All roads lead to the Donnybrook

We got no jobs, no money, no power, no nothin', nothin' to live for 'cept vice and indulgence. That's how they control us. But it's falling apart. What we got is our land and our machines, our families and our ability to protect it all, to keep them alive. We got our hands. Ones who'll survive will be the ones can live from the land. Can wield a gun. Those folks'll fight for what little they've got. They'll surprise the criminals with their own savagery. ~ Donnybrook: A Novel, Frank Bill.

Donnybrook: A Novel
Frank Bill
FSG Originals, 2013
Available Now

Reviewer: Trudi
Rating: 5 out of 5 punches to the head

I was already familiar with Frank Bill's writing after surviving a close encounter with his debut -- the short story collection Crimes In Southern Indiana. Upon finishing those stories, my only thought was: "Jesus Christ, this man is a lunatic" -- and then immediately, "I want more!" For sure the stories are raw and unpolished, and perhaps a little too overeager to tell rather than show, but there is also an urgency, a ferocity to the writing that refuses to be ignored. It's so in your face that at times it feels like an assault. I loved it!

So you can bet when I heard this guy was about to publish his first novel I became very afraid, and very, very obsessed with getting my hands on it to read it.

Usually my eyes tend to glaze over and ignore most book blurbs because they always seem so generic and at their worst, sycophantic. But at their best, book blurbs can capture in a few short phrases the very tail of the beast itself and show you its face. As much as I loathe the majority, there are some that do their job so well, they deserve to be recognized along with the book they're blurbing. I only say this now to emphasize that Bill has attracted the attention of authors I love and respect and if you're not going to listen to me when I say this guy's the real deal, then maybe you'll listen to them:

Donnybrook is vivid in its violence, grim in its grimness. It reams the English language with a broken beer bottle and lets the blood drops tell the story. -- Daniel Woodrell, (Winter's Bone)

With action like a belt across the face and vivid prose like a stroke up the neck, Frank Bill's astonishing novel...renders you punch-drunk. Here's the writer to watch: mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Megan Abbott, (Dare Me)

Frank Bill (author)

I also like this one by Bonnie Jo Campbell: "Don't poke this book with a stick or you'll make it angry." And trust me -- you won't like this book when it's angry.

Goodreads friend Jacob writes in his review:

something this good should be illegal, because the act of hunting down a banned copy and hiding from the censors and morality police to read it is the only goddamn way it could get any better. Donnybrook is a relentless, no-holds-barred, total fucking mind-fuck of endless violence...

Yeah, like that. But now you're looking at me tapping your foot impatiently saying: "Yeah, but what the hell is this book about?" I could give you the plot summary lowdown -- about bare-knuckle fighting in the backwoods of Southern Indiana, about desperate family man Jarhead Johnny Earl who's going to steal a thousand dollars to cover the entry fee into the infamous annual Donnybrook tournament.

Then there's meth-making brother and sister Angus (nickname Chainsaw) and Liz who put the F.U.N. in family dysfunction. They've just lost their last batch of dope and are determined to recoup their losses, no matter who gets in their way, even if it means each other. Like any great rural crime story, you've got the steely, determined deputy Sheriff following a trail of dead bodies into a trap he has no idea lays in wait for him. Last but not least, there's Chinese "collection agent" Fu, who's about as badass a dude as you're ever going to meet. He is awesome.

This mad, manic mélange of murderers, misfits and miscreants will eventually descend upon the Donnybrook -- a three day stint of brawling, booze and drugs run by a man named McGill, who makes the Governor from the Walking Dead comics look like Mr. Rogers. But it's not about the final destination folks, but the journey to get there, and (to quote one of my favorite movie taglines ever): who will survive and what will be left of them. Reading this book I couldn't help but be reminded of the lucid insanity of some of Tarantino's best work -- the ensemble characters, the multiple plot threads, and how it all comes crashing together in the end with defined, divine purpose. Hells yeah, people. This is the good shit. Heisenberg grade blue.

Frank Bill is a writer you want to watch. You can find out more about him at his blog House of Grit or follow him on Twitter @HouseofGrit. And as my mama always told me -- never trust a man with two first names.

This review is also posted on Busty Book Bimbo

The Sun Also Rises and the book is also boring.

The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
Reviewed by Stephanie
1 out of 5 stars




I was sitting outside of a bar in Key West Florida. It was August, it was hot. The bar was on the beach where there was lots of sand and water. In the water I saw dolphins and waves. The dolphins jumped and the waves waved.

My glass was empty. The waiter walked up to my table. “More absinth miss?” He asked. “No, I better not.” I put my hand over my glass “I read somewhere that it can cause hallucinations and nightmares. Just some ice water please.” I said. He put and empty glass in front of me, tipped his picture of water over my glass until it was full, at that time he stopped pouring.

A man I did not know walked up to my table “No one in Key West is to stop drinking alcohol while they are conscious, you know the rules Manuel!” said the stranger to the waiter. “Don’t make me repeat myself; did you hear me? Don’t make me repeat myself, it’s annoying.”

“I’ll drink to that”. I said and held up my ice water, then put it to my lips and drank. It was cold. I set it back down on the table. “I just finished a book where everyone repeated themselves over and over……drove me to drink!”

“Sorry Mr. Hemingway” said Manuel “she said she wanted ice water, so that’s what I gave her”. A cat ran by, it was fast. “Meow” it said…..it was orange. “But you know the rules Manuel, you know the rules.” Said Mr. Hemingway “I know the rules Mr. Hemingway, how could I not? You tend to repeat yourself continually….it must be all the absinth…..” muttered Manuel.

“What did you say Manuel?” Asked Mr. Hemingway “Nothing….” said Manuel. “Bring the lady some Champagne right away!” said Mr. Hemingway. Manuel walked away towards the kitchen.

“Who are you?” I asked the man I did not know. “Hemingway…..you wouldn’t happen to be related to the writer, would you? His book The Sun Also Rises was the book I was just referring to; I don’t remember ever being quite so bored. On the bright side, I think it did wonders for my blood pressure.” I said.

Dressed in worn khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with one too many colors, he stood there at my table and squinted at me, sweat rolling down the side of his face into his gray beard. It was hot. He set his drink down on the table, hard, and pulled out a chair and sat down. “May I sit?” he asked as he put his dirty bare feet up on the table as he tipped the chair back. “Sure, you’re already in the chair. Besides I don’t think it will be long before you fall on your ass.” I said, I drank some water, it was cold. “Language! I’m Ernest Hemingway the guy who wrote that boring book” he put his feet on the ground and the chair dropped down with a bang. He put his right hand out to shake mine. I stared at it for a while then took it. “Stephanie. Hey, I don’t want to come across as insensitive but aren’t you dead?” I asked “Really? I don’t feel dead….at least I don’t think I am.” Said not dead Ernest “Damn! Absinth lives up to its reputation. “I said and smacked the left side of my head with my left hand. My head was hard.

“Manuel!! Where’s that champagne? “I shouted in sheer panic. “So” Ernest picked up his drink and drank the whole thing in one gulp. “I am one the greatest American writers, if not the greatest, everybody says so. And you…..” he paused and pointed his finger at me using the same hand that still held the glass, the melting ice clinked “you didn’t like the Sun Also Rises?” he asked and set his glass down. “I know, I heard the same thing, that you were one of the greatest American writers, so imagine my surprise that I didn’t love it like the rest of the human race. In fact, I really didn’t like it AT ALL! Please don’t hurt me.”

Manuel walked back to the table caring the bottle of Champagne and two glasses. He sat the glasses in front of us and went about the task of opening the bottle. “Thank god your back Manuel, I think I’m hallucinating. I hope champagne helps things to normalize.” The bottle said “pop”. “It won’t help because you are not hallucinating.” He said and poured the Champagne, he turned and walked off. I picked up the glass and drank, it was bubbly….and cold.

“What else didn’t you like about my book?” Asked Ernest “I’m really not comfortable telling you to your face, but, alright” I said “I found all the characters aimless, unlikeable, drunkards that didn’t have any idea what to with their lives but travel about the world constantly drunk….which doesn’t sound all that bad on the surface, but it was so not interesting.” I said “they were so excruciatingly boring that I couldn’t even care enough about them to remember who was who.” I said “it felt like it would never end, but when it did end the only thing that I liked about it was the fact that it was over…..finally. No big payoff ending. ” I sighed and finished off my Champagne, poured myself and Ernest another glass.

“Wow. Sorry you hated it. I suppose you can’t please everyone.” He said. “I’ll by you dinner to repay you for putting you through that”.

“That’s not necessary, but I could eat. I must bathe first.” I said. “Well sure, it is hot after all.” He said “Yes, I must bathe you understand? One cannot dine without bathing first, so you will have to wait until I bathe.”

“I must bathe. I must bathe. I. must. Bathe.” I said.

“Now you’re just making fun of me.” he said.

“Yup……I will make you suffer the way you made me suffer.” I smiled

“Great. I look forward to it.” Said not dead Ernest. We rose to our feet, steadied ourselves and stumbled off into the sunset.

Also reviewed on http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/162244241

Do you have free will?

Free Will
by Sam Harris
Non fiction
Reviewed by Stephanie
2 out of 5 stars



I am an agnostic which means I am firm in my belief that I have no idea what to believe. I don't know what is true and what isn't and no one, no matter how strong your faith, or how strong your lack of faith is.....you don't know either. You don't know what happens to you after you die.  You pretty much have to die to find that out. You may really, really, really believe little alien souls are attached to your body and making your life miserable, and that the only way to make it all better is to blow your life savings in Clearwater Florida trying to rid yourself of these little bastards by way of a weird looking machine. It still doesn't make it true, it's purely your free will to believe it is.

Next to art, and generally making things that are pretty and/or interesting, I'm really fascinated with science. Books on the brain are something I generally gravitated towards which is why I picked up Free Will.

Sam Harris is obviously a very intelligent man he generally seems to know what he is talking about. But I can't digest what he is dishing out in Free Will. Basically, if I am following what he is saying (and it is possible I'm NOT) human beings have no free will.....excuse me?

Apparently there have been studies that prove that when we make the decision to do something our brain does the deciding first before we are even aware of our decision consciously. This is done with some fancy imaging machines that catch a blip of some sort go off before you do what you're going to do. So, of course we don't have free will.

I must be missing something.

My head hurts.

Somehow because we don't know what makes our brain decide something before we become aware of what it is that we are deciding we aren't actually deciding anything at all. Uhhh......ok? To me this strengthens the argument that we are something more than just our brains. Maybe....just maybe, what is making the brain do it's business is the energy (or soul if you like to call it that) that animates these meat suits we walk around in. Or not! I don't know but I believe someday science will figure out what that's all about. Science advances insanely fast. Right now I can probably take over a third world country with my Ipad. I can't even imagine what will be invented or discovered in the near future. So for Sam to jump to this conclusion seems premature.

It is more likely we have control over our decisions and that we are responsible for them than not. I believe we have free will to do the right thing despite our circumstances growing up.

I have the free will not to like Free Will all that much and you have the free will to disagree with me about that.....

Also reviewed on http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/457520634

You're Old, I'm Old . . . Get Used to It!

Virginia Ironside
Viking Press
Reviewed by: Nancy
3 out of 5 stars

Plot Summary

Wry essays about the advantages and indulgences of aging.

No matter what they say, sixty will never be the new forty. But sixty- five-year-old British writer Virginia Ironside is determined to convince people that getting old is not so bad-even for a Baby Boomer who interviewed the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix early in her career. In her first nonfiction book published in the United States, Ironside explores the many unsung benefits of aging. There are ailments, but there are also fabulous meds. There are grandchildren- your reward for not killing your children. And then there's "wisdom," the random accumulated knowledge you can label as such precisely because you are old. You're Old, I'm Old . . . Get Used to It! celebrates scattered memory, frequent naps, and mercifully lowered expectations.

Ironside, an "agony aunt" with a plainspoken wit, is a convincing spokesperson for the advanced years. The book's easy-to-browse format, clever line drawings, and self-deprecating charm make this a fantastic read for fans of Judith Viorst, Nora Ephron, and anyone who can appreciate the humor in longevity.

My Review

I couldn’t resist picking this book from the “Spring Picks” table at my local library. Granted, I’m not quite as old as the author is, but I’ll be getting there before long and I was curious to read one, never mind twenty reasons why getting old is so great. The smiling old lady sitting on top of an hourglass with a glass of wine in her hand doesn’t look too unhappy about her rapidly passing years. And I was happy with the comfortable-sized large print.

It looked to be a funny book, making light of something that happens to all of us. And it was funny, for the most part. I just wish she didn’t start out discussing ailments. I’m not yet ready to think about colostomy bags, arthritis, walking with a cane, and the anxiety that creeps up on older people who were once fearless.

“Lots of my friends no longer dare to drive on highways. Single women who hitched across the Gobi Desert when they were thirty and who, in their forties, drove across India and America in cars piled high with small children, now find that, faced with a highway, they are reduced to quivering Jell-O.”

On the plus side, older people often become more confident. They don’t mind seeing films by themselves or walking out during the first 10 minutes if they are not captivated. Life is definitely too short to sit through bad movies!

Changes in memory occur as we age too. We tend to forget a lot of useless information as we get older. One of the nice things is forgetting the plots of books and films from years ago, making them feel new and fresh upon revisiting.

There is very good advice to those who are lonely, and tips for looking good when there’s no hair left to comb.

Though aging is a universal thing, the author’s British perspective highlights some of the differences in European and American health care systems, and work and retirement.

I just hope that when I get old I won’t be afraid to drive to my favorite Mexican restaurant, my stomach will be able to handle tacos and margaritas, and I won’t be sitting on a park bench sipping prune juice and talking to pigeons.
 

Also posted at Goodreads

Mars Colonization Done Right

DESOLATION ROAD
Ian McDonald
Pyr SF
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: It all began thirty years ago on Mars, with a greenperson. But by the time it all finished, the town of Desolation Road had experienced every conceivable abnormality from Adam Black's Wonderful Travelling Chautauqua and Educational 'Stravaganza (complete with its very own captive angel) to the Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar. Its inhabitants ranged from Dr. Alimantando, the town's founder and resident genius, to the Babooshka, a barren grandmother who just wants her own child-grown in a fruit jar; from Rajendra Das, mechanical hobo who has a mystical way with machines to the Gallacelli brothers, identical triplets who fell in love with-and married-the same woman.

My Review: Earth can't sustain its current population in the style to which all 7 billion of us wish to become accustomed, and no one is predicting a sudden outbreak of common sense and birth prevention to bring the numbers down. What are we to do?

Move, of course. Where? More than one place. There's the Metropolis, the geosynchronous city in space reached by fixed space elevators; but that's filling up too; wherever shall we go?

Well, Mars, for one. The Remote Orbital Terraforming and Environmental Control Headquarters (ROTECH for short) consortium is created on the Motherworld, sent into a moonbelt orbit around Mars, and given a thousand years of development, has finally produced a planetary ecosystem that can sustain unsuited humans in the open.

ROTECH governs Mars as lightly as any frontier is governed. People, let loose from cities and rules, pretty much do what comes naturally. They have babies, they make farms, they organize themselves into Us and Them, and they do it all at breakneck speed without worrying too hard about consequences. When Consequences rain down from the Heavens, well, adapt or die.

Ian McDonald does in 363 pages what others do in 1000. He makes Mars come alive, he peoples it with fabulous characters (human and cyborg and robotic), he creates a logical thought experiment...how can humanity survive its inevitable wearing out of the Motherworld?...and uses it to tell us about ourselves, about what we are *actually* made of, and about what triumphs and tragedies flow naturally and inevitably from that.

I adore this book.

There.

No, really, that's it. I adore this book. You should read it, especially if you point your booger-holder at the sky when science fiction is mentioned. I don't read THAT people should read this. If you don't, then you should be ashamed of your inflexibility.

I even re-read Jane Austen recently. And liked it. So. What's that “I don't like THAT” stuff again?

The messy, beautiful India of 2047

RIVER OF GODS
Ian McDonald
Pyr SF
$26.00 hardcover, $17.00 trade paper, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 5* of five

The Publisher Says: As Mother India approaches her centenary, nine people are going about their business—a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a dropout. And so is—the waif, the mind reader, the prophet—when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden.
In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation.
River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures—one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.

My Review: Ian McDonald. This is a name to conjure with, boys and girls. This is one fearless Irishman. This is a major major talent doing major major things. How dare he, how dare I, warble his praises when he, a white guy from the colonial oppressor state, has the temerity to write a science fiction novel about INDIA?!? There are scads of Indian writers and it's their country! Let *them* write their stories!

Codswallop.

Read the book. Then come and tell me it should have remained unwritten because of some nonsensical national pride hoo-hah.

It's got every damn thing a reader could want: A new gender, the nutes, pronoun “yt;” a wholly new form of energy harvested from other universes; a political scandal-ridden politician who falls for our main nute character, despite his long marriage, and pursues yt desperately; a civil war a-brewin' over water rights in the now fragmented subcontinental political world; aeais (artificial intelligences) that are forbidden by law to exceed the Turing Test that establishes whether an entity is human or human-passable; and, as with any law, the lawbreakers who inevitably arise are hunted by a new breed of law enforcement officers, here called “Krishna cops.” Krishna being the Original God, Supreme Being, One Source in many parts of India, there is some justice to that, one supposes.

Recapitulating the plot is pointless. This is a sprawling story, one that takes nine (!) main characters to tell. I felt there were two too many, and would entirely prune Lisa, the American physicist, and Ajmer, the spooky girl who sees the future, because those story lines were pretty much just muddying the waters for me. I thought the physicist on a quest, who then makes a giant discovery, which leads her back to the inventor of the aeais, could easily have been a novel all on its own, one that would fit in this universe that McDonald has summoned into being. I simply didn't care for or about Ajmer.

The aeais' parent, Thomas Lull, is hidden away from the world in a dinky South Indian village. Yeah, right! Like the gummints of the world would let that happen! I know why McDonald did this, plot-wise, but it's just not credible to me. He could be demoted from player to bit part and simplify the vastness of the reader's task thereby.

So why am I giving this book a perfect score? Because. If you need explanations:

--The stories here are marvelously written.

“And you make me a target as well,” Bernard hisses. “You don't think. You run in and shout and expect everyone to cheer because you're the hero.”
“Bernard, I've always known the only ass you're ultimately interested in is your own, but that is a new low.” But the barb hits and hooks. She loves the action. She loves the dangerous seduction that it all looks like drama, like action movies. Delusion. Life is not drama. The climaxes and plot transitions are coincidence, or conspiracy. The hero can take a fall. The good guys can all die in the final reel. None of us can survive a life of screen drama. “I don't know where else to go,” she confesses weakly. He goes out shortly afterwards. The closing door sends a gust of hot air, stale with sweat and incense, through the rooms. The hanging nets and gauzes billow around the figure curled into a tight foetus. Najia chews at scaly skin on her thumb, wondering if she can do anything right. -- p388

Krishan barely feels the rain. More than anything he wants to take Parvati away from this dying garden, out the doors down on to the street and never look back. But he cannot accept what he is being given. He is a small suburban gardener working from a room in his parents' house with a little three-wheeler van and a box of tools, who one day took a call from a beautiful woman who lived in a tower to build her a garden in the sky. -- p477

Some of my favorite passages I can't put here, because they contain some of the many, many words and concepts that one needs—and I do mean needs—the glossary in the back of the book to fully appreciate.

--The concept of the book is breathtaking. Westerners don't usually see India as anything other than The Exotic Backdrop. McDonald sees the ethnic and religious tensions that India contains, barely, as we look at her half-century of independence ten years on (review written 2007) and contemplate the results of the Partition. He also sees the astounding and increasing vigor of the Indian economy, its complete willingness to embrace and employ any and all new ideas and techniques and leverage the staggeringly immense pool of talent the country possesses.

--McDonald also extrapolates the rather quiet but very real and strong trend towards India as a medical tourism destination: First-world trained doctors offering third-world priced medical care. This is the genesis of the nutes, people who voluntarily have all external gender indicators and all forms of gender identification surgically removed, their neural pathways rewired, and their social identities completely reinvented.

Think about that for a minute.

If your jaw isn't on the floor, if your imagination isn't completely boggled, then this book isn't for you and you should not even pick it up in the library to read the flap copy. If you're utterly astonished that an Irish dude from Belfast could winkle this kind of shit up from his depths, if you're so intrigued that you think it will cause you actual physical pain not to dive right in to this amazing book, you're my kind of people.

Welcome, soul sibling, India 2047 awaits. May our journey never end.




















v

Mad Hatters, White Rabbits, and Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow

Return to Wonderland:  Grimm Fairytales Wonderland #1

Written by Raven Gregory

Illustrated by Daniel Leister and Nei Ruffino

Published by Zenescope

Reviewed by Amanda
1 Out of 5 Stars

If you've ever read Alice in Wonderland and thought, "You know what this story really needs? More tits. And viscera. Tits and viscera for everyone!" then a) you are probably a 12 year old boy who butchers his neighbor's pets in his spare time and b) this collection is for you.

This is some dark stuff and, folks, I certainly don't mind dark stuff, but this is gratuitous with no cohesive storyline and a complete and utter lack of imagination (I say this because to take Alice in Wonderland and sex it up doesn't require any great creative power--just an unhealthy preoccupation with people's "naughty bits"). Basically, Alice's teenage daughter, Calie goes to Wonderland. Calie encounters exactly all of the same experiences her mother did, only they're all portrayed with a blatant lasciviousness: Calie's built like an inflatable doll and every scene is sexually charged by playing to as many fetishes as possible. And, as if that wasn't enough, it's as though the author is trying to cram as much shockfest violence, gore, and sexuality into the pages as possible. The narrative is so busy trying to shock us that the vignettes with the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts don't serve a real purpose--they simply provide the next platform from which to blow our minds with how daring and edgy the story is. Yeah, well, we've got another name for being sexually daring and edgy without context and storyline: porn. Because that's really what this is, in a subdued form. Whether we're talking about the violence or the sex, it's playing to a certain type of unhealthy libido in a manner meant to arouse.

Back in the real world, Alice has attempted suicide multiple times and lives in a catatonic state. In the meantime, her husband is having an affair and not just any old affair. Oh, no. We wouldn't want to miss out on an opportunity to bring out the whips and chains, would we? So he's having an affair steeped in sadomasochism. And then there's Calie's brother who is exhibiting all the classic signs of a blossoming young serial killer. It's dysfunctional with a capital D, which seems a little overboard when coupled with the level of macabre that is present in Wonderland, too. For either Calie's reality or her Wonderland experience to be dark and twisted would be fine, but the two together is too much.

A Brotherhood Born of Blood and Violence

The Sisters Brothers

by Patrick DeWitt

Published by Ecco

Reviewed by Amanda
4 Out of 5 Stars

I like reading about bad people in fiction.  And, lest we jump to conclusions, it's not because I'm a bad person myself (at least not in the torture or kill people kind of way; no, the sins in which I dabble are much more pedestrian than that), but it's because I like peering into those dark little corners of their brains.  The most frightening and fascinating realization I come to in such novels is that, really, they're much more like me than I care to admit. 

Take Pulp Fiction, for example, which may be my favorite movie of all time.  Sure, you've got some of the old ultraviolence, but what's really chilling is to see how it's part of the average work day for Jules and Vincent.  Their days are filled with conversations both philosophical and mundane, punctuated by acts of violence that they accept as part of how their world works.  When we think of men who can kill, we think of monsters, depraved beings who have no moral compass, an inability to reason.  While that is certainly sometimes the case, sometimes we find that--behind the monster--there is just a man, one who knows that what he is doing is wrong, but does it anyway: for money, for love, for power.  And what worked for Pulp Fiction is what works for The Sisters Brothers.

Charlie and Eli Sisters are two of the most feared assassins in the West, working for a shadowy figure known only as "The Commodore."  Charlie, the older brother, is ruthless and power hungry, while his brother, Eli, is a sensitive sort who is prone to violence when he becomes enraged--a tool often used by Charlie to his advantage.  Even in adulthood, Eli is relegated to the archetypal role of the younger brother, haplessly following and obeying his older brother, while occasionally challenging Charlie just to see how far he can be pushed. 

The brothers are sent by The Commodore on an errand to kill Hermann Kermit Warm, a prospector who has crossed The Commodore in ways unknown to the brothers.  Not that it matters as their job is to kill and not ask questions.  The journey there provides the brothers with adequate time to be attacked by a bear, run into a backwoods witch, visit a brothel, and encounter characters curious and strange.  As the men travel, we see them banter back and forth, every bit true siblings, alternately needling each other's quirks and weaknesses and then engaging in profound conversations about their beliefs and shared history. 

The dialogue between the brothers is the real treat of the novel--witty and peculiarly formal (think Charles Portis's characters as portrayed in the Coen version of True Grit).  As he longs for love, worries about his weight, discovers the joys of dental hygiene, and wrestles with his disdain and admiration for his one-eyed, cantankerous horse, Tub, Eli Sisters is the more relatable of the two brothers.  However, before one can become too attached to either character, a scene of needless and wanton violence reminds us that both of these men are killers and, for all the contemplation of human nature the two engage in, it proves as difficult to put down a gun as it is to pick one up. 

Dinner Time!

Hannibal
NBC
Thursdays
by Kemper

Hannibal Lecter was the original foodie.

Thomas Harris’ brilliant crime-thrillers Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs showcased an unforgettable cannibal serial killer and were adapted in film versions with Michael Mann doing the first one as Manhunter, and  the movie version of SotL becoming an instant classic.  However, a bad thing happened after that.

Hannibal Lecter got popular.

With everyone joking about fava beans and a nice Chianti after the second movie hit it big, it was just a matter of time until the good doctor made another appearance, but the follow-up novel delivered by Harris was a gore-soaked mess that tried to transform Hannibal into some kind of anti-hero by pitting him against someone supposedly worse than him in the character of a wealthy disfigured former victim of the psychiatrist.  (And let’s not even talk about what Harris did to Clarice Starling in that one.)

The film based on that one did well at the box office but took a critical beating.  Then someone remembered that Anthony Hopkins had never played Hannibal in Red Dragon so a competent but uninspired second movie of it was put together and rolled out, but it didn’t rake in the cash.  Shortly after that, Harris completely sold out his best known character by cobbling together an origin story in novel and screenplay that flatly contradicted much of what we’d been told about Hannibal.  When Hannibal Rising hit theaters, it didn’t have the benefit of Hopkins so it crashed and burned with critics and audiences.

This is where Hannibal had been left.  A once great villain that had been overexposed by clumsy attempts to cast him as some kind of righteous avenger and defender of culture by munching on rude and tasteless people.  Meanwhile, scores of books, movies and TV shows had done their own versions of genius serial killers and tortured souls chasing them with the help of high-tech forensics.  Hannibal had sparked a trend and became a complete cliché in the aftermath.

Which is why doing a TV series as a prequel to Red Dragon seemed like such a terrible idea.  Hannibal wasn’t even going to be the first serial killer from a series of books to hit television since Dexter had been working that turf for years.  With it being on the worst rated old broadcast network in NBC instead of an ediger cable network, this just seemed like it’d end up as another sorry chapter in the sad descent of Hannibal Lecter.

Wrong.

Producer Bryan Fuller, best known for creating clever and quirky shows that get cancelled before their time like Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me, came up with the idea of using some of the back-story in the novel Red Dragon to give us a new interpretation of Hannibal, and it looks like he‘s both taking the story back to it‘s roots while putting new twists on the old characters.

In the pilot episode Apertif, Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) teaches criminal profiling at the FBI training academy.  After a string of college girls are kidnapped and killed in Minnesota, Will  is recruited by Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne), the head of the Behavioral Science Unit, to help find the killer.  Unfortunately, the empathy and imagination that enable Will to put himself into the mind of a killer also result in borderline social disorders and make him unstable so Crawford brings in prominent psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) to hold Will together long enough to get the job done.

That story should sound familiar to fans of Harris, but it’s what Fuller and company have done with stray bits of back-story from that one that made this pilot so good.  Red Dragon started with Will Graham retired after nearly being killed while capturing Hannibal.  Lecter is in custody and delights in tormenting Will with observations that he’s so good at finding serial killers because he’s one at heart.  We never got see Will or Hannibal in their primes so this show is filling in a significant gap.

Like the best adaptations, Fuller knows when to break away from the source material.  Will and Hannibal never worked together in the book (It seems like this might be an idea Fuller picked up from the second film adaptation.), and Will was not a bundle of near-crippling social anxieties despite his issues.  There’s a critical event that’s part of Will’s history that is shown in the pilot, but with the new factor that Hannibal is not only present, he engineered it.  Fuller has also gender flipped a couple of characters like Freddy Lounds going from ugly male sleazy tabloid journalist to an attractive female sleazy crime blogger.

The show’s stunning visuals (Inspired by Fuller's love of The Shining) are haunting like a woman impaled on the antlers of a deer head or a field of decomposing bodies sprouting mushrooms in the second episode.  These effects are also used well to show us how Will’s mind works.  The Red Dragon book notes that Will pictures a silver pendulum swinging and stopping to clear his thoughts.  In the show, a line that sweeps back and forth is used to depict how Will filters out everything he doesn’t want to see to work a crime scene.

Dr. Lecter probably has a recipe for the 
mushrooms that Will found in the woods.

All of this has made the first two episodes good, but what elevates them to great is the way that Fuller has handled the main characters, and despite the show’s title, it’s Will, not Hannibal who has been more of a focus so far.  Hannibal doesn’t even show up until halfway through the pilot, and that proves that Fuller knows what makes Lecter work.  Where the last couple of books and films tried to make Hannibal the main character, the first two books are better with Will Graham and then Clarice Starling in the lead while Hannibal is the boogeyman who frightens and torments them.

Since this is before he‘s been caught, this version of Hannibal has to seem somewhat normal, and Mikkelson does a great job of playing him as just a little off. Not so much that anyone would think he’s a serial killer, but enough to let the audience know that Hannibal is a shark swimming among schools of fish.  When a blubbering patient drops a used tissue on his table, the momentary flicker of distaste that Mikkelson flashes makes you wonder if the guy is going to make it out of the room.  Just showing Hannibal preparing and serving food to other people is enough to make a viewer’s skin crawl.  Fuller has taken what could be a disadvantage in audience familiarity with Lecter and turned it into a way to generate tension just by having him around.

It also allows them to focus on the more sympathetic character of Will, and this is another great performance for the show by Hugh Dancy who completely sells the idea of a man so sensitive that it could make him crazy.  Will is a guy who compulsively saves stray dogs, but there’s some real darkness lurking there, too.  His empathy can put him into the crime scenes to the point of detailed imaginings of killing people yet he can also feel the suffering of the victims so it’s a double-edge sword.

Artistic themes are all over Harris‘ books, and it's almost as if the killers that Will chased were creating their own gruesome forms of expression, and that Will was the only critic who could correctly interpret it.  There’s a great bit in Aperitif in which another dead young woman has been discovered.  Will is almost offended at the crime scene, not because of it’s graphic nature, but because it’s immediately obvious to him to be the work of a copycat who harbored none of the oddly tender feelings he picked up on at the previous killing.  He dismisses it instantly as an art expert would an inferior forgery, and what adds another dimension is when it’s strongly implied that Hannibal killed this woman simply to get Will pointed in the right direction by showing him the opposite of what he should be looking for.

Even creepier, we aren’t sure what Hannibal’s agenda is in this.  He finds Will interesting, but is the doctor trying to push him into darker corners to see if he can turn him from ‘critic’ to ‘artist’?  Hannibal could be just toying with him while staying inside the FBI’s inner circle of serial killer experts for his own purposes, or he could genuinely think he’s aiding Will by his own twisted logic.  We don’t know yet, but we know what Hannibal is and some idea of where it ends up thanks to Red Dragon so the prospects are horrible to think about.

With only a couple of episodes aired and so-so ratings, there’s still a distinct possibility for this show to become yet another Fuller series cancelled before it’s time.  It’s also hard to tell how long they could sustain this concept.  At some point, it’s going to be ridiculous if a couple of serial killer experts like Will and Crawford can’t recognize the one under their noses.  However, Fuller claims that he has a plan for couple of 13 episode seasons at least so hopefully this smart new interpretation of a 30-year-old story will get a chance to deliver on the potential it’s showing in the early stages.

If nothing else, it’s turned an old and tired villain into something new and terrifying.

Kemper will never eat mushrooms again after viewing the second episode of Hannibal.  You can read his review of Red Dragon at his blog.

Up Jumped the Devil

The Death of Bunny Munro
Nick Cave
Faber and Faber, 2009
Anthony Vacca's rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I am conflicted. On one hand, Nick Cave is one of my top ten favorite musicians. For over thirty years he has consistently made some of the best emotionally and physically visceral music ever to come tearing, and sometimes aching, its way of the electric shiver of a set of speakers. The man can sing about capital letter Love in a way that will turn any person equipped with something resembling a heart into a believer; but he can also thrash and foam like a maniac about the erotic bliss of banal and lowercased murder. Age has not tempered the man. He can do the arena rock (There She Goes My Beautiful World), and then turn around and throw a dirty old man punk rock boogie your way (No Pussy Blues), and then stick his tongue firmly in cheek and strut his way through a playful poke and prod at a bible story favorite (Dig Lazarus, Dig). What I am saying here is that the man is versatile, confident, and staggeringly literate in his ability to craft a hell of a song. The same is true in every way about Nick Cave’s approach to writing a novel.

And here comes the conflict: as much as I love Nick Cave’s music, having finished reading this, his second novel (twenty years later after And the Ass Saw the Angel I am left wondering how many wonderful novels we could have had from the man if his calling had been that of a novelist first instead of a musician. Because, yeah, The Death of Bunny Munro is a wonderful book. It’s disturbing, tender, articulate, funny, monstrous, profane, humane, and everything else I could ever ask for from a single book.

Bunny Munro (could this be a respectful nod to the then recently departed John Updike and his own great creation of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom?) is damned. We know this from the first sentence on. And we also know, even if Bunny’s own self-awareness fails him on about all fronts imaginable, that there is no one to blame for Bunny’s fate except himself. His problem is not that he is married to a long-suffering, and emotionally-disturbed wife or that he has a precocious and loyal little son charmingly named Bunny Jr.; Bunny’s problem is that he can’t stop trying to fuck anything with a vagina even if it is at the expense of everything he should hold dear.

I saw the film Shame last year, which was a powerful rumination on sexual addiction and what exactly it means to be a human being that interacts and forms relationships with others, and let me tell you this: I like sex as much as the next sane, non-repressed person, but living a life resembling anything like the shit that Michael Fassbender’s character from the aforementioned flick or that Bunny Munro goes through…well, there’s a reason why I just used the word shit.

Bunny will gladly tell you that his favorite thing in the whole wide world is a woman’s vagina: any and all vaginas. He wants to be inside them all. This is why in the first chapter of the book we find Bunny sitting in a sleazy motel room with a black hooker while he tries to talk his wife down out of a panic attack on the phone. She wants her husband to come home, but Bunny tells her he can’t because he is still out on the road selling his company’s beauty products from door to door. This is what we call a lie, because Bunny is only a few miles away from his home where his wife gets calls about Bunny’s dying father and there’s the sound of a thousand birds fleeing a burning peer right outside her window that’s driving her insane. Bunny promises his wife he will be home early in the morning, but it is late in the afternoon by the time he finally does; after he fucks a random waitress, of course.

This is the kind of man Bunny Munro is.

After a series of misfortunate events, the novel really gets rollicking when we find Bunny back on the road once more, selling his cosmetic wares all over Brighton (that’s in England) with little Bunny Jr. in tow. If I had to describe the plot of this novel then I would have to say here that it is a road-trip novel about fathers and sons. But that makes it sound so pedestrian and there is nothing ever somewhat resembling that word when it comes to something Nick Cave has created.

For one, Nick Cave weaves an encroaching apocalyptic funk throughout the novel by constantly reminding Bunny and the reader of a maniac who is terrorizing public spaces, his body painted red and horns jutting out of his skull. This is far from being just a prank because the bodies of women are starting to turn up, their bodies ripped to pieces by a pitchfork. No matter where Bunny goes he can’t escape seeing news coverage of the madman on TVs and in newspapers. He does his best to ignore the news story and the sense of dread it is welling up inside him, but he can’t help but notice that the killings are getting closer and closer to Brighton. And Bunny knows that the killings are coming home to him.

Also, Bunny is fairly certain that a ghost is haunting his every movement.

But it is hard to feel too sorry for Bunny, because he is constantly at his worst behavior. As he and Bunny Jr. drive around all day, spending nights at cheap motels and having every meal in fast food joints just as ubiquitous, we see just exactly how shitty a dad the man is. He leaves his kid in the car for hours while he goes to visit the homes of women whose names are on his list of interested customers, and when he is not trying to hawk his ridiculous sounding creams and ointments, he is seeing if maybe he can talk whatever women is in front of him into a quick screw. Because this is how Bunny sees women (and I do mean any and all women): they are vaginas with some immediate potential to be entered. It does not matter how old or unattractive a woman is, when Bunny sees them he is immediately thinking of them in terms of fucking. This does make for a lot linguistic feats on the part of the author, as he thinks up another colorful expression or play on words to talk about Bunny and his nearly constant erection.

In fact, it is the humor that saves this book from being utterly harrowing (and it is plenty enough harrowing, still). Cave does a similar trick like Martin Amis, in that, he is constantly placing Bunny in absurd and humiliating situations that the character completely deserves. One of the funniest running gags in this book (and one which Cave apologizes for in the afterward of the novel) is Bunny’s obsession with the singer Avril Lavigne. Cave sums it up nicely in this sentence right here: "Bunny is almost positive that Avril Lavigne possesses the fucking Valhalla of all vaginas." So if you can’t find humor in a dirty, middle-aged man beating off to this ridiculous notion of Avril Lavigne as the end-all be all sex object, then this book might not be for you.

Don’t think this book is all grotesquery and gallows humor, because Cave is also melancholy and generous in his portrayal of Bunny Jr. When Cave writes about how Bunny Jr. loves his father for no reason greater than the fact that Bunny <i>is</i> his father, the prose makes you ache. If anything, Bunny Jr. is the collateral damage throughout this whole story. We watch as he tries to understand exactly who this man is that is supposed to be his father. The boy is smart—he spends his time cooped in the car reading through an encyclopedia—but is too young to realize that he is or find comfort in the fact. What Bunny Jr. wants is for his father to love him back and be proud of having him as his son. Unfortunately for Bunny Jr., his father is a cad.

A quick post script: For the five-star experience, get a copy of this book on audiobook. Nick Cave reads the novel himself, and there is nothing like hearing Cave’s exact and lyrical way of speaking, as he keeps the story moving at a rapt pace. Plus, the audiobook features an original score of music composed by Nick and Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds (Nick Cave’s backing band). The score divides each chapter as well popping up every now and then at moments in the text where the music adds a surreal urgency to the events at hand. There’s also neat sound effects placed throughout the reading, so that when Bunny walks into a room with a flickering light there is also that all too distinct sound for us to hear right along with him. It all adds up to make a unique and unforgettable experience.

Also posted on GoodReads