The Last Hiccup by Christopher Meades

Published by ECW Press on April 1, 2012

Vladimir lives in Russia. In 1929, he develops a case of the hiccups. This is a normal affliction for an eight-year-old, but Vladimir's won't go away. No matter how many people shout "boo" at Vladimir -- his mother, his teacher, his doctor -- he continues to emit a hiccup every 3.7 seconds. Specialists are called in, using a series of increasingly drastic treatments that nearly kill Vladimir but fail to cure him. Unable to find a physical cause of Vladimir's condition, his treating physician decides the problem is psychosomatic and confines him in an asylum -- where, of course, his constant hiccuping drives the patients even madder than they already are.

Vladimir's physician is perplexed when a psychiatric specialist who asks Vladimir about love -- and then nearly every person Vladimir encounters -- comes to view Vladimir as a monster, "an evil spirit bathed in malice." That conclusion, adopted by others, leads to the search for a cure that lies beyond the realm of medicine, a cure that can only be found in Mongolia.

After a flash-forward to 1941, the adult Vladimir experiences an epiphany while standing in a waterfall, and it is time for him to leave. Vladimir's journey from Mongolia to Moscow is eventful, to say the least. Dodging the Red Army, the German Army, the Japanese Army, an irate farmer concerned about the virtue of a daughter who has none, a batty woman who refuses to acknowledge the death of her son, and hiccuping all the way, Vladimir returns to the hospital where he was once treated, and learns of the surprising impact his life (and hiccups) had on the people he once knew. His story goes on from there. And, difficult though it may be to believe, the story becomes even stranger.

What to make of the adult Vladimir? He might be deranged or he might be unusually focused. He lives in a society that condemns him but there are those who love him. It is easy for a reader to be both sympathetic to and a little repelled by the man Vladimir becomes. To what extent he is a creature of his own making (epiphanies notwithstanding) is unclear given the brutal history he has endured, yet in the end there is something admirable about this strange man. He is, in some ways, more pure, more innocent, less a monster than many of those his society holds in higher esteem.

The fascinating but bizarre tale that Christopher Meades tells is difficult to classify. Not quite a horror story, not quite a love story, not quite a war story, but with elements of each, The Last Hiccup is sort of a macabre comedy. Apart from mining the comic potential that inheres in hiccups, Meades generates laughs with professional jealousy, lust, war, religion, and a variety of other topics that the naïve Vladimir isn't quite equipped to comprehend. Yet what seems to start as light comedy becomes progressively darker as Vladimir becomes ever more aware of life's cruelty. Still, even the novel's darkest moments are brightened by the slapstick humor of absurd events.

Meades writes with droll wit while moving the story forward at a brisk pace. Supporting characters (like a narcoleptic nurse) are imbued with qualities that enhance their comedic appeal. All of this makes The Last Hiccup a thoroughly enjoyable story.

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Distant Water by Bruce Gray

Published by Live Oak Book Company on January 27, 2012

Twin mysteries unfold in Distant Water, both involving missing daughters in Asia. The first story is sometimes told in the first person by Bryan Paton, an American lawyer who has just joined a Hong Kong firm that represents a prominent businessman, Li Dak-chung. As the novel opens, Dak-chung's daughter, Fiona Li, is entering China. When we last see her, she is on the brink of being abducted. When the Chinese government notifies Dak-chung that his daughter's dead body has been recovered, Paton is dispatched to China to identify the body and to arrange for its return to Hong Kong. The reader soon begins to wonder whether the body is, in fact, Fiona's.

The second mystery, which dominates the second half of the story, gives the novel the flavor of a political thriller. It revolves around General Zhu Fangguo, whose daughter is also missing. Zhu supports the moderate political faction in its struggle for power after Chairman Mao's death -- a position that puts Zhu squarely at odds with Mao's far-from-moderate widow. Zhu is both the instigator and the victim of political intrigue. Zhu hopes to use the recent death of Chairman Mao as "the cover for exacting cold revenge," although the meaning of that phrase does not become clear until late in the novel.

For that matter, it's unclear how the stories of the two missing daughters are related until late in the novel, although the connection isn't difficult to guess. The plot is nonetheless clever. Distant Water easily held my interest from the first page to the last, in part because the cast of characters is so diverse. From British diplomats to Chinese civil servants, Bruce Gray gives each character a unique personality. I can't say that I became emotionally attached to any of the characters, but I enjoyed reading about them.

In addition to the power vacuum that follows Mao's death, the novel delves into the political situations in Taiwan (where Dak-chung's sister is a powerful and ruthless figure) and in Hong Kong, while offering a history lesson that begins with the Treaty of Versailles and the May 4th Movement. Readers who don't know much about the twentieth century history of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong may need to breeze through a Wikipedia article or two, as I did, to get a better handle on the story. The struggle of a faction that included Mao's wife for leadership of the government, popularly characterized as "the Gang of Four," as well as the complex relationship between China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong are all integral to the novel.

Gray paints a convincing picture of the authoritarian regime that has Paton (and other characters) in its clutches. Gray builds tension as the characters wonder who to trust in a treacherous environment. On occasion Gray indulges in unnecessary lectures about the evils of communist dictatorships, exposition that has less impact than his descriptions of the unease (at best) and terror (at worst) his characters experience at the hands of authoritarian thugs.

Putting aside the improbability that a young man with zero legal experience would be given such a high profile position in a law firm, Distant Water tells a believable story, at least as compared to most modern thrillers. One aspect of the ending is a bit of a stretch, but the "surprise" is well integrated into the cohesive plot. Despite my emotional detachment from the story, I found it fascinating and I do not hesitate to recommend it to thriller fans.

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A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer duBois

Published by The Dial Press on March 20, 2012

What should you do when you know you're losing? That question is at the heart of A Partial History of Lost Causes. Jennifer duBois's skillful storytelling drew me into two distinct worlds, one occupied by a young woman in Massachusetts who knows her clarity of thought is soon destined to fade, the other by a chess prodigy in Russia (a thinly disguised Garry Kasparov) whose empty life is only partially filled by chess and later by politics. By the time the two stories converge, however, I found the woman's story to be a bit thin.

Chess prodigy Aleksandr Bezetov drifts into a dissident movement because its members hold their meetings in a warm building. One of his dissident acquaintances publishes a journal entitled "A Partial History of Lost Causes" that, among other things, reports arrests, detentions, and searches in Leningrad. At the same time Bezetov begins a short-lived romance of sorts with a prostitute named Elizabeta. The story follows Bezetov into the 1980s as he is forced to make a life-changing decision, then rushes through the 1990s until we reach 2006. Bezetov's early internal struggle between individuality and conformity is the novel's strongest element. Even in its late stages, when the story focuses on Bezerov's presidential campaign and his determination to prove that the 1999 apartment bombings were orchestrated by Putin and/or the FSB rather than ethnic extremists, I found Bezetov to be a fascinating character.

Irina Ellison is 22 when she learns that she will probably live another ten years before experiencing the onset of Huntington's, a disease that claimed her father's mind and then his life. In 2006, she is 30, "in the last year or two of sound body and mind," when -- having lived a quiet, lonely, brooding life -- she travels to Russia on a mad quest: she wants to meet Bezetov, to whom her father had once written a letter, asking how Bezetov dealt with failure.

When the two stories finally converge about halfway through the novel, the pace slows a bit. The alternating points of view that characterize the first half continue in the second half, revealing two perspectives of the same events, a technique that has value at the price of repetition.

Bezetov's is the better of the two stories. Bezetov's story is compelling because political struggles in authoritarian countries are a different sort of chess match, one in which a checkmate may mean death. I'm not sure I entirely understood Irina's motivation for seeking out Bezetov, but then, I don't always understand what motivates my own behavior. I understood, and thus connected with, Bezetov; duBois convinced me that I was inside the head of an unhappy prodigy. I like the characterization of the older Bezerov as a man torn between idealism and practicality, a man haunted by the knowledge that other dissidents have been imprisoned or died while he has been -- to some extent, at least -- co-opted by the system. I was less impressed by the characterization of Irena as a woman who struggles to come to terms with her fate, if only because it seems like a device designed to work another character into the story who feels an impending sense of doom.

Both Bezetov and Irina are self-absorbed, albeit with good reason. Both are searching for a purpose in life, but Irina's search is largely the result of self-pity. Her story nonetheless seems authentic. What intelligent person wouldn't be self-pitying, after all, knowing that at an early age the death of her mind would precede that of her body? Still, I sometimes found Irina's unrelenting introspection to be tedious. The karmic resolutions of both stories seemed a little too neat, although I'll admit they were satisfying.

Jennifer duBois' writing style is vibrant but occasionally self-conscious. She deftly evokes the climate of fear and hopelessness that arises from the brutal suppression of free thought while recognizing that brutality is not the only tool of oppression wielded by a political regime. Had she made me feel as much for the characters' personal struggles as I did for the dissidents' political struggles, I would be wildly enthused about A Partial History of Lost Causes. As it stands, I recommend it as an enjoyable but not entirely successful first novel.

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The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura

First published in Japanese in 2009; published in translation by Soho Crime on March 20, 2012

The Thief is a Japanese version of noir, a dark psychological thriller that builds suspense rapidly as Nishimura, a pickpocket who often seems to be on the verge of a breakdown, becomes ensnared in the grip of a shadowy underworld figure in Tokyo. Nishimura's tension is palpable in the novel's early pages. He finds wallets in his pocket he does not remember stealing. He catches glimpses of a mysterious tower that he often saw in his childhood, a tower that may never have existed and that becomes a recurring, haunting image as the story progresses.

Nishimura imagines seeing his mentor, Ishikawa, as he looks into the faces of homeless men. For Ishikawa, picking pockets carried the ecstatic thrill of artistry. Not so for Nishimura as he nervously ponders Ishikawa's fate. The two men were wrapped up in a serious crime, more serious than Nishimura anticipated, and he hasn't seen Ishikawa since. The man who masterminded that crime soon recruits Nishimura to steal three things. The difficult assignments will tax Nishimura's skill as a pickpocket, but he is threatened with death if he fails.

The criminals in The Thief are unusually philosophical. Nishimura wonders whether there is "something deep-rooted in our nature" that compels people to steal. As a child he equated stealing with freedom; as an adult he's less certain of that equation. He thinks about how he has "rejected community" by reaching out his hands to steal, how he has "built a wall around myself and lived by sneaking into the gaps in the darkness of life." The mastermind, on the other hand, discusses the importance of balance, the need to feel sympathy and pity for a victim while torturing her to death. When the mastermind threatens Nishimura's life, he tells Nishimura not to take his life so seriously; he's just one of billions of people who are fated to die, and "fate shows no mercy." Nishimura sees it quite differently; he doesn't like his life, but he doesn't want to lose it. None of these musings are particularly profound but they add something out-of-the-ordinary to a story that is already offbeat.

The most interesting (and really, the only) relationship in Nishimura's life is with a child whose hooker mother forces him to shoplift. Despite Nishimura's detachment, his sense of isolation from the community of man, he feels protective of the boy. That plot thread builds interest in the story while adding another dimension to Nishimura.

Quite a lot in The Thief is left unexplained, although that makes sense within the context of the novel. As the criminal mastermind observes, "life is a mystery" and actions often seem arbitrary. Still, it's mildly annoying to invest time in a crime novel and then wonder what the crime actually was.

The simple but clever plot and swift pace make this short novel a quick read. I wouldn't recommend it to readers who want shiny, smiley, likable characters and happy endings. For fans of dark fiction, however, I would say that is one of the better Japanese crime novels I've come across, despite my reservations about its unresolved nature.

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Beautiful Thing by Sonia Faleiro

First published in India in 2010; published by Black Cat on February 28, 2012

Subtitled Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars, Beautiful Thing grew out of an article Sonia Faleiro wrote about Mumbai's "bar dancers" that was never published because it wasn't considered newsworthy (perhaps because the bars were officially banned in 2005). It is true that Faleiro's subject isn't groundbreaking, yet the world she investigated -- a world she found fascinating and intimidating even as it left her "feeling frustrated and hopeless" -- deserves to publicized, if only to illuminate the impact of poverty on women who live in a culture of limited options.

Faleiro sketches the hierarchy of sex workers in Mumbai, from the waitresses in a Silent Bar who provide manual relief while serving drinks and tandoori, to brothel workers, to call girls and massage parlor employees. Bar dancers reside at the top of the heap, in part because they sell sex discreetly and infrequently (and thus do not consider themselves to be sex workers), while facing many of the same challenges: paying bribes to the police to avoid being brutalized by their cattle prods; working for violent employers; enduring rude comments and the judgment of a society that regards their profession as impure. Still, by dancing for men, bar dancers gain freedom they could not otherwise enjoy. They do not have to live at home, under the domineering rules of fathers or husbands. They can speak to men to whom they are not related without fear of punishment. Their customers think the bar dancers are dancing for them, but according to Leela (the dancer with whom Faleiro spent tbe most time), the customers are dancing for the bar girls: exchanging money for an insincere smile, rewarding cheesy lines from Bollywood romances with lavish shopping trips, forsaking loving wives for the illusion of a satisfied lover.

Most of the book consists of stories that Leela and other bar dancers told Faleiro about their lives. Faleiro also interviews customers, bar owners, pimps, and a transgender hijra. Faleiro reports the stories told by bar dancers uncritically, without noting that tales of woeful pasts (rapes by their fathers and sons and cousins and strangers) told by women who are ashamed of their profession, as well as tales of success (the power they wielded over men who adored them) may not be entirely true. This seems particularly likely in Leela's case; her smug, self-centered nature is not conducive to honesty. Still, it is certain that the women Faliero interviewed endured horrid lives before they became sex workers, even if they might exaggerate the horror when they chat with a sympathetic listener. Although Leela is more than a little annoying, it would be impossible to read this book without feeling empathy for the abused women in Mumbai and anger at, not just the abusers, but the people in their lives who do nothing to help because they regard the violent behavior of men as none of their business.

Faleiro paints a bleak picture of Mumbai, one that is filled with gangsters and petty criminals rather than Bollywood celebrities. She describes a city ruled by corruption. She attempts to explain why men seek out bar dancers and how the dancers become obsessed with the unlikely hope of romantic love and marriage as the only means of erasing the stigma of their profession. In a chapter that showcases the book's strongest writing, Faleiro interviews a woman who has been diagnosed with HIV Wasting Syndrome and talks to Leela about what will happen to the woman's child.

Beautiful Thing has its flaws. Faleiro often leaves Hindi words and expressions untranslated, and while the meaning is frequently apparent from the context, I still felt I was guessing. An appendix with a glossary of Hindi words translated to English would have been a useul addition to the book. At some point, the stories begin to sound the same; there is too little to differentiate them from each other. Beautiful Thing has the feel of a lengthy magazine article that has been fleshed out to fill the pages of a book.

The second part of the book addresses the 2005 ban on dance bars, a cynical attempt to distract voters from the city's underlying problems (poverty chief among them) by focusing on illusory "quality of life" issues. (Perhaps the politicians in Mumbai learned from Rudi Giuliani, whose war on petty crime in New York City during the 1990s coincided with a spike in unemployment.) Far from improving the quality of life in Mumbai, the ban increased the city's population of destitute women by throwing the bar dancers out of work, placing the women at increased risk of disease and sexual assault. Leela did not fare well after she lost her job as a bar dancer, although there are always places for a sex worker to find employment. As this section of the book illustrates, the real story here is not that poor and abused women turn to sex work, but that poverty and abuse are so often ignored or tolerated by people of means. Beautiful Thing reports nothing new, but the reporting is nonetheless worthy of attention.

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