Tag: book review

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BOOK REVIEW: The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie by M. Rickert. Tragicomic magical realism.

M. Ricket’s novel The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie is almost uncategorizable. It’s a magical realist character study/slice of life smalltown drama. The magic in the novel is more in the vibe than it is in concrete acts of wonder. There are hints of fabulism in the stories the characters tell one another, and when ghosts do appear, they are as natural as the sea air that drenches the small New England town of Bellefairie. The novel is the story of Quark, a gentle giant of a man who returns to his hometown to take care of his ornery sea captain father. Quark left town and never looked back, finding solace in his job as a taxidermist. The relationship between Quark and his father is contentious and complicated; Quark has gaps in his memory due to his traumatic upbringing, which is shrouded in tantalizing bits of mystery.

“Grief is a ship without a captain.”

Rickert tells the tale in the close third person point of view of Quark, who is a fascinating and occasionally infuriating person. His clumsiness and inability to read social cues is what drives the plot, as the grief-stricken man stumbles from one misunderstanding to another, as he pieces together the missing places in his memory. The odd taciturn locals call him ‘Frankenquark,’ first as a joke that then becomes sinister later in the plot. Rickert subtly suggests that Quark might be neurodivergent—adding another layer to his trauma. “Tragi-comic” comes to mind when thinking about the novel’s mood whiplash. Themes of generational trauma, isolation, and grief play across the pages. Rickert’s prose is lovely and crisp, full of seaside imagery and allusions to folktales and myths. The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie weds the quirky fabulism of Kelly Link with the dark whimsy of the best of Shirley Jackson.

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In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson (Book Review)

The plot of this novel is relatively simple. Set in the early 1980s, it follows Travis Stillwell, a lone drifter who kills young women to fill up some void within himself, caused by a broken family and a touch of PTSD. Stillwell meets Rue, a young woman in a honky tonk bar that is more than she seems. After a one night stand with Rue, he wakes up with a deep, strange and insatiable hunger. As he drifts through small towns in the Texas desert, he ends up at the Sundowner Inn, a semi defunct motel/motor lodge run by Annabelle Gaskins, a widow and mother to her ten-year old son Sandy. At the same time, a Texas ranger named John Reader is investigating the murders of young women who frequent honky tonk bars.

The characters are archetypical and accurately drawn. We head hop from Stillwell, whose life is filled with ugly memories of his family life and the Vietnam war to Rue, whose fate is changed with a chance encounter with a mysterious nomad who curses her with murderous hunger, to the more quotidian existence of Gaskins and her son. Davidson’s take on vampirism (never referred to as such in the text, has such verisimilitude that it almost seems natural. Conversely, the author imbues the Texas landscape with a magical quality. In the Valley of the Sun combines languid lyricism with scenes of brutal violence reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s work. 

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BOOK REVIEW: The Blade Between by Sam J. Miller

One of the great things about Speculative Fiction is that an author can personify and give literal breath to a concept. Metaphors walk in the pages alongside the characters an author summons. Miller’s new book turns Gentrification into actual characters. 

The depressed, Rust-Belt city of Hudson NY is the setting of the novel. Back in previous centuries, whaling—the hunting and apportioning of humpback whales—was its primary industry before turning into a manufacturing hub. The city is given new life as an influx of economic opportunists transform the town into an area filled with antique stores and artisanal coffee shops.  The internet billionaire Jark Trowse not only makes Hudson the base of his many financial operations, he is also running for Mayor. This transformation causes the displacement of many of the long-time residents of the city as Hudson attracts a younger, hipper demographic.

The edgy photographer Ronan Szepessy returns to his hometown in the middle of  arevitalizing campaign to take care of some business with his estranged, dementia-addled father. Ronan is a damaged individual—a meth addict who still is wounded by his Hudson upbringing which included the suicide of his mother and nasty homophobic bullies. (In many ways, he reminds me of Liz Hand’s character Cass Neary—another wounded bird addict compelled to create disturbing photographic tableaux). Like Neary, Ronan is self-destructive and seems to thrive on negative energy. In spite of his less than adoring attachment to his hometown, he immediately doesn’t like the way the city has become a sort of trendy outpost for Brooklyn, frequented by quirkily dressed hipsters. Miller has Ronan tell his own story in the first person and he’s an intriguing if not always likeable anti-hero. His return is the catalyst for the action.

The Blade Between also has a scattering of other points of view, mainly from Ronan’s ex-boyfriend, the police officer Dom and Dom’s social worker wife Attalah. Dom’s narrative has him exploring the sudden rash of often violent resistance against the town’s ‘invaders,’ while Attalah and Ronan secretly conspire to challenge the mayoral campaign.  Just in the ‘corner of the eye,’ there’s some lowkey supernatural occurrences that add to the mayhem.

The supernatural intrusion is the tangible manifestation of the rage and nihilism of the dispossessed.  Miller gives the reader the satisfying taste of revenge, and also the bitter aftertaste of extremism. This is not a simple morality tale; everyone from both sides of the divide is imperfect in one way or another. Miller actually makes Trowse (a sort of Bezos (Amazon) meets Dorsey (Twitter) figure) approachable and charming, even as he is visiting economic devastation on Hudson. And the supernatural actors are monstrously immune from empathy in their zeal.

Miller manages to artfully display the various issues of gentrification. Change is inexorable and cities change character with great frequency. The Washington, DC neighborhood where I live has been home to members of the Harlem Renaissance artists (Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes lived nearby); the site of race riots in the 60s; my block was full of literal crackhouses in the 80s and 90s; and now has become a corridor full of artisanal shops and hipsters. Long term residents have been displaced, and new neighborhood traditions have sprung up. The Blade Between captures the ambiguous complexities that surround these issues, and never becomes a simple issue-based novel.