4 Stars - The Irresponsible Reader

by Loren D. Estleman
eARC, 192 pg.
Tyrus Books, 2017
Read: March 24 – 30, 2017

I’ve heard about the stories in this volume for years, but have never tracked one down before — and then a whole collection of them show up on NetGalley! How could I not request it? I’m so glad this book exists so that those of us who don’t get the magazines, etc. that publish short mystery fiction can have them (and even those who do have access to those magazines, etc. can have them in one handy volume).

Anyway, here’s the setup: Claudius Lyon is a huge fan of Nero Wolfe — he reads every one of the reports that Archie Goodwin’s literary agent Rex Stout publishes. He’s such a fan that he wants to be Wolfe (like the guys dressing up in Batsuits in The Dark Knight Rises) — he’s fat, fairly clever, and wealthy enough not to need to work and still indulge himself. He renovates his townhouse to include a greenhouse, an elevator, and a first floor floorplan that pretty much matches Wolfe’s. He hires a private chef — a kosher chef of dubious quality (not that Lyon needs to eat kosher, it’s just what Gus can cook), changes his name to something that approximates his hero’s and hires a “man of action,” Arnie Woodbine. Arnie’s an ex-con, small-time crook who doesn’t mind (too much) putting up with his looney boss for a steady paycheck and meals.

The number of ways that Lyon isn’t Wolfe is pretty large and I won’t spoil your fun in discovering them. Now, Lyon’s unlicensed as a PI, so he can’t take on paying clients — but he occasionally gets people who will take him up on his free services. He’s decent at solving puzzles and low-priority mysteries (not that he doesn’t find his way into something bigger on occasion). Once he gets a client (non-paying, Arnie’d have me stress), he goes through whatever steps he needs to figure it out (including his own version of Wolfe’s lip movement and sending Arnie on fact-finding missions), and goes to some lengths to assemble some sort of audience for his reveal. I can’t help smiling as I think about it, really.

The whole thing is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Nero Wolfe/Rex Stout — recognizing the brilliance of the Stout’s work (how can you not?), while poking fun at it. Lyon’s really a goofy character and Woodbine is great at pointing that out — while begrudgingly admitting that he gets things right every now and then. There’s a lot of fun to be had in the story telling — the mysteries aren’t all that much to get excited about, it’s in watching Lyon stumble through his cases that the entertainment is found. Well, that and Woodbine’s commentary.

Not unlike many of the Wolfe stories (particularly the short stories).

I wouldn’t recommend reading more than two of these stories in a sitting, I think they work best as solo shots. It’s a difficult call, because I typically wanted to go on for one more. Also, I’m not sure how enjoyable these’d be for non-Wolfe readers — but then again, I think a lot of the humor would hold up and it might entice a reader to learn more about Lyon’s idol. And anything that gets people to read Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels is a good thing.

But for readers of Stout’s Wolfe novels? This is a must read. He’s not trying and failing to recapture Stout’s magic (see Goldsborough post-The Bloodied Ivy), he’s intentionally missing and yet somehow getting a little of it. I really enjoyed this book and can easily see me re-reading it a handful of times.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from Adams Media via NetGalley in exchange for this post — thanks to both for this.

Startup by Doree Shafrir

By HCNewton

On May 8, 2017

In Fiction, General Fiction/Literature

Startup

by Doree Shafrir

eARC, 304 pg.
Little, Brown and Company, 2017

Read: May 2, 2017

It’s hard to give a thumbnail pitch for this book — my gut wants to compare it to Coupland’s Microserfs, just because I liked that so much. But it’s more like a feminist Po Bronson’s The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest, I think. It’s been about 20 years since I read that, and my memory is more than fuzzy on the details. It’s about web/app-based companies in New York and the strange (especially to outsiders) culture that surrounds them. You don’t have to know a lot about tech — or venture capitalism — to appreciate this, however. You just have to know about people.

Because at the end of the day, this book isn’t really about startup culture, apps or technology — it’s about people. There are 5 central characters — and a couple that hover around central — to this book, and yes, they’re all involved with startups, but that’s just where they happen to be. You could set this novel in the Wall Street culture of the mid 80’s and not have to change much about it at all, because the relationships, the people are what matter — not the industries/subcultures they’re in.

You’ve got Mack McAllister — the driving force and face of TakeOff — an app promoting mindfulness, happiness and productivity; he seems pretty harmless (initially, anyway), but gets reckless with money and sloppy with interpersonal issues — when that starts to snowball out of control, he then crosses the line into something worse. Isabel is in charge of Engagement and Marketing for TakeOff, she had a little thing with Mack awhile ago, but has started to see someone else recently. Sabrina works for Isabel, is ten years her senior, but has just got back in the workforce after having kids — she’s got some money problems and a husband that seems to be checked out of the relationship and parenting. His name is Dan, and he’s an editor for a Tech News website — he’s pretty oblivious to a lot, really (like his wife’s problems) and the crush he has on one of his reporters (actually, he may be very aware of that, come to think of it). Her name is Katya, the child of Russian immigrants — a hungry reporter, trying to figure out just how to make it in the world where journalism is judged by quantifiable results (views, shares, retweets). Katya needs a break, and stumbles upon a story about Mack — and Isabel — and this could be the thing to solidify her position at the news site.

That’s all you really need to know going in — actually, I knew far less, so that’s more than you need to know. You take those people and their goals, their problems — but ’em in a blender and this book comes out. It’s pretty easy to see how — the part that isn’t obvious is how Shafrir accomplishes this. She does it by: 1. making these all very relatable characters, with strengths and weaknesses; 2. by making even the villains of the piece not that villain-y (I’m not saying, for example, that Mack is a paragon of virtue — he does some horrible things, but he never sets out to be horrible, he just ends up that way); 3. by making the heroes of the piece not all that heroic — just people trying to do (and keep) their jobs, while not screwing up the rest of their life.

I love the fact that Sabrina and Katya are both pretty serious grammar Nazis who find themselves in jobs where they have to do so much that violates grammar — it’s a nice touch, and I enjoyed their reactions to poor grammar. Similarly, Katya’s attitude toward smoking is a lot of fun to read about — but not really something you want to inculcate to kids, or even see in someone in real life.

This is Shafrir’s first novel, but she’s been writing for forever — most notably as an online journalist. She knows the world she’s depicting, she’s lived it and wrote about it — this is just a barely fictionalized version of her reality, so it reeks of authenticity. I have no doubt I could find people very much like her main characters without trying very hard if I put myself in the right cities. She’s not so close to this world that she can’t comment on it, nor is she so close to it that she’s bitter, nasty and cynical about it.

There’s a very slow build to this book — around the 40% mark, I noticed that while I was enjoying the book, appreciating the writing, and so on — I wasn’t really “hooked” by it, I wasn’t invested in any of the characters, which I thought was odd. So, I resolved to make note of when it happened, to see if it was an event, or a development with a character or whatever that prompted it. By the time I hit 80%, the hook was set (it happened well before then, but don’t ask me where), but there wasn’t anything that I could point to that did it. Just slowly but surely, these people and their individual struggles wormed their way into my subconscious. Which is a great way for a book to be — not that I mind those that hook you from the start, or those that a have a big, dramatic moment that grabs you — but those that gradually get you without you noticing.

The ending sneaks up on you — I really didn’t realize the novel ended when it did — I got to the words “Acknowledgements” on the next page before I realized that the book had ended. I really liked the way it ended (once I figured out it happened), even if I found the last sentence annoying. I still do, actually — but I see what she was going for and she achieved it. But I still would’ve liked a few more pages to follow that last sentence.

I can’t help feeling like I should have a lot more to say about this book — but I can’t figure out how to do so without giving everything away. So I’d better leave it by saying that I really liked these people, Shafrir’s writing, and the way she told a story. Startup was honest, heart-felt, compassionate, and real — this debut is as strong as it is winning. I hope to read more from Shafrir in the future.

—–

4 Stars

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from Little, Brown and Company via NetGalley in exchange for this post — thanks to both for this.

Pub Day Repost: The Best of Adam Sharp by Graeme Simsion

By HCNewton

On May 2, 2017

In Fiction, General Fiction/Literature

The Best of Adam Sharp

by Graeme Simsion
eARC, 352 pg.
St. Martin’s Press, 2017
Read: April 17 – 18, 2017

If my life prior to February 15, 2012, had been a song, it might have been “Hey Jude,” a simple piano tune, taking my sad and sorry adolescence and making it better. In the middle, it would pick up—better and better— for a few moments foreshadowing something extraordinary. And then: just na-na-na-na, over and over, pleasant enough, but mainly because it evoked what had gone before.

That’s the first paragraph, and I’m betting 80% of reviewers will be quoting that — how can you not? You get a sense of Adam, his musical taste, how much music means to him/the way he thinks — and you get the novel’s mood. In the next few pages, you get an idea what Adam’s life is like in February 2012 — his relationship, his relationship with his mother, the nostalgia (and maybe more) he feels towards a country he lived in while he was young and his first great (greatest?) love.

Then we end the introduction with this paragraph that pushes us into the novel:

No matter now. I would soon have more immediate matters to occupy my mind. Later that day, as I continued my engagement with the past, scouring the Internet for music trivia in the hope of a moment of appreciation at the pub quiz, a cosmic DJ—perhaps the ghost of my father—would lift the needle on the na-na-na-nas of “Hey Jude,”say, “Nothing new happening here,”and turn it to the flip side.

“Revolution.”

On the flip side is an email from The One Who Got Away (“got” isn’t necessarily the best term — “slipped away”, “blindly walked away from”, “made the greatest mistake of your life with” — come closer). Angelina was a night-time soap actress that Adam had an affair with while he lived in Australia while working on a contract job in 1989. Over the next couple of chapters Adam reminisces about his time with Angelina — it’s a heckuva love story. It’s an even better doomed-love story since we all know it’s coming to an end, and he’s able to tell it that way.

This email is the first communication she’s attempted since she informed Adam that she was getting married before he had a chance to come back.

We also get a compressed history of Adam and Claire (his might-as-well-be wife), their 15+ year relationship — the ups, downs, and obvious commitment. Even if the romance is largely gone, there’s something strong under-girding their bond. Right? Maybe? Probably? And I do mean compressed — their decade and change is given less space than the few months Angelina and Adam have. We also see what’s going on in the Spring of 2012 with their relationship, and how this new email correspondence fits in with Adam’s life.

Part II of the book is focused on what happens when Adam and Angelina reconnect in person for a few days months later. Which is really all I can say about that. Well, it takes almost the same amount of space as the first part (ecopy, so I can’t do page counts, so these are just estimates) — so it’s obviously a lot more detailed.

I loved Part I — totally. The feel of it, seeing the changes for the better that Adam goes through thanks to the confidence boost that emailing Angelina gives him. Watching his relationship with Claire improve at the same time. All the while enjoying the 1989 story, too, sharing that feeling of nostalgia and more with him. It’s just so well done.

But Part II? I had serious problems with. I cannot detail them without ruining the book for you all. But people just don’t act the way most (if not all) of our primary characters do here. There are just too many psychological, emotional, spiritual and moral problems with what happens, how people react (both in the heat of the moment and in the cool light of day) — people, real people, just can’t do this and survive in any meaningful fashion.

We also do meet Angelina’s husband, Charlie, and I have so many conflicting opinions about him — on the one hand he appears to be good guy, generous, gracious (and other positive adjectives that don’t start with “g”) . . . but he’s dishonest with everyone (possibly including himself), manipulative, cold, calculating . . . I want to state that he’s not physically or mentally abusive, because my description of him almost sounds like it. Things would be less murky if he was.

Angelina is equally troubling — both in how she acts toward Charlie, her children and Adam. I’m not incredibly certain that I’m pleased with the way she treats herself (or if she’s true to her chosen vocation or character). I can understand a lot of how Adam comports himself, but at some point, I needed him to call the whole thing off (anyone else could’ve, but it wasn’t in their character at the moment).

The whole thing at the point became the car wreck you pass by on the Interstate and try to not gawk at.

I can’t find the exact quotation, but Nora Ephron said something about Sleepless in Seattle not being a love story, but a story about movie love (Rosie O’Donnell’s character says something similar in the film). About the only way I can handle huge portions of this book is thinking of it in similar terms — Part II isn’t about actual love, romance/commitment between two human beings — but it’s about love in fiction, romance/commitment between two fictional characters. If I think of Adam and Angelina (and Charlie and Claire) as actual people, I feel a mix of pity and repugnance for all involved (well, no repugnance for one of them, but I’ll leave it at that) — along with a strong desire to get a pastor and/or psychologist to their doorsteps. But if I think of them as fictional characters — which, I guess is what they are, as much as one doesn’t like to admit that — I can feel that revulsion and sympathy and just hope that they’re able to have decent lives.

But the writing? Simsion’s craft here is what kept me going through my distaste — and what’s going to compel me to give it a higher rating than I initially thought I would. Everything I thought/hoped he was capable of after The Rosie Project is on full display here — and, honestly, Adam Sharp is probably a better novel than it’s predecessors. Yes, there are comic moments, but this isn’t as funny as the Rosie books, so don’t look for a similar experience. But the emotional palate is richer, more varied — deeper.

The use of music throughout — as Adam’s refuge and outlet, the way that he bonds with people, and the songs used for various purposes — is just dynamite. Well, almost dynamite — Cher’s “Walking in Memphis” rather than Marc Cohn’s? Really? (both in the playlist and novel) One of the problems with musicians in novels who write their own material (Alex Bledsoe’s Tufa, Andy Abramowitz’s Tremble, Hornby’s Tucker Crowe, etc.) who use other’s songs, is that you have to imagine the music, imagine the skill, imagine the feeling. But with Adam (or Doyle’s The Commitments) you can take a shortcut through that and know exactly what feelings, sounds, rhythms, and so on are to be conjured up (Simsion gives us the exact album version sometimes so we can’t get it wrong). I’m sure there are articles to be written about the music here and how it serves, propels, shapes the plot — but I don’t have that kind of time.

Oh, I can’t forget to mention — the official playlist for this is killer. I wish I’d have had an Internet connection available while I was reading it, I’m sure it’d have been a bonus. It’s definitely helping while I write — but there’s some good stuff there for just good listening.

I was genuinely excited to read this book — while I wasn’t especially taken with The Rosie Effect, I loved The Rosie Project — I’m pretty sure it made my Top 10 that year, and I recommended it to everyone I could think of online and in person. So when a new book by Simsion was announced — and not another Rosie book — I preordered it, and jumped on the opportunity when I saw it on NetGalley. And then that Introduction hooked me hard. Part I was wonderful. But man . . . I just couldn’t handle Part II. Which leaves me in a pickle when it comes to this post, you know?

I admired this book more than I enjoyed it — though I need to stress I really enjoyed parts of it. I’d love to heartily recommend this, I wish I could — but I can only do so with reservations. There’s so much I object to going on in these pages that I can’t, while I can respect Simsion’s work — and I know this book achieved everything he wanted. I’ll give it 4 Stars on merit, not my own enjoyment.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley in exchange for this post — thanks to both for this.
N.B.: As this was an ARC, any quotations above may be changed in the published work — I will endeavor to verify them as soon as possible.

—–

4 Stars

The Best of Adam Sharp by Graeme Simsion

By HCNewton

On April 27, 2017

In Fiction, General Fiction/Literature

The Best of Adam Sharp

by Graeme Simsion

eARC, 352 pg.
St. Martin’s Press, 2017

Read: April 17 – 18, 2017