Bellevue

AUTHOR: Marc Siegel

PUBLISHED: 1998

GENRE: Fiction

Oh, where to begin.

“Bellevue” is a frantic, hyperkinetic novel, as jumpy as a coke fiend in need of a fix.  At the center of it is David Levy, a young medical school graduate showing up for his first day as an intern at Bellevue Hospital¹. Bellevue is an utter hellhole: a dirty, crumbling structure filled with the poorest of patients, an apathetic staff, and a complete lack of medical equipment or supplies such as, you know, morphine.  Or gauze.  It is a place you avoid at all possible costs, because if whatever lands you there doesn’t kill you, the dirty conditions or lack of attention will.  Bellevue’s crapitude is reinforced by the shining city on the hill, New York University Medical Center, located directly across the river.  Needless to say, the characters do a lot of pining in that direction.

Levy and his best friend Sal Vertino – who is, from the very beginning, a total douche bag, if you’ll pardon my French - have been assigned to Dr. Goldman, a chief resident.  Dr. Goldman (or, as he is commonly called to his face, “Fat Goldman”) is supposedly a well-respected and good doctor, but he treats his interns and his patients like utter crap, demeaning them in front of each other while swigging continuously from a two-liter bottle of soda.  Ten minutes into their first shift, Goldman has abandoned rounds and left Levy alone so he can go take a nap. 

While Levy struggles with his patients, Vertino and Goldman spend their time vying over mysterious medical student Delia Meducci. ²  By day two – day TWO! – Vertino is so smitten that he has stopped showing up for work, and Levy is forced to cover for him.  When Meducci dumps Vertino for Goldman (which happens off-camera, as does most of the driving action of this book), Vertino falls into a suicidal stupor and ends in Bellevue’s ER, feverish and disoriented, leaving Levy to find out what has happened to his friend – and what is really going at Bellevue.

Okay.  So maybe it doesn’t sound so crazy yet.  But you haven’t heard about the other sub-plots. Ready?  ‘Cause here we go:

 

1. The super-secret, super-scary “red liquid” study:  Conducted by everybody’s least-favorite boss Dr. Kell, who lurks in the background, finding comatose patients and hooking up bags of the “red liquid” to their IVs for his nefarious purposes.  In response, Levy and Goldman run around the hospital pulling down the bags and hiding their patients.  Kell, who eventually ends up shtupping – you guessed it – Delia Meducci, spends his free time trying to ruin both Levy and Vertino: Levy for interfering with his study, and Vertino for, well, being a douche bag.      
2. The witch of the Catskills – and I don’t mean a nasty woman: Vertino is convinced that he has been cursed by a witch. Yes, a witch, who Vertino believes has hexed his family for some long-forgotten slight.  And this man is supposed to be a doctor.  When Vertino suffers a tragic accident, Levy starts to wonder if the witch story just might be true.  (What’s that?  No, this isn’t supposed to be a supernatural thriller.  Why do you ask?)
3. Sally Wilson, everyone’s favorite no-nonsense, gets-stuff-done ER nurse:  Levy meets her while searching for Vertino in the ER.  Completely inexplicably, she agrees to not just go out with him, but to help him in his crazed quests.  She disappears after Levy starts shtupping – WAIT FOR IT! – Delia Meducci.
4. The bewitching minx herself: A medical student, Meducci doesn’t seem to do anything except sleep with people and then dump them, leaving the reader to wonder, who the hell is this woman? (Or, in the more poignant words of the late Heath Ledger, “what is it with this chick?  She got beer flavored nipples?”³)  She takes up immediately with Vertino, then switches to Goldman, then back and forth until Vertino goes crazy and drives his car into a guardrail (or was it the witch?) and Goldman goes from bully to kind-hearted mentor and moves to California.  She then takes up with Levy, who despite his attempts to resist immediately becomes obsessed and nearly screws up his entire residency, only to dump him later for Dr. Kell and his red liquids
5. The patients.  Oh, the patients:
   a.     Rulo, the wheelchair-bound Nostradamus of Bellevue: He spends his day wheeling around the hospital, trying to avoid Kell’s red bags of death.  In his free time, he makes prophetic statements and deep philosophical pronouncements.  And I don’t mean it’ll all be okay! assurances.  I mean the crow flies at midnight and the river will run red with blood type shit.  And Levy makes serious decisions based on them.
   b.    Lacombe, or, the Quiet Man: Levy’s first patient, he suffers from every ailment known to man, include the pesky problem of having no pulse and no breath sounds.  Only Levy can tell if he’s still alive or not, to the point that when Lacombe’s roommate codes, the nurses try to resuscitate the wrong man.  Levy’s very scientific method of determining Lacombe’s state of being is to feel if Lacombe is still warm. 
   c.     Mrs. Ruby, or, Sal Vertino’s only real contribution to this whole thing: Early on, Mrs. Ruby flat-lines and is brought back to life by Vertino’s quick thinking.  The other characters spend the rest of the book marveling about how she shouldn’t be alive!  Um, excuse me?  As opposed to the guy with no pulse?!?
   d.    The Biter: The Biter, well, bites, apparently in an effort to infect as many people as he can with the HIV/AIDS virus he carries⁴.  He is roommates with the comatose Lacombe, who is presumably unbothered by all that chomping.
   e.     The housekeepers: For comic relief – excuse me, “comic relief” – we have two union housekeepers who are on disability and thus get to stay in the hospital for free as long as they want, although why they would want to stay is beyond me.  They spend their days complaining about the food and throwing parties for the rest of the housekeeping staff, who, we are told repeatedly, don’t actually clean but rather leave memos around the hospital outlining what they plan on cleaning one day.  They end up in Kell’s red liquid study, which in my opinion is the most satisfying part of the entire novel.

I know it is hard to believe, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.  The story flies back and forth in between all these storylines in a feverish panic, confounding the reader as characters and plot lines disappear and reappear at a mind-boggling pace - Sal is at Bellevue!  No, he’s up in the Catskills.  No, he’s at Bellevue! Wait, where’s Sally? Oh, who the hell CARES!  It is beyond bizarre.

If the book had been sold as a mystery, or a paranormal thriller, or something, perhaps the reader wouldn’t be left to wonder if the author really believes that witches, prophesying patients, and super-secret, super-scary red liquid studies are commonplace.  But the book jacket bills the story as a stirring missive on the pain of becoming a doctor in the inner city.  And in the end, that just might be the most baffling part of it all.

LENGTH: 288 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Uh, no.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Are you sitting down?  If not, go ahead, I’ll wait.  Because I’m going to say yes.  If only for the sheer number of WHAT THE HELL? moments this story produces.  Honestly, you cannot understand the craziness until you experience it for yourself.

¹The author may well have established a time period for this.  I’m not sure.  It’s a definite possibility that I was so flummoxed by the crazy storyline that I missed it.  If I had to hazard a guess, I would go with the mid-to-late 1970s, when New York was too poor to pay its bills and arson became a perfectly logical way of getting out of a lease.  But I could be wrong.

²One of the other reviews I read referred to her as a third-year student.  I apparently missed this detail, or any other details about what she looks like.  Or what any of them look like, other than that Goldman is fat.  This is what happens when the reader spends all their time asking, what the hell is happening? instead of paying attention.  Also confusing is how they all relate to each other, work-wise – who’s reporting to who, what exactly each is supposed to be doing during the day, that kind of thing.  I’ll admit that the entirety of what I know about the whole med student-intern-resident process comes from Scrubs.  But – and this is truly inexplicable – the author is apparently a doctor himself, and thus would have first-hand knowledge of what being an intern is like.  So you’d think he could explain it a little better.

³10 Things I Hate About You is truly an underrated classic, although I could at first only remember the above-quoted line and not the movie it was from, forcing me to google “chick with beer flavored nipples”, which landed me on all sorts of interesting lists, I’m sure.

⁴Throughout the story, AIDS is referred to as the virus, complete with italics, which is annoying but does help to confirm that this is, in fact, supposed to be the mid to late ‘70s.

A Marked Man: An Abigail Adams Mystery

AUTHOR: Barbara Hamilton

PUBLISHED: 2010

GENRE: Crime-Solving Pilgrims! (a.k.a. Historical Fiction)

Yes, you read that right.  “An Abigail Adams Mystery.”  Abigail Adams, wife of the second president of the United States, solving crimes.  Oh, I cannot tell you how excited I was.  This was going to be awesome.  It was going to be Nero Wolfe meets The Scarlet Letter.  The Federalist Papers meets The Pentagon Papers.*  Fair reader, your dearest blogger didest have but the highest hopes for such a tome. 

But alas!  I waseth so disappointed.  Eth.

Mrs. Adams’ private investigation skills are put to the test when a young patriot, Henry Knox, is accused of murdering a randy Englishman in the employ of the King himself, Sir Jonathon Contrell.  Sir Jonathon was in Boston on business from Maine where he was… doing something?  I’m still not sure.  Something with land rights.  This book masters that mystifying paradox of being both so completely crammed with detail that it is virtually impossible to get through and yet so lacking in proper explanation of the story or the characters that the reader is, if he or she is anything like me, lost most of the time.  The details!  They were everywhere!  Even worse, they were repetitive.  If I learned anything from this book, it is that Boston is really, really cold in the winter.  Really cold.  Cold enough that the characters spend at least 25 of the 336 pages putting on or taking of their winter gear, and 10 more pages huddling around and/or stoking a fire.  Did she mention it’s cold in Boston?

When Hamilton wasn’t writing about the cold she was introducing new characters – for every main character, there were servants, pages, maids, stable boys, that had to be named and characterized.  My favorite had to be either magnificently or absurdly-named sailor, “The Heavens Rejoiced Miller”, who I only determined to be human after his ship mate started calling him Hev, having up to that point assumed him to be ship of some sort.  But I get it.  Those pilgrims named their kids wacky things.  But if she wanted a colonial name, she couldn’t have gone for “Prudence” instead? Especially when everyone else is Paul or Jonathon or Margaret or Lucy? And I haven’t even mentioned that John Adams only calls his wife Portia or Nabby, never Abigail. Oy.

It’s a convoluted, densely-packed story that ends with a cross-dressing faux-crippled lady’s companion and an actor named Perocles, which sounds like it should be amazing, but instead is seriously unsatisfying. How did all go so very wrong?  A cross-dressing faux-cripple lady’s companion and an actor named Perocles, people!  I’m not sure if it was overexcitement or nervousness, or if Hamilton was overtaken by that common scholar’s affliction known as I-researched-it-so-it’s-making-it-in,-damn-it! Syndrome.**  But all that information smothered whatever story was under there.  And that’s a damnable shame.  I guess Sam will have to wait for that pilgrim detective idea for a few more years.

PAGES: 336 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: I sincerely doubt there are very many people who would get as excited about this concept as I did.  Aside from West Wing fans.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: As much as it breaks my heart, no.  It just doesn’t fulfill its promise.  So sad. 

*Perhaps even more importantly, it was the embodiment of one of the greatest West Wing conversations of all time, exchanged while Sam and Toby try to write the President’s Thanksgiving Day Address:

Sam: Over three and a half centuries ago, linked by faith and bound by a common desire for liberty, a small band of pilgrims sought out a place in the New World where they could worship according to their own beliefs... and solve crimes.

Toby: Sam...

Sam: It'd be good. By day, they churn butter and worship according to their own beliefs, and by night they solve crimes.

Toby: Read the thing.

Sam: Pilgrim detectives.

Toby: Do you see me laughing?

Sam: I think you're laughing on the inside.

Toby: Okay.

Sam: With the big hats.

Toby: Give me the speech.

**Much like Stockholm Syndrome, this disease so addles the brain of the writer as to win them over to the side of crackpot theorists whose work the writer then includes in more scholarly endeavors, earning the writer a lower grade and a sorry shake of the head from his or her professor.  Sad, but true.

There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos

AUTHOR: Marc Mappen
PUBLISHED: 2009
GENRE: History, Local Interests

As a rule, New Jerseyites spend more time defending their state than any other against a wide array of accusations and assumptions.  It's almost pathological at this point, this need to assure anyone that will listen that no, the whole state doesn't smell; yes, we do know how to drive*; no, we are not all goombas; and so forth.  It is in that category of state-wide neurosis that this book falls. 

It's a fun little anthology of short stories about the history of New Jersey, which, all other issues aside, is actually quite rich.  More Revolutionary War battles were fought here than anywhere else, given New Jersey's location between British-held New York and the Continental Congress in Philly.  We are the densest state in the union (population wise, not mentally), and if the US was to split into 50 little countries, New Jersey would be the richest place in the world.  We are, for a small place, incredible diverse, both in geology and ethnicity.  Despite being one of the smallest states in the union, Jersey is broken up into distinct parts. (Mappen says 2 (north and south), but I say 3 - north, central, and south, with this third tier being the result of a surprising point: New Jersey has hillbillies. Unexpected but true - South Jersey is full of them. Thus central Jersey's separation from its southern brethren.**)  It's a pretty interesting place to be.

It's not exactly great writing.  The first sentence has no fewer than 5 comma-separated clauses.  But you don't pick up a book like this anticipating Tolstoy-like prose.  You expect a story about George Washington and Thomas Paine lighting methane gas from the bottom of the Raritan River on fire.  And in that way, it delivers.

LENGTH: 196 pages of 2-3 page stories.
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: No.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT: Yes.  It's a full, quick book full of silly facts and fun stories about America's armpit.

*Yes, we drive more quickly that some other sections of the population.  But the BAD drivers are far and away actually Pennsylvanians.  Also, it's not our fault you can't negotiate a jughandle.  The sign did say all turns from the right lane.

**In case you're wondering, my extensive research has concluded thus: North Jersey is the top of the state to the Woodbridge area, or exit 11 of the Turnpike.  Central Jersey extends from Exit 11 to about Exit 7, or Jackson.  South Jersey is everything below.  Thus Central Jersey encompasses not only our capital city but also all the good shore towns.  Suck on that!

Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

AUTHOR: Erik Larson
PUBLISHED: 1999*
GENRE: American History

You're going to hate me after this one. 

It's not easy to describe how horrifying, how tragic, how heart-wrenching this book is.  You need to read it anyway.

Isaac's Storm is the story of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, so called because it completely decimated Galveston, Texas, a little spit of land in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Isaac of Issac's Storm is Isaac Cline, Galveston's resident meteorologist.  Galveston in 1900 was on the verge of greatness, having cemented its reputation as a beautiful resort town, an Atlantic City for the Texas Coast.  A feeling of invincibility has taken over the town and its officials, who believe they have conquered Mother Nature with their modern technologies.  When reports start coming in of a storm in the gulf, Cline tells the residents not to worry, they need not evacuate.  The storm will blow by.

It does not blow by.  It builds and builds until it strikes Galveston with an unimaginable force that tears the town apart by the seams.  Its residents are caught completely unprepared, having been assured that they were safe, and can only watch in horror as the sea advances, up the beach, up the sidewalks, up the stairs, until there is no where else to go but underwater.  And when the water receeds, those still living must face streets where piles of dead bodies have replaced stately homes.

It is not known how many people died in the Galveston Hurricane.  6,000 is a conservative estimate.  I'm not going to try to tell you the individual stories - they are too horrific to summerize.  I'll let Larson shoulder that burden.  But it's important to hear them.  It's important to not forget them.  Because Galveston, Texas?  It's been rebuilt.  There's a seawall now, but the town still sits at the mercy of the sea.  And if we forget that, who knows that could happen.
LENGTH: 273 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: No, even though it should be.  Larson has been getting quite a bit of praise for his newest book, In the Garden of the Beast.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Like I said, you'll hate me, but yes.

*This book was published prior to Hurricane Katrina, so I'm not sure that the title of deadliest hurricane in history still applies.  It doesn't make it any less harrowing. 

The Suicide Collectors

AUTHOR: David Oppegaard

PUBLISHED: 2008

GENRE: Fiction

I’m not sure what inspired me to pick up this novel.  Maybe I was swept away by the spirit of the Halloween season. Perhaps I had seen it so many times on the library’s new books shelf that I felt bad for it.  The cover quote advertised it as “a wonderfully creepy debut”.  I would classify it kind of a bore.

I had high hopes when I saw the opening quote for the tale.  Most authors go with Shakespeare, or Poe, or if they’re feeling particularly epic, the Bible.  Oppengaard went instead with Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, an interesting and unusual choice.*  But it soon became clear that the quote had been forced into service to give the story something it lacked: a sense of urgency and nervousness, which, I think we all would agree, is kind of essential for this type of novel. 

When the book opens, its protagonist, Nelson, is returning from a nice morning of fishing, but the home he returns to is far too quiet.  His wife Jordan has committed suicide, overdosing on pills while he fished.  Nelson is distraught, but not terribly surprised; not because Jordan has been depressed but because suicide has taken the lives of most of the world’s population.  Known only as the Despair, it came upon mankind suddenly, driving the happy and sad alike into sudden acts of self-harm; after a pleasant breakfast, a businessman might head into the office, or he might jump off the local water tower.  There is no accounting for who chooses to live and who chooses to die.  Those who have managed to resist the urge live scattered and in fear of the Collectors, seemingly inhuman figures who come for the bodies of those who have ended their own lives.  The impulsive decision to keep the Collectors from his wife’s body sends Nelson on a cross-country trip to the heart of the Despair and the source of it all.

Despite its lofty themes, the story lacks any real pressure or tension, largely due to the laid-back, it-is-how-it-is attitudes of its two main characters, Nelson and his neighbor, Pops.  Dead wife?  Bummer, man.  Horde of crazy cultists?  Eh, we’ll figure it out.  These personality traits make sense; in order to survive the overwhelming death and collapse of civilization around them, they must adopt a, shall we say, thicker skin.  But that survival instinct makes for a less-than-thrilling ride.  The decision to place the story in what seems like the near future – cars have voice controlled windows, but nothing else seems different? – just confuses the reader further.  The Collectors show up infrequently, with no explanation given as to how they know the dead bodies are there, or why they want them, or any other question you might have.**

By the time Nelson finally gets to his destination, the reader has grown accustomed to a plodding pace.  Then BAM!, a major plot point comes at you like a wayward water balloon.  Having found a cell of resistance, Nelson is asked – told? he doesn’t really get a choice, they just kind of assume he’ll do it – to go on a suicide mission to destroy the Collectors’ HQ.  He agrees instantly, and no thought is given to why this man who has so far completely resisted the urge to hurt himself, who has shown nothing but the strongest sense of survival, is so willing to just end it.  One minute he’s walking in the door, the next he’s on a barge taking the all those collected bodies to the source of, well, the Source.*** 

 From there it dissolves into a lot of light and a lot of humming and a lot of shady and half-formed explanations for the Despair and the Collectors and what it all means.  It’s not very satisfying, but fortunately, by that point, you don’t really care much about what it all means.  And that’s no way to thrill anyone.

LENGTH: 304 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: No.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Nah.  It’s an interesting concept but lacks any depth and ends without any sense of conclusion or even explanation.

*The quote is, “A swimmer in distress cries, “I shall drown!  No one will save me!” A suicide puts it another way: “I will drown! No one shall save me!” In relaxed speech, however, the words shall and will are seldom used precisely; our ear guides us or fails to guide us, as the case may be, and we are quite likely to drown when we want to survive and survive when we want to drown.”

**About all we known about the Collectors for most of the book is that they really like helicopters, making them the Delta Force of otherworldly body-snatchers. 

***This would not be same as the Source from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, unfortunately.  This book could have used a little Giles in it.

The Snow Angel

AUTHOR: Glenn Beck

PUBLISHED: 2011

GENRE: Novel

I’m going to be upfront about this: I despise Glenn Beck. I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with anything that has come out of his mouth.  Even worse that what he says is the way he says it – screaming unfounded and unsupported accusations onto the airwaves, hiding behind the First Amendment, and then accusing anyone who might differ of being a traitor to the American flag.  He’s the type of guy who thinks he can say whatever he wants because goshdarnit, he’s just being honest, then crucifies others who try to express their own views.  To put it bluntly, he sucks.

So as much as I wish I could say I went into this completely unbiased, I think you would all know that’s a boldfaced lie.*  In fact, reading it started out as a dare from the awesome Jamie Rabinaw – would I actually subject myself to the insanity and inanity that is Glenn Beck?  Not being one to turn down a dare (at least book-related), I agreed, and we both waited in rapt attention for the horror to begin. 

The Snow Angel is the story of Rachel, a young mother struggling to free herself from a life of abuse, first at the hands of her drunken mother, then her cruel husband.  (I’m not even going to discuss the idea of Beck writing in the voice of a battered woman.)  I braced myself for the lectures, for the admonishments, for the if-you-were-a-better-wife-and-Christian speeches, but they never came.  When Rachel’s best friend learns the truth of the abuse, she tells Rachel God hates divorce – but later on helps her escape.  When someone quotes the Bible, it’s generally to remind Rachel that God wants all people to be loved, not to cite his vengeance.  All that... civility kind of sucked all the fun out of it all.

That’s not to say that it’s a good book.  The writing is awful.  Beck is one of those who think that weak writing can be strengthened by adding adjective upon adjective, when it just weakens it further.  He especially loves colors.  (Someone has “denim-colored eyes”.  Would that be an acid wash or a dark fade?)  The prose is jumpy and stiff, and lacks any sort of fluidity.  His characters are stereotypes.  The long-suffering but devoted old man, the precocious, wise-beyond-her-years daughter: they exist solely to prop up Rachel and force her in the right direction.

Then there are the times when his choices are just plain weird.  Take the history of Rachel and her mother, the abusive drunk.  Beck sets up one story as a crucial turning point.  It is, he tells the reader, the worst thing Rachel’s mother ever did to her.  Really, the worst.  Ready?  Have you braced yourself?

She made fun of Rachel for using baking powder instead of baking soda in a cookie recipe.

HUH?

Not the repeated tirades about how Rachel was an unwanted accident that ruined her mother’s life.  Not the beatings that left her bruised and bloody.  No, this woman’s lifetime of psychological trauma hinges on a tragic baking accident.

It’s insane, and it’s pretty solid proof that if he wasn’t a television talking head, Beck would not be a published author.  But he is, and he’s not going anywhere.  So all we can hope to do is avoid him as much as possible – on the screen and on the page.

LENGTH: 288 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Though not the juggernaut he once was, Glenn Beck remains pretty big.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: No.  Not because of his politics, or your politics, but just because it’s badly written.

*I am, unsurprisingly, not the only one who feels this strongly about Beck.  The Amazon.com reviews for this book were 5 stars or no stars, with nothing in between.

The Hottest State

AUTHOR: Ethan Hawke (yes, that Ethan Hawke)

PUBLISHED: 1996

GENRE: Fiction

Just something to know: I really like Robert Sean Leonard.  I saw him on stage once, in a Moliere play at McCarter Theatre.  It was the highlight of my French language learning experience.  And supposedly, Robert Sean Leonard is really good friends with Ethan Hawke.  Which, to get around to my point, is why I picked up this book.

This book, to put it succinctly, is exactly the story you would expect an Ethan Hawke character to write.  It’s from 1996, but is timeless in that way that mournful, emo love stories of skinny dudes in tight jeans will unfortunately always have a place in culture.*  The main character – Michael? Paul?  No, William.  It doesn’t really matter – is a sometimes actor from Texas living in New York when he meets Sarah.  She wears green dresses with matching shoes!  She sings in a band, but is terrified to perform in front of people!  She won’t have sex with him!  It’s looooove.  Until she dumps him.  The love remains on his end but it’s not enough for her, even though she has begged him to never leave her, begged him to basically force himself on her no matter what she says.  You can see how he might be a little confused by it all.

This isn’t a spoiler because he tells you all this in the first few pages, about how she broke his heart and it shattered in to a million pieces and now he doesn’t know if he could ever love again and GET A GRIP, man, pull yourself together.  It’s so stereotypically hipster, beat poet, struggling artist who wants to be Jack Kerouac or Bob Dylan, that’s it’s almost a farce.  The painting she gives him, see, it’s a bleeding heart, because he’s wounded, man, he’s so wounded.  (The fact that she has invited him over to give him birthday presents after they’ve broken up and she’s told him she never wants to see again leads me to believe she’s not an artist, she’s just a bitch.) 

William’s sexual dysfunction is of particular interest to Hawke (he can’t perform with a condom on! Ooh, deep!), as is his parents’ divorce, his mother having been knocked up at 16 and divorced by 20, and his and his mother’s move hundreds of miles away from his father.  It’s all supposed to come together – the fear of condoms, the fear of kids, the scars from his childhood traumas – but it’s just a jumble of facts and whiny emotions, meaning nothing.  He falls in love, she falls in love, she breaks it off.  He calls her, calls her again, calls her again.  She threatens police action, invites him over for birthday presents.  He sits, so very alone, in his threadbare apartment.  Cue a ballad from the Cure.  I’m over it. 

LENGTH: 208 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: No.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Ehhhh… If this sounds like your sort of thing, then sure, why not.

*The same cannot be said for the book-jacket picture, which I’m pretty sure is his cast photo from Reality Bites.  It’s so angsty-looking.  All that’s missing is Winona Ryder in a sundress and Doc Martens and some Lisa Loeb playing in the background. 

Heads You Lose (Not Heads Will Roll, as I kept calling it, which is a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song)

AUTHOR(S): Lisa Lutz and David Hayward (although Lutz never hesitates to confirm that SHE is the lead author)

PUBLISHED: 2011

GENRE: Crime thriller

Warning: Bad language ahead.  The author’s, not mine.  I would never use bad language.*

Heads You Lose is, on its face, a pretty typical crime thriller.  Lacey and Paul are twenty-something siblings living in their childhood home, growing weed and laying low.  Until a headless body gets dumped on their lawn.  Given their profession – which is a badly kept secret among the community, given that most of them are customers, but still – the siblings choose to dump the body in the forest instead of calling the cops.  But, much like the proverbial cat in the hat, it comes back the very next day.

What’s different about Heads You Lose is that it’s written by two authors – but not in tandem.  Lutz reached out to Hayward (apparently there’s some history there, if you know what I mean, which will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this thing) and proposed this: Lutz would write the odd chapters and Hayward, the evens.  More interestingly, they would not edit each other’s chapters and would not share storyline notes, meaning neither would know where the other was going.  Hayward might set up a new character, intent on him being the killer, only to have Lutz kill him in the next chapter.

We know all these because of these author interludes in between each chapter, and the snarky footnotes that appear occasionally (i.e., “Hmmm.  Does the cat really need a back story?”).  The interludes are full of raw emotion, far more real than anything in this book or, actually, most others.  Lutz harps on Hayward relentlessly about his language, characters, and lack of movement.  Hayward reacts with ever more passive aggressiveness, which results in a 2 and a half page Dick-and-Jane chapter (“Terry was cutting the pretty plants.  Cut, cut, cut, went the scissors”), to which Lutz responds with this.  To quote:

My thoughts, in chronological order.  1. Fuck you.  2. Seriously, fuck you.  3. I wonder what John Vorhaus is up to these days.  I never did call him.  4.  What was I thinking collaborating with an unpublished, narcissistic poet?  5. We’ve sunk three months into this and there’s still a mystery to solve.

See what I mean about the emotion?

The ending is kind of lame, but the rest of it is fairly interesting, especially watching how the two parts come together as one.  But the interludes remain the absolute best part of it.  It takes a lot of courage to put that all out there like that, and I don’t think they could ever recreate it.  And that’s reason enough to read it.

LENGTH: 301 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: The crime stuff, yes.  The rest of it, no.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes, if only for the pure emotion between the authors.  That is some crazy sh- I mean, stuff.

*And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

The Night Circus

AUTHOR: Erin Morgenstern

PUBLISHED: 2011

GENRE: Fiction; Fantasy

This book was a recommendation from the wonderful Jan Sparrow at Words! bookstore in Asbury Park (go check it out!).  And what a recommendation it was.  There’s only one problem with reviewing a book like this.  Its plot is so intricate, its characters so sensuous, its landscape so flowing that the only thing a reviewer can really say is read it.  Anything else seems lacking in the face of it all. 

Morgenstern’s debut novel (debut!) is set in the wondrous world of Le Cirque des Reves, a circus that arrives without warning and disappears just the same.  The black-and-white world of Le Cirque is open only at night, when customers come to wander the never-ending tents, each housing its own special act – a contortionist, a fortune teller, an animal trainer.  But not all the tents are traditional circus acts.  Some house fantastic illusions – an entire room frozen in snow, even in the heat of summer; a staircase of clouds; a burning cauldron that never goes out and where the flames change colors on cue.  At the heart of the story are Celia and Marco, who are connected to each other in ways they themselves do not even understand, and a contest, one with deadly consequences, one that takes over the circus and everyone in it.

Perhaps the best word to describe Morgenstern’s prose is fluid.  Her words flow over the page, drawing the reader in.  Fantasy novels are notoriously hard to write convincingly, and generally appeal to a small, devoted audience.  And yet The Night Circus breeds no disbelief or hesitation the reader’s mind, even for a moment.  The world is so complete as to prove completely believable.  You can almost hear it: the rustle of a silk skirt, the whipping of a tent flap, the clink of fine glassware being met in a toast.  In contrast of all those times where I questioned the logistics of a story, The Night Circus is proof that I am still able to get lost in a book enough to not worry about the specifics of it all. 

It is hard to explain unless you have read it, but Morgenstern’s world is lyrical and luxurious, an enchanting dream from which you dread having to wake.  I cannot imagine how long it took Morgenstern to write The Night Circus.  I can only hope she can find the strength to build another world soon.

LENGTH: 400 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: Not particularly.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes.  I don’t care if you don’t like fantasy, or romance, or beauty.  Read it anyway.  Maybe it’ll warm up your cold, cold heart.

The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH

AUTHOR: Shawn Green (Shawn Green, outfielder, not to be confused with Sean Green, pitcher, not to be confused with Sean “I was a Giant when all that happened” Estes, pitcher)*

PUBLISHED: 2011

GENRE: Non-fiction; Sports

I first heard about this book during an interview with the author. Green started in the ‘90s playing outfield for the Toronto Blue Jays, then moved to the Los Angeles Dodgers and eventually my New York Mets.  I never particularly thought much about Green – he was only around for a few years - and probably would not have read his book if I hadn’t found it had a reference in it to my favorite player of all time, John Olerud.**  It turned out there were only a few sentences about Olerud in the book, but by the time I figured that out, I had already bought the thing, so I kept reading.

Green isn’t your typical jock, even in baseball, where the players tend to be slightly more erudite then those in other sports (see Dickey, R.A.).  He credits a large part of success to the practice of meditation and of deeper thinking – the separation of ego from the self and the mind from the body.  When the story begins, he is a struggling rookie, desperate to impress his teammates and his manager, but failing miserably.  It’s only when he begins an intensive regimen on a tee in the batting cages that he begins to see a difference.  The repetition of placing the ball on the tee, swinging the bat, and hitting the ball, then starting all over again, for hours at a time, allow him to quiet his thinking and to slow his actions mentally, if not physically.  Eventually, he acquires one of the greatest skills a hitter can have – the ability to decipher what pitch the pitcher is throwing as it leaves his hand.  He suddenly can feel when his foot’s lifting too high or his arms are extending too far, and is able to correct for it.   As a result, his career explodes, and the skinny little kid from California becomes a power-hitting star. 

But it’s not all sunshine and happiness.  Green acknowledges that he frequently allowed his ego to sneak back in and the pressure to get to him, leading him to force his swing.  His sudden celebrity status and a trade from sleepy Toronto to loud Los Angeles wear on his good habits and set him back.  Each time, he must return to the basics and find his peace again.  It’s actually a really great story, and I respect Green a lot for his methods and for his willingness to admit his own faults in written form.  But the book is basically the same pattern over and over again; by the third chapter, it has lost all its momentum.  Green also never offers up any tips on how to apply his practices to the reader’s life (presuming the reader is not a Major League Baseball player).  I know this isn’t a self-help book – “How to Hit a Home Run in Your Life!” – but it kind of leaves you thinking, “well, gee, great for him, but what about the rest of us?”.  It would have made a great magazine article (Sports Meditations Illustrated, perhaps?).  But ironically, for a book about a power-hitter, it just doesn’t have enough pop.

LENGTH: 224 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: No.  It’s too much baseball for non-fans and too much meditative thinking for hardcore sport nuts.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: As much as I want to say yes, no.  I have a new appreciation for Green and like his thinking, but it just really isn’t that interesting.

*Remember when all that stuff went down between Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza during the 2000 World Series (you know, when Clemens ‘roid-ed out and chucked a bat piece at Piazza)?  The next time the Mets faced the Yankees, pitcher Sean Estes was left with the task of defending Piazza’s honor.  But Estes had been a Giant when the 2000 nonsense went down and quite obviously wasn’t very enthusiastic about being pulled into it.  So he “accidentally” threw BEHIND Clemens – a rather large target – when he came up to bat, which just left the Mets looking like a bunch of fools.  And since Sean “Punk-Ass” Estes isn’t suitable for mixed company, he is now known as Sean “I was a Giant when all that happened” Estes. 

**Olerud was around for the length of time as Green – 2 years – but made a significantly different impression.  Much like the one in his forehead.  HI-YO!†

†John Olerud underwent emergency brain surgery in 1989 when doctors found an aneurism.  The surgery left him with – appropriately enough – a baseball sized dent in his forehead where they removed some skull, which is why he wore a helmet at bat and on the field.  So yes, that was a brain surgery joke.  And yes, that was my best Ed McMahan impression. And yes, this is a footnote to a footnote.