Funny Girl: Life Imitates Art Imitates Life

Nick Hornby fans, I think, will be pleased with his latest novel, Funny Girl, about a woman who becomes a TV comedy star in 1960s England. There is slapstick. There's wit. There's uber-Britishness. And, of course, there are scenes of absolutely hysterical dialogue.

We follow young, comely Barbara as she leaves her small-town home to make it in show business in London. Barbara is a quit-witted Lucille Ball aficionado who enjoys messing with people who underestimate her comedy chops (or her intelligence) — think Amy Poehler reacting to mansplainers here.

In one scene early in the novel, Barbara is on a "date" with a man who she is hoping to use to buy her a TV (she's broke, working at a fragrance counter in a department store, and desperately misses being able to watch I Love Lucy). Barbara and this philandering fellow are supposed to meet another couple, but everyone's shocked when the other guy shows up with his wife, instead of a young "date" like Barbara. There'd been some crossed signals about what type of night on the town this was supposed to be. Everyone's embarrassed, but Barbara decides to have fun with the awkwardness — pretending she doesn't know her date is married, and doing everything she can to make the scene as uncomfortable as she can for everyone involved, especially the other guy's wife. It's high comedy!

She sees such "acting" as practice — and it's not long before her practice pays off, and she's cast in a show about, incidentally, a young woman named Barbara who moves from a small town to London and marries a man totally her opposite. (The real Barbara now has changed her name to the more dynamic Sophie Straw..."Straw," her agent tells her, because it makes men subliminally think about a roll in the hay.)

One of the funniest scenes in the novel involves a table read with Sophie/Barbara and her leading man, a semi-famous British actor. The scene is about their wedding night, and the writers have decided to challenge convention for comedy, making the man a virgin and the woman not. But the leading actor takes exception — and after some hemming and hawing, he admits the reason he's uncomfortable with the scene is that he thinks he's too good-looking for the audience to believe he's a virgin. Indeed, this frequent blurring of the line between art and life — but for comic effect — is one of the strengths of the novel.

My hesitancy to give this a full glowing review is that it's about 100 pages too long for a comedy novel — we spend a ton of time at the end catching up with all the characters years later. And it just seemed a bit superfluous. But for the most part, this is a funny, breezy read, which, as I said, long-time Hornby fans will definitely like.

The Girl On The Train: Do We Finally Have the "Next Gone Girl"?

(A quick note: In the next few weeks, you'll see a flurry of posts on this poor, neglected book blog. Rather than doing a two or three posts with a bunch of mini-reviews, which feels more like busy work than thoughtful writing, I think it be more fun to do a bunch of mini-posts over the next few weeks. I hope you enjoy!) 

(Oh, one more thing — as of today, links to books on the blog will be to RoscoeBooks's website — my place of part-time employment. If you're considering buying the book, I'd consider it a solid — and should we ever meet in person, buy you a beer — if you buy the book there. Cheers!)

I don't know what's more surprising, that publishers and reviewers are still, 2.5 years after its publication, using the "next Gone Girl" tag to describe books, or that in the case of British writer Paula Hawkins's The Girl On The Train, it's actually a pretty decent description. Hawkins won't be confused with Gillian Flynn in terms of her writerly chops (I think Flynn is in a class by herself in this regard), but Hawkins's twisty, turny thriller is certainly the best "next Gone Girl" yet.

The girl on the train is Rachel — an early 30s divorced woman who is rather a train wreck (terrible, but you can't look away, etc.). She drinks. She lies. She lies about her drinking. And she's been fired from her public relations job but takes the train into London everyday anyway to hide the fact of her unemployment from her increasingly worried flatmate. Much of the story is told from Rachel's perspective, as she tries to come to terms with her divorce — she is still obsessed with her ex-husband who has remarried a woman with whom he was having an affair while he and Rachel were married. Rachel often drunk-dials him. And then, after a particularly drunken evening, she becomes obsessed with trying to find out what happened the night our other narrator, beautiful, troubled Meg, disappears.

There's infidelity, a murder investigation, unreliable narrators, a mysterious red-haired man, and an accused, distraught husband. And what's more, there is cruelty between characters not often seen outside the pages of a novel. These people are utterly horrible to each other! It's certainly not the kind of novel you'll want to read if you must like your characters in order to like the novel.

The place where this novel diverges most from Gone Girl is its ending — both hurdle to a conclusion, but the way they wind up is very different. I'll just say I liked Gone Girl's much more.

Still, while it takes a little bit to gain momentum, this is an up-real-late-to-finish-type thriller that really makes you glad your own life is relatively stable — definitely worthy of its praise.

War Sucks: On Phil Klay's REDEPLOYMENT and Dinaw Mengestu's ALL OUR NAMES

One of the really fun things about being, um, less than deliberate in how I pick books is reading very different novels right after one another that complement each other, theme-wise. That's the case with Phil Klay's National Book Award-winning short story collection Redeployment and Ethopian-American writer Dinaw Mengestu's 2014 novel All Our Names.

These are two very, very different books —but they have one commonality: they both explore how stupid, brutal, and absurd war is, and its lasting affect on both its participants, but also those who become collateral damage in one way or another.

In Klay's collection about soldiers in the Iraq war, a major theme is the effect on soldiers' psyches of the horrific violence they witness daily, as well as the complex psychological effects of being duty-bound to kill. Sometimes they're racked with merciless guilt, sometimes they think it's awesome and go eat lunch (hey, you don't get cherry cobbler often!), sometimes they come home and do things they'd never have otherwise done (shoot dogs, visit hookers, exaggerate what really happened). Several stories in Klay's collection also deal with the question of who, really, are the "good guys" in war? Of course, we assume we are, but the average Iraqi certainly doesn't see it that way.

One story, in particular, my favorite in the collection, titled "Money as a Weapons System," shows how we're often doing more harm than good in Iraq — it's a Catch 22-esque story about a guy who is tasked with redevelopment in Iraq, trying to rebuild a water treatment plant, but winds up teaching Iraqi women how to bee-keep and having to take photos of Iraqi kids fake-playing baseball, because a rich ignorant guy in Oklahoma thinks it's important to spread American baseball as a symbol of freedom. It's so sad it's funny. (Or so funny it's sad?)

In Mengestu's novel, about an uprising against an oppressive African regime in the early 1970s, the fighters of a small band of revolutionaries are supposedly on the side of right — they're fighting against injustice, after all. But they still commit acts of atrocity against common citizens.  And common citizens commit terrible violence against other citizens. So, who really are the good guys? Here, it's even less clear.

The novel involves two alternating strains of story — one taking place in Africa, one in a small Midwest town soon after the events (it's the early 1970s) that had just happened in Africa. The US-set strain of story furthers even more the theme of "those without sin can cast the first stone." The African refugee begins a romantic relationship with his mid-20s white social worker (who is narrating this part of the story). She takes him for lunch one day at her favorite diner, and both are saddened (though not totally surprised) when it's suggested that they're making people uncomfortable, so wouldn't it be better if they finished their lunch elsewhere. The point is that it's absurd that a man could escape the lawlessness and violence of an African revolution to come to what is supposedly an enlightened, first-world country like the U.S., but then still be discriminated against. Will their relationship survive?

Both of these are fantastic books, and I highly recommend both, whether or not you read them one after the other.

Four Post-Holidays Mini-Reviews

YA, thriller, and two non-fiction — I was pretty much all over the place (per usual) for holiday reading. Here are four mini-reviews of those books: 

Revival, by Stephen King — This novel fits neatly into the most common King criticism: "great story, odd ending." It's the story, told over the course of about 50 years, of a guy named Jamie Morton — he grows up in small town Maine, joins a band, experiences first love, gets hooked on heroin, and then is cured after a chance encounter with the minister from his youth, Charles Jacobs. This guy Jacob's got all kinds of tricks up his sleeve — having abandoned God after an accident claimed his wife and son, he experiments with what he calls the "secret electricity," a power, that when harnessed, can cure disease, addiction, and do all kinds of other cool tricks. But is Jacobs nothing more than a side-show shyster (it certainly appears that way when he starts a new religious movement based around his ability to heal) or is he actually tapped into a secret power like the world has never seen? As Jacobs and Morton meet each other through the years, the novel speeds through to a conclusion that, frankly, goes a bit off the rails — but it's typical King. You've enjoyed the story so much to that point, you don't even mind how strange the ending is. I liked this much, much better than King's early 2014 effort, Mr. Mercedes. If you're a King fan, I think you'll dig this.

Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand — I wanted to read this before seeing the movie, but after reading, I'm not sure I even want to see the movie anymore. Yep, it's quite the inspirational story. Louis Zamperini is testament to the that old familiar tune: "If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all" — but on a rather grand scale. Imagine surviving a plane crash, surviving 47 days at sea on a raft, and then thinking you're about to be saved, only to be strafed by an enemy plane. But of course he survives that, too, and then nearly two years of deplorable, inhumane treatment in several Japanese prisoner of war camps. It's truly amazing, and as well, a testament to the horrors of war. Hillenbrand, as she must, takes some liberties to construct a narrative that really does read more like a novel than a history. And what a great read it is.  
 

I'll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson — I don't read a ton of YA, but I was drawn to this unique story about artsy California teenage twins. And I loved it. The story's told from the alternating perspectives of Noah and Jude, Noah's when the twins are 13, Jude's when they're 16. Noah is gay and has a crush on his neighbor, a baseball star named Brian. Jude's story is more about the after-affects of a tragedy, and how it has affected her relationship with her brother. As these inseparable twins collide with life, they become more separable than they ever would've thought possible — they actually do horrible, cruel things to each other. Much of the story is really sad, and you're just amazed how these emotionally fragile kids don't totally meltdown. But, more so, it's a story about becoming who you are. Indeed, as Noah tell us, ruminating on how his classmates all seem to try too hard to fit in, including his sister, "They're like toads changing their skin color. How come I'm always just me?" Indeed, the highlight of this story is the enthusiastic, colorful, whimsical way Nelson writes — that's what I really liked about this, and why it's a story really worth reading.

The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson — It was fun to learn how little I actually knew about the history of computers and the Internet. Isaacson's thesis here is that no one person "invented" the computer, or the Internet — innovation happens as a sort of constantly evolving process where ideas are borrowed, built upon, and re-imagined in new ways. Not exactly an earth-shattering premise, but there are tons of "did you know?" moments in this history — about Al Gore's real role in "inventing" the Internet (he never actually claimed to invent the Internet, but he really was key in making it more available), the history of the personal computer including Bill Gates' and Steve Jobs' roles, and the origins of their nearly lifelong feud. Even if you don't know your microchip from your microprocessor or your HTML from your HTTP, this is a fascinating history that really, at least for me, helped filled in some huge gaps in my knowledge of these machines we rely on every day.

New Dork Review Top 10 of 2014

What a stupendous year in books! So many highlights: I finally read Jane Eyre, I was dazzled by David Mitchell and amused by Murikami, and James Michener took me on a 1,200-page historical trip to Hawaii (prior to an actual trip to Maui in May). In total, for the fourth consecutive year, I broke my previous record (61) for books read (67) in a year. Yep, it was a great year. 

Here are the 10 best novels published in 2014 I read this year. They're in no particular order (except for No. 1 —The Bone Clocks. My favorite of the year.)

Broken Monsters, by Lauren Beukes — I haven't been glued to the page of any novel in a very long time like I was to the last 100 or so of this one. It's a cool, creepy, contemporary tale of the broken American dream — and what happens to people when their dreams go to dark places.

Shotgun Lovesongs, by Nickolas Butler — This story about friendship, secrets, music, celebrity, and loyalty takes place in a small town in Wisconsin. Several different characters narrate parts of this novel about mid-30s lifelong friends, and how their friendships have changed as they've gone out into the world, and then returned. It's just a fantastically profound and fun novel — and one that hit me just at the right time in my life to really love.

The UnAmericans, by Molly Antopol — I stepped up my short story reading in 2014, and of the 10 collections I read, this was my favorite. These character-driven stories will are by turns devastating and enlightening – but they're all about imagining yourself in someone else's shoes. Wonderful. 

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel — I'm not a huge fan of the burgeoning post-apocalyptic novel genre, but this story is so much more than a traditional "what happens after everyone dies" story. Going back and forth to before and after the flu that kills much of the population, this intricate story is a masterwork of craft in how St. Mandel slowly reveals themes and each characters' back stories. It's a novel that slowly builds on itself for a whole that is so amazingly good.

The Sleepwalker's Guide To Dancing, by Mira Jacob — Another story that jumps back and forth in time, I loved the protagonist of this story, and her attempt to deal with her slowly-going-insane-(or-is-he?)-Indian-immigrant father.

An Untamed State, by Roxane Gay — Just a horrifying novel about a woman kidnapped, raped, and beaten in Haiti — and then she has to try to re-acclimate herself with "normal" life with her husband and son. I include this on my list for several reasons, but mostly the sheer bravery it must've taken to write this book.

Fourth of July Creek, by Smith Henderson — A novel about our limits — both in terms of our "freedom" to deal with others' problems and of our ability to deal with tragedy. This novel has perhaps the most sobering and sad end-reveal of any novel I read this year.

O, Democracy!, by Kathleen Rooney — I loved this small-press novel by Chicagoan Rooney about a staffer for the Senior Senator from Illinois during the 2008 election. It's, I guess, satire — but dammit if it doesn't feel real.

The Martian, by Andy Weir — The most fun I had with a book this year, this novel about a stranded astronaut on Mars is part fiction about science, part goof-off novel, part testament to human ingenuity. Word is that Matt Damon is starring as Weir's astronaut in an adaptation of the novel, which in my mind, is an absolutely inspired piece of casting.

The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell — This is my favorite of the year. Mind-blowingly good. Mitchell is a genius.