My review of James Kirkwood's novel "There Must Be A Pony!" 4 of 5 stars.

I found this novel in a used bookstore back when I was in my 20's, many years ago, and I bought it because of the title. I read it and adored it--if there had been Goodreads back then, I would certainly have given it 5 stars. It inspired me to read three others by James Kirkwood--PS Your Cat Is Dead, Good Times/Bad Times, and Some Kind Of Hero. all of which I loved. I also tried Hit Me With A Rainbow but disliked it and dnf-ed it.

This is the story of a rather Holden Caulfield-esque teenage boy whose mother is a slightly past her prime Hollywood actress. The major difference between Holden and the narrator here (Josh) is that Josh is almost relentlessly sunny whereas Holden is disillusioned. In fact, Josh is so agreeable and positive that he didn't quite ring true as a 15-year-old boy to me, and so I only give the book 4 stars upon re-reading it all these years later. There Must Be A Pony! is the story of a young man, his slightly unstable mother, a charming man they both adore, and a crew of side characters. When tragedy strikes and everything seems to go from wonderful to awful all at once, Josh and his mom find themselves in a sea of troubles. The title is taken from a joke about a man with twin sons, one an optimist and the other a pessimist. Their dad gives the pessimist a bunch of games and toys and things but the boy just sits there eyeing it all suspiciously. He gives the optimist a pile of dung, but the boy is thrilled and shovels through it excitedly. When the dad asks him why he is so happy, the son replies that "with all this horse (stuff), I figure there must be a pony!" It's an apt metaphor for what this novel is about.

As a grown adult re-reading the book now, and looking at mid-century mores from the vantage point of the 21st century, the constant--and I do mean constant--consumption of alcohol by everyone in the book except Josh becomes extremely tiresome. Even Josh himself remarks about how the adults around him can't seem to make the slightest move without needing a drink first. Near the end of the book, Josh's mother finds out a friend of hers is pregnant, so what does she do? She proposes a toast. Holy fetal alcohol syndrome, Batman.

Kirkwood can be howlingly funny and there are sections of this book that had me in stitches such as the pet parrot who can only ask "Are you a Communist?" At the same time, the plot of this book is often heart-breaking, so it gets both "funny" and "sad" tags from me. In sum, There Must Be A Pony! didn't mean as much to me in my 60's as it did in my 20's, but I'm glad I re-read it, and do recommend it if you can find it. Kirkwood's books all seem to be out of print now, which is a darn shame.

Book Review--"Shy Creatures" by Clare Chambers 5/5 stars.

Shy Creatures is a marvelous and sometimes heartbreaking yarn about a man discovered hidden away in a tumbledown old house with his elderly aunt. An argument has caused neighbors to call the authorities, and they find the heavily bearded, nearly naked, and apparently mute man in an upstairs bedroom. He and the aunt are removed to a mental hospital where we meet a young art therapist named Helen and a married doctor for whim she falls. (Yes, I know, sounds trite about the affair, but the author has a real knack for drawing it in such a way that it's interesting and enlightening.)

The book wavers between 1964 (the novel's "present") and flashbacks that go ever further into the past to tell the tale of how William (the man discovered in the old house) came to be where he was. It turns out that he is not mute, he just only talks when it suits him. His backstory is extremely entertaining and heart-tugging, and his progress at the hospital--and Helen's as well--makes for a fine story. I loved it.

Book Review: "Joyriding To Nightfall"

 

Joyriding to Nightfall by Joan Colby
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is so much bad or impenetrable poetry out there that it's a genuine joy to find a collection like this one. Joan Colby draws from the classic poetic subjects: nature, love, death. She uses what manages to seem simultaneously like conversational language and also head-exploding, unexpected metaphors and combinations of disparate things to achieve poetry that is true and honest and visceral. And besides, this volume has the best cover art ever. Absolutely recommended.

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Book Review : "The Sun Down Motel"

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was okay. It's about Carly, who goes to Fell, New York to try to unravel how her aunt Viv disappeared while working the night shift at the Sun Down Motel 35 years previous. The POV shifts between Viv in 1982 (which I much preferred) and Carly in 2017. Carly annoyed me. I kept picturing her as Denise from Stan Against Evil. Appropriate I guess, since the motel is quite definitely haunted.

That said, this is less a ghost story than it is Nancy Drew Visits The Bates Motel. The first half tried my patience and I couldn't decide if I liked it or not. The spooky motel was cool, but the two dopey girls running around playing teen detective wore thin quickly. I also got very sick of the author's habit of invariably and everlastingly describing everyone's full ensemble every time they appear. Yes, we want to be able to visualize the characters; no, we don't need the full Marie Claire.

In the second half I have to say that I did get drawn in a lot more, as Viv consistently held my interest with her determination and resourcefulness. Carly, OTOH, continued to grate, with her super convenient luck in finding just the right (you have no idea) apartment, and her crush on the straight-from-central-casting handsome rogue Nick, who stays at the Sun Down because it is the only place he is able to fall asleep. (Um, kay.) The creepy motel is certainly the star here, and there were other things to like, including the weird baddie who checks in from time to time, but I just could never shake the tv movie feel of the whole thing. Not really recommended, though it is readable. Kudos for the cover, which is excellent.



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Book Review : "A Wartime Love"

 

A Wartime Love: A World War Two Drama by Shiralyn J. Lee
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm stunned, really. I'm stunned by the many plurals spelled with apostrophes (like this: apostrophe's), the blessed FLOOD of tears at every turn, the constant whimpering and trembling (What ever happened to that famous English reserve?) and just the whole host of offenses against Good Writing which are to be found here. What a mess.

The novel takes place in wartime England and that setting was one of only two things I liked about it. The other was the touching sweetness between the two main characters, Stella and Ruth. In their private moments, they really are lovely together. However, except for the love scenes, the writing is so laughably bad, and the editing non-existent (despite a claim that it was edited by some outfit called P-ink), that I had to resort to extreme measures just to get through it without extensive therapy. Arriving exhausted and annoyed on page 98 (of 222), I got out my pen and starting marking every clumsy, misspelled, repetitive, awkward, nonsensical, irritating passage as I went along. This process kept me interested enough to tolerate reading to the end.

The whole thing is stagey and melodramatic. Yes, life during the Blitz was certainly enough to try anyone's endurance, but here the only one being tried is the poor reader. Every time someone's teacup is upset, the characters start trembling and whimpering. Tears and more tears ensue. Even when a person might actually react that way due to bad news or whatever, it was done so often, and in such a predictable, plastic, over the top way, that it almost became funny. Then we have the mother, whose answer to every event is to make more everlasting tea. Moving right along, I am not one to shun the deets, but oh dear me does the author go into endless detail about trivial stuff. Every time a door opens, an inventory team gets its wings. We hear about the lamp shade, the dresser, what's on the dresser, the wallpaper (always flowered), the rug, the spider in the corner, everything. This is especially vexing when it's the middle of an important plot development and Lee pauses to inventory the soup tins or something. Moreover, the segueways are weird and jarring. On the occasions that the bombings or a sweet moment between the women absorbed me, Lee would jump to some wildly different mood and tone. For example, she manages (somehow!) to nail the perfect ending and then ruins it by segueing into a pedantic summary of WWII, followed with a painful and unnecessary "fifty years later" bit in which we discover that two of Stella's sisters live happily ever after with kiddies and the other mourns her life away over her dead serviceman boyfriend who she seems to have only known for two weeks or something before her steady boy yelled ships ahoy and joined the nay-ay-vee. (Or the army). In short, the "update" was really just a depiction of bizarrely static lives. Whee. So, even when Lee gets it right, she then turns around and messes it up.

Revel in this tortured sentence about Christmas decor: "It gave little in the way of joy but at least it was able to offer some sort of normality in the way of celebrating the traditional holiday." Now *I* want to whimper and burst into tears in the way of hammering my head against the desk. I haven't even mentioned the Spitfires leaving to bomb Germany, never mind that Spitfires were not bombers. And I've spared you the handy plot resolution near the end that is as unlikely in tone as it is emotionally false. All I can leave you with is that this is NOT the worst book I've ever read to the end. That "honor" still goes to Linda Rentschler's godawful "Mother", which makes this disaster look like Shakespeare. Need I say...NOT recommended.

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Book Review : "Hotel du Lac"

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This short novel reminded me a lot of Anne Tyler's "Breathing Lessons" which I hated. They both won a major prize ("Breathing Lessons" the Pulitzer and "Hotel du Lac" the Man Booker Prize), they were both written in the 1980's but feel more like the 1940's, and they both annoyed me as I read them, but this one redeemed itself a bit in the end. Getting there, however, was quite the tedious chore.

The blurb at Goodreads describes this book as "witheringly funny." It is not. There is the odd mildly amusing wry remark here or there, particularly in the opening chapter, but that's the full extent of any humor. The story concerns Edith Hope (This is the second time I have read a novel in which the author heavy-handedly names their character "Hope"), a writer of romance novels and an unmarried woman of a certain age who has been sent to a Swiss hotel as banishment for a social misstep. Heart-stopping stuff we can all relate to, not. The Hotel du Lac is a well-run but stuffy and colorless place for people who like their getaways calm to the point of coma, rather like the bulk of this book. If you enjoy reading reams abut what the women are wearing, what they think about each other, and who took a walk today and who went shopping, this is the novel for you, you wild thing. Reading this book was like one of those dreams where one tries to run but remains in frustrating slow motion.

Everyone cheerfully bullies Edith without malice or second thoughts. She appears to them to be a pleasant cipher, someone to fill an empty chair and behave as they would prefer for her to, but she has more spine than is readily apparent. Suffice to say, I felt I understood her in the end, and was proud of her, but it took the entire torpid, dull, endless, mind-numbingly repetitive book to get there. Not recommended, in the same way that I would not recommend for you to take grandma's dusty old lampshade down from the attic and put it in your living room. It is not charming, or nostalgic, or ironic--it is just lifeless. One star for the first 186 pages, four stars for the final two.

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Book Review : "Unclean Jobs For Women and Girls"

 

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I loved the first three (of eighteen) short stories in this collection. They were very funny and also had a deeper point. I thought I was going to love this book. One of the stories was about a boozy assistant to a Swedish (?) super model who attends Andy Warhol-ish parties and speaks in riddles. It concerned feeling empty enough that reflected shine from empty celebrity seemed like a move up. Another was about a sex worker for a reality game show where one of three men wins anal sex on the moon with the narrator by winning a competitive eating contest.

So it wasn't the bizarre story lines that made me give this collection one star. I like Donald Barthelme, Russell Edson and Michael Andreason very much, for example. Ms. Nutting is very clever. A little too clever, in fact. As she parades this laundry list of self-loathing women, worthless men and violent mothers across these stories, she is long on bizarro details and story lines but she seems to either mock her characters or distance herself from their pain by making them and their situations crazy and laughable.

I'll use the penultimate story, "She-Man" as an example. She has her trans narrator start right off by saying that she "is really a man." Transphobes say that, not trans women. Her pro bowler boyfriend somehow doesn't know that she's trans and the author sets up a ridiculously kitschy parody of a certain idea of white-bread normalcy which includes her making beaded Christmas sweaters as a sideline, and the bowler boyfriend having a penchant for Kat Klocks and such. The narrator's old pimp--because, of course--shows up to blackmail her, kills her dog, and outs her to the bowler boyfriend, resulting in his bowling alley pals beating her to death with baseball bats. Nutting tries to inject some pathos at the end--as she does with many of her endings--but she has set the whole thing up all the way through with a smirk and wink, so her attempt to switch gears at the end falls short.

If Nutting concerned herself less with showing how very clever and outre she can be, and showed a little more heart for her characters--not to mention giving them some admirable qualities once in a while--her stories would be improved considerably. Not recommended.

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Book Review : "Daisy Jones & The Six"

 

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Think Fleetwood Mac meets Almost Famous meets As The World Turns. This is the fictional story of a 1970's rock band called Daisy Jones & The Six. It's done in a faux interview format, which I liked because A) I grew up devouring CREEM magazine and Rolling Stone and any rock biographies I could find about my favorites, and B) because it shows what happens from multiple pov's, which sometimes contradict each other or see things from very different perspectives. It's an easy and engrossing read and I basically couldn't put it down.

There are several strong female characters and I especially enjoyed their takes on a lot of what went on in the male-privilege-gone-wild world of '70s rock n roll. I liked how the relationships in the book were all complicated in various ways, a trade-off of good and bad, just as relationships of any depth always are.

That's not to say there weren't annoying flaws. The ending toward which the whole book careens, comes with a whimper, not with a bang. And the where-are-they-now bit at the end was so cliche (Adopted orphan children? So '90s!) and the big reveal of who the interviewer is seemed forced and movie-of-the-week to me.

So, I enjoyed the book, it captured the scene as it was in that very memorable era, and so it entertained me but it didn't move me. The only time it really did that was as I read the included lyrics at the end and came to "Aurora", the title song of the band's mega-hit album. That got me, but it took until literally the last page. Recommended, but well short of must-read.

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Book Review : "A Dirty Job"

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It's rare for me to give up on a book I've already invested time on, but having slogged through a third of this one, I was not about to endure any more.

If you like middle school level humor, casual white male privilege that thinks it's cute, or reading the phrase "beta male" seventy thousand billion times, then this may be the book for you. Moore has evidently been told how hilarious he is so often that he never says in one sentence what he can stretch out to five in order to include all his knee slappers. Ugh.

The characters here are not really characters, they are caricatures. The plot had promise, but Moore tangles it up in so much nonsense and convoluted silliness that it leaves the reader wondering WT exact F? I found it not to be worth the effort of finding out. By the time I had waded through the easy shots at women, Asians, and blacks, I'd had enough. You don't have to be the PC Police to know stupid.

NOT recommended.

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Book Review : "Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant"

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Honestly, after reading the goshawful "Breathing Lessons" (Pulitzer Prize? Really????), I had sworn off Anne Tyler novels for years. To me, she is very uneven. "The Accidental Tourist", "A Patchwork Planet" and "Saint Maybe" were great, "Celestial Navigation" was good but horribly sad, "Morgan's Passing" and "Searching For Caleb" were okay, "Ladder Of Years" could have been good but the wimpy, irritating ending ruined it, and "Breathing Lessons" and "Back When We Were Grownups" were just awful. That said, I kept hearing that this novel might be her best, so I decided to read it and I have to say, it was every bit as good as "Saint Maybe."

I couldn't give it five stars perhaps for personal reasons having nothing to with the writing. The dysfunctional Tull family was way too weirdly like my own original family and so it was hard for me to read; it was like being suddenly plunged back into my own past and that isn't a place I want to go, ever. So I guess I recommend it for Tyler fans, and I'm glad to have read it, but it did not make me want to read another by her. Ten is plenty.

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Book Review : "The Sea-Beast Takes A Lover"

The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: Stories by Michael Andreasen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Holy cats, did I love this. As a big fan of Donald Barthelme, this collection reminded me a lot of his stories, though of course this one reads as more modern. Andreasen creates bizarro worlds and story lines to illustrate all too familiar themes of isolation, the desire for connection, and that old show stopper, the continuing misery of being alive. That said, these stories--for the most part--are anything but somber, and several of them are howlingly funny. It is, in part, the author's perfect ear for language that makes this work. He boomerangs from scholarly, arcane language to the most casual slang and back again, and he plays fast and loose with time as well, all to glorious effect.

The title story is the best, in my view. We meet a crew of salty sailors whose ship is locked in the embrace of a love-struck kraken whose misguided desires are dragging the ship down by degrees. The story is up to its gunwales in seagoing parlance, but just when the reader gets into that Mutiny On The Bounty vibe, sailors start appearing wearing sunglasses and ear buds and playing video games to pass the time as the titular Sea-Beast embraces their vessel. So, who's in charge here? The cannibalistic Admiral, that's who. I laughed so hard at this story that I had to stop and gather myself before finishing. Arr!

Here's a quick note on the other ten stories:

Our Fathers At Sea--a meditation on failure of family connection, in which the elderly are sent to the bottom of the ocean in pressure-resistant capsules launched from a carnival-like seaside park.

Bodies In Space--On a business trip, a married man referred to only as "The Man Of The Future" strays with a co-worker in the back seat of a Volvo. Just as satisfaction is at hand, both he and his paramour are abducted by aliens.

The King's Teacup At Rest--The King Of Retired Amusements buys a closed fairground and discovers the impossibility of bringing the past back to useful life. Don't eat the hot dogs.

He Is The Rainstorm and the Sandstorm, Hallelujah Hallelujah--A grade-school age girl tells the story of her ever-cheerful and nearly Holy Infant-ish baby brother, as well as the story of her mother and "aunt" who are trying to avoid the aunt's ex-husband. This story, despite its odd elements, was more serious than most, and one of my favorites.

Rockabye Rocketboy--an airborne teenage boy is admired from afar by a beautiful porn star. Sometimes we only want what we can't really have.

The Saints In The Parlor--four saints (Saint Her Own Hand On A Plate, Saint Upside Down Skull, Saint Tongue Of Flame and Saint of Dubious Or Mythical Origin) somehow find themselves materialized in someone's parlor.

Andy, Lord Of Ruin--third grader Andy, a pulling-wings-off-flies type kid, becomes dangerously unstable at an atomic level. Officials, teachers, parents and neighbors debate what to do before he explodes.

Jenny--The narrator's teenage sister is a normal girl except for not having a head. He loves and resents her at the same time, as her condition controls the lives of the whole family including him.

Rite of Baptism--parents and congregation vow to help (name) through life's shitty trials, and they are legion.

Blunderbuss--something goes wrong during a field trip to the Time Institute. This had me in tears from laughing.

One of the best short story collections I have ever read. If you can't abide the bizarro stuff, it might not be for you, but i adored it. Highly, highly recommended.

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Book Review : "The Knockout Queen"

The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My word, what a book. Briefly, it's about two teens who don't fit in, but don't go glassy-eyed on me just yet. This novel is anything but formulaic. I am a little bit confused by the title as it references not the narrator--a gay teen named Michael who meets older men via Craiglist and Grindr because he feels that no boy his own age would be interested--but his next door neighbor Bunny Lambert, an amazon of a girl and a star volleyball player.

Both have pretty much been cast adrift to find their way on their own. Michael's mother has gone to prison for stabbing his alcoholic father. He is living with his aunt and her son, a real bro who Michael has nothing in common with. They live in the sort of small house that is rapidly being replaced in their suburb by McMansions on every side. In the one next door lives Bunny, whose mother has died in a road accident and whose boozy real estate salesman father is never home. She and Michael find each other like finding a life ring, and become best friends.

However, vicious gossip and casual high school cruelties lead to a series of shocking twists, and the reader is never really on solid ground again. This is not an easy read. It is almost too real--the characters and the events here are as messy and mixed as life itself. It's a terribly sad book, and I had to fight off falling into a depression myself while reading it, and yet it is not the kind of book that wallows or annoys. Like life, it just kind of breaks your heart. All of the characters are both brave and awful, doing the best they can with what they've got. Just when you think they've beaten the odds, they fall again, and just when you think they're down for the count, they manage to get back on their feet. It is a messy, violent, thoughtful, poignant, marvelously observed tour de force.

I should mention that if you clutch your pearls at sexual scenes that pull no punches, or depictions of rather awful violence, you've been warned. This is a very human book, above all. It will tear your heart out while patting your hand, give you a sweet feeling and then smack you in the face. It deserves 5 stars, honestly, but because it was so sad, I gave it 4. I just can't rate it with books I LOVED. I respect what this author has done here, and I am very glad I read it, but I am also glad it is done. Highly recommended, but be aware that it is demanding reading, emotionally.

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Book Review : "Who Will Run The Frog Hospital?'

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Honestly, the first twenty pages bored me stiff. Then, though, it picked up and wormed its way into my heart. This is the story of two teenage girls, best friends, at a time (the early 70's) when I was at that point in life myself. The narrator's parents are, to be blunt, effed up, putting emphasis on the peripheral and missing what's really important in their rigid, closed-off way. By contrast, the girls--Berie and Sils--are wild and vulnerable at the same time. Wild mostly at heart, looking for Truth in pop songs, and depending on each other to be there at the center of each other's world.

I have read Lorrie Moore before, and she can be hilariously funny. I confess, I expected this book to be that way too, but it wasn't. Oh, there are funny moments, but this is really an elegy (as one blurb put it) to a lost time and place, and made my heart ache with it. Recommended, but I would add that you have to be in the mood for what this book is. If you go into it expecting it to be light-hearted, as i did, it won't be that--much as what we expect from life at fifteen always turns out to be something quite different. Having just turned the last page, I feel as if I have visited my own past.

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Book Review : "Furiously Happy"

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well...this is a difficult book to review, because different things about it struck me in different ways. It is often very funny. Other times, Lawson seems to be trying way too hard to be funny and it comes off as manic and forced. Then again, her mental illness is central to the book and when she actually took time to talk about that, I found it engrossing, relatable, touching and brave.

The trouble is, she doesn't really slow down and talk about mental illness that often. When she does, her writing is wonderfully easy to read, heartfelt and honest. She spends an enormous amount of time doing a sort of free association football (to borrow a phrase) that isn't really that funny and made me feel like the entire book could have been cut by a third and lose nothing. Ultimately what I liked the most about the book was when she talks about how her first book made people--including herself--feel so much less alone, and how it actually saved lives. She talks about depression being a liar who wants to kill you (which it is) interspersed with the funny/unfunny stuff I mentioned. Recommended, but with reservations. I would say, feel free to skim where necessary, in order to get to the better chapters. That said, I really admire Jenny Lawson for writing about this, writing about it in such a non-textbooky way, and in simply finding the wherewithal to take on the challenge of writing a book and accomplishing that while dealing with a disease that talks against you all the while.

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Book Review : "13 Rue Therese"

13, rue Thérèse by Elena Mauli Shapiro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Glorious! This will remain a favorite novel of mine for as long as there are books. It is, in part, the story of a woman named Louise Brunet and events that take place in her life in Paris in 1928. Having lost her much-beloved fiance in the Great War when he was just 20 and she 19, Louise has drifted into a steady but passionless marriage to a man who works in her father's office.

Louise loves to get away with small transgressions like making up wild, sexual "confessions" for the parish priest, or indulging her lust for the handsome teacher and former fighter pilot recently moved into the same building as Louise and her husband. She longs for a child, but hasn't conceived. She misses her soldier fiance, who has died. She feels stifled in her marriage and so she looks for little rebellions to help her feel alive and less like a caged animal.

We find all this out in a rather remarkable way. An academic named Trevor Stratton has discovered a collection of photographs and mementos from Louise's life and has begun to study them. The photos and objects themselves are pictured in the book and are part of its interesting construction. We get to actually lay eyes on her lost fiance, her mesh gloves for church, and any number of other items. The items themselves appear quite pedestrian or only mildly interesting until Trevor begins explaining what they are and what they mean.

In the final third of the book, the story heads down some very unexpected rabbit holes, reminiscent (to me) of John Kenney Crane's excellent Boer War novel "The Legacy Of Ladysmith" except, unlike "Ladysmith" there are no monsters to be revealed. That is not to say that the the ending isn't amazing--it is! I'll say here that this is one of those books that isn't for everyone. If you like your fiction very straightforward, this one might lose you a bit. There are sexual situations that might make your Aunt Millicent tut tut. But I give it an enthusiastic 5 stars and highly recommend it.

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Book Review : "Us Against You"

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Let me start by saying that the earlier installment, "Beartown" was magnificent. This book has almost all of the same characters, and is written in the author's engaging style which makes me want to keep reading "just five more pages" until it's the middle of the night and I'm half way through. He makes you care about this little town and its hockey club.

BUT.

Backman does something in this book that he did not do in the first one. He keeps breaking the fourth wall. He does this often, and in two main ways. The first way is by stepping outside the story to deliver little homilies about people and life. Let the story tell it, like in the first book! The second way is by constantly saying what kind of story this is. Just tell the story and let your reader decide. I had one other gripe with this book. Red herrings. I know, it's done all the time, but at some point I felt like I was just being manipulated and messed with. I could almost feel a grinning Backman sitting at his keyboard saying, "Watch this!" as he pulls the (carefully laid) rug out. Plot twists are one thing. Heavy-handed set-ups are another. Backman is plenty skilled enough to make a reader invest their heart in his story, but apparently not restrained enough to stop screwing with same readers.

I would give 3.5 stars if I could. I rounded up on the strength of the two books together. Recommended, but with reservations, and strong advice to read "Beartwown" first, not because you won;t understand the second book if you don't, but simply because the first book is better.

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Book Review : "Hope : A Tragedy"

Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one crazy novel. A Jewish man flees the big bad city for a farmhouse in a tiny community, but no sooner does he arrive than a firebug starts burning down homes just like his. But wait, that's the least of it. After hearing noises in the attic of his new castle, he goes up to investigate and finds Anne Frank living up there. She's ancient, hideous, bitter, stinky, and foul-tempered. What to do?

Shalom Auslander is a seriously funny writer. I laughed myself silly, especially in the first half of the book. The narrator, Kugel, is forever trying to figure out life's knotty questions, a task made harder by having to deal with his ever more disappointed wife, his neurotic Holocaust-obsessed mother, and old crazy hag Anne Frank in the attic.

Why is man born, only to suffer and die? Kugel may find out, if he can dodge the falling anvils long enough. This novel is wildly absurd, hilarious, dark, and at times frustrating. Have you ever watched one of those sitcom episodes where a character is trying to do (or undo) something and keeps running into obstacles and further problems for the whole half hour? This book is like that at times. I hate those kind of episodes, and at some points, I got tired of it here, as well. On the whole, though, I found this novel refreshing, funny, and just the thing for reading during lockdown. Recommended.

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Book Review : "The Book Of Bunny Suicides"

The Book of Bunny Suicides by Andy Riley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These cute little bunny fluffballs simply can't face another carrot dinner. They're ready to end it all, and find ever more hilarious ways to dispatch themselves. Their deadpan faces as they engineer their own demise only makes it funnier. Of course, it goes without saying that finding humor in the idea of adorable little bunny rabbits offing themselves belies a warped sensibility and a deeply disturbed spirit. I laughed myself silly, so what does that say about me??? Recommended.

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Book Review : "Good Boy"

Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is not your father's animal book. Hey, I've read "A Dog's Purpose" and "Dewey, the Small Town Library Cat" and adored them, they're fantastic. I'm just saying that if you pick up Jenny Boylan's "Good Boy" expecting it to be the usual neatly divided seven chapters about seven heart-stealing dogs, you won't get what you're expecting. Oh yes, there ARE seven dogs, and they have all the wiles and charms that almost all dogs possess. But this book is about more than that.

If you've read any of Boylan's memoirs, such as "She's Not There", then you know that she lived half her life as James Boylan, before becoming--or should I say, expressing--Jennifer. This book is as much about that journey as it is about the dogs. At every step of the way, dogs were there --as they have been in my own life--to make the whole experience of life more joyful, deeper, sometimes sadder when the time comes to say goodbye. I would go so far as to say that this book is about the most important things that make us human--a subject dogs seem to know an awful lot about.

Boylan is honest in these stories, sometimes talking about things that burn in the remembering of them. Some are small, like the day in childhood when young James breaks all the crayons in a girl classmate's desk, scarcely knowing, himself, why he does it. Other moments are larger, but the author doesn't shy away from any of them. As I read the book, I found that the honesty about the moments she is not proud of made the shining moments more vivid as well. It's not easy to tell it like it is (or was) but it certainly makes for a richer telling.

The book is also very funny! I laughed hard, especially in her descriptions of Matt the Mutt, a dog entirely untroubled with restraint or household rules. Boylan gives a dog's eye view of Matt's full speed ahead take on life. My son has a knack for voicing what my dog would say, if he could speak Human, and Jennifer Boylan has that same knack.

In the end, this is a book about love, family, taking care of each other, and how our lives build one thing upon the next. It's a book with heart. Very much recommended.

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Book Review : "Owls Do Cry"

Owls Do Cry: A Novel by Janet Frame
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first noticed this book simply because the title intrigued me. Since then I have read that the author spent part of her life in an institution, and was saved from brain surgery only by winning a prize for literature. And so this book is certainly autobiographical, to at least some significant degree.

It concerns the Withers family, well-named, consisting of the blustering father, faded and careworn mother, an older sister Francie who dies young in an accident, a bother Toby who is an epileptic, Daphne who goes into an institution after her sister's death affects her behavior, and young Chicks, who grows up to be a shallow status-conscious social climber. The book concerns itself very much with class differences and attitudes, and Frame has a remarkable ear for the way people discuss each other and talk about one another.

All of this makes the novel sound dreadfully sad, and it *is*, but the writing shines. it alternates between straight narration and a sort of dreamy stream-of-consciousness on the parts of Daphne, and to a lesser degree, Toby. The latter is actually more incisive and spot-on than the former, and reads like poetry.

One of the most remarkable passages in the book is Chicks's diary, in which she shows herself to subscribe to every paper-thin affectation that shallow people like her hold as important, indeed crucial. The fact that she is the most outwardly stable and successful member of the Withers family is a rich irony. Daphne, with her disordered mind, actually sees things as they are much more clearly than any of the others.

This is an unusual novel, some sixty years old, and as sad as life itself can be, and yet I highly recommend it because you won't read anything truer or more unique anywhere.

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