Call for the Dead

This is a guest review from my eldest son, Deron:

This is my first John le Carré novel as it was le Carré’s. In this spy thriller that takes place during the early Cold War, we are introduced to George Smiley, a member of the Circus, a British intelligence agency named for its location in Cambridge Circus, London. At home, he receives an urgent late night call from the Circus Head of Service - Samuel Arthur Fennan at the Foreign Office had committed suicide. Only two days earlier, Smiley had conducted a routine security interview with Fennan prompted by an anonymous allegation. He had judged the claim baseless and assured Fennan that he “could see no reason why we should bother him further.” But despite those assurances, in a letter found near his body, Fennan wrote, “...I have decided to take my life. I cannot spend my remaining years under a cloud of disloyalty and suspicion. I realise that my career is ruined…” Smiley was baffled. The letter was in complete contradiction to what he had expressed in the interview. He then conducts an initial investigation and finds even more inconsistencies that convinces him that this was not a suicide; it was a murder.

Chapter one, “A Brief History of George Smiley”, was jarring. Rather than beginning with the action, the novel begins with a biography. I generally expect to learn a character’s history through relevant flashbacks as the story progresses and not given it wholesale. Only after finishing the book did this chapter make more sense. John le Carré is loudly declaring who George Smiley isn’t, namely Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Right out of the gate in the first sentence, the “breathtakingly ordinary” George Smiley marries the beautiful Lady Ann Sercomb, and in the second, we learn “she left him two years later in favor of a Cuban motor racing driver”. One might as well replace “a Cuban motor racing driver” with “Bond, James Bond”. Dapper? Smiley is described as “Short, fat and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.” In his prime? “Smiley was no material for promotion and it dawned on him gradually that he had entered middle age without ever being young, and that he was - in the nicest possible way - on the shelf.” And as far as espionage and foreign intrigue goes, Smiley was told, “Anyway, my dear fellow, as like as not you’re blown after all the ferreting about in the war. Better stick at home, old man, and keep the home fires burning.” This chapter also provides some clever foreshadowing of both Smiley’s professional and personal lives.

I did feel that le Carré was hand-holding me through the entire novel. Smiley noted the questions needing answers. Problems were restated, and there was very little misdirection. I always knew what Smiley was thinking through interior monologues. This left me never guessing.

The prose is the real reason to read this novel. John le Carré’s character descriptions, such as Smiley’s, are precise and vivid. Of Fennan’s wife, he writes, “Although frail, she conveyed an impression of endurance and courage, and the brown eyes that shone from her crooked little face were of astonishing intensity. It was a worn face, racked and ravaged long ago, the face of a child grown old on starving and exhaustion…” He is even skilled at purposely writing badly. I chuckled when Smiley said, “My story really begins in 1938. I was alone in my room one summer evening. It had been a beautiful day, warm and peaceful. Fascism might never have been heard of. I was working with my shirt sleeves at a desk by my window, not working because it was such a wonderful evening.” This is shortly followed by Smiley saying, “I’m sorry, I feel a little inarticulate.”

While imperfect, Call for the Dead was entertaining, and I found myself rereading sections. I’m looking forward to the next novel in this series.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment:

Both John le Carré and Ian Fleming were members of intelligence services, utilizing their knowledge and experiences in their novels. Given le Carré’s awareness of James Bond, is it possible that George Smiley’s unfaithful wife was named after Fleming’s wife, Ann?

Caramel Part I

The author sent his novella to me to read and review:

If I was Haji Outlaw (he says that’s his real name) and had my druthers, I never would have done the story in the fashion that he did it in. Why write three novellas (are they long enough to even be called a novella?) totaling 171 pages instead of a decent size novel. Here are the page totals of each of the three parts: 84, 37 and 50. Haji Outlaw coulda been a contender (my favorite line from Marlon Brando in the 1954 movie On the Waterfront). A contender for what? A contender for the many sci/fi-fantasy awards that are available every year? Or the many dystopian novels adapted for film? The story is written in a crude and raw fashion (it’s almost still in it’s notebook outline), yet the reader is mesmerized by the author’s ingenuity. And although there are bits and pieces of other dystopian novels in Haji's story, such as, Hugh Howey’s 2004 Wool (see my review of 1/21/2016), it remains largely original and quite breathtaking.
 
I can’t tell the reader too much because, if you remember, part one is only 84 pages long. The year is 2112 (is Haji a Rush fan?). Most of the population live in the 135 story Giddings building. The rich and privileged in the upper floors and the downtrodden in the three basement areas (B1, B2, B3) which are overcrowded and toothless rat infested. The Giddings Building had been there since the winters turned sub-arctic at 50 below zero and summers heated up to 125 degrees. Why the weather changed is not given in part one. The novella opens with Stan mourning the loss of Donny, one of his fighters (I’m assuming that was the reason) in the drug infested B3, where there is always a blue haze in the stagnant air from the heavily smoked Scanoline drug. B3 is ruled by a gang of ruthless killers. “Stan was so consumed with these thoughts, that he did not notice the young woman who stood in the middle of the room with her head down."

Eventually gang members noticed her standing in the middle of the floor. They want her pretty jacket...or else. I will not tell you what happens next, but it’s not pretty. And Stan has his next fighter. She will not talk, so he names her Caramel, or Cara for short. He and Caramel are granted entrance to the higher floors where 16 full contact battle courts are located. Meanwhile in the ground floor tunnel, a line was forming to get in. New people were being granted entrance to serve the rich. “For the better part of the year the tunnel of life was vacant. But on this occasion it was filled with two miles of men, women, and children. These were the lucky ones. The ones who had made it out of the harsh winter beyond and had a chance to live and work in the Giddings.” Suddenly, there was loud crashing sounds in the tunnel. What can it be? Something is trying to get into the tunnel. Oh, I should have told the reader that with all the environmental changes, normal house pets mutated. The screams in the front of the line were horrible. “Whatever made it in...was killing. It was killing good. It was killing fast. And there was no end in sight.” You would never guess what was tearing the people apart. I’m not telling. It’s brilliant.

It’s a shame that I have to give this story three stars, because the author could have done so much better. His imagination is amazing. His storytelling is gripping. Haji can still fix this literature faux pas. Put all three novellas into one novel, embellish the the story with at least 200 more pages, grab a top notch editor to put it together...and wa-lah you will have a big time hit on your hands.
 
RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: It’s almost like Haji Outlaw was getting paid to see how fast he publish. Since I mentioned in the first paragraph that I didn’t read Parts two and three, I don’t know what direction the novel will take. The prose is rudimentary at best, but like everything else...he gets away with it. Can strong storytelling overcome all literature and grammar rules? Ya think?

THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

Wow, what a second novel! Coming off his first novel, This side of Paradise, no one expected F. Scott Fitzgerald to top the bestseller list again so quickly. F. Scott once again uses The 1920’s Jazz age and WWI as a backdrop for his second novel. The effects of future wealth and power are fully examined on the two main characters of the novel: Anthony Patch and his eventual wife, Gloria Gilbert. I’m also happy to report that there were only six main characters, which allows the reader time to get to know each character’s modus operandi. Anthony, a recent Harvard graduate, was brought up by his multimillionaire grandfather, Adam Patch. Grandpa wanted Anthony to write a book, or anything else constructive other than wasting his life away in the NYC nightlife. But Anthony could not get motivated in any career when he knew he was going to inherit millions from his sickly grandfather soon. Anthony got along nicely, selling off a bond or two (inherited from his mother) when he needed cash to continue his NYC daily cabareting. “At eleven he had a horror of death. Within six impressionable years his parents had died and his grandmother has faded off almost imperceptibly.” So you see, it was a matter of time before his grandfather dies...where else would the money go? Oh, life is going to be so good! Whereas Anthony occasionally traveled back and forth from NYC to Europe, he decided to get an apartment in NYC (closer to grandfather’s Tarrytown estate) and wait for the old man to die before living permanently in Europe. It’s not that he hated his grandfather (he didn’t); he just wanted his money. And his parties. And his booze.

I forgot to mention that F. Scott Fitzgerald is known to be the last descriptive writer. Let’s see how F. Scott describes Anthony’s seventy-five-year-old grandfather Adam Patch on page 16, “The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows, the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweaked out his hairs, changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in others - callously transposing his colors like a child trying over a paint-box. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a hand of harps and canticles on earth.” What did he say? Anyway, back to the story. Anthony continues to drink and party at the many NYC private clubs he has joined. He is usually with his two best friends from Harvard. Maury Noble and Dick Caramel, who is writing a book. One day Anthony runs into Dick coming out of a barbershop. He tells Anthony that his cousin from Kansas is staying at her parent's apartment at The Plaza. Dick tells Anthony, “Got a cousin up at The Plaza. Famous girl. We can go up and meet her. She lives there in the winter - has lately anyway - with her mother and father.” Later, Anthony runs into Maury and is informed that he also met Gloria...and she has the best legs he ever saw. Lets meet Gloria.

Before Anthony meets Gloria, I would like to talk about the chapter F. Scott titled, A Flash-Back in Paradise. The reader meets “Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting-room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star (is this heaven?). It became known to her, at length, that she was to be born again (is the VOICE God)? She learns that she will journey to a country that she has never been to. Beauty asks, “How long a stay this time?” The VOICE answers, “fifteen years”. All Beauty knows is that she will be a “society gurl”, as a “ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp.” This is what I don’t understand...the few woman in the novel all lived way over fifteen years. None of them died in this novel, none of them left after fifteen years... Is this a continuation of something that was started in F. Scott’s first novel? If so, I’m lost because I didn’t read This Side of Paradise. Okay, enough already. Gloria was gorgeous and every man or woman agreed. She was a lifetime partygoer and a big tease. And a big drinker. To Gloria, “Beauty always came first. That’s why she didn’t have children, the menace (a pregnancy) to her beauty appalled her.” Then she met Anthony. Her cousin and Anthony’s friend Dick brings her over to Anthony’s NYC apartment. It’s page 48...let the romance game start! “On Thursday afternoon Gloria and Anthony had tea together in the grill-room at the Plaza (try to get in there now, haha) They play the society game saying hello and blowing kisses to all the rival debutantes and bachelors. But they know that they are the stars dancing on the Plaza floor. Life is good...unless.

Some of the language used by F. Scott is archaic by today’s standards, but no writer could put a sentence together better than Fitzgerald. Some say this novel truly emulates the romance F. Scott Fitzgerald had with his wife, Zelda Sayre. In reviewing the many quotes from the real life Zelda, I find a Gloria Gilbert in most of them, such as, “Without you, dearest dearest I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think - live - I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us apart another night.”

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: While Hemingway and The Left Bank Gang of Paris expatriate writers of the 1920s ultimately ended the descriptive writing era, I still prefer it, even though a novel like The Beautiful and Damned takes awhile to finish because it’s really a kind of textbook on writing. You really aren’t reading the novel...you are studying it. Fitzgerald never changed his writing style. That’s why I like reading the classics.

Did you know that Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (F. Scott's full name) was named after his father’s distant cousin, the author of the “Star-Spangled Banner”.

Many of Fitzgerald’s novels and short stories have been adapted to film. The Great Gatsby has been a movie five times, while The Beautiful and Damned has been done twice. Even his short stories have become movies, such as, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (you didn’t know he wrote that...did ya?)

In 1940 with The Last Tycoon only half finished, F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack on December 21, in Sheilah Graham’s (a gossip columnist) Hollywood apartment. He is buried in Rockville Union Cemetery in Maryland. He was 44 years of age.

In 1948 Zelda Fitzgerald died in a fire at a hospital in North Carolina. She was 47.

ANIMAL FARM

This is a guest review from my fifteen-year-old grandson, Kai O:

George Orwell uses the animals of Manor Farm to re-enact the Russian Revolution of 1917. Throughout the book, I found myself drawing connections from the farm to the actual events. At first, I was a little bit annoyed at this because I kept stopping every few pages or so to compare the story to real life. This got in the way of my overall enjoyment of the book. Later, I realized that George Orwell’s book was so skillfully written that I couldn’t help but find deeper meaning. Animal Farm was written in 1945, so the theme in this book seemed unimportant. But as the saying goes, those who don’t remember their past are doomed to repeat it.

The story begins with Old Major, a respected senior boar, calling all the animals (living on the farm) to a meeting in the barn. Once the meeting begins, Old Major tells the animals his dream for the future of Manor Farm. The old boar tells the animals of a farm where the animals rule themselves, and most importantly, he teaches the whole farm a song called, The Beast of England. This would be the rallying cry of the animal’s revolution. Old Major dies...but his original ideas live on. Quickly the animals revolt against their human oppressor, Mr. Jones. Soon Manor Farm is theirs and renamed Animal Farm. The pigs, being the smartest animals on the farm, became the masterminds behind the running of the farm, while the other animals took to the fields.

The animals now reign supreme on the farm. There are seven commandants behind animalism, but the sheep boil it down to, “Four legs good, two legs bad.” How will animalism fair when put into practice? If you know anything about the Russian Revolution, you have probably drawn a few conclusions. George Orwell gets straight to the point. Animal Farm isn’t a very long book, but every page added to the story. In my opinion, there are no boring parts in this book. Overall, Animal Farm is a quick read that would help anyone visualize what happened in the Russian Revolution. I would recommend this book to anyone twelve years old and older.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Excellent short, but to the point review! As Kai gets older, he seems to dig deeper into the author’s mind to understand the true meaning of what the author is trying to say. I think he succeeded in this review.

I believe that it’s obvious that Orwell intended the Old Major to be Karl Marx; Napoleon, the pig, to be Joseph Stalin; and Boxer, the workhorse, the hard working peasant (serf). Snowball, the other pig, was the loser in a power struggle with Napoleon.

SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Finders keepers, losers weepers! That seems to be the premise of Catherine Steadman’s maiden novel. The above phrase tightens its noose around all the main characters in this gripping tale set in Great Britain. The novel’s protagonist and narrator is documentary filmmaker, Erin Locke, who will soon be married to the love of her life, “Mark works in banking. I Know, yes, boo, hiss. But all I can say is: he’s not an arsehole. You’ll have to trust me on that. He’s definitely no Eton, drinking-club, polo-team alumnus.” They both have money put aside, a beautiful home, and potentially exciting careers when the unforeseen happens. According to Mark, thanks to stodgy bank politics and economic hard times, he loses his job at the bank and waits to tell Erin on the cusp of their wedding/honeymoon arrangements to Bora Bora. Reluctantly, Erin agrees to trim off some of the expense of the wedding, including a week shorter in the honeymoon department. Mark, no longer the joyful future husband, agrees to keep his chin up and try to enjoy their once-in-a-lifetime adventure in Polynesia. Erin wonders why Mark didn’t tell her about the loss of his job and all the wedding cutbacks till now, “He canceled our honeymoon. No, he didn’t cancel it; he just rearranged some of it, that’s all. But without asking me?” Mark says, “Erin. Thanks for being, you know...I’ve got a lot on my plate right now...I tend to clam up when I’m stressed.” Liar liar, pants on fire!

The first part of Steadman’s novel seemed to take awhile to develop and then when it did, it seemed to come on too fast...go figure. I liked how she kept the main characters down to a minimum. The author also proved that characters could remain anonymous and still be vital to the story. I love that kind of creative writing. Whenever a bad guy (for the sake of another word) contacted Erin or Mark, it was in the form of a text; such as, “The screen flares to life. Text messages ping up on the phone. Two messages: The offer still stands  Contact me.” Do you see how a writer can make a character remain important without knowing their name? When Erin picks up the pursuing bad guy’s lost phone and dials him up, he doesn’t answer with his name, instead he simply says, "Who is it?" All of this adds mystery to the story. You are probably asking yourself (based on the book’s title), what did Erin and Mark find in the water? And who are these nameless people that are trying to find them? Are they bad, or just desperate to get back what was theirs in the first place? Who are the real bad guys...Erin and Mark, or the nameless hunters?

Based on the research I did, If you recover a lost item and return it to a police station and they can’t find the owner after thirty days...it’s yours. But if author/actress Catherine Steadman followed that thought, she wouldn’t have a novel. Anyway, I was impressed with this young Downton Abbey actress’ (she plays Mabel Lane Fox in the series) ability to understand the basic rules of good literature and deploy them in her first novel. My only dislike was her mad dash to end the novel. I think she could have added another fifty pages, or so, to slow down the pace, although she does have a style that encourages the reader to rapidly turn the pages. Like I said in the second paragraph...go figure. By the way, I forgot to mention that the (eight page) first chapter titled The Grave was a splendid idea...the proverbial putting the cart before the horse. It hooked me right into the creel. The first line is, “Have you ever wondered how long it takes to dig a grave? Wonder no longer. It takes an age. However long you think it takes, double that.” I dare you, I double dare you to buy this novel!

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Steadman's novel is original in its concept. I looked through a list of novels involving items lost at sea and didn't come up with a similar story.

I have no reason why I used those three children's phrases other than they just seemed to fit the text of its paragraph and my mood writing this review tonight.

the DEATH of Mrs. WESTAWAY

A thriller doesn’t get any better than Ruth Ware’s latest nail-biter. Winner Winner chicken dinner if you can identify the murderer within the last fifty pages. It almost seemed like the murderer was a blue plate special and handed over to us...then unceremoniously taken from us with a sleight of hand (that hand belongs to master storyteller, Ruth Ware). Whodunit? Halfway through the novel, I didn’t even know there was a murder. My only criticism of Ware’s novel was the unnecessary sidebar with Hal and a loan shark’s hoodlum, it felt out of place. Wouldn’t the loan shark pursue her all the way to Trepassen? He didn’t even bother her when Hal stupidly kept coming back to her attic flat in Brighton. Okay enough of that; I just couldn’t let this brilliant novel go unscathed. I thought the italic font from one of the ladies' (which one?) 1994 diary was intense and kept the reader guessing... a welcomed offshoot of the story. The juxtaposition of the diary and the guts of the story had a somewhat melded effect for the general mood of the novel. Well done. I also enjoyed Mrs. Westaway’s solo servant, Mrs. Warren, who, I’m sure, reminded everybody (who read the novel, or saw the movie) of Mrs. Danvers from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (see my 4/3/2016 review of Daphne’s similar work, Jamaica Inn). Nothing like a cantankerous old servant to stir-up the built-in hate of a dreary crumbling mansion on a cold rainy day. Haha.

Harriet (call me Hal) Westaway is a twenty-one year old girl that has a tarot card reading service in her booth on a Brighton’s West Pier. She recently lost her mother to a hit and run accident. She is in debt up to her wazoo. The tarot card business was her mother’s. Hal lives alone in an attic flat at Marine View Villas. “The name was a lie. There were no villas, only a slightly shabby little row of terraced houses, their paint peeling from constant exposure to the salty air...and there was no view.” One day she goes home to find two strange letters in among the many bills that were marked FINAL DEMAND. She owes for rent, gas and electricity, “But the one that really made her stomach turn-over was different from the official bills. It was a cheap envelope, obviously hand delivered, and all it said on the front, in ballpoint letters, was 'Harriet Westaway, top flat.'...Inside there was just one sheet of paper, with only a couple of sentences typed on it.” That same message showed up at her booth on the pier. “She had been ignoring calls and texts to that effect for months.” The message was always the same, “Sorry to have missed you. We would like to discuss you’re financial situation. We will call again.” Is it greetings from the loan shark? Hal threw everything in the recycling bin, but as she took a bite of her fish and chips, an elegant letter caught her eye.

At first she didn’t see it…"A letter in a stiff white envelope, addressed by hand, and stuffed into the bin along with the takeout menus.” She must have shoved it in there by mistake. She ripped open the letter, “The piece of paper she pulled out wasn’t an invitation. It was a letter, written on heavy, expensive paper, with the name of a solicitor’s firm on top.” The following is an abridged version of that letter, “I am writing at the instruction of my client, your grandmother, Hester Mary Westaway of Trepassen House, St. Piran...Mrs. Westaway passed away on 22nd November, at her home...As Mrs. Westaway’s solicitor and executor, it is my duty to contact beneficiaries under her will...Because of the substantial size of the estate, probate will need to be applied...The process of disbursement cannot begin until this has taken place...In the meantime, you could provide me with copies of two documents confirming your identity and address...Please write to your late grandmother’s housekeeper Mrs. Warren...Yours truly, Robert Treswick.” Maybe it’s me, but the character’s names and the towns they live in have the flavor of Charles Dickens all over them. Hal stared at the letter for a long time. Is there another Harriet Westaway “Because it didn’t make sense. Not one bit. Hal’s grandparents had been dead for more than twenty years.” Did they mail the letter to the wrong person? Could Hal pull off the deception and finally get out of debt? If she took wrongful money and got caught, she would go to jail.

“There had clearly been some sort of mistake. She was not Hal’s grandmother. The money belonged to someone else, and that was all there was to it. Tomorrow she would write back and tell Mr. Trewick that.” Or would she? She starts second guessing herself. “But what if it’s true? They wrote to you, didn’t they? They have your name and address.” But she knew it wasn’t true. However, she thinks to herself, “You could claim this money, you know. Not many people could, but if anyone can pull this off, it’s you.”  Okay, I didn’t want to review more then the first seventeen pages, so I’ll stop here. The good news is that you have 351 pages of pure excitement ahead of you. This is not the first time I’ve read this accomplished storyteller...see my 9/19/2017 review of The Lying Game and my 9/7/2016 review of The Woman in Cabin 10. In the three Ruth Ware books I’ve read, she has spent some chapter time writing about something that didn’t seem needed in the story. I mentioned in the first paragraph of my review that the incident with Hal and the loan shark’s hoodlum wasn’t necessary. Well, there was a second incident and I will talk about it in my comment section.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: The second unneeded incident that Ruth wrote about was in chapter six. When a strange woman, who was waiting outside Hal’s Tarot Card booth (as Hal is closing up) says, “I’ve been waiting,” said a hectoring female voice. “Don’t you want customers?” Hal says to the woman that she should have knocked. The lady says, “If you was a real psychic, you would’ve known.” That’s an excellent point. Anyway, the lady moans about a son that has gone bad. After the session ends, the lady drops sixty pounds on Hal’s table and disappears out the door. Hal runs after her to tell her that she can’t accept that much money for a Tarot reading. Now what does the debt ridden Hal do? She puts all sixty pounds in a donation box. It doesn’t make any sense. Was the mysterious woman really the ghost of Mrs. Westaway? Did Hal donate the sixty pounds to charity because she needed to convince herself that she wasn’t a thief? The hoodlum disturbance happened in chapter seven. After those chapters, the reader never saw hide nor hair of either character. Is Ruth Ware writing symbolism into her novels for us to discover? If so, who was the hoodlum representing? The bad son? Interesting.

Also interesting is that in the exclusive B & N pages at the novel’s end, Ruth Ware says she picked out the Cornwall section of England for her novel because of her love for Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn. “I’ve written a lot about Agatha Christie, but I often say that while Christie taught me how to plot, du Maurier’s books are my go-to for how to write character.”  
    

COMPLICITY

The author sent a copy of his novel to me to read and review:

Since I’m a reviewer that believes in limited characters per novel (aka Cormac McCarthy novels), I had no chance of liking this somewhat mishmash of a novel by L Dalton White. In the first twenty one pages, the author will present, or mention to the reader the following characters in this sequence: Natalie, Rich, Rodriguez, Pete, Perry (a Jack Russell Terrier), Parker, Bobby, Linda, Pat, Morrison, Ben, Henry, A big man dressed in black, Molly, Haley, Beverly, Rock, Weasel, and Jimmy. That’s nineteen characters in the first twenty one pages with many more to come. And the reader is supposed to remember them? If you are going to have a ridiculous amount of characters, then provide the reader with a dramatis personae in the beginning of the novel. Then the author makes the novel dicier, by alternating chapter dates to and fro. It’s just not a well thought-out novel. The author calls the novel a thriller, I call it a clunker.
  
I just couldn’t get into this novel about a college student (Natalie) from Connecticut chasing her boyfriend’s father across the country in order to find his lost backpack and journal only to be beaten up and threatened throughout the story. First she is roughed up in Vernon, California looking for Pete’s knapsack and journal with Rodriguez (who gets stabbed three times) and Natalie is warned, “I’ll be back for you.” She is later manhandled by a jogger while walking her sister’s dog and warned, “Don’t scream, you gotta take me to Pete Shines.” Natalie responds, “I don’t know where he is...nobody does.” That’s the general theme of this novel...get Pete Shines. For some stupid reason I kept thinking about the old Peter Sellers’ movie, After the Fox.

On page thirty-five, Natalie meets with detective Gregory to understand why she is being bullied and followed, “What I want to know is what this has to do with Pete Shines. I went to the warehouse looking for Pete’s stuff. This other guy, yesterday, wants me to tell him where Pete Shines is. What’s the deal with Pete? Why after eight weeks (he is missing) is he suddenly so popular?” Detective Gregory advises her to give up the chase and go home...will she? Well, if you care to find out if Natalie goes home and where Pete Shines is, you will have to buy your own copy, because my review ends on page thirty-five. I didn’t like this novel (is it obvious?), but you might. I’m too set in my ways to appreciate a work so nebulous and pointless. I have no idea why other reviewers rated this novel so high.

RATING: 2 out of 5 stars

Comment: No further comment needed.

Rambling Comments #6

If you missed AMC’s recent ten part miniseries adaptation of Dan Simmons’ 2007 novel The Terror, you have my condolences...it was a blockbuster. This column is not going to review the book nor the miniseries. Instead I’m going to see if the miniseries was tweaked or modified in any way compared to the actual novel. I read The Terror three years before I started reviewing books (eleven years ago) and I don’t plan on rereading a 766 page book any time soon. So I’m going to compare the last 98 pages of Simmons’ novel with the last few episodes of the miniseries to see if there are any differences. Yes, I will read the last 98 pages again, but not the prior 668 pages. I also thought that I should reprint the brief description of the story (located on the front inside dust jacket of Simmons’ novel) to see if the basic structure and plot were the same as the miniseries. The following is what’s printed:  

                                             Inside Dust Jacket  

“The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.” Okay, the first paragraph is very close to what happened in the mini series. The only two things different are minor: 132 men versus 126 men and there was no mention of the crushing ice in the miniseries.

“When the expeditions leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival - or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape.” This paragraph generally holds true to form.

“The Terror swells with the heart - stopping suspense and heroic adventure that have won Dan Simmons praise as ‘a writer who not only makes big promises but keeps them.’ With a haunting and constantly surprising story based on actual historical events, The Terror is a novel that will chill you to your core.” Okay, so far, so good. Now let’s get into those last 98 pages.

                                   Goodsir, chapter 58, pages 669-675

This chapter did happen in the miniseries but was nowhere near as savage and dark compared to the novel. The TV series has Dr. Goodsir rub his body with poisons, drink some of it, and then slit his wrists to bleed out. The next day Hickey and his men began eating him. In the book, Goodsir is writing in his personal diary: “I have taken the final draught. It will be a few minutes before the full effect is felt. Until it is, I shall catch up on my diary. These last few days I have been recalling the details of how young Hodgson confided in me and whispered to me in the tent weeks ago on that last night before Mr. Hickey shot him. The next morning, Mr. Hickey assembled everyone and had Magnus Manson force Lieutenant Hodgson to kneel before him...then he set the long-barreled weapon to the base of George Hodgson’s skull and blew his brains out onto the gravel.” Dr. Goodsir refused to dissect the Lieutenant in front of the assembled men. Since Goodsir refused, Hickey had Manson shear off Goodsir’s two big toes. “Since that day of Lt. Hodgson’s demise, I have demurred again to the sum of eight more toes, one ear, and my foreskin.” At this point, terrible storms hit daily (not in the miniseries). As Goodsir was dying from his poisons, he wrote a note and pinned it to his chest: Eat these mortal remnas of Dr Harry D.S. Gooodsirifff yo u wisssh the poisssn withinn ths bones and flesh wiol kill yoou also. (in the miniseries, Goodsir did not warn the men that he poisoned himself).

                                   Hickey, chapter 59, pages 676-682

“Sometime in the last few days or weeks, Cornelius Hickey realized, he had ceased being king. He was now a god.” Hickey has gone crazy, similar to the miniseries, but his meeting with Tuunbaq will be different. “When, after more than three weeks of being unable to move because of the blizzards, winds, and plummeting temperatures, his dray beasts had whined and begged for food, Hickey had descended among them like a god and provided them with their loaves and fishes. He had shot Strickland to feed Seeley. He had shot Dunn to feed Brown. He had shot Gibson to feed Jerry. He had shot Best to feed Smith...but now those he’d so generously fed were dead, frozen hard into their blanket sleeping bags or contorted into terrible claw shapes of their final throes.” Magnus is now dead in the bow, Hickey was thinking that he could bring him back to life whenever he needed him. “Suddenly, he sensed movement to the west. With some difficulty - it was very cold - Hickey turned his head left to look out to the frozen sea. Something large was walking toward him on two legs.” Hickey was not afraid because he knew it came not as a predator, but as a worshipper (haha). Hickey heard it moving around the under the tarp. “Then suddenly the thing was there, looming over the gunwales, the upper body rising six feet or more above a boat that was already raised six feet above the sledge and snow.” This was not the same confrontation that was shown in the miniseries. “The thing sniffed Magnus Manson’s body...its huge tongue licked at the frozen fall of brown blood...abruptly, yet almost casually, the thing bit off Magnus’s head. The crunching was so terrible that Hickey would have covered his ears if he had been able to lift his gloved hands from the gunwales. He could not move them...the thing smashed the dead man’s chest in - rib cage and spine exploding outward in a shower of white bone shards. Hickey could no longer move his head even an inch, so he had no choice but to watch as the thing from the ice excavated every inner part of Magnus Manson and ate them.” Suddenly, Tuunbaq’s unfeeling eyes were inches from Hickey’s own staring eyes. “Its hot breath enveloped him.” Cornelius Hickey said, “Oh.” “It was the last word Hickey ever spoke...he felt his own warm breath flowing out of him...but instantly he realized it was not his breath leaving him forever, but his spirit, his soul. The thing breathed it in. It dropped on all fours and left Cornelius Hickey’s field of vision forever.” So Hickey’s death was completely different than his miniseries death and Tuunbaq was still on the prowl.

                                   Crozier, chapters 60-65, pages 683-742

Most of these chapters were not shown in the miniseries. Yes, Crozier did stay with the native Inuit tribe, but nobody from England came to rescue him or his men...like the last show of the miniseries would have us believe. Yes, he mated with Lady Silence and eventually had two children after she nursed him back from a near-death experience following his many gunshot wounds from the crazed Hickey (Hickey’s shooting of Crozier happened before I started with chapter 58). In the last scenes of the miniseries, you can see Crozier ice fishing with his children and that’s where the tenth show ended. But the novel does tell us about the legend of Tuunbaq and Crozier’s later discovery of his old ship. The Inuits believed, “During the first period of the universe, The Earth was a floating disk beneath a sky supported by four pillars. Beneath the Earth was a dark place where the spirits lived. This early Earth was under water most of the time and without any human beings - the Real People or others - until two men, Aakulujjuusi and Uumaaniirtuq, crawled out humps in the earth. These two became the first of the Real People. Women had joined the two men on Earth in this earliest of times, but they were barren and spent all their time walking the coastlines in search of children. The Second Cycle of the universe appeared after a long and bitter contest between a fox and a raven. This is also the time when the Real People learned about Sedna. Then there came a time, many thousands of years ago, when Sedna, the Spirit of the Sea, became infuriated with her fellow spirits, the Spirit of the Air, and the Spirit of the Moon. I’m condensing this part so you don’t blow your brains out with too much useless information. To kill them - these other two parts of the Trinity that made up the basic forces of the universe - Sedna created her own tupilek. This spirit - animated killing machine was so terrible that it had its own name - soul and became a thing called Tuunbaq. Okay, enough of Tuunbaq for the moment, let’s get back to the ice and Captain Crozier. The Captain realized that he could never go back to England. He thought, “But what if he makes it to civilization...back to England? Alone. He will always be the captain who let all his men die. The court-martial would be inevitable, its outcome predetermined. Whatever the court’s punishment might be, the shame will be a lifelong sentence."

                                     Chapter 66, pages 743-746

“She (Lady Silence) touches his face, gets to her feet, and goes away from him, pulling the tent flap shut behind her. He (Crozier) finds enough strength to stand and to shed the rest of his clothes. Naked, he does not feel the cold. Six feet from the edge of the water he goes to both knees again and raises his face to the sky and closes his eyes. He hears the thing rising from the water not five feet from him and hears the scraping of its claws on the ice and the huff of its breath as it pulls itself out of the sea onto the ice and hears ice groaning under its weight, but he does not lower his head nor open his eyes to look. Not yet. He smells the wet fur, the wet flesh, the bottom-of-the-ocean stink of it, and senses its aurora shadow falling over him, but he does not open his eyes to look. Not yet. Only when his skin prickles and goose bumps rise at the heavy mass presence seeming to surround him and only when its meat eater’s breath envelops him does he open his eyes...he closes his eyes again, tilts back his head, opens his mouth, and extends his tongue exactly as Memo Moira taught him to do for Holy Communion.” Now Crozier and Lady Silence are truly united.

                                       Chapter 67, pages 747-766

This is the last chapter and where the Inuits and Crozier find HMS Terror almost 200 miles south of where she had been frozen fast near Erebus for almost three years was beyond Crozier’s powers of speculation. Since the ship had three kegs of gunpowder aboard, Crozier decided to burn the ship. “The ship burned for almost an hour and a half before it sank. It was an incredible conflagration. Guy Fawkes Day above the Arctic Circle. When the show was over and the ship was sunk and the sun was also sinking toward the south so that their shadows leapt long across the greying ice, still they stayed to point and enjoy the steam rising and celebrate the bits of burning debris still scattered here and there on the ice.Then the band finally turned back toward the big island and then the smaller islands, planning to cross the ice to the mainland before they would make camp for the night. Taliriktug (Crozier’s new name) took the squirming Kanneyuk in his left arm and put his right arm around Silna-Silence. Raven, still being carried by his mother, was petulantly trying to slap her arms away and force her to put him down so he could walk on his own. Taliriktug wondered, not for the first time, how a father and mother without tongues were going to discipline a headstrong boy. Then he remembered, not for the first time, that he now belonged to one of the few cultures in the world that did not bother to discipline their headstrong boys or girls. That’s it folks! With all the differences (that) I found in the last 98 pages, I’m going to say that there also had to be a lot of changes in the first 668 pages. I read this novel eleven years ago and just don’t recollect.