Thriller in disguise

Jeff VanderMeer's Hummingbird Salamander (2021) certainly doesn't sound like a thriller. And with its cover showing a colorful hummingbird against a white background, it certainly doesn't look like a thriller. Aren't thrillers supposed to have black covers? And yet  a thriller is what it is, and a particularly fine nail-biter and edge-of-the-seater at that.

VanderMeer’s story takes place in the near future when the United States is near collapse because of climate change and environmental disaster. Or because of the consequences of the Biden administration, if you prefer.

A large woman (six feet tall, 230 pounds) who works as a security consultant. "Jane Smith," as she calls herself, has a husband and daughter at home. One day she receives a box containing a stuffed hummingbird, possibly the last of that particular species. A cryptic note from someone named Silvina hints that there is a stuffed salamander out there somewhere that she should find.

Jane once thought she might like to become a detective, and so she begins trying to unravel this mystery. It dominates her life, causing her to neglect both her job and her family. She and those around her are soon in grave danger. The mystery deepens, bodies pile up and eventually her quest takes her back to the beginning — her own beginning.

By the novel's end it begins to read like science fiction, but until then it reads like a thriller, an unusually good one.

Reading with tea

C.S. Lewis

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

C.S. Lewis

As someone who enjoys both drinking tea and reading books, I must comment on this comment by C.S. Lewis.

I usually have a cup of tea at my side when I read in the afternoon, but I favor a small cup. You might even call it a tiny cup, about the size of one you might find in some Asian restaurants. The advantage of the small cup is that the tea stays hot until it is empty, unlike a larger cup that usually has cold tea at the bottom. A small cup requires a tea pot, of course, but part of the fun of drinking tea is pouring the tea from pot to cup. And it stays hot much longer in the pot.

As for long books, I tend to agree more with Jane Austen, who said, "If a book is well written I always find it too short." I never thought Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove or Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit were too long. Another 200 pages of each would have been welcomed. Yet I've read plenty of 300-page books that were way too long.

Similarly, a good song can never be too long or a bad song too short. The same with movies.

The Lewis comment is interesting because he favored high-brow books, the older the better. He would have considered Little Dorrit contemporary literature, though he was a 20th century man and Dickens wrote 100 years earlier. I doubt that he would have bothered with Lonesome Dove at all had he lived long enough to consider it. Considering the kinds of books he read, I must admire Lewis, even if I can't quite agree with him on the subject of large cups and long books.

Begins with a bang

Blood Is Blood, the 2018 Barker & Llewelyn mystery by Will Thomas, starts with a bang — quite literally.  The London office where these late-19th century "enquiry agents" work is blown to bits, leaving Cyrus Barker seriously injured. It also leaves Thomas Llewelyn, his assistant, in charge of finding who is responsible for the explosion. And it's just one week before the younger man's planned marriage to Rebecca, a beautiful Jewish widow.

Just then Barker's older brother, Caleb, shows up. He's been in America for a number, working as a Pinkerton detective and now on an assignment in England. The two brothers have never gotten along, but Caleb agrees to help because, after all, blood is blood. Yet Llewelyn can never be sure if Caleb is more help than hinderance, given his habit of disappearing for hours at a time without explanation.

Llewelyn decides the guilty party must be someone with a grudge against Cyrus, and so he investigates all of the likely suspects, including those still in prison. He is assaulted and threatened at every turn, although an attractive young woman who keeps appearing and disappearing seems to be his greatest threat. 

Llewelyn kills a man for the first time, endangering his wedding because he does so in Rebecca's presence. The fact that he may have saved her life does not seem to weigh in his favor.

Will Thomas, an American, keeps these adventures lively and exciting, and Blood Is Blood is certainly no exception.

All about the journey

Often I read a book that I've owned for years and then, because it's so good, I wonder why I waited so long to read it. One such book is The Dog of the South (1979) by Charles Portis.

Portis is best known for True Grit, his only western as far as I know. There are certain similarities. Both are journey novels about one person's search for another. Both are filled with colorful characters and incidents so wild and improbable that they ring true.

The Dog of the South is narrated by Ray Midge, a 26-year-old college student from Arkansas with a passion for military history, especially Civil War battles, but not much ambition. When Norma, his wife, runs off with another man and, perhaps worse, his prized car, Midge takes off in pursuit by following the credit card receipts. (She also took his credit cards.)

The chase eventually leads through Mexico to Belize, but as with life itself, it's all about the journey. He travels most of the way with Dr. Symes, a talkative, opinionated man also bound for Belize. The doctor, who lost his medical license years before, has a million get-rich-quick schemes, but to pull any of them off he needs control of an island owned by his mother, who runs a mission for children in Belize. The main focus of this mission seems to be showing old movies featuring Tarzan or whomever to those children. She and the woman who lives with her turn out to be as talkative and opinionated as Dr. Symes.

All this is hilarious as Midge describes it. And in the end, it all seems pointless. And yet one gathers this may be the highlight of his life. He chose to write it all down, after all. It's about the journey, not the destination — the searching more than the finding.

High school hysteria

At times Megan Abbott's 2014 novel The Fever reads like an amateur detective mystery, a medical thriller,  a teen romance and and even a story about witchcraft and superstition — and indeed it is all of those things.

A lovely high school girl experiences a mysterious seizure in class and is hospitalized in serious condition.  Then other girls report similar conditions, though not as severe. The rumor mill among students, parents and teachers kicks into high gear. Is it drugs? Is it the effects of a polluted nearby lake? Is it a sexually transmitted disease? Is it the HPV vaccine all the girls received? Is it some kind of supervirus? Or is it Deenie Nash, the one girl in the group who seems to be OK but has had contact with all the others?

Abbott's story focuses on Deenie and her older brother Eli, a popular jock in the same school, and Tom, their single father who teaches at the school. In their own way, each member of the family searches for answers, even as medical authorities and school authorities conduct their own more official probes.

Abbott keeps the tension building as the hysteria rises. One important character turns out to be at the center of the mystery without even realizing it. It's all high-tension excitement, and best of all, a mystery in which nobody dies.

Writing's pros and cons

The great thing about writing is that you are self-employed. The bad thing about writing is that you have to wait on other people to find out if you are going to be published. Then, you have to wait to find out if anyone is going to buy the book or like it, or read it, or keep it in print.

Ellen Gilchrist, The Writing Life

Ellen Gilchrist

Ellen Gilchrist puts her finger on what separates writers from wannabe writers — the willingness to fully trust not only one's own talent and ambition but also the willingness of many others to invest their money in what you write. Professional writers need both publishers and readers, the more readers the better, to survive as writers.

One can always self-publish a book that no one will read or file away a manuscript descendants may discover one day, but those writers who expect a financial reward for their efforts had better attract other people, people with money in their fists, to the project. And that can be an even greater challenge than writing the book itself. It's kind of sad seeing writers behind tables in bookstores and at book festivals trying to sell their last book, with nobody standing in line waiting to buy it, instead of being where they most want to be — at home writing their next one.

Most writers, including Gilchrist herself, must get jobs with a regular paycheck in order to feed their families until they hit the best-seller lists. And most of them never make it to the best-seller lists. William Faulkner became a Hollywood screenwriter. Ernest Hemingway became a war correspondent and wrote magazine articles. Franz Kafka worked for an insurance company. Today a great many authors teach creative writing classes. This is what Gilchrist did. This lessens what she calls "the great thing about writing," being self-employed, but it does help pay the bills between royalty checks.

Personally I think the great thing about writing is the writing itself, watching words form on the page and wondering where they came from. So many writers talk about feeling as if they are taking dictation as they write or as if their characters are making their own choices, which the authors are only recording. That's not what really happens, of course, but when it seems to happen ... that is the great thing about writing.

Professor ignores his own lectures

I have been a fan of Thomas C. Foster's "Professor" books since How to Read Literature Like a Professor, but he may have reached the limits of his expertise with How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor (2020).

Partly it's a matter of nonfiction being such a broad topic, including everything from biography, history, politics and science to newspapers, magazines and blogs. It's not easy being an authority on everything. Another problem is that Foster's book, being itself nonfiction, doesn't always conform to the author's guidance on what constitutes good nonfiction.

For example, Foster writes, "I have long counseled students of fiction to start doubting the narrator's veracity if they see the word 'I' on the first page. ... The same is true of nonfiction." I am probably not the only reader to check back at the beginning of his own book. His introduction begins with the word "I." His first chapter begins with the word "I'm." (Note that this blog post also begins with the word "I.")

More serious is the professor's lecturing on objectivity or, more accurately, the lack of objectivity. He offers a lot of good instruction on how to detect an author's particular slant and judge the accuracy of statements. But then Foster himself sometimes often fails the objectivity and accuracy tests. For example, he slams Fox News repeatedly, including by saying the network "does virtually no actual news gathering, relying much more on opinion shows ..." A more objective and accurate writer might also point out that other news networks, including CNN, MSNBC and Newsmax, also depend mostly on opinion shows. And the "virtually no actual news gathering" comment is just blatantly wrong.

Foster criticizes the "fake news" label popularized by President Trump, yet he is all aboard with the misinformation and disinformation terms employed more by those on the left. Many readers may find it hard to tell the difference, other than by the political views of those telling the untruths. The author favors cracking down on misinformation and disinformation, especially in the cyber world. The problem is that most fact-checkers, being themselves biased, also need fact-checkers. And what starts out as fact-checking can easily transform into censorship.

Foster shines in many of the chapters in this book, even if he stumbles in others.

A slave abroad

A seducible boy is what I am.

Tiller in My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee

Novels aren't very interesting when what we expect to happen happens. That certainly isn't the case with My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee (2021).

Tiller is a directionless college student looking forward to an opportunity to study abroad when he meets Pong, a Chinese-American chemist/businessman who discovers abilities in Tiller the young man had never realized he possessed. Pong, for example, owns a chain of frozen yogurt shops, and Tiller can, in a couple of sentences, describe each flavor colorfully and accurately predict its sales potential.

Pong offers to take Tiller along with him on a business trip to Asia as something of a protege. Never mind college, this seems like too good an opportunity to pass up. On the trip Tiller continues to discover unknown abilities in himself, such as a karaoke talent that is widely appreciated.

Then Pong abandons Tiller in China, promising to return soon. Yet he doesn't, and Tiller soon finds himself trapped in virtual slavery.

Lee, a Korean-American novelist who teaches at Princeton, tells what happens to Tiller after his Chinese experience in alternate chapters. He now lives with an older woman, Val, and her son, Victor Jr. Val is in the witness protection program after testifying against her husband. That's one thing that hangs over this makeshift family. The other is that Val is suicidal, and Tiller must always be alert for signs that her depression may be worsening. Does she really love Tiller or does she view him just as someone who will be willing to care for Victor Jr. after she's gone?

The two stories never really come together, forcing readers to draw their own conclusions. What does Tiller's year abroad have to do with his life with Val? Has he traded one form of enslavement for another? Are any of us really free?

The author writes with the wordy richness of literary notables with names like Updike, Bellow and Roth. This may not be the most rewarding story you will read this year, but it certainly does stay interesting. You never know what might happen next.

A worthless treasure

If you think it's challenging to steal a ring with incredible value and huge international significance, try giving it back.

Why Me? could have been the title of any of the 14 novels Donald E. Westlake wrote featuring his hard-luck thief John Dortmunder, but it's actually the one published in 1983. It's somebody else who originally steals the Byzantine Fire, a priceless gem coveted by the Greeks, Turks and several others. That night the stolen ring is stored in the safe of an ordinary jewelry store, but that just happens to be the night Dortmunder decides to break into that store. He spots the Byzantine Fire in the safe and thinks it's probably a fake, but he takes it anyway. Big mistake.

Dortmunder doesn't pay much attention to newspapers and TV news, so he is among the last people in New York City to hear about the museum theft. By then the police, the FBI and those various international groups have organized in pursuit of the Fire and whoever has it. Worse, because the cops are putting the heat on everyone in the city with a criminal record, Dortmunder's own usual partners in crime are cooperating in the hunt.

The Byzantine Fire may be the biggest score of Dortmunder's criminal career, yet it is worthless to him. He wants only to give it back without getting caught. But how?

Virtually every chapter in this novel — and there are 46 of them — is a comic masterpiece, and almost every character is uniquely hilarious.

The novel may be dated in some respects, yet it remains enormously fun to read.

A lively abode

May I just say that history is lively abode, full of surprises.

Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile

So much has been written about Winston Churchill, about World War II in general and about the Blitz in particular that you wouldn't think someone could write anything fresh and original about them. But this is Erik Larson and the book is The Splendid and the Vile (2020), so move to the edge of your seat.

Larson has a way of turning history into something that reads like a thriller, as he has done before with the sinking of the Lusitania and the Chicago World's Fair. Now he does it again with the Churchills and the Blitz. Winston, the new prime minister, shares the spotlight here with his wife, Clementine; his daughter, Mary, then in her late teens; and his playboy son, Randolph, with his huge gambling debts and numerous affairs.

Larson makes the war personal, and not just for the Churchills but also for various figures in the British government and and even for some of those on the German side and in the United States. Good fiction requires interesting detail, and Larson shows that the same is true with books of history. For example, Winston Churchill took two baths each day, conducting business with his secretaries and advisors while in the tub. Larson tells us that Churchill once met with President Franklin Roosevelt while entirely nude and out of his tub.

Larson turns his history into a love story, and in fact into multiple love stories, including Mary and her temporary sweetheart and Pamela Churchill (Randolph's wife) and William Averell Harriman, FDR's representative to London. Meanwhile, he gives us plenty of detail about the German bombing attacks.

One detail I found particularly interesting was that the London Blitz began by accident. Hitler ordered his pilots to bomb only military targets in England, but one dark night bombs were accidentally dropped over London. Churchill retaliated by bombing Berlin. Hitler, unaware of the accidental London bombing, retaliated by bombing London. From then on the bombing of cities became routine, right up to Hiroshima

In Erik Larson's hands, history certainly is a lively abode.

Book picture book

I can't say that Jane Mount's Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany (2018) makes particularly good reading or has much in the way of interesting information, but that's OK. It's a book about books, but it's mainly an art book about books, more a pleasure to leaf through than to read.

Mount says she kicked off her art career when, out of ideas, she started drawing the books on her own bookshelves. Then she moved on to the books on the shelves of friends, and soon she was in business. I am another of those people who love the sight of books on shelves. I spend a moment or two practically every day just admiring the spines of my own books. I can understand why readers would be willing to spend a few bucks for a Jane Mount painting of their favorite books.

And that is mostly what Bibliophile amounts to — paintings of books. True, she also includes paintings of striking bookstores and libraries, writers' pets and the rooms where famous writers did their writing, but mostly it's books. She divides them into two-page groupings: choice books of short stories, choice fantasy books, cult classics, choice picture books for kids, choice cookbooks, choice graphic novels, choice mysteries, choice nature books and so on.

She tosses in a few paragraphs about some of these books and their authors and adds lists of other books in these categories that aren't pictured. You may want to read Bibliophile with a notepad handy to take down all those books you may want to read — or even even to acquire just to decorate your own bookshelves.

Careful reading

"I believe young writers should be careful about what they read," Ellen Gilchrist says in The Writing Life.

Whatever our age and however we make our living, that is still probably good advice. Each of us can read only so many books in our lifetimes, and for most of us who are not blessed with speed-reading abilities, each book takes several hours to read. So we do need to be careful.

Robert Frost

Gilchrist herself says she starts each day by reading a Robert Frost poem and devotes her Sunday afternoons to reading Shakespeare plays with friends. Others of us have our own favorites. I know a man who begins each day by reading a psalm. I know others who read at least one thriller a week. If the thriller adds pleasure and stimulation to one's life, it may be as good a choice as Frost or Shakespeare. At least for that person.

I recently read about a woman who became a writer after reading some terribly written stories as a girl. You can get paid for writing this stuff, she realized. She knew she could tell better stories than that, and then she went out and proved it. So I guess that proves that even reading bad books can sometimes be worthwhile.

Last week I commented on books I read decades ago that I had totally forgotten about ("Forgotten books" June 29, 2022). Were they a waste of my time? In many cases, I'm sure they were. Yet I'm also sure many of them gave me momentary pleasure, insights or information, even if they did not impact me enough to stick in my memory. If only those experiences that affect us in a profound and/or memorable way are worthwhile, then most of our lives would be a waste of time. That's a discouraging thought.

I still agree with Gilchrist that we need to be careful about what we read, especially if we are writers and especially if we are growing old. Writers need the best examples of good writing implanted in their brains. Aging individuals need to finally attack all those books they've been saving for a rainy day or for a week at the beach. We are running out of time.

Living a fairy tale

It took me a couple of chapters to get in tune with the cutesiness of Fredrik Backman's My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (2013), but once I did I loved it.

Elsa is a precocious almost-eight-year-old girl under the influence of her grandmother's fanciful stories, her own Harry Potter books and the Spider-Man comics she considers great literature. She believes she's living a fairy tale. When Granny dies she leaves Elsa a challenge — to find and deliver a series of letters to various people living in the same apartment building. Each letter is an apology for something Granny herself couldn't bring herself to apologize for while she was alive.

Granny was a difficult woman, to say the least. A surgeon, she had devoted her life to going to disaster areas around the world and helping wounded people, while all but ignoring her own daughter, Elsa's mother. She had a good heart, yet was always argumentative and insulting. Elsa was the only person who could get close to her and the person who loved her best.

Elsa's quest takes her into the lives of her neighbors, all of whom had some unexpected connection with Granny and many of whom were the models for characters in her fairy tales. And some of these people have also been given a challenge by Granny — to protect Elsa.

The little girl's life is as much a mess as that of any of the adults. Her parents have divorced and remarried. Her mother is pregnant, and Elsa fears her mother's love will be devoted only to her little brother or sister. Because she is so different from everyone else, she is bullied in school and always on the run, usually returning home with bruises.

Fairy tales have happy endings, and Backman doesn't disappoint. Read this with dry eyes. I dare you.