wandering reviews
just a note to say that I've started moving book, movie and other reviews from this blog to the recs blog... and so things might go a little wobbly for a while.
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January 12, 2004
Naked Prey -- John Sandford ****
John Sandford's Lucas Davenport novels fall into the category of hard boiled contemporary detective/crime fiction. It is a series marked for its interesting characters, and beyond that, it is simply well written and superbly plotted. I always feel like I've climbed inside the brain of Lucas Davenport when I read Sandford, and it's an unsettling place to be.
The amazing thing is that, some thirteen books into the series (Naked Prey is the most recent) there's nothing stale about the writing or the characters. When this novel opens, Lucas has finally settled down after many years of wider appreciation of women pretty much everywhere. That means there's no woman for him to be irritating or for him to irritate. I was worried that Sandford wouldn't know what to do with a Lucas who couldn't flirt with any serious intentions, but he found a good foil in a twelve-year muskrat rapper called Letty West. I'd bet almost anything Letty is going to be around for a good while. Certainly Weather will be the kind of influence she needs. This novel works not just because of Letty, but because of the way it explores morality issues where they are least clear.
Of all the novels, I have to say my favorite is Winter Prey -- this is where Lucas first runs across Weather Karkinnen, who is a wonderful character, smart and tough enough to meet him on his own terms.
Bride of the Wilderness -- Charles McCarry *****
This is a book that I re-read regularly. It is out of print, but worth the search.
McCarry is best known for his political novels and for a series of espionage novels focusing on the Christopher family (there's a good article about him here). One day he decided to sit down and write a historical novel about the founding of that family, set in the early eighteenth century in London, Canada, and the wilderness that would one day be Connecticut. The title is very romance-like, and in fact there is an incredible love story ('incredible' just doesn't do it, and I would insert a lot more adjectives here but I'm holding back) at the heart of this novel, but its scope is broad. It is, simply put, one of my all time favorite historicals.
It's not too hard to find a used copy of this book, and it is at most libraries that I've checked.
Romance, Recommended
...and that's saying a lot. I'm not going to take the time or energy right now to talk about the anti-romance prejudice out there, except to say this: the happy ending may be out of fashion, but that won't last forever. This culture of the ugly and morose that permeates literary fiction circles will fade away eventually, and in the meantime you can always read Jane Austen -- she'll give you a love story and a happy ending you don't have to apologize about.
Anything I could say on this topic has been said before and said very well indeed, particularly by Jenny Crusie, the goddess of modern romantic comedy. Please have a look at her Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women (an essay on the romance novel as feminist revision of toxic fairy tales and canonical literature), and Defeating the Critics: What We Can Do About the Anti-Romance Bias.
Of course you could just skip the essays and go straight to one of her novels -- I'd recommend you start with Welcome to Temptation (St. Martin's Press March 2000 ISBN 0312252943) . Reading her fiction will get across all the same points.
So, a list of three romance novels that I consider just plain good: well written, engaging fiction with a strong narrative and excellent characterizations. And happy endings, which (remember this) aren't fattening.
Beyond Welcome to Temptation I recommend: Flowers from the Storm (Avon Books 1992; re-issue May 27 2003, ISBN 0380-76132-7 ) by Laura Kinsale. It was out of print for a long time, but it's back again, and what a good thing.
Especially fine is Judy Cueva's (aka Judith Ivory's) Dance (Jove Books, 1996, ISBN 0-515-11763-3). In fact, thinking about it, if I had to pick one novel classified as romance to take to a desert island, it would probably be Dance, for the lyrical language and the characters I adore so much that I shiver -- literally -- when I pick this book up to read it again. Which I do regularly. Now if they'd only reissue it (it's sadly out of print, but worth the search) and give it a worthy cover.
Hardcase - Dan Simmons ****+
There are three novels in this ultra-hardboiled {thriller/detective/ough guy} series. (The genre is in flux, and at present there isn't really a term for it that I like.) The hero is Joe Kurtz, and he's is the hardest fictional case I've run into who still comes across as three dimensional and interesting in a variety of ways. The third in the series (Hard as Nails) is just out. I haven't read it yet, but I will soon.
Genres are genres specifically because there are conventions associated with them. Romance novels (whether or not they are marketed that way) are love stories with a hopeful ending -- how shocking. Hope? Happiness? How very naive, how feminine. Tsk tsk. Traditional mysteries will, in the end, let you know who did it: there's supposed to be an Answer. In hardboiled fiction, the main character(s), no matter how tough, have to have limits to what they will do. Lucas Davenport in Sandford's Prey series goes right up to that line, so do Patrick and Angie in Dennis Lehane's series. But Patrick and Lucas are engaging where as Joe Kurtz is mostly just scary.
Most of these hardboiled series follow the pattern set up by Robert Parker in his Spenser novels: There's Spenser, the detective who stays just side of the line, and his good friend, Hawk, much more dangerous and unpredictable, who is happy on the other side of that same line and does the stuff that Spenser won't. In Robert Crais's novels, there's Evis Cole and Joe Pike, in Dennis Lehane there's Patrick and Angie on the bright side of things and Bubba Rugowski on the dark. Joe Kurtz is Bubba and Patrick rolled into one, and Bubba is winning the wrestling match.
A Catch of Consequence - Diana Norman ****+
So I picked up a book at the local small bookseller (Village Books in Fairhaven) because the cover and the cover copy appealed.
This is by no means a sure thing -- I've been fooled before. But what a find. A Catch of Consequence by Diana Norman (Berkley, pub date July 1, 2003, ISBN: 0425190153)
It reeled me in right away and kept me going. Really first rate historical fiction about a young woman in Revolutionary Boston who rescues a Tory and ends up fleeing for her life as a result. The love story is complex and the characters engaging. If I have any doubts about this novel, it's that the troubles that come along are broadcast a little too clearly right from the beginning.
Now here's the odd part. I was so taken by the writer's prose and storytelling that I went to look for more novels by her. There are some historicals but they are not available here (Norman is a Brit and is pretty well known over there, it seems), so I ordered a used copy of Vizard Mask from an on-line bookseller. (Penguin Books, pub date 26/10/1995 ISBN: 0140243267).
Two things: I liked this one as much, if not more than, A Catch of Consequence and here's the kicker: when the main character runs into the man who will be her lover on and off over the years, he gives her the nickname Boots.
Obviously I am in tune with this author. I hope her American publisher brings out her earlier titles here. I think she'd find a thankful audience.
research & imagination
The reason to go to New Orleans was, of course, the novel I'm writing, the fifth in the Wilderness series. I'm calling it Queen of Swords. Let's hope I can hold onto that title in the long run.
I did a lot of research for the trip and made plans, and got pretty much everything in that I needed to do. The re-enactment of the Battle of New Orleans at Chalmette was high on the list, and that was indeed a good thing to see. People who spend so much time and energy doing reenactments are a wonderful resource. Who else knows what it's like to wear woolen underwear all day long? And it's one thing to see a uniform in a color plate, and another to see it on a man walking along the levee. Also, I always forget how loud the artillery fire is. I'm surprised anybody who fought in those battles had any hearing left.
The most instructive and interesting place was the Pitot House, (French Colonial/West Indies in style) built in 1799 on Bayou St. John. It's been carefully restored and is maintained by the Louisiana Historical Society. We were fortunate to be the only people touring that morning, which meant I could ask all the questions I usually hold back for fear of slowing things down too much or boring less inquisitive types. Kathy Collins (our guide) was one of the best informed and most helpful people I have ever run across at a historic house. We got into such an interesting conversation that I took up a good hunk of her morning.
The house itself is the kind of place historical novelists are always looking for, with an atmosphere that is so strong that you can -- for a few moments -- get the sense that you are no longer in your own time. The furnishings, the way the light falls, the air itself -- everything comes together in a very powerful way that allows the imagination to take over. I'm going to use the Pitot House as one of my settings in this novel. I will make some changes, of course, but then I will set my characters loose in its rooms. Kathy was kind enough to share the names of some of her ancestors with me, and I may well end up using them, as well: Jean Baptiste Baudreau dit Graveline is especially nice, but from Kathy I also found out more about the Pelican Girls (also called Cassette Girls).
In the early 1700s, the first families and young women came from France to the new French colony at what is now Mobile, Alabama. Many of the girls came from Parisian religious communities, and they were all approved first by the bishop (who made sure they were virtuous, but also hard workers). These young women -- some no more than fifteen-- married the French Marines who were already stationed at the colony. Prime material for a historical novel, if anybody's looking.
dialogue overheard
I like to keep track of dialogue I overhear that strikes me as unusual. Not that I *listen* to other people's conversations, understand. It's just a professional hazard, having bits of conversations jump out at you while you're sitting, minding your own business. I suspect pretty much any writer of fiction experiences this. I have a whole file full of little gems, and here's one I picked up in New Orleans.
After a week of gumbo, jambalaya, and crawfish in every possible configuration, we decided to try something outlandish, like Italian. Found a restaurant that was highly recommended, got ourselves out there by rental car. Northern Italian cuisine, heavy linen tableclothes and napkins, the wait staff very formal -- you get the picture. So we're waiting for soup and talking in this almost empty restaurant (it was quite early) and the only other occupied table is right behind us, two elderly couples. They were exchanging news about friends and family and so forth, got into politics for a while, and then fell into silence while they got ready to order. Then a querulous, confused voice said, "But I don't see spaghetti and meatballs anywhere on this menu."
It took me by surprise, and I nearly laughed out loud.
One of my all time favorite overheard comments was while I was in line at the grocery store in Ann Arbor. Two undergraduates, young women, seeing each other for the first time in the new fall semester:
Q: Hey Katie! How are you doing!A: I got my wallet stolen in the taco isle at Meyers!
For years I've been thinking about this, and playing with it. So she got her wallet stolen. Sure, it's an unsettling experience. But what's the significance of the two prepositional phrases? Why qualify the statement that way? There's definitely a story waiting to be told. Don't know if I'll ever get around to it.