Luis Leante, Mira si yo te querré

Desde el barracón que hacía las veces de calabozo, el cabo Santiago San Román llevaba todo el día observando un movimiento anormal de tropas.  Cuatro metros de anchos por seis de largo, un colchón sobre un somier con cuatro patas, una mesa, una silla, una letrina muy sucia y un grifo.

     Querida Montse:  pronto hará un año que no sé nada de ti. 

Había tardado casi una hora en decidirse a escribir la primera frase y ahora le parecía afectada, poco natural.  El sonido de los aviones que tomaban tierra en el aeródromo de El Aaiún lo devolvió a la realidad.  Miró la cuartilla y ni siquiera reconoció su propia letra.  Desde la ventana del barracón no alcanzaba a ver más que la zona de seguridad de la pista y una parte del hangar.  Lo único que distinguía con claridad eran las cocheras y los Land-Rover entrando y saliendo sin parar, camiones cargados de lejías novatos y coches oficiales en un extraño ir y venir.  Por primera vez en siete días no le habían traído la comida, ni le habían abierto la puerta a media tarde para que pudiera estirar las piernas en uno de los extremos de la pista del aeródromo.  Llevaba una semana sin cruzar apenas palabra con nadie, comiendo un chusco duro y una sopa sosa, sin apartar la vista de la puerta ni de la ventana, esperando a que vinieran en cualquier momento para montarlo en una aeronave y sacarlo de África para siempre.  Le habían asegurado, en tono amenazador, que sería cuestión de un día o dos, y que luego tendría toda la vida para añorar se Sáhara. (pp. 23-24)

Tales involving lovers separated by time and space by all rights should be trite and clichéd affairs.  How many ways can a writer express "true love" without it becoming hackneyed and devoid of anything resembling originality?  Yet every now and then, there emerges a writer who manages to rework this age-old formula just enough to create something that is both familiar and yet differs in some key ways from the norm.

This is certainly the case in Luis Leante's 2007 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel, Mira si yo te querré (See if I Will Love You).  It is a tale of two young lovers, one fated to become a Barcelona doctor, the other a soldier in Spain's foreign legion during the last years of General Franco's regime in the mid-1970s.  Yet Mira si yo te querré is more than just a love story.  It is as much a tale of Spain's ill-fated retreat from its Western Sahara colony in 1975 and the invasion and annexation of this nascent country by Morocco.

The story shifts back and forth between the two lovers, Montse Cambra and Santiago San Román, from their initial relationship in the early 1970s (leading to Montse becoming pregnant) and Santiago's embarking for the Western Sahara to Montse's discovery, nearly three decades later, that Santiago did not die in the fighting there, as she had long presumed, but may have somehow survived and had stayed in the region after the Moroccan invasion.  Leante shifts back and forth in narrative time, building up Montse and Santiago's original relationship in order to ratchet up the tension leading to her arrival in the occupied region.  Questions are raised about how each has or might have changed over the years, all over a backdrop whose own recent, tortured past serves as a counter to any possible tendency toward treacliness. 

Leante does a very good job in establishing setting and narrative flow.  Things move smoothly from event to event, never feeling forced or underdeveloped.  The characterizations, however, are a bit more uneven, perhaps due to Santiago's necessary lengthy absences from the "present" PoVs in order to further Montse's character arc.  The concluding scenes, however, more than make up for this relative character underdevelopment, as they serve to reinforce not only what had been developed earlier between the two characters, but also to tie in the Western Sahara conflict with the characters' lives.  The result is an entertaining love story that contains more depth than usual for lost lover narratives.

Xavier Velasco, Diablo Guardián

No lo puedo creer.  La última ve que hice esto tenía un sacerdote enfrente.  Y tenía una maleta llenísima de dólares, lista para salvarme del Infierno.  ¿Sabes, Diablo Guardián?  Te sobra cola para sacerdote, y aun así tendría que mentirte para que me absolvieras.  Tú, que eres un tramposo, ¿nunca sentiste como que se te agotaban las reservas de patrañas?  Ya sé que me detestas por decirte mentiras, y más por esconderte las verdades.  Por eso ahora me toca contarte la verdad.  Enterita, ¿me entiendes?  Escríbela, revuélvela, llénala de calumnias, hazle lo que tú quieras.  No es más que la verdad, y verdades ya ves que siempre sobran.  Señorita Violetta, ¿podría usted contarnos qué tanto hay de verdad en su cochina vida de mentiras?  ¿Qué hay de cierto en la witch disfrazada de bitch, come on sugar darling let me scratch your itch?  Puta madre, qué horror, no quiero confesarme. (p. 11)

Tales of prodigals, men and women alike, appeal to us not only because some of us reader sympathize with their lack of restraint and their giving in to total hedonism, but also because for some readers, seeing such characters get their comeuppance serves as a justification by proxy of their own decisions to refrain from any indulging of the senses.  The story of the "pretty woman," the hooker with the heart of gold, has been told in many guises, but what about a tale of a girl who descends, through spendthrift actions, from the upper middle-class to prostitution and yet who does not see herself as a victim in any real shape or form whatsoever? 

It is this latter premise that makes Xavier Velasco's 2003 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel, Diablo Guardián, such an intriguing story.  It traces the life of a fifteen year-old girl, who now goes by the pseudonym of Violetta, from the time she stole $100,000 from her parents (who in turn had embezzled that money from fraudulent Red Cross transactions) to her flight to New York and her subsequent blowing of that money over the course of lavish parties and blow until she turns to hotel "encounters" in order to maintain even a semblance of her party life.  Accompanying her in her descent into hedonistic excess is a frustrated, egotistical writer known as "Pig," who watches, somewhat helplessly, as he finds himself following along with this girl with whom he has developed some feelings.  All the while, there is this vague sense of a metaphorical Mephistopheles, a guardian devil of sorts, guiding and sheltering Violetta.

If this premise alone does not sound enticing, Velasco manages to imbue the narrative with an almost effortless vibrancy.  Although it is difficult to claim that Velasco is an accomplished stylist (if anything, the prose has a roughness to it that somehow manages to fit the story being told), the narrative certainly has a casualness to it that dovetails nicely with the tale of excess and (mostly) unrepentant attitude toward misfortunes.  The characters of Violetta and Pig are well-rendered and their plights feel real and not overly contrived.

However, there are a few weaknesses.  At times, the narrative gets bogged down in detailing the minutiae of Violetta's extravagant lifestyle.  This in turn led to a loss of narrative impact for much of the novel's middle portions.  The final scenes, however, manage to recapture much of the novel's earlier energy.  Although the conclusion is a bit surprising in some regards, for the most part it ties together the narrative nicely.  Diablo Guardián might not be a technically perfect novel, but even despite its warts and all, it is one of the more original and powerfully told stories to win the Premio Alfaguara. 

Final nine 2014 releases reviewed

Although there were times that I wasn't for sure if I would be able to do it, I've finally managed to write something about each of the 165 books listed on this 2014 releases post.  Although these will be barely 100-150 words in comparison to the 750-1200 word reviews I typically write, I believe they will represent in full my reactions to these works.  Now onto the capsule reviews, presented in a rough chronological release order, starting with  August (1), September (1), then October (3), November (3), and December (1):

 Lydie Salvayre, Pas pleurer (winner of the 2014 Prix Goncourt)

This was the last 2014 release that I read.  Pas pleurer by all rights should not have succeeded as well as it did, as it combines two vastly different narratives, a personal account of a daughter putting into print what her mother experienced during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 along with a third-person description of French writer/politician George Bernanos' evolution of thought regarding the conflict.  Salvayre does an outstanding job in mixing the two together, as scenes described by the mother dovetail nicely into the horrors that Bernanos experiences when he visits Majorca soon after Franco's forces have taken control of the island.  The prose is exquisite and the characterizations are very well done.  This is a fairly original way of melding a slight fictionalization of a family history with a psychological portrait of a famous writer and his crisis of thought as he comes to see Franco, whose side he initially championed, for a sort of monster.  Well deserving of the literary accolades it has already received, including France's most prestigious literary prize.

Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

This was my first introduction to Bennett's work, but I highly doubt it will be my last.  Although it took awhile for the narrative to move into high gear, considering the amount of time Bennett devoted to establishing the backdrop for this secondary world fantasy, by novel's end, there was an interesting mystery plot that had unfolded better than I had anticipated.  The sometimes uneven narrative developments of the first half were smoothed out by later revelations, making for a surprisingly enjoyable conclusion.  I am curious to see where Bennett goes from here, as there are enough positive elements (in particular, the purposeful avoidance of anything that might be construed as an analogue for Western European medieval mores or culture) in this novel to allow me to forgive the author for the unevenness of the opening chapters.

Keith Donohue, The Boy Who Drew Monsters

The Boy Who Drew Monsters is one of the best literary horror novels that I have read in quite some time.  Featuring a ten year-old boy with high-functioning autism who steadily withdraws from the outside "real" world in order to create disturbingly creative monsters that appear to populate the local environs as the novel progresses, the novel strikes a near-perfect balance between creating psychological tension (just how real are these monsters?) and fantastical effect.  Donohue is a superb writer and each element feels carefully crafted to achieve the maximum narrative effect.  The concluding chapter is perhaps one of the more profound and chilling plot twists that I've read in a while.   The Boy Who Drew Monsters is the sort of novel that I could gift to people who rarely read either horror or literary fiction, as there are enough strong elements of both to facilitate a quicker, more complete understanding of just what Donohue manages to accomplish here with aplomb.

Nuruddin Farah, Hiding in Plain Slight

Farah has long been rumored as a potential Nobel Prize candidate and there are certainly some weighty themes explored in his latest novel:  dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack; internal struggle of a young female professional/ex-pat Somali who suddenly finds herself dealing with her dead brother's adolescent children; confronting "difficult" relatives; homosexuality in East African societies; and balancing career against personal desires.  Each of these could make for an intriguing novel and for the most part, Farah manages to juggle these themes while making it seem as though it were effortless.  Yet there are times where the prose or dialogue fails to capture the potential full power of certain scenes, thus reducing the novel at times to a display of restraint at the expense of explosive yet vital narrative and character development.  Hiding in Plain Sight is far from a poor effort, yet its occasional failure to go beyond the constraints of the characters and scene situations make it feel as though Farah pulled a few of his punches.

David Nicholls, Us (longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize)

This is the story of a slowly failing marriage, seen mostly through the perspective of the husband.  There are no sudden downturns or bitter conflicts.  Instead, what Nicholls presents is a gentle descent into estrangement, as personal differences, long buried under the bonds of common interests and affection, slowly rise to the top.  At first, it is not apparent that Nicholls is indeed describing a failing marriage, as it feels more like any of the usual marriages after a long period of familiarity.  It is only in the latter half of the novel that these long-simmering disputes begin bubbling over.  Us is a smartly constructed novel, utilizing its dozens of short chapters detailing individual scenes to great effect.  The prose, while not sparkling, is certainly fitting for the narrative and the characterizations, warts and all, are well-developed.  It is not the "sexiest" of narratives, yet it is one that achieves virtually all of its objectives.

Denis Johnson, The Laughing Monsters

Like a Resident Evil zombie that has been plugged several times and yet somehow still manages to rise again, colonialism is undead and not so well in Johnson's latest novel.  Following three ex-pat characters as they travel across the African continent, The Laughing Monsters contains some brilliant lines.  Yet despite Johnson's talents as a prose writer, The Laughing Monsters does not feel as substantive as many of his earlier works.  Perhaps it is the problematic subject matter (it is hard to tell a story of European-descended people in Africa without there being some sort of exoticism on display, it seems) or perhaps it is simply that the narrative as a whole is just not as developed as it could have been.  Regardless of what the primary cause might be, The Laughing Monsters is a mild disappointment, as readers of his previous works likely will expect great things and anything less, such as this good but flawed novel, will be a letdown.

Ron Rash, Something Rich and Strange

This is a collection of thirty-four of Rash's best stories, mostly taken from previous collections.  These tales, mostly set in rural Southern Appalachia, focus on the lives of drifters, addicts, and those who seem adrift from the mainstream of contemporary American live.  Rash's characters feel like people I've known most of my life; they are that true to Southern life.  His stories vary in style and theme, yet there is a common focus on the lives that these characters have chosen (or in some cases, had chosen for them after a bender or tweaking experience).  It is hard to pick out a singular story, as there were so many that I enjoyed.  Something Rich and Strange serves as an excellent primer to the works of one of the best Southern writers telling tales today.

Paul Theroux, Mr. Bones

This collection of twenty stories touches upon violence and how that shapes and reshapes American culture.  Theroux particularly seems interested in exploring conceptualizations of beauty and how increasingly outdated views of what constitutes "masculinity" may be the impetus for acts of desperation, if not outright violence toward self or others.  He is a very talented writer and his characters are vividly drawn.  Some of the tales might be unsettling to read, but I suspect that is precisely the point, to make the reader react strongly to the questions he is exploring within his tales.  Although some stories are slighter in content or are not as well-polished as others, on the whole Mr. Bones is another fine effort from one of the more well-known American short story writers of the past half-century.

S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh (translated by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck)

This translation of a 1949 Israeli novella that deals with the clearing of a Palestinian village in the immediate aftermath of the 1948-1949 war that created the state of Israel is perhaps one of the more harrowing stories that I've read this year.  The narrative follows the lives of a handful of young Israelis sent to a hilltop to await orders.  They want action, violent action even.  Yet what transpires against a vividly-described backdrop, is one of the more heartwrenching scenes written in the past century.  The language itself serves to illustrate the dualities of Israeli-Jewish identity and how the very experiences of the Holocaust are turned upon their heads as the exiles become the exilers, the eternally dispossessed dispossess villagers who had lived on that historical land for millennia.  The US English publication is long overdue, as this should have been part of the decades-old dialogue over the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

And on the penultimate day before Christmas, ten mini-reviews to delight even anti-squirrelists

Hard to believe, but before the week is over, I will have written something about every single 2014 release that I have listed here.  Unfortunately, I haven't had much energy for reviewing at length, reserving that for finishing out the Premio Alfaguara winners (still have three more to write over the next eight days), so here are ten paragraph-length capsule reviews of books that I finished earlier this year.  It's an eclectic book, from a story of an anarchist society to reality TV/sex tape satire and all parts in-between.  Now for the brief thoughts on these diverse works:

Margaret Killjoy, A Country of Ghosts

Lately, there have been too many dystopian novels for my taste.  Therefore, it was refreshing to learn of a narrative about an anarchist utopia set in a different world under attack from imperialist forces.  Although there were a few times that I had some mild disagreements with Killjoy's presentation of anarchist principles (then again, I'm more sympathetic to syndicalism, which does shape my attitudes somewhat), for the most part I found his treatment of his characters and their plights to be well-developed, with a good narrative flow to help maintain a nice tension throughout the novel.  Although the prose was relatively weak in comparison to thematic and character development, it was only a minor hiccup in what was otherwise an enjoyable novel.

Christopher Beha, Arts & Entertainments

I should have hated this novel.  It focuses on two recent pop culture developments, "reality" TV and "leaked" sex tapes, that really are passé to me.  Yet, somehow, Arts & Entertainments ended up being an engrossing read.  Perhaps it is because Beha manages, through the complex character of "Handsome" Eddie Hartley, simultaneously to explore just why people are drawn into whoring themselves out for fame and (unlikely) fortune while satirizing the industry that in turn exploits and manipulates both participants and audience alike.  The scenes are sometimes too much to believe, yet ultimately by novel's end, there is something of substance to be found lurking beneath the rather putrid excrement of such pop trash.  It certainly had a far greater depth of character and theme than I was prepared for after reading plot descriptions.

Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

This tale of a 36 year-old man who, at the prompting of a woman he encounters, embarks upon a redemptive pilgrimage of sorts to find out just why four high school friends of his suddenly abandoned him in college is one of the shorter, more taut Murakami novels that I've read.  There are enough several oddities and fantastical elements in here to satiate those who expect such from Murakami, but this was a darker, more reflective tale, one in which the personal quest reveals several tragedies as well as moments of reconciliation.  When I finished reading it back in August, I was uncertain what to make of this novel, as it absorbed my thoughts while reading it, yet when I finished it, I did not have a firm concept of what I thought about how well or poorly Murakami executed his themes on friendship and the ties that can unbind.  Four months later, I still am uncertain if he wrote one of his better works or if this latest novel is one of his more muted yet spectacular failures.  It certainly seems to be the sort of novel which morphs upon a re-reading.

Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

Thomas's debut novel is purportedly an Irish-American multi-generational family history, but the story centers around Eileen Tumulty (later, Leary) and her complex, sometimes fractious relationship with her husband Ed.  Their battles and love, seen over the course of the mid-20th century, take on surprising new forms as Ed becomes afflicted with Alzheimer's.  Thomas shows a deft hand in constructing Eileen and Ed's lives, as their different world-views and personalities are developed superbly.  The reader is given a vivid yet complex mosaic of their lives and by the time the novel concludes, there is not as much a sense of disappointment or tragedy as there is of witnessing two lives well-lived, each following, more or less, his or her heart's desires.  We Are Not Ourselves is one of the best debut novels I've read this year.

Nina Allan, The Race

A confession:  I do not really know what to make of Allan's first novel-length work.  It is more a mosaic than a unified novel, in which elements of four separate novellas merge in interesting fashions and shape reader understandings of what transpired in an earlier section.  This can make for some interesting textual interplay, but at times, especially when this particular reader read this only once, it can be trying to recall just precisely how each section connects to the others.  There are certainly elements of SF and murder/mystery in here, along with what might be meta-commentaries on these genres.  But there seems to be both something lurking in the depths and something missing that would tie these disparate elements together even more tautly.  The Race is one of the more intriguing debut efforts that I have read this year, but I am not certain if it isn't also one of the more fundamentally flawed in terms of its overall execution.

David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks (longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize)

Despite being longlisted for the Booker Prize, The Bone Clocks might be one of Mitchell's weaker books in terms of structure and plot development.  Divided into several sections, reminiscent of his most famous work, Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks suffers whenever the focus shifts to its more supernatural storyline.  Although Mitchell is clever in re-introducing several characters from his earlier novels, he fails more often then not in crafting a cohesive meta-narrative.  The section detailing the battle between opposing supernatural "guardian"/"occult society" forces felt clichéd and hackneyed, dampening the narrative energy for most of the second half of the novel.  Although there were some bright moments throughout the narrative, on the whole, The Bone Clocks felt disjointed.  Certainly one of Mitchell's least successful narrative offerings.

Hilary Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

I greatly enjoyed Mantel's two most recent historical novels on Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII (both won Booker Prizes), but I was uncertain as to whether or not the richness of setting and characterization would translate well to the short story milieu.  For the most part, Mantel does an outstanding job constructing her stories, as each tale feels different in tone and setting from the others, yet there is a uniform quality of characterization and prose to each of them.  Although there were a couple of stories that felt slighter than the others, this is perhaps as much a matter of reader preference as anything else.  Mantel is certainly one of the better stylists writing today and this is on full display in The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.

John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van (longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction)

Darnielle is more famous for his work as the singer/songwriter for The Mountain Goats, but here in his debut novel, Wolf in White Van, he manages to parley his talents as a songwriter into the longer novel medium.  It is a deceptive novel, one that lays out its central premise within its opening pages, only to revisit and rework that premise in subsequent chapters.  It is a combination of a live-action role-playing game and something darker, something that lurks within the recesses of the Trace Italian game designer's mind.  As the novel progresses, the setting deepens, with some surprising twists and turns.  Darnielle is a very talented writer, and several scenes are effective in part due to how well he constructs and narrates them.  Although the ending was relatively weaker than preceding sections, Wolf in White Van was one of the more entertaining debut novels that I've read this year.

Ben Lerner, 10:04

The success, or failure, of Lerner's second novel, 10:04, depends upon how readily the reader is willing to separate quasi-fact from fiction.  Like his previous novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, there is a semi-direct authorial stand-in present in the main character.  At times, this perceived semi-factual viewpoint adds a sense of veracity to the narrative, but at other times, the artifice is too self-conscious, leaving a slightly disagreeable aftertaste of navel gazing.  This is a shame, as Lerner is a talented writer, able to say more with a few pithy sentences than what many authors manage to achieve with pages of description or dialogue.  The premise of 10:04 was interesting for the most part, but Lerner's penchant for self-reflection weakens the narrative's flow at some of the story's more crucial points.  Certainly one of the more mixed reactions that I had to any 2014 release read this year.

Jay Lake, Last Plane to Heaven

Lake's stories, both novel-length and short fiction alike, have been a mixed bag for me.  Often, he would create a vivid setting peopled with some interesting characters, only for there to be something about the story's structure or its prose (or vice versa) that would hinder my enjoyment of the unfolding story.  In his last, posthumous collection, Last Plane to Heaven, there are a wealth of diverse tales that are a testament to his creativity.  However, there are some several clunkers that just do not feel as well-realized as his more successful tales.  At times, it was hard to believe that the same writer penned these tales, as the quality, not to mention the tone and presentation, varied so much from story to story.  Yet there are enough good tales to justify giving this collection a chance.  Just do not be surprised if there are several tales that will do nothing for you.

Final four foreign language 2014 releases reviewed

I have reviewed more current foreign language works this year (17; not counting pre-2014 releases) than I have in any previous year.  These works, published in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian, have included some nominees and winners for major literary awards (Premio Alfaguara, Premio Strega, Prix Médicis).  In the next few days, I'll list my favorites for the year.  But for now, here are capsule reviews of the final four 2014 releases that I read in French, Spanish, and Portuguese:

Christine Montalbetti, Plus rien que les vagues et le vent (longlisted for the 2014 Prix Médicis)

In her latest novel, Montalbetti continues exploring facets of American life that she conducted in earlier novels such as Western.  Here, the setting is the West Coast and as the title suggests (Nothing More than the Waves and Wind), the locale plays a substantial role in shaping the narrative.  Montalbetti's prose is evocative and the narrative sustains a steady flow throughout. While the characters at times take a backseat to the scenes in which they operate, for the most part the characterizations are well-realized as well.  Plus rien que les vagues et le vent was one of the longlisted titles that I had hopes for selection for the finalist round of the Prix Médicis and it certainly is one of the better French-language novels that I have read this year.

Valérie Zenatti, Jacob, Jacob (finalist for the 2014 Prix Médicis)

Set in French Algeria during World War II, Jacob, Jacob is the story of an Algerian Jew, Constantine, who is called to fight for his country in advance of the 1944 invasion of Provence.  It is a short, sharp tale of an innocent who will be forced to confront the terrible realities of a war in which ideologies play a role in shaping an understanding just what the stakes are.  Zenatti does an outstanding job in establishing her characters and the effects that the war will have on them.  Her prose is exquisite, eloquent without ever descending into maudlin melodrama.  The plot flows smoothly from beginning to end, with no longeurs.  Jacob, Jacob was one of my favorite non-English-language reads this year.   Hopefully, there will be an English translation of this excellent work in the years to come.

Fábio Fernandes and Romeu Martins (eds.), Vaporpunk:  Novos documentos de uma pitoresca época steampunk

This second volume in the Brazilian steampunk anthology series Vaporpunk contains nine stories that explore various elements of Brazilian and world cultures in relation to the notion of replacing current technological developments with those derived from an alternate, steam-based technology.  I enjoyed the majority of these stories, finding them to be inventive looks at our own contemporary societies and how certain historical developments shape our understandings of the world around us.  My only quibble about this otherwise very good anthology is that it's shorter than I expected, with only nine (albeit for the most part good) tales.  Despite this, this second volume manages to sustain the energy and momentum established in the first volume.

Mariano Villarreal (ed.), Terra Nova 3

This third installment in the Spanish SF anthology series perhaps may be the best in a series that has already garnered some of Spain's most prestigious SF awards.  Like the previous two volumes, Terra Nova 3 mixes in Spanish originals with translations.  This time, however, instead of the foreign stories being from Anglophone countries, there is a direct translation from Chinese to Spanish of a story by Cixin Liu, which happens to be one of the strongest stories in an anthology full of interesting takes on SF issues.  At nearly 350 pages on my iPad, Terra Nova 3 is one of the larger foreign language anthologies I've read this year and it is among the best.  My only complaint is that there could have been even more Spanish-language originals, as I am curious about SF being produced in Hispanophone countries, but this is a minor complaint in what was otherwise a very enjoyable anthology.

Five October and December releases by women reviewed

2014 has seen the release of some outstanding works by women writers.  Over 40% (granted, this is lower than the percentage published this year) of the 2014 releases I've read this year have been by women and by far, the majority of those releases have been at least well-written and entertaining.  If it weren't due for a time/energy crunch these past couple of months, I would have devoted much more space to extolling the virtues of the five works I am about to cover.  Two were considered for the National Book Award for Fiction; two are debuts; and two are short story collections (one a debut).  Each is deserving of a greater readership.  Now onto brief discussions of why I enjoyed these works:

Julia Elliott, The Wilds

Elliott's debut is one of the strongest, most thematically connected collections that I have read in quite some time.  Over the course of eleven stories, each of which contains an excellent mixture of humor, bizarreness, and in-depth exploration of facets of human character and motivation, Elliott confronts readers with topics (such as how we treat the outcasts and less fortunates) that we perhaps might not rather want to consider.  Her use of surreal settings to make the "invisible" more visible is realized almost perfectly in these stories.  Her writing is impeccable, as there is a deceiving sense of effortlessness to her storytelling.  Every element, from the prose to characterization to narrative/plot flow, fits together like a jigsaw puzzle.  The Wilds is one of, if not the absolute best, the strongest collections released this year in a 2014 full of excellent short story collections.  It is one of those books that lovers of both speculative and realist fiction could gift to fans of the other and claim it is one of the best examples of that literary genre released in recent years.

 Jac Jemc, A Different Bed Every Time

"Every night I stunned myself with gin.  On one date, a man and I ended up at the airport and ate rhinestones.  We moved fast and real."  This opening to the first story, "A Violence," sets the tone for the remainder of Jemc's latest collection.  She takes no prisoners.  The stories are sharp, embedded with unusual imagery and with prose that can be unfamiliar to readers more accustomed to more straightforward narratives.  But once the reader gets acclimated to how Jemc narrates her stories, the vistas open up and several remarkable moments occur over the course of these 42 short stories, the majority of which are flash fictions under 5 pages long.  The cumulative effect is greater than the sum of each of these short fictions, making A Different Bed Every Time a strong, wonderful collection to read for those who enjoy startling, impression-filled stories.

Jane Smiley, Some Luck (longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award)

Some Luck is the beginning to a trilogy that plans to cover 100 years of an Iowa family over the course of 100 chapters.  It certainly is a promising beginning, as Smiley fills these early decades of the 20th century with characters that reflect the reality of those times:  recent immigrants, suffering from xenophobia due to World War I; the radicalization of some rural families due to the then-popular socialism of first Eugene V. Debs and later Lenin and Trotsky; uncertain economic times due to collapsing food prices during the 1920s; and questions of whether or not "progress" is a noble ideal or a masque for something more nefarious.  Her characters do not parrot these historical realities as much as they live them; each feels like a dynamic, well-realized individual.  By novel's end, I was left wanting to read more, curious to see how the middle decades of the 20th century will treat the Langdon family.

Marilynne Robinson, Lila (finalist for the 2014 National Book Award)

There must be something powerful about having Iowa as a setting, as along with Smiley's book, Robinson's narrative set in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa was also nominated for a 2014 National Book Award.  The third in a trilogy of books set there, Lila was more of a struggle for me to read.  Not because the narrative is dull (it is not) nor because of bad prose or poor characterizations (the opposite, in fact), but mostly due to me reading this without reading the first two novels.  Yet even after realizing that there were a number of references to other characters whose import I would not understand due to not having read those books, Lila was still a very engaging work, as this hither-to young wife to the other two books' main protagonist proves to be an intriguing, challenging character to consider.  Sometime in the near future, I plan on seeking out the first two books and then re-reading Lila, as I think when placed within a larger context, it might be one of the better historical/family series to be released in recent years.

Jennifer Marie Brissett, Elysium

When I finished reading Elysium a couple of weeks ago, my first thought was, "This was a debut?"  It certainly is a daring first effort, as Brissett tackles issues of gender/sex identities and love through the interactions of two souls, Adrianne/Adrian and Antoine/Antoinette, over the course of several "lives," each of which are seen only as vignettes interrupted by seeming computer code/rebooting.  In each of these iterations, these characters struggle to forge identities and bonds even as their bodies shift and they find themselves in new situations.  In some ways, it is a struggle toward nirvana, although it is never couched in those terms during the narrative.  By the novel's end, the cumulative lessons that these two souls (or perhaps computer simulacra?) have learned makes Elysium one of the best debut novels that I've read in a year full of strong first novels and collections.

Leopoldo Brizuela, Una misma noche

Si me hubieran llamado a declarar, pienso.  Pero eso es imposible.  Quizá, por eso, escribo.


Declararía, por ejemplo, que en la noche del sábado al domingo 30 de marzo de 2010 llegué a casa entre las tres y tres y media de la madrugada:  el último ómnibus de Retiro a La Plata sale a la una, pero una muchedumbre volvía de no sé qué recital, y viajamos apretados, de pie la mayoría, avanzando a paso de hombre por la autopista y el campo.

Urgida por mi tardanza, la perra se me echó encima tan pronto abrí la puerta.  Pero yo aún me demoré en comprobar que en mi ausencia no había pasado nada – mi madre dormía bien, a sus ochenta y nueve años, en su casa de la planta baja, con una respiración regular –, y solo entonces volví a buscar la perra, le puse la cadena y la saqué a la vereda.

Como siempre que voy cerca, eché llave a una sola de las tres cerraduras que mi padre, poco antes de morir, instaló en la puerta del garaje:  el miedo a ser robados, secuestrados, muertos, esa seguridad que llaman, curiosamente, inseguridad, ya empezaba a cernirse, como una noche detrás de la noche. (p. 13)

Like most of its neighbors in the 1970s, Argentina went through a period of socio-political upheaval that led to a right-wing military coup.  The "Dirty War" of 1976-1983 led to tens of thousands of disappearances, mysterious robberies, assaults, murders, and other acts of violence.  Often neighbors would witness atrocities, only to be forced to remain silent lest what they saw would be visited in turn upon them.  It is, nearly forty years later, still a controversial topic within Argentina and there are many groups clamoring even today for justice to be served for those who inflicted such violence upon its citizens.

In Leopoldo Brizuela's 2012 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel Una misma noche (On a Similar Night might be an appropriate translation), he explores the issues of fear-driven forgetfulness and subconscious complicity in acts of state atrocity.  Through the eyes of his narrator, a writer named Leonardo Bazán, Brizuela jumps back and forth through two time periods, 1976-1977 and 2010, to probe at just how people could look at a horrific event and manage to rationalize it away from their conscious thoughts.  It is an interesting narrative approach, albeit one fraught with flaws.

The chapters, labeled by letters in the Spanish alphabet, alternate between these time periods.  Bazán at first tries to adopt a more "clinical" approach toward narrating the similarities between the house invasion he and his parents witnessed in 1976 and a 2010 elaborate robbery (which includes, interestingly enough, a member of the local police) in that very name house.  What are the connections between the two?, Bazán begins to ask himself.  Then, as memories are triggered by this 2010 invasion, the question shifts more toward that of what was he hiding from himself all along?

The narrative depends upon the reader's willingness to consider and reconsider details that Bazán raises as he shifts back and forth from memory (some of which seems to be unreliable, as he recalls in different lights the exact same events he discussed in a prior chapter) and "present" reflection.  At times, the split between the past/present becomes a bit too dizzying, as there are occasionally no narrative bridges between these temporal shifts of thought.  This in turn risks missing out on important information or clues into what happened in the original 1976 home invasion and how Bazán's family dealt with its aftermath.

In addition, some of the principal characters, including the Jewish family, the Kupermans, are not as fleshed out as much as they perhaps should have been.  These relatively sketchy characters on occasion detract from the narrative's potential impact as there is not enough information provided about them to enable the reader to form solid connections.  This is a shame, as at times Brizuela's prose, particular when Bazán is contemplating the connections between the events, is sharp and the narrative flow on these occasions is fluid and devoid of the false steps that plague other parts of the story.  This unevenness in the characterizations and plot development dampens the enjoyment that might have been derived from reading Una misma noche.  It is not by any stretch a particularly "bad" novel, just merely a flawed one, one of the weaker Premio Alfaguara winners in the sixteen years since the award was resumed.

Santiago Roncagliolo, Abril rojo/Red April

Con fecha miércoles 8 de marzo de 2000, en circunstancias en que transitaba por las inmediaciones de su domicilio en la localidad de Quinua, Justino Mayta Carazo (31) encontró un cadáver.

Según ha manifestado ante las autoridades competentes, el declarante llevaba tres días en el carnaval del referido asentamiento, donde había participado en el baile del pueblo.  Debido a esa contingencia, afirma no recordar dónde se hallaba la noche anterior ni niguna de las dos precedentes, en las que refirió haber libado grandes cantidades de bebidas espirituosas.  Esa versión no ha podido ser ratificada por ninguno de las 1.576 vecinos del pueblo, que dan fe de haberse encontrado asimismo en el referido estado etílico durante las anteriores 72 horas con ocasión de dicha festividad. (p. 13)

Police procedurals, or "whodunnits," are a very popular literary genre.  If crafted well, each scene, each character interaction builds toward something greater until the final revelations are made and the case is closed.  But what if this murder/mystery tale were wedded to political turmoil and terrorism?  What if coercion and covert sympathy for the offenders were to play a major role in blocking a case from being solved?

Santiago Roncagliolo in his 2006 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel Abril rojo (available in English translation as Red April) manages to create a near-perfect melding of these elements.  Set in an isolated, mountainous region of Peru between March 9 and May 3, 2000, Abril rojo is the tale of a state prosecutor, Félix Chacaltana Saldívar, who is trying to solve a series of murders in his hometown of Ayacucho.  What Chacaltana discovers, however, is that the local people may or may not be complicit in harboring some of the remnants of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla/terrorist group that had terrorized much of Peru, especially the more Quechua-speaking areas of the mountains, during the 1980s and 1990s.

Roncagliolo develops the action carefully, utilizing several investigative interviews conducted by Chacaltana to provide context for what is transpiring in Ayacucho.  In these scenes, the citizens interviewed reveal only small fragments of information, leaving Chacaltana impeded in his search for justice for the growing number of people dying in the region, most especially during the weeks leading up to Holy Week in late April.  Furthermore, his efforts seem to be leading to more murders, as those who do agree to divulge information appear to be targets for the murderers.

However, there are some interesting twists to what might seem to be a standard tale of nefarious bandits terrorizing the locals.  Roncagliolo also presents a very realistic portrait of the senderistas through some of the testimony provided in Chacaltana's interviews.  This composite portrait, derived from actual court cases according to the author, provides valuable insight into the reasons behind the senderistas becoming dedicated to overthrowing the national government, as well as providing a glimpse into the appeal the Sendero Luminoso had for even the more privileged members of Peruvian society.  It is this sense of veracity within this procedural tale that makes each plot development in Abril rojo feel so vital.

Roncagliolo's writing is sharp throughout the novel.  There is a gradually building narrative tension that rarely suffers from longeurs.  The characters are well-developed and even though some might at first glance appear to be stock characterizations, there is a level of depth to them that often does not appear in murder/mystery stories.  Although the conclusion is slightly weaker than the middle portions of the novel, it provides enough detail and narrative power to make this novel one of the more enjoyable police procedurals that I've read in either Spanish or English in quite some time.  Abril rojo is one of my favorite Premio Alfaguara-winning novels and this re-read after an initial read almost eight years ago confirmed my original high opinion of this novel.

Tomás Eloy Martínez, El vuelo de la Reina

A eso de las once, como toas las noches, Camargo abre las cortinas de su cuarto en la calle Reconquista, dispone el sillón a un metro de distancia de la ventana para que la penumbra lo proteja, y espera a que la mujer entre en su ángulo de mira.  A veces la ve cruzar como una ráfaga por la ventana de enfrente y desaparecer en el baño o en la cocina.  Lo que a ella más le gusta, sin embargo, es detenerse ante el espejo del dormitorio y desvestirse con suprema lentitud.  Camargo puede contemplarla entonces a su gusto.  Muchos años atrás, en un teatro de variedades de Osaka, vio a una bailarina japonesa despojarse del quimono de ceremonia hasta quedar desnuda por completo.  La mujer de enfrente tiene la misma altiva elegancia de la japonesa y repite las mismas poses de fingido asombro, pero sus movimientos son aún más sensuales.  Inclina la cabeza como si se le hubiera perdido algún recuerdo y, luego de pasarse la punta de los dedos por debajo de los pechos, los lame con delicadeza.  Para no perder ningún detalle, Camargo la observa a través de un telescopio Bushnell de sesenta y siete centímetros que está montado sobre un trípode. (p. 11)

There is a relatively new cliché that obsession is more than a perfume by Calvin Klein.  Yet there is something beguiling, alluring even, about displays of obsession that draws people's attentions.  Perhaps it is our own half-understood realization that we all have our things or people that become our objects of fixation and desire.  Seeing it in others can be revolting as well, as though we are witnesses simultaneously something quasi-criminal and a too-clear reflection of our own most shameful lusts.  Yet, sometimes, we observe, perhaps behind some metaphorical curtains or bushes the obsessed soul in action.  We might feel helpless to resist, but there it lies, waiting for us to see how this obsession will unfold.  Sometimes, it'll be fortuitous, with the obsession transformed into reciprocal love.  Other times (and these can be the most delectable for us, loathe as many of us may be to admit it), the obsession crashes into disaster.

In Argentine writer Tomás Eloy Martínez's 2002 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel El vuelo de la reina (The Flight of the Queen), the reader encounters a disturbing sort of obsession straight from the opening paragraph.  Camargo, the head of Buenos Aires' most influential newspaper, is spying upon a
young woman, a reporter named Reina.  It is not a Romeo espying a Juliet; it is a predator stalking its prey.  Camargo is double Reina's age and furthermore, he has all sorts of power over her:  his ability to block or accelerate her career advancement; his knowledge of an extramarital affair that she had; and his awareness of how precarious her position is in a society that has a double standard when it comes to issues of sex and morality.

It would be too easy to view Camargo as the villian, as after all, he has very few, if any, redeeming personal qualities and his lusts for power and dominance are not exactly heroic.  Yet Eloy Martínez, by having us see events through Camargo's thoughts and actions, forces the reader to confront these detestable qualities head-on.  Camargo is so blinded by his obsession with Reina that he justifies all sorts of nefarious actions in such a fashion that at times it is hard not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for him, controlled as he is by his desires.  But it is in a few scenes with Reina, leading up to the denouement, that we see the full extent of his power plays and the deleterious effects this has on the young woman.  Here is where Camargo's self-delusions and machinations are laid bare and the reader is confronted with the insidious nature of Camargo's actions.  Eloy Martínez manages to execute this so well that when the novel concludes, the reader is left with two wavering images of Camargo, each seeming to elide into the other, with the dissonance serving to illustrate how Camargo's self-image differs from the reader's.

Eloy Martínez's prose is excellent throughout the narrative, and he manages to shape through carefully crafted passages, nuanced portraits of the principal characters.  While Camargo's obsessed, mostly-malevolent character can be distasteful, especially when he is the primary character, Eloy Martínez manages to make other character perspectives feel dynamic and true to life.  Although there are a few moments where the narrative slows down overmuch, for the most part, Eloy Martínez's slow ratcheting up of the narrative tension adds greatly to the story.  While the conclusion might be a little "soft" for some readers, it too fits in with the themes of power and desire that Eloy Martínez explores to great depth here.  El vuelo de la reina is a very good novel, one of Eloy Martínez's best, and it certainly was deserving of its selection as a Premio Alfaguara-winning novel.

Elena Poniatowska, La piel del cielo

 – Mamá, ¿allá atrás se acaba el mundo?

– No, no se acaba.

– Demuéstramelo.

– Te voy a llevar más lejos de lo que se ve a simple vista.

Lorenzo miraba el horizonte enrojecido al atardecer mientras escuchaba a su madre.  Florencia era su cómplice, su amiga, se entendían con sólo mirarse.  Por eso la madre se doblegó a la urgencia en la voz de su hijo y al día siguiente, su pequeño de la mano, compró un pasaje y medio de vagón de la mano, compró un pasaje y medio de vagón de segunda para Cuautla en la estación de San Lázaro. (p. 9)

Some of civilization's greatest thinkers began their paths to discoveries by asking simple questions in life.  There is something of a child's wonder at what lies beyond the horizon, discovering whether or not there is truly an "end" to the earth, or if, as is stated by the mother above, that such a child can and will be transported to a place beyond current sight, a locale where perhaps conceptualizations of reality can merge with those of a child's flights of fantasy.  Such stories, both real and fictitious alike, can move readers who witness the development of that curious child into an inventor or trailblazer.

In Elena Poniatowska's 2001 Premio Alfaguara-winning La piel del cielo (a possible translation being The Sky's Skin or The Skin of Heaven), she traces the life of such a singular child, Lorenzo de Tena, from his impoverished youth through his struggles to arrive at where he seemed destined to be, an astronomer.  It is not the end point that fascinates as much it is the difficult journey that Lorenzo has to make.  The son of an out-of-wedlock relationship between a distant, wealthy businessman father and a determined, intelligent, yet impoverished mother, Lorenzo has to fight and scrape in order to follow his ambitions.  His humble social origins are repeatedly thrust into his face, as he has to battle in order to make it through into college.  He is for a time associated with Mexican Communists during his youth (the middle decades of the 20th century) before he changes course and becomes an astronomer.

Poniatowska goes to great pains to make sure that Lorenzo's narrative arc is not clichéd.  While he has difficulties in achieving his ambitions, some of the issues arise from his own sometimes prickly personality.  His demeanor and social attitudes can at times be offputting, but this is almost certainly intentional, as Poniatowska seems to be tracing the machismo roots of certain attitudes that Mexican scientists had during the mid-20th century.  Lorenzo's flaws, as much as his achievements, are a large part of what makes La piel del cielo such a fascinating character study.  It is difficult to make genius into something relateable, yet for the most part Poniatowska manages to pull this off and make it seem almost effortless.

Yet there are times where the story flags a bit, particularly in the middle sections of the novel.  Here Lorenzo's struggle does not feel as vital, nor is there a strong enough narrative "hook" to overcome this fall in the action.  However, this fall in narrative power only occurs for a few chapters in this book, as the beginning and concluding chapters are much stronger.  Likewise, Lorenzo's character, as mentioned above, can be polarizing in how he views the world and its people, but even at his least likeable moments, his strength of character shines through.  Poniatowska's prose is subtle in its depictions of character interactions and with only a few mild hiccups along the way, the narrative flows smoothly from beginning to end.  La piel del cielo ultimately is an interesting look at how genius can triumph over adversity without ever resorting to alienating the genius's personality from that of the surrounding environs.  It is a fascinating character/society portrait, one that is deserving of the literary prize bestowed upon it.

Five September releases reviewed

The five books discussed below offer a nice diversity of narrative styles, themes, and characterization choices.  There are historical novels butting up against psychological portraits, with war being a catalyst for some surprising changes.  I enjoyed reading each one of these books, usually for different reasons, and while I do not have the time this month to write detailed individual reviews for the remaining 2014 releases I want to cover (there will be a handful of exceptions, perhaps), many of these are just as well-written and memorable as several that I have lauded before.

Lin Enger, The High Divide

It is tempting to view Enger's novel as an updated Western (it is set in the late 19th century prairies of western Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana) or, with a protagonist with the name of Ulysses Pope, as a riff off of Homer.  Yet despite the wealth of historical detail and a mystery surrounding Ulysses' disappearance, The High Divide is a sharp, penetrating look into family dynamics and the effects that one's past can have in shaping future decisions.  Enger's characters are well-developed, with motivations and weaknesses that make them dynamic, well-rounded personalities.  Couple this with Enger's detailed, evocative descriptions of a vanishing way of life and The High Divide is one of the more captivating novels of the late 19th century American West that has been released in recent years.

Brian Francis Slattery, The Family Hightower

I have been impressed with Slattery's previous novels, so I was intrigued by a pre-release description of this book as being about family and mob crime.  A multi-generational tale of how a Ukrainian immigrant changed his name and fortune by becoming involved in the Cleveland crime scene in the early 20th century and how this affected two similarly-named descendants captivates because Slattery has created a gripping mystery peppered with nuanced characterizations.  As the story unfolds and a journalist grandson delves into why he has become the target of hit men, I found myself more and more entranced by the narrative.  There are no longeurs and as the action built to an explosive climax, I found myself reading this even faster than usual.  Simply put, this is a fast-paced crime/mystery novel that has embedded within it an intriguing family history, all integrated almost seamlessly.

Michael Pitre, Fives and Twenty-Fives

I noted in a previous review that 2014 has seen a bumper crop of Iraq/Afghan War-related fictions.  In Iraq War vet Michael Pitre's debut novel, Fives and Twenty-Fives (the title references the IED's danger range for convoy vehicles and soldiers on foot), the Iraq War is shown not so much as a series of battles and ambushes as more akin to the hellishness found in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman.  Day after day, week after week, the soldiers protecting convoys through the Anbar Province have to stop, investigate any potholes, patch them up after any detected IEDs have been blown up, and then travel on through, knowing that they will have to repeat this frequently in the same spots on the same roads.  Pitre does an outstanding job showing the effects of this monotonous yet dangerous military assignment on the soldiers during and after their tours of duty.  A worthy complement to Phil Klay's National Book Award-winning Redeployment.

Joseph O'Neill, The Dog (longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize)

The Dog is one of those novels that, if individual elements are considered in isolation, would seem to be a much better novel than what the actual narrative ends up being.  The prose is mostly fine (except where certain incidents and character foibles feel as though the author lingers over-long on them), the characterizations are good (except when there's too much harping on certain character defects), the wit is amusing (except, of course when it continues too long).  The result is a tale of a Western lawyer in Dubai that feels like it almost is a great tale, but ultimately it is a narrative that appears to suffer from O'Neill just adding a surfeit of details and redundancies that weaken the impact of what otherwise could have been one of the more powerful examinations of Western and Gulf State morality/greed collisions written this century.  As it stands, The Dog is not by any stretch a horrible novel, but its flaws are magnified by its numerous good traits being over-presented.

Dylan Landis, Rainey Royal

Rainey Royal was a difficult book for me to read.  Not because Landis doesn't write memorable scenes filled with subtle details and dynamic characters, but because she captures too well in prose a spoiled yet neglected teen girl growing up in 1970s New York.  Rainey's sometimes-tortured, sometimes-carefree adolescence, seen through chapters that feel more like a melding of short stories rather than tight, cohesive novel chapters, alternates between fascinating and horrifying the reader, depending on what happens to her.  All the while, Landis's characters stay true to themselves, even when things as horrific as a rape at the hands of a star pupil of her father's is in turn dismissed by him.  It is amazing that this character manages to survive to become something more than a testimony to youth wasted and abused, but Landis manages to pull this off with aplomb.  While the subject matter occasionally made me uncomfortable, Landis's talent in developing characters and creating vivid scenes shines through on almost every page.

Three short story collections, an anthology, and a review essay collection

Confession:  I have read a lot of wonderful short fiction collections this year.  I have also read some that did not appeal to me.  Chances are, if it's a recent SF/F anthology/collection, I did not enjoy it as much as I did those not marketed as such (one such collection will be reviewed in the next week or so), perhaps due to changing tastes or just a general lack of narrative energy and experimentation.  I also am going to write a few words about a writer/lit critic/professor whose reviews, even when I disagree with them, often serve to remind me how much further I could go as a critic if I felt so inclined (sometimes, I feel more inclined to just skim over the sludgy mediocre stories in favor of those that didn't suck quite so much, other times it's all about the squirrel readers; the price I had to pay for reading/reviewing so many books this year).  Some of these works you might enjoy much more than I did; others might be less appealing.  But here they are, in an even-more condensed version than what Reader's Digest could ever hope to pull off:

Dorothy Tse, Snow and Shadow (translated from Chinese by Nicky Harman)

Snow and Shadow is testimony to the ability of writers to employ surrealistic techniques skillfully irrespective of culture or language.  Tse's stories are mostly set in a warped, sometimes grisly Hong Kong, in which women may turn into fish, or a wicked queen might attempt to graft a pig's trotter onto the amputated arm sockets of young women.  Harman does a good job in making Tse's use of weird, grotesque images seem as though they were originally composed in English.  There are few dull stories in this collection; many succeed in creating unsettling settings for some truly odd happenings.  While not every story is pitch-perfect, there are enough solid to very good efforts to make this debut English-language collection worthwhile for readers who enjoy surrealist and weird fiction.

Justin Taylor, Flings

It is almost clichéd to claim that a short story collection contains a mixture of good and not-so-great stories.  Yet there are times where one might read a collection and wonder between stories if the same writer composed the two, because one is so much better than the other that it is difficult to believe the same pen composed the twain.  This is the case with Justin Taylor's latest collection, Flings.  Roughly half of these stories are standard lit fare, replete with familiar characters and cozy plots and mundane action.  The characters in these stories might as well be engaging in one-off flings for the lack of depth and vitality that they possess.  Yet there are a handful of stories that manage to go beyond the mechanistic entities of the other tales and become something moving, vibrant beyond the author's obvious talent for writing.  In tales such as "Sungold" or "Poets," Taylor provides the reader with enough glimpses of his abilities that it is frustrating to read his lesser works, because it is plain by collection's end that he has the potential to write tales that could approach the level of some of the finest short fiction writers of the past half-century.  Maybe in his next collection he'll realize this potential.  As it stands, Flings is a solid yet uneven collection.

Margaret Atwood, Stone Mattress

Atwood is a difficult writer to sum up in a few pithy sentences.  Not only is she a talented writer on the technical level, but her stories also tend to contain profound themes, memorable characters, and situations that challenge reader preconceptions on several "hot topic" issues.  The nine stories in her latest collection, Stone Mattress, largely live up to reader expectations.  There are surprising revenges, intriguing revelations, and tales that consciously and confidently brush aside issues of genre identification in order to narrate tales that engage the reader without feeling too oblique or too transparent in construction or execution.  Stone Mattress might not be Atwood's best work, but it certainly ranks comfortably with several of her other collections and novels.

Adam Roberts, Sibilant Fricative:  Essays & Reviews

Confession:  I have a difficult time pronouncing "sibilant."  I frequently confound it somehow with silibant, which would make for an odd pun if one were pondering the merits of (unintentionally) comic novels.  Puns of course being something with which followers of Roberts' Twitter account would be familiar.  That weakness being confessed, here's another:  Roberts is one of the best lit critics writing today, especially for those who deign to treat topics as varied as Robert Browning, Gene Wolfe, Christopher Priest, Maurice Sendak and Robert Jordan.  Yes, Roberts' essays run the gamut from breaking down complex fictions into interesting, illuminating reviews to bringing to the fore Jordan's unfortunate penchant for writing quasi-clothing and tea porn.  There are times where I disagreed with his conclusions but admired the way he argued his points.  Then there were the times that I wanted to laugh aloud at how adroitly he could skewer a plot that deserved to die the death of a thousand pinpricks.  If this isn't a testimony to how good Roberts is as a reviewer, then perhaps I should just say go forth and buy a copy and find out for yourself.

Neil Clarke (ed.), Upgraded:  A Cyborg Anthology

There is a passage in the New Testament book of Revelation that talks about a church being like lukewarm water, fit only to be spewed out of the mouth.  "Lukewarm" is perhaps the most fit descriptor for this anthology of stories that deal with humans being augmented or in some form or fashion becoming "cyborgs."  There was nothing overtly offensive in any of these tales from a diverse mix of young and established SF writers, but neither was there anything memorable at all.  It took over three months for me to finish this anthology because so few stories had any real interest or appeal to me after the first few paragraphs.  Maybe it was the theme, but I suspect it is more the case that recent SF/F short fiction (not that older SF/F was better on any technical or narrative level) just leaves me cold.  There are few glaring problems with prose or characterization other that one feels cold and the other just merely lifeless. This is an issue that goes beyond this particular anthology, making Upgraded merely emblematic for the larger malaise that I feel is afflicting current SF/F short fiction.  Reading this anthology after reading several solid to outstanding non-SF/F collections and anthologies this year only underscores just how devoid of prose mastery or character nuances the SF/F collections/anthologies that I've read in recent years tend to be.  As I said above, this anthology left a lukewarm feeling, thus I spat out these thoughts.