God Help The Child

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Giving a Toni Morrison book only 3 stars seems ridiculous in light of some of the 4 and 5 star ratings I've doled out. What I'm saying is, Morrison can write the pants off of most writers. Whether you like her stuff/style or not, it must be admitted that the woman can string together one word after another in a very pleasing manner.

Having said that, God Help the Child did not enthrall me as others of hers have. I'm not 100% sure why. There could be a number reasons, here are some of them:

There weren't too many characters in this one that I particularly liked. Most were repulsive in some way shape or form, at least the main characters, of which there are nearly a half dozen. It's not that Morrison did a poor job creating them, it's that she did too good a job and by chance I'm not a fan of who these people are.

Another issue might be that I prefer Morrison's stories when they're set in the past. This one was her most modern setting yet, out of the books of hers that I've read. I love when she sets the scenes of days past. She does it so well and her style meshes with bygone eras like peanut butter and chocolate.

The subject matter here -child molestation- is particularly hard reading. The characters may be fictional, but that doesn't lessen the kick-to-the-gut feeling you get every time the narrative focuses on the subject.

All in all, it's a tough read. Certainly not bad, just tough for the aforementioned reasons.

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The Winter Box

The Winter Box by Tim Waggoner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Todd and Heather's marriage has been on the rocks for some time. When they get trapped at home with no power during a blizzard, they're forced to confront their problems by the terror that lurks within... the Winter Box!

Okay, I made The Winter Box sound like a Twilight Zone episode. I guess it could be but it's more like a ghost story/cautionary tale.

Todd and Heather have drifted apart over the years and the specter of divorce is lurking in the background. When they get snowed in, weird things start happening and they're forced to work on their marriage, though it may be too late.

The Winter Box is a chilling tale in many ways. The blizzard and power outage are the least so. Much more chilling is what they let happen to their marriage and the shitstorm emanating from the Winter Box.

I've said many times that ebooks have once again made the novella a viable form and this is a prime example. The Winter Box is a fantastic story. I can't say enough good things about it. Five out of five stars.

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The Other Side

Shawn Lane
JMS Books LLC
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Dr. Ray Carmichael is a wealthy African-American doctor and political activist running for office on the platform that the brutality and corruption of the local police force is out of control. Nick Sorenson is a white cop who grew up poor and almost lost his life in gangs and crime before turning his life around by joining the police force.

When Ray’s brother is beaten by a couple of police officers after a traffic stop, Nick is the Internal Affairs detective put in charge of investigating the incident. Dr. Carmichael's obvious distrust of the police force rubs Nick the wrong way, and the man becomes a pain in his neck. Too bad, because neither of them can deny their attraction to each other.

Ray has Nick removed from the case when he decides he’d rather date the man than fight with him. In spite of their differences, they begin an affair and grow closer. Until an explosive incident at a family gathering puts nagging doubts in Nick’s head -- he's not sure if they can overcome the differences that separate them.

When Nick is about to lose everything important to him, will he realize his budding relationship with Ray is worth trying to see the other side?

My Review

I read The Other Side in one sitting and was blown away by the intensity and emotional depth of this story. Dr. Ray Carmichael is a wealthy African-American doctor who is running for political office and has little use for the police department. Nick Sorenson is in charge of the investigation of police misconduct involving the beating of Ray’s brother. In spite of the obvious differences between the men and the conflicts that stem from their value differences, there is no denying the physical attraction they both have for each other.

I’ll admit it took me a little while to warm up to the hoity-toity Dr. Carmichael, with his custom-tailored suits, Bel-Air mansion, and full housekeeping staff. What did he know about the real world, the struggles of poor and working-class people, the cars that won’t start, the low-paying jobs, the impact of drug abuse on the addict and their family?

At first, I thought there was no way a relationship between Ray and Nick could ever work. They had different upbringings, came from different social classes, and had different problems. Boy, was I ever mistaken! I enjoyed watching these two men as they struggle, resolve conflicts, and develop love and respect for each other.

A very moving, sexy, and satisfying romance! I will definitely be looking for more of Shawn Lane’s work.

We Ride the Storm

We Ride the Storm by Devin Madson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Through war empires rise and fall. War is ready to tear down the Kisian Empire. Some like Princess Miko, a daughter of a traitor, will fight to preserve the empire. Some like exiled Rah e'Torin will fight because he has no choice. One woman, Cassandra, fights to make the voice in her mind go away. Blood will be spilled as a storm wipes away an empire.

We Ride the Storm reads like a low magic version of A Song of Ice and Fire. There are bastards, traitors, secrets, horse lords, and so many lies. If that was where the similarities ended I wouldn't mind, but two of the three point of view characters felt heavily inspired from A Song of Ice and Fire.

Princess Miko was perhaps the most naive and needy character I've seen since reading Sansa Stark in A Game of Thrones. Miko seems to go through Sansa's arc as she begins as considerably naive with some plots of her own and becomes massively manipulative as the story continues. She seemed to be too naive to survive, but like Sansa she kept managing to stay alive. Miko did have some differing qualities from Sansa as she was incredible with a bow and she has some political sense.

Rah e'Torin, the exiled Levanti captain, hung on to his honor more than any character I've seen since Eddard and Robb Stark. Rah would rather be executed than submit and it was only the threat of death to those under his charge that got him to go along at all. Rah is stiff necked and determined. Honestly he seemed like a gigantic pain to have around. He and the rest of the Levanti felt like a slightly more civilized version of the Dothraki from A Song of Ice and Fire. They love their horses and are deadly fighting from them. They are nomadic people who care nothing for wealth and civilization as a whole.

The third point of view character, Cassandra, is the one who received the least amount of page time. Cassandra happened to have the only story I felt was truly intriguing, but she gets massively ignored in the second half of the book. It seems Cassandra has another woman's mind living in her body and in order to ignore it she drinks. The other woman can take control of Cassandra's body at times and she largely disagrees with everything Cassandra does. The other woman can do even more interesting things than that, which is why I wanted a lot more of her and a lot less of the Kisian War. I forgot to mention Cassandra is also a whore assassin and apparently very good looking despite her being a little old for a whore.

Dom Leo Villius is the one other character of note. He has an interesting arc and he's incredibly mysterious. He has some power or someone powerful backing him and I would have much rathered see his point of view rather than Miko or Rah.

The war storyline was largely predictable. Nothing happened that truly felt like a shock. Nothing happened that even excited me. Generally I enjoy a good war story, but I found myselt wanting to know the origin of the other woman in Cassandra's head or how Leo could do the things he did.

We Ride the Storm is a story that had quite a bit of under used potential. I'm curious to see if the sequels will focus more on the interesting tidbits rather than being a lesser version of A Song of Ice and Fire.

3 out of 5 stars

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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HAVOC BY TOM KRISTENSEN

Havoc by Tom Kristensen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”Behold the man. But wasn’t it a lie to maintain that he had sought for the spiritual? He with his Mongoloid features? The infinitude and intractability of the soul?

Anyway what had come of it?

A ruined marriage and a lost job. Here he was. Brawling and broken window panes. Tawdry seduction and infidelity. Ridiculous conversion and a home gone up in flames. Hallucinations and havoc. And Ecce Homo! Was it a man who stood here? And whiskey, whiskey, whiskey!

I have longed for shipwrecks,
For havoc and sudden death.”

Ole “Jazz” Jastrau has a respectable job writing book reviews for the newspaper Dagbladet. He has an apartment, a wife, a child, and all the books he could possibly read. He has the same dissatisfaction that all people have, wondering if this is it. Is this all? These are mild concerns, but then two communist friends shove their way into the apartment, on the run from the police, and in the course of their discourse with Jazz, they shove wedges and crowbars into the cracks of his insecurities and make them into yawning chasms of all consuming rebellion.

He begins to drink too much.

His wife and child move out.

The books, his livelihood, piled about his apartment are oppressing him with their demands to be read. ”It was impossible to escape one’s fate. There lay the stack of review copies---waiting, waiting.” There are many of us reviewers who have suffered from a cacophony of imploring overtures, not only from new books and their anxious authors, but also the books from the past that still haunt us with their beseeching appeals for our attention.

”Yes, of course. He was going to resign. It was like peeling a whole layer of opinions from himself. He no longer wanted a steady job as a producer of opinions. Infinity---was that not what he was seeking? He wanted to be an infinite person, one who was initiated into the mysteries.”

Jazz is railing, in his own fashion, at the shape of the world. He doesn’t see what he gains from being a productive member of it, except increasing levels of responsibility and a growing distance from what makes life real.

Whiskey seems to be the quickest way to go to the dogs. If he becomes a drunken lout, little will be expected of him. He can focus on reaching the divine, which frankly, whatever that is becomes more and more muddled in his mind. Whiskey induced philosophical hallucinations of Jesus and Nietzsche lead to an ill-fated attempt by Jazz to convert to Catholicism.

Giving up the religion of economics to clutch at faith? Leaping from one blazing inferno into yet another?

In the introduction, Morten Høi Jensen sums up the novel perfectly. ”Havoc should come with a health warning. Tom Kristensen’s novel, about a thirty-something literary critic who loses himself in a maelstrom of drink, jazz, and sex, is one of the most disturbing and absorbing accounts of self-destruction in modern European language.”

There is music. ”This feeling was tempered somewhat, as it was by the jazz from the worn and scratchy records on the phonograph.”

There is drink, of which Tom Kristensen has firsthand knowledge. ”On more than one occasion, his nighttime exploits landed him in a cell at the local police station, where it was joked that Kristensen didn’t have enough blood in his alcohol content.”---Morten Høi Jensen

There is sex and the accompanying worry of disease. A woman by the name of Black Else keeps showing up, and despite warnings from his friend Vuldum that she is diseased, Jazz can not stay away from her. By attempting to avoid her, he just keeps finding her. After an unwise assignation, he sees her as a vision caught against the backdrop of a fire from across the street. ”...fiery shadows, bloody shadows. The naked female body floated upright but obliquely through purple waves, arms outstretched above its head. A greenish darkness lurking in the shadowy armpits. Black Else! Her breasts became so full in the reflections of the red light flickering on the yellow skin. Feminine curves. Just then a tongue of flame shot up across the way and ignited another curtain--an elongated feminine arm, a demanding feminine body, supple, alluring, devouring. A raging fire. Yes---a woman.”

There is seduction. Not by Jazz, but of Jazz by a married woman named Luise Kryger. ”The neck of the pajama top had fallen aside, and in the glow from the pink fabric one of her breasts, which had come to view, shone with a fresh and youthful charm, and the dark nipple caught his glance and fascinated him by its disproportionate size, so large was the brown aureola surrounding it.”

That dark nipple is going to cause Jazz all sorts of irritations with the unwanted attentions of her cuckold husband, who keeps trying to usher him out of town with a cluster of Øre notes.

There is also the heady backdrop of Copenhagen pollution. ”Standing beneath this wide-open expanse they both instinctively drew a deep breath of cool evening air, seasoned with gasoline and perfume and the fetid odor of many people, to which was added the acrid aroma of metal and coal smoke from the subterranean railway---a slightly intoxicating draught of poisonous liqueurs that the big city had to offer in spring.”

This book has never been out of print in Denmark since it was published in 1930. There is a good reason for this, because the concerns of Jazz are the same concerns of the modern age. As society demands more from us for less in return, and we become aware of the true shambles our belief in the system has made for us, the urge to drop out becomes more and more appealing. There is a cautionary tale mingled with the booze, slutty encounters, and the “deviant” music that going to the dogs creates just as much anxiety as being a productive member of society. Hedonism certainly has some attractions, but the cost proved too high for Jastrau and, in the end, to be equally dissatisfying. Perhaps we all should do some unpeeling, but at a moderate speed so we don’t find ourselves face down in a gutter with a mangy critter licking our sweaty, whiskey swollen faces.

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Not the Best Block, But Still Damn Good

Out on the Cutting Edge by Lawrence Block
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not topnotch in the Scudder series, Out on the Cutting Edge is still nonetheless a quality Block book.

While the three star rating (it would be closer to 3.5 and I rue GR's lack of half stars!) might seem low for a "quality" book that I would still recommend, I have my reasons. The biggest problem with this one is that our aging, alcoholic, ex-cop turned unlicensed private detective hero Matthew Scudder doesn't really solve the crime. I mean he puts the pieces together, but the pieces fall into his lap by chance.

HOWEVER! He does solve another crime that you might not have seen coming. There's a nice twist towards the end. But that's part of the problem. A lot happens at the very end and the lead up to it is long and drawn out due to a lack of action. Scudder books could hardly be called "action-packed" by the longest of stretches, but usually there's a little more balance. Even the tension, that harbinger of action, is mostly absent.

None of that hardly matters though. I can still find a good deal of enjoyment in these books even when the plot doesn't pack a punch and all we do is watch Scudder go on dates and to AA meetings. Block's descriptions of NYC from back in the day (this one is set in the late Summer of '86, if I have my baseball references correct) and his excellent characterizations are utterly enjoyable to lose oneself in. He makes you feel like one of Scudder's buddies (if Scudder had anyone you could call a "buddy"), just hanging out with him during his wanderings about the city, like taking a Sunday drive with someone real chill. But no one here is what you would call "cool". These people have seen some shit and have the scars to prove it. The good guys, the bad guys, and all the guys in between (actually most fall into the "in between" category) have been slapped about by life. In this series, Block paints life perfectly.

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Tampa

Tampa by Alissa Nutting
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On the surface, Celeste Price and her husband are the perfect couple. He's a cop and she teaches junior high. However, her secret ravenous lust for young boys threatens to tear them apart...

Yeah, this is one of those polarizing books. It asks the uncomfortable question "If a gorgeous 26 year old teacher wants to bed a very willing 14 year old student of hers, is it really rape?" A wise man once wrote "the best villain is the one who thinks he's the hero" and Celeste definitely thinks she's in the right.

The book is written in a funny, vulgar style, so much so that you forget you're reading about a sociopathic child predator at times. The style reminds me of a more humorous, more vulgar Megan Abbott. The plot, however, is a sexuallized reverse Lolita, I guess. Celeste pursues and persuades a boy into a sexual relationship with her and they furiously bump uglies until the train gets derailed. A couple derailments, in fact. In some ways, it reminds me of a Jim Thompson book. You can tell how abnormal Celeste is and know it's only a matter of time before everything goes to several shades of shit.

The book made me feel dirtier than the floor of a porno theater but it was compulsively readable. It simultaneously made me wish I had a Playboy centerfold for a teacher in eighth grade and made me glad I didn't.

Uncomfortable but readable is my final feeling on the book. It was a gripping read and I'll be interested to read whatever Alissa Nutting writes next. Four out of five stars.

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Somatesthesia

Ann Somerville
Self-Published
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

2042, post-peak oil America. The FBI and NSA have been merged into a single entity — the Federal Justice Agency — with wide-ranging investigative powers across state borders. Within it, a small core of elite agents, Special Crime Investigators, are brought in on the most difficult, dangerous cases to offer their expertise and abilities.

New SCI Devlin Grace meets his partner, enhanced agent Connor Hutchens, for the first time. Connor is odd and damaged — but with the ability to hear, taste, feel, see and smell well beyond the senses of ordinary people. Together they must solve a dangerous, perplexing case before more children are killed or mutilated - and resist their growing attraction to each other, which could put their careers and their safety in great peril.

My Review

In 2042, America finally comes to its senses and decreases its use of oil significantly while relying on solar, wind and water power. As a result, automobiles have become nearly obsolete and trains have become the primary mode of travel for commuters and industry alike. The cost of imports has become prohibitively expensive, forcing people to become more self-reliant and produce more local products. Crime is still prevalent, and the Federal Justice Agency, a group of elite agents with jurisdiction over state borders, strengthens its crime-fighting abilities by pairing up agents with scientifically enhanced senses with “normal” agents.

Devlin Grace is new to the agency. He’s devoted to his family, committed to his work, and protective of his new partner, Connor Hutchens.

Connor is the enhanced half of the duo. Although he has superior hearing and sight, he has a social anxiety that makes it difficult for him to interact well with others. His childhood was traumatic, having been abandoned by his real parents and then losing his adoptive parents along with his eyesight in a car accident. He was then adopted by an emotionally distant Japanese scientist who provided a good life and security for his young charges as he experimented on them.

Though the two men couldn’t be more different, they work well together and efficiently put their brains and abilities to use in solving a series of bizarre kidnapping cases. Despite agency rules against fraternization, it is inevitable that the two men eventually fall in love.

I enjoyed the fast pace of this story, the growth of Connor and Devlin in and out of their relationship, the well-developed secondary characters, and the twists and surprises that made me think, made me laugh, and brought a tear to my eye. I felt the ending was wrapped up a little too quickly and neatly, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story.

Another winner from Ann Somerville!

Little Wren and the Big Forest (short story in Unfettered II)

Unfettered II by Shawn Speakman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Little Wren and the Big Forest

The forest near Wren's house is something of a mystery. Only her father ever enters, but only just slightly. When Wren's brother enters the forest following a sheep, he doesn't reappear. Wren's father and mother follow until only Wren remained. Now Wren could follow her mother's instructions or she could enter the forest to see if she can find her family. Wren may be little, but she's no coward.

Little Wren and the Big Forest is a fairy tale about the dwarf Gronbach. He's a vile clever creature who cares only for himself. Wren is a simply written girl like any protagonist of a fairy tale. The story is simple, but it's point is achieved, do not trust Gronbach.

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A TOWN LIKE ALICE BY NEVIL SHUTE

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”I suppose it is because I have lived rather a restricted life myself that I have found so much enjoyment in remembering what I have learned in these last years about brave people and strange scenes. I have sat here day after day this winter, sleeping a good deal in my chair, hardly knowing if I was in London or the Gulf country, dreaming of the blazing sunshine, of poddy-dodging and black stockmen, of Cairns and of Green Island. Of a girl that I met forty years too late, and of her life in that small town that I shall never see again, that holds so much of my affection.”


There was a 1981 mini-series starring Bryan Brown and Helen Morse.

Our narrator is a solicitor by the name of Noel Strachan who is ”as solid as the Bank of England, and as sticky as treacle.” He becomes involved with an estate that seems to be a straightforward affair, but soon it evolves into his most all consuming case.

It involves a woman named Jean Paget, to him more of a girl, but as we learn her story, we find out just how much of a woman she really is.

Paget’s story is based on true events. This story is set in Malaya, but the real story is set in Sumatra. The women and children taken by the Japanese during the war are Dutch, not British, and Nevil Shute gets many things wrong. Some of that is translation problems, and some of those are changes necessary to tell the story he wants to tell. The Japanese take all foreign nationals in Malaya prisoner. They separate the men from the women, haul the men off to camps, and don’t have a clue what to with the women and children.

So they march them in what turns out to be random directions towards mythical camps for women and children that never materialize. With every brutal mile, their ranks are thinned, and the youngest woman among them becomes their de facto leader.

Jean Paget.

She befriends a truck driver from the Australian outback, Jim Harman, who steals much needed supplies at great risk. Eventually, he is caught.

”’I stole those mucking chickens and I gave them to her. So what?’ said Joe.

The ’So what?’ turns out to be a very big deal indeed.

”’They crucified him,’ she said quietly. ‘They took us down to Kuantan, and they nailed his hands to a tree, and beat him to death. They kept us there, and made us look on while they did it.’”

This is a story that Paget tells to Noel Strachan, and he shares the story with us. Over the course of the novel, she continues to write to him about her life. Despite the age difference and the impracticality of a relationship, it is easy to see that Strachan has fallen in love with Jean Paget, and as it turned out, so did Joe Harman.

Joe Harman is based on a real man by the name of Herbert James ‘Ringer’ Edwards. He was every inch the man that Shute describes in his novel.


Look at that jaunty angle to his hat.

In this edition, there is a wonderful afterword by Jenny Colgan. She makes the case that writers, craftsmen and craftswomen, like Nevil Shute, Bernard Malamud, Elizabeth Taylor, Robertson Davies are largely forgotten by the reading community today. Interestingly enough, I have several books by all these writers in my personal library. I am the consummate pursuer of writers, exactly like Shute, who have been relegated to the past, left for dead, but who are in need of a resurrection with a new generation of readers. He has certainly left his mark on me. I think about Shute’s book On the Beach at least once a week. It is one of my favorite post-apocalyptic books. I have a feeling I will be similarly haunted by A Town Like Alice.

Nevil Shute Norway is his full name. To keep his engineering life and his writing life separated, he existed under Norway in one and Shute in the other. He became caught up in the disastrous airship craze between the world wars, and he is brought to life so vividly by David Dennington in his historical novel The Airshipmen.

Shute’s writing style is crisp, concise, and straightforward. There is romance, but he presents it in such a practical fashion that the plot never bogs down in the melodrama of star crossed lovers. ”But Shute was a storytelling craftsman to his bones; an aeronautics obsessive-- there are very few authors who are also excellent engineers. He never constructs a lazy or shoddy sentence, any more than he’d have let the wings fall off one of his aeroplanes.”

After receiving her legacy, Jean ends up in the outback of Australia, being exactly the can-do woman she was in Malaya. She wants to build the sparse few buildings of Willstown into the next Alice Springs. I find this part of the story so inspiring. She is such an natural entrepreneur. She asks the right questions. What do people need? What do people want that they don’t even know they want it yet? What must we do to make each venture profitable? How does she keep the young women from running off to the big cities? No young women means there are no young men. In many ways, she is like Bugsy Siegel who envisioned casinos in the desert. She wants to build A Town Like Alice.

She uses her legacy to build something.

There is one major plot twist which is dangled so masterfully by Shute, but the reveal is not a grand fireworks affair. That just isn’t Shute’s style. He brings it in subtly, as if to say,...of course, this is what really happened.

Poor Noel Strachan meets the girl of his dreams forty years too late, but fate does at least let him meet her. You, too, can meet Jean Paget and Joe Harman and get to know what poddy-dodging means and ringers, but more importantly, if you love a good story as well crafted as the airplanes you trust your life to, then you should be reading Nevil Shute. His books should not be forgotten. Blow the dust off them in your local library and paperback exchanges, and let his stories live in your mind as they do in mine.

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