Daniel Jones: Modern Love--50 True & Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, & Devotion

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Modern Love is a collection of 50 short essays from The New York Times' freelance Modern Love column. "Love" here includes a lot of poignancy and lonely introspection, but little sex or sweetness. However, the best of the essays are excellent.

Editor Daniel Jones’ selections are interesting and surprisingly even in quality. Perhaps too even; the themes and voices can be too uniform, and the collection is grouped by similarity rather than variety. At one point I thought there were 30 essays too many, but I enjoyed them more once I started to skip and skim.

Why “modern” love?

The collection hits some obviously modern notes: flirting by text message, a painful conversion from housewife to feminist, being lovers and colleagues, sperm donors, gay adoption. The essays also touch on a mobile society: the long-distance romances and pseudo-familial relationships developed by people living far from home. Implicit too is a set of male/female relationships that I’m not sure older generations have experienced: unisex dorm life, cross-sex friendships, and mixed housing situations lasting long after college.

My favorite essays are those that directly address modern culture, particularly Waldman, Korelitz, and Hekker. For those writers who hew to the more personal, Jones appends “where are they now” updates that I find slightly jarring. Each piece is short, and many are online, so I’ll just point to a few of the interesting ones.

Seeking: R We D8ing?

In this section romance is largely about the writer, not the other person. In Sandra Barron’s R We D8ing?, an exchange of cryptic one-liners (from R we still on 4 2morrow? to What did I do 2 upset u?) is a mini-relationship with a full complement of emotional highs and lows. It’s fascinating that we can invest meaning in even such a sparse exchange.

Mindy Hung’s I Seemed Plucky and Game, Even To Myself describes playing a role to be desirable. Trey Ellis' Who's That Lady in the Bedroom, Daddy? feels unfinished, but it’s unusually sweet for this collection.

Finding: I Think I Love You

Howie Kahn's The Third Half of a Couple evokes years of group living. Good roommates can become as close as family or lovers. Kahn takes that intimacy a step farther, using his friends as a shield against dating.

I depend on the stability of their marriage; I need them to stay together so I can go where they go and do what they do. Simply put, I'm their third wheel.

Breeding: What to Expect That You're Least Expecting

Ann Hood's Now I Need a Place to Hide Away touches on music and memory and the joy of a shared obsession. The TMI problem of Helaine Olen's The New Nanny Diaries Are Online may ring a bell if you’ve ever google-stalked a friend. Dan Savage writes honestly about the pitfalls of open adoption.

Staying: The Ties That Bind

Ayelet Waldman contributes a controversial essay, Truly, Madly, Guiltily, that I've read before but always enjoy.

I am the only woman in Mommy and Me who seems to be, well, getting any. ... I love my children. But I am not in love with them. I am in love with their father.

Jean Hanff Korelitz's Sleeping with the Guitar Player has a surprise ending from a cynical start:

in the last few years I've experienced, via my husband, another masculine stage, one I'd been blissfully unaware of. This is the time of a man's life that I must now and forever think of as the guitar-in-the-basement phase.

I’m sure some readers hate her framing of the guitar-in-the-basement in terms of gender and ambition; it’s as provocative as Waldman’s essay.

Leaving: The Ties That Fray

I like the honesty of Terry Martin Hekker's 2006 essay on motherhood and feminism, Paradise Lost (Domestic Division):

In the continuing case of Full-Time Homemaker v. Working Mother, I offer myself as Exhibit A. Because more than a quarter-century ago I wrote an Op-Ed article for the New York Times on the satisfaction of being a full-time housewife in the new age of the liberated woman. I wrote it from my heart, thoroughly convinced that homemaking and raising my children was the most challenging and rewarding job I could ever want.

Read her 1977 Op-Ed as well. The essays are both passionate and forthright, though they present different viewpoints thirty years apart.

Bound: Family Ties

I find Leaving and Bound difficult sections to read. They’re too much alike, a litany of strangely similar divorces and deaths. Skipping around in the book helps, but neither the situations nor the telling can hold my interest through these final sections.

Overall this collection might be a C+, but a few pieces in it are A- quality. I’ve read my fill for now, but I discovered some interesting personalities through the columns.

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C.L. Wilson: Lord of the Fading Lands

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Erin Galloway of Dorchester Publishing was nice enough to send me an advance copy of Lord of the Fading Lands. I’m glad she did--Wilson has a gift for storytelling, and her prose is polished. I was disappointed by the book’s reliance on well-used tropes: the romance is straight out of Christine Feehan’s Carpathian playbook and the fantasy setting is more detailed than innovative. Nonetheless, for a debut novel it’s striking, and I’ll try another book sometime.

Rainier Tairen Soul, King of the Fey, is several thousand years old and a part-time fire-breathing giant winged cat. The last time he ventured out of the Fading Lands, he destroyed half a continent. Now a vision sends him back into the world, seeking a future for his people.

Ellysetta Baristani is the adopted daughter of a woodcarver in stodgy, pious, unmagical Celieria. Ellie appears to be simply a preternaturally nice mortal girl, but Rain recognizes her instantly as his other half. Women don't get to choose their marriages in this world, so it's up to Rain to convince the Celierian king to release Ellie from another man’s claim. Claiming Ellie and politicking distract Rain from investigating a nebulous conspiracy, but it appears that that conflict will happen in a later book.

Alpha and orphan

Ellie and Rain are familiar romance character types—so familiar that based on an excerpt, Laura Vivanco pegged the characters:

the hero was a type I’d read many times before. He’s the most powerful male in the world, he’s capable of violent rages, he has a very tortured past and he falls in love with an innocent, much younger woman. He’s so possessive he frightens her, and he reacts instantly to any threat (perceived or real) against her….

The heroine’s an orphan who’s something of an ugly duckling (perceived as ugly by her adoptive culture, coming into her own power), under threat and in need of rescue…

Wilson sometimes sacrifices character development for reinforcement of these standard traits. Instead of how Rain reacts to the world, we’re told what he wears; instead of who he is now, we get his powers, his tragic history, and generalizations about the Fey.

The built-up world

Wilson’s attention to detail is laudable, but sometimes less might be more. For example, an important courtroom scene includes a lengthy description¹ of Rain’s clothes. It doesn’t say anything new—we know he's handsome, wealthy, and powerful—so rather than the fashion report, I’d like to see the legal and political interludes developed farther. These scenes are crucial to illuminate inter-kingdom politics, and to explain the villains. (The evil Mages merit more discussion--thus far, they're simplistic villains for villainy's sake.)

Sci fi and fantasy author M John Harrison propounds a different approach to worldbuilding:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding. […] Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there.

and

Substitute imagination for exhaustiveness, and inventiveness for research.

Harrison is often provocative, and here he stakes out an extreme view, but I agree to a large extent. Not every world must be built the same way, but in Fading Lands I wanted a better balance of emotional and political explication versus décor. The detailed description also slows down some key scenes, which may be one reason some readers find Fading Lands slow going.

Truemates, lifemates, fated love

In the Elloran world, fate and race determine much of the characters’ lives. Every Fey character is noble and gifted; every Celierian character is ordinary. This robs the diplomatic conflict of tension: the Celierians are too far outclassed by the Fey. Ellie’s special qualities are evidently due to her non-Celierian blood; even her father’s business success has a non-Celierian cause. The Celierian women come off particularly poorly. Their lives are dictated by fate, race, and whichever man claims them, and they’re not notably charming, admirable, intelligent, or honorable: they’re perfect pawns for the men of the story.

The lack of outstanding female characters, and the emphasis on fate, are also clear in the romance. Wilson says her “truemates” concept is not the same as Feehan’s “lifemates”. I see no essential difference between the two, though some readers disagree with me. Like Feehan’s Carpathians, Fey men are fearsome warriors, but each kill adds darkness to their souls, gradually deadening their emotions. Like the Carpathians, Fey women are gentle; Ellie fits right in, as her sweetness heals all wounds and even inspires a Fey bodyguard to pledge himself to her. (It’s a little much; not even Feehan’s women save the souls of men other than their mates.) Like Feehan's Carpathians, there's some lip service given to the importance of the woman making an emotional choice but the outcome is never in serious doubt.

Fading Lands also reminds me of Ann Maxwell (Elizabeth Lowell)’s Timeshadow Rider (1986), a space-fantasy romance about a made-for-each-other couple from an all-powerful race with an animalistic side. However, Maxwell’s book is explicitly about overcoming cultural conditioning and sets up a more clearly worked-out tension between fate and choice.

Wilson is a good storyteller, and I enjoyed Fading Lands, though I found it heavy on genre clichés. Many romance readers will enjoy the alpha male/sweet female relationship, but on the fantasy side the mythology and characterization seem rather standard and un-innovative. It didn't strike the sweet spot for me, but it was an engaging read.

Grade: B-
(I'd give it a C+ for carrying forward so many bad-old-days-of-fantasy conventions, but it's really no worse than average in that regard. Besides, it's a B+ for storytelling. Storytelling and voice mean a lot to me.)

---

¹ From Chapter 6:

Tall, lean, and searingly handsome, Rainier vel’En Daris exuded the dark, dangerous beauty and mystery of the Fey race as he strode down the blue carpet. His black leather tunic and snug leggings seemed to absorb light, while his bristling collection of Fey blades were so highly polished that they reflected light back with almost blinding intensity. Black boots, tooled with scarlet and purple tairen, crossed the length of the throne room in smooth, ground-eating strides. A scarlet sash embroidered with taired worked in gold thread draped from his left shoulder to his right hip, just below one of the two crossed bands of Fey’cha daggers, while a chain made of fist-sized squares of gold, each set with large Tairen’s Eye crystals, hung from one shoulder to the other. A golden crown circled his head, each of its six points topped with a small globe of priceless Tairen’s Eye crystal. Even without the crown, no one who saw him could fail to recognize he was a King. He carried power as effortlessly as his broad shoulders carried the purple-lined black cape that billowed out behind him.

Tags: book, review, fantasy, romance, magic

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Kit Whitfield: Benighted (Bareback)

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Benighted (Bareback in the UK) is a striking and well-written novel set in a grim alternate reality. Whitfield depicts rampant social injustice and a culture of chronic violence. The emoting is on the heavy-handed side, but the main character and the world are engrossing.

Benighted is a modern-day story, but grounded in an alternate history dating back to the Middle Ages. Lycanthropy is the norm, and every full moon the population turns wolf. Society copes with its animal side repressively, imposing full-moon curfews and lock-ups.

Far worse off are the tiny minority who are born disabled, unable to change. These non-lunes or “barebacks” are despised and disadvantaged from birth; as adults, they’re pressed into dangerous work “dogcatching” for the government, sent out at full moon to round up and pen loose wolves.

The story is told by Lola May Galley, a dogcatcher and legal representative for lune offenders. When her colleagues are attacked by both wolves and humans, Lola fears she’s next.

Benighted society

Whitfield presents a very effective dystopia, with a lot to say about power and privilege, and clear analogies to modern social injustice. Non-lunes are only one percent of the population, but they’re crucial to maintain lune society’s compartmentalization of their wolf natures—a Faustian bargain dating back to the Inquisition years:

Luning, already regarded by the Church with the suspicion that sex, childbirth, and all the other carnal upheavals the human frame fell prey to, became a matter of panic. The Inquisition came down hard; they went on the hunt. The Dominicans, the founders of it all, took up their nickname like a banner: Domini Canes, the Hounds of God, appointed to run down Satan’s wolves. Protestants, who by then were killing Catholics with equal fervor, declared luning to be an unregenerate state, because you were incapable of faith while under its influence. Pious citizens who feared temptation to sin, or frightened citizens who didn’t want to find themselves at the stake, take your pick, but people began locking themselves away. […]

We were useful, back then. People needed us.

That’s Lola: intelligent, bitter, and well aware of the ugly sides of the law she serves.

Despite the themes of prejudice and alienation, this is not an epic struggle of good versus evil. It’s Lola’s book, and she lives in a moral grey area—as do her lune clients. Lunes rarely remember their wolf experiences, and civil trials permit what amounts to a sleepwalking defense: I did it while I was a wolf; I don't remember it; I wouldn't have done it otherwise. The lunes’ inability to police themselves makes it hard to imagine a "save the world" happy ending; the world of Benighted remains screwed up, and the focus stays on Lola’s struggle to stay alive and sane.

Not likable, but sympathetic and reliable

Lola is frankly a bit of a pill. She has to be tough to survive her job, but she’s also inconsistent, self-centered, and prejudiced. She’s a thorough pessimist, and a nervous wreck—certainly not the tiresome "plucky heroine triumphs over adversity" female character type, but is she too hard to like? Not in my judgment. Lola’s not precisely an unplucky sad sack, and she’s no villain, but she’s a character on the cusp. Will fear harden her attitude into outright persecution of lunes, or will she continue trying to walk the line, defending lunes in court and treating them as humans--except at full moon?

I find Lola more sympathetic than likable—or perhaps likable by Anne Lamott’s liberal definition: "someone whose take on things fascinates you", who’s flawed in understandable ways, or who has the survivor’s "certain clarity of vision". Lola’s rough edges are understandable, and I appreciate seeing a complex female character facing significant moral dilemmas.

The over-bright side

The writing and the messages in the book are not subtle. Lola has been abused in every imaginable way—the litany is overwhelming. Her downward spiral is relentlessly dark, while the happy-sunshiny scenes with her infant nephew and her lover, Paul, can be maudlin.

Paul especially is too good to be true. His entry into Lola’s life is overly serendipitous and he’s infinitely patient with Lola’s freak-outs. He does, however, make a significant contribution to the story: Paul’s hippie-dippy quest for self-knowledge provides a faint hope that lune society could change.

Benighted is not the typical werewolf novel that’s flooded the market recently. I imagine it could be shelved under literary fiction, science fiction, or horror. Like my favorite speculative fiction, Benighted alters today’s world just enough to create pointed social commentary, and it’s refreshing to see writing that makes me empathize with a challenging character. The dénouement is rather a let-down, much like a mystery in which on the last page the sleuth deduces the presence of some unseen hand directing the action. However, the provocative climax is what’s stayed with me.

Grade: B for Lola's melodramas, the "unseen hand" ending, and some clunkiness in describing her relationships. An A for an interesting voice, a fascinating world, and a provocative, memorable story. Overall, A-/B+.

Tags: books, reviews, horror, fantasy, alternate history, speculative fiction, werewolves

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Michele Slung: I Shudder At Your Touch: 22 Tales of Sex and Horror

(ROC, 1991)
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I Shudder At Your Touch has taken me a long time to finish. I don't read much horror in one sitting (especially before bed), and I kept hitting dull or dated pieces of writing and losing interest. A number of the stories are well written and a few are fascinating, but overall the quality of writing isn't as high as I'd hoped. The selection doesn't really hold my interest either: I've enjoyed some of these authors more in other collections.

I'm not a frequent horror reader. I've read the older classics in the genre, a handful of the big names from the last few decades, and I enjoy some of the recent crossover horror/fantasy/romance fiction. Most of all, I enjoy a good short story in any genre.

I'll discuss the stories here. In Part 2 I'll talk about the very interesting preface by Michele Slung.

The stories

I Shudder was first published in 1991; most of the stories date from before that. The earliest stories (1890s-1960s) are all strong: they're distinctive enough to stand out among decades of similar themes, and they're not overwhelmed by old-fashioned ornamentation. Several of those written in the 1970s-80s sin the other direction--they're distinctive only in plot, with no writing style; good stories told with minimal nuance. Too many of the later stories rely on the reader's visceral, squeamish reactions for effect, neglecting the good writing that turns a lurid read into a compulsive read.

It's not that these stories are nonstop gore. The collection is fairly well balanced between different types of horror: growing hatred, sudden violence, and outré paranormal creatures. Nor am I arguing for an elaborate Gothic style. If anything, the opposite: several of the stories are flabby, wordy writing.

My synopses are sketchy because I hate to "spoil" short stories, and because there are 22 of them. If you want more detail, try here.

Women run amok

Several of the stories are in the vein of The Turn of the Screw: they center on a woman going mad (perhaps driven mad by frightening forces), and ultimately harming herself or others.

The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson by Stephen King, 1986
Becka accidentally shoots herself in the head. The bullet lodged in her brain is only the start, as her reality and her attitude toward her husband take some strange and threatening turns. King's language is flat, and his voice is blah. Interesting ideas, boring delivery.

• An episode of The Outer Limits is based on Becka.

Cleave the Vampire, or, A Gothic Pastorale by Patrick McGrath, 1991 (titled "Not Cricket" in the UK edition)
A well-written send-up of a British matron (complete with fox-hunting-obsessed husband and cricket-obsessed son), in the sex-mad style of a country-house farce. Lady Hock has stopped taking her medications, an grows increasingly obsessed with a vampire at the neighborhood cricket match. Cleave is light on the horror; Lady Hock's mental state is developed more than the vampire. Slung hits on the one aspect that up-ends the usual vampire story:

It's a provocative thought that the only thing worse than a vampire's advances could be a vampire's indifference.

The Conqueror Worm by Stephen R. Donaldson, 1983
The one madness story in the collection that centers on a man. The story would be unremarkable except for the ghastly "worm". Which is sort of the story of Donaldson's success, I think: seemingly ordinary stories with a queasy element that renders them uncomfortably memorable. It's very effective, but I always end up feeling manipulated by it.

Keeping House by Michael Blumlein, 1991
Another "horrid" story of a woman going mad. In this case the evil seems to emanate from a house, and manifests itself through creepy crawlies and rank odors. The horrors and her madness progress in smart tandem, keeping the reader unsure of the narrator's reliability until near the end.

Unsafe at home

Keeping House is the best of several stories about the terror and mental fatigue of feeling spied-on in one’s own home.

The Master Builder by Christopher Fowler, 1991
More stalker-thriller than horror; great ideas but flabby, wordy writing.

Wings by Harriet Zinnes, 1988
This could have been an intriguing little psychological piece. It breaks all kinds of taboos and plays with the character's mind and sexuality to a cruel degree--but it goes nowhere and explores nothing.

Nature, red in tooth and claw

A few of the stories depict half-humans who seem to belong to a nature that's fierce and uncompromising. There’s no true understanding between the ordinary person and the half-human Other.

Sea Lovers by Valerie Martin, 1988
Sea Predator might have been a better title. Mermaids can have cold, fishy hearts; this particular mermaid is anti-men, having seen one drowned and found his genitals frightening... quel shock! It's a strong story with a weak ending. Some editor should have accidentally-on-purpose omitted the last two paragraphs.

The Tiger Returns to the Mountain by T.L. Parkinson, 1991
Slung compares this story to Beauty and the Beast, but the fairytale is altered in almost every respect. Most versions of the story alter the atmosphere but not the structure of the fairytale; Jean Cocteau's prince is beastly in instincts but still leads a life of privilege--and he's still constrained by the need to win the beauty's love. The Tiger Returns twists male/female power disturbingly. The Tiger Man is far from privileged; he's a prison escapee. He doesn't woo; he kidnaps and forces. On the face of it the Tiger Man possesses all the power in the relationship, and Molly can only take back her power negatively, by acquiescing to her own rape.

Master by Angela Carter, 1981
White man, native woman, jungle, jaguar, killing that which we love or that which we become. Oh-so-full of symbolism, but none of it spoke to me.

The everyday: Fantasy and cruelty

Most of the stories involve relationships going awry. A couple of the stories are about the entirely human dimension of horror, the kind of thing that leads to divorce court or, at their most fantastic, headlines for supermarket tabloids.

A Quarter Past You by Jonathan Carroll, 1989
A wife is a little too honest about her sexual fantasies; the husband thoroughly squelches her fantasy. Not remotely horrific, but a decent short story.

A Glowing Future by Ruth Rendell, 1987
A rather predictable story of a woman done wrong, and her revenge on both the man who done it and the woman he done it for.

• The full text is online (PDF).

Other stories originate in human discontents but conjure something otherworldly.

Consanguinity by Ronald Duncan, 1965
I found this the most intriguing story in the book. After reading the ending, I immediately started again from the beginning. It's a primarily psychological tale of an unusually close brother and sister; more about the weird and the transgressive than the truly horrible.

Festival by Eric McCormack, 1987
A genuine piece of grotesquerie with a twist in the end. A couple attend a festival of increasing horrors; they've agreed to participate in the final act. The interest is in the couple's agreement, their brinksmanship, and their careful compact that accommodates both of their yearnings toward death. McCormack has found the flaw in the Prisoner's Dilemma: the two principals may trust each other implicitly, but can they trust the rest of the world to play along?

Psychopomp by Haydn Middleton, 1991
An exploration of the yearning to return to one's beginnings, and the death that accompanies this turning away from life.

Editor's note: A psychopomp... was, in ancient Greek myth, a conductor of souls to the place of the dead.

Salon Satin by Carolyn Banks, 1991
A trite tale of two women and a supernatural spa (described in ridiculous psychedelia). The "punchline" is all in the last page, and hinges on a lame pun.

Nameless horrors

A few of the stories are Gothic in structure, relying on nameless horrors for their emotive value. These two vintage Gothic pieces worked for me (Sinclair and Hitchens); the newer stories weren't very good.

The Villa Désirée by May Sinclair, 1926
A classic Gothic tale of a young woman engaged to a mysterious stranger. Mildred is alone in his remote home, sleeping in a bedroom with a bloody past.

How Love Came to Professor Guildea by Robert Hitchens, 1900
Another classic story of an isolated man haunted by the nameless. The Professor would rather die than live with the creature's affection.

The Swords by Robert Aickman, 1975
A young commercial traveler becomes fascinated by a perverse carnival act. It's an interestingly macabre idea, but I didn't find the writing very effective.

Ladies in Waiting by Hugh B. Cave, 1975
An over-explained and under-atmospheric story of a strange house. A wife is strangely attracted to it, her husband strangely repelled.

Moral fairytales

I don't necessarily mean moral as in upright. Several of the stories have clear roots in legend, and take a fairly direct path toward resolution.

The Basilisk by R. Murray Gilchrist, 1894
A lush and strangely sexy Victorian fairytale about a young woman who's in thrall to a basilisk, and her human lover who doesn't realize what he's up against. One wants to warn him of the obvious: "Young man, don't mess with basilisks."

• The full text is online (PDF)

Death and the Single Girl by Thomas M. Disch, 1976
An interesting, deadpan story that plays with the banal side of death by sex.

Death spread his suitcoat and unzipped his fly.

Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament by Clive Barker, 1984
Power leading to degradation; love leading to a fall; ultimately, both protagonists are damaged enough to come together.

Slung's breathless introductions do the stories no favors. The buildup is gushing, and the purple prose is comical. I prefer to read the stories first, then scan the introductions for any points of interest. Slung introduces Jacqueline Ess with typical hyperbole:

In the dark miracle of Jacqueline Ess, Clive Barker has given us what may be the most daring and unnerving story many of you will ever encounter. For in exploring those deepest mythic recesses of female power which exist beyond any known responses, he moves instinctively into the realm of Circe, of Medusa, of Kali, of shape-changing goddesses and demons. Yet, despite its awesomely frightening special effects, for me this story is ultimately an allegory of the nature of desire, which is in itself an endless mystery.

But because there are what can only be termed harrowing perversions of desire on exhibit here, I must also stress the tenderness that unexpectedly breaks through. I could be mistaken, but I do think that Barker provides in "Jacqueline Ess" an utterly original expression of admiration for and homage to the smoldering primal force that is women's sexuality.

(I found the story interestingly plotted and constructed, but by no means "the most daring and unnerving story" I've ever encountered.)

I enjoyed about half stories from the collection, and found most of the rest interesting. But overall it's not the strongest collection; too many pieces are blandly written and not aging well.

I'm certain some of my reaction is due to reading these stories many years after they were first published, in a whole different literary culture. However, I can't evaluate these stories based on a hypothetical long-ago reader. As a book to read in 2007, I'd give it a C+ grade. If it were re-released with better introductions, I'd read it with historical curiosity... but I'd still find the writing a mixed bag.

Tags: books, reviews, horror, sex, love, gothic,

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Paul Levine: Solomon vs. Lord

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Solomon vs. Lord is a lively combination of legal thriller, romantic suspense, and comedy. The mystery isn't memorable, but the characters have surprising depths, the repartee is crisp, and I laughed out loud. I wish more books had such deft dialogue.

Steve Solomon is a no-holds-barred defense lawyer whose iffy-looking advertisements adorn city buses. Victoria Lord is a brand-new lawyer anxious to prove herself to a demanding district attorney.

When their personality clash costs Victoria her job, Steve inveigles her into a temporary partnership defending Katrina Barksdale. Katrina’s case is high profile: her husband died during a bondage game on their yacht. Meanwhile, Steve’s personal life becomes even more complicated than the merry widow’s, as he fights both his sister and the state for custody of his autistic nephew.

Florida, the surreal sunshine state

I'm a sucker for books in which the setting strongly shapes the narrative. Especially Florida. Florida is a strange, strange land where almost anything seems plausible. In books by Susan Orlean and Carl Hiaasen, Florida is practically a character in its own right. In Solomon vs. Lord, Florida lends a crazy variety to the cast and settings. Where else could “old-money Miami” Victoria and “barefoot Coconut Grove” Steve face off in downtown courtrooms, a cult camp in the swamps, a luxury yacht, and an avocado plantation?

Mystery: strangely absent

The mystery itself isn’t particularly mysterious. It’s neither densely-plotted nor intense, the murder isn’t overly gory, and all the elements of the solution are telegraphed to the reader early on. The final solution seems meant to be ingenious but is only middlin' so—and not entirely convincing. This weakness makes the mystery a mere backdrop to Steve and Victoria. The subplot involving Steve's nephew is far more engaging than the murder case.

Character, character, character

What’s special about Solomon vs. Lord is the interplay between the title characters. Their chemistry makes for an engaging sparks-at-first-sight romance. The repartee is both funny and revealing, in the vein of The Taming of the Shrew (though it's hard to say who's the shrew here).

To quote Bob Mayer, "Dialogue reveals a great amount of information about your characters. It is their chance to express themselves". In The Scandal of the Season I complained that the characters' witty exchanges were mostly situational comedy—more arch commentary than character development. Levine, in contrast, writes dialogue that lets us see inside the characters, past Steve’s superficial jackassery and Victoria’s apparent prissiness.

Levine works within conventional legal-thriller forms, but turns them on their heads. At first sight, Victoria and Steve are nothing surprising: she's a rule-follower, he's a rule-breaker. She prepares, he extemporizes. But there's a reason she's a uptight: part of it's personality, part is because she's a new-minted lawyer with a fire-breathing boss. Similarly, Steve is a good guy under the jackass front… but the jackass is part of him too.

Levine credits his TV experience (JAG) with making his writing leaner and his dialogue “zippier”. Both are evident in Solomon vs. Lord; the repartee zips from the first page.

The man in the holding cell loosened his tie, tossed his rumpled suit coat into a corner, and stretched out on the hard plastic bench. The woman in the facing cell slipped out of her glen plaid jacket, folded it carefully across an arm, and began pacing.

"Relax, Vickie. We're gonna be here a while," the man said.

"Victoria," the woman corrected. Her angry footsteps echoed off the bare concrete floor.

"Wild guess. You've never been held in contempt before."

"You treat it like a badge of honor."

"A lawyer who's afraid of jail is like a surgeon who's afraid of blood," Steve Solomon said.

"From what I hear, you spend more time behind bars than your clients," Victoria Lord said.

"Hey, thanks. Great tag line for my radio spots. 'You do the crime, Steve does the time.' "

"You're the most unethical lawyer I know."

"You're new at this. Give it time."

"Sleazy son-of-a-bitch," she muttered, turning away.

"I heard that," he said.

Nice profile, he thought. Attractive in that polished, cool-as-a-daiquiri way. Long legs, small bust, sculpted jaw, an angular, athletic look. Green eyes spiked with gray and a tousled, honey-blond bird's nest of hair. Ballsy and sexy, too. He'd never heard "sleazy son-of-a-bitch" sound so seductive.

"If you weren't so arrogant," he said, "I could teach you a few courtroom tricks."

"Save your breath for your inflatable doll."

"Cheap shot. That was a trial exhibit."

After this unpromising start, the easy labels—sleazeball vs. silver spoon, clowning man vs. uptight woman—give way rapidly.

I don’t need a lengthy disquisition on Steve and Victoria’s feelings to believe in their rapprochement. The two are dissimilar both superficially and in deeper ways, but they find unexpected things to admire in each other. Both are idealists, and Victoria recognizes Steve’s affinity for the underdog even if some of his clients give her the willies.

Crucially, Steve and Victoria develop a genuine professional respect: she recognizes his expertise in court, while he predicts she'll be extraordinary in the courtroom as she gains experience. Near the end, one scene sold me on them as a couple: Victoria acknowledges how much she's learned from Steve, and--unexpectedly--he in turn listens to and learns from her. Their efforts to reconcile a growing professional and personal respect with awkward realities—Steve really can be a “sleazy son-of-a-bitch” and Victoria really can be uptight—are both endearing and a source of ongoing tension.

Uneven secondary characters

There’s a hodgepodge of unusual secondary characters. The standout is Steve’s nephew Bobby. Damaged by abuse and neglect before Steve took him in, Bobby is both appealing and appalling. He’s also good for a number of easy laughs: one of his talents is anagramming people’s names.

The book occasionally slides into pure slapstick, and Levine includes some stock characters. Worst among these are a ridiculously evil district attorney, and Victoria’s nice-but-bland fiancé, Bruce the avocado king. Bruce is strangely oblivious to the undercurrents as Victoria puts him in one ridiculous situation after another. It’s hard to believe in their relationship, and it’s beyond ridiculous that Victoria’s never told him she’s allergic to avocado. That kind of trying-too-hard comedy grates in several scenes.

Worth the read

While I’d love a more intriguing mystery and less slapstick, it’s a very fun read. Steve and Victoria carry the book. I’ll read the next in the series to see whether the plotting will perk up—and whether the characters will remain so engaging.

The entire first chapter is online at Levine's site, and also in audio, read by Christopher Lane. (I don't care for Lane's "Victoria" voice. There aren't a lot of female characters in the book, so it's a real problem if the voice ruins the main one.)

Grade: A- for entertaining protagonists and dialogue; C+ for the mystery elements. I enjoyed it, so I'll call it a B+.

Tags: books, reviews, mystery, thriller, comedy, florida

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Sophie Gee: The Scandal of the Season

• On Amazon
• Author's website
• Excerpt

The Scandal of the Season fictionalizes the events that inspired Alexander Pope’s satirical poem “The Rape of the Lock”. The novel is set in London in 1711, in a fascinating period in English history and literary history. I wish I could say Gee brings the figures of the time to life, but her social commentary works better than her character development.

The period

Scandal is set at the end of Queen Anne Stuart’s reign, near the height of the Jacobite plots to put exiled James II on the throne, and a time of renewed tension between Protestants and Catholics. Alexander Pope plays a starring role in the novel, and we see his early interactions with Jonathan Swift, Richard Steele, and Mary Pierrepont (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu).

Pope visits London in the company of his country neighbors, Teresa and Martha Blount. Teresa is a local beauty, disappointed by her reception in London; Martha is plainer and predictably sweeter. The Misses Blount hope to be introduced to London society by their city cousin, Miss Arabella Fermor. Arabella is a renowned beauty, but only breaks into the upper echelons of the social hierarchy when she catches the eye of Robert Petre, the 7^th Baron Petre. Meanwhile, Petre covertly supports a rather silly Jacobite plot, endangering himself and his family’s estate.

Love quintangle, or more

Scandal has quite a tangle of central characters, but only one is well fleshed out.

Gee convincingly portrays Alexander Pope as a gifted young man with great ambition and a terrible post-adolescent awkwardness. His hunchback, sickliness, Catholicism, and desperate self-consciousness cost him in the hypercritical society he so wants to impress. Pope’s outsider status and fragile connections tie together the novel’s several threads of political, social, and literary history.

Gee’s command of historical detail is excellent, but there’s more commentary than life in the book. Pope is well developed, but he’s absent for long stretches of narrative. Martha is an acute observer, but she too hangs about the periphery of the action. The action hinges on characters who are little more than mouthpieces for Gee’s commentary.

Martha Blount quietly adores Pope, while Pope pines for her sister Teresa. Teresa treats Pope badly, setting her sights on Lord Petre, who in turn falls hard for Arabella Fermor. (Petre’s previous liaisons also figure into the story.) In addition, John Caryll is godfather to Martha and advisor to Pope, and was trustee for Petre’s estate.

The primary love story is between Arabella Fermor and Robert Petre. Gee acknowledges the affair between Arabella and Petre is the least documented aspect of the book; it “had to be filled in imaginatively, based on very light evidence in letters and diaries from the time.” Gee shows them at first simply as Beautiful People, each smug at capturing such an enviable partner. But after some mutual peacocking, they find themselves in love.

Given that the romance is a major strand of the story, it’s disappointing that Arabella and Petre remain two-dimensional. Gee takes us into the characters’ thoughts, but I rarely find these passages authentic. Rather than the characters’ private reflections, we hear Gee’s didactic moralizing. With so many articulate characters onstage, I'd have liked to see inside their heads more.

Climax? What climax?

There's little tension in Scandal, and the final blackmail is unconvincing. John Caryll appears as a convenient bogeyman at the beginning and end of the book, but each time his role—and the news he brings—isn’t well fleshed out. This bald treatment makes the threat of anti-Jacobite action appear flimsier than it should, and adds to other questionable aspects of the climax. If Petre’s funds weren’t supporting the Jacobites, a charge of treason is nonsense. If Jenkins is the threat, surely he could be paid off. If Petre saw Arabella one last time, why didn’t he warn her what was afoot? The explanation for each is frankly silly.

The ending of Arabella and Petre’s romance provides a mild kind of narrative climax, but the true resolution of the book is Pope’s decision to write "The Rape of the Lock", and Pope’s social climbing success. In keeping with her pointed commentary throughout the book, Gee wants “to leave people remembering that sexual and social pleasure are often incompatible with domestic harmony.”

Late in the book Gee has Pope explicitly reject sexual and social pleasures. The narrative is explicitly structured to reward his renunciation of society and sex with new social standing and professional success; and to punish Arabella and Robert Petre for being part of the social world, and improvidently falling in love. As an interpretation of Pope, perhaps it works; as the climax of the novel, the "Naughty naughty; I told you so" is smug and unconvincing.

The Rape of the Lock

Gee has also written an introduction to a new edition of Pope's "The Rape of the Lock". The Scandal of the Season corresponds closely to her interpretation of the poem.

Pope’s poem gives us the feeling of an outsider looking in, noticing things and overhearing conversations that he ought not to be seeing. What we get in "The Rape of the Lock" is the beginning of English comedies of manners.

Gee’s Pope has a chronic spleen and a sharp-tongued approach to people around him that are in keeping with some of his writings—such as his “Of The Characters of Women: An Epistle To A Lady”, which begins

Nothing so true as what you once let fall,
"Most Women have no Characters at all."

Why so unsatisfying?

I enjoyed The Scandal of the Season more as fictionalized history than as a novel. I appreciate the glimpses of the early-18th-century political and literary world. I’d prefer to see more of those dimensions and fewer of the rather bland social scenes and the stilted, un-historical romance.

Most importantly, the majority of the characters simply don’t breathe. Their situation itself is interesting, given the religious and political issues, the literary period, and the multiple interlocking love triangles. But the writing is too banal to capitalize on the great setup.

As Jonathan Wolff said recently,

Academic writing needs to be ordered, precise, and to make every move explicit. All the work needs to be done on the page rather than in the reader's head. By contrast, good literature often relies on the unsaid, or the implied or hinted at, rather than the expressed thought.

In Scandal I found too much said, in too didactic a mode. All the characters are articulate, but there's little nuance below the obvious level of repartee. Where there is additional meaning to be mined, Gee does the work for us, explicitly instructing us how to read the character's views and what they mean in the society of the time.

Grade: A- for interesting situations and clarity, C+ for the flat writing and characters (apart from Pope). As Pope isn't onstage enough to carry the book, and neither fiction nor nonfiction needs to be written with so many entirely symbolic characters, I'll go with a B- overall.

Tags: books, reviews, history, literary, poetry

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Jennifer Egan: The Keep

• On Amazon
• Author's website
• Excerpt
• Cheesy "Visit The Keep" site

The Keep is a twisty, layered tale. It's both a Gothic novel and a prison memoir, alternating between a crumbling Eastern European schloss and a prisoners’ writing program in New York. The layers of narrative continually interrupt each other, creating a House of Mirrors effect, but I never lost interest in the characters or the narrative.

Danny and Howie are cousins with a strained past. As children, Danny was popular and eager for approval; Howie was a weirdo with a big imagination. The two were friends until Danny played a malicious prank that left Howie traumatized and claustrophobic.

Twenty years later, the tables are turned. Danny’s a bit player with the Mob, while Howie’s a successful entrepreneur. After years of silence, Howie asks for Danny’s help converting a small Eastern European castle into a hotel. Danny is only too glad to get out of New York just then, but suspects that Howie hasn’t truly forgiven him. Danny’s anxiety is exacerbated by being away from his familiar scene, and living among the secret histories of the castle.

The story is told in installments by Ray, a maximum-security prisoner taking a writing class. The writing instructor, Holly, has troubles of her own, but Ray’s story captures her attention. It’s unclear which of the story’s three male characters represents Ray, or how much of the story is fantasy. Nevertheless, Holly comes to believe that it’s true.

---

Getting away, getting back

Howie’s dream is to create a refuge from the demands of the world, a phone-free, schedule-free meditative space. His vision of The Keep's future patrons is straight out of Wordsworth: "The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers". It’s a vision that’s guaranteed to give Danny the willies.

Danny prizes his ability to suss a situation. He’s hyperaware of his surroundings, and of his status in the hierarchy of knowledge and power.

When [Danny] first came to New York, he and his friends tried to find a name for the relationship they craved between themselves and the universe. But the English language came up short: perspective, vision, knowledge, wisdom-those words were all too heavy or too light. So Danny and his friends made up a name: alto. True alto worked two ways: you saw but also you could be seen, you knew and were known. Two-way recognition.

However, Danny’s "alto" depends on being plugged in; he’s so adapted for communication that he can sense the presence of wireless networks. Without gossip, email, and phone, Danny feels like a fish out of water, and his questing senses conjure up ever more paranoid scenarios.

Careful what you wish for

Danny is fascinated with other people’s versions of alto (or perhaps Ray, telling the story from prison, is fascinated by it). Howard has power but craves release from the attendant obligations. The castle is haunted by a baroness holed up in one tower, powerless except in her own mind—a mirror image of Danny.

All the characters are trapped in different ways—by others’ expectations, by their own frantic lives, by jail cells, by addictions and responsibilities. All the characters get a glimpse of something new—peace, respect, a creative outlet, a different way to live—and not always with happy results. Some would die to protect the status quo, and some would die for their new vision. Danny is particularly troubled by change, and seeks a way back in to his familiar tightly-bounded world.

Goth

The form and setting of The Keep are pure Gothic. Much of the story is told by a prisoner, purportedly looking back on a strange period of his life. There’s an empty castle, labyrinthine corridors, walls that seem a different shape by night, a mysterious baroness living in a tower.

Many of these Gothic elements are not themselves central, but they contribute to a sort of magical realism that pervades the castle portions of the book. As in The Turn of the Screw, the setting works on its inhabitants, shaping and increasing their private fears until what’s objectively real is less important than the characters’ perceptions. In keeping with the Gothic setting, Egan is heavy-handed on the atmospherics and the house-of-mirrors subplots in which each story is reflected in another.

Loose, female ends

Many Gothic novels leave the conclusion of the book to a young heir or secretary who provides shocked commentary on the diarist’s fell tale. Egan leaves the ending in the hands of Holly, the prison writing instructor, but gives her a more active role.

Over the course of the book, Holly develops a tentative, ill-fated relationship with Ray. Their interactions are closely circumscribed yet emotionally charged by their student/teacher relationship and more. More than Ray himself, though, his story changes Holly’s vision of her future, and she’s ultimately moved to investigate the truth of the tale. In the final chapters, Holly emerges as perhaps more desperately in need of Howard’s peaceful retreat than any of the men in the story.

Metafiction & magical realism

While The Keep’s overall structure is metafictional, the story isn’t cold or overly academic. It’s impressive that despite being constantly jerked out of the trajectory of the story (or realizing the trajectory was a chimera), the narrative remains compelling and the story retains that tug to engage with the characters. The magical realism of the castle scenes, while strange, keeps the reader emotionally in touch with Danny. The prison scenes develop Holly, who is the most straightforwardly sympathetic character in the book.

Wikipedia has nice descriptions of both writing forms:

• “Metafiction draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality.”
  
• “Magic realism… is a fusion between scientific physical reality and psychological human reality; it incorporates aspects of human existence such as thoughts, emotions, dreams and imagination.”

Much of The Keep’s charm is the way it blurs internal and external reality; even Danny’s paranoia is sympathetic when seen from the inside. Danny inhabits a near-dream world of fact and imagination, perception and self-consciousness, that I find fascinating as a depiction of how our consciousness processes our surroundings. Howie's challenge to Danny sums up the story:

“What’s real, Danny?... We’re living in a supernatural world, Danny.”

Grade: B+ for a weird and wild ride.

Tags: books, reviews, gothic, metafiction, magical literary

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Emma Donoghue: Landing

• On Amazon
• Author's website
• Excerpt

Landing is a well-written epistolary romance. The central duo are an "odd couple" drawn in rather heavy-handed contrasts, but they aren’t simply stereotypes: they’re nicely fleshed out in their different milieux. Unfortunately, I don't completely buy the final solution to the long-distance affair.

Landing opens with Jude Turner and Síle O’Shaughnessy sharing a disturbing experience on a transatlantic flight. Back in Dublin, Ireland, and “Ireland”, Canada, Jude and Síle start a correspondence that rapidly becomes central to their lives. The two women fall in love through email; telephone calls and visits deepen the relationship and increase the tension of the distance between them.

Contrasts

Síle and Jude are drawn as such opposites that the contrasts become a little tiresome, though they never become caricature. Indo-Irish Síle, 39, leads a big-city life in Dublin and loves to travel. Canadian Jude, 25, lives in her childhood home in a town of 600, two hours from Toronto. Síle is into gadgets; Jude is a techno-phobe. Síle is involved with a refined blonde Irish woman; Jude with a rough-edged half-Mohawk man.

On the other hand, Donoghue uses these contrasts well in writing about Jude and Síle’s passion for each other. This is the first time I’ve read a love story between two women that shows a wide array of loving feelings, not emphasizing the “feminine” side of love or the couple’s common experience as women. Landing has what Nicola Griffith calls "triple girl cooties: a girl writing from the POV of a girl who likes girls", but this triple-whammy doesn’t render the story bland. The characters’ differences create a varied dynamic, and Donoghue writes about their feelings in ways that I often find touching and real. The darker side of relationships is missing--Jude and Síle don't spend enough time together to argue--but their love is well described.

Why, then, am I unsure that Jude and Síle have what it takes?

A lack of togetherness

Jude and Síle have a far more dimensional relationship because of their differences. At the same time the contrasts are so strongly drawn that I have trouble imagining a happy ending. The long-distance relationship plays into this uncertainty, adding layers to the story but also keeping the women's relationship somewhat superficial.

Jude and Síle's letter-writing provides a lot of opportunity for quotation and allusion. In a metafictional touch, Jude often excerpts letters from the museum’s archive. However, many of the allusions are rather bleak stories, such as the Nathaniel Hawthorne story of the snow-child who couldn't thrive outside her natural setting.

At the same time, the epistolary structure of the book keeps Jude and Síle physically apart. The reader never sees them become comfortable in each other’s sphere and the relationship stays at the level of a honeymoon, so there's little conflict.

Real life = emotional life

There’s a persistent theme in Landing that “reality” consists of what’s most emotionally vibrant in life, not simply the habitual or the near at hand. Without that emphasis, I suspect the story would fall flat. If our "nearest" were necessarily our "nearest", who would ever try a long-distance relationship or an on-line flirtation?

This theme is particularly explicit when a written “I love you” changes Síle’s perceptions about where her “real” life lies: not in routine and familiarity but in emotional connection from afar.

She’d made the mistake of thinking that dinners out and traffic jams were her real life, and this connection with Jude was just a transitory preoccupation. But now she saw that she’d been living out her real time onscreen [via email]….”

As the relationship progresses, both women find their everyday lives receding:

They rang each other at any time of day or night…. Síle had started taking occasional baths now, to remind her of Jude, and because there seemed more time to kill.

Different styles of cleaving unto

The style of commentary in Landing reminds me of an article by Elizabeth Campbell:

[Epistolary] novels have always been about sexual politics.... [They] use the letter as a subversive and freeing agent and also as a mirror in which they not only seek themselves and/or another but attempt to change their lives to reflect the mirror image.

Donoghue integrates several ideas of femininity and gay culture into the story. Both Síle and Jude are openly gay, and comfortable with themselves, which adds a great deal of honesty to their developing relationship. Both women have close friends and supportive communities, but at times experience prejudice.

Síle's relationship with her partner is more comfortable than sexual.

Kathleen had silently forwarded her a link to some online journal article about the high incidence of "what is popularly known as bed death" in long-term lesbian relationships.

Having lived celibate for several years, Síle is occasionally disconcerted by Jude’s past relationships, and seems alarmed that Jude still considers herself bisexual.

”Did it feel any different with the girls?” Síle wanted to know.

No answer for a second. Then, “Sex is always different, depending on who you’re with.”

“Your generation’s really ditched the old labels, haven’t you?”

I found Landing well written but a little static in places, slightly sterile in the first half’s letters, and I don't completely believe the ending. I plan to try Donoghue's historical novels: I'm curious to hear her voice in a different setting without the epistolary form. Her Slammerkin is the story of Mary Saunders, a servant who murdered her mistress in 1763. Life Mask fictionalizes a (possibly) historical love triangle between playwright Richard Sheridan, actress Eliza Farren, and the Earl of Derby in 1790s London.

Grade: B- because I wasn't convinced. But I really am interested in trying Donoghue's other books.

Tags: books, reviews, romance, ireland, canada, lesbian

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Steve Almond: My Life in Heavy Metal: Stories

• On Amazon
• Author's website

My Life in Heavy Metal is a dozen stories about sex and love, being together and standing apart. Almond has a wonderfully strong and pungent voice. Some of the stories are excellent, some are duds; several have stuck with me. Well worth the read.

In the best of the collection, Almond truly inhabits his characters. Not only the protagonist, and not only the male characters; he also writes secondary characters who matter. The lively characters are the key to these stories in which, as Almond says, "What they do, and quite vigorously, is have sex and suffer heartbreak."

I really like that Almond uses sex to develop characters. In his stories, a sex scene or an emotional discussion doesn't halt the action; it's a means to explore conflict, to move the story forward. However, the earthiness of the stories gets strong reactions. Almond says his early reviews included headlines like "A Pervert Among Us" (NY Times Book Review, Apr '02), and "How Low Will He Go?" (Us, Jan '03).

The stories

Heavy Metal, Run Away My Pale Love, and Body in Extremis share a protagonist, a callow twentysomething who initially has his cake and eats it too. Some ten years later, he gets his just desserts. (Thank you, Steve Almond, for making your characters face their various assitudes. That twist provides an extra layer of development that's sometimes missing in short stories.)

• Excerpt from Heavy Metal

Among the Ik
A widower feels his loneliness at a family gathering. A surprisingly touching story of loss.

Geek Player, Love Slayer
Almond creates a 30-something female journalist with a rapid cadence and a flip, hip way with words. Despite the irreverent, one-of-the-guys persona, she's vulnerable. She poses a good question, too, adding a dimension of social commentary:

How did Computer Guy become the Lifeguard of the decade? How did the mild-mannered Systems Manager morph into an omnipotent Geek Player, Love Slayer?

GP,LS is a favorite in the collection. Not because the protagonist is a woman (though Almond writes a great woman), or because I've experienced the pseudo-intimacy of the Geek Player crouching between my knees under my desk. From the first sentence the language makes me smile. Almond's sometimes rude, always lively narrative voice is especially strong here, even over the top in places. And despite its familia