The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

Book #156 of 2019:

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials #2)

I really like how this sequel deepens the worldbuilding of the original His Dark Materials book, expanding the action from the alternate reality of that story into a universe more like our own and one other besides. And the character moments are great, with returning heroine Lyra just as ferocious as ever and new protagonists Will and Mary equally compelling figures in their own right.

The plot, however, is a bit of a mess. First Will finds his portal off-world in a place where anyone could have stumbled across it, and then Mary abruptly exits the narrative with no real climax or resolution to her storyline. In between, author Philip Pullman casually escalates his critique of church doctrine to a literal war on God, which is given nowhere near the attention a development like that should properly deserve. It’s still a strong series, but this is the worst sort of middle volume that doesn’t stand on its own at all.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

Book #155 of 2019:

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

This novella offers a sparse but effective character study of an aging detective, unnamed yet clearly intended to be read as Sherlock Holmes. Feeling adrift in the new century, he comes out of retirement to help a young Jewish refugee from Hitler’s Germany — hence the double-meaning in the story title. Unfortunately, this aspect of the narrative has been left rather under-developed, especially when compared to how Chabon handles that era in works like The Yiddish Policemen’s Union or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I’m not as bothered by the resolution of the case as some readers seem to be, but I don’t find much to elevate this read beyond any other Arthur Conan Doyle pastiche.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Recursion by Blake Crouch

Book #154 of 2019:

Recursion by Blake Crouch

At the start of this inventive sci-fi thriller, a New York City cop investigates a case of people suddenly remembering alternate lives they’ve never lived, while a tech genius a decade earlier researches a way to digitally record and retrieve the failing memories of Alzheimer’s patients. Author Blake Crouch quickly upends the expected connection between these plots, however: it isn’t that false memories are being implanted by the technology, but rather that a breakthrough has enabled a sort of time travel of consciousness back to when an encoded memory first occurred. The witnesses in New York are experiencing a genuine reality shift, brought on by someone making changes to the past.

The really clever bit that gives the novel its title is that again and again over the course of the narrative, someone winds up using the device to go back and redirect the timeline, spawning yet another wave of doubled recall. Sometimes it’s for personal gain, sometimes it’s to prevent an atrocity, and by the end it’s a frantic coil of repeated attempts to save the world from the unbearable weight of all that ensuing remembrance.

The action is exciting and mind-bending, and although it never quite reaches the poetic elegance of my favorite time loop stories — Version Control, Replay, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, the “White Tulip” episode of Fringe, etc. — it’s still an engaging rush through a fascinating concept.

[Content warning for suicide, gaslighting, and memory loss]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Book #153 of 2019:

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

I really like the beginning-to-middle of this novel about a young ‘marsh girl’ growing up on the edges of a small Carolina town. It’s a slow-paced coming-of-age character study, filled with some beautiful nature descriptions and scenes of independent living. Unfortunately, the flash-forwards to a murder investigation and eventual trial feel dramatically and emotionally inert, and the ultimate resolution to that storyline seems totally unearned. There’s still a lot to appreciate in this distinctive Bildungsroman, but I wish I could excise everything after the protagonist’s teenage years.

[Content warning for domestic abuse and a sexual assault / rape attempt]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro

Book #152 of 2019:

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro writes movingly of her sense of identity being upended by an unexpected DNA test result, but I struggle to truly comprehend her viewpoint. Even setting aside the author’s odd trust in mediums, meditation gurus, and personality tests, it feels as though she places way too much importance on her biological genealogy, which just doesn’t fit with the loving bonds I’ve personally felt with my adopted relatives, step-relations, in-laws, and ‘found family’ friends. She also somewhat exoticizes her newfound heritage, bragging that “I’m a hybrid, made of two sets of ancestors who would never have crossed paths or sprung from the same village” — as if people of mixed origins haven’t existed for all of human history!

Shapiro is a gifted writer, and although her Orthodox Jewish background is not quite the same as my Reform one, I recognize many of the familiar touchstones of our shared faith that she clings to in her distress. Yet I just don’t think I’d be this upset to discover I was fathered by a sperm donor, and that disconnect really alienates me from this reading experience.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb

Book #151 of 2019:

Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb (The Rain Wild Chronicles #2)

In my review of the first book in this Realm of the Elderlings quartet, I complained, “Not much happens, and then it just continues not happening right through the end.” Yet compared to this sequel, that original novel was action-packed. At least its early chapters had a small plot of getting the characters to this rain forest river setting, whereas in the next volume they literally just continue to navigate their ship further upstream.

If you’re going to restrict the scope of your storytelling to such a small space, you really need to have some sort of engaging interpersonal drama or driving investigation to bounce personalities off of one another in interesting ways. For the most part, however, the conflicts here revolve solely around who will be sleeping with whom, and even author Robin Hobb’s customary skill at characterization can only carry that so far. A minor antagonist gets a bit of a redemption arc, but otherwise, it’s just more of the dull old same.

[Content warning for miscarriage and discussion/threat of rape.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

Book #150 of 2019:

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

This short novel starts out feeling like it will be a fun sci-fi romp, but it soon turns mind-bending and profoundly reflective in equal measure. Bequeathed a device that can travel back and forth along the timestream, our hero encounters many alternate versions of himself: some from his relative future, some from his past (often with him playing first the younger and then the older role in quick succession), and some from branching realities that his / their meddling has since prevented. In the book’s most daring section, he even strikes up a romantic relationship with himself — and although many writers would treat that as a simple punchline or an excuse for prurience, gay author David Gerrold instead delivers a tender consideration of coming to terms with one’s desires without shame.

Like the best of its genre, this story entertains readers with fabulous inventions while also posing smart questions on topics like human nature, identity, free will, and fate. It’s clever in a way that serves its character(s) rather than merely showing off twisty paradoxes, and its lonely traveler reminds me strongly of Steven Gould’s Jumper, a staple of my own wayward youth. Gerrold is most famous for screenwriting the classic Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles,” but this Hugo and Nebula nominee proves that his long-form fiction is just as striking.

[Note #1: Although the book was originally written in 1973, my library only had the updated version released 30 years later. I can’t speak to what all has changed beyond the new 9/11 references, but I understand that this is the author’s preferred text anyway.

Note #2: This is the first title that I’m reading and reviewing at a Patreon donor’s request. Want to nominate books for me yourself (or otherwise support my writing)? Sign up for a small monthly donation today at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke!]

★★★★★

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Book Review: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

Book #149 of 2019:

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

A somewhat dense history book, detailing the (mis)treatment of various Native American groups by the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Writing in 1970, white historian Dee Brown gathers from many previously neglected sources and aims to center this narrative in the Indian perspective, emphasizing how the federal government regularly lied and broke treaties in order to push the tribes off their lands. There’s a heavy focus on military skirmishes and the overall lessons of the book are less revelatory now than upon its initial publication, but it remains a valuable look at the bloody campaign to seize our western frontier from its original populations.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Veronica Mars, season 1

TV #31 of 2019:

Veronica Mars, season 1

What an incredibly satisfying and well-crafted season of television. The high school noir tone is pitch-perfect, the title figure is layered far beyond her initial feisty appeal, and subtle clues to the ultimate answer of who killed the teenage sleuth’s best friend are threaded brilliantly throughout the year. (The first time I saw this show, I came nowhere close to guessing the solution in advance but still had an immediate frisson of recognition upon the reveal. On repeat viewings, I’ve simply enjoyed watching the writers build up to it in plain sight with masterful misdirection.)

Even beyond that overarching plot, a succession of episodic cases consistently delivers trenchant critiques of the social class dynamics in this fictional California beach town. These smaller mysteries spin out endless variations on the widespread entitlement of the haves and the resentment of the have-nots, which nicely echo the conflicts in Veronica’s own life. The other major question introduced in the pilot, the heroine’s rape, receives less overt attention than the murder from week to week, yet it nevertheless adds raw energy to her newfound status as an avenging angel for Neptune’s powerless.

For all my praise, this debut outing of Veronica Mars is not quite flawless. There are a few false starts, like the journalism teacher in the early opening credits whose actual role ends up fairly minimal, and the gender politics can already feel dated just a decade and a half later. Veronica’s disbelief and slut-shaming towards a fellow student’s allegations of staff impropriety are at least somewhat framed as a learning opportunity for the young detective, but the series narrative never once sees anything wrong with positioning a 20-year-old police officer as a love interest for its 17-year-old protagonist. (If anything, we’re invited to see her as the worldly operator manipulating him!) The resolution to the rape storyline, too, is somewhat of a mess even before next season retcons it further.

Nevertheless, it’s the characters, the class consciousness, and the homicide investigation that stand out for me — along with a certain unexpected romance — and all of them succeed beyond belief. There’s a real clarity of purpose to this original run of the program that it never quite manages again, and that’s worth celebrating despite the occasional misstep.

★★★★★

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Book Review: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss

Book #148 of 2019:

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club #1)

I think I admire the ambition of this Victorian horror pastiche, which is like a feminist next generation to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, more than I care for the finished product. It’s a fun idea to throw together the daughters and other female survivors of Frankenstein, Jekyll, Dracula, Moreau, and beyond, but I rarely feel as though the ensuing story has much weight to it. I also cannot stand how all seven heroines regularly interrupt the action to offer snarky commentary, as though they too are reading some later account of their adventures.

I might have liked this book better if I hadn’t already read Megan Shepherd’s The Madman’s Daughter trilogy or Kiersten White’s The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein, which dig deeper into the treatment of women in those original texts and are a closer match to their nineteenth-century tone. By comparison, the ladies here feel far more modern and interchangeable.

★★★☆☆

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