April book reviews
On Thin Ice - Susan Andersen (fiction, romance, crime) (unfinished)
This is a novel about figure skating. The author misspelled the word axel. (Tip: it's named after the first dude to compete the skill.) Some things are just unacceptable.
As a romance, I found On Thin Ice dull. As a murder mystery, I found it unconvincing. Major thumbs down.
Tokyo Vice - Jake Adelstein (non-fiction, memoir, crime) (***)
Tokyo Vice is a working memoir of American Jake Adelstein’s somewhat incongruous career covering crime in Tokyo for Japanese newspaper, The Daily Yomiuri.
The book’s ‘hook’ concerns Adelstein getting into hot water with the Yakuza (the ‘Japanese Mafia’), but I actually found the anecdotes about his everyday life as a reporter in Tokyo to be more entertaining. Familiar crime reporter material - squeezing sources for information; going undercover in the red light district - is rendered delightfully strange by the context. Adelstein not only recounts his experiences, but in doing so also highlights the eccentricities of the Japanese culture.
The result is a solid if not spectacular book. Good for reading in bitesize chunks over a commute.
Wildfire at Midnight - Mary Stewart (fiction, romance, crime) (**)
I secretly love novels about people going on holiday and bad things happening to them in some secluded spot. Is it because I’m bitter about the fact that I can never afford to go on a real holiday? Who knows!
Anyway, in that vein, Wildfire At Midnight is about a young fashion model who goes on holiday to the remote and beautiful Scottish island of Skye. Then everything comes over all Agatha Christie and people start dying on the island. Oh, snap! Should’ve stayed at home!
The mystery of Wildfire is serviceable enough, with an interesting reveal. However, it’s weak on the red herrings and ‘gotcha!’ moments that make good mysteries really enjoyable.
According to Wikipedia, Mary Stewart “invented” the romantic suspense genre and, well, Wildfire was certainly better than other “sexy mysteries” I’ve read, where either the romance or the mystery seems like an afterthought. Stewart blends romantic tension with deadly suspense skilfully.
Unfortunately, Wildfire was written in the 1950s and you can really, really tell. Unlike contemporary novels like I Capture the Castle (which still feels fresh today), Wildfire is cringe-y in its outdated gender norms. The central romance is creepy as hell, and modern readers will be yelling at the protagonist that she should SAVE HER OWN DAMN SELF, rather than always waiting for the menfolk to save her. :/
A short and diverting read, but one that felt old-fashioned and, honestly, a bit forgettable.
Company of Liars - Karen Maitland (historical fiction) (*)
Company of Liars, a “novel of the plague”, set in 14th-century England, squanders its interesting milieu with unrelenting misery. Obviously, a pestilence-torn country is unlikely to be all sunshine and puppies, but I am a great believer in balancing darkness with light in fiction. Liars is just endlessly macabre, with no humour, laughter or heartfelt warmth to act as juxtaposition.
Clocking in at a hefty 550 pages, it’s unsurprising that Liars is plodding and overwritten. Worse, the plot points are hopelessly telegraphed. Each of the ragtag band of characters that are on the road, trying to escape the Plague, has a terrible secret and they are almost all really easy to guess.
(Interlude: I remember when the short film Starcrossed hit the blogosphere and my friend remarked wryly that sekrit homosexuality is no longer shocking; it now must be combined with sekrit incest to really pack that OMFG punch. Mostly, though, I’m just sick of the “shocking reveal” in fiction being either gayness or incest. It’s just not that shocking anymore, folks.)
I didn’t even find the 14th-century setting all that convincing. It just about skirts around being outright anachronistic, but all the characters (with the exception of blowhard Zophiel, who rails against Jews, women, teh gays, etc.) seem to have progressive, “modern” views that just ring false. What’s entertaining about good historical fiction like Mad Men is that it unflinchingly zeroes in on the prejudices of its time period, giving otherwise-likeable characters incredibly offensive world-views.
Liars is another one of those that falls into the category of “promising subject matter; poor execution”.
Blood Roses - Francesca Lia Block (short stories, teen) (****)
Not quite magic realism, not quite fantasy, Blood Roses is a series of short stories that have the quality of a beautiful hallucination.
Francesca Lia Block takes the hellish insecurity of being a teenager and gives those anxieties physical form: this is a world where fairies, vampires and aliens lurk at the edges of the Southern California setting. Unlike some of her contemporaries, however, Block doesn’t use her fantasy to sugarcoat reality: these are gritty stories and better for it.
I first fell in love with Block’s novels for their sparing, poetic use of language. And, the more ‘safe’, neutered teen books I read, the more I appreciate the way that sexuality and danger form fundamental parts of all of her teenage characters’ lives.
I went into this very slight volume thinking I’d find it too short to be satisfying, but actually, no, I loved it and it was exactly the right length.
Favourite stories: ‘My Boyfriend Is An Alien’; ‘Skin Art’.
Bossypants - Tina Fey (non-fiction, memoir) (***)
Eloquent and funny, Tina Fey’s mish-mash of autobiography and personal essays made for some really good sunny-day-in-the-garden reading. In fact, I was enjoying it so much that I carried on reading for quite a long time after the sun had gone in. (England, huh?)
My criticism of Bossypants would be that it reads like someone said to Fey, “hey, you should write a book! here, have a large advance!” - rather than as a heartfelt desire to record aspects of her life on paper.
As a result, Bossypants is quite scattershot in its compilation. The autobiography of Fey’s young life is long and in-depth, but she scarcely outlines what happened to her after the age of 23. Where’s the story of how she met and fell in love with her husband? Where’s the story of how she made the decision to have a baby? I suspect that Fey may have found these subjects too schmaltzy to focus on at length, but if you’re gonna write an autobiography, write an autobiography.
What we’re left with instead is random anecdotes from Fey’s adult life, many of which come across a bit too much like blog entries. The decision to list all of the 30 Rock writers feels like pandering, and, in all, Fey seems to be too much aware of her audience. Parts of the book seem transparently written as a rebuttal to journalists who’ve profiled her unfairly.
Bossypants is a book that could have been a 5-star read. While it would be unfair to write it off as a quick cash-in - there’s plenty that’s entertaining here, and the social commentary about women is excellent - it’s impossible not to suspect a little more time, effort and passion could have gone into this project.
This is a novel about figure skating. The author misspelled the word axel. (Tip: it's named after the first dude to compete the skill.) Some things are just unacceptable.
As a romance, I found On Thin Ice dull. As a murder mystery, I found it unconvincing. Major thumbs down.
Tokyo Vice - Jake Adelstein (non-fiction, memoir, crime) (***)
Tokyo Vice is a working memoir of American Jake Adelstein’s somewhat incongruous career covering crime in Tokyo for Japanese newspaper, The Daily Yomiuri.
The book’s ‘hook’ concerns Adelstein getting into hot water with the Yakuza (the ‘Japanese Mafia’), but I actually found the anecdotes about his everyday life as a reporter in Tokyo to be more entertaining. Familiar crime reporter material - squeezing sources for information; going undercover in the red light district - is rendered delightfully strange by the context. Adelstein not only recounts his experiences, but in doing so also highlights the eccentricities of the Japanese culture.
The result is a solid if not spectacular book. Good for reading in bitesize chunks over a commute.
Wildfire at Midnight - Mary Stewart (fiction, romance, crime) (**)
I secretly love novels about people going on holiday and bad things happening to them in some secluded spot. Is it because I’m bitter about the fact that I can never afford to go on a real holiday? Who knows!
Anyway, in that vein, Wildfire At Midnight is about a young fashion model who goes on holiday to the remote and beautiful Scottish island of Skye. Then everything comes over all Agatha Christie and people start dying on the island. Oh, snap! Should’ve stayed at home!
The mystery of Wildfire is serviceable enough, with an interesting reveal. However, it’s weak on the red herrings and ‘gotcha!’ moments that make good mysteries really enjoyable.
According to Wikipedia, Mary Stewart “invented” the romantic suspense genre and, well, Wildfire was certainly better than other “sexy mysteries” I’ve read, where either the romance or the mystery seems like an afterthought. Stewart blends romantic tension with deadly suspense skilfully.
Unfortunately, Wildfire was written in the 1950s and you can really, really tell. Unlike contemporary novels like I Capture the Castle (which still feels fresh today), Wildfire is cringe-y in its outdated gender norms. The central romance is creepy as hell, and modern readers will be yelling at the protagonist that she should SAVE HER OWN DAMN SELF, rather than always waiting for the menfolk to save her. :/
A short and diverting read, but one that felt old-fashioned and, honestly, a bit forgettable.
Company of Liars - Karen Maitland (historical fiction) (*)
Company of Liars, a “novel of the plague”, set in 14th-century England, squanders its interesting milieu with unrelenting misery. Obviously, a pestilence-torn country is unlikely to be all sunshine and puppies, but I am a great believer in balancing darkness with light in fiction. Liars is just endlessly macabre, with no humour, laughter or heartfelt warmth to act as juxtaposition.
Clocking in at a hefty 550 pages, it’s unsurprising that Liars is plodding and overwritten. Worse, the plot points are hopelessly telegraphed. Each of the ragtag band of characters that are on the road, trying to escape the Plague, has a terrible secret and they are almost all really easy to guess.
(Interlude: I remember when the short film Starcrossed hit the blogosphere and my friend remarked wryly that sekrit homosexuality is no longer shocking; it now must be combined with sekrit incest to really pack that OMFG punch. Mostly, though, I’m just sick of the “shocking reveal” in fiction being either gayness or incest. It’s just not that shocking anymore, folks.)
I didn’t even find the 14th-century setting all that convincing. It just about skirts around being outright anachronistic, but all the characters (with the exception of blowhard Zophiel, who rails against Jews, women, teh gays, etc.) seem to have progressive, “modern” views that just ring false. What’s entertaining about good historical fiction like Mad Men is that it unflinchingly zeroes in on the prejudices of its time period, giving otherwise-likeable characters incredibly offensive world-views.
Liars is another one of those that falls into the category of “promising subject matter; poor execution”.
Blood Roses - Francesca Lia Block (short stories, teen) (****)
Not quite magic realism, not quite fantasy, Blood Roses is a series of short stories that have the quality of a beautiful hallucination.
Francesca Lia Block takes the hellish insecurity of being a teenager and gives those anxieties physical form: this is a world where fairies, vampires and aliens lurk at the edges of the Southern California setting. Unlike some of her contemporaries, however, Block doesn’t use her fantasy to sugarcoat reality: these are gritty stories and better for it.
I first fell in love with Block’s novels for their sparing, poetic use of language. And, the more ‘safe’, neutered teen books I read, the more I appreciate the way that sexuality and danger form fundamental parts of all of her teenage characters’ lives.
I went into this very slight volume thinking I’d find it too short to be satisfying, but actually, no, I loved it and it was exactly the right length.
Favourite stories: ‘My Boyfriend Is An Alien’; ‘Skin Art’.
Bossypants - Tina Fey (non-fiction, memoir) (***)
Eloquent and funny, Tina Fey’s mish-mash of autobiography and personal essays made for some really good sunny-day-in-the-garden reading. In fact, I was enjoying it so much that I carried on reading for quite a long time after the sun had gone in. (England, huh?)
My criticism of Bossypants would be that it reads like someone said to Fey, “hey, you should write a book! here, have a large advance!” - rather than as a heartfelt desire to record aspects of her life on paper.
As a result, Bossypants is quite scattershot in its compilation. The autobiography of Fey’s young life is long and in-depth, but she scarcely outlines what happened to her after the age of 23. Where’s the story of how she met and fell in love with her husband? Where’s the story of how she made the decision to have a baby? I suspect that Fey may have found these subjects too schmaltzy to focus on at length, but if you’re gonna write an autobiography, write an autobiography.
What we’re left with instead is random anecdotes from Fey’s adult life, many of which come across a bit too much like blog entries. The decision to list all of the 30 Rock writers feels like pandering, and, in all, Fey seems to be too much aware of her audience. Parts of the book seem transparently written as a rebuttal to journalists who’ve profiled her unfairly.
Bossypants is a book that could have been a 5-star read. While it would be unfair to write it off as a quick cash-in - there’s plenty that’s entertaining here, and the social commentary about women is excellent - it’s impossible not to suspect a little more time, effort and passion could have gone into this project.