Posts Tagged ‘Book Review’
Balance of Power – Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik
Balance of Power is one of the Tom Clancy’s Op-Centre series. The description on the back is as follows:
Spain is a nation poised to suffer its worst internal strife in a thousand years. Certain well-place Spanish diplomats sense it. Op-Centre’s intelligence corroborates it. All the United States and Spain have to do is find a way to avert it.
Before they can, an Op-Centre representative is assassinated in Madrid on her way to a top-secret diplomatic meeting. Now all fears are confirmed. Someone very powerful wants another Spanish civil war – no matter what the cost.
I enjoy the Tom Clancy novels, whether they’re specifically written for young adults or for adults. This one is no different. It has all the elements we’ve come to expect from a Tom Clancy novel: politics; thrill; excitement and psychology. I notice from the description of the authors that Steve Pieczenik is a Harvard trained psychiatrist with a PhD in International Relations. This gives him the edge with the psychology and explains why it’s all written into the book.
One thing I thought about with this novel (and I’m sure it’s taught in writing classes, one day I’ll take one of these classes and learn stuff proper like) was how an author has to put in more than just the story line in order to have a good book. They have to put in motivation and stuff to describe their characters and background stuff like.
Our lead character is Paul Hood, he heads Op-Centre, the National Crisis Management Centre which deals with both international and domestic crises. Hood is currently caught between two worlds, he’s very good at his job but this calls him away from home a lot and his wife is trying to keep him home more often so he can be part of the family, it’s a problem many people can identify with. One of the things that makes this book good is how Clancy and Pieczenik examine this from both sides, we see Hood and wife discussing it on the phone getting more and more angry with each other, then we see each of them thinking about it and understanding the situation more.
There are more examples of this throughout the book with different scenarios and different people. Another Op-Centre representative was present at the assassination, her feelings are examined at the time and then later on, we’re given a good understanding of how she’s coping with the whole scenario. If the book was just a straight line from the assassination to the conclusion then it’d be fairly boring, but with all these little asides fleshing out the characters and the situations, making us understand how people work things change dramatically and the book comes alive.
The Value of X – Poppy Z. Brite
I don’t normally read romance, but I’ve heard about Poppy Z. Brite’s horror and didn’t realise he (yes, I’ve got the right pronoun, he’s going through gender reassignment) wrote romance as well. It’s not really romance as the two lead characters, Gary and Rickey, have been best friends since forever and it was only when their hormones started making changes they realised they were in love. Brite deals with them telling each other fairly quickly and then we get down to the business of the storyline.
The Value of X by Poppy Z. Brite
This is the back story to how Rickey and G-Man from one of his previous books, Liquor, get together. It may have dealt very briefly with how they first met but, if so, I missed that. This deals more with their relationship and how they keep it going despite the families trying to break them up and make them be ‘normal’. Rickey is given the opportunity he can’t refuse and is sent away to the best cooking school in New York while Gary stays in New Orleans. They both have their temptations but stay true to each other and eventually get back together.
They don’t really get any advice from people and I can’t help but wonder how normal that is for emerging gays. Gary does go to a priest, but it’s the wrong man and he gives him the party line of homosexuality is not allowed. Gary’s sister and mother go to their family priest who talks to them about not judging people, but we don’t find out about that until quite late in the book when Gary’s sister mentions it and tells him he should really be with Rickey.
This is my first foray into gay literature. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad from the point of view of that genre but it seemed pretty good to me. The characters were nicely drawn, they didn’t have the ‘traditional’ effeminity that we see in Hollywood and that was nice, they were both portrayed as nice, wholesome boys who loved their families but also loved each other. It showed some of the problems gays can have with those who have less tolerance and it showed some of the problems they can have with other gays who just want sex and don’t care which relationship they ruin to get it.
Brite showed how families will do interesting things to solve a problem that isn’t there and how some parts of the family are more tolerant than others, he shows it isn’t necessarily a generational thing as Gary’s father is more tolerant than Gary’s mother.
One thing I found interesting was that some of the problems could easily be true of heterosexual relationships. When Rickey leave New Orleans and goes to New York he encounters problems with an older guy and that could quite easily happen to an 18 year old girl away from home for the first time.
You can buy it here, while it’s a good book I feel it more important for other people to read and have no intention on keeping it on my shelf. Anyway, I do recommend it despite it not being in my usual reading genre.
Warnings:
Sex and sexual references
Violence
Gay Literature (Have I made that clear yet?)
The Peace Garden – Lucy Sussex
Just for a bit of a change of pace I thought I’d review a book I picked up this afternoon. It’s a children’s book so didn’t take too long to read. It was Lucy Sussex’s first fiction novel.
I first heard of Sussex last year when I attended AussieCon 4, fourth World Science Fiction convention to be held in Australia, in 2010. I attended a panel and I forget the correct title but I think it was about Australian female horror writers, Sussex was on the panel. When I saw the book I knew I had to read it and see what made her so good.
The Peace Garden is a fairly ordinary patch of land in a fairly ordinary town in Australia surrounded by ‘interesting’ people. Holly is shuffled between her separated parents, it’s currently the holidays and she’s with her mother and step-father. Despite being only 11 she’s left on her own a lot of the time and finds her way to The Peace Garden. It doesn’t remain peaceful for long as two people decide they want to lease it for their own purposes. Holly finds herself in the middle of all this, bringing together the misfit children in the town and helping find a resolution that suits almost everyone.
I like the writing, I found it very easy to read. Some of the misfit children seem to be misfits more because of their parents rather than due to their own behaviour and Holly seems to bring out the best in them. The language is uncomplicated and the concepts are easily understood by someone with a reading age of about 11, but if they’re reading above their age I’d still recommend it.
There are lessons in this book. Never judge a book by it’s cover being the biggest. One of the children, Gawaine (he prefers Gary) has a mohawk and ‘intriguing’ clothes but he turns out to be the nicest person, Bridie is in a wheelchair and can’t speak but when Holly starts talking to her we find she is lovely, bright and quite capable. Another lesson is that there’s always a better idea, one that can include many more people.
One thing I found quite interesting, I waited the whole book to see if it would be followed up, were a couple of possible horror motifs. They weren’t followed up. Sussex had the choice to make it into a horror story but chose, instead, to make it into a lovely story about children helping the whole town to win in the nicest possible way.
Because I loved this book so much I’m going to give it away. I reread that sentence and it doesn’t really make sense but that’s tough. It’s too young for my kids so I want someone else to have it for theirs. Tell me your favourite childhood book and why you liked it so much. You have until 5pm Tuesday 21st January. Your time starts…now!
This Boy’s Life – Tobias Wolff
This Boy’s Life is a memoir of a few years in the life of Tobias Wolff. It is a well constructed story with no wasted words and details how hard it must have been for him growing up. His parents divorced relatively early on and his mother (Rosemary) wandered looking for a place to stay and looking for a man in their lives. Bear in mind this is 1950s America where it was thought every boy needed a father figure in their lives.
His father was profligate, made up stories about himself and changed his name according to what he needed it to be and Wolff was no different. In order to get into a ‘good’ school he created a persona for himself, then he created school reports and referrals to fit that persona, he also embellished his name to Tobias Jonathan von Ansell-Wolff, III.
His mother was not good at picking men. Her father was a bully and she seemed to only be able to pick men like that. She eventually married Dwight who she thought was a good pick but he ended up being worse than any other man. He bullied Wolff both physically and emotionally making things challenging for him.
It’s certainly an interesting read, I probably would have read it even without having it as a text as I like memoirs. Wolff is a very good writer, very skilled and you can see where he got some of his skills. At school he helped other boys with their writing, even doing some of their essays for them. He made up stories about what he’d done and went into quite some detail making sure to get the finer points correct.
Wolff was in the Scouting fraternity although this didn’t make him a paragon of virtue. He was in trouble (or should have been in trouble) far too often and he doesn’t pull any punches in detailing many of these incidents in this volume.
This memoir was made into a film in 1993 with Robert de Niro as Dwight and Leonardo diCaprio as Wolff. We saw a little of the movie in class and it was quite powerful.
Warnings: swearing, violence and boys being boys and talking about sex.
Puberty Blues – Gabrielle Carey & Kathy Lette
‘By day we were at school learning logarithms, but by night – in the back of cars, down behind the Ace-of-Spades Hotel and on Cronulla beach – we paid off our friendship rings.’
Puberty Blues is about top chicks and surfing spunks – and the kids who don’t make it – in a world where only the gang and the surf count.
Puberty Blues gives us the facts no one wants to face. It is a horrifying yet hilarious account of the way many young people live, and some of them die.
I didn’t read this book when it came out in 1979, I was reading mysteries, fantasy and science fiction back then and this doesn’t fit into any of those genres. It’s an interesting little book, the authors were fairly young at the time of writing, and the book is semi-autobiographical. It is a seminal work as it was the first novel written by teenagers about teenager behaviour.
This is not the teenage behaviour I got up to, not that I’m trying to distance myself from it in anyway. The behaviour is raw and it shows them trying to have sex at a very early age and sometimes succeeding, sometimes you can be too young and not physically ready for sex, that’s depicted in this book.
I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I didn’t like the content as it is so far removed from anything I ever did and from anything I could ever conceive of doing, but on the other hand it tells it like it was and probably still is in some circles. I love it and hate it for exactly the same reason, the behaviour depicted. It is a great book for documenting what actually happened and probably still does happen.
It’s available for sale here
Warnings. There is lots of sex, swearing and drugs as well as other inappropriate behaviour.
Deep Secret – Diana Wynne Jones
One of the many super fabulous books by the dearly loved and recently deceased Diana Wynne Jones. The description of the plot is as follows:
All over the universe, Magids are at work to maintain the balance of magic, using their own talents to push the right people into doing the right things at the right time. And on Earth, the Magids are working hard to coax the world into its rightful place Ayewards, towards magic.
Rupert Venables has been the junior Magid here for only two years when his sponsor dies; it’s up to him to find a replacement. Trouble is, the most promising on his list of five names, Maree Mallory, doesn’t want anything to do with Rupert Venables. And while the junior Magid is trying to track down the other four, the fatelines are becoming dangerously entangled on more than one world and magic starts getting out of hand…
When it comes to describing Jones’ books I find it hard to stop using adjectives. Her writing is spot on, her characters are believable and her worlds make me want to be there. I can’t reveal the twist as you might not want to read it and we can’t have that, but suffice to say Jones manages to get her usual unexpected twist into the book.
Deep Secret - Diana Wynne Jones
What I loved most about this book is part of the setting. She’s set it within a convention called PhantasmaCon, it was awesome. I’m sure she’s been to many conventions over the years, she’s probably been feted at a large number of them. Her descriptions described the madness beautifully. Sitting talking to someone, trying to have a sensible conversation when someone drifts past in some costume and you have to run after them as you need to talk to them about something ‘very important’. I have certain friends I only ever see at conventions or conferences. I adored her descriptions of the costumes and the people, she has them down pat. There’s a bit of madness with the layout of the hotel as it changes continually and the attendees barely notice, when they do they put it down the committee having done a wonderful job.
Just awesome stuff, it’s a good read if you want to attend a convention for the first time as it gives you a good understanding of how conventions work, it’s also a good read for the fantasy aspects.
I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
This book was originally published in 1954 and is a scary thought of what could happen given the technology available to us now.
Robert Neville may well be the only survivor of an incurable plague that has mutated every other man, woman and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creature who are determined to destroy him.
The premise of this book is very scary, it’s a brilliant fusion of horror and science fiction. A plague has hit, very much like the black plague, and no-one can work out how to deal with it. It reminds me very much of the advent of the AIDS virus, how it spread so quickly and how there were so many people worried about getting it and the misinformation that surrounded it at the time. With this virus they didn’t appear to have time to figure out how to combat it and they certainly have little idea of how it spreads. This plague turns people into vampires and Robert Neville is currently the last man who hasn’t succumbed, the reason is unknown as his wife died from it some time before the book is set.
The writing in this book is superb, you don’t get much better than this. Matheson has fused the two genres of horror and science fiction very nicely. There is just the right amount of each and a good story line as well.
The things I had trouble with are Neville trying to figure out the plague by himself and how the infrastructure kept going despite having no-one to run it. It was not sufficiently explained how Neville had the background to be able to figure out all the science type stuff in order to figure out how to treat the disease. I don’t know why it worries me about the infrastructure, but I’d like to know how it kept going. Many of the systems would have stopped, in fact, Neville did install a generator so he could generate his own electricity, but there was also the water and the sewerage which just seemed to keep going despite the lack of personnel.
I’d still recommend this book. Whether you like horror or science fiction I feel it has enough of both to satisfy most people. Now I have to see the movie of the same name with Will Smith in the lead role, awesome!
Empire Falls – Richard Russo
A story about a man, his daughter and the community they live in. Miles Roby is a man with a sense of humour and a penchant for spotting signs that don’t quite make sense or have typos, a trait he shares with his teenage daughter. It’s not gentle, but it does have a lot of gentleness throughout in the love Miles has for his daughter, in the relationship he has with his ex-mother-in-law and the relationship he has with his ex-wife’s new husband.
I loved the writing in this book. I admit to having read it in audio form and that made it more special as the voice did a very good job. The writing was just lovely, there was brilliant characterisation, I could visualise the people and the township, I could visualise the hardship some of them dealt with in order to just get through their lives. I was unsurprised to find the book won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2002, well deserved. Richard Russo has written a number of other books and I’m going to be adding them to my To Be Read pile in due course.
I mentioned the book is not gentle and that’s true, it deals with many challenging situations such as Miles being invited to his ex-wife’s wedding, and having to deal with her new husband on an almost daily basis, such as having a priest with Alzheimers who feels the confessional is a good place to pick up gossip. There are much harder situations in this book but I won’t give you spoilers. Russo deals with many of these situations with humour but doesn’t minimise the challenges Miles faces. Russo gently guides us towards the biggest problem of all, one that many people in today’s community will recognise, one that has devastated many schools in America…but I promised no more spoilers. If you want to know more I suggest you buy a box of tissues and then the book, you won’t regret it.
The Phantom Tollbooth – Juster & Feiffer
Normally when you write the name of a book and it’s author you don’t write the name of the illustrator unless the illustrations are integral to the book. I didn’t think they were in this case until I read this article. It turns out they were very integral to the writing of the book. Norton Juster wrote bits of this book, read them out to his roommate, Jules Feiffer, who sketched out some ideas. Juster then used these illustrations to give him more information on the writing. A wonderful partnership.
I loved this book, despite it being around when I was young I only read it a few years ago. I was totally enchanted. Here’s the synopsis taken from the article:
Milo is a bored innocent who unexpectedly finds himself on a magical journey to a strange land. Accompanied by his traveling companions, Tock the watchdog and the Humbug, the young boy struggles to make sense of the nonsensical adult world and sets off to rescue princesses Rhyme and Reason.
How this happens is that he’s in his room and finds a toy car, getting in the car is the start of a magical journey. It is full of puns and references to so many things that it’s worth reading multiple times to ensure you understand everything completely. As an adult I adored it and could see how it would appeal to children of all ages, have I ever mentioned I tell people I’m 18?
What makes the book appeal to me more is this interview. I rarely read author interviews as I find they’re so different to the book, the fact that they can write so differently to how they interview probably attests to their writing power, but in this case I read the whole thing. What I found is that the author and illustrator are exactly like the book, they wrote/drew as they interview and I find that appealing. They’re in their eighties but they sound as if they’re much younger than that, they haven’t lost their inner child, the inner child that came through into the book.
Enough from me. Your homework is to acquire the book (not from me as I’ve already sold it) and read it yourself. It shouldn’t take long but it’s a wonderful journey.
The Hand That Signed the Paper – Helen Demidenko
I picked up this book second hand knowing the controversy behind it, knowing Helen Demidenko is really Helen Darville and knowing she had tried to pass this book off as family history rather than a fictionalised account of interviews with Ukrainian witnesses. I’ll take the description from the back of the book:
The Hand that Signed the Paper tells the story of Vitaly, a Ukrainian peasant, who endures the destruction of his village and family by Stalin’s communism. He welcomes the Nazi invasion in 1941 and willingly enlists in the SS Death Squads to take a horrifying revenge against those he perceives to be his persecutors.
The story is horrific and I feel partly tries to absolve certain people from their actions. I’m not here to comment on whether this is good or bad as I’m not unbiased, I am very fortunate as almost all of my family were living in Melbourne since before WWII but this doesn’t make me unbiased. I’m going to try and comment on the book and the writing.
Some of the writing is very good, I often look at a phrase or a paragraph and note how nicely it is written. I did find there was a lot left out, a lot that I was interested in or felt would have added to the story but was just omitted. I agree it’s a big story and challenging to get it all into only 157 pages. I found it challenging to recall which person was speaking as they all seemed to have the same way of speaking and there wasn’t much difference between when one finished and another started. The only time it was clear cut was when they changed hemispheres and all of a sudden the niece/daughter in Australia was speaking, it was easier to note the difference as there were references to the Australian landscape.
There was a lot missing and a lot I didn’t find believable. Back in June I reviewed a memoir written by a Lithuanian now living in Melbourne and I found myself comparing the two books. I also found myself comparing it with the books written by Arnold Zable, Café Scheherazade – Arnold Zable and Jewels and Ashes. I did try to be careful with my comparisons, Liubinas is not a professional writer, Darville/Demidenko is a journalist and Zable is an accomplished author who has run many writing workshops. Out of the three Zable was obviously the best crafted, Liubinas was very touching and as it was an honest memoir was easily believable, Darville, while well written just didn’t have that air of honesty.
One of the problems the first chapter brings to light is the way war criminals can move countries and settle into a new life. Melbourne is home to a great many Holocaust survivors, I believe there are more here than anywhere else, and among those survivors there must be some whose war record is dubious. One of the issues this book shows us is what to do with these war criminals. They are now old men and women, in so many regular crimes in Australia there is a statute of limitations where if it’s been too long since the crime was committed then the person can’t be prosecuted, has it been too long since the Holocaust and should those old men and women not be prosecuted? I don’t have the answer to that and I’m not going to express an opinion, just stating it’s brought to light by this book. Again, I’m biased so I’m only trying to comment on the book. It’s an interesting discussion and one that should be discussed on a different type of blog by someone else.
Could I even recommend it? That seriously depends on the reader. If you identify with the Jews in the Holocaust then I suggest you don’t as you’ll be really upset as it details atrocities and how people tried very hard to ignore them while profiting from them. If you are able to stay unbiased and treat it as historical fiction you’ll probably get a lot out of it. I won’t say you’ll enjoy it as enjoyment is not something you get from books like this.
My dilemma now is what to do with the book. I don’t want to keep it on my shelf, it’s been hard enough having it here so long. I don’t fancy selling it as it makes me uncomfortable. Should I just return it to the op shop? Maybe that’s what I’ll do.