The Library at Mount Char - Scott Hawkins

I have been meaning to write about this book for a while. I initially read it back in 2016, and have made everyone I could convince read it ever since. It is an incredible, and strange, and incredibly strange book. If you read it, you will love it or you will hate it. I am not sure there is any middle ground.

But first, how did you learn about this book, you ask. Did some algorithm suggest it to you? A friend? Someone who is not your friend anymore? Well, here’s my story. One of the regulars on Tony Kornheiser’s podcast is Chris Cillizza, who is a political analyst for CNN. Back then, I followed him on Twitter. One day he posted about this book, saying in essence, “I don’t know if this is the best book I’ve read all year, or the worst”. From earlier posts, I knew he was a fan of fantasy and science fiction. So, count me as intrigued. I picked it up at the library and took a shot. And here’s my review:

Our protagonist is Carolyn, a woman in her early thirties. Years before, when Carolyn was only 8, her suburban neighborhood was destroyed, and she and several children were taken in by a powerful man known only as “Father”. He assigned each child a particular skill or “catalog” to master in his (and now their) home, the Library. For Carolyn, the catalog was languages, even non-human ones. David was assigned murder and war. Jennifer studied how to heal, up to and including resurrection. Which comes in handy, because Margaret was required to walk the paths of the dead. And so on. But as the novel begins, Father has disappeared, and they can’t get back in the Library. The novel follows their efforts to regain the Library, among other things. You see, since Father has disappeared, that leaves a power vacuum in their “family dynamic”, so to speak. And we all know nature abhors a vacuum. As you can imagine, some of these grown children have real issues, and that provides for some delightful conflict.

Now here’s the thing. This novel is in no way straightforward. To say much more about what is really going on would be spoilery, and I don’t do that. But I will tell you this. This is one of the weirdest books I have ever read.  And just when you think it can’t get weirder, it gets weirder. Off the charts weird. But not incomprehensible weird. More like “holy shit!” weird.

And the book definitely has its moments of absurd humor. My favorite exchange from early on:

“You might have told me he was a fucking tiger, Michael.”

“You didn’t know? I thought everyone knew.”

In addition, “The Library at Mount Char” certainly rewards re-reading. There are passages that sort of just float by the first time, but on second reading you go “Oh! That’s what that meant!” Just phenomenal craft.

I have to say, I believe I understand Cillizza’s original ambivalence. And here’s the warning. This novel is full of triggers. Sometimes shocking violence, especially to women and children. Harm to animals. And absolutely cold-blooded murder. It’s all in there. But it is never gratuitous, it is always in service of the story. And given the abilities of the children, some of the “bad stuff” has lower stakes than you might otherwise imagine.

All in all, it is just an amazing read. I promise you will not have read a novel this unusual in your entire life. You will love it, or you will hate it. I’ll take Column A.

Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders

A note about my book reviews. I read a lot of books. But in this venue, I think I will only review those that really make an impression. If, for some strange reason, you are interested in what I think about all the books I have read, have I got a deal for you. Every month I send out an email reporting on them all, both positive and negative, with occasional in-jokes. If you want in on the mailing list for that monthly book report, then venture over to the Contact page and provide your information.

Now on to the book, and it is a doozy.

Lincoln in the Bardo

George Saunders

“Lincoln in the Bardo” is set in 1862, immediately following the death of the Lincolns’ eleven-year-old son, Willie. In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is essentially a limbo-like state between lives, where one passes after death before moving on to the next life. So the Lincoln referred to in the title would be Willie, rather than the 16th president. Saunders has said that he got the idea for the novel after hearing that Lincoln was said to have visited his son’s temporary crypt in Georgetown to actually hold the young boy’s body.

The construction of the novel is simply amazing. It is written as a series of passages (some quite short) wherein different characters narrate events or hold conversations. There is no other third person exposition. And it is no spoiler to tell you that almost all of the characters are ghosts.

After a prologue of sorts introducing the characters of Hans Vollman and Roger Bevins III, Saunders relates the story of Willie’s death, quoting contemporaneous sources (some real, some fictional). The remainder of the novel takes place over one night in Oak Hill Cemetery, where Willie was interred.

The ghosts generally refuse to recognize the nature of their existence, maintaining that they are only sick, and their coffins are merely “sick-boxes”. But the three main characters: Vollman, Bevins, and The Reverend Early Thomas, all realize that their kind of existence is not for the just-arrived young Willie. Children and infants, they note, never remain long, and the consequence of “tarrying” for the young seems to be a sort of insanity of the soul. So the three take it upon themselves to help Willie move on. But when the president makes a surprise appearance to visit his son’s body, Willie resists leaving. To say much more would be kind of spoiler-y, and that’s not my thing. And the story’s not just about Willie and the ghosts, it’s also about the president and how he dealt with the grief over his son while struggling to lead a nation at war with itself. In the end, it is a very satisfying read: a page turner that is at various times profoundly sad, sometimes frightening, and often surprisingly quite funny. I think you should read it.

A few words about the audiobook. I am one of those people who read books both ways. I will listen to audiobooks on my walks or working in the yard, and then switch to the physical or ebook version at other times. As mentioned above, this book is told from many points of view. So the audiobook was recorded with a different narrator for each point of view, which turns out to be 166 different readers. One complicating factor of the audiobook is that the different speakers are only identified the first time they speak, whereas in the text, the sources or speakers are noted each time. This might make it difficult to understand, but the bulk of the story is told by four characters: Hans Vollman (Nick Offerman), Roger Bevins III (David Sedaris), The Reverend Everly Thomas (George Saunders), and Willie Lincoln (Kirby Heyborne). And they have different enough voices and points of view that it is easy to follow. A highlight of the audiobook is Bill Hader and Megan Mullaly giving voice to the drunken (and foul-mouthed) Eddie and Betsy Baron. Still, if you mainly listen, I definitely recommend having a print (or ebook) version handy so you can initially identify what is going on.  

Last word: “Lincoln in the Bardo” is just a fascinating and unique book. And it has been in circulation long enough, that you probably won’t even have to put a Hold on it.

Bellweather Rhapsody - Kate Racculia

I thoroughly enjoyed “Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts”, so I looked up Racculia’s other books. This was her second novel. It is also really good, but in a very different way.

One of the things that really pulled me in to “Tuesday Mooney” was Racculia’s treatment of her characters. She changed the point-of-view character regularly, and in so doing, made them all deeply realized, fully human characters. She does that here too. Amazingly real characters. Somewhat distinctly  from “Tuesday Mooney”, almost all of the viewpoint characters in “Bellweather Rhapsody” are a little bit crazy, and a couple are full-on, “where’s my straight-jacket”, crazy. That Racculia can portray their neuroses (or psychoses) with such seeming verisimilitude is simply amazing and definitely praiseworthy.

But what’s it about you ask. Well…

After serving as a reluctant bridesmaid, twelve-year-old Minnie witnesses a murder suicide in room 712 of the Bellweather Hotel.  Fifteen years later, Alice Hatmaker and her twin brother Rabbit are attending the Statewide music conference at the Bellweather. Alice is in the chorus and is something of a diva. Rabbit plays bassoon in the orchestra and has a secret he wants to reveal to his sister. Alice is assigned to the dreaded room 712. Her roommate is teenage flute prodigy Jill. When Jill apparently hangs herself, things kind of go off the rails. Especially when Alice seeks help, only to find Jill’s body gone. WTF! Oh, and there’s a snowstorm coming, threatening to maroon all the guests at the hotel. As noted above, there are lots of characters, and everybody has baggage to work out. This is a mystery, a comedy, a coming of age novel. It is lots of things, but mostly it’s good. Compared to “Tuesday Mooney”, it is just as funny, although somewhat darker, and has a more melancholy ending. But it definitely rings true.

Full disclosure: There are parts in this book that made this grizzled, and frankly, sometimes fragile, old man cry.

Adventures in Emailing Authors, Part 2: There was a passage in which two of the characters meet for the first time. One of them has a badly damaged hand. The other hears in her head “Gimme your hands! You’re wonderful!” I immediately said to myself, “That’s ‘Rock and Roll Suicide’ by David Bowie”. So I emailed Racculia to ask. She replied in the affirmative. I think it is so cool that authors gladly interact with readers. But I guess unless you are one of those factory authors (like James Patterson) who “writes” a dozen or more books a year and they’re all on the bestseller lists, the most important thing you can do is generate goodwill with readers. Then mission accomplished!

But What If We’re Wrong - Chuck Klosterman

What a wild book! The subtitle is “Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past”. Klosterman has really matured as a writer. His first book, “Fargo Rock City” is about metal music and growing up in a small town in North Dakota. This one is a pretty deep dive into a lot of unanswerable questions, some of which are truly disconcerting. Some are interestingly trivial.

In one essay, Klosterman questions who far future generations will associate with “rock and roll”, like we almost exclusively associate march music with John Phillip Sousa. Dylan? Elvis? Chuck Berry? It’s an interesting topic, covered possibly exhaustively.

One of the disconcerting ones is his consideration of the “simulation hypothesis”, which suggests we are only self-aware computer simulations in a program developed by a far future computer programmer. The arguments put forth by the main supporter of this thesis, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, are surprisingly, and discomfitingly, compelling. For the record, I believe I am real, but reading this section made me a little queasy.

Regardless, the depth of thought Klosterman has given to this wide range of topics is truly impressive. And yet, he retains the humor and occasional pop culture references (a lot of which reference the music of the 80’s and 90’s, since he was a music writer) of his other work. Fun read.

Oh, and the upside down title is not a mistake.

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts - Kate Racculia

Delightful novel that sure turned out to be more than I expected or bargained for. I had to give a lot of thought about how to review it.

Tuesday Mooney is a goth loner who works as a prospect researcher on a hospital fundraising team. At one of the hospital’s fundraising events, eccentric millionaire Vincent Pryce (with a “y”) keels over dead. In his will, he leaves a chunk of his fortune to anyone who can play his game and solve his puzzle. Tuesday sets out on the treasure hunt with the motliest of crews: Dorry, her teenage neighbor and goth-in-training; Dex, her best friend and karaoke aficionado; and Nathaniel Arches, himself a mysterious millionaire who knew the deceased well. While this is a common enough theme in fiction (“The Westing Game”, “Ready Player One”, etc.), I have never seen it executed with such style and character.

But the novel is so much more than an entertaining adventure. It is also a mystery (several actually), a love letter to Boston (and Edgar Allan Poe), and an exploration of friendship, grief, and family. And it is about hope and joy. And the characters are not the cardboard cutouts they could become under less skilled hands. Tuesday is more than just the creepy tall girl who likes “The X-Files”. She still carries a deep sorrow from the disappearance of her best friend Abby when she was a teen. Dex is more than just the gay best friend. He is a financier who feels maybe he has lost his way. And Dorry is more than just the plucky teen next door. She worries about how her father is coping with the death of her mother, just as she herself is struggling with it.

Funny, suspenseful, and touching, “Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts” ticks all the boxes. Read it now.

The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu

Just a mind boggling hard science fiction novel from Chinese author Cixin Liu. Originally published in China in 2008, the English translation was released in 2014 and subsequently won the Hugo Award and was nominated for the Nebula Award.

The story opens during the Cultural Revolution in 1967, as astrophysics student Ye Wenjie watches as Red Guards beat her professor father to death. Ye is then sent to what is effectively a forced labor camp in Mongolia. She is eventually selected to work at a mysterious mountaintop antenna facility. The story then jumps to the present day (actually the near future from the book’s point of view) and takes up with Wang Miao, a nano-tech researcher. There appears to be a struggle between pro and anti science forces that is going on behind the scenes. There is also a weird, immersive video game called “Three Body” which takes the player to a world in a system with three stars, whose orbits seem impossible to predict (the so-called three-body problem), resulting in catastrophic changes in worldly conditions. Roughly halfway through the book, you learn what it all is really about.

I have to say it is not an easy read. Several reviewers have mentioned echoes of Arthur C. Clarke. The author himself has admitted he was greatly influenced by Clarke. Like Clarke, events tend to matter more than characters, and the characters don’t always ring true. And the science is impressive. There is even a long section about unfolding the higher dimensionality of matter that is straight out of string theory. Mind blowing. My final verdict, though, is this. There are two more books in the series. I don’t plan to read them.

Declare - Tim Powers

This book is fantastic! It’s as if John le Carré wrote a fantasy espionage novel. Wow! Powers (author of “Anubis Gates”, which is also delightful) has crafted an ingenious “secret history”. He intermixes real people and real events to craft an amazing story about what “really” happened in the struggle between East and West in the 40s, 50s and 60s. This novel is really fascinating. The present in the story is 1963, as our main character is summoned back to the British Secret Service to complete a mission that ended in disaster in 1948. Sections of the novel are set in 1941 Paris during the occupation, 1945 Berlin just after the end of the war, 1948 Eastern Turkey, and of course the “present day” action in 1963, which mostly takes place in the Middle East. Very Le Carré-esque, but le Carré never wrote about dark desert springs that talk, among other fantastic elements. It’s a spy story, it’s a fantasy story, it’s alternate history, it’s a romance.

One thing I thought was particularly impressive was Powers’ ability to include real events and real people into this wondrous jigsaw puzzle of an alternate history. References are made to notorious double agent Kim Philby, his father and noted “Arabist” St. John Philby, lapsed priest and Soviet spy Theodore Maly, T. E. Lawrence (of course), Philby’s recruiter and handler Guy Burgess, and many more. Powers even manages to weave in the historical fact that Kim Philby had a head injury in Beirut during 1963. Just mind-bogglingly well researched.

Fun side note: As you know, I am very willing to “suspend disbelief”. But there was one anachronism early on in the book that just pulled me up short. In a passage set in London in 1963, one character mentions an audience with Pope Pius XII that happened only weeks ago. Pius XII was long dead in 1963. Why this bugged me when other obviously fantastical elements did not, is a mystery. Perhaps it was because the other historical references were otherwise impeccably researched.

So I wrote the author. In part, I asked whether it was an intentionally sly wink to those paying attention that the supernatural was going to play a larger part in the narrative going forward, as in an audience with a dead Pope. Powers wrote back! He said it was just a mistake, and said he was surprised I was the first person to notice, almost 20 years after the book was published. He said he did like my idea of an audience with a dead Pope, though! Affirmation, baby!

I think I am going to read a lot more Powers.