Monkey droppings - Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin

The monkey feels bad about things.

The monkey watches a movie about good people helping other people, where everybody hugs at the end after learning heartfelt lessons about something.

The monkey knows he should feel better, but somehow feels even worse. And dirty, like a kitchen rag squeezed dry after wiping up a spill.

Drive-by Saviours (2010)
by Chris Benjamin

If there is one genre of art almost guaranteed to raise hackles (mine, anyway), it's that of 'liberal guilt.'

You know the genre. There's a person who feels guilty, and takes it upon him or herself to somehow 'better' the life of someone less fortunate. When done wrong (and it has been done so, so wrong), it usually takes the form of overly-sentimentalized Hollywood hokum (The Blind Side, Freedom Writers, Dangerous Minds, etc). The kind of movie, book, or television show that ends with the audience so damned pleased with themselves, feeling themselves better for having shed a tear for those plucky immigrants/inner-city students/sick kids. And please don't think ill of me, I promise this is not a conservative screed disguised as a book review; I'm as lefty as all get out, but I call shenanigans on such saccharine drivel.

The genre does have highlights, works that somehow transcend the genre with though, imagination, and a lack of bathos. Friday Night Lights, for example, presents realistic portrayals of all involved without over-varnishing of the travails of everyday life (and I hate football, so for me to watch it, it must be freakin' good). Dead Man Walking was a movie that could have gone wrong in so many ways, but gripped me from beginning to end. Half Nelson found a good balance.

My point? It's a fine line between writing a theme and bashing people over the head with it. And I should know; I mean, have you even read Shelf Monkey? Sledgehammer, baby.

Drive-by Saviours, by newbie author Chris Benjamin, skirts this line time and again. But through skill and subtlety of character, Benjamin for the most part pulls it off.

Drive-by tells in alternating chapters the stories of two men; Bumi, an Indonesian immigrant, and Mark, a Toronto social worker. Bumi's life has been one of hardship; brought up in the island of Rilaka, he is removed from his family to enter a newly-established residential school. Bumi is eager to learn, intelligent to a fault, but he suffers from variety of obsessive compulsive tics that make it difficult for him to concentrate, and earn him a reputation as a fairly strange man:

his incessant purification rituals that crossed the line toward self-abuse; his long morning routine of dressing, undressing, and redressing multiple times until he got it just right . . . His use of elbows and feet instead of hands, which were often protected in plastic bags; his strange and complex series of patterned twitches . . . his harassment of strangers as they passed on foot, writing down their names and purposes or fretting inconsolably if they refused to provide the information.

Through a series of mistakes and assumptions, Bumi is forced to flee for his life, leaving his family and taking up a life as an illegal immigrant in Canada.

Mark, on the other hand, is a fairly well-off Canadian with little in common with Bumi save a less than perfect childhood. His job as a social worker at a community health centre is undemanding, Mark writing up proposals and plans, seeing people less and less; his clients would "give me the Coles Notes version of all their problems and I made suggestions, like a drive-by saviour."

It doesn't take a genius to see that these two men will cross paths, and it's a tribute to Benjamin's talent as a writer that the trek to that point is almost sheer pleasure. Perhaps by necessity, Bumi's tale is far more interesting, and Benjamin pulls off the neat trick of taking a potentially dark tale and never succumbing to despair. Bumi's life is harsh, but the bleakness never overwhelms either Bumi or the reader. Mark's life, likely more familiar to the average North American reader, is more comfortable than Bumi's, but his life too is full of pitfalls and disappointments. Benjamin is working with a universal theme here, the idea that happiness comes from within, and it is how we strive against obstacles that defines us. It's a far more palatable motif than the aforementioned theme of 'let's help those who cannot help themselves and feel better about ourselves as a result.'

And when the two finally meet, not as social worker and client but as two figures on public transport, Benjamin takes great pains to avoid any clear-cut resolutions. Mark understands Bumi's dilemma, and recognizes his OCD, but such a revelation does not lead to triumphant resolution. Bumi appreciates Mark's efforts, but knows that his life in Canada is not the life he wishes.

At times, Drive-by Saviours veers perilously close to polemic, telling rather than showing, especially with regard to Mark's efforts to help Bumi, but Benjamin's novel only uses their relationship as an anchor to tell the stories of two sad and lonely men, each trying to find their place in the world. While it's a common theme, it's only as strong as the storyteller, and Benjamin proves himself a natural.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES A LOT

Monkey Droppings - Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

The Monkey travels to the depraved depths of modern London.

Which is pretty damned depraved, as it turns out.


Ordinary Thunderstorms
by William Boyd (2009)

Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock coined the now-famous term ‘MacGuffin,’ referring to that event that triggers a plot to propel itself forward. For Hitchcock, it was not important whether the audience believed in the MacGuffin or not, what mattered was that the characters believed it.

In Ordinary Thunderstorms, British writer William Boyd takes that concept to heart. The Costa Award-winning author (for his 2006 novel Restless) has created a story apparently revolving around mysterious documents, but they function only as Boyd’s MacGuffin, as his true ambition lies in an incisive exploration into character.

Taking another Hitchcockian cue, Ordinary Thunderstorms begins with a classic narrative set-up, an innocent man on the run. In this instance, Adam Kindred, in London for a job interview, who within the first twenty pages finds himself inadvertently accused of the murder of a drug company scientist.

In his hand as he runs is a paper from the dead man’s files, “a simple list of names and ages…and beside each name…was some form or shorthand that looked like the record of some kind of dose.” What the list represents is unknown and is almost beside the point, as Boyd merely employs the trappings of a thriller to better follow the ensuing lives of several characters while presenting a dissection of the diverse veins of London life.

Boyd is skilled enough to craft characters and scenarios that grab the reader, but the story he wants to tell is oftentimes an ill fit with the structure of a suspense novel. Ordinary Thunderstorms is marketed as a straight-ahead mystery-thriller, but Boyd’s plot, while atmospheric and sometimes engrossing, is too leisurely paced to maintain any narrative thrust.

As a cat-and-mouse chase it lacks a sense of true urgency, and as an exploration into the evils of corporations, it falls far short of the penetrating insight of John le Carre’s The Constant Gardener. But Boyd is far more interested in people than plot, and what his tale lacks in tension it makes up for with insight into personalities.

For Boyd, people are only as powerful as someone else allows them to be. Jonjo Case, a mercenary who lets Adam slip through his fingers, is eager to right himself in the eyes of his mysterious superiors. Ingram Fryzer, president of the drug company Calenture-Deutz, wields enormous authority yet cannot control the machinations of a silent partner who is rushing an asthma medication to market.

Ironically, the person with the most power is Adam, surprisingly resourceful, forced to begin again by going underground in a city reputed to shelter over 600 missing persons a week. “Only London was big and heartless enough to contain these lost multitudes, the vanished population of the United Kingdom – only London could swallow them up without a qualm, without demur.”

There is a decent thriller in Ordinary Thunderstorms, but those looking for a breakneck murder mystery should seek simpler climes. Boyd may appear distracted by the tenets of the genre, resulting in sub-plots left dangling, but the end result, far from ordinary, is intriguing and often startling in its subtlety.

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

The Best Books of 2009. Well, the books I read, anyways.

Whoa, did another year really go by? Or was that just gas? I do feel a little urpy...probably just the overabundance of gravy coating my arteries. I'll be fine.

As 2009 limps its way to a disappointing close, let's take a look back and ponder over what I've read in the past 365-ish days. These are the novels that stand out to me, regardless of their year of publication.

And they're in no order save alphabetical. It's too hard to choose a winner.



The Abortion: A Historical Romance, by Richard Brautigan (1970) - A winningly sweet little yarn of a weird library, a spontaneous romance, and a trip down south. Brautigan was unknown to me before this, but I'm going to try and read one of his novels every year to make up for it.

Amphibian, by Carla Gunn (2009) - The perils of environmental devastation, as seen from the POV of a nine-year-old boy. Phineas Walsh is a definitely memorable narrator.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke (2007) - A marvellous comedy following one man's journey from expert in packaging to infamous arsonist. Clarke has a fantastically literate wit.

Finch, by Jeff Vandermeer (2009) - Hard-boiled mushroom noir. A descent into moist madness as a detective tries to solve a murder while an intelligent fungus controls the city. Atmosphere to spare.

God Says No, by James Hannaham (2009) - A clever, humane, and surprisingly even-handed look at the intersection of religious fundamentalism and homosexuality. Gary Grey's inner turmoil as he battles his natural tendencies is funny, sad, and sometimes devastatingly human.

The Living Dead, by John Joseph Adams (2008) - Zombies run amok in a spectacular collection of tales that alternate between the gruesome, the funny, the subtle, and the flat-out terrifying.

Love in Infant Monkeys, by Lydia Millett (2009) - A collection of tales involving the interactions between animal and people that could have gone saccharine in lesser hands. Millet's capacity for satire is matched only by her infinite humanity. These tales, particularly the title story, haunted me for days afterward.

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman (2009) - A terrific foray into imagination, the best adult urban fantasy since Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Mixing Harry Potter, Narnia, and who knows what else, Grossman has come up with a witty ode to coming-of-age stories that is as memorable as it is enthralling.

ManBug, by George K. Ilsley (2006) - Alongside The Abortion, my favourite romance of the year. A touching, wondrously perfect little story between an entomologist with Asperger’s Syndrome and a Buddhist bisexual dyslexic. Ilsley captures magic.

The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry (2009) - A detective story by way of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Alongside Finch (above), the year's most atmospheric and intricately strange mystery.

Ribofunk, by Paul Di Filippo (1996) - An exercise in bio-sci-fi. Di Fillipo's collection takes the idea of genetic alterations to the limit, in a superb set of stories by a master of biopunk.

Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde (2009) - A bizarre, thoroughly offbeat look at a possible (but not likely) future, as denizens of future Earth are classified into castes based on their optical perceptions of colours. Think Aldous Huxley by way of Douglas Adams.

Shambling Towards Hiroshima, by James Morrow (2009) - A lovely satirical ode to the b-movie renaissance of Hollywood, the perils of nuclear arms, and the mania of military paranoia.

The Wall of America, by Thomas M. Disch (2008) - Another fantastic collection of thought-provoking stores. A final gasp of brilliance from a pre-eminent yet often ignored master of science fiction.

The White Mountains, by John Christopher - A re-visit to a novel of my youth. A future imagined where humanity has devolved to a feudal system, and mechanical tripods roam the lands and rule from above. Weird, beautifully intelligent YA sci-fi/fantasy.

Runners-up: Those novels are well worth your consideration, and I can't bear to leave the year without mentioning them.

Amberville, by Tim Davys (2009)

The Breast, by Philip Roth (1973)
Darwin's Nightmare, by Mike Knowles (2008)
Fear the Worst, by Linwood Barclay (2009)
Hater, by David Moody (2006)
The Hunchback Assignments, by Arthur Slade (2009)
Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving (2009)
Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow
Marvellous Hairy, by Mark A. Rayner (2009)
The Reality Machine, by Cliff Burns (1997)
Steampunk, by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer (eds.) (2008)
The Stress of Her Regard, by Tim Powers (1989)
The Tel Aviv Dossier, by Lavie Tidhar & Nir Yanic (2009)

The Voice of the Butterfly, by John Nichols (2001)
Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld (2005)
The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood (2009)

Some disappointments (novels I expected to love, but was left wanting):

Generation A, by Douglas Coupland (2009) - After the world bee population dies off, five people are thrust into the celebrity spotlight when they are stung. A satire primed for excellence, yet it loses its teeth well before the end.

Pygmy, by Chuck Palahniuk (2009) - A terrorist infiltrates a typical American family, with should-have-been-memorable consequences. Easily the weakest novel Palahniuk has produced.

The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan (2009) - From an award-winning director of some of the most fantastic visions of the past ten years, this first novel in a planned trilogy outlining the vampire apocalypse is fun yet too mundane to have much bite.

And now, because you knew it was coming:

The Minnow Trap Award for Worst Novel Read in the Year 2009 is:

The Justice Riders, by Chuck Norris and three (!) others (2006) - A novel so horrible, it took four people to tame it! A mishmash of historical western, b-movie d-level dialogue, ridiculous high kicks, and grotesque religious overtones. Justice Riders, consider yourselves Minnow Trapped!

Monkey Droppings - The Reality Machine by Cliff Burns

Just a quickie review today, as short and devastating as the book itself.

One hopes.

The Reality Machine
by Cliff Burns
Black Dog Press, 1997

The reality was far more ugly and ominous.
Isn't that the way it always is?

Some authors write to mirror reality. Others, not content to be restrained by the limitations set down by an arbitrarily perceived list of natural rules, try to warp reality to suit their own needs.

Cliff Burns is definitely among the latter. The Canadian author's 1997 collection The Reality Machine should stand as proof. It is twisted. Seriously twisted. Gloriously unhinged. Irredeemably odd. And one whackadoo amount of fun. These are stories that add layers to reality, both atop and underneath, revealing new worlds while at the same time reflecting back our own existence. I'm not sure if that makes any sort of literal sense, but its difficult to encapsulate the overall effect Burns' stories have on the unsuspecting reader. And when you come across a paragraph such as this -

The waitress dragged her feet and her thighs had worn holes in her nylons. Cancer had eaten her ovaries and one day would be back for seconds. And she wouldn't mind one bit.

- it's clear that the author is not content to let the reader wile the hours away with some mindless entertainment.

Each short story brings forth a skewed perspective of our world, subverting what appear to be, on the surface, simple tales of relationships, work, love, and the like. "Also Starring" posits a brief but intense crime spree by criminals who look an awful lot like Hollywood's best-loved character actors. "The Woman Who Gave Good Phone" is a witty ode to random cruelty. "The Goblins" posits terrors far worse than the monsters under the bed. "Dialogue (For Two or More Voices)" examines the destruction of a relationship through the inevitable lassitude and ennui that infects all couples. "In Dreams, Awake" presents the end of the world, if you can stay awake for it.

Burns writing is sparse, minimalist, but his words are as sharp as knives, dissecting our universe with astonsishing precision. The Reality Machine, as sharp and memorable as a paper cut, is a real find. These stories have teeth, and they bite. You will not leave unmarked.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES A LOT

EXTRA: If your interested, Burns has two of his novels, So Dark the Night and Of the Night, available online for free, so how could you lose?

Monkey droppings - Finch by Jeff Vandermeer: "I am not a detective. I am not a detective."

The monkey treks through a strange land where mushrooms hold sway over people and the spirit of Dashiell Hammett infects the most jaded of men.

Call it 'mushroom noir'.

Or maybe 'fungalpunk'?

'Spore gore'?

How about 'hard-boiled truffles'?

Finch
by Jeff Vandemeer
Underland Press

Another part of him looked down from a great height, puzzled. When did being a detective mean this? He was investigating a double murder. He was working for an occupying force that could make Stark disappear in a burst of dandelion-like spores. And he didn't have his shoes. He didn't have his socks. He didn't have his gun.

I don't know how it got its talons into me, but if there is one type of fiction that always gets my motor revving, it's the sci-fi/supernatural/fantasy novel mixed lovingly with healthy dollops of the tropes of detective/cop/noir mysteries. Did that sentence make sense? Probably not, but neither does my love for the mashup genre. Give me a Raymond Chandler mixed with Star Wars, and you've won my heart.

There are no words to describe my absolute enchantment with novels such as Falling Angel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Gun, with Occasional Music, Bone Song, and Asimov's Lije Baley series. I can easily sit through repeat viewings of Angel Heart, Blade Runner, Constantine, and Lord of Illusions, again and again falling easy prey to their pulpy charms. Clive Barker's noir PI Harry D'Amour is one of all alltime favourites, and the rumours that Barker is set to comingle D'Amour and the helltastic Cenobites in his long-delayed Scarlet Gospels have made me giddy for years now.

I just want you to understand my mindset when I'm confronted with such scenarios. And so you can understand that the concept of setting a gritty detective noir within the moist, claustrophobic confines of Jeff Vandermeer's world of Ambergris made me tingle in all sorts of indescribable but PG-rated ways. And the end result, Finch, is just what I wanted.

Ambergris, as set out in the award-winning author's multi-layered novel City of Saints and Madmen and his follow-up Shriek (unread by me, but hopefully not for long), is a city with a long and uneven relationship with a bizarre species known as gray caps. The best way to describe them would be 'sentient fungus.' The titular character John Finch describes the gray caps as "rows and rows of needle lines set into a face a little like a squished-in shark's snout. Finch couldn't tell if the lines were gills or teeth, but they seemed to flutter and breathe a little. Wyte said he'd seen tiny creatures in there, once." They are, by all accounts, desperately unpleasant creatures to be around, with "a touch like wet, dead leaves sewn together and stuffed with meat." They have also, by the time of Finch, completely taken over the city.

Before I get into the actual plot structure, I want to heartily congratulate Vandermeer on crafting one of the most unpleasantly atmospheric (in a good way) novels I've had the pleasure to read. Ambergris, as befits its fungal overlords, is a city of mould and mildew, of creeping tendrils and sweaty walls.

Inside, the lobby is dank and dim and molding. And old crooked photograph on the wall captures a few signs of the hotel's lost luxury in a scene from some long-ago party. A strain of pale green lichen has infiltrated the faded burgundy of the carpet. Gives the floor a spongy feel and sheds a disconcerting, ghostly glow that leads Finch through the entrance after dark.

Not since Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, with its oppressive depiction of a world overrun by decay and kipple, have I felt the walls of a fictional world close about and suffocate me so effectively. It's perverse, but Ambergris is a a beautifully ugly city, and Vandermeer is a loving tour guide who does not shy away from the seedy back alleyways.

Stuck in this nightmarish world, the human citizens do their best to survive the new occupation. Some survive by becoming Partials, human/gray cap hybrids who "got an adrenaline rush from heightened powers of sight. Enhanced by fungal drugs autogenerated inside the eye."

Alternatively, humans work in coordination with the gray caps to keep order. One of these men is John Finch, a detective charged with keeping a modicum of order in a crumbling society. At the start of the tale, Finch is called in to examine the bodies of two beings, one human, one not, both discovered in strange positions in an old apartment. The rare appearance of a murdered gray cap is enough to clue in Finch (despite his personal mantra of "I am not a detective") that something beyond even the usual unusualness is going on:

Gray caps bled. Finch knew that. Not like a stream or a gout, even when you cut them deep, but a steady drip from a leaky faucet. Puncture wounds healed almost immediately. It took a long time and a lot of patience to kill a gray cap.

As the investigation proceeds, Finch and his partner Wyte (a man slowly disintegrating under an infection by spores) uncover a labyrinth conspiracy involving the plans of the gray caps and a planned rebel uprising. And throughout it all, Finch struggles with his place in Ambergris' history, both before the occupation and, hopefully, after.

Despite its fantastical trappings, Finch is hard-boiled noir through to its infected heart. Finch is the prototypical loner cop, hiding from his past and simply trying to survive (think Bogart's Rick Blaine mixed with his Marlowe). There are code words, and femme fatales, and dastardly criminals, and red herrings, and goons, and betrayals. There are also numerous blows to the head; John Finch may hold the record for most times knocked unconscious within seventy-two hours.

Finch may also be viewed as a subtle commentary on the dehumanizing nature of occupying forces in a foreign land; there are some distinct parallels to be made between Ambergris and the current situations in Iraq or Afghanistan, although Vandermeer is wise to keep such comparisons simmering beneath the surface. Finch is first and foremost a mystery thriller, set in an unearthly city so well-described it might as well be the next town over. Like the best detective stories, Finch does not offer easy explanations, and much that occurs is completely beyond the detective's realm of control. John Finch is both observer and participant, and if the ultimate ending is slightly confusing, it's only because all the pieces have not been made visible to him. But Vandermeer does not cheat; there are distinct codes and modes of thinking within Ambergris, and he is rigid in his understanding of its history and culture. Finch follows a obscure internal logic that may take more than one reading to fully comprehend. It does offer a note of hope by the end (although only of the bleakest sort), and it is gratifying to think that there may be more to come.

Make no mistake, Finch is not a mystery for everyone; it is dark, spooky ride with a gruesome, gory centre. And while a passing acquaintance with Vandermeer's previous excursions onto the streets of Ambergris is not essential, it does help. But for those with a love of the strange and the challenging (or if you simply want to visit a world of trenchcoats and tough, tough guys), Ambergris should be your next visit. Like the great detective novels of old, it demands repeat readings.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES

NOTE: And how wonderful it is that in the same year I come across two decidedly unique takes on the detective novel, Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection being the other.

EXTRA NOTE: For some Finch-related goodies (including the images scattered about this review), check out Finch's reader kit.

Monkey droppings - Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving: "Danny knew how stories were marvels."

Today, the monkey travels to the past, to an author long loved yet somehow misplaced as the years roll by.

Oh, cruel march of time! Why must you trudge so relentlessly onward? Damn you, sir!




Last Night in Twisted River
by John Irving

As for the river, it just kept moving, as rivers do - as rivers do. Under the logs, the body of the young Canadian moved with the river, which jostled him to and fro - to and fro. If, at this moment in time, Twisted River also appeared restless, even impatient, maybe the river itself wanted the boy's body to move on, too - move on, too.

John Irving has a lifetime pass with me, for the following reason:

In 1982, the movie version of Irving's The World According to Garp was released. I was a lad of twelve, and far too young and impressionable to be allowed to watch such an R-rated film. However, I was a huge Robin Williams/Mork and Mindy fan - still am, really; why, Robin? Why Old Dogs? WHY? - and would find another way to avail myself of what was sure to be a laugh riot. So, as there is no restriction on what books a boy of twelve may purchase, I snapped up a copy of Irving's novel from the local Woolworth's and sat down to read.

Many, many days later, my perception of reality had been permanently skewed, a result of an influx of deeply adult themes and settings that my then-tender grey matter was ill-prepared to accept. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying, not what I expected. But it was awesome. A novel richer and more dynamic than anything I had ever come across. Since then, I have reread Garp's story numerous times, and as in the case of all great stories, always discover something new, another nuance that only age reveals to me. And then I discovered The Hotel New Hampshire, and then The Cider House Rules. I've read them all at least four times each, and Irving has carved a permanent place in my heart.

But I did not care for A Prayer for Owen Meaney. Despite protestations from acquaintances that it remains his best work, I found it unexpectedly forced, artificial, and surprisingly annoying (although it remains astronomically better than the movie adaptation, which will surely go down in history as one of mankind's most awful crimes). And after that, I simply fell away from Irving's oeuvre. I gave a half-hearted stab at The Fourth Hand, but wasn't in the mood at the time. And the movie version of Cider House was, like almost everything Lasse Hallström directs, vastly overpraised; it really should have become an HBO miniseries.

But there were rumblings that Last Night in Twisted River was a return to form, so, hesitatingly, I cracked open his latest novel, and began to read a corker of an opening sentence; "The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long." And what I found as I continued on through the pages was almost a primer (intentionally so) for everything I loved about Irving's earlier novels - it has (among other Irving obsessions) bears, farting dogs, unlikely coincidences, sex, sudden violence, accidental deaths, and gloriously rich characters.

But it was also uneven, occasionally sloppy, and sometimes unbearably twee (see the opening quotation of this review). But it is a John Irving novel through and through, and in the end, that is quite a good thing indeed.

Last Night follows the father/son duo of Dominic and Daniel Baciagalupo. Dominic is a cook at the Twisted River Logging camp, creating food fit for kings for loggers too hungry to appreciate his craft. Dominic's wife passed away years earlier in an accident on the frozen river, and ever since, "Dominic had the look of a man long resigned to his fate. He was so unflinchingly calm that he radiated a kind of acceptance that could easily be mistaken for pessimism." Or, "Neither a storyteller nor a dynamite man, Danny Baciagalupo thought of his father." But Dominic lives for his son, and when a strange event occurs - an accident so unlikely you marvel at how effortlessly Irving pulls it off - Dominic and Daniel are forced to flee the camp, changing their identities as the hop from city to city, only keeping in contact with their former life through Ketchum, a hard-talking logger who functions as the novel's Greek chorus, always telling the Baciagalupo's how to stay alive, always commenting on their actions.

As the Baciagalupo's traverse a portion of the United States (and, later, Canada), Daniel's natural talent begins to flourish. The novel transforms from a chase scenario into an examination of what it means to be a writer. Irving clearly has a lot of fun with the details, as much of what happens to Danny runs parallel to Irving's own experiences:

"All writers are outsiders," Danny Angel once said. "I moved to Toronto because I like being an outsider." But no one believed him. Besides, it was a better story that the world-famous author had rejected the United States.

Like Daniel, Irving has made a home in Toronto (although to my knowledge he has not become a citizen). Like Daniel, Irving is a successful novelist whose work is constantly scrutinized for hints of his own existence. While all authors use pieces of themselves in their writing, here Irving deliberately plays with the notion, crafting a character who serves as both a focal point for the narrative and as a meta-character for Irving, drawing attention to Irving's own life while subverting it to suit the novel.

It's clever, and each of Last Night's individual pieces work well, often superlatively. Irving's recreations of the logging camps of the 1940s, and later of the various kitchens Dominic works in, are superlative, giving the book a welcome flavour of authenticity. His characters (always his greatest strength) are believable and robust, particularly Dominic and Ketchum. Ketchum is a terrific creation, one of Irving's best, an over-the-top mountain man with hidden reservoirs of wisdom. In lesser hands, Ketchum would be a completely unbelievable construct, but Irving lodges a human centre within Ketchum's ferociousness; in many ways, he is similar to Saul Bellow's brilliant comic creation Henderson, brash and impulsive yet undeniably charismatic and wondrously complex.

But Daniel only becomes the focal point at the midway point or thereabouts, and his transformation from confused child to talented author is sudden and unconvincing. Irving fills in a lot of Daniel's backstory as he goes, but Daniel never fully congeals into a recognizable character of his own. Irving's fun with meta distances the audience from Daniel, and as a result Daniel skirts the edges of full characterization without ever truly connecting. Comparing Daniel to Garp (another Irving writer/protagonist) only serves to show the cracks in Daniel's seams. Garp's functioned as his own character, and his life seemed more real; Daniel's existence is shown through a prism of authorial cleverness, and can't function on his own. He lacks a recognizable character arc of his own. His story is stuck on the path of the novel, rather than the novel allowing Daniel to find his own way.

And as much as the individual pieces work, when jumbled together they show the novel to be a quite misshapen beast. Some have said that the Baciagalupo's lives correlate with the violence and political landscape of the United States. That may very well be, but the sudden introduction of commentary on current events is jarring, and does not mesh with the story. The narrative drive that propelled his best works is in a lower gear here, resulting in swatches of story that threaten to stall altogether.

And yet, the overall story is still vastly affecting in that manner only a few gifted storytellers can attain. Irving's novel may be rough, but it still touches, and while he may not hit the heights of his trio of powerhouse novels, be shows that he is not bereft of stories to tell. Last Night in Twisted River may be lesser Irving, but lesser Irving is still, at the root of it, a damned entertaining thing.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES

Monkey droppings - God Says No by James Hannaham: "I told her what she wanted to hear in the words everybody used like shorthand."

Today, the monkey discovers that all people have faults, there are no easy answers, we're all uniquely human, etcetera, etcetera.

Whole lotta sorts on this planet. Make a'da world go round.

God Says No
by James Hannaham

Even after all the guy stuff, I still believed that homosexuals were evil people who wished eternal hellfire by defying God's law, as stated in Leviticus. Homosexuality was punishable by death. Take a step toward it and Christ, the Bible, and your family would condemn you. If one of the sex viruses didn't kill you, loneliness would.

In the early months of 2006, Ted Haggard was an evangelist on the rise. His congregation neared 14,000 in number, and he was promoted as one of the great charismatic leaders on the American Christian landscape. He also espoused many of the fundamental tenets of the far right wing, condemning homosexuality and gay marriage.

Then, in November of that year, Haggard was removed from his post as details on his visits to a male prostitute came to light. Other leaders were quick to deny that Haggard had ever been a real leader with any power, and he was quickly shuffled off for heterosexual counseling, and was pronounced 'cured' of homosexuality some weeks later.

At the time, I won't deny an overwhelming rush of shameful joy, watching a man who preached love while practicing hate brought down by the very 'sins' he vociferously declaimed against. But a small part of me was sad for Haggard; he was a man brought up to loathe those things in himself that others found repugnant, and was filled with self-hatred that expressed itself in the condemnation of others for his own perceived faults. If had grown up with a family, in a culture, that allowed him the freedom and understanding to find his own way, who knows how things would have turned out?

I bring up this example as way of introduction to James Hannaham's often remarkable debut novel God Says No. Covering many of the same themes as Haggard's life, Hannaham provides a sometimes hilarious, always insightful, and surprisingly even-handed look at a man struggling with his innate desires.

Gary Gray is a young black Christian man with a new wife, a good job, and a deep abiding evangelical belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ. He is also a homosexual, and has known that he has no attraction to women from a very early age. Being brought up in an evangelical household with a father who occasionally beats him, Gary seeks refuge in the Bible, hoping that 'getting saved' and becoming a devout Christian will somehow erase his yearnings from his soul.

The way our classmates talked about it, getting saved came naturally, like a sneeze. Jesus would illuminate your soul and touch your heart until it blew like a volcano into ecstasy and new life. Color and peace flood your world...Salvation was like trying to think of a name you couldn't remember. It would come faster if you didn't force it. Maybe getting saved and liking women happened in the same way. Maybe if I let go and let God in, He'd mend everything.

Unfortunately (from his point of view), leading a deeply Christian life, getting married and having a child does not quell his desires, although he struggles mightily to keep that side of him hidden from public view. He rationalizes his warring natures through a combination of self-loathing, religious teachings, and specious reasoning: "I wasn't a homosexual, I just had same-sex attractions, and I did guy stuff sometimes, but I could sort of perform with my wife sometimes now, so that was that." But soon, Gary finds that denial is not an option, and he decides to travel a new path for awhile to try and rid his tendencies from his body once and for all.

What is most surprising about Hannaham's tale is how superbly he handles all sides of the issue. Gary is absolutely sincere in his desire to change that which can never be, although it is obvious that he's happiest and most 'himself' when he accepts his nature. When he enters a program to 'remove' his homosexuality, a lesser writer would likely use the opportunity to condemn such actions as ludicrous and hateful. But Gary and his teachers are fundamentally good people, led by firm beliefs that what they do is right. This is not an attack on Christianity, but a dissection of people who take the Bible very seriously at the expense of their own unique individualities. There are no cheap shots, no laughs at the expense of bigotry. Hannaham's tale slowly expands itself into an exploration of how we all lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better, and how we all alter our behaviour to suit the beliefs of others. Gary and his fellow students at the ministry are devout in their belief that they can change an innate portion of their being to satisfy others, even though the entire notion is inherently laughable. The rest of their lives will be spent in hollow denial of themselves, if the treatment actually worked: "Dr. Soffione's treatment didn't offer a 100 percent cure. From the way Bill and Gay spoke about it, nobody could. Did Christ really want that for us? Would we have to spend the rest of our lives counting the seconds to make sure our hugs didn't go into overtime?"

Gary is, as befits the dual nature of his personality, quite a complicated individual, and not the most likable of protagonists. His actions are alternately noble, misguided, selfish, pious, and deluded, and it is sometimes difficult to sympathize with his dilemma. But who ever said a protagonist had to be likable? Hannaham pulls off a far more impressive feat; he makes Gary imminently relatable. We may not agree with his decisions, but we see in him all the contradictions we find in ourselves. Hannaham may give other characters short shrift (Gary's wife Annie exists more as an object to test Gary's resolve than a full character), but it's not their story anyway. It's Gary's life, in all its laughter and tragedy. He's a universal character, comic, fallible, and deeply human.

In the end, Gary's tale does not resolve itself, except in the sense that life continues no matter what choices we make. But the finale of God Says No is hopeful, sentimental yet never cloying. Gary may not have found himself by the end, but he may have found a way to live with himself.

VERDICT: MONKEY REALLY, REALLY LIKES

Love in Infant Monkeys - review in Quill and Quire

My review of Love in Infant Monkeys, Lydia Millet's absolutely fantastic collection of short stories (from Soft Skull Press), has been posted on the Quill and Quire website:

Stories involving animals can often be a mixed blessing. At their worst, like the manipulative treacle of Marley & Me, such tales use animals as a contrivance through which human characters may better themselves. A quick glance at Love in Infant Monkeys, a story collection that revolves around the tabloid fodder of celebrities and their pets, might suggest that Lydia Millet is following that same path...Millet, however, is a shrewd storyteller, and the stories in this collection are penetrating narratives that lay bare the complexities of life in all its folly and glory. Millet is unconcerned with easy homilies, instead crafting subtle studies of the existential crises humankind faces. That the stories are often very funny only adds to their effectiveness.

Read the rest of the review here, and check out a sample of the collection here.

And buy the book. Seriously. I'm not a huge short story lover, but some of Millet's tales have stuck with me for weeks now. Monkey LOVES this book.

Monkey droppings - Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow - "We can thank our lucky stars that Hitler never got the lizard."

Today, the monkey braves horrors that would terrify you, if you were a gullible teen in 1940s America. As it stands today, you'd probably giggle instead.

Still, great book ahead.

Shambling Towards Hiroshima
by James Morrow

There exists in my house a monolithic list of authors I admire intensely. I'd show it to you, but it's far too heavy to move, and is in danger of growing its own gravitational pull. It's currently functioning as a temporary retaining wall in my basement. It's a big list, I guess would be the main bullet point to take away from this topic.

But authors I will follow to the ends of the Earth and beyond if they asked me to? The list quickly gets whittled down to a select few. These are authors who've earned my respect and admiration to such a degree that they could publish the phone book under their name and I'd read it. Hell, I'd read it twice. Jonathan Lethem is probably the leader of the pack. Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, Clive Barker. William Kotzwinkle. Eric McCormack. John Irving. I'm sure there are more, but you get my drift. Jim Dodge, where are you? Please write again.

James Morrow is another. His Godhead Trilogy is arguably (and I'll argue it to the pain, my friends, the pain) the greatest religious satire of the last century, followed close behind by his own Only Begotten Daughter. His work evokes the best of Vonnegut and Swift. Morrow is an author par excellence, a satirist of the highest quality, a provocative writer of limitless compassion for the foibles of humanity. And a damned funny novelist. If you don't laugh as his befuddled characters trek around, over, and through the two-mile-long floating corpse of God in Towing Jehovah, well, you just don't get humour. Or you're easily offended.

But Shambling Towards Hiroshima, like its subject matter, is a weird beast. It's a light, airy piece of work, a lark. Morrow appears to be having a ball with this quick little read, loosing all his talents over a frolic of a novel. Consequently, Shambling may not be his best, most focused work of caustic wit, but it is supremely entertaining.

Remember Godzilla? Silly question. We all know of the great fire-breathing lizard, even if we haven't seen his films. So great and powerful is the hold the mythic pop-culture monster has over our collective conscious that everyone everywhere knows of his exploits. Not bad for a man clad in a rubbery, unwieldy costume who lays waste to some of the least-convincing cities ever put to film.

Well, Godzilla had nothing on Gorgantis, the fire-breathing lizard whom the world fell in love with, at least as Syms Thorley tells it. According to Thorley, writing his memoirs over the course of one long night , Gorgantis was not originally a monster born of Japanese fears of nuclear argmageddon in films such as Gorgantis vs. Octopocalypse. No, Gorgantis was the brainchild of the U.S. Army during the final days of World War II, an attempt to terrify the Japanese high command into surrendering. And it was Thorley, b-movie actor and star of such 1940s monster epics as Curse of Kha-Ton-Ra and Corpuscula Meets the Dopplegänger (not since Paul Auster's Book of Illusions have I longed so desperately for fictional films to actually exist), who was picked to star as the titular monster because, as head mad scientist Dr. Ivan Groelish says, "His lumbering is second to none." And given that Thorley is most famous for portraying Corpuscula, a monster with a "third eye embedded in his cheek and [a] herniated brain emerging from his fractured skull," he would seem ideal for the role. And it's not like Thorley would turn down good work: as he puts it, condensing an actor's entire existence into one short sentence, "You learn your craft, you play your mummies, you collect your trophy, and then you die."

This being the U.S. Army, of course, frightening the enemy is not nearly enough; there has to be something to back up the macho posturing. Through Dr. Groelish's tireless efforts, three leviathan fire-breathing lizards do in fact exist, kept sedated in a large lake and going by the names Blondie, Dagwood, and Mr. Dithers. These aren't cartoonish monsters, however, but truly horrific freaks of genetic alteration:

The creatures suggested quarter-mile-high tyrannosaurs, but modified for a marine environment - pulsing gill slits, translucent swim fins, webbing between their talons like the vanes of a Spanish fan - and retrofitted with fighting tusks, barbed horns, feelers as long as tentacles, and dorsal plates the size and proportion of fir trees.

Thorley is to portray Gorgantis destroying a scale model of a Japanese city to demonstrate the unstoppability of the real monsters should they be unleashed upon Japan. Much of the novel's humour comes from Thorley's personal testing of the constume with his girlfriend Darlene, both for practical and impractical purposes, which leads to a scene of sexual bravado that can only be described as...well, I don't know how to describe it well enough to do it justice. Let it be known, however, that the original Gorgantis suit was put through its paces both inside and out.

Morrow's novel is at once a cautionary tale of military paranoia and a superbly enjoyable recreation of the b-movie renaissance of the '40s and '50s. Thorley's memoir is peppered with loving tributes to the days when movies were made in two weeks, descibing himself and his fellow b-movie breathern as "a bunch of hard-drinking alpha males who spent their days pretending to perform blasphemous medical experiments and their nights fantasizing that they were going to give up alcohol tomorrow."

It was also a time when true craftsmen toiled in the trenches of pulp cinema to pursue their art. Cinema geeks (such as myself) will get a kick as luminaries such as esteemed director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein) and special effects maestro Willis O'Brien (King Kong) make appearances. O'Brien is hired to create the effects for Gorgantis' carnage, and Whale is pegged to direct the opus for maximum terrifying effect. Whale proves himself somewhat more artistic than the army had hoped: "This is not a cerebral part," Whale instructs Thorley on the nature of his role. "You are a monster from the id. You are Death with haunches, la Grande Faucheuse with scales."

Beyond the loving recreation of Hollywood's monster era, Shambling Towards Hiroshima makes some trenchant points on military madness, the utter uselessness of war, and the way horror movies desensitize the populace to the true, unimaginable horrors that exist just out their windows. Such movies are fine for entertainment's sake, but they can serve to distract us from the importance of our own reality, as Thorley discovers in his later years, preaching on the perils of nuclear holocaust to Gorgantis fans far more interested in his recollections of wearing the suit.

As I said, Morrow is being immensely loose and playful with his story, which may explain the novel's relative slightness. But how I can I really complain, when the result is so much damned fun? Shambling Towards Hiroshima is the most sheerly entertaining novel I've read in quite a while.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES

Arthur Slade's the Hunchback Assignments

Once in a great while I do a few reviews for the venerable Canadian publishing magazine Quill and Quire. They have just posted my review of Arthur Slade's terrific new steampunk novel for young people, The Hunchback Assignments.

Slade’s London is an engrossing mélange of the historically precise and the ridiculously imaginative. Working within the genre of steampunk, a mode of speculative fiction that posits a world of technological invention within the trappings of the Victorian Era, Slade crafts a world in which the sad reality of children “[sifting] through the mud at low tide for coal, bits of rope, anything to sell for a penny” exists alongside fantastic armoured men powered by gyroscopes made of “steel bones, the steam pumping out of holes in narrow iron plates.”

Read the entire review here.

Monkey droppings - Hater by David Moody

Today: A return to the wonderful scares of old, in a new novel equal parts Stephen King, George Romero, and Richard Matheson.





Hater
by David Moody

"If I find I cannot terrify the reader, I will try to horrify, and if I can't horrify, I'll go for the gross-out.” – Stephen King, Danse Macabre

Terror is arguably the hardest emotion to evoke from the page. As the maestro of modern horro says above, horror is easier to instill in a reader than terror, and gore easier than horror. Horror makes you think, “Wow, there’s an image I’ll never forget.” Terror makes you afraid to dangle your feet over the edge of the bed at night while you sleep, lest the shoggoths who inhabit the nether realm under your lower mattress get hungry. Horror makes you wince. Terror makes you wet yourself rather than go into the cellar without a flashlight. Horror is visceral and immediate. Terror infects your soul.

As such, true terror in printed fiction is relatively rare, an occurrence that only gets rarer as one ages and becomes hardened and cynical. There’s a reason they’re classified as ‘horror’ novels rather than ‘terror’ novels, after all. But a few tales out there still instill dread in my soul. Clive Barker’s The Damnation Game got to me early, and still makes me question how important my soul is to me. King’s masterpiece ‘Salem’s Lot, with its destruction of a small town by vampires, always gets me, and I find myself hesitant to leave the safety of the bed at night. Richard Matheson’s I am Legend left me chilled and spooked for days.

But as I grow increasingly older, I find such visceral responses become scarcer, the maturation of my medulla resulting in a soggy dampening of my reactions. Most recently, I anxiously anticipated the delicious terrors of Guillermo del Toro’s vampire epic The Strain, only to be rewarded with an enjoyable mix of gore and some effective scenes that, while definitely horrific, did not last much beyond the page. Only a few times of late have objects of the artistic bent triggered my dread receptors, and usually only in cinematic form. The sputtering panic that effortlessly ramps into an inferno in The Blair Witch Project. That lovely scene in the diner in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (or, for that matter, that slow camera pan down a dark hallway in Lost Highway or the lingering framing of a painting in Fire Walk With Me, cinematic shots so laden with dread that they somehow bleed fear). The finale to Frank Darabont’s The Mist, and tough for all you naysayers, that ending blew me away. And almost the entirety of a re-watching of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the low-budget zombie horror opus of the 1060s that, despite poor acting and weak camerawork, evokes a sense of dread better than almost any film out there. The hopelessness, the paranoia, the insanity; NOTLD is nothing less than pure cinematic dread.

So consider me delighted, tickled pink in fact, when I discovered that David Moody’s novel Hater made me clutch my pillow as I slept oh so much tighter than usual. It has been a great bloody while since I felt the creeping tendrils of dread envelope me as I read, and Hater brings forth the forgotten emotion in great heaping shovelfuls.

The premise is simplicity itself; average citizens are suddenly embarking on murderous rampages, physically attacking and (gruesomely) killing people who moments previous were friends, co-workers, lovers, spouses. There’s no reason for the attacks (none provided, anyway), but as more and more people display symptoms – become ‘haters’, in other words – the world quickly begins to wind itself down. People stay inside lest they be attacked, or worse, ‘infected’. Paranoia quickly becomes the norm for society, freaked out over a villain with no face, no cause, and no remorse.

Moody presents his horrific little ditty from the point of view of Danny McCoyne, an average man who reacts as all do, with barely-restrained panic. Despite his dislike of his family – Danny’s life is an almost stereotypical example of the unhappy family man, stressed over work and more stressed over family - he knows that he must do whatever it takes to protect them from…what, exactly? Danny doesn’t know, and while the comforting platitudes from government officials play over the televisions and radio (shades of NOTLD), he begins to distrust everyone and everything around him. “Who is it going to happen to next?” he asks himself. “Me? Lizzie? Harry or one of the kids? Someone at work? It could be anyone.”

Moody lays out the basis of his story will spartan precision, documenting the quick fall of ‘civilized’ society with clarity and, yes, dollops of dread. His characters are flawed, relatable beings, reminding us that true terror only arises when you care about the personalities involved. There is an aura of uneasiness to the early scenes that grab you, an uneasiness that only increases as the paranoia and confusion sets in. Moody taps into the random, unfocused fear that appears to have infected western society, with its overarching fear of the ‘other’. Who is this other? What do they want? Yesterday’s fear of the communist agenda was been replaced with terrorism, but the effect is the same; we are all deathly afraid of each other, because we simply do not know each other’s thoughts or motives. Much as in the great zombie films of Romero and Fulci, Moody uses the infected in Hater as a metaphor for everything out there on the streets that we fear, including the worst fear of all, that we will somehow become that which we fear. In many ways, Hater is a superior example of the zombie novel, even more effective than Max Brooks’ scattershot yet undeniably effective World War Z.

But zombies, a versatile monster that easily functions as allegory for whatever the author seems fit, are often hamstrung by the limitations of their fearsomeness. Zombies are great as monsters but are boring as personalities, a design flaw that hinders attempts by Brian Keene and David Wellington to craft entire novels around their rampages. Moody sidesteps this by using the trappings of a zombie tale yet not using zombies, allowing us insight into the mind of the infected. In a third-act development I will not spoil here, Moody abruptly shifts the ground out from underneath the reader, proving that he understands how to present both sides of the issue.

Hater is not perfect, and it’s not for everyone. It’s a little shallow at points, and somewhat repetitive (although this repetition may be intentional to lure the reader in). It’s also markedly disturbing, vicious, and, yes, terrifying, with few answers and little in the way of a happy conclusion. This is a return to real scares, an event worthy of praise. On the last page, Moody declares that this is part one of the ‘Hater Trilogy.’ I can’t wait.

VERDICT: MONKEY REALLY, REALLY LIKES, IF THAT'S THE BEST WORD FOR IT

Monkey droppings - The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Who like fantasy? 'Cuz I gots a doozy of a tale for you!







The Magicians
by Lev Grossman

Quentin is a typical teen; imaginative, too smart for his own good, and positive he is meant for more than life offers, that somehow his real life has been “mislaid through some error by the cosmic bureaucracy.”

Oddly, Quentin is absolutely right, and his acceptance into the ethereal Brakebills college proves it. After all, it’s not every eighteen-year-old who gets to practice sorcery, as most people “lack the tough, starchy moral fiber necessary to wield awesome magical energies calmly and responsibly.”

With this brief synopsis, a reader can be forgiven for believing The Magicians to be a cynical retread of the Harry Potter children’s series. Indeed, author Lev Grossman layers his second novel with purposeful allusions to J.K. Rowling’s creation, alongside the fantasies of C.S. Lewis and T.H. White.

However, Grossman, the book critic for Time Magazine, is canny enough to comprehend the difference between homage and rip-off, and The Magicians is certainly no rip-off. While The Magicians wears its influences on its sleeve, its presentation marks it as the work of a marvelous wordsmith and a definite talent.

As Quentin advances through his classes, he discovers that the magical fantasies of his youth have little in common with the actualities of modern life. His hope that learning magic “would be a delightful journey through a secret garden, where he would gaily pluck the heavy fruit of knowledge from conveniently low-hanging branches,” is quickly demolished under the practical mundanities of spellcasting.

Stories of the kingdom of Fillory that consumed his childhood (think Narnia) have left him ill-prepared for a world with little need for magic. Grossman layers his story with identifiable pathos as he expertly tracks the transition from adolescent idealism to brooding disenchantment, a period marked by self-destruction and a burgeoning drinking problem.

When a classmate discovers that Fillory actually exists, Quentin sets himself a quest, something to save him from “the ennui and depression and meaningless busywork that had been stalking [him] since graduation with its stale, alcoholic breath.” But an actual dominion of necromancy is a far cry from his daydreams, and Quentin soon learns that a search for self is far easier than a search for magical amulets.

The Magicians is a psychologically astute coming-of-age novel ensconced within the overt trappings of fantasy. Far from the light-gothic sensibilities of Rowling, Grossman’s tale of mysticism is resolutely adult, rife with terror, depression, sexual confusion, and death.

If there is a real weakness to Grossman’s tale, it’s that the set-up and the payoff are unequally balanced. Quentin’s trek through the academics of the supernatural is enthralling, but his adventure in Fillory is sketchy.

The quest is a thrilling interlude, but considering the majesty of what came before, Grossman does a disservice to his characters by rushing the final third. The lackluster presentation of Quentin’s fate, combined with a few loose ends left dangling, hinders the emotional dénouement the story deserves.

Nevertheless, The Magicians is a thrilling entertainment, the finest, most literate adult fantasy since Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Should Grossman ever decide to revisit his otherworldly territory, it should be a trip well worth taking.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES

Originally published (expurgated version) in the Winnipeg Free Press, August 16, 2009.