The Quarry by Iain Banks

Published by Redhook/Orbit on June 25, 2013

One of the characters in Iain Banks' final novel is dying of cancer, the disease that ended Banks' own life, although Banks did not receive his diagnosis until the novel was nearly complete. Banks lightens a serious story about death with characteristic humor touching on a variety of subjects, including movies, religion, British politics, AA, families, and holistic medicine. Many of the laughs come from a character who expresses himself with uncommon bluntness. Kit Hyndersley is insensitive, self-centered, introverted, and autistic. He feels most comfortable when he is online, in a role-playing game called HeroSpace, where clearly defined rules govern his life and expectations are unambiguous. Some people feel sorry for Kit because he is mentally ill; others pity him because he doesn't have a "real" life. His father's friend Holly is teaching him the conventions of polite social interaction, most of which he regards as inane. Kit knows he doesn't think like other people, but he's content and sees little reason to change. His version of happiness might not be the norm, but as he sees it, "happiness is happiness." In any event, the reader wouldn't want him to change because he's perfect the way he is ... perfectly infuriating, perfectly amusing, and (unhampered by the filters of politeness) perfectly honest.

Kit is eighteen. He lives with his disagreeable father, Guy, in a dilapidated house on the edge of a quarry. Guy's cancer does nothing to improve his disposition. Kit doesn't know his mother. Guy has kept her identity a closely guarded secret, sometimes hinting it might be someone Kit knows, other times inventing improbable liaisons with women in distant places.

A group of friends from Guy's university days, fellow students of Film and Media Studies, have come to spend the weekend in his house, helping to empty it of clutter. Their ulterior motive for visiting their dying friend is to search for a video they once made that would be embarrassing (in an unspecified way) if its contents were ever made public. Knowing that people tend to avoid "the very sick and the very dying," Guy dangled the tape to orchestrate this (presumably) final gathering of old mates. The result is a British version of The Big Chill as the friends spend most of the weekend talking, drinking, and doing drugs.

The plot that loosely binds The Quarry revolves around twin mysteries: the identity of Kit's mother and the contents of the tape. As you'd expect from a Banks novel, quirky characters are the novel's strength. Guy is often an overbearing jerk -- and probably was even before he was dying -- but Banks creates sympathy for the man by illuminating his fears and regrets. It's also easy to like Kit despite his many faults, or perhaps because of them. Although they aren't developed in equal depth, the other characters are damaged in conventional ways. Banks seems to be suggesting that we're all damaged and that Kit's mental illness is just a different kind of damage, perhaps organic in nature, while the other characters have been ground down by life's experiences.

One of Banks' characters argues that people have reunions like this because they want to measure themselves against known reference points, and maybe that's the point of the book. None of the characters measure up as well as they might like, but few of us ever do. Kit is a bit young to be measured, and to the extent that this is his coming-of-age story, it's fair to say that Kit, despite his limited ability to change, does learn something about how to live his life. Unlike Banks' strongest efforts, however, The Quarry doesn't pack many surprises or dramatic moments, although Guy's anger and frustration that cancer has taken control of his life is realistic and moving. The resolutions of the twin mysteries are a bit disappointing, given the buildup they receive. For that reason, while I've never encountered a Banks novel (including his science fiction) that wasn't worth reading, I'd put The Quarry in the bottom half of my stack of Banks novels. That still makes it a better novel than most authors can manage. It's sad that the stack will never grow taller.

RECOMMENDED

Wrecked by Charlotte Roche

First published in German in 2011; published in translation by Grove (Black Cat) on May 7, 2013

The first several pages of Wrecked are devoted to the narrator's frank and detailed description of the steps she takes to give sexual pleasure to her husband. Elizabeth Kiehl's narration is alternately clinical and erotic, and occasionally touches upon the science and psychology and politics of sex. Readers who don't approve of graphic language will want to stay far away from Wrecked.

The sex is followed by a considerably less interesting discussion of cooking, which turns into a discussion of motherhood, from Elizabeth's perspective as both the daughter of a domineering mother and as the mother of an eight-year-old girl, the product of her first marriage. This leads to the story of how Elizabeth met her current husband (Georg), which leads to an analysis of the role sex plays in a marriage, which amounts to: love is just an excuse to have sex. Filling out organ donor cards (because love is intertwined with death) is the height of their romantic relationship. Elizabeth wants to have sex with a man who isn't her husband (but only with her husband's approval), a desire that provides what passes for dramatic tension in the novel: will she or won't she?

As the title suggests, Elizabeth is a wreck. She has panic attacks. She has body issues. She has odor issues. She has control issues. She is plagued by feelings of guilt. She hates her mother. She hates her stepmother. She has a father complex. She has worms (did we really need to know that?). She is rigidly opposed to change. She is "hostile to life." She often contemplates suicide. She's ambivalent about some of her husband's kinkier desires but she's unable to say "no." She fears that her husband (and every other man she knows) is a pedophile who will sexually abuse her daughter. She is always afraid that something bad is about to happen -- with some justification, given the bad things that have happened to her. According to her therapist, her hypersexuality temporarily displaces her fear. Therapy defines her.

When she's not recounting the tragedies that have comprised her life, Elizabeth reveals every thought that passes through her mind, from the environmental impact of dishwashing to corporal punishment to gray hair and breast size and the many ways in which she and everyone she knows might die. A character with this many tribulations and odd thoughts should be interesting, but the engaging aspects of Elizabeth's stream-of-consciousness narration are too often overshadowed by her tedious nature.

As I was reading Wrecked, I was trying to work out whether Charlotte Roche meant it to be a comedy. Parts of the novel are quite funny (including Elizabeth's interaction with her desperately needed therapist, with whom she discusses -- you guessed it -- her sexual fantasies), and at least some of the humor is clearly intentional. Other bits made me laugh because they were just so over-the-top -- like deciding which partner she and Georg should choose in a brothel (because she feels a need to give Georg everything he wants) or offering to show him her worms. I give Roche credit for her humor, which is the novel's redeeming value. On the other hand, the story's most dramatic moment, recounted from Elizabeth's memory, seems contrived, created only to add tragedy to Elizabeth's life. In fact, I came to believe that it was inserted into the story just to give Elizabeth something meaningful to talk about during therapy.

As a psychological study of an extreme case, Wrecked is moderately interesting, if a little creepy. As an exaggerated commentary on therapy and therapists, Wrecked has value. As an exploration of the relationship between sex and death, or a statement about feminism, or a complaint about the unfair expectations placed upon wives and mothers, or an illustration of a child's rebellion against a parent or an indictment of monogamy and double-standards ... well, that's all been done before in novels that make those points without lecturing the reader. Perhaps I should be sympathetic to Elizabeth despite (or because of) her maddening nature, but Roche only made me feel happy to have her out of my reading life when the novel ended. I appreciated some of what Roche is trying to do, and I enjoyed some of the comedy as well as a few of the less clinical descriptions of Roche's sexual adventures, but since the novel ultimately left me feeling wrecked, I can't recommend it.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer

Published by Ecco on June 25, 2013

Is it ever possible to be the person who, as a child, you dreamed of becoming? That's the question that animates The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells.

Greta experiences "true sadness" when, within a period of months in 1985, her twin brother Felix dies and Nathan, her live-in lover, leaves her for another woman. After conventional treatment for depression fails, she turns to electroconvulsive therapy. Greta assumes she's hallucinating when, the following day, she wakes up in a bedroom that isn't quite hers with a face she doesn't recognize. She eventually realizes she's living in 1918, having exchanged bodies with a Greta from a pre-AIDS Manhattan where Felix "lived, but did not live well," and where she married Nathan, who has gone to war. Another treatment, this one administered in 1918, sends Greta to 1941, to an even stranger life where Nathan is living at home with her, but as a less-than-faithful husband.

If Greta isn't hallucinating, perhaps she is traveling through time to parallel universes, or (as the 1985 version of her Aunt Ruth suggests) perhaps she is experiencing the transmigration of souls. Perhaps this is happening because all three versions of Greta want to escape their lives, to make them perfect. As she cycles through the three time frames, the 1985 Greta, eager to change her own and her brother's life in the earlier times, finds that the other Gretas have been mucking about in her 1985 life. In each life Greta must make choices, but the right decision in one life might be the wrong decision in another. In each life, Greta's heart wants what it wants, but as she bounces from life to life, what her heart wants is not always clear. "If only we just loved who we're supposed to love" is a thought that runs through the novel, but how do we know who we're supposed to love? Andrew Sean Greer's point (which he eventually states explicitly) is that we each have many heads and many hearts. Another (albeit less obvious) point is that it's fine to change your own life but it's generally best not to meddle in another's.

Change is a theme that dominates The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. Each Greta is fundamentally the same but subtly different, as are the Nathans and Felixes, the changes dictated by the times in which they live ("It takes so little to make us different people"). Changing times are most notably reflected through Greta's brother, who refuses to acknowledge his true nature in 1918, stays in the closet in 1941, and is openly gay in 1985. On a more intimate level, the novel addresses the need to find that part of ourselves that all our friends know we should change but lack the courage to tell us. Yet the story is also about the illusion of change. In 1918, at the end of the war and in the midst of a flu pandemic, Greta is the only person who knows that a new world war will begin in twenty years, that an HIV pandemic will spread death in sixty years. In each life, people die, lovers disappoint. Perhaps the perfection Greta seeks is unattainable; perhaps some things can't be changed. Perhaps fate dictates our lives, no matter what choices we make. Perhaps it is only our memories that change, the present altering the past.

Although Greer addresses a number of interesting ideas, it's probably impossible to pull off a story like this in a way that is entirely satisfying. At times, Greer strives without success to make simplicity out of complexity. Melodramatic moments undermine the parts of the story that seem genuine. Greer too often serves up platitudes, although I appreciate his occasional acknowledgement of different perspectives (Greta's "live for today," for instance, is countered with her brother's "It only works if there's no tomorrow"). Dialog occasionally hits a false note as characters utter philosophical pronouncements that are a bit too obvious. The plot falters toward the novel's end. It resolves a little too easily, sidestepping hard questions in favor of easy answers. Although the novel is flawed -- a strong concept imperfectly executed -- it offers enough moments of insight to make it worth reading.

RECOMMENDED

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews

Published by Scribner on June 4, 2013

"Two agents, both witting of the other, a single handler, the whole case directed by a mad scientist of a CI chief, two mole hunts -- and the added necessity of having to decide where to eat dinner." That sentence, appearing about three-quarters of the way into Red Sparrow, stands as a quick-and-dirty summary of an absorbing plot.

Red Sparrow begins with a traditional, but well executed, surveillance/chase scene. CIA agent Nathaniel Nash meets with a highly placed asset in Moscow, code named MARBLE, and manages to elude the FSB agents who stumble upon the meeting site. Vanya Egorov, First Deputy Director of the SVR, knows Nash met with someone, but doesn't know the traitor's identity. Nash has protected his asset but has blown his own cover.

After Nash is reassigned to Helsinki, the story shifts to Dominika Egorova, Vanya's niece, a determined woman who sees the colors that surround people. A detailed backstory explains how this oddly-wired woman became an SVR operative. It eventually becomes Dominika's mission (and Vanya's obsession) to trap Nash, to learn from him the identity of his Russian asset. Much of the initial fun in Red Sparrow derives from the chance to follow two intelligent intelligence officers as they try to recruit each other. The story eventually introduces a highly placed spy in the American government, the counterpart to MARBLE, but Nash and Dominika always remain the story's focus. About halfway through the novel, a conventional plot takes the sharp turn that separates jaw-dropping stories from those that are merely good.

A good spy novel needs moments of tension. Jason Matthews excels at those. He builds anticipation that instills serious teeth-gnashing as he places key characters in precarious positions. He makes palpable the anxiety endured by double agents who risk being unmasked. The last quarter of the novel is particularly intense. The plot thread concerning Dominika's relationship with Nash could have become trite (the stuff of trashy movies), but Matthews makes the emotions real while keeping the story fresh.

A good spy novel also needs good tradecraft, and the descriptions of tradecraft in Red Sparrow are exceptional. Spy novels often describe the schools in which the techniques of field work are taught, but I've never encountered such a thorough description of training in seduction, the clinical lessons imparted at Russia's Sparrow School. Although they detail the objectification and humiliation of women, the scenes are written with sensitivity and compassion.

The convincing portrayal of Dominika's roiling emotions, her evolving contempt for her masters, and Nash's evolution from a nakedly career-driven spy to a grounded human being make the lead characters in Red Sparrow memorable. Even minor characters are given full biographies. In fact, if Red Sparrow has a weakness, it is that so many characters are developed in so much depth that the novel is longer than it needs to be. Fortunately, it never drags, and that weakness disappears before the novel's second half.

Dominika's ability to see colored auras emanating from people is a little whacky for my taste, but that's the novel's only other misstep. Like real people, the characters spend some of their time eating. Their meals are described in mouth-watering prose. Rather incongruously, each chapter is followed by a recipe for some dish that is mentioned in the text. A chapter that ends with a dramatic death, for instance, jumps to a recipe for shrimp salad. The recipes are an odd addition to a spy novel, but people who have more culinary skill than I do might find them useful. In any event, they don't detract from one of the most impressive debut espionage novels I've encountered.

RECOMMENDED

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Published by Hogarth on May 7, 2013

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a haunting novel of exquisite prose and striking images, of big themes built upon small, poignant moments. Every character, no matter how minor, rings true. Rarely has a debut novel so impressed me with its power and beauty.

Sonja Rabina is a trauma surgeon who left London and returned to her home in Volchansk in 1996. She is the hospital's last remaining physician when Akhmed shows up in 2004 with eight-year-old Havaa, who was hiding in the woods as Russian soldiers took her Chechen father away and burned her house to the ground. Akhmed, an incompetent doctor from Havaa's village, agrees to stay on at the hospital if Sonja will allow Havaa to remain. The two physicians are a study in contrasts: Sonja is skillful but lacks empathy for her patients (and for Havaa); Akhmed has empathy for all but no skill (except for drawing, which he much prefers to medicine). Neither would willingly trade places with the other.

The story looks back over a ten year period to reveal how the novel's key players arrived at their present circumstances. Anthony Marra creates sympathy for, and assures the reader's understanding of, each character. There are no true villains here, only people who are forced by circumstances to do things they regret. Characters are steeped in their region's misery: Dokka, Havaa's father, whose ten fingers were the price of resistance before he disappeared for the final time; Khassan Geshilov, the historian whose "history of a nation that had destroyed history and nationhood" reached fifteen million words and was forever in need of revision; Khassan's son Ramzan, an informant for the Russians who is feared and reviled by all, but who once (unknown to all) was a tragic hero; Akhmed's bedridden wife, Ula, whose descriptions of her day are mistaken for hallucinations; Sonja's sister Natasha, who twice pays an unconscionable price for her freedom. Although the characters endure atrocities and disappearances and lives of deprivation, they carry on, often guarding secrets, not just from the state, but from those closest to them.

The characters form a microcosm of Chechnya during a harsh and brutal time.  The novel provides a fascinating, condensed look at Chechnya in evolution over a ten year period, as well as the tension between Chechens and the ethnic Russians who were forcibly relocated to Chechnya, but the information is so seamlessly integrated into the story that it never feels like a history lesson.  Some chapters are so intensely moving they're difficult to read, but the trauma of Chechen life is tempered by the reminder that "the nervous system doesn't exist exclusively to feel pain."  Love and tenderness coexist with torture and death.

The maturity and sophistication of Marra's storytelling is astonishing. Among the novel's many symbols, my favorite is ice, symbolic of both survival and disappearance, "a melting into the past, not an erasure but a conversion in form, from presence to memory." Another is static from the radio, formless sound that can be shaped (like memories, or certain people) into whatever we desire.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena explores diverse themes, all timeless and universal: the cycles of life (babies are born to replace the dead as new wars flare up to kill the living); the importance and difficulty of family; books and art as instruments of bonding and as vaults for the preservation of memories; the nature of betrayal (of family, friends, and lovers) and what it does to the soul; the protective power of hope, kindness, and generosity. Although the novel's time frame is 1994 to 2004, with a particular focus on the last four days of that period, every now and then Marra gives us a peek at what will come later, reminding us of the story's most important theme, one that is echoed in the book's title: people suffer, death is inevitable, but every day, new lives begin and existing lives begin anew. Life goes on.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED