Generation A

by Douglas Coupland

Quickie Recap: In the not too distant future, the world will have no more bees, and with the bees go lots of our favourite crops. Five years after the extinction, 5 seemingly unconnected individuals are stung all over the world, and in rush the scientists to study them while they blow up all over social media.

Quickie Review: Told from a shifting-frame perspective, each of the group of 5 gets their chance to narrate and bring their own views and unique voice to the novel. This style is supposed to mimic Coupland's most famous novel, Generation X. I liked this book, although I read it warily. As usual, Coupland explores the meet and greet between culture and media\technology. His protagonists are all slackers, all disaffected youth, and all seem to be up for this non-voluntary adventure their bee stings have obligated. They're also living in a time when heroin addiction is null because of course, poppies require bees. A new drug, called Solon, has stepped in to replace it and everyone's attracted to it - except for these five. Released from their experimentation cells, they have a new prison: celebrity. To escape, they are herded by a charismatic scientist named Serge onto a remote Canadian island where they are encouraged to tell stories. These stories end up revealing things about their raconteurs of course, but also about who they are becoming, isolated together on the island. The stories, unfortunately, take the place of plot, and the book kind of falls apart in the second half, and Douglas struggles to regain control so that he may grant us the ending we deserve.

 

Quickie Recommendation: I wish we had learned more about this world without bees. The stories did very little for me. I missed action, I missed movement in the story. I'd still say check it out, but it doesn't stand up to his previous great works.

The Night Circus

by Erin Morgenstern

Quickie Recap: A mysterious circus that opens only at night enraptures its audience wherever it goes, but for all the amazing acts and sights to see in the circus, it's the people who run the show who are of most interest. As the book unravels, we begin to understand that two powerful and rivalling magicians are pulling more strings than we know, and less than they'd like.

Quickie Review: This is another book I walked by a few times before I finally picked it up. I suppose it reminded me a little of Water for Elephants and since I loved that book, I didn't want some pale comparison mucking it all up for me. But while yes, they are both circus-y, they are different books, and now I could not say which I preferred because this one was definitely the best thing I've read this year, and my favourite thing I've read in quite some time. It's her first novel, which astounds me, because it felt really rich and layered and well-developed. It's the kind of book that leaves you with really strong pictures in your head, and while at times it feels as if the author just has yet another really cool idea and is trying hard to finagle it into the book, I can almost forgive it of her because it IS a cool idea, and it adds to this magical universe she's created where maybe not everything is plot-centric, but rather floats around creating this overall impression. At this point, I'd say Morgenstern was more magic than craft, but for this novel it really worked, it was a wonder, and I look forward to reading more from her.

Quickie Recommendation: Without reservation.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

by Garth Stein.

Quickie Recap: This story is recounted by a dog named Enzo who watches enough television to have formed the belief that when a dog dies, if he is lucky, he will come back as a human in his next life. Enzo wants this very, very much. Of course, this becomes primarily the story of the family that Enzo lives with, and he tells it the way a dog would: with more compassion than is probably deserved, and abounding love and faith and loyalty.

Quickie Review: I remember seeing this book in an airport some time ago and I gave it a miss. It looked a bit silly. But then I read all the other books in the book store (okay, maybe not all, but enough that I could give this book a second look) and so I picked this up, and started reading right in the parking lot and didn't put it down until I was done, about 4 hours later. I was crying on page 5. Okay, so I'm a sap who happens to be lucky enough to have not one but three of the world's most awesome dogs living in my house (and cuddled around me as I read this). So maybe I was predisposed to love this. Whatever the case, I did. It was sweet, but not cloying. It is a bit silly, a bit simple. It's what a dog's book should be. It doesn't feel gimmicky or particularly childish. It's a bit of a reach, I'm not going to lie. The end is a bit cheesy-movie contrived. But on a snowy afternoon, cuddled in front of the fire, it was perfect.

Quickie Recommendation: I'm going to say yes. I'm not sure about the author, he was a little uneven, but he hit on a great little story here and it warmed me right up.

The Rapture

by Liz Jensen.

Quickie Recap: Bethany has already driven one psychologist crazy: she's a young girl in a high security facility because she stabbed her mother to death with a screw driver. And now she's predicting deadly storms culminating in Armageddon...or is she causing them? Her new therapist, fresh from her own wounds, has to sort out the difference while keeping her sanity.

Quickie Review: Oh man. This was intense. It takes extremes of religion and environmentalism and makes the end of the world sound all too plausible. It's light on psychological fare, surprisingly, and heavier on psychic abilities, so yes, suspension of disbelief is necessary. But fun.

Quickie Recommendation: Pretty okay.

The Unit

by Ninni Holmqvist.

Quickie Recap: On her 50th birthday, Dorrit is declared by her government to be disposable, so she, and others like her, are whisked away to the unit. They have no children, and no fame to redeem them, and so they are used as lab rats until such a time as they can ultimately be used for spare parts and make one big "final donation."

Quickie Review: Destined to be viewed as a great dystopian novel, I was immediately angry, fascinated, repulsed, and drawn the fuck in. Irresistible. Imaginative. Scary as hell.

Quickie Recommendation: Oh yeah, this one is very, very high on my list of loves.

The Answer is Always Yes

A novel by Monica Ferrell

Quickie Recap: Matt is a high school loser with big ambitions for college. Over the summer he's carefully crafted a definition of cool - but despite his painful efforts, he fails. But then he's discovered by the owner of a popular club, and as a new promoter he suddenly has everything he always thought he wanted.

Quickie Review: A professor supposedly researching the socialization of children contributes to the novel via footnotes that are mostly just distraction. The main story is familiar but interesting and would be more readable if it stood on its own. It does an excellent job of portraying cringe-worthy loserdom. Oof.

Quickie Recommendation: Needs editing.

Lullabies for Little Criminals

by Heather O'Neill.

Quickie Recap: Baby is being "raised" by her junkie dad, who had her when he was all of 15. Really, he's barely capable of keeping tabs on her, as evidenced by her constantly falling into the hands of others - foster homes, detention centres, homeless shelters - and all of these better than her fate if the pimp who has his eye on her gets his way.

Quickie Review: Oh, sigh. Big sigh. This has been in my to-read pile for so long that I'm so tickled to have finally gotten to it. It was worth the wait! My friend Luc read it just before me and gave it his seal of approval so of course I couldn't wait to rip into it. But then I stalled. Well, not stalled, exactly. But my enthusiasm paled. Not because the writing wasn't stellar, because it was, but because it's tough. You want to give this little girl a home, even though you know she's not real, but your chest tightens because you know there are actual little girls just like her. It's messy. It makes you emotional. I kept looking up from my book to exclaim things because I needed to interrupt myself, cut the tension. Really, really good read.

Quickie Recommendation:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

by Michael Chabon.

Quickie Recap: Clay is the lucky boy born and raised in America in the 1930s and has all the big dreams to prove it. His cousin, Kavalier, escapes Prague just in time and arrives with only one ambition: to earn enough money to send for his family. Together they create a comic book featuring The Escapist, and hope it will lead them to fame and fortune.

Quickie Review: I could fall in love with this author based solely on his vocabulary. It's tremendous. It's exciting just to read his words, never mind what they mean when they're all strung together into a story. But what a story! Kavalier & Clay is not new to me, but having recently read the Yiddish Policemen's Union, I got the bug to reread this one, and I'm always glad when I do. It's a tapestry of incredible stories and feels to me what a "great American novel" should be.

Quickie Recommendation: For everyone, yes.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

Quickie Recap: Yes, it really is the bones of our favourite Austen story, with Miss Bennett and Mr. Darcy and the whole crew, plus a few undead thrown in for extra fun. And it is! If you've read the "original" as I have, you can't help but delight in Elizabeth sparring verbally with her lover and pausing only to disembowel a zombie. It's genius!

Quickie Review: You'll laugh, I promise. You may also wince in disgust. It'll open your eyes to a whole new side of Austen that she probably never intended but I think is a whole pile of enjoyment nonetheless.

Quickie Recommendation: I liked it. Apparently I like watching a classic be defiled. Actually, that's not generally true. I hate remakes. This is just different. It's cute. It works.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

by Michael Chabon.

Quickie Recap: This novel features an alternative history to the one we're familiar with: during WW2, Alaska opened its doors to Jewish immigrants, saving the lives of 4 million Jews. Sitka, Alaska, is the town where they were settled, and it boomed for 60 years, but now the treatise is ending and all these nice people have to find somewhere else to go. In the meantime, the town's police force has close all of its open files, which is not easy to do in a town full of close-mouthed people afraid of the Jewish mob boss who makes sure that no one sees anything.

Quickie Review: Whoa. This guy is a genius.I'm always impressed with a writer who can invent a divergent history for us. It takes balls, and a scope of imagination that I know I wouldn't be capable of. As a reader, it fascinates and thrills me - as a fellow writer, it leaves me feeling comparatively vapid. So I don't compare, I just enjoy, and this is a very enjoyable novel. Lucky me. Lucky all of us that Chabon is willing to dive into something so rich and nuanced and finely tuned, and brings us along for the ride. It's a detective story, I suppose, but also a really cool cultural exploration, throwing together Native Americans and Jewish people of varying backgrounds, and a mix of world history and personal history that really present a strong and interesting mosaic.

Quickie Recommendation: So cool.

Downtown Owl

a novel by Chuck Klosterman.

Quickie Recap: Owl is a tiny mid-western town stuck in the rut of mediocrity. Nothing big ever happens there and the people are just limping through life, never imagining anything bigger. But then one day, something big blows in, and as you might imagine, many are unprepared.

Quickie Review: Let`s just forget that I love everything that Klosterman does. This is different. This is fiction. And yet: still totally awesome! Win!

Quickie Recommendation: Oh yeah, I was seriously impressed. Yum!

Girl In A Blue Dress

a novel by Gaynor Arnold.

Quickie Recap: Alfred Gibson is a celebrated author revered by his public and he'll do anything to keep their unblemished impression of him - including betray the woman who has cared for and loved him for years.

Quickie Review: Although this is a work of fiction, it is based on the life and marriage of Charles Dickens. It's easy to see the similarities if you're at all familiar with his work, and it's lump-in-the-throat-ish even if you aren't. It's a fascinating and intimate portrait of life behind closed doors, all the more so because Gibson\Dickens took such pains to always present a certain image to his adoring audience. It definitely stands on its own as a novel but as a glimpse of the man, the talent, the hypocrite, it's even better.

Quickie Recommendation: A brilliant insight.

The Blue Notebook

by James A. Levine.

Quickie Recap: Batuk is a young girl sold into prostitution by her father. Her only escape is via the nub of a pencil she managed to pilfer from her madam and whatever scraps of paper she can keep hidden in her cage. She writes of violence, savagery, and dehumanizing acts as if they were merely a way of life, and for her, they are.

Quickie Review: Haunting, devastating, heart-breaking, hopeful. I don't know how he did it, but Levine writes beautifully and manages to present to us a face and an issue inside a story that you cannot put down. I blew this one out of the water, staying up past the wise hour in order to finish it all in one sitting. It's painful, but it's good. It makes you really think about the magic of words.

Quickie Recommendation: Please, yes. Levine is donating proceeds to help exploited children, so by buying his book you not only help, you have an inspiring and inspired piece of writing.

Something Rotten

4th in the Thursday Next series, by Jasper Fforde.

Quickie Recap: Thursday Next, literary detective and fiction crime fighter, is on yet another mission, and this time, the fate of the world depends on it.

Quickie Review: By now everyone knows I have a Ffordian crush that appears to be unrequited. And though this novel had a couple of cliched moments, overall I just feel like this guy goes to a place that I've never read of before. It's exciting to see what he'll come up with next. It's a whole other universe, and yet it feels oddly familiar.

Quickie Recommendation: He does it well. Very, very well.

Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese.

Quickie Recap: Marion and Shiva are twins born of an Indian nun and a British surgeon. Their birth parents disappear very suddenly from their lives and they are raised in a mission hospital in Africa.

Quickie Review: This book was beautiful and incredible in ways I hadn't really anticipated. To call this book compelling would be to sell it short. It juxtaposes culture and brutality while hinting at the great things to come. It's a literary page-turner that I felt privileged to read.

Quickie Recommendation: Oh yes.

Border Songs

by Jim Lynch

Quickie Recap: Brandon is the newest member of the border patrol, and his extreme height and autistic tendencies make him possibly the most notorious and most maligned. But it's soon apparent to everyone that he has a sixth sense for detecting things that shouldn't be - bombs, drugs, illegal aliens. This makes him good at his job but unpopular in a town along the border where his own father is being offered huge amounts of cash and the girl across the border that he's crushing on is part of the biggest North American grow-op.

Quickie Review: Lynch is an American, so I felt like I was reading a story that had been flipped because it's not everyday when Canadians are portrayed as the bad influence. At the heart of the book, though, is Brandon, and he's a great character that makes you feel so much more forgiving of everything else. His sympathy is so far-reaching it even leaps up off the pages and extends to the reader. The genius of the book is how under-the-radar the satire is, but you can feel it like a light buzz that once perceived becomes hard to ignore.

Quickie Recommendation: One of the most striking and unforgettable characters makes this book one not to be missed.

The Neighbor

by Lisa Gardner

Quickie Recap: It's a "detective" novel, so I can't give too much away. Let's just say that a wife disappears in the middle of the night under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind not just her cash and ID, but also her young daughter. The police identify two suspects very quickly: her husband who is clearly hiding something, and the convicted sex offender down the street who is guilty just by virtue of his record. Now the squeeze is on to find her body and make the arrest - but which one will it be?

Quickie Review: It's a mystery, and it bears some reference to her last fare, Say Goodbye, which I read and reviewed last summer. My sister considers Gardner to be at the top of her game in this genre, and I suppose she must be right. After all, The Neighbor did have that page-turner quality. Bonus points that I found this one to be a little less predictable and it attempts to touch on some real-life issues in a not insensitive way.

Quickie Recommendation: A book to read while floating in the pool.

Brooklyn

by Colm Toibin.

Quickie Recap: Eilis leaves Ireland for America, away from her family, but also towards opportunity and independence. She finds both, and in them she comes to realize that maybe they're not exactly what she wanted.

Quickie Review: I immediately had the sense that I was reading something very special. It was beautiful and captivating. I devoured it, but come the last 15 pages or so, I dreaded the reading, not just because I didn't want it to end, but because I was so enthralled with the main character that I didn't want to see her get hurt. Faced with a tough choice, I was rooting for Q but fearful she'd opt for P. I read it as if she were my friend, as if the outcome mattered to me personally. This felt more like a letter to me than a novel. I fell in love.

Quickie Recommendation: This is the other book I referred to as most likely not moving from my top 5 of 2009 - along with The Good Mayor and Come Thou Tortoise. Loved it.

The Story Sisters

by Alice Hoffman.

Quickie Recap: After suffering some trauma, the Story sisters invent a fantasy world complete with their very own language. But as they grow through adolescence and beyond, they learn that their other world can't keep them safe.

Quickie Review: Of course I wish this book was better than it was. I breezed through it of course, because it's "easy-reading" and it has a huge readership I'm sure. At least one seems to be the better sort for its genre, and I didn't dislike it. In fact, I read it knowing exactly who it would be perfect for. It's the kind of book that would be great to throw in your beach bag for the summer.

Quickie Recommendation: Not for serious readers.

The Good Mayor

a novel by Andrew Nicoll.

Quickie Recap: Tibo Krovic does his job with zest; the town cannot help but dub him the "good mayor" and he lives up to that title every single day. That he is such a competent mayor is a true testament to his will, because Krovic is tortured at work. He is in love with his married secretary.

Quickie Review: Breath-taking. The jacket refers to Nicoll as a former lumberjack, which completely blows away every lumberjack stereotype you thought you were comfortable with. This novel is subtle, sensitive, beautiful. It's a love story, in a way, that veers toward the Kafkaesque toward the end. This too will probably stay in my top 5 for all of 2009 - which means beware the remaining 6 months' worth of books, there are only 2 spots left! Bring your A game, because Nicoll certainly has, despite this being his first novel. You just get swept along into such sweetness and tenderness, yet also fantastic and funny.

Quickie Recommendation: Not to be missed!