The Tenderness of Wolves

Excuse the stock picture folks--I can't seem to find the camera's battery charger. Tenderness of Wolves (Stef Penney), Literary, historical murder and wilderness story.

Dove River Canada in 1867, Hudson’s Bay era. A fur trapper has been murdered, and there's a rumor that he had in his possession something very valuable. A 17-year-old boy disappears the night of the murder. You'd think that's enough action to start us off, but add to that the interconnections of the townspeople and the town's dark history, which includes the disappearance of two little girls many years ago.

Mrs. Ross. discovered the fur trapper's body. She is a bit of an outsider, serious, married to a man who doesn't get along with their now missing son. Not only are people talking about a possible connection but it's a difficult winter; Mrs. Ross decides to go after her son, taking the other murder suspect as her guide, a native by the name of Parker.

Hudson's Bay man Donald Moody then comes into the picture. Charged with finding the fur trapper's killer, Moody soon falls in love, he thinks, with one of town sisters so that his own coming of age (poor guy) is intertwined with his assignment to solve a murder. He and a party set out into the snow, and young, inexperienced Moody has no idea what he's in for.

When I started reading, I did not know what to expect. I picked it up because I liked the writing. Well suited to the harsh and intricate winter world described. But then the story wove itself deeper and deeper through the characters and all their individual [internal and external] goings-on. Pretty soon my mind was bound by about a million plot or personality threads and shortly after that, I ran out of pages to read.

So I liked it. I liked the history, the perspective of being on the move, trying to survive a Canadian winter, the idea of an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company being responsible for justice. (I kept imagining going into the local department store, now named simply 'The Bay,' for this kind of service).

We do indeed find answers, and a remote Hudson's Bay outpost in a degraded state (very Heart of Darkness). In the midst of that we get a real look into an older and more dangerous world.

What the heck, let's start a rating system from 1 to 10, 10 being the best.

I give this one: 8

Blood lies...apparently more than you think

Really the cleverest thing about Blood Lies (Daniel Kalla) is the title, which works as an adjectival phrase –lies about blood—and as a sentence: blood does not always tell the truth. See how cool? And then it goes downhill from there to...

1) Frustrating 2) soap opera-like 3) draws morally simplistic lines. I read it on a plane and that’s what it’s good for. Sure it`s a mass market thriller. But let`s remember people: that`s a genre--not a license for mediocrity.

It's not that Daniel Kalla is a bad writer necessarily. It's that he seems to be a black and white thinker: his umpteen complicated plot threads end up in the very same place: someone falls on hard times, becomes a drug user...then gets AIDS. And I just have to hold up my hand here and say "What exactly are you getting at here buddy?" That no one else but our physician-protagonist (on the run--he`s been wrongly framed of course) can handle a bad day without turning to drugs? And that this ALWAYS links directly to AIDS? This is plain irresponsible .

Oh wait--I can`t leave it at that... I said I was suspending judgment about Kalla's writing abilities. But I have to say that if Eliska`s gorgeous green eyes are made such a big deal of on page 172, shouldn't those same eyes still be described as green on page 210--not brown?

Yes, yes they should. I mean, this is baby stuff. Where`s your editor, Kalla? Did he turn to drugs?

Shortcomings

Ben and Miko are fighting. She claims he has "white fever" and he can't really deny it. He's been sidling up to some blue-eyed blondes while he ignores underwear-clad Miko most weeknights at home.

They live in San Francisco--or they do until she decides to go to New York for a job. Her decision surprises him, and he's sure it says something ominous about the relationship (he might be right). So he seeks the help of his friend Alice, power-lesbian and fellow Asian. Turns out Alice has a friend in New York they can stay with. She and Ben decide to fly there and see what they find.

At this point I'm going to tell you: this is a graphic novel. It's called Shortcomings (Adrian Tomine). S said it would make me well rounded to read one. (Is that all it takes?)

I will say this about the graphic novel. It's very now. And I think--perhaps as a result--I've never read snappier dialogue, the properly cynical, jaded kind that reminds me of conversations Gen X-ers have with a certain kind of best friend in a certain time of life. During many of these bits of dialogue, I did indeed laugh out loud. So the Ben and Alice scenes were entertaining, and they read as amazingly authentic. I don't think this could be done with books that are meant to have a longer shelf life. Or no. I guess I mean books that shy away from talking about the right-here and now because it might compromise their hopes of becoming "classic." But I liked this approach--it felt...comforting and relevant.

But then...but then I got really annoyed at the Ben and Miko scenes--maybe because Ben told all his crap to Alice and yet to Miko his girlfriend he seemed silent and so painfully casual. Like nothing mattered.

Well, Ben, that's not cool anymore.

And I guess Miko got fed up too. I'm not giving all that much away when I say that she and Ben have a confrontation--and it seems at first like it's going to be some kind of crazy Hollywood-style excitement but instead...how can I forget...Gen X-ers don't do that (I know because I am one). Instead, they tend to give in to a general feeling of melancholy and purposelessness. Which really seemed unnecessary, quite frankly. I saw lots of cool ways that Ben could have had an awesome epiphany and--and--

Well I guess it's not my graphic novel to write. And I can admit now that it was quite effective to see a portrait of Ben at his bitter worst and think...well maybe it's time to get beyond that now.

Maybe.

Maybe tomorrow. Until then I'm just going to look pensively out this airplane window--

The Brothers Torres

Oye. Someone wrote a young adult novel that a boy might read. This is significant. You have Robert Cormier for this, you have Gordon Korman, and now, you have Coert Voorhees.

The Brothers Torres (Coert Voorhees) is --yes-- a story about a boy who likes a girl, but probably it's even more about a boy who worries about his older brother. Aha, a slight twist on the old sibling story.

Francisco Torres or, if you want to anglicize it, Frankie Towers, lives in two worlds. You can tell by his name. Part Hispanic, part Anglo and living in New Mexico, he is a waiter in his family's restaurant (think sopaipillas) and trying to make it through high school in an environment full of Varsity-type white boys and gangster-type cholos. (I can see you, my friend A____, rolling your eyes at the earnestness of other-language italics. You'll have to get over it for this book.)

So Frankie is worried about Steve, who is his older brother and one of the school's soccer stars. Steve, of course, is also living in two worlds, but it seems that the Hispanic one he's chosen is getting dark and sinister. In the past, little Frankie has usually ended up doing just what his big brother did before him, without much thought otherwise. So Frankie doesn't have much experience going his own way, but it's beginning to look like he might have to try it. And, really it's an awkward time, because there's this girl he likes and he really can't waste time looking stupid, especially since white-boy bully John Dalton is closing in on Rebecca too...

You get the picture. Really the best thing about this book is Frankie's inner voice. Yes, the dialogue is pretty great too, and often incredibly funny, but it's when Frankie is thinking to himself that you really feel you're getting an authentic glimpse into a certain kind of [astute] teenage mind:

My dad motions for me to sit down in one of the booths. "Why don't we have
a little chat , son." I love my dad, right? But it's like he's learned how to be a father by reading self-help books. He tries hard, so you can't fault him for that. But any time he has to talk about something other than the restaurant menu or Steve's soccer games, he turns into a caricature of a concerned parent. Everything is so meaningful and special that nothing is meaningful or special anymore.

This is a perfect reminder of how you should never underestimate a child just because he or she is smaller and has seen fewer winters. Younger, more mentally elastic: always thinking, thinking, thinking. The problem happens with all the zinging and firing in the average teenage mind. Too much input is hard to sort.

But Frankie does all right. He also shares a few interesting thoughts about small business, classicism, racism, stereotypes. But not so much that you aren't also allowed to enjoy passages like this one:

You know those movies where the hot chick has a couple friends who are almost as hot but not quite? They always walk in slow motion with the hottest one in the lead, like a squadron of attack planes in V-formation? Rebecca could make that happen if she wanted to. But she doesn't need that kind of attention, and Katie seems to want it, so Katie's the one in front. The other chick is Andromeda Escalante, but she's not even in Katie's league, no matter how many upperclassmen she's yanked off already.

Fun stuff.

I mean, I'm a self confessed Voorhees fan already, but now I know it's justified. Nice work, ese.

A Spot of Bother

Book 8: A spot of bother (Mark Haddon).

Fiction, and hilarious. Now, I had to borrow this book, because I was too timid to buy it. My reasoning was this: Haddon's first book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime was so good, and its unique quality (autistic boy tries to solve a dog's murder) made me think that anything else would be a complete departure and therefore a disappointment. Not so.

Haddon seems to be good at getting into the minds of all sorts of people. Here he does so with George Hall, who is having a crisis. In fact, George thinks he's going crazy but is properly English enough to know that this is a terribly bad time for it, what with his daughter's [second] wedding on the horizon and his wife apparently having an affair with a friend of his. Not good at all.

The book continues in this vein, but somehow (I know you were thinking it) avoids becoming a farce. No, really, I assure you. Funny in a genuine and loving way. Pretty much everyone in this family is given a turn to do something incredibly stupid and then realize that things can still turn out all right. Now, this very evenhandedness could almost be a mark against--it made me realize that this was a carefully constructed work. Then I hit the part where George begins experimenting with Valium and I didn't care about literary criticism.

Comforting and entertaining at the same time, this story. Carrying around this book for subway reading is like carrying around a really witty and wild [albeit English] friend. I still like Curious Incident better, but this book was welcoming and homelike in a way that Curious Incident was not.

I want to quote one part before I sign off, because it shows the combination of insight and humor that Haddon does very well. This part's about Kate's soon-to-be husband as told by her brother:

How did Ray do it? One moment he was dominating a room the way a lorry
would. Next minute he was down a hole and asking you for help. Why couldn't he
suffer in a way they could all enjoy from a safe distance?

nd this is a key thing about family in trying times. You really wish you could avoid being involved...but often, with a sigh, you can't help but jump in.

Three Cups of Tea

Book 7: Three Cups of Tea (Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin).

Everyone must read this book. You can't make up a story this good.

Shall I go on? This non-fiction gem is set in Northern Pakistan --border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the famed K2 tests mountain climbers year after year. Greg Mortenson was one such climber, who had to abandon his attempt just 600 meters from the summit. Trying to make his way back to camp he stumbles instead on a tiny Balti village where he is taken care of until he is able to meet up again with his party. In the interim he makes friends. Amazed by these people who live in such an extreme, mountainous place, he is also dismayed to find that the little girls of the village are attending "school" without so much as a roof over their heads. Every time they try to scratch letters in the sand with sticks, a wind blows them away.

Mortenson decides that educating girls is a direct solution to a problem. Where women are the primary caretakers of their children and in many other ways the centre of the community, useful daily skills, such as high altitude medicine and the ability to study, will ensure the survival and then growth of that community. Upon his return to the states, Mortenson writes hundreds of letters (to Tom Brokaw, for one) in an effort to build schools for these girls.

But it's Jean Hoerni who makes the difference: a crotchety Swiss physicist with a heart of gold. Mortenson figures that if the villagers supply the labor, he needs only $12,000 to buy the supplies "in town" (in this case, I think it's Peshawar) and truck them up the mountain passes.

And he is right. The Balti go to work lugging timbers to their building site and soon a school is built, initiating concrete changes in the life of the villagers. With Hoerni’s help, Mortenson starts the Central Asia Institute, and continues to build schools and give talks, slowly gaining a name for himself both in the States and with Pakistan's government.

Mortenson has some character quirks which make the social undercurrent and behind-the scenes nature of this book very interesting. In fact, David Oliver Relin, the author helping Mortenson to share his story, gets that across very well. He also does justice to a good story with quality writing, something that does not always happen with jointly written books. In the end, Relin cannot help but be won over the "Dr. Greg's" dedication, and this happens to the reader too. Whatever the man's faults, it becomes clear that not a single dollar goes to anything but furthering the cause.

I’ll cut now to the chase and share the best point that this book gets across-- it happens when Mortenson visits the Pentagon in 2002 to brief assorted military personnel. This is what he says to them:

I'm no military expert, and these figures may not be exactly right. But as best I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon Guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?"

I think the man has a point. Central Asia Institute is at: www.ikat.org

My swordhand is out of practice

You know what? You can blame puzzles for the blondiereads.com hiatus. Those things...they insinuate themselves into your lives and there's really nothing you can do. It's addictive. Puzzles are SO annoying, and yet here I am puzzling over a giant 1,000 piece photograph of a waterfall. a WATERFALL.

Ugh.

Book 6: My Swordhand Is Singing (Marcus Sedgwick). This Young Adult novel has two main things going for it--the title and the spooky atmospheric setting in a Polish forest many, many years ago. No, I don't know exactly how long ago, but to give you a bit of an idea, Peter and his father are woodcutters. (Though Peter ends up doing most of the work, as his father devotes plenty of time to a side job as an alcoholic.)

So we're in the forest deep in winter and the local village seems to be a pretty smallminded place dominated by fear. It reminds me a bit of the M. Night Shamylan movie The Village, cloaks and lanterns and whispered meetings of the elders.

They are afraid of something and guess what it is. Things that come out at night and feast on the blood of the living. Can you guess now? The local gypsies refer to them as "hostages," and we come to find that Peter's father used to be very good at fighting them. The gypsies want his help again ..and that's the central tension of the story: getting Peter's father to help.

Which seems pretty sad to me: the father's dormant heroism can only be applied to fighting vampires, apparently. Why not give up drinking for the sake of your kid? We don't even have to weave a story of magic for that kind of heroism. But alas, no, this is one of those magic stories of the Old World, so we get some complicated "magical ideas" such as this choice item from page 162:

If a virgin rides a horse over a grave where a hostage lies, the horse will
know and refuse to cross.

Wha? Is it the virgin who gives the horse this extrasensory power or...how does this work? Magic is supposed to be magic. When I need a diagram to figure it out, my suspension of disbelief is sorely tested. Luckily this magical procedure has the added benefit of informing Peter that Sofia, the gypsy girl scout he's been hanging out with, is pure.

So, Peter learns to wield a sword. And we are treated to the AWESOME title phrase: My swordhand is singing. This is the phrase you use when you're really kicking some vampire ass. But I think it could be applied to all kinds of daily situations. Just the other day, I'm cranking away on a report, and I couldn't help but think, my swordhand is singing.

The Other Side of the Bridge

Arthur Dunn is his name. But don't let that fool you. To the people who really know him, he's not as boring as that name sounds. He was why I read The Other Side of the Bridge (Mary Lawson).

Lawson is all about tricking her readers in the beginning of her books. Only to reveal in the end that long-accepted "facts" are actually not true at all. The dull guy who hardly speaks is the good man with a very romantic heart. The rakish light-of-his-mother's-eye is actually a lazy and manipulative creature of ego. And people do get their due. Lawson seems to approach her stories (generally set in farmland Ontario, Canada) with a real need to bring about justice. She did so in Crow Lake and she does it again here.

I liked this one better, though.

It still portrays the sometimes harsh reality behind sibling dynamics (Arthur and his brother Jake), standoffish neighbors, and unplanned pregnancy as a catalyst for change (and a few other shocking events, as seen in the harsh winter light of northern Ontario). But I can hang on through all that without losing hope, as long as I'm pulling for someone like Arthur. The quintissential unsung hero, who doesn't bother to point out the injustices against him because he seems to understand why people do these things and also, he seems to be content enough despite it all.

I thought about why I liked this book better, and I think it's two main things.

1) Ian the farmhand's perspective lends a lot of weight to Arthur's character, and provides a believable perspective--not just on Arthur but on Laura (Arthur's wife) and Jake too. In addition, Ian's own story is a good angle on the town--he's trying to find his career and his way in this place where he knows everybody and everybody knows him.

2) A little bit more distance between the author and the main character than in Crow Lake. My guess is that Crow Lake's protagonist was far too close to the author herself and therefore Lawson's portrayal of that character is pretty unforgiving. When Lawson allows more affection for Arthur, we can be more comfortable about sympathizing with him.

There are plenty of great side stories in this book too. Ian's friend Pete, a native Canadian, who feels there is no reason to leave such a beautiful lake or to do anything but fish whenever he can. The German prisoners of war (this is set during World War II) who become part of Arthur's extended family of farm help. The Canadian soldier who returns home without his legs and whom Arthur visits every day despite not knowing what to say.

If you've read between the lines here, you may have guessed that I have a hard time either understanding or sympathizing with Lawson's female characters. To me, they are two-dimensional. Even the lovely Laura, whom Ian has a crush on, and who plays a pivotal role with the men around her, is not quite present in this story. She seems to be merely a plot device.

No matter--the book is well worth it. Dark and somewhat moody in tone, but gives much to think about.

AND we're back.

Forgive me dear readers for the long silence. But don't worry--I am still reading in 2008!!!!

Here's what I've read so far...I'll tell you right now that three of these four are pretty weighty books. (And, for a little game, you can probably guess from the photo.)

1: Suite Francaise (Irene Nemirovsky).

(Fiction based on non-fiction) France World War II--and occupation by Germans. Was to be five novellas, but Nemirovsky herself was taken to a camp and did not survive. Great writer. Amazing character studies (especially of selfish, childish people who never change, even when war would demand it of them). It's sad (for many reasons) that this book is unfinished.

2: Half of a Yellow Sun (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie).

(Fiction based on non-fiction) This one is about Nigeria and the declared "independence" of Biafra from Nigeria (the Biafran flag features half of a yellow sun). The story centers around the linked stories of a pair of sisters and their men and/or family. But mostly you tend to identify with the endearing houseboy, Ugwu, who is eventually forced to be a "soldier" for the cause, which involves treating fellow Nigerians horribly. And there is a lot of that, of course--this being a civil war. This book has memorable people in it; it's alternately very touching and incredibly shocking. There were parts of the book where you are seeing such terrible things through the characters' eyes that you pretty much shut down. And in later pages, you find yourself not reacting at all to the deaths and starvation and rape going on.

But let me move on to something lighter for a moment, and take note writers: This book employs a very effective way of simultaneously setting both scene and culture. Through food. When guests come to talk, Ugwu makes his hot pepper soup--that's how you know what kind of night it's going to be. A neighboring houseboy (who tends to compete with Ugwu) takes another approach, by whipping up lemon meringue pies in a [misguided] attempt to serve the British visitors/colonial masters the food to which they're [supposedly] accustomed. Food, and later the absence of food, since Nigeria uses the technique of starving out the Biafrans, serve as effective indicators of what's really going on-- things that are unthinkably horrible. This book is so fascinating and shocking both that it almost requires a second read. But steel yourself: I came out of this a little numb.

3: Die Trying (Lee Child).

(Fiction) Here's what the pitch might be in Hollywood: MacGyver-like team battle deep-woods Montana religious cult. Jack Reacher (recurring hero of many Lee Child novels) runs into Holly on the street, offers to carry her dry cleaning at the same moment that a van pulls up to kidnap her in broad daylight (I couldn't resist saying "broad daylight").

We come to find out that he's former Army and she's FBI (because that happens all the time, right?). And when I say these two are like MacGyver, I mean the real-life stuff, the orderly "use-all-available-resources" way of thinking. Now that kind of competence is very hot--so I found it odd that this book is low on what my aunt likes to call "Points of Contact" (POC for short or when speaking in mixed company). Guns are described in far more sensual detail than is kissing. The loving descriptions of hardware made me think of Tom Clancy, actually, but Child keeps it relevant enough so that I wasn't too bothered.

But still, for Jack to go to all that trouble fighting off the backwoods zealots and not get any action? Poor guy. But hey, the unsung hero needs no rewards. He just Does the Right Thing. Anyway, I'll read another, Mr. Child, but I really hope you're not leading me on.

4: Railway Man (Eric Lomax).

(Non-fiction) A former prisoner of war in Japanese-occupied Thailand. Eric Lomax happens to be one of those real-life MacGyver types. A true engineering mind. His topic is the building of the Siam to Burma railway during which time he survived torture for being one of a group of prisoners who built a contraband radio. He is then discovered to have a hand-drawn, highly detailed map of the railway and surrounding area. Of course he made this map as his own sort of informational weapon. He denies all charges, of course, and is duly tortured in a long, surreal set of scenes --scenes that made me realize that books don't let you look away.

Much later and with many mental scars to deal with, Lomax confronts the Japanese officer who played a role in the torture. Now...I can see why it might be hard not to hate everything Japanese after going through what Lomax did. Yet he doesn't delve too far into his own emotional baggage, except to simply say it's there, having already described why. And while the book did not let me look away, Lomax tells the story much like an engineer would. Usually I would consider this a negative, but I was immensely grateful. His writing creates a necessary protective barrier between happenings and emotions. Lomax's doggedness was also on display, though I commend him for making something positive out of it in the end.

I just finished another Mary Lawson book. I'll think about it a little. (Never lighthearted, is she?)