This was really, really good. In fact, it’s dangerously close to excellent.
For me the location was the main draw, I love reading internationally and have read some interesting things out of Israel. This short story collection is definitely up there quality wise. It stands to mention that this is the author’s debut and not only is he that impressively good right out of the gate, but he’s also really young, almost too young to be that good, to write fiction of such striking emotional maturity and complexity. Maybe I’m just being agist. Or maybe not. Maybe Geffen is just that unicorn of an author who genuinely understands the power of written world on a profoundly sophisticated level, after all he has the professional training and education for it, his day job actually involved studying the way storytelling affects brainwaves or something really fascinating like that. So writing fiction is a perfect companion to that and man, can this guy write. It starts with a tale of an 80 year old widower who decides to join the army. It’s possibly the book’s longest story, though most are fairly long, getting shorter as the book progresses, and it’s perfectly emblematic of this collection…it represents lives and situations singular to its place of origin and does it warmly, humorously, wryly, empathetically and realistically. The stories continue in similar way until about midway through where they, quite seamlessly, veer into science fiction territory, all the while maintaining a characters first approach, specifically Israeli characters first, so it’s really just a continuation of the theme, just done from different angles. Very interesting and original angles, too, exactly my sort of both fiction and science fiction. And what themes...all the main themes... modern oxymoron of an intricately interconnected world and disconnected individuals, love, loneliness, search for meaning and place in the world. All the important things in life. Be it on the Jerusalem Beach (the collection’s most emotionally potent tale about an elderly couple saying goodbye) or in outer space on a privately owned planet closest to the Sun, these stories do a terrific job of representing the mentality and inner workings of a modern society whose idiosyncrasies reflect its singular geopolitics. The author definitely accomplishes to bring to the table all that the official book description promises and more and does so excellently. I’m say he’s a prodigious talent, but that might be considered agist also, so…let’s just say he’s really timelessly good, clever, versatile, emotionally intelligent, etc. and I’d be very interested in checking out his next book, a novel this time, whenever it comes out. This was a great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
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Three for three, bravo. Three very different and profoundly excellent books from an immensely talented author and I love each one more. This one is a biography, of sorts. A life told through the perspectives of others, a singularly interesting life of a movie director, who seems to have made movies in a desperate bid to understand life itself.
First off, it takes guts to rest an entire novel on a protagonist as complicated and emotionally distant as Sophie Stark. And even more so, to rest an entire novel on a protagonist who is only presented through the perspectives of others. North does this, because she can and does it spectacularly well. You may not like Sophie Stark, you may actively dislike her even, but you’ll be completely drawn into this retrospective of her life, done by people who loved her as much as they were able to and knew her as much as it was possible. Stark is something of an unknowable character, some of it deliberately so, some of it simply because she doesn’t know herself all that much. In fact, her passion for moviemaking is born out of the very desire to understand, relate, fit in. To paraphrase one of her movie’s reviews, Stark is like an alien who has made it her life’s work to figure out this strange planet and its inhabitants. There’s a distance between her and the rest of the world and her efforts to span it are informed by a certain deliberate manipulative calculation that often finds Sophie exploiting people around her for stories. It would seem almost evil had it not been so sincerely motivated. It ends up immoral by conventional standards, but then again Sophie Stark operates on an entirely different morality plane. To this extent, she uses men and women in her life, who end up loving her and, maybe, in a way using her too…the nature of relationships being a symbiotic mess that it is. Whatever talent she possesses springs from her flawed personality, she needs a personal connection to bring the stories to life, she’s sort of like an emotional vampire that way, something that serves her so well for a while and in the end lets her down so drastically. Sophie can be odd, off putting, brutal, charming, loving, kind…she is a walking talking paradox of a person, though, tragically, one thoroughly unsuitable to this place of existence. Which is why in the end, for all her faults, her death still devastates. Although the manner in which she leaves the world is poetically perfect and all too apt. Not the easier protagonist to love or even know, not the easiest novel to love, maybe, but such a gorgeous poignant meditation on the nature of social connections and love and emotional responsibility that…how can you not love it. There’s a line a movie produces feeds a starlet in the novel, something about how she brought a two dimensional role to 3D. Well, North goes further, she brings her characters to life, as much of a life as characters can have in readers’ minds, so that a novel about movies can play like a movie at the drive in of your brainpan. It’s a thing of beauty. Which is a longwinded way of telling you just how much I love her writing. Not one of her three books I’ve read so far were alike in any way aside from terrific writing and great female protagonists. There’s much to be said for that level of quality consistency. And this was an absolutely awesome book, like its cactus of a protagonist…memorable, fascinating, mesmerizing. And this isn’t merely my love of movies and moviemaking talking, this is the real deal. Read this book, it’ll take you away. Recommended. I like trying out new genre authors, but having had one too many disappointments, I do try to make sure the quality is there, so there are certain tests, not foolproof, but it’s something. Superficially this book passed every one of those tests and then I read it an lo and behold, the context matches. Don’t you just love it when the innards match up with the outwards. The outwards were the awesome cleverly punny title, excellent cover, the warm introduction by the author, a bonafide genre fan…and then the atmospheric black and white photo for each story and a very nice afterword discussing how each tale came to be. The innards were the stories themselves. Subtle and spooky original takes on traditional genre concepts, ghost, cannibals, etc. and some new subjects, inspired by the author’s Basque origins and her current Utah location and author’s own anxieties and fears. It’s very much a case of use what you know done right. Neatly twisted at the end, disturbing scary stories told without relying on guts and gore. Just things going Boo in the night. Very nicely done. I’m impressed. Sometimes it pays to judge the book by the cover. I really enjoyed reading this collection. It was spooky and slim and easily done in one late night sitting, which is really the best time for this sort of thing…if you dare. Recommended for genre fans. Thanks Netgalley. Once upon a time the world was round and you could go on it around and around * and then it became something different entirely. A universe all too contained and suddenly coming undone. And in it a young woman contracted as a maid, fleeing a double suicide of her employers tries to find her way to something like safety or maybe just solace.
Myrra is twenty five and she has been under a labor contact for most of her life, a fifty year contract that can be bought and sold, like so many of her social class. Because the world she lives in is extremely socially divided into approximately three strata, the megawealthy, the workers, and everyone inbetween. Myrra was born into the first stratum, her employers were very much of the second one and Tobias, the Security forces worker who is tasked with finding Myrra, was born into money, but eventually adopted and raised in the inbetween class, comfortable, but not obscenely so. Due to his divided upbringing, he has becoming a methodical precise ambitious man, someone who wants to excel and prove himself to the world and to his beloved adopted father who is also his boss as the chief of Security. But this is neither a crime novel nor a chase novel. In fact, once you learn the reasons for Myrra’s leaving and you will in the end of first chapter, you’ll know exactly what kind of story this is. Frustratingly enough, the description doesn’t give away too much, so I don’t think I can either, but suffice it to say, whatever kind of story you think it might be…it is magnificent. Every so often the book just hits you right, the words reach out from the pages, grab you and don’t let go. It’s a terrific rush, the sort of thing a reader always looks for and seldom finds and this book did just that. From the very first chapter, it transported, teleported, threw me into a distant, strange and tragic world. And I didn’t want to leave, though leaving is kind of one of the main themes here. You can tell, though, what’s coming. The title promises as much. The world goes round and around until it no longer can. And this novel is appropriately elegiac without reserving to being moribund. It’s more about the endings than beginnings, but it is a thing of beauty to behold for all its inherent sadness. It’s a debut that gets every single thing right from creating terrific, compelling, memorable characters to spectacular intricate worldbuilding to gorgeously engaging narrative. I absolutely loved it. Being a fan of dystopian fiction, I do have a pretty wide field of comparison, but this book is too good for all that, it is very much a thing of its own. So if you read thus far you already got the idea that this is a book worth checking out. Please do. And walk away now, because I want to say something things about the ending. OK? Ok then… So no happy ending here, not a conventional one. That’s a brave thing in this world of contrived performative collective cheer and I salute it. And sure, I’ve come to care so much about the characters and sure I wanted them to somehow find a magic way out, but at the same time I completely understand and appreciate the ending the author chose. This is, after all, a novel about the world giving way. Because this world itself a stunningly hubristic venture into the indifferent darkness of space, this world’s trajectory was that of an Icarus’ flight. Ambition or arrogance dwarfed by impossible circumstances, chance, brutally random twist of fate. Les like fiction, more like life. A cheaper, more commercially minded way to end this would have the three of them finding a shuttle, making to Telos, living happily ever after. In fact, there’d be at least one sequel too. It would have been fine, but it wouldn’t have been right. And it wouldn’t have poignant. And it wouldn’t have been memorable. This is the way that world ends…it’s the end of the world and they know it…and they are fine. In fact, approaching something like peace, something like grace. So that’s the novel and all my notions and thoughts about it. It’s an excellent read, I absolutely loved it. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. * Gertrude Stein, from Myrra's favorite book Seriously, how many trench coats must this guy go through? It's no surprise he chose to forego the most of the rest of the clothes. But hey, he looks good doing it, so..
Mignola returns to long form with this latest adventure, revisiting some of the themes from the books one and two. Aliens…check. Evil Nazis…check. Mad scientists…check. Strange creatures turned fellow investigators…check. Etc. It also gets serious at the end, the red giant takes a pause from taking names and kicking ass and ponders his origins and fate. Loved this one, loved them all. Five books in and the quality has never waned, what an impressive output. Also, love the terrific artist gallery supplementals, you get to watch the character development from the mere sketches, fascinating material. Read them all, in order. Recommended More short stories, just like the volume three, about the great read one, from early years to now. It’s such an interesting format or really it’s very interesting the way Mignola chose to develop his character, through both long novel versions and these shorter vignettes. It works either way, because he’s a terrific storyteller and a genius artist. And once again he draws on such a wealth of random (and international) resources to craft the spookiest adventures yet for his terrific protagonist. So yeah, another great entry intro a great series. I loved it as much as pancakes. Which is also a title of the first and most whimsical of biographical snippets of the greatest paranormal investigator’s early life. Recommended.
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December 2023
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