What initially appears to be yet another thriller is actually a first rate literary novel, albeit one with a mystery at its center.
The Artist in the title is Sophie Tugiers, someone who becomes famous, positively notorious for controversial exhibits and then becomes notorious, positively infamous for being named as the culprit in the death of one of her subjects. But first Sophie was a nobody, a proverbial (though not quite) starving artist dreaming of fame and fortune. Then she got a huge corporate sponsorship and sold out. Because, of course, she did. The carrot is front of her was just too irresistible. Then Sophie was bathing in all the recognition, adulation and prestige. And then the waters got murky. Morally challenging. Complex. Messy. And so she completed the title and vanished. So a classic three act story in a way. And then there’s James. A man who unwittingly stays in Sophie’s old apartment and, through his daughter who is a fan, becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Sophie. James is a washed up and tired documentary maker, freshly divorced and drinking about it. Sophie, in a way, becomes a road to redemption for him. Even if he doesn’t find her, he might just find himself, buried somewhere underneath all that booze and self pity. So a very compelling drama, albeit with many thriller presets, such as split timeline, plot twists, etc. What really makes the book is its commentary or, more accurately, its indictment of the art scene. But also it mediates on the high cost of fame, selling out, the near impossibility of maintaining personal integrity in a scene that has very strict rules and conditions for its love. There is a fascinating intersectionality of art and social commentary, not just in Sophie’s art, but in the novel’s themes. The fleeting attention spans or the easily distracted, the quick to snap blame finger. There’s plenty of food for thought here. The South African setting is a welcome bonus too. I love reading internationally whenever possible. Took me a moment to appreciate the ending, but it worked well. I don’t know if I especially connected with any of the players here, but a good book doesn’t actually require that. If the characters are well rendered and developed, it’s more than enough. So really it is a testament to the quality of writing that one can enjoy this book without necessarily emotionally engaging with either Sophie or James. Which is to say…good read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
0 Comments
Oh, finally, a proper thriller. It’s been a minute.
Minka Kent is actually someone I’ve come to expect reliably entertaining but fairly mediocre entertainment from, so this was a pleasant surprise all around. This was my third read by her and by far the best of the three. Why is it good? Well, for one thing it featured not one but two genuinely good and unpredictable plot twists. For another it managed to tell the entire story in a very reasonable (way under 300) page count, meaning it wasn’t as annoyingly stretched out as some/most of this genre’s books that utilize the describe every moment play by play for extra word count methods to beef up the plots. This is essentially a story of an unconventional love triangle. You got Luca and Merritt, the happily married well to do family of restauranteurs, whose life is thrown for a loop when the missing presumed dead first wife of Luca’s shows up out of the blue after a decade. The story is narrated by both Luca’s wives, the newly unmissing one and the current one. Its dynamic, exciting and dips more than its toes into the murky abyss of dark psychology, criminal and otherwise. The main message here is that you never really know people. Even or maybe especially people you love. Never quite know what evil lurks behind a seemingly normal exterior, never quite know what to expect. The surprises the three leads spring on each other in this boo are of a distinctly nasty variety and that’s wat makes it such fun. Excellent, entertaining, speedy read for suspense thriller fans. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. Not a lot of reviews for this one out yet and and normally this would be awesome because I’d be excited to tell readers about a great new book I found, but this time it is to warn reader to stay far, far away from this flaming bag of…um…excrement.
The thing with being a completist…well, it’s kinda tedious, to be honest. It’s the sunken cost bias concept but in a book. Meaning you figure well, you already spent some time on the book, you might just finish it. And it’s almost never, ever worth it, either. Take this waste of digital ink…I pretty much knew from the very first paragraph free image heavy overlong sentence prone first page this wasn’t going to be for me. But did I put it down? No. I persevered. Much to my shame and annoyance. And read the entire thing in one 230 minute or so bewildering sitting. And bewildering it was…bewildering that a major publisher would produce this. That people will presumably read and enjoy this. That anyone would find it worthy of their time. But those are all just vague opinions, what about specifics, you might ask? Well, specifically, this tediously dense dystopian nightmare is about an incestuous and partially deformed family of survivors who…well, just kind of exist. And this existence of there is so grotesque, so disgusting, so meaningless, that there’s no real reason form them to be alive and definitely no reason for them to have a book written about them. And the frustrating thing here is that author actually has a nice way with words, but it’s overstylized into this mess, obviously deliberately. Definitely lamentably. In a way it sort of reads like a kind of book that wins awards. One of those pretentiously unreadable tomes that critics tend to adore. Except that this one is especially vile, exceptionally viscerally vile. Not sure I ever used that word to describe a book, but reading this one, it was one of the first that came to mind. And no, it isn't because I'm delicate or easy offended or dainty. I frequently read a variety of dark and scary things. It was just this terrible book. This was a very sad waste of my time. And while there are some books you can not like but understand how someone might…with this one, I’m not sure how anyone can honestly enjoy it. Stay away, stay away. Thanks Netgalley. Seriously? This is the great and famous In a Dark, Dark Wood? The book all the critics have practically sh*t themselves before it ever saw the light of printed day? The book all the readers have continued to sh*t themselves for years later, so much so that this is actually the first time I was able to get a digital copy from our library system. All of the numerous copies have always been out, always.
Well, how freaking disappointing. Seriously. This wannabe Agatha Christie (so much so it even refers to it in the book) tries and fails flatly to be the next And Then There Were None. Are people not seeing through the thin gauzy layer of initial appeal straight to the underwhelming innards of this thing? Why and how did this book get as popular as it did? Was it timing? These estrogen driven thrillers are all the rage these days, but they weren’t always. The bandwagon rolled out not that long ago, but everyone and their auntie jumped in on it and now these books are everywhere, but relatively speaking Ware boarded early enough to stand out. Or was it just hyped up at random, for hitting the right notes and not overthinking it? Because if you do overthink it, you’ll realize just how trite and predictable the entire thing is. Ask how predictable…well, this fairly intelligent reader of many thrillers was able to figure out this apparently mesmerizing and mindboggling plot twist somewhere around 50%. Which for me is completely unacceptable for a genre that lives and dies (pun that) by its twists. This quaint affair of a very British bachelorette party gone wrong might have worked had it not been for…its overreliance on the entire oohhh women can be evil too thing, the overbaked love triangle and the overdone single white female style bestie. I mean, the writing itself is perfectly fine. Ware got the thriller style sentence long paragraphs and ta da da DUM rhythms of taut suspense music sequences down perfectly. She has the right conceptual ideas, though a heavyhanded way of layering them in and so there are oodles of parallels about acting and performances, juxtaposing them to real life, etc. At least 50% of the main cast are directly connected to the theatre. Because, of course, everyone performs and, more importantly, everyone lies. You can’t even really trust our protagonist, the many named 26 year old professional crime thriller writer, but that isn’t her fault, she’d had a brain trauma. Which is preventing her from remembering just how wrong her weekend away with the girls went. She only knows it ended terribly and someone is likely dead. It was never going to be that great. The entire thing was forcibly put together and attendance was manipulated, the place was remote, weird, coffee free, cellular reception free, and all kinds of socially uncomfortable. There was no real reason for Nora, our narrator, to go celebrate Clare’s impending marriage even before she knew whom Clare was marrying, because Nora and Clare hasn’t been friends in 10 years. Who the F would agree to that? What were you thinking, Nora? You’re supposed to plot crimes for a living, presumably a suspicious mind is a must for that. But no…none of that logic. Why isn’t it like And Then There Were None? Outside of the very obvious fact that Ware’s no Christie, she didn’t even try that much. For one thing there aren’t enough characters/suspects. For another, it is so, so obvious to anyone who takes a moment to think about it who the culprit is. There’s really only one person with means, motive and opportunity. From then on, the only person surprised by the unfolding events is Nora…but hey, she does have a brain trauma. And so it doesn’t matter how readable it is, this book is hugely disappointing. And also wildly bewildering for its popularity and praise. This wasn’t the first Ware I read and it won’t be the last. If only to see what she does next. Turn of the Key was pretty good, actually. But it’s impossible not to remain in the dark (dark wood) about why this one was such a huge deal. It read very quickly, though, which was lovely. I’ve never really had an opinion on Shaft. Though there’s much to be said about that magical moniker. Outside of the theme song that cooks up corn and cheesiness to perfection, there was a movie I remember with the ubiquitous Samuel L. That’s’ about it. But, then of course, to a black community Shaft is something of a cultural institution . A righteous brother, protector of his fellow men, lover of his fellow women, he’s the cat that won’t cop out, hip to the bone and tough as nails…a superhero, really. Which is a huge deal, especially for the era, when representation wasn’t what it was now, in either general or superhero variety.
So I didn’t know what to expect from this graphic novel and ended up being pleasantly surprised. This was a good story well told and excellently drawn. An origin story for Shaft, a story that does its best to stick to the original source of the character, which are books, not movies or tv show of the 70s. In this story Shaft goes from a tough criminal youth and boxer to soldier to veteran to boxer again to private investigator. Sometime between the last two phases of his journey he meets and falls in love with a woman and their brief but passionate love affair inspires him to become the man people know and love as Shaft. A man with the iron fists and strong moral code, defender of those who need defending, punisher of those who need punishment. The story is set in the 70s and tied into the local New York politics of building the World Trade Center. And though that financial manipulations of that kind aren’t usually of much interest to me, this book handled it well and gave Shaft an excellent backdrop against which to steadily (and meditatively, this guy is a thinker not just a lover and a fighter) develop into the Shaft he’s become known for, the complicated (love the way they used this from the song in the story) man who can do what no other can or willing to…fight for justice in an unjust world. Very good read, very good art. Definitely the book to turn indifference into appreciation. Recommended. The cheap looking cover should have turned me off, but no, I read it anyway. And to be fair, the art inside is a considerable improvement upon the cover…so much for putting their best foot forward first, but at any rate, this book didn’t really do much for me. Or more like this book did nothing for me except remind me what a terribly tedious generation millennials are. Or is it GenX already?
Whatever they are, the 20something timewasters in this book are apparently getting it together, meaning there are trying to sort out their messy love lives and friendships. And I mean messy, not a single straightforward uncomplicated decent relationship to be found here. These kids or whatever they think themselves to be are mostly a barely employed promiscuous bunch of directionless bundles of precociousness who spout the latest in wokespeak while communicating with each other, but none of their conversations go anywhere. There’s one proverbial (and literal) straight guy meant presumably as a foil who actually has a job, wants a semblance normal relationship, all that. Sadly he picks a musician for his partner, who of course has very different ideas for her life i.e. fame. So she cheats on him and he mopes about it, mostly to his bff who is a gay brother of his ladylove. That’s actually the bulk of the book, although there’s also a significant amount of pages dedicated to just how promiscuous the gay brother actually is, as he orders sex off the apps. So, sure, this can be billed as the Friends for the new generation with ample albeit one sided LGBTQ representation and music, which may sound like fun…but what you’re really getting is a trite sitcom style goings on of a bunch of whiny babysnowflakes whose most profound moments come from rolling on Molly. All done in decent but nothing special sort of art. If this is meant to be an interesting, exciting and engaging insight into a generation…look away. Nothing much to see here. Then again, it’s possible people of the same age group and mentality might find it relatable. For all others…maybe these characters will be worth reading once they get it together, but their process isn’t worth the time. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2023
Categories |