Random House

Upcoming: KILL BAXTER by Charlie Human (Century)

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Human-KillBaxterUK

In July, Century (a division of Random House UK) will be publishing KILL BAXTER, the follow up to Charlie Human’s mind-bending debut, Apocalypse Now Now. I thoroughly enjoyed that novel (despite the slightly weak ending) – the main character, Baxter, was delightfully twisted; the plot rather bonkers, with a great Cape Town setting populated by some of the most colourful, interesting and weird Urban Fantasy creations I’ve come across. I have pretty high hopes for Kill Baxter, and can’t wait to get my mitts on a copy. The cover is once again done by the ever-excellent Joey Hi-Fi who is also working on a separate South African cover (as he did for Apocalypse Now Now). Can’t wait to see that piece, too!

Here’s the synopsis…

And he thought the hard part was over…

The world has been massively unappreciative of sixteen-year-old Baxter Zevcenko. His bloodline may be a combination of ancient Boer mystic and giant shape-shifting crow, and he may have won an inter-dimensional battle and saved the world, but does anyone care? No.

Instead he’s packed off to Hexpoort, a magical training school that’s part reformatory, part military school, and just like Hogwarts (except with sex, drugs, and better internet access). The problem is that Baxter sucks at magic. He’s also desperately attempting to control his new ability to dreamwalk, all the while being singled out by the school’s resident bully, who just so happens to be the Chosen One.

But when the school comes under attack, Baxter needs to forget all that and step into action. The only way is joining forces with his favourite recovering alcoholic of a supernatural bounty hunter, Ronin, to try and save the world from the apocalypse. Again.

Sounds pretty cool, no? This time, I hope Human manages to really stick the landing, and makes Kill Baxter awesome all the way through. The novel is due to be published on July 17, 2014 in the UK (not sure about the US or South Africa).

“& Sons” by David Gilbert (Fourth Estate/Random House)

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Royal.inddAn intriguing, engaging literary novel

The funeral of Charles Henry Topping on Manhattan’s Upper East Side would have been a minor affair (his two-hundred-word obit in The New York Times notwithstanding) but for the presence of one particular mourner: the notoriously reclusive author A.N. Dyer, whose novel Ampersand stands as a classic of American teenage angst. But as Andrew Newbold Dyer delivers the eulogy for his oldest friend, he suffers a breakdown over the life he’s led and the people he’s hurt and the novel that will forever endure as his legacy. He must gather his three sons for the first time in many years – before it’s too late.

So begins a wild, transformative, heartbreaking week, as witnessed by Philip Topping, who, like his late father, finds himself caught up in the swirl of the Dyer family. First there’s son Richard, a struggling screenwriter and father, returning from self-imposed exile in California. In the middle lingers Jamie, settled in Brooklyn after his twenty-year mission of making documentaries about human suffering. And last is Andy, the half-brother whose mysterious birth tore the Dyers apart seventeen years ago, now in New York on spring break, determined to lose his virginity before returning to the prestigious New England boarding school that inspired Ampersand.

But only when the real purpose of this reunion comes to light do these sons realize just how much is at stake, not only for their father but for themselves and three generations of their family.

& Sons is a very good novel. It’s a bit tricky to review, though. I was quickly drawn into the story, and the lives of the protagonists. It was by no means perfect, and sometimes downright weird, but Gilbert’s prose and characters were engaging throughout.

This is a peculiar novel, in many ways. Gilbert writes extremely well, but that didn’t stop the beginning from being a bit confusing – specifically, the narrative style wasn’t clear. I wasn’t sure who was narrating the tale. It is presented as if Philip Topping has written an account of the events, but bestowed upon himself omnipotence, able to write inside his subjects’ heads without really any way of knowing what was going on. A strange decision, but one that I quickly got used to and accepted.

It is the story of families, fathers and sons. Philip Topping, never particularly close with his father, was always enamoured of the Dyers – revering Andrew, idolising Richard and Jamie, glomming on to the family as an attempt to become a de facto member. For this desire, he has long been mocked and pranked by the elder two Dyer brothers. It was a strange and sometimes-creepy dynamic. Andrew Jr., the half-brother whose existence cratered A.N. Dyer’s marriage, is probably the best character in the novel, and I enjoyed seeing him navigate his world, and the strange dynamic he had with his father and brothers.

GilbertD-AndSonsLiterary fiction seems to require a peculiarity. I’m not sure why this trope has developed, but almost every literary fiction novel I’ve read contains a truly bizarre element or event, and this can often be the stumbling block that takes a great novel and almost ruins it. With & Sons, the peculiarity is the secret Andrew wishes to share with his sons. I’m not going to spoil it, but it kind of came out of nowhere, and we’re never sure if it’s real or a delusion of the fast-declining Andrew Dyer.

I’m not really sure what else to write about the book without spoiling the twists and turns, or delving too deeply or academically into its contents (which is not something CR has been doing in the past). Needless to say, I enjoyed reading & Sons. There’s a great deal of insight and shrewd observation about families – especially fathers and sons – presented in both remorseful and amusing ways. Despite the muddled narrative voice of the first couple of chapters, this grew to become a very strong novel and engaging read.

Recommended for fans of New York-based literary fiction – for example, Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch – and also authors such as Michael Chabon, Philip Roth and Richard Russo.

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David Gilbert’s & Sons is published by Fourth Estate in the UK and Random House in the US. It is out now.

Upcoming: “Black Moon” by Kenneth Calhoun (Hogarth)

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CalhounK-BlackMoonUKThis is a really intriguing-looking novel. A copy of the novel arrived in the mail yesterday (complete with an eye-mask…). Here is the synopsis for Kenneth Calhoun’s dystopian future novel, Black Moon…

Insomnia has claimed everyone Biggs knows. Even his beloved wife, Carolyn, has succumbed to the telltale red-rimmed eyes, slurred speech and cloudy mind before disappearing into the quickly collapsing world. Yet Biggs can still sleep, and dream, so he sets out to find her.

He ventures out into a world ransacked by mass confusion and desperation, where he meets others struggling against the tide of sleeplessness. Chase and his buddy Jordan are devising a scheme to live off their drug-store lootings; Lila is a high school student wandering the streets in an owl mask, no longer safe with her insomniac parents; Felicia abandons the sanctuary of a sleep research center to try to protect her family and perhaps reunite with Chase, an ex-boyfriend. All around, sleep has become an infinitely precious commodity. Money can’t buy it, no drug can touch it, and there are those who would kill to have it. However, Biggs persists in his quest for Carolyn, finding a resolve and inner strength that he never knew he had.

Black Moon will be published in March 2014 by Hogarth (an imprint of Random House) in both the UK and US.

An Interview with SUSIE MOLONEY

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MoloneySusie-AuthorPic(Richard-Wagner-2010)Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Susie Moloney?

I’m a writer of horror fiction, and I live in Canada and the US, spending half my time in New York City with my playwright husband, Vern Thiessen. I’m a mom to two sons and a blind dog, and I love them all equally, no favourites.

I’ve been writing stories since I could hold a pencil, although when I first started writing, I used to illustrate them as well, and color the pictures. Somewhere there’s a pretty epic illustrated story about a black water beetle (“Blackie’s Story”) who isn’t black, but green. No black crayon.

To date, I’ve written four novels, Bastion Falls, A Dry Spell, The Dwelling and The Thirteen. My claim to fame is that A Dry Spell received the largest advance ever, in Canada. That may have changed by now, but it was a big deal back in the day. I’ve been on the cover of two national magazines. The week my cover on Chatelaine came out, was the week that Princess Diana died. True story: I walked into an airport bookstore to pick up something to read on the plane, and there was my cover, right next to the People Magazine Princess Diana cover. I turned around and ran out. It was too overwhelming, my face right next to hers. I read the in-flight magazine that trip.

Things Withered, Stories is my very first collection. I’m no longer a collection virgin.

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What inspired you to write these particular stories? And where do you draw your inspiration from in general?

All my inspiration comes from really mundane, prosaic sources. I know everyone says that. But I’ll tell you, regular, ordinary everyday people terrify me. You know why? Because everyone has something special about them. Everyone. We were raised on that tenet. So if some regular Joe is standing in front of you, and you can’t quite tell what’s special about him — I just naturally assume his special quality must be that he’s a serial killer. Or what if he’s a vampire (if it’s at night), or a warlock hell-bent on collecting enough souls to pay a debt to Satan? What if there’s a suburban mom, slowly letting her oppression and anger drive her into madness and as a means of releasing that horrible pressure cooker of rage, she poisons cookies and brings them over? What if the cookies are super-good and you eat like, ten of them (not saying I’ve ever eaten ten cookies at once)?

I’m pretty sure regular, ordinary, everyday folk are seriously dangerous.

How were you introduced to genre fiction?

Blatty-TheExorcistThe first genre book I ever read, if you can call it a genre book, was The Exorcist. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to read it, I was only a little kid. I certainly knew enough to read it with a flashlight in the cubby hole at my grandparent’s house. It was sufficiently terrifying that I went on to read Jaws I think that same summer. By the time I was a teenager, people were passing around Salem’s Lot by Stephen King and I alternated between horror and those bodice rippers that were all the rage in the ’80s (an entirely different kind of horror).

Up until then I was writing stories about my dog and the odd love story. Often someone died in what I wrote. After I finished reading Cujo, also by King, I just wanted to write something in the tone and mood of that book — and so was born Bastion Falls, my first novel.

MoloneySusie-FirstStephenKing

How do you enjoy being a writer and working within the publishing industry? Do you have any specific working, writing, researching practices?

Publishing has changed so much since my early days! In a lot of ways it’s much better. We do seem to be in some kind of a transition phase and I’m curious to know where it ends up. This is the most literate epoch in human history — we’re constantly communicating. Email, Facebook posts, Twitter (literate in 140 characters!). Everyone is clever and interesting and sharing. I love/hate it. Being a writer is no longer a special career! On the other hand, there has never been so much access to such an incredible variety of experiences and perspective, that a seeker of the human experience is the beneficiary of an embarrassment of riches, the likes of which have never been seen.

MoloneyS-TheThirteenAs for writing practices, the only thing I consistently do is burn a candle while I write. Makes me feel like I’m in a dark garret in the middle of Paris (never been, I hear they have garrets).

When did you realize you wanted to be an author, and what was your first foray into writing? Do you still look back on it fondly?

Aside from the aforementioned “Blackie’s Story,” the first substantial piece I ever wrote was about a single-mother vampire by the name of Aria. This was long before the Twilight days, long before vampires were ever even a thing — how about that, right? I invented vampires (maybe not — should probably Google-check that). The story came out of my experience of being a single mom back in the days when that was a bad thing. I felt like a monster much of the time, and I suppose that was my way of dealing with it. In the story the little boy is not a vampire and the mom — Aria — does her best to raise him even as she tries to adapt to her new form. There’s a version of it in Things Withered at the very end of the book, a short film script I wrote to adapt the story in some way.

MoloneyS-TheDwellingWhat’s your opinion of the genre today, and where do you see your work fitting into it?

I love how many women are writing genre now, and how that’s changing the face of genre. I have my favourites, like Gemma Files, Kaaron Warren, Barbara Roden — her book Northwest Passages is absolute not-miss — Tananarive Due, these are all great writers who are writing genre.

I never quite feel like what I’m writing fits exactly into the genre category. It’s not a perfect fit like some of the women I’ve listed. I feel like I’m writing about very dark subject matter, with some supernatural elements.

What other projects are you working on, and what do you have currently in the pipeline?

I’ve started a new novel, but it’s always slow going in the beginning. I always think of the first four-five months of a new novel to be the “mistake-making” time. I change my mind about the direction a character is taking and have to rewrite, or I decide one character is more important than the one I felt was the protagonist and have to rewrite, or I have an existential crisis and decide to spend a week drinking too much, doubting the value of my existence and the value of words in general, and have to spend some time drying out. I’m nearly through this part. Also, there’s still lots of crying.

This new (currently untitled, or more accurately, over-titled) is the first time I’ve written “in period.” It takes place in the very early ’70s. It requires more research than you’d think. Who remembers? You know what’s fun about it? Listening to the music of the time and remembering that most young girls listened to AM radio. Wow that was some really bad music (“Go Away Little Girl”, Donny Osmond), and some really exceptional stuff (“Ain’t No Sunshine”, Bill Withers).

What are you reading at the moment (fiction, non-fiction)?

EndicottM-TheLittleShadowsRight this very moment I’m reading The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott, a stunningly written story about a mother and her daughters on the Vaudeville circuit around the time of the first world war. I’m also reading Manson by John Gilmore. I’m a Gilmore fan, love his gritty edge, his no bullshit style.

What’s something readers might be surprised to learn about you?

I’m totally obsessed with Bonnie & Clyde. I have about twenty books on the subject and I’m sure I know everything there is to know about the deadly couple. I once started a screenplay, told from Bonnie’s POV and I called it “Dirt.” Never got very far with it, but I think about picking it up again about every six months. I also have a more minor obsession with Tudor history and the reformation. I like to think that gives me Nerd status on the street. I got juice, man.

What are you most looking forward to in the next twelve months?

I have a couple of projects that I’ll see the end of. It’s always nice to finish things. And I have the new novel… I’m hoping that my schedule will clear up enough so that all I’ll be working on is the new book. There’s something so extraordinarily wonderful about waking up in the morning and knowing that the only thing you have to do is toss yourself into the world you are creating and not come up for air until it’s dark.

I do love the dark.

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Things Withered is out now, published by ChiZine Publications.

“The Circle” by Dave Eggers (Knopf)

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EggersD-TheCircleAn interesting, timely and disturbing novel

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in America — even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

The Circle is the first novel I’ve read by Eggers. It is also one of the creepiest books I’ve ever read. The novel revolves around Mae Holland, a new hire at The Circle – a massive, Google-meets-Facebook-type social media goliath. We follow her story as she navigates the company, its quirks, and also its never-ending evolution. We see her life turned upside down as she strives to rise in the Circle’s ranks, to adopt and embrace its new innovations. Completing the Circle becomes an obsession, and despite clear signs of its negative impact on her life and those of her loved ones, the inexorable pull of the company, the sense of community, and compulsion to be a part of something proves too much for Mae to resist.

What made this novel so unsettling was how Eggers has extrapolated an all-too plausible (albeit slippery-slope) evolution of social media. The author’s not subtle, either, and it sometimes felt like he is trying to bludgeon the reader with his own negative feelings about social media and its ubiquitous place in contemporary life. At the same time, he has a point. As The Circle continues to evolve, and gobble up ever-more resources, technology and, above all else, access to its users’ private lives, we see an unprecedented erosion of privacy. More than that, though, is that this erosion is voluntarily embraced by Circle users.

Despite the anvil-from-the-sky approach to delivering his point, Eggers has written an accessible, engaging and above-all thought-provoking novel. It will make you analyse your own social media use, and probably make you adjust your habits, too…

An important, if unsubtle, novel, The Circle is certainly recommended reading for anyone who embraces a well-connected life.

An Interview with TAYLOR STEVENS

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StevensT-TheInformationist

Taylor Stevens is the author of the new thriller THE INFORMATIONIST. It has an interesting premise and a pretty unique-seeming protagonist. Naturally, I wanted to learn more after the book arrived in the mail, and so Stevens’s UK publicist (Arrow) kindly set up this interview…

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Taylor Stevens?

I’ve been asked many, many questions but this is the first I’ve been presented with this one, so let’s see: Officially, Taylor Stevens is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author, whose books have received critical acclaim, are published in over twenty languages, and whose first title, The Informationist, has been optioned for film by James Cameron’s production company. Unofficially, Taylor Stevens is a harried, fulltime working mom, who juggles after-school activities and all the crazy that goes into running a household, with making up stories to pay the bills.

Your latest novel, The Informationist, was published by Arrow in December. How would you introduce the novel to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

The Informationist is the beginning of tragic, intense, victorious, globe-trotting, rollercoaster-ride of a kick-butt series, though I had no idea that would be the case when I wrote it. As readers, we tend to categorize books because this allows us to explain in quick brushstrokes how they fit into the reading experience. For that reason, these stories are labeled thrillers, although there is more to them than that. They are in the vein of Jason Bourne, or James Bond, or Jack Reacher—albeit with a woman in the lead who could go toe-to-toe with any one of the men.

What inspired you to write the novel? And where do you draw your inspiration from in general?

Well, the impetus and inspiration winds so far back that we would take pages to get to the root of it, but in its most concise version: I had lived in Equatorial Guinea, a tiny island off the coast of Central Africa, for a little over two years. When I made the decision to start writing, it was because I wanted to bring this country to life for readers who might never have the chance to visit. Without a doubt, the first two books are drawn heavily from things I lived and experienced, but we’re heading into the fifth book now and, as I often joke to my readers, “I only have so much life trauma to pull from and I’d really like to keep it that way.” World news and current events work quite well as alternative source material.

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The Informationist UK Cover

How were you introduced to thrillers/crime fiction?

Somewhat by accident, I think. When I first began writing fiction, I had no concept of genre. I had been born and raised in a very strict, isolated, and controlled religious environment in which my education stopped completely when I was 12 years old. We weren’t allowed to watch TV, or listen to music from the outside, and were also forbidden from reading fiction. When finally I was free of that and able to make my own choices, not only did I have no reference as to what authors to read, I was too poor to go to bookstores to buy books. Everything I read came to me second hand, and as it was, most of the novels were suspense and thrillers. So I came to fiction with the understanding that stories were meant to be “exciting,” and that was what I emulated when I began to tell stories of my own — which actually worked out quite nicely given that writing suspense is what I’m good at.

How do you enjoy being a writer and working within the publishing industry? Do you have any specific working, writing, researching practices?

I cannot even imagine what life would have been like had this whole “writing thing” not worked out. I’m overwhelmed by the goodness that has come through the publication experience, ever grateful for each day that passes wherein I’m able to pay the bills while still being available for my children. That said, I do not really consider myself a “creative” or even a “writer” so much as a storyteller who happens to use the written word as the medium for communication. My personality is more inclined toward spread-sheets and paperwork, so imagining the stories to life is what’s most difficult about the process. Once the stories are built, the bean-counter in me gets to have fun with the editing and tightening, which is handy I suppose, because revision is where the craft lies. As far as writing and researching practices, these have changed often throughout the years, but the one thing that has been consistent is “butt in chair.” That’s the only way to get a book written.

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The Informationist US Cover

When did you realize you wanted to be an author, and what was your first foray into writing? Do you still look back on it fondly?

You see, this is a very difficult question to answer. Growing up, I had no concept that “being an author” was even an option. Thoughts of becoming a doctor or lawyer, bartender or chef were as foreign as those of becoming a handyman within one of the communes — which, in our culture, was strictly a male job. As a girl, the best I could hope for was to become a personal assistant to one of those higher up the cult food-chain, and in my early twenties I did wind up in that unpaid position for a few years. As children we were essentially child labor, and as we had no mental stimulation and we were so bored, I would make up stories for entertainment. When I was fourteen, I started writing them down, but this turned out very badly. When my notebooks were discovered, I was isolated from my peers and the “demons” “exorcised” and my writing was confiscated and burned. I was told never to write fiction again, or else. I was in my thirties, at home with two babies, when I realized that I wanted to give storytelling another try. But I didn’t start writing with the idea of “becoming an author.” I wrote just so I could say I had finished a book, and to give a finger to the people who had controlled me in the past. There was no way I could have possibly predicted or even imagined what would follow from the determination to see that one decision through.

Taylor Stevens (credit must be used Alyssa Skyes)

Taylor Stevens (Credit: Alyssa Sykes)

What’s your opinion of the genre today, and where do you see your work fitting into it?

To be honest, I have no idea. I’m still sorely under-read and rather painfully oblivious to current trends. I know that there is so much available for readers to explore and that my books are just a drop in a vast ocean of goodness. I’m completely honored to be part of that ocean, though, and treasure every one of my fans and readers — they’re the ones who’ve kept me in business and I owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

What other projects are you working on, and what do you have currently in the pipeline?

The next in the series, THE INNOCENT, takes readers inside the cult of my childhood. It is as close to real life as I could get in a genre-specific, word-count based, fictional format. For that reason, it is more psychological and has less blood and violence than the first — but the realism is uncomfortably accurate. The high octane continues with THE DOLL, and in the United States we are now getting ready to publish the fourth in the series, THE CATCH. I’m excited because with each new title I hear from more readers, and I do love to interact with my readers. For those who are interested, I email regularly via my website.

What are you reading at the moment (fiction, non-fiction)?

SmithHW-PowerOfPerceptionI’m a firm believer in the need for continual self-growth. I feel that the more I am able to shed bad habits and wrong ways of thinking, the happier and more balanced my life will be — and there is always room for improvement. I have just finished Power of Perception by Hyrum W. Smith. It’s a tiny book, basically the direct transcript of a speech that he gives, but the principles, simple as they are, are life-changing. Based on how much I appreciated the speech, I purchased two of his older books, 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management and What Matters Most: The Power of Living Your Values, and plan to start them shortly.

What’s something readers might be surprised to learn about you?

Considering the characters that I write and the life background I’ve risen from, readers are often surprised—perhaps disappointed—to discover that I’m very sweet, happy, empathetic, content, and polite in real life. I also cry when I see or experience something beautiful, or when something makes me happy (which is often).  And I hate suspense and blood and gore, which I find hilarious, seeing as that’s exactly what I write. I suppose it’s different with my own work because I get to control the story and I know how it ends. I love spoilers. Sometimes that’s the only thing that will get me to watch a particularly suspenseful movie. With suspenseful books, I have to read the last chapter first.

What are you most looking forward to in the next twelve months?

Over the past few years, during quiet spells, or while waiting to receive material back from my publisher, I’ve worked on side project geared more toward a younger audience. Oblivious as I am, I couldn’t say what genre the book is, only that it’s not a thriller. I finally finished the writing just last month and the response from test readers has been quite enthusiastic. The manuscript is in the hands of my agent now, and I’m nervous because it’s unlike anything I’ve done before. If I could have a wish granted over these next twelve months, it would be to see something wonderful happen with that story. I’m also quite excited to begin on the fifth book in the Vanessa Michael Munroe series.

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Be sure to visit the author’s website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook, for more information and news. The Informationist by Taylor Stevens is available now (Arrow Books in the UK, Crown in the US).

An Interview with ALMA KATSU

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KatsuA-I3-DescentUKA few days ago, a copy of Alma Katsu’s third novel, The Descent dropped through the mailbox. It is the third novel in the author’s The Immortal trilogy, but I didn’t (at the time) know too much about the series or the author, so I took the opportunity to send her some questions.

Who is Alma Katsu?

As a girl, I wanted to have a magical, fantastical life but the outlook was kind of narrow and grim, and I think that’s why I turned to creating my own worlds in fiction. Then, funnily enough, I ended up having a life that was the stuff of fantasy: working in intelligence, traveling, doing all this technical, math-y stuff that I never would’ve thought possible for a little storyteller. Lesson: you never know where life will take you. Continue reading →

“The Emperor’s Children” by Claire Messud (Knopf)

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Messud-TheEmperorsChildrenAn interesting tale of privilege in New York, in the lead-up to 9/11

A novel about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their way — and not — in New York City. There is beautiful, sophisticated Marina Thwaite — an “It” girl finishing her first book; the daughter of Murray Thwaite, celebrated intellectual and journalist — and her two closest friends from Brown, Danielle, a quietly appealing television producer, and Julius, a cash-strapped freelance critic.

The delicious complications that arise among them become dangerous when Murray’s nephew, Frederick “Bootie” Tubb, an idealistic college dropout determined to make his mark, comes to town.

As the skies darken, it is Bootie’s unexpected decisions — and their stunning, heartbreaking outcome — that will change each of their lives forever.

This novel came very highly recommended, but for some reason it took me quite a long time to get around to reading it. I have a weak-spot for novels set in New York City. This is the first one I’ve read that takes a look (near the end) at the impact of 9/11 on inhabitants of the city – not in terms of politics or the War on Terror, but rather as an event that would turn the lives of these protagonists upside down, in both large and small ways. I certainly enjoyed reading the novel, but it’s not perfect. It offers some shrewd, pointed commentary on the foibles and anxieties that face or characterise the lives of privileged (and some not-so-privileged) white youth in New York City.

The friends at the core of the story are quite typical, in many respects. This works in their favour, and makes the novel pretty easy to sink in to. They are from a wealthy set, but each hides their own insecurities from the others. Julius, for example, is down on his luck, and has been hiding the fact that he has resorted to temping in order to make ends meet. Danielle is ticking along, but then develops a relationship with someone she never would have thought possible. Marina is a typical, spoiled, highly privileged daughter of an accomplished, beloved-of-the-NY-literary-set journalist. In the meantime, Bootie, Marina’s awkward cousin with delusions of literary/journalistic grandeur, a surprisingly strong sense of his own iconoclasm, moves to New York, and ends up causing quite the unpleasant stir.

It’s tricky to go into too much detail, as is so often the case. Messud weaves a number of twists and turns into the novel, as her protagonists navigate their way through their personal and professional lives – Marina struggling to finish the long-fallow book project she’s been paid to write (years ago), and also having to deal with her new boyfriend’s obvious distaste and derision for her father’s reputation; Danielle trying to get her productions green-lit, while keeping her new romance secret from her friends (who would undoubtedly disapprove); Julius, whose love-life takes a turn for the better, before spiraling catastrophically; and Bootie’s attempts to make a life in New York, balancing his awe, jealousy and eventual disappointment in Marina’s father (for whom he works as an assistant for a short while).

The novel had two particular strengths. First, the characterisation – which I know I haven’t outlined particularly well, above – was excellent. These are people who are by no means perfect or in any way heroes. There is a natural ugliness, almost, to their personalities: the natural jealousies, the petty narcissism, and so forth. But also their privileged ennui, as they attempt to figure out what it is they are meant to be doing with their lives (something I can sometimes relate to). There were a few uncomfortable moments when I would read one of the characters’ inner struggles, perhaps raise a judgmental eyebrow or sneer, and then realise that I myself had harboured similar thoughts, worries, or jealousies on occasion.

Another thing I really liked about the novel, were the moments in which characters would talk about books. Perhaps a strange thing to pick up on, given that they are universally small and fleeting moments in the story, but I really liked it. For example, when Danielle is looking at her bookshelves in her apartment, a form of biblio-memoir:

… a wall of books, both read and unread, all of them dear to her not only in themselves, their tender spines, but in the moments or periods they evoked. She had kept some books since college that she had acquired for courses and never read — Fredric Jameson, for example, and Kant’s Critique of Judgment — but which suggested to her that she was, or might be, a person of seriousness, a thinker in some seeping, ubiquitous way; and she had kept, too, a handful of children’s books taken from her now-dismantled girlhood room, like Charlotte’s Web and the Harriet the Spy novels, that conjured for her an earlier, passionately earnest self, the sober child who read constantly in the back of her parents’ Buick, oblivious to her brother punching her knee, oblivious to her parents’ squabbling, oblivious to the traffic and landscapes pressing upon her from outside the window.

Messud does a great job of giving each character their own voice (although, sometimes only slightly different from others), and she’s doing a great job of deconstructing her protagonists and their neuroses and petty jealousies. But, and this is my only real issue with the novel: it could have been trimmed down, I think. There were times when it felt like the novel veered off into an unnecessary tangent, without adding enough to the story to justify it, or being too mundane to really be worth it. I also think the author has never found an over-long sentence she didn’t like. There were, for my taste, far too many run-on sentences. There were so many instances when a well-placed full-stop would have done wonders for the prose and reading experience; any number of sentences that were begging to be broken up into easier-read sizes. Take, for example, this paragraph (which is by no means the worst offender):

As they each gingerly dismantled and consumed their fanciful dishes — in her case at least, a fancy that, Danielle thought but did not say, was less original and extraordinary than the restaurant’s reputation and price had led her to expect, and therefore disappointing, as she had chosen the venue to impress — Danielle proceeded to explain that she had been taken with his use of the term, that she had, perhaps wrongly, heard in it a certain echo, the suggestion of an ethos that she thought might be found, to greater or lesser degrees, in certain other publications or presentations, and that she, in her producer’s role, had thought to articulate into, well, a movement.

Or this stuttering, shorter example: “and there was, had been, at the very sight of him, at the front of the line at the restaurant, a pull that Danielle felt to be inevitable, personal, even spiritual — a magnetic attraction.” And the use of near-repetition to make or reinforce a point (“having felt, and felt keenly”).

There are, of course, moments of levity that break up what could otherwise become a rather heavy-handed narrative. Mostly, this occurs when theses privileged characters are confronted with simple situations they are entirely ill-equipped to deal with (thing that would, ordinarily, be dealt with by the Help). For example, when Marina’s cat, Pope, dies:

“I’m sorry, Daddy — it’s just the Pope. She’s not — I mean, she’s dead.”

“Oh.” The two of them stood side by side without approaching. “You’re quite sure?” Murray asked, scratching at the back of his head.

“Yep. Sure.” The cat, a black blot on the duvet, didn’t move.

“Is your mother asleep?”

“Hours ago.”

“Hmm. Worse things could happen than leaving her there for the night, don’t you agree?”

The idea seemed somehow sacrilegious to Marina, though whether the offense was against the cat or the bed and its imminent occupant, she couldn’t have said. “Don’t dead things, you know, leak?”

“Not overnight, I wouldn’t think. And it’s pretty cool in here.”

And this, later moment in which they discuss what to do with books from university…

“What did you major in, in college?” she ventured again, after a time.

“Poli Sci.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You must have been English, right?”

“Does it show that badly? We all were. I was double, English and Philosophy. I don’t remember a thing.”

“Who does?”

“Seriously, though, I look at the books on my shelves and it’s clear that I read them, back then, but I can’t remember ever doing it, and I don’t have the first idea what they might be about.”

“Read them again, then?”

Danielle sighed. “Not now. Maybe someday. I look at them and wonder who I was, you know? It’s a long time ago. I’m thirty.”

“You should throw those books away.”

“Like, in the garbage?”

“Like that.”

“Sacrilege. It would be.”

“Do you hang on to clothes you haven’t worn for ten years? Or bags of pasta, or cans of beans?” Danielle did not need to answer. “What is it about books? Perfectly rational people get crazy about their books. Who has time for that?”

“I measure my life out in books.”

“You should be measuring your life by living. Correction: you shouldn’t be measuring your life. What’s the point?”

Ultimately, The Emperor’s Children is a richly drawn, well-observed story of how these friends and relatives navigate their world. The characters develop naturally over the course of the story, and while they felt rather cookie-cutter at the beginning, they quickly developed their own voices. Despite the sometime-trouble I had with Messud’s drawn-out prose-style, this is a recommended read. I’ll be sure to read her latest novel, The Woman Upstairs, very soon.

Mini-Review: “A Time to Kill” by John Grisham (Arrow)

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GrishamJ-ATimeToKillGrisham’s debut novel didn’t really work for me, sadly…

When Carl Lee Hailey guns down the monsters who have raped his ten-year-old child, the people of Clanton see it as a crime of blood and call for his acquittal.

But when extremists outside Clanton hear that a black man has killed two white men, they invade the town, determined to destroy anything and anyone that opposes their sense of justice.

Jake Brigance has been hired to defend Hailey. It’s the kind of case that can make or break a young lawyer. But in the maelstrom of Clanton, it is also the kind of case that could get a young lawyer killed.

The story of Grisham giving away millions of dollars’ worth of A Time to Kill first editions is pretty well-known, now. After his first publisher went bankrupt, Grisham had to buy 1,000 copies of the 5,000 print run. Here’s what he told Newsweek:

“I took all the books down to the local library and we had a big book party. When the party was over, I still owned 882 copies… so I started giving books away. We took them back to my office and packed them in the reception area. The boxes were everywhere, and I would just give them away. If one of my clients wanted a book, I’d try to sell it. If not, I’d give it away. I’d sell them for 10 bucks, five bucks. I used them for doorstops. I couldn’t get rid of these books… These 5,000 books were the only first editions of A Time to Kill. That book today is worth about $4,000. I had 1,500 of them in my law office at one time. So that’s my big mistake — that’s about $6 million, the way I do the math.”

When I re-read A Time To Kill recently, I found it rather tricky. I’m a huge fan of Grisham’s novels, and have read them all – only two haven’t hit the mark for me (The Street Lawyer and, sadly, this one). But this one just didn’t have the skill and addictive quality of his later work. Mainly, that boils down to the way in which it was written, rather than the story itself, which is pretty great.

Put simply: it’s not as polished as the novels that came afterwards. Sure, it’s a great story and premise, and it is – for the most part – well structured. However. The novel is nevertheless over-written and the content shows a distinct lack of authorial and editorial restraint. Grisham, and his characters, describe and explain everything. One sees only the early signs of the master storyteller he would become. There are plenty of tangents that aren’t quite as well incorporated to the main narrative as it perhaps could have been. They also often felt longer than was necessary. Despite this niggle, though, I kept reading.

One thing I do want to point out, and a major plus, is that Grisham doesn’t pull any punches. His characters are well-developed, diverse, and each of them is a mix of good and bad traits. I can’t really comment on how True To Its Times it is, as I only six when this was first published. But the community and society are presented in a pretty open-eyed manner. The racism, divisions, mores are laid bare for the reader. The characters are what make the novel, though. The story, if the writing had been a little more polished and restrained, would have been superb – perhaps why it worked so well as a movie?

I’m certainly interested to see how Sycamore Row turned out (I have it on my Kindle already, just need to read it): the same main character, combined with his years of experience and authorial improvement? It could be a stunning thriller. I think I’ll have to move it up the TBR mountain. Grisham fans will enjoy it, but I’m not sure they’ll like this as much as his later novels (or, really, immediately following novels…).

“Apocalypse Now Now” by Charlie Human (Century)

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Human-ApocalypseNowNow-UKA bonkers, fascinating, twisted debut urban fantasy

I love the smell of parallel dimensions in the morning.

Baxter Zevcenko’s life is pretty sweet. As the 16-year-old kingpin of the Spider, his smut-peddling schoolyard syndicate, he’s making a name for himself as an up-and-coming entrepreneur. Profits are on the rise, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he’s going out with Esme, the girl of his dreams.

But when Esme gets kidnapped, and all the clues point towards strange forces at work, things start to get seriously weird. The only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter that goes by the name of Jackson ‘Jackie’ Ronin.

Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town’s supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including the odd brush with the Apocalypse.

This is an extremely strong debut novel, from an author who exhibits a great deal of talent and potential. Apocalypse Now Now is bonkers, twisted, very funny, and utterly engaging. I read this a little while ago, but Human’s characters and writing have stayed with me. The author channels the best of Urban Fantasy, makes it his own, and blends it with a Hunter S. Thompson-esque flair for language. This was a lot of fun.

[Full disclosure: I now work for Charlie Human’s agent. So I probably shouldn’t be reviewing this, but I loved it and wanted to at least write something.]

Baxter is an interesting and fun guide to the Cape Town supernatural underground. He is not your typical teenager. He’s possibly crazy, Machiavellian, a little paranoid, and definitely sociopathic. He picks on his brother, who is slightly mentally handicapped. He’s unpleasant to a lot of people. He runs a porn-ring. He goes to a fancy-ish school in Cape Town:

Like all prominent high schools in the leafy Southern Suburbs we have lush school grounds, sophisticated computer labs that were out of date as soon as they were installed, a debating team, a competitive rugby team, and gangs, drugs, bulimia, depression and bullying.

It’s an ecosystem; a microcosm of the political, economic and military forces that shape the world. Some high-school kids worry about being popular or about getting good marks. I worry about maintaining a fragile gang treaty that holds Westridge together. Horses for courses, as my dad says.

The first two-thirds of the novel make up what has to be the strongest start to a debut series I’ve read in a very long time. We get a superb, guided tour of Cape Town’s underground, and also plenty of interesting asides about South African folklore and mysticism. The story builds to a rather strange ‘Big Boss Fight’, which I didn’t find quite as compelling as the world-building and character-development in the first two-thirds of the book. True, there’s a lot of world-building and attention to establishing the characters, but I was never bored. In fact, I would have happily read even more of his creations. I haven’t come across a more-immediately-gripping UF series than this.

I felt I really got to know Baxter, the members of the Spider (especially Kyle, Baxter’s closest friend), Ronin and everyone else. They interact realistically, they bitch and gripe at each other. Baxter makes the adults he interacts with extremely uncomfortable. Maybe the only character who wasn’t expertly incorporated into the story was Esme, which is strange, given that her kidnapping forms much of Baxter’s motivation in the story… A minor weakness, though, in an otherwise superb novel.

Human’s writing is immediate, addictive, funny, and expertly crafted. The humour is natural, understated, often rather dark, and I often chuckled and laughed-out-loud on the train and Tube. Baxter’s internal monologues (and dialogues, as it turns out… just read it) are cynical, fresh, and often very funny. It’s like he sees the world with one eyebrow permanently raised.

Encouraging a sweet and fragile teacher – distraught at the thought that we don’t care about her class, and driven to hysteria by consistent and vicious undermining of her authority – to throw herself from the second storey is wrong. But it’s also fun.

Human-ApocalypseNowNow-SAThis is a pretty short (somewhat disjointed) review, I know. But this is a novel that has to be read to be properly appreciated. I could provide near-endless quotations and descriptions of his original and brilliant creations. But that would rob the novel of its impact, when you pick it up yourself (which you must!). I’d love to sit down and chat with people who have read this, going through various plot points, jokes, etc., in more detail. I took a greater-than-normal amount of notes, mainly favourite quotations and jokes. Let’s hope plenty of other people read it, so I have others to chat to about it.

Needless to say, Charlie Human has proven that Urban Fantasy is still a very vibrant and diverse genre, with considerable scope for originality and invention. He’s also messed around with a lot of the genre’s tropes, twisting things into new shapes, while remaining true to some classic themes and aesthetics. I really can’t wait for the second novel in the series. (It’s on its way.) Cape Town is a refreshing location for the story, and adds so much to how the author has created his supernatural community and mythology. It’s really great.

I recommend this very highly to anyone with even a slight interest in Urban Fantasy. Also, to just anyone who’s looking for something original, very well-written, funny, dark, and genre-blending. Charlie is definitely an author to watch, and I think we’re still only scratching the surface of what he can, and will do.

Apocalypse Now Now is out, uh, now in the UK.