The Morningside by Téa Obreht

Published by ‎ Random House on March 19, 2024

Téa Obreht writes allegorical novels. The Morningside is the story of people who feel the need to keep silent about their past to survive in the present. The key characters, Sylvia and her mother, represent everyone who has fled from a difficult circumstance and who fears being judged (or condemned, or killed) if they reveal the truth of their history.

For reasons that are only vaguely explained, Silvia and her mother left their home country as refugees. (All cities and countries in the book have fictional names. In keeping with the book's allegorical nature, they represent many places.) Silvia and her mother seem to have fled both a war and an environmental disaster that bears the signs (fires and floods) of global warming. Their passage was perilous. Along the way they joined a refugee camp. A war criminal was eventually placed in charge of clearing out the camp. His methods were unsound.

Sylvia’s mother taught her to hide her nationality so people will not make assumptions about what side she was on during the war or why she left. “It’s always dangerous to give people a way to tell themselves stories about you before they get to know you.” Yet Sylvia’s mother hides her past even from Sylvia, leaving her daughter to guess at the details of her homeland and the life her mother once lived.

Silvia and her mother now live in Island City, a place that might be a flooded Manhattan. The southern end of the island is underwater when the tides are in. The rules that govern residents include the consumption of government-supplied food rations and a prohibition against eating meat, although the rules don’t seem to apply to the wealthier island residents. A pirate radio station run by the Dispatcher gives a voice to less fortunate Island City residents.

Silvia and her mother are supposedly beneficiaries of the Repopulation Program. They were “recruited from abroad to move in and sway the balance against total urban abandonment.” Program beneficiaries have been promised better housing and newly constructed schools in the southern end of the island when the flooding recedes. The program is corrupt and the promises seem hollow. They give false hope to the relocated refugees. False hope might be better than none.

In the meantime, Silvia and her mother have been installed in Morningside, a large apartment building that was once elegant. Sylvia’s mother is employed as its superintendent. Many residents of Morningside have retained their wealth, including Bezi Duras, a mysterious woman who lives in the penthouse with her three large dogs.

Silvia lives a friendless, isolated life. She does chores in the Morningside, argues with her mother, and listens to the Dispatcher. When a new family moves into the Morningside, Silvia thinks she might finally have a friend in a girl named Mila, but the rude and bossy girl seems intent on getting into trouble and dragging timid Silvia along with her.

Silvia draws conclusions about her worlds that are rooted in the supernatural. She places objects (an empty perfume bottle, broken scissors) in places where they will support a spell of protection to keep her mother safe. A belief in the supernatural was instilled in Silvia by Ena, a now-deceased aunt (her mother’s or hers or just an aunt in general) who is the only relative other than her mother Silvia has ever known. Silvia believes Bezi Duras is a Vila (sort of a malignant fairy) and that her dogs are actually men who take canine form. Silvia’s beliefs are probably the imaginings of a young girl that were encouraged by Ena, but who knows? Obreht has a talent for making the supernatural seem natural.

Perhaps, as Silvia’s mother argues, a belief in magic prevents believers from having “a sense of true consequences.” Substitute “religion” for “magic” and Obreht might be weighing in on the reality of a benevolent god who allows refugees to endure enormous suffering at the hands of war criminals. Yet even in adulthood, Silvia will not surrender her belief that magic is real. She has always lived with the guilt that she saved her mother’s life by asking the Vila to take another person in her mother’s place at a time when her mother’s life was in danger. Whether that person was taken, what actually happened to her, is one of the novel’s unresolved ambiguities.

By the novel’s end, Silvia’s place of birth no longer exists. Events have forced Silvia, her mother, and the Dispatcher to remake their lives outside of Island City. The journey from an arbitrary birthplace to a place that feels like home is the story of refugees throughout history — at least, it is the story of refugees who manage to survive their ordeal. As Silvia’s mother observes, they are searching for light and its comforting illusion of warmth. Perhaps they can find it somewhere.

Obreht is a pleasure to read. Her first novel was a masterpiece. The two that have followed, while less stunning, continue the theme of finding lessons and hope in the hardships and mysteries of life. Obreht's reliance on folklore and mythology illuminates the darkness of modern times. As always, Obreht’s prose is both precise and evocative. The Morningside is a novel of allegorical truth that bears rereading.

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The Havana Run by Ace Atkins

Published by Amazon Original Stories on March 12, 2024

George and Jay are retired journalists living in Florida. An old man named Navarro offers them $10,000 to travel to Cuba and recover “family valuables” that have been hidden away since the Revolution. They fly to Havanna, where Navarro has arranged for Carmen to act as their guide. Carmen drives them to a hotel and assures them that a driver will take them to Santa Clara on the following day. Whether Carmen is trustworthy may be questionable. Sure, she drives off with their luggage, but maybe she was in a hurry.

Later that day, George and Jay are in fact met by a man named Armando who agrees to drive them to Santa Clara in the morning. Armando tells the men not to trust Carmen. In the hotel bar, George meets an American who tells him not to trust Nararro. They soon learn that they cannot trust Armando. The trip to Santa Clara turns out to be perilous.

In Santa Clara, George and Jay search for the contacts Navarro provided, Rosa and Safia. The two women are widely believed to be witches, but they put George and Jay in touch with a very old man. When George shows the man a map that Navarro made, he knows exactly where to find the valuables. Recovering them, however, will be a hairy experience.

Ace Atkins is high on my list of favorite thriller writers. This story earns points for avoiding the usual thriller themes. George and Jay aren’t tough guys. They don’t have guns. They don’t use their wits to accomplish their mission. Instead, employing journalistic persistence, they muddle their way forward until they get what they came for.

George and Jay have little choice but to place their faith in unsavory characters who routinely betray them. Yet they took the job and they doggedly perform it. Reflecting their uncertainty about their journey, the nature of the “family valuables” Navarro asked them to recover turns out to be ambiguous.

“The Havana Run” is driven by Cuba’s revolutionary history and post-revolutionary corruption. The medium-length story doesn’t waste a word. Atkins tells an offbeat tale at a good pace, creates atmosphere, populates the story with colorful characters, and grounds a plausible plot in an interesting history lesson.

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The Rule of Threes by Jeffery Deaver

Published by Amazon Original Stories on March 1, 2024

The Rule of Threes is a serial killer novella that challenges the reader to identify the killer. To solve the puzzle, the reader will need to identify the killer’s motivation. Jeffery Deaver adds so many plot twists that the reader will be challenged to keep up with the novella’s changing landscape. Solving the mystery is out of the question.

Constant Marlowe is the protagonist in one of Deaver’s ongoing series. Constant is the kind of police detective who makes her own rules. Those rules aren’t always consistent with the law. Fictional cops who go Dirty Harry on criminals are popular with consumers of crime fiction even if, in the real world, cops who don’t obey the law have no business being cops.

Constant makes her way to Clark Valley, Illinois to investigate a serial killer. Only two women have been killed, so it might be more accurate to say that she is concerned about a budding serial killer. The killer earns the name BRK (for Bludgeon, Rape, and Kill) because that’s what he does to his victims and the media like to identify serial killers by cool names or initials.

The first victim was killed three days before the second. Both are young women of similar size who have short dark hair. As Constant examines the crime scene, Joseph Ray Whelan is hiding in the woods, watching her work. Is he the killer? That would be telling.

A Native American Deputy Sheriff is assigned as Constant’s local contact. They use a gas station security camera to identify license plates of cars that drove past the park where the second killing occurred, hoping one of the drivers might have witnessed something. That strategy brings them into contact with Glen Hope, who was driving his daughter Tamara to her college residence in a nearby town. They stopped to eat lunch in the park, but they give Constant no useful information. Tamara will later become an attempted murder victim, perhaps because BRK believes she is a witness who needs to be removed.

Although her investigation doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, a couple of big dumb guys attack Constant. In the story’s background is a newly discovered treaty that may grant an indigenous tribe the rights to certain land. The attempted thrashing may have been inspired by white supremacists in the Eagle Brotherhood who think that Constant’s presence in the area has something to do with the treaty. They don’t realize that Constant used to be a professional boxer. She likes nothing more than punching big dumb guys. She thinks the guys have been hired to attack her but someone with a rifle foils her plan to beat the truth out of them.

Other key characters are in the business of fencing stolen goods or money laundering. The disparate parts of the story — probably too many for a novella — come together when Constant, using her brain rather than her fists, pieces together clues that reveal an explanation for the killings. She exposes the killer, or thinks she does, but the story continues.

Like most modern crime novels that depend on plot twists, the reader must accept implausible developments for the sake of enjoying the story. What seems to be a final twist at the end is soon followed by another. And another. And one for good measure at the very end. All the twisting struck me as overkill, but such is the way of the modern crime novel. The ending is a bit abrupt, but at least it puts an end to all the twists.

The Rule of Threes is better than the last serial killer story that Deaver wrote for Amazon Original Stories. It might be criticized as formulaic if the formula is “stuff as many surprises into the story as possible.” That is, in fact, an approach that Deaver often takes.

The notion that a character is obsessed with “threes” is gimmicky but contributes nothing to the story. Constant is a fairly one-dimensional character so plot is everything. While I wasn’t entirely sold on the plot, it moves quickly and is reasonably entertaining. The word count is sufficiently high that the novella offers a meatier reading experience than many Amazon Short Originals, including others that Deaver has written, so the story earns an unenthusiastic recommendation.

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Victim by Andrew Boryga

Published by Doubleday on March 12, 2024

Victim is a novel that takes the form of a memoir. Javier Perez admits that he was a slacker who learned to game the system by portraying himself as a victim until his dishonesty was discovered. By telling his story in Victim, Javier is attempting to atone by being honest with himself and with the world. The novel is a nuanced look at the risks people take when they abandon intellectual honesty under the pretense of telling a larger truth.

Javier has had a tough life, but he is used to his life so he doesn’t regard it as particularly difficult. He grew up in the Bronx with a mother who worked hard and made sure he had enough to eat. He lived in a sketchy neighborhood but he learned to read the warning signs and knew when crossing the street (or running) would keep him safe. His dad was a drug dealer who was gunned down in front of Javier on one of Javier’s visits to Puerto Rico, but Javier wasn’t surprised by his father’s fate. To Javier, his life is just the way life is. He has nothing to complain about.

Unlike his friend Gio Meija, Javier is a reasonably good student. Gio clowns around in classes, insults teachers, hangs with drug dealers, drops out, and ends up in prison. Javier has a nerdish reputation because he enjoys reading. He does enough in classes to stand out in comparison to students who don’t try at all. He wants to become a famous writer and “make bank” although he hasn’t tried to write anything.

Javier attracts the attention of a roving guidance counselor who tells him how to exploit his background in an a college admissions essay. On the strength of an essay that exaggerates the hardships he has endured, Javier is given a free ride to a prestigious university in upstate New York.

Javier takes advantage of his ethnicity in college. He scores points with professors for having an authentic underprivileged experience. He milks the fact that his best friend is in prison. He meets a Latina student who is a year ahead of him. She introduces him to a campus organization for students of Latin heritage. Javier relies on his “street” experience to make it seem that he has overcome more barriers than his peers. His Latina friend begins to supplement his college education with information about systemic racism, white privilege, and America’s oppressive power structure. Javier doesn’t know many white people and those he knows have been good to him, but he parrots her teachings because he wants to get in her pants. After he also accepts her lessons about feminism, she sleeps with him and they become a couple.

Javier begins to write a column for the student newspaper. His classes have taught him about the importance of research and discipline, but that seems like too much work to Javier. His columns are superficial but are published in the interest of allowing diverse voices to be heard. To publish more, Javier begins to embellish his personal experiences. He claims that instructors have confronted him with racist attitudes. He describes a benign encounter with the police as if it were threatening.

Javier’s columns play well with his white liberal audience. He justifies his lies by telling himself he’s exposing injustices that actually exist, even if they aren’t part of his own experience. Javier thinks of himself as taking shortcuts rather than telling lies. He thinks he is exercising an artistic license to tell greater truths.

After graduation, Javier gets a job writing for a magazine. He again faces criticism for producing superficial work until he again embellishes his experiences. After Gio is released from prison, Gio calls out Javier for the lies he tells. Gio knows that Javier didn’t grow up eating unhealthy fast food that capitalists sell to exploit the poor — an article Javier’s editor assigned after a story broke that portrayed the Bronx as a third-world community where healthy food was unavailable. Gio knows that Javier’s mother served rice and beans with fresh food — her meals were “the bomb.”

Javier ultimately alienates both Gio and his college girlfriend by portraying them in articles with half-truths. Gio knows that Javier was never recruited to join a gang — Javier is too soft. Gio knows that he did not have an epiphany about being a victim because of his post-prison talks with Javier. Gio has never seen himself as a victim. He knows that people who define themselves as victims make their whole life about victimization. Gio doesn’t want any part of such a confining identity. He regards it as “just another trap,” no better than prison.

Yet Javier doesn’t want to embrace Gio’s demand for honesty. Unsurprisingly, Javier eventually learns a lesson when his dishonesty blows up his life.

There have been well-publicized incidents of journalists falsifying sources or fabricating facts to make a larger point. While the point may have merit, supporting it with lies only undermines the truth the journalist is trying to prove. The social justice issues that Javier writes about have merit, but his lack of intellectual rigor and his reliance on fabrications only harms his cause. Victim makes that point effectively.

An equally important point is that people gain attention and sympathy by portraying themselves as victims or by exaggerating their victimization. This is true across the spectrum of race and political beliefs. That the media crave stories about victims only encourages people to self-identify as victims rather than working to overcome any harm they experienced. People too often use the label “victim” as an excuse for their failure to do their best — at work, in school, in relationships. Javier’s life might have been difficult compared to more affluent students at his university, but he never thinks of himself as a victim until he realizes that playing the victim card attracts attention, sympathy, and opportunities he hasn’t earned.

Even if Victim is viewed as satire, Javier’s story might be a bit simplistic or heavy-handed. Still, fiction can use exaggeration to expose truth even if journalism can’t. The novel is not written in an elegant style, although that might be a function of Javier's voice. Javier doesn't come across as a writer who would take the time to polish his prose. Victim is engaging and it addresses issues surrounding the exploitation of victimization that are too rarely explored. Those are good reasons to read the novel.

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Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux

Published by Mariner Books on February 6, 2024

One pleasure of reading lies in the vicarious opportunity to live a different life, if only for a few hours. One pleasure of reading Paul Theroux is that he transports the reader to unfamiliar places, to lives unlike our own. Burma Sahib takes the reader into the life of young Eric Blair as a supervising officer in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma during the 1920s, before Blair began to publish novels under the name George Orwell.

Blair hates the nickname “Lofty,” a reference to his height. He attended Eton, suffered the beatings by faculty and older boys, passed up the usual path of an Oxford education and a life of privilege, and is now taking a probationary position as assistant district superintendent of police in Burma. At the age of 19 (he will turn 20 in 1923), Blair has accepted a three-year contract and will need to repay the cost of his passage (and incur his father’s wrath) if he quits. The novel’s initial chapters begin with Blair’s travel on a ship that is sailing to Mandalay and follow him to his first posting.

Great Britain is administering Burma as a colony, taking its resources and offering a dubious path to “civilization” in return. The constables Blair supervises are Burmese and Indian. Natives automatically refer to Blair as Sahib, but he is expected to become a Pukka Sahib, a title that suggests both authority and an exemplar of gentlemanly behavior. Unfortunately, most Pukka Sahibs are gentlemanly only toward other white Europeans. They belittle, berate, and beat Burmese and Indians without giving their ungentlemanly behavior a second thought.

The novel follows Blair through various postings in Burma, most of which don’t end well. He has unfortunate encounters with a rogue elephant (Blair is too violent in the opinion of his superior) and with a crazy man (Blair is not violent enough). To his colonial bosses, elephants are more important than Asians because elephants help the timber industry make money and are less easily replaced than native workers.

Blair was raised to believe in the correctness of British colonialism and in the superiority of white men, the British foremost among them. His views are both reinforced and challenged as he performs the duties of a police superintendent. Blair has a grandmother and a few other relatives near Mandalay, but he is distressed to learn that his uncle Frank married a Burmese woman who gave birth to Kathleen, Frank’s “half caste” daughter. Blair is afraid that his superiors will learn about the relationship and will make disparaging comments about him behind his back. His disgust with people of mixed races eventually causes him to feel disgusted with himself for not judging people on their merits rather than their parentage.

Blair is pleased to encounter a friend from Eton in Burma and is equally distressed when he learns that the man is engaged to a Burmese woman. His concerns are defined less by his own prejudices against Asians than by his fear that he will be judged for having friends and relatives who are willing to mix with natives. At the same time, Blair enjoys the sexual company of Asian women. Sometimes he has to pay for it, but a couple of his postings come with a young Burmese woman who is expected to keep him happy at night.

Blair eventually agrees to sponsor an Indian — one of his few friends in Burma — as a member of his social club, knowing that he will be criticized and even ostracized for daring to bring a nonwhite through the club doors. Placing friendship above social position is a transformative decision, similar to Huck Finn’s moral decision to risk God’s wrath by helping Jim gain his freedom.

Theroux pays close attention to the minor characters in Burma Sahib, including Blair’s police colleagues and his relatives. He gives each of Blair’s lovers a distinct personality, but none of them (apart from the white woman with whom he has an affair) are happy with Blair’s unwillingness to make their relationship permanent. One of those women contributes to Blair’s undoing. The married white woman who occasionally shares his bed has a dirty mouth (by the standards of her time) and Blair finds it exciting to encounter naughty words and ideas that he never seen in books.

Blair's fullness as a character is impressive. Theroux paints Blair as an isolated man who prefers his own company to that of others. He holds his secrets dear, even when the secrets are not worth holding. He gives the impression of being a blank slate and avoids spreading clues about who he might really be. He hates the assumptions that the British make about him when they learn he attended Eton. Blair despises most people, whether they are white Europeans or Indians and Burmese who have darker skin. He only seems content when he is reading or struggling to write poetry. Jack London, Kipling, and Somerset Maugham have the most impact on his literary sensibility, while E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India fails to speak to his own experience.

Theroux is a masterful storyteller. His descriptions of 1920s Burma make the reader scratch mosquito bites, gag at the odor of open sewage, and feel disgust at white colonists who feel privileged to treat everyone with dark skin as a servant. If Theroux occasionally makes points a bit redundantly, those points are always important to the story. The primary point he makes in Burma Sahib relates to Blair’s ability to change his thinking (to become "woke" in current parlance) after observing the unfairness both of British colonialism and of racial or ethnic prejudice in all parts of the world. Blair’s formative experiences have a liberalizing (and thus humanizing) impact on Blair, turning him into the author who will later question authoritarian rule in 1984 and Animal Farm. Burma Sahib is a fascinating portrait of Blair’s intellectual and empathic development. At the same time, it is a fascinating story of a young man who comes of age in an unfamiliar and challenging world.

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