Bright’s Passage by Josh Ritter
Hardcover, 193 pg.
The Dial Press, 2011
I wanted to like this a lot more than I found myself able to–maybe it’s just that I didn’t get it, I don’t know. I found this to be an over-written, messy bore. Sorry, Mr. Ritter, I’ll keep listening (and reading in the future), but…this just didn’t work at all for me.
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I typically don’t bother with posthumous novels, but for some reason* I went ahead and tried this one, and on the whole, I’m glad I did, despite my rating. There’s a lot to the characters in this novel that weren’t in the previous novels. Still, as much as I appreciated various aspects of the novel, I just couldn’t get into it as a whole.
Part 3, “At Sea,” did almost nothing for me — Thomas Hudson is almost impossible to recognize, and it’s probably harder to sympathize with him — or his crew. Given that they’re hunting Nazi’s, it should be a pretty easy sell.
Part 2, “Cuba,” had some really interesting moments, some dialogue that leaps off the page, and once his first wife appears, Hudson becomes likable for the first time since Part 1. I don’t recall Hemingway’s characters having a pet before, and while Hudson’s relationships with his cats seem more than a little strange, just having them made him seem more human. Like in Part 3, he’s very different from the character we met in Part 1, but it’s a bit more understandable here. While I didn’t find that much to like about the character, the physical descriptions he gives towards Honest Lil are about the best, and most evocative, I remember in Hemingway.
Part 1, “Bimini,” is what made this worth the read. Other than the kid in The Old Man and the Sea (which a significant portion of this section evokes), we don’t really see children in Hemingway. But here, Thomas Hudson’s two sons from different wives are spending a few weeks with him, a chance for them all to reconnect, and give their mothers some sort of break. I really liked these kids — probably more than any other characters he’s devised. And Hudson’s relatable, sympathetic, and even likable as a person — something that he loses quickly, and only regains briefly toward the end of Part 2.
Honestly, if you’re inclined to give this a try, only read Part 1 — you’ll be happier for it, and the scenes with Hudson and one or both sons are really great. Otherwise, you probably have better things do with your time.
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* I’d already checked it out from the library before I found that out.
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I Just Want My Pants Back by David Rosen
Paperback, 240 pg.
Broadway Books, 2007
This is a Coming of Age novel by a would-be Nick Hornby. Frequently amusing, but fairly paint-by-numbers. There’s virtually no plot point that couldn’t be predicted the instant a character is introduced.
There are plenty of fun turns of phrase, and Rosen definitely has a knack for this thing–I just hope that next time out the story is as good as the writer telling it.
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The Intercept by Dick Wolf
Hardcover, 387 pg
William Morrow, 2012
If you want suspense novel that serves as a love song to the Patriot Act and expansive police power, this is it. There’s a constant stream of thought here saying that police officers (especially in New York City) are better at foiling crime/terrorism than Homeland Security is. Of course, this is especially true when they’re not hampered by probable cause or any other constitutional protections as they are here.
The hero is super-cop Jeremy Fisk, an Arabic-speaking maverick with uncanny intuition and a stubborn streak that keeps him going while his superiors, the FBI and other Homeland Security officials are telling him that he’s wrong. He’s also a pretty dull character — most of the victims of the first stages of the terror plot, the other cops, the terrorists and even minor characters that are in only one or two scenes are far more interesting.
There’s a whole lot of data dumping and exposition in dialogue — usually to people don’t need to be told basic facts about their profession in every conversation, but here Wolf insures that happens. Wolf’s Law & Order series have a tendency to fall into this, but in this book it really seemed prevalent.
The big narrative twist that reveals the true nature of the terrorist plot was pretty obvious, and I saw it coming almost from the start. The only satisfaction I got from its reveal was that small sense of smugness that comes from being right about something you couldn’t care less about.
A well-paced, technically effective disappointment. Can’t see me coming back for Jeremy Fisk #2.
Below the stars here, I’ve added a spoiler-rich paragraph with one of my biggest gripes. Read on, if you don’t mind things soiled.
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Spoiler-y Point: (and this is likely more on the publisher than on Wolf — but I don’t know)
Putting on the cover that this is “A Jeremy Fisk Novel”, and then focusing so much on Krina Gersten — and making her the far more interesting character — is a dumb idea. It pretty much mandates she’s killed at a critical moment. Which, not at all shockingly, she is. Wolf should know better, just sloppy story telling.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Original Publication: 1811
I honestly don’t know what to say about this, my first exposure to Jane Austen (other than it’s far overdue).
I don’t see the appeal, I don’t see why this one has endured. That’s not to say I hated it. It’s just that I don’t get it. Yes, there were amusing turns of phrases here and there, and I can see where it might be seen as a template for romantic comedies since then. But..meh.
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Robert B. Parker’s Damned if You Do by Michael Brandman
Series: Jesse Stone, #12
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
At least half of one of those stars is due to loyalty to the fine men and woman (pretty sure there’s just one) of the Paradise Police Department.
Brandman knows Stone. He knows Suitcase (though you’d have a hard time proving it based on the evidence here) and Molly. He has a decent handle on the city, and the supporting characters.
What he doesn’t know is how to write a mystery. Or a police procedural. Possibly not a novel — maybe he should stick to scripts.
There are two cases that Jesse’s working on in this book — one he stumbles onto when helping a friend, he develops a hunch about conditions in a local retirement home. He talks to two citizens about it — both of whom serve mostly as exposition dumps and confirm his hunch. Jesse proceeds to harass and bully his way through bringing the retirement home in line. There’s no challenge for him here, there’s no struggle, there’s no effort, really. It does allow Brandman a chance to talk about some real problems, cite some statistics about a social ill and move on.
There’s a murder mystery also — he detects a little here. Mostly he susses out one clue, and the rest is delivered to him by Gino Fish and Vinnie Morris. Always nice for a small town cop to have a mobster and a shooter to call on for answers.
If this took me any time at all to read, I’d probably be more upset. The Stone novels for years were the best things that Parker produced. Towards the end, there was a resurgence in the quality of the Spenser novels which seemed to result in lesser Stone novels. But we’d still occasionally get one worth reading. Brandman has consistently fallen far short of even Parker’s worst. It’s really sad to see such a good franchise ruined like this.
Leverage: The Con Job by Matt Forbeck
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Wow, it’s so easy to read men like Lee Goldberg and think that all tie-in novels are really good, this is one of those books that serves as a cold dose of reality. This was sloppy, lazy, heavy-handed and overly-reliant on inside jokes and name dropping. Most of those revolved around Wil Wheaton — and, yes, were amusing. But there were just so, so many of them it became annoying, I started calling this book “Leverage: Forbeck Less-Than-Threes Wheaton.”
I’ll be back for the next book, because I was such a fan of the series and these characters, not because of this book — just thankful it’s a different author.
Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books by Tony Reinke
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was just not a book written for me — don’t need encouragement to read, and widely. Not crazy about his overall approach in the practical half of the book, either. Sure it’s advice, not edicts, but if you ask me, the reasoning is off.
And don’t get me started on that nonsense about marking-up books. Sure, I know a lot of people do it — even some of my friends — but people (even friends) watch Survivor or America’s Got Talent. Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Show some respect, Reinke, trees gave their lives for those things you’re covering with graffiti.
Every now and then, he overwrites a passage, but on the whole, a decent enough read, and it could be a decent tool in the right hands. Those hands just aren’t mine.
P. S. I wrote this a few months back, and honestly don’t remember much about the book — and that probably says more about its worth than my rantings above. The one thing that sticks in my mind is that overall, Reinke sees books as collections of resources to be mined. His question seems to be, “What can I get out of/use from this book?” It just seems to cheapen the act of reading — and overall, is disrespectful to the act of writing. The Preacher said, “The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings.” Now, sure, he was referring to an inspired book — but the same principle is in place no matter the book — each word, each idea is important — as is the aesthetic, the experience, and the gestalt of the book. I’d like to think a Christian way of reading would appreciate that. Each nail (word) is there for a purpose, we shouldn’t overlook that.
A slightly briefer version of this appears on Goodreads.
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Archie Meets Nero Wolfe: A Prequel to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe Mysteries by Robert Goldsborough
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Back in Junior High when I first discovered the Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin books, I was quite relieved to learn that his family had approved a new author to write new books in the series. Murder in E Minor was pretty good — even if it sort of spoiled A Family Affair, it read like Stout on an off-day. His follow-up, Death on a Deadline, did some interesting things and was good enough. But from there, the quality really started slipping, and I can honestly say I really didn’t enjoy Silver Spire or The Missing Chapter at all — not because the latter was about an author continuing a popular series and dealing with backlash from the fans (that was actually sort of amusing). The passion and drive Goldsborough had initially was clearly gone — it’s this experience that keeps me from wholly embracing Ace Atkins as Spenser’s new scribe (as much as I really want to).
So why did I pick up Archie Meets Nero Wolfe? Well, it’d been eighteen years — so for Goldsborough to come back, there had to be a good reason — a story he cared about. He had time to get the voice right, the details “just so.” I was more than a little curious, too, just how did he see this initial meeting?
Oh, and, fine — I’ll be honest. You put out anything with the label “Nero Wolfe” on it and I’ll read it. Janet Evanovich, Nick Hornby, or Richard Russo wants to take a crack at it? I’ll bite.*
But, I did put it off for months. Take that, Goldsborough.
But I had hope. And that hope was buttressed after a few pages when I read:
…I got grilled by a surly lieutenant named Rowcliff, who had bulging eyes and a snarling voice that broke into a stutter when he got excited, which seemed to be much of the time.
He kept trying to get me to say that I fired at the robbers first. I was nervous, but when I wouldn’t budge off my story, his stuttering got worse, which would have been funny under different circumstances.
. That was a nice character moment. I looked forward to more of them. I even had Evernote ready to capture them like that one. That’s the only quotation I bothered grabbing.
There are two things you have to have (at this point) for an acceptable (if not good) Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin book. You need the characters we know and love and an interesting plot. Here, Goldsborough falls short on both counts.
To be fair(-ish), I thought he got Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin fairly close to right. Fritz and Rowcliff were pretty dead-on (and not really that present), maybe Stebbins, too. Cramer, Orrie and Bill were off. It was nice to spend some time with Del Bascom — and given how little time we spend with Bascom in the books, you can’t really judge how Goldsborough did with him.
Archie’s a tough one to peg — he’s new to New York at this time, fresh out of Ohio — so we can understand he’s not the detective we meet in Fer-de-Lance yet. He has to learn the city, learn more about being a detective — especially doing it Wolfe’s way, and essentially grow up. Sure, there’s traces of our man here — his attitude, his smart-mouth, his ability to handle himself in a moment of crisis. We see Archie’s appreciation for non-gourmet, but well-prepared, food — and a palate ready for education once he comes into Fritz’ influence. I don’t remember him being so fixated on coffee, either. I think there’s enough of Archie there to give Goldsborough credit for his characterization, but something’s holding me back.
I didn’t buy Wolfe at all — this is the big one. The others are seen in different lights than we normally are exposed to them, which can explain away a lot of the weaknesses of their portrayals — but you have to nail Wolfe or the whole thing is a waste of time. And beyond the beer, the dramatic entrance, his provision for guests . . . it was just a fat guy in a suit playing a part.
And as for plot? Pfui. This wasn’t much of a mystery, the bad guys do most of the work. Saul does almost everything commendable (and yes, you could make the argument that this is often the case) — Wolfe himself doesn’t solve much at all. He still holds the big gathering in his office — pretty much because he has to.
A lot of the attitudes expressed — say, for the child’s emotional well-being following the kidnapping, for example — seemed anachronistic. As did the language the characters used to describe that and similar ideas. I’d stopped caring by the point I noticed these piling up, so I didn’t take notes.
Lastly, I don’t buy at all the explanation Wolfe gives for hiring Archie. It’s just we’re at the end of the book, and it has to happen, so he makes up an excuse with no real justification behind it.
In the end, I’ve got to call this one unsatisfactory
If Robert Goldsborough dips back into this well? Will I read his next one? Yes, absolutely. I’ll hate myself, but I will.
I might wait a year or two, first.
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* I have nothing against any of these authors, at all, I like them a lot. I just don’t think they’re right for the books. Lee Goldberg, on the other hand…
Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
It’s like a December-May version of the movie Before Sunrise. Except instead of Ethan Hawke, you have a bitter ex-General (now Colonel) in the US Army with some sort of terminal cardiac condition. And instead of Julie Delpy, you have a young, selfish, stupid/naive girl (or at least one who acts stupid and naive). The relationship between the two is so skeevy that you can imagine that some reviewer came up with the word just to describe this. Okay, so it’s actually nothing like Before Sunrise in that it’s very talky and the couple spends the time bouncing around a European city.
There’s practically nothing redeeming about this novel — there are flashes of Hemingway’s brilliance. Occasionally — very occasionally — the couple’s dialogue is dynamite. The conversations the Colonel has with a portrait of the girl are almost completely superior and more interesting. You have sentences like
The Colonel breakfasted with the leisure of a fighter who has been clipped badly, hears four, and knows how to relax truly for five seconds more.
You can’t hate a book that contains things like that — as much as you might want to.
It’s books like this that make me wonder if I’m just not as savvy a reader as I think, that all the literature courses I took were a waste. This was just pointless — and not in an artistic, or even Seinfeld-esque manner. The conclusion was typical for Hemingway, and broadcast for about 90% of the book. And then you get the infuriating last line, which I’ll be honest, I don’t get. Was it supposed to be funny? Nihilistic? Something else? By this point, I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to get it.
Flashes of brilliance like I said, but not enough to warrant the time or effort involved. Spare yourself.
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