Spring has arrived and with it comes variety! Ah, the spice of life. How wonderful to have strange little oddities, unexpected beauties, and yes, even horrendous wastes of time. You see, a wise person once said “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life.” Sometimes a soul-deadening torturously boring book is just what you need to kick-start better decision making in the future. Welcome Spring!
This is Literary Lollapalooza, March 2010 Edition.
Books Read This Month: 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan, Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhhamad Knight, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Books Acquired:
Fiction: The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Non-Fiction:
E-Books:
Books Borrowed: Never Let Me Go by Kashuo Ishiguro and Y: The Last Man by Vaughn, Guerra, and Marzan
Currently Reading: Never Let Me Go by Kashuo Ishiguro
Reviews of This Month’s Books:
99 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange
This is a graphic novel with the conceit that it will relay the gist of 99 classic and genre favorite books in single page, 4-paneled illustrations. Each book in 4 simple, illustrated panels. The results are mixed.
It’s a great concept, and most any book lover will get a kick out of it. Just don’t take it as a cliff’s notes version, as most summaries are either wildly inaccurate, simplified to a fault, or changed slightly to make a funnier entry. Sometimes this book-as-a-one-page-joke formula falls flat and produces some pretty lame entries. But others are inspired, inventive, funny, and sometimes very silly. My favorite is The Bible, but Master and Margarita, and 2001: A Space Odyssey are also very good. The bright points keep you moving along, and trust me this is a very fast read. A one-sit read if ever there was one.
It’s not the height of literature, or the height of graphic novels, but it’s a fun and whimsical distraction, and it may even inspire you to pick up one or two if these great classic novels. Any thing that might get you to pick up a copy of Bulgakov or Kafka, I can whole-heartedly endorse.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers wrote this, her debut novel, at the age of 23 in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1940. It became a literary sensation, skyrocketing to the top of the bestseller lists in 1940. McCullers would go on to write several more novels highlighting the plight of the oppressed, and Hunter gained its place in the pantheon of great American novels.
At the heart of the story is John Singer, a deaf-mute, whose deaf-mute mentally impaired companion gets committed to an asylum. Singer moves into a room at the house of the Kelly’s. Young Mick Kelly, daughter of the Kelly’s, is a teenager in love with music and seeking to fit in. She frequently visits the bar run by Biff Brannon, where we meet Jake Blount, an alcoholic labor agitator. Jake becomes friends with Singer, cleans up and starts working at an arcade. The Kelly’s maid is Portia, a young black woman, whose brother gets arrested and imprisoned, and her father is the highly-educated and idealistic Dr. Powell who anchors the African-American community with his community dinners and awards for best essay written by a black teenager.
I am certain that at one time in this country this was considered a shocking vision of race and class that shook people to the core. In my heart of hearts I believe that. Why else would so many people praise it as a masterpiece? Sadly, it is a master-piece-of-shit (ya, see what I did there?). This book has not aged well. At all. Mostly it is about the conditions in the south that lead to racism and of fat cats taking advantage of the working class, this reads today as overly romantic, racist, ignorant, Marxist claptrap. We not only have a (black) character named Karl Marx, we have a character whose soul purpose is to spout the Marxist philosophy. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” This quote gets reiterated a hundred times. Oh! And then there’s the black characters who are written in uneducated, ‘black talk’: “Nothing us could do would make no difference. Best thing us can do is keep our mouth shut.” Seriously. Oh, and the coup de grace is when respected old Dr. Powell sits thinking about how much he wishes he were white, oh to have fair skin, and thin lips, etc.
The fact that I slogged through 1/3 of this horrendous nightmare of a book before giving up and putting it aside is a testament to either my stupidity or my stubbornness. In the end it ended up taking up 2½ weeks of this month, so I’m sorry if I’m a bit bitter. I should’ve listened to Jim when he said, “Why are you reading that? It’s awful. Life is too short to read bad books.” Too true, Jim. Life IS too short to read bad books, even if I sometimes think I need a challenge. Trust me folks, pass this “classic” by.
Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan
Okay, so this was homework for class, but someone a few months ago asked why I didn’t read more plays and now I have. So there. You’re welcome.
Lobby Hero is primarily about two characters, Jeff a twenty-something security guard in a Manhattan hotel lobby, and William, his uptight African-American supervisor. The play takes place entirely in the lobby of said hotel, and unravels as we discover more and more about the characters. Jeff is a self-proclaimed “fuck-up” who got kicked out of the Navy for smoking pot, got himself in deep with some loan sharks after losing big in Poker, and is now living in an apartment with his brother and his brother’s wife. He hopes to start paying his brother rent, but really wants to get out on his own, and he desperately wants to feel like his life has meaning and worth. Meanwhile, William is a self-made man. Through hard work, clean-lined ethics, and a no-nonsense take on following the rules he has risen to the position of Captain, the youngest in the company to ever achieve that. But William has a brother, and his brother has just been arrested for some really bad shit. And his brother has named him as his alibi. Two cops, one a hot superstar, the other a female rookie round out the cast of characters and help bring these secrets and desires crashing down around all of their heads, and none will ever be the same again.
The character is king with Lonergan, whose film You Can Count on Me was a breakout indie hit a few years back. Story is secondary to character, with the plots and subplots building solely out of the motivations and levels of the characters, and this play is an actors’ dream. Lonergan gives the characters nuance and so much pathos that it makes building a character an act of careful unpacking and assembling. This one gets my stamp of approval.
Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhammad Knight
Osama Van Halen is part sequel to Knight’s breakout underground Muslim punk-rock novel The Taqwacores, part autobiography, part metafiction, and part crazy delusional punk rock sojourn across the American landscape with a giant machine gun.
Knight, whose Taqwacores launched a Muslim sub-culture, plays fast and loose with the rules here. It’s more like a short story and essay collection than it is a novel. Threading all of the tales together is Amazing Ayyub, punk rock hero of Taqwacores, who along with Rabeya, the burka-wearing feminist Muslim, kidnap Matt Damon and are holding him hostage. They demand that Hollywood depict Muslims in a more positive light. They want just once to not be portrayed as al Qaeda steretypes. Meanwhile Ayyub, the amazing one, sets off on a personal mission to rid the world of a Muslim emo band by the name of Shah 79. Armed with a cartoonishly giant machine gun Ayyub traverses deserts and plains, often invisible, and along the way he escapes flesh-eating zombies in a mosque off the highway, gets rescued by taqwacore zombie-killer heroes The Kominas, and meets up with some pychobilly jinns. And to confuse matters more Michael Muhammad Knight enters the story as a character and occasionally as the author commenting on the characters and sequences as they occur.
This is a hell of a good time. I don’t know what it is, but I like it. For fans of crazy punk-rawk fiction, it doesn’t get more punk-rawk than this. While making homage to his own characters, he manages to create something wholly unique and original. Trust me, if you want to read this, you know right now. If Muslim emo bands getting massacred and Muslim zombies don’t get you excited, this is not for you. For the others of you (and you know who you are), order it now.
And now, for something completely different…
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for this, her debut collection of short fiction. A reading club favorite since its publication, it’s not the sort of book I gravitate towards. However, as providence would have it, I found it for really cheap on a clearance rack. Cut to several months later: I am finishing Osama Van Halen, looking for something to refresh and cleanse my palette. Interpreter of Maladies seems to fit the bill.
From the very first story I was engrossed and engaged with Lahiri’s remarkable prose. Her writing is elegant and precise, and yet moves with the fierce yearning of love. Her characters are almost all Indian, most Indian-Americans, (Lahiri herself is of Indian descent, born in London and raised in Rhose Island), and yet despite their sometimes exotic Eastern locations and customs, these stories aren’t foreign or alien at all. These stories take simple everyday slices of life from very average characters and reveal the deeply woven reality of these characters’ lives, making them much larger than life. Much like our own lives are so immense and deep and complicated to ever be simple, these stories showcase a literary talent who is at the top of her game. From “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” in which a little girl witnesses war and partition in Pakistan through the eyes of an older visitor, to “Sexy” in which a young woman enjoys playing the part of the kept mistress to a married man, each story is wholly unique and different, each one an entire world of its own.
My favorite story of the collection, “This Blessed House” is the story of a young couple, recently married. Theirs is the product of an arranged marriage, and so a few months in they are still getting to know one another, their quirks and idiosyncrasies. The new house they have purchased and moved into is a bit of a fixer upper, but they are ready for the challenge and look forward to having a home that is uniquely theirs. But free-spirit Twinkle has made a new game of treasure-hunting. It seems the family that lived in the house previously was devout Christians, and the couple is finding things all over the house. Twinkle begins earnestly searching for Christian curios, and she proudly displays them on the mantel, much to the chagrin of strait-laced Muslim Sanjeev. As the Christian artifacts accumulate, so does the tension in the house, culminating in a house-warming party where drunken guests join in the search and Sanjeev reaches a turning point.
This is beautiful and warm prose that gently urges you to keep reading. And when one finishes, you won’t be able to resist diving into the next irresistible world. An incredible debut collection, this is the type of book that as soon as you finish it you want to tell somebody else about it. Don’t resist that urge.
Well, that’s all for March. A bit of a downer of a month, but what a way to finish it! Until next month, keep reading.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Literary Lollapalooza, February 2010 Edition
It is February…a famous month for lovers, but we instead turn our gaze inward. This month, by complete accident I assure you, we discuss four separate tales that examine the search for self, (with some film criticism thrown in). In a month where “who am I” supersedes “who am I with”, here are some great Narcissistic puzzlers.
This is Literary Lollapalooza, February 2010 Edition.
Books Read This Month: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, Point Omega by Don DeLillo, The Moment of Psycho by David Thomson, Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown, and Horns by Joe Hill.
Books Acquired:
Fiction: The Professional by Robert Parker, Perforated Heart by Eric Bogosian, All the World’s a Grave by John Reed (play)
Non-Fiction: War by Sebastian Junger
E-Books:
Books Borrowed: Point Omega by Don DeLillo, 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange
Currently Reading: 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange, McSweeney’s Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon
Reviews of This Month’s Books:
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Murakami has been on my radar for quite awhile now. One of those writers I hear people talk about, and file it away in that “someday” folder in my head. I wasn’t sure where to start and my friend Kate suggested Kafka. So, thanks Kate!
Kafka on the Shore tells two interrelated but distinct stories, alternating between chapters. The odd chapters tell the story of 15-year-old Kafka Tamura who runs away from home to avoid an oedipal curse. His father, a successful sculptor who never showed much love to Kafka, told him that one day he would kill his father, and sleep with both his mother and sister. Kafka sets out to make a new life for himself. He finds shelter in a quiet private library in Takamatsu and settles in until police start looking to question him about a recent murder.
The even chapters focus on an old, mentally handicapped man named Nakata. Nakata lives on a subsidy from the state and, because of his unusual ability to talk to cats he makes extra money by finding lost cats for people in the neighborhood. A search for a particular neighborhood cat leads him out of familiar territory and into a road adventure with a truck driver named Hoshino. The unlikely duo cross the miles, encountering many odd characters, until they find what they are looking for.
Kafka and Nakata’s fates are intertwined, and we are certain from the start that somehow these two characters are very important to one another. Written in a heightened style, mixing reality with metaphysical planes, Kafka on the Shore reads like a strange but engrossing dream. With fun characters, pop culture references, music, fish falling from the sky, and talking cats this book is one of a kind. A great, fun read that’ll leave you puzzled and wanting to read it again. Since finishing Kafka it has lingered in my head, and I think of the characters like old friends.
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo’s latest novel, released February 2, is another short and brisk novel of surprising force. DeLillo’s lean prose is as spare and athletic as ever, weighing in at only 117 pages, it is a breathless and energetic read.
Jim Finley is a middle-aged filmmaker who has an idea about a film: it will be one long, continuous take of a man holding forth, talking about whatever comes to mind. That man is Richard Elster, a former U.S. defense consultant for the Bush-Cheney administration. A sort of conceptual strategist for the Iraq war, Elster tells Finley he wanted a “haiku war”, “a war in three lines”. Finley is trying to woo Elster for his film and Elster seems to just want company. The two men spend a couple of weeks at Elster’s desert hideaway talking, two men laying bare their souls. Elster says that they are reaching their omega point, an idea that suggests an eventual leap out of our biology, as Elster puts it, an ultimate evolution in which brute matter becomes analytical human thought. DeLillo gives us a sense of foreboding, that the two men are headed towards tragedy. Soon their solitude is interrupted by the appearance of Elster’s twenty-something daughter, Jessie. The tension between the three of them ratchets up, sending the book towards its ultimate tragedy.
Bookending this story is the first and last chapters, where an unknown male character stands silently in a museum watching 24 Hour Psycho, where Hitchcock’s film Psycho is slowed down to play over the course of 24 hours, making each slow mili-second of the film its own strange piece of art. DeLillo attended this exhibit while it was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It serves to examine how time and space changes the meaning of the smallest action.
DeLillo is a master of those tiny human moments that add up to make a life. Both profound and shattering, Point Omega is a breath-taking work about the struggle to reconcile the soul with its surroundings, and to understand the scope of space and time.
The Moment of Psycho by David Thomson
And speaking of Psycho…
David Thomson is a film critic and historian, among the foremost in the field. His knowledge of film is formidable to say the least, and here Thomson turns his keen eye on Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock, citing it as a turning point in American cinema.
Thomson’s writing is fantastically off-the-cuff and highly verbose. He starts off with a brief history lesson, to place us in the cultural context of the moment, listing pre-production issues and casting decisions as well as Hitchcock’s recent filmography. But where Thomson’s razor-sharp little book really finds its feet is in the cultural significance of the film, both on the business of film itself (Hitchcock’s lucrative back-end deal was among the first of its kind) but on movie-going audiences as well. With vivid detail, but with none of the stuffiness one might get from a film professor, Thomson recounts not only the making of the film, but how it changed and continues to change film and the audiences that watch film. Thomson understands that the “moment of Psycho” transcends the film and has greatly shaped film, and America itself, in the 50 years since its release. (As a fun bonus, Thompson brings the book full circle by mentioning at the book’s conclusion, the art exhibit 24 Hour Psycho, mentioned previously in Point Omega.)
The Moment of Psycho is a great book for film lovers or anyone who wants to understand the giant cultural shift that helped to define modern cinema.
Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown
Funny Misshapen Body is a memoir drawn by cartoonist Jeffrey Brown. Along with his other titles like Clumsy it tells the story of Brown’s formative years, growing up with Crohn’s disease and overcoming art school and the need to be a “serious artist”. Told in short ten page vignettes based on various themes, Brown’s crude yet highly detailed cartoons make up a scattered, meandering personal history. Brown’s great gift is his ability to tell a story in a very small hand-drawn square. The amount of detail he manages to squeeze in to those little 2-inch squares is astounding, never failing to connect one instantly with their own awkward childhood, or hard-partying college days. The fact that this memoir is practically told without words (the text never overtakes a frame, and is always a tiny portion of the 2-inch square) is a testament to Mr. Brown’s tremendous talent.
Funny, thought-provoking, and at times melancholy and nostalgic, this is a great quick little read, but one you will want to spend hours studying those dazzling, crudely drawn little squares. Also, Brown includes a vignette which he is writing and publishing Clumsy, so it feels, in a way, like you’re reading the making of the book you’re reading. Ooh, how Meta!
Horns by Joe Hill
This is the second novel by Joe Hill (Heart Shaped Box), declared by many to be the new voice of supernatural thrillers. I haven’t read his 1st novel, or his collection of short works (20th Century Ghosts) but they have both been on my reading list since they were published. I picked up the ARC of Horns, published in hardcover February 23, and I couldn’t resist this fiendish little book.
Horns is the story Ignatius Perrish, or Ig to his friends, who wakes up after a night of drunken debauchery to find that he has grown horns. The devil kind: growing right out of his forehead. He also finds that the horns have an unexpected effect on people: they all want to tell him their deepest, darkest desire and they want him to tell them it’ll be okay. Like the mother of a screaming brat, who tells him “I’d love to kick her in her spoiled little ass, but I’m worried about what all these people would say if I hit her. Do you think…?” He says, “No.” Or his grandmother who tells him, “When I look at you I want to be dead.” Why? “Everyone stares at me. They all know what you did,” she tells him. You see, a few years earlier Ig’s girlfriend Merrin was brutally raped and beaten to death. He was the prime suspect, but due to a lack of evidence an expensive family lawyer was able to get a mistrial. Popular opinion, however still laid the blame solely on Ig’s head. Depressed, heartbroken, and socially unmoored, Ig began a downhill spiral of self-abuse culminating in that terrible morning and his brand new horns. The mystery, of course, is if Ig didn’t kill Merrin, then who did? And is that person still out there? As Ig looks for the truth, the book builds toward the inevitable: some hellish revenge to be meted out.
Hill writes with jet-black humor and a razor sharp wit, reveling in the worst that we can be. This is a nasty piece of fiction, ruthless and unflinching, as bold a look at our darker natures that has been written in recent years. It careens towards the end like a death-proof hotrod, muscled, and growling through the turns. It’s unpleasant. It’s not religious. As a matter fact, it’s downright blasphemous. But it’s fun. In that scary, let’s turn off the lights and see what might be lurking, kind of way. If you like your thrillers dark, you could do a far sight worse than picking up Horns. It seems that Stephen King guy might have some competition…
And that ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the end of February. A good month with some very eclectic choices, but I was still able to find a common theme. Don’t expect that to happen again. Thanks to everybody that keeps coming back! Tell your friends.
Until next time, keep reading!
This is Literary Lollapalooza, February 2010 Edition.
Books Read This Month: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, Point Omega by Don DeLillo, The Moment of Psycho by David Thomson, Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown, and Horns by Joe Hill.
Books Acquired:
Fiction: The Professional by Robert Parker, Perforated Heart by Eric Bogosian, All the World’s a Grave by John Reed (play)
Non-Fiction: War by Sebastian Junger
E-Books:
Books Borrowed: Point Omega by Don DeLillo, 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange
Currently Reading: 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange, McSweeney’s Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon
Reviews of This Month’s Books:
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Murakami has been on my radar for quite awhile now. One of those writers I hear people talk about, and file it away in that “someday” folder in my head. I wasn’t sure where to start and my friend Kate suggested Kafka. So, thanks Kate!
Kafka on the Shore tells two interrelated but distinct stories, alternating between chapters. The odd chapters tell the story of 15-year-old Kafka Tamura who runs away from home to avoid an oedipal curse. His father, a successful sculptor who never showed much love to Kafka, told him that one day he would kill his father, and sleep with both his mother and sister. Kafka sets out to make a new life for himself. He finds shelter in a quiet private library in Takamatsu and settles in until police start looking to question him about a recent murder.
The even chapters focus on an old, mentally handicapped man named Nakata. Nakata lives on a subsidy from the state and, because of his unusual ability to talk to cats he makes extra money by finding lost cats for people in the neighborhood. A search for a particular neighborhood cat leads him out of familiar territory and into a road adventure with a truck driver named Hoshino. The unlikely duo cross the miles, encountering many odd characters, until they find what they are looking for.
Kafka and Nakata’s fates are intertwined, and we are certain from the start that somehow these two characters are very important to one another. Written in a heightened style, mixing reality with metaphysical planes, Kafka on the Shore reads like a strange but engrossing dream. With fun characters, pop culture references, music, fish falling from the sky, and talking cats this book is one of a kind. A great, fun read that’ll leave you puzzled and wanting to read it again. Since finishing Kafka it has lingered in my head, and I think of the characters like old friends.
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo’s latest novel, released February 2, is another short and brisk novel of surprising force. DeLillo’s lean prose is as spare and athletic as ever, weighing in at only 117 pages, it is a breathless and energetic read.
Jim Finley is a middle-aged filmmaker who has an idea about a film: it will be one long, continuous take of a man holding forth, talking about whatever comes to mind. That man is Richard Elster, a former U.S. defense consultant for the Bush-Cheney administration. A sort of conceptual strategist for the Iraq war, Elster tells Finley he wanted a “haiku war”, “a war in three lines”. Finley is trying to woo Elster for his film and Elster seems to just want company. The two men spend a couple of weeks at Elster’s desert hideaway talking, two men laying bare their souls. Elster says that they are reaching their omega point, an idea that suggests an eventual leap out of our biology, as Elster puts it, an ultimate evolution in which brute matter becomes analytical human thought. DeLillo gives us a sense of foreboding, that the two men are headed towards tragedy. Soon their solitude is interrupted by the appearance of Elster’s twenty-something daughter, Jessie. The tension between the three of them ratchets up, sending the book towards its ultimate tragedy.
Bookending this story is the first and last chapters, where an unknown male character stands silently in a museum watching 24 Hour Psycho, where Hitchcock’s film Psycho is slowed down to play over the course of 24 hours, making each slow mili-second of the film its own strange piece of art. DeLillo attended this exhibit while it was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It serves to examine how time and space changes the meaning of the smallest action.
DeLillo is a master of those tiny human moments that add up to make a life. Both profound and shattering, Point Omega is a breath-taking work about the struggle to reconcile the soul with its surroundings, and to understand the scope of space and time.
The Moment of Psycho by David Thomson
And speaking of Psycho…
David Thomson is a film critic and historian, among the foremost in the field. His knowledge of film is formidable to say the least, and here Thomson turns his keen eye on Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock, citing it as a turning point in American cinema.
Thomson’s writing is fantastically off-the-cuff and highly verbose. He starts off with a brief history lesson, to place us in the cultural context of the moment, listing pre-production issues and casting decisions as well as Hitchcock’s recent filmography. But where Thomson’s razor-sharp little book really finds its feet is in the cultural significance of the film, both on the business of film itself (Hitchcock’s lucrative back-end deal was among the first of its kind) but on movie-going audiences as well. With vivid detail, but with none of the stuffiness one might get from a film professor, Thomson recounts not only the making of the film, but how it changed and continues to change film and the audiences that watch film. Thomson understands that the “moment of Psycho” transcends the film and has greatly shaped film, and America itself, in the 50 years since its release. (As a fun bonus, Thompson brings the book full circle by mentioning at the book’s conclusion, the art exhibit 24 Hour Psycho, mentioned previously in Point Omega.)
The Moment of Psycho is a great book for film lovers or anyone who wants to understand the giant cultural shift that helped to define modern cinema.
Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown
Funny Misshapen Body is a memoir drawn by cartoonist Jeffrey Brown. Along with his other titles like Clumsy it tells the story of Brown’s formative years, growing up with Crohn’s disease and overcoming art school and the need to be a “serious artist”. Told in short ten page vignettes based on various themes, Brown’s crude yet highly detailed cartoons make up a scattered, meandering personal history. Brown’s great gift is his ability to tell a story in a very small hand-drawn square. The amount of detail he manages to squeeze in to those little 2-inch squares is astounding, never failing to connect one instantly with their own awkward childhood, or hard-partying college days. The fact that this memoir is practically told without words (the text never overtakes a frame, and is always a tiny portion of the 2-inch square) is a testament to Mr. Brown’s tremendous talent.
Funny, thought-provoking, and at times melancholy and nostalgic, this is a great quick little read, but one you will want to spend hours studying those dazzling, crudely drawn little squares. Also, Brown includes a vignette which he is writing and publishing Clumsy, so it feels, in a way, like you’re reading the making of the book you’re reading. Ooh, how Meta!
Horns by Joe Hill
This is the second novel by Joe Hill (Heart Shaped Box), declared by many to be the new voice of supernatural thrillers. I haven’t read his 1st novel, or his collection of short works (20th Century Ghosts) but they have both been on my reading list since they were published. I picked up the ARC of Horns, published in hardcover February 23, and I couldn’t resist this fiendish little book.
Horns is the story Ignatius Perrish, or Ig to his friends, who wakes up after a night of drunken debauchery to find that he has grown horns. The devil kind: growing right out of his forehead. He also finds that the horns have an unexpected effect on people: they all want to tell him their deepest, darkest desire and they want him to tell them it’ll be okay. Like the mother of a screaming brat, who tells him “I’d love to kick her in her spoiled little ass, but I’m worried about what all these people would say if I hit her. Do you think…?” He says, “No.” Or his grandmother who tells him, “When I look at you I want to be dead.” Why? “Everyone stares at me. They all know what you did,” she tells him. You see, a few years earlier Ig’s girlfriend Merrin was brutally raped and beaten to death. He was the prime suspect, but due to a lack of evidence an expensive family lawyer was able to get a mistrial. Popular opinion, however still laid the blame solely on Ig’s head. Depressed, heartbroken, and socially unmoored, Ig began a downhill spiral of self-abuse culminating in that terrible morning and his brand new horns. The mystery, of course, is if Ig didn’t kill Merrin, then who did? And is that person still out there? As Ig looks for the truth, the book builds toward the inevitable: some hellish revenge to be meted out.
Hill writes with jet-black humor and a razor sharp wit, reveling in the worst that we can be. This is a nasty piece of fiction, ruthless and unflinching, as bold a look at our darker natures that has been written in recent years. It careens towards the end like a death-proof hotrod, muscled, and growling through the turns. It’s unpleasant. It’s not religious. As a matter fact, it’s downright blasphemous. But it’s fun. In that scary, let’s turn off the lights and see what might be lurking, kind of way. If you like your thrillers dark, you could do a far sight worse than picking up Horns. It seems that Stephen King guy might have some competition…
And that ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the end of February. A good month with some very eclectic choices, but I was still able to find a common theme. Don’t expect that to happen again. Thanks to everybody that keeps coming back! Tell your friends.
Until next time, keep reading!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)