Okay, I have to admit: Sometimes I just don’t get it. Whenever I read a book or short story, listen to a song, or watch a movie, I ask myself: What’s the point of this? What is the artist trying to say? Are they trying to get me to feel something? Are they showing me a different perspective on something? Are they preaching, or are they entertaining? And sometimes I come away none the wiser. It’s rare, but it happens.

UNTOUCHABLE by Scott O’Connor falls into the aforementioned rarity category. After reading it, I have no idea what I’m supposed to take away from the novel, other than a general sense of malaise and melancholy. It’s bleak and depressing, much like real life.

Sixth-grader Whitley Darby, also referred to as “The Kid,” recently lost his mother; a school teacher, she fell over dead (face first) in class. Whitley is attempting to deal with that, as well as the fact that he is constantly picked on by his classmates. You would think that his peers would cut him a break considering he lost his mom and all, but no, these kids are strictly from the Heartless Bully School of Hard Knocks Academy (that’s a made-up school, by the way).

Whitley gets picked on, his best friend and former comic book reading ally has become fanatically religious, and his dad — a crime scene cleanup person — is off in a world of his own. Dad sleeps in his truck every night because he can’t bear to sleep in the bed he once shared with his wife. He’s also convinced that she didn’t just die of natural causes; he has thoughts that she committed suicide.   

You ask, “Can it get any more depressing?” Yes, it can.

Whitley has stopped talking. Since he didn’t witness his mother dying, he suspects that she is still alive somewhere. His friend tells him that if he makes a covenant with God, sacrifice something, that maybe God will give him what he wants. And of course, all Whitley wants is for Mom to come home, so he stops talking in order to make this covenant.
              
I wish I could tell you more about this book, but that’s about it. Nothing gets resolved, and if there’s a message, I didn’t pick up on it. Sure, the writing is descriptive and it’s easy to see what the characters see. There are some nice touches, like Whitley’s obsession with talk shows and his desire to be host one. The fact that he no longer speaks may be a stumbling block for his career path, but a mute Johnny Carson is not out of the realm of possibility. (I would actually prefer a mute Jay Leno, but that’s my personal preference.)

I just didn’t get whatever the author was trying to convey. If his message is that life can be hard and unforgiving, and that things don’t always get resolved, well, I got that.

But the point of this book? I didn’t get it. —Slade Grayson

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THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER, the second novel in Monte Schulz’s Jazz Age trilogy, shows another side to his writing. Instead of showing the dark underbelly of society through the eyes of 19-year-old Alvin Pendergast, as in THIS SIDE OF JORDAN, we are treated to three very distinct women and their stations in life. This novel is connected to the previous one, since the characters are connected by family. But it’s only in a letter that any mention of Alvin is made, so anyone coming to this book first will not be lost.

Widowed Maude Hennessey is at her wit’s end with her daughter, Rachel, a spoiled girl who lives her life frivolously and spends her days with a young pilot. Then there is Marie Hennessey, forced to live with her mother-in-law, Maude, as her husband goes off to find work to support his family.

This is a household that is literally a family of extremes, with Maude taking the matriarch part to heart, to the point of lecturing her daughter-in-law about how life is in the South — Texas, to be precise — since Marie has come to face-to-face with how society treats those of a different race within the opening pages.

Schulz has come up with an extraordinary tale of the plight of not only women of the time, but how racism plays a central part. When the story hits its climax, it resembles such mob-justice tales as THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, only for the situation to be defused by the actions of persons who have seen enough.

ROSE works as a companion piece to JORDAN, but at the same time, stands on its own. The best way to describe is as the calm before the storm, meaning the onset of the Great Depression. This novel should move Schulz to an even wider audience, which he clearly deserves. One can only wonder how this trilogy will conclude. I’ll patiently wait. —Bruce Grossman

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Seeing a review of any book by such a lofty literary figure as Joyce Carol Oates on this site is sure to raise an eyebrow or two, but her readers and followers of various anthologies know that the author is no stranger to genre fiction. (A story of hers is included in the recent James Ellroy and Otto Penzler-edited BEST AMERICAN NOIR OF THE CENTURY, for example.) In fact, GIVE ME YOUR HEART, her latest collection of short stories, is her second gathering of TALES OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE, as the subtitle has it, with 2006′s THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES being the first.

In general, what you’ll find here are highly literate, expertly crafted stories rich in character detail and psychology. But these features are often at the expense of what is generally regarded as mystery and suspense.

Take “Strip Poker,” for example. In this story, an adventurous adolescent girl finds herself surrounded by a group of threatening young boys. She agrees to take part in their game of strip poker to give her more time to figure out how to escape unharmed. But during all of this, Oates goes so deep into the girl’s past and fleeting recollections that we almost forget her current conflict.

In “Smother,” a woman’s recurring dream is suddenly seen as a memory of a murder she witnessed as a small child. This memory will pit her against her already estranged mother, especially when the woman suspects her deceased father as the murderer. Here, too, the author’s probing details into her characters are both fascinating and revealing, especially as to the ambiguous nature of the woman herself. But by the time she is finished with all of it, the story itself is left dangling.
 
Far more effective are entries like “Split/Brain,” a mesmerizing following of a woman’s speeding thoughts as she realizes the life-threatening danger she is in and the alternative ways she might deal with it. Or the title tale, where a dying academic who has publicly declared the donation of his internal organs after death receives a letter from a former lover who makes an impassioned claim for his dead heart.
 
Like those mentioned above, women are the main characters in most of the book’s contents, and the loss or love or the obsessive need for love of one kind or another is what motivates their actions.
 
Readers new to Oates will find in these stories a technique similar to the celebrated works of George Pelecanos or Laura Lippman: that is, a crime — either already committed or contemplated — lurking in the shadows of the characters and their stories. Such mystery or suspense as there is concerns not so much who committed the crime as much as why it happened or the lingering consequences among those involved.

Collections like this and its predecessor are not likely to cause retailers to move Oates’s previous works from the general fiction section to the mystery shelves, nor is it entirely correct to see her as one of those authors championing the merits of crime fiction to the rest of the literary world. She remains, as always, an extremely gifted, prolific and highly honored writer. If she finds that a finished work is more appropriate for ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE than THE KENYON REVIEW, well, so be it!

So mosey on down to the fiction section and treat yourself this collection of stories by a mainstream author who occasionally hangs out in our neighborhood. You’ll find her an initiated and welcomed guest — and you’ll probably look forward to her next visit. —Alan Cranis

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The ever-reliable Walter Mosley takes a break from his Leonid McGill mystery series (THE LONG FALL, KNOWN TO EVIL) and briefly revisits contemporary Los Angeles with his new novel, THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY, an emotionally wrenching but moving and fulfilling standalone.

Ptolemy Grey is 91 years old, and lives alone in an apartment full of junk and debris, and with a mind full of conflicting, fleeing thoughts and confusing memories. His family has all but forgotten him, except for Reggie, his great grandnephew who frequently tries his best to take care him. One day, Reggie stops appearing.

Not long afterward, another grandnephew, all but a distant memory to Ptolemy, shows up to help him cash his retirement checks and buy some groceries. Like many who know him, the young relative takes advantage of the old man’s frail health and faulty memory by stealing his money. To make matters worse, Ptolemy soon learns that Reggie is dead, the victim of a drive-by shooting.

At Reggie’s wake, Ptolemy meets Robyn, a pretty young girl Ptolemy’s niece has taken in. Before long, Robyn visits Ptolemy and, outraged by his living conditions, cleans his apartment and fixes his bathroom so the toilet will flush again. As they spend more time together, Robyn becomes a light that has long been lost in Ptolemy’s life, and he begins to feel the kind of love he long gave up for lost.

Then, during a visit to a social service center, Ptolemy is referred to a doctor who is doing experiments with a drug intended to treat dementia and improve memory. It won’t prolong Ptolemy’s life — in fact, the side effects might mean he won’t live to see 92 — but he agrees to the treatments and begins the injections.
 
Following a two-day coma, with his brain flooded with dreams from his past, Ptolemy wakes to feverish clarity and sense of purpose he hasn’t felt for decades. Now knowing and understanding the direction of his life, he immediately sets about to insure a legacy that will protect those he loves, and at the same time, right a violent wrong done to his family.

With his usual economy and precision in description of both the past and present, and with dialogue that often seems to sing from the pages, Mosley immerses us into the tangled mind and heartbreaking life of his main character. We see and experience the long life Ptolemy has lived, and the many lessons he has learned on his own, from the women he loved and lost, and especially from his friend and mentor, Coy McCann. It’s life full of poverty, pain and then abuse and neglect.

But along the way, it is also a life enhanced by love — which becomes the motivation and salvation in Ptolemy Grey’s last days.
 
While not as immediately appealing as his mystery novels, THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY is without question a masterly written and personally felt work that should be read by everyone.
 
And Walter Mosley’s name attached to it will certainly promise that it will. —Alan Cranis

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Editor’s note: We don’t review short stories on their own, but when Akashic Books asked us to participate in a crowdsourced review of Joe Meno’s DEMONS IN THE SPRING collection, we couldn’t say “no,” and were assigned “Animals in the Zoo.” Akashic invited 20 literary blogs to review one of 20 stories from the paperback edition; you can see the results here, with exclusive commentary from Meno.

Ever seen the 1965 family comedy ZEBRA IN THE KITCHEN, in which a kid opens all the zoo cages to free their residents, who cause playful havoc? Joe Meno’s “Animals in the Zoo” is like that. What about the 1977 horror film DAY OF THE ANIMALS, in which the beasts of the forest terrorize and slaughter unhappy campers? Joe Meno’s “Animals in the Zoo” is like that, too.

At once funny and ferocious, amusing and anxious, the five-page story details what happens what a brokenhearted zookeeper throws the cage doors wide open, to unleash the creatures within on an unsuspecting populace. But the animals, accustomed to their bubble-like habitat, stay put for a while, not knowing what to do.

Jump-cut to third-grader Emily Dot, who’s harboring problems of her own, having received a less-than-admirable report from school. She’ll have to face the consequences from her father, which is what’s about to go down as Meno suddenly slams the two story threads together.

Much like the Dots, once the collision occurs, you’re not sure whether it’s folly or fear, so you feel a little of both. Mind you, this chunky blend of child-like wonder and middle-aged unease is communicated all in five pages — three and a half, if you take away the illustrations — which isn’t easy to do.

It’s also not easy to make me laugh, but Meno manages that accomplishment, too, when he introduces Mr. Dot: “He is in sales, a project manager. He has been known to manage a project or two in his time, you better believe it.”

Lines like that makes “Animals” a standout, you better believe it. —Rod Lott

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Jonathan Lethem is currently one of those young favorites of the East Coast literati crowd who, like Michael Chabon, was influenced early by genre fiction. And unlike Chabon, Lethem keeps a much tighter reign on this influence in his own works, although he did edit the popular Library of America reissues of Philip K. Dick.

CHRONIC CITY, Lethem’s latest, is by no means a genre novel. Yet a few of those influences seem to creep along its edges. It’s narrated by Chase Insteadman, a former child star of a hit TV series. Chase hasn’t acted since the show ended production, and subsists these days mostly on residual checks and as a popular fixture at upscale dinner parties in New York City.

His current claim to fame is that he is the estranged fiancée of Janice Trumbull, an astronaut on an international space station whose reentry orbit is blocked by debris floating in the upper atmosphere. Janice writes aching love letters to Chase that are published in the national press and followed like a popular ongoing romance series.

One afternoon, while recording a voiceover for the accompanying disk of a DVD reissue collection — the closest thing to an acting job he’s had in years — Chase meets Perkus Tooth, a shaggy, wall-eyed pop critic who was once much celebrated for his essays in ROLLING STONE, as well as his hand-painted broadsides that he used to post around the city. Chase is immediately fascinated by Perkus’s encyclopedic knowledge of esoteric films, books, recordings and other media, and soon becomes a fixture at his cluttered apartment. There, Perkus entertains and challenges Chase with his rants on culture and conspiracy, fueled by high-grade marijuana, strong coffee and the frequent greasy cheeseburgers and shakes from a nearby burger joint.
 
Chase soon meets some of the other individuals who know and occasionally hang out with Perkus. They include Oona Laszlo, a prolific and self-important ghostwriter who ends up as Chase’s lover, and Richard Abneg, a former radical for who now works for the city mayor. Together and individually, these characters set out on short-term adventures in the city, or spend long hours arguing or discussing various and far-flung topics, all in a quietly desperate search for some kind of meaning or truth. Or so it seems.
 
In addition to the recurring theme of Chase’s astronaut fiancée — a Dick situation if there ever were one — Lethem occasionally slips in references to his other genre heroes, such as the funeral Chase and Oona attend for a popular and wildly prolific science-fiction author whose mutton chops and string bolo ties suggest a dead ringer for the late Isaac Asimov.
 
But beyond that, the overall appeal of CHRONIC CITY is its quirky, eccentric characters. By the middle of the novel, however, this appeal wears thin as Perkus and company’s endless pontifications and pronouncements on works of art and culture, both real and imagined, seem to go on without end.
 
Still, there are moments of absolutely wonderful writing to be found, with phrases that you’ll want to read over again and write down for future reference. This is especially true in the first half, where, for example, Chase describes his Upper East Side neighborhood: “If one of money’s laws is that it can never buy taste, here is where it went after it failed, and here’s what it bought instead.”
 
Recommended? Yes, but cautiously, especially for those aren’t used to stories where nothing happens beyond the observations and thoughts of its characters. CHRONIC CITY delvers its rewards slowly and over long stretchs of exposition and dialogue. But they are there to enjoy for those with the patience to discover them. —Alan Cranis

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• FOUR NOVELS OF THE 1960S by Philip K. Dick, edited by Jonathan Lethem
• VALIS AND LATER NOVELS by Philip K. Dick, edited by Jonathan Lethem

Huh? I think that sums up the reading of PECKINPAH: AN ULTRAVIOLENT ROMANCE. D. Harlan Wilson’s work is not a novel in the sense of a traditional story. It’s more of a collection of bizarre, brief sketches, all of which revolve around “ultraviolence,” as the author likes to state.

But as soon as something starts, it ends. The longest piece is three pages and, trust me, it reads like just a couple of paragraphs. I really can’t explain what goes on in these pieces, other than that they just start with some violence of some sort, the end.

Then, for some weird reason, Wilson describes in verbatim an old Monty Python sketch with ties to Sam Peckinpah. There is a very brief foray into A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. And then we get more pieces that are strange little moments. For me, the best thing in the book was one of the last things in it, where Wilson gives a one-page summary of the Peckinpah biography IF THEY MOVE … KILL ‘EM!, where he details all the bullet points. Those who have read that book will get a great laugh out of it.

But for a book that is so slim and full of blank space and block-print artwork, you may wonder, “Is this some kind of hipster joke?” Wilson has the talent — now if only he could concentrate his efforts into one full-length story instead of these asides. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BLANKETY BLANK: A MEMOIR OF VULGARIA by D. Harlan Wilson

Don’t take Tod Goldberg’s OTHER RESORT CITIES as some fun-loving travelogue. These 10 stories are populated with people who live in resort towns, but they are not what the local chamber of commerce wants you to see.

I had read the story “Mitzvah,” dealing with a rabbi in Las Vegas before in the LAS VEGAS NOIR anthology, but the other nine were all new to me, even though some have been printed in different forms. The one unifying connection between them is just how dark of a writer Goldberg really is. These are no media tie-ins, folks (although he does those well).

The book opens with “The Salt,” about a cop reflecting on his past as he watches the local police dragging bodies from the Salton Sea. “Walls” involves a grown adult telling the story of his youth and the men who entered his mother’s life, be they good,bad or just plain ugly. It’s never fully explained who the narrator is speaking to, but he sure is full of venom as he recounts the events of her mistreatment.

Two tales feature the same characters, and each tell somewhat of the same story. The first is “Palm Springs,” in which Tania, who has made a life working in resort towns such as Vegas and now Palm Springs, remembers the time she adopted a girl from Russia who, five years later, ran away, never to be seen again.

Tania is revisited in “Other Resort Cities,” which goes into detail about the whole adoption process of bringing the girl over from Russia, learning along the way that even though what she thinks she is doing right, her adoptive daughter would have much rather been left alone. These stories are truly haunting, and Goldberg does a masterful job of pulling the reader into this woman’s extremely lonely life.

He also adds a bit of surrealism into the book with “Living Room,” about a man whose wife and children have left him, by all accounts, so he decides to open a Starbucks in the middle of his home, even hiring a worker just to cater to himself. As surreal as it is, it only scratches the surface of what might really be going on in the narrator’s life.

“The Models” tells of a father trying his hardest to provide for his children, to the point of living in model homes for shelter, while in “Granite City,” the discovery of a family killed in a cabin tests what a sheriff will do to help out grieving relatives, even if it goes against the brutal truth.

“Will” is another piece of surrealism, in which a surviving son is thrown by the final wishes of his father’s will. Goldberg shows that this son must have really been a screw-up for the dad to put in these stipulations. “Rainmaker” is about a college professor and his second job. Those who watch BREAKING BAD will get a kick out of this one, as it shows the lengths some people will go to survive.

The people who populate these stories could totally exist in our society and probably some do. They are just like you and me, but with some truly twisted backstories. Some of these stories could be expanded into even further lengths. While I’d love to read more about these people, I definitely would not want to hang out with most of them. OTHER RESORT CITIES is an eye-opening look at life in today’s society, never sugarcoating its harsh reality. —Bruce Grossman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BURN NOTICE: THE END GAME by Tod Goldberg
• BURN NOTICE: THE FIX by Tod Goldberg

Thomas Pynchon is one of America’s greatest living writers. His THE CRYING OF LOT 49 should be required teaching in high school, and his MASON & DIXON is one of the truly great underrated masterpieces. But his recent dip into genre fiction, INHERENT VICE, may lead some readers to worry: Will it be as literarily obscure as GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, or could there even be a level of condescension present?

Well, no worries, chaps. INHERENT VICE is one of the author’s most accessible and books, all while maintaining the expected Pynchonian level of description, misdirection, humor and undeniably intricate plotting. The novel is set in the Los Angeles of 1970, at the tail end of the psychedelic ’60s and the beginning of the brand-dominant ’70s, all the details of which Pynchon spreads liberally throughout, referencing TV shows, California idiosyncrasies and historical milestones, thoroughly submerging the reader into the stoner culture of his characters.

Hippie P.I. “Doc” Sportello, baked to the gills, tries to help his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Shasta, who quickly goes missing, and he ends up wading into extremely deep waters that involve the LAPD and an enigmatic group of gangster dentists called the Golden Fang. Shasta re-emerges in the story fairly quickly, but Sportello is now entangled in a conspiracy that deepens in part because of his own inherent, drug-fueled paranoia.

The story has its twists and turns, as well as the usual confusion in which Pynchon delights: the half-told tale, the indirect reference, the introduction of other worlds. The drug culture surrounding this VICE helps out a lot with that. He is also a master of dialogue, hiding intimate knowledge in each character’s call and response — a realistic, if somewhat tricky to follow, technique that heightens the mystery.

Indulge me for a moment now in what I consider to be Pynchon’s unparalleled skill: the art of description. In so many works, description tends to be either bland or purple-flowered, and it’s rarely used to properly further the story. Pynchon is absolutely crazy in his descriptions, so thorough with each word carefully chosen, layered just so, that he often makes his settings a character in themselves. Witness this shot of a somewhat over-the-hill casino that Doc enters:

“Doc got out and strolled under a Byzantine archway and into the seedy vastness of the main gaming floor, dominated by a ruinous chandelier draped above the tables and cages and pits, disintegrating, ghostly, huge, and if it had feelings, likely resentful — its lightbulbs long burned out and unreplaced, crystal lusters falling off unexpectedly into cowboy hatbrims, people’s drinks, and spinning roulette wheels, where they bounced with a hard-edged jingling through their own dramas of luck and loss. Everything in the room was lopsided one way or another. The ancient bearings on the roulette wheels made them spin erratically faster and slower. The classic three-reel slots, set long ago to payout percentages unknown south of Bonanza Road and perhaps to the world, had since each drifted in its own way, like small-town businessfolks, toward openhanded generosity or tightfisted meanness. The carpets, deep royal purple, had been retextured over the years with a million cigarette burns, each fusing the synthetic nap to a single tiny smear of plastic. The all-over effect was of wind on the surface of a lake. The level of the main floor was ten feet below that of the desert outside, providing natural insulation, so the chill in this vast indeterminate space wasn’t all from air-conditioning, which had been set on low in any case to save current.”

If you’ve been leery of Pynchon, cast aside your wariness and get this book. Lose yourself in his own peculiar madness, and move from here to his other tales. It is the author remarkably at both his best and his most readable. —Mark Rose

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In JULIET, NAKED, Nick Hornby has created a story about three lost individuals, and how they come to find themselves and each other. Annie and Duncan, a stagnant couple, have been together for 15 years. Annie loves Duncan — or at least thinks she does — but soon discovers she’s fallen out of love with him. Duncan loves Annie, but he cares about singer/songwriter Tucker Crowe more. I’m talking an obsessive, big-time man-crush.

Tucker, who’s compared to Bob Dylan, reached his peak in the 1980s, and promptly quit the business, walking away without a trace. It was hard for me to understand Tucker’s music since he’s a fictional character. It helped when I pictured a 50-year-old Kurt Cobain or Jeff Buckley, the only difference being that Tucker is still alive and kicking, albeit in self-imposed seclusion in Pennsylvania.

The book begins with Duncan and Annie traveling across the United States, visiting historical markers from Tucker’s life. They see his boyhood home, the restroom where he was last seen, and the house where the woman who inspired Tucker’s best album, JULIET, lives.

Tucker hasn’t released a new album in 22 years, but when Annie and Duncan return to their native England, they receive an unplugged version of JULIET in the mail (hence the title, JULIET, NAKED). Duncan thinks it’s the most powerful music he’s ever heard; Annie dislikes it. They both write reviews and post them on the Crowe fansite message board. That’s when their relationship begins to unravel.

Tucker comes out of hiding and e-mails Annie. They begin to correspond and a bond emerges. He’s an unemployed father of five – from four different mothers – who’s just become single again and doesn’t have much to account for the past two decades. She’s childless, works a thankless job, and wants to make up for wasting most of her adulthood.

JULIET, NAKED is a superb story about real people who struggle with regret, longing, loneliness and melancholy. The character development is gradual, and at the end of the book, I was able to feel their raw emotions. —Sean Taylor Simpson

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Monte Schulz proves that his father was not the only talented storyteller in the family. For those who don’t know, Monte is the son of the late Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts. Now, Monte has carved out his own stake with THIS SIDE OF JORDAN, the first novel of a planned trilogy.

In spring 1929, Alvin Pendergrast is a 19-year-old who just spent the previous year in a hospital due to consumption. Very early on, Alvin realizes he is not fully over the disease and feels as though it’s going to come back. Not wanting to return to the hospital or even spend time on the family farm, he teams con man Chester Burke, who has no problems using a knife or guns with deadly consequences.

JORDAN is focused mainly on Alvin, with Chester appearing at key moments that affect the teen. Before Alvin goes on this journey, we find him at a marathon dance where he is a spectator. Schulz shows how brutal those events are in a few quick pages that will make some want to find a copy of THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?, as he pulls back the curtain at these events, totally disillusioning Alvin.

Once on his journey across the country, Alvin finds himself with another new companion: a dwarf named Rascal, who is mainly referred to as just Dwarf. It’s this relationship between Alvin and Rascal that is the main focus of the story. Rascal is a bit of a blowhard who tells tales as though they were real, as if to make up for his short stature. That issue is never really discussed throughout, which most might find odd, since this was at a time when little people were considered sideshow attractions.

As the novel progresses, Alvin and Rascal are swept up in Chester’s crooked operations, be it stealing from banks or churches, while Chester has no regard for the people he takes money from, and Alvin slowly gets sicker. It all builds up to the final chunk, taking place at a traveling circus, where each character’s fate is set.

Even though there are moments of brutal violence in the vein of Cormac McCarthy, JORDAN is more about the young man facing his future with uncertain terms. In this novel — the second prose work published by comics house Fantagraphics — Schulz’s writing works in a way that it’s like another tale told by the dwarf himself. You’ll find yourself enraptured by his style, fittingly written in honor of his father. —Bruce Grossman

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I knew that reading those classic novels in high school and college would pay off someday. Because I was able to get most of the jokes in R. Sikoryak’s MASTERPIECE COMICS collection. Although it’s not the New York-based artist’s only gig, he’s made a name for himself marrying modern-day cartoon characters to the plots of literature’s most famous works, and the result is brilliant, brainy parody.

Having read several here and there over the years, I was pleased to see them all collected in a sturdy, handsome hardback from Drawn and Quarterly. One need not have a degree in English Lit to enjoy the contents, but those with no familiarity with the books being spoofed will be unable to grant it the deep appreciation it deserves.

“Blondie” is the first target, with Dagwood Bumstead and his lovely wife recast as Adam and Eve, with Mr. Dithers playing God, in “Blond Eve.” In the book’s first true stroke of genius, the bubble-gum groaners of Bazooka Joe are reimagined into an eight-strip journey into Dante’s INFERNO.

Hell comes to Garfield, too, in “Mephistofield,” with Jim Davis’ fat cat sprouting horns and a master who studies black magic. Old fuddy duddy Mary Worth becomes “Mac Worth” in a soap-opera version of Shakespeare’s MACBETH, and Ziggy gets the Voltaire treatment in a greeting-card-ready tour of sins titled “Candiggy.”

“The Crypt of Brontë” is unearthed next, with WUTHERING HEIGHTS turned into a dead-on EC horror tale in two parts. Little Lulu becomes Hester Prynne in the most adorable adaptation of THE SCARLET LETTER ever, while Batman is the guilty party of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, here turned into an issue of DOSTOYEVSKY COMICS. This story is perhaps the book’s masterstroke, with near-equals to follow when Charlie Brown becomes METAMORPHOSIS‘ Gregor Samsa (“Happiness is a pest-free home,” thinks Snoopy), and Superman is portrayed as THE STRANGER in a series of ACTION CAMUS covers.

No matter what the work being parodied — and on either side, book or comic — Sikoryak hits the bull’s-eye. It’s absolutely amazing how he’s able to ape each property. Not only does any given story capture its overall look and style, but the characters are dead ringers, and even the lettering is pitch-perfect. He has the fine points of parody down to an exact science.

So that’s how they look. Bonus: They read as funny as they are smart. I can imagine only the stuffiest of literature professors not finding this savage dressing-down of the classics at least amusing. Whether you love the big books or despised them, you’re apt to glean pleasure from Sikoryak’s tastefully twisted takes. —Rod Lott

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I’m not sure what I expected in reading THE ENTHUSIAST by Charlie Haas, but I expected more than I got. Haas’ novel has had heaps of praise, including a total rave in REASON magazine and other trusted sources, and its subject matter is something I hold near and dear: enthusiast or hobby magazines.

The protagonist, Henry Bay, is an associate editor who flits to and from small niche publications devoted to specialized pursuits like a fly on a window pane, from KITE BUGGY magazine to CROCHET LIFE to ICE CLIMBING and to tons of other publications that are supported by a small knot of avid readers. Haas definitely gets this culture and explains the appeal of it to Henry in a marvelous paragraph, of which this book is filled:

“On the plus side, being in the enthusiasm business let me see people being happy, doing what their bumper stickers said they’d rather be doing, what they braked for. For a long time I was able to coast in the wake of that happiness. Winning the prize for biggest geode or scariest wipeout changed their faces, and I was there, writing down the shop talk of the work that’s not for money. It was a country of fevers, and I only had to deal with the harmless ones.”

That’s a beautiful paragraph, beautifully written. And the writing quality here is high. This is Haas’ debut novel, but he is a successful screenwriter, having penned MATINEE, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH and OVER THE EDGE. He knows pacing and he knows character. But this wryly comic novel — more wry than comic — is a little underwhelming in the story it has to tell. It’s because Henry is so satisfied with the banality of his life, that his dynamism is understated.

Perhaps that is the point. Subtlety is a lost art, and if Haas is anything, his writing is subtle. In an afterword, he lists some of his influences as Charles Portis, Walker Percy, Julie Hecht and Nicholson Baker. I can see the Baker in his work — minus Baker’s micro-observations — and I think that Henry’s eventual fulfillment tracks along with some of Baker’s character work, a slow realization that one has achieved fulfillment, although it is not what the character or others thought it would be.

Maybe I wanted more for Henry, but he got exactly what he wanted in the end. This is a lovely work that should stay in your head for some time — not perfect by any means, but certainly worth the time it takes to read and reflect on its messages. —Mark Rose

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From 1892, THE FATE OF FENELLA is an odd novel with something — but not much — for enthusiasts of Victorian sensation fiction; fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker; and readers interested in literary experiments.

Magazine publisher Joseph Snell Wood, who edited “a newspaper de luxe, indispensable to every Gentlewoman” called, well, THE GENTLEWOMAN, came up with a publicity gimmick that he thought would stimulate sales: He would sign 24 popular authors — 12 men and 12 women — to write a single novel, with each person writing one chapter. The writer who began the book would have no idea where the story and characters would end up.

You might think that this peculiar arrangement would result in an unreadable hodgepodge
of styles and plot directions. Yes and no. Styles, yes. If THE FATE OF FENELLA is representative, for instance, of the style of the author of chapter 23, heaven help her readers. The entire chapter of 11 pages is comprised of only nine paragraphs. A single sentence chosen at random is made up of 112 words, 12 commas, two semicolons and a dash. (Her name was Jessie Catherine Couvreur and she wrote using the pseudonym “Tasma.” Care to guess why she’s no longer in print?)

“Tasma” is only one of the 21 authors of whom you have never heard. F. Anstey might be familiar to students of Victoriana as the author of the comic novel VICE VERSA, about a father and son who exchange bodies for a week. The book was the source of the Judge Reinhold/Fred Savage movie from 1988.

But back to Fenella: “Her hair, gloves, and shoes were tan-colour, and closely allied to tan, too, was the tawny, true tiger-tint of her hazel eyes. For the rest, she was entirely white save for her dark lashes and brows, the faint tint of rose in her small cheeks, and a deeper red in her lips …”* She’s basically a nice young woman with a wealthy husband and a son upon whom she dotes. Starting to sound dull? Wait for it.

She has a German lover, while her husband has a French mistress. Fenella also has dangling after her a romantic young man named Clitheroe Jacynth (pardon the Dave Barryism but, no, I’m not making this up). The German lover is murdered, and Fenella, who didn’t do it, takes the blame and goes to trial. Before the story ends, the son will be kidnapped by the mistress and taken to America; the father will follow and end up committed in an insane asylum; the mistress’ husband will escape prison in France and come after her; the son will be given to a Dickensian band of thieves in the slums of New York; there will be a few attempted murders; and one of the major characters will die of exhaustion.

Surely, at least some of the writers involved with this project had their tongues firmly in cheek as they wrote. This stuff is so wild and wooly, it could have made an episode of RIPPING YARNS. If you think you could pick out the chapters by Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) and Stoker (author of DRACULA), I doubt you could. There is nothing particularly notable about their contributions. In fact, I wonder if they didn’t just churn something out and then wait for their checks to arrive.

I think THE FATE OF FENELLA will be enjoyed best as a pastiche of the sensation novel — a form developed in the 1860s, novels that self-consciously excited the emotional sensations of middle- and working-class readers, instead of attempting to appeal to their intellects. It was the sensation and Gothic novels that evolved into the kind of popular fiction BOOKGASM readers enjoy today. —Doug Bentin

*NOTE: This description of Fenella, taken from the first chapter, was written by Helen Mathers, a photograph of whom adorns this book’s cover. She gets high marks from me just for the phrase “tawny, true tiger-tint.”

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Paul A. Toth’s third novel, FINALE, is full of appealing promises. But Toth seems to go out of his way to make them difficult to accept. The Raw Dog Screaming Press release presents itself as a road novel, a journey of self assessment and discovery, and an irreverent commentary on love. But Toth’s techniques become so off-putting that we find ourselves doubting his intentions as the story unfolds.

Jonathan Thomas, the novel’s narrator, receives a strange, threatening letter signed with the initials M. W. He’s certain the letter was sent by Mary Whitcomb, an ex-girlfriend. So he immediately resurrects “The Wanderer,” his persona prior to married life with Rosie in Northern California, and drives to San Diego to confront Mary.

Once located, Mary denies sending the letter. So Jonathan embarks on a trek from one end of California to the other, in search of his previous lovers, positive that the correspondence came from one of them.

Toth counts down the chapters of the novel from eight to zero, as Jonathan reunites with these old girlfriends and their quirky personalities and lifestyles. But convinced as well that his journey has opened a “personal fault line,” Toth has Jonathan separate each descending chapter with internal “Earthquake” chapters — a sort of reflective, free-verse poem — rising in magnitude from 1.0 to 8.0.

Tracing one’s personal history through former relationships is hardly a new idea (Nick Hornby’s HIGH FIDELITY is just one recent example), but we go along with it here, thanks mostly to Jonathan’s narrative voice. It’s predominately deadpan, but brimming over with insightful, often culturally hip observations of his former lovers, the various minor characters he meets, and the contrasting landscape and scenery along his California journey.

But Toth can’t leave well enough alone. The earthquake motif, odd to begin with, becomes downright intrusive. And those interceding poems quickly become incomprehensible and irritating. Then, as the chapters near zero and the quakes rise in strength, Toth introduces the notion that the letter and everything that follows has been a scheme carried out by Jonathan’s former lovers and masterminded by one particular woman whose presence and influence lurks periodically through the story. It’s nearly impossible to believe, as is the impressionistic rebirth and summation that sees Jonathan through chapter zero.
 
Toth is undeniably talented, and has all the makings of a notable force in contemporary fiction. But he needs to keep his cleverness in check and follow his FINALE with less pretentious, more subtle works. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Raw Dog Screaming Press.
 

Wildly intense, literate, contemporary mystery/fantasy with a highly integrated theme of nationalism, segregation, isolationism and political terror, coupled with well-drawn characters living in a complicated world — the physicality of which is difficult to describe, but the metaphysicality of which is the point of the book. Sheesh. Can’t ask for much more than that, can you?

China Miéville’s THE CITY & THE CITY is one of the most captivating mysteries, and one of the most captivating fantasies I’ve read this year. It is the ultimate genre crossover, but with much higher ambitions than just a little entertaining story. The conceit is that there are two cities that exist intertwined with one another, Besźel and Ul Qoma, but that the inhabitants of each city refuse to recognize the existence of the other.

They inhabit the same corporeal space, but they have been trained since birth to “unsee” the other. To truly see and acknowledge the other city and its inhabitants is to commit the grievous sin of Breach, to breach the two worlds. When this occurs, a third entity, also known as Breach, polices the situation. Their methods are not subtle.

It’s completely insane and impossible, and Miéville labors long, hard and somewhat successfully to make it plausible for the reader. Whether you compare the situation to other “split cities” (a term the author introduces) of our own knowledge, or whether you look at it as how we deal with The Other, the underlying theme of this novel carries deep meaning for almost any reader.

Into this philosophical construct strolls Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad of Besźel, on his mission to solve the death of a young woman found on his patch of turf. It is only when he believes that the killers must have committed Breach in order to place the body where she lay, that things begin to get very complicated.

There are certainly points here that the author hasn’t considered in his weird, dual-city approach, and the final third of the novel is almost too action-oriented and somewhat distracting from the central motif, but these are mere quibbles. THE CITY & THE CITY is an extraordinary work, capable of appealing to the most discerning readers of not only mysteries and science fiction, but thoughtful literary fiction as well. It’s the best piece of fiction I’ve read all year, and that’s saying something. —Mark Rose

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After bringing the exploits of Arsène Lupin and Fantômas back from obscurity, Penguin Classics resurrects a whole slew of gentlemen thieves in THE PENGUIN BOOK OF GASLIGHT CRIME: CON ARTISTS, ROGUES, AND SCOUNDRELS FROM THE TIME OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Anyone who enjoys a good, smart, short, literate crime caper should snatch this anthology up … but pay for it, please.

Editor Michael Sims has rounded up a dozen examples of this all-but-dead subgenre — a lineup that includes works by the likes of O. Henry, William Hope Hodgson, Edgar Wallace and Sinclair Lewis, but mostly from authors whose reps have vanished like so many objects in their stories.

Their antiheroes use the tricks of their trade to trick the rich and gullible out of jewels — the shinier, the better — and even identities, not to mention good-ol’-fashioned cash. While not household names, some of the characters do enjoy some cult followings. Raffles is hired to steal a painting in E.W. Hornung’s “Nine Points of the Law,” while the French detective Valmont investigates the theft of 500 diamonds in a mystery by Robert Barr.

Those unaccustomed to pop-lit of this era may require a slight transitionary period getting used to its language and style — markedly different from today’s crime fiction, the stories aren’t the kind of thing to dive into with abandon. (Henry’s more comic-driven entry may be the exception.) Patience and an understanding of the times — which Sims’ intro more than supplies — are key to approaching and appreciating these fine tales. —Rod Lott

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Twelve-year-old T.S. Spivet is as unique as his name — and that’s Tecumseh Sparrow, for short. He lives on a remote ranch in Montana with his farmer father of few words, his doctor mother and his sister, but spends his days and nights making intricate, detailed maps — of anything and everything — in color-coded notebooks. Some maps he even sells to magazines.

One day he gets a call from the Smithsonian. Unbeknownst to T.S., someone has submitted his work for a prestigious award. At first, the boy declines, then accepts, wondering what the rest of the world looks like. Without telling his parents — not to mention alerting the Smithsonian that he’s not even a teenager yet — he sets off east for the award ceremony, and this adventure forms the heart of Reif Larsen’s THE SELECTED WORKS OF T.S. SPIVET.

The journey proves to be a litany of firsts for the guarded T.S. — a first trip to McDonald’s, a first near-death-experience with a hobo, a first speech to a crowded room. It’s that latter point where WORKS finds its emotional release, as T.S. clumsily accepts his award with a story about his brother’s accidental death. The tragedy is hinted at from the book’s start, but full details are saved until then.

That’s not quite the end of the book, either, as T.S. deals with the media aftermath and wondering just how in the hell he’s going to get home, considering he barely survived the first leg.

T.S. is an odd duck, and so’s Larsen’s debut. It’s told through the boy’s point of view, but it never sounds like the words of a child — naïve, sure, but not simple. Is he a certified genius? Autistic? Mentally handicapped? Just an extreme case of OCD? The jacket copy says “genius,” so we’ll go with that. At any rate, you’ll be reminded of Mark Haddon’s wondrous THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, but without a mystery at its core.

Regardless, the socially inept youth’s mapmaking skills are shared with the reader on practically every page. With WORKS shaped like a textbook, the margins are filled with annotations and illustrations, with T.S. mapping everything from the soundwave of the gunshot that killed his brother to the nationwide pinching of Honey Nut Cheerios. The novel is a triumph of design (Wes Anderson would be jealous), and not only do the marginalia serve the story, but make it better. If stripped of the extras, the flaws would be more apparent. —Rod Lott

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I give Chuck Palahniuk credit for being original, for being daring, for writing whatever the hell he wants with no regard for potential controversy. But sometimes that freedom comes at a price: $24.95, to be exact, which is how much PYGMY would set you back.

The title refers to the nickname given to our otherwise unnamed narrator, a 13-year-old boy from another country — one presumes of Middle Eastern origin — fresh off the plane in Midwestern America, where he’ll spend time as an exchange student with a suburban family. In reality, however, he’s a terrorist in disguise, undertaking a mission he refers to as “Operation Havoc.”

He immediately takes a dislike to his new temp fam (maybe it’s the “Property of Jesus” T-shirt they gift him?), deeming them “cow father,” “chicken mother,” “cat sister” and “pig dog brother.” In this initial meeting, there’s a crackle of humor as he sizes them up individually, noting their various stenches (café iced mocha vanilla and Xanax for the matriarch) and thinking about the martial-arts moves he could kill them with (i.e. Flying Giant Stork Death Kick), if he so wanted.

The condescension continues as Pygmy is quickly indoctrinated into American life. Not a whole lot happens, at least not in service of a plot — scenarios just come one after the other until the end is reached. Pygmy visits Wal-Mart, where he anally rapes a bully in the bathroom. Pygmy participates in a spelling bee. Pygmy joins the Model United Nations. Pygmy plays dodgeball. Pygmy eats Thanksgiving dinner. Pygmy attends the science fair, where “cat sister” unveils her invention: a vibrator/MP3 player.

Threaded in are bits with a school shooter and a sexually predatory preacher, seemingly included just to piss people off. But those who would be offended aren’t the kind who read Palahniuk, and if they tried, they wouldn’t get that far; the homosexual anal rape scene on page 17 almost guarantees it.

As much as I loved the gut-sucking HAUNTED, the car-crashing RANT and the gang-banging SNUFF, his latest is a huge disappointment. PYGMY is up there with those in terms of button-pushing, but minus one great element: readability. That’s because the book is told from Pygmy’s point of view, but Pygmy’s grasp of English is limited at best.

Here’s an example of his clipped, awkward narrative, describing his observations of the school dance:

“Occasional male student approach female, request mutual gyrate to demonstrate adequate reproductive partner, fast gyrate to display no cripple. No genetic defect to bequeath offspring. Demonstrate coordinated, plenty vital to provision impregnated female throughout gestation period. Provision subsequent offspring until matured. Females flaunt dermis and hair to depict viable vessel for impregnate, paint face so appear most symmetrical. Best likely produce frequent alive births.”

It sounds like the voice of Beldar Conehead, right? Well, the entire book is like that, all 240 pages. It reads like a work that was originally written in a foreign language, then translated to English, but only by a first-year ESL student. I never got used to Pygmy’s voice, so even in the last chapters, I couldn’t tell whether some of what he relays actually was happening, or whether he just wished it were. With tense problems like that, the flow is doomed.

There’s a ripe premise in a teenage terrorist, but the comedic potential is ruined by a narrative that reads like a code only halfway cracked. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should, and I believe any author below Palahniuk’s stature would have been given the red light, or at least a heavy edit. One wonders if his considerable cult will take to this as easily as everything else he’s produced, no questions asked. —Rod Lott

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“All body of bully suffocated, only still seizure every muscle as straight fingernail drill through pucker and pull sideways to stretch open hole. Pry. Force open, dry, all friction, all peel of tender membrane until dripping head of weapon wedge room in twist of muslce. One stroke. Hips of operative me shove full deep, belly deep, ram until bully stand only on foot toes try to escape.”

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• HAUNTED by Chuck Palahniuk
• RANT: AN ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF BUSTER CASEY by Chuck Palahniuk
• SNUFF by Chuck Palahniuk

Another in Papercutz’s revival of the classic comics series, CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED: THE RAVEN AND OTHER POEMS is a collection of nine pieces of verse written by Edgar Allan Poe, with illustrations by the macabre master of the inkwell, the great Gahan Wilson. If there’s anyone born to bring these lines to life, it’s Wilson, and he provides solid, consistent work throughout.

“The Raven” is the most famous here, obviously, with “Annabel Lee” and “The Conquerer Worm” included as well. I’d rather see adaptations of stories rather than the poems, but well, that’s what GRAPHIC CLASSICS is for. This may be a good way to introduce kids to Poe’s work, but adults — other than Wilson and completists — won’t be too drawn to it, especially given the god-awful ugly typeface chosen for its guts. —Rod Lott

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I’ve got news for all the 14-year-old girls out there: Those vampires in TWILIGHT? They’re not vampires. But Jacques Chessex’s THE VAMPIRE OF ROPRAZ. Now there’s a vampire!

To wit, his damage: “The left hand, cleanly severed, is lying beside the body. The chest, hacked with a knife, has been entirely butchered. The breasts have been cut off, eaten, chewed and spat into the sliced-open belly. The head, three-quarters detached from the torso, has been pushed down into it after bites were made in it in several very visible places: the neck, the cheeks, the base of the ears. One leg — the right one — has been hacked up the thigh to the genital cleft. The pubic area has been sliced away and chewed, devoured.”

To summarize: Edward Cullen is a wussy.

Chessex’s short novel — 100 pages — was first published overseas in 2007, but Bitter Lemon Press now brings the Swiss author’s work to these shores, with a matter-of-fact, unfussy translation from the French by W. Donald Wilson. The story is based on an true-life event that happened in 1903.

In the Swiss village of Ropraz, a young woman is discovered mutilated, exactly as you read above. The town is all abuzz about who would do such a thing — a vampire is the logical conclusion. He must be caught before he kills again. But he’s not. Another victim is soon found, and another, all the same type of female, all destroyed in the same manner of savagery.

A break in the case arrives when some farm animals are found to be have raped — by one instrument or another — with saliva and sperm left behind in a manner matching that found on the dead women. When a socially inept farmhand named Charles-Augustin Favez is caught in the act of “having his way with a hobbled heifer,” authorities think they have their vamp.

Or do they?

The book works because of its simplicity. Keeping the page count low makes the tale taut. Because it adheres to the true story, ROPRAZ doesn’t follow the traditional, three-act thriller structure, so it doesn’t culminate in a climax, but on a note of irony. You’d be disappointed if that were a novel, but in a slim volume such as this which can be digested in half an hour, it’s rather fitting.

Chessex’s — and Wilson’s, one must assume — prose is lyrical, even for such a gruesome subject. Leave it to a literary treatment to remind us that real-life horrors are scarier than any fiction can conjure. —Rod Lott

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Cuba really changed in 1992. With the downfall of Communism in Russia, Cuba went into what was called the “Special Period,” entering a severe economic crisis causing major problems for the Cuban people. Set in that time, Robert Arellano’s HAVANA LUNAR focuses on Dr. Manolo Rodriguez, who runs the clinic which now takes up most of his grandmother’s house he grew up in before her passing.

It all starts with an attempted break-in, leading Manolo to a bar where he runs into a Cuban detective who has questions for him, all about a prostitute the doctor has been associated with. It seems her pimp was decapitated and then dumped in the ocean.

From here, the book is told in flashback, in the events that lead up to the death. Arellano builds upon everything we have witnessed so far by slowly dropping information to the reader. He goes back to Manolo’s youth, where we witness events such as how he is saddled with a benign-looking birthmark that was first thought as a cancer, to his time in school where he meets his future wife, who then leaves him devastated when they divorce. These chapters are interspersed throughout the book, usually alternating with the current situation of a young girl who comes to the clinic for an AIDS test, then explains she was only with her boyfriend, only to later say that he is actually her pimp.

The reader also gets a close-up view of the troubled time that Cubans were dealing with, such as scares that bread might have ground glass in it; the scarcity of items such as gas and coffee; and the constant sense of paranoia that a small rumor could ruin people’s lives. Arellano’s writing gives an actual portrayal of the Cuban people and the time, as though you were right there seeing it with your own eyes.

The noir aspect really only takes place much later in the novel, when the crimes are explained clearly. Don’t let that dissuade you, since it feels more of a story of what leads people to these situations, more than a full-on crime novel. There is one minor problem for some readers, and that is Arellano keeping it so close to the Cuban feel that Spanish is used throughout, to the point where some might need to brush up on their high school Español, or they might lose the full essence of the story.

But that can be forgiven, since Arellano is telling a story not of just a doctor trying to deal with what life has given him, but how he survives in such dire straits. —Bruce Grossman

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Give THE MANUAL OF DETECTION points for originality. Jedediah Berry’s debut novel puts forth a premise different from any other mystery you’re apt to find. Even if it may not completely pay off for the attention invested, it’s at least unlike everything else you’ve read so far this year.

Charles Unwin is its beleaguered narrator — a lonely, unassuming, middle-aged man who has spent the last 20 years working as a clerk in the Agency, cataloguing the clues of superstar Detective Sivart, he of such famed cases as “The Oldest Murdered Man,” “The Three Deaths of Colonel Baker” and “The Man Who Stole November Twelfth.”

Suddenly, the very private Unwin — that name can’t be accidental — is promoted without explanation to the very public position of detective. He doesn’t want it and thinks it’s a mistake, but when he goes to see his new supervisor, he finds that man murdered in his office. Adding insult to injury, Sivart has gone missing. Furthermore, something a little “off” is discovered with a museum mummy that threatens to undo all of Sivart’s supposedly solved cases.

All Unwin has to go on is the copy of the Agency’s standard-issue MANUAL OF DETECTION, and it’s missing Chapter 18 — the very pages he’s somewhat cryptically told to consult. And don’t forget the dreams.

Ah, yes, the dreams. Berry’s novel floats along from the start in a state that’s positively dream-like, and for good reason, as will be revealed. That very revelation likely will further entrance readers into submission or repel them in irritation. See, MANUAL shares all the cleverness and ingenuity of a Charlie Kaufman film … and also its eventual frustration and pretension, when its story grows too cagey for its own good.

Berry’s a fine writer, though — his sentences are at once precise and lyrical, all in the service of his Big Idea. This literary mystery/quasi-fantasy has its share of strengths; despite that, my enthusiasm for it waned ever so slightly after its first third, ending on a bitter — but not sour — note of “eh.” But it was an admirable “eh.” —Rod Lott

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I really wanted to like Sam Savage’s FIRMIN, the admittedly sometimes charming story told by a bookish rat in the first person, about his life hiding in a used bookstore, the friends and enemies he makes along the way, and his nostalgic look back at a life that may or may not have been well-lived. Its cuteness even extends to the large bitemark taken out of the book’s fore-edge. But the novel just doesn’t extend the way one would hope.

It tries to be clever in a very literary way, sprinkling fake book titles throughout the rat’s monologue that describe his feelings, and giving the protagonist a gloomy, self-obsessed mien. And it tries to occasionally give us a purchase in the rat world by discussing paper-chewing, pipe-climbing and other common rat behaviors. But it never quite blends the two motifs into a magical whole.

Firmin — for that is the rat’s name — tells the story of his life, from birth through his first love of humans, to departing his first home and finding happiness with a second human, to the eventual end of the tale. There are great moments in the book, such as when Firmin tries to teach himself sign language in order to communicate, but can really only manage to say, “Hello zipper.” And the relationship with the second human in his life is lovingly detailed.

But I felt myself yearning for more rat-human connections, more explanation as to why the author is choosing a very well-read and self-reflective rat to tell the tale, more rattiness. In the end, it seemed like the title character could have been a child (well, except for one or two scenes) and the story would have changed little.

Okay, that’s enough bitching on my part. Because the book is still a fun and inventive read, a fantasy for adults that doesn’t have sword and sorcery and magic elves and the like capering through its pages. And it’s good enough that I’d like to see Savage go at the topic again. It’s a debut novel that has received great acclaim, and is certainly likable enough within its limitations, but I think Savage has more in him. As an aside, it’s a must-buy for collectors of shaped books, and for those who appreciate the illustrations of artist Fernando Krahn. —Mark Rose

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‘Twas the film THE ILLUSIONIST that introduced me to Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Millhauser, whose short story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” served as the source material. It’s not all that often that a movie inspires me to check out an author on whose words were the springboard.

Thus, the new-in-paperback DANGEROUS LAUGHTER: 13 STORIES. “Eisenheim” isn’t among them, but it has a baker’s dozen of spiritual brethren in this collection of literate but loony tales of duplicate towns, a library wizard and the perils of merriment.

Right off the bat, Millhauser’s mastery at shaking up the mundane reveals itself with the quirky “Cat ‘N’ Mouse.” It begins like a novelization of umpteen TOM AND JERRY routines, before slowly growing existential as the characters ponder their acts of cartoon violence. “Is he perhaps too much alone?” the mouse wonders. “Is it possible that they might become friends? … Haven’t they much in common, after all?”

Next, “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman” concerns the vanishing act of a young woman from a locked room, but perhaps more mysterious is that no one seems to have any solid memories of her. “The Room in the Attic,” perhaps the most intriguing story of the bunch, details a friendship between our narrator and a fellow student whose sister lives in total darkness in the attic. Our narrator makes frequent visits to her room, where she toys with him and plays games, and he become ever more curious as to what she looks like, what may be wrong with her.

“The Dome” examines the troubles that occur when mass-produced domes become all the rage among the middle class, encasing their homes in a safe, secure environment … for a while. In “The Tower,” the titular site stretches from Earth to Heaven, with each successive generation of inhabitants charged with climbing as high as they possibly can.

The members of “Here at the Historical Society” take it upon themselves to preserve the past completely, right down to every cobweb, to every needle of a fir tree. Artist Harlan Crane is the subject of “A Precursor of the Cinema”; his 19th-century paintings appear to move, thanks to a new paint that animates the medium’s molecules.

In DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Millhauser presents a number of scenarios that would crumble in other’s authors’ hands. He specializes in examining the skewed, in a style that more resembles an account than a story; in other words, these tales are not dialogue-driven, but his “reports” are rendered with a fly-on-the-wall fascination. They’re not for everybody, but those who will “get it” will get it good. —Rod Lott

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Completed in 2005, BARFODDER: POETRY WRITTEN IN DARK BARS AND QUESTIONABLE CAFES — the second volume of poetry by horror writer Rain Graves — is now available to a wider audience, courtesy of the good folks at Cemetery Dance. But be forewarned: This is not a collection of horror narrative poems, as the cover illustration by Daniele Serra and the Cemetery Dance backlist might lead you to believe. Then again, don’t be put off, either.
 
What we have here is a varied gathering of more than 100 poetic observations, memories, regrets and lots of other things, by an impressive, and often delightfully twisted, author. And, as the title indicates, they were written in bars and cafes in her hometown of San Francisco, as well as some in Los Angeles, New York, Buenos Aires and a few other locales — all dutifully noted on the acknowledgments page.

And while there are no contemporary retellings of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” here, there are several horrific images to be found throughout this collection. Like “Heart Wolf Hunter”:
 
he waded through her flesh
as a butterfly spread its wings
looking for something lost
looking for something in it
 
it was scarred, he said
but still beating;
he could hear it in his sleep.
 
And, reminding us that horror fiction is her other specialty, Graves works H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu into — of all unexpected things — a haiku, and includes a brief but effective ode to Clark Ashton Smith.
 
But then Graves can be gentle and playful, as when she describes fellow writer Neil Gaiman in “A Snake, A Snail, A Puppy Dog Tale”:
 
only the young ever see him clearly
with magical ears and dancing eyes:
I’ve got a story for you, he says
and he writes them all down
 
he is the great pumpkin, charlie brown
the one they believed in and wrote about
 
Graves is equally varied in her forms as she is in her imagery. Several poems run only a few lines, while others, like the recurring and disturbing “Angel of Wrong Things,” go for several pages. At times she is point-blank direct, reminiscent of the late Charles Bukowski (who also spent more than a few hours in bars). But more often, she lets fly with a barrage of imaginative metaphors and references.
 
Her topics range from her fellow barflies and the cocktails in front of them, to dancing the tango, city and skid-row scenes, lovers remembered fondly and less-than-fondly, and even visiting a friend immediately following a traffic accident in “October 14”:
 
Even morphine
cannot cure your strength
and
it never occurred to you
(to die)
just never occurred.
 
But the mere fact that this is a book of poetry is enough to put many readers off completely, no matter how much praise and recommendation from this end. So look at it like this: You might already know Graves from some of her stories or readings at horror conventions. And you know she’s, well, one of us. So you know you’re in good company.
 
Now dismiss the painful memories of those boring poems you were forced to memorize in middle school. Relax. Down a glass or three. And take the plunge into BARFODDER. After a while, you might find yourself wrapped up in the magic and power that the unexpected combination of words and images creates. That’s poetry, and it can sometimes be fun. —Alan Cranis

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Hobart Bosworth — actor, producer, director — is seeing his career head toward oblivion. Having made his name on a handful of productions adapting the works of superstar novelist Jack London, Bosworth sees only one way to save his livelihood from crumbling: another London film, yes, but more importantly, one written by London himself. There’s only one problem: London no longer speaks to Bosworth, wrongly believing the Hollywood player cheated him out of thousands of dollars.

Desperate, Bosworth heads to London’s spacious California ranch in 1915 to confront his old friend, only to find it burned to the ground. The author’s stepsister tells Bosworth that the writer has fled to paradise — more specifically, the islands of Hawaii — leading the aging idol on an adventure of a lifetime, which Paul Malmont details in JACK LONDON IN PARADISE.

On his sea voyage toward Hawaii, Bosworth begins an affair with a married actress and tells her of his plans (“The dog writer?” she asks, which Malmont turns into a good running gag). After picking up a silent sidekick and checking out a volcano, Bosworth locates his old pal. It takes some explaining and duking it out in the boxing ring to get London to allow Bosworth back in his life.

Near-broke, London agrees to pen a screenplay; he’ll put aside the sexual memoir he’s been working on to do it. But it’s not that easy: He’s plagued with kidney stones and other ailments that require morphine injections, and he wonders if writing isn’t killing him. There are other wounds, too: He and his second wife both aren’t quite over each other’s infidelities, and they still weep for the death of their infant daughter, whom they regret naming Joy. And then there’s the matter of London’s state of mind, as he starts having visions based upon the myths of the islands — some harmless, some that put his life in grave danger.

PARADISE is Malmont’s second novel, following 2006′s acclaimed THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL. Although this sophomore effort is another pas de deux between two real-life creative figures, it’s written in a different style, eschewing the tropes of pulp for those of London’s literary adventures. That’s not to say CHINATOWN’s many admirers won’t also enjoy this; they should, more often than not, provided they don’t expect a stylistic dupe. It may not have CHINATOWN’s resonance, but it carries its class.

It’s like London’s own works, in which the struggles are as about man vs. himself as they are man vs. nature. And Malmont writes chewy, meaningful dialogue for London that sounds a lot like something the author would have said: “Jealousy is more powerful than love, for it is the twisted perversion of love itself forged over a fire of anger.”

A lot a little too circular in the second half, this is a touching novel filled with real pain — a manly man’s love story of friendship and betrayal. —Rod Lott

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“He let his hand drift down her body, rising over the soft curve at her breast, then sliding down her slim waist and over her hips and around to rest on her bottom. … He wanted her now. He wanted to take her roughly and drag her down to his stateroom one last time, to feel her nipples between his lips.”

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL by Paul Malmont

Since his 1963 breakout work, the now-classic THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, John le Carré has set the standard for the modern, realistic spy novel. Eschewing the gadgetry and suave worldliness of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, le Carré concentrates instead on the lives of real intelligence agents, with all their human doubts and imperfections. And like Graham Greene, the author he’s most often compared to, he’s established himself as an author whose probing works are both popular and critically acclaimed.

But when the Cold War faded into history, many wondered if le Carré would have anything to write about. Including his latest, A MOST WANTED MAN, he’s proved them wrong, demonstrating that the contemporary world is still full of spies and the related risks that come with clandestine intelligence gathering.

It’s no real surprise that A MOST WANTED MAN concerns our post-9/11 world and the resulting war on terrorism. It’s a deeply engrossing and at times disturbing novel that illustrates how the paranoia of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks have altered the lives of even the most unsuspecting people throughout the world.

A gaunt young man in a long, dark coat wanders the streets of Hamburg, Germany, and soon appears on the doorstep of local boxer Melik Oktay and his mother, both Turkish Muslims. The young man calls himself Issa, a devout Muslim, and he appeals to his fellow believers to take him in while he pursues his dream of studying to become a doctor. The Oktays are hesitant, but soon welcome Issa and treat him as a protected member of their family.

But Issa’s arrival sets off of a chain of events. The first concerns Annabel Richter, a lawyer for Sanctuary North, a legal aid support group for persecuted immigrants. Annabel is aware that Issa, a Chechen, arrived in Germany under highly suspicious means, and she is using every resource within her grasp to prevent his deportation to his previous residence and imprisonment that surely awaits. But she is also aware that Issa is heir to a large amount of money secured by his father in a small, Hamburg-based bank.

Enter Tommy Brue, the son of the founder of the Brue Freres Bank. Upon meeting Annabel, Brue learns that Issa is the potential claimant to the mysterious Lipizzaner account, first started by his father on behalf of Grigori Karpov, a Russian Army colonel. Issa is Karpov’s son, but wants nothing to do with his father’s money, which he considers tainted. Nonetheless, Issa is now as much Brue’s responsibility as Annabel’s. And since Brue is immediately attracted to the determined Annabel, he is readily willing to offer his counsel and services.

But there are others very much interested in Issa as well. His shadowy past and fervent religious beliefs have branded him an escaped terrorist. Soon, intelligence agencies from Germany entrap Annabel to their cause, while simultaneously, British spies reveal the true nature of Brue’s father and the Lipizzaner account, and pull Brue into their net. Before long, both Annabel and Brue are manipulating Issa into what their separate and often competitive controllers feel is his forgone destiny.

Questions of loyalty, patriotism and other moral ambiguities abound in this story, as they do in most of le Carré’s work — and as he would insist they do in the real world of spies. It’s these questions that make his characters and stories so compelling and often powerfully suspenseful. In this particular story, sympathies shift from Issa’s devout intentions to the protective and watchful actions of the German and British intelligence. At times, it appears as though le Carré weighs on the side of the criminally profiled Muslims, especially when we witness the manipulations of the British and Germans. But he also reminds us throughout of the many murderous acts that have been committed in the name of religious faith.

His trademark prose style is also on full display here. With an almost Dickensian flair, le Carré incorporates character’s backstories into the flow of the narrative. Such an elliptical technique is tried by many, but le Carré has mastered it and knows exactly how much to divulge without distracting from the thrust of the plot. It’s potent and calls upon the reader to pay attention. But it also manages to be effortless and easy to digest.

Unfortunately, with an author as skilled as he, the defects stick out like the proverbial sore thumbs. So when he introduces American CIA operatives toward the end of the novel, they come off as rushed and dashed-off with little thought or development.

This, along with a decidedly abrupt and less-than-satisfactory resolution, are what makes this particular novel something less than classic le Carré. But nowadays, less-than-perfect le Carré is still well worth reading than his hundreds of lesser-quality imitators. A MOST WANTED MAN is not an altogether “fun” novel, but an important and painfully relevantly one. —Alan Cranis

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Perhaps my love for THE GEOGRAPHER’S LIBRARY — my favorite novel of 2005 — tainted my expectations for Jon Fasman’s follow-up THE UNPOSSESSED CITY, a literary thriller in which a down-on-his-luck Jim takes a gig in Russia interviewing political prisoners to pay off some gambling debts, much to the chagrin of his fishmonger folks. The trip seems worth it when he falls for the beautiful, Finnish wannabe actress Kaisa, but then the Soviets don’t take kindly to his job, and abduction becomes the name of the game. Fasman is a terrific writer whose lines really sing, but the plot never pushed me to keep going, like I just had to read one more chapter before flicking off the bedside light. It’s the alternating chapters focusing solely on the Russians that did me in, whereas the ones with Jim drew me in. It’s not a sophomore slump, but it’s not out of the stadium, either.

Heard the one about Coca-Cola translating to “bite the wax tadpole” in China? Yeah, not exactly. Amateur logophile David Wilton shoots down many popularly held beliefs involving words and phrases in WORD MYTHS: DEBUNKING LINGUISTIC URBAN LEGENDS. For example: “Crap” does not come from Thomas Crapper, who’s wrongly credited as the inventor of the toilet. “In like Flynn”? Nothing to do with Errol. Nearly every cliché you can think of — “chew the fat,” “throw the baby out with the bathwater” — is discussed, with Wilton dishing about their true origins, with informed research and clear explanations. The illustrations by alt-cartoonist Ivan Brunetti are icing on the cake. (For more current word porn, see Elizabeth Little’s new, fun BITING THE WAX TADPOLE: CONFESSIONS OF A LANGUAGE FANATIC, which goes one further by delving into numerals.)

It’s every parents’ worst nightmare: the disappearance of your child. In Michael Jasper’s fantasy A GATHERING OF DOORWAYS, the situation is more complicated than usual, because 5-year-old Noah has entered into “the Undercity,” a cavernous, underground world whose tunnels he navigates with the aid of a jaguar. Guilt-stricken dad Gil goes on the hunt for him, helping advance the adventure, but the scenes with Noah’s mother threaten to reverse that forward motion, or at least bring it to a halt. Descriptions of the forest ground suddenly opening up into a hole to swallow people are nightmarish, leading characters (and the reader) to princes, dragons and other strangers. The underwhelming novel’s just shy of satisfying, despite an ending that is poignant and real. A better tale of this type lies in John Connolly’s THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS.

I’ve never heard of the “hit Cartoon Network show” BAKUGAN, but my 11-year-old informs me it’s “stupid.” Whatevs. The animated series is now a graphic novel in the alliterative BAKUGAN BATTLE BRAWLERS: THE BATTLE BEGINS. It’s short and roughly digest-sized, comprised of stills directly from an episode, which is an approach I always find to be lazy. Then again, this one isn’t directed toward middle-aged men. Its target is little kids — ones not old enough to remember POKÉMON, but they’re apt to get into it, because this is exactly like POKÉMON, in that people fight one another via supernatural creatures with silly names that emerge from tossed balls and cards. —Rod Lott

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Four years after publication overseas, Rafael Reig’s second book comes to our shores translated by Paul Hammond. A PRETTY FACE is not an easy novel to categorize, since it’s borderline science fiction mixed with alternate history, mystery and a surrealist plot.

The story focuses on children’s author Maria Dolores, who is killed within the first few pages, yet narrates as a ghost as she witnesses the goings-on after her own demise. The novel features a wide variety of characters who all have some tie to Maria, including ex-husband Fernando, a scientist who is bent on winning a Nobel Prize; her psychiatrist father, who developed some new drug that will supersede all others; and private detective Charlie Cott, hired by Maria’s father to find out who killed his daughter, since the local police can’t be bothered and chalk it up to random violence.

All the while, we’re also given a view of the alternate history of Spain — of a takeover by the U.S., forcing its will onto society — and how some new drug referred to as “the green capsule” has turned junkies into living zombies. They’re not zombies in the sense of horror movies, but more of the catatonic who only survive by either finding a source for the drug or taking their own lives to end the suffering.

Maria is living in some sort of ghost state, communicating with one of her creations from her books: a young, one-eyed boy to whom Maria tries to give love and warmth. This is not some straightforward read, but more of a metaphysical journey for our narrator as she watches the aftermath of her death, while also reflecting on her own past and revisiting key moments.

One can see Reig is an extremely talented author with a wide variety of ideas, but what hampers the book sometimes is the translation, which is so literal that it seems jarring to the reader, especially with Spanish idioms. A PRETTY FACE is definitely worth the read for those who want something completely different from the norm. It might not tie up all its loose ends, but will give you plenty of ideas to think about. It has made me a new fan of Reig, who’s other books I will search out, because this type of literature is ahead of its time. —Bruce Grossman

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WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS? I asked the same thing myself as I read Kate Atkinson’s latest, the third in a series that began with the wildly acclaimed CASE HISTORIES. It begins with a brutal murder in which a family is slain, save for one little girl who witnesses it all. Fast-forward a few decades and she’s now a doctor, and saves the life of investigator Jackson Brodie, the series’ mainstay, about the same time as the aforementioned killer is sprung from jail. Then there’s a whole deal with the grown-up woman’s nanny. But this is a book in which characters are more interested in thinking about things than actually doing them. Multiple storylines converge, but too late to prevent a slight case of “Now, wait, who is that again?” syndrome. Atkinson is a good writer, obviously, but this plot was too loose to command my attention and respect.

SPIDER-MAN MAGAZINE #3 features four more all-ages Spidey stories, each continuing from the previous bimonthly issue. (Hope you’ve got a good memory, kiddos!) First, Spider-Man continues to fight the villainous group known as The Sinister Six, then teams up with Power Pack against Venom. The best story finds him fighting alongside Captain America (who, strangely, looks like a kid), and the worst as a de facto member of The Fantastic Four. There’s no decades-old contribution this time, but at least the mag has dialed down its reliance on filler, with only three pages devoted to posters and such. The covers are starting to look indistinguishable. An inside-back-cover ad reveals that WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN MAGAZINE will debut this month.

Dreams may complicate your life (to paraphrase R.E.M.), but they work well for Jesse Reklaw. The comic artist is an alt-weekly mainstay with the four-panel strip Slow Wave, illustrating dreams submitted by readers. They don’t make any sense, which is entirely the point; otherwise, where’s the humor? THE NIGHT OF YOUR LIFE collects about 250 of them, covering such sleep-borne stories as a cat with urgent news (“Your tomato plants are on fire!”), hallucinogenic dishwashing detergent, Christopher Walken’s corpse, a plastic flamingo that eats mixed nuts, attacking chopsticks and many more fever-dream elements. It’s good to know we’re all crazy when we sleep, and it’s good to have someone as talented an artist as Reklaw to prove it.

Who says print is dead? SLICE MAGAZINE #3 celebrates it, bringing a fresh look to ye olde literary journal. The two-tone, spine-bound issue packs a lot of content into 148 pages, with a heady mix of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. I can do without the latter, but there’s not a lot of it. The short stories lean heavily toward serious subjects, of course, so they’re not for casual reading. My favorite pieces were the interviews — including with author Salman Rushdie and Japanese calligrapher Yoshiko Komatsu — and Nicole Walker provides an interesting essay on all things meat in “Amalgamated Products Are Us.” Photography is spare, but incorporated with style into the magnificent minimalist design. —Rod Lott

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BLANKETY BLANK: A MEMOIR OF VULGARIA is indeed the perfect title for D. Harland Wilson’s novel, because if the average person picked it up and read any given page, his reaction would be, “What the fuck?”

Part of the take-it-or-leave-it “bizarro” movement, Wilson’s book isn’t a novel per se — at least not in any shape, form or fashion that you’re used to. It does tell a story in its own roundabout, A.D.D. way, of a serial killer who’s all the talk of not your average, ordinary suburban America neighborhood, like PEYTON PLACE with a Chernobyl cloud hanging overhead.

How different is this tract of homes? Just consider the family of protagonist Rutger Van Trout. In the opening chapter, he hammers a hole in his hand, just for the hell of it. His son is a werewolf. He haggles a guy selling a BMW Futique with built-in KITT mode (as in KNIGHT RIDER). People’s skeletons have ghosts. Mass-murdering Mr. Blankety Blank becomes the rage, precisely for his rage. Lou Diamond Phillips is a supporting character.

Why, yes, this story is full of meaningless sketches and nonsensical asides, with discussions on BREAKIN’ 2 and Mae West’s nipples. It’s that kind of word that thinks nothing of interrupting itself for a paragraph-long history of the Ferris wheel, a discourse on the blank Scrabble tile, a rant against chiropractors, notes on the handlebar mustache and various haikus. As one character says on pg. 65, “This doesn’t make any sense,” which is the point of this purposely absurd underground subgenre.

Case in point: “Layke took the y out of her name and laid it on her bed. She realized that ys were basically upside-down penises and wondered why her parents had put one in the middle of her name. Then she realized that all letters looked like penises if you perceived them from the right angle and wondered why her parents had given her a name full of penises. Then she put her y back.” You can either see it as pretentious or harmless, depending on your tolerance for experimentalism … and for scenes of people stapling their cheeks together. —Rod Lott

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Maybe it’s because so many do it poorly, but poetry sits with me as well as ipecac syrup. Some people with no writing talent and a surplus of wide-lined notebook paper scribble a few lines in the ABAB format about their cat Marbles and think they’ve created art. I should know — my mother-in-law is one of them, and she falls for those poetry “contests” where you “win” the right to be published, yet have to pay for copies of the supposed books.

Which brings us to THE UNICORN MAN, Vox Anon’s rather thick paperback collection of dark poetry. He knew my stance on poetry, but wanted to send the book for review anyway. On the outside of the envelope was scrawled this message: “I hope you love it or hate it.”

Given its bizarre subject matter, one might think THE UNICORN MAN lent itself to such a polarizing either/or decision, but that’s not the case. There’s a lot more going on here than mere verse. For one thing, take the title: The work as a whole is built around the loose concept of a human who sprouts a cutaneous horn on his forehead; surgical excision would prove fatal, so he lives with the taunts and stares and accompanying migraines.

The poems that comprise the seven sections — most grouped by color — are presumably his own thoughts: “Love Let Me Hunger,” “Cover Your Shame,” “Suffer the Little.” You get the idea. From my perspective, the titles are fairly interchangeable, with little relevance to the poems on which they appear. And those poems are rather bleak and, sure, somewhat pretentious, but better than what I would have expected. I can’t qualify them as “bad,” yet I can’t say they’re something I’d ever seek out or revisit. In a “take it or leave it” scenario, I’d still leave them.

More notable than what the poems are is what they are not: graphic, profane or overtly sexual. This is not a case of shocks to substitute for substance, so bravo to Anon for not going the easy route of appealing to the lowest-common denominator.

Before the poetry — which comprises a majority of the book — are three short stories. These flesh out the world of The Unicorn Man, beginning with a first-person account of him realizing he has become a beast. The second plays his life like an epic fairy tale or myth, while the third is his diary leading up to the fabled end times of 2012.

And on the back end lies the book’s best asset: 55 pages of bizarro illustrations. Like the found-art collages that proliferated the pages of so many zines in the ’90s, these images are assembled from medical clip art, mathematical graphs and formulas, geometric shapes and lines, religious iconography, the occasional pop-culture picture and, yes, loads of unicorns. Whereas some may find them messy and off-putting, I see them as visually fascinating. (Conversely, someone is bound to love those poems that were met with indifference on my part.) There’s somewhat of a merging going on here between Old World science and today’s technology, yet filtered through a lo-fi aesthetic — the result is disturbing, but oddly hypnotic. —Rod Lott

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Let’s just cut to the chase, because you’re not going to believe me anyway: The narrator of Victor Pelevin’s parodic THE SACRED BOOK OF THE WEREWOLF is A Hu-Li, a female fox — literally, not figuratively — who’s 2,000 years old, yet looks 14ish. She works as a prostitute in Moscow, where her name translates to an obscenity (like “Whatze Phuck” would be to Americans, she says).

Despite her chosen trade, she’s never actually had sex. That’s because her tail harbors hypnotic powers. It makes her human johns think they’re having the wildest ride of their life, when really, they’re just jacking off, while A Hu-Li lounges about, re-reading Stephen Hawking’s A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME for a laugh. It’s a living.

Then one day, she picks up Alexander. As she attempts to pull the ol’ tail trick, he turns into a werewolf. A Hu-Li is so shocked, she freezes on all fours, and gets violated via a heated round of weresex, leaving her specialness torn and bruised. Yes, kids, it’s love — they are MFEO!

This is the best Russian love story between an immortal fox whore and a werewolf ever written. But with all those qualifiers removed, it’s merely an interesting but deeply flawed one. Sporting a terrific translation into English by Andrew Bromfield that doesn’t dull its strange leanings, the book features a saucy, singular voice, even if you’re not quite sure what to make of it.

Pevelin obviously has a twisted sense of humor (you think?), and a couple of scenes are really funny, including one in which A Hu-Li and Alexander argue over the literary merits of James Joyce’s ULYSSES, and an early client-pickup conversation that goes like this:

“You look like Captain Nemo.”
“From 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA?”
“No, from the American film THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. There was one extraordinary gentlemen who looked just like you. An underwater karate specialist with a beard and a blue turban.”

THE SACRED BOOK is short on plot and long in the tooth, but utterly outrageous. But that only takes you so far, and sadly, that point wasn’t all the way to the end. That’s not quite a recommendation. —Rod Lott

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“Leaning his huge, monstrous jaws down over me (his breath was hot, but fresh, like a baby’s), he bit through all three of my bras, pulling them off with his terrible hairy fingers. … After doing the same thing with my panties, he pulled away from me and began growling, as if he was about to tear me to shreds. … However, the ordeal proved not to be as painful as I’d been expecting. But I did things right anyway and groaned from time to time: ‘Oh, that hurts! Don’t pound so damn hard, you ugly monster. Gently, smoothly … That’s right.’”

Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!

Elizabeth Peters’ latest may not star her regular heroine Amelia Peabody, but THE LAUGHTER OF KINGS remains rife with Egyptology. Returning to the Vicky Bliss series, Peters kicks off this light suspenser with the theft of King Tut. Curator Vicky’s cad-like boyfriend has several theories as to whodunit, and sets off to find which holds water, if only to prove that he didn’t do it, despite what his criminal record fencing antiquities suggests. These two travel, drink and eat extravagantly more than they sleuth, leading to amusing scenes of witty, Nick-and-Nora-style style banter that proves to be the author’s forte. Even with well-placed twists, the delightfully old-fashioned mystery works best when its leads bicker adoringly.

No less an espionage fiction master than Graham Greene assembled THE SPY’S BEDSIDE BOOK, with his brother Hugh. Originally published in 1957, the now-back-in-print anthology culls stories (both real and made-up) and poetry (yes, poetry) on all things secret agentish. With a buttoned-up veneer and contributions from the esteemed likes of W.H. Auden and D.H. Lawrence, the compendium is charmingly both quaint and antiquated, covering everything from purposely poisoned laundry pins to butterfly hunting. More of a curio than a classic, it’s an occasionally illustrated, of-its-time oddity recommended for those whose tastes run more toward John le Carré than James Bond (although Ian Fleming is present). Imagine how awesome a book like this would be if it went the all-pulp route.

Marvel Comics’ horror-esque antihero series TERROR INC. gets an adult-oriented revival by writer David Lapham and artist Patrick Zircher. Its unlikely star is a centuries-old immortal with a skull face who today is a well-armed, big-muscled freelance hitman — in other words, kind of like The Punisher, minus an epidermis. He has the ability to interchange his body parts with others’, so he’s somewhat of a master of disguise, taken to utter extremes. In this five-issue arc, Terror’s in search of his old arm. At least I think that’s the deal, but I found it extremely muddled, which is odd for Lapham (whose SILVERFISH graphic novel is terrific), and Zircher’s often ugly art makes it even more of a mess. I have no problem with blood, gore and nudity, but there’s so much of it here that it feels like shock for shock’s sake.

MASTERS OF AMERICAN COMICS allows you to take home the recent exhibit of L.A.’s Hammer Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Art. Edited by John Carlin, Paul Karasik and Brian Walker, this huge, heavy book pays tribute to Sunday funnies greats, comic book superstars and underground pioneers, with a 150-page history of the entire medium. Then individual chapters salute giants like Winsor McCay, E.C. Segar, Chester Gould, Milton Caniff, Charles M. Schulz, Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, with loads and loads of examples of their art, both unfinished and printed. —Rod Lott

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Perhaps the first thing to do when considering Hannah Tinti’s debut novel is either avoid all the blurbs covering the back and inside flaps of the dust jacket, or refuse to take them too seriously. These well-intended advance promotions would have you believe that Tinti is the heir apparent to such authors as Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain and even J.K. Rowling and Walt Disney. (Disney?)

Such comparisons could have you expecting The Greatest Thing Since Movable Type. Or, since a few of these authors evoke horrid memories of your middle school required reading list, you might be tempted to avoid THE GOOD THIEF altogether. But please don’t.

While there are indeed echos and influences of some of those literary giants mentioned (especially Dickens), this is nothing more — and certainly nothing less — than a throughly approachable, wonderfully entertaining and often touching novel from a very talented and promising author.

Twelve-year-old Ren can’t remember life prior to his arrival at the St. Anthony’s Orphanage for Boys in nineteenth-century New England. Nor can he remember how he lost his left hand. So, like the other boys, he suffers the daily abuses of the monks running the orphanage while yearning for a family of his own. His only diversions are the Catholic prayers he recites, either out of faith or habit, and his skill for stealing items small enough to tuck into his shirt — like Father John’s copy of THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS.

Being a cripple means little hope of adoption. But one day, a man named Benjamin Nab arrives at the orphanage and loudly proclaims Ren as his long-lost brother. The monks release Ren into Benjamin’s care. But no sooner do they leave the orphanage when Benjamin confesses that the story is a hoax. He and his partner, Tom, are scam artists and petty thieves. And Benjamin immediately sees Ren’s deformity as a way to pry donations from sympathetic onlookers.

It’s just one of the several means Benjamin and Tom have of making money, including selling the jewelry and clothing off bodies they dig up from the local cemetery. But soon they learn that a hospital in the nearby town of North Umbrage will pay top dollar for freshly exhumed bodies to be used for medical studies, so the three travel via a stolen horse cart to begin their new careers as grave robbers.

So many things might have gone terribly wrong with this novel that it’s a wonder it is as good as it is. The basic premise of an orphan boy taken in by thieves during this period in time, for example, could easily become overly sentimental or end up reading like a parody of either Dickens or Stevenson. But Tinti wisely avoids becoming too precious with her frequent dips into the Gothic and grotesque. Like the quirky boarding house landlady who shouts at everyone due to her own near-deafness. Or the mysterious dwarf who lives on the roof of the boarding house and descends the chimney each evening for his dinner. Or the huge, haunting McGinty’s Mousetrap Factory and Distribution Company, which hovers over North Umbrage and employs most of its young girls. And the many and various residents of the town whose oddball mannerisms and behavior are both amusing and frightening.

There are those, however, who might find the picaresque structure of the novel difficult. Owing perhaps to Tinti’s background in short stories, this first full-length work is mostly a series of interconnected adventures. But her descriptions of the locale and period, along with her fascinating characters, are more than enough to pull you along until the story finds a central thrust in the third and final section.

Genre fans will also find much to like in what is essentially a mainstream novel. There is the recurring mystery of Ren’s family origin and how he lost an appendage. And the scenes of grave robbing and other eerie undertakings have just enough gore and violence to keep contemporary horror readers amused.

Time alone, obviously, will determine if THE GOOD THIEF becomes a member of the World’s Greatest Books, as the promotions predict. For the moment, it is a highly recommended first novel from a writer whom everybody should know about and follow. —Alan Cranis

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With his second novel THE LEARNERS, Chip Kidd moves into the revered pantheon of postmodernist writers who have an affinity for the quirky (authors like David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, etc.). But the charm comes from his unpretentious storytelling, and a welcome belief in brevity.

The tale revolves around a young man who obtains his first job as a graphic designer at a small advertising firm. This position allows Kidd, who is perhaps this country’s most influential book designer, to share thoughts on the meaning of typography, form and content. These aren’t just pedantic asides, they are integral to the story and frankly, I was hoping for more of them. One of these comes when the character explains exactly how and why he set the type for a very particular advertisement, an ad that will eventually change his life forever.

The ad is run by Professor Stanley Milgram, and it is recruiting individuals to participate in an experiment related to memory. Of course, this is actually the very famous Milgram experiment, where he duped participants into believing that they were administering electrical shocks to another participant in a different room. They were divided into “teachers” and “learners,” but the learner was actually an actor hired to perform a role. The learners had to remember a series of word pairs. For every one they got wrong, the teacher would administer an electrical shock that escalated in power with each successive wrong answer. At some point, the learner would start really complaining about the pain, even screaming in agony. But the “experimentor” who sat with the teacher would calmly keep telling the teacher to proceed, everything was fine, the experiment must go on. It was Milgram’s investigation into how seemingly ordinary people would blindly obey an authority figure they trusted, even going so far as to administer potentially lethal shocks.

It is this experiment in which Kidd’s character participates, and what really drives the second half of the story. Don’t worry though, this isn’t a book of smarmy psychobabble, it’s really a loving investigation into the main character’s own understanding of who he is and what he can become. The wildly eccentric characters that surround him at the ad agency add not only comic relief and color, but they each have their own personalities, and would benefit from a bit of the soul-searching that the main character is forced to do.

This is an excellent, charming, often funny book mixed with thought-provoking commentary. Recommended. —Mark Rose

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• CHIP KIDD: BOOK ONE – WORK: 1986-2006 by Chip Kidd

Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!

I don’t ever want to know what it feels like to be burned alive, but Andrew Davidson came damn close to making me feel it in his debut novel THE GARGOYLE. The opening scene — and many, many thereafter — offer nail-biting detail about what it’s like to burn and the even more painful process of trying to heal. The hero, a formerly handsome “fuck artist” in the porn industry, ends up in the burn ward after a car crash, and upon awakening months later, gets strange company. Marianne, a patient from the psych ward who — over many long, drawn-out stories — reveals the two were lovers in medieval times and that he has been burned twice before. He believes she is either schizophrenic or a manic depressive, or both, yet she calmly tells him one day he’ll understand. She’s a stone carver of gargoyles and takes him in after his release, and the two begin their bizarre yet innocent relationship based on her belief that her heart belongs to him. Well-written, gutsy, evocative and ultimately redemptive, the 465-page tome seemed too long, as the story skitters off the path into the past too much to keep a brisk pace. However, the story is so good, the long length and occasional aside is forgiven. It’s a weird, wild, wonderful ride. —Malena Lott

Adrienne Barbeau — yes, that Adrienne Barbeau — tries her hand as a novelist, pairing with Michael Scott for VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD. And you know what? She ain’t bad! This horror-tinged mystery is admittedly fluffy, but surprisingly witty. Set in Hollywood, the book follows a former B-movie actress who just happens to be a vampire, as she teams with a jaded detective to investigate a string of murders, in which all of the victims were bloodsuckers like herself, even if no one outside of the fanged circle knows it. Film fans are going to dig it, as hardly a page goes by without some reference to one movie, actor or another, touching on everyone from Ray Harryhausen to Roger Corman, and with Barbeau making fun jabs at her own work in CANNONBALL RUN and CARNIVALE. They even create a vampire council comprised of dead Tinseltown luminaries, including Orson Welles, who bemoans his involvement with TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE.

It will take you maybe 15 seconds to read I’M LOOKING FOR A MONSTER in its entirety, but I’ll bet you take much, much longer to peruse its pages. See, Timothy Young’s book is a pop-up, intended for pre-kindergarteners, and while they’ll be entranced by the wheels, tabs, flaps and snaps, it’s adults like you who can truly appreciate Young’s illustrations. Each spread contains a single-colored background, with all the figures in the foreground in black. Only eyes, teeth and various kinds of horns and claws render as white, making for a simplistic, stark cartoony look that’s rather cool. It should keep the kids entertained until Halloween, when they’ll wish their trick-or-treat bags looked as hip.

The second digest in the series, SPIDER-MAN FAMILY: UNTOLD TEAM-UPS continues in the tradition of all-ages adventures pairing your favorite wall-crawler with various heroes. Here — in six stories from three consecutive issues — that includes the Agents of Atlas, Doctor Strange (with a cameo from vampire Morbius), caveman Ka-Zar and the villainous Kraven (if only for just long enough to take care of Man-Wolf). The two best stories come from the comedic Chris Eliopoulous, who tackles The Puppet Master and Frog Thor — yes, that’s the Mighty Thor as an amphibian — with cartoonish glee. —Rod Lott

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Few premises are as original as the one in THE 351 BOOKS OF IRMA ARCURI, the debut novel by David Bajo. In it, a twice-divorced, unemployed mathematician named Philip is willed the titular library of his former lover and the one he probably should have married, if only he had asked. But she’s not dead — she’s merely dropped out of life, and clues to her whereabouts are hidden within her volumes.

Philip’s first inclination that something is up is when a current woman he’s bedding (and this guy gets laid a lot) notices that Irma’s collection of Jorge Luis Borges short stories includes one the author never actually wrote. Next, Cervantes’ DON QUIXOTE becomes the subject of much comparison and decoding.

Unfortunately, the novel is more metaphorical than mystery. It’s one of those literary affairs that’s longer on dialogue than plot, where the characters say a lot, yet don’t say anything at all — in other words, a book that sips espressos with pinky extended on a sidewalk café, brooding.

The first third is pretty decent and mildly engaging, as Philip’s miserable life is established — a routine of jogging with his former stepdaughter and fucking other women — and flashbacks tell of his torrid affair with Irma … and Irma’s torrid affair with one of Philip’s ex-wives. But at some point, I just stopped caring, and the drama wears all too dreary — not to mention the missed opportunity with the mysterious messages.

What he lacks in follow-through, Bajo makes up for in descriptions. Witness his near-pornographic explanation of why books aren’t just for reading: “They bind and revive friendships. Their spines cupped for coolness or warmth. Their covers lingered over. I still love to slip my fingers between cool pages, like finding the fresh creases of bedsheets with your bare legs. They are portable, the most efficient of vessels. You can carry an entire country or civilization in the crook of your wrist. Hold open a life or the expanse of a relationship with the gentle crimp of your thumb. They are incredibly light and manageable for what they contain, what they can induce.”

Schwing. —Rod Lott

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No matter how many bios of Franz Kafka you’ve read, you’re guaranteed to have read none quite like James Hawes’ WHY YOU SHOULD READ KAFKA BEFORE YOU WASTE YOUR LIFE, and certainly you can tell from that title. The Oxford alum and Kafka scholar discusses the German writer’s life not as a thesis, but as a conversation, as if you and he were sitting at the pub, talking literature over a beer.

How else to explain so much hubbub over Kafka’s porn collection? So terrified was the celebrated novelist over its discovery that he hid it in a locked case and left instructions for its destruction upon his death. Obviously, someone didn’t follow them to a T. Oops!

The pornography is not comprised of photos, but absolutely twisted drawings that nonetheless are sick and disturbing, even by today’s comparatively lax standards. Several are reprinted here.

On the actual sex front, letters from Kafka portray a bizarre, tortured courtship of a woman he had absolutely zero interest in, as well as his first sexual encounter, which was with a prostitute. Whatever went down (no pun intended), something about its “vile” nature and, um, its smell haunted Kafka for the rest of his life.

Hawes spends a great deal of time debunking famous myths surrounding the author, such as that his work went unknown during this lifetime, that he was poor, that his father was a tyrannical parent. And he does this all without sounding like a boring academic or pompous English professor.

Two things, however, with which I take issue:
1. Hawes uses too many absolutes — such as “There is no debate” and “There’s simply no way around ths one” — as if to discourage challenges, when ….
2. …. I challenge a point he makes on the very first page: “Apart from Shakespeare, there’s simply no writer whose image is so well known to so many people who have never read a word he wrote. The face of Kafka has become virtually a brand.”

On that point, I disagree. I’ve read Kafka in high school, college and on my own time, and I don’t think I’d ever seen his photo until now. In fact, I’d float the theory that Edgar Allan Poe enjoys this “brand” recognition far more.

Despite this pair of objections from the bench, I found this unconventional bio to be unique. After all, very little is devoted to Kafka’s output — it really is all about Kafka, the man. Big points to Douglas Smith for the excellent cover illustration as well. —Rod Lott

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I’m not exactly sure what to say about Traci L. Slatton’s IMMORTAL. There are elements of the novel that are dull and maddeningly frustrating, and there are counterbalancing elements that are exciting, enlightening and utterly fascinating. Some of the success stems from the setting of 15th-century Florence, Italy. The exotic locale colors our perceptions and distances us effectively in a way that allows us to appreciate the tale of growth that Slatton wishes to tell us.

Luca Bastardo is a young, abandoned street urchin, cruelly imprisoned in a children’s brothel, forced into sex slavery with little hope for escape. But there is something special about Luca: He does not age as others do. Indeed, when he is 30 calendar years old, he appears as a cherubic youth of only 13.

This curse — or blessing — of an exceptionally lengthy lifespan is what marks him both as a heretic of the time (as only demonic intervention could accomplish this) or as a man of God (as only the love of God could create such a perfect being who ages so slowly). The battle over whether Luca’s existence is overseen by Satan or God rages in both Luca’s thoughts and of the friends and enemies that surround him. His search for love and belonging is a spiritual one — a longing for something beyond one’s self. It is the search that both destroys and fulfills him.

This journey is the exciting and enlightening part of the novel. His longing for love fuels the story and elevates the writing a notch. But the frustrating part is showcased by two very common failings of historical fiction: 1) the desire to mark your fictional protagonist as special — and to provide recognition anchors — by peppering your text with very famous real historical figures, all of whom somehow contrive to be a part of the story (in this instance, we have Leonardo daVinci, Petrarch, the Cathars and the entire de’ Medici clan); and 2) a studied unwillingness to avert one’s doom, even though the outcome is obvious. Luca knows that certain people will eventually kill him, and he avoids any action that will divert the course of this destiny.

But, in one aspect, maybe that is the point. Luca understands what his life has meant, to him and to others, and his acceptance of his destiny, his acceptance of the presence of God, no matter how cruel or capricious, serves as his — and the reader’s — enlightenment.

In the end, it’s an interesting, well-told tale that doesn’t quite transcend some of the well-known limitations. Its setting and sensitive characterizations bode well for the future. A following novel from Slatton may be very worthwhile. —Mark Rose

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With its fairly large print, Bruce Wexler’s THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD OF SHERLOCK HOLMES may appear “elementary,” but it’s a big book (in width if not depth) whose pages that fans of literature’s detective icon will delight in turning.

Separated into a handful of heavily illustrated chapters, the volume opens with a brief biography of Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Much of it will be old hat to anyone who’s ever read about his life, save for the occasional offhanded nugget (such as the flop play he co-wrote with PETER PAN‘s J.M. Barrie), but as with the entirety of the contents, it’s really what surrounds the text that counts.

And by that, I mostly mean vintage covers of COLLIER’S magazine sporting Dorr Steele’s illustrations, and Sidney Paget’s prized drawings from THE STRAND. Yes, the latter are often reprinted in various collections of the Holmes stories, but to see them in full-color instead of the same-old black-and-white is a treat.

Following the Doyle info, Wexler’s work starts focusing on Sherlock’s life in print, whether serialized in the aforementioned magazines or rounded up in books, on both sides of the Atlantic. To give readers a more informed perspective of the series’ Victorian setting, subsequent chapters spotlight the London look (including several shots inside the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221-B Baker St., where I really want to visit), the medical and forensic sciences at play at the time (with an unsettling peek into Dr. Watson’s bags, full of terrifying surgeon’s tools), police equipment and the Whitechapel scourge of the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.

Period photos and illustrations dot each page, which makes the later chapters on film and TV adapations and various memorabilia — from British commemorative stamps to chess sets and cigarette cards — so much fun to look at. (Note that one of the movie poster images still bears the watermarked URL of the site from which it was taken.) Wexler’s book won’t set you back many bucks, so if you’re one who’s read the Holmes canon more than once, logical deduction assumes you’ll enjoy this diversion. —Rod Lott

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With all its talk of vaginal embolisms and chewing on used condoms, Chuck Palahniuk’s SNUFF is destined to land on several year-end worst lists. But not mine!

I’m intrigued by the maverick author’s plot about an aging porn queen out to set an on-camera gang-bang world record, told from the perspective of three of the 600 men milling about in a basement, awaiting their shot at pornographic immortality. If the very idea offends you in the slightest, don’t even give it a try — you won’t get past page 2.

For everyone else, you can expect from SNUFF what you have from all of Palahniuk’s other novels: a feeling that you’ve never read anything quite like it. Whether it’s good or bad is a whole other story — and here, that line is more subjective than ever.

Cassie Wright is the triple-X movie star in question who — with vagina newly waxed — is ready for her final extreme closeup, knowing she’s too old to be a porn princess anymore. But she’s going to go out with a bang — 600 of them, to be exact — with a train-pulling that just might kill her. Regardless, her legacy and estate will be assured.

While Cassie lay in a bed upstairs, her impending sexual partners await in one crowded room, eating chips and stripped to their undies, as some of Ms. Wright’s greatest hits from yesteryear play on monitors like visual Viagra. The guys comprise a melting pot of cultures, ages and backgrounds; each is identified by the Sharpie-scrawled number on his wrist.

Mr. 72 is an adopted young man who brings roses, because he believes Wright is his birth mother. That’s what he’s been told, anyway, by his adoptive mom after she catches him humping a blow-up doll modeled after the movie star. He’s here to “save” her.

Mr. 137 is a well-known and good-looking TV actor whose career has run aground with his show’s cancellation. His profile could use a boost, which this gig could get him, if he doesn’t kill himself with all the pills he’s taking while he waits.

Finally, Mr. 600 is no stranger to porn himself. He’s a past-his-prime actor and former co-star of Cassie’s on- and off-screen. All three of these guys interact with another as the book’s viewpoint shifts between them — see, this novel is all about taking turns — with each chapter.

As hinted by Mr. 600′s opening admission that none of them intended to make a snuff film that day, this can’t end well. (Another hint: Palanhiuk’s name on the spine.) But there is no way you can guess exactly how it will end. It’s so over over-the-top that predictions are impossible, so yes, prepare for a shock.

SNUFF may be the dirtiest book I’ve ever read. It’s not so much the sex — there aren’t that many scenes that depict actual acts, but the characters sure do talk about it a lot. The salacious subject pretty much informs every one of its almost 200 pages. As I read, I caught a serious AMERICAN PSYCHO vibe off of it, given the amount of daring involved and the serious potential to be misunderstood.

See, SNUFF is not about titillation, despite what the fornicating figures of its endpapers suggest otherwise. Every character is a sad one, stuck in a self-loathing rut to some degree, and the act of sex is purely mechanical — a joyless means to an end. There’s nothing remotely arousing about it here — ironic, given the circumstances.

I’m torn as to whether the novel qualifies as “good.” It’s never boring, certainly, and it has loftier ambitions than the trash many, many, many will proclaim to be (an idea its plain-brown-wrapper ink will help support). It’s an experience I won’t soon forget, but is it one I’ll ever revisit? —Rod Lott

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“Folks were pulling me back until only my dick was still touching her, my hips still bucking until just the head of my dick was inside her, until I popped free, my ‘nads jumping out ribbon after ribbon of white ooze across her butt. At the far end of her, Cassie Wright’s mouth said, ‘You guys getting this?’ The director said, ‘This is one for the trailer. … Careful, kid, you’re fixing to drown us.’”

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• HAUNTED by Chuck Palahniuk
• RANT: AN ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF BUSTER CASEY by Chuck Palahniuk

Here’s how good James Morrow’s THE PHILOSOPHER’S APPRENTICE gets, for a long while: It’s more accessible and memorable than his THE LAST WITCHFINDER, and that book was one of 2006′s very best.

This fantasy of “mischievous alchemistry” is told by Mason Ambrose, a philosophy doctorate student who gets an unusual job offer after blowing his dissertation: He’s asked to tutor a teenage girl at her home on Blood Island, off the Florida Keys. Specifically, he’s to restore the “moral compass” she lacks following a hit on the head.

The pay’s great, the locale is paradise, so off Mason goes. Before he meets the Lolita-esque Londa, he meets her mother — and his new employer — Edwina. She’s a strange one, as witnessed by their immediate surroundings, which include a tree that shudders and bears hallucinogenic fruit, and an feathered iguana that talks.

That’s the least of the wonders Mason discovers on the not-so-uninhabited private isle, but to reveal any more would be to the detriment of your enjoyment. Suffice to say, Morrow’s work is like THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU fornicating with MY FAIR LADY.

Divided into three distinct sections, APPRENTICE leaves the island behind after Part I, as Mason and Londa’s relationship morphs, to say the least, with the former feeling like an involuntary Dr. Frankenstein. The two are forced to encounter the “greatest antiabortion protest in history,” which all comes to a head in the final third.

Morrow is a true original, and APPRENTICE is a work of bawdy brilliance — right up until that final chunk, which stumbles under the weight of its own outrageousness. Prior, a manageable level of political satire is kept in check, but then grows too heady and thick. Again, to give details would spoil the discoveries, but to say assassination plots, pineal glands and the Titanic are involved is safe enough.

The author’s gift for turning a phrase remains in full force throughout; in his hands, even the mundane deserve highly imaginative descriptions, such as “knuckles acquired the look and texture of uncooked bacon.” Big ideas and big laughs also are in no short supply.

All in all, taking in THE PHILOSOPHER’S APPRENTICE reminded me of this three-sentence exchange from page 160:

“I applaud your ambition.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“The last thing on my mind.” —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE LAST WITCHFINDER by James Morrow

Regardless of what you think of it, the new-in-paperback Chuck Palahniuk’s RANT: AN ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF BUSTER CASEY will screw with your head. And I don’t just mean shock you, but really mess with it. It’ll cut around your entire scalp, scoop out your brain and wring it dry before putting it back — and not exactly in the same condition.

The Buster Casey of the title is now deceased, and the novel is comprised of nothing more than snippets of interviews with those who knew him, reminiscing about his life. Nicknamed Rant, he was a famous serial killer, but not like a Jeffrey Dahmer or even a Jason Voorhees; he was responsible for a plague-like outbreak of rabies that turns people into zombies of sorts. His infection was brought on by his hobby of purposely getting bit by snakes, spiders and scorpions.

It’s a hobby he picked up as a child — when he wasn’t collecting his own boogers or other children’s teeth — and never grew out of. In fact, having the poison flow through his veins was like Viagra to him. Rant’s also known for his acute sense of smell; one round of oral sex with his slightly deformed girlfriend and he can tell what she ate that day.

After leaving his small hometown and unhappy childhood behind, Rant falls in with a group of people into Party Crashing — a quasi-DEATH RACE 2000 sport in which teams of four cruise the streets in cars, looking for other teams to crash into for kicks – at low-velocity speeds, mind you. (Palahniuk includes no scar-fucking, but probably only because David Cronenberg beat him to it.)

One can tell Palahniuk had a ball teasing readers with the oral-bio structure, divulging the important parts bit by bit on his own terms, and not to the conventions of fiction. You can imagine him smiling in malicious glee as you’re left baffled as to why all the people’s names are accompanied by graphic of either a sun or a moon, leaving it unexplained, yet eventually doling out enough clues for you to figure it out, albeit long down the road.

But just when you suspect RANT may be all about structure, Palahniuk throws in a big twist that upends the story thus far, and takes it somewhere else entirely. It’s a move that could have backfired, but instead — especially after a little too many pages devoted to Party Crashing — it sets the book aflame with excitement. Without revealing the proverbial monkey wrench, it finds the author toying with science fiction, as only he can.

RANT is not for everyone — nothing by Palahniuk is, of course — but those willing to strap in for a wild ride down unpredictable paths will be rewarded with a daring and darkly comic work of originality. —Rod Lott

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“He used to wedge his face between my legs and and slip his tongue into me. He’d come up on his elbows, smacking his lips, his chin dripping, and Rant would say, ‘You ate something with cinnamon for breakfast …’ He’d lick his lips and roll his eyes, saying, ‘Not French toast … something else.’ Rant would snort and gobble, then come up with his eyes shining, saying, ‘For breakfast, you drank a cup of Constant Comment tea. That’s the cinnamon.’ From just the smell and taste of me, he’d nail my whole day.”

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• HAUNTED by Chuck Palahniuk

Did you hear the one about LOLITA‘s pedophiliac Humbert Humbert being confronted by DATELINE’s “To Catch a Predator” segment? If not, consult THE MCSWEENEY’S JOKE BOOK OF BOOK JOKES pronto. This slim but satisfying anthology pokes a number of holes into the often-inflated world of self-important literature and writing with dozens of brief biting bits.

From the start – namely, the introduction by John Hodgman – you can tell you’re in for a good time. “It is hilarious that Herman Melville wrote MOBY-DICK,” he writes. “It is hilarious that it has a tattooed cannibal in it named ‘Queequeg’ and also a guy with a peg leg, and what’s more, it’s GODDAMNED TITLE IS MOBY-DICK. Priceless. I know, as we all do, that MOBY-DICK is hilarious, and I HAVEN’T EVEN READ IT.”

If that at least put a crooked smile on your face, dig in; there’s plenty more where that came from. Matthew Kennedy offers a sexually explicit “The Dick and Jane Reader for Advanced Students,” while Jim Stallard goes meta with a RASHOMON-style look at the exploits of Highlights for Children mainstays Goofus and Gallant.

John Moe has a diary of what it’s like when “Winnie-the-Pooh Is My Co-Worker” (“Winnie’s friends came by to take him out for lunch today … a tiger that had to be on coke”), and Jared Bloom presents a two-page excerpt from Steven Seagal’s “very authorized biography,” in which the actor struggles to come up with titles for what eventually became the film HARD TO KILL (discarded monikers include DIFFICULT TO BEAT UP; SERIOUSLY, TRY PUNCHING THIS GUY IN THE FACE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS; HOWARD’S END; and SEX FIGHTING).

Franz Kafka’s man-turned-cockroach Gregor Samsa is the subject of two pieces: one by Alex St. Andrews, taking form of a Social Security notice denying his disability claim, and another by Will Layman, imagining him as a sports coach.

There are lots of short lists, including:
• “Klingon Fairy Tales” (example: “Mary Had a Little Lamb. It Was Delicious”)
• “Ikea Product or LORD OF THE RINGS Character?”
• “Twist Endings”
• “Thrilling Chapter Endings You May Use in Your Next Novel” (example: “Suddenly, {PROTAGONIST} noticed darting shadows in the corner of the ballroom. Ninjas!”)
• “Possible Titles for Future Sue Grafton Novels After She Runs Out of Letters” (example: “‘,’ IS ALMOST FOR COMA”)
• and perhaps most hilariously, Dan Wiencek’s “Thirteen Writing Prompts” (example: “A wasp called the tarantula hawk reproduces by paralyzing tarantulas and laying its eggs into their bodies. When the larvae hatch, they devour the still living spider from the inside out. Isn’t that fucked up? Write a short story about how fucked up that is.”)

Like ye olde Spy magazine – without which McSweeney’s would not exist – some pieces are better as a concept than in execution (“Lady Macbeth on Ambien,” “Jane Eyre Runs for President”), but if there’s something you don’t like, simply turn the page. It should be noted that McSweeney’s sometimes is responsible for the very brainier-than-thou attitudes they’re making fun of here, but at least their hands of parody are quite deft ones. –Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF JOHN HODGMAN:
• THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE by John Hodgman

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MCSWEENEY’S:
• NOISY OUTLAWS, UNFRIENDLY BLOBS, AND SOME OTHER THINGS THAT AREN’T AS SCARY, MAYBE, DEPENDING ON HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT LOST LANDS, STRAY CELLPHONES, CREATURES FROM THE SKY, PARENTS WHO DISAPPEAR IN PERU, A MAN NAMED LARS FARF, AND ONE OTHER STORY WE COULDN’T QUITE FINISH, SO MAYBE YOU COULD HELP US OUT

Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!

About all I remember from the 1983 miniseries V of my childhood: 1) Faye Grant looked hot, 2) Freddy Krueger was in it, and 3) that lizard baby. V’s writer/director Kenneth Johnson revisits the loose ends of the resulting 1984 weekly series with the novel V: THE SECOND GENERATION. The reptilian alien “Visitors” have wrestled control of Earth by tricking its residents, except for the small splinter group of resistance fighters. Your enjoyment will help tremendously if you’ve revisited V on DVD, as several characters and storylines either are referenced or still in play. Everyone else may be working at a disadvantage, and may be better suited to awaiting the eventual screen adaptation, even if Johnson’s ever-thriving imagination is still in full force.

For THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES: ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF CHINESE FOOD, Jennifer 8. Lee traveled the globe to find the very best Chinese restaurant. I won’t spoil the surprising winner for you, but the real charm of the book comes in the other chapters, in which she laments the dangers of being a Chinese food deliveryman, explores the origins of chop suey, visits the manufacturers of those white takeout boxes (a wholly American thing, by the way) and recounts a 2005 Powerball mishap when there were more payouts than usual because a fortune cookie string of lucky numbers actually was. Lee writes so friendly, you want to take her out for a bowl of hot-and-sour soup. This engaging buffet of travel, history and popular culture will put a smile on your face and a pang in your stomach. And no MSG!

Gonzo cruciverbalist Ben Tausig attempts to hook kids into pencil games instead of video games with MAD TAUSIG VS THE INTERPLANETARY PUZZLING PEACE PATROL. You’re supposed to stop madman Mad Tausig by doing crosswords, cracking codes, unscrambling words and tackling a variety of logic, word and other puzzles. The quasi-mystery is a lot of fun, with something to do on every page, and the cartoony illustrations by Goopymart – an alias, I’m assuming – help make the book irresistible. Buy one for your kids … and one for yourself. It’s not the most fiendishly clever puzzle book out there – that’d be Lemony Snicket’s THE PUZZLING PUZZLES – but it’s darn close.

The whole of our country’s cinema criticism is chronicled in AMERICAN MOVIE CRITICS: AN ANTHOLOGY FROM THE SILENTS UNTIL NOW – EXPANDED EDITION, edited by Phillip Lopate. Among its earliest entries are poet Carl Sandburg’s awkwardly phrased reviews (“Then it is for you this Caligari and his cabinet”) and Cecilia Ager’s take on KING KONG, which focuses solely on Fay Wray. Film criticism got better as the decades progressed, as Jonas Mekas’ all-question review of Andy Warhol’s SLEEP shows, or the rightfully praised works of Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby. More recent pieces of note include J. Hoberman’s bad movies essay/tribute and screenwriter Paul Rudnick’s take on DANCES WITH WOLVES, albeit under the satricial guise of Libby Gelman-Waxner, the über-yuppie columnist from the late Premiere magazine. At more than 750 pages, there’s a wealth of material here for serious film enthusiasts.

THIS MAY HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORLD, goes Lawrence Potter’s slim little volume, which serves as an FAQ for this current crazed earth of ours. It seeks to tackle – through both commentary and good ol’ hard facts – many of the trickiest hot-button issues of today, including “Is Bush actually stupid?,” “Is it possible that global warming is not taking place?” and “What is Iran up to?” (The short answers, respectively: His IQ equals John F. Kennedy’s, not likely, it ain’t pleasant.) Chapters are divided amongst topics like China, Darfur and Russia. That Potter offers concise, easy-to-follow explanations justifies the book’s title; unfortunately, those in most need of knowing the answers may not even care.

‘Tis easy to see why they call New York “the city that never sleeps”: Because when you have a thousand-plus-page book like WRITING NEW YORK: A LITERARY ANTHOLOGY, you’d better be planning on some long nights. Edited by Phillip Lopate, the book originally was published in 1998, but this 10th-anniversary edition from Library of America is much more relevant with the inclusion of post-9/11 material, like a chilling excerpt from Don DeLillo’s FALLING MAN novel. A wealth of classic writers are here – F. Scott Fitzgerald, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, Edgar Allan Poe, Tom Wolfe, O. Henry – paying tribute to (and sometimes knocking) the Big Apple. If you’re a fan of the metropolis, or a New Yorker subscriber, this belongs on your bedside table. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

In a world where the Goldman family is now making money (and taking writing credit for) O.J. Simpson’s tasteless IF I DID IT book, and where the Kindle and the iPhone have made the media act like giddy schoolgirls, we at least have the solidity of BOOKGASM, presenting good (and bad) books for us to read on a daily basis. So let’s take a look back through 2007 and pick out the best of the titles you may want to pick up with all the gift cards you got this season.

Best Books I Reviewed in 2007
So what piqued my interest in 2007? We’ll start with the fabulous debut of Lisa Unger in BEAUTIFUL LIES. Truly remarkable were her entirely believable characters, who actually behaved like normal folk when dealing with the police instead of the intensely idiotic morons we are normally used to reading about. It was also highly evocative of New York City – not just using the city as a crutch, but really writing about it.

MEMORY AND DREAM by Charles De Lint is actually from 1994, but I reviewed a 2007 reprint of this disturbing contemporary fantasy about artists who can create beings from what they paint on canvas. The moral and social responsibilities they inherit by creating these creatures is soul-wrenching for everyone – characters and readers alike – and the book stays with you long after it’s read.

My big find of the year was Mark Lindquist’s THE KING OF METHLEHEM. Lindquist, an actual chief of a drug unit trial team in Tacoma, knows the meth culture inside and out. His tale concerns a detective on the trail of the King of Methlehem, otherwise known as Howard, and the trials and tribulations of tracking him down. Funny, smart, and horrible all at the same time, this is super-realistic fiction, and a book I’ve convinced at least four other people to read. Join the club.

Cherie Priest’s reluctant ghost-hunting detective Eden Moore has really grown on me, first with WINGS TO THE KINGDOM and now with NOT FLESH NOR FEATHERS. Her Southern Gothic style is perfect for the spooky atmosphere she creates, and the books have a lot of humor in them. These aren’t gory horrorfests, but they are wonderfully written and fun to read.

A big surprise to me was Karen Miller’s THE INNOCENT MAGE. My point in the initial review was that after 640 pages, I actually thought “Damn, I wish I had the second book in the series to start.” She takes pretty standard fantasy set pieces (rude country boy meets sophisticated prince and they hit it off) and thoroughly develops them so you care about the characters and the world they inhabit. It’s the best fantasy novel I read this year.

Stef Penney’s THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES was another excellent work, set in the far Canadian North in the year 1860. In a riveting mystery, she also managed to explore mixed race and homoerotic relationships with a delicate touch of subtlety and grace. Not easy to do. But the book isn’t obsessed with these themes, and that makes it even better. Penney is an absolute master of characterization and this is only her debut novel. Much more can be expected in the future.

Best Books I Read – but Did Not Review – in 2007
Published in 2005, Nick Jans’ THE GRIZZLY MAZE is an account of grizzly bear lover and pseudo-educator Timothy Treadwell, and how he and his girlfriend eventually were attacked and eaten by bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. I read this after seeing Werner Herzog’s brilliant documentary GRIZZLY MAN, and recommend you do the same. Jans will add a lot of detail and context to what you see in the movie, and also helps you to understand just how freaking brilliant a filmmaker Herzog is. (Speaking of which, do yourself a favor and rent his and Zak Penn’s mockumentary INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS, which is knock-dead hilarious.)

If you love old-time country music, you will definitely want to read HOW NASHVILLE BECAME MUSIC CITY, U.S.A.: 50 YEARS OF MUSIC ROW by Michael Kosser, published in 2006. This is a phenomenal look at Nashville recording studios and the history of country music in the city. The subject is so broad that no book could be comprehensive, but Kosser does a good job just by interviewing people who were instrumental in putting Nashville on the map. He doesn’t talk to everyone and some big stars get a little bit of short shrift (such as Johnny Cash). But because Kosser isn’t writing about the celebrities, he’s really writing about the studios and record labels, how they got started, how they survived, how they grew from the honky-tonk days of the ‘40s through the Garth Brooks overexposure of the ‘80s, to the Gretchen Wilson and Toby Keiths of the ‘90s. Lots of great anecdotes and loving commentary and unusual facts, this is a really fun book.

Best Publishing Development
Night Shade Books out of San Francisco has a lovely off-kilter focus on its fiction line that’s hard to pin down, but worthwhile because it’s different, from the romantic tone of Nathalie Mallet’s THE PRINCES OF THE GOLDEN CAGE to the urban madness of Richard Kadrey’s BUTCHER BIRD to the tremendous detective noir/fantasy cross of Alex Bledsoe’s THE SWORD-EDGED BLONDE.

Oooo, oooo, I also have to put a plug in for the Online Books Page, which lists thousands and thousands of free books available on the Internet. I love checking out their daily updates and wishing I had time to read some of the truly obscure titles out there.

Worst Publishing Development
Dammit! Still no new books from D.B. Weiss or Antoine Bello (both of whom haven’t been heard from in four years) and Nicholson Baker’s newest book doesn’t come out until March 2008.

Disappointments
Alberto Manguel’s A READING DIARY (published in 2004) was way too self-obsessed and trivial to be interesting. I was also saddened by Don Rickles’ RICKLES’ BOOK and Bob Newhart’s I SHOULDN’T EVEN BE DOING THIS! AND OTHER THINGS THAT STRIKE ME AS FUNNY, because neither title really got off the ground or shared enough information about the writers. Newhart’s book is funnier (and it’s interesting to note that it was his wife who came up with the idea for the classic ending of the final NEWHART sitcom), but Rickles’ book has a picture of him dressed as C.P.O. Sharkey.

Naomi Novik’s HIS MAJESTY’S DRAGON made me cry and introduced me to the wonderful dragon lore of the Temeraire series. The most recent book I reviewed of hers was EMPIRE OF IVORY and it was a little disappointing with an ending that went over the top. Maybe the approaching invasion of Napoleon will jazz up the series once more.

My nastiest review of the year was plopped on Christian Jungersen’s THE EXCEPTION, a European best-seller that was a big turd of overinflated self-regard, nanny statism, and moral relativism. Plus, you get boring interludes of articles on genocide and symbolism so blatant, I thought at first it was parodic. Yeesh.

And that’s about it. I hope all of the readers have a healthy 2008 with lots of time to read lots of books. Until then … –Mark Rose

Buy it at Amazon.

One reason I started BOOKGASM was to keep a record of everything I read, because when you consume more than 100 books a year, one can no longer rely on memory alone. But if I didn’t have BOOKGASM, I would utilize something like READ, REMEMBER, RECOMMEND, created by Rachelle Rogers Knight.

This spiral-bound reading journal would make a perfect gift for any hardcore bibliophile on your list, with nearly 250 pages of section to help keep reading material straight, separated with handy, full-color, recipe-tabbed section breaks.

There’s a section to write down books you’ve read, with space for passages to remember and other comments/thoughts. What to read next? Consult your “to read” list or “author pages.” Loaning out a book? Don’t forget to record it in the “loaner lists” so you’ll know who has it and for how long.

The thing that makes READ, REMEMBER, RECOMMEND stand out from the dime-a-dozen reading journals at Barnes & Noble is its enormous amount of checklist up front of award winners and best-ofs; the Pulitzers, National Book Awards, Oprah’s Book Club selections, Time magazine’s most influential novels – they’re all there, and that’s just scratching the surface. (As you look year by year, it’s amazing how many times Joyce Carol Oates as placed as a Pulitzer runner-up … and sad that she’s never won.) –Rod Lott

Buy it at Bibliopages.

Michael Dirda is a book critic after my own heart. In his one-hair-shy-of-joyous tour of lit CLASSICS FOR PLEASURE, he sympathizes with the commonly held view that classics are “difficult, esoteric, and a little boring. … Really, after a hard day’s work, who wants to settle down with more … work?”

Exactly. But some classics aren’t work. Some can be enjoyed as much as a speedily paced thriller. Heck, some could be classified as speedily paced thrillers, at least comparatively for their time. And it’s these enduring books that Dirda revisits, hoping to introduce old-tome-shy readers to new-for-them stories, like BEOWULF, Jules Verne’s TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and Philip K. Dick’s THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.

Smartly, Dirda – a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic – separates the book into sections by genre or some overall loose theme. This is great because if you categorically hate all romance, you can steer clear of that portion – but then you’ll miss his essay on Arthurian romances, heavy on the derring-do, not so much on the lovey-poo.

Two sections appealed to me – and likely you, dear member of the BOOKGASM faithful – most: “The Dark Side” and “Realms of Adventure.” The former addresses the giants of monster lit – Bram Stoker’s DRACULA and Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN – but also the ghost stories of M.R. James and Sheridan Le Fanu, and H.P. Lovecraft’s AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS.

The latter find Dirda poking around the works of H.G. Wells and H. Rider Haggard, but also Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes canon, Agatha Christie’s detective mysteries and even Dashiell Hammett’s THE MALTESE FALCON.

No essay is more than a few pages, and even if you disagree with Dirda, you still respect his views because they’re well-informed and not coated in dryness. The man knows literature, pure and simple; he’s intelligent, but not arrogant. That he’s attempting to make more of it accessible to today’s audience should be lauded; that he succeeds more often not, ditto.

For those looking to build a library of the greats or simply revisit them in lieu of a conversation with a like-minded friend, CLASSICS FOR PLEASURE is a gratifying start. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.