Author: townhalllibrary

Overview:

How many times can killers beset a small town? How many times can the same heroine rise to the occasion and thwart the relentless evil that attacks with brutality in seemingly inexhaustive supply? If one were to take Stephen Graham Jones’s Indian Lake Trilogy at face value, they might say, “three.” But once they’ve read the whole tale—the one that begins with My Heart is a Chainsaw, hurtles through Don’t Fear the Reaper, and concludes with The Angel of Indian Lake—they will know the number is much, much higher. Jones and his reluctant protagonist, Jennifer “Jade” Daniels, return to Proofrock four years after the events of Reaper and eight years since everything began with Chainsaw. And right on schedule, things go increasingly wrong. In true trilogy fashion, Jones takes the reader off the rails following and subverting the rules of the genre, particularly those listed by Randy in the second and third installments of the Scream franchise. Higher body count? Check. More elaborate deaths? Check. Superhuman killer? Anyone can die? The past will come back? Well . . . you’ll just have to pick up the book to find out.

Thoughts:

It is possible to consider The Angel of Indian Lake outside of the trilogy Jones has penned, but it wouldn’t be complete. These books can stand alone (I think), but that doesn’t mean that they should. Jade’s story doesn’t end with any one of these books. It doesn’t begin with any of them either. It may seem unbelievable, at the very least fantastical, that so much would happen to one town and one girl/woman in particular. But Kurt Vonnegut once said of protagonists, “. . . make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” It may not take all three installments of the trilogy for us to see what Jennifer “Jade” Daniels is made of, but it does take the events of all three books for Jade to see what she is made of. And that is at the heart of any good story—growth and self-realization. It may have taken an unimaginable series of tragedies and more than a few buckets of gore to get her here, but in the end, Jade knows who she is and what she is and she is no longer searching for the next final girl.

Overview:

The Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix is simultaneously everything and nothing that its title suggests. Upon reading the moniker, one might get the impression that this is a comedic satire. It is. And it isn’t. There are funny moments and there are satirical moments. Sometimes the two even intersect. But Hendrix does so much more. The satire can be funny, but it can also be scathing. The humor can be both amusing and frustrating, and it is counterbalanced by the very fact that this is still a horror novel. It may not be just a horror novel, but it is horrific when it needs to be. Hendrix does a fantastic job of blending all of these elements in a way that can critique the culture and time period addressed without feeling that he is writing with an agenda. He can make you laugh out loud without cheapening the visceral moments. None of these seemingly contrasting constituent parts are at odds. They don’t conflict. Nothing feels out of place as Hendrix transitions effortlessly between modes.

Thoughts:

Hendrix accomplishes quite a significant feat in a book that is socially conscious, often humorous, and frequently terrifying—he invokes a range of emotion in the reader. He takes characters that could easily be dismissed as stereotypes and caricatures and turns them into fully-formed individuals. Readers will find themselves increasingly frustrated by Patricia’s woes and will want to fight for her and those she holds dear, not only against the evil in which she alone believes but against the social and familial mistreatment she must endure as the only seemingly sane person in a collection of characters that have written her off as mad.

Overview: 

Andre Dubus III’s novel brings together two narratives of the American Dream and the potential for such dreams to quickly turn to nightmares. The story alternates between two characters—a U.S. born woman forced from her home due to a clerical mistake showing that she has an unpaid tax bill and an Iranian immigrant who has purchased a home for his family only to find that the home was sold to him in error—neither of whom are responsible for the situation in which they find themselves. Dubus presents first person perspectives for each of these characters with seemingly genuine insight into their respective plights and the wronged feelings each cannot help but experience. Dubus education in sociology is put to work in this tale of failed bureaucratic processes and the human fallout that can result from such failures.

Thoughts:

House of Sand and Fog presents a realistic portrayal of human beings cast into an, unfortunately, all too believable scenario in which no one would ever conceivably believe they might find themselves. It is impossible not to see the opposing sides of this story and feel that neither character is wrong but rather the flawed system that puts them at odds. Though, while not wrong in their positions, no character is innocent in their actions. Dubus draws portraits that are simultaneously sympathetic and deeply flawed, as he builds a toward a life-altering finale, the impact of which extends far beyond the principle players.

Overview:

It would be inaccurate to say that Lisa Jewell’s Then She Was Gone starts in the middle. The truth is, the story starts surprisingly close to its conclusion. Ellie Mack has disappeared but not recently. She’s been gone for ten years already by the time the reader joins the fray. Following her mother, Laurel, the reader gets a picture of life both before and after Ellie’s disappearance. The timeline shifts from past to present and back again throughout the story, offering pieces that begin to connect in the reader’s mind. The narrative purpose of these pieces demands no heavy lifting on the part of the reader, though. The structure is more akin to a simple 100 piece jigsaw puzzle, where the placement of each object quickly becomes clear, than it is to a 1,000 piece monstrosity full of vibrant and overlapping colors that require dedicated determination on the part of the solver. Jewell’s book is not intended to be such an arduous effort. It is a story designed to allow a picture of events to unfold before the reader without relying on clever twists or unexpected surprises. It is simple and complete and devoid of the unforeseen.

Thoughts:

As noted above, Lisa Jewell’s Then She Was Gone is not designed to surprise you. It is not a book where you read the last page of some late chapter and say out loud, “Well, I didn’t see that coming.” It’s not that type of mystery. The details are presented in their own time and—as previously noted—create a clear path to the finish. I, personally, like a fair dose of the unpredictable in the mysteries I read, but to each their own. Where I really see a hiccup in Jewell’s methods begins about nearly halfway into the book. With the start of Part Three, there is a surprising shift in narrative perspective, one that is echoed even more jarringly toward the end of the book. The sudden shift in narration after over a hundred and fifty pages of prose feels a bit awkward. It almost reads as though Jewell started the book with an idea and lost her handle on how to bring it all together, so she chose to incorporate these not-so-subtle shifts in the presentation of the story to provide a purely expositional explanation of events. The book is not dissatisfying for those insistent on concise explanations and the variety of closure that does not abide loose ends. It is capably written and the premise is intriguing. I only wish the story had unfolded with a little more show and a little less tell.

Overview:

Like other works by Cormac McCarthy, The Road is described in rich detail, though in a largely journalistic fashion—without any real hint of emotional investment on the part of the narrator. McCarthy almost seems to go out of his way to ensure that the narrator does not become a character in the story, remaining nothing more than a reporter limited in scope to their omniscience. It is the stark and detached narrative voice that highlights the desolation of McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic landscape in The Road.  

Thoughts:

I have always felt that I want to like McCarthy’s work more than I actually do. This isn’t to say that I did not enjoy this book or have not enjoyed other books he has penned. It is only to say that the narrative voice, discussed in the Overview section above, sometimes leaves the reader feeling equally detached. Empathy for the characters can become as hard for the reader to attain as it is for those left to wander blindly in the barren world of McCarthy’s creation. In the case of The Road, though, McCarthy hasn’t built his world in such a bleak manner without purpose. If the reader is willing to put in the work, to take on the same burden of despair as the characters in the story, there is a payoff—and a surprisingly emotional one at that. This Pulitzer Prize winning novel is not a difficult read because of its language. It doesn’t present hard-edged or abstract questions. But it is a demanding read, for what it does is ask the reader to experience the emptiness of a world gone over and to find humanity where it is all but forgotten.

Overview:

Joe Hill makes the fantastic seem all too plausible with his longest novel to date. His attention to detail gives the story a developed, lifelike texture that aids in the monumental task of giving imagination life. But stories are not written in a vacuum. Not a single story has been put to paper without its fair share of influence, and Hill is no exception. He owns this, wears his influences like a badge of pride. He calls them out, by name, before the story gets underway. The page immediately following the dedication is reserved for naming the muses to whom he owes a debt of gratitude and citing their specific contributions not only to his complete body of work but to this book in particular. Notable among those recognized is his father—pop-fiction monolith, Stephen King. Hill confesses that his father is the author “ . . . from whom I stole the rest.” It is impossible for any who are familiar with King’s work to not notice his fingerprints on Hill’s story. The premise itself aligns with King’s longest single work, The Stand: creating a post-apocalyptic setting in the wake of a highly fatal contagion. One scene, and a particular line of dialogue, is lifted directly from this novel. Beyond The Stand, readers will see other parallels to King (the pyrokinetic abilities of some of the characters cannot be read without recalling King’s 1980 novel, Firestarter). There are other more subtle nods to his father’s work throughout the book. There are even some that the reader may start to see, parallels they may begin to draw, that turn out to be red-herrings created not by Hill but the associations of the readers’ own minds.

Thoughts:

On the whole, The Fireman is a well-crafted and enjoyable read. Its territory is familiar, but the novel’s well-trodden subject is not a hindrance. Instead it adds to the comfort, like slipping into a much loved and worn-to-tatters sweater. It also compounds the anticipation, as familiarity with this type of story and the behaviors of characters in such tales allows to the reader to see potential pitfalls that the characters, born to serve the authors intent, may not. There are a few places where a line of dialogue is jarring—usually because of a combination of the words themselves and the character uttering them—but there are bound to be such missteps when a book finds itself in the ballpark of 190,000 words. Given the overall competence of the writing and craftsmanship of the story, I think we can forgive such minor infractions.

Overview:

Something has happened—something significant, something world changing. Yet this something, this catalyst for Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind, takes a backseat, is simply a plot device in a novel that really isn’t plot driven. This novel is not about the events that create the situation, or even the situation itself; this novel is about people. Plain and simple. It’s not about how people react to adversity and uncertainty, thought those are unavoidable components of the story. The novel is about how people work: their prejudices and preconceptions—not only with regard to others, or how the world should be, but also how they see themselves. At its core the novel is about people struggling with their inclinations—good and bad—while moving through a world that has changed, is changing, and processing their notions of self and the other. It is a story of the endless reckoning that takes place throughout lives, but it is not a journey. It is a snapshot of life in its ongoing complexity.

Thoughts:

Alam’s Leave the World Behind starts out innocuously enough. It feels, if anything, banal. A family leaves for a vacation: a chance to, as the title says, leave the world behind. The prose feels almost excessively heavy in its description at the onset. But, as the novel progresses, this depth of detail becomes the very locus of the character studies at the heart of the book. Alam’s insight into people’s inner-workings, without judgement or value assessment, provides a lens through which we cannot help but gauge ourselves.

Leave the World Behind has recently been adapted as a Netflix film starring Mahershala Ali, Julia Roberts, and Ethan Hawke. The film deviates somewhat from Alam’s story, leaning more heavily on the question of what exactly has happened, using devices better suited to film in an effort to create tensions that vary in ways from those in the book. Despite these changes, both the book and the film are worth the reader’s/viewer’s time, as the latter differs enough to stand apart from the former without being so far removed from the source material as to seem negligent.

Overview:

Kingsolver draws the reader into a part of America with which they may not be familiar, one they may have already—consciously or unconsciously—filed away under some broad, possibly unfair and unkind, stereotype. She makes this setting a character, well rounded and three dimensional, without the snide dismissal so often cast on the quieter corners of the country. She draws the reader into the heart of Appalachia: a real place, populated with real people and their all too real strife. Kingsolver does this without mercy, opting not to wade readers gently through the shallows but to drop them straight into the rip current, where they are left to struggle helplessly against its pull. Floundering amidst the crashing waves of poverty, neglect, and addiction, the reader follows Demon through each phase of his life, be it yet another setback or a momentary triumph, until the stakes feel as important to the reader as they are to the protagonist himself. Demon Copperhead  may be a work of fiction, but Kingsolver’s use of historical information—from the documented oppression and exploitation of coal workers to the  opioid crisis and its impact on rural areas like Demon’s beloved Lee County—paints a picture as honest and true as any plucked from real life.

Thoughts:

Having not previously read the Dickens story to which Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel aspires, I cannot speak in direct comparisons. I can, however, say that Demon Copperhead is deserving of the praise it has received and each and every one of the sixty-four weeks it has spent on the New York Times’s Bestseller List. It is an utterly human look at a life moving through utterly dehumanizing obstacles and emerging on the other side a product of these experiences—for better or worse.

Overview:

Stephen King’s approach to Holly is not unique. It is familiar. It does not waiver from that which he’s used in works such as the Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch). In other words, his approach is the same as it has always been for works in which we find the character of Holly Gibney. As is the case with the Bill Hodges trilogy, there is a mystery to be solved for the characters in the book, but not for the reader. The reader is privy to everything, for the omniscient narrator holds nothing back. Able to see the story from the perspectives of both the protagonists and antagonists builds a different kind of tension. Rather than staying close to Holly, following along and waiting to find out the details as she does, the reader already knows the who, what, where, when, why, and how. The suspense, instead, builds from the question: Will Holly find out in time?

Thoughts:

King’s real talent has always existed in his ability to establish characters that are realistic in their complexity even in the most fantastical of situations, and with Holly, he is once again successful in this regard. For constant readers and established fans of Ms. Gibney, this book will not disappoint. The same awkward, quirky character first encountered in Mr. Mercedes lives within the pages, but she has grown and continues to grow with each new experience. Readers new to Holly Gibney, or King in general, will find endearing characters in both the titular protagonist and her supporting cast.