A man with a dull and ordinary life suddenly finds his world upside down and filled with doubt. Murders, affairs, bad language, and government intrigue. All in all, Diablerie is a pretty action-packed book, considering that it’s so short. There’s a lot going on and a lot to absorb, which is one of the things that I like about Mosley as an author. He definitely gets the reader thinking.

Our hero lives an extraordinarily bland existence until he encounters a woman who claims to know him, but he can’t remember her. As it turns out, she’s part of his distant past, and she says that he’s done something, but his faulty memory makes it impossible to determine whether or not she’s telling the truth.

Along the way, we watch his marriage fall apart, and we’re introduced to his tormented daughter, his mistress, and a friend with connections in high and low places. It’s a pretty fast-paced book, and we don’t really get to know anyone in the story very well, but I suspect that’s sort of the point. I really like the premise of the story and the way in which it unfolds, with deft use of language along the way.

Demographics:

Diablerie, by Walter Mosley. Published 2008, 180 pages. Fiction.

So, my main problem with this book was that it read almost exactly like Nineteen Minutes, a Picoult book I read in October. Actually, I guess it’s the other way around, since The Pact was published before Nineteen Minutes. Either way, the characters and scenarios felt like total copies of each other, from parents in denial to teens insisting on testifying in their own trials. In fact, I think that some of the dialogue might have been copied verbatim.

I felt like I read the same book twice, with slightly different scenarios. One is a school shooting, the other is a teen suicide. Or is it a murder? That’s the crux of the book, but I found myself getting pretty bored with it, very fast. On the other hand, Picoult is a pretty prolific writer, so I feel like I now know the plots and characters in all of her books. I could review, say Mercy, or maybe Harvesting the Heart, without actually having to read either.

Apparently Picoult is also a huge fan of flipping back and forth between “then” and “now,” which is a narrative device which seemed to be really trendy in the 1990s. I, however, am not really a fan of this style, with the exception of a few notable books. I also note that she apparently isn’t a fan of strong female characters, and that she loves the thought of white male lawyers with attractive black female partners. And sexual abuse. And sympathetic English teachers.

I’m kind of surprised that anyone tried to ban this book. After all, it’s probably a copy of one of her earlier works, so what makes this more objectionable than, say, Picture Perfect?

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The Pact, by Jodi Picoult. Published 1998, 407 pages. Fiction.

What do you do when an old friend calls and asks for a favor? Especially when that favor requires a return to a lifestyle you have abandoned? That’s the point on which this story, set in South Africa after over a decade of life post-apartheid, hinges.

It’s a thriller of sorts, I guess, complete with car chases, but it’s more of an introspective exploration than anything else. Our hero is trying to live a quiet life after having cleaned up his act, but he’s dragged back into the underworld, and he is faced with a series of choices. Does he take the easy way out, or does he do things the right way, even if this way is harder? And how much is he willing to risk to keep a promise?

We meet a variety of characters over the course of the book, and the narrative style, while irritating at times, is actually pretty effective. We are constantly launched back and forth, reading supplemental information and getting new perspectives. Once you settle into it, it’s actually kind of fun.

The one thing that kind of disappoints me about this book is that the reader does not really get a taste and a feeling for what South Africa is like. There are occasional glimpses here and there, but I don’t get much of the flavor of the place. It’s kind of unfortunate, since there aren’t a lot of books set in South Africa, and it’s a place of which I have only dim and uncertain impressions.

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Heart of the Hunter, by Deon Meyer. Published 2004, 384 pages. Fiction.

The final entry in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. And I wouldn’t want to spoil the end for you now, but, let me tell you, it’s a doozy. It’s all redemptive and stuff, and I think it’s the perfect way for this series to end. It’s also an ending which requires a certain amount of cojones on the part of the author, but that’s another story.

I love that we are introduced to all kinds of new and crazy concepts in this book while we also get background information on Bartimaeus, the djinni hero of the trilogy. We also get to see more of Kitty, the Commoner girl who flickers in and out of the books, and we see a great example of what happens when a government controls the citizens too closely and the citizens finally rebel against it.

And, of course, the book deals with the consequences of slavery, having your forces overstretched in far-flung foreign nations, and failing to fully think out actions and decisions. All in all, a good time, and chock full of potential moral and political lessons. Fun for the whole family, I suspect.

Sure, the writing in this series isn’t exactly stellar, but I think it’s pretty darn good. If you’re into fantasy at all, you should definitely give it a shot.

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Ptolemy’s Gate, by Jonathan Stroud. Published 2006, 501 pages. Fiction.

The second in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, complete with Golems, the Resistance, and werewolves. Good times to be had by all (well, except the people who get eaten, but they are mostly minor characters anyway). In this point in the story, our young hero has risen to prominence in the government, but he finds his position threatened due to a series of events which are blamed on his inability to keep control. As a result, he’s forced to resort to some underhanded tactics to clear his name, and resolve the problem.

One interesting thing about this book is that we see a slow transition going on, with the hero growing less scrupulous about how he uses his power. He’s less likely to keep promises, and more focused on advancement, as well as saving his own skin. He actually comes off as a bit of an ass in this book, and I like an author who is willing to make his main character more flawed, because it makes the story more interesting. By the end of the story, you’re not really sure who to root for, and that’s the whole point.

I’m kind of surprised that no one has proposed making these books into films, since they provide a plethora of interesting characters and settings. Maybe it’s because they are sort of dark, and they have a pretty unabashed message about rebelling against the government and considering how and why people come into power. That sort of thing probably doesn’t go over well with, you know. People in power.

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The Golem’s Eye, by Jonathan Stroud. Published 2004, 464 pages. Fiction.

I was feeling a bit under the weather today, perhaps due to the unexpected heat, so I thought I might re-read the Bartimaeus Trilogy. My plans were a bit foiled by the fact that I kept falling asleep, or feeling too unpleasant to actually open my eyes, let alone read an actual book, so I only got through book one.

This trilogy centers around the life of a young magician who grows up in a sort of alternative England which has become dominated by magicians. In fact, the magicians have basically seized control of the nation, setting up a ferocious class war. Their secret is that their power lies in the demons they summon, with the magicians lacking inherent magical power. Our young magician summons Bartimaeus, a wise-cracking demon who is fond of footnotes, and the games begin.

I love these books because they are smart, and funny. Yes, they are intended for children/young adults, but they’re fun for adults too. I love footnotes, especially wry ones, and I like the story and the ideas behind it. I sometimes feel like an unseen hand is controlling my own government, and so I can appreciate the world of London that our hero lives in. And I have a soft spot for demons.

And now, back to lying prostrate on the floor and feeling sorry for myself. Linoleum is remarkably cooling, you know, especially if you place strategic ice packs on it for 15 minutes or so before you plan to lie on it.

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The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud. Published 2003, 464 pages. Fiction.

As Morrison points out in the afterward to this edition, published in 1993, it took 20 years for The Bluest Eye to get the kind of recognition and acclaim it deserved. I can see why it took so long for people to start reading the book and taking it seriously, because it challenges ideas about race and beauty and it forces the reader to endure uncomfortable moments and to deal with ideas which make them uneasy. That’s what makes The Bluest Eye so fantastic.

At its heart, the story is about a black girl who longs for blue eyes. Blue eyes symbolize the idea of whiteness for her, and the story wraps around this idea, talking about colour and beauty and what life is like in small, dusty towns. The story opens with a botanical mystery and it closes with one, and along the way, the reader is taken through a series of lives.

I really like the language in The Bluest Eye. It’s very changeable, as Morrison switches voices and tones, but there’s a pure clarity to it, even the dialect, that draws the reader into the story. There are some really great images in here, some very vivid scenes that come to life so that you feel like you can smell the summer and feel the skin of the characters brushing against your own. Morrison is an incredibly talented writer, and I feel sorry for the people who took 20 years to learn that.

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The Bluest Eye, by Tony Morrison. Published 1970, 164 pages. Fiction.

I’m glad to say that I liked this recommendation of Brendan’s much more than the last one I read. In fact, I liked this book in general, which is perhaps not surprising, since it is about Greece, and I like Greece and its people very much. Henry Miller, like many other people who have visited/lived in Greece, could not help but fall in love with Greece, and this book is a fantastic look into pre-war Greece.

One other note of interest about this book is that Miller was invited to Greece by Lawrence Durrell, an author who I happen to particularly enjoy, along with his brother Gerald. So it’s kind of neat to see these two literary giants intersecting, and to get Miller’s version of some scenes I have seen described in books by the Durrell family. I have to say, I’m a bit jealous of a time when authors held crazy expatriate salons without feeling terribly self-conscious about it.

At any rate, this book celebrates the people who actually live in Greece, distinguishing it from books about antiquities and history or books about expatriates living in Greece. Miller clearly has a deep affection for the Greeks, even though he met them when they were pulling the tattered threads of their dignity around themselves. What happened to Greece in the Second World War was a terrible shame, and it’s something that doesn’t get widely discussed, and it makes Miller’s glimpse into innocence all the more sad.

The Greece of The Colossus of Maroussi is gone now. I wonder how many Miller fans have read this book and traveled eagerly to Greece only to discover that it is not what they expected at all. And I also wonder if there will ever be a time when I am not nostalgic for the Greece I knew, and for the past in general. Why does it feel like everything which was good is already over?

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The Colossus of Maroussi, by Henry Miller. Published 1941, 244 pages. Biography.

I fought with this book. And I don’t use that term lightly. I mean that I wrestled through it, kept setting it down to reapproach from different angles, kept pushing myself to read it, to wrap my mind around it and try to understand why I was so resistant to reading it. I simply didn’t like it. At all.

The opening line, “I’ve been cordially invited to join the visceral realists,” holds so much promise and potential. It sparkles. It plunged me into the book, and then almost immediately I pulled up short, hating it within pages. Hating the characters, the language, the story. The pointless meandering. The dancing around a point.

I don’t think that this is a bad book. I think it’s important to distinguish between bad books, and good books I don’t like. A lot of people like this book, and it has received major critical acclaim. And I’m not afraid to call out a bad book when I see it. This just isn’t my kind of book. I can get, on an abstract level, why people like it, I just couldn’t relate to it at all.

I wanted to like the different voices, the exploration of culture, the characters. But I just couldn’t get into it. I have the same problem with most of Marquez: I understand why people like him, I just don’t. Maybe I will appreciate The Savage Detectives more in a few years.

Demographics:

The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolano. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. Published 1998, 577 pages. Fiction.

In February, I read This is the Way the World Ends, and I was pretty sure that it was going to be my book of the year. It might have seemed early to make such a sweeping statement, but I was pretty sure. I just had a feeling that it would be an extremely difficult book to top, and although I figured I would read some good books in the following months, I didn’t think that any of them would be better. As it turns out, I was wrong, because I just finished The Book of Lost Things, and I think it is definitely my book of the year, and it may even be a contender for my favourite book ever status, a place which has been occupied by The Sparrow for many years.

This is a book about a boy who loses his mother to cancer in the tumultuous world of wartime Britain, and is forced to cope with having an entirely new life thrust upon him. He ends up retreating into a world of books and fantasy, and eventually he is actually transported into a parallel world. Sort of like The Chronicles of Narnia, except that this book is waaaaaaaay creepier.

The foundation of the story is fairytales (and there’s a great index/discussion at the end of the copy I read in which the author talks about the history of the fairytales in the book). But the stories in this book are…twisted. I don’t really want to get into details, because I want you to read this book, and I do not want to ruin it for you, but let’s just say that it takes darkness to a whole new, awesome level.

Our hero navigates the peculiar world into which he has fallen, looking for a way back home, and he grows up along the way. Fundamentally, this book is about the transition into adulthood, and the things we struggle with as we age and grow. We ride along with  our character as he makes mistakes, comes to realizations, and copes with his demons.

The Book of Lost Things is, in short, totally amazing. The language is clear and crisp, with a hint of that fairytale style without seeming precious. It is definitely written for adults, but I can see how older teens would get a lot out of it. I certainly would have if I had read it at 15 or 16. So stop reading what I have to say about it, and go get a copy at your local independent booksellers (or the library).

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The Book of Lost Things, by John Connolly. Published 2006, 470 pages. Fiction.