Reviews: fiction
Steve Almond, The Evil B.B. Chow: Short stories by the author of the enjoyable Candyfreak. The stories didn’t do much for me - love, betrayal and similar endeavors in the new millennium - but that’s what I get for going outside my genre! If you like the stuff on Nerve.com, these might be for you. In fact, some of the stories already did appear there.
Christopher Priest, The Prestige (audiobook): It’s okay to like the movie better than the book, right? This story of the rivalry between two nineteenth-century magicians, and the lengths to which they will go to best one another, is substantially less bloody in the book version, playing more as a moderate tragedy of misplaced enthusiasms than as the Grand Guignol of the movie. The book also spends a lot of time with the subsequent generations of the Borden and Angier families, indicating that the old rivalries have reverberations into modern times, but I didn’t like any of them except for Rupert Angier, the original magician (a disinherited lordling who made a life in theater for himself), for whom I had some reluctant sympathy. I had less use for Alfred Borden, whose trick “The Transported Man” compelled Angier into an alliance with Nicola Tesla, of all people, using electricity to better his illusions into something quite spectacular. Borden’s portions are, however, narrated using a device that might work better on the written page, and/or might work better if you haven’t seen the movie. In the end, I preferred the higher stakes of the film to the less consequential machinations of the book.
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife: As with The Prestige, this is a genre concept written as a mainstream novel. Clare met Henry when she was six and he was in his forties, traveling back in time and already married to the Clare in his time; Henry didn’t meet Clare until he was in his late twenties. The novel goes back and forth with them, revealing the course of their relationship (or relationships, since they don’t happen in the same order for the two of them). Henry repeatedly travels to see his mother, who died when he was a little boy, an event that devastated his father and led Henry to some rather dangerous behaviors. I started out thinking it was creepy and cloying; I ended up thinking it was a little cloying, but actually not a bad love story. And I really appreciated Henry’s version of time travel: seizure-like, uncontrollable in direction, and just moving his body, meaning that he arrived out of time naked and thus often in a fair amount of trouble. Clare’s desire for a child, actually, turned out to be the creepiest part of the story - inheriting Henry’s time-traveling in the womb is a bad idea.
D.C. Noir, ed. George Pelecanos: Not the collection for me. The stories, set in times from the 60s to the present-day, offer little in the way of twists, and the local color didn’t make up for the generally crude level of the writing.
Christopher Priest, The Prestige (audiobook): It’s okay to like the movie better than the book, right? This story of the rivalry between two nineteenth-century magicians, and the lengths to which they will go to best one another, is substantially less bloody in the book version, playing more as a moderate tragedy of misplaced enthusiasms than as the Grand Guignol of the movie. The book also spends a lot of time with the subsequent generations of the Borden and Angier families, indicating that the old rivalries have reverberations into modern times, but I didn’t like any of them except for Rupert Angier, the original magician (a disinherited lordling who made a life in theater for himself), for whom I had some reluctant sympathy. I had less use for Alfred Borden, whose trick “The Transported Man” compelled Angier into an alliance with Nicola Tesla, of all people, using electricity to better his illusions into something quite spectacular. Borden’s portions are, however, narrated using a device that might work better on the written page, and/or might work better if you haven’t seen the movie. In the end, I preferred the higher stakes of the film to the less consequential machinations of the book.
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife: As with The Prestige, this is a genre concept written as a mainstream novel. Clare met Henry when she was six and he was in his forties, traveling back in time and already married to the Clare in his time; Henry didn’t meet Clare until he was in his late twenties. The novel goes back and forth with them, revealing the course of their relationship (or relationships, since they don’t happen in the same order for the two of them). Henry repeatedly travels to see his mother, who died when he was a little boy, an event that devastated his father and led Henry to some rather dangerous behaviors. I started out thinking it was creepy and cloying; I ended up thinking it was a little cloying, but actually not a bad love story. And I really appreciated Henry’s version of time travel: seizure-like, uncontrollable in direction, and just moving his body, meaning that he arrived out of time naked and thus often in a fair amount of trouble. Clare’s desire for a child, actually, turned out to be the creepiest part of the story - inheriting Henry’s time-traveling in the womb is a bad idea.
D.C. Noir, ed. George Pelecanos: Not the collection for me. The stories, set in times from the 60s to the present-day, offer little in the way of twists, and the local color didn’t make up for the generally crude level of the writing.