Shelf Monkey

Critical Monkey entry #1 - Twilight, or, Bella feels chagrined and Edward chuckles.

2009-07-04T08:52:00.023-04:00

For my first entry in my personal Critical Monkey list, I thought I'd go big or go home, and tackle a publishing juggernaut of almost unprecedented size:

Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer.

Why I might hate it: Let's face it, a near-forty-year-old man is not the target demographic for a tale of high school vampire romance. Also, Stephen King hated it, and while his output may have waned over the years, the man's a born storyteller with a true grasp of the craft of writing, and I'm inclined to follow his lead on this one. And the absolute saturation of the media with any and all things Twilight-related sets my teeth on edge. I mean, c'mon, she's written five books, and she accounted for one in seven books purchased in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2009. No one is that good, and my experience is that the more overblown sales of a book are, the worse the book is (see also: Tuesdays with Morrie) (Better yet, don't).

Why I might like it: The movie version, although I went in preparing to hate it, was actually not that bad. Yes, the special effects outright sucked, and the paleface makeup was laughable, but it was a movie of surprising quiet moments and effective atmosphere. Not a great flick, and nowhere near as good as the Harry Potter films (to make an analogy to another pop-culture landmark), but I was entertained despite myself. And despite my recent rant, I'm really not against re-examining the vampire mythos. I never agreed with the classic "can't be seen in a mirror" bit, and nothing is above a little tweaking now and then.

The book itself: Yee-ouch.

I went in with an open mind, I really did. The movie, as I said, had its moments, and gave me hope that perhaps, just perhaps, there was a reason for the hype beyond, well, hype. But what the movie proved is that gorgeous scenery and charismatic actors can go a long way toward rectifying piss-poor dialogue and repetitive, mundane writing. And what Twilight (the book) proves is that success is not dependent on talent. Because quite frankly, Twilight is one of the most embarrassingly amateurish novels down the pike in a good long while. And while I am aware that this may come across like the crank who can't get into today's music and pines for the olden days, I cannot fathom Meyer's success.

The plot, for those seven people out of the loop, follows Bella Swan, a seventeen-year-old girl come to live with her father in Washington State. At her high school, she becomes instantly attracted to Edward Cullen, a mysterious teen described thusly:

His skin...literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut...A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.

And it goes on like this, again and again, pages of purple. I could excuse a little over-enthusiasm on the part of Bella, but fully half the novel is given over to how perfect Edward looks. Which helps him, I guess, as his actual personality is that of a total ass. He makes a big show of how badly he feels for Bella, as she's in complete danger whenever he's around, but he shows no restraint and therefore dooms her anyway to satisfy his own emotional needs. Actually, he is a monster.

But then again, Bella is a conceited shrew, so that axiom that there is someone for everyone is likely true. Certainly no one else could stand to be around either of them for ten minutes. Bella is one of the least likable characters I can recall, a whiny neurotic who complains endlessly about how no one understands her, likes her, or appreciates her, yet is surround be people who understand, like, and appreciate her. I understand it's written from her point of view, but she comes across like a complete narcissist. And there's nothing that says your central character must be likable, but somehow I'm not getting the vibe that we're supposed to dislike her.

But luckily for the plot, there's far more to Edward than being a self-centered dimwit. It turns out he's also a 100+-year-old vampire! (Sure, vampires that glow rather than die in sunlight, but, yeah, vampires, sure, let's go with that.) Which strikes one as odd because, for a centenarian, he provides little proof that he's learned anything over the years. Edward may look 18, but he should behave slightly older, I think. When you compare him to, say, Claudia, the 60-year-old vampire in a six-year old body in Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire, Meyer's complete and utter lack of insight into the effects of age and experience on the psyche become even clearer. Edward does not come across as old, or even learned, but rather like a goth emo kid affecting a quasi-arch manner of affected speech that would come across as painfully annoying if it weren't so devastatingly dull.

I won't get into the actually mechanics of vampirism here, as Meyer is well within her rights to alter such mythological creatures to her whim. It would not matter a whit if her tale was in any way interesting. But it's not. It's boring. Utterly mundane and uninspired. And much of that can be ascribed to the fact that absolutely nothing remotely of any interest happens beyond two unlikable people mooning endlessly over each other. If there is a junior Harlequin Romance imprint, consider this a perfect example of the form.

Meyer does her plot no favours with the sort of amateurish hack writing that should make a tenth grader's creative writing homework, not a published author from an established press. Meyer never met an adverb she didn't use, and as every character angrily, hungrily, happily, sarcastically, or leeringly haunts the pages, Meyer's lack of actual talent becomes quite clear. Hardly a page flips by without Edward chuckling, or Bella feeling chagrined. I don't often recommend an author consult a thesaurus, but the advice in this instance is apt.

"But wait a moment, Corey!" I hear you ask (I have very good hearing). "This is a book for young adults! Don't overthink this, it's written more simply for a reason!" Point taken. There is an established (although arguable) tradition of writing with a slightly broader style for novels aimed at the younger set. But I put it to you that there is a wide difference between simple and simple-minded. And after having recently read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, and Arthur Slade's The Hunchback Assignments, I am more convinced than ever that writing for young adults does not mean writing stupid. And while some have paralleled the ascension of Twilight and its sequels with the Harry Potter phenomenon, it only goes so far as sales, as Potter, while not art, was an entertaining and often gloriously exciting series.

Twilight is a spectacular waste, insipid and vapid. It is insultingly poor, and how anything this incompetent was allowed to pass through an editor's hands and into the public sphere is distressing.

Verdict: MONKEY WOULD DIG A DEEP DARK HOLE AND BURY THIS THING IF HE COULD

On the next Critical Monkey: Sure, taking on Twilight is like boxing a mountain (doesn't really get you anything), but for my next exercise in self-punishment, I take on the full roundhouse kick of Chuck Norris and The Justice Riders. But not right away, I need to recuperate.

Critical Monkey begins! Earth quivers in anticipation!

2009-07-02T08:09:00.009-04:00

Ah, July 2. The Canadian holiday is over, the American one is fast approaching...let's read some soul-churning, stomach-clenching books!

As I descibed in a previous post, the point of Critical Monkey is very simple: take a book (or author) you've always avoided, for whatever reason, and force yourself to read it. Then, post a review, link to it in my comments section, and once a month I'll post an update for all participants. We're going for seven reviews over the course of a year, to correspond to the seven stages of grief:

Shock (one review)
Denial (two reviews)
Bargaining (three reviews)
Guilt (four reviews)
Anger (five reviews)
Depression (six reviews)
Acceptance (seven reviews)

At the end of the year (July 2010), survivors who complete the full gamut will have a chance at fabulous (read: cheap) prizes. I'll figure that out as we go along, but there will be a signed copy of Shelf Monkey, because let's face it, that's all I really have to offer.

So let's get on it, people! I'm already prepping my review of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. I finished it on June 30, and it took me most of Canada Day to untangle myself from the fetal position where I lay for upward of twenty hours, moaning softly to myself.

Will the review be positive? Stay tuned, interested readers.

Bulwer-Lytton winners announced!

2009-06-30T13:07:00.003-04:00

Just too much of a joy for me to contain: this year's winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced.

For those unaware, Bulwer-Lytton (named after Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, the originator of the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night") is an annual contest to see who can come up with the worst opening sentence to the worst novel never written.

This year's winner, from the mind of David McKenzie, "a 55-year-old Quality Systems consultant and writer from Federal Way, Washington":

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

More winners and runner-ups can be found here.

Monkey droppings - Far North by Marcel Theroux

2009-06-28T19:00:00.007-04:00

On today's menu: the apocalypse, with a side of artistic license.

Far North
by Marcel Theroux
HarperCollins Canada, 296 pages, $29.99

Science fiction, as a genre, has always suffered from a decided lack of scholarly respect. Yet while ‘literary’ authors may be wary to dive into the space battles of tomorrow, the same cannot be said of one of science-fiction’s subsets, the post-apocalyptic novel, which regularly attracts the heavyweights with its promise of heady themes and bleak world outlook.

Writers as lauded as Margaret Atwood, P.D. James, and J.G. Ballard have routinely explored the world that lies just a plague, oil shortage, or nuclear blast away from ours. Cormac McCarthy recently won the Pulitzer Prize (and, more profitably, an Oprah endorsement) for The Road, a gruesomely bleak foray into the hell-blasted landscape of our future.

Marcel Theroux would appear to have the chops to successfully take on the subject. A British author and broadcaster, and son of celebrated American author Paul Theroux, he has carved a career for himself with well-received novels such as The Paperchase, earning himself the 2002 Somerset Maugham Award in the process.

Far North is Theroux’s attempt to present the Earth after society has all but given up the ghost for reasons left tantalizingly unclear, although there is talk of blighted areas and poisonous animals. His narrator is Makepeace, possibly the last person living in a settlement in northern Russia.

Humanity has reverted to a nomadic lifestyle where suspicion of one’s fellow man is the wisest choice of action. Makepeace understands that while there is nothing so friendly as a well-fed man, “take away his food, make his future uncertain, let him know that no one’s watching him, and he won’t just kill you, he’ll come up with a hundred and one reasons why you deserve it.” After Makepeace witnesses the sheer impossibility of a plane flying overhead, the notion that there may be a world still evolving takes hold. Makepeace sets out to discover the plane’s origins, and quickly discovers a world “fading to nothing, like the words of a vital message some fool had laundered with his pants and brought out all garbled.”

Theroux guides Makepeace’s journey with a steady hand, slowly revealing both the state of humankind and Makepeace’s surprising nature with a deliberate, unforced caution. While lacking the stark, hypnotic beauty of McCarthy’s prose, Theroux is an able craftsman, and Far North engages in its depiction of mankind’s survivors kept cowed and under thumb through “the patterns of older gods…terror and mercy, like twin shadows of an old totem that gets fed with blood.”

However, a marked lack of urgency drastically hampers Theroux’s imaginings. Makepeace’s world may be winding down, but this ramping inertia unfortunately transfers to the story, resulting in scenes that feel stale where they should excite.

There are some late-act developments that beggar belief, including a McGuffin of a mysterious elixir and the reemergence of a person important to Makepeace’s past. The last fifty pages pile on the coincidences, as if Theroux did not trust his world to be fascinating on its own.

There is enough good (and some excellent) in Far North for it to warrant a look, especially for aficionados of ‘end-of-the-planet’ scenarios. Yet for a novel encompassing the climax of mankind, Far North is quietly anti-climactic.

Originally published (expurgated version) in the Winnipeg Free Press, June 28, 2009.

A literary contest for all us haters

2009-06-20T19:12:00.009-04:00

Hey, who wants a challenge?

As some readers of this blog may know, I participate in Yellowknife blogger extraordinaire John Mutford's Canadian Book Challenge, wherein competitors blog reviews of Canadian novels over the course of a year. John asks for thirteen entries (one for each province, natch), and those who complete the challenge are eligible for a variety of prizes, mostly symbolic and of very little cash value. It's a tonne of fun for readers, and also a way to promote Canadian efforts.

Well, at the risk of being deemed a copycat (or copymonkey, as the case may be), I have decided to run a similar contest open to anyone who happens across this blog. But only similar in construction, but rather different in content.

Here's my bit...

I, as I assume most people who read this blog are, am somewhat of a book snob. I don't pretend to read only the 'classics' of the Western canon, but there's a lot of crap out there I go out of my way to avoid. See? Right there, snobbery. Bad monkey! Bad!

So I have decided to launch Critical Monkey, a little contest designed to make us confront our fears, and read those we otherwise actively ignore. These do not have to be authors who are typically derided in literary publications; choices can be books you simply have never wanted to read for whatever reason. Never read a Charles Dickens, but always felt bad? Now's your chance to try him on for size. Have you avoided Margaret Laurence because a lousy teacher force-fed you The Stone Angel and squeezed everything good out of it (guilty!)? Time to make her acquaintance. Anything you like. Even Harlequin romance novels. I double-dog dare you to try.

Why am I proposing this? Two reasons. One, I'm kind of a masochist, and feel I should be punished. Two, I do feel the slightest bit bad about judging an author without having actually read anything by said author. How does that make me any different than religious fanatics who burn copies of Harry Potter? I'll be damned if I'm going to get lumped in with that lot.

So, let's be clear; I am asking for blogged reviews of any novel you've avoided in the past. I'd like real reviews, not Amazon.com-type two-line hate rants. If you despise what you've read, then good, but let's get a sense as to why. And if you turn out to actually like it? Well, I guess you've grown up a bit now, haven't you?

And I am not suggesting you go out and buy novels you suspect you will hate. Please, use your libraries and second-hand stores. Go easy on yourself. I know from experience, paying full price for a hardback James Patterson can take years off your life.

Now, while John opted for an obvious yet daunting thirteen entries, I am choosing to go easier on you. God knows, you may read some awful stuff, so let's not punish you into a coma. Instead, I chose a nice lesser number of seven, graded by the seven stages of grief:

Shock (one review)
Denial (two reviews)
Bargaining (three reviews)
Guilt (four reviews)
Anger (five reviews)
Depression (six reviews)
Acceptance (seven reviews)

By the end, those who have finished this grueling course will find themselves spiritually cleaner, and emotionally more well-rounded. And you'll be able to proudly hold your head up and say, "Yes, I have read Dan Brown, thank you, and this is why he sucks!"

Prizes? I am unsure as of this writing as to what the prizes will be. I'd like to have a number of prizes to send to deserving winners, but I'll let you know as we go. There will be a personally autographed copy of Shelf Monkey for one lucky winner (and I, while a participant, am exempted from receiving a prize), and hopefully more as we go on. I get a lot of free copies of books, so I'll start hoarding, depending on how successful this is. I'm betting on "not very," but I'd like to be surprised.

So, if you want to play, the start date is July 2, 2009 (give me the holiday first), and will end on July 2, 2010. Place links to your reviews in the comments section of this blog. I will update once a month with everyone's progress.

And put the logo on your sites. Tell your friends. Misery loves company, and all that.

So, c'mon! Who's with me? Let's put our money where our mouths are! Grab the logo at the beginning of this post, and tell all your friends. Let's push our personal boundaries! Let's boldly go etc.

I've got my first pick all lined up: coming in the month of July, expect a review of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, a novel surely on the front lines of the I-love-it/I-despise-it battleground.

Will a thirty-something Canadian man find value in a book aimed at pre-teen girls?

Stay tuned...

In today's little tidbit of absolutely appalling news, or, people don't get that Shelf Monkey wasn't meant to be taken seriously.....

2009-06-15T19:25:00.005-04:00

This may be the most disgusting thing I've heard all week, but then again, it's only Monday, and I'm sure another all-out assault on common sense by Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin/Sean Hannity/take-your-pick-they're-all-the-same is just around the corner.

From The Guardian:

In a scene which appears to have been lifted straight out of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a group of Christians in Wisconsin has launched a legal claim demanding the right to publicly burn a copy of a book for teenagers which they deem to be "explicitly vulgar, racial [sic], and anti-Christian".

The offending book is Francesca Lia Block's Baby Be-Bop, a young adult novel in which a boy, struggling with his homosexuality, is beaten up by a homophobic gang. The complaint, which according to the American Library Association also demands $120,000 (£72,000) in compensatory damages for being exposed to the book in a display at West Bend Community Memorial Library, was lodged by four men from the Christian Civil Liberties Union.
...
The legal challenge follows a lengthy campaign by some West Bend residents to restrict access to teenage books they deemed sexually explicit from library shelves, which was eventually thrown out at the start of June."

I can't even begin to describe how disgusted I am at this.

Thanks to Bookninja for the info.

This week in disturbing imagery

2009-06-14T07:20:00.004-04:00

I present, the heroic Redekop:

and the deeply unsettling Redekop.

*shudder*

*NOTE: I'll have better posts soon, I promise. I'm having a bit of down time at the moment.

Wanna be an official Shelf Monkey? Well, now you can!

2009-06-05T15:31:00.007-04:00

Hey, want to get free books? Free good books? Well, have I got a deal for you!!!

My publisher ECW Press is pleased to announce the unveiling of their new reader review program, Be a Shelf Monkey (hmm...wonder where they came up with that name). Simply sign up on the website, and you'll be able to receive review copies of new releases!!!!!!

The more books you review (on blogs, 'zines, social networking sites, etc), the more likely you'll receive more!!! Just sign up from the website and click on the Be a Shelf Monkey link in the right-hand corner, and you're on your way to fabulous literary treasures!!!!

It's open to both Canada and U.S. residents 16 years of age and older (although certain restrictions may limit the books that can go to the U.S.)!! Sign up, and you'll receive updates on new books headed to the stores. If you want one, let them know!!!!!

Yes, it's just that simple!!!

Free books, and the right to call yourself an official shelf monkey? That's what I call a deal!!!!!

NOTE: Corey's over-enthusiasm and rampant overuse of exclamation points is the result of a mild overdose of muscle relaxants. He'd apologize, but he's busy singing Liza Minnelli show tunes to his cat at the moment.

Mysterious artwork enlivens humdrum task

2009-06-04T20:25:00.008-04:00

As a librarian, one of the duties is to ensure that all books in the library are being used and, if said books are not used often enough within a certain period of time, to weed unused books from the shelves.

Sad, but true.

Yet today, as summer interns began the arduous task of examining every single book in our fiction area, a small piece of hardened parchment fell out of the pages.

And another.

Over thirty so far, and we haven't even finished the As.

Who did this? Who depositied tiny pieces of watercolour artwork randomly into the novels of the Fredericton Public Library? No one knows, but it does add a touch of utter wonderment to the day.

I can hardly wait until the Bs.

Anyone have any idea what this is all about? I'd like to thank the artist if I could. Thank you, mysterious painter, I and my colleagues thank you for your gifts.

Monkey droppings - The Strain: Were vampires ever scary?

2009-05-24T13:21:00.035-04:00

Curl up, boys and girls, and I'll tell you a story of the long ago time.

It was an innocent time. A time when being a monster meant something. A time when a monster could actually scare someone. A time when the possibility of getting the blood sucked from your body was greeted with something akin to revulsion or, even better, horror. A time when vampires ruled the night, and you were forever running home after the sun set for fear of running into a thirsty bloodsucker.

Alas, young'uns, but those times are pretty much gone the way of the dodo and compassionate conservatism. People tend to try and humanize that which they cannot understand, and that's a strong reason as to why the historically scary monster has almost gone the way of the dodo. Even the most famous vampire of them all, the venerable Dracula, had a sense of style about him. He went about his nightly plasma-feasts in a stylish cape, and attended fancy cocktail parties and made chit-chat with comely lasses. But at least Dracula wasn't overly conflicted about his actions. He didn't moan and groan about his natural tendencies. He seduced, then he drained. And if a person was unlucky enough to survive the encounter, that person stood a very good chance of becoming a creature of the night, feeding on the blood of the living, terrified of sunlight and garlic.

Jump ahead a century or so, and the undead nightstalkers have been transformed from black-hearted demons into creatures somehow far worse; emo kids. Blame novelist and recent born-again Anne Rice for this, who began the whole transmogrification of the vampire from beast of legend to mopey teenager with her Lestat series of vampire novels. Yes, Interview with the Vampire was a gothic feast of suppressed longings with hearty dollops of bloodlust, and more importantly, a terrific novel. But as the series went on, and on, and on, it played up the romance and forgot about the horror, with increasingly silly consequences (Memnoch the Devil, anyone?).

Now (and you must have seen this coming at this point in the post), Stephanie Meyer and her Twilight vamps has taken whatever horror was left at the bottom of a nearly empty barrel and chucked it, turning the once-proud vampyre into depressed teenagers who, gosh dang it, just want to fit in and belong. Meyer's creations are not vampires, they're posers (Vamposers? If that term takes off, I want a credit.). They aren't scary, they're soulful. They're not afraid of the sun, they're just a little on the pale side. And they sparkle, like the glittery plasticized My Pretty Ponys that fill the toy chests of young girls. And that's where the vampire is now at: it's an object of adoration for pubescent girls, looking broodily out from the pages of Twilight and Vampire Academy and The House of Night. I'm all for thinking outside the box and trying new things, but the 21st century vampire is a neutered thing, sad and alone, holding his fangs in the palm of his hand and wondering how the hell things got to be so bad.

There have been some attempts made to bring the nastier vampires back out into the sunlight, so to speak; the movie 30 Days of Night - based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles, itself a case of steadily diminishing returns as the series sputters on - for all its faults, certainly tried to make the vampire a creature to be feared rather than pitied. You didn't leave the theatre wishing "If only I could be one of them!" It had copious amounts of gore, moments of real horror, and a lead vampire of utter malevolence. But for the most part, vampires are yesterday's news. Even the movie I am Legend, based on Richard Matheson's stunning novel of the last survivor of a vampire plague, took the insulting step of removing the concept altogether, replacing the sorry vamp with an overly-CGI'd monster that was far more amusing than horrifying.

Is there any hope on the horizon for an undead resurgence? As it stands, even zombies are more popular, and you can't say that they suffer from a surfeit of personality. They're even encroaching on Dracula's Elizabethan upbringings, which must rankle him something fierce.

Well, new steps have been taken to reignite the vampire's career as chief among the fiends. And from the outside, their would appear reason to hope for a triumphant return. Renown Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro is a cinematic fabulist with a dark bent to his more personal efforts. He has proven himself as an able creator of big-budget fantasy/action epics (Hellboy), as well as a vastly talented director of personal visions that effectively mingle the darkest of nightmares with atmosphere and verve (the wonderful Academy Award-winning Pan's Labyrinth, the spectacularly weird Cronos). He's even personally handled the vampire with his Blade II, a sequel which added a new bent to the mythos, although it was far more of an action film than a horror. But look at that punim! You tell me that's not a freaky-deaky monster.

Joining del Toro is Chuck Hogan, a Hammett Award-winning author for his novel Prince of Thieves. Together, the duo have planned a trilogy of vampire horror, a vast epic of horror and dread.

At least, that's the hope. And now arrives The Strain, ground zero for "a horrifying battle between man and vampire that threatens all humanity," if the back cover of the ARC is to be believed. And when you come across such passages as this, a description of one character's experiences at a Nazi concentration camp -

The searing pit. The hungry flames twisting, the greasy smoke lifting away in a kind of hypnotic ballet. And the rhythm of the execution line - gunshot, gun carriage clicking, the soft bouncing tinkle of the bullet casing against the dirt ground - lulled him into a death trance. Staring down into the flames, stripping away flesh and bone, unveiling man for what he is: mere matter. Disposable, crushable, flammable sacks of meat - easily revertible to carbon.

- you get a sense of real old-school horror making its resurgence.

And how I would dearly love for that to be so. The zombie novels of David Wellington and Brian Keene are all well and good and bloody disgusting, but I miss the concept of a monster with a personality. But while The Strain is as gruesome and dripping red as one could hope, its overall impact as a horror novel is decidedly light. There is a definite feeling that more del Toro and less Hogan could have improved things tremendously.

To its credit, Strain begins with a terrifically tense first act; a plane lands at JFK Airport in New York, and immediately afterward goes completely silent. After calling in the experts, including Ephraim Goodweather of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the plane is cracked open to reveal a surplus of dead bodies with no discernible method of death. Quarantining the lot, Goodweather takes command of the examination of the bodies, which soon begin to display strange tendencies not usually associated with the recently deceased.

The first half of The Strain is where the mix of classic horror and 21st technology works the best. There is real menace in the early going-ons, and the authors expertly raise the tension through the addition of flashbacks to the life of Abraham Setrakian, the novel's Van Helsing, who became obsessed with tracking down the monsters after an encounter at the Treblinka extermination camp in World War II. There are also glimpses of an overarching narrative that will no doubt be fleshed out in the second and third novels, a hint that there is far more to the vampire empire than the almost mindless creatures that begin decimating the neighbourhoods of Manhattan.

There is also a concerted effort to explain the biological aspects of vampirism; or at least, these vampires. This comes as no surprise considering del Toro's past; Blade II has an absolutely lovely autopsy scene of a vampire hybrid, complete with blood, guts, a heart sheathed in bone, and an autonomic nervous system that won't be content to shut down. This can lead to slightly clunky exposition, as the characters are prone to spouting their explanations in medical techspeak; "It engorges as they feed. The flesh flushes almost crimson, their eyeballs, their cuticles. This stinger, as you call it, is in fact a reconversion, a repurposing of the old pharynx, trachea, and lung sacs with the newly developed flesh...The vampire can expel this organ from its own chest cavity, shooting out well over four and up to even six feet." But it's good that someone has at last tried to present the vampire as a functioning biological being rather than a supernatural force. These vampires do deviate from the norm somewhat, what with their extensible tongues that can infect you from across a room in place of the more classic fangs of yore, but at least they're true monsters.

Where Strain disappoints is in the creation of terror. Perhaps it's del Toro's cinematic background, but the narrative is shallow, with very little in the way of deeper characterization. Goodweather is a bland lead, with the stereotypical ex-wife and son that he absolutely must save. Setrakian is more interesting, but as a vampire hunter, he's had the more interesting life. But his main purpose appears to be to fill in the gaps of the narrative. Other characters flit in and out, but make little impact.

And the vampires themselves? At the present, they're little better than zombies. Hopefully in the sequels they take on some life, as it were, but in The Strain they serve only as mindless obstacles to overcome.

Which is where the novel truly disappoints. The lack of strong characters, and the focus on action and shocks, would work far better on the screen. As a novel, terror can only truly be achieved if the reader has an empathy for the characters, a vested interest in their survival. If you take Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot as a template (and fair or not, it is still the gold medal standard of modern vampire fiction), The Strain comes up far short. King provided characters of depth, which made their eventual outcomes more emotionally wrenching. del Toro and Hogan try, but end up giving us ciphers, good for moving the plot along, but unable to create interest beyond the superficial "wait until you see what happens next" variety.

There is a lot of pleasure to be had with The Strain, and despite del Toro's protestations that a movie will never happen, the almost-inevitable adaptation should be great fun. And perhaps as a trilogy, the novel's flaws will diminish as being the product of first act jitters. But there's no denying that The Strain is somewhat limp, a fast-paced actioneer that sacrifices emotional terror for gross-out gore. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying.

MONKEY LIKES, BUT ONLY JUST

Star Wars!, or, how Jedi mind tricks can enliven a humdrum day

2009-05-18T09:56:00.027-04:00

Things to do on a rainy day presents:

Star Wars Punch-Out Action Figure Fun Day!
A dramatization in pictures and words.

Boy, what a dull day! Nothing to do, nothing to do. And sheesh, I don't want to actually do anything productive, like write or something.

Ooh, look, kids! A Star Wars Punch Out and Play! action fun-time extravaganza arrived in the mail! Just in the nick of time! I was perilously close to being bored! Time to get started!

Whew! That was a long twelve minutes! But well worth the effort! Look how cool they are!

AWESOME! Take that, Threepio, you uptight mass of useless circuits!

But whatever will I do with them besides re-enact my favourite scenes both real and imagined? I'll have to weigh the pros and cons, asking the good and evil sides of my brain to help me navigate this delicate conundrum.

I know! I'll get a shelf monk to join my shelf monkeys! It fits with the theme, and protects them from the dark side of dust and mildew.

I'll use the powers of both the light and dark sides of the force to help me with my culinary skills!

Don't be afraid to use a store-bought BBQ sauce, my young apprentice!

Feel the force of the steak's natural juices flowing through you!

I'll use them to keep my cat mildly entertained for three seconds!

Run, Luke, run! The rancor is behind you!

LOLCats, eat your cutie muffin hearts out!

They can serve as handy television decorations, letting your friends know just how important the Star Wars universe is to you every time you invite them over for a Futurama sleepover.

They can add spice to even the most humdrum of road trips. Even my '94 Saturn can be a Millennium Falcon, thanks to Star Wars Punch Out and Play!

Who knew Yoda was such an effective gardener?

Boy, that sure was a fun day! Good-bye, Star Wars friends! I hope to play with you again real soon!

Wait, I live here.

Monkey droppings - short people ain't got no reason to terrorize us

2009-05-18T06:46:00.006-04:00

In today's exciting episode, a master lets down his audience.

Pygmy
by Chuck Palahniuk

Agent 67 has a slight problem. The terrorist operative, dubbed ‘Pygmy’ by his ignorant classmates, has infiltrated an American high school as a foreign exchange student from an anonymous totalitarian country. He and his fellow operatives plan to unleash “Operation Havoc” on an unsuspecting populace, but the perils of America’s consumerist society present unexpected challenges.

Chuck Palahniuk also has a problem. The American author rose to substantial prominence with his brilliant debut novel Fight Club, a blistering attack on American culture that read as part manifesto, part roaring good read.

Since then, Palahniuk has carved himself a comfy niche as an edgy cult satirist who never shies away from the profane, the scatological, and the painfully biological. It says much about Palahniuk’s canon of work that his last novel, Snuff, concerning a porn star trying to break the world record for the most sexual partners in one day, was a relatively tame affair for him.

Palahniuk’s problem is; where can he go from here? Efforts such as Diary and Lullaby revealed an author unafraid to travel new avenues, and his often-astonishing novel Rant gave us a glimpse of a true heir to the late J.G. Ballard, but other works such as Snuff and Haunted played to Palahniuk's worst tendencies, and found the well of pop culture topics running precariously dry.

Enter Pygmy, Palahniuk’s tenth novel, another assault on the western way of life that is guaranteed to offend almost everyone in some way, and a large step backward for the novelist. Palahniuk assails themes such as consumerism, sexuality, religion, peer pressure, school shootings, xenophobia, conformity, and individuality with his usual abandon, but Pygmy finds an author on a downward curve, content to use novelty and shock in place of content and substance.

Presented as ongoing communiqués from agent 67 to his masters, Pygmy is written in a pidgin English dialect that is initially off-putting. The lack of definitive articles and adjectives leads to a novel written solely in sentences such as “For official record, during American winter youth attend compulsive levels of teaching; during summer, American youth must attend shopping mall.”

The concept is not entirely successful (why would Pygmy write reports in English rather than his native tongue?), but it can lead to some offbeat and memorable descriptions of western culture. When Pygmy visits a Wal-Mart, the store presents itself as “squirrel maze of retail distribution centre puzzle of competition warring objects, all improved, all package within fire colors…All object printed: Love me. Look me. Million speaking objects, begging. Crown American consumer with power of king, to rescue choose and give home or abandon here for expire.”

It’s an interesting choice to be sure, and one that is sure to garner praise in some quarters for its ‘bravery’. However, the structure proves too limiting, and seldom does the conceit rise above anything other than a gimmick.

In the past, Palahniuk has demonstrated an ability to leaven the more outrageous aspects of his novels with a deep understanding of character. Pygmy’s construction discourages such empathy, giving us a cipher for a protagonist and a series of increasingly bizarre proceedings that jolt and titillate, but never impress as being anything more than snapshots.

By Pygmy’s end, Palahniuk’s style has drained the story of all possible tension, resulting in a book that reads as unfocused rage at anything and everything. What should have been invigorating, as in Fight Club and Choke, is instead airless and empty, a shell of a good idea.

It’s far too early to declare an end to Palahniuk’s reign as the preeminent alternative author in America, but Pygmy finds the author running on empty. Pygmy has big themes and an enormous potential for effective satire, but in the end, Pygmy is, well, small.

MONKEY IS DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED

Originally published (heavily expurgated version) in the Winnipeg Free Press, April 17, 2009.

Monkey Droppings - mythical monsters get the celluloid treatment

2009-05-15T18:54:00.006-04:00

Just a quick little bite together, but more tomorrow.

Through the grapevine that is the Internet I have stumbled across the following news:

They are actually going to attempt a movie version of Steven Sherrill's brilliantly absurd The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break.

Now, I won't comment on the fact that the director is best known for Kung Fu Panda, mostly because I have not seen it. And I am happy for Mr. Sherrill, as this means more people will take to his wonderful work.

But the novel is one of those heart-breakingly tiny pieces, full of tiny moments and perfect stillness. It is a novel of grace and intelligence. Yes, it is about a Minotaur who works as a short-order cook, but it is as finely-tuned a piece of literature as anything by Jose Saramago or Mordecai Richler. It does not scream out, "Movie!"

Please don't let them screw this up.

Bill C-61 - the basics

2009-05-07T10:12:00.003-04:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not exactly political by nature. And I do try not get up on my high horse, although I'm hardly successful.

But Bill C-61, the Canadian government's legislation concerning copyright in the digital age, is a joke, a monstrosity that turns its back on the last twenty years of digital advancement in favour of out-dated ideas and the interests of a few multi-nationals who fear loss of revenue.

It's a complicated issue, to be sure, but this short documentary (narrated by Cory Doctorow) lays out the issues quite clearly, and lets you know how devestating this bill could be to artists, educators, librarians, and the general public, to say nothing of artistic freedom or the right to actually own what you;ve purchased.

Please, give it a watch. And do whatever you can to keep such legislation down. It's your freedom too.

Monkey Droppings - Overqualifed by Joey Comeau

2009-04-24T16:57:00.016-04:00

In today's exciting episode of the barely-coherent ramblings of a primate with delusions of being human (or at least, a critic), we present:

Overqualified
by Joey Comeau

Dear RAND,

I am writing to apply for a job with the RAND Corporation. The first time I heard of the RAND Corporation was on The X-Files, the conspiracy-theory-heavy television show I was obsessed with in high school. I watched every episode. That was the beginning of my paranoia, my belief that there are huge corporations behind everything. That everything that happens in the world happens for a reason.

If there exists a more tedious, exhausting, frustrating experience than the writing and rewriting of your resume and cover letter, I haven't found it. Hours of your life can be spent poring over every little detail, trying to tickle out every nugget of experience from your meagre employment background, not to mention editing for spelling and grammar. You find yourself re-evaluating the entirety of your life over a few pages of bullet points and half-hearted exaggerations. It's the creation of mountains from something less than molehills, and there is not one sane person alive who enjoys the experience. And reading them? Feh. Almost as bad.

So let's give Canadian author Joey Comeau this much credit: he's made the writing of cover letters seem like a pleasure. More importantly, he's made the reading of said letters a joy. And in the process, he's provided an epistolary novel that surprises, moves, and makes one chuckle incessantly on the plane ride home. OK, that's a personal experience, but you get the gist: Overqualified is one gem of a read.

Overqualified is, quite simply, a series of letters, but Overqualified is not the usual epistolary novel where the writer pens notes to A or B, and possibly A or B responds. Overqualified follows the format of cover letters written to companies such as Apple, Bell, and Nintendo. Rather than simply listing his qualifications with the use of artful euphemisms, the job-seeker Joey Comeau decides to use the letters a launching point for family anecdotes, bizarre jokes, and a very real sense of personal tragedy. When Comeau, applying to be a bicycle tour guide, outlines a sample tour with the narration, "Coming up on the left, we find the bakery where my very first girlfriend works...When we were fourteen, we both got really drunk and had sex," there are true inklings that not all is well in Comeau's world.

Comeau, best known for his surreal web comic a softer world, crafts his letters into an nonlinear diary of sorts, and an abiding sense of melancholy begins to creep into the missives. His letters run the gamut of topics, from personal reminiscences to dreams to sexual fantasies to musings on the state of humanity. There is no plot per se, but as readers make their way through Comeau's slim-but-hardly-slight volume, an unflinching honesty concerning the state of the narrator's world comes into focus. Comeau the author may be just fine (who's to say?), but Comeau the job hunter is in serious disarray.

Overqualified is a hard novel to categorize; is it a memoir? An exercise in form and style? A joke? Probably all, and then some. What I can definitely categorize Overqualified as is a book of humour laced with despair, truly original, and a pleasure to read.

MONKEY LIKES A LOT AND THEN SOME

Finally, I can defeat Kirk in battle.

2009-04-20T07:38:00.004-04:00

I always wanted to be a Romulan. I dig the big-shouldered look.

However, the Vulcans do have their charms.

And who didn't have a thing for Uhura? No one, that's who.

Monkey Droppings - Trauma by Patrick McGrath

2009-04-17T10:17:00.012-04:00

On today's menu: loss and desire, with a side of psychoanalysis.

Trauma
by Patrick McGrath

I stood on the sidewalk and stared at it, and it stared back at me, sagging, unsafe, condemned, and the blocked windows were like dead eyes, blank and opaque but pregnant, somehow, with secrets, like a trauma built of wood.

There are two things you can almost always expect when you crack open a Patrick McGrath:

you are going to discover an intricate, highly literate examination of the darker impulses of humankind, and
you are going to get depressed.

I mean 'depressed' in the best sense of the word. McGrath invariably conjures up worlds of such bleakness and despair that the reader inevitably feels the weight of the world crushing down on him. And any humour McGrath see fit to leaven the proceedings is wit of the darkest sort. Witness The Grotesque, his opulently cynical debut novel (seriously, read it and prepare to gasp), with its Mervyn Peake-esque characters such as Fledge the butler and Sir Fleckley Tome the barrister. And with titles such as Dr. Haggard's Disease, Spider, Asylum, and Port Mungo, the british novelist has deservedly earned a reputation as a true gothic stylist who delves into the shadowy worlds of mental illness, illicit affairs, and barely-suppresed sexual urges with flair and decidedly marvelous polish.

Trauma, McGrath's seventh novel, is arguably his most 'mainstream' work to date, being set in 1970's New York and populated by people far more identifiable and easily empathized with than his earlier works. Absent are the gloriously strange names and eerie settings (until the final third, that is). This is not to say that Trauma is a leave of form; still present are the sexual longings, the alienating repression, and the bleak despair that marks his best works. But perhaps as a result of it's more commonplace setting, Trauma feels like lesser McGrath, an examination of people's hidden scars that never reaches the lunatic heights of his best works.

McGrath's protagonist is Charlie Weir, a psychiatrist as inwardly conflicted as the patients he counsels. His marriage broke up years earlier due to a miscalculation on his part, and now he is alone and lonely. A new relationship with a mysterious but fragile woman promises to heal him, but his ongoing infatuation with his ex-wife, and the emotional web that entangles him with his family's past, threaten to overwhelm the tenuous peace he has made with himself.

As in McGrath's best works, Trauma is rife with, well, trauma; Charlie suffers, his brother suffers, his wife agonizes, his father drinks to forget. There is not one character present who is not damaged in some way, which is as it should be, and McGrath makes you feel every pang of remorse.

Yet Trauma feels rote, at least for McGrath. The psychiatrist unable to cure his own ailments is not exactly a new subject for literary dissection, and McGrath brings nothing new to the theme. The strange, unknown agony Charlie suffers from, in its ultimate reveal, feels like a cheat. It's too simple an explanation, one which belies the narrative's central theme of how we can never truly understand anyone else. The ending feels as rushed as Charlie's eventual descent into near-insanity. The final third of the novel finds a stronger footing, as Charlie's exterior settings begin to mirror his withdrawal into himself, but the final few pages are hurried and feel like an afterthought. McGrath travels the avenues of the psyche with aplomb, but Trauma, while hardly a feel-good story of redemption, isn't dark enough to satisfy it's set-up.

MONKEY LIKES WITH RESERVATIONS

Monkey Droppings - Coventry by Helen Humphreys

2009-04-17T08:06:00.008-04:00

Two reviews in two days? I'm on some kind of a roll here. I think that flu bug I've been fighting is tickling my cortex into action. Not action of a necessarily productive sort, but action nonetheless! Good job, typewriter-banging monkey!

Better not jinx it by talking about it, so without further ado:

Coventry
by Helen Humphreys

"For all her efforts Harriet can't really remember Owen very well. His memory has been worn thin from use, like a patch of clot rubbed too vigorously and too often. She has her ideas of him and of their happiness, but at this point the reality of him has been subsumed into her own need to remember him in a certain way. In real life he would never have bent to her will, but now that he's dead she can do whatever she chooses with him. This knowledge sickens her, but she is also powerless against it."

We are all the products of our triumphs and our tragedies. Harriet lost her new husband to the trench warfare of World War I. Maeve bore a child out of wedlock, and has to fend for herself ever since. In one night, trapped in Coventry during the German bombing raids of the Second World War, both women find their pasts effecting their decisions in surprising ways.

This sketch of a narrative has the potential to go one of two ways; either the resulting novel will be an overly sentimental gush of nostalgia and female empowerment, or it will be a subtle and often wrenching study of loss and remembrance. Luckily, Canadian author Helen Humphreys is at the helm, and Coventry, her first novel after The Lost Garden (a Canada Reads selection for 2003), is a remarkably moving and insightful effort, stark and clear.

There is very little in the way of surprise in Humphrey's compact novel; Coventry is not a story of momentum, and there is a foreboding sense of inevitability hanging over the proceedings, as if all this has already passed. The women had met once previously, on a care-free day before WWI had begun, and there is a sense of the inescapable that the two will meet again. This sense of the novel being an elegy serves to drag down the story to a standstill at times, resulting in a lack of immediacy that blunts the ultimate ending. Add on an unlikely coincidence involving Harriet and a stranger not to be named here, and Coventry falls shy of becoming the masterpiece it yearns to be.

Humphrey's strengths comes out in her characterization of Harriet and Maeve, two women as vital as any that have stalked the pages of Canadian literature. Harriet is scarred, hardened and alone after the loss of a husband she barely new; Maeve is exhausted from life, and her longings to become an artist have fallen by the wayside along many such sadly disposed-of dreams. As Humphrey alternates from each woman's POV as the long night wears on, we see their lives intersect on paths they never planned on traveling.

Humphrey's other great triumph is her evocation of the bombing raids; nightmarish imagery abounds as catastrophe follows catastrophe, numbing the populace insensate. "My wife was killed," remarks a man with a chilling distance from his words, "standing in the kitchen, making us a cup of tea." Helen is in the thick of it, running through the devastation as people perish in ways both savage and calm. Maeve is in the countryside, fleeing, apart from her son and surrounded by strangers. Coventry is a city destroyed beyond recognition, and Humphrey presents an unflinching portrait of people stunned by incomprehensible violence that is sadly all too identifiable today.

Coventry is an often stunning novel, a crystal-clear evocation of things lost and found again under extraordinary circumstances. Its flaws only serve to highlight Coventry's tremendous strengths.

MONKEY LIKES A LOT

Monkey Droppings - Brock Clarke's An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

2009-04-15T12:45:00.007-04:00

I'm going to put a few quick book reviews up in the next few days, to make up for an appalling break on my part. They'll be quick, and hardly insightful, but I do hope you'll read the books anyway, and forgive my lackadaisical nature.

Also, I'm starting a new ratings system. I'm sick of As, Bs, Cs, etc. You'll find the new handy-dandy rating at the bottom of each review.

And now, to work! If twenty minutes of ill-conceived ramblings can be considered work. It can? Score!

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
by Brock Clarke

Sam Pulsifer has a problem, or rather, many problems. He was convicted of arson and inadvertent murder after a youthful escapade ended in the fiery destruction of Emily Dickinson's house, and the deaths of the two caretakers inside. Years later, after serving his sentence, Sam appears to have his life back on track; he has a wife, lovely kids, a degree in packaging science, and no contact with his parents or anything from his previous life. Until the son of the dead caretakers shows up for an apology, and the homes of other famous authors are mysteriously torched.

From such beginnings grows a novel of insanity and revenge that almost effortlessly achieves a strange and alluring grandeur. An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is a gratifyingly accomplished novel that puts author Brock Clarke on my watch list.

What makes Guide such a marvelous comedy, aside from Clarke's clear prose and sparking wit, is his treatment of his lead character. In the best tradition of classic comedic heroes, Sam is not so much an actor as a reactor, always one step behind and guided by forces beyond his control. There is quite a bit of the hapless Sam Lowry in Pulsifer, the befuddled hero of Terry Gilliam's satire Brazil. Pulsifer, like Lowry, is an immediately identifiable 'bumbler' (in the parlance of his father), trying to wend his way through life without causing ruckus or discord, yet constantly forced to act against his will. As he slowly tracks down the real arsonist - aided by letters written to him while in prison, pleading for him to burn down other the homes of other authors such as Mark Twain or Robert Frost - Pulsifer examines the effect stories have on people, and how people are desperate to have stories of their own.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is a major accomplishment in comic misadventure, a softly endearing dissection of the love of good stories, and a treat of a novel.

MONKEY LIKES A LOT

Derek Weiler, 1968-2009

2009-04-13T16:40:00.003-04:00

It is with great sadness that I learned today of the death of Derek Weiler.

Derek was the editor of Quill and Quire, Canada's book industry magazine. I only met him a few times at trade events, but he always struck me a very friendly, approachable man who greatly enjoyed both his job and the people his work brought him into contact with.

Apparently he had been sick for some time. He was a hell of a nice man, and has been taken far too soon. He will be sorely missed.

More news of his passing can be found here.

People don't learn...

2009-04-11T09:40:00.003-04:00

From Chapter 22 of the zen-like ode to incompetence that is James Patterson's online 'virus kidnap crap-o-rama' Airborne:

‘Don’t even think about trying that again, b*tch,’ he hissed in her ear.

‘Someone get the girl!’ Jones ordered from the ﬂoor through clenched teeth. ‘Somebody get that machete!’

‘F*ck!’ The biker restraining Lesley threw her behind him roughly and joined the circle closing in on Amanda.

Seriously? Still with the *s? What if I can't crack the code? Batch? Botch? Fick? I don't understand this idiomatic lingo! And what if they throw in a # or a %? I didn't do well in calculus, I can't solve for Y!

This entire exercise is like a slo-mo car crash, with another automobile adding to the pile every day. I have read articles in the Weekly World News that make more sense, and have a better grasp of pacing and characterization.

That said, like the movies of Uwe Boll, I cannot look away, and eagerly await Patterson's sure -to-be-awe-inspiring conclusion.

From the files of the prudish...

2009-03-24T12:34:00.006-04:00

From Chapter 6 of James Patterson's mind-numbingly stupid online "chain thriller" Airborne:

Sh*t! Peter went over his plan again.

Yes, you read it right: Sh*t! In an adult novel about kidnapping and mysterious viruses, a character actually thinks to himself, Sh*t!, no doubt pausing afterward to genuflect and repent for daring to think up such a loathsome word.

Can we possibly hope to take any part of a novel seriously when an author is so much of a prude that they won't spell a curse word completely? What, expletive deleted was too subtle?

For the record, the 'novel' is written by 28 winners of an online writing contest. Each 'winner' submits a 750-note chapter, with James Patterson himself (ooh, thrilling!) penning the first and last chapters personally.

We're six chapters in, and it is as fantastically awful as feared, rife with hilarious exposition, howlingly bad inner monologues, and suprisingly enough, spelling errors. But if it might be true that a million monkeys can write for a million years and create a masterpiece, it is definitely true that 29 people can write for a few minutes each and create sh*t.

Apparently, she's a contortionist

2009-03-23T12:49:00.004-04:00

From Chapter 3 of James Patterson's already depressingly awful online novel-by-committee "chain thriller" Airborne:

Amanda's throat felt hoarse from all the screaming, which must have lasted for at least 20 minutes – she couldn’t be certain because her watch was strapped to her left wrist, which was hogtied to her right one behind her back...She sighed and felt the perspiration drip from her temples down her face, and she wiped it away on her forearm – she needed to do something.

Her hands tied behind her back, but she somehow wipes her face on her forearm - go ahead, try it, I dare you. I'll wait.

If you aren't yet following this novel, you really should; it'll make you appreciate quality all the more.

Random Monkey Droppings, March 21, 2009

2009-03-21T12:19:00.006-04:00

A few musings, to keep myself entertained whilst I drive nails into my forehead i.e. try to write something worth reading:

1) This sampling of TV blowhard and waste of DNA Bill O'Reilly reading the *ahem* sensual parts of his novel Those Who Trespass is too disturbing for words.

2) I'm reading Joe R. Lansdale's Sunset and Sawdust, and am really digging his overheated southern gothic style.

3) Here's my late-to-the-party thoughts on Watchmen:

Sure, it's not a perfect film, but after sitting through the deeply disappointing and empty The Incredible Hulk (despite the exquiste set design of Andrew Redekop [some relation]), I am prepared to be forgiving of its flaws, as a superhero movie with a brain is infinitely more impressive and rare a thing than one that has none. My god, people, it actually tries.
Yes, you can see Dr. Manhattan's wang. Get over it, it's like in 5-6 shots, it's not like the whole film is blue genitals.
I want someone to invent the Rorschach shifting facemask tout de suite.
I will definitely purchase the Director's Cut DVD.

4) With thanks to Jeff Vandermeer for the idea, this is my favourite book-related moment from TV:

Review - Portobello by Ruth Rendell

2009-03-15T09:56:00.012-04:00

Portobello
by Ruth Rendell

I'm a book snob. I admit that up front. And the main reason that I had until this point never picked up a Ruth Rendell is that I am inherently distrustful of the prolific. And can you really blame me? Maybe it's just jealousy (ok, it's definitely part jealousy), but a novelist who apparently publishes every three months does not scream quality. Sure, it can be done. I devour Stephen King and Ed McBain like handfuls of Werther's Originals, but for every King and McBain, there's a Lori Wick, or Danielle Steel, or god help us all, James Patterson, an author so utterly overflowing with contempt for his audience he is now writing books under his name by committee. For pity's sake, Barbara Cartland wrote 664 books, sometimes at the rate of twenty a year. I don't care who you are, you can't create quality work on that scale.*

Sadly, Rendell found her way onto my snobbish little list, this despite her winning pretty much every major mystery award available. So it was with unfathomable tentativeness that I picked up Portobello. This was a stand-alone novel, not a part of her ongoing Inspector Wexford mystery series, so I figured I might not be too lost in references to past events.

Once again, my snobbishness has proved unfounded. Portobello is not a perfect novel by any means, but it displays an assurity of craft and ambition at vast odds with my assumption that Rendell was another, well, Patterson, or Nora Roberts, or Nicholas Sparks. My bad.

Rather than a mystery per se, Portobello is a character study surrounding the repercussions following the most insignificant of events; a man has a heart attack near Portobello Road in the Notting Hill section of London, and drops an envelope of money (Already my brain is yelling, "The plot's afoot!" expecting a chase thriller, or possibly a literary discussion of the perils of greed). Eugene, a wealthy art gallery owner, discovers the envelope, and rather than contact the police, he decides to place up a flyer announcing his find in the hope of returning it to its rightful owner. Rendell then throws in Eugene's girlfriend Ella, a doctor who returns the money to its owner in the hospital. The money's owner, Joel, is a disturbed and lonely man who is now seeing visions after his near-death expierience; he decides that Ella should be his doctor, and Ella is too kind-hearted to refuse.

And there is also Lance, the young louse who tries to claim the money, and then decides that Eugene represents point zero for his imagined life as a top-flight burglar. Lance also has problems; he lives with his religious zealot uncle, and he's under the gun (literally) to pay for his ex-girlfriend's dental work after he drunkenly assaulted her.

There's a lot of possibilities for mystery here, although that expectation is largely based on Rendell's reputation. Part of the initial thrill of reading Portobello is wondering when the mystery will actually start. Again, my bad, as Portobello is a psychological character study first and foremost.

This is a novel of secrets, of psychoses small and large that haunt both the best and worst of humanity. Eugene has a shameful (to him) addiction to low-calorie sweets. Joel has been blamed by his father for a family tragedy that his ripped his life in two. Lance finds in his illegal sojourns to homes of the wealthy a world that he cannot understand but craves all the more. These people, all damaged, wander throughout the pages of Portobello as Rendell delicately reveals the creepy delusions and urges that make up the psyches of the lonely and desperate.

Rendell has an astounding talent at place and setting, manifesting a section of London in all its vibrant and seedy glory. Her Portobello Road is menacing yet comfortable, a neighbourhood where the classes mix with familiarity and surface friendliness, yet where there exists a simmering undercurrent of unease.

It may be unfair to complain that very little occurs in Portobello. Plenty does, but it is only in retrospect that the reader comprehends the novel's many facets. Rendell's presentation, so subtle and understated, drives home the novel's tension and its themes of unspoken desires and the quiet madness that grips us all. It is no small accomplishement to write small; Portobello is a novel about the space between action and reaction, and Rendell fills the space with desperate longing.

But Portobello, as fine as it can be at points, cannot completely sustain itself through inaction. Eugene, arguably the central character, is sadly the least believable and therefore Portobello's weakest link; his inner dilemma of sweets vs. romance is too inherently silly to fit comfortably next to the bleakness of the other characters' lives. It's an interesting situation, but the story comes crashing to a halt whenever Eugene reappears.

But Portobello has once again proven to me that my snobbishness can lead to devestating loss. Rendell is clearly a fine, fine writer, and I will gladly delve into her other works. And I will definitely peruse the works of Georges Simenon, another crazily prolific author. But not Roberts, Patterson, Sparks, or Wick; never again.

*NOTE: For an entertaining look at the perils and pitfalls of the prolific, please read British novelist Geoff Nicholson's piece "Can't. Stop. Writing." at the New York Times Book Review.