Number 28 - The Pearl - John Steinbeck

 

Of Mice and Men was one of the two best books I read for school all those years ago. For some reason though, I've never really read much else by Steinbeck, despite owning a nice hardback set of 5 of his books.  for the record, since school I've read Travels with Charlie and Grapes of Wrath.

This is not one of the hardbacks as you can tell. This is a freebie I picked up as part of a set that someone was giving away on one of those facebook giveaway pages.

It might be short but it's taken me a couple of days to read it.  Not because it's a struggle to read, but because the prose is so good it demands to be savoured. 

I don't remember OMAM being written as poetically as this, which is probably a good thing.  Age 14 me would probably have hated it. Age 21 and a bit me finds it a great pleasure to read.

The story is based on an old Mexican folk tale about a man who finds a giant pearl. However, far from being the thing that changes his life for the better, it does the complete oppposite.

I genuinely felt angry at the side characters for taking advantage of, or trying to take advantage of, poor Kino, the man who found the Pearl of the World. For a work this short, the town and its people are amazingly well drawn. Kino is beautifully realised as a character with all his hopes and dreams for what this amazing gift from nature will get him.

The prose is as close to pure poetry as it gets. The ending is true tragedy. 

This is a great little book and I will have to pull down one of his others sooner rather than later.

Number 27 - A Basketful of Heads - Joe Hill /Leomacs/Dave Stewart

 

More Joe Hill graphic novel goodness.

This is as mad as a box of frogs and is easily as good as (if entirely different to) anything in the Locke and Key series.

It follows the story of June Branch. She's just popped over to see her boyfriend, who's a summer deputy on a peninsula somewhere on the US coast.

However, when a group of convicts escape, and the power is cut by a storm, she finds herself trapped. her only defence is a viking axe she finds herself the temporary owner of.  It has the remarkable power that when she decapitates an attacker with it, the head stays alive and talking.

She soon finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy with a few talking heads offering their opinions.

What is the truth about what's happening on the peninsula and how deeply involved is her boyfriend?

The story rushes by at a fast pace.  June is a great protagonist. There are twists and turns galore. the artwork is perfectly suited to the writing.  There are tricks in the presentation here that tell the story in a way that would be impossible to replicate in prose.

There's not much in the way of subtlety going on in any of this. But if you're picking up a graphic novel with that title and cover, I doubt that subtlety is top of the list of what you're looking for.

The Hill House comics series are definites on my to be collected list.

Number 26 = Unquiet waters - Thana Niveau

 The second story collection I've read by the oddly monikered Thana Niveau.

My only complaint about it is that there are only four stories so the whole thing was over in just over 100 pages.

Thana's stories are so smooth and easy to read but superbly creepy.  They read like the offspring of Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Campbell with a touch of Pat Highsmith thrown in for good measure.

This mini collection kicks off with To Drown the World. A man drives to see his sister after receiving a strange message. she lives on the other side of a causeway which he has always found nightmarish to drive across. He has a fear of the open sea.  His sister however has always loved it and felt like it's part of her.  That could never be a problem could it?

This is the longest story in the collection and packs a real emotional punch. The last few pages of this story are brilliantly effective. Eldritch horror doesn't come much better than this.

The second story is the Reflection. This is a super-creepy doppelganger story. It reads like something ray Bradbury would have written on a really mean spirited day when he just wanted to scare the bejeezus out of everyone.  I really thought this would be the best story in the collection

Then I read Rapture of the Deep. Two friends go SCUBA diving.  Strange things happen.  

I can't give any more of the story away than that.  However, the writing in this is superb.  You feel and experience the sense of dislocation that the characters feel. this is the literary equivalent of watching Gravity on IMAX 3D and feeling yourself alone in a great void. I can'r remember an atmosphere like this in anything I've read in years.  And she does it in under 20 pages.

To round the collection off we have Where The Water Comes In- a psychological horror delving as deeply into the central character's psyche as anything Highsmith managed in short fiction with some added Campbellian weirdness. This has a nasty twist at the end and was a more than satisfying closer to the collection.

I have both of Thana's novels on order. I hope her long work is as good as these colelctions have been.

Black Shuck Books seem to be a small press to look out for.  They seem to be concentrating on the absolute best of modern British horror writers.  There are 12 of these mini collections in the Black Shuck Shadows series featuring Gary McMahon, Simon Bestwick and other names I'm not so familiar with, but have heard good things about.  I will be investing in a few of them over the coming months.

I biought this from Waterstones but they can be bought direct from www.blackshuckbooks.co.uk/shadows

Numbers 22,23,24 & 25 - the Bandini Quartet - John Fante

 

I wondered when I picked this up if I should count it as one book or 4.  After reading it. it's most definitely 4.  The lead character may be Arturo Bandini in each, but they are at least three different people with the same name. 

The Bandini in Wait Until spring bandini might well be the bandini from Ask the dust, but he certainly isn't the same character as in the other two books.

If it had been one continuous story across 4 novellas, I would have said one book, but with there being no continuity in personality or history or family memers between the books, it has to be 4 separate books.

Wait Until Spring, Bandini 

One of the few book titles I recall with a comma in it. This is the youngest Bandini we meet.  He's 14 and a bit of an arsehole. Actually, in the opening chapter he's 14, then 12, then 14 again and back to 12 before reverting back to 14 and staying that age for the rest of that particular story. There's no flashbacks or anything in the first chapter, just seriously dodgy copy-editing on behalf of the publishers.

He lives in a very poor area.  His family are desperately poor and his parents struggle to feed him and his two younger brothers. He has a crush on a pretty girl in his class who barely knows he exists.  His father goes out drinking and doesn't return for days. All in all, it's a pretty miserable existence.

This was the first of the Bandini novels to be published - way back in the thirties. The attitudes on show are a product of their time and I imagine there are a lot of people might take offense at aspects of the story.  That's their prerogative. Personally, I find books about flawed characters to be far more fascinating than books about perfect people who never put a thought wrong. 

It follows young Arturo through a few eventful weeks in a frozen Colorado winter, where he's unable to even play his beloved baseball - receiving no reply but the title of the book whenever he suggests it.  His father's longest disappearance to date, the most miserable christmas day in literature and a deeply unrequited first crush serve to batter the young man over the course of 200 pages. 

The writing is deceptively simple yet emotive. This version of Bandini actually raises some sympathy from the reader despite his flaws and his lapses into unforgivable behaviour - especially the way he treats his mother on occasion. 

As an example - this is a quote descibing Svevo - Arturo's father - taken from the first chapter.

"Svevo Bandini's eyes watered in the cold air. They were brown, they were soft, they were a woman's eyes. At birth he had stolen them from his mother - for after the birth of Svevo Bandini , his mother was never quite the same, always ill, always with sicly eyes after his birth, and then she died and it was Svevo's turn to carry soft brown eyes."

That's just gorgeous writing.  It's mirrored later on in the narrative with a reference to Arturo's eyes.  There's subtlety happening in this book behind the brashness of the title character. 

This was a great opener to this omnibus edition even with the continuity error with his age in chapter 1.

The Road to Los Angeles

This was the first Bandini book written, but the last to be published.  It was printed posthumously in the mid 80s. That should be a clue that there were maybe reasons that Fante didn't think it should be published.

18 year old Bandini in this book lives in California with his mother and 16 year old sister.  His father has been dead for some years. If the 14 year old Bandini was a bit of an asshole (excusably though since he's 14, he's struggling to cope with his home life and his changing body), this incarnation of the character is almost irredeemably nasty. 

He's self absorbed, lazy, completely egostistical, possibly psychotic and entirely impossible to sympathise with. There's humour to be found of a very wry type in the disconnect between his proclamations of greatness and the reality of his life. The level of delusion he operates on are quite disturbing to be honest. He tells everyone he's a great writer despite not having written anything. He reads Nietzche and the like constantly (although it's clear he understands very little of what he absorbs) and imagines himself to be superior to everyone around him.  He can't keep a job and of course this is everyone else's faiult, but nothing to do with him. He's racist throughout the book and talks down to absolutely everyone.

His behaviour towards his mother and sister is horrific throughout.  In the first book, despite his outbursts he always loved his mother and treated her with respect when he wasn't stealing from her or trying to avoid doing what she asked. In this book, his behaviour is abusive at best. He has decided he's the boss in the house, he treats his mother like dirt and never says anything even remotely nice to his sister. Screaming verbal abuse at her is the best he ever treats her. Violence creeps in for no good reason later on.

Since this book went unpublished for so long I don't believe it was meant for publication.  I don't think this is the Bandini that Fante wanted the word to see. The prose is not as nice as the first book and the character is too annoying.

I actually think I would have enjoyed it more as a separate volume with Bandini's name changed.  The sudden personality change from the first book (along with the move halfway across the continent and other changes) maks this one unsatisfactory.  There were still glimmers of the great prose and as a portrait of a delusional psychopath, it's actually pretty good. 

Ask The Dust

This was the second Bandini novel published - also in the 30s the year after Wait Until Spring.

Bandini is back to his relatively sane self for this one and there's no reason to believe that this isn't the same characcter from book 1 but almost grown up. Once again he's 18.  he's moved across the country to live in LA where he's striving to become a writer. 

Prior to moving to LA he had a short story published. that's the proudest achievement of his entire existence. He lives in a run down hotel in Bunker Hill and spends his time doing anything he can to avoid the task of actually writing. He develops a very disturbing relationship with the barmaid at a nearby bar. I did find myself wondering what she saw in him since he was rarely if ever nice to her, yet the relationship develops in any case.

His racial attitudes haven't improved that much, even though the object of his affections is not exactly of aryan descent. There is some self-awareness in this this book that his attitudes are wrong and that they stem from his own treatment at the hands of racists as a child on account of his Italian ancestry. This self awareness is both a good thing, as it almosts lends him some sympathy, and deeply frustrating since he fails to learn the lessons from it. He's certaimnly a more complex Bandini than the Bandini from Book 2.

Once again, the prose sings off the page. The wry humour is back.  His visit to a lady of the night was a particularly funny sequence. The story takes a dark turn towards the end and it closes on an extremely sombre note.

One amazing thing is how much he gets paid when he does finally sell another short story.  

After an iffy second book, the omnibus was back on track.

 Dreams from Bunker Hill

The final Bandini book - written in the mid eighties, shortly before his death. He narrated this book to his wife from what would be his deathbed.  He could no longer type because diabetes had robbed him of his sight years before.  Weirdly, in the three volumes written in the thirties there were references to Bandini worrying about his sight.  I wonder if his family had similar issues as he was growing up.

Bandini is now 21. However it's a different Bandini again since, when he visits his family at one point, he is a middle child with an older brother, a slightly younger sister  and a younger brother (all of whom he gets on well with). He's hustling for writing work in LA still, but with more success than his Ask the Dust alter ego.

This book is much more episodic than the first three (and 50 pages shorter) and hence the overall story arc is less satisfying than books 1 and 3.  I'm not sure book 2 had much of an arc to it at all. The character's racist tendencies, whilst still present, are pretty much kept to his thoughts rather than his actions and are that bit more palatable as a result. 

He bounces from job to job and does his usual trick of winding up everyone he comes in contact with.  This time the jobs are all in writing related circles and he seems to be making a success of his stay in LA at last. The ego is still there but also toned down.  He still thinks he's God's gift to women (a trait he has in all 4 books despite his notable lack of success). 

He also still has a treat 'em mean attitude that does not sit well with a modern day lead charcter - however, see my comments on the first book in the quartet.  It's an uncomfortable read through a modern lens, but art should aim to disturb the comfortable. All 4 volumes in this omnibus achieve that aim.

Overall this has been a great read.  Books 1,3, and 4 were particularly good, but book 2 just didn't seem to fit.

I'm a bit worried what the book group are going to say next week as this was my choice for them to read...

Number 21 - The Blue Canoe - TM Wright

 

I hope it's just the brightness settings on my screen that render the cover picture as dark as it appears, because it's a seriously creepy cover when seen normally.

It looks ok on my phone, so i'll not mess about trying to change it.

TM Wright was one of the leading proponents of quiet horror. He didn't use endless gore or violence in his stories, he created an atmosphere of... I'm not quiete sure. It's not, strictly speaking, dread, it's something more insinuous than that. His writing unsettles you and can make you doubt the reality around you.

This is one of his later works, published by PS Publishing. That creepy looking cover perfectly fits the story inside.

The title page describes it as "A memoir of the newly non-corporeal" and that's as good a clue to the story as you can have. 

The unlikelily named Happy Farmer is existing inside a big house, along with other shapes and shades that ocasionally visit.  Nearby  there is a lake, and on that lake there is the Blue Canoe of the title.  He uses it to visit a hill on the other side of the lake where there's an empty village or hamlet. He remembers his past loves who may or may not exist and visits a town named after the lake for his breakfast.

There's not really much obvious story to this book.  The reader has to do a lot of the heavy lifting for him/herself to work out what, if anything, is happening or has happened. It's all told in random bursts of stream of consciousness with at least a half a dozen different threads to the story all being told simultaneously. 

The sections are separated by roman numerals that become something other than roman numerals as the book draws on.  Chapter headings are almost randomly allocated.  Towards the end we suddenly find chapter 1 which is a whole new narrative thread again, but which seems to tie some of the more disparate threads together.  Or maybe it doesn't.  I don't know.

If the afterlife really is like this, it's a horrible concept and that's where this qualifies in the genre. 

The piecemeal storytelling keeps you off balance and wary all the time you're reading it.  You never quite know what is or isn't real inside this mini universe Wright has created. 

It deserves to be read in as few sittings as is possible. that way it flows much better than just reading 5 pages at a time.  It starts to make sense (almost) when you devote some time to this book. A good long reading session enables you to truly feel the flow and power of his writing.

There's a very wry and dry sense of humour running through it.  It's never laugh out loud funny, but I found myself grinning, although sometimes I wasn't sure why.

It's not a book I think everyone would love.  It's very different to a regular narrative.  It's one I will probably reread just to see if I can figure it out properly next time.

For me, Wright's prose has always been addictive. He writes smoothly and hypnotically. Regardless of the storyline, his prose is an experience all of its own. this book is no exception. The imagery is hallucinatory. there are nuggets of real wisdom in there, and a lot of what the hell is going on? 

If you like a book that's a challenge as well as an easy read, this will do that for you.

Number 20 - Zero Day - Ezekiel Boone

 

As I start one trilogy, time to finish another. As you can probably guess from that cover, this is the final part of the Skitter trilogy I started last year. 

This trilogy couldn't be any more different from Ramsey's highluy literate and measured prose in the Daoloth trilogy. This is action movie horror story telling. Fast paced and no frills.

The second book ended on a cliffhanger - several cliffhangers really - and this picks things up directly from those events. One puzzle he left the second book on is immediately - nnd somewhat annoyingly- discarded. It's clear he's realised that he set an impossible task for that particular set of characters and deals with it by making a blink and you miss it statement about why they chose not to do what they were aiming to do.

If you've read the previous entries about this trilogy, you'll know the basic storyline. Even if you haven't, you can guess what it might be.  The killer spiders have unleashed a third wave on humanity. This time, it could mean the end.  However, our intrepid heroes have been learning over the previous two books and may well have a way of fighting back.

Throw in a military coup against the president when she refuses to nuke everything west of New York, a lot more spider carnage than in book two and the scene is set for an exciting conclusion.

The pace barely slacks in this volume.  We have the same cinematic cutting between disparate groups of characters as was a feature of the previous two, the same glossy action over believability that makes this whole series a somewhat guilty pleasure, and plenty of shreddies who serve no purpose other than to be eaten.

There are some annoying loose ends.  Why are certain characters apparently immune to being attacked by the spiders?  Is it simply to have placeholder characters in specific locations so he can keep popping back to see how things are going? No explanation is ever hinted at.  They've not been implanted, they just walk through swarms unharmed for no reason.

What was the purpose of the family on the Scottish island?  They witnessed one spider attack from a safe distance in book 1, made a phone call in book 2, and did nothing in book 3. They could have been excised entirely from the story without any plot or emotional impact. They were never in danger, and they never interacted with the main cast.

Those criticisms aside, when the action ramped into top gear near the end, it was genuinely exciting.  I was cringing in a good way at some of the action sequences. The descriptions of the spiders crawling over the heroes was enough to make my skin crawl. When I thought one of the leads was about to die. I was  actually really upset.

If you're looking for a no brainer series of books, something to entertain without being too challenging, this is a damned good choice. They're not perfect, but I know I overanalyse at times.  Stay away from that and you'll have a ball with these books.

Number 19 - Doll - Ed McBain

 Ed McBain is one of the legends of the crime writing scene.  His 87th Precinct stories - of which this is apparently number 20 - paved the way for hard hitting realistic cop shows like Hill Street Blues.  His influence on the genre can't be denied.

He was so popular when this one was published, they didn't even bother to put his first name on the cover.

I've read several of these books now and they deserve the praise heaped on them.  They're fast paced, exciting and compulsive reads.

With a few hours spare in a day, I've been known to finish them in a day.  

I really should be reading them in sequence, but with more than fifty to source, that's a tall order and they work well as stand-alone novels in any case.

This one revolves around the hunt for the killer of Tinka Sachs, a fashion model.  Her daughter was sitting in the next room playing with the eponymous toy while a man viciously hacked Tinka to death. 

It's a case that leads Detective Carella into mortal danger. He follows up a lead on his own and goes missing.  His colleagues have to pull out all the stops to solve the murder and his disappearance.

The prose is brisk and plain, whilst still breaking most of Elmore Leonard's rules of writing on a regular basis. Adverbs are used to describe how characters speak when necessary.  They don't just say things. People whisper, shout, ask and correct others. This is a great example of why Elmore Leonard's rules only apply if you want to write like Leonard.

And the style really works.  It never feels like complex writing. It draws you in and makes you feel for the character's plights. The tension genuinely ratchets up in the last few chapters. I was really annoyed that I had to go back to work with 30 pages left to go.

I was more annoyed that the previous owner has torn out the last page.  Luckily, the main plot was resolved before that, and I've only missed a loose end or two being tied up, or set up for book 21, I'm not sure.  I popped onto Abebooks and ordered myself a new copy so I can read what I've missed for 83p plus postage.

There are some aspects that need to be looked at in the light of the fact the book was written in the 60's.  Although the intent is not to offend, the description of the black detective might not pass muster these days. 

I wuld love to see a TV version of these books, in the original 50s/60s settings. With more than 50 books, there's a lot of material they could choose from.  For short books they have a large cast and it would make a great ensemble drama.

 I have a whole slew of these still to read.  You will see more reviews popping up from time to time.  Hopefully, the rest of them haven't been vandalised.

Edited to add - my replacement copy arrived and I managed to read the last two pages. They made an unexpectedly moving close to the novel.  McBain really was a master of the art,