Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson

Several weeks ago I finished reading Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life.  If you pay attention to that sort of thing, and even if you don’t, you have probably seen Life After Life on numerous Best Of 2013 lists. 

What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.

(via the author’s website)

At a glance, Life After Life appears to have elements of a novel that I would not only enjoy, but absolutely love.  If you pay attention to the blurbs, this is one of the most remarkable novels to have been published in some time. 

Since I am contrary, I only mildly enjoyed it.  Conceptually, I love the idea of what the novel is about.  I love the branching possibilities and that it is such small changes that makes the differences in Ursula’s life.  When and how she dies are the whim of small decisions (go to London on this day? Is the doctor running late by one minute? Accept the help from this stranger?) and Ursula is not a major player in the world.  She is an individual living her life during some turbulent times, but not much more. 

I appreciated the overall construction of the novel, but I struggled to engage with the characters or the story.  Whether it is the continual death (which, given some of my reading preferences, should not be too much of an issue for me) or the bleakness of what is going on in the world, or the sense that Ursula’s life is one hopeless attempt after another, or something else, I was stuck with the sense that Life After Life is a novel I could only appreciate from afar.  The older Ursula became, the more I engaged, but never fully.  From that perspective, I’m disappointed.  I appreciated it more than some other recent book club picks, and I certainly understand why others love the book, but it just didn’t work for me. 

Life After Life is the February 2014 pick for Books andBars, and one which I expect will lead to some great conversations.  It is also one of the selections for this year's Tournament of Books. 

A Touch of Daggerspell

Last year I followed Aidan’s series of posts regarding his read of Daggerspell with Kate Elliott’s re-read.  Daggerspell is the first entry in a multi-volume, multi-generational epic series of fantasy novels.  The series was one I had my eye on for some twenty years when I had first encountered one of Katherine Kerr’s novels from the middle of the series when I was twelve and for whatever reason, I just wasn’t ready for it and I never went back. But, several years ago I did purchase a copy of Daggerspell and once again, I never read it.

Now, this particular post of mine is fairly out of date because I finally read Daggerspell back in July and August of 2013, so you may well be wondering why I am writing about it now.  The very short answer is that I’m preparing to start reading Darkspell (the sequel) and I wanted to re-familiarize myself with the first book before I dove back in.  I’ve been on something of an unintentional semi-break from science fiction and fantasy and over the last few months and I want to dive back in.  Working on some series that I had always planned to work through seems like a good idea.  Plus, I’d rather not have an accidental five years pass and find myself still have not yet opened up Darkspell. 

The crazily short and absurdly simplified to a fault version of what Daggerspell deals with is reincarnation, fate, and atonement.  So, while this is a multigenerational tale, it is also dealing with the opportunity (nay, requirement) for a particular character to correct a serious mistake of the past and in correcting it, fix himself.  That sounds intensely cheesy and dismissive of just how good of a job Katherine Kerr did in setting up this story and what sort of story it is.  But, I am coming from this more than six months since I read the book and the beautiful interweaving of time periods and characters is somewhat lost in what I have in me to describe the book.

I do highly recommend Daggerspell and would suggest that new readers start with the introduction to the re-read series but not venture beyond them because the next three parts are heavy with spoilers and synopsis of the book.  Do not delve into the posts without working with the schedule of what is being covered.  It’s worth reading, but not before you’ve read the book. 

All that said, I do appreciate Aidan and Kate doing those posts because it helped give me that final push I needed to finally read Daggerspell, and it was more than worth the wait.  Even writing this little bit about Daggerspell makes me itch just a bit to start Darkspell.

Books Read: January 2014

Below is a listing of the books I read in the month of January.  My wife and I were talking about what we were reading and I had mentioned that I really don’t remember having read an actual novel in a while that I thought was extra fantastic. She said, “what about…oh, the one that starts with a W…you know the one, you kept talking about it.”  Eventually we figured out that she meant Wolf Hall, but after looking it up, it turns out that I finished the book in November, so that didn’t really argue against my point. 

1. Tiassa, by Steven Brust

2. Great Whiskeys, by Charles MacLean

3. Humans of New York, by Brandon Stanton

4. Command Authority, by Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney

5. Mercy Kill, by Aaron Allston

6. The Dark Man, by Stephen King

7. Insurgent, by Veronica Roth

8. While the Clock Ticked, by Franklin W. Dixon

9. Sisterland, by Curtis Sittenfeld

10. When Did You See Her Last, by Lemony Snicket

11. Wheels of Rage, by Kurt Saxon

12. Life Ater Life, by Kate Atkinson

13. The Cuckoo’s Calling, by Robert Galbraith

14. Beautiful Lego, by Mike Doyle

Best Book of the Month: Humans of New York is a photography book and is easily the most compelling, fascinating, funny, and heartbreaking thing I read last month.  Easily.  Stanton’s photography and ability to find such a variety of individuals and really get across something about them in a picture and occasionally with just a line or two of text of description is just perfect.  The stories contained in the images are outstanding and makes you wonder what else is going on in their lives.  There is a mystique about New York City, but really, I think it is just because the city is large enough and densely populated with enough ethnic groups that Stanton was able to find such a cross section of people.  I’m sure most other major cities could have something similar, but as much as I love where I live, I don’t think that Humans of Minneapolis would have quite the same scope or impact.  Maybe, but I doubt it.  

Worth Noting: The Dark Man is not a new Stephen King novel, rather it is a poem he wrote some forty years ago, but now illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne.  Completists will want to read this volume anyway, and many readers will be interested to get a first glimpse into a character that later became Randall Flagg (from The Stand, if the name is only ringing a vague bell). But it is Chadbourne’s art that makes this slim volume special.  The art makes the work yet more haunting and dirty than King did with those few words. 

Disappointment of the Month: Wheels of Rage. Having finally caught up on Sons of Anarchy and having read Under and Alone, I want to read more about motorcycle clubs / gangs. It’s a fascinating subculture, though a nasty one (and as such, one I would stay as far away from as possible).  Wheels of Rage is a fictionalized account of stories told to the author which ended up leading to the arrest of gang members.  So, even though it isn’t investigative reporting or a well researched account or the story of an undercover operative, it seemed like it could be a solid glimpse into what was going on in the 70’s.  Unfortunately, the writing is atrocious. It is unclear from the book as to whether Saxon was riding along with the Iron Cross club, if he invented a character that did so, or exactly what the perspective was – but it was such an over the top reveling in being a part of something “fun” that even without the horrible writing, the book was off-putting.  Add in the writing and I’d recommend ever picking up a copy of this book (even though you can find it feely distributed online, don’t).

The Tournament of Books X

Over the last year, I’ve been part of a book club called Books and Bars.  It is likely to be exactly what you think it is: a book club hosted at a bar (and often at a very good craft beer bar, but that’s getting off topic into another facet of my geekdom).  During the discussion of The Orphan Master’s Son last year, there was some talk about something called The Tournament of Books.  I had never heard of such a thing, which seems a tragedy since I like tournaments and I like books.  What can possibly be wrong with this?  Part of what the people in the know found so fascinating was that besides the official commentary of the books during each judging round, there was serious and intelligent discussion going on in the comments section of each round, often as good or better than the initial judging.  For Books and Bars, great discussion points came out of the Tournament of Books. 

I decided I wanted to know more. 

A month ago, this year’s Tournament of Books was announced.  The Tournament of Books is put on by The Morning News, “an online magazine of essays, art, humor, and culture published weekdays since 1999”, plus links to headlines of interesting news bits. 

The way this works is that 17 books are seeded into a bracket setting (2 books have a “play in” round).  Each match up has a judge and the judge will lay down some commentary on each book before choosing a winner to advance.  Each round has a different judge.  There are a couple of other little quirks like a “zombie round” where a lucky loser gets to play back in if it was one of the most popular books voted on before the tournament began, and then in the finals, the full panel will select the winner. 

Or, it’s a great big reading list of hopefully interesting books and is a spark for great conversation both within the tournament and outside of it.  This will be my first year participating in it in any capacity. 

Below is the list of books in the tournament.

"At Night We Walk in Circles" by Daniel Alarcón
"The Luminaries" by Eleanor Catton
"The Tuner of Silences" by Mia Couto
"The Signature of All Things" by Elizabeth Gilbert
"How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" by Mohsin Hamid
"The Dinner" by Herman Koch
"The Lowland" by Jhumpa Lahiri
"Long Division" by Kiese Laymon
"The Good Lord Bird" by James McBride
"Hill William" by Scott McClanahan
"The Son" by Philipp Meyer
"A Tale for the Time Being" by Ruth Ozeki
"Eleanor & Park" by Rainbow Rowell
"The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt
"The People in the Trees" by Hanya Yanagihara

Pre-Tournament Playoff Round
"Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson
"Woke Up Lonely" by Fiona Maazel

 

At this point, I have read The Lowland and Life After Life, and I attempted The Booker Prize winning The Luminaries and decided after only a few pages that I didn’t have the patience to attempt this monster tome, award winning or not.  I’ll chip away at this listing as I can before the tournament starts and brackets are released sometime in late February or early March, which probably means I’ll read one to two more books (How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is next up from the library).  I may write a little bit about The Lowland and Life After Life in the coming weeks. 

Favorite Reads of 2013

I wouldn’t necessarily read too much into this post existing.  I still fight with conflicting motivation to write, and to specifically write about books and stories and people telling grand lies for money.  But, I am still reading voraciously and last year I read 126 books and I wanted to acknowledge, somehow, the best of what I read.  Or, more accurately, what I enjoyed the most out of what I read.  There won’t be a Hugo nomination post, because I’m not a supporting member of Worldcon this time around and I don’t plan to be this year or next.  There likely won’t be a post where I list out my top nine books read in 2013 or my top nine books published in 2013, though I did always enjoy writing up those entries in years gone by.

Happily, though, I use Goodreads and so I don’t have go through my list of all the books I read during the year and decide which ones I liked best.  I can just click on what I read that I rated 5 stars, pull out the comic books and voila!  We have list!   

This is in no particular order, so unless I get extra ambitious, don’t expect ranking. 

I will say, though, that if I absolutely had do a ranking, the top of the list would include those books with stars below.  Think of it as a bonus mark of distinction.

The First American: Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, by H. W. Brands

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

The Inexplicables, by Cherie Priest

*The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach

Defending Jacob, by William Landay

The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson

Red Country, by Joe Abercrombie

Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to Ever-Ending Earth, by Craig Childs

Legion, by Brandon Sanderson

My Share of the Task, by Stanley McChrystal

*The Round House, by Louise Erdrich

The Human Division, by John Scalzi

*N0S4A2, by Joe Hill

*Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, by Michael Moss

Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King

The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume Three, by Joseph Gordon Levitt (editor)

on fame

"It'd be great to be so famous that if I murder someone, I will never, ever, ever serve any jail time, even if it's totally obvious to everyone that I did it."

- Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, pg 62

community swimming pool

"Not to sound braggy or anything, but I kind of killed it in college. You know that saying 'big fish in a small pond'? At Dartmouth College, I was freaking Jaws in a community swimming pool. I wrote plays, I acted, I sang, I was the student newspaper cartoonist. All this, of course, was less a function of my talent than of the school's being in rural New Hampshire, where the only option for real entertainment was driving one and a half hours to Manchester, on the off chance the Capitol Steps were touring there."

- Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, pg 47

alienating the police

"That does make her squirm a little. Dan probably wasn't counting on her digging up the details on the story of how he made his name mud with the cops. Turns out the police don't like it when you report on one of their own who accidentally discharges his weapon into a hooker's face while coked up to the eyeballs. Chet said the officer got early retirement. Dan got his tires slashed every time he parked at the precinct. Kirby is happy to discover she's not the only one with the ability to alienate the whole of the Chicago PD."

- Lauren Beukes, The Shining Girls, pg 82

fighting fair

"He wasn't expecting Grebe to gush like that. Wouldn't have come to it if the bastard had fought fair. But he was fat and drunk and desperate. Couldn't land a punch, so he went for Harper's balls. Harper had felt the sonofabitch's thick fingers grabbing at his trousers. Man fights ugly,  you fight uglier back. It's not Harper's fault the jagged edge of the glass caught an artery. He was aiming for Grebe's face."

- Lauren Beukes, The Shining Girls, pg 10

World Fantasy Award Nominee: "Swift, Brutal Retaliation"

“Swift, Brutal Retaliation”

Meghan McCarron

Tor.com

Nominated for 2013 World Fantasy Award: Short Story

***

This is the second time I’ve read Meghan McCarron’s “Swift, Brutal Retaliation”, a story focused on the aftermath of the too young death of the brother of Sinead and Brigid with both their escalating war of pranks on each other as well as their desire to help the ghost of their dead brother find peace. 

That’s a gross simplification, of course, and when you get down to the heart of the story, what “Swift, Brutal Retaliation” seems to really be about is grief.  The grief of parents, the grief of sisters, the grief of the deceased, and how that grief and anger manifests throughout a family.  How losing that son and brother through a drawn out illness changes the dynamic, most likely irreparably.  

 “During Ian’s last few months, their mother was usually busy taking care of him. When he died, they had briefly hoped she would recover her interest in their well-being, but instead her caring engines shut down completely. She spent whole days in her room; the girls had no idea what she did in there. If they put their ears to the door, they heard the television, but they had the eerie feeling it wasn’t being watched.”

Told mostly from the third person perspective of the sisters, “Swift, Brutal Retaliation” is a story that begins a touch lighter than the subject matter would suggest, but simmers at a slow burn and has a powerful, explosive ending.  Explicitly, there is a touch of the supernatural with Ian’s ghost, but in this case it is one of the least important supernatural elements in a story and very well may just be a manifestation of the emotions of the family.  Regardless of that, this is a worthy story for the World Fantasy Award nomination.

dignity

"These were days of pajamas and beard scruff, of mumblings and requests and him endlessly thanking everyone for all they were doing on his behalf. One afternoon, he pointed vaguely toward a laundry basket in a corner of the room and asked me, 'What's that?'

'That laundry basket?'

'No, next to it.'

'I don't see anything next to it.'

'It's my last shred of dignity. It's very small.'"

- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, pg 248

thinking about death

"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death."

- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, pg 1

a republic, if you can keep it

"A life as full as Franklin's could not be captured in a phrase - or a volume. Yet if a few words had to suffice, a few words that summarized his legacy to the America he played such a central role in creating - and that, not incidentally, illustrated his wry, aphoristic style - they were those he uttered upon leaving the final session of the Constitutional Convention. A matron of Philadelphia demanded to know, after four months' secrecy, what he and the other delegates had produced.

'A republic,' he answered, 'if you can keep it.'"

- H. W. Brands, The First American, pg 716

When a Series Doesn't End

I finished reading Demonstorm a couple of days ago and it made me think reader expectations and the ending of a series. 

As I understand it, James Barclay intended for Demonstorm to be the conclusion to his Legends of the Raven trilogy.  It ended the story of The Raven, a mercenary band that saved the world on multiple occasions. There an epilogue which set the tone for the future and it was one where not only wasn’t The Raven needed, but it was one where they didn’t really exist anymore.  Which will make sense if you’ve read the books and be fairly non-spoilery if you haven’t. Demonstorm was an ending and a concrete ending at that. 

Of course, what I had known all along is that there was still one more book which was set ten or so years later: Ravensoul.  I knew that long before I read Dawnthief, but by the time I finished what now feels like the “series proper”, I wasn’t sure why or how there could be another book.  As Barclay writes on his website,

A quick scan down these bibliography entries will lead you to Demonstorm and my assertion that it was to be the last Raven novel and that there were no plans for more. Luckily, I also mentioned the immortal words ‘never say never’. Because, four years later, along came Ravensoul.

The fact is that something began nagging at me almost from the moment Demonstorm was done and dusted. That although I had written “The End” for the last time in Raven history, it just wasn’t the end. For a while I didn’t know why, but a bit like Vault of Deeds, the idea wouldn’t go away and slowly, it took proper shape. In the days when writing The Ascendants was particularily hard, I gave it considered thought too.

I wanted The Raven to have one last ride…

 Barclay then goes on to give a little bit more detail about the ending of Demonstorm then I want to go into here, but what I want to express is that I feel very mixed regarding how I feel about this as a reader.  I have very much enjoyed Barclay’s work with the Raven novels (see here for my thoughts on the first three books), and though I have seen a brief synopsis / cover copy on Ravensoul and know approximately how the story is continuing, Barclay finished the series.  He finished the story. 

Obviously, James Barclay disagrees with me since he wrote another novel set ten years after and who am I to say that the author is wrong for having more stories he wants to tell?

It’s not even that I don’t want to read more Raven stories.  It’s just that he wrote a book that had such an ending, to the point that the idea there is more feels something of a let down or a refusal to let go.  Part of this has to do with a specific story point that because it occurs so late in the series, but is absolutely key as to why having a sequel comes across as somewhat offputting to the reader, or, at least to this one.

Of course, if Ravensoul is up to the level of quality the first six books hit most of this is moot and I’ll accept it.  But there is that niggling part of the reader brain that thinks that no matter how good Ravensoul is, things should have ended where they were originally intended to. 

We’ll see. 

liars and weaklings

“I should have stuck around to discover the nature of that soil for myself – but I belong with the liars and weaklings. I cannot lead my betters. If I want to be a hero, it will not be to the jocks, whose interiors have an integrity that springs up from the very center of the earth itself. It will be to the utter liars I find myself here, in the white-walled room that is the typing school’s second-floor studio.”

- Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?, pg 34

2013 World Fantasy Award Finalists

(Via SF Signal)

The nominations for the 2013 World Fantasy Awards have been announced, and while I have been less active in the SFF scene this last year or two, this has long been my favorite of the genre awards.  Congratulations to all the nominees, and I can't wait to dive in to these.

Novel

• The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Doubleday)
• The Drowning Girl, Caitlin R. Kiernan (Roc)
• Crandolin, Anna Tambour (Chamu)
• Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus)

Novella

• “Hand of Glory,” Laird Barron (The Book of Cthulhu II)
• “Let Maps to Others,” K.J. Parker (Subterranean Summer ’12)
• The Emperor’s Soul, Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon)
• “The Skull,” Lucius Shepard (The Dragon Griaule)
• “Sky,” Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls)

Short Story

• “The Telling,” Gregory Norman Bossert (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/29/12)
• “A Natural History of Autumn,” Jeffrey Ford (F&SF 7-8/12)
• “The Castle That Jack Built,” Emily Gilman (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/26/12)
• “Breaking the Frame,” Kat Howard (Lightspeed 8/12)
• “Swift, Brutal Retaliation,” Meghan McCarron (Tor.com 1/4/12)

Anthology

• Epic: Legends of Fantasy, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Tachyon)
• Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, Eduardo Jimanez Mayo & Chris N. Brown, eds. (Small Beer)
• Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Jonathan Oliver, ed. (Solaris)
• Postscripts #28/#29: Exotic Gothic 4, Danel Olson, ed. (PS Publishing)
• Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Random House)

Collection

• At the Mouth of the River of Bees, Kij Johnson (Small Beer)
• Where Furnaces Burn, Joel Lane (PS Publishing)
• The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories Volume One: Where on Earth and Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands, Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)
• Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine)
• Jagannath, Karin Tidbeck (Cheeky Frawg)

Artist

• Vincent Chong
• Didier Graffet and Dave Senior
• Kathleen Jennings
• J.K. Potter
• Chris Roberts

Special Award-Professional

• Peter Crowther & Nicky Crowther for PS Publishing
• Lucia Graves for the translation of The Prisoner of Heaven (Weidenfeld & Nicholson; Harper) by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Adam Mills, Ann VanderMeer, & Jeff VanderMeer for the Weird Fiction Review website
• Brett Alexander Savory & Sandra Kasturi for ChiZine Publications
• William K. Schafer for Subterranean Press

Special Award-Non-professional

• Scott H. Andrews for Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• L. Timmel Duchamp for Aqueduct Press
• S.T. Joshi for Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, Volumes 1 & 2 (PS Publishing)
• Charles A. Tan for Bibliophile Stalker blog
• Jerad Walters for Centipede Press
• Joseph Wrzos for Hannes Bok: A Life in Illustration (Centipede Press)

The Life Time Achievement Award will go to Susan Cooper and Tanith Lee!

rumors

"Are the men talking of dweomer among themselves?" Rhodry said.

"They are, my lord. I do my best to stop it."

"I know I could count on you for that. How do you feel about these rumors yourself?"

"Pack of horseshit, my lord."

"Good. I couldn't agree more."

- Katherine Kerr, Daggerspell, pg 213

this is the way it will be

"'What are you asking me, exactly?' Gudrun said. 'Why do I think the problems between the men and women of the world are the way they are today? You want to know whether the problems that you teenagers feel - will they follow you over the rest of your lives? Will your hearts always be aching? Is that what you are asking me?

Goodman shifted in discomfort. 'Something like that,' he said.

'Yes,' said the counselor in a suddenly plangent voice. 'Always they will be aching. I wish I could tell you something else, but I wouldn't be telling the truth. My wife and gentle friends, this is the way it will be from now on.'"

- Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings, pg 131

Jules

"Jules. There it was, right there: the effortless shift that made all the difference. Shy, suburban nonentity Julie Jacobson, who had provoked howls for the first time in her life, had suddenly, lightly changed into Jules, which was a far better name for an awkward-looking fifteen-year-old girl who'd become desperate for people to pay attention to her. these people had no idea of what she was usually called; they'd hardly noticed her in these first days of camp, though of course she'd noticed them. In a new environment, it was possible to transform. Jules, Ash had called her, and instantly the others followed Ash's lead. She was Jules now, and would be Jules forever."

- Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings, pg 15

tearing a new one

"Abumwe began by tearing Doodoodo a new one, in as brilliant a show of venomous politeness as Wilson had ever seen in his life. Doodoodo and his fellow negotiators actually began to cringe, in the Burfinor fashion, which Wilson decided was more of a scrotal-like contraction than anything else.

Watching the ambassador do her work, and doing it with something approaching vengeful joy, Wilson realized his long-held wish that Abumwe would actually relax from time to time was clearly in error. This was a person who operated best and most efficiently when she was truly and genuinely pissed off; wishing for her to mellow out was like wishing an alpha predator would switch to grains. It was missing the point."

 -John Scalzi, The Human Division, pg 265