The new year has begun, and I have finally gotten myself caught up on all my literary 'paloozaing! Whew! I read some pretty good stuff this month. Take a look at my recommendations and then leave me a note letting me know of something you've read recently that blew your mind. In this way we can share!
This is Literary Lollapalooza, January Edition.
Books Read This Month:
After the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Books Acquired:
Fiction: The Likeness by Tana French, And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer, The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard, Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem, The Best American Comics 2007 edited by Chris Ware, Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren’t as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn’t Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out. Edited by Ted Thompson
Non-Fiction: A Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates
Poetry: The Door by Margaret Atwood
E-Books: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Books Borrowed: After the Flood by Margaret Atwood, and Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson
Currently Reading: Matched by Ally Condie
Reviews of This Months’ Books:
After the Flood by Margaret Atwood
After the Flood is the second book in Atwood’s proposed MadAddam trilogy, which began with Oryx and Crake. I loved Oryx and Crake and couldn’t wait to get back to this world.
After the Flood takes place during and after the events of the first book, with flashbacks to a world before the first book. So it’s not really a sequel or a prequel, but perhaps a companion piece to Oryx and Crake.
This book, unlike Oryx and Crake’s single protagonist, has two separate female protagonists, which splits the focus into two different storylines that cross, converge and meld into one story. This is part of the book’s problem, by telling two stories from two different perspectives it weakens the focus and lightens the built-in tension. The characters from Oryx and Crake all make minor but important appearances here, deepening the connections in the MadAddam universe.
Atwood’s imagination is still in fine form, expertly continuing to create a fictional world and its inhabitants. Her use of language creates instant mental connections from a fictional world to the one we know, which helps add credibility to her dystopic vision. This is a world and an outcome that isn’t all that farfetched, and Atwood’s firm grip on her viewpoint makes the story a parable of caution in the uses and scope of human advancement.
Sadly, After the Fall is not as good as its predecessor, but it is still ground-breaking science fiction. Not as hauntingly memorable as the story of Snowman, Oryx and Crake, but still achingly familiar, and an almost mirror image view through the eyes of two distinct female protagonists.
If you read Oryx and Crake (and you SHOULD), then you will definitely want to pick up this follow-up. I can’t wait for her conclusion to this incredible trilogy.
Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson
Aside from hosting TV’s Late Night with Craig Ferguson, TV’s Craig Ferguson also has also found success writing and directing independent films, and writing books. Between the Bridge and the River is his debut novel and it is a fine read, declaring once and for all that TV’s Craig Ferguson is one hell of a writer.
Between the Bridge and the River is a story that is mostly about religion. Or faith. Whatever. The story is separated into different but related storylines centered on different protagonists. One, a famous Scottish TV evangelist now caught up in a sex-scandal, and two American brothers, who seek power through creating a new American church conglomerate, the stories weave through alternating chapters, often crossing and finally converging in a fateful worldwide religious convention where the characters’ lives are forever altered.
This book is hilarious. And sad. And thought-provoking. And irreverent. TV’s Craig Ferguson is not afraid to say the things we’re all thinking, or to think the things we’re all too disgusted to imagine. A comic tour-de-force, this imaginative treatise on modern faith is at once a send-up of modern religious traditions, and a heartfelt and eye-opening study of what faith really means.
I highly recommend this book. This is for fans of TV’s Craig Ferguson, and for fans of thoughtful, funny fiction. Ferguson is a writer to watch for; his wit knows no bounds.
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
This book is a collection of stories that are inter-related, based on a specific time and place. The time is 1974, and the place is New York City. A man has just stretched a tightrope between the twin towers, and as a city holds its breath in horror, admiration, and shock, lives unfold.
Bookended by stories about the real-life tightrope walker that walked the rope hundreds of stories above downtown Manhattan, are stories of authentic and unique lives being lived at a snapshot piece of time. All of the stories are heartfelt and emotional, creating indelible impressions of a New York caught in a moment, like mosquitoes caught in amber.
The most powerful of these, in my opinion, and the one most interconnected to all the others centers on a young Irish immigrant to the city whose monastic religious views has him serving as servant and protector to a cadre of prostitutes, a calling his recently arrived brother sees as decidedly one-sided. He can’t understand how his brother can be so deluded to let these women take advantage of his kindness, but ever without agenda the young man steadfastly looks after his flock, often risking his own life and limb. He gets beaten by pimps and arrested by cops, but his unspoken commitment to these lost souls can’t be beaten. It is a heartbreaking and involving story that draws you deep into the emotional heart of this world, and it is here that the other stories seem to orbit. All of them somehow tinged, connected to, or haunted by this story of a good-hearted man doing his best to do right by societies downtrodden.
Of course, all of the stories are also uniquely tied to that man up on that tightrope who is hundreds of feet in the air, barely visible to the naked eye. He is doing the unthinkable, the unimaginable. He is walking, running, lying down on a tight rope stretched between those brand new twin towers. And meanwhile while people stop and stare up into the sky, lives continue being lived down below. This is a panoramic view of a NYC at a specific place in time. Like many different Polaroids taken from different angles: they all show slight variations of the same thing. The subject may differ, but they share the same backdrop, and occasionally you can piece together a larger picture based on the details you see in those different Polaroid pictures.
This is heart-stopping, amazingly clear and direct prose. McCann is a major talent, and Let the Great World Spin is the announcement of his arrival. Haunting, emotional writing, McCann goes straight to the heart with this collection of stories.
Okay, folks…not a bad start to the beginning of the new year. Let me know what you’re reading that’s blowing your mind! I’m always looking for my next favorite book.
Until next month, happy reading!
