Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro

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Dear Life: Stories is, as one reviewer posited, a bad place to start reading such an acclaimed author. This may very well be true. Either way, I have no intention of continuing to read any of Munro’s work after reading what amounts to an extremely over sold and boring set of stories.

I honestly have no idea where Munro earned her reputation from, earning the Nobel prize and all. Then again, Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow earned the Pulitzer and I’m stuck a third of the way through that. So, yes, I can see the award winning, I just can’t understand it.

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Clans of the Alphane Moon by Phillip K. Dick

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A fast-paced novel, Clans of the Alphane Moon has a little of everything: a meditation on the civil rights of the mentally ill and the freedom of free will and free agency; the trials of marriage and divorce; the insanity of a paranoid security apparatus.

Far from being the failure or claptrap Barry Malzberg calls it (sci-fe being a lesser genre in his not-so-humble opinion) in at least one edition (Bluejay Special Edition) of the book.

Worth the read.

On Goodreads

Samaritan by Richard Price

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Samaritan, the first Richard Price book I’ve read, reminded me why reading can be so enjoyable. Plotting, pace, dialogue, characters, it’s all brilliant here. Easy to look over are the beautiful turns of phrase.

I will admit, at the end, the morality starts beginning to feel less like a revelation after the fifth or sixth time and more like hammer banging on an already flush nail.

Leading up to that morality, and the play itself, was not something I realized until I finished the book, was not something I was cognizant of. Brilliant.

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The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

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The sequel (in a planned series) to The Long Earth is a disjointed, unbelievable and internal-morality questionable series of vignettes, too many characters and, worst of all, no actual plot.
Please, don’t get me wrong. I love Terry Pratchett’s books, to a fault, and I feel sacrilegious writing this review after his early death.
The Long War is, however, an un-plotted bore that breaks the suspension of disbelief and has an uneven moral grounding.

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This Must Be the Place by Anna Winger

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This Must Be the Place is a well-written exercise in nothing-happens fiction.
Some may argue for the virtues of nothing-happens fiction (Ulysses) or point to other great novels by literary greats where nothing actually happens.

Kudos to those people because they are ignoring the flip-side of do-nothing fiction: the multitude of books published that are, at their core and outer edges and everywhere in between, boring. Boring, boring, boring.

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House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy

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House of Echoes is plagued with problems, from a clichéd plot ripped from X-Files episodes, to an entire lack of action/plot development to a complete and total non-suspension of disbelief. Couple all of these problems with some rich whiney city people who move to a not-rural Eastern town? (C’mon New York; move to Utah, Idaho, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, etc., the middle of these states, and then you can start complaining about rural life). It’s a recipe for a boring waste of time.
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The Witch of Painted Sorrows by M.J. Rose

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M.J. Rose’s new novel, The Witch of Painted Sorrows, feels more like a very long draft of a novel rather than a fleshed-and-thought out story.

Along those lines, Sorrows does not pick up until the last 100 pages or so. Up to that point, it’s a horrible slog, not just a slog like the last 100 pages.

Furthermore, the plot elements introduced at the beginning to propel the main character to Paris, where the book takes place, feels haphazard at best and the very first draft at worst. Her husband is described as “dangerous.” He is a killer! Except he’s not. The main character’s treatment of her husband, meant to be a plot point, appears more like she’s actually crazy because of the level of hysterical thoughts and feelings attributed to him.

“But I would not live with a brute who had my father’s blood on his hands.”
Hysterical.

Also, there’s a sleep rape scene perpetrated by the female main character against her male lover, which is portrayed as totally OK. Switch the genders and it would not be OK.

Sleep rape is not OK.

All in all, not worth reading.

This book (an advanced uncorrected proof) was received, free of charge, from the Goodreads First Reads program.

Update on Jan. 26, 2015
The author, Ms. Rose, took to Facebook on Jan. 18 to complain about my review and defend the offending scene in the book, which I believe I have correctly described as sleep rape perpetrated by a female on a male. This can also be called made to penetrate.

I don’t have a problem with portraying rape in fiction. I have a problem with portraying rape as anything other than rape, and therefore, acceptable.

The offending lines in my original review (above) (besides being negative in general) are as follows:

“Also, there’s a sleep rape scene which is portrayed as totally OK. Switch the genders and it would not be OK.
Sleep rape is not OK.”

As I wrote in the original post, my problem is the portrayal of sleep rape as acceptable, as the norm, or as Ms. Rose would have one believe, not possibly because the victim is a man and the perpetrator a woman.

Ms. Rose proceeded to defend the scene to her nearly 80,000 followers.

Many of those commenters wrote that I must be puritanical, prudish, that I confuse sleep rape for lovemaking or that I live in the 19th century.

As evidenced by Ms. Rose’s post on Facebook, she intended the scene to be seen positively.

“An early reviewer has blasted the book claiming I have a sleep rape scene. Ahem. In said scene Sandrine – a FEMALE – arouses her MALE lover while he is sleeping and they proceed to make love while he is half-asleep.”

Please observe what is wrong with Ms. Rose’s defense of the sleep rape scene: “a FEMALE – arouses her MALE lover while he is sleeping.”

Ms. Rose uses the argument that because a woman is doing the perpetrating, it’s obviously not rape.

Unfortunately, this is a wrong-headed and entirely false conceit. Neither rape nor consent know gender or gender roles.

She also uses the argument that what her main character does to her lover is acceptable because of their romantic relationship.

This would not be an acceptable argument if the gender roles were reversed. After all, marital rape has been illegal in all 50 states since 1993.

Below are three very good articles on the issue from three different publications:

Slate — When Men are Raped by Hanna Rosin
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_…
Choice quote: “By portraying sexual violence against men as aberrant, we prevent justice and compound the shame.”

Vocativ — The Hard Truth About Girl-on-Guy Rape by Elizabeth Kulze
http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/cri…
Choice quote: “Of course, for even the gentlest male sleep-rapist, ‘I assumed she’d be into it’ doesn’t exactly fly in court. Consent reigns supreme, and to pursue a female without it is to invite culpability. In
‘made to penetrate’ cases, the line is often far more ambiguous. Still, there are plenty of female aggressors who don’t leave much to interpretation.”

Pacific Standard — When Women Sexually Assault Men by Livia Gershon
http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law…
Choice quote: “THE NOTION THAT SEXUAL assault of a man by a woman is impossible, and even laughable, rests on the same gendered assumptions that are also used to downplay assaults on women by men”

The Reverie by Jason Shprintz

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The Reverie is written well enough and it uses an interesting narrative tool.

Neither of those qualities is near enough to save it from a boring, long-winded plot and pointless scenes. Really, it could have been a novella and not lost anything.

This book was received, free of charge, from the Goodreads First Reads program.

Dangerous Heterosexuals by Paul Leeper

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The only good quality about Dangerous Heterosexuals is the cover. The rest of it is worth throwing away. Pages upon pages upon pages of entirely pointless dialogue. Boring writing. No even casual copyediting was done before the book went to print.

According to the information in the book provided by the author, one of Leeper’s plays was nominated for an Edgar award and he has had many readings in big towns of his other plays.

Maybe that’s why he thought it was acceptable to include so much pointless dialogue. It’s not. If it were read as a skit or a one-act play, it still wouldn’t work.

Plus, the double spaces after the period (which look more like full indentations, and I think are at least quadruple spaces) and the horrible simple sentences. So many! So annoying!

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Women’s Work by Kari Aguila

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Women’s Work is another entry into the post-apocalyptic genre, a surprisingly well written first novel for the author, Kari Aguila. It is an ideal novel, but, nothing much ever happens to make the idea worthy than more than a short story.

The problem with Aguila’s book is not what might be expected from her premise: following a world war and an effort of semi-global oppression of women by men, women take control of the non-functional central government. More importantly, the previously oppressed women take the reins of their local governments and become the oppressors under the guise of security in the face of roaming bands of evil, rapist men.

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Tunnel Vision by Aric Davis

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I have many problems with the book, on two separate levels: poorly plotted and ridiculous on the first level, badly designed and poorly printed on the second.

When it comes to the plot and the like, please believe the other reviewers with the one and two star ratings: the plot is so ridiculous as to be throw away. I’m all about the suspension of disbelief, but, this book pushes far beyond any galaxy I know of into the bounds of the stupid. An 18-year-old running a marijuana growing operation, who’s also a private eye, who has his own house and thinks like a 40-year-old man? Give me a break.

Teenagers who solve a murder mystery? Again, break please.

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Man alive! by Mary Kay Zuravleff

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Man Alive! by Mary Kay Zuravleff is a decent read. It starts strong, it seems like it has a decent enough middle but ends up just sort of plodding along to its ending. Despite some plot turns, some ratcheted-up drama, it just ends and by the end of the book I was happy just to be done.

In the end, I just don’t care that much about the characters, or maybe, I stopped caring.

I want to write more. I want to make this a long, in-depth review. I want to hit 600 words. But I can’t, because there isn’t enough to write about. It’s well written enough. It starts our interesting. Blah, blah, blah. Not bad, but the lack of a finish makes it just blah.

This book was received, free of charge, from the Goodreads First Reads program.

 

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

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The Paying Guests, despite the critical acclaim, is nothing more than an extremely bloated exercise in supposedly literary fiction.

At 564 pages, big pages, it’s a door stop and a slog and a bore. Really, The Paying Guests could be 150 pages and not lose a single thing. Around page 260, something actually happened. The first thing of any real substance.

Any real plot developments in The Paying Guests are overshadowed by the endless parade of bloated thoughts from the narrator. The bloated thoughts aren’t interesting or engaging. Rather, they’re pointless drivel.

The book is a period piece, it speaks to a certain time and it might actually carry some great weight about the status of women in a patriarchic society. It might, but I don’t know because all of the worthless words bogged it down so far that I ceased to care a long, long time ago.

The paying guests is not worth reading, or buying. Maybe an abridged version would carry less real weight and more of the metaphorical kind. I can only hope.

This book was received, free of charge, from the Goodreads First Reads program. All quotes come from an uncorrected proof for limited distribution and may, or may not, reflect the final copy. Just don’t know!

On Goodreads

Skinny Bitch gets Hitched by Kim Barnouin

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Sloppily and condescendingly written, “Skinny Bitch Gets Hitched” asks the reader to suspend the disbelief, not in aliens or artifacts or magic but rather, in how people act and how the world works.

Personally, I don’t understand the appeal of the “skinny bitch” moniker.

The “skinny bitch,” Clementine Cooper (Clem for short) is a vegan. And don’t forget it, because if you’re not a vegan, well, prepare to be preached at with flimsy arguments and pointless rhetoric.

So Clem, at an improbably young age, runs her own restaurant and is dating the millionaire-owner-chef of a steak house.

So, Barnouin (author) set up the tension for us in the structure. Lest ye be interested in people who make only moderate amounts of money, the aforementioned millionaire boyfriend is, well, a millionaire. Tapping into the shades of money without the sex, submission or anything even remotely fun.

The millionaire (who will propose to Clem, hence the title of the book) has a horrible, horrible mother whom he wants to reconcile with. He is, of course (please, start parading out the tropes so they may strut their stuff on the catwalk) blind to his own mother’s idiocy.

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Irish Girls About Town, an anthology

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I figured, I should read more Irish authors and I figured, I should read more female Irish authors. So, I picked this book up, along with a few others, trying to fill a 4-for-3 quota. I read it all the way through.

(I adore short stories.)
These stories are utter rubbish.
Had they been written by men, the book and the authors would be excoriated for being misogynistic cretins obsessed with their own gender. As such, the book is filled with un-ironic slut-shaming, un-ironic figure-bashing, god-awful romance, some staying in an abusive relationship. Almost every single story is about or has a strong component of, why women need a man in their life.
Just one. And he’s the empowered one. He may screw around. She may not.

With that being written, here is a review of each story, in the order they appear:

(Click link to read the rest of the review):

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The Ghosts of Nagasaki by Daniel Clausen

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Reviews aren’t done in a vacuum. This is especially true when a book has been out for a while and has been reviewed for a while.

Most of the reviewers make great hay of the surrealism, of the book, its conceit of a person’s personal spirits both existing and being visible by others who, likewise, have their own spirits. Or personal demons. Or, baggage, as many of the more knowledgeable characters point out to the main character, a former English teacher turned businessman.
This making of hay (the author, in his email to me asking if I’d be interested in reviewing the book, also made great hay) over the use of personal spirits, metaphors and an expanded consciousness (There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy) is ridiculous.
The book has spirits. Enough said. Suspend your disbelief. We do it for Shakespeare, I think we can do it for Clausen.
I don’t see anyone making hay over the dead king’s ghost (was it really the ghost or a demon sent to tempt Hamlet?) so I don’t see why a few spirits and a metaphysical island should send every reviewer into a tail-spin tissy.

The main character, he’s a poor broken boy from a broken home who makes his way in Japan.
Him being broken, and his broken home, follow him, literally and metaphorically, until the dénouement of the book.
It’s very well written, engaging, and rarely dull.

The problems
The Ghosts of Nagasaki is not without its own problems. First and foremost, a choice of typography. Every paragraph break has a space underneath it. No, the book isn’t double spaced, but the paragraphs are. Makes for a jarring read, especially when double spacing between paragraphs, or quadruple spacing, is meant to signify a certain level of break in the context of the read. Then, there’s breaks marked by asterisks.
The second problem comes from the plotting of the book itself. The orphan did get shown some love, later on in his orphan time, and is now haunted by his past.

(Click link to read the rest of the review):

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