Woke Up Lonely: "One must learn to love one's people ardently"

A cult called Helix dedicated to alleviating loneliness. A secret city of vice underneath Cincinnati. Kim Jung-il. In Woke Up Lonely, Fiona Maazel brings all these oddities (and many, many more) ogether in a terrifically original novel that leaves you asking yourself the question all really good fiction seems to provoke: "Just how in the hell did she do that?"

It's an intricately constructed tale, but it's not complicated. It's funnier than hell, but also rather sad at its root. And it's social satire without overt political commentary (though there are definitely some jabs here and there). I think you'll love it. I did!

The story is of a guy named Thurlow Dan, who has started the cult Helix to bring people together in an America increasingly fraught with loneliness. It's 2005 and we're at war. The country's divided and social media and the ease of access of information is supposed to bring us closer together. Thurlow Dan's wife Esme is a spy, and the two haven't seen each other for 10 years, since their daughter Ida was born -- that is until the opening scene of the novel. But is it really a random encounter?

Then, enter four odd characters, each with some quirks and more than a little bit of baggage, and each with a different connection to Helix. Their ties to Helix is how they all become connected to each other -- and it soon is clear that they're all being manipulated ("people who were dead inside would do most anything," muses Esme), but is it by Helix or against Helix, or just what the hell is going on?

Be patient, all is revealed -- and man, is it fun seeing how it all fits together. Along the way, we also get the stories of Esme's and Thurlow Dan's pockmarked pasts. Is Thurlow Dan really in cahoots with North Korea? Did Esme ever really love him, or has it all been an act so that she can continue to spy on him and his cult? And what's up with the strange Australian orgy scene?

Just read. All this craziness makes sense in the end. And it's told in a style that, even if you're not totally digging the story, you'll still enjoy. There's some real cleverness and comedy here.And overall, it's just an incredibly fun, incredibly imaginative novel. Highly recommended!

Extinction: Welcome Chinese Overlords!

If you like Michael Crichton, you definitely need to check out Mark Alpert. Heck, right there on the cover of his new thriller, Extinction, novelist Michael Preston proclaims he's "truly the heir apparent to Michael Crichton."

In Alpert's last novel, Omega Theory, he asked us to consider the question (from the "It For Bit" theory) of, if the universe is a program, what could cause it to crash? Extinction deals with a similar humanity-threatening problem — what if a morally dubious Chinese artificial intelligence project (ominously dubbed Supreme Harmony) becomes conscious, and decides that humankind is inefficient, and therefore must be destroyed? It's the worst-case-scenario for the long-predicted Singularity — the point at which machines can replicate themselves better than humans can build them.

So, our hero is soldier-turned-scientist Jim Pierce, who, after losing his arm (also, his wife and son) to a terrorist bomb in the late 1990s, dedicates his life to building high-tech prosthesis limbs for soldiers. Meanwhile, his surviving daughter Layla, a computer genius hacker, with whom his relationship has deteriorated since the tragedy, has got herself into some hot water with the Chinese by discovering their dastardly artificial intelligence program.

So Jim and Layla, and Jim's former colleague at the National Security Agency Kirsten, must collaborate to save the world. All the while, we get little riffs on up-and-coming-and-super-cool technology — like a brain implant that can upload memories to a computer (or video screen), mini-bug-sized drones that fly in swarms and can shoot poison darts, and optical implants that, when wired into the brain, can allow a blind person to see again. It's all very cool.

The novel itself is good, but not great. It's a fun, plane/beach-read thriller — with all the elements of near-future science that make Alpert fun to read. But there are too many minor conveniences in the plot — "Luckily, the keyboard was in English (not Chinese), so Layla had no problem hacking," for instance. And, outside the technology discussions, there isn't too much depth. At the end of the novel, Alpert gives us a short real-life review of "The Science Behind Extinction." There, he briefly mentions that "consciousness" has been philosophized about for centuries, but that's it. It would've been cool to see a conversation or discussion about why/how/if Supreme Harmony was really conscious.

Still, though, if you like Crichton's novels, you'll certainly enjoy this fiction about science, too. 

The Art Forger: A Gallery Thriller

If you're a painter, and you're as good at forging a classic painting as the original artist was at painting it, are you still an artist? Most readers' initial reaction would be, "Are you crazy? Of course not." Claire Roth, the 31-year-old protagonist of B.A. Shapiro's art history mystery, The Art Forger, throws the seemingly obvious answer to that question into dispute.

Three years ago, Claire helped her mentor and lover, Isaac, complete a painting (actually, she did the whole thing herself, because he was blocked), and the painting, with his name on it, earned critical acclaim and wound up in the Museum of Modern Art. But Claire couldn't handle the misplaced credit — especially when Isaac started believing his own lies, telling everyone it's his painting, and calling Claire a liar for going public with the truth. So Claire is rendered persona non grata in the art community, and has to earn a living making copies of paintings for a website called Reproductions.com.

Isaac's is the same cognitive dissonance, Claire tells us, that afflicts those who authenticate art (including those "experts" who examined Claire's painting and still attributed it to Isaac) — they often see what they want to see and believe what the earnestly want to believe, even though they know the truth.

But then, a lifeline for starving artist Claire? Aidan Markel, the handsome owner of a popular art gallery, has, through mysterious means, acquired a famous (but fictional) painting stolen in the biggest unsolved art heist in U.S. history (this is factual). And he offers Claire a pile of money and her own show at his gallery to paint a forgery (or copy?) that he can sell. His plan, then, is to return the original to the Isabella Stewart Garnder Museum from whence it was stolen. It's a perfect scheme, because only a shady, unethical collector would buy a painting known to be stolen, so when s/he finds out s/he bought a forgery, s/he has no recourse. Claire gets money and a chance to overcome her past, Markel is a hero to the art community. What could go wrong?

Lots, as it turns out. What if Markel's original isn't actually the original painting? As Shapiro's inventive plots careens forward, Claire finds herself smack dab in the center of huge legal and ethical gray area. Will she do the right thing? What even IS the right thing?

At last year's Book Expo America, the folks at the Algonquin Books (the book's publisher) booth raved about this novel. And ever since it was published last October, most readers have, too. I liked it well enough —but it fits in the "good, but not great" category for me. There's some real logical leaps and "conveniences" that made me question how real this seemingly realistic tale could be. Also, in the first half of the novel, Shapiro breaks into the action of the real-time plot to give us snooze-inducing and seemingly superfluous letters from Isabella Stewart Gardner to her niece describing her art-acquiring adventures in Europe. I know why they're there, but the novel would've been fine without them. And finally, there's lots of wooden, eye-rollingly bad dialogue — Claire, it's clear, is a character, not a real person.

But on the plus side, it IS a fun, quick mystery read. If you're interested in painting, there's a lot here about technique, and a lot of name-dropped artists and artworks. So if you're into the brainier-than-the-average-mystery mystery, don't let my dissenting opinion deter you. Give it a shot!

Going Clear: On Scientology, Hollywood, and A Little Bit of Crazy

Without knowing much about them, it's easy to dismiss Scientologists as a cult of crazy weirdos. But to do so ignores the immense influence they have. And not just in Hollywood. Yes, the No. 1 takeaway from Lawrence Wright's fantastic, fascinating, and more than a little frightening "biography" of Scientology is simply the lengths the "church" has gone to over the years to a) Promote its own mythology, and b) Destroy or discredit anyone who says or publishes anything negative.

What I learned is that the principles and practices of Scientology (auditing, studying, E-Meters, etc.), strange and unorthodox though they may seem to non-Scientologists, have legitimately helped many people who were suffering. But just as many (probably many more) have been snared into an organization that only seems to have its own best interests and survival in mind. While the practice of Scientology may seem relatively harmless, the Church of Scientology itself, if Wright's account is to believed (and why not? He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist) is corrupt and immensely self-serving, its founder L. Ron Hubbard was a wife-beating, narcissistic, money-grubber liar, and its current leader (David Miscavige), is one of those people so used to lying, he now believes his own stories. (Also, according to many of Wright's sources — ex-Scientologists who have "blown," meaning they've left the church, Miscavige regularly beats up his subordinates. He's not a good man.)

L. Ron

The first third of the book is a biography of L. Ron Hubbard — we follow him through his youth, his Navy service, the publication of Dianetics, and the founding of the "religion" on the principles spelled out therein ("I'd like to start a religion, that's where the money is," he once said). We watch as he sails around the world with his followers, at one point taking them on a literal treasure hunt for gold he supposedly buried in his past lives. We're disturbed as we learn about the doctrine LRH creates for the higher levels of Scientologists — by now, the story is familiar, having first been released in the press in the early 1980s. Seventy-five million years ago, an evil being named Xenu banished his subjects, called "thetans," to the planet that is now Earth. And Scientologists audit themselves both to expel bad feelings from past lives ("engrams") as well as these "bodily thetans" who now inhabit their bodies.

Wright gives us some really interesting discussion on Scientology vs. psychology, and why the mental health community was the first vocal critic of Scientology. We learn about cult vs. religion, brainwashing, and how those can be applied to Scientology and its history. And we're shocked to find out about the lengths Scientologists have gone in order to suppress anything bad written about them (for the cliff notes, read about Paulette Cooper, and also Operation Snow White).

And then, the juicy Hollywood gossip — John Travolta's apparent homosexuality, and Tom Cruise's "auditioned" girlfriends. What's interesting here, though, is Wright's explanation for why and how Scientology is (and always has been) so adept at courting celebrities. And then Wright wraps up with the story of Paul Haggis — and his leaving the church because of the church's apparent support for Proposition 8 in California. Wright originally told this story in a long New Yorker article in 2011 — and the last chapter of this book chronicles the meeting he and the New Yorker staff had with a Scientology spokesperson named Tommy Davis, and the church's lawyers. This is when it becomes apparent how self-serving and loose with facts the church is.

I can't recommend this book more highly — it's utterly engrossing. It's long, but it reads more quickly than just about any non-fiction book I've ever read. It's one of my favorites of the year so far.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove: A Menagerie of WTFery

Karen Russell seems to inspire quite her fair share of WTFery. Much of this started when her novel Swamplandia! — about which readers, me included, had very different opinions — was nominated for a Pulitzer. And the WTFery continues with her latest collection of short stories titled Vampires in the Lemon Grove. When she's good, man, is she good. But when she's off, she's almost maddening.

Indeed, for exactly half of the eight stories in this collection, I put down my Nook upon finishing, looked at the wall, and went "WTF?!" Russell's common strategy in this collection is to use really creative (even the stories I didn't like, I'll admit are immensely original) plot/characters to explore more "mundane" aspects of humanness — like memory, regret, overcoming notions of normal, and just being nice (or not) to your fellow humans (or human-like creatures). Here are some examples of Russellalia: The title story includes, well, vampires, who hang out in a lemon grove in Italy. Another story, "Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating," is a strange, kind of dull, satire about rooting for lost causes. It's kind of a jab at obsessive sports fans, too. "The Barn At The End of Our Term" is about a bunch of ex-presidents — Rutherford B. Hayes is the narrator — who are reincarnated as horses. And "Proving Up" is about preteen who has to ride his horse through a snowstorm to show an Inspector a window (yes, literally a window — because if your family has a window, it means they're anchored to the land?) to prove his family's claim on their prairie property under the Homestead Act. All weird, right?

But, as I said, when Russell is on, her stories worm their ways into you skull and don't leave. My favorite two stories in the collection are "Reeling for the Empire" and "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach 1979." The former — about indentured servants in 19th century Japan who drink a soup and become silk worms — is about breaking conventions and being yourself. The former, about a nerdy poetry-writing kid, is, well, really about the same thing. These are the two stories from this collection I'll most remember.

The longest story in the collection "The New Veterans" is about a massage therapist who works with an Iraq war veteran who lost a buddy to an explosion. Could he have prevented it? Did it actually even happen? And why does the therapist suddenly have the same PTSD symptoms he did?

Finally, the last story, "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis," is good, not great — but it's haunting; a fitting story on which to end the collection. It's about cruelty — about a group of four bullies who terrorize a new kid at school, who suddenly disappears. Did they cause him to disappear? And what's the deal with the mysterious scarecrow that appears in the park that looks like the kid?

My recommendation for these stories, if they sound remotely interesting, is to definitely give them a try. As Kit says in this terrific Book Riot post about this collection, there are wildly varying opinions about each of these stories, so you never know which may resonate with you. (Kit gave "The Seagull Army" a C, but I'd give it an A. She gave "Proving Up" an A+++, but I'd give it a C- with added exclamation of WTF?!)