially, anything relating to law is where the book is strong. Anything relating to character depth and anything emotional is poorly done, even formulaic. He did not even need to bother with the ending since it had been telegraphed for so long.

Gone are the days where Grisham was the master of the legal thriller. This book is one of the many that have grown a part of his slow descent…

Stunning

"Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerney

Writing in the second person can be draining - the constant balance between the character and the reader and having to maintain both the distance and the familiarity is something few writers tackle other than in short stories (Junot Diaz is the perfect example). But Bright Lights, Big City manages to produce the first “great” second person narrative that I can think of. From the very first pages where McInerney throws us into New York night life, we are confronted with a character who is both strange and familiar who is moving in a New York that is both strange and familiar. As a fact checker at a major publication who is getting over the fact his wife, who happens to be a model, has left him, the protagonist struggles with a dual desire to be isolated and comforted by others.

What is most striking about this book is the prose. It is both clean and smooth and has a way of moving you back and forth between action and description. This book can be read in a single night and you find yourself so attached to this guy who is as messed up as can be, yet you feel so sorry for him as he confronts his brother, uses more drugs than you can imagine, and struggles to write a novel. He is the anti-hero spawned in a world after the Beats made names for themselves, and I can honestly day that this novel may be a stronger piece of fiction than On the Road or even Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.

This is a gem and should be treated as such.

Fictional Satire at its Best

England, England by Julian Barnes

I wish I were older and/or had better knowledge concerning England. Everything I know at this point consists of the scant details spoon-fed to me in high school and a history survey in college. But even with this limited knowledge, Julian Barnes’ England, England is a wonderful satire, one that even such as myself was able to enjoy.

The novel tells the story of the strangely brilliant Sir Jack Pitman, who builds an island “England, England,” which is a small miniaturized version of England that attracts tourists from all over the world. Packed within a few square miles are scaled down versions of all that the rest of the world views as inherently “English.” From Robin Hood and Buckingham Palace, to pubs and Princess Di’s tombstone, the small tourist attraction professes to include everything a tourist would want to see in England but in a quarter of the time.

Much of the novel is told through the eyes of Martha Cochrane, a middle-aged woman with the kind of outsider’s point of view that is both strange and comforting once it’s thrown into this plan to create Pitman’s dream island. Her views on sex, relationships, and just about everything is told, along with the rest of the novel, in the type of dry humor much of the world has come to associate with the British. I found myself laughing as Barnes described some of the historical possibilities including Robin and his Merry Men being a group of homosexuals and other such reinterpretations.

Though I found this novel wonderful, I can see a lot of people not liking it. Barnes’ prose is dense and makes it impossible to skim. And many parts of the novel include really elaborate descriptions, which for some may seem over-elaborate and possibly boring. But, if you’re a fan of old English literature like Dickens or of dry British humor, you will certainly enjoy this book. I did.

Some Quotes:

“Why did love seem to come with a subversive edge of boredom attached, tenderness with irritation?”

“What if I suggested that England’s function in the world was to act as an emblem of decline, a moral and economic scarecrow?”

“Dr. Johnson had put it better, of course: they had lost that tenderness of look, and that benevolence of mind.”

Like a Well-Oiled Machine

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

There is something almost infuriating about how well Ian McEwan writes. In many ways, there was something very machine-like about reading Amsterdam because of how smoothly the prose and shifts in perspective worked so effortlessly. When reading most fiction, even good and great fiction, you often find yourself seeing passages that don’t work as well or the actual seams connecting plot points the author is trying to move through. But here, there is none of that, and McEwan, with arguably a more deft touch than he exhibited in Atonement, outlines the relationships of his characters so wonderfully that it is hard to see what happens until the very end where you feel chilled to the bone.

The novel opens at a cremation for a popular woman who died of a degenerative disease. Present are at least three former lovers and a husband whom they all mocked. Clive, a celebrated composer, and Vernon, the editor for the Judge, a British daily, meet and rekindle their friendship. Both have fond memories of the deceased, who really stands as the woman who brought these two men together. From that point on, the two men find themselves yearning for one another’s company until a series of events leads to the dissolution of their friendship, and ultimately, their dooms.

Some have criticized the book for its melodrama and overt ethical condemnations, but I see no problems with it whatsoever. One could criticize Dickens, Tolstoy, and Nabokov for the same reasons. The debates that McEwan presents are an integral part of the story, something that only adds texture to the lives of his characters.

This novel surely deserves the Booker Prize and your attention.

Some great quotes:

“A great man, Clive Linley. To air differences and remain friends, the essence of civilized existence, don’t you think?”

“He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy. Poison, in preserved form, to be used against you long into the future.”

Makes Dan Brown Look Like a Genius

The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry

Dan Brown can be blamed for the sudden proliferation of books dealing with quests, historians, and the search for treasure, knowledge and power. The problem is that as much as I am loathe to admit it, Brown is a much better writer than most of the people putting out similar books.

Berry’s outing is about as bad as it gets. He tells the story of the Templars, who have been driven into hiding and have long since vanished from the world. The Templars are in search of the Great Devise, a supposed secret concerning the life of Christ that will allow them to come out of hiding and shatter the Church that drove them under. Cotton Malone is a used bookseller and ex-federal agent who gets caught up in this mess and has to help stop the Templars. What ensues is a race to solve a series of clues and a chase scene about as short and uninspired as a walk to the grocery store and back. I really wish I had more positive things to say about this, but in a market that is already saturated with Dan Brown clones and National Treasure spin-offs (even spoofs), there is no need to produce any more of it.

Don’t bother buying this. I’m sure you’ll be able to find a copy in a 25 cent bin like me.

Some quotes:

“It has served us well, this myth of Christ”

“She’d only recently satisfied a loan used to finance Mark’s college and graduate school. Her son had several times offered to assume the debt, especially once they were estranged, but she’d always refused. A parent’s job was to educate their child, and she took her job seriously. Perhaps too much, she’d come to believe.”

“There much to be said for devotion. A man can seriously accomplish much when the woman he loves supports him, even if she believes what he does is foolishness.”

Enjoyable, But No Kite Runner

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Similar to The Kite Runner, Hosseini’s latest novel deals with illegitimate children in an Afghanistan reeling from turmoil and change. This time, Hosseini focuses on the female perspective by recounting the lives of Miriam, an illegitimate daughter of a wealthy cinema owner and business man, and a woman named Laila, whose parents are killed in a rocket attack. Both women, in the span of 18 years, end up married to Rasheed, a shoemaker who ends up beating them both relentlessly. The women try to escape from their husband’s rule. All of this takes place against the backdrop of the Soviet Union leaving Afghanistan and the subsequent Taliban takeover.

I ended up reading this book incredibly quickly, as the prose and the pacing is well done. You really do fly through everything. But what bothered me about the book was the same thing that bothered me about Kite Runner – everything seemed like it was written by someone who wanted to provide a perfectly balanced story that had to end in a somewhat neat package. Both of Hosseini’s books, although filled with tragedy, telegraph the redemption that saves the newest generation. I can understand the desire to end on a hopeful note, but there is something too artificial about the way that Hosseini goes about executing his vision.

Overall, this is a decent read, but one that does not live up to his previous outing.

A Quote:

“In that week, Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”

The Wondrous Writing of Junot Diaz

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I had the pleasure of listening to Junot Diaz read from his first collection Drown a few years ago at Hunter College and even then, I found myself excited to see what he could do with a novel. His prose, especially in the sarcasm and humor he is able to include, is phenomenal. After reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I can understand why it took Diaz so long to write it. I can only hope it does not take him another ten years or so to write something else.

This novel chronicles the life of a first-generation Dominacan-American named Oscar who loves his comic books and science fiction, as well as the many women in his life – namely, his sister, mother, and grandmother. Diaz frames the novel, which is more like a series of vignettes, as relating to a fuku, or a curse that has been placed on Oscar and his family that leads to much heartache and tragedy. Oscar, and those around him, struggle with what it means to be Dominican, so in that sense this book is a part of the transculturation/diaspora literature tradition carved out by writers such as Cristina Garcia and Julia Alvarez; yet at the same time, this book moves beyond that tradition by including so much humor, wit, and a modern-day sensibility that marks this as the start of a possibly new tradition, one that blends historical fact, mysticism, and fan-boy adoration all into one.

I really cannot say enough about this book and firmly believe that anyone who reads this will be a fan. The Pulitzer Prize Committee made the right decision.

Some Quotes:

“Her rage filled the house, flat stale smoke. It got into everything, into our hair and food, like the fallout they talked to use about in school that would one day drift down soft as snow.”

“You always think with your parents that at least at the very end something will change, something will get better.”

“Juan, the melancholic gambler, who waxed about Shanghai, as though it were a love poem sung by a beautiful woman you love but cannot have.”