WARLIGHT

You would think that a novel about both parents suddenly leaving their two children to be cared for by unknowns in 1945 England would be exciting. But Michael Ondaatje (win a chicken dinner if you can pronounce that last name) has a knack for being boring and dull. The author of the award winning novel, The English Patient gets away with his seemingly anemic story because of his first class prose. Do you remember that episode on the Seinfeld TV show where Elaine is forced to watch the movie (The English Patient) that all her friends and boss loved? She shouts in the theater, “I can’t do this anymore...I hate it...die already!" Anyway, a blitzed out England should be a great milieu for a story. And it is, as we see that the main chaperones for the children are known by Nathaniel (age 14) and Rachel (age 16) as The Moth and The Darter. The story is narrated by Nathaniel, who at the age of twenty-eight, decides to find out the truth beyond their disappearances. Although the mother came back to the kids in about a year, it was like pulling teeth to get the answers of where she was. And when the answers come, the author takes his good old time to pass along the humdrum details to the reader. I liked the novel strictly because of the composition of the writer, but if you are expecting excitement in war torn England...forget it

“One morning either our mother (Rose/Viola), or our father suggested that after breakfast the family have a talk, and they told us that they would be leaving us and going to Singapore for a year.” Really? The father told them that he got a promotion to take over the Unilever office in Asia.They would be put in boarding schools a mile apart and on weekends and holidays they would be cared for by a guardian they previously met at their home. Mom stayed for a week after dad left to pack her steamer trunk and to firm up the boarding school arrangements. The kids could not stand boarding school because, “Everyone there already knew they had been essentially  abandoned.” Luckily, Nat gets caught urinating in the bathroom sink and almost gets expelled if it wasn’t for The Moth talking the School Master into letting the kids become day students only. Once home, the kids meet Moth’s friends. All lovable...my favorite is The mysterious Darter. One day the kid’s find mom’s steamer trunk in the basement. How could she have gone away without all her belongings? That night, Nat asks The Moth, “Where is my father?” Moth says, “I’ve had no communication with him.” Nat says, “But my mother was joining him.” The Moth says, “No...you must believe me, she isn’t there with him.” That’s all happens in the first twenty nine pages.

You know everybody has different opinions. For me the novel was lackluster, while other people will find the story exhilarating. That's what makes the world go around. The author's assets are his prose, his minimal main characters, and his ability to make the reader feel empathy for everyone in the story. I guess I just wasn't wholeheartedly committed to the story line. Anywho, Michael Ondaatje is recognized as a premium writer, so don't let my review stop you from reading his novel. Not for nothing, does anybody know what nationality Ondaatje is? I know he was born in Sri Lanka, spent time in England and now is a Canadian living in Toronto.
 
RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: I just looked at Goodreads.com’s The 421 most boring books ever. The first 57 on their list (that I’ve read) don’t make any sense to me (except two). The following are their rank of boredom according to Goodreads.com: 
  
(2) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957) - Are they crazy! Number two! One of the greatest books ever written.

(4) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951) - This is one of the exceptions that I agree with.

(26) Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2001) - I didn’t think this novel was boring at all.

(29) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859) - How dare they attack one of the greatest writers of all time.

(32) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939) - What!!! This book is a classic.

(43) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861) - I loved this book, It was required reading in high school. Dickens is going to turn over in his grave.

(46) The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1390) - I couldn’t agree more! But shouldn’t it be number one? I was forced to read this book in High School.

(52) Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004) - A wonderful walk through the world of magic.

(55) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1849) - Are you kidding me?

(57) The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (2005) - The best vampire novel ever written and in the epistolary style to boot. 

the CASTLE

Can Bud Hutchins (PI/inventor) possibly get into anything crazier than his last adventure (see my review of The Elixir on 12/9/2017)? Oh yes he can! Meet Vincentas (“No! No! Please! Plea…) a vampire extraordinaire, meet the FBI (?) and the Chicago police (as usual) chasing Bud and his cohorts, Maeve, a monk of The Order Of St. Michael, and Ivy who are on a mission to find Bud’s missing teleportation wristband and grandfather. Is it the author’s (JB Michaels) intention to make the reader buy and read the first two escapades (smart move, if true)? I would say so, since little is mentioned about his cadre of characters that would make sense to a newbie reader. As in his previous Bud Hutchins novels, the author has to come up for air. What I mean by that is that (almost used that, that) his novels race to the finish line without taking a break. Slow down! Even a pregnant pause would be acceptable (see Jack Benny, the master). I’m not criticizing the author’s work...just trying to make it less dizzy. Okay’ I’ll give you a taste of the first 30 pages, or so.

Bert, Bud’s android, is (for some reason) running amok throughout Chicago. Bud finally catches up and is forced to behead him. Bud returns to his old office in his grandfather’s house to find it trashed and with a tree symbol carved on his desk. Later Bud is arrested by the Chicago police (for aggravated assault) and then handed over to the FBI, led by Special Agent Jordan. They have pictures of Bud chasing his rampaging Android all over Chicago. Agent Jordan takes a cuffed Bud away in his vehicle, but is pursued by Ivy and Maeve, who with the aid of her special elixir powers, burst Agent Jordan’s car into flames. Jordan gets away with Bud to a yacht in the lake. Bud asks Agent Jordan, “What do you want?” Jordan says, “We want your tech. We are willing to give you all the resources you need to invent, reinvent, and innovate for Uncle Sam.” Maeve tries to sneak a peek on what’s going on in the yacht and gets captured by another agent. Bud’s demeanor shifts when agent Jordan says, “What if I told you I have the last known location of your grandfather? Would that sweeten the deal?”

From here on in, the novel takes off like a runaway train. Bud and his friends have a tall man, wearing a mask, throw a human head at them, get tricked by a dying old man and get gas bombed trying to escape the multitude of stalkers. When Ivy goes missing, Bud says, “First my grandfather, now Ivy. We have to move fast, or we will never find her.” Believe it or not, the pace of the story quickens! If it wasn’t for the relief of the short chapters, I would become discombobulated. Nevertheless. I enjoyed this third Bud Hutchins caper by JB Michaels and I highly recommended this fast paced novel.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: It has always been my goal to entertain and humor the reader, while pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the author’s work. That includes best selling authors like J.K. Rowling of the Harry Potter series, Rick Riordan of the Percy Jackson series, Suzanne Collins of The Hunger Games series and Harper Lee of To Kill A Mockingbird (the strength) and Go Set A Watchman (the weakness).     

The Book Thief

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! This was 550 pages of wonderful bohemian writing. It’s an extraordinary story about a very young madchen, Liesel, and a young junge, Rudy, during the 1940s on Himmel Street in the fictitious town of Molching in Nazi Germany. My opening phrase is used many times in the novel as a reaction by a character when surprised. Guess who narrates this novel? DEATH (“it kills me sometimes, how people die”)...yes, I said DEATH tells this story! But it’s more than a story about a young boy and girl. It’s about the fear of being discovered as a Hitler hater by the Nazis, or of hiding a Jew in your basement, or of searching for food everyday, or the everyday trepidation of bombing raids by the allies. The people on this street are not very nice to each other...or was it my imagination. Almost everybody calls a women, saumensch (bastard), men are called saukerl (human pig) and everybody is an arschloch (asshole). I never could figure out why that was. Yet, somehow these people of Himmel Street get along with each other to some degree or another. I thought their local vernacular (was this common in all of Germany?) was hilarious.
 
The novel starts off with Liesel Meminger attending the burial of her younger brother (doesn’t say how he died) and of her finding a book a grave digger dropped, The Grave Digger’s Handbook. Later she is delivered to foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. Liesel doesn’t know why her mother left her (we never do find out why). She is nine years old and can’t read or write. Hans teaches her the alphabet which ignites her desire to read books. But like I said, the story is not really about a book thief, but a tale of living in a slum town in Germany during WWII. I found the characters delightful and despicable at the same time. Besides the Hubermanns, Liesel and Rudy (the good guys)...we have: the disgusting spitting Frau Holtzapfel; Frau Diller; Rudy’s buddy, Tommy Muller; the repulsive Pfiffiikus (no, I didn’t misspell the name); the hidden Jew, Max Vandenburg; Rudy’s Nazi Youth program enemy, Franz Deutscher; and, Liesel’s not so reluctant victim of stolen books, the frail Ilsa Hermann, the mayor’s wife. Even though the author, Markus  Zusak has a lot of characters, they are all easily remembered, while miraculously sticking to six main characters...good job.

Was the dark chapter inserts all from Death, or also from Liesel, such as,*** Rudy Steiner, Pure Genius ***, 1.He stole the biggest potato from Mamer’s, the local grocer. 2. Taking on Franz Deutscher on Munich Street. 3. Skipping the Hitler Youth meetings altogether?  In any case, it was a refreshingly unique style of writing, and I loved the short chapters (my fave).The author is quoted saying,”I often feel like that - that a story is watching from somewhere, waiting for the right moment to stand in front of you. The thing is, you’ll only recognize it if you think about it enough. It’ll come.” I like Death’s last line in the novel, “I am haunted by humans”. I believe this adult novel (my opinion) is considered YA, if so, it’s the best one that I ever read. I highly recommend this inventive story. Wow!
   
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Here are some other YA novels that I’ve enjoyed reading. I was surprised that very few made the the top one hundred list provided by Goodreads.com. The Book Thief came in at number 10. My grandson Kai read and reviewed another ten, or so, that I’m not mentioning. The following are five that I’ve read and their Goodreads.com ranking:

No. 8- Divergent by Veronica Roth (2011). A five faction dystopian Chicago world. If you are sixteen years old...time to pick your faction.
No. 9- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960). A novel of childhood in a sleepy southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it.
No.12- The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien (1937). The story of Bilbo Baggins and the spectacular world of Middle-earth.
No. 52- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951). Teenager Holden Caulfield’s prep school failure and his three day romp in NYC.
No.80- Watership Down by Richard Adams (1972). The adventures of a group of rabbits searching for a better warren.