Number 78 - Talk - Kathe Koja

Non-supernatural teen drama is not my thing. High school arguments and who wants to go out with who are sub plots.  Not the lead story.

That's my normal thoughts on the genre.  Then along comes Kathe Koja again and writes a compelling and utterly absorbing little book like this where the most out there thing that happens is a fight at a town rally.

Lindsay is the school's queen bitch. She's used to  getting what she wants.  Kit is a quiet kid hiding a secret about his sexuality.  He's persuaded to try out for the school play - Talk - and finds himself cast in the male lead opposite Lindsay.

Lindsay has just recently dumped her jock boyfriend and finds herself attracted to Kit. Things are not going to go well. As you might guess from that cleverly designed cover, the play attracts a fair amount of controversy. 

The chapters are told in almost stream of consciousness narration from the POV of Kit and Lindsay alternately.  There are also inserts of script from the play.

The voices telling us the story are clearly delineated, you can tell them apart easily from the rhythms and word choices.  The story races along at a great pace and the more Lindsay fixates on Kit, the more tense things become.  

The ending happily doesn't shut down all the storylines.  Life rarely does this so it's nice to see this reflected. I wondered if the ex boyfriend had a more accurate gaydar than a straight guy would normally have. of course we only have his actions to judge him by as told through the two narrators and there's no way to  know if there's more to my pondering on that.

We feel real sympathy for the two leads. Despite Lindsay being the queen of the school, we know her thought process and why she does and says the things she does. We know she's heading for a big fall and the inevitability of that is the lead source of tension in the book, even ahead of the "will the play go ahead" storyline.

As YA dramas about school life and regular normal people doing regular normal things go, this is really very good indeed. It left me wanting to know what happens next.  That's always a good thing.

Number 16 - Love After Love - Ingrid Persaud

 

This month's book group read.  There is no way I would ever pick up this book through my own choice.  As regular readers of this blog know - romance is not my chosen genre.  To put the word love in the title twice is unforgivable. It makes the book look like something twee and horribly icky.

Because of the title alone, this is one of those books that when you put it down you can't pick it up again.

It's not as twee or icky as it sounds.  It's actually fairly well written and contains some quite tough subject matter.  

But that cover just makes me cringe and not want to pick it up.

The story follows a Trinidadian "family", Betty and her son Solo, and the lodger Mr Chetan.

Betty is a single mother because she pushed her alcoholic wife beating husband down the stairs when Solo was very young. This is told in the first chapter so I don't count that as a spoiler.

Mr Chetan is a local teacher who moves in and becomes a part of the family although, for reasons of his own, he can never have a proper relationship with Betty. When the family secrets are revealed, the unit breaks apart and we follow the three on their separate tangents through life. Will the rifts between them ever be healed?

Each chapter is written in the first person from the POV of one of the three characters.  It's good that each chapter is headed by the name of the character because all three voices are very similar and could easily be confused. The lilting rhythm of the trini dialect it's written in is very easy to read, but should vary for the different voices.

The book paints a good portrait of Trinidadian life. Persaud must be a fan of Trini cooking because there are pages that feel like a recipe book.  Sadly, those are some of the most interesting sections.

It might be an easy read, the prose might be almost poetic, but there's something not quite there for me. I never really connected with the characters. They don't lead particularly fascinating lives. The ending is very emotional, but I wasn't that bothered because of my lack of connection to the characters.

I've read several books about ordinary people doing ordinary things and loved them. But here, it doesn't work. Despite that quote on the front saying that this is Unforgettable, I think I'll have trouble remembering anything about this in a few weeks.

Maybe if it had a title that didn't make me cringe every time I picked the book up, I might have enjoyed the contents more, because, other than the similarity of the narrative voices, there isn't that much wrong with the book.  I can't deny that the prose is good. When she writes about cooking, you can almost smell the spices. She deals with some tough subject  matter without flinching. Objectively, this is an admirable book. I feel like I should have liked this more than I do. But I don't.

Number 10 - Carol - Patricia Highsmith

 

I keep saying I don't like romance novels.  And I genuinely don't.  There are only two endings to a will they/won't they scenario and I've always contended that that's ok for a subplot but not for the whole central drive of the story.

However, this is by Patricia Highsmith and this is one of three of her books that I hadn't read yet. I've been reading her books since I was in my teens and I've not found one I disliked yet.

Originally published as The Price of Salt, under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, this is Highsmith's second novel. It was released in 1953 and is very much a product of it's time. 

By today's standards the plot is unremarkable. But back when it first came out it was quite revolutionary.  It's credited as being the first lesbian romance novel with a happy ending (although the sacrifices one of the characters has had to make somewhat undermine that score)

The plot is fairly basic. Therese is working part time in a department store when she serves Carol and is immediately fixated with her. This being New York in the early 50s, she tries to keep her feelings under wraps even while a relationship develops between them and they start spending lots of time together.

Highsmith's greatest talent was always her ability to drop you in the heads of her protagonists. This book is no exception. The whole book is told in close third person from her point of view.  We know every thought in Therese's head from the first stirrings of love to her full acceptance of the way she feels.

Guilt is always a primary motivator in Highsmith's novels, and again, this is no different. Only this time it's not guilt over some act of violence, it's over her feelings for Carol.  Again, this is 50's America.  Lesbians were something "other", a love that dared not show its face.

The prose is dry in places. I'm not sure Highsmith was at the height of her talent with this book, but it's still fairly compulsive reading. 

In the afterword in this edition, Highsmith describes Therese as a bit of a wet blanket and I pretty much agree with that.  But, as Highsmith also points out, it's a result of the time and place and her upbringing.  Despite her wet blanket qualities, she never comes across as a whiner or annoyingly self-centred. 

An interesting thing to note is that Highsmith recounts her inspiration for the story being when she herself worked in the dolls department of a large store and found herself transfixed by a customer - a scene we read in chapter two of the novel.  When Highsmith calls Therese a bit of a wet blanket, how much self-deprecation is going on there?

This isn't the novel to convert me to romance reading.  It is however still a damned good read. From a historical viewpoint it's a great portrait of a moment in time and the attitudes that were prevalent. And, being written contemporaneously, we can be assured there's no looking back through any tinted goggles. We also know it made a huge impact at the time.  The two leads didn't have to die for their sins and were allowed to love each other.  That makes this a hugely influential book.

Since the film was released a few years back, this is easily available again in any reasonably good bookstore. If you want a copy of The Price Of Salt with the original pen name on it, you'll be looking in the region of £300-£500. You're probably better off going with a modern copy.

Number 28 - Stations Of Shadow - J Daniel Stone

My first experience of J Daniel Stone's writing was his segment of the reather good collection I Can Taste The Blood which I read and reviewed last year (around April time if you want to check it out). I finished that review with a promise to read more by this young writer, so here we are.

As you can see this copy has a "not for resale" band across the front of that rather eyecatching cover.  This is a review copy and the book comes out properly in July.  It will be available through Amazon, but if you order direct from Lethe Press the publishers don't have to pay any commission to Jeff Bezos and will make more money to publish more books.

The story follows two drag queens in New York, Sebastian, aka the Hydra, and Adrian, aka Hera Wynn.  Sebastian is the new queen of the underground circuits Thanks to a mindblowing performance. His partner and occasional lover Adrian is determined to find his secrets. How did he perform  that effect at the last show?  Was it some spectacular make-up or mechanical effect, or is it something more basic and terrifying?

The underground scene in New York is portayed in such grimy detail you almost feel you want to take a shower.  The settings are almost a character of their own.  The sexual politics will certainly wind up a certain demographic, but they're not the type who would openly admit to reading a book set in New York's queer scene anyway. Anyone with an open mind will have no issues.

This book deserves to be read in as few sittings as possible.  Set aside a few hours, stick some Tool, or A Perfect Circle or Puscifer on your music system and let Stone's hallucinogenic and occasionally brutal prose drag you through the seedy world of the underground clubs and the resident freaks and weirdos. He'll take you on a wild ride and you may not come out the other side quite the same as you entered.

I'm not sure it all made complete sense.  There were times when I genuinely wasn't sure if what was happening was real in terms of the narrative or the result whatever illicit substance the character involved had just ingested. But it's so well written, I don't really care.

Stone wears his influences on his sleeves. His writing is occasionally reminscent of Kathe Koja - who also gets namechecked in the book.  Every one of Maynard James Keenan's bands is referenced multiple times and, at least once, his song lyrics are paraphrased into the prose. Other writers who are namechecked and whose influence is notable include Lorca and Shirley Jackson. There are characters named for Oscar Wilde and Byron.  He manages to keep his own distinct voice despite the high visibility of his influences, and his voice is pretty damned good. One thing is for certain, he's got good taste.

It's not a perfect novel. I do have a couple of minor quibbles with it.  The word raped/raping is used as a metaphor several times in the book, occasionally within a few pages from the last appearance.  It feels like an overused phrase and started to pull me out of the narrative when it appeared.

My other quibble is that there are a couple of times where, instead of finding his own imagery, something he excels at in the rest of the book, he chooses to compare what's happening to scenes from a specific film or tv show - "Creepy dance reminiscent of the 2018 reimaging of Suspiria" and "looking like people from the "Eye of the Beholder"episode of the Twilight Zone" were the worst examples of this.

This sort of thing can be acceptable if used in dialogue as it's giving character to the speaker and telling us his likes and dislikes, but feels awkward to me when used in an omniscient third person narration. Apart from anything else, I've not actually seen "Eye of the Beholder" so I don't know what is being described.

These are very minor faults though in an otherwise very good read.  I will certainly be tracking down the rest of the books listed in Stone's back catalogue.

This is a new writer to keep an eye out for.  He could be massive one day.

To find out more about J Daniel Stone, yon can visit his website www.solitaryspiral.com

An easy 8/10 I think.