Sometimes we're always real same-same by Mattox Roesch

An interesting novel, set in an Eskimo village. Cesar, a teenage gang-banger from Los Angeles, moves with his mother back to her old home in Alaska. It's Cesar's cousin, Go-Boy, that eases the culture shock for Cesar. This is a coming-of-age novel, and it follows Cesar and Go-Boy, Cesar's mother, and his new girlfriend, as Cesar adapts to life in Alaska.

Cesar is an unlikely choice for a protagonist. It's tough to be sympathetic to a gang-banger, especially when we learn that he earned that label by participating in a gang-style rape. It's not clear if he actually raped the girl or if he just assisted, but it adversely affected my opinion of the character. Near the end of the novel, Cesar attempts to rationalize his part in the rape by claiming that everyone is guilty of something, an argument that seems immature at best:

And here we all are, standing on this ground. Sure,none of these people have ever participated in a gang rape. None of them have ever seen anything so ugly. But in a way, they have. In a way, every person here has raped someone. Every person in the world has raped someone.

The character of Go-Boy steals the novel. He is a perpetual optimist with his own odd mix of religious beliefs. It is inevitable that his optimism will crash in the face of repeated real-life failures, and that crash forms the real climax of the book. It is Go-Boy's journey that is more compelling and interesting, and his character that is more sympathetic. We see Go-Boy's struggle through Cesar's eyes, and Cesar learns much from Go-Boy.

An interesting novel, giving the reader a glimpse of modern eskimo culture that few will ever see.

Link to Amazon: Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Subtitled: Or the Evening Redness in the West

McCarthy's war novel. Not war between nations but the more elemental and basic desire of man to war on his fellow creatures to advance himself.

At times it reads like a heroic epic poem, at times like a biblical chronicle. There are no heroes here - the characters give free reign to their basest cravings and desires. Violence is ubiquitous. The central character - the kid, is curiously minimized. He appears at the beginning, and again at the end, but in the majority of the novel, as the hideous exploits of the roving warriors are told, the kid is curiously absent from the narrative. We know he is there, that he takes part, but we are not seeing the action through his eyes or even getting his reactions to what happens. In a sense he is everyman, or any man, caught up as a teenager in the war.

The character of the judge is the god of war. He is ruthlessly self-centered. Nothing exists that he does not destroy. He controls and manipulates everyone that he meets.

An unsettling read - grit your teeth and bear it.

Link to Amazon: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Life Portraits - Rejection

I got my latest rejection for my novel Life Portraits yesterday. This particular agent had had a partial manuscript for four months. A typical rejection: she was "intrigued by the premise", thought it had "appeal in today's market", but "just didn't fall in love".

The tally of queries and rejections for 2009 are:

I sent out 56 queries.
I got 26 rejections.
I got an astounding 30 "no response means no". In other words, 30 agents couldn't even be bothered to respond to my query with a simple no.

This is pretty discouraging for a novel that finished in the finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Here's the Publisher's Weekly review that I received as part of the contest:

When a woman inherits a series of nude photographs of an unknown man, it triggers a search for the truth behind her dead mother’s mysterious history in this superb novel. Shifting back and forth between the present and the past, with portraits both metaphorical and literal, the parallels between the lives and personalities of young mother Sally Swain and her own newly-deceased mother, photographer Eva, come into detailed focus. Sally’s search draws her into a quest for her unknown father’s identity as Eva’s tale moves from the 1950s to the 1970s amid the drama of the Civil Rights movement and explores her relationships with two very different men: doctor and budding politician Paul James, and confused, often-depressed artist Isaac Rutherford. The suspense is maintained masterfully throughout, and Sally’s slow maturation as she learns the lessons of the past is handled gently and effectively. Paul, Isaac and their family members are richly portrayed with a complex and realistic balance of virtues and flaws as Sally slowly unravels Eva’s secrets and resolves her own personal challenges in the deeply satisfying conclusion.

What now? I suppose I'll keep plugging away at it. This is not my only novel, of course. I have another that is completed and yet another in progress. But I can't pretend that I am not disappointed.

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

Draw a line from William Faulkner through the midnight dark of the human soul and at the end of it you will find Cormac McCarthy, picking over the bones of murderer and murdered, like some oracle seeking the truth of the ways of man and god. McCarthy’s god is, at best, indifferent. At worst, malevolent and sadistic.

This is the story of Lester Ballard's descent into hell. Ballard is a piece of work, a real child of god. McCarthy tells it in stark and simple prose with black humor. Ballard, with the cunning of all men, learns to take advantage of his situation, preying, like the "Son of Sam" murderer, on lovers parked in cars along lonely mountain roads. In his depravity, Ballard takes advantage of the dead female bodies.

No one can tell stories of this kind better that Cormac McCarthy. After reading it I felt depressed and blue for days, wary that a sadistic god would laugh when I was struck down by some depraved child of god.

Link to Amazon: Child of God

Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy

Draw a line from William Faulkner through the midnight dark of the human soul and at the end of it you will find Cormac McCarthy, picking over the bones of murderer and murdered, like some oracle seeking the truth of the ways of man and god. McCarthy's god is, at best, indifferent. At worst, malevolent and sadistic.

Set in the mythical southern Appalachia of Faulkner, this novel is sparse and stark. It follows an incestuous brother and sister. She bears his child; he abandons it to the elements. The baby is taken by a passing tinker. She sets out to find the baby. The brother sets out to find her. Along the way they encounter good and evil in many forms. Look for no happy ending here.

Link to Amazon: Outer Dark

A Romance on Three Legs by Katie Hafner

Subtitled "Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano"

The characters make this creative non-fiction book about Glenn Gould's search for the perfect piano. There is Gould himself, of course. The author does not make a judgment about his mental health, letting his actions speak to the reader. Think the character of the detective Adrian Monk from the popular TV series. To me Gould seems to have obsessive-compulsive character disorder as well as being borderline autistic.

Gould could not find a perfect piano with a piano tuner-technician to keep it perfect, and that character is the practically blind piano tuner Verne Edquist. Edquist's story is, to me, as fascinating as Gould's. Raised on a poor farm in Saskatchewan, he was forced to attend a school for the blind where he learned the rudiments of his trade, working his way up through the ranks of piano tuners to become the best.

The third major character of the book is the piano itself, one of the few Steinways manufactured during the war years when the factory was re-tooled for the war effort. That it was constructed at all seems a miracle. Gould found it languishing in a department store in Canada. He was looking for a super-light action and a clean sound, and it was Edquist that brought that sound out of the piano.

A lot of fascinating details are also revealed about the Steinway Artist program as it existed after the Second World War. Once an artist signed an exclusive contract with Steinway they were supplied with pianos and even piano tuners when they toured.

Unfortunately, shipping Gould's Steinway led to the end of it's useful life, at least for Gould. It was dropped five feet on a loading dock and the plate was cracked. After it was rebuilt, even Edquist was unable to get it back to the pre-accident condition that Gould obsessively desired.

This is a non-fiction book, so the facts get in the way of a happy ending, but it's still a fascinating account of two interesting men and the piano they shared.

Link to Amazon: A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano

The Art of Practicing by Madeline Bruser

Subtitled "A Guide to Making Music from the Heart"

A very useful guide to practising a musical instrument, with tips on everything from physical to mental preparedness. Some of the advice is evident and common sense, some is unexpected.

Link to Amazon: The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music from the Heart

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl

I did not care for this at all. I have also read The Dante Club by the same author. He's carved a little niche for himself, writing novels with a literary tie-in.

It's worth examining in detail just to understand what bothers me about the novel - so I don't commit the same errors.

The protagonist is an idiot for most of the novel. Naive and bungling, yet unbelievably lucky. Not convincing that he would abandon everything to find out the truth about Poe's death. Mystery novels have a long history of the dumb sidekick, but in those cases the sidekick is not the focus of the novel - the detective is. It's not the mysteries of Dr. Watson, it's the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. In this case neither of the detectives grab the readers imagination, leaving us with this idiot for a protagonist.

Too close to the truth, which, in this case, is boring. I realize the author did a lot of research into Poe's death so that he could wrap his novel around fact. It's boring. You see a mystery about the death of Poe on the bookstore shelf and what springs to mind? Something macabre, something obsessed with being buried alive, something dark and gloomy and fantastic. Instead we get a not-very-cohesive story about Poe being overcome by a single drink of alcohol and spurned by his friends. It's supposed to be fiction, OK? No one expects the truth. It should be a story worthy of the man who wrote The Cask of Amontillado and The Fall of the House of Usher.

The writing style, while it might be appropriate for a novel of the period, is too cumbersome and long-winded for a modern novel with modern readers. There are plenty of examples of historical novels written in a compelling and captivating manner. March and The Year of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks are good examples.

So I didn't like it. Will I read another novel by Pearl? Probably, with the hope that he improves.

Link to Amazon: THE POE SHADOW

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

This novel is worth studying just to understand how McCarthy constructed it. Yes it is violent and hopeless, but it is also riveting and compelling.

My understanding of the construction of the novel is that McCarthy took the novel apart, separated it into two parts, and put it back together. The compelling part is a linear telling of the story of the stolen money and the chase. In this part the writing is restricted to only what can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled - the senses. There are no reflections by the characters, no feelings, no rhetorical questions, and no flashbacks. Essentially all of that has been removed and placed in the other part of the novel, in which the character of the Sheriff addresses the reader. There is no action in this part, only a discussion by the Sheriff in first person of his life as a sheriff and his feelings about what he has observed. The two parts alternate, with the Sheriffs first person musings in italics.

It works, very well. Makes me want to try to imitate it.

Link to Amazon: No Country for Old Men