The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

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It’s not like me to read award-winning books, unless they’re YA fiction of some kind.  But my wife read this book and told me that I had to read it.  That was enough of an incentive for me.

By now, I think everyone knows about this book, one way or another.  Either you heard about it after its release, or you heard about “them” making a movie out of it, or you heard the controversy surrounding the release of the movie.  One way or the other, I’m guessing that this is old news for much of you.  But if you’ve heard about the book, and relegated it to the periphery of your interest, then start thinking about it again, because this is a good book to read.

The last book I read that had this feel to it was The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak.  Both books have a very tragic feel, but it’s very much a foregone conclusion as you start the book that these will be tragic stories: One is set in Nazi-occupied Germany; the other is set in Afghanistan.  You don’t have to be a history or political science major to get the implications of those settings.  Despite the inherent tragedy of the stories, though, each is a hopeful analysis of human nature.  Sometimes we just have to make it through some of our darkest moments to make it to that grace.

One last aside, and then I’ll get to the story: A few years ago, I read a neat essay about the movie The Shawshank Redemption.  The author said that the movie was a great pick-me-up movie.  She anticipated the scoffing, and went into her “No, really!” mode.  The caveat was that you had to make it through the entire movie to reach the payoff of the pick-me-up.  And she’s right.  The Kite Runner is one of those kinds of books.

The Kite Runner is about loyalty, courage, and redemption.  It’s about suffering some of the worst things in the world, but only vicariously.  It’s about friendship, family, faith, and endurance.  It’s about the human condition.  It’s … well, it’s hard to really pin it down.  I expected a character-driven story when I started the book, and was surprised when it seemed to have a compelling plot.  But regardless of the story’s drive, it was a book that I couldn’t stop reading.  It haunted me with its imagery, and kept me thinking about the characters.  I played the “What will happen?” game when I was away from the book.  At first I liked the main character.  Then I hated him.  And then I liked him again.  It was a tough ride.

This is also a book with some brutal imagery.  This is a book set in Afghanistan, partly during the Taliban rule, so it comes with all the territory you would imagine from that setting.  This is what makes the book tragic, but as I mentioned above, the book wouldn’t have its redeeming, hopeful outlook without having to trudge its way through the tragedy.

If you’ve put off reading the book, do so no longer.  It’s definitely worth reading, despite what your usual reading proclivities may be.

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Intruders

Intruders by Michael Marshall

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I’ve written about Michael Marshall before on this blog, so there’s no point in re-hashing his dark, nihilistic outlook on life.  Let’s just say that it’s present in this book here, contrasted nicely (and not a slight bit oddly) by his apt observations on humanity.  This is a man who knows people, and probably has a good finger on what makes them work.  He’s also depressing as hell, and when you’re already in a funk, he’s probably not the best man to turn to.

The fact is, I’ve been pretty quiet lately.  The blog hasn’t been that active lately, and according to my records, this is only the third book I’ve read this year.  That’s not so good for me.  I’ve moved to a different state, and moves being what they are, I’m still adjusting.  That I’m still adjusting six months after the move is indicative of my current mental state.  I’m not suicidal, but I am down, in a funk, what-have-you.  So my reading has seen a decline lately.

The last two books I’ve chosen to read have NOT been the proper selections.  They’re both fairly dark and hopeless.  Now, my wife wants me to read The Kite Runner, so I’m sure I’ll be a devastated wreck at the end of that book.  After that, I plan to read some My Pretty Pony and Karen Kingsbury books.

No, not really; I’m not THAT desperate.

As dark as he is, Michael Marshall is a good author.  His stories are always tense and compelling, and the darkness gives them a more serious edge than the typical thrillers you might encounter among the bestsellers.  In this one, an ex-cop is approached by an old high-school friend, now a lawyer, who is trying to unravel a mystery concerning a man whose family was murdered, the experiments he was running in his basement, a missing ten year-old girl, and a vast conspiracy dating back hundreds of years.   Anyone who’s read Marshall before will know that conspiracies are nothing new in his world, so this should coma as no surprise to those readers.  Shoot, that isn’t even a spoiler; it’s pretty plain from the get-go that something vast is underway.  True-to-form, it gets your attention and will keep you reading.

Unfortunately, the explanation for it all is pretty lame.  That doesn’t come into play in the novel until the last 75 pages or so, so there’s a lot of good stuff to get through before you get there, but for all that set-up, you might wonder why the pay-off is so small.  It will require a significant suspension of disbelief to accept it, and maybe because of the tone of the novel, I was less likely to find it acceptable.  Who knows?  Just be prepared for some disappointment.

That being said, the final ending (the denouement, maybe?) will leave you unsettled, like a good horror novel should.  Depending on how vivid your imagination is, you might find yourself wondering how real the events are.  It gets a little under your skin and into your brain, and if only for that being so effective, the disappointing explanation works.  Like Hot Fuzz becomes a pastiche of itself just as you think that the story is too ludicrous to contain itself, The Intruders manages to pull out something deep and affecting from what appears to be stupid and contrived.  So despite my reservations, I’d recommend the book.

Just make sure you have the Prozac ready before reading.

Deeper

Deeper by Jeff Long

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Nowadays, it’s not enough to have a hit idea in entertainment; you have to have a hit ranchise.   Witness the success of movies like The Matrix or Pirates of the Caribbean, which were then followed by the plodding, nonsensical, self-gratifying, pretentious, convoluted messes that were the sequels.  Even worse, think back to how the second movies in these “sagas” ended — with a ridiculously-placed cliffhanger which served only to draw people back to the theaters for the last movie in the series.  Moviemakers can talk all they want about how the movies were intended to be a trilogy from the get-go, but if that’s the case, then why do the first movies seem self-contained and innovative, while the last two movies seem to be one story, with no clear direction or innovation?  I think it has more to do with the money.

Cynical?  I won’t deny it.  And why am I bringing this up in reference to Deeper?  Well, I’m seeing the same sort of pattern here.  The Descent was a pretty fun book, hardly anything to win awards or significant recognition, but for a beach read, it was enjoyable.  Deeper tries to pick up where The Descent left off, and I suppose in that respect, it succeeds.  It’s a darn shame, though, that that’s the only way that it succeeds.

This book plods.  The real crux of the novel begins after the 100 page mark in the book, which means that the first 100 pages deal with exposition.  This is odd by itself, since this is a sequel, but perhaps the author didn’t want to lose any new readers by not having the proper background.  If he did it well, I wouldn’t complain all that much, but the characterization is weak and even cliched.  Even for characters that I already knew and related to, they were hard to care about the second time around.

This book preaches.  Instead of making it a light, fun romp like the prequel, the author tries to give it some heft and meaning by making it relevant and timely.  It doesn’t even fit with the story.  The angle only serves to draw the reader out of the story and wonder what the author is trying to convey.  If it had any real bearing on the rest of the story, the political overtone of the novel may not feel as forced, but that part of the story is told through soundbites and asides, and never has much significance to the action and events.

This book contrives.   Much of the progress of the plot hinges too much on coincidence, and it’s hard to feel compelled to finish a story when you feel like the author is dragging you along without a real reward for your commitment.  If it made sense, and tied together neatly, the effort would be worth it; as the book stands, though, it’s just a mess.  Characters change motivations whenever it suits the author, not when it suits the plot.  It’s distracting, and careless.

This book panders.  It wouldn’t be so bad if we were allowed to take the events seriously at all, but it seems dumbed down.  The cliffhanger ending, where little is left resolved, makes me wonder if this was written strictly to pad out the story to make the story into a saga, as opposed to a novel.

Long can write a good, powerful, effective story.  The Reckoning was one of those novels that sneaked up on me without pretension, kept me reading despite my reservations, and then hit me with an ending that was similar to being punched by Mike Tyson.  The talent is there.  It’s just not evident through this book.

The Descent is a fun read.  If you like James Rollins and Preston/Child, there’s a lot in the story that will keep you engaged.  If you’re dying to read an adventure novel about a subterranean civilization that makes the myth of hell come alive, then find that book and read it.  Once you’re finished, though, resist the temptation to read the sequel.  There are too many other good books to waste your time reading it.

Mister B. Gone

Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker

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For a while, I thought that Clive Barker was going to give up on standard horror novels.  What with the popularity (and brilliance) of the Arabat series, paired with the success of his earlier dark fantasy novel for a younger audience, The Thief of Always, I thought maybe he was going to take the route of other horror authors, and focus on writing for teens.  Mister B. Gone marks his return to adult horror, and I’m pleased to say that it’s pretty good.

Barker has always been a little hit-or-miss with me.  On the one hand, I enjoy his knack for finding the disturbing without having to be grotesque about it.  One of my favorite scenes from any novel is the way that one creature’s eyes from Arabat crawl around on his face like insects, and even have the ability to crawl right off his body, and still see for him.  It sends one of those pleasant shivers down my spine, because it genuinely creeps me out, without being violent or graphic.  What’s odd about saying that is that Barker is known for being a progenitor of the “Splatterpunk” genre, where the graphic, detailed, violent imagery is as much a character of the stories as the people populating them.  So, in a way, part of me enjoyed the YA-focus of his other novels, since it seemed to distill the violence down to something more effective.  But that’s where it has always been hit-or-miss with me.

Mister B. Gone hits and misses, as well, for the same reasons.  The hit is a good one, and is the main premise of the novel: A demon is speaking to us from within the prison of the very book we’re reading.  In fact, it’s not really a book we’re reading, as it is a story we’re hearing told from the demon himself.   Barker uses this premise to full effect, finding ways to disturb us with this connection.  Just as we start to lose ourselves in the story, the demon comes back to speak to us, directly, and reminds us that we might have to pay a small price for hearing this story.  It works, and it works well.  I don’t think it will have anyone convinced that the premise could possibly be true, but like any good horror novel, it will make you wonder if you shouldn’t be listening to the demon’s entreaties a little more seriously….

The miss, though, is in the violence.  Graphic depictions seem unnecessary to me, even when they fit in with the stories (Charlie Huston, I’m looking in your direction…).  In this story, oddly enough, they seemed gratuitous, even if they were supposed to be spoken by a demon.  Those moments were gross-outs, not creep-outs, and I always prefer the latter to the former.  Gross-outs are cop-outs, to me, and are a cheap way of being “horror” when you can’t find enough of an emotional connection to truly frighten someone.  It’s like the difference between the movies The Haunting and Friday the 13th; one is an effective story of psychological manipulation, while the other is just a slasher flick.

Luckily, the violence isn’t as over-the-top as it could have been, and the premise of the story carries it well enough to compensate for what violence is in the book.  If you’re looking for a good, short scare, this might fit the bill.  It’s a good read that won’t keep you thinking for too long after the story ends, but the short time that it will take you to finish the book will more than make up for that fact.   It’s no Imajica or “In the Hills, the Cities,” but it shows that Barker hasn’t lost his touch just yet.

Bad Monkeys

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

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OK, I’m not dead.  I don’t know if anyone was really worried, but given that it’s been over two months since I posted here, I thought I would get that out of the way.  I just couldn’t seem to find the motivation to read anything, including the latest Neil Gaiman book, which seems to mostly be a Michael Reaves book, since the two of them wrote it together.  I mean, I’ve started it (as you can tell), but I’ve stalled out.  But a new Matt Ruff book might be the impetus to get me going again.

I discovered Matt Ruff through Sewer, Gas, Electric: The Public Works Trilogy.  If you haven’t read that one, find it and read it.  It’s wacky and subversive, and brilliantly plotted.  Set This House in Order, the follow-up (though not a sequel) was several years in the works, but well worth the wait.  It had so many red herrings and false leads that it read like a mystery-thriller, though it said much more about people and their relationships.  Bad Monkeys was a book I eagerly awaited, and I was pleasantly surprised when I received notification that it was ready for me at the library.

It reads just like a good book should read: It’s tight, well written, compelling, and interesting.  It has the same sorts of characteristics that made Set This House in Order one of the very few books that kept my wife up past midnight.  And like that book, it read more like a mystery-thriller than impressions suggeste.  At first, I thought it might be a “more of the same” sort of book, at least in style, but the plot is so different and so strange that it stands alone.

Bad Monkeys is about a woman named Jane Charlotte, who has been interred into a psychiatric institution, due to her possible schizophrenia.  She relates the story of the events that brought her to the institution to her therapist, who is (obviously) doubtful of the accuracy of her story.  And the author gives us many clues along the way to make us wonder who’s telling the truth, who’s really who they say they are, and if we’re reading along to another version of Fight Club.  There are so many twists and turns in this story that it’s possible to get a little lost among the paths, but Ruff is a talented guide, who takes us to an end that may not be obvious, but is certainly satisfactory.

Unfortunately, Bad Monkeys isn’t this author’s best work.  I still have to give that designation to Sewer, Gas, Electric, just because it’s the most original book he’s written (and possibly the most original book I’ve read in the past 15 years).  But he is a skilled, talented author, and if you like stories with a great deal of suspense, a lot of “What the heck is going on?” moments, and want to read a compelling story that will keep you guessing, Bad Monkeys is a good place to start.  Just make sure you work your way back through his catalog.  You won’t be disappointed.

D.A.

D.A. by Connie Willis

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I adore Connie Willis.  The first book of hers I read was To Say Nothing of the Dog, and it was one of those books that I bought on impulse, thinking I would probably never read it.  It lingered on my shelf for several months before I finally took the plunge, and was pleasantly surprised with the story.  It was interesting, sweet, compelling, and tight, all with this sort of style that seemed effortless.  From that moment on, I was hooked.

D.A. is considered a novelette, but really, it’s a short story.  It’s 76 pages, with full-page illustrations and wide typespace with a larger-than-average font, and I finished the book in less than an hour.  Frankly, I don’t care; it’s a new Connie Willis story, and I’m all over that like cold on ice.  It’s been at least 6 years since Passage, and if all I can get between then and her next novel is a couple of short stories, I can deal with it.  My only issue is that Willis really shines when she’s given the length of time to really develop a plot and characters.  Both Inside Job and D.A. are good stories, with clever ideas, but are too short to really get a sense of her precision.   Plus, one of the aspects of her stories that I always enjoy — the romantic subplots — was entirely missing in this story.  It read more like a YA story, since it’s about a high-school girl who’s essentially kidnapped to participate on an elite space station, and there was no sense of a love interest in the story.  I suppose that’s fine, but that aspect of her previous stories lends it more into the realm of slapstick which, oddly, works perfectly well in her fiction.  I was disappointed to find it lacking in D.A.

Of course, like any of my favorite authors, Willis’ mediocre works are a far cry better than some of the best works by other authors, so this is a small criticism.  I wouldn’t recommend anyone start reading Connie Willis with this book (Bellwether or Doomsday Book are better starting points), but it’s a tasty appetizer to hold me over until she finishes her next novel.

The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

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I expect that I’m not the only person who decided to read this book after hearing about the decoding of the message at the top of the Adobe corporate tower (look here).  I also expect that I’m not the only one who may have missed the whole message of the book, too….

I mean, I get it.  It’s a novel that’s clearly the product of its time, satirizing the California culture that was prevalent during the era that the novel was written, but if the satire is so dependent on its time, how successful is it, then, as a novel?  I never really enjoyed Animal Farm because I didn’t ever fully understand what represented what in the real world, and I think that same barrier kept me from truly understanding this book, as well.  The only things that kept me reading The Crying of Lot 49 was:

a. it’s short; and

b. the controversy kept me interested.

There was a huge undercurrent to the novel, of a conspiracy that may or may not have been true, but it was more like a historical conspiracy, and less a Dan-Brown-let-loose-in-Europe conspiracy.  That central mystery kept me more or less engaged (I never really found myself thinking, “Ooh, I get to return to The Crying of Lot 49!”; it was more a “Aw, man, I really want to read The Last Days, but I suppose I should finish The Crying of Lot 49 first…”), but the rest of it was just too confusing for me.  I found myself reading a few pages, and realizing that I hadn’t really read any of the last few pages, and dreading having to go back and re-read those pages over again.

So, it comes back to function over form, for me.  I want a story that’s interesting, a premise that’s gripping, and characters that are easy to believe in and root for.  If you want to add some thematic or symbolic imagery, fine, go ahead, but make sure that you give me a darn good reason to want to read into all that before you get all high-falutin’, artsy-fartsy on me.  So, forgive me if I don’t go into tremendous detail over the plot, because, really, it’s not the central core of this novel.  It’s more like that piece of parsley that restaurants stick on the edge of your dinner plate — it’s there, but it’s really not that important.

Am I denying myself good literature by thinking this way?  Perhaps.  But I was a literature major in college, and while I liked some of what I read, most of it went right over my head.  I guess I’m just too simplistic of a reader to appreciate fiction that delivers more style than content.  Oh, and poetry?  I never could figure that stuff out.

I’m comfortable with the fact that I will likely never read Joyce’s Ulysses, but I’m always looking forward to the next Stephen King novel.  I wonder what my English professors would think of that?

Thirteen

Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan

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As if Market Forces weren’t dark enough, Richard K. Morgan returns to his nihilistic look at the future, this time through a race of genetically modified “variant” human beings, who have been bred and raised to be more aggressive, more violent, and more deadly than humans have been in a very long time.  The idea is that we, as a culture, have processed out those tendencies as part of being civilized, and we’re no longer very good as soldiers.  Enter the variant “Thirteens,” who are supposed to be the perfect soldiers in the future.

Note “supposed to be”; it wouldn’t be a nihilistic look at the future without a little mucking up of things along those lines.  Shoot, what reader, looking at that theme, wouldn’t start asking questions?  Morgan doesn’t keep it simplified, either.  He addresses cultural and race wars (the Chinese are viewed as the evil race, and there’s an entire criminal subculture on Mars), the growth of religion in politics (the US South is renamed “Jesusland” in this book), and the effects of a long-term memory in a short-term memory society (the main Thirteen in the book is a black man).  It’s amazing, and thoughtful, but probably best for small doses.  Given that this is a 500+-page book, small doses means that the book may take a while.

On its surface, Thirteen is a mystery thriller, with layers upon layers of mystery and deception.  It succeeds admirably at this, and just may sneak under your radar, given the overall theme and atmosphere of the book.  I was surprised, afterward, at how complex the plot was, and how well-constructed it was.  Morgan managed to take a lot of disparate elements of the story, seemingly planted just to set the tone and atmosphere of the novel, and weave them together into a satisfying conclusion.  But sharp readers are going to notice this only after submerging themselves in this future culture that is, collectively, us.

I tend to pick up moods from the books that I read, so I was careful in how much I dove into the book.  I didn’t want to take a marathon approach to reading it, but neither did I want to spend an overly long time in that world, either.  For all the nihilism in Thirteen, Morgan does give the future some redeeming qualities, but these are scattered about, partly to move the plot along, and partly to keep us from leaping off of a tall building midway through the book.  It’s not depressing so much as it is bleak and hopeless, but there are enough hopeful moments to keep us reading and wanting things to get better.

The question we have at the end of the novel is just that: Will things get better?  It’s hard to say.  Morgan doesn’t judge the present through this novel, or offer any solutions.  He just presents a possible future, and shows us where that will take us.  The rest, I suppose, is up to us.

MirrorMask: The Illustrated Script

MirrorMask: The Illustrated Script

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It’s hard to classify this one.  Is it fiction?  Nonfiction?  Graphic novel?  Or a weird blend of all three?  I’m going to go with the third option, just to be on the safe side.  More information is better than less, right?

Being the Neil Gaiman fanboy that I am (see the last few entries if you don’t believe me), it was inevitable that I was going to see this movie.  I wanted to catch it in the theaters, but the small window of time that it was there (I estimate about 20 minutes) prohibited me doing so.  As soon as it was released on DVD, though, I was there.  Two hours later, I was … well, confused.

I hate to come across as anti-intellectual, but I much prefer the story over the form the story takes.  This preference is part of the reason I couldn’t get into Danielewski’s House of Leaves, and why I have such a hard time getting into character-driven fiction.  MirrorMask went way over my head, and there were times when I was struggling to figure out what, exactly was going on.  I love Dave McKean’s style, and it’s all over this movie, but it was like reading Arkham Asylum without the script: As appropriate as the art style was, it seemed to detract from my understanding of the story.  Had I not read the anniversary edition of Arkham Asylum with the script afterward, I would have taken a lot less from that story than I did.

Luckily, the illustrated script of the movie helped clarify some of the questions I had.  It turns out that I did understand most of the story, and I did have a clear idea of Helena’s motivations; it was just buried beneath the idea that I had to be missing something among all that style.  For a Neil Gaiman story, though, it’s a bit shallow, which was slightly disappointing, but the conflict, the transformation, and the ending were all excellent ideas, brilliantly executed.

Another neat aspect of this book is that there is some behind-the-scenes stuff here, including Neil’s original draft of the story, and the back-and-forth discussions between writer and director to make sure the story worked for film.  There were even storyboarded portions of the story that didn’t make it into production, and some of Neil’s insight into how movies are made, and how making this one was different.  It’s like getting the bonus material on a DVD, and if you’re like me, and love those sorts of bits, then you’re going to enjoy the extra stuff in the book, too.

I’m looking forward to seeing the movie again, now that I have a clearer understanding of the story.  Now that I have all that out of the way, I can probably better appreciate the melding of style and story, and bring myself back up to the level of intellectual.

Yeah, right.

A Neil Gaiman Audio Miscellaney

Signal to Noise and Two Plays for Voices by Neil Gaiman

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My roadtrip was round trip, of course, so a three-hour audiobook is only going to last me one direction. Since I was already on a Gaiman kick, I figured it would be a good time to revisit a couple of audio plays that I’ve had for a while now: Signal to Noise, a radio play adapted from Neil’s and Dave McKean’s graphic novel of the same name; and Two Plays for Voices, a collection of two adapted stories for Seeing Ear Theater, “Snow, Glass, Apples” and “Murder Mysteries.” All three stories are among my favorites of Neil’s (have you figured out yet that most of his stories are among my favorites?), so they were good company for the trip back home.

Of all the standalone graphic novels that Neil and Dave have created, Signal to Noise is probably my favorite. I ought to re-read both Violent Cases and Mr. Punch, just to refresh myself with the stories, but Signal to Noise always resonated with me. The story-within-a-story aspect of it appealed to me, as did the idea of a story compelling its author beyond his normal limits. Watching an author come to terms with his own mortality while writing about a group of people coming to terms with their own, at the end of the first millennium, was brilliant to me. When I learned that this production was available, I jumped on it.

The production is a full one, with ambient sounds, a soundtrack, and proper actors. I’ve never sat down with the graphic novel while listening to the play, so I don’t know how much adaptation the audio required to maintain the full story, but I recall distinct images during crucial parts of the story. That it comes to mind so easily is just further indication that the BBC didn’t shirk when it came to making this radio play.

Two Plays for Voices has all these same things, but for some reason, Signal to Noise has a more professional sound to it. There’s something extra within the production that gives it more depth, I think, but I couldn’t tell you what that is. It’s like listening to the production from a CD that was originally recorded 20 years ago, versus one that was recorded last year. It’s not a bad criticism for the 20 year-old recording, but it’s that sort of difference that I hear between the productions.

“Snow, Glass, Apples” is a nifty retelling of a classic story, told in such a way that you might not catch how clever Neil’s being with this story until about halfway through. Bebe Neuwirth (Lilith from Cheers) plays the prominent role in this story, and Brian Dennehy plays the one in “Murder Mysteries,” which is about the very first murder on record. No, not Abel. Trust me. You’ll like this clever adaptation of our origin story, I think.

The adaptations here are more straightforward, I think, because the original stories were written in the first person. I don’t think anything was removed or changed from the stories to the adaptations, save for extra noises in the background, for crowds, and other sounds that were appropriate to the stories. They’re great stories in their own right, but hearing them performed this way steps it up to another level, and shows you how versatile Neil is with his fiction.

If you enjoy audio fiction, and want something a little more than just someone reading to you, check out these productions. They’re very enjoyable, thoughtful stories that will keep you engaged on those long drives, leisurely walks, or hardcore exercise regiments. And hey, they’re Neil Gaiman stories, so what else can I tell you?