“The world breaks us all. Afterward, some are stronger at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway, Farewell To Arms
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The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson A Swedish journalist delivers three manuscripts to a publisher. He then dies. The manuscripts are published posthumously, one by one. No, this isn’t some high-concept movie pitch, it’s the actual story of this book’s origin. The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second volume of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, recently translated into English. I had a hard time getting started on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Larsson’s first volume, because the Swedish-to-English translation seemed a little lifeless to me. But the more I read the more I was pulled in, and totally hooked by the third chapter. When I finished the first book, the second was not yet available in the States, so I put myself on an Amazon watch list, and ordered it as soon as it was. Lisbeth Salander is an unforgettable character. in this second book her life is on the line to a far greater extent than it was in the first — you feel a palpable sense of danger on every page, danger which builds to a horrific climax. I won’t say that the story told in the second book is more or less engrossing than the first; rather, I’ll say that both are gripping, tense, serious stories that are impossible to put down. Sweden. Who knew so much crazy shit goes on over there? Yes, I think the translation is still a bit lifeless — you’re aware throughout that the book was originally written in another language — but once you’ve become Lisbeth’s bitch, you won’t mind a bit, and now I actually hope the same translator works on the third volume, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, which should be available to American readers some time next year. I’ll be waiting in line. |
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Virtual Light, by William Gibson I started reading William Gibson novels about a year ago, and instantly became a Gibson groupie. Virtual Light is nearly perfect Gibson, and to my delight turned out to be the precursor novel to All Tomorrow’s Parties, introducing characters I’d already become fascinated with, and going into great detail on a very plausible future San Francisco and it’s Bay Bridge squatter community — plausible indeed considering California’s current economic predicament. You see a lot of Blade Runner in these novels (Gibson wrote the screenplay), and if you liked that, you will LOVE these novels. |
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Empire of the Sun, by J.G.Ballard Most Americans my age know a lot about World War II, if by “a lot” one means the war in Europe as experienced by Americans, Britons, Germans, and Jews (the Russians, eh, not so much). When it comes to the war in the Pacific, our knowledge is confined to our own country’s participation. We know almost nothing of the war as experienced by Asians: the Japanese, Chinese, Indonesians, Malaysians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Pacific Islanders. And there is much to learn. J.G. Ballard writes of the experiences of Jim, the son of British expat parents living and working in Shanghai, during the Japanese invasion and subsequent occupation of China. Prior to the outbreak of war and his internment in a squalid and brutal prison camp, Jim had looked on the Japanese military as a force equal to, and as heroic as, the British military, and throughout the deprivations of prison camp life, he continues to sympathize with the Japanese occupiers. The tale of Jim’s survival is of course the story of British life in wartime internment camps, and is semi-autobiographical (J.G.Ballard spent four years in the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center, a Japanese-run prison camp outside of Shanghai). In a very real way, it is also the story of the Japanese and Chinese experience of WWII, presented through Western eyes. Jim draws us in because we share his culture and values; through his eyes we begin to understand something of the Asian experience of, and outlook on, war. This is a marvelously told story, with gripping images and unforgettable characters, a story with grand and sweeping themes, the unvarnished experience of war as seen through a child’s eyes, possibly the best war novel I have ever read. |
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jPod, by Douglas Coupland Some years ago I read Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, a funny yet penetrating look into the lives of IT workers, told through fictional but clearly based-on-life characters. jPod is more of the same, and much, much less. The main character is the son of a mother who kills a biker and buries the body in her basement; later, with his mother, he holds up and robs another group of bikers. Through a friend of his brother’s, he becomes part of an illegal Chinese immigrant smuggling ring. Page after page is filled with giant type, mere collections of symbols and Microsoft wingding characters, padding out what is essentially a short story, if that. I don’t know what additional absurdities Coupland planned to inflict on me, because I gave up less than a third of the way into the story. Nothing in JPod is in any way connected to life as we know it . . . Coupland is coasting; jPod is not worth reading. |
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The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell If you dread reading histories of Puritan America because they’re so dry and academic, and the Puritans themselves so far removed from our contemporary secular sensibilities, Sarah Vowell writes for you. She’s damn good at pop history: her writing is breezy, present tense, conversational. She makes a fascinating part of American history, well, fascinating. And if you’ve ever wondered why we Americans see ourselves as God’s chosen people, and our country as the “city on a hill” Jesus spoke of during his Sermon on the Mount, Sarah Vowell’s history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony will explain it for you. |
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The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann The story of the legendary lost civilizations of the Amazon basin and the explorers who searched for them. The focus here is on Colonel Fawcett, who disappeared into the jungle with his son and his son’s friend in 1925, determined to find the fabled “Lost City of Z,” and the various attempts over the years (stretching even unto today) to find some trace of him and his party — and not incidentally, Z itself. Very well told by a journalist/writer who catches the exploring bug himself and treks into the jungle on his own search. Tell you what, Colonel Fawcett makes Indiana Jones look like a pussy — this is one gripping read. |