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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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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Julie Anne Long: The Secret to Seduction

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Julie Anne Long writes beautiful passages about emotion, about being exquisitely aware of another person, about a fledgling relationship. She also writes clunky, irritating plot and pointless, overwrought secondary characters. I almost set the book down after chapter 2. I'm glad I persisted, but I can't recommend the book as a whole. It's frustrating, because here and there Long's prose can be exceptional. The book is strong in the middle, but forced and chaotic at the beginning and end.

In The Secret to Seduction, Sabrina Fairleigh starts out a rather self-righteous small-town vicar's daughter. A few days' stay at the home of Rhys Gillray, Earl of Rawden, changes Sabrina immeasurably. Rhys is bored with his life and his coloratura mistress, so he tests Sabrina against his alter ego--The Libertine, rakish author of sensual poetry. In short order the two end up married, and then several subplots play the story out. An intimate, relatively contained romance story goes wild with secret identities, secret sisters, a false suitor, blackmail, international intrigue, and a whodunit complete with cliffhanger court trial.

The good parts

Sabrina's response to Rhys's sensual poetry is lovely, and hot without being explicit. The poetry opens up her emotions in a new way; perhaps it's her first conscious exposure to sensuality, or the first time it's evoked by a man within her social circle.

Though with every page her mind told her she should stop reading, her hands, as if of their own accord, turned the next page and the next. Until at least her head swam with the explicit, lush heat of the words.

I like the use of reading as a central plot point. For Sabrina, reading is transformative. Her experience illustrates that words are dangerous; her innocence is gone by the time she finishes reading The Libertine's poetry, regardless of her physical state.

Besides, she's carried away by a good read... and a sexy read, too! And I appreciate Long's description of what romantic writing can be:

The poetry wasn't salacious. The word was far too simple. There was a very focused beauty to it, and a subtlety difficult to describe.... And in some ways they were reverent, his poems, but they were also shameless and abandoned.

The other outstanding parts of the book are a few equally tight-focus scenes between Sabrina and Rhys. Long writes beautifully about their burgeoning intimacy, without too much heavy-handed explication.

And music too

As with the poetry, I enjoyed Long's use of music to illustrate character and show an unspoken understanding between the accomplished musicians at the house party. Music and poetry are time-honored ways to indicate passion, heroism, sophistication, closeness to both the sacred and the profane. A recent article in The Guardian describes Monteverdi's setting of Orpheus and Eurydice as

a conscious attempt to recapture what music meant to the ancient world: something that was not merely a skill, a display of virtuosity, but an enchantment, something that spoke to the soul, something deeply and sweetly natural.

Rhys is the one with all the poetic ability; their talents are a little more evenly matched in music. Sabrina doesn't excel as do Rhys and his mistress Sophia. But when Sabrina performs well at the piano, she becomes one of the inner circle of artists in the house, someone worthy of Rhys' attention and Sophia's competitive spirit.

The not-so-good parts

This is the 3rd book in a series. The most jumbled writing occurs early on, in bringing the reader up to speed on the secret sisters story from books 1-2. However, that's not the only problem in the writing. As soon as the focus moves from Sabrina and Rhys, the writing, plotting, and pacing are eye-rollingly bad.

Part of the problem is that Long's history is "wallpaper" at best: as soon as Sabrina engages the larger society, the shallowness of the historical setting is apparent. The novel works so much better in the isolation of Rhys' estate, I suspect it would cohere best of all if Long transplanted Sabrina, Rhys, and some sexy books to a sealed cargo container.

There's also a lot of breathlessly bad prose:

She wondered what on earth the woman had said to cause such a pronounced reaction from such a very large man. Such passions. How uncomfortable it must be to be at the mercy of them.

And with that thought, somehow she knew: this man was the earl.

Sabrina tried to force her interest and trepidation back into the clothes of compassion, but they wriggled back out again.

They wriggled back out again? Enough said.

I'm torn in reviewing The Secret because some of Long's prose is excellent. I wonder if this is a case of a good writer who hasn't found the right niche. The Secret to Seduction read like a great novella unwisely expanded to book length. Stripped of the ungainly side plots, The Secret could be a lovely shorter work, a meditation on awakening sensuality and intimacy. I won't be reading Long's earlier books, but I would love to read a novella.

Grade: C

It's been a bad week on the "L" shelf. Next reviews brought to you by the letters A and D.

Tags: books, reviews, novel, fiction, romance, historical

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Melissa Bank: The Wonder Spot

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I read The Wonder Spot out of morbid curiosity. It wasn't really worth it.

Last month I mentioned the war between authors Jennifer Weiner and Curtis Sittenfeld. I was fascinated: they spent more time reviewing each other's personalities and genre definitions than each other's books. And it was so damn circular:

1. Melissa Bank wrote The Wonder Spot.


2. Curtis Sittenfeld reviewed The Wonder Spot and said it tried to be Literature but it was just chick lit.


3. Jennifer Weiner reviewed Sittenfeld's review and said Sittenfeld's own book, Prep, tried to be Literature but it was just chick lit.
   (Jennifer Weiner, btw, writes chick lit.)

And that's the version without the drama.

I won't review Weiner's review of Sittenfeld's review of Bank's book. That would be meta-meta-(meta?)-review, and Egging On Authors Behaving Badly besides. Instead I decided to read all three books.

First up: Wonder Spot

The Wonder Spot is a series of chapters in the life of Sophie. We first meet her at age 12, an ordinary girl growing up outside Philadelphia; the book ends with her near 40 in Manhattan. And that's about it. Banks drags us through Sophie's life, detail by detail, occasionally fast-forwarding a few years. Bank writes well, and I smiled at the occasional turn of phrase, but Sophie is most interesting early on, as a child; the college and adult chapters blur together. You can pick up the book at any point without losing the thread (or worrying that you've missed something).

Introducing... Generic Girl

It's hard to get a sense of Sophie as a distinct personality. Her voice, bland as it is, becomes familiar; as do her vital stats and family network. But there's no distinctive pattern of thought, nothing unique in her style of story telling. Only the external details (e.g. people's names) tell the reader that it's still Sophie speaking. There's no distinguishing characteristic giving a sense of recognition in each new section: "Yes! That's Sophie!" Nor a sense of "Oh, that's changed! This is Sophie grown up!"

A random walk

There's not really a plot, more a random walk through Sophie's life. That's a perfectly OK form, but to pull it off, there needs to be something keeping the reader engaged. Something like:

• An interesting personality
  
• Character growth
  
• Atmosphere
  
• Unusual setting/circumstances
  
• A series of vignettes that capture truly fascinating moments
  
• A series of vignettes that build on each other's events and symbols to create a larger narrative.

The Wonder Spot has none of these. By the end of the second chapter it's monotonous, and remains so through the end.

Sophie's lack of growth left me disappointed with the ending. By growth, I don't necessarily mean "improvement"; just that she sounds exactly the same (same voice, emotions, style of relationships) at 40 as she did as 12. In the final chapter, she's supposed to have found her wonder spot. But the section's only 7 pages long--and Sophie sounds 12. No more or less sure of herself, no more mature, no more distinct a personality. It's hard to believe in the passage of years since the previous chapter, let alone believe in any momentous personal change in Sophie.

Sittenfeld says she's disappointed by the predictability of Sophie's finding "11th-hour love". My disappointment is that the 11th-hour love affair substitutes for character development. It's as if Banks thinks "Is she alone at the end?" is all the reader needs to know. The flat ending leaves me with no urge to speculate (who is Sophie at 40? will this one last? has she really found her wonder spot?). Instead, it feels like just another episode in Sophie's span.

Chick lit?

I read Sittenfeld's review after writing my own, and was surprised at how often I agreed with her. Not on all points though, and I'm not sure about Sittenfeld's definition of chick lit.

Sittenfeld argues that chick lit's "appeal relies... on how closely readers relate to its protagonist." That jives with some of my feelings on chick lit. But in Wonder Spot, we see Sophie in a range of situations. Unlike a chick lit novel taking place within a single social circle and neighborhood, I imagine some readers could identify with some of Wonder Spot due to sheer variety of situations. So I'd say Wonder Spot's problem is more a failure of characterization; a focus on the surface; and especially a lack of character growth--all of which can happen in any genre, not just chick lit.

And again unlike most chick lit, Wonder Spot takes place over 25 years. It's a shame that that span of time isn't reflected in Sophie's narration. Sittenfeld seems to somewhat agree, so perhaps my quibble with her definition is all semantics: "Good novels allow us to feel what the characters feel, no matter how dissimilar their circumstances and ours."

I'm told Bank's debut, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing was a lot more creative and readable. The Guide is a collection of short stories, and I can believe Bank might fare better in shorter form. But give The Wonder Spot a miss.

What would Yoda do?

So much for reading a book because of a flame war. Maybe this is a mini-lesson in motivation: "Read for the right reasons, you must." So should I still read Sittenfeld and Weiner? On the plus side, I agreed with a lot of Sittenfeld's review--though that doesn't mean I'd enjoy her fiction. On the minus side, the premise of Weiner's book sounds banal--I know that's just the cover copy, but it's not enticing.

Grade: C-

Tags: books, reviews, romance, chicklit, fiction

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Megan Hart: Broken, An Erotic Novel

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A lot of people love this book. For me, it's a well-written, rather overdone book with a couple of major disappointments. However, if a book that makes you cry is automatically "great", this one's for you. If you loved Daddy-Long-Legs at 13, then I think you'd love Broken at 20.

Five years ago, Sadie married Adam. Four years ago, Adam was paralyzed from the neck down. Two years ago, Sadie began a slow-moving but sensual affair of the mind. Once a month, she meets Joe for lunch, and Joe tells her--in explicit detail--about his latest sexual conquest. Sadie returns to work and husband, and in private replays Joe's stories and touches herself.

Broken is entirely in Sadie's voice. Each month we hear one of Joe's stories--as told by Sadie. We don't just hear his stories second-hand, we hear them in Sadie's voice, projected into his lover's perspective. Meanwhile, we also get to know Sadie's quadriplegic husband and their up-and-down, complicated but loving relationship.

---

Broken has some real strengths. The writing is strong and clear. It's meticulously plotted, and until near the end there's good continuity, considering all the personalities portrayed in Joe's stories.

Joe is a good foil for Adam. Both are articulate (one a poet, one a lawyer), but Adam has withdrawn from Sadie, while Joe if anything tells her too much. At the same time, Sadie sees too much of Adam--catheterizes him, wipes his ass, worries about him like a mother with a sick child--while she sees and knows very little of Joe. That in itself must be attractive to her, or at least provide a respite from the overfamiliarity forced on her by Adam's illness.

I enjoyed Sadie's pleasurable awareness of Joe's every detail, in contrast to the anxiety in her attention to Adam:

That was the first time I heard what Joe does for a living, and his last name. I found these two details more intimate than the description of the car sex or the way it felt to have a stripper writhing on his lap.

Broken did choke me up a couple times, but I had trouble believing in large chunks of the story. The moments when I most believed were between Sadie and Adam. Their marriage provides the surprises in the book, the little contradictions that make Sadie more complex, more real. Her interactions with Joe hold no surprises. So she's turned on by his stories. So she replays them later. Wouldn’t anyone? And that brings me to the first big thing that goes wrong.

Thing 1: Joe's not real

Points for trying something unusual in keeping all Joe's stories in Sadie's voice. It’s quite a feat: I couldn’t project myself into a story in real time. Just as I couldn't do simultaneous translation at the UN. However, it distances the reader from Joe. We rarely hear from him. We're not in his head, which is fine: we don't need an omniscient point of view to get to know him by his words and actions. But we don't hear his words either: Joe tells Sadie his stories, but she tells them to us, in her own words, from her own imagination.

Thing 1.5: I shouldn’t have to agree with the author’s moral judgments to understand the characters

I could accept that Joe's role is primarily symbolic... but I’m pretty sure Hart intended some subtext about Joe that went over my head. I was baffled by several scenes, starting in Chapter 1:

He didn’t deny he was, indeed, the sort of man who picks up women in bars and sleeps with them, perfectly satisfied with one night....
I smiled. “That you’re a cheater? A rogue? That you don’t know the meaning of fidelity? That you go through women like wind through lace?”
“Don’t forget that I’m a silver-tongued devil who’ll say anything necessary to get into a woman’s pants. That my Holy Grail is pussy. That I’ve split more peaches than a porn star.... Go on and say it, Sadie. I’m a manwhore. You think I’m a slut.... I know you think it, so you might as well say it.”
“But, Joe,” I said gently. “It’s true.”
“It won’t always be true!” His words rang out, echoing.

Later in the book, Joe asks if Sadie thinks he’s capable of fidelity. As I thought the real question was whether his latest amour was worth it, the exchange seemed to come from left field. Joe: “You don’t think I can do it, do you.” Sadie: “No.... I don’t think you can do this.” And still later: “I can’t be your answer, Joe. I can’t be the one who saves you from yourself... to be your redemption.”

As I never thought Joe’s single lifestyle made him a “cheater”, these judgments jolted me every time. I didn’t understand until I read in Jane'sJanine's review at Dear Author:

For me, Joe started out with three strikes against him, since he (A) had slept with lots of women, (B) kissed and told, and (C) chose a married woman to tell his stories to

Aha! Apparently there’s a struggle-and-redemption arc for Joe. I thought his whole arc was just a life transition, from Carefree Single to Guy Wanting Relationship. I totally missed the character arc from Manwhore to Good Guy. That's sloppy characterization. Joe’s lifestyle shouldn't substitute for character development. If you believe that being on the prowl makes you a Sinner In Need of Redemption, then the book has an extra layer to it. But it doesn’t make Joe any better developed.

Thing 2: the ending.

Sadie and Adam are better fleshed-out. They both have ups and downs, but they're pretty consistent--until near the end. I'll hide the spoiler to discuss it (though I can't imagine anyone NOT guessing the whole thing by chapter 2).

I find Broken predictable, but it edges into trite at the end. I called this a spoiler, but did anyone not guess that Adam would die, and Sadie would hook up with Joe, be conflicted, figure it out, and finally hook up for real? The only part I didn't predict was his brief engagement to Priscilla. And as soon as Priscilla appeared in Chapter 11, I amended my prediction to include "Joe experiments on Priscilla, then dumps her".

Broken spends most of its time wallowing in the erotic (many chapters of Joe's stories) and the tear-jerking (many chapters about Adam's illness). Where is Sadie herself, in all this? I was missing that character who drives the story forward. I enjoyed the gradual fleshing-out for a few chapters... but came to feel I'd have enjoyed the book as a whole more if I'd skipped a few of Joe's stories. They're good, hot stories, but there's a lot of words for very little movement in plot or character. And after Adam dies, the life goes out of the story. Without him to react to, Sadie's character goes flabby. And seriously, what happened to her anger? She's (understandably) seethed with it through the entire book; then Adam dies, and she spares hardly a thought for the man who caused it? She’s furious with him before Adam’s stroke, but afterward there’s no railing against fate; only, briefly, against Adam. It’s hard to believe all that rage is suddenly gone. The ending is strangely tidy, in both plot and emotion. Ah well, perhaps she'll turn into a domestic tyrant and kick Joe around to make up for lost time.

Grade: B for being tightly crafted, but C for the wallowing and the ending.

Tags: books, reviews, romance, chick lit, tearjerker, erotic

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Lora Leigh: Harmony's Way

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• Author's website

Harmony's Way is the 11th book in the Breeds series, so you know what to expect. A well written, very sexed-up erotic romance, with lots of plot and psychodrama. And characters who fall in love superduper fast, aided by paranormal body chemistry. Unfortunately this series has fallen flat. The Breeds' biological imperatives tend to overwhelm the romance, and character development can be rather sketchy.

The Breed books are set in an interesting world. The Breeds are a bioengineered race with both human and animal traits. The crux of the series is a phenomenon called Mating Heat. Snort for the name, but it's apt: when a Breed finds a mate, they rut like goats until conception. (Cue sex: much, much sex.)

Harmony is a Lion Breed. She escaped from the breeding labs as a child, and became a vigilante, isolated from Breeds and humans alike. In Harmony's Way she's working as a sheriff's deputy and hiding from militant human supremacists. Lance is a macho small-town New Mexico sheriff with a talent for listening to the winds. The winds send him for a one-nighter with Harmony, but they don't warn him she's a Breed whose bite will change his body chemistry forever.

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I hadn't read the Breeds series for a while, which gave Harmony's Way extra freshness. Even so, it's not my favorite of the series by a long shot. Harmony isn't a strong enough character to breathe fresh air into a book so late in the series, and Lance is a great character but underdeveloped. Nonetheless, Leigh creates a lot of heat and intensity between the two--even given crazy time constraints, the insatiable rut, a long-lost asshole brother, and enemies galore. After 11 books, I'm surprised that the story isn't worn out. But the Breeds are a survive-by-seat-of-pants group, the drama is overwrought but not purple, and Leigh's voice is exceptionally strong.

I rarely believe in love that's induced by metaphysical freakery. In the Breed books it bothers me less, largely because I suspend disbelief pretty severely to read erotic romance. Breeds don't get a lot of choice in their mating: it's Wham, bam, ogod what's happening, I suddenly can't live without your semen, seriously, it hurts, oh noooo, wham-bam-bambambam.

In the series' favor, both partners are out of their depth with the mating; both are coerced by hormones and Fate, and they can only find a solution together. (In contrast, in Christine Feehan's Carpathian books the [male] vampire recognizes his lifemate, and often forces the mating on her. He is far older and more experienced than she, and his needs and decisions are shrouded in mysteries and ceremonies that she can't penetrate. Both Fate and the man coerce the woman into a relationship that's dangerous and permanent. It doesn't matter how heartfelt the scene is--that level of coercion still has a ring of the old "I vant you, you haff no choice, you vill die vithout me now.")

The Beef

It also helps that there are Breed females. We don't meet many, just enough to change the dynamic now and then. Book 2 (Jacob's Faith) features both male and female Breeds. Books 3 (Kiss of Heat) and 13 (Dawn's Awakening) feature female Breeds. Harmony's no alpha-kitty though, and that's my biggest beef.

In most of the series, the male/animal connection is strong. The hero is the Breed; he does all the growling, biting during sex, marking territory. Harmony is possessive, she purrs, she growls, but it's "cute", not threatening. Also absent is the alpha-kitty drive. Lance, though human, is larger and stronger, and his winds level the playing field against Harmony's superkitty senses.

Disappointingly, it's not much of a contest: Harmony's not the ass-kicker she's made out to be. Despite being a stone-cold killer feared by all, she's pretty passive when it comes down to it. She also folds in a crisis. While she's no virgin, she's been so isolated that she's unaware of the Mating Heat; Lance is far more knowledgeable than she, and she turns helpless in a hurry as the hormones take hold. In all the books the Heat hits the female hard, but in light of Harmony's putative ass-kickiosity, it's inconsistent. Was her reputation exaggerated? Was she already tired of fighting? Did the mating change her? The male Breeds don't fall apart after mating, so some explanation is in order.

The Oops

The main story is well crafted as always, but there were a couple of clunkers.

Big wince for the subplot: Harmony is the secret sister of Jonas, a.k.a. Chief Prick and Manipulator for the Breeds. Jonas hates her, no he loves her, no he must hate her because he sets her up for a forced pregnancy. Harmony makes hissing kitty noises over his behavior, but it's all sound and fury, signifying nothing. I was disappointed not to see her exercise her steely cold assassin skills on the men running her life. Particularly Jonas, who should be a lonely-at-the-top, scary-impressive figure. Unfortunately, he overcomplicates everything. It's as if he can't plan a simple hit without running over 3 dogs and bringing the cops to his door. His part in the plot is way over the top.

There's also an eye-rolling scene in Lance's office, when he pulls a wrapped! brand new! gag gift! what a riot! ball-gag out of a cabinet so he can do Harmony on the desk without her "animalistic little growls" letting his men know he's a kitty-smurfer. On the clock, too.

There's plenty of sex in the story, and that's as it should be. But it feels like this scene exists only to ratchet up the kink. Erotic romance should at least pretend there's a plot and a romance driving the action. For the most part, Leigh walks the line well. This book just had a couple of scenes that came out of left field.

The Head-scratchers

Lora Leigh writes these crazy plots, extreme characters, melodrama and futuristic soap opera... and often she makes me like it. When I haven't read her books for a while, I tend to remember only the over-the-top aspects, and I start to downgrade her writing in my mind. But then I decide to read one last book... and she sucks me in through sheer power of voice.

The sex is explicit. Semen fetishists will be pleased, and Lance is an ass man. (Aren't they all?) And yet again, ass play is depicted as the ultimate form of domination. I never understand this, but Lora Leigh and Sarah McCarty (author of many ass-obsessed cowboys) assure us it's so. Man+ass = hot sexy domination scene? Granted there's a "bottom" involved, but... what am I missing here? Something to ponder during books 12 and up, as apparently Leigh isn't stopping any time soon.

Read instead

The earlier books in the Breeds series are safer bets. (Don't be fooled by Berkley's new numbering system, which calls Harmony's Way book 2. Leigh's site lists the books by publication date.)

Grade: B+ for storytelling, C- for Harmony's and Jonas' inconsistent characters

Tags: books, reviews, romance, erotic, sex, paranormal

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Lilith Saintcrow: Dead Man Rising

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• Author's website

Dead Man Rising is tantalizing. So much is good... and could have been much better.

Caveat lector: I ordered Book 1, Working for the Devil. What arrived was Book 2, Dead Man Rising. I dove in anyway, curious to see whether Book 2 could stand alone.

Necromancer Dante Valentine is reeling from the death of her demon lover, Japhrimel. She copes by focusing on her bounty hunting business. You'd think that would do the trick--she lives and works with an ex, Jace, who's gorgeous, powerful, well connected, and give-it-all-up-for-love crazy about her. She's also working with the police to stop a psychic murderer, a hunt that forces her to confront childhood traumas and reconnect with fellow sufferers.

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Unfortunately even derring-do, evil in the flesh, and unconditional lurve don't distract Dante from her mourning. Quite the opposite: her mournful stream-of-consciousness intrudes on every scene. Her state of distraction conveys her sadness; she's literally distrait, distracted by loss. It's understandable, but does the story no favors: a disconnected narrator can make for a frustrating, even boring narrative. I kept flipping forward (How long is this monologue?) and looking for excuses (Maybe this is supposed to represent Japhrimel haunting her?) While some of it may be Japhrimel, the repetitive, interruptive monologue makes for long, static scenes.

The book opens with a combination of action scene and backstory through internal monologue. The action writing is great, but Dante's thoughts wander at such length that time seems to expand and contract like a scene from The Matrix. Dante stalks a killer... oh, Japhrimel... the place could blow up at any moment... this reminds me of Tijuana.... Her drifting breaks the action and makes it hard to believe she survives as a bounty hunter. Maybe she wasn't so dissociated in Book 1; maybe it's only since Japhrimel's death that she's drifty. But it's too much.

The action scenes are also bogged down by random punctuation. I had to backtrack and untangle far too many sentences.

So, does Book 2 stand alone? Not really.

It's not for lack of backstory. It's a complex and well-crafted world. Saintcrow fills us in with a variety of clever devices (in addition to all the monologue!), including a pamphlet by a necromancy academy. The problem is an underdeveloped cast of characters. Dead Man Rising is so much inside Dante's head that I never got to know the men in her life. I hope Book 1 developed the other characters more, but here the effect was rather one-dimensional.

Dante herself is surprisingly underdeveloped as a real character. The premise is promising: Dante Valentine, badass heroine with issues. Unfortunately, Dante is also... perfect. She "has the face of a holovid model" (she tells us constantly). Her golden skin and black claw/nail polish come up even more often. She makes powerful allies wherever she goes. She's half-demon, so she's nearly indestructible (she tells us over and over). She can kick any ass, including her sensei's. You get the picture. She's plenty vulnerable on an emotional level, but that only increases the sense of narcissism: everything is about Dante.

The ex-lover/live-in partner, Jace, is confusingly written. Over and over, Dante tells us that Jace walked away from ruling a Mob Family, all for her. He's also a hitman. All the signs point to "tough guy", but the Jace we see is a bit of a sad sack. Dante reflects (all too often) that Jace is human (weak), aging (while she isn't), tired (humans need sleep but she doesn't), too nice to push her. He arranges meetings for Dante, digs holes, sleeps next to her without nooky. Despite his history with Dante, he plays only a bit part. I'm always afraid I know what happens to the bit-players.

I'm sure the books hang together better if they're read in order. Regardless, as a stand-alone this book feels like it skims the surface of something that could be more substantial. As part of a series, it feels like a "treading water" middle book: there's a self-contained plot, but no movement in the overarching relationships until the last 20 pages. Nice setup for a next book, but a bit flimsy for this book.

There was a lot of good writing in Dead Man Rising, but ultimately it frustrated me more than it engaged me.

Grade: C+

Tags: books, reviews, fantasy, paranormal, psychic, urban, fiction, sci fi

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