Walking on the Moon

Not only did I recently realize that Shirley Jackson was important, I’ve been on something of a tear through her work. Castle is broadly the story of a haunted house from the perspective of the haunters. Who are still alive. At the very least it tells a story of how that creepy house you grew up afraid of might have become that creepy house without anything supernatural happening at all.

But then again, there might have been some witchery. But no more than knocking wood, but everything is heightened here. It’s another book by Jackson that transports you into a world that’s slightly off, but not in any way that you can put a finger on. That transportation is just a delight, both in experience and seeing aspects of the trick as it happens.

You can interpret it from different angles as well. Characters seem to stand in for aspects of the mind and watching them interact can be like hearing your own inner monologue. And the spooky stuff is all still going on, as is some class struggle and…

So, a rich text.

In addition to all those structural and thematic acrobatics, there are so many individual sentences that made me catch my breath. Just amazing.

A must.

Man, I don’t know how I was unaware of Shirley Jackson until recently, but it does mean I get to be blown away by a great author for the first time later in life.

“The Lottery” has a reputation as a great short story, of which I was unaware, and it’s well earned. It’s evocative, powerful, and deep. In a couple pages it can completely rattle your worldview. Even if someone else has canted your worldview the same direction, it’s still an amazing story.

“The Lottery” comes at the end of a collection of other great short stories that have set a high bar for perfectly crafted stories. The whole time I was reading the collection having been clued in to “The Lottery”‘s reputation and thinking I’d be disappointed because everything up to it was so good. Nope. All great stuff.

Strongly Recommended.

I found a lot to like in Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds, a historical fiction set in the Dust Bowl. It’s pretty much impossible to take that on without inviting comparisons to Steinbeck, of course.

Hannah’s book isn’t about the Dust Bowl, but about specific characters in the Dust Bowl. Her characters are interesting and believable, though I do find them a bit broadly drawn. I find them very easy to get to know and identify with, but not unforgettable.

The Dust Bowl takes them from Texas to California along paths that many at the time were forced down. I think Hannah balances making the era come alive for readers and making the events into a story that shapes her characters. I can see the outlines of the country’s plight, but she is committed to the view on the ground and the reactions of her characters.

I like the character-driven approach and was happy to see some closure in the story. These are hard times and for much of the book sympathetic characters are taking a lot of abuse from the world and their fellow people. These folks find a way to escape the worst of the times, but in a way that’s specific to them. I want there to be answers for everyone, but that’s not this book. And probably not the real world, either.

It’s an interesting, well-written historical fiction. The hard parts are pretty bleak.

Recommended.

Greg Melville has put together a survey of historical trends tied together by the theme of graveyards. It reminded me of Loewen’s Lies Across America which did a similar thing with historical markers.

Body runs well with the idea. Graveyards are full of people so the Melville is able to touch on issues of race and class in America. They’re also public lands, which lets him talk about how we treat such lands from their landscaping to who can use them. Military graveyards are a jumping off point for wars and how we talk about soldiers.

As with Lies, Melville is surveying, not doing a deep dive. Every topic he touches on has more comprehensive and insightful works on it, but he never pretends otherwise. The result is an interesting exploration of how history ties into everything. It’s a nice doorway into how everyday things can lead one into more of the world once you scratch the surface.

Recommended.

This is a rush of shock melodrama executed really well. The first chapter could stand as a short story that hits the electric rails of unwed parents, cruel children, child murder, and a horrifying revenge. I was solidly on my heels there and there was still a book to go. Kanae Minato has set herself a lot to follow in her own book and acquits herself well.

Overall it’s an enormously exciting and entertaining story of bad acts and consequences that never holds back. The characters are certainly created in service of the plot, but are fleshed out enough to hold everything together. The plot is a cascade of transgressive actions. The characters didn’t make me feel that this could happen to anyone, but they did make me believe it could happen to someone.

It does get a lot of its juice from upping the ante on transgressive actions. It’s set in a middle school and much of the plot is students doing horrible things to students, teachers doing horrible things to students, students doing horrible things to teachers, and so on. And the things are inventive and horrible. It was just cartoonish enough that I enjoyed it, but not everyone will.

Recommended.

Between Redshirts and the Collapsing Empire trilogy I’ve quote enjoyed the Scalzi I’ve read. Starter Villain was a good read as well. I think it’s a lighter story than either of the others I mentioned, but it is great fun.

We’ve got a sympathetic character thrown into a crazy scenario that pushes a ton of pop culture buttons and we never really stop to take a breath. The dialog is snappy and we can pull for the good guys and hiss the villains with glee. (Villain being a relative term here, I did see the title.) There’s some earned warmth and a nice ending.

Recommended.

I was surprised by how charmed I was by Murder on the Orient Express. I know Christie’s reputation and her work is popular enough that I know some of the plots, so I know what I’m getting into. At some point, admittedly late in the game, I realized “oh, this is the one where…”. And I still was more charmed than I can defend.

I just finished writing a review of The Thin Man where I lamented that I wasn’t lit up by Hammett a writer who does so many things I generally love in writing and here I am being charmed by Christie who is doing so many things I generally don’t love.

I feel like the characters are all comparatively thin. Stereotypes are doing a lot of lifting here. And the plot is contrived to make the puzzle. It seems like this should irk me to death.

But.

In the middle of a plot that at several points seems to scream “look: a clue”, Christie snuck several genuine clues right past me. In the midst of stereotypes who were sticking to the script remarkably well, she slipped one into another and caught me off guard. And when she has Poirot lead characters by the nose as if to say “I’m better at this than you think I am” I get the feeling she’s saying that to me as a reader about her writing. And she’s right.

She turns contrivances into comfort while never letting you take anything for granted. She moves her characters along the chessboard with finesse and panache. It’s all in the service of a puzzle, but the craftsmanship is so exquisite that it can’t help but charm.

Strongly Recommended.

I wish I liked Dashiell Hammett’s work more.

I see the clever plotting and the realistic characters. I like the dialog that sounds just clever enough that a wise guy would use it. I like the moral ambiguity of his world. I like the plots that are just twisty enough to be confounding without being unbelievable.

And I recognize that he’s part of a genuine sea change in detective and crime fiction. I read Murder on the Orient Express after I read The Thin Man and there are a couple times where Nora suggests Poirot’s techniques and Nick directly says “that doesn’t work.” You could say these are works in conversation, but Hammett’s giving a lecture. I respect that. And I take his point that many earlier mysteries are just candy crush before there were screens and he’s writing stories about characters in settings.

But it doesn’t all gel for me somehow. I know this is a de gustibus thing for me. I think that if you like detective stories at all, you should check out Hammett. He’s an excellent writer and broke plenty of new ground in the genre. I really like the movies made from the books. But I don’t light up when I read him.

Strongly Recommended.

This is a Jack Reacher novel. The first one, in fact. I picked it up because my Dad has been entertaining himself with these and recommended them. He knows he’s not recommending great literature.

I did roll through it and it was fun. I had the feel of an 80’s action movie. Or maybe more like an 80’s action TV series, where a drifter moves from town to town and gets sucked into their problems. It had pretty much all the good and bad of that genre.

I think Child did a better than average job putting building Reacher as a protagonist who is believable enough to not break suspension of disbelief. Reacher does some things that run that risk, but Child moves things along and keeps twists coming in ways that kept me along for the ride.

But it is an 80’s actioner. For guys. The female characters are just prizes and items to defend.

Well built, but not my favorite.

I am a sucker for conspiracy-draws-character-to-the-meaning-of-reality art. I’m willing to die on the hill that conspiracy-draws-character-to-the-meaning-of-reality is a genre based on the number of works that fit the bill that I’ve read.

This is Chesterton’s take on it, set in the early 1900’s. I mention the time, because like so many of these, he draws the reader into the web by using plenty of contemporaneous references that slowly melt into universal tropes. Since I didn’t live in the nineteen aughts, these are historical references to me. I like the feeling that Chesterton was pulling his readers in with pop star references.

Because this kind of book is deliberately twisty to make the reader look at reality differently, I won’t try to explain much of the plot. It’s a good run at the genre and has some nice revelations. I think it’s probably sound enough that it would read and confound modern readers of this era’s fiction.

Recommended.