What We're Reading Now -- Brian -- The Light of Falling Stars

It starts with a plane crash and is as compelling of a fifty-page beginning to a novel as I've read in a while. Emotionally rich. Human and complicated. The plane crash serves as a catalyst for a handful of characters to start dealing with their own repressed problems.

But then it sort of unravels. Long, kind of dry stretches of internal monologue and thoughts and feelings with the occasional compelling node. A few scenes near the middle that sort of pop up out of nowhere and make very little sense. And then, eventually, these repressed problems the characters are dealing with get resolved....because they, meaning the characters, say so. The characters do something or say something that triggers them to believe that they've resolved their problems.

This may very well be J. Robert Lennon's point. A statement on the human condition...or whatever. Saying, basically, humans are shitty at dealing with things. Once a problem is brought to the surface, there's some grappling, and eventually, it's rationalized away. Shoved under the carpet. A haircut, or a new apartment, and the belief that everything is going to be all better. But no real progress is made.

As an aside: lately I've realized that I don't much care for internal monologue in a book. There are a few writers who do it well, but I think a lot more can be found out about a person by observing what they do, rather than listening to what they think -- and this, to a certain extent, is the case with real people. For example, when people talk to each other, they present themselves how they want to be seen, which isn't exactly how they really are -- this is something everybody has noticed at one point or another. If you really want to get to know someone, observe them when they don't know they're being watched (you know, in a non-creepy, legal way).

Another aside, this time about the book. Lennon makes Montana feel surprisingly urban. With bustling down towns and basement apartments, corner delis. There's no mention of strips of fast-food joints and big box retail that populate every town in the West. It was an interesting choice, to portray the town this way.

Anyway. Back to the point. Everything considered, it was a good book. An enjoyable read. Not as tight as it could be, but still pretty good. Worth a read

What We're Reading Now - The Zero by Jess Walter

by Carolyn, editor


I used to be anti-genre fiction, which is to say that I used to be a Serious English Student. 


Then it turned out that my favorite movies were thrillers. As in I noticed a pattern of "What kind of movie do you want to watch?" preceding "Thriller!" and I guess that's how I started gravitating to the book jackets with blurbs like "keep you guessing in this race against time" and "a roller-coaster ride" and "a psycho-sexual thriller". 


Okay, that last one was the tagline that drew me to see Black Swan (but regardless of how traumatized you were by seeing Natalie Portman get nasty on herself, you've got to admit that was a must-see movie for making conversation with people you don't really feel like talking to)


The point is that in my staid old age of responsibility and sobriety, a really compelling thriller is peak excitement - right up there with ordering uni and spotting the neighborhood Newfoundland. And, in case you thought I had totally lost the thread: The Zero is a fantastic thriller with enough substance for even the most Serious of English Students to have a good chaw. 


[Enter comment here about how refreshing it is for an author with literary talent to wade unapologetically into genre fiction, to write something that can confound bookstore clerks by being genre-proof. Of course Jess Walter performed the same trick in his previous novel Citizen Vince, which I read, sadly, before the birth of this blog, but also recommend.]


I'm assuming that - if you cared - Amazon would tell you that The Zero is a fictional story of a cop after the September 11th attacks, who wakes up in the first scene after trying to shoot himself in the head (the bullet grazes his head - just stitches. This isn't a post-suicide in the hospital sort of deal.) 


Beyond the 9/11 premise, The Zero is too dark and unforgiving to feel like propaganda. Instead, it's told in sharp flashes as the cop becomes part of the confusing aftermath of clean-up, intelligence rivalries, and coping. It works partly because of a complete lack of name-dropping - the words "September 11th" never appear, nor do "World Trade Center" or even "NYPD" - and partly because Walter's writing is so fluid and his characters so flawed that they feel real enough to touch. 


The line that keeps you guessing (and reading) is that our protagonist cop is having "gaps" in his memory, so that the story is told not in chapters, but in fragments of consciousness. I think there is an obligatory reference to Fight Club that needs to be made here, but rather than feeling tricked at the end, the reader sees the careful orchestration of story lines that read as a whole, over and above the fragments. 


That wasn't a spoiler, so sit back down. I always find my eyes trying to skip down a page when I want to know what happens - it takes discipline to read a good thriller line-by-line. (Sidenote: did you see that article about how you enjoy a book more when you know the ending? Such bullshit.) 


So here is my attempt to tie this back neatly to the reason we're all here:
If it's possible to write a genre-proof novel with the intrigue of a thriller, the grit of noir, and the human frailty of literary fiction, can you create a genre-less fragment of it on a 4x6" card? Better yet: can you write a story in 250 words that builds so much tension that the reader must train his or her eyes to read line-by-line, and not skip to the bottom? 


Note: Brian has informed me that the tie-back-to-kindling is not necessary. What a waste.

New Years and What We're Reading Now

Today is the last day of 2011 (it may be the beginning of the last year ever and isn't Mayan Apocalypse super exciting). Approximately mid-morning on the east coast, but I'm sure some of our readers, writers and all around fans are drunk already. And why not...mimosas and bloody maries are delicious. So, enjoy the eve. Have a riotous time. Just as a word of caution: don't kill anyone. Prison life is no life at all.


At any rate, I'd like to take this time to introduce a new feature to our blog. It's called the What We're Reading Now section. We being the editors, and what we're reading being books. If this goes according to plan, there will be discussion of the books we're reading after we finish them, or while we're reading them...or whatever.


So, without further ado....Brian is reading -- Light of Falling Stars by J Robert Lennon.  Carolyn is reading The Zero by Jess Walter. Updates to follow.