Revised review - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 1818

Well it had to happen sometime - I updated and expanded a review from one I did in 1998.  Check out Frankenstein and especially the edition I just read.  Amazing.  Lynd Ward's illustrations update the feeling of the novel, but keep the dread, the power and the drama.

Updated review - http://thebookmarque.blogspot.com/2006/08/frankenstein-mary-wollstonecraft.html
Link to edition from Fall River Press - http://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-Lynd-Illustrated-Mary-Shelley/dp/0486470539/ref=pd_cp_b_0  (this isn't the version I have, but the only one I can find that is still available readily - do a search of Lynd Ward and Frankenstein and see what comes up, you might find one used or remaindered.)

Here are a couple of the illustrations -

Spider by Patrick McGrath, 1990

Read again in 2010

Synopsis:  Spider is gaunt, threadbare, unnerved by everything from his landlady to the smell of gas.  He tells us his story in a storm of beautiful language that slowly reveals itself as a fiendishly layered construction of truth and illusion.  With echoes of Beckett, Poe and Paul Bowles, SPIDER is a tale of horror and madness, storytelling and skepticism, a novel whose dizzying style lays bare the deepest layers of subconscious terror.



Oh the difficulty in reviewing a book of such subtle power and deliberation.  The precision of craft and vision is truly staggering.  Often when reading a McGrath novel I have to pause and reflect on just how high a level of perfection he achieves marrying story to narrator to technique.  Re-reading passages is another ritual I seldom perform with other authors so dead is the language compared to McGrath’s.  


As expected with any of his novels, the narrator is unreliable.  Slowly over the course of the story the reader will realize this and be forced to wonder how much (if any) of what she’s reading is real.  So much in Spider’s tale is impossible for him to know, yet he tells us anyway and we can’t help but form a catalog of ideas based upon this “knowledge”.  Allegory, imagery and misdirection play a large role and make teasing apart the layers a delight, especially when something is revealed and we have a delicious “ah-ha” moment.  There are many of them to savor in this harrowing tale of madness and self-deception.


Every time I read a McGrath novel I’m strengthened in my opinion that he writes madness the most convincingly of any writer I’ve encountered.  Here are some examples -


Spider is convinced there is something in the attic making noise and driving him crazy -
“(Dear God I wish silence would descend on this house!  They’ve started up again, and they seem to be stamping up there now, they keep it up for minutes on end and then collapse, helpless, apparently, with laughter.  I’ve been standing on my chair and banging on the ceiling with my shoe, but it does no good at all, in fact it only seems to make things worse.  Mrs. Wilkinson has much to answer for, and the disturbance of my sleep by these creatures is not he least of it.  And my insides still hurt!)”  (p 74)


and  later on page 88 -


Spider identifies with his father’s feeling of malevolence upon finding the other-worldly physical state of his garden where he has buried the wife he murdered -
“(I know this feeling, I too have been tormented in this way, I too have felt them clacking and clicking round the back of my head like the teeth of a hound, like a cloud of chattering gnats, in fact the sound is rarely absent, though most of the time it is mercifully subdued, more of a hum than anything else.)"


Bit by bit, chinks are showing in his armor, he’s losing his ability to keep track of his concealment of his madness.  He’s losing what he feels is his control.  Spider is escaping the back room more and more.  Some more examples -


Spider feels like the memories he’s writing don’t come from his head, but from his pencil -
“When this happens I have the curious sensation not of writing but of being written, and it has come to arouse in me feelings of terror, faint at first but growing stronger day by day.” (p 134)


“All is quiet in the attic now and my terror has abated, to some extent.  My relationship to this book is changing:  when I began to write I intended to record the conclusions I’d arrived at about the events of the autumn and winter of my thirteenth year; and in the process I thought I’d buttress and support myself, shore up my shaky identity, for since being discharged I have not been strong.  But all this has changed; I write now to control the terror that comes when the voices start up in the attic each night.  They have grown worse, you see, much worse and it is only with the flow of my own words that I am able to block out the clamor of theirs.  I dare not think of the consequences were I to stop writing and listen to them.” (p 150)


At first Spider can separate the timelines in his story - the one in the present; writing in the journal, his daily routine and suspicions, and the story of his past.  Then the lines blur and within paragraphs the two timelines collide, as they had previously been separated.  Then even within a single sentence they both lay, intertwined.  I truly believe this is what it must be like to be insane.   It’s during this pitch that McGrath’s writing is at its strongest.  He has such control of the narrative, subtly shifting the tone and perspective of how Spider understands his life and how he chooses to reveal or conceal it.  There is so much to love about this novel and I’m going nowhere with this review so I’ll wrap it up by saying if you’ve never read a McGrath, do yourself a favor and read one immediately.  You won’t be disappointed.

The Professionals by Owen Laukkanen, 2012

Read as an ARC in 2012

Synopsis: Four friends, recent college graduates, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it's no joke. For two years, the strategy they devise-quick, efficient, low risk-works like a charm. Until they kidnap the wrong man.

Now two groups they've very much wanted to avoid are after them-the law, in the form of veteran state investigator Kirk Stevens and hotshot young FBI agent Carla Windermere, and an organized-crime outfit looking for payback. As they all crisscross the country in deadly pursuit and a series of increasingly explosive confrontations, each of them is ultimately forced to recognize the truth: The true professionals, cop or criminal, are those who are willing to sacrifice . . . everything.

The blurbers on the front could not have read this book and still described it as “spectacular”, “top-notch”, “brutally beautiful”, “really terrific” or even “satisfying”, but that’s what they all did.  Now I KNOW blurbers are paid to say nice things, but come on, if you’re going to slap your name on a product, don’t you think you should know if it’s crap or not?  Oy vey.  Same with the folks giving this book 4 and 5 stars...I wonder if we read the same book.

The premise was pretty interesting.  If it wasn’t I wouldn’t have picked this as an ARC, but by the third paragraph, which is just one, big awful sentence, I knew things were going to go downhill.  Don’t believe me?  Behold -

“It was dusk by the time he stepped onto the platform, the crisp October air and the chill wind off Lake Michigan already hinting at the long winter ahead, and Warner shivered involuntarily and pulled his coat close around him as he joined the rest of the Highland Park commuters, a uniform crush of tailored suits and tasteful ties and thousand-collar briefcases, a collective desire to get home, get warm, get fed.”

Here are my notes as I read -

Staccato style is overly done.  The whole thing seems like dialogue. No one should write narrative like dialogue.  Can’t anyone create with language anymore?

Clunky sentences, weird word usage.

Having read all the Prey novels, reading about the BCA from someone else was weird.  I mean there are 20 or so Prey books and what, 6 Flowers books, can’t someone come up with something new?

SAC @ the BCA (Lesley?) = caricature local angry cop.

Aren’t there any normal women? Why does Windermere HAVE to be beautiful?  Hello wish fulfillment.

Stevens has to be afraid to fly...that’s so original.  Well at least he’s not an alcoholic, too.  Oh and why doesn’t he look like George Clooney?

OMG stop calling Sawyer big guy, ok?!!!

oh and now Stevens is big guy, too.

and now some thugs who are also big guys.  Are we up the beanstalk?

Juvenile dialogue, everyone talks like they’re 15.

Boss?  Really?  Sawyer calls Pender boss?  OMG.  All I could picture was Tattoo from Fantasy Island after a while, but then I remembered that Sawyer was a big guy.

Too stagy and scene-driven.  Every chapter is 4 pages long.

How is a desk jockey with no big cases behind her and no clout suddenly a big shot?

Face his team??  Pender’s team???!!  Oy vey.

Lunkhead?  Dangerous cats?  Cats??  Who talks like this??  The slang was a weird combination of Gilligan’s Island and Shaft.


The “team” was alternately believable then asininely stupid or insightful the next.  They blundered into stupid situations and got out of them with a lot of luck.  Up against people with years more experience, craftiness and understanding, they somehow manage to take them down. Witness the totally off the charts scene in the old train yard...there is NO WAY they’d prevail in that situation, yet they do.  But then right after they make rookie mistakes like they’re supposed to.  I wish the author would have stuck with one track - either these “kids” (who are almost 30, btw) are inexperienced and can only handle the mildest of cluster fucks, or they’re the professionals of the title and never make those mistakes and take out folks who should by all rights hand them their punk asses.  Not both.  And Tiffany’s involvement was just stupid.  Stupid.

The fake sexual tension between Windermere and Stevens was eye-rollingly bad.  Ditto for Stevens’s home life which was overly sympathetic, touchy-feely, sexy and perfect.  Toward the end I really disliked Windermere.  I found her caustic, blinkered and trying way too hard to prove herself.  A boor.  Stevens had a bit more credibility, but there isn’t enough that is interesting about him to make me want to spend anymore time with him.  Rumor has it that there will be more books featuring this duo.  Ugh.  Sorry Mr. Laukkanen, you may have gotten others to fall for it, but not this little gray duck.

My Antonia by Willa Cather, 1918

Read in 2012

Synopsis:  My Ántonia chronicles the life of Ántonia, a Bohemian immigrant woman, as seen through the eyes of Jim, the man unable to forget her. Jim, now a successful New York lawyer, recollects his upbringing on a Nebraska farm. Even after 20 years, Ántonia continues to live a romantic life in his imagination. When he returns to Nebraska, he finds Ántonia has lived a battered life. Although the man to whom she dedicated her life abandons her, she remains strong and full of courage.

While I didn’t love this novel, I did like the way the story was told and the emotions it evoked.  Living in the western US in the early 20th century was no picnic.  I had to laugh at myself and pretty much everyone else in modern society for being such wimps.  Antonia worked like a dog and seemed to be fulfilled by it.  She liked to work as hard as a man did and was restless and bored when she had to live in town.  It wasn’t just her, everyone worked themselves to death, but considered it their place; a higher calling even.  They were pioneers and that was an amazing thing to them.  Not everyone could be one; they were a people set apart.  Out in the wilderness carving out civilization an acre at a time.

Not all of it was terribly civil though.  The attitudes and customs of the newer immigrants were treated with suspicion.  In turn the immigrants distrusted the more established Americans and longed for the land they had left.  I have to agree with someone in the novel who suggested that they go back if they found it to be so horrible.  Instead, one kills himself out of despair rather than learn the language or adapt.  It was the beginning of my phase of distaste and outright dislike for Antonia and the rest of her family. They were terrible neighbors and Jim’s grandfather just took it and never taught them a lesson in how to get along.  

It was a phase though, and when Antonia and the rest of the family began to act like part of the community I fell back into my previous attitude toward her; puzzlement.  I couldn’t figure out why Jim (or anyone else) found her so beguilingly attractive.  She wasn’t to me.  She was just an uneducated farm kid who became an uneducated mother to a herd of kids in the end.  She didn’t strike me as anyone special since 100s of other women were in the same position as she was.  I didn’t get it and so the story stayed distanced from me, like an old movie I know I’m supposed to appreciate for its artful direction, dialog or photography, but one that just doesn’t light me up inside.  I can understand why others love My Antonia; it’s very beautifully written and romantic, but it didn’t reach me if you know what I mean.  It stayed remote and untouchable.  I couldn’t help comparing it to The Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner and how the story of those pioneering people really did reach me and I could easily imagine them as real people.  Cather didn’t bring that home to me with this novel.  I can see why some would love it, I’m just not one of them.

The Aeneid by Virgil (Vergil) c. 20 BC

Read in 2011 (Translated by Patric Dickenson)

Synopsis:  Aeneas the True - son of Venus and of a mortal father - escapes from Troy after it is sacked by the conquering Greeks. He undergoes many trials and adventures on a long sea journey, from a doomed love affair in Carthage with the tragic Queen Dido to a sojourn in the underworld. All the way, the hero is tormented by the meddling of the vengeful Juno, Queen of the Gods and a bitter enemy of Troy, but his mother and other gods protect Aeneas from despair and remind him of his ultimate destiny - to find the great city of Rome. Reflecting the Roman peoples' great interest in the myth' of their origins, Virgil (70-19 BC) made the story of Aeneas glow with a new light in his majestic epic.


Several reviews characterize The Aeneid as a slog and I agree.  Compared to The Iliad and Odyssey it definitely is a more difficult story to get through.  Partly for its self-aggrandizement of the Roman people and foundation, partly for its huge chunks of backstory and wild justification, but mostly for the insufferable gods and goddesses.  Oh my head that was painful.  Everyone it seems has a stake in Aeneas’s fate, but of course they are almost all at odds with each other and none seem to know what the others were doing.  Every once in a while Zeus/Jove/Jupiter gets involved and lackadaisically makes a decision, but for the most part Venus and Juno get to butt heads and see who can mess with the participants the most in order to fulfill her ends.

To some degree it’s a foregone conclusion since Vergil is writing this epic to give validation and divine permission to Augustus (his patron) and the Claudian and Julian families for crushing the life out of the Roman Republic.   That means that Aeneas has to be perfect.  Noble.  Brave.  Pious.  Clear-sighted.  Righteous.  Determined.  Bor-ring!  There wasn’t enough humanity about Aeneas for me to connect with him.  He was the correct embodiment of all that Roman Patrician families strive for in their men and he came off robot-like and stilted.  Give me the much-maligned Odysseus any day.