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matthewcpeck's reviews
586 reviews
NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
4.0
An exceptional piece of New England horror/fantasy, and the fastest 700-page book I've read. Hill has Neil Gaiman's knack for mixing the mundane with the enchanted, and it's refreshing that the characters' psyches tend to be permanently screwed-up from their supernatural encounters, instead of bouncing back like nothing happened. I wasn't as fond of Hill's attempts at crass, grisly, Cryptkeeper-level wisecracks. But these are few and and far between, and the ending is perfect.
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
3.0
Much wackier than expected. I guess PKD was heavy into the themes of illusory reality and mysticism right from the start of his novel-writing career. The first 3/4 of the book are a provocative blend of ideas and exposition, even if it's not terribly exciting. In the last quarter the plot accelerates and things get stranger yet. I admired the novel's opaqueness and resistance to clichéd plot mechanisms, even if the middle section is a little dull.
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
4.0
The stories in Karen Russell’s debut collection are of a piece. Nearly all of them take place on an unnamed south Florida island, and an ancillary character in one story may be the protagonist in the next. The first four stories alone are all set among adolescent inhabitants of this swampy isle, and always at night.
The typical Russell yarn features an endearingly awkward teen (chubby or hairy or mute, etc.) that’s slipped through the cracks of societal institutions, and a surreal, natural-world adventure – like getting trapped inside of a car-sized conch shell with a janitor during a thunderstorm, or searching for the aquatic ghost of a dead sister in a hidden bay cove festooned with glowworms. These tales are in the tradition stretching from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Haruki Murakami, but above all they have the lingering flavor of Karen Russell’s subconscious. From the descriptions, it sounds like the stories could suffer from forced whimsy and quirk, but no – they work wonderfully because Russell describes the frustrations and euphoria of adolescence with the same matter-of-factness she employs to introduce a dancing albino covered in tin foil or an alpine plane crash. There is one story where this balance doesn’t quite work – the intriguingly titled ‘from Children’s Reminiscences of the Westward Migration’ imagines the legendary Minotaur as the harried patriarch of a family of 19th-century settlers, and it never quite gels. On the high end of the spectrum is the title story, saved for last, narrated by one among a group of werewolves’ daughters being eased into human society. It’s flawless – hilarious, unforgettable, haunting.
*A note for fans of ‘Swamplandia!’: the first story in this collection (‘Ava Wrestles The Alligator’) is the seed that grew into the novel, but it has some significant alterations and is worth reading on its own.
The typical Russell yarn features an endearingly awkward teen (chubby or hairy or mute, etc.) that’s slipped through the cracks of societal institutions, and a surreal, natural-world adventure – like getting trapped inside of a car-sized conch shell with a janitor during a thunderstorm, or searching for the aquatic ghost of a dead sister in a hidden bay cove festooned with glowworms. These tales are in the tradition stretching from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Haruki Murakami, but above all they have the lingering flavor of Karen Russell’s subconscious. From the descriptions, it sounds like the stories could suffer from forced whimsy and quirk, but no – they work wonderfully because Russell describes the frustrations and euphoria of adolescence with the same matter-of-factness she employs to introduce a dancing albino covered in tin foil or an alpine plane crash. There is one story where this balance doesn’t quite work – the intriguingly titled ‘from Children’s Reminiscences of the Westward Migration’ imagines the legendary Minotaur as the harried patriarch of a family of 19th-century settlers, and it never quite gels. On the high end of the spectrum is the title story, saved for last, narrated by one among a group of werewolves’ daughters being eased into human society. It’s flawless – hilarious, unforgettable, haunting.
*A note for fans of ‘Swamplandia!’: the first story in this collection (‘Ava Wrestles The Alligator’) is the seed that grew into the novel, but it has some significant alterations and is worth reading on its own.
Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell
5.0
I read Karen Russell’s 2nd collection of short fiction after I read her novel ‘Swamplandia!’ but before I read her debut collection, ‘St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised By Wolves’. Although ‘Wolves’ is more controlled and consistent – almost to the point of being an episodic novel – ‘Vampires’ is more eclectic and it reaches greater heights. I’m always more drawn to risky, sloppy art than I am to perfect little baubles anyway.
Russell still has an uncanny knack for writing about teens, most presciently in the creepy bullying parable that ends the book, ‘The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis’. But she extends both age range and geography in this collection – centuries-old married vampires in Italy, a lonely middle-aged masseuse in Wisconsin. There is an all-out comedy/satire piece about rooting for the Krill team to beat the Whales, which reminds me of pre-2004 Red Sox fans. There is ‘Reeling for the Empire’, about a cramped factory of hybrid silkworm-women in early industrial Japan, that are forced to secrete threads of colored silk from their bodies after drinking laced tea. This tale, which culminates in a harrowing revenge plot, is as darkly perfect as a Grimm fairy tale or a Twilight Zone episode.
I’ll concur with Joy Williams in the New York Times and admit that ‘The Seagulls Descend on Strong Beach’ and ‘The New Veterans’ are the two weaker stories in the collection, the former in particular. But the characters and details are still so vivid and affecting, it doesn’t matter much.
For me, the jaw-dropping, dream-invading masterwork is ‘Proving Up’, the first-person narrative of a boy in the 1840s Nebraska wilderness. Settlers are required to have a glass windows in their hovels in order to ‘prove up’ and become titled landowners, and our protagonist gets caught in an apocalyptic blizzard while trying to deliver his family’s precious window pane to their closest neighbor, before the federal ‘Agent’ shows. And then things get stranger. There are shades of Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, Stephen King – it’s like this story was written for me.
Now for the bad news - I've read everything this writer has published, and I have to wait...
Russell still has an uncanny knack for writing about teens, most presciently in the creepy bullying parable that ends the book, ‘The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis’. But she extends both age range and geography in this collection – centuries-old married vampires in Italy, a lonely middle-aged masseuse in Wisconsin. There is an all-out comedy/satire piece about rooting for the Krill team to beat the Whales, which reminds me of pre-2004 Red Sox fans. There is ‘Reeling for the Empire’, about a cramped factory of hybrid silkworm-women in early industrial Japan, that are forced to secrete threads of colored silk from their bodies after drinking laced tea. This tale, which culminates in a harrowing revenge plot, is as darkly perfect as a Grimm fairy tale or a Twilight Zone episode.
I’ll concur with Joy Williams in the New York Times and admit that ‘The Seagulls Descend on Strong Beach’ and ‘The New Veterans’ are the two weaker stories in the collection, the former in particular. But the characters and details are still so vivid and affecting, it doesn’t matter much.
For me, the jaw-dropping, dream-invading masterwork is ‘Proving Up’, the first-person narrative of a boy in the 1840s Nebraska wilderness. Settlers are required to have a glass windows in their hovels in order to ‘prove up’ and become titled landowners, and our protagonist gets caught in an apocalyptic blizzard while trying to deliver his family’s precious window pane to their closest neighbor, before the federal ‘Agent’ shows. And then things get stranger. There are shades of Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, Stephen King – it’s like this story was written for me.
Now for the bad news - I've read everything this writer has published, and I have to wait...
Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt
4.0
This is a 280-page book that sets out to answer the most fundamental question a sentient being can ask: why is there something rather than nothing? It's my feeling, of course, that there will never be an answer, that there is no 'ultimate explanation'. Even when it seems like we MAY have discovered it, it will beg further explanation - a point (Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason) that Jim Holt keeps returning to throughout his book.
But I couldn't imagine a more genial and funny primer to the 'darkest question in philosophy'. Holt travels over the US and Europe to a fascinating assortment of philosophers, physicists, theologians and writers. Oxford theology professor Richard Swinburne believes that God is the simplest explanation for existence, thus the most likely. Roger Penrose feels that 'mathematical entities' exist independently of the human mind and are the fabric of reality. And those are two of the of the least strange ideas set forth in the book's interviews. Holt even comes up with own theory near the end, concluding that our universe is one of 'infinite mediocrity'. Between the speculations are some of Holt's own brushes with nothingness - the death of a dog, and then a parent. These memoir sections are apt and genuinely moving.
I'll knock off a star for a bit of inconsistency - Holt tends to over-explain certain relatively well-known concepts, while skating over other ones that deserve more than a sentence. That being said, I recommend 'Why Does The World Exist?'. Not for answers, but for questions I would have never, ever thought to ask. Choose your philosophy!
But I couldn't imagine a more genial and funny primer to the 'darkest question in philosophy'. Holt travels over the US and Europe to a fascinating assortment of philosophers, physicists, theologians and writers. Oxford theology professor Richard Swinburne believes that God is the simplest explanation for existence, thus the most likely. Roger Penrose feels that 'mathematical entities' exist independently of the human mind and are the fabric of reality. And those are two of the of the least strange ideas set forth in the book's interviews. Holt even comes up with own theory near the end, concluding that our universe is one of 'infinite mediocrity'. Between the speculations are some of Holt's own brushes with nothingness - the death of a dog, and then a parent. These memoir sections are apt and genuinely moving.
I'll knock off a star for a bit of inconsistency - Holt tends to over-explain certain relatively well-known concepts, while skating over other ones that deserve more than a sentence. That being said, I recommend 'Why Does The World Exist?'. Not for answers, but for questions I would have never, ever thought to ask. Choose your philosophy!