MostlyFiction Book Reviews » Florida We Love to Read! Wed, 14 May 2014 13:06:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3 A PERMANENT MEMBER OF THE FAMILY by Russell Banks /2013/a-permanent-member-of-the-family-by-russell-banks/ /2013/a-permanent-member-of-the-family-by-russell-banks/#comments Thu, 19 Dec 2013 12:55:13 +0000 /?p=22430 Book Quote:

“After lying in bed awake for an hour, Connie finally pushes back the blankets and gets up. It’s still dark. He’s barefoot and shivering in his boxers and T-shirt and a little hungover from one beer too many at 20 Main last night. He snaps the bedside  lamp on and resets the thermostat from fifty-five to sixty-five. The burner makes a huffing sound and the fan kicks in, and the smell of kerosene drifts through the trailer. He pats his new hearing aids into place and peers out the bedroom window. Snow is falling across a pale splash of lamplight on the lawn. It’s a week into April and it ought to be rain, but Connie is glad it’s snow. He removes his .45-caliber Colt service pistol from the drawer of the bedside table, checks to be sure it’s loaded and lays it on the dresser.”

from A Permanent Member of the Family

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (DEC 19, 2013)

I have long been an admirer or Russell Banks’ work. This collection of short stories is excellent and many of them kept me riveted for the duration. The collection consists of twelve stories, most of them about the families we have and the families we make. Others are about the figments of truth that make up our experiences while we decide what is worth believing and what is not. The stories take place in different geographic settings from Florida to upstate New York to Portland, Oregon.

There are a few that are my favorites and will stay with me for a long while. One of the ones I loved was Former Marine. Connie is a former Marine who raised his three sons by himself after his wife deserted the family. He is now without work. “Let go. Like he was a helium-filled balloon on a string, he tells people.” What he always wanted was to be able to take care of himself and his family “because you’re never an ex-father, any more than you’re an ex-Marine.” Desperate times require desperate measures.

In Permanent Family, a family dog holds the memory of permanence and stability intact after a divorce. She was “the last remaining link to our pre-separation… to a time of relative innocence, when all of us, but especially the girls, still believed in the permanence of our family unit, our pack.”

Big Dog is about Erik’s winning a MacArthur genius award for his giant art installations of kitchens and bathrooms. He is told not to tell anyone about the award until it is formally announced. However, at a dinner party that night with close friends, he spills the news. What occurs is far from what he expected.

Blue is my favorite story in the collection. Ventana Robertson has saved up $3,500 to buy a used car. She arrives at the car lot at 6 p.m. They close at 6:30. Forgetting Ventana is still in the lot, the salesmen lock up the fenced yard. Ventana finds herself locked in with a vicious pit bull on her scent. She scrambles on top of a car to get away from him. What happens that night is heart-stopping.

I also loved Searching for Veronica, a story that takes place in a bar in the Portland Airport. Russell sits down in the airport bar and Dorothy, a woman he doesn’t know, proceeds to tell him the story of Veronica, a drug-addicted young woman who once lived with her and her daughter Helene many years ago. Dorothy had to kick Veronica out because of her drug use and now thinks that she is dead. Consequently, she visits the morgue every time an unidentified female body shows up. Is the story true or is it something that’s been manufactured by an addled mind?

Several of the stories deal with the obtuse meanings of truth and what exactly is happening. There are narratives that come out of addiction, some that are about starting a new life, and others that result from finding oneself a witness to a horrific deed. All of these push the meaning of truth to the limit. Additionally, there is almost always a picture of family, of one sort or another, that governs these tales.

Banks has a wonderful way with words and the stories, which can be dark, are often balanced with humor or questioning. I found this book one of the best short story collections I have read this year. I highly recommend it.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 13 readers
PUBLISHER: Ecco (November 12, 2013)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Russell Banks
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

Movies from books:

]]> /2013/a-permanent-member-of-the-family-by-russell-banks/feed/ 0 THE CONSUMMATA by Mickey Spillaine and Max Allan Collins /2011/the-consummata-by-mickey-spillaine-and-max-allan-collins/ /2011/the-consummata-by-mickey-spillaine-and-max-allan-collins/#comments Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:49:59 +0000 /?p=21536 Book Quote:

“I can always tell if a broad is lying to me. I spent a lot of years honing this bullshit detector.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 9, 2011)

In the 1960s, Mickey Spillane began to write The Consummata–a follow-up to The Delta Factor, the novel which introduced super-crook Morgan the Raider. After a series of disappointments with the Delta Factor film, Spillane stopped work on the unfinished The Consummata manuscript. Twenty years ago, he gave the manuscript to long-term friend, collaborator, and creative heir, Max Allan Collins. Since the death of Spillane in 2006, Collins has devoted himself to finishing the many Spillane projects left behind. So far fans have seen a number of publications, including Dead Street, The Goliath Bone, The Big Bang, and Kiss Her Goodbye. Now comes The Consummata–the long awaited sequel to The Delta Factor. The appearance of the sequel is reason enough to celebrate, but the novel’s publication also heralds the autumn return of Hard Case Crime following a short hiatus.

The Consummata finds Morgan the Raider on the run in Miami’s Little Havana and being chased by “federal suits” teamed with “local fuzz” who think he has 40 million dollars in stolen funds. With no place to hide, the chase seems to be coming to its inevitable conclusion, but suddenly Morgan finds himself snatched and hidden from the feds by some of Little Havana’s Cuban community. As Morgan hangs out with the Cubans waiting for the heat to cool down, he learns that the exiles managed to scrape together a fund of $75,000 to assist their relatives back in Cuba. Double agent Jaimie Halaquez wormed his way into the Little Havana exile community, and once he gained their trust, he lifted the dough. Morgan, grateful for the Cubans’ help, agrees to track down Halaquez and get the money back.

Easier said than done….

Halaquez, as it turns out, is “an S&M freak,” and this leads Morgan on the hunt for La Consummata, a legendary dominatrix who is rumored to be “setting up shop in Miami:”

“Sometimes she works alone, by appointment through intermediaries. Other times she has set up a location with other young women trained in the arts of sado-masochism. And, again, clients are by referral only. She has turned up in every major city in America and not a few in Europe. Her clients, they say, are among the most rich and powerful men in business and government. If she exists.”

“You don’t even know if she exists?”

“She is a rumor. A wisp of smoke. A legend. A dream. Lovely, a vision in black leather, they say….”

Of course, it’s inevitable that La Consummata and Morgan meet and tangle.

The Consummata is unabashedly pulp, so this is fast-paced action with not a lot of down-time. The story is set in the 60s, so expect the women to be sexy babes and the men (Morgan specifically) to be macho. This is a sequel novel, and for those who didn’t read The Delta Factor, The Consummata plays catch-up for approximately one chapter. Naturally, since the action hits the notorious bordellos of Miami and includes some of its working women, the book includes sex which is told from a male fantasy perspective. Overall, however, the emphasis is on action, reaction, and the recovery of stolen money.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 2 readers
PUBLISHER: Hard Case Crime (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Mickey Spillaine and Max Allan Collins
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

And by both authors together:

Bibliography:

Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins:

]]> /2011/the-consummata-by-mickey-spillaine-and-max-allan-collins/feed/ 0 LOST MEMORY OF SKIN by Russell Banks /2011/lost-memory-of-skin-by-russell-banks/ /2011/lost-memory-of-skin-by-russell-banks/#comments Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:05:44 +0000 /?p=21235 Book Quote:

“The Kid reminds the Professor of Huckleberry Finn somehow. Here he is now, long after he lit out for the Territory, grown older and as deep into the Territory as you can go…and there’s no farther place he can run to. The Professor wants to know what happened to the ignorant, abused, honest American boy between the end of the book and now…[H]ow did he come years later to having ‘no money, no job, no legal squat’? In twenty-first-century America.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (SEP 27, 2011)

The main character of Banks’ new novel, a twenty-two-year-old registered sex offender in South Florida known only as “the Kid,” may initially repel readers. The Kid is recently out of jail and on ten-year probation in fictional Calusa County, and is required to wear a GPS after soliciting sex from an underage girl. Ironically, he is still a virgin.

The Kid cannot leave the county, but he also cannot reside within 2,500 feet from any place children would congregate. That leaves three options—the swamplands, the airport area, or the Causeway. He chooses the Causeway and meets other sex offenders, a seriously motley crew, who consciously isolate from each other as a group. He befriends one old man, the Rabbit, but sticks to his tent, his bicycle, and his alligator-size pet iguana, Iggy. Later, he procures a Bible.

These disenfranchised convicts are enough to make readers squirm. Moreover, in the back of the reader’s mind is the question of whether authorial intrusion will be employed in an attempt to manipulate the reader into sympathizing with these outcasts. It takes a master storyteller, one who can circumnavigate the ick factor, or, rather, subsume it into a morally complex and irresistible reading experience, to lure the wary, veteran reader.

Banks’ artful narrative eases us in slowly and deftly breaks down resistance, piercing the wall of repugnance. It infiltrates bias, reinforced by social bias, and allows you to eclipse antipathy and enter the sphere of the damned. A willing reader ultimately discovers a captivating story, and reaches a crest of understanding for one young man without needing to accept him.

An illegal police raid on the Causeway, provoked by hatred and politics, disrupts the Kid’s relatively peaceful life early on, and now he has nowhere to turn. Subsequently, a hurricane wipes out the makeshift homes of the inhabitants. The kid becomes a migrant, shuffling within the legal radius of permitted locales. At about this time, he meets the Professor, who the Kid calls “Haystack,” an obese sociologist at the local university who is the size and intellect of a mountain, an enigmatic man with a past of shady government work and espionage. He is conducting a study of homelessness and particularly the homeless, convicted sex offender population.

The Professor offers the Kid financial and practical assistance in exchange for a series of taped interviews. He aims to help the Kid gain control and understanding over his life, to empower him to move beyond his pedophilia. They form a partnership of sorts, but the Kid remains leery of the Professor and his agenda. The Professor’s opaque past, his admitted secrets and lies, marks him as an unreliable narrator. Or does it? Later, perilous developments radically alter their relationship, a fitting move on the author’s part that provides sharp contrasts and deeper characterization.

Sex offenders are the criminal group most collectivized into one category of “monsters.” Banks takes a monster and probes below the surface of reflexive response. There is no attempt to defend the Kid’s crime or apologize for it. We see a lot of the events through his eyes, and decide whether he is reliable or not. He acquires an undernourished, skulking yellow dog and a crusty old grey parrot with clipped wings and a salty tongue. His relationship with these animals is rendered without a lick of sentimentality, but it bestows the most resonant and powerful feelings in the reader compared to anywhere else in the book. The care and feeding of dependents bring out the Kid’s protective instincts and help keep him focused.

The book is divided into five parts. Along the way, Banks dips into rhetorical digressions on sex, pornography, geography, and human nature, slowing down the momentum and disengaging the tension. These intervals are formal and stiff, although they are eventually braided into the story at large. However, despite these static flourishes, the story progresses with confidence and strength.

Most characters, whether stand-up citizens or sex offenders, have a moniker, which deliberately mechanizes them, but between the author and reader, humanization occurs between the pages. There’s Shyster, the pedophilic, disbarred lawyer and ex-Senator; Otis, the Rabbit, an elderly, disabled member of the tribe; and a Hemingway-esque character, the Writer, who incidentally resembles Banks himself; and others who personify their names.

Overall, the languid pace of the novel requires steadfast patience, but commitment to it has a fine payoff. Readers are rewarded with a thrilling denouement and a pensive but provocative ending. It inspires contemplation and dynamic discussion, and makes you think utterly outside the box.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 112 readers
PUBLISHER: Ecco (September 27, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Russell Banks
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

And other:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

Movies from books:

]]> /2011/lost-memory-of-skin-by-russell-banks/feed/ 0 BIRDS OF PARADISE by Diana Abu-Jaber /2011/birds-of-paradise-by-diana-abu-jaber/ /2011/birds-of-paradise-by-diana-abu-jaber/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:37:05 +0000 /?p=20953 Book Quote:

“Four – almost five – years of erratic visits – perhaps twelve visits in all. No, Avis corrects herself; she has not lost track after all. There have been eight visits to date, no more no less. She has seen her daughter exactly eight times since she turned thirteen.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (SEP 15, 2011)

Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber is a richly layered and beautifully written novel. It is akin to an archeological dig – each layer uncovering unexpected treasures. The book begins five years before Hurricane Katrina hit and ends during its aftermath.

The gist of the novel is about a family living in Coral Gables, Florida. The chapters are told from the viewpoints of different family members. Felice, the protagonist of the novel, is a thirteen year-old runaway who, at first, runs away repeatedly and is brought back by the police or social services. At some point before she turns fourteen, she leaves her home for good, leaving a distraught, broken family behind.

Felice manages to survive in Miami by doing odd modeling jobs, living in “the Green House” with other run-aways, and hanging out at clubs and partying. She is incomprehensibly beautiful, often compared to the young Elizabeth Taylor. She has run away to atone for a crime she believes she has committed which becomes clear as the story progresses.

Avis, Felice’s mother, is a baker – but not any baker. She has trained with French chefs at one of the best culinary arts programs in the United States. “She knew how to blow sugar into glassine nests and birds and fountains, how to construct seven-tiered wedding cakes draped with sugar curtains copied from the tapestries at Versailles…She studied Audubon and Redoute.”  When she had a show of her work at Cornell, where she interned, her own mother commented that the exhibit was “amusant.” In Florida, she has a baking business that she runs from home. “She could charge almost any price and customers seemed to consider it a privilege to pay it.” All of this came with a price for her, too. For years she was so busy baking that she had little time to see her son, daughter, or husband.

Felice’s father, Brian, is an attorney for a land acquisition firm. His firm buys land, develops it, and then flips it. He misses Avis and is drawn strongly to a co-worker.  He is losing his moral compass at this job. At one point, he is about to buy into one of the company’s land deals so that he can raise some capital for his son, Stanley’s, business.

Stanley dropped out of college to start a grocery based on local organic farming and green foods. His venture has become a phenomenal success but he sees his parents rarely, feeling like he lives in the shadow of his missing sister. Felice left when he was eighteen. He started college but felt like the real world was where he wanted to be. For years, he could not get into a car without looking for Felice.

Avis has seen Felice infrequently during the five years she has been gone. Most of these visits are when Felice needs money. She and Avis meet at a café and chat. Avis is careful not to touch Felice which would chase her away. As the book opens, Avis is waiting for Felice at a restaurant for hours and Felice never shows up.

This book deals with many themes. Obviously, food plays a big part. Avis is focused on the beauty of her creations, Stanley runs a specialized food market, and many of Felice’s friends suffer from anorexia or bulimia. While Avis is enamored of her beautiful pastries, “she didn’t really approve of food.”  She is smitten by the beauty of a pastry that looks like a replica of a cathedral but regular food makes her ill.

The book also deals with adolescents and the way they interact. Girls are known for their meanness through words and banishment and this book looks closely at the way that girls are cruel to one another.

Those of us who have kept up with real estate news know that Florida has been very hard hit by a depression due to its boom and bust housing market. Both Fort Meyer and Port St. Lucie in Florida are two of the hardest hit cities in the country due to flipping and the bust in real estate. Brian’s work puts him right in the middle of this.

The book is riveting and the writing is as lush as the Florida foliage. Abu-Jaber is an artist of the highest caliber and this is definitely one of the top ten books I have read this year.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 53 readers
PUBLISHER: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (September 6, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Diana Abu-Jaber
EXTRAS: NPR audio on Birds of Paradise
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

]]> /2011/birds-of-paradise-by-diana-abu-jaber/feed/ 0 SWAMPLANDIA! by Karen Russell /2011/swamplandia-by-karen-russell/ /2011/swamplandia-by-karen-russell/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 19:57:23 +0000 /?p=15883 Book Quote:

“You thought you couldn’t stand not to know a thing until you knew it, wasn’t that right? Who had said that, the Chief? Some poet from the Library Boat, maybe.

Knowledge at last, Kiwi’s mind recited dutifully. The fish’s living eye glass.

Sometimes you would prefer a mystery to remain red-gilled and buried inside you, Kiwi decided, alive and alive inside you.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  (FEB 02, 2011)

In her hotly-anticipated debut novel, Swamplandia!, Karen Russell returns to the mosquito-droves and muggy-haze of the Florida Everglades and the gator-themed amusement park featured in her short story, “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” that opened her widely-praised 2006 collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. It was that collection, with its exuberant mix of satire and fabulism, that secured Russell’s reputation as one of the most exciting up-and-comers around and earned her a coveted spot on The New Yorker’s much buzzed about “20 under 40” list last fall. With her energetic prose, quirky settings, and fantastical plots, Russell is a writer’s whose style forces you to sit up and take notice, sometimes at the cost of emotional involvement with her work. However, Swamplandia!, with all its flashing-neon prose is an insightful (and surprisingly funny) exploration of the loss of innocence that inevitably follows the death of a parent.

In the year following her mother’s death, 13-year-old Ava Bigtree quickly learns how “one tragedy can beget another and another.” Since birth, their family-owned, 100-acre island attraction, Swamplandia!, has been Ava’s home. Its 98 alligators (all named after their original gator, Seth, because as Chief Bigtree likes to say “Tradition is as important as promotional materials are expensive.”), Reptile Walk, Live Chicken Thursday feeding shows, and lone mammal, a balding, rhythmless bear named Judy Garland, have all helped Swamplandia! hold its position as the “Number One Gator-Themed Park and Swamp Café” in southwestern Florida. That, and Ava’s mother’s gator-swim routine. However, when Hilola Bigtree dies of ovarian cancer, Chief Bigtree, lost in his own fog of grief, fails to amend the promotional materials and tourists continue to file off the Mainland-Swamplandia! ferry eager to watch the “Swamp Centaur” swim through a gator pit “planked with great grey and black bodies.” Initially, the disappointed mainlanders are understanding –- after all, a family has lost its mother – but, their hijacked sympathy soon swings to money-back-demanding indignation, until a new corporate theme park, the World of Darkness, opens just off the highway, and the tourists stop coming altogether.

With the tourists gone and their father increasingly preoccupied, Ava and her dreamy older sister, Osceola, (white-haired and violet-eyed, Ossie resembles “the doomed sibling you see in those Wild West daguerreotypes, the one who makes you think Oh God take the picture quick; this one isn’t long for this world”) are left alone with empty days to fill. The girls take to hanging out on the abandoned library boat with their studious brother, Kiwi. Kiwi is the kind of guy who gives himself report cards and studies for his SATs long before he’s even stepped foot inside a high school, and so he scoffs when he learns that Ava and Osceola plan to contact their mother with Ossie’s newly acquired occult powers and their homemade Ouija board.

Their unsuccessful séances crush Ava, but when Ossie starts using the Ouija board on her own to meet other ghosts –strange men! – Ava tattles to their father: her sister is dating men, dead ones. Burdened by the park’s mounting debt and his own mismanaged grief, Chief Bigtree isn’t up to dealing with his lonely and disturbed 16-year old daughter.

Or anything else, for that matter.

Angry at his father’s inability to face their increasingly precarious financial situation, Kiwi runs away to the mainland to save his family from destitution and is initiated into the realities of minimum-wage labor as a peon at the World of Darkness. And so, when the Chief disappears to the mainland on mysterious business, Ava and Osceola are left to fend for themselves in the swamp. However, as Osceola’s romance with the ghost of a ill-fated, Depression-era dredgeman, Louis Thanksgiving, intensifies, Ava is left increasingly alone. When Ossie runs off to the Underworld to elope with Louis Thanksgiving, a mysterious stranger, the Bird Man, offers to be Ava’s guide in her quest to retrieve her sister

Forget Dante’s rings or Homer’s River Styx; this is mangrove swamp as the Underworld! With its fecundity and “blue lozenge” water ways, Ava frets that the swamp doesn’t look much like the underworld she’s read about in books, but with its “leafy catacombs,” ravenous mosquitoes, and “rotten-egg smell [that] rose off the pools of water that collected beneath the mangrove’s stilted roots,” but I can’t think of a milieu more likely to harbor ghosts.

Part of successfully navigating the swamps of adolescence involves knowing which beliefs to cling to tenaciously, and which to modify, if not altogether discard. Although the inevitable loss of innocence that follows is heart-breaking, as the Bigtree children learn that life on the mainland is just as imperfect as life on the swamp, that loving a ghost, if possible, comes with a steep cost, that mothers, once dead, stay gone, Russell never lets us lose our sense of humor. Moreover, as Ava oscillates between her girlish beliefs and her adult awakening, Russell maintains expert control over the narrative. So much so, in fact, that the reader, like Ava, is unsure of exactly what to believe. That is, until disaster strikes, and the reader is left sharing Ava’s sentiment: we should have seen it coming all along.

Ava and Osceola’s story is about loneliness, loss and sisterly love, but Kiwi’s sudden emersion in the ways of the contemporary teen helps to lighten some of that darkness. Fascinated by the alien customs around him, Kiwi takes to writing down his observations while his colleagues take to calling him Margaret Mead. His education into mainland life is perceptive, and often hilarious.

Swamplandia! is a quirky, but well-crafted read, and Russell’s prose is dynamite. While the ending might be too pat for some, I was so impressed by Russell’s knack for description and laughed far too many times (really!) to hold it against the book. Karen Russell has been likened to writers as wide ranging as Amy Hempel, George Saunders, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kelly Link and Judy Blume, and while her energetic prose might be too exhausting for some, if her writing is anything, it’s this: original.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 462 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf (February 1, 2011)
REVIEWER: Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: MacArthur Foundation page on Karen Russell
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another Southern Florida story:

Bibliography:

]]> /2011/swamplandia-by-karen-russell/feed/ 3 THE CYPRESS HOUSE by Michael Koryta /2011/the-cypress-house-by-michael-koryta/ /2011/the-cypress-house-by-michael-koryta/#comments Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:54:49 +0000 /?p=15633 Book Quote:

“This was a dangerous game. Wasn’t as simple as talking. There was more to it than that, and what Tolliver had said had been the truth – the dead weren’t required to help him.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (JAN 24, 2011)

In Koryta’s latest thriller – noir with a twist of the supernatural – it’s late summer 1935 and a group of hard-bitten WWI veterans and one talented 19-year-old are headed for the Florida Keys to build a highway bridge.

“They’d been on the train for five hours before Arlen Wagner saw the first of the dead men.” Wagner, a loner who’s taken the kid, Paul Brickhill, under his wing, developed a chilling battlefield talent during the war. He could look at living men and see death steal over them. “He could see skulls shining in the pale moonlight where faces belonged, hands of white bone clutching rifle stocks.”

He found he could save some too, change the course of their fate. Not all, not even many; but some. So when he looks around and sees that every last man on the train, including young Paul, is about to die, he tries to convince them to get off at the next stop. But it’s the middle of nowhere in backwoods Florida and these hungry men aren’t about to fall for some superstitious claptrap. He and Paul, a budding and natural engineer, are the only ones who stay behind and as they head out into the dark, “the summer night pressed down on them like a pair of strong hands, made each step feel like ten.”

They finally end up at an oddly deserted fishing resort – The Cypress House – presided over by a woman, Rebecca Cady, who could have stepped right out of a James M. Cain novel: “Beautiful, yes. The sort of gorgeous that haunted men, chased them over oceans and never left their minds, not even when they wanted a respite. But was she trustworthy? No. Arlen was sure of that.”

Paul, however, is smitten and even after a punishing run-in with the corrupt local sheriff, he’s determined to stick around and use his skills to make her life easier. His determination only grows after a powerful hurricane takes out the Cypress House generator as well as its boathouse and dock.

“The three of them went out onto the front porch once, with the building offering shelter between them and the wind, and took in the yard. Everything was awash with water, the sea moving all around them, as if they stood aboard a ship rather than a porch.”

This is the 1935 hurricane that destroyed the Florida Keys railroad, killed hundreds and put paid to any notion of building a Keys highway for many years to come. Wagner’s death vision has been fulfilled – all the men who were on the train were killed in the hurricane. And Wagner is becoming increasingly sure that the longer they stay at The Cypress House, the more they tempt the same fate, even as he finds his eyes – and thoughts – lingering longer on Rebecca Cady. The men who run things in this corrupt little backwater make their own law, and their hold over Cady is as absolute as it is mysterious. To save Paul, Wagner has some hard choices ahead.

Koryta keeps his dialog hard-edged. The noir atmosphere drips with steamy Gulf Coast humidity, and crackles with human chemistry. The supernatural element heightens the eerie feel while the story’s foundations go deep into the real hopelessness of the Depression. Sentence by sentence the prose draws the reader into the story but it all sags a bit in the middle. One of the strengths of classic noir is brevity, and that’s just not possible these days. People like their thrillers long and a certain amount of padding is all but inevitable it seems.

Nevertheless, Koryta builds to a tense, violent climax that makes full use of the swampy Florida setting and its backwoods denizens, as well as all of Wagner’s ingenuity and spooky sense.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 75 readers
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company (January 24, 2011)
REVIEWER: Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Michael Koryta
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

More hurricane based fiction:

And another novel with that eerie supernatural feel:

Bibliography:

Lincoln Perry series:

]]> /2011/the-cypress-house-by-michael-koryta/feed/ 0 SUNSET PARK by Paul Auster /2010/sunset-park-by-paul-auster/ /2010/sunset-park-by-paul-auster/#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:23:02 +0000 /?p=13611 Book Quote:

“He wonders if it is worth hoping for a future when there is no future, and from now on, he tells himself, he will stop hoping for anything and live only for now, this moment, this passing moment, the now that is here and then not here, the now that is gone forever.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill Shtulman  (NOV 15, 2010)

Paul Auster is one of my favorite writers; he paints his characters with taut, finely detailed, yet propulsive brush strokes. And in Sunset Park, he does not disappoint.

This novel is less postmodern than his recent book Invisible. It focuses on debris: physical debris from trashed-out foreclosed homes in Florida that Miles Heller, a Brown University dropout, rescues through his camera lens. And mental debris that Miles wrestles with after a spontaneous action on his part results in an accidental death, causing him to flee from his New York family and live in self-imposed exile down south. A chance encounter with a high school student, Cuban-American Pilar Sanchez, while reading The Great Gatsby brings fleeting connection into his life for a few happy months. But Pilar is underage and he is soon forced to flee back north to avoid her jaded older sister’s charges that could lead to jail time.

As a result of his northbound trek, Miles moves in with the other characters that populate this book: four flat-broke twentysomethings who are struggling with issues of personal identity and past failures. Together, they illegally squat in an abandoned house in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, openly evading the government and awaiting the day when eviction will become a reality. Each has placed his or her life on hold while forestalling a crucial decision. In Miles case, he is awaiting the right time to connect again with his father Morris, an independent publisher who is fighting the dissolution of both his business and marriage and has never quite given up that his son will eventually find his way back home.

The fractured narrative, told sequentially in the third-person, weaves together a number of elements: the economic recession and ensuring foreclosure crisis, baseball trivia including Jack Lohrke (“Lucky”) who cheated death repeatedly until the very end, William Wyler’s 1946 coming-home classic The Best Years of Our Lives, the demise of the literary publishing houses, To Kill A Mockingbird, and the Hospital of Broken Things, which repairs artifacts of a world that once was. This seemingly haphazard assortment is not quite so haphazard on second glance: all are centered on one’s ability to out-cheat fate and assume control of one’s own destiny…or not. The themes that Auster has explored in the past – chance encounters, tragic flaws and past events, art and soltitude, rebellion and penance – are all here again.

James Wood, the esteemed New Yorker critic, famously called Auster’s prose “comfortingly artificial.” With the exception of a few passages that I found to be inorganically graphic, I don’t agree. As these disparate elements come together at the end; the power took my breath away in ways that no artificial construct ever could.

In essence, Auster is asking: “Is luck random or is it within our control? How much responsibility can we take for occurrences? What does self-forgiveness entail? Is it worth hoping for a future when there may be no future? Should we live for the passing moment or take a bigger picture into consideration? These questions – perfectly posed for today’s tough economic times and daunting crises — will have you ruminating long after you read the last pages.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 98 readers
PUBLISHER: Henry Holt and Co. (November 9, 2010)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

Screenplays:

Movies from Books:

  • The Music of Chance (2003)
  • In the Country of Last Things (2007)
]]> /2010/sunset-park-by-paul-auster/feed/ 0 DEXTER IS DELICIOUS by Jeff Lindsay /2010/dexter-is-delicious-by-jeff-lindsay/ /2010/dexter-is-delicious-by-jeff-lindsay/#comments Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:31:52 +0000 /?p=12243 Book Quote:

“I thought again of the promise I had made in the hospital: I would be a better man. No more Demon Dexter—I was Dex-Daddy now, dedicated to the welfare of Lily Anne and my fledgling family. For the first time human life seemed rare and valuable, in spite of the fact that there was so much of it, and for the most part it consistently failed to prove its worth. But I owed it to Lily Anne to change my ways, and I would do it.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (SEP 19, 2010)

In Dexter Morgan’s fifth outing, Dexter is Delicious, our devilish and alliterative slasher and narrator is in danger of becoming a mushy and sentimental softie. His wife, Rita, has given birth to an adorable baby girl named Lily Anne, and Dexter is head over heels in love with his brand new bundle of joy. As he stands in the nursery gazing at the baby, he suddenly wants to embrace life, not death. “I want to hold her. I want to sit her on my lap and read her Christopher Robin and Dr. Seuss.” In short, he decides, “I don’t want to be Dark Dexter anymore.” If he were to kill again, it would be to protect his beautiful child from any predator who would dare to touch a hair on her lovely head.

Paternity leave is short-lived, however, since Dexter’s bossy and demanding sister, Sergeant Deborah, summons him to an address in Old Coconut Grove. She drags Dex into a room “so spattered with blood that it looked like a large animal had exploded.” An eighteen-year-old girl has disappeared and Deborah wants her brother to help analyze the blood splatter to determine what might have happened. At first, he is bewildered, but further inquiries reveal that there are some serious weirdoes loose in Miami who are engaged in nefarious activities, including cannibalism.

Parts of this novel rank up there with the best of Lindsay. These include the sections that deal with Dexter’s newfound feelings of humanity and his repressed, but still active, impulse to slice and dice; and Dexter’s love/hate relationship with Deborah whom he would do anything to protect but who drives him up the wall. A few new characters spice up the story, including Deb’s partner, Deke Slater, a slow-witted but sinfully good-looking cop. To add to the excitement, one of Dexter’s long-lost relatives arrives unexpectedly and shows no signs of leaving any time soon. In addition, Deb’s boyfriend, Kyle Chutsky, and Dex’s nemesis, Sergeant Doakes, make brief but lively appearances.

On the other hand, the villainy in the book is disappointingly predictable. The bad guys have no depth and the “surprises” that the author springs on us are telegraphed well in advance. The territorial infighting between Deb and federal agents trying to wrest jurisdiction from her is a tiresome cliché that has been done to death, and Deb’s constant use of profanity is irritating. Nor are we terribly shocked when Dexter and Deb get themselves into hot water by rushing into dangerous situations without sufficient backup. Still, we keep reading, since we want to know if Dexter will revert to his bad old ways. Read Dexter is Delicious to enjoy the delightfully satirical humor, observe the evolution of Dexter’s personality, and empathize with Dexter’s struggle to resist the increasingly urgent whisperings of the Dark Passenger. No matter how much Dexter would like to believe that the sun will come out tomorrow, it is all too apparent “that the sun is nearly always hidden by clouds, flowers have thorns, and rainbows are always out of reach.”

AMAZON READER RATING: from 67 readers
PUBLISHER: Doubleday; First Edition edition (September 7, 2010)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Jeff Lindsay
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:Darkly Dreaming Dexter (1)

Dearly Devoted Dexter (2)

Dexter by Design (4)

Bibliography:

Dexter Series:

TV Series from book:

]]> /2010/dexter-is-delicious-by-jeff-lindsay/feed/ 0 THE NIGHT MONSTER by James Swain /2010/the-night-monster-by-james-swain/ /2010/the-night-monster-by-james-swain/#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 02:45:33 +0000 /?p=9633 Book Quote:

“Using a black Magic Marker, I wrote down the date of each woman’s abduction, and beneath that, the things that linked them – – age, athleticism, and the fact that they were all nursing students.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (MAY 25, 2010)

Before getting kicked off the police force, Private eye Jack Carpenter served for sixteen years as head of the missing persons department for the Broward County Police Force in Florida. Kicked off the force for being too rough with witnesses, Jack still works with the missing persons department as a consultant. His specialty is finding missing children. He and his Australian Shepherd, Buster, form a team and they have a special sense for locating the missing. Jack is especially good at finding damaged children such as those who have autism, have been abused, or are handicapped in some way.

Eighteen years ago, while he was head of missing persons, he witnessed the abduction of college student Naomi Dunn but was unable to stop it. It has haunted him all this time. Just recently, he received a phone call from his daughter Jesse, a college basketball player. Jesse tells him that a creepy guy has been stalking their team, videotaping them and making them feel uncomfortable. Jack checks this out and finds a small, smelly guy named Mouse wearing a fake reporter’s badge videotaping Jesse’s team. Shortly afterwards, one of their star players, Sarah Long, is abducted by a six foot ten inch “monster.” Jack tries to stop the abduction but is no competition for this huge man who has flung Sarah over his shoulder. Jack’s worst nightmare has been replayed and he is determined to get to the bottom of this. Jack’s search for the abductors and the reasons behind the abductions form the basis of The Night Monster’s plot.

Jack lives alone in a single room over a bar. He is separated from his wife, has no money, and his home is in foreclosure. As Jack investigates the abductions, working in tandem with the police force and the FBI, he puts together some interesting clues. Both girls were nursing students and each was tall and very athletic. The same “giant” took both of them and disappeared, seemingly into nowhere. Linderman is the FBI agent that Jack works with and Linderman’s own daughter was abducted five years previously. This case is very personal for him.

Jack gathers evidence from casino tapes where Mouse and the giant have been stalking another woman and develops a dossier showing that five women have been abducted in the same manner over a period of years. All of the woman were nursing students and athletes, and they were abducted from their own apartments. Over time, Jack comes to realize that the police force is on the wrong track and he goes off on his own maverick scent.

Sarah Long’s father is one of the wealthiest land developers in Florida and he hires Jack to find his daughter. This puts a large amount of money into Jack’s pocket and also puts a helicopter and additional security cops at his disposal. Along with Sarah’s father, he begins a long and desperate search that takes him throughout Florida.

His search leads him to an abandoned psychiatric facility for the criminally insane called Daybreak. Daybreak was closed several years ago and the patients placed in other facilities. There were problems with the management of Daybreak and the patients were mistreated. Jack finds out that the giant and Mouse were both patients there and that they escaped the facility nineteen years ago. Lonnie is the giant’s name and he was sent to Daybreak when he was a child. Not only was he a giant but he was “retarded.” When Lonnie was thirteen years old, “he came upstairs when his mother and sisters were eating dinner. Had a sledgehammer in his hand. He bludgeoned his mother and one of his sisters to death.” Mouse is described as “crazy like a fox” but not actually criminally insane.

As Jack follows the trail from Daybreak to the present, he ends up in the town of Chatham, Florida where he believes Lonnie and Mouse are hiding. Chatham is surreal. As Jack sits in a restaurant having dinner, he looks outside. “The sidewalk outside The Sweet Lowdown was filled with people out for an evening stroll. Over a third of them were missing an arm, a leg, or a hand, with some even missing two limbs. They all seemed to know each other, and had stopped to chat or have a smoke. It was a parade of the maimed.” How is Chatham linked to Lonnie and Mouse? Do the people there know that kidnappers are living among them? Why are there so many maimed people?

While the procedural aspects of this book are interesting, the characters are never well-developed. They are mostly outlines without any depth. Some of the plot seems a bit silly but the book traverses a lot of interesting ground as well. Will Jack find the abductors and be able to save any of the women? This aspect of the book holds the reader’s interest and keeps an exciting pace. James Swain writes an interesting mystery and keeps readers guessing until the end making it a perfect vacation read.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 74 readers
PUBLISHER: Ballantine Books (May 25, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: James Swain
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Tony Valentine series:

Jack Carpenter series:

Magic Stand-alone thrillers:

]]> /2010/the-night-monster-by-james-swain/feed/ 0 TRY TO REMEMBER by Iris Gomez /2010/try-to-remember-by-iris-gomez/ /2010/try-to-remember-by-iris-gomez/#comments Sat, 22 May 2010 03:16:59 +0000 /?p=9464 Book Quote:

“It was awful, Fatima, like he was possessed or something. See, he has these delusions, on top of the temper. He thinks we’re gonna get millions of dollars from the government, and that everyone’s trying to keep him from collecting the money. And I’m all alborotada all the time fearing that he’s going to get arrested and lose his green card and we’ll all end up in some sad life in Colombia with no way back!”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (MAY 21, 2010)

As Try to Remember begins in 1968, Gabriella is fifteen years old, living with her father, mother and two younger brothers near Miami, Florida. They have come to the United States from Colombia and though her parents both hold green cards, Gabi is afraid that they will all have their cards confiscated and be sent back to their village in Colombia. Gabi’s fears stem mostly from the fact that her father behaves erratically and her brothers get into trouble in school.

They have a large extended family that helps them out. Gabi’s mother does piecework and part-time janitorial work. Gabi’s father harbors delusions that the government owes him millions of dollars. He is unable to hold down a job and he spends his days writing letters to government officials asking for his back pay. Somehow, he has confused the money he earned as an oil rig worker in Colombia with money he thinks he’s earned in the U.S. Gabi is the transcriber of these letters which are incomprehensible and delusional in quality.

It is obvious to Gabi that her father is very ill. The family, however, and especially Gabi’s mother, refuse to believe the extent of his illness. They refer to what is going on with him as “nerves.” Sometimes Gabi’s father rants and beats up Gabi’s brothers. They, in turn, are acting out by glue sniffing, oppositional behaviors and cutting school. Gabi appears to be the only mature one in the family. She tries to break through her mother’s denial about her father, but can not succeed.

After Gabi’s father severely beats up one of her brothers, her mother gets some dalmane (a sleeping pill) from a relative and starts grinding these pills into her husband’s morning orange juice. It seems to calm him down.

Gabi is coming of age in all this chaos. She is trying to individuate, make friends, understand the rituals of dating and daring to think what she might do with her life. It is the 1960’s, a time of experimentation, the beginning of feminism and the time when she is growing up. Her family expects her to finish high school and live at home afterwords. Should she have aspirations of attending college, she must commute.

Gabi meets people who hold different ideas than her family and they open her eyes to alternative possibilities. She thinks about leaving home for college, wishes that she had more time to spend outside the house and, mostly, wishes that her family was not so crazy.

I enjoyed reading about Gabi and her life. I empathized with her difficult life as a parental child and the only mature person in her family. However, I was somewhat disappointed with the way this book dealt with the serious and chronic mental illness of Gabi’s father. Dealing with serious and chronic mental illness is always difficult for families. At best, there are resources, support systems and medical assistance. Gabi’s family is poor, her mother in denial and they don’t know where to start. Additionally, there are cross-cultural differences to mental illness. In Latino families, a man’s role is very important. To undermine his role, by suggesting there is something wrong with him, is a very difficult action to take. It felt like Gabi’s mother’s denial was too strong, her resistance beyond reasonable. However, the book was more about Gabi’s experience of her family than what her family actually did or did not do.

This is a debut novel by a recognized poet who currently works as an immigration attorney. The author was born in Cartagena, Colombia and grew up in Miami, Florida. The addendum to the book states that this novel “draws on her personal experiences growing up as a Latina in Miami.”

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 15 readers
PUBLISHER: Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (May 5, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Iris Gomez
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another coming of age story:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by  Junot Diaz

Bibliography:

Poetry:

]]> /2010/try-to-remember-by-iris-gomez/feed/ 0