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Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name is a tense examination of identity and family set in the remote upper reaches of Scandinavia, a place called Lapland. She sets the pace of a thriller, almost demanding you read the book straight through, but manages to provoke some interesting thoughts as well.
Dislocation and disorientation are the primary themes as narrator Clarissa struggles with a series of emotional jolts—her father dies and in going through his things she finds out he wasn’t her real father, discovers her fiancé and longtime time friend knew about her parentage the whole time, and then she takes off to Helsinki without a word to anyone in the hopes of meeting her real father, a Sami priest in Lapland. Her mother abandoned the family fourteen years before and has practically disappeared from the face of the earth.
As she embarks on her quest, Clarissa is a severely distraught and stumbles from encounter to encounter on the verge of breaking down. Her mother studied the people of Lapland before meeting the man she thought was her father, so she tracks down the man on her birth certificate. Of course, such journeys have a way of revealing the unexpected, and Clarissa does not find the answers that she anticipates.
I hesitate to give any more of the story, though there are some interesting parallels between Clarissa and her mother, which resonated with me as I often try and discover how my parent’s behavior when I was a child affects my behavior now as an adult. Yet Clarissa fails to ask these questions, and as Vida informs us at the novel’s end of the characters fates in the future, one can’t help but think that she really didn’t learn all that much from her trip at all. In this respect, I feel that Vida fails a bit, but overall this is a beautifully written novel.
While one might suspect the story to be a travelogue, informing the reader about the sights and culture of the Sami people, Vida resists this urge. These native Scandinavians are analogous to American Indians. Her acute descriptions keep the novel focused and allow for a somewhat mystical feel to the whole narrative. Only occasionally does she give any description beyond a snowsuit, but when she does a few words can make all the difference: ‘The sun never rose, but at ten thirty, the sky looked like a dark blue parachute concealing a flame.’
And as I stated at the start, perhaps the greatest accomplishment here is that such a slim volume could contain the fast pace and still raise so many intriguing questions. I tend to resist the McSweeney’s crowd these days (Vida is married to Dave Eggers), but I am glad that I listened to the recommendation by Jenny Davidson and read this novel.
As a kid I really liked Superman and started reading a bunch of his comics when I was about eight or so. That maintained for many years, and I slowly added on other titles that I was intrigued with, usually after some sort of crossover event (I was a sucker for that marketing ploy). But in those days one almost never mixed comic companies: you were either a DC guy or a Marvel guy. So aside from a brief fling with the Marvel collector cards in sixth grade and the very occasional comic, I knew practically nothing about the greater Marvel universe.
But in high school I watched the X-Men cartoon with regularity and was thus introduced to much of the team’s mythos. For example, I know all about the Days 
of Future Past and Dark Phoenix sagas even though I’ve never read the books (being remedied in the near future). And even though I dabbled with the Marvel universe from time to time as an adult, I never have gone back and read the classic story arcs from my childhood I missed the first time around.
Anyway, God Loves, Man Kills is a storyline with which I also had a bit of familiarity for it was the inspiration for a sizable chunk of Bryan Singer’s X2. The novel concerns Minister William Stryker who stirs up religious anti-mutant fervor among the populace while kidnapping Professor X and using him in a diabolical attempt to eradicate all mutants. Stryker believes that Professor X is the antichrist, and writer Chris Claremont did a good job emulating the oratory of fundamentalist rhetoric in Stryker’s sermons.
Though it has been a recurring theme for well over two decades, this novel was apparently the first time that the direct comparison between mutants and persecuted minorities is played out. The opening concerns minions of Stryker chasing down two mutant children, killing them and stringing them up on a swingset. The fact that these two children are depicted as African American only further grinds home Claremont’s point.
Meanwhile, Magneto is out for a violent revolution against the mutant hating sentiments embodied in Stryker, placing the X-Men in a tough position. Do they stay true to Professor X’s vision of a peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants or join Magneto in his quest?
I’m not much of a fan of Chris Claremont’s work, and this novel didn’t really change my mind. In an included interview, he says that he thinks a sense of subtlety was achieved. Well, not so much. But he does do a good job at talking about something most in comics overlook: the appearance of mutants would terrify just about any normal person. Can you imagine seeing a guy across the street turn into the Incredible Hulk? This is presented quite well in an early debate on ABC’s Nightline between Stryker and Professor X when the minister asks Charles how the normal man is supposed to defend himself against the powers that mutants possess. There is no ready answer for the question, and while the general populace might not favor extermination, their sentiments would likely lie more with Stryker.
The whole plot to use Professor X in conjunction with a Cerebro-esque machine to amplify his powers to turn them on mutantkind is too clichéd to be really effective. But the true failure here is the inability to explore the real differences between mutants and humans. Are they the next stage in evolution? Are they in fact mutations that will die off given enough time? Even though Nightcrawler is blue, has a tail, and can teleport, he is more human than anything else because that justifies the whole thesis Claremont is asserting and the general thesis taken by the creators of today.
Perhaps that is a more general complaint about the X-Men rather than specific to this particular book. Regardless, God Loves, Man Kills is a decent story and worthy of your time. Claremont manages to write a story with all sorts of comic conventions, yet portray such conventions as shocking to the populace, making the steps the team takes to protect humanity cause them to be feared all the more. I’ll be reading more X-Men and other Marvel comics on the future and discussing them here. Let me know what you think.
Though I haven’t read Michael Lewis’s new book about the financial crisis, nor do I plan to, I am interested in the way the book is being marketed here in the US v. the UK. Well, to be more specific, the difference in covers between the two countries is always interesting to me. I often wonder why a distributor publishing in both places wouldn’t 
just use the same cover art, or buy it from their counterpart, but I am sure that there are marketing textbooks addressing this very topic that I have yet to read.
In the instance of Panic, I find the US cover (shown first) to be a little deceptive. Lewis is probably best known for his book Liar’s Poker, which concerns his time at Solomon Brothers and the financial crisis that occurred in the late 1980s. By so prominently placing his name on the cover, the publisher severely downplays the fact that this book is nothing but a collection of previously published pieces on the economy, which were compiled by Lewis. Though the words ‘Edited By’ do appear, their size and placement above the ‘Best-Selling Author’ line downplay the importance given to its meaning. In fact, though I had seen images of the cover several times, I was unaware that the book is a compilation until I saw the UK cover.
As is immediately apparent, the ‘Edited By’ line is stressed here in the same way it was downplayed on the US version. This would help a browser recognize that the book isn’t a sole work by Lewis, but something else that might warrant closer examination. I also like the prominent reference to the similarly themed Liar’s Poker. However, Lewis has had more recent success in the US with Moneyball, an 
examination of the search for undervalued talent by the Oakland A’s, so the more generic ‘Best-Selling’ author tag on there opens it up to fans of both books. I doubt that Moneyball was much of a hit in foreign markets.
While the shredded dollar bill on the US cover is a nice conceit, the coupling with the red word balloon that looks like a price sticker doesn’t convey a sense of panic to me. The different shades of red on the UK edition do however serve to illustrate the chaos indicative of a panicky state. The font choice also helps serve this idea, where the conservative font on the US edition does the opposite, at least in my opinion.
This analysis doesn’t address the broader marketing strategy for the book both domestically and in England, but I do feel that cover imagery is first and foremost a marketing tool and should be evaluated that way. Without reading the book but only flipping through it, it seems obvious to me that the UK edition’s cover art more adequately reflects the content than its US counterpart, both in theme and literal content. Your opinions?
While Laurel Hawthorne’s life seems to be practically perfect—nice house in suburban Victorianna, beautiful daughter, great marriage—all is thrown into question when one night she is visited by the ghost of her daughter’s friend, who has just drowned in her backyard pool. Thus begins Joshilyn Jackson’s new novel The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. While many of you are thinking that this isn’t the sort of book I would usually read, I must confess that you are right and also that I really liked this book, recommended by Jenny Davidson at Light Reading.
Though the death is ruled accidental, Laurel believes it to be anything but and enlists the help of her estranged older sister to figure out what really happened. Through the novel, she undergoes a life altering journey triggering startling revelations about her family’s past, the true state of her ‘perfect’ marriage, and what really happened that evening.
Though I ultimately enjoyed the novel, I found it quite confusing at the start. Laurel at first seemed more of a collection of traits than an actual person, and her penchant for seeing ghosts and sleepwalking didn’t really mesh with the naturalistic tone. Yet as I got deeper into the story and began to understand the characters a bit better, I started to warm up to it. Everything leads up to solving the girl’s death, but it’s the characters that are really more of a puzzle.
Laurel’s past is haunted by the memory of DeLop, a former mining community where her mother grew up. That seedy upbringing shaped her mother’s life, which in turn shaped the life of her girls, Laurel and her sister Thalia. Yet Laurel has brought into her home a young teenage cousin named Bet Clemmens, who back in DeLop lives in abject poverty.
Though Jackson constantly alludes to Thalia throughout the story, she doesn’t actually show up until about the halfway point. She is a natural born actor who thrives on conflict and married a gay man, making her pretty much the opposite of Laurel. Their relationship is fragmented and complicated; Thalia at times is so inconsiderate of her sister’s feelings that it makes one wonder why she hasn’t broken off all contact before this point. But their common upbringing binds them, and their shared childhood trauma gives each a unique insight into the young girl’s accidental death. On top of this, Thalia peels away the anesthetized cover of Laurel’s marriage and forces her to look at her life in a different light, though the outcome of this examination is not what either of them would have suspected.
While Jackson’s prose is adequate, her real strength lies in her ability to build complex and fascinating characters. No matter how minor, each character she creates is evocative, even if they are only referenced and never seen. However, the memory sections dealing with Laurel’s uncle did fall a bit short; without giving anything away, I don’t really understand exactly why he did what he did.
And perhaps the most important aspect of such a story, the mystery of why the girl drowned, is maintained throughout the novel with an expert touch. Even when the end is revealed, one realizes how it makes perfect sense yet also was so well hidden. We discover things as Laurel herself discovers them; when she is misled, we are as well.
This was the first book by Jackson that I have read, yet I doubt it will be the last. This isn’t the sort of book one can dismiss as ChickLit, but a talented Southern author who has great skill with characterization. The Girl Who Stopped Swimming is an entertaining and quick read that you should very well take a look at.
At some point in the last few months I stumbled across a list of the best graphic novels of all time. Most of the listed were works with which I had some familiarity, but one near the top, Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby, was completely unknown to me. So when I came across it recently, I picked it up to see what I had been missing.
Stuck Rubber Baby is an extraordinarily rich and complex tapestry of characters deftly woven into the fabr
ic of a specific time and place: a mid-sized community in the Deep South during the Civil Rights era of the mid 1960s. The story primarily unfolds in the fictional town of Clayfield. Its downtown, suburbs, and small college serve to place it in any number of Southern towns, though Cruse being from Birmingham would imply that as an appropriate stand in. The main characters are far from what we would call typical Southerners, yet they are every bit a part of the South. It is refreshing to see the community of a Southern town painted in shades of grey rather than the usual formula of citizens being either bigots or those who fight against bigotry. The real world is a lot more complicated than that, and Cruse brings that complexity through into his characters.
The novel is narrated by and centers on Toland Polk, a young man who can’t seem to make up his mind. The narration is told from the future, probably around the time of publication (1995). Toland appears at the outset and then throughout, mimicking in many ways the narrative style of Harvey Pekar. I wasn’t surprised to see Cruse refer to Pekar as a major supporter and influence in the book’s acknowledgments. The story itself begins with a fragmented look at Toland's childhood, which comes to a dramatic close when his parents die suddenly in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. While he seems to authentically mourn their loss, he does not appear to be traumatized by it. He is shown to be close to his older sister, Melanie, who marries a fairly typical conservative and religious southern man.
Following this brief introduction, the story shifts to the time frame within which it stays for the remainder of the novel. His closest friends at that time are Riley Wheeler and his girl, Mavis, who together form a modern, liberal couple that is just shy of being too-good-to-be-true. After Riley returns from his stint in the armed forces, Toland moves in with them. But, before this happens, he meets Sammy Noone, a gay man fresh out of the Navy, and Ginger Raines, a free thinking coed from Ohio. While newly enlightened Toland struggles to overcome the inherent racism in his upbringing, he also must deal with the homosexual feelings that he hopes are just a phase.
Cruse uses the struggles of the Civil Rights movement to explain the struggles of being a gay man in a homophobic society quite well. The novel is full of entertaining secondary characters drawn from both communities. While Toland’s own struggles can seem trivial compared to the lynchings happening elsewhere, the very real danger that is present for many in the gay community in this place and time are quite real and the comparison in apt.
Toland’s story is not all that different from any coming of age tale, where a young man finds out who he is. Yet his path is full of mistakes and his inability to be truthful with himself over much more than just his sexuality. Through these flaws and failures, Cruse never loses empathy for him, and as a result we do not either.
This is not to say that Cruse’s novel is without flaws. Through much of the book, the town of Clayfield seems to fluctuate in size, seeming to be a small town where everyone knows everyone to a large enough town that it can support a very large yet semi-closeted gay community. With this, issues arise as to how Toland becomes so quickly a part of the Civil Rights world, able to call at any time on the leader of the movement for advice. There also seems to be a shocking lack of national media on the scenes of some of this violence; I am no expert, but it seems that even in the mid 1960s, if a black children’s chorus were bombed it would be national news. The art can also be a little distracting, with Cruse’s overuse of crosshatching making it initially difficult to determine the race of certain characters, quite important in a novel with such themes.
It isn’t difficult to see why Stuck Rubber Baby is considered one of the best graphic novels. It does something different with the form than is the norm, and some of Cruse’s layouts are better than typical. The novel works on several levels as well, something that many graphic novels fail to do. In presenting the human cost both on Toland and those around him as he searches for an identity he can live with, Cruse has crafted a tale that shows the real value of the individual, whether black or white, gay or straight.
This past year was really the first in which I began to read mysteries, and in writing about them here, I have felt a bit frustrated that I am unable to discuss them to the depths I would like in order to avoid giving the whole thing away. Tana French’s Edgar Award winning In the Woods is such a book, but fear not, I won’t spoil you.
As a group, homicide detectives stand among the most jaded, most alcoholic, most emotionally dama
ged groups that exist in literature. Yet even Rob Ryan stands out among them. As a boy growing up in a small town in Dublin, he and two friends go missing in the woods. Ryan is the only one found, with no memory of the event, his shoes soaked in blood not his own. The incident enters the town lore, a famous case that is referenced in the media again and again throughout Ryan’s life.
Ryan changes his name after spending his adolescence in boarding school, returning to Dublin where he makes a career as a homicide detective. The past is brought back full force when he is assigned to the murder of a twelve-year-old murdered near the very same woods, which currently are the sight of an archaeological dig. There is the possibility that the two cases may be connected in some way, and Ryan hopes to defeat his own demons by solving the current case.
French’s prose is fantastic. The situations and characters are drawn with a vividness that imprints them upon the reader’s mind; the feel of dreary Dublin and the life of a homicide detective is presented so well that at times the imagery makes you feel you are watching a movie. Like most novels, the narrative is in past tense, yet French is able to tantalize the reader with future events because of Ryan’s later perspective as he tells the story. This may not seem groundbreaking, but I find it more rare in fiction than one might initially think.
Ryan is a mess, making idiotic decisions throughout, yet French is able to make the reader sympathize with him even as they want to reach into the book and shake some sense into him. Supporting characters, especially Ryan’s partner Cassie, are also well written, coming across as believable well-rounded characters. There are also depictions of psychopathic behavior that are not over the top, which is both refreshing and more chilling than the usual.
I was a bit unsatisfied with the way the two mysteries interconnected, at least at the end of the story, yet this is something that would give too much away. In her next novel The Likeness, Cassie is the main character and French uses the denouement here to set up that situation. I suppose there isn’t anything wrong with this, and as a new reader to the mystery genre it may be the norm, but it struck me as a bit of a marketing ploy. That said, all the information we get is from Ryan, and I would say that most of it is pertinent for the resolution of his story.
In the Woods is a fantastic mystery, both in concept and execution. Rarely do I spend an entire day reading one book straight through, yet I couldn’t put this down. It gets my highest recommendation.
Before I begin, let me just say Happy New Year to each of you. I am unsure why I use this space each month to talk about progress on my thesis. It doesn't really fit with the post's theme, nor does it seem to be of any great interest to you readers. Yet it does serve as a place to hold myself accountable to progress I've made (or haven't made), thus it will continue.
This past month I completed my thesis proposal and began the process of getting it approved by my committee members. I also used my seminar paper in my research methods class to work out a literature review that
with only slight tweaking should serve as a good fourth of the final project. Unfortunately, the economic troubles felt by the country have also been felt here at my house, so with the new acquisition of a full time job, I have decided to graduate not this Spring but instead this Summer. Relaxing the demands of school should help me maintain my sanity as I get the household back in black ink.
I also was accepted to a conference in April where I will present an overview of my thesis and hopefully receive some valuable feedback from other scholars. This will help make sure that I actually get some work done during the Spring.
This past month I finished 28 books, play, and graphic novels, and here is what they were:Not too difficult to see how the numbers can get inflated when one counts a graphic novel the same as a six hundred page book. I want to highly recommend Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas, easily one of the best books I read this past year. I'll also have thoughts in the next week on Brian K. Vaughan's Ex Machina comics.
As always, questions, comments, and recommendations are strongly encouraged. This month saw comments by two new readers, bringing the readership here up to almost double digits!
