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Review: The Family Fang

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September 12, 2011
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The Family Fang
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My favorite book of all time might well be Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, so when The Family Fang opened with a strange family doing odd performances, I knew this book was likely to be up my alley. Kevin Wilson’s debut novel is a quick and easy read and one I really didn’t want to end.

The plot concerns a family of artists, where the mother and father use their two children as props for their real-world artistic stunts, staging elaborate hijinks in the real world to elicit reactions from the unsuspecting public. This lifestyle naturally somewhat traumatizes the kids, who end up feeling like they are always somehow part of an approaching disaster staged by their parents. The four Fangs are delightful characters, though Buster and Annie are the most well-drawn (as they should be, I guess), with their parents seeming almost impenetrable in a way. Wilson has a gift for coming up with often hilarious stunts for the Fangs, and I looked forward to the end of each chapter, where another Fang piece would be detailed.

Sometimes I felt like Wilson was a little less imaginative, or a bit sloppy. Would a barber in Tennessee (or wherever they were) really tell someone he was going to make them look like Jean Seberg from Breathless? Really?! I don’t buy it. Also, there’s a reference to Annie’s boyfriend, a screenwriter, being “quickly on his way to becoming one of the most powerful people in Hollywood,” or something to that effect, which is completely ludicrous. Screenwriters are not, as a rule, powerful, and it seemed like Wilson was writing about a world he didn’t really know that well whenever he wrote about Hollywood. While the ideas for the Fang pieces are genuinely cool, the ideas for the screenplays and movies and video games he writes about are much less convincing. I hated every time I had to read about Fatal Flying Guillotine III, which is a fake video game that really makes the rounds in the book and just reads as a really cheeky invention by the author.

Furthermore, the ending to the story itself seemed way too abrupt and far too easy. I was captivated by the mystery, but the resolution left me wanting more. And I really didn’t like the final chapter, which seemed cheesy to me, almost treacle.

Overall, though, a fun read and an impressive debut.

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Daily Words: One Month Until Publication …

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September 4, 2011
I Held My Breath as Long as I Could, Writing
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I visit Stephen King's Bangor house

At the gates

Not a lot of time left now until I shove my ebook out the door. Recently went on vacation to visit the family back home in Maine, swung by Stephen King’s famous Bangor home to see the bats and take a photo of myself lurking at the gates of the master. Wore my Daukherville shirt to warn him of things to come, ha!

All in good fun. He is still the writer I’ve read the most. Even if he wasn’t one of the most prolific, I think that would still be the case. His were the first books I ever read, and to say that I was influenced by him is an understatement; his books were part of the landscape of my childhood, and I’m grateful for it. It was a lot of fun.

But now it’s back to the hard and stressful work of trying to make my stories better. I’ve been working a lot, even if I haven’t been posting much, and I feel great about the first and fourth sections; it’s the damn middle two now that I have to get into shape.

So little time, and it just doesn’t stop being scary. I have no idea if I’m doing the right thing.

Review: Mile 81

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September 3, 2011
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Mile 81
Mile 81 by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great story for a quick flight from Logan to New York. I’m not going to say too much about the plot, since the story’s so short, but I’ll say that, once again, it’s the people not the monsters that King draws best. Something bad happens at an abandoned rest stop, do you really need more? Most of the characters meet a terrible fate, and it’s King’s ability to make you care so quickly about them that steals the show. Also, the atmosphere of the abandoned rest stop is outstanding. Loved every creepy detail.

All that said, the “big bad” of the story, to borrow a phrase from the Buffyverse, is laughable. King writes the hell out of it, of course, but it’s still an embarrassing concept. Again, I won’t spoil anything, but I do want to say that there’s a wobble effect described here that seems like King’s trying to describe some really terrible CGI. Two things about that: 1.) when writers start letting CGI color their imaginations, they need to be slapped and told to work harder; 2.) even if you want to let the modern abomination that is Hollywood CGI color your imagination, at least write about expensive CGI. The effect King sells in this story is some Syfy Channel-level work, at best.

Giving this one four stars for being compelling and filled with great details and characters; docking it a star for having a worthless, uninspired (and rather recycled, in terms of the King-verse) central villain.

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Review: The Last Werewolf

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September 1, 2011
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The Last Werewolf
The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, damn. Here I was, really enjoying this book, until it just … got old fast. The title sums up the plot accurately enough: Jacob Marlowe is the world’s last werewolf, who is being hunted by an international group dedicated to killing occult creatures, but the joke’s on them, because Jake has a bad case of ennui and plans to kill himself, anyway. Think James Bond if James Bond was a werewolf who wanted to kill himself after too many women, too much booze, and too many years on the prowl. The first few chapters were unique and fun, lots of great lines.

But then … ?

The first moment of disappointment came with the first major love scenes in the story. So many good lines, and yet–too many overwrought ones. And the action and story itself I found far too simple and almost entirely predictable. Also, like Jake I found myself not quite caring about what happened. Maybe that’s the problem with having a character who doesn’t want to live.

Story is a bit like a dessert that you start eating feeling delighted by and end feeling like you should’ve stopped ten forks-worth ago, because now it just seems like the worst thing you ever did, eating that cake.

That said, there were too many sentences I loved to give this book any less that three stars.

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Review: Full Dark, No Stars

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August 17, 2011
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Full Dark, No Stars
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Almost a four-star review, but not quite. I enjoyed the stories overall, but I feel like the ideas just weren’t good enough. When I think of the stories in Different Seasons, or Four Past Midnight, or even the Bachman Books, I feel like this collection of four novellas comes up lacking a bit.

The collection start with “1922” — the story of a haunted man and his equally haunted son — begins in unbelievability, wanders into decent horror story territory, and then waddles off into a muttering, clumsy puddle of half-baked plot before whimpering to its conclusion. But hey, some of the details were cool (loved the rats! loved them!), so I wasn’t entirely bored. But I didn’t in the end find much to believe in this one. Might’ve been better as a real short story.

Next comes “Big Driver” — and this one pretty much follows the plot of films like Last House on the Left (itself rented and viewed by the main character) and would have seemed really derivative to me, had it not been for King’s striking ability to write well when the mood suits him. I wound up having a blast with this story, even if I wanted to reject its very premise from the moment I realized what it was going to be about. The conclusion was suspenseful, and if all the stories were as good as this one, I’d probably have given the collection five stars.

“Fair Extension” was absolute garbage, and King should be ashamed of himself for it. This deal-with-the-devil story has the devil go by the name of George Elvid. Yes. That’s right. Elvid. One look at that name, and I wanted to slap King on the wrist.

Finally, “The Good Marriage” continued King’s habit of writing long stories of women alone in a house sifting through their husband’s stuff. This one discovers a nasty secret about her husband. It was interesting, and decent enough, but rather long-winded at times for my taste. Nice ending. Also, though, I feel like this one could have been better as a real short story. There’s a lot of fat on this one.

So I guess I liked half the stories here, barely liked another, and full on mocked another. And yet … it was all so very easy to read and King kept me turning the pages.

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Review: The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

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August 13, 2011
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The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good, fun reading about cholera breaking out in mid-nineteenth century London and the way two men figured out what was really going on. The central character is John Snow, who fights against prevailing superstition and wrong-headed ideas about the nature of disease. The story of Snow’s research is really fascinating, but Johnson loses me a little in his somewhat unfocused ramblings toward the end. The “epilogue” in particular goes on for quite some time about nuclear disarmament. I mean, I get it, but really? I came here for the cholera story, not Johnson’s thoughts on 9/11. Overall, though, this was a great read.

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Daily Words: Two Months to Go …

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August 7, 2011
500 Words a Day, I Held My Breath as Long as I Could
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I Held My Breath as Long as I Could Cover

Cover Art, I Held My Breath as Long as I Could

In the last month, I’ve kept busy and missed precious few days. I’ve written a completely fresh draft of a story called “Radiation,” which I originally wrote in high school (it’s the story that earned me my favorite rejection letter ever, the letter which said, “This story is almost strange enough to like — unfortunately, it makes no sense at all!!!”). I love the revision. Also been working on revisions to some of the stories here, to mixed results. I have these ideas of what I want to do, but sometimes it just doesn’t work the way I think it should. I’ve got one more month until my deadline for new content expires and I go to strict line-editing, but I’ve already gotten the feeling that these are the stories I’m going with, and that I’m going to need all the time I can get to make this heap of sentences work.

There’s so much to do. There are so many words. The idea that people routinely write long novels blows my mind a bit right now.

Tonight, I’m going to read one of the pieces at Black & White here in Manhattan. Hope the audience likes it. I feel a bit nervous, as always, but it’s been too long since my last reading. I’ve been too much in the lab, and I have to make an effort to get out more.

Review: Geek Love

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August 6, 2011
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Geek Love
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the best books I have ever read, and the horror novelist in me wants to claim it for my own genre. Here’s the slew of adjectives: dark, funny, disturbing, and beautiful. These are some of the best, most perfectly captured characters I’ve ever had the pleasure to spend time with.

The writing is beautiful without getting in the way of the story itself, which rolls forward at a perfect clip. I found myself underlining passages quickly so I could hurry up and turn the page.

And what a story. A novel hasn’t gotten this far under my skin for a long, long time.

READ THIS BOOK!

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Review: The Metamorphosis

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August 6, 2011
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The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Before I go and lookup the online decoder rings to apply to this story, I wanted to say that I can’t believe it took me so long to get around to this super-short book. It’s custom-tailored to be the kind of story that I’d fall in love with: it has well-drawn characters, a good central drama, and it is both funny and heartbreaking. I think this is entirely accessible to the casual reader, for those who care to read a story about a man who wakes up to find he’s turned into a bug.

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Review: Frankenstein

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August 6, 2011
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Frankenstein
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ok, before I gush — this book isn’t perfect. There’s a lot more telling than showing, and the story is essentially three long monologues. But that’s okay with me. I think it works. The story is both heartbreaking and scary, and the epistolary nature of the book underscores the loneliness of each of the three men telling the story (that is, they have to divulge their lives to each other because they have (and have had) no one else to listen). None of the filmed versions has ever captured the full power and melancholy of Shelley’s classic. You may know the story thanks to the derivatives, but the atmosphere and tragedy is most sharply drawn in the novel. I love this one!

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