After they're gone

It happens every time -- I wind up obsessed with the writers who appeared at the Key West Literary Seminar for months after the event. Perhaps it's just the inevitable effect of spending four days in their company, or thinking about their subjects. I at least have a valid excuse for reading After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman after the Seminar -- because it wasn't published until February. What a great read it is -- an unconventional crime novel in many ways, more of an examination of what happens to a family when its center mysteriously disappears. In this case it was first Felix Brewer, and later his mistress, who disappeared exactly 10 years after her lover. Many assumed she had gone to join him -- until her body showed up 12 years after that.

Another decade has passed by the time it gets taken up as a cold case by Sandy Sanchez, a retired homicide detective now working as a consultant for the Baltimore Police Department. But the real pleasure of the book is not just following Sandy's investigation, but in learning the story through chapters that move fluidly among characters and in different times. It provides a portrait of Baltimore in the second half of the 20th century, for the most part, in a particular upper middle class Jewish circle. And it never flags -- while in some books that alternate viewpoints you just can't wait to get away from some characters and back to others (ahem, George R.R. Martin), in this one every single chapter was interesting in its own right and I was always glad to pick up with whomever Lippman wanted to tell us about next. The whodunit aspect is satisfying, in the end (I hadn't guessed it) but the real pleasure of this book, for me, was the people.

Speaking of compelling characters, I've just caught up to Malla Nunn's series of Emmanuel Cooper novels (s0 far) with an advanced copy of Present Darkness, which publishes in June. The books are set in South Africa in the early 1950s, just as apartheid is being instituted, and it's a fascinating, horrifying, fraught time period especially for a man in Cooper's position. I don't want to offer any spoilers but suffice it to say that Cooper's background and upbringing means he's in a position to cross a lot of lines. He's also a World War II vet with a nasty case of PTSD decades before that term would be applied -- in his case it manifests as migraines and the voice of his Scottish drill instructor issuing orders and advice inside his head. Start with the first in the series -- A Beautiful Place to Die -- and read them in order.

I had always considered apartheid the most outrageous social atrocity of my high school and college years, and its ending a miracle of my adulthood -- but I had never really sat back and thought about 1) how insanely recent it was 2) its endless complicated consequences for the people who actually had to live with it and 3) how bizarre it was in a country that had just sent soldiers to World War II -- fighting against and defeating a regime built on ethnic hatred. Cooper is a classic crime fiction hero in many ways -- a flawed but admirable man who seeks to do good in a deeply screwed up world. It's a tribute to Nunn's skill that I find myself missing his world when I finish one of her books -- because who would really want to live under those conditions? Yet her people and the plots are so compelling that want to know what happens next for Detective Sergeant Cooper. Like Matthew Shardlake (C.J. Sansom's Tudor series), Gaius Petraeus Ruso (Ruth Downie's Medicus series) and Jackson Brodie (Kate Atkinson), I am eager to hear how he will get out of his next tight spot and figure out a way to, improbably, do some good.

Summer reading recs: English court intrigue, Papal court intrigue, dragons meet Napoleon in Russia and literary noir close to home

[gallery type="slideshow" ids="1552,1550,1555,1551"] Four novels, all set to be published this summer. All four are probably not to most people's reading taste but they all were to mine.

Queen's Gambit is the story of Katherine Parr, the final and surviving wife of Henry VIII. She's got an interesting story and it's told well both from her perspective and that of a servant, Dot, whom she brings from her own household to serve her when Katherine (reluctantly) becomes Queen. Even if you think you've read or watched everything you need to about the Tudors, this is worth a read, especially since it covers a relatively unexamined person and part of the story. Its perspective on Elizabeth is especially interesting, both from Katherine's view and from Dot's. As everyone who knows anything about Elizabeth knows, she and her final stepmother were close -- until Katherine caught her last husband, the ambitious, vain Thomas Seymour, playing some sort of naughty bed game with the young adolescent Elizabeth. While Katherine was pregnant with his child. I was dreading that part of the story even though I knew it was coming -- but Fremantle handles it with an interesting approach. A debut novel by Elizabeth Fremantle, who appears to be a worthy addition to the Tudor-writing historical fiction ranks. The book is scheduled for release on Aug. 6.

Blood & Beauty is about the Borgias, another telegenic Renaissance-era family (also the subject of a pay-cable drama from the same folks who brought us The Tudors). Sarah Dunant sets her books in medieval and Renaissance Italy and the Borgias offer incredible scope. I knew little about them, beyond their historical reputation as a bunch of depraved poisoners -- this book provided a much better rounded portrait especially of Lucrezia, daughter of the ambitious Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI). Even her ruthless brother Cesare is understandable, if not necessarily sympathetic. I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to the next installment -- though it led me to some confusion over the dramatic choices in the Showtime series. But hey, I knew from watching the Tudors that the guy behind those shows is not all that concerned with historical accuracy so I'm going to assume Sarah Dunant's sticking closer to the record until I learn otherwise. Dunant is probably best known for In the Company of the Courtesan; she may go stratospheric (into Philippa Gregory-like sales levels) with this one. Blood & Beauty publishes July 16.

Blood of Tyrants is speculative/alternative/fantastic historical fiction -- the latest and apparently penultimate volume in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. I've blogged about this series before -- the previous entry, Crucible of Gold was one of my favorite books from last year -- and this is a worthy successor. As it opens, our hero Will Laurence has been shipwrecked on the shores of Japan and has amnesia. So even though most of his shipmates and fellow aviators think he's dead and "his" dragon, Temeraire, desperately wants to find him, Laurence thinks he's still an officer in the British Navy and has no memory of the last eight years, ie. the time he's spent with Temeraire and learned a hell of a lot about dragons (and encountered Napoleon personally, and been court-martialed, and been made a prince in China and nearly died in both Africa and Australia and ...  well these are adventure books, OK?). The series is often described as Patrick O'Brian with dragons and that works -- it's set in the British military during the Napoleonic wars. And it is cool to imagine military aviation coming into play a few centuries before it actually did, and how that might have altered things and worked in the culture of the time (few know it outside of the aviation corps, but there are a number of female officers because one particularly valuable breed of dragon, the poison-fanged Longwings, will only abide women as their captains). But the true appeal of the series, for me, is the way it fulfills an animal lover's fantasy of bonding with intelligent, emotional beings who can, in this world, speak and express their opinons, sometimes irrational as they may seem (all dragons covet treasure and want to see their humans kitted covered in the Regency-era equivalent of bling whenever possible). I found myself, when reading this book, thinking of the relationship I've had with dogs and horses and how it often feels like you are holding conversations with them -- and how you feel a responsibility for their care and happiness that goes far beyond mere ownership. It will be interesting to see how Novik winds up the series -- this book ends with Napoleon on the march in Russia but she has previously shown no problem with materially altering history (Napoleon is currently married to an Incan princess) and kudos to her for the last line, which I won't spoil here but which has to be a nod to that other dragon-loving fantasy writer, George R.R. Martin. Blood of Tyrants publishes on Aug. 13 -- if you haven't read the previous seven entries in the series, that would make an excellent --and fun! -- summer reading project. I will be sorry to see this series end but will try to view it as I do my favorite TV shows when they go away after a few seasons -- better to go out with quality than trail on forever just because someone is willing to pay you to do so.

One of these books is not like the others, as the old Sesame Street ditty goes. Men in Miami Hotels is a contemporary noir, set in Key West but it's a wholly different creature from the usual subtropical mystery/detective novel -- it has more in common with the work of Thomas McGuane than Carl Hiaasen or James Hall. Cot Sims is a journeyman gangster for a Miami crime lord. He returns to his hometown of Key West to help his mother, who has been kicked out of her hurricane-damaged home by code enforcers and is camped out underneath. It is recognizably Key West in a lot of keenly observed ways, though a smaller less transient -- and more violent -- island than the real one (it appears to be a Key West inhabited entirely by Conchs and visiting Miami gangsters). Sims quickly gets himself into serious trouble by stealing a bunch of emeralds from his Miami crime boss and is basically on the lam from then on, throughout Key West, mainland South Florida and eventually Havana. I particularly liked the action in the cemetery, where Cot spends some time hiding out in a friend's family crypt. I'll admit that I admired this book but didn't find it captivating the way some crime fiction that is considered genre can captivate me (most recently, Lyndsay Faye's Gods of Gotham). But for those who prefer their crime with a more literary approach, or who read in order to admire language, this is a great read and I hope it finds its audience. It deserves to. Men in Miami Hotels will be released July 2.

Harry Potter for grownups, or realistic fantasy

Lots of books get described as Harry Potter for grownups. Deborah Harkness' work is the closest I've seen to truly fitting the bill. (Other contenders include Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I haven't read yet, and Lev Grossman's Magician books, which I read and liked but consider to be far more Narnia-infused than Potterian, despite the action surrounding teen magicians at a special magical academy.) When A Discovery of Witches came out, I read it and liked it though I fear I may have read it too fast -- it just felt like the crises were too many and piled on top of each other too quickly.

But I knew I was going to read Shadow of Night, the second in a planned trilogy, especially since the protagonists -- witch Diana Bishop and her vampire lover Matthew de Clermont -- were planning to travel back in time to 1590, the Elizabethan era. The book publishes in July but I got my hands on an advance review copy (one of the benefits of being a librarian) and devoured it in just a few days. Then I went back and bought a copy of A Discovery of Witches -- despite the fact that we have two copies in our branch of the library alone. And enjoyed re-reading it thoroughly; my earlier concerns about it just being Too Much seem to have disappeared. Perhaps a couple doses of George R.R. Martin gave me some perspective. Or maybe it really was my own fault for reading it too fast.

If you're vampire-curious, these are far, far better written than the Twilight series or the Sookie Stackhouse novels. If you like some romance in your reading, these have that, too, without many of the conventions and, yes, cliches that define so much romance fiction. If  you like old manuscripts and ancient conspiracies, set in academic libraries and old family castles, they've got that -- and I don't even want to mention Dan Brown in the same sentence, these are So. Much. Better.

So why call them Harry Potter for grownups? Because they fit into the same realm of realistic fantasy, a sort of yang to the yin of fantastic realism. While much of what gets labeled fantasy fiction takes place in some alternate universe or a mythical planet, the Harry Potter books, and these, take place in a world we recognize easily as our own -- only it happens to also be occupied by supernatural beings (which we always kind of hoped would be the case, right?). In J.K. Rowling's world, and Harkness', we can easily imagine ourselves living our daily lives, interacting with these witches and wizards and vampires and daemons. In Harkness' books, daemons are creative but often unstable, or as one witch puts it, "rock stars and serial killers." In the second book, Christopher Marlowe is a daemon, and a remarkably unstable one at that. Some people, like Queen Elizabeth, know about the existence of vampires and witches and the witchhunting craze at the time takes on even more sinister cast when there are real witches in danger of persecution simply because of who they are.

She also handles the attractions and dangers of time travel in the most deft way I've read since Connie Willis' Doomsday Book. From speech to clothing to the possibility of screwing up your own future existence -- or, in this case, revealing the fate of a being who thinks he is immortal -- it's all handled with the same straightforward approach. Magical realism has had quite a heyday. With vampires, werewolves and zombies all the rage, I'm ready now for realistic magic and I'd put Harkness at the front of the pack.

Recent reading roundup: The Brits, then and now

Just in time for the Fourth of July -- or maybe in anticipation of the London Olympics? -- OK, it was completely by accident -- I recently finished two books whose authors are Brits and which concern mostly British people in harrowing situations. * Other than that, they couldn't be more different.

One is nonfiction, the other is a novel. The nonfiction book was just published, the novel came out eight years ago. One is a disturbing account of a young woman who falls victim to a sociopath. The other is a historical adventure romp that should appeal to people who like Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels -- and/or the movie version of Last of the Mohicans. Yes, that happens to describe me.

I read the nonfiction book first, a contemporary true crime account called People Who Eat Darkness (note to publishers: why oh why would you give a book a title that is both generic and difficult to remember???). I've recently gotten into the true crime genre but almost exclusively on the historical end. More recent crimes just don't interest me enough to read an entire book about them - most of the appeal is learning about a whole time period or society rather than just getting tons of detail about an ugly crime. But this book got a good review on Salon so I figured I'd give it a try. Especially since it was helpfully in the library's collection.

The author, Richard Parry, is a British journalist based in Tokyo. One story he covered during his tenure there was the disappearance of a young British woman, Lucie Blackman and the subsequent trial of the man accused of killing her.

It's very well done, especially on the inevitable but still heartbreaking cultural divide and incomprehension between Blackman's desperate family and the Japanese authorities tasked with investigating her disappearance. Blackman was working as a hostess in a Japanese bar, one of scores of Western women who flirt and drink with Japanese men at bars in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. She was far from the first to encounter the man eventually charged with killing her -- and that's the other heartbreaking part of the story, how many opportunities were lost to stop the sociopath before he encountered Lucie.

Parry also excels at his portrayal of Blackman's family. Her parents had already been through a bitter divorce and Lucie's disappearance drove them even further apart. Lucie's father, Tim, spent a lot of time in Japan and courted the media in the search for his daughter. Her mother, Jane, was far less public -- and eventually made Tim's efforts the target of her own rage, trying to discredit and destroy the Lucie Blackman Trust he established and cast him as a villain in the drama. Parry is straightforward but fair in his depiction of the two grieving parents, who can't even rely on each other for support in the midst of a parent's worst nightmare. As anyone who's ever grieved knows, each person reacts differently and not always rationally -- and that's just normal grief, not the horrifying media-glare version the Blackmans endured.

My favorite line, though, came toward the end of the book when Parry is describing a self-published manifesto by the defendant (and in a further torture for Lucie's family, his trial took six years, because hearings were held every few months and because the Japanese judicial system rarely encounters a defendant who does not, eventually confess to his crimes). Obara's book, "The Truth About the Lucie Case," contains some valid questions about the prosecution and evidence, Parry acknowledges. "But the body of material was so vast, so promiscuously inclusive and unfocused, that any value it had was overwhelmed in a slurping swamp of weirdness and tedium." If you've ever encountered someone who's gone down the rabbit hole on making their case -- and has the wherewithal to publish their findings -- you know exactly what he's talking about.

The second book was a much lighter, easier read -- I polished it off in a day while waiting for the AT&T guy to come and fix our internet service. It's called Jack Absolute by C.C. Humphreys and it's adventurous historical fiction in the Bernard Cornwell/Sharpe vein. It's also in the library's collection. And it's got a great premise: that the character Jack Absolute from The Rivals by Richard Sheridan, was a real person. The book opens shortly after the play is produced (the book's conceit is that Sheridan and Absolute are friends, and Sheridan wrote about a real episode from Absolute's life and used his name, thinking his friend had died in India). As the novel begins, our man Jack, a retired captain in the Light Dragoons, is trying to make his way to the Caribbean where he has recently acquired a plantation he hopes will restore his family's fortune. Instead, he is coerced back into the Army to serve as a spy for the British forces trying to quash the American Revolution.

It's interesting to see the American Revolution from the other side -- Benedict Arnold makes an appearance while still fighting for the rebels but he's obviously a turncoat-in-the-making -- and Absolute is an attractive and entertaining character. My only quibble with the book is that I figured out who the concealed enemy spy was more than 100 pages out and I'm not usually too sharp on those plot twists. So if I can figure it out it must be really obvious. Still, I plan on reading the other two books in the series and must admit I'm disappointed that they're both prequels. Humphreys appears to have moved on to other subjects in the meantime, so I don't know if I'll ever find out what happens next to Jack Absolute.

* Since writing this it has come to my attention that C.C. Humphreys was born in Canada and now lives in Canada so maybe I shouldn't call him a Brit. He did grow up in Britain, though, according to the jacket copy and he certainly has worked there and the book is, in fact, all about Brits.

This, that and the other

1) It's March which means many people pay a lot of attention to basketball and eventually I remember that the cool people over at The Morning News are holding the annual Tournament of Books. I'm still working my way through the first round but man, this is good stuff.*

2) Which is sort of related (smart writing about books -- on the Internet!) to another thing: this recent, incredibly smart piece in Salon, examining Franzen v. Internet (for the record, I'm on the Internet's team) and giving the best defense I've read yet on what the Internet has brought to the world of books and readers. It's so good I'm going to quote from it at length. But you should still go and read the whole piece. And follow the links in the first excerpt.

The Internet has been amazing for book talk. There is more of it, and at a higher quality, than perhaps at any other moment, certainly in my lifetime. Dinosaurs love to lament the lost space in newspaper book reviews; a few years ago, the National Book Critics Circle fought, what seemed to me, a self-serving campaign to save the book review, by which a handful of people really wanted to save their right to sell the same lame 450-word book report to a handful of regional dailies. You didn’t have to bother reading the book to write many of those reviews, and as a one-time daily books editor myself, who once assigned reviews to some of those active in this debate, it was clear that many critics did not. Now we have the Rumpus and the Awl and the Millions and the Morning News and Maud Newton and Bookslut and the Nervous Breakdown and Full-Stop and the Los Angeles Review of Books and HTMLgiant and you get the idea. Professional freelancers didn’t save the book review – the battle was won by the Internet and people who love reading. The culture is richer for it. Twitter’s a useful tool for keeping track of the idea explosion.

and this:

That the online book culture is full of branding and image-burnishing is hard to deny. But it is also a generous place, at its best, and writers who use these social media tools understand this. They retweet, they send out links to positive reviews and articles about other people, they congratulate each other on publication day. Promotional, sure — but if it’s news that a favorite writer has a new story in a small journal I wouldn’t have known about, well, that’s valuable news. Indeed, it’s at least as valuable as the phony and promotional blurb industry which Franzen seems to have no problem being a part of.

 Hear, hear! Also, read, read! And write, write!

3) Speaking of writing ... if you are a Keys person and you are a writer, aspiring or otherwise, there's a cool contest this year at The Studios of Key West. It's called The Writes of Spring and last I heard there were about 10 spots left (they're only taking 25 registrants total). So get over there (digitally or otherwise) and sign up!

4) Illustration of The Book Reader of the Future, which came from the April 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics, courtesy of the awesome website Retronaut.

* Special thanks -- and asterisk/footnote homage -- to Citizen Reader both for reminding me about the Tournament of Books in general and for pointing out that this hilarious round in the ToB was judged by Wil Wheaton -- a name that sounded vaguely familar when I read it but didn't remember until I read the CR entry that goddamn, that *is* Wesley Crusher from Star Trek TNG! I've read occasional references and links to his blogging but had no idea he was this funny.