Monkey droppings - The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle

The Monkey leisurely finishes an epic trilogy.

And speeds through a review.

The monkey enjoys contrast.

The Dead Republic
by Roddy Doyle (2010)

I'd cycled every inch of every lane of this country. I'd lobbed bombs from most of the ditches. Bullets had slowed me down, but nothing had ever stopped me. Thirty years ago. Only thirty years. It wasn't a lifetime. I looked at my hand, at yellow, knuckled bone. The hand had once held guns and women. I closed my fingers and felt nothing.
I used to be heard. My eyes used to kill.

Roddy Doyle's A Star Called Henry is a masterpiece, plain and simple. Following young Henry Smart as he becomes a key player in the Irish Citizen Army in the early 20th century, Doyle's novel was a key departure from his until-then usual, more intimate style, and was a literary triumph in every respect.

Its follow-up, Oh, Play that Thing, followed the wisened Henry to America, on the run and completely alone. Doyle had some great fun leaving Ireland and playing with the glories of the Jazz Age, especially when he somehow joined up Henry to Louis Armstrong. At the finale, Henry was older, very tired, and short one leg. His wife, the estimable Miss O'Shea (no name ever supplied nor needed), had been trapped on a train with his children as they rode the rails, and Henry had slipped beneath the wheels and was left behind. Oh, Play that Thing is deeply enjoyable, a romp and a half, but somehow doesn't linger nearly as long in the mind as Star. And its emphasis on Henry's acquaintance with various famous figures in history sometimes gave the book the air of a highbrow Forrest Gump.

The Dead Republic, Doyle's final volume, splits the difference. Doyle completes his Last Roundup trilogy by reuniting Henry with Ireland, and brings to a close Henry Smart's literary bildungsroman in often high style.

The book opens with Henry on the set of John Ford's classic motion picture The Quiet Man. Ford has somehow become convinced that Henry's story should be filmed; Henry sees it as another thing to do, and only goes along with the scheme when it becomes apparent that he could possibly return to the land he fled in fear for his life. Anyone who has actually seen The Quiet Man can attest that the end result is hardly the story of Henry, fictional character or not.

The opening third, much as the whole of Oh, Play that Thing, is the weakest element of The Dead Republic. Henry's exploits among the famous are inherently fun, but never truly memorable. It's only when Henry travels back to Ireland, to witness and again become a part of the political strife decades later, that the novel begins to soar to Star's heights.

To be sure, it's hardly a perfect novel, even at its best. Henry's irascibility as he gets older is wonderfully done, but the plot often appears too slight to support his heft. Henry feels shoehorned into the political machinations of the time, whereas in Star the plot and Henry were organically connected. Perhaps this is intentional on Doyle's part; Henry has no desire to rejoin with elements of his past, and goes along with the plans of others rather unwillingly. But even so, Republic sputters when Henry meets up with his past, especially at one crucial point; frankly, Henry's reunion with one particular character completely beggars disbelief, even topping the desperately loopy reunion in Oh, Play that Thing.

But it's Henry Smart that's the driving force, and on that sole element, The Dead Republic delivers in spades. Doyle's main strength as a writer has always been his ability to breathe life into his characters (I offer as proof the absolutely wonderful Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Woman Who Walked into Doors), and Republic spectacularly captures a man who is eternally on the fringes of history, both as active participant and passive tool.

Bottom line: when Doyle works with the plot, rather than the character, The Dead Republic suffers. But when it's simply Henry Smart, older, grimmer, and bursting with life, well, it's grand stuff, that.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES

Monkey Droppings - The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag by Alan Bradley

The monkey remembers a simpler time, when all you needed to solve a mystery was a zest for crime-solving, three good friends, and maybe a talking dog.

And a van. Always need a good van.


The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag
by Alan Bradley (2010)

If one were to closely follow the tenets of Agatha Christie mysteries, one would be wise to stay as far away from quaint English townships as possible. The murder rate of such hamlets, as described by Christie and her ilk, must rank in the highest percentile of crime statistics.

The town of Bishop’s Lacey is no different, having quite an off-centre proportion of strange criminal conundrums for such a tiny municipality. For balance, all such villages must also be blessed with a detective of unusual cunning and resourcefulness, ideally a local eccentric with a penchant for amateur sleuthing.

Flavia de Luce is just such an investigator, and Toronto-born author Alan Bradley revels in her peculiarities. Introduced in 2009’s surprise hit The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Flavia is a self-possessed eleven-year-old girl with a fondness for chemistry and a yearning to make sense of her world, and in Bradley’s hands she is the spiritual lovechild of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple.

At the start of Bradley’s second de Luce mystery, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, Flavia finds herself still living in a large old house with her two detestable sisters and her philatelist father. Flavia is proceeding with her investigations into chemistry, already “making notes for a definitive work [called] De Luce on Decomposition, in which I would outline, step by step, the process of human cadaveric decay.”

When Flavia happens upon an enigmatic woman weeping in a graveyard, she takes it upon herself to intervene. The young snoop quickly finds herself caught up in a mystery involving marionettes, the past death of a local child, and one decidedly dead BBC children’s personality.

Flavia is a strikingly enjoyable heroine, precocious, preternaturally intelligent to a fault, and not giving “a frog’s fundament” for anyone who crosses her. Her intellect crosses the border into the implausible, but such a leap is far easier with such an engaging narrator, at ease with explaining the mechanics of human decay as she is espousing that Beethoven, while “a very great musician, and a wizard composer of symphonies…was quite often a dismal failure when it came to ending them.”

As in classic Christie novels, the mystery forms only half of the narrative. The other half is the town itself and its many varied characters, and Bradley heaps scads of idiosyncratic personalities with such glorious monikers as “Mad Meg,” “Dogger,” and “Mutt Wilmott” into an already convoluted plotline.

If there is any real shortcoming to The Weed That Strings, it is that Flavia has shown precious little growth as a character since her introduction. While continuity of character is another staple of such anachronistic entertainments (did Miss Marple ever evolve beyond her knitting and gardening pursuits?), one hopes that the few glimpses allowed into Flavia’s past, especially concerning her long-deceased mother Harriet, will eventually allow her some avenue into maturity in further stories.

Otherwise, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag is a surfeit of pleasures, an old-fashioned puzzler of red herrings, left turns, and sharp twists. It should easily please Bradley’s fans, and newcomers will find themselves happily falling for Flavia’s exploits.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES

Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press (expurgated version), March 13, 2010.

Monkey droppings - And Another Thing... by Eion Colfer: "Get your towel, Arthur. We have to leave."

The monkey uses his mind to fold space in upon itself, and travels the space-time continuum in search of a new entry in a classic series long thought dead. Will it be a new awakening of classic pleasures, as enjoyable as Joe Gores recently revival of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in Spade and Archer? Or will it fester like the innumerable entries in the 'sequel to Pride & Prejudice or anything by Jane Austen' sweepstakes?

Let's find out.

And Another Thing...
by Eoin Colfer

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying "And another thing…" twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.
- Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

I'll just start this little review with an aside: How could I possibly hate a novel that has the following conversation:

A huge anthropoid was seated uncomfortably in the interview room's office chair, its grotesque, scaled torso squirming in the confines of the small seat. tentacles dripped from its chin like fleeing slugs and hard black eyes glittered from the depths of its pulpy face.

Hillman Hunter shuffled the pages of the creature's résumé.

'So, Mr Cthulhu, is it?'

'Hmmm,' said the creature.

'Good,' said Hillman. 'A bit of the ineffable, I like that in a deity.' He winked conspiratorially. 'Still, it wouldn't be much of an in-depth interview if we couldn't get a few facts out of you, eh, Mr Cthulhu?'

Cthulhu shrugged and dreamed of days of wanton genocide.

How could I ever dislike a novel with the temerity to subject the Great Old One Cthulhu to a job interview to ascertain his possible suitability as a deity for a new colony of Earthlings? Hillman had high hopes for a more ethereal interview process, "engaging in philosophical conversations on the nature of happiness, or being wowed by awesome displays of godly power. Instead he had been forced to grind his way through a sludge of padded résumés in which demi-gods tried to make themselves sound a lot more significant than they actually were." As it turns out, Cthulhu is not at all what Hillman has in mind, being only a 'demi-god' and therefore not technically an immortal being. "It's more or less the same thing," Cthulhu protests. "I do all the same things: apparitions, impregnating, you name it. I have cards for the lounges in Asgard and Olympus. Gold cards." But as Hillman insists, "the advertisement did specify grade-A god."

Part of the genius of Douglas Adams was his ability (likely learned from the British masters of comedy Monty Python) to always make even the most fantastic of circumstances appear mundane through a morass of well-meaning bureaucracy. In Adams' worlds, the most awe-inspiring sunset could only be fully appreciated if the correct paperwork had been filed beforehand in triplicate.

Ever since Adams passed away in 2001—and in another aside, what does it say about me that the celebrity deaths that have affected me the most are invariably comedy related? Adams, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., John Candy, John Ritter, Phil Hartman (I will never get over Phil Hartman)—ever since, there has been a dearth of his uniquely weird brand of comedic literature. Yes, Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin are cut from the same cloth, but Adams was an originator. His seminal work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (hereafter referred to as HG2G) is a masterwork of offbeat plotting and witty writing, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is, to my mind, even better.

But even Adams admitted that his later sequels to HG2G were lacking. The first two were of the same calibre, more or less, but the last two (particularly Mostly Harmless) showed us an artist running a little dry. They had their moments, but they can't be considered as worthy of 'classic' status.

So a new sequel to HG2G should be dismissed out of hand as a bad idea. But there is still the idea that one should not tamper with another's work. Let's be honest, no one wants to see the glory of Adams' legacy reduced to something on the scale of the still-ongoing literary tawdriness of V.C. Andrews, whose fairly ridiculous writings have continued for over two decades since her death.

So now, on the thirtieth anniversary of HG2G's initial publication, a new sequel has been released. Unfortunately, it was not written by Rankin, who I still feel was the best man for the job. But Irish writer Eion Colfer (who mainly writes fiction of the child/young adult variety) has pretty much pulled it off, creating a novel that honours Adams' sensibilities, yet doesn't come across as forced. Make no mistake, Colfer's sequel And Another Thing... is not up to Adams' best, but considering how wrong it could have gone, it is a fine accomplishment, and certainly better than Adams' last two sequels.

And Another Thing... takes up the plot immediately at the end point of Mostly Harmless, wherein Arthur Dent, Trillian, their daughter Random Dent, and Ford Prefect are about to be destroyed along with the Earth, or a plural reality version thereof. I'll stop here to note that a knowledge of the previous five books is essential to comprehension of And Another Thing...; I have read a few blogosphere comments complaining about this, but allow me to make the bold statement that no novel of Adams' HG2G trilogy-plus-two makes any sort of sense without full knowledge of the previous entries. If you're not up to that task, best walk away now.

After the quartet (spoiler alert!) survive the attack, they find themselves once again hooking up with Zaphod Beeblebrox (highly improbably, but if you know the series, imminently foreseeable), ex-president of the Galaxy and all-round froody guy, as well as with returning bit player (from Life, the Universe, and Everything) Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. Together, in a plot that manages to weave in the mythical god Thor, a bizarre cult "who firmly believed in divination through the medium of semi-congealed cheese," and feral physical therapists, the group must defeat the Vogons from wiping out the last vestiges of humanity (currently living on a planet designed after the John Wayne movie The Quiet Man).

Quite obviously, Colfer has taken Adams' penchant for throwing everything into the mix to see what sticks to heart. The pages of And Another Thing... are teeming with the absurd asides that were the hallmark of HG2G's style, such as a quick explanation of the belief system of Folfangan slugs, "who judge a number's worth based on the artistic integrity of its shape. Folfangan supermarket receipts are beauteous ribbons, but their economy collapses at least once a week." Admittedly, such tangents can get tiresome, and Colfer arguably uses a few too many funny words and silly noises, but Adams was hardly above a bad pun or two himself.

Not a lot of Colfer's plot makes any sort of linear sense, but the series has always had a great deal of fun playing with notions of time and space anyway. And it's rather wonderful to be with old friends again, especially the terminally unlucky Arthur, pining for his lost love Fenchurch; as Random succinctly puts it, "I'm sure you'll bring doom down on us all presently. It's your destiny to be a cosmic Jonah." I also enjoyed Colfer's attempts to better humanize Trillian, a character Adams never fully explored and who came across initially as flighty and later as just plain unlikeable. Ford gets slighted, but there's more than enough Zaphod to make up for it. I would have liked a return of Marvin the paranoid android (surely there must have been a way), but as his ultimate exit in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was Adams as his most touching, I can live with it (If you must spoil it for yourself, visit the Marvin Wikipedia page). If there's a real fault with Colfer's attempt, it's in his trying to cram too much in; there's too many nods to past novels, too many inside references, too many bloody characters doing too much at once.

But the HG2G series has always had a shaggy dog aspect to it, an unkempt attitude; the novels sometimes behaved like ADD sufferers on a Red Bull binge. Colfer does his best, but And Another Thing... occasionally substitutes speed of delivery for wit, and quite often is plain too goofy even for a Douglas Adams piece.

But I'm okay with that. Colfer has crafted a strong companion piece to Adams' HG2G series that continues the mythos with the same anarchic glee and intelligence. If he must continue it further (and there is always more story out there), I look forward to the ride.

VERDICT: MONKEY THINKS IT'S ALL RATHER FROODY

Monkey Droppings - Darwin's Nighmare by Mike Knowles

Today, we boil away society, leaving only the hardened nubs of humanity behind.

Darwin's Nightmare
by Mike Knowles
ECW Press, 2008

“People die because I live. I’m what Darwin dreamed of at night. Top of the food chain, no remorse.” – Paolo Donati

Writing hard-boiled fiction is hard.

Scratch that. Writing good hard-boiled fiction is hard.

Example:

I saw a woman in a fitted business suit make her way up the stairs. I imagined her at first to be a lawyer or doctor, but her bag was just a bit too shiny to be high-class. I pegged her for a working girl stopping into the clinic. Most of the working girls I knew tried to pinch every penny. No one wanted to work under men forever, and hookers needed condoms like offices needed paper clips.

See? All hard-boiled prose is just a hair’s breadth away from being completely ridiculous. It all comes down to attitude. The author must take the genre absolutely seriously, without a nod or wink of condescension. These are tough guys talking tough talk.

When it works, as in the genre-high works of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, the first Mickey Spillane/Mike Hammer novels, or the early Burke novels by Andrew Vachss, it can be a wonderful thing. When it doesn’t, as in the later Vachss novels when he descended into self-parody, it can be a thing easily derided.

Another example:

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

That’s from the Bulwer-Lytton contest to pen the worst opening sentences from the worst novels never written. As you might expect, hard-boiled prose is a favourite target. It’s way too easy to make the gritty dialogue seem absurd.

The first example, by the way, is an early excerpt from Canadian author Mike Knowles’ debut novel Darwin’s Nightmare, an exercise in the hardest of hard-boiled that comes off wonderfully. Knowles never flinches, never jokes, never shows the slightest hesitation. His tale is one of bad people doing bad things, and damn if it doesn’t work.

Knowles’ anti-hero is Wilson, a hired gun who harbours no pretensions about the life he lives. Wilson is the seedy in ‘seedy underbelly’, the man who gets things done, the man who can utter threats such as “Anything funny and you’ll be dead before you hit the floor. The receptionist will be next, way before she gets from nine to one one on the phone” with absolute conviction.

Wilson’s terrain is Hamilton, Ontario; not the most obvious choice for an exploration of the dark, but Knowles makes it work. Wilson was brought into his line of work by his uncle, a career criminal who (in quite an original teaching method) instructs a young Wilson on how to live the life through a game of Pac-Man:

I watched the take and learned slowly to think ahead of one ghost, then two, then three. After too many hours I began to see the whole table at once. I followed each ghost with my eyes, learning how they moved. Soon I learned how they reacted, and then I survived them. They couldn’t touch me anymore. I made a choice not to let them.

Wilson works primarily for Paolo Donati, doing jobs that require muscle, smarts, and a closed mouth. When Wilson steals a package for Paolo, he thinks it as just another job, but when he finds himself being tailed, Wilson has to pool his resources and work out exactly who’s coming after him, and why.

Wilson’s world is a tangled weave of criminals, people who owe favours, and relationships that can be turned with a flash of extra cash. There are no heroes, only villains. Knowles brings this subterranean world to vivid life, anchored by the possibly sociopathic but definitely intelligent Wilson.

But as violent as Wilson gets (and he gets plenty violent, whoo boy), his associates are indisputably worse:

Tommy Talarese was as scary a human as I had ever met. He was a man who had gotten where he was through nights of blood. He reveled in cruelty as though it were a religion. Tommy had butchered entire families, raped children in front of their fathers, and tortured enough people to fill a cemetery.

As the pages flip by, and bones break, and tendons rupture, and blood spurts, and bullets pierce flesh, the crunchy dialogue and pungent narrative drives Darwin’s Nightmare to new heights of hard-bitten cynicism. Knowles’ Hamilton is one unrelieved by humour or compassion. Wilson is a monster, but he has become one to survive the other, far worse monsters that populate his world. This is kill or be killed, Darwin’s theory put into brutal practice.

Such tales of unrelieved pessimism can easily wear out their welcome, but like the best practitioners of the genre, Knowles keeps his story moving, his action clear, and his character engaging even when he’s been shot and possibly bleeding to death. Darwin’s Nightmare is fantastic, bleak noir of the finest sort. Knowles and Wilson are working together again in Grinder, and if Nightmare is indicative of Knowles talent, it will be a gruesome trip worth taking.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES