Category: book reviews

Review: The Mayor of Macdougall Street

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I like Dave Van Ronk. I have forever. Still, the book took me forever to read. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, I very much did, but because, as always, Dave Van Ronk is surprising.

I wasn’t expecting a chapter devoted to anarchy, activism, or the confiscation  of the term and re-appropriation of libertarian-ism quite so early on. This was stupid of me. I know who Dave Van Ronk is, after all. And I know he had things to say.

My favorite answer to that question is: Dave Van Ronk was a folk singer who was out to dinner the night of the Stonewall Riots, saw people throwing bricks and heard the commotion, and excused himself from the table to join. Famously quoted, “…I figured, they can’t have a riot without me!”

If for whatever reason you doubt Van Ronk’s intelligence, you needn’t. Everything discussed shows a highly intelligent, curious, thoughtful man who carefully plodded through his politics and his craft. These are perhaps his two most comfortable topics. He, like so many men laboring against patriarchy long before it was popular or even a term, runs into that barrier of having to define what patriarchy is without many allies. He knows that there is injustice, that he seems to be somehow benefit from the status quo, yet he wants to raise up the others around him. He believed in true equality —which is goddamn hard when you’re getting started in the 1950s as if it isn’t still hard today.

There’s a cancer of hyper individualism that sees people with amazing work lives or intellectual lives who have very turbulent personal lives. Van Ronk is one of them, a proud race of people trying to navigate the society he’s in and the values he has.

Also, his descriptions of music and honing his skill leaves me jealous. He was someone who put his head down and learned, meticulously, leaning heavily on the influences around him to be a school and not something he merely took from. 

Review: Remarkably Bright Creatures

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The debut novel from Shelby Van Pelt, I’d seen an article talking about Remarkably Bright Creatures shortly after it was published , talking about the unexpected nature of the book and how it had come together. It was stuck like a burr in the back of my hair, something to look out for.

I had forgotten about it for a bit so when I had the opportunity to read it, it was a surprise. Like finding a missing key.

How appropriate, then, that the whole novel centers around small discoveries and their importance, finding things lost you’d not known were missing.

I found the book a bit slow at times, I had thought. Then I checked my tracking app and found I’d read it in two days. I thought it had been longer, and in part that’s because of how immersive the characterization and set description is.

Carefully crafted and laid, the book is lovingly written with characters that come alive, even those that go from obnoxious to well rounded through the course of the narrative. All of this is punctuated with a Greek chorus of Marcellus, an octopus, describing events as he witnesses them from his tank at the aquarium where many of the human characters lives intersect.

The book is charming, and despite seeming simple at it’s outset it was incredibly sentimental and sweet.

Review: Keep Moving

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I seem to be following a pattern, or I’m being pulled by an algorithm, where I read Carrie Fisher then Penny Marshall, then Carl Reiner, and now I’m on Dick Van Dyke. It’s like a game of memoir telephone.

This was a real ‘well why not’ read; coming out in 2015, Keep Moving hits on that same vein I’ve seen in a lot of the memoirs I’ve read. Happy people live longer.

Keep Moving summarizes Dick Van Dyke’s main advice; the book is an exploration of how he’s managed to live well into his 90s: a combination of optimism, changing habits when you have to, and never settling down. Perhaps it’s because I finished the book the morning of writing this, but the chapter lingering most in my brain is his conversation with Carl Reiner. Several times in the book Van Dyke considers at what point you feel old. He asks the people around him. He asks Reiner. Reiner says there wasn’t a specific time. The problem, the same problem Van Dyke describes, is that he doesn’t know when or how he got old; he was too busy. He supposes when he feels old is when he wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror and sees the evidence. But in terms of feeling old? It never occurred to him. It never occurs to Van Dyke. There’s too much to do.

Van Dyke also talks a decent amount about challenging ageism. If someone isn’t capable it’s not because of a number of years, it’s no different than anyone contracting illness or physical impairments, it’s only more likely. I have a friend in disability advocacy who ends every presentation she does on cerebral palsy , which she has; “Remember, I’m a member of the only minority group that anyone can join.” It’s an important reminder that you’re gambling with how you will be treated yourself

Vonnegut, part 2

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I have more to say about Vonnegut.

These reviews are posted somewhat out of order. From time to time I delve into a specific writer, and I have done so with Vonnegut a few times throughout my life.

I read Slaughter House Five a few times in coursework; in both highschool and a college course on Wartime literature. When Vonnegut died I was in college. I turned, in a panic, to a roommate who reported that she didn’t know who Kurt Vonnegut was. The conversation haunted me then and now. I am not afraid to say he’s my favorite author though I hate that kind of commitment.

Here are the books I’ve reread by Vonnegut this year:

Cat’s Cradle

Man Without a Country

Books kitty-corner to Vonnegut I’ve read this year:

If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?

Love, Kurt

Pity the Reader

I also wrote a story story called “Book on Tape” where I have a conversation presumably with Vonnegut. The character has Vonnegut’s history and some features but it’s not actually about Vonnegut at all. And the character that uses Vonnegut like a mask isn’t based on Vonnegut at all. Vonnegut isn’t in the story for a single moment but it’s sculpted in a way to make the general population think it’s Vonnegut. I did it because it’s a story, much as Vonnegut suggests you write, written to one person and one person only. Only one person can read that short story and know that the conversation I’m having is with them. I’ve been thinking of it as a love letter and am vaguely ashamed I used Vonnegut in that way.

I’m going to be very presumptuous and familiar and upsetting in that this isn’t really about Kurt Vonnegut at all. I think Vonnegut is my favorite writer because he’s saved my life more than once. I have a very blunted view of him as a man, a perhaps inflated view of him as a writer, but I think he provides a familiarity. He writes a bit how my father talks, he reminds me of a friend I miss, I have another friend I miss who had tattoos of Vonnegut’s doodles and who has since passed. Vonnegut, like Edward Gorey, has an indelible mark throughout my life through various touchstones.

And lately I’ve needed him. I’ve needed that amalgam old friend to lean on.

“Love, Kurt” —a collection of love letters collected by his eldest daughter Edith sent to her mother, (prior to her parent’s divorce, of course,) describing a side of the man that isn’t satirical, competing with himself to prove his intelligence, or the presented pose he contrived. It’s full of doodles, his name in bubble letters checkerboarded, hearts, constant self doubts, frustrations, and attempts again and again to put feelings into words that he actively avoided putting into novels. Vonnegut felt any manner of romance ruined a novel because love is so much more important to humans than any plot. Once there was romance in a story the story became the romance, and the story ends when they kiss.

In a commencement speech documented in “If this Isn’t Nice, What Is?” Vonnegut suggests, if you find yourself in marital trouble, the trouble isn’t likely sex or money or how to raise a kid, but that the problem in every marriage is that each partner too often looks at the other and is hurt/disappointed/angered that they are only one person. You want your partner to be the world and you lose sight of the singular person that they are. I read it suggested in an article that the reason his marriage to Jane ultimately failed was because he looked at her as a character he had come up with, and that he had become her character just the same. She had been the one to continuously push him as he repeatedly gave up and pursued a wide variety of day jobs, always thinking that writing would just be a hobby. His success ultimately created the rift between them because they were confronted with the truth that they weren’t the characters they’d been playing for each other.

Admittedly, this is what made me go looking through folders to find old notes and love letters from my partner. If you have any things like that laying around, go find them.

My favorite thing Vonnegut wrote, two things I should say, were highlighted in “Pity the Reader”. The first was a letter written home, the first letter written home after he had been liberated in Dresden. The first letter he had sent home to let everyone know that he was alive. There is something so glib and his voice is already so clear then as he reports what has happened and why he’s been missing and how he’s doing at the moment. It’s so clear and evocative a letter that I have no problem seeing him sitting on the cot writing it.

The second, also in “Pity the Reader” is a long form contract he has written to his wife Jane as she is pregnant, detailing all of the things he is willing to do for her, clean for her, arrange for her, and the amount of swearing he’s going to attempt to refrain from while he does it.

I think in those two pieces you get most of what you need to know about Vonnegut the person, outside of Vonnegut the author. You get bluntness, unapologetic honesty, humor, adoration, and resilience.

Review: Sunnyside, Glen David Gold

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My friend who doesn’t know me, Glen David Gold, was someone whose books were recommended to me by a friend who has since passed. I had avoided them at first, as I mentioned in my review last year of Carter Beats the Devil. My friend had been right, of course, knowing me well enough, that I feel strongly about these novels.

I loved Carter Beats the Devil, I adored Sunnyside.

Sunnyside, Gold’s second novel, is an examination of so many things: old Hollywood, war, masculinity in relationships, parental relationships, neglect and control. It honestly took me quite a while to grapple with it, not being a page burner so much as a book that requires breaks and contemplation. The way which the different story lines, the completely unrelated characters, weave together is ingenious. An intelligent, winding story with many fantastical elements, stories of old west shows woven into the plot involving Weimar Germany, the fundraising of old Hollywood for war bonds, and heavily leaning on the life and stories of an animated, well characterized Charlie Chaplin as the divining rod for the plot. Normally I’m skittish about historical fiction that leans on well known historical figures—I just have this sort of cringe reaction, wondering how a person would feel having words put in their mouth. With Glen David Gold I consistently don’t mind, I don’t think of it at all. That is Chaplin.

And while Chaplin is a focus and draw, of course, I think my favorite character was Lee Duncan. He was such a smooth, bumbling at times, sympathetic leading man for Gold to lean on.

I cannot begin to fathom the research process for a book like this. It’s stellar.

Review: Insomniac City

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Bill Hayes, a memoirist and photographer based in New York City, writes a charming love story to the city and details the loss of romantic partners bookending his initial move to New York and his new life as an established New Yorker.

Famously, Bill Hayes was the partner of the now passed Dr Oliver Sacks and in this book Hayes discusses leaving Los Angeles after the sudden death of an earlier long term partner to a premature heart attack, only to be swept up into a romance with Dr Sacks, their relationship and its age defying and cultural defying nature as Sack’s had been a closeted man. It then details Sack’s cancer and eventual death.

The whole relationship is documented lovingly and sweetly. Something which I lingered on in the telling was the care that Hayes put into not being bitter. Having suffered the loss of two romantic partners, his memoir beginning and ending with loss, it would be easy to see someone fall into despair. Hayes, admirably, writes from a place of love and acceptance.

What first convinced me to read the book was the description of loss in the very beginning chapters, as Hayes details the loss of his partner, Steve—-Of seeking connection and sense in a sudden, unbearable moment. Hayes struck a chord with me early on regarding the nature of grief, yet his optimism, his ability to love again and demonstrate loving again, made this a remarkably wholesome, heartfelt read.

Review: The Ladies of Grace Adieu

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This book was a bit of a struggle for me, admittedly, because while I adore Susanna Clarke and the tone, atmosphere, and world that she’s created, it was frankly strange to get accustomed to her in a short story format after Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

I found myself half way through the book before I struck on my favorite story of the lot, “Mr Simonelli or the Fairy Widower”. 

Prior to that it felt like I was floundering a bit looking for the punchline at the end of each story. “Ah, Rumpelstiltskin”, for example.

But the stories about fae folk are where I think Susanna Clarke really makes her name and sets the flag. She’s rekindled for me, a person who loves deals with the devil, just how devilish and dealing fae can be.

The stories after this midway mark all bear the same tone and quickness I expected of Susanna Clarke from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, down to the copious footnotes in “Tom Brightwind”. I worry I wouldn’t have stuck with the book if not for “The Ladies of Grace Adieu” themselves, the first story of the collection, which had all the snark and turn I like of her style.

Now I’m a bit struck at a loss because I’ve run out of Susanna Clarke to read. There’s a surrealist aspect to some of these stories that had me thinking of what it would be like if Samuel Beckett was writing fantasy. I already miss it. The atmosphere is hard to capture as effectively as Clarke consistently does.

I almost immediately passed off my thrifted copy to a friend; I need these stories still circulating.

Review: The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen

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I was in a rut and in a mood for fluff. Something vaguely romantic or funny. The book seemed to appear of its own idea and I liked the cover. Sometimes that’s all it takes. I think people are far too dismissive of the importance of good cover art.

As to the charge of needing to be vaguely romantic or funny; this book delivers. It was quick paced, very sweet, and I liked it.  The dialogue at times took me out of it because it was too much friend-speak or jokey and not what I expected in a fantasy-romance. That is a compliment. This book delightfully doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The trope of enemies to lovers through an anonymous letter mechanic is hardly novel, but the romance is heated, the itch scratched.

What’s memorable for me for this book, however, isn’t the romance aspect. It was the fantasy.

The world building, which the reader is thrown into rather than sermonized at, was well paced, well thought, well devised. I would be happy to learn more about this fantasy world, the gods and creatures, and found myself finding the book all too short. I really enjoyed the aspects of fantasy which were neither overdone or underdone but meted out as necessary to the romance. It’s a very character driven story.

(If I’m speaking in an odd cadence, blame Susanna Clarke. She’s next week’s review.)

I really, really liked this book. I quickly recommended it to a friend. Sometimes the pursuit of fluff is perfectly admirable. Not every book need be dark or poignant, which isn’t to say this book lacks poignancy. But rather, it’s fun. I found myself doing that all too satisfying thing of skipping back and forth to passages I had liked or that had stuck in my head for one reason or another, which I always mark as a sign of a great writer.

Review: Juniper and Thorn

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Juniper and Thorn is a fast paced and engrossing book billed as a retelling of The Juniper Tree. I wasn’t actually familiar with The Juniper Tree and sought out the fairy tale; I find that a lot of fantasy recently has been reviving the Brothers Grimm. Once I read it I did vaguely recall: 

A kindly man and woman, unable to have a child, do so through apple-magic, as one does. The wife promptly has a baby and dies, as one does. The wicked stepmother comes in and has her own child who she wants to inherit the father’s estate and so she lures her stepson to look into a crate then slams the lid down decapitating him, as one does. 

In a fit of just unusual cruelness, she then reassembles him, props him up, and encourages her daughter to go ask him for an apple. The daughter does, he’s suspiciously not listening, step mom gives a good ol’ “Whack him!”, the daughter does, and his head falls off.

You know.

The daughter, deeply distraught about her brother’s death, gathers up the dismembered parts and puts him back together while attempting to give him a proper burial beneath a juniper tree. Oh, I forgot to mention the stepmother also tricked her husband into eating some of the corpse. You know.

The boy gets transformed into a bird, he drops a millstone on the stepmother, he turns back into a boy, everyone has lunch. You mother’s dead, you’re brother is a revenant, time for Red Lobster.

Reid cleans this up a bit into a love story involving deceiving fathers and the necessity of being a bit monstrous to overcome them. Within the greater novel this myth serves as a backbone both in ways reflecting themes of the narrative and serving as the inspiration for the ballet in which Sevas, the male lead, performs.

Outside of that inspiration, the story is a well constructed fairy tale inspired by Russian, Jewish, German cultures that has that childhood-fantasy nostalgic allure while keeping things R rated. I really enjoyed it, much like I did The Wolf and the Woodsman (read the review here: https://aliactast.com/2022/03/18/review-the-wolf-and-the-woodsman/) , also by Reid and taking place in the same fantasy world building.

I found Juniper and Thorn to be a tighter narrative than Woodsman that focused singularly on the characters and their progression through the story, letting you be thrust into the world rather than taking the time to linger on world building. That said it’s very much a stand alone story which holds its own weight, I appreciated being thrown in rather than having my hand held. 

I’m continuing to really like Reid’s writing style and now I’ll have to hunt for what’s next.

Vonnegut

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Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors of all time. Few even come close to the affection I feel for that dead old man and his pall malls.

The way each story unfolds and what it represents is always done in this clear, no bullshit, no time for pleasantries, miasma of honesty. There’s so much humor and humility and cleverness; his political opinions and his stances, his morality is never vague. And he doesn’t come off as pretentious in his storytelling –in fact pretentiousness and how boring it is is a huge theme.

I also, and this is a personal jab at myself, absolutely buy into the mix of sci fi and speculative fiction. I’m pretty sure that when I was little I also was convinced I lived in a space zoo. So. I’m doing great. Don’t worry about me.

Free will versus predestination; prophecy and its inscrutable, annoying, cloying certainties; and, the nature of time are massive themes in most of Vonnegut’s stories and I very much jibe with that.

Which brings us to: I recently reread Cat’s Cradle and I wanna talk about it.

It might be my favorite of his books.

As the man says: see the cat, see the cradle?

I realized sometime in January, Cat’s Cradle kind of fundamentally hits the nail on the head for me. And it is presented in exactly the way it has to be to get its point across. I mentioned some time ago that that’s the key to a well written murder mystery —that the audience doesn’t see an alternative option that would suit the story better. Vonnegut couldn’t kill god in any more perfect a way than he does in Cat’s Cradle.

It does that thing I love of telling you one story, presenting you one plot contrivance early on which seems so different from the ride and destination that you end up on. You tumble along with the characters into an impossible scenario and you turn around and squint at the beginning, at the person you used to be before you ended up here. And yet—and yet how could you have ended up anywhere else?

And what better way to end a book than by ending the world, laying on a mountain, and pointing your finger up at god? If that doesn’t tell you everything about humanity, what does?

Please, if you haven’t, read as much Vonnegut as you can find.