Review: The Book of Lost Things, by John Connolly

Unlike Connolly's The Gates, which I recently reviewed, The Book of Lost Things is not meant to share with children. I had fully intended upon reading it with my daughter, as I had Gates, but after a few chapters was glad I had decided to go through it myself first.

At first, Things, which takes place in 1940s England, seems innocuous. Following the death of his mother, with whom he shared a love of fairy tales, twelve year-old David begins hearing voices from the books in his room. In fact, he begins to hear voices from every book he comes in contact with. Very shortly, David's father begins to date, Rose, an administrator from the respite care facility where his mother spent her last days, and it is then that David has his first 'attack' - an almost seizure-like episode where he can see a distant land with his mind's eye. By the time David's father reveals to him that Rose is pregnant, and they will be getting married, David has learned to control his attacks, but now there is something new; a Crooked Man has crossed over from the land of fantasy into David's world, and David has begun to hear his mother's voice calling to him from the woods behind the house, pleading with him to follow her voice and help her. One inevitable night, David finally follows the voice, and winds up in the Crooked Man's world, where animals want to be men, and nightmarish monsters roam free. The spoiled and unhappy David must journey to find the King, travelling at times with others, but always relying on himself to solve the puzzle of this place.

The Book of Lost Things once again brings to mind a Stephen King novel, this time The Dark Tower series. In fact, one of the characters David travels with is named Roland, and he is a gunslinger of sorts on a quest to a dark tower. Many other works of fiction are mentioned / appear in Book, as well, including several grotesque retellings of popular fairy tales that relate to the world in which David finds himself. The tales are told by various characters David runs into as either explanations of creatures or allegories for the events and transformations that David himself is experiencing. These references are at turns interesting and disgusting, and are integral parts of the story. It is these stories, along with the deeper social commentary, that make the novel inappropriate for younger readers.

While the novel seemed to briefly lose forward motion in the middle, the beginning and endings make it still well worth the read. The characters and events, which are at first deceptively straightforward, are by the end an obvious tapestry of foreshadowing and deeper workings. It was not the typical read, and that in itself makes it a good choice, since much of what is out there at the moment seems to be firmly in one groove or another. The social and morality tales of the story are definitely there for the ingestion, but aren't presented in a hit-you-over-the-head kind of way. There were plans to turn the novel into a film, and rights were purchased by John Moore, who did the new Omen film, but that seems to have tanked. I think this is just as well, since books like this, to me, are better left to the imagination where gore can't overtake the actual meat of the story.

Rating: four stars. Interesting blend of ideas, loses steam briefly before a stellar ending.

Review: The Hour I First Believed, by Wally Lamb

I picked up The Hour I First Believed for two reasons: one, I liked Lamb's first novel, She's Come Undone, very much when it came out years ago (he has written other novels since, but that was the last one I read) and was looking for more of the same, and two, it discusses the events at Columbine High School from an inside vantage point, which I found interesting. What I got wasn't quite what I expected.

Lamb's emotionally closed-off main character, Caelum, is a middle-aged high school teacher who is working on his third marriage, to Maureen, the school nurse. Although from the east coast originally, the two move to Columbine, CO to escape the memories of Maureen's infidelity and Caelum's resulting violence on both her and her lover. Their attempt to start anew puts them directly in the path of the runaway nightmare train that two students brought down upon the school; while Caelum is away at his aunt's funeral, Maureen is trapped in the Columbine school library, hiding in a cabinet, listening to the shooting and waiting to die. The overwhelming PTSD Maureen suffers as a result of the events leads them back to the east coast, to live in Caelum's aunt's home and try, again, to restart their lives. Unfortunately, like an unwinding top, events spin ever further out of control, and their lives go into freefall. No one will hire Caelum for a teaching position at a high school because of his previous actions, and when Maureen is finally able to work once again, her choices bring their own unhappy consequences.

Within this story, there is another, far less interesting, mostly unrelated one regarding Caelum's family history. Much is made of the local women's prison that his grandmother used to run, and in the last third of the book many many pages are used detailing the information the woman who is renting the upstairs of Caelum's house finds in the many boxes of papers left by his aunt. These papers, in their convoluted way, lead Caelum around the mulberry bush as to who his mother, who had died years before, really was.

This plot line, if it can be called that, is one of the major things I didn't like about this novel. Ironically, even Caelum himself comments that he couldn't get through the research papers his renter writes based on her findings; if Lamb didn't think that his own character would be interested in his own history, then for heaven's sake, why would he think the readers would be?! It was some pretty seriously boring stuff, and had nothing to do with the real plot of the book. In addition, there were several other, smaller side plots that were half-developed, and really only served to distract the reader.

The other major hurdle of the story is the fact that the characters were entirely unlikeable. I mean, entirely. Caelum is a dissociated, detached wife-abuser / violent offender who couldn't even summon enough emotion over the death of the woman who raised him to shed a tear. Maureen is an adulterous, argumentative woman whose behavior after the shootings, while understandable with PTSD, certainly didn't make her any more likeable. I'm not sure why they stayed married, frankly, especially since Caelum referred to her as his 'three-strikes-and-you're-out wife'.

Lamb obviously did a great deal of research on the events at Columbine, and the descriptions of the scene in the library, as well as the publication of the writings of the killers, were chilling. Maureen's PTSD was very aptly described, and again, it was plain that Lamb had done his work well. However, in his attempt to make the characters human, Lamb forgot that some people are so awful that really, no one would want to spend time with them; his characters are this way, and the fact that I spent several hours reading about them, and letting them into my mind, isn't something I feel great about. Yes, there are people this messed up and unpleasant out there, and that's reality; most people, somewhere, also have redeeming qualities, and certainly all great literary heroes do. These characters really didn't.

Rating: one star - massively disappointing, scattered with stray underdeveloped subplots

Review: Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls

After Glass Castles, one of the most absorbing and well-written books I have ever read, I couldn't wait to hear more from Jeannette Walls. I was thrilled to see that she had published a prequel to Castle, and immediately requested it from the library. Once again, I was completely captivated. Not only was the novel, a work of historical fiction because Walls' grandmother passed away when Walls was eight, interesting in its own right, but knowing what the future would bring had me even more engaged, looking for clues to what was to bring on the craziness and misery that was to follow in the next generation.

In Half Broke Horses, Walls tells the story of her maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, an incredibly ingenius woman from birth. The story begins with Lily saving herself and her siblings from a flash flood by pulling them into a tree at the last minute; she kept the three of them alive by making sure everyone stayed awake all night, until the waters receded and they could slog their way home. She managed the family ranch and the employees from age eleven on, because her father had a speech impediment that prevented him from communicating with the ranch hands and buyers. At a time when women were still supposed to be subservient, throughout her life she worked constantly and proudly, beating men in horseracing and poker, selling beer out of her kitchen during prohibition, and learning first to drive and then to fly. Her talent of breaking wild horses is a theme that runs through the book.

As impressive as Lily was, I could also see where some of the family's later misfortune came from. Lily was changed dramatically by her discovery that her first husband was actually a con artist with another family, and later by the suicide of her pregnant sister. She became intolerant of any sentimentality, and hardened towards others, never fully trusting another person again. Her second marriage was a partnership rather than a love affair and, because she blamed her sister's death on a combination of a lack of inner strength and emotional weakness brought on by all the favor she received because of her beauty, her children were raised with an eye towards teaching them to withstand hardship. Her daughter, who went on to become Walls' mother, was a replica of her aunt, and was particularly affected by her mother's lack of emotional attention and understanding. This made an obvious, and sad, correlation to her later behavior - as that of wild horse half broken, just as Lily herself had been half-broken by the emotional tragedy of her early life.

While Walls states at the end of the novel that she cannot call it a biography, she was able to verify many of the events and stories that had been passed down through the generations through local media and oral histories. Thus, though the work is technically a type of historical fiction due to conversations and emotional insights that could not be verified, its flavor is definitely that of a well-crafted biography. The story of her tough-as-nails grandmother is just as interesting as that of her parents, in its own right as well as in an anticipating-a-trainwreck kind fo way.

Rating: five of five stars. A must for Glass Castle readers, and anyone interested in biographical fiction.

Review: The Generosity of Women, by Courtney Eldridge

Reading The Generosity of Women was like trying to keep track of a whirlwind. The novel's main concept is to follow a chain of events through the prospect of six different women, who are all connected by one main strand that the reader doesn't get clued in on until the last quarter of the book.

What is at first problematic - following the six women through rapid-fire chapter / voice changes - becomes surprisingly monotonous towards the end of the story. I actually started wondering if I had accidentally opened the book in the wrong section, because several of the perspectives were very similar, and with such similar voices it became difficult to tell them apart. To make things even more difficult, a few of the characters had similar names, and several of them knew each other. I quite nearly had to make a chart to keep track of everyone and their relationships to the other characters. Because there were so many characters, it was difficult to connect to any of them, because there wasn't time to get deeply into any of them. The one I enjoyed the most was also the youngest, Jordan, but her perspective was a little thin.

While it took me a few chapters to get into the story, after awhile I found that I was enjoying most parts of it. However, by the final quarter, I was skimming some sections, because hearing the same story over and over and over was getting a little old, and the final chapters were entirely predictable. I was fairly disgusted with several of the characters by the time I was done, as they became more and more caricatures of themselves.

The book isn't poorly written, per se, in that I could see what Eldridge was trying to do, and it might have worked if she hadn't taken it to the nth degree. I haven't read anything else by her, so I have nothing to compare it to, but if she had chosen only three or four characters, and developed them more, it might have been a higher-quality read. As it is, it was a mostly-enjoyable piece of chick lit, nothing more.

Rating: two out of five stars. Confusing beginning, interesting middle, boring ending.

Review: The Gates, A Novel, by John Connolly

If any of you have ever read Stephen King's only foray into children's literature, The Eyes of the Dragon (and if you haven't, Do So Right Away, it's wonderful), and Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth (again, go to the store NOW and get it if you haven't), imagine taking them both and putting them into a literary blender. Sprinkle them with a smidge of 'Men in Black'. The lumpy goodness that you would pour out would be John Connolly's The Gates (of Hell Are About to Open).

This wry and witty novel centers around Samuel Johnson, a brainy eleven year-old British boy who accidentally witnesses the opening of a portal to Hell while peeking through a neighbor's window. The unfortunate neighbors, who were merely bored suburbanites looking for a little thrill, are having a seance in their basement when an interesting malfunction occurs many miles away during a routine operation of the Hadron collider (a machine that attempts to create tiny black holes for scientific study); the two simultaneous events lead to their being possessed by four demons, much like the farmer in Men in Black is worn like a cheap suit by the cockroach alien. The leader, whose job it is to prepare the way for Satan to escape from Hell, senses little Samuel Johnson (and his little dog too!) and sets about trying to capture him.

Her pursuit of Samuel leads to what is undoubtedly the funniest aspect of the book; the intrduction of several entirely inept demons, such as The Thing Under The Bed, who is new to the job and can't begin to imagine how to frighten anyone, and Nurd, The Scourge of Five Deities, who initially is transported accidentally to earth, only to have his illusions of grandeur (and his body) abruptly squashed by a vacuum. His later appearances grow increasingly hilarious as he becomes entangled in the plot to send the evil demons back to hell, saving the earth. It is in the final scenes of the novel, however, that Connolly pulls out all the stops, with zombie-fighting vicars, accidentally-drunken demons, and the shovel-bearing man who singlehandedly beats several demons into the ground for messing with his rosebushes.

It is impossible to convey the wittiness and snarky glee with which these events occur. The oddity in itself would be interesting, but Connolly's genius lies both in his crafty turns of phrase and in his ability to weave the deadpan British humor into the fantastical goings-on that Samuel is dealing with. By having a child as the main character, the author disposes with the potential problems of disbelief and fear of insanity that an adult character would have in the same situation, thus making him able to pull the reader right into the meat of the story.

In addition, the book is enjoyable on many levels, and its lack of gore or foul language (again, a benefit of having a child as a main character) combined with widely-appealing material makes it appropriate for anyone above the age of ten. As soon as I finished it, I immediately read it with my daughter, who is almost eleven, and while she didn't get all of the more adult references Connolly sneaks in, the silliness of a confused and embarrassed Underbed Monster and a demon named Nurd who ends up in increasingly ridiculous situations (teleported into a sewer! smooshed like the road runner in front of a truck! arrested by clueless police for massive speeding in his new love, the Porsche!) were more than enough to bring her along for the ride. Some of the more adult references I explained to her, such as puns on popular culture, and others I let sail over her head, laughing to myself.

I cannot reccomend this book strongly enough. It's funny without being condescending, innocent and yet wickedly witty. The brave Samuel and his friends, including Nurd, are endearing and entirely realistic (yes, even the insecure Nurd) in their upside-down world. There are the occasional slower chapters, particularaly those describing the Hadron collider in detail, but even those have snarky footnotes to liven them up. The ending leaves an obvious opening for a sequel, and I have all ten fingers crossed that there will indeed be another chapter in the book of Samuel.

Rating: five out of five stars. Smart, witty, kooky and fun romp through the ridiculous.