Review: Faith, by Jennifer Haigh

Jennifer Haigh's new novel, Faith, focuses on a Boston family during the height of the infamous Catholic church scandal surrounding pedophiles' taking advantage of young acolytes and parishoners.  When Father Art McCann, brother to the narrator of the story, is accused of doing just that by a mother of a boy who had grown close to the priest, the family and community are torn apart, and narrator Sheila is determined to find the truth.  Art is definitely hiding something, and her search for answers is the backbone of the novel.

I grew up near Boston, and have a real affinity for the hard-core accent and customs of the community, which are often as in this case, represented by Irish Catholic characters.  While I haven't lived in the area for decades now, something about a Boston accent makes me feel immediately at home.  Unfortunately, I simply couldn't bond with these characters.  The book opens with Art's mother, still a teenager herself, being abandoned by her young husband; this chapter was well-written, and I was invested in the woman.  However, this is the last we really see of that part of the story, as the novel immediately jumps forward to a brief discussion of Art's joining the priest preparatory school at age 14, leaving his mother, step-father and new siblings behind.  From this point, the story begins to be told more by Sheila, but the problem with this is that she is telling Art's story, making it difficult to bond with him as he is still the 'other', but we are not really involved with Sheila as a character, either.  At the time of the events she describes, she is a young girl, and we have no relationship with her, and even her adult character is not developed to a point where we are really part of her life, either.  This situation left the book feeling more like a documentary than a novel to me.  Also, since the reader knows from the beginning that the focus of the story is accused of a heinous act, it is difficult to know how to react to him - do I root for him, or not?  While you're pretty sure he probably didn't do it, there is the kernel of doubt that the family, and thus the reader, is left to deal with, and this again makes connecting with the characters difficult.  I don't want to root for someone who ultimately is revealed to be a pedophile. 

The pacing of the story is another issue I wasn't happy with during the first half of the book.  The story dragged on for at least the first hundred pages, leaving me thinking, I get it, there's an issue, let's move on.  The final quarter of the story definitely picks up, and when the entire truth becomes clear, it is of course tragic, and I can say this without feeling that I'm giving anything away, because regardless of the truth, whether he actually did anything wrong or not, lives have been ruined.  I think the 'big reveal' of information did draw me into the story more, but by then the book was almost over.  Perhaps re-reading the story, knowing how it ended, I would feel more invested in the work and less like an observer, but then again, I'm so disgusted with some of the characters' seediness, maybe not. 

Haigh definitely has a knack for description, and she does not shy away from having her characters make unpopular life choices.  By taking on this novel, she investigates morality, faith, poverty, and the issue of priesthood as a lifestyle and religious choice.  These are sticky issues that stir firmly held opinions in the minds of many, particularly when mixed together.  Haigh does an admirable job of creating realistic drama and reactions to these situations.

Overall, I probably wouldn't recommend this book, but it depends on what you're looking for.  If you don't mind not being terribly engaged with the characters, then this might be a good book for you, particularly if you are familiar with the Boston Archdiocese nightmare.  How committed are you to your family members?  Would you stick with them even if you thought they had committed a heinous act?  How would you cope with family members who walked away, or stayed?  These are interesting questions; Haigh simply didn't make me care about the choices this particular family made.

Rating: one and a half stars.  Gripping topics conveyed via cold characters.

Review: Robopocalypse, by Daniel H. Wilson

While I don't typically pick up science fiction (I think you could probably count the numbers of sci-fi reviews I've done on one hand), for some reason this book kept popping up in my way.  It seemed to be everywhere!  Finally I gave in and ordered it from Overdrive, and I'm glad I did.

If you've seen or read 'I, Robot', you have the general concept of the story; smartypants scientist messes with artificial intelligence (A.I.) in ways he shouldn't have been, and his biggest success leads to his almost immediate demise.  From that point on, the mainframe mastermind links up with the technology of the world - by this point, everything is 'smart', including cars - and instigates the annhilation and enslavement of humanity.  It's a pretty straightforward plot that would frankly have been a tired rehash of other quality novels had it not been for Wilson's combination of time-lapse storytelling with a variety of personal narratives.  Like many other current, popular novels, Robopocalypse employs a cast of storytelling characters to keep the reader from becoming complacent, but the format is twisted by using those voices not in conjunction, but in succession.  The premise is that the main character / narrator, after having already succeeded in leading the group who ultimately defeats Archos, the AI mainframe, comes upon a box containing video clips collected by various surveillance objects of human actions during the war.  It is the archived story of the human resistance, told in linear miniclips of the novel's characters. 

What makes this work is that all of the characters are sincerely, completely absorbing.  They are all very different, and include an elderly Japanese AI genius who is touchingly in love with his companion robot, an American Congresswoman's young daughter whose toys go frighteningly haywire, a self-absorbed London hacker, a small-town sherrif, an American military officer stationed in Afghanistan, an unlikely NYC couple who lead a resistance, and a man who against all reason winds up being the leader of the American resistance.  Each member of the international cast is integral, and though the individual appearances of each one amounts to only a few short chapters apiece, Wilson somehow makes these people into living, morphing, dynamic characters that I was enthralled with.  Many of the characters never even meet, and yet their presence is carried over into each other's stories in tendrils that connect the entire piece into one cohesive account.  The focus is always on the characters; this is not a book that delves deeply into technobabble, or references concepts that only hard-core sci-fi readers would understand, but rather it is a very reality-based story that any of us could imagine experiencing.  While self-professed geeks will probably enjoy Robopocalypse (such as my husband, who also couldn't put it down, and who spends a great deal of his time reading hard-core scif fi that frankly makes me want to take a nap), this is a very accessible story to the general reader who enjoys seeing how pieces, and people, fit together in this shrinking world. 

This is not to say that the book didn't have flaws, such as the resolution, which seemed to be pretty simple.  I feel that I can discuss this, because the book is clear from the start that humanity has already won, and that the tale is more about how we got there rather than where we ended up.  I mean, really?  It was irrationally easy, which if anything you would expect a computer overlord to uber-rational.  Quality endings are hard to come up with, and here I think Wilson falls a bit short.  The robots who are 'awakened', i.e. freed, by Takeo's work should have been further developed; I understand that some were crucial in the war's resolution, but really, a lot more could have been done with them, particularly Mikiko, his beloved companion.  I believe that the Congresswoman's daughter was vastly underutilized as a character and could have been developed further.  I have also seen many comparisons to a book called World War Z, by Max Brooks, which I have not read; those who have claim that the two are very similar, and if you like one, you will like the other, and vice versa.  I cannot speak to this, but plan to check out WWZ, both because I really liked Wilson's take and because I heard WWZ is about zombies.  I think I've made it pretty clear how I feel about zombies, people.

I read this one almost straight through.  It was a nice change of pace for me, but more than that, the characters are gorgeous.  I loved how they all were so disparate, but yet fit together in key ways from thousands of miles away.  Even if you're not a science fiction person, I would try it out for size.  The first chapter is a bit dull, but once the other characters begin to come into play, it's defintiely a worthwhile, fun read.

Discussion questions for Robopocalypse:
1. What did you think of the ending?  How could it have been made more compelling?
2. Why do you think the humans were so taken aback by the uprising of the machines?  Do you think that real society would be as vulnerable to being duped?
3. Which characters do you feel were most like what you think your own personal reaction might be to the uprising?  Would you survive?
4. If you have read WWZ, compare and contrast the stories.  Which one relates the apocalypse tale better?  How do you feel about authors releasing similar tales, even if they were 'inspired by' other previous works?

Rating: four stars.  Very engrossing, character-driven reboot of the apocalypse theme.

Review: The Arrivals, by Meg Mitchell Moore

I have to admit, what made me pick up this novel first was the cover photo.  I mean, really, look at it!  It's lovely.  When I realized that the story takes place in Burlington, VT, where I went to college many moons ago, I plopped it into my bookbag and off I went.  Those of you who live in NYC, or LA, have the luxury of reading about the cities you recognize all the time; for me, being able to place myself in the scenery with the characters was an unexpected, and welcome, pleasure.

Aside from my own personal geographic longings, 'The Arrivals' offers a great deal to woo readers.  Moore's novel follows several members of a large family, each of whom has chosen a very different life from the others, as they return for one reason or another to their parents' home in Burlington over the course of several weeks, descending en masse on aging parents who are alternately thrilled with their adult children's return and despondent that they will never leave.  One nice facet of the story is the generational spread that the characters represent; the youngest 'child' who returns home after a difficult breakup in NYC is in her early twenties, while her older sister, who also has fled relationship issues with her two children in tow, and older brother, who ends up planted for the duration of the summer with a wife suddenly put on bedrest during what was supposed to be a short visit, are respectively in their early- to mid-thirties.  This range in age, combined with the parents' perspectives, casts a wide net for readers, providing a niche for everyone. 

Moore presents the novel in perspective-driven chapters, rotating tales and characters with each change.  Because we are shown so many different lives, at first it is slightly difficult to keep people straight, but that quickly clears up, and from that point on there is little time for even the most ADD reader to get bored.  While there was one particular plot line that I didn't care for, surrounding one of the character's semi-subconscious decision to become entangled with a priest - the character herself had other aspects that I found interesting and endearing.  This is another perk to Moore's storytelling; the characters are multi-faceted, making even their least desirable traits less irksome because there are other areas to focus on.  Also interesting are backhanded references to real-world events, such as the Wall St. crisis and various military situations.  These events aren't belabored in a way that would reduce the applicability of the novel in future years, and are more mentioned in relation to certain characters rather than specifically discussed in their own right.

I would actually be interested in reading a sequel to The Arrivals, to see how things eventually turn out for the characters in the decisions they make at the end of the novel.  I have purposefully not given much of a summary here, because it's too delicious to unravel on your own.  I had a good time with this one, and I think many of you would, too.  It's a casual, positive adult family relationship book, in a time where as a culture we seem to celebrate the darker, seedier side of family interaction.

Some discussion questions for The Arrivals could be:

1. Which of the novel's many characters did you relate to the most / least?  Why?
2. Jane and Stephen share their decision for Stephen to be the full-time caregiver early in the story, and are adamant that it's what they want.  How do Jane's actions reflect a potential rethinking of this strategy after the baby is born?  On what circumstances could her reaction to the ringing phone be based, and what do you think this may indicate about the author's perspective on parenting?
3. Jane, Lillian and Rachel have vastly different experiences with and expectations of motherhood.  What are their commonalities, and how do their situations influence their relationships?
4. Ginny and William both start and end the book alone in their home.  How do the experiences of the summer influence their perspectives on their children, their partnership and their own identities?

Rating: four stars.  Deeply interesting character-driven novel that embraces the family as a source of strength and growth.