by Elisha Cooper

published by Anchor, September 2007

book 65 of 2011

by James Stokoe

published by Oni Press, December 2007

Book 64 of 2011

by Andrea J. Buchanan

published by Seal Press, March 2003

Book 63 of 2011

by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish

published by Scribner, February 2012

Book 62 of 2011

by Nick Harkaway

published by Knopf, March 2012

Book 61 of 2011

Nick Harkaway’s Gone-Away World was one of my top books of the last few years — an astonishing post-apocalyptic love story / buddy story with pirates, ninjas, amazing fight scenes, powerful humanist undertones, constantly hilarious wit, and one of the wildest plot twists ever.  So I have gloated gleefully over this new novel galley sitting on my bookshelf, and broke it out a few weeks ago when I was sick in bed and had time to dig into something juicy.

There’s not the same shock factor of discovering something entirely new that Gone-Away World had, but  Angelmaker does have the same wonderful everything-and-the kitchen-sink, genre-loving indiscriminancy that the first book had.  It also has a comparable sense of working-class cameraderie, individual decency in the face of faceless corporate/governmental evils, and truly satisfying sense of story.  While GAW focused on the members of a rough-and-tumble clean-up crew for the messes created by a doomsday weapon (which they themselves may have had a part in triggering), Angelmaker is about a man trying to resist following his father’s path outside the law, but in increasingly dire straits as he runs afoul of various organizations fighting over a doomsday weapon that he has helped to trigger (hmm…)

Now that I think about it, there are a heck of a lot of thematic commonalities between the two novels — but the flavor of Angelmaker is all its own.  There are Gaiman-ish parts about the secret underground of London, steampunky bits with a wondrous train and submarine made by the society of Ruskinites (not the mention the clockwork beehive that’s causing all the trouble), Bond-worthy globe-trotting to do battle with outrageous villains, almost Kesey-like descriptions of physical and psychological torture, and a sort of Bonnie and Clyde meets Robin Hood love story / coming of age narrative.  I also love that Harkaway writes a serious female character who is not the love interest and who has her own arc and interests and gets nearly as much page time as the ostensible hero; along with his championing of individual compassion over the pieties of the corporation and the state, this is what makes him a truly moral adventure writer.

This book is destined to become one of those I wish I hadn’t already read every time I have a long plane trip or a boring afternoon.  It’s stuffed silly with plot and wit, and since the doomsday device is essentially a machine that destroys free will by imparting absolute knowledge, it makes for some interesting conversation as well.  Well done again to Harkaway — I hope to get him to sign my copy if and when he passes through New York in the spring.

by Hari Kunzru

published by Knopf, March 2012

Book 60 of 2011

This is the first big fat novel I read since the amazing Orphan Master’s Son, which like this book was blurbed by David Mitchell.  I am predisposed to read anything the man likes, and since one of my work colleagues highly recommended it too, I made my first foray into Kunzru.

It was dazzling, to say the least, and employs a multiple-narrative structure to capture the eerie essence of a portion of California desert that seems haunted by extra-planetary life, whether divine, legendary, extra-terrestrial, or purely psychological.  Kunzru plays with motifs and ambiguities in a way I love — Coyote is a recurring character, in the form of Native American legends or humans who seem to evoke him, and is the inhabiting spirit of chaos and madness that defines the region.  From a 17th century priest to a post-WWII outcast to a very contemporary family (Wall Street dad, artist mom, mixed race, autistic son), all come under the strange influence of the place and are drawn to it, with stories that intertwine and build on each other in ways that are satisfying to trace.

It is a literary novel, though, so my hopes that I’d find out at the end whether or not there are actual aliens contacting people or what was misguided.  There are no answers to what people are really seeing and hearing when they say they’ve been contacted from beyond; just a through-line of how often and in how many ways it seems to happen.  Kunzru, a South Asian born in London and living in New York, has somehow captured the scary freedom of the American West in an entirely new way.

by Jesse Browner

published by Europa Editions, September 2011

Book 59 of 2011

Full disclosure: I was treated to a truly excellent meal at this author’s apartment in the West Village a couple of months back.  And I hosted an event for his previous novel The Uncertain Hour, which involved delicacies inspired by Roman feasts.  I also read that earlier book and loved it in a way that has haunted me.  So I am predisposed to like anything Jesse Browner does, as he is an excellent cook and a lovely human being.

Luckily the book was excellent.  Like The Uncertain Hour, Everything Happens Today takes place over the course of a single twenty-four hour period.  In the former novel, it was the last day in the life of a Roman dignitary who had been essentially ordered to commit suicide by the Empire.  In the latter, it’s a pivotal day in the life of a high school senior who has just lost his virginity and is struggling to figure out what kind of person that makes him, not to mention what to do about his dying mother, his lackadaisical father, his out-of-reach crush, the unexpected girl he has actually slept with, his winning but vulnerable younger sister, and the essay on War and Peace he’s supposed to hand in the next day.

I love the conceit of a life metonymized in a single day, especially in the case of a character like Wes.  He is very precisely an over-smart high school student, with all of the idealism and sensitivity that implies, as well as all of the posturing, self-consciousness and self-righteousness that go along with it, in that flavor specific to being seventeen.  I particularly loved watching the evolution of his emotions from the abstract worship of a Buddhist mother figure (his crush) to the undeniable connection with an unexpectedly insightful and funny rich girl, who is fighting her own battles (absent parents, a bad reputation) but understands Wes slightly better than he understands himself. 

It’s a bit Holden-ish, natch (especially Wes’s Phoebe-like younger sister, the repository for his longing for innocence) — but it’s no sin to be influenced by the most influential novel of contemporary adolescence.  Browner’s take on the internal life of an urban kid in the 21st century is satisfying without being pat, with believable philosophical ruminations alternating with, of course, a good amount of time spent on preparing a particularly complex and fraught dinner.  It’s a small gem of a book, and one I wish I’d read as a teenager myself, though I probably understand it all better in hindsight.

by Peggy Orenstein

published by HarperCollins, February 2011

Book 58 of 2011

We are having a daughter in about a month.  So suddenly the topic of what it’s like to be a girl, or the parent of a girl, in the 21st century has gotten very interesting to me.  Particularly, I’m a bit worried about Disney princesses.  Honestly, do we have to?

Peggy Orenstein says no.  Her examination of contemporary girlhood, while clearly written from a feminist perspective, is really a warning about American consumerist culture, particularly in a marketplace that uses gender as a marketing tool.  If boys and girls must have different kinds of toys, clothes, accessories, etc., they can be sold twice as many… and there are so very, very many things to buy to help your daughter “express herself.”  From Barbies to Bratz to Disney to American Girls to pink and blue layettes to makeup for eight-year-olds, this is really a book about having the ability to say “no” to the demands of a shrill and pervasive culture of consumption-as-identity.

That said, I wished the book had been a little more substantial on some of the feminist issues.  The book is really a collection of magazine pieces, and it shows.  Most of what Orenstein observes I’ve already observed myself; I was hoping for more science, more expert opinion, more analysis of what being a girl really is, in a universal way and a 21st century American way.  I whipped through the book in a couple of days, and it definitely has become food for conversation with my husband and my female friends, but it left me wishing for some more concrete, even scholarly work on the topic.

by Jose-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental, and Stanislas Barthélémy

published by Drawn & Quarterly, November 2011

Book 57 of 2011

Appropriate timing as the new Tintin movie is coming out — and for me, since I always think of Tintin at Christmas, as we used to get rolled-up Tintin comics in our stockings for years.  Must have been great for our parents, as we instantly plopped down on our stomachs on the living room floor to read them, leaving them to get breakfast or whatever parents do on Christmas morning after the presents (???).  Tintin remains my standard for a good adventure story, though as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to cringe a bit at some of the period racism that becomes more obvious with rereadings.

So I was excited to read a graphic novel about Tintin’s creator, done in his signature clean-line style.  Unfortunately, a mans’ life doesn’t tend to have the same narrative arc as a boy’s adventure story, and the book seemed choppily episodic in a way that never quite came together.  I learned some curious facts about Herge — the influence of a right-wing Catholic priest on his work, his early commitment to the Belgian equivalent of Boy Scouts, his marriage, divorce to marry a younger colleague, and continuing weekly meetings with his first wife — but didn’t feel a strong sense of the man or his life story.  Interesting, but mostly it just made me want to go back and read The Blue Lotus and Tintin in Tibet and Red Rackham’s Treasure and The Calculus Affair….

by Adam Johnson

published by Random House, January 2012

Book 56 of 2011

I picked this up because of the blurb by the incomparable David Mitchell, and discovered a North Korea that could be the model for Mitchell’s future dystopia in Cloud Atlas.  But Adam Johnson’s Korea is neither futuristic nor fantastical — it takes place in the all-too-strange present, with songs for the Dear Leader blasting out of speakers in every street and building, and an atmosphere of patriotic paranoia about the rest of the world that barely covers the terror of what is happening to citizens at the hands of their own state.  The story of a not-quite-orphan who finds himself made into an kidnapper, spy, hero, prisoner, and finally the one person capable of thwarting the Dear Leader in a very personal way is a picaresque and grim adventure, complete with scenes of both torture and tenderness.  Johnson is a master of voice, getting inside the heads of people in almost unimaginable situations, and of scenes and images that have stayed with me.  I was blown away by his literary accomplishment, and shaken by the implications of his research and insights into the realities of this little-known place.  I hope the book gains a wide readership for its devourability as a story, and for the sake of raising our awareness of human suffering and nobility in one of the last, worst dictatorships.