A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin

This is the fifth book in Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire. Long awaited, much anticipated, and released not long after HBO’s masterful dramatization of the first volume in the series, Game of Thrones, this book could hardly hope to measure up to everyone’s expectations, and alas, it does not. It’s too long, and has too many subplots. Our favorite characters from the earlier books are either dead or powerless, trapped or lost, and we spend far too much time on secondary plotlines that are disgusting or confusing, or both. Unfortunately, Martin’s flashes of brilliance continue to pop up at unpredictable intervals, rendering me unable to abandon the series entirely.

No, really, I won’t give up on them. These books are unique, with sympathetic original characters, inspiring plotlines, a refreshing lack of stereotypes, and huge emotional payoffs. If Martin has a fault, it’s that his imagination is too vast to be easily contained within the pages of a normal-length novel. That’s not so bad, really. My friend Max, who is 19 and a zealous fan of these books, gave me a pep talk the other night when I saw him at his parents’ house. His continued wide-eyed devotion to the books made me consider them with a fresh perspective. Talking with him reminded me of the sense of wonder and anticipation that a series like this can bring to a reader and made me want to recapture some of that for myself, even if I have to wade through nearly 1,000 pages find it.

ETA: The Onion weighs in.

(Book 40, 2011)

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

This was one of those books I avoided because everyone else was reading it. I can be so narrow-minded sometimes, usually to my detriment, as in this case! If you’ve already read this, I’m sure you liked it. Who didn’t like it? It’s one of those sprawling old-fashioned novels that offer something for everyone: memorable characters, unique locations, plenty of action, and lots of emotion.

And if you haven’t read it you can look forward to it! It’s the story of Marion Stone and his brother Shiva, twins born to a nun who kept her pregnancy secret, and raised by a pair of Indian doctors in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the 1950s. Most of the book is about their childhood at the mission hospital that employs their adoptive parents and I liked that part the best. I thought the book lost a lot of its charm when the action transferred to the U.S. where Marion goes for medical training. In fact, Marion was one of my least favorite characters. I much preferred reading about his natural parents (Thomas Stone and Sister Mary Joseph Praise) and later his adoptive parents, Hema and Ghosh, and the denizens of the mission hospital: nurses, gardeners, drivers, nannies, Hema and Ghosh’s colorful friends, the local prostitutes and politicians, and the hospital’s patients. Marion by himself is brooding and obsessive and the book doesn’t pick up steam again until the end when characters are reunited (though tragedy accompanies their reunion).

Erica Wagner, writing in the New York Times, says that Verghese’s writing owes a debt to Salman Rushdie and John Irving, and I agree. When describing this book to a friend the other day I said that it was like a lot of Indian novels in its scope and sprawl, and the book’s “capacious” feel (Wagner’s adjective) reminds me of Irving’s books, too. Though it’s something of a reach to compare Verghese’s writing to that of these two masters. His dialogue can be awkward, and he breaks some elementary rules of form when he uses Marion’s first person narration to describe events at which Marion was not present. But these are minor quibbles.

(Book 39, 2011)

All Other Nights by Dara Horn

Last year I read Horn’s book The World to Come and I loved it. All Other Nights is nothing like that book and indeed if I didn’t know they were written by the same author I would never have guessed. All Other Nights is straight historical fiction with a linear plot. It completely lacks the whimsy and playfulness of The World to Come—All Other Nights is an easier read but not nearly as much fun.

This book tells the story of Jacob Rappaport and his experiences during the American Civil War. Rappaport is Jewish, from New York, the son of a wealthy businessman. At the beginning of the book he joins the Union army to escape from his overbearing father. Recruited as a spy, Jacob must constantly navigate the gray areas of conflict: his first assignment is to travel to New Orleans and assassinate his own uncle, who is plotting to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, and things get even trickier from there.

In my last post about The Cookbook Collector, I said that a book can have imperfections and still be a good read. That was true for TCC and it’s true for All Other Nights as well. Horn’s depictions of Jacob’s struggles (both physical and moral) are engrossing to read but Jacob himself is flat and unremarkable. He’s someone to whom things happen, but I don’t think that was Horn’s intention. It’s like she tried to make him interesting by putting him into interesting situations but that wasn’t enough to overcome his essential torpidity. Some of the secondary characters provide much needed punch, but often they just seem strangely out of place, like the girl who speaks only in palindromes; she could have wandered in from The World to Come, now that I think of it.

(Book 38, 2011)

The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman

The Cookbook Collector is the story of two sisters, Emily and Jess, who approach life very differently. It examines their varied experiences over a period of a few years in the early 2000s, when Emily is the CEO of a dotcom startup and Jess is a graduate student. The plot and the characters owe a lot to Sense and Sensibility and indeed Goodman makes it abundantly clear that this is a novel for novel-readers; references to, and plot devices from English literature abound. But Goodman doesn’t adhere as strictly to the plot of S&S as Cathleen Schine does in The Three Weissmanns of Westport. She isn’t retelling the story of S&S so much as paying homage to the “smart sister, sensitive sister” dynamic, and her approach is less distracting than Schine’s.

Like Austen, Goodman talks a lot about money in this book, and who has it and who doesn’t. Emily and her fiancé Jonathan (a CEO of a different startup) get very rich when their respective companies go public. Several other characters are quite wealthy, too. But I didn’t enjoy Goodman’s descriptions of high-end houses and cars and restaurants. I know the story is set 10 years ago (almost historical fiction!) but I was really put off by everyone’s air of entitlement, as if it was somehow inevitable that they were all going to end up rich. I will say that money doesn’t equal goodwill in Goodman’s world. Both Jonathan and George (ex-Microsoft) are unpleasant ubercompetitive jerks and one of them meets an untimely end. I’m sorry, do I sound like a total killjoy? I can’t help it. The book’s attitude toward money just seemed so retrograde and not in a good way.

On the other hand I wasn’t bored! Plenty of stuff happens (how’s THAT for a plot description?) and Jess is delightful, even if Emily can be a bit of a pill. The subplot about the mysterious collection of cookbooks is inventive and engrossing. Sometimes a book can have imperfections and still be a good read. The book I’m reading now, All Other Nights, by Dara Horn (plot inconsistencies! flat characters!) falls into that category too. I’ll say more about that idea when I post about that book.

(Book 37, 3011)

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

A salient feature of fantasy novels is world building. Doing it well is tricky and it’s often where a good idea turns into a not-so-good book. It’s also been the weak link in the fantasy novels I’ve read recently (Kraken by China Mieville and Shades of Grey by Jaspar Fforde). Here is the dilemma: if an author concentrates too hard on world building, he or she can end up with too much explication and not enough action. Not enough world building and readers are baffled by the mysterious rules of an unknown universe. I have found that authors usually err on the side of too much rather than not enough but in the case of Midnight Riot the opposite is true.

However, given the choice, I’d go with not enough. Reading always includes some element of suspension of disbelief; if the world building is a tad incomplete it’s just one more thing to not think too hard about. Aaronovitch’s enthusiastic foray into a magical London is just delightful, even if I didn’t always follow the action, exactly.

His protagonist Peter is a newly minted London constable who, to his great surprise, finds himself assigned to assist Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale in his investigations of crimes involving magic: ghostly witnesses, brawls among minor dieties, riots caused by long-dead provocateurs. It turns out Peter exhibits some aptitude for magic and throws himself eagerly into his new job. He’s a funny, warm-hearted, totally modern protagonist who cheerfully suspends his own initial disbelief, so is it too much to ask that we do likewise?

Aaronovitch’s sly references to contemporary vampire fiction and Harry Potter only enhanced my enjoyment of this book. I didn’t actually, in the end, understand the whole plotline concerning a lethal reenactment of Punch and Judy, but so what? It was still a really good read and I am thrilled to find another book featuring Peter and DIC Nightingale is already available (Moon Over Soho) and a third is coming in May 2012.

(Book 36, 2011)