The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

Published by The Dial Press on June 10, 2014

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers features wonderfully eccentric characters, but this character-driven novel has the added virtue of telling a multi-layered story that combines humor with intrigue while exploring the mysteries that come from knowing (and depending upon) other people. The characters have, to varying degrees, invented their lives and hidden their pasts, or settled on histories that suit them in the moment, sometimes because they do not know the full truth, other times because they want to conceal it.

In 2011, when the novel opens, Tooley Zylberberg has settled down, having purchased a small used bookshop in a small Welch village. It is a quirky shop, the sort that every booklover wants to find, but it earns no income, forcing Tooley to pay her sole employee, Fogg, from her meager savings. Although she is marching toward insolvency, Tooley keeps the place because it makes her feel rooted after living a rootless life. She avoids friendships because friendships require a past ("your past only mattered if others sought to know it") and she would prefer not to have one. Or so she tries to tell herself until an urgent Facebook message sends her flying across the ocean to meet someone in New York, only to cross it again to visit another person from her past in Italy. Her travels prompt her to reinterpret her life and to develop new understandings of the friends who were once part of it.

We learn about Tooley's past (as she understood it at the time) when the novel begins to jump to earlier decades. In 1999, at the age of 20, Tooley's exploration of New York City leads her to a law student named Duncan McGrory. He becomes the new presence in her life, an addition to her current traveling companions: an elderly man with a Russian accent named Humphrey who blames his misfortune on "the Moron Problem" and an affable itinerant Canadian con artist named Venn.

The novel's third time frame begins in 1988 as Tooley leaves Australia and travels to Bangkok with Paul, a contractor who installs modems in small American embassies. There she encounters flighty Sarah, who afterwards continues to drift in and out of her life. The significance of Tooley's time with Paul and Sarah only becomes clear in the novel's last half. In fact, it is only in the closing chapters that Tooley puts the pieces together and begins to understand her life from a new perspective.

The novel's fragmented structure allows intrigue to build as the reader watches and anticipates the reconstruction of Tooley's life. By emphasizing the relative nature of time, the novel suggests that memory is a form of time travel and raises the possibility that we change the past whenever we visit it. In a related passage that I loved, the novel argues that readers keep their books because they contain our past, "the texture of being oneself at a particular place, at a particular time, each volume a piece of one's intellect."

Apart from its thoughts about time and memory, The Rise & Fall is largely about the fictions that people make of their lives and the difficulty of piercing the fictions of others. As Humphrey says: "Nothing, not even dictionaries, can tell you what anything means. The reality of things is just sad, for the most part." And if reality is sad, inventing a happier version of your life is a way to cope. Yet when memories, in their retelling, "chip loose from the events themselves," detaching the present from the reality of the past, isolation can be the consequence of dishonesty. And while it may be impossible to penetrate the fictions of others, the novel wisely suggests that the key to understanding people lies is accepting "that to be surprised or disappointed or even betrayed [is] not a catastrophe." All of that is nutritious fruit to chew upon.

The opinionated characters in The Rise & Fall cover vast ground in their amusing conversations, from political systems to the myth of meritocracy, from the benefits of having faith in human beings to the advantages of living apart from them, from the perils to the joy of nonconformity. Some chats are silly, others are profound, all contribute to the eager turning of pages. Graceful prose, unpredictable characters, startling humor and rich insights into human nature make The Rise & Fall of Great Powers a true pleasure to read.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Sandrine's Case by Thomas H. Cook

Published by Mysterious Press on August 6, 2013

There are few novelists of intrigue I admire as much as Thomas Cook. Whether he's writing a spy story, a crime novel, or a courtroom drama, his approach is unconventional. Tension derives not from action but from the intense probing of his characters' lives. In Sandrine's Case, Cook uses a criminal trial to reveal not just the facts underlying a death, but the mind and soul of the accused, an unfeeling man who (his wife once said) is composed of scar tissue.

Sam Madison, an English professor at a liberal arts college in a small Georgia town, had a terrible argument with his wife Sandrine, a history professor at the same institution. He is accused of killing her and of attempting to disguise the murder as suicide. The evidence against him is circumstantial: a "sinister research history" on his computer; his role in obtaining the Demoral that killed her; the antihistamines in Sandrine's blood; a broken cup; a parody Sam wrote of noir fiction; "a silence when I should have spoken, a question I should have asked but hadn't." Sandrine had recently been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, a condition that (according to the prosecutor) furnished Sam's motive: it was easier to kill than to face years serving as a caretaker, feeding and bathing his helpless wife. Sam fears that the jurors will despise him because he is an intellectual living a privileged life, but the most damning evidence against him are the words Sandrine spoke to her friends about Sam's detached, isolated nature. Sam is, according to Sandrine, a sociopath (or so she said in the last words she spoke to him), and he knows his "cold perhaps even haughty demeanor" is not playing well with the jury. He has good reason to fear that the trial has become a referendum on his marriage, that he will be punished for being a distant, uncaring husband.

The ultimate mystery in Sandrine's Case is not what Sam did or did not do, but whether Sam is correct in certain suspicions he begins to harbor about Sandrine. Since Sandrine's Case is told in the first person from Sam's perspective, it obviously isn't a whodunit. Sam feels enormous guilt, but for much of the novel his precise role in Sandrine's death is unclear. Was he possessed, after twenty years of sharing a home with his wife and daughter, to murder Sandrine, despite his belief that "no man had ever been loved by a more worthy woman"? As Sam slowly disintegrates -- thinking about the testimony of the witnesses at his trial, reliving the police interrogations, recalling (in bits and pieces) his life with Sandrine -- he begins, perhaps for the first time, to understand himself, to come to terms with his deep sense of failure, a judgment he "put on everyone else," particularly Sandrine, because he feared to judge himself. The testimony of witnesses teaches Sam what Sandrine really thought of him, and seeing himself through Sandrine's eyes is a revelatory experience.

Sam describes Sandrine's academic writing as "graceful and carefully measured," a description that applies equally to Cook's prose. Sam, who laments "what a low culture we have now," has never read a crime novel (unless you count Crime and Punishment or other works of literary genius). If he were to do so, Sandrine's Case would be a good place to start. Cook's insight into his characters and his elegant prose are undeniably the stuff of quality literature, yet he (unlike Sam, whose failed novel became more academic with each rewrite) never fails to tell a compelling story. There might be more courtroom theatrics in a Grisham novel, but there is more bare honesty, more heart, in Sandrine's Case than you'll find in a dozen Grishams. It is a strangely redemptive, life-affirming story about death, a decidedly different take on courtroom fiction, but in its own quiet way, a small masterpiece.

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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

Zeroville by Steve Erickson

First published in 2007; published digitally by Open Road Media on April 30, 2013 

Steve Erickson's 2007 novel begins with 227 consecutively numbered chapters, followed by 226 chapters that are numbered like a countdown, from 226 to 0. Talk about a story arc! Apart from its unusual structure, Zeroville isn't quite like any other novel I've read. As one of the characters remarks near the novel's end, "What you thought you knew all along turns out to be something else." That's a fitting description of the story.

Vikar arrives in Hollywood in the summer of 1969. With Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor tattooed on the sides of his shaved head, Vikar -- still known by the name Ike Jerome -- has an encyclopedic knowledge of movie trivia. He did not come by it easily, given his Calvinist upbringing by a father who did not permit exposure to television, movies, or books other than the Bible. Having abandoned his study of architecture after the model of a church he designed was criticized for having no door, Vikar hopes to get a job in the film industry. He's disappointed to discover that the only person in Hollywood who shares his love and knowledge of movies is a burglar ("a foot soldier in the armed struggle against the white oppressor") who steals his television.

When Vikar later finds a job building sets at a movie studio, he finally meets people who understand movies: a film editor named Dotty who worked on A Place in the Sun, and a screenwriter named Viking Man, who believes "God loves two things and that's the Movies and the Bomb." The novel follows Vikar as he works his way into the film industry, including unwelcome detours to Cannes and Franco's Spain and an unhappy stay in New York, where he's regarded as an avant garde film editor (or an idiot savant) because he says things like "In every false movie is the true movie that must be set free." Since nobody understands his work, he is deemed a genius, both in Hollywood and abroad.

Vikar frequently reminded me of Jerzy Kosinski's Chauncey Gardiner, a seemingly clueless character who hears phrases he doesn't necessarily understand and later repeats them out of context with hilarious results. Vikar's mind is oddly wired. He does not believe in continuity, in movies or in life. He dreams in an ancient language that he doesn't understand. He's obsessed with the biblical story of Isaac. Late in the novel, fueled by his dreams and obsessions, Vikar begins what another character describes as an heroic quest, although it's really more of a lunatic's mission, the culmination of lifelong obsessions.

Zeroville is usually light but sometimes dark, often very funny but occasionally sad, brilliantly daffy but profoundly serious. Children play a role in the novel, as they do in the movies, and how they are treated by their parents is one of the novel's themes. In Vikar's view, God is not kind to children (and neither is the Devil, at least in The Exorcist, a movie Vikar mistakes for a comedy).

Apart from being an opinionated homage to Hollywood, actors, directors, and everyone else associated with film production, Zeroville pokes wicked fun at Hollywood, actors, directors, and everyone else associated with film production. Still, movie lovers should appreciate the nuanced discussions of classic films and the people who made them great. The book convinced me to take a second look (sometimes a first look) at several of the films the characters discuss.

In the end, however, Zeroville takes a provocative look at the influence movies have on our lives and at the unhealthy tendency of fans to worship their stars and creators. It inspires thought about the difference (if any) between illusion and reality, between celluloid characters and the people we know, between the plots we watch on screens and the lives we live. You can learn something about life by watching good movies ... and by reading Zeroville.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Morels by Christopher Hacker

Published by Soho Press on April 30, 2013 

The Morels might be summarized as a book by Christopher Hacker about a writer named Arthur Morel who writes a book titled The Morels. Yet that summary, while accurate, would not do justice to Hacker's stimulating novel. The Morels is actually two absorbing novels merged into a successful whole. Alternating between philosophy and storytelling, the first half of The Morels is an examination of art: the purpose of art; the meaning of applause; whether the creation of literature should be driven by readers' demands; the difference between literature (solitary in its performance and reception) and most other art (experienced communally and offering immediate feedback to the artist); the extent to which the act of writing literature can be blended with artistic performance. The second half is an examination of an artist. It tells the riveting story of a writer who becomes lost in the blurry gap between the real and fictional worlds he inhabits. What is the difference, Hacker asks, between reality and its artistic representation?

In his desire to create an emotional impact that his audience will experience honestly, Arthur Morel, an accomplished but socially inept student of the violin, does something shocking during a performance. His friend Chris (the novel's narrator), playing the cello in the orchestra, does not see Arthur again for fourteen years. While Arthur seems to have fallen into an ordinary domestic life, complete with wife (Penelope) and child (Will) in Queens, he's also authored a best-selling book -- a fortunate development since, according to Penelope, he's otherwise "barely employable." Chris, a struggling filmmaker who feels adrift and craves guidance, renews his friendship with Arthur with the hope that Arthur will become his mentor. Yet the roles are reversed when Chris tries to become Arthur's teacher, an advocate for responsible limits on artistic license, limits that Arthur dismisses as evidence of limited taste.

The first half of The Morels poses penetrating questions and challenges the reader to form his or her own answers: Is art worthwhile if it fails to provoke, if it appeals only to people who have weak stomachs? Should a writer be shunned for depicting, without judgment, an act that society would universally condemn? Are decency and moraltiy essential components of enriching literature? Is it the obligation of literature (as John Gardner argued) to promote moral conduct? Or is (as Arthur argues) "the death of transgression" also "the death of art"?

Most of the story's drama surrounds Arthur's second novel, The Morels, a book that is about "the dilemmas of everyday life." In other words, like much contemporary fiction, "there's little story to speak of." It is a self-referential novel of "exquisitely rendered scenes, well-observed prose." It also has a shocking ending. Its publication causes repercussions that drive the story's second half.

Does this description of Arthur's novel also apply to Hacker's? Yes and no. Arthur is portrayed as a literary genius. Hacker is not quite of that caliber, although his skills are admirable; his prose is wonderfully descriptive and he wields it to tell a compassionate, intelligent story. Arthur's book "uttered what can't be said" while Hacker found a way to write about provocative art without actually producing it. Arthur reveres and emulates writers like Gass and Barth and Burrows, precisely the writers Gardner eviscerates. They are (Arthur tells us) writers who don't try to make us feel good, who leave us feeling confused about who we are rather than confirming our understanding of ourselves. Hacker straddles the line: he allows the reader to feel good by making it possible for the reader to understand why the artistic representation of depravity might have value -- and to understand why an artist might be driven to produce it. Hacker's novel might be less "courageous" than Arthur's, but that doesn't diminish its worth. And, unlike Arthur's version of The Morels, Hacker's has a plot (in addition to, but intertwined with, unraveling "the puzzle of Arthur Morel"), although it doesn't blossom until the novel's second half. This isn't a courtroom drama, but it does generate dramatic tension as Arthur and his family become entangled in the criminal justice system as it engages in the difficult and error-prone task of separating fact from fiction. And if the ending of Hacker's novel isn't shocking, it is sufficiently surprising to cast the entire story in a new light.

The Morels pulls no punches. It isn't the right book for a reader who craves sunny characters and upbeat endings. Arthur, tortured by the past, learns something meaningful about living in the present, but this isn't a story about someone who learns a valuable lesson and lives happily ever after. No character emerges unscathed (although, as one character learned in Vietnam, "given time, even scorched earth recovers"). While Arthur, Chris, and Will each learn something about how to live a life, the true lessons of The Morels are more subtle. Mining the depths of this memorable novel to unearth them is an enriching experience.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED