Book Review: Godspeed: A Kurt Cobain Graphic Novel by Barnaby Legg and Jim McCarthy

I’ve been a Nirvana fan for about five, maybe six years. I was born in 1992 but I can’t pretend I identify with the alternative metal, grunge, post-grunge movement. I can barely call myself a Nineties kid at all when it comes to cultural identification. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate Cobain in my own way. And while I know some details about his life and tragic death, I’m not clumsy or naïve enough to interpret a comic book expression of his journey as his Word-of-God biography.

Let’s get it right off the bat that I don’t believe this graphic novel is completely true. But it’s a subjective artistic interpretation of another’s man life and the perspective it offers is still valuable. Legg and McCarthy are talented writers. They capture the burgeoning confusion and displacement of a preadolescent Kurt, the angst and depression of a teenage Cobain, and the chaos and pandemonium of the rock star he eventually becomes. Flameboy’s artwork here is gritty and messy, full of hard lines and sharp colors, bringing out something essentially Nineties in flavor and tone.

There is a scene in the novel that I found rather touching. It was where he had achieved everything he had ever dreamed of in his youth, where his accomplishments had become a reality, and he at last decided to let go of this dream, and let others follow. It’s a heartbreaking scene that doesn’t need melodrama or painstaking detail to be succinctly true. This novel can be true without being accurate.

Book Review: Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

The second installment in Asimov’s classic trilogy is Foundation and Empire. The people of the Foundation face their greatest threat yet as Bel Riose, charismatic and brilliant general of the Empire wages a bloody war of conquest. At this time the Foundation’s influence has strengthened in the Periphery while the Empire wanes and decays. Rumors of the Foundation’s ‘magicians’ spread throughout the remnants of the old Empire. General Riose is thirsty for battle and glory. Knowing his prospects for conquest are poor throughout the galaxy, he turns his eyes towards the rumors of the Foundation and seeks to spark a war that will turn him into a legend.
Asimov takes the first half of the novel to build the atmosphere of assurance and invincibility that underlies the people of the Foundation. Hari Seldon’s psychohistoric predictions have gained religious faith and dogmatic certainty. Nothing, they believe, can threaten them now. But as Riose marches from victory to victory, the confidence is slowly chipped away. Individual actions lead nowhere. Time is slipping and it seems as though Seldon’s plans might be thwarted. Asimov establishes the nigh-inevitability of Seldon’s predictions, under normal circumstances, when the psychohistoric trends of the past generations turn against Bel Riose in a way that no heroic undertaking by any mere individual could have.

The first half of this book was enjoyable, pact with intellect and suspense and delightful scenes of action. It was a great way for Asimov to open this chapter in the saga of the Foundation, but it pales in comparison to the second act, where Asimov moves out of our comfort zone into less hospitable territory.

The second story is an inversion of everything we have been taught to expect. The antagonist is a mutant called the Mule who exhibits immense and mysterious powers that he uses in his aims to build his own empire. To accomplish such a feat, he wants, of course, the Foundation. Psychohistory predicts the behaviour and patterns of millions and billions of ordinary humans. The theme underpinning the previous Foundation stories concerns the unbeatable course of history and patterns over the actions of any one man. The rise of the Mule, however, who isn’t an ordinary human, derails Seldon’s plan with alarming swiftness.

Isaac Asimov crafts an intriguing novel and breaks patterns with his previous ventures into the Foundation universe. While I was not as enthralled overall by this episode as I was of Foundation, Asimov sets the stage for a turning point in his narrative, one full of potential and uncertainty. The story of the Mule is easily the most captivating of both the two stories in Foundation and Empire and the first novel.

Book Review: Tweak3nd by O.R.N.

Consider this neat little scene in the sort-of prologue: the narrator is in the bathroom, checking herself from every conceivable angle only to find that she cannot perceive her reflection. This event serves dual roles. First, it illustrates the loss of identity that these characters, this disillusioned slice of a generation, inevitably experience. Their constant and gratuitous exploitation of drugs and alcohol, not only numbs and alters a pervading reality of bland meaningless existence that they desperately try to escape from, but also numbs them from any grip on the meaning of Self. They lose themselves, and further their substance abuse to flee from that too, entrenching themselves in an uncertain ouroboros, spiraling towards despair. Second, the metaphor of the missing reflection illustrates the status of the narrator. She is a placeholder for us. We see through her eyes, into her world, with or without her prejudices. She plays no significant role here, despite an amusing, yet misleading opening chapter.

These characters are quite infuriating to think about, with their copious intake of alcohol, toxic nihilism, and extreme ways of avoiding their purposeless lives. It’s just as disappointing to realize that these people exist, that their lives, while exaggerated, are inevitably real. O.R.N. provides a mirror for us to examine a few days of their amoral lives and see aspects of our own reflected back. This is unromanticized reality, complete with Facebook statuses, BBMs, and tweets.

O.R.N. maintains a steady dubstep-infused tempo of witty irony through a flow of music, situations, and steam-of-consciousness monologues. Dave piles on the entertainment and waxes philosophy with almost tireless energy, creating this short novel featuring more liquor consumption than some pubs. Yet, in spite of the captivating style, there’s hardly a plot. The conflicts are mostly internal struggles, but by the end, there is no resolution, no conclusion to these kids’ meandering existences. Well, how can you end a book like this? I don’t know, so I don’t fault the author for it.

In many ways, Tweak3nd mirrors Ellis’s Rules of Attraction, which in a scene it even alludes to. The hedonistic party college culture seems an extension of this earlier novel, to the point that it seems, at times, like Tweak3nd is this generation’s version of Ellis’ work. Some chapters, particularly the opening segment, remind me vaguely of Chuck Palahniuk’s satiric writing. They are humorous, sarcastic, and transgressional. It was surprisingly clever and well-written for a self-published work. Tweak3nd is worth a shot or two, like good scotch, and though it might not be to everybody’s tastes, it will either open your eyes to the kind of debaucheries our youth are up to, or at least give us a viewpoint into understanding the psychological reasons behind this behavior or the mentalities of kids that partake in this. Either way, as twentysomethings, we all learn to hate the cool kids a little more (or feel sorry for ourselves, if we are like them).

Stiff by Mary Roach

“Stiff” is a macabre, compelling, witty investigation of the postmortem. For such a small book, Roach covers a broad scope of accumulated knowledge regarding our dead-selves, its history, and purpose. She treats taboo topics with a sensitive hand and the intense, painstaking attention to detail apparent in the exposition easily lends her major authority on the topic. Mary Roach aims to shed light on the achievements and involvement of cadavers in scientific advancement. With two-thousand years of history to sift through, she manages to highlight the most significant (and most unique) examples with a deftness and awareness that is amazing.
 

Roach approaches life and death and the strange topics that most would find distasteful with a light touch and a humorous voice. Her little sidebar footnotes are terrific and often funny to read. Throughout the book, she sprinkles her opinions and confusions and own ideas, giving the prose a distinctly living taste. But never is Roach disrespectful to the cadavers or those who donate their bodies, which I think is an important factor that makes this book popular.

I love reading nonfiction literature. It is a breadth of knowledge that is as valuable to human imagination as great fiction. I was skeptical when I first decided to open “Stiff.” A book about cadavers isn’t my regular cup of tea, but I’ve come to realize that what we need is to step out of our comfort zones once and a while. I think we’d all be a little mildly, delightfully surprised at what find. For example, I pleasantly learned that cadavers had a hand in testing the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, in France’s first guillotines, heart transplants, solving the mystery of the TWA Flight 800, and the first blood transfusions. In their silent, unassuming, and unpretentious way, cadavers have been working to make life better for those left behind.

Book Review: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

It is astonishing to realize that science fiction consisted of a relative humble portion of Isaac Asimov’s ouevre. While most of his time was spent on nonfiction work, his contributions to science fiction proved so monumental that there is not a single science-fiction writer today who has not been influenced, in some way, by Asimov’s writing. His intellectual and engaging fiction has produced some of the finest short stories and novels in the genre, in classics such as “The Last Question” and “Nightfall”. But his seminal work is the top-of-the-pyramid, groundbreaking, and famous “Foundation Trilogy”. He is to SF what Tolkien is for Fantasy.

“Foundation” is an entertaining piece of sociopolitical SF in the backdrop of a space opera. This book is the foundation of SF for the past six decades. Asimov’s prose is clear and concise, without any room for ambiguity or vain style. Asimov’s words, though pared down and stripped of subtext, are not any less true or beautiful or witty.

Set thousands of years in the future, after humanity has colonized millions of planets in our galaxy, “Foundation” introduces the Galactic Empire is in its waning years. One man on the capital planet of Trantor, Hari Seldon, predicts the cataclysmic and chaotic decline and fall of the Empire. Seldon has developed the science of psychohistory, which aims to calculate the behaviour of mass populations over the course of events using, among other things, socioeconomic trends. Seldon has predetermined not only the demise of the Empire, but that thirty millennia of barbarism will follow, unless his organization, the Foundation, is able to finish its gargantuan mission of cataloguing and preserving all accumulated human knowledge and history. The act would serve to lessen an inevitable thirty-thousand years to a mere thousand.

Asimov portrays the epic grandeur of the galaxy through the unyielding arc of time and history. Individual lives are ineffectual, though not inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things.  Throughout the stories, there is a pervading sense of ‘greater good’ or ‘the bigger picture’. There is only one recurring character in each of the five tales: the Foundation. It stands in the background, an entity both mysterious and arresting; a godlike presence that shaped religion and ruled a city. The story of the Foundation is portrayed through the periodic snippets of human life throughout the growth of the First Foundation from an indefensible, dependent, colony in the backwaters of the outskirts of a great empire to a massive political juggernaut with commercial and technological prowess. The central characters: Hari Seldon, Gaal Dornick, Salvor Hardin, Linmar Ponyets, and Hober Mallow are seen in flashes as their importance and contribution to the longevity of the Foundation is waxes and wanes.Asimov has an arresting flair for conjuring up a methodical, articulate, and complex history. In the battle for free will over determinism, Asimov’s “Foundation” falls securely into the side of the determinists. Psychology and economic trends and the insurmountable turn of time dominate the short stories with a sense of inevitability. But it the tone of the story is far from pessimistic. There is only ever the slightest indication that they should lose hope, or that individual lives are meaningless. As one character says, “Seldon’s laws help those who help themselves.” Asimov appears to advocate forging a better future through the sole and collective action of the present.Unquestionably, “Foundation” is an intellectual treat that tends to emphasis the background scenes as opposed to the ones that illustrate more action. Most of the book is exposition and dialogues between characters in a meeting over smokes. The third story, The Mayors, provides the most exciting, and arguably cleverest, climactic confrontation in the book. It is a scene between Mayor Hardin and Prince Regent Wienis. Hardin, in a stroke of brilliance, has manipulated events to stave off a rival political party’s attempt to impeach him and end the threat posed by the Four Kingdoms.“Foundation” is a significant to the genre in more ways than the ideas it challenged us with. It is the culmination of science fiction into a literature encompassing reason and ideas. It reinvigorated the genre and turned it into a platform of higher ideals and concepts. “Foundation” steered it away from the pulp swamp creatures. It did for science fiction what “Spiderman” (2002) did for superhero movies, or in particular, what Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins” (2005) reboot did for the franchise. Asimov gives us excellent characters, complex sociopolitics, and a good story that never wanes.

Book Review: FreakAngels Vol. 1 by Warren Ellis

Originally a free webcomic that was released every Friday, this collects the first 24 issues. Twelve children were born in England at exactly the same moment. They exhibit psychic abilities at varying degrees. Six years ago, the world ended in an undisclosed cataclysm that has left civilization in ruins. Now, at 23, they try to piece together their lives in Whitechapel, maybe the last real settlement in flooded London. They are the self-proclaimed Freakangels, the councilors and protectors of Whitechapel. Of the original twelve, only eleven remain.

This opening arc begins with a girl named Alice walking into Whitechapel, wielding a shotgun, and crying out for the Freakangels. When they detox her of the subliminal junk in her brain, Alice serves as a placeholder for the readers. Her tour of steampunk Whitechapel is our introduction to this strange, new world. She may even be a reference to “Alice in Wonderland”. She certainly left behind normalcy and entered a very different world.

Warren Ellis is a clever writer who allows the reader to glimpse fragments of the plot. He alludes to the developing backstory, unravels lengthy exchanges depicting the interpersonal relationship among his large ensemble of characters. The best asset of “FreakAngels” is the brilliant dialogue. Ellis has a masterful touch for regional accents; the characters are distinguished by variances in speeches: KK, for example, is bemused and snarky, while Luke sounds bitter and indifferent. The British overtones are thick in the air and the dry humor punctuates the punk teens’ exchanges.

Paul Duffield is a fantastic artist. The purple eyes, the scenic landscape, the authoritative command of colors really bring out the somber atmosphere of post-apocalyptic Whitechapel.

This is a neat achievement in webcomic publishing. Ellis is consistent in his prominent intellectualism and unbridled vulgarity. The sociocultural themes are apparent throughout the story. Despite the steampunk motifs (Victorian-style corsets, stunning inventiveness), the essence of the story more inclined towards the post-apocalyptic field, as it charts the progress of rebuilding and redemption.

Book Review: When Patty Went to College by Jean Webster

                                                

Jean Webster published her first novel, “When Patty Went to College” in 1903. Like her uncontestably more famous “Daddy Long Legs” (1912), her debut novel was based on her life and experiences in a women’s college. The book is a collection of loosely connecting stories about Patty Wyatt’s senior year, beginning with her first day in her new dorm and ending a few weeks before graduation. As “Daddy Long Legs” introduced me to Jean Webster’s body of writing, I admit it was rather difficult not to draw comparisons between the two novels, and particularly, between Judy Abbott and Patty Wyatt.

Patty Wyatt could have been a politician had she been born in a more modern time. She can be described as charismatic and imperturbable, carefree and creative, lazy and intelligent, fun-loving and reckless. Throughout the book, in spite of Patty’s misadventures, clever antics, and pranks on her fellow classmates to entertain herself, she is well liked by her friends and faculty. As Cathy Fair tells her in the denouement to the final story, “I’ve always liked you, Patty,—everybody does,—but I don’t believe I’ve ever appreciated you, and I’m glad to find it out before we leave college.” She can be a trifle judgmental, cuts church, and can hardly be moved to study more than she absolutely has to, and yet, whenever Patty is confronted between the right choice and the easy way out, she displays a strong sense of morality and honesty in spite of the consequences. I like her character. Patty is easygoing and yet proactive; you just know that if she were the recipient of an anonymous benefactor to study at college, she wouldn’t be inclined to send monthly letters to her mysterious figure. No, Patty Wyatt would have tracked him down and pulled aside the curtains to reveal Jervis Pendelton before her first letter even arrived in his mailbox. Judy’s story is one sprawling adventure spread over her collection of chronicling letters; Patty’s story is a collection of all these tiny adventures that compose one book. I wonder if she drank coffee.

The book lacked cohesion in its narrative. Each story was a snapshot of life from the beginning to end of her last year in college and yet I couldn’t help but feel like it was missing a unifying theme or oscillating purpose. Some of the stories concentrated on Patty’s dilemmas involving owning up to her faults and confessing; these pieces connected in their purpose of showing Patty’s gradual maturity.

In context, the relatively heavy-handed moralizing in some of Patty’s tales is to be expected. This was a novel written in the early 20^th century for children and adolescents. It could have been far worst. Traces of Webster’s first-wave feminism shine through and are as strong as they are in her later writing. She explores contemporary issues such as women’s rights, women’s education, socialism, and gender roles with an air of a bygone era’s lightheartedness. On the whole, I would classify this as lighter than “Daddy” or “Dear Enemy,” which I find to be Webster’s most serious endeavor. I liked this novel on its own merit. The glimpse into life of a bygone time and place, into the world that Jean Webster occupied for years, was worth the read.

Book Review: The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

Ellis displays his engaging and captivating stream of consciousness writing. He speaks through the thoughts of varied characters in a college where self-absorbed, bohemian students find themselves in more parties than classrooms, and sex and drugs run rampant. “The Rules of Attraction” offers a dark and satirical take on the upper-middle-class college student culture. Set in the fictional college town of Camden, New Hampshire, the novel is narrated in first-person by the sexually students, in particular, revolving around three: Paul, Sean, and Lauren. The novel begins and ends in mid-sentence, giving the impression that there is really no beginning and end to the story. The reader was just there for the ride, passing like a tourist through Camden and glancing sideways into their lives.

“The Rules of Attraction” is fundamentally a story that studies the rules of attraction that exist between affluent students in a college town. Plot is unnecessary. The traditional aspects of stories are accessories. The important stuff is in the questions that are asked: Who will you hook up with tonight? What are you going to wear at the party? How do you get laid here? Who do we need to see to get drugs? Through satire and dark comedy, Ellis portrays the corruption of youth and the discrepancy between reality and fiction. This exaggerated and distorted manner in showcasing campus life hones the reader’s awareness to these particular realities.

The portrait of campus life for these students is heavily aided by the shifting first-person which illustrates the varying priorities that are juggled throughout the year and paints events from multiple angles. The reader’s interpretation is an essential part of understanding the story. Paul’s narratives focus on his sexual encounters with Sean, while Sean leaves them out entirely in his, leaving the actuality of their occurrence ambiguous. These uncertain passages give weight to the novel and force the readers to perceive the development of the characters.

Bret Easton Ellis does a fantastic job in displaying a segment of society that perhaps many readers are not a part of, if they even knew existed. He creates characters that are selfish, nihilistic, world-weary, experimental, callous, and narcissistic. He does it without batting an eye. They are interesting to watch and study, but I don’t think I’d invite them over for dinner.

                                                

Book Review: The Byron Journals by Daniel Ducrou

The Byron Journals tracks the questionable, alternative lifestyles of a group of young adults in Byron Bay. His skilled writing paints a languid, summery tone that is undercut with the uncertainty of growing up and the bittersweet trial of identifying ourselves. The dialogue is conversational, plot realistic, and the characters are full of depth and humanity; together, they oscillate into crafting an honest and perceptive novel that looks into the mind of a new generation regarding sex, drugs, and music.

Ducrou gives some firsthand detail to the environment of Byron Bay. His portrait is clear in the reader’s mind and the swelling heat, the passion in the air, the music vibrating through the streets come alive with his words. I found the novel not so much about growing up as it is about learning to forgive ourselves and others and letting go of the past. Ducrou hints that the two are closely intertwined: we can’t begin to let go and move on until we’ve found forgiveness. The realization of that notion might be the first step. Andrew arrives in Byron Bay to escape problems at home. There he parts with his mates and meets Heidi, who has also run away to Byron. While their experiences in Byron help mask the issues that brought them there, the past haunts them like a shadow, and it’s with them always.

Daniel Ducrou has an excellent debut novel. His writing is fresh and powerfully authentic. He stirs the pot with the twists and turns and bad decisions only confused, experimental teenagers make. I started reading this novel seeing comparisons to John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” another bildungsroman about regret, forgiveness, and looking for life-changing experiences. The particular similarity was in Alaska and Heidi. Both were troubled, guilt-ridden girls. But as the novel progressed, the two novels’ differences showed and I began to appreciate Ducrou’s book for what it is. This is a valuable addition to Australian literature. I look forward to his next.

Book Review: Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves

There is an unmistakable, and probably justified, prejudice against children’s novels being enjoyable for adult tastes. I mean there are surely good kid books, from beloved classics like “Heidi” or “Daddy Long Legs” to modern tales like the Lemony Snicket and Harry Potter series. But overall, adults don’t read children’s books and there is a good reason for that. Not to say that they’re all crap, but the black-and-white morality, simplistic storylines, and straightforward character interactions tend to conflict with the expectations of an adult world and the preferences of an adult mindset.

Joey Harker, an average boy, discovers he is a Walker, a being with an ability to cross from Earth to another in an endless continuum of alternate universes. As soon as he discovers his ability, he is targeted by the forces of magic and science who want to strip him, and alternate versions of Harker across the multiverse, of his Walking ability to fuel their ships. Harker is recruited by an organization called InterWorld, operated by different versions of Harker, which seeks to maintain balance between magic and science.

“Interworld” is a children’s novel. The storyline is simple, almost formulaic, but the way in which Gaiman and Reaves write the story make it feel more than going through the motions. There is real excitement in how they portray their universe (or universes, to be clear). The villains are cartoonish and there is never a sense of moral ambiguity amongst the characters or in their decisions. Evil is evil, no matter in what world you’re on. I think that is perhaps the book’s greatest flaw.

What makes up for it though is Gaiman and Reaves’ excellent worldbuilding skills. The mythology underlying “Interworld” is impeccable and captivating. They construct a fantastic universe that seems a shame not to return to. Despite the concept of alternate universes, the authors allude to pop culture and history with great ease. There are numerous references to popular events, some of which a thirteen-year-old reader should have no appreciation for. Likewise, Gaiman and Reaves make fantastic use of clever fantasy tropes and high scientific concepts, both fictional and real. They do not underestimate their readers’ capacity to understand ideas, a notion which seems to escape many children’s writers today.

Day 16: The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Is there a single person who hasn’t heard of “The Lord of the Rings” yet? This is the greatest literary feat in the fantasy genre, the grandfather of modern fantasy, and an essential piece of literature. The story modernized Elves, Dwarves, and created Hobbits. No modern fantasy story has been produced in the past half-century that wasn’t in some way inspired or influenced by Tolkien’s magnificent body of work. Being a linguistic professor, Tolkien constructed the several languages for use in his stories and had quite a fondness for etymologies and history. His devotion to his universe represents the first true feat of worldbuilding, and till today, Middle-Earth stands paramount.

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Book Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Why does he want to do this to me? Why does Kazuo Ishiguro want to make me cry for imaginary characters? The answer, for me at the very least, is that they aren’t make-believe. Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth are real – they are us, the readers, and they smell of our lives in all its complexities. I read this book twice. The first time took me roughly fourteen hours. About four days later, I picked it up again and finished in about six. Both times the fundamental truth that underpins our own is startlingly clear in the memories Kathy remembers: no matter how long we have, it is never, ever enough. We all want to defer completion. Wouldn’t it be nice to have another three years? Hell, why not swing for four?

Kathy H. presents her life without guile or angst. She is young, but she is old. In the end, it seems like she’s accepted her fate. She isn’t going to rage against the dying of the light. Instead Kathy meets her preordained fate with resigned acceptance. The story isn’t a tale of free will versus destiny, it is a study of life and living, and the incomprehensible difference between them; the nature of the human soul, love and longing, friendship, existence, and Time.

Ishiguro has incredible insight into the human condition. Without saying as much, he points out the certainty in our world that we would sacrifice the lives and liberty of artificial humans for the sake of preserving our own kind. I suppose the story is as much about the needs of the many over the wants of one, but I’ve never read anything else where I’ve wanted so badly for the wants of one to be so selfishly fulfilled. “Never Let Me Go” is dark and beautiful, powerful and moving. The ending, in particular, as the symbolism of Norfolk transcends being a place where the things we lose end up, to the fields being a tiny personal heaven for her, is unforgettable. I recommend this to anyone who has read his previous work, watched the movie adaptation, or just stumbles upon this review. It’s simply terrific.

Book Review: Blockade Billy by Stephen King

Stephen King shows off his undying adoration for baseball in this sports novella. Written in the voice of a retired third-base coach, King demonstrates his mastery of storytelling, and his ingenuity with narrative and style. This is the macabre tale of the tragic William Blakely, who might have become the greatest baseball player, but has since been erased from the record books. The story drips of suspense, as natural for a King story, but unnaturally for King, the novella is substantially short. Perhaps because of its length, it is straightforward, though decently wrought. As a fan of the game, King evokes nostalgia for the way baseball was played in the fifties. “Blockade Billy” is probably a novella best enjoyed by Constant Readers of Stephen King or fans of the sport in general. However, what this story wins in style, it lacks in substance. The joy of being sweet and short also makes “Blockade Billy” relatively depthless in comparison to his weightier selection of works. New readers may want to immerse themselves in his classics before enjoying this treat.

The companion short story, “Morality,” is reminiscent of King’s short story masterpieces. It is a character study of a married couple with financial difficulties faced with a terrible opportunity. From reading his autobiographical work, “On Writing,” Chad Callahan’s teaching career and attempts to write a book seem to be taken directly out of King’s own past, another case of art imitating life. As I read, what kept popping up in the back of my head was that Twilight Zone episode, “Button, Button”, which might have been an influence. The moral dilemma is sufficiently engaging to surpass the titular story in entertainment.

Book Review: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger’s novel about a romance between Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire is not particularly original. It’s been done a thousand times before. What makes Niffenegger’s version of boy meets girl is the backdrop of time travel that she involves to articulate certain aspects of their relationship. Henry, you see, is a time traveler, but he isn’t like Hiro Nakamura from “Heroes” or H.G. Well’s unnamed time traveler. Henry has a genetic mutation that causes him to travel through time against his will. When he disappears he takes nothing with him, not even the fillings in his teeth. He is drawn to certain places, however, like the accident scene where his mother died. Another place is the meadow behind Clare’s house, where she meets him for the first time at the age of six, when he’s already 36.

The time travel motif serves many purposes in the story. It serves as a metaphor for couples that have to live with a handicap or disease. They shape their lives and their relationships around it. They live with it, just as Clare has to live, however agonizing it might be, with being the one left behind. The storyline deals with the consequences seamlessly and the exploration of their lives from each of their perspectives easily lends “The Time Traveler’s Wife” a seamless realism. When Henry first meets Clare from his perspective, she’s already an adult and she’s known him for years, but he’s completely at a loss as to who she is.

The rest is simply the rest of their lives and the layers of complex connections that weave through them and the people that populate their world. The characters are realistic and the anguish they feel is poignant. Underneath the clever writing is a deeper question pertaining to determinism and free will. Is Henry, having been to the future, able to choose differently in his past? Does Clare, knowing the future, have some control over actions she creates in her present? 

Niffenegger handles expressions of loss and enduring time with deft, meaningful prose. She’s a great writer and this is one of the best debut novels I’ve read in a while. It’s a great piece of literature that easily lends itself for comparison to other works. Clare is likened to Penelope from the “Odyssey,” a comparison noted by critics and other reviewers. Henry, on the other hand, seems inspired by Billy Pilgrim from “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. If you like this one, I really recommend reading “Slaughterhouse-Five” too.

Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

This is a terrific and terrifying tour-de-force in the vast plains of culture, mystery, and journalism. Larsson’s first novel in the Millennium Trilogy is a stunning tale of an age-old mystery and an investigation into the bowels of corruption and intrigue that permeate a wealthy Swedish family. I found the novel slow to get rolling. It takes such a considerable amount of time for the characters to move along that I’m reminded of how it feels to wake up in the morning: the long lethargic stretch, followed by a pause, and then a slow staggering out of the bedroom. I won’t spoil any details, except to say that financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist is convinced to take on a job by Henrik Vanger to ghostwrite his autobiography and solve the locked-room on an island mystery of the disappearance of his niece, Harriet Vanger in the sixties. He is teamed up with the antisocial, problematic, and unquestionably brilliant hacker Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo.

                                 

I don’t know how much time Larsson spent developing the central mystery that envelops the life of Henrik Vanger, an obsession that totally eclipses everything else, but it is an intriguing one and tasteful in its execution. For Henrik, Harriet is dead, even if her body was never recovered, nor the method of her death proven. The questions that remain for him are: who, why, and how? Those questions are dissected in the novel through the eyes of Mikael, and later through his partner, Lisbeth. It was a treat to watch Larsson handle his characters, shaping them into realistic and distinct persons.

Larsson’s attention to detail is superb, the trait any mystery or thriller author requires. Needless to say, I was impressed by the level of detail and analysis that went into the investigation part of Harriet’s disappearance.

Like I said before, this book is somewhat slow. That is probably my only grievance, but it isn’t much of one at all. During my first read-through, it seemed to take countless pages before any real tension; any drama began to seep through the pages. In fact, Lisbeth and Mikael are on two wildly different and completely disconnected paths until quite late into the novel when Lisbeth helps tackle his case. The author also spends a lot of time giving exposition to relevant history and to a host of terminology and processes in the financial world and technology.

Though Larsson takes his time to build up the story, the suspense is gripping in the latter half of the novel. Larsson indeed breathes a potent vibrancy into his writing. Translated into English from Swedish, the prose retains some non-americanisms that ring in the ear. Just from reading aloud the dialogue and the supporting texts, the prose is decidedly euro-centric and quite refreshing. Most of the novels I’ve consumed are North American or English, and though I’m quite new to the game of Scandinavian thrillers, I have to say I like what I’ve read so far.