August is a Wicked Month by Edna O'Brien

First published in 1965; published in digital format by Open Road Media on April 3, 2012

Ellen Sage (an Irish woman living in London) has been separated from George for two years. Their son shuttles between their homes. George is taking their son on a camping trip. Although Ellen turns down George's invitation to accompany them because there will be "nothing to fill the hours of treachery between them," she is having difficulty adjusting to life without him. A week later a man shows up at Ellen's door complaining about his mistress. Although Ellen has met the man only once, they spend the day (and then the night) together. As she longs for him in the ensuing days, she thinks it was wicked of him "to renew her life for an evening when she had resigned herself to being almost dead." In a desperate mood, Ellen buys "freedom clothes" and travels to France in search of men who will provide temporary respites from her frustration. Despite her "humiliation in the presence of perfectly formed people" and her indifference to the Mediterranean's beauty, she soon finds herself in the company of an American actor and his entourage. The story takes off from there.

August is a Wicked Month provides an insightful look at a woman who is learning (or relearning) how to live her life. Cycling between ecstasy and joylessness, Ellen struggles to reclaim a sense of purpose, of dignity and freedom. It is a cliché to say that she is finding herself but Ellen is clearly on a quest for self-discovery. Of course, at the end of such journeys we don't always like what we discover.

To a surprising extent, Ellen is sexually adventurous (surprising only because this 1965 novel takes place at a time when attitudes about casual sex were still evolving, when -- as Ellen notes -- female chastity was still the ideal), perhaps because she feels a need for the intimacy that disappeared from her life even before her separation. To her dismay, her adventures are mostly flops. When Ellen proclaims August to be "the wicked month," she is being ironic, "thinking of her own pathetic struggles toward wickedness."

"Sage means wise or something like that" Ellen says of her name, and while it's true that Ellen gains some wisdom during the month of August, her insights are not entirely positive. They are, in fact, rather depressing, although Ellen does learn (in a painful way) to see beyond her illusions. Readers who like sunshiny stories with happy endings should avoid this novel. A tragic (perhaps wicked in a different sense) event toward the end of the novel forces a further reassessment of Ellen's life. Although that aspect of the novel veers toward strangeness, it also acts as a reminder that people grieve and heal in different ways. At the very least, it feels authentic; Ellen is an odd but entirely believable person.

Edna O'Brien's prose ranges from light and melodic to dark and dense. She shapes sentences that are unusual but memorable. On several occasions the narrative jumps to a different place or time without making an obvious transition, a jarring technique that causes unnecessary confusion. In most other respects, I admired O'Brien's writing style. O'Brien provides enough detail to establish the scene and flesh out the characters but exercises enough restraint to avoid stating the obvious. The characters are both funny and sad, the story both amusing and disheartening. In that regard, the story reflects the joy and pain of life as focused through a lens that spotlights a lonely woman cast adrift. It isn't always easy to read a story like that, but August is a Wicked Month ultimately rewards the effort.

RECOMMENDED

Tumblin' Dice by John McFetridge

Published by ECW Press on January 25, 2012

The High, a Canadian band that has been around since the 1970s, is back on tour, playing Indian casinos and similar venues with the likes of Grand Funk Railroad and the Doobie Brothers. Ritchie Stone (lead guitar) is getting it on with Emma (business manager) while Cliff Moore (singer) has sex with as many soccer mom groupies as he can find. Dale (drummer) brings his wife of thirty years with him on the tour bus. So far this sounds like a typical road band story, but here's the twist: Barry Nemeth (bass) picks up extra cash by stealing equipment and instruments from other bands and selling them to the loan sharks who haunt the casinos. Soon Cliff and Barry begin to rob the sharks at gunpoint, a fun hobby until an unfortunate incident prompts Cliff to swear he will never do it again. But then the opportunity arises for a final score, one that is motivated by as much by revenge as much as the chance to walk away with serious money.

Other characters making significant contributions to the plot include the band's shady ex-manager, a horny drug cop who wants to be a homicide cop, various other members of the Canadian and American law enforcement communities, an ex-stripper who is the de facto business manager of the Saints of Hell motorcycle gang, and of course a hooker -- because what would a casino novel be without a hooker? One plot thread concerns the motorcycle gang's plan to move in on the Mafia-type gangsters who control a casino; another follows the investigation of a Pakistani girl's killing by a family member.

Rock fans will appreciate all the nostalgic references to bands and musicians, including a funny riff on various recording artists who died violently, the subject of Cliff's musing while he's locked in a trunk after a robbery gone wrong. The High supposedly played or partied with everybody back in the day, from Chuck Berry to Keith Richards. All the name dropping is fun, particularly if you're old enough to remember the older bands (or a younger fan of classic rock).

Tumblin' Dice rips along at the frantic pace of a high energy rock song. There's a certain stream of consciousness quality to John McFetridge's prose, marked by sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and haphazard use of quotation marks. It's the kind of style that often irritates me, but I got used to it quickly and actually started to enjoy it. Dialog tends to channel writers like Elmore Leonard, a style that is rarely mimicked successfully, but McFetridge handles it well.

The plot is a bit convoluted. It occasionally meanders. I'm not quite sure why the plot thread involving the Pakistani is part of the novel; it contributes little of value. Major characters (particularly cops) drop out of sight before the story concludes. Yet what I admired about Tumblin' Dice wasn't so much the crime story (although I like its surprising and amusing resolution) as the band story, the fact that four guys finally get it together in late middle age and figure out at the end of their musical careers how to be the kind of band they always wanted to be, how to make music that has the audience screaming and dancing in the aisles, how to have fun performing together. That theme, combined with solid characters, makes Tumblin' Dice an enjoyable reading experience.

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Instruction Manual for Swallowing by Adam Marek

First published in Great Britain in 2007; published by ECW Press on April 1, 2012

Adam Marek's best stories explore the oddness of life, or perhaps the odd ways that people live their lives. Many of the stories might be characterized as science fiction or fantasy or horror or alternate reality, but in the end, they defy conventional categorization. The stories are sui generis.

Some of the stories in Instruction Manual for Swallowing reminded me of Monty Python sketches. "The Forty-Litre Monkey" is about a pet shop owner who competes to raise the world's largest monkey (as measured by volume). A man's attempt to have an affair is disrupted by an adverse reaction to sushi (or guilt) in "Sushi Plate Epiphany." In the strange future imagined in "Robot Wasps," terrorists hack advertising zeppelins to make them display anti-government messages while a man does battle with the robot wasps that have taken over his garden. In "The Thorn," a child's grandparents struggle to pull a stubborn thorn from a boy's foot, only to discover that it isn't a thorn at all. The narrator in "Instruction Manual for Swallowing" gets in touch with his inner-self: the guy who runs his autonomic nervous system, who happens to look just like Busta Rhymes, is none too happy with the narrator's self-abuse.

In the absence of any better way to categorize the remaining stories, I'll lump them together according to my impressions of them:

Grotesque: Told from the father's point of view, "Belly Full of Rain" is the story of a woman who, pregnant with 37 fetuses, enlists the help of an "expert" to help her achieve the medically impossible by giving birth to all of them. A carnivorous centipede saves a man from a bear trap in "The Centipede's Wife," but haunting guilt about its past prevents the centipede from devouring the man.

Morbid: In "Jumping Jennifer," college girls are unsympathetic to the student they've nicknamed "Barbie" after she falls (or is pushed) from her dorm room window. A cat alerts two young people to an older man's unbecoming fate in "Ipods for Cats."

Bizarre: "Testicular Cancer vs. the Behemoth" asks which is worse: learning that you have an advanced case of testicular cancer or discovering that your family and friends are preoccupied with the Godzilla-type monster that is tearing up the city. "Boiling the Toad" is about a man who comes to fear the painful sex games his girlfriend wants to play. An art exhibit comes alive (with deadly intent) in "A Gilbert and George Talibanimation." Zombies with voracious appetites need a credit card to eat at the restaurant staffed by "Meaty's Boys"-- but what exactly are they eating?

Mysterious: A man meets a teenage girl he images to be the incarnation of his infant daughter in "Cuckoo."

Marek writes in a deceptively simple style that enhances the reader's ability to accept his wild imaginings as if they are ordinary events faithfully reported by a reliable narrator. In other words, Marek makes the extraordinary seem ordinary, perhaps because his characters are ordinary people who view zombies (for instance) in the same way we might view bad drivers:  irritating but commonplace.  I didn't like all of these stories equally, but I liked them all. 

RECOMMENDED

House of the Hunted by Mark Mills

Published by Random House on April 3, 2012

House of the Hunted begins in midstream, as if it were the sequel to a novel that had already set up the plot and established the characters.  It is 1919 in Petrograd.  As Irina Bibikov is surreptitiously released from prison, Tom Nash, who orchestrated her escape and is the father of her unborn child, flees from Cheka patrols.  Little by little, Mark Mills fills in the backstory.  We learn that Nash was working for the British Foreign Office until, after barely escaping from Petrograd during the Russian Revolution, he joined the SIS to better his chances of assisting the woman he loves.  His attempt to spirit Irina out of the country goes disastrously wrong; Nash has been betrayed and is lucky to make a second escape from Russia.

After that tense beginning, the story flashes forward to 1935.  It again begins in mid-stride, introducing new characters in a new setting (Toulon, France) as if they were already familiar to the reader.  The focus nonetheless remains on Nash, who is haunted by his failure to rescue Irina.  Despite his retirement from a life of danger, Nash becomes the target of an assassination attempt.  Even worse, he suspects he has been betrayed by one of his friends.  At that point the novel blends suspense and mystery as Nash tries to figure out who wants him dead and why.  The threat forces Nash to look back upon his life, giving the reader an abbreviated view of the events that shaped him, including some ugly childhood memories.

The characters in House of the Hunted are all erudite, well-educated and often artistic.  They make impossibly witty dinner conversation while consuming bottle after bottle of fine wine.  They are nonetheless a believable mix of Russians, Americans, Germans, French, and British, the sort of folk who might have summered (or lived) in a charming harbor town in the south of France between the two world wars.  Nash’s relationship with a goddaughter who is blossoming into adulthood adds an interesting dimension to Nash’s character as he tries to decide what to do about their changing relationship.

This isn’t a novel of jaw-dropping developments, and in that low-key sense House of the Hunted is more credible than many espionage thrillers.  Several small interpersonal dramas substitute for blockbuster international intrigue, although those dramas give birth to intrigues of their own.  There is nonetheless a significant surprise at the end, as well as a smaller one, neither of which I anticipated.  This is a novel without loose ends; all the storylines are carefully knotted together as the story reaches its climax.

Mills’ prose is as smooth as the cognac the characters love to drink.  He tells a smart, engaging tale.  While I felt emotionally detached from Nash and the other characters (maybe I’m just not a cognac kind of guy), I appreciated the skillful storytelling and enjoyed the unexpected plot developments.  The final chapter sets up the possibility of a sequel that I would love to read.  Nash is a worthy heir to James Bond, sophistication and grit without all the flash and gadgetry.

RECOMMENDED

Omega Point by Guy Haley

Published by Angry Robot on March 27, 2012

My reaction to Omega Point is similar to my feelings about Reality 36, the first Richards and Klein novel: Guy Haley's attempt to introduce an element of comedy detracts from the action-adventure science fiction story that dominates the plot. It's possible to write a tongue-in-cheek action-adventure sf novel -- John Scalzi did it quite well in The Android's Dream -- but Haley's comedy doesn't quite work for me: it's funny enough (sometimes), but it doesn't mesh with the rest of the story. I nonetheless enjoyed both novels, Omega Point somewhat less than its predecessor.

When we last saw Richards and Klein, the renegade AI known as k52 had seized control of a portion of the Reality Realms. In Omega Point, the cyborg Otto Klein, recovering from his injuries, is trying to track down a hacker who can infiltrate the Realms without alerting k52 -- but first he must get past Kaplinski, a holdover from the last novel. The AI Richards, stuck in human form and unable to turn off his pain receptors, is stranded inside the vanishing Realms, where a bear and a purple giraffe have taken him prisoner. Suffice it to say that if you haven't read Reality 36, you should do so or Omega Point won't make any sense. Even then, I'm not sure Omega Point will make perfect sense to anyone.

Nor am I sure that most of Omega Point does much to advance the overall plot. The last three or four chapters (the second to last is the best in the novel) bring the "investigation" to a conclusion, but much of the meandering story prior to those chapters is sort of pointless. Early on, Richards manages to discover what k52 intends to do with the Reality Realms he has infiltrated; after that, Richards chases around the Realms with pirates and toys. Klein, meanwhile, spends most of his time fighting Kaplinski. All well and good for action fans (and I'm one of those), but the action is a poor substitute for the substance that the first novel seemed to promise.

As was true in the first novel, the scenes that take place in the Reality Realms are too cartoonish for my taste. I understand that they're supposed to be funny and maybe they are -- some of Haley's humor made me smile -- but they seem out of place in the context of a futuristic action-adventure story. Talking teddy bears and armored weasels and dogs with Richard Nixon's head just don't mix well with cyborgs and androids and theoretical physics. The Reality Realm scenes go off on endless tangents (a battle between air pirates and the Punning Pastry Chef, for instance) that distract from the main plot.

I give Haley credit for having a big imagination. The framework of the two novels, the concept of the Reality Realms, and particularly Omega Point's ending, are well conceived. I also give Haley credit for developing the implications of a common sf theme: vesting Artificially Intelligent constructs with human rights. Haley takes the concept to an amusing extreme: what rights, for instance, should be given to an intelligent vibrator? Reality 36 develops that theme in greater depth than Omega Point. For that reason, and because less of Reality 36 takes place in the Reality Realms, I think Reality 36 is the better of the two novels. Still, I would like to meet Richards and Klein again, provided their next investigation doesn't involve talking teddy bears.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS