The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson

First published in 1956 

Scott Carey is dwindling to nothingness. Having been sprayed by insecticide and then irradiated, Scott loses an inch a week until his former self is all but lost. Although the movie version of The Shrinking Man and some later editions of the book add the word "Incredible" to the title, Scott finds his loss of stature to be humiliating and ultimately dehumanizing. The story might be incredible in the sense of "not credible" (how do Scott's organs, particularly his brain, continue to function normally when he is less than a half inch tall?), but Scott is no Ray Palmer. To the extent he demonstrates any heroism, it is in his dogged determination to survive.

Through much of the story, Scott finds himself trapped in the basement being chased by a spider. In Scott's mind, the spider comes to represent "every anxiety, insecurity, and fear in his life given a hideous, night-black form." Scott survives on soggy crackers and water collected in a thimble, although reaching the water becomes a challenge when he shrinks to less than half the thimble's height.

As Scott goes about the daily business of survival, he flashes back to the days that preceded his perilous life in the basement. Scott is 6 feet tall before he starts to shrink. When he sees his mother (at 5'3"), she is in denial. When he's down to 4 feet, his wife starts to treat him like a child (it doesn't occur to her that he might still want sex). At 3'6" he attracts a pedophile. At an inch under 3 feet, he feels despair because his wife pities him. At 21 inches, he fantasizes about a teenage babysitter but she, like his wife, is unattainable. Later he needs to be protected from his daughter, who comes to view him as a doll rather than a father. Pride prevents him from cashing in on his story; he refuses to be treated as a freak, even though his family desperately needs the money. He achieves a respite from the destruction of his self-image when he meets a female circus midget, but he knows the relationship will not last. Nothing can stop him from shrinking.

Richard Matheson fully imagines the physical dangers and difficulties of being less than an inch tall, but the story is more interesting for the emotional toll that Scott experiences. "Awareness of the shrinking was the curse, not the shrinking." Matheson creates a convincing psychological profile of a man who can't readily cope with the loss of everything he values: his job, his wife, and chiefly, his self-respect. Experiencing "a complete negation of spirit," he feels like "a pathetic fraction of a shadow," drained of purpose, unable to meet his basic needs, dependent upon others for survival. In the end, however, trapped in the basement and too small to be noticed by others, he can only depend on himself.

An ineffable sadness pervades the story. As Sam reclines on a dollhouse bed and says to the doll beside him "Why aren't you real?," the trauma of his vanishing life is palpable. There are many such moments in The Shrinking Man. Yet, in the end, this isn't a sad novel. The human spirit triumphs. Life endures. There is meaning to be found in even the smallest existence. This is Sam's ultimate discovery, and it is a metaphorical lesson for all who feel themselves shrinking, diminishing in importance, as their lives unfold.

RECOMMENDED

The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom

Published by Hyperion on September 4, 2012 

The measurement of time, Mitch Albom’s parable tells us, distinguishes man from other animals.  Man alone measures time, and man alone fears time running out.  Every parable has a moral, and Albom’s is this:  we should replace fear of losing time with an appreciation of the time we have.  It is a worthy lesson, even if the parable flounders as it makes its way there.

The Time Keeper imagines Father Time as a real person, a man immune to the ravages of time.  In biblical times, Father Time’s name was Dor.  While his childhood friend Nim was building the Tower of Babel, Dor was learning how to measure time.  When Dor’s wife becomes ill, Dor tries to climb the tower in the hope that by reaching the heavens, he can make time stop.  When the tower falls, Dor is banished to a cave and cursed with immortality because he offended God.  By teaching man to count time, “the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”

Alternating with Dor’s story are those of two other characters.  Victor Delamonte, the fourteenth-richest man in the world, has a tumor on his liver.  At the age of 86, he is running out of time.  He resolves to buy more time.  Sarah Lemon is a smart but unattractive seventeen-year-old who falls in love with an insensitive hunk named Ethan.  When he rejects her, she doesn’t know if she wants to keep living -- she wants less time than she has been allotted.  Dor’s penance -- his chance to atone for the sin of inventing clocks -- requires him to intervene in the lives of Victor and Sarah.

The Time Keeper is easily read in one or two sittings (depending upon how long you sit).  Albom uses simple sentences to tell a simple story.  As is generally true of parables, simplicity is The Time Keeper’s defining characteristic.  The proposition it initially advances -- that counting moments leads to misery, that we should lead simple and grateful lives -- isn’t particularly profound, but the nature of a parable is to illustrate an obvious lesson.

But is it an honest lesson?  Dor was punished (or readjusted) because he wasn’t content to live his life without counting its moments, but inquiry and invention are arguably a better use of a life than sitting still and being grateful.  There is much to be said for the human capacity to plan and to inquire, traits that inevitably lead to an understanding of time.  Albom’s point -- that we need to spend our life appreciating the time we have rather than fretting about the time we don’t have -- is a good one, but it’s also a half-truth.  The downside of measuring time is balanced by countless upsides, a reality that Albom’s story chooses to ignore.  The sense of urgency, the race to accomplish something before the clock runs out, has led to better medicine, longer lives, greater comfort, and a host of other worthy accomplishments that would never have been achieved if everyone were content to tend sheep and feel grateful for a quiet, uneventful life.

Albom’s expressly stated notion that life was more satisfying before the invention of time measurement is unsupportable.  Time measurement actually began with prehistoric man, long before Dor, and cave dwelling isn’t my idea of a fulfilling life.  There’s an undertone in Albom’s story -- simplicity is good, progress is bad -- that is reflected in Albom’s vision of a future in which people have “forgotten how to feel.”  A few hundred years from now, Albom posits, people will long for “a simpler, more satisfying world.”  Albom’s peek at the future is a denial of history:  life might have been simpler in biblical times, but it was also shorter and more difficult.  Lives were consumed by the struggle to survive.  The slaves who were building the Tower of Babel had little opportunity to feel grateful for their existence.  The ensuing millennia haven’t made people any less capable of “feeling,” and it’s difficult to believe that people will lose that innate ability as time marches on.  People are fond of believing that everything was better in the past, but as Woody Allen recently demonstrated, the present is a better place in which to live.

Of course, parables aren’t meant to be taken literally, and if one reads the story solely as a reminder of the need to appreciate whatever time we have, the message resonates.  There are conventional novels that make the same point with greater depth and more subtlety (The Chequer Board is a favorite), but parables aren’t meant to be subtle or deep.  Nor are the gaps in internal logic as important in a parable as they would be in a different kind of story.  At its root, The Time Keeper tells a good story, has a sweet ending, and delivers at least half of a universal truth.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

NW by Zadie Smith

Published by Penguin Press on September 4, 2012 

The primary characters in Zadie Smith’s new novel -- residents of North West London, from which the title derives -- are dissected and analyzed, or more often skewered, as Smith lays bare their hypocrisies, ambitions, facades, insecurities, prejudices, and fears.  The four central characters stand on different rungs of the social ladder.  The impact of class and social identity on relationships is the novel’s central theme, why some people rise above their beginnings and others don’t is the central question, but -- setting aside those social issues -- I enjoyed NW for the portrait it paints of troubled individuals coming to terms with their changing lives.

Leah Hanwell, 35, is married to an African named Michel.  Leah has a love/hate relationship with Michel, and also with her friend Natalie (formerly Keisha), a barrister whose upward mobility (assisted by marriage to a prosperous money manager) has eluded her childhood friends.  Just as J-Lo tried some years ago to convince her audience that she was still “Jenny from the block,” Natalie is experiencing something of an identity crisis.  Having shed the name Keisha, she still clings to her past, at least to Leah, whose attendance at Natalie’s posh parties seems designed to contrast Natalie’s humble beginnings to her current status.  Although Leah has done well for herself, earning a degree and finding employment with a nonprofit, she remains tongue-tied in the company of educated professionals (Natalie invites Leah to tell stories and then gladly tells them for her) and is embarrassed by Michel’s sincerity (but only when they are in public).  Leah also seems envious of and disquieted by Natalie’s children.

A couple of lesser characters haven’t made the same progress as Natalie and Leah.  Nathan Bogle, the recipient of Leah’s childhood crush, is mired in a slang-filled, weed-smoking life, a life on the streets that is dedicated solely to survival.  His role in the novel is to teach Natalie that she knows nothing about his social class despite attending the same school when they were both ten.  Nathan knows Natalie has “made it” because she can squander her tears on something as insignificant as a distressed marriage; she has left more fundamental worries behind.  Yet for all her success and despite Nathan’s complaint that she is needlessly self-pitying, Natalie feels trapped by her circumstances.  Her desperate sadness motivates foolish behavior.

Positioned somewhere between Nathan and Leah on the ladder of success is Felix Cooper, whose Jamaican father lives in the West End.  Felix craves the freedom of a better life in the North West with Grace (half Jamaican, half Nigerian), who wants to free him of his “negative energy.”  While interesting and well written, Felix’s story seems out of place, having only a tangential connection to the rest of the novel.

Readers who cannot abide unconventional writing might dislike NW.  Each of the novel’s sections is written in a different style.  Dialog is often (but not always) set apart in condensed paragraphs; in the first section, quotation marks are nonexistent.  Sentences, like the thoughts they reflect, are sometimes incomplete or scattered.  One passage is written as free-form poetry; another as an online chat.  The largest chunk of the novel is written as a series of vignettes, scenes that deftly sketch out Leah’s and Natalie’s lives from their childhood to the present.  One section follows Natalie as she takes a long walk through the North West.  It is divided into subsections (“Hampstead to Archway”) like a guide to a walking tour.  I enjoyed the different styles -- they aren’t particularly daring and they don’t make the novel inaccessible -- but readers who favor a straightforward narrative might be put off by the jarring changes in format.

As we have come to expect from Zadie Smith, much of the story is wryly amusing, if not laugh-out-loud funny.  Her description of “marriage as the art of invidious comparison” is one of many sly observations I admired.  Smith’s prose is as graceful and unpredictable as a tumbleweed.  The pace is relaxed, not slow but unhurried.  In a good way, the story is slightly meandering.  Smith takes her time, developing the characters and their surroundings bit by bit until it all becomes real.

I suspect that readers who dislike Jonathan Franzen’s most recent novels will dislike NW for the same reasons:  there isn’t much of a plot and the characters aren’t always likable (although Smith’s characters aren’t as determinedly self-centered as Franzen’s).  Both writers strive to say something about society at large by focusing on smaller segments, families and friends who are defined by geography and class.  Readers who believe that good writing often illuminates the world as it exists, not as we want it to be, that it is just as important to understand flaws as perfection, will find much to admire in Smith’s surgical exploration of characters struggling to come to grips with their changing lives.

RECOMMENDED

Stranded by Anne Bishop (ed.)

Published by Bell Bridge Books on August 24, 2012 

Stranded brings together three lengthy science fiction stories, all written for this volume, that share the titular theme: stories about being stranded. Each is preceded by a short introduction written by the story's author.

James Alan Gardner wrote "A Host of Leeches."  Alyssa Magord, the victim of an alien plague, wakes up alone -- alone except for a hybrid computer/dolphin that shares her blood and a variety of weaponized robots. She soon realizes she's in quarantine ... the kind of quarantine from which it may be impossible to return. While this is a promising premise, the story descends into silliness as the robots squabble with each other. The story isn't quite funny enough to succeed as laugh-out-loud comedy, although I assume that was the author's intent. It has its moments, and the ultimate resolution is moderately clever.

Anne Bishop wrote "A Strand in the Web."  Willow lives on city-ship that travels around the galaxy. The crew's mission (which carries quasi-religious overtones) is the restoration of devastated worlds (sort of like playing SimPlanet). Although she is merely a student, Willow mysteriously becomes responsible for restoring an entire island. Apart from an unfortunate bit of silliness involving unicorns, the story becomes interesting when it focuses on the restoration work, the careful balancing of plants and birds and bees, predators and prey. On the other hand, Willow's triumphant development as a character and the story's conclusion are predictable and dull.

Anthony Francis wrote "Stranded."  For no apparent reason, the girls are at war with the boys in a ship that is falling apart, and it's up to a "Halfway Boy" named Sirius to save them all. Now, with the ship in distress, they must land on an uncharted planet. Add an elf-monkey child (seriously?) and a centaur (seriously?) who carries a staff that lets her "skip from world to world" (seriously?) and you've got what amounts to a fantasy married to cheesy science fiction. The story reads like it was written in the Flash Gordon era (the nastiest weapon the humans can muster is a "blaster"). The writing style is cliché-dependent and overwrought, relying too amply on exclamation points!!! to signal conflict and create drama. The plot is preachy (and rather stale in its condemnation of patriarchy and homophobia), often more soap opera than space opera, but the last third of the story introduces some interesting concepts.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Stranger in the Room by Amanda Kyle Williams

Published by Bantam on August 21, 2012 

My reaction to Stranger in the Room is similar to my assessment of The Stranger You Seek: an enjoyable read that falls well short of greatness. In common with the first Keye Street novel, the story occasionally has an engaging, playful quality and the characters are fun. When it tries to be a serious thriller, however, Stranger in the Room suffers from many of the problems that marred the first novel.

In addition to Keye Street, two characters who played critical roles in The Stranger You Seek return in the encore. Street's computer whiz helper, a stoner named Neil Donovan, shows up from time to time to provide comic relief. Street's boyfriend, homicide lieutenant Aaron Rauser, is investigating the murder of a child. Street, of course, becomes embroiled in that mystery.

The novel's other significant storyline involves Street's troubled cousin. Miki Ashton is off her meds but she isn't cutting or overdosing. Her current problem is a stalker who, we soon learn, is also a killer. Street needs to keep her safe and find the killer. The odds of a connection between the two cases are, of course, infinitesimal, but in the world of thrillers, coincidence is commonplace. Unfortunately, the stalker/killer is more a collection of buzz words than a believable character.

As was true in the first novel, some of the best (and funniest) moments involve the mundane aspects of Street's job, including picking up a bail jumper who has weaponized his boogers. Unfortunately, another assignment -- one that occupies several chapters -- adds little value to the novel. Street is hired to investigate a crematory operator after a family receives an urn filled with cement mix and chicken feed. Apart from being less interesting than the central plot, this storyline is awfully far-fetched. It doesn't deserve the degree of drama that Amanda Kyle Williams tries to attach to it.

To flesh out her characterization of Street, Williams delves into the circumstances of Street's adoption and devotes some scenes to Street's interaction with her adoptive parents. Despite the pop psychology overtones (Street's mother feeds feral cats, giving her an opportunity to demonstrate love without getting too close to its recipient, just as she did with her adopted children), the story does manage to advance the reader's understanding of Street's personality.

Several aspects of the novel are problematic, including a chapter in which Street, calling upon the profiling skills that supposedly allow a profiler to "see" everything a killer did while preparing for the murder, finds a clue that only the stupidest of killers would have left behind. This is the stuff of mundane television crime shows, not carefully constructed thrillers. On other occasions, Street relies on glib insights to feed her assumptions about the killer's motivations. The notion that Street could actually find the killer based on her vague and generalized profile is the product of wishful thinking rather than the reality of profiling (in the real world, profilers are more often wrong than right). The psychological profiling that was (fortunately) underplayed in The Stranger You Seek is given a more significant role in Stranger in the Room, and the novel is weaker for it.

Street's temptation to renew her love affair with alcohol leads to more than one trite moment, and the frequent reminders that she's a recovering alcoholic become tiresome. Only slightly less wearying is Street's tendency to define herself as a victim because her grandparents were murdered thirty years earlier. A lifetime of self-pity does not an appealing protagonist make.

Williams occasionally tries to add hip humor to her story with gratuitous celebrity bashing. If anyone reads this novel twenty years from now, they'll probably wonder who Anna Nicole Smith and Lindsay Lohan were. I'm not a fan of either celebrity, but I'm also not a fan of cheap shots. Given the sympathetic attention Williams pays to Street's alcohol addiction, snarky jokes about addicted celebrities seem misplaced.

Setting all of those qualms aside, Stranger in the Room has sufficient merit to earn a lukewarm recommendation. The story moves quickly, the supporting characters are strong, and the ending, although predictable, is reasonably satisfying.

RECOMMENDED