"Mecca" by Susan Straight (2022)

"Sergeant Michael Miller Sr. hated us all.  'Inland Empire assholes - don't you guys have brain damage from birth?  Wait, Frias is from the OC.  How the hell is he the best shot at the range?'"

Susan Straight is an American novelist who also teaches Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.  To date she's had nine novels published, of which Mecca is her most recent.

Mecca opens with Johnny Frias, a California highway patrolman with a dark secret.  From Johnny the novel moves on to a cast of largely Mexican-American (or Hispanic American) characters trying to survive in southern California, some of them there legally, and some of them on the lookout for ICE.  Towards the end of the novel COVID intervenes, and on the heels of COVID there's an uptick in immigration raids leading to a standoff on a reservation in the California desert.

It's a good book, even if it doesn't quite come together in the end.  The characters are for the most part convincing, although some of the male characters seem unnecessarily macho at times.  It's no easy thing to (literally) break someone's face, and that part of the book could have used both more buildup and more explanation beforehand.

As you might imagine, this novel also checks off a lot of diversity boxes.  Character who's a single mother?  Check.  Character who's a black single mother?  Check.  Character who's a black Hispanic Native American single mother?  Also check.  Mecca doesn't go out of its way to include gay, trans or handicapped characters, but in all other respects it's guaranteed to infuriate your average Trump supporter.

I'm hoping that the author only happened to check off all those diversity boxes, and that the presence of so many ethnicities isn't just pandering.  I don't think that it is.  At least I hope it's not.

I do have one serious complaint about Mecca, however, and this complaint is that some of the antagonists are very one dimensional.  I think that delving into the personalities and motivations of the police sergeant, the rich benefactress and at least one of those evil ICE agents would have made this book much stronger. 

This said, the first 3/4 of this book is excellent.  The remaining 1/4?  It wasn't the heart-rending climax I was hoping for.

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"Human Acts" by Han Kang (2014)

"When she finally came down from the loft the next evening, her mother informed her that the corpses had been loaded into the city garbage trucks and driven off to a mass grave."

The Gwangju Uprising was a series of anti-government protests which occurred in 1980.  Back then military dictator Chun Doo-hwan, acting as President, implemented martial law across South Korea.  Many took issue with both Chun Doo-hwan's usurpation of executive authority and the harsh regime he represented, and in response many workers and students in Gwangju took to the streets to voice their opposition.  Both their uprising and the government's violent response to it form a dark chapter in South Korean history, and it is this harsh episode which is the subject of Han Kang's novel.

Human Acts tells the story of the Gwangju Uprising from several different perspectives.  We see this momentous event through the eyes of one of the students who lived through it, through the memories of a former factory girl involved in the labor movement, and even through the eyes of a corpse left to rot in an out of the way location.  The multiple perspectives on this same event cross over one another in surprising ways, and often converge around the figure of Dong-ho, a middle school student killed by the army very early on in the novel.

It's a fully realized account of an event which few outside of South Korea are familiar with.  The author was clearly consumed by the event upon which she was writing, and even though the extremely dark subject matter was hard to get through at times, I'm still glad that I came upon this book, and saw it through to the end.

Author Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last year.  I've seen copies of The Vegetarian in local bookstores, and I might read that one once I've finished a few other books first.

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"Intermezzo" by Sally Rooney (2024)

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"Intermezzo" by Sally Rooney (2024)

"At the kitchen table, she sits and eats alone, knowing that after she's finished eating she will have to wash up individually each utensil she has used to prepare and eat this meal, and to wipe down also each surface involved: the sink-side countertop, the fridge-side countertop, the cooking surface, and the kitchen table itself."

Sally Rooney is an Irish novelist.  At the time of writing she's penned four novels, Intermezzo being the most recent.

In the novel two brothers, Peter and Ivan, grieve over their father's death from cancer.  Peter is a barrister living in Dublin, while Ivan is a former chess prodigy living in Peter's shadow.  As the story unfolds the two brothers come to terms with their father's absence, with Ivan's quest to become the first Irish Grandmaster being an oft-revisited thread throughout the narrative.

Sally Rooney's prose will remind you a lot of James Joyce, though unlike Joyce her stream-of-consciousness approach often wears out its welcome.  I found it a bit unfortunate that she chose to quote Joyce in the novel, given that she's no James Joyce and Intermezzo is a far cry from Ulysses.  Intermezzo isn't terrible, but in reminding the reader of a far better novel this one can only suffer by comparison.

In dramatic terms I was also disappointed by this book.  The events it presents seem to be out of order, and they certainly don't add up to the big, life-changing moment that the author was aiming for.  Giving us a clearer picture of the two brothers and their relationship in the beginning of the novel would have made for smoother sailing later on, and even now, having just finished it, I'm not sure that I completely understand who Peter is or what he's about.  The (Catholic) guilt over a polyamorous affair I get, but I never got a sense of why he was so angry and troubled all the time, or why he was so dissatisfied with his life after the funeral.

There are critics who fawned over this book, and Sally Rooney has been hailed as both "one of the foremost millennial writers" and "one of the most influential people in the world."  If you ask me Intermezzo is only a passable effort, leaning as it does on the work of a much better writer.

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"Shards of Earth" by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2021)

"Solace nodded.  The Betrayed were a relatively new faction within internal Colonial politics.  They were officially decried by Hugh and yet, mysteriously, they'd never been outlawed.  The Parthenon didn't care for the legitimate Nativist movement either, which was all about returning to one unified human identity.  They celebrated old Earth and embraced the rhetoric of humanity's past glories.  The Betrayed went a step further, preaching that humanity would have been the galaxy's dominant species, if allowed to fight the Architects 'properly.'"

Adrian Tchaikovsky is a British author of science fiction.  He arrived at science fiction from interests in zoology and role-playing games.  At the time of writing he's written over 30 novels and has received many awards.

Shards of Earth is the first book in The Final Architecture series.  It's followed by Eyes of the Void and Lords of Uncreation.  Shards of Earth won the Best Novel award from the British Science Fiction Association.

In Shards of Earth a crew of space salvagers find themselves at odds with several different spacefaring civilizations, some of these human and some of them not.  While the salvagers contend with various interested parties over the contents and nature of a salvaged ship, the galaxy wrings its hands over the fate of the Architects, a destructive race of beings seemingly absent from the scene for an extended period of time.  But are the Architects truly absent from the scene?  And can our crew of space salvagers reveal the truth about these Architects before it's too late?

In terms of tone and characterization this book reminded me a lot of Star Wars, although it's a much bloodier take on that type of science fiction.  Spaceships vanish into and return from a kind of hyperspace without any thought given to relativistic time dilation, and other futuristic plot elements are also treated in very cursory terms.  

I'm not complaining about this aspect of the book because sometimes dwelling on such matters gets in the way of the story the author is trying to tell.  It's often enough to let the crab alien in the corner just be the crab alien in the corner, and to let the sentient cockroach colony think its thoughts without trying to explain why it's thinking those thoughts.  Pondering such things can be fruitful for many science fiction authors, but not for all of them.  In this respect I'm glad that Adrian Tchaikovsky knows what kind of author he is, and what kind of story he's trying to tell.

I found Shards of Earth a bit slow in parts, and the ending seemed to go on longer than it should have, but overall I enjoyed it.  The doses of gore peppered throughout the story were appreciated, as were the interactions between the more eccentric human characters and the stranger sorts of aliens.  I have the feeling that if someone tried to make a movie out of Shards of Earth they'd probably bungle it, but as the book stands it represents some very solid storytelling that left me wanting more.

I look forward to reading Eyes of the Void and Lords of Uncreation soon.  Science fiction of this caliber isn't easy to find nowadays.

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"The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd (2002)

"A pause followed.  I crept closer to the edge of the porch.  'I just have a feeling about this, June.  Something tells me not to send her back to some place she doesn't want to be.  Not yet, at least.  She has some reason for leaving.  Maybe he mistreated her.  I believe we can help her."

Sue Monk Kidd is an American author who sometimes writes fiction, sometimes writes self-help books.  At the time of writing she's penned nine books, the most recent being 2020's The Book of Longings, a novel.

In The Secret Life of Bees a young white girl living in the South in the 1960s escapes to a family of strong, empowered black women.  And yes, that description sounds super "woke," and yes, I suppose it is.  Anyhow, she escapes to said house and learns about both the art of keeping bees and the discrimination with which her housemates contend on a daily basis, thereby coming to new understandings of herself, her personal history and the region in which she lives.

In other words it's your typical Lifetime movie fodder, or in this case the inspiration for a wider release motion picture that not many people saw.  The starring roles in the movie went to Queen Latifa and Dakota Fanning, two actresses who probably did what they could with a somewhat derivative, less-than-inspired script.  I haven't seen this movie, mind you, but I imagine that it's a far cry from The Help or other, more concise attempts at storytelling.

The movie was, nevertheless, an opportunity to improve upon the novel.  Instead of having the protagonist wait a staggering six months for her heart-to-heart conversation with her host, the movie could have reduced that waiting period to a more believable few weeks.  Instead of overemphasizing a kind of backyard Catholicism, the movie could have minimized that aspect, keeping the theme of female empowerment without dwelling on the cult-like aspects of the characters' belief in a "Lady of Chains."  The movie could have also minimized the crying jags at the end of this book, and instead cut to the chase, fast forwarding to the protagonist's confrontation with her father.  This father, for that matter, could have been a more fully realized character, instead of a cartoonish villain plagued by a sense of loss that's never really explored.

Now of course I haven't seen the movie, but it might have done some or all of the above.  Given its 60% score on Rotten Tomatoes I'm sure it fumbled some of the plot elements described above, but it might be interesting to compare the movie and the book.

The novel itself?  Eh, it's OK.  I've read much worse.  It's no Gone with the Wind or anything, but it's OK.

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"The Last Duel" by Eric Jager (2004)

"The standard field for judicial combat was a flat rectangular space measuring forty by eighty paces, or about one hundred by two hundred feet."

Eric Jager is a Professor of English at the University of California.  To date he's written four books on medieval topics.

The (far more interesting) 2021 film by Ridley Scott notwithstanding, The Last Duel is a straightforward work of history detailing a dispute between two nobles in late 14th century France over the supposed rape of one noble's wife.

If you're arriving at this book from the movie it will probably bore you to tears.  Where the movie crackles with dramatic tension the book is a much slower, much more chronological exploration of the same event.  And even though the nature of the rape itself is called into question by various historical sources, none of the other events described in this book are matters of conjecture, to the point where this book seems like a foregone conclusion from the outset.

I can only blame the marketing department.  Medieval history is one of my favorite subjects, but having been led to this book by the movie, I was sorely disappointed by its contents.  Even lacking any dramatic impact, I think the book could have been a more enlightening (if you'll forgive the pun) venue for a wider understanding of the time period in which it's set.  As it is it's fairly pedestrian, and it lacks the wider, more scholarly viewpoint of other works that delve into the same time period.

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Three Books by Two Bass Players