Tag: Fiction

Lu Yao’s Life

On By upstateasbIn Fiction, International Literature, Literary Fiction1 Comment

What an opportunity we readers have here.  Chinese author Lu Yao had only two published works and died at the age of forty-two, but Life, this superb novella published in 1982 and still a bestseller in China, is now in English translation.  It’s the early Eighties, rural China begins a slow forever change, begins to turn away from the community and culture of eons; and we meet Gao Jialin, the educated son of peasants.  A sympathetic character, he’s lost his prestigious teaching job, lost face, and is in despair.  Lu Yao shares only a brief span of this young man’s life with the wrenching decisions he must make between the known past and the unknown future, a story that portends China’s path from rural to urban.

So very Chinese, yes, but absolutely stunning in its universality.  Human beings, past, present, and forever, have acted and will act as this young man does and as those around him do.  What is loss of face, but pride, hubris?  Do we choose generosity of spirit or cunning ambition?  Betrayal or trust?  What are we but “I want”?  Lu Yao’s quiet work could have played out on a stage in ancient Greece.  And one of the simplest, most beautiful opening paragraphs I’ve ever read begins “On the tenth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar, the evening sky was…”

Available now at Amazon.com or shop your local indie bookstore

Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to me by AmazonCrossing via NetGalley. I would like to thank the publisher and the author for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Erica Ferencik’s Into the Jungle

On By upstateasbIn Fiction, Psychological ThrillerLeave a comment

I read this.  Yes, the whole thing, and apparently, the Bolivian experiences of a friend of the author provided the idea behind this novel.  Good to know, that, ‘cause otherwise I’d have launched into a discussion of its utter implausibility.  The prologue nearly stopped me right there and then, that python dream, but I thought maybe that was unfair and soldiered on.  At nineteen, Lily, a lying, thieving survivor of the U.S. foster care system, is stranded in Bolivia, where she meets and falls in love with Omar, a motorcycle mechanic from the jungle.  He is moderately hot.  Soon he is summoned back to his remote village, Lily goes with him, and, after a harrowing plane ride, they arrive.  Here, among showers of tarantulas, Omar transforms, but it’s all good, and how! – from cute mechanic to wise, noble, studly, mighty hunter and savior of his people.  Lily, after some minor cultural adjustment and soon pregnant, attains depths of character and resourcefulness you wouldn’t believe.  Literally.  Shall we say over the top?  Let’s.

There’s a creepy telepathic shaman, a completely gratuitous family of lepers, a slimy poacher whose face is ripped off by a timely eagle, a lovely little pig that gets eaten, and a murderous neighboring tribe who can melt into the jungle and “melt out” of it as well.  Man, it’s hot.  Can we borrow a cup of curare?   But I read this, the whole thing, and there’s the rub.  While “utter implausibility” flashed on and off like a neon sign, I often found myself riding the literary skids of this jungle extravaganza with my hair plastered back, having a big ol’ time.  Readers, casting suggestions for Omar?

The ride begins on May 21 at a bookstore near you.

Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to me by Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books / Gallery/Scout Press via NetGalley. I would like to thank the publisher and the author for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Leonard Goldberg’s The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth

On By upstateasbIn Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery & Crime FictionLeave a comment

This third in the “Daughter of Sherlock Holmes” series was my introduction to Joanna Blalock Watson and her small family, born sleuths, all of them.  Joanna is the flesh and blood daughter of the famous detective, and her father-in-law is the ever-present Dr. Watson.  Her husband, Watson’s son, narrates, and her son Johnny promises to be his grandfather Sherlock all over again.  It’s World War I, so, as you’d expect, there are German spies, zeppelins and U-boats, encryption and experts, clandestine affairs (or not?), and a dastardly traitor.  Who?  (I figured it out; I figured it out!)  There’s even a fake funeral involving a long-dead cat.  Nice touch.

All this gives Joanna ample opportunity to dazzle with that famous deductive reasoning, but, in the Holmes tradition, there can be no rush to judgment.  She moves at a measured pace, dispensing conclusions in small, intriguing doses, and, like her father, is more than a bit condescending to those of lesser gifts……and isn’t that everybody?  While it may be something of a trudge for the modern reader, if you’re a Conan Doyle fan and don’t want to re-read him for the umpteenth time, this is well-done and as close as you can get.  Prefer your detective series in order?  Begin with The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes and follow with A Study in Treason.  This installment makes its appearance on June 11 from Minotaur Books.

Full Disclosure:  A review copy of this book was provided to me by St. Martin’s Press / Minotaur Books via NetGalley.  I would like to thank the publisher and the author for providing me this opportunity.  All opinions expressed herein are my own.

 

Helen Phillips’ The Need

On By upstateasbIn Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Mystery & Crime Fiction, Psychological ThrillerLeave a comment

Helen Phillips, this novel left me reeling.  So real it could be yesterday in my own kitchen, but then so utterly, devastatingly surreal.  Is it alternate realities, or a frazzled mother’s mind unraveling into madness, or is it a wicked human plot?  Or is it creepy with the supernatural and spooky portals to other planes?  Are the children going to die, or are they already dead?   What it is…….is a consideration, a contemplation, if you will, of a mother’s love, so fierce and so fraught with its intensity and its burden.   Tiny Ben and lively Viv (a masterpiece, the most fully realized fictional four-year-old ever), the warm funk of children sleeping, their unremitting needs, tantrums, vomit, Cheerios, yes, and the bone-deep fear of it all.   But make no mistake.  This is not a horror story.  It is a human story.  Helen Phillips, your talent is frightening.

Readers, make haste to your local bookstore (support the independents, please!) to pick this one up on July 9 from Simon & Schuster.  Or to pre-order from Amazon.com, click here: The Need

Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to me by Simon & Schuster via NetGalley. I would like to thank the publisher and the author for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Erika Swyler’s Light from Other Stars

On By upstateasbIn Fiction, Literary Fiction, Sci-Fi / DypstopianLeave a comment

Entropy.  Accelerating/decelerating half-life.  De-organizing systems.   I understand nothing.  Science, technology, Earth is mid-Apocalypse, and a failing space ship carries four pioneers to an unnamed planet.  My mind goes “Yadda, yadda, yadda.”  And yet.  And yet….   You must begin in a tiny Florida town, Easter, on the day Challenger explodes.  In a small college lab, an experimental machine named Crucible activates; and time begins to move forward, backward, to slow.  Water freezes, ponds boil and frogs scream, viscous liquid drips from power lines.  Then, in Easter, time stops.

But, you see, this book, this story, does not focus on science and technology, or on an imaginary world.  Rather, it is built around its characters, human beings speaking and thinking as we might, and what treasures they are.  At its core there is Nedda, a prodigiously gifted eleven year old, her mother, a brilliant chemist who bakes experimental cakes and her father, the prof who created Crucible.  No matter that I don’t understand entropy.  What matters is that I will never forget this story and these people.  One of my two best reads so far this year.  Shines as brightly as the light from any star in any galaxy real or imagined.  Hitting bookstores on May 7 (Bloomsbury USA).

Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to me by Bloomsbury USA / Bloomsbury Publishing via NetGalley. I would like to thank the publisher and the author for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Dave Robicheaux Returns: The New Iberia Blues

On By upstateasbIn Fiction, Mystery & Crime Fiction, Southern LiteratureLeave a comment

Been hanging out in the Delta with my friend Dave Robichaux.  I don’t know how old Dave actually is now (two hundred three or so?), but he’s still kicking butt, breaking hearts and doing his own yardwork at his peaceful Cajun cottage on the bayou.  No matter.  For the creator of this all-time great detective series, I’ll willingly suspend any disbelief.  The man is a writer.  He can tell a story and write up a storm.

You do know James Lee Burke, don’t you?   If you don’t or you think he’s mass market dross ‘cause he’s on every drugstore rack, get over it and get on with it.  If you’re a returning devotee like me, New Iberia Blues is a good place to jump back in.  If you’re a devotee-to-be, start here or anywhere, or, if you want, go back to where it all began with The Neon Rain.  You will, anyway.   Feel the soft bayou breezes through the window screen, fluttering the curtains just before the storm.

Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to me by Simon & Schuster via NetGalley. I would like to thank the publisher and the author for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed herein are my own.