One Step Behind by Henning Mankell

Wallander stopped in his tracks on the narrow footpath. In his mind he went back to the moment when he had stood in the doorway of the living room and first witnessed the devastation. Martinsson had been right behind him. He had seen a dead man and a shotgun. But almost at once he was struck by the feeling that something wasn't quite right. Could he make out what it was? He tried again without success.

Patience, he thought. I'm tired. It's been a long night and it's not over yet.

He started walking again, wondering when he would have time to sleep and think about his diet. Then he stopped again. A question suddenly came to him.

What if I die as suddenly as Svedberg? Who will miss me? What will people say? That I was a good policeman? But who will miss me as a person? Ann-Britt? Maybe even Martinsson?

A pigeon flew by close to his head. We don't know anything about each other, he thought. What did I really think of Svedberg? Do I actually miss him? Can you miss a person you didn't know?

-One Step Behind

Poor Wallander. At the start of One Step Behind, he's battling constant fatigue; he goes to the doctor only to be diagnosed as diabetic. He's ashamed by this diagnosis, disgusted by his own bad habits. He vows to make a change, only to have his plans for healthy living derailed by his discovery of a colleague's murder. Suddenly he's heading up the investigation, fantasizing about those little clumps of sugar floating in his blood and struggling to keep moving forward despite his ever-deteriorating health and subsequent gloominess. Of course, this is Wallander - gloominess seems to suit him.

Wallander realizes that his colleague's murder is tied to the disappearance of three young people, and from there things get complex. Mankell invents quite the intricate tale of murder and mayhem, and I enjoyed seeing Wallander having to suss the tiniest of details as he doggedly pursues answers in a case that presents question upon question. I think this story worked even better as a book rather than in televised form, and not only for the usual reason that the book presents a more detailed story. The plot of One Step Behind hinges on an important photograph, and I think things are much more mysterious if one can't actually see this photograph - otherwise it's much easier to solve the mystery, which in turn makes Wallander & co. look a bit thick.

Although One Step Behind was less ambitious in scope than the globe-spanning adventures of The White Lioness, I enjoyed it just as much. I am quite looking forward to reading more Wallander mysteries - not too much more to say as I hesitate to spoil any more of a mystery's plot than I have to. Also, I'm on my second day of winter break and I feel a bit too scattered to write up anything properly. Apologies for the brief and less-than-elegant post.

Up next: Flannery, by Brad Gooch, a biography of one of my hands-down favorite writers, Flannery O'Connor.

When Will There Be Good News?

Louise was an urbanite, she preferred the gut-thrilling sound of an emergency siren slicing through the night to the noise of country birds at dawn. Pub brawls, rackety roadworks, mugged tourists, the badlands on a Saturday night - they all made sense, they were all part of the huge, dirty, torn social fabric. There was a war raging out there in the city and she was part of the fight, but the countryside unsettled her because she didn't know who the enemy was. She had always preferred North and South to Wuthering Heights. All that demented running around the moors, identifying yourself with the scenery, not a good role model for a woman.

-When Will There Be Good News?

When was the last time you read the word "rackety," excepting the paragraph above? I'm not sure if I ever have. Such a delicious word, too - one of the many, many things on the long, long list of things I love about Kate Atkinson's writing. (The praise of North and South at the expense of Wuthering Heights also makes the list, naturally.)

When Will There Be Good News? picks up some time after the events of Atkinson's previous novel, One Good Turn, and also features former private detective Jackson Brodie and Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe. Like Atkinson's two prior mysteries (Case Histories was the first in which Jackson figured), When Will There Be Good News? is set in Edinburgh and told through the use of intertwining narratives: in this case, those of Jackson and Louise, as well as that of newcomer Reggie Chase. Reggie is a 16-year-old girl who could have easily slipped through the cracks. Instead, she's found work as a "mother's help" for a high-powered doctor and looks upon the doctor and her baby as a surrogate family. Perhaps that's why Reggie can't rest when the doctor vanishes and no one, not even the doctor's husband, seems to be worried. Of course, Reggie doesn't know that the doctor survived a brutal childhood tragedy that shattered her family, and that the man responsible has just been released from prison...

Reggie's hunt for the missing (...or is she?) doctor leads her to Louise, who's preoccupied with a domestic violence case as well as her misgivings about her own marriage; Reggie finds Jackson after a horrific train crash*. Atkinson manages to weave all of the stories together quite expertly. It's just a brilliantly constructed book, and I'm awed by the way Atkinson created three characters so well realized and orchestrated their interactions so beautifully. Jackson, Louise, and Reggie are all extremely tough - they'd have to be, to deal with the events of this book as well as to survive what we know of their lives before this point. They also seem so vulnerable, though, because Atkinson allows us to know them so intimately. It's very impressive. I basically want to be her when I grow up.

Also, I just love love love Reggie Chase, in case that wasn't clear. She's a wonderful heroine, scrappy and tenacious, and I was in her corner from the get-go. That reminds me: I need to see an adaptation of this on PBS's Mystery!, like, yesterday. They can start with Case Histories, but I think this is actually my favorite of the series so far - that's pretty exciting, when you think about it.

Up next: One Step Behind by Henning Mankell. It's part of the Wallander series, which I do not seem to be reading in any particular order (this book is set several years after the last one I read, but there were several in between). I actually did see an adaptation of this on Mystery!, but I seem to have done a good enough job of forgetting the particulars so as to be quite puzzled by the case - which is good, I guess, for entertainment purposes, though it doesn't speak too well of my memory.

*I find it strange how patterns can crop up in books one reads. For example, this is the second book I've read recently to deal with the aftermath of a train crash (Drood also had one). When I read American Wife and Admission back to back, I noticed that both mentioned the Princeton P-rade, something I had been entirely ignorant of before. Funny.

Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

The vampires have a public face and a public explanation for their condition - they claim an allergy to sunlight and garlic causes severe metabolic changes - but I've seen the other side of the vampire world. My eyes now see a lot of things most human beings don't ever see. Ask me if this knowledge has made me happy.

No.

-Dead to the World

So feels Sookie Stackhouse, our heroine and telepathic waitress extraordinaire. At the beginning of Dead to the World, Sookie is on the outs with former boyfriend Vampire Bill (again), thanks to his behavior in the previous book. Coming home from work late one night, she is astonished to see a nude man running along the side of the road. She is even more astonished to discover that it's Eric, the vampire sheriff (!) of her part of Louisiana. She quickly ascertains that Eric has lost his memory, rendering the vampire best known for his power almost helpless. What sort of mischief is afoot? Why, it's the work of witches, of course! Sookie takes Eric in, and then must help the vampires and werewolves who have banded together in an attempt to fight off the evil, power-hungry coven. All this, and Sookie's roguish brother Jason has gone missing....

The addition of witchcraft to the mix once again widens the universe of Sookie Stackhouse. It's not quite as fun as the werewolf storyline from Club Dead, but there is certainly potential. Just to clarify, by the way, not all of the witches involved in the goings on of Dead to the World are evil. Only the V-addicted, were-vampires. Naturally.

I actually don't have a ton to say, I'm realizing. This book is very much in line with the previous books I've read in the Sookie Stackhouse series, and it hits all of the points that have made the previous books entertaining: Sookie's spunk, supernatural hijinks (as well as some mayhem), Southern Gothic atmosphere, and sexy vampires. I mean, it's a pretty good combination. It was rather contrived to have an amnesiac Eric shacking up with Sookie, of course, but it doesn't mean the results weren't enjoyable.

Up next: When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson - I've been waiting for this one for awhile, so I'm quite ready to start reading (After Glee, of course. Or perhaps during the commercial breaks.)

Drood by Dan Simmons

In this manuscript (which, I have explained - for legal reasons as well as for reasons of honour - I intend to seal away from all eyes after his death and my own), I shall answer the question which perhaps no one else alive in our time knew to ask - "Did the famous and loveable and honourable Charles Dickens plot to murder an innocent person and dissolve away his flesh in a pit of caustic lime and secretly inter what was left of him, mere bones and skull, in the crypt of an ancient cathedral that was an important part of Dickens's own childhood? And did Dickens then scheme to scatter the poor victim's spectacles, rings, stickpins, shirt studs, and pocket watch in the River Thames? And if so, or even if Dickens only dreamed he did these things, what part did a very real phantom named Drood have in the onset of such madness?"

-Drood

When I read the excerpt above, which is in the first few pages of Drood, I was left gaping - then smiling. A novel in which Charles Dickens is a potential murderer? Certainly a promising premise for a Dickens fan such as myself. The manuscript that is mentioned, which forms the substance of the novel Drood, is framed as the work of real-life author Wilkie Collins, a contemporary of Dickens. In his day, magazines containing serialized versions of Collins's books, such as The Moonstone*, actually outsold issues that featured Dickens, although it is my impression that Dickens was both more critically acclaimed and more popularly beloved. Collins, though, could tell a ripping good tale.

In Drood, Collins is not doing so well. In terms of his stories, yes, he's on the top of his game. But he's consuming more and more laudanum to deal with bouts of rheumatic gout, and his domestic situation is growing ever more fraught with tension. Plus, there's the pesky side-effect of all that laudanum: paranoid delusions (or are they?), such as his doppelgänger (whom he calls the Other Wilkie), which make him a decidedly unreliable narrator.

Collins is also increasingly unhappy with his relationship with the man who is publicly considered to be his mentor, Dickens. I'm surprised that I was almost all the way through the novel before I thought to compare their relationship to that of Salieri and Mozart in Amadeus, a film I love. Like Mozart, Dickens basks in praise while his fellow artist (Salieri/Collins) stews, becoming increasingly agitated by his perceived lack of respect. It does make me a bit uncomfortable to see a real person portrayed in this way - in Amadeus, Salieri is painted as a would-be murderer, which is unsubstantiated by history; similarly, Collins...well, I won't give that away, but needless to say, if this is how Wilkie Collins ends up being remembered, it's far from flattering (to put it mildly). All the same, I was actually quite sympathetic to Collins, despite some of his more egregious behavior (and it is pretty egregious) and his attacks on Bleak House (the nerve!).

One probably could have written a novel about Collins and Dickens that didn't involve the supernatural, but Dan Simmons invented the monster called Drood. I hesitate to say too much about the devilish Drood, because a novel of suspense is naturally weakened by an early revelation of too many details. I will say that Drood involves mesmerism, a creepy section of London known as Undertown, an enormous detective named Hibbert Hatchery**, and scarab beetles. My God, the scarab beetles. There was a certain point when I realized that my internal monologue while reading some scenes was along the lines of Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. One of the opening scenes in particular, which describes the aftermath of a train disaster Dickens survived at Staplehurst, is incredibly vivid and intense. Simmons certainly does know how to ratchet up the tension - if I hadn't been simultaneously working on NaNoWriMo, I certainly would have been flipping Drood's pages far more quickly.

There is the matter of length, by the way: Drood is nearly 800 pages long. I must say, I can't imagine keeping a novel of such length and complexity together, not to mention actually pulling off a satisfactory ending, as I think Simmons did. I also admire the way that things were resolved with sufficient ambiguity, which leaves one with a fair amount to mull over after finishing the story (although there's at least one bit I wish were a little tidier). There was a certain point, though, about 200 pages from the end of the book, when I rather wished I was done with it. Not that I wanted to put it down, just that I would have been satisfied had the novel reached a conclusion by that point. That having been said, this feeling may have been influenced by the dream team of books that I have acquired recently***, which are just calling out to be read.

Speaking of...Up next: It was difficult to decide, but I went with the 4th Sookie Stackhouse, which has quite the juicy premise - Eric has amnesia! You've gotta love it - or, actually, I suppose you don't have to, but I for one appreciate a good amnesiac vampire yarn.

*Unlike many people, I suspect, I actually have read The Moonstone. Sadly, I really don't remember any of it. (Sorry, Wilkie!)

**One does imagine that Dickens would be proud of that one - it actually is a spin on his own Dick Datchery from The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

***The 4th Sookie Stackhouse, a Wallander mystery, and the latest Jackson Brodie novel from Kate Atkinson. Terrifically exciting lineup for me.

From NPR: Neil Gaiman Asks: Heard Any Good Books Lately?

First off: I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days. How 'bout them apples?

Due to this semi-crazed November pastime and Thanksgiving, however, I've been pretty remiss about posting. I am about midway through Drood, which I adore, and presumably will be reading faster with my new-found spare time.

I didn't want to wait any longer to post, though, so luckily my mom came through with this link:

Neil Gaiman Asks: Heard Any Good Books Lately? (from NPR)

It's a story by Gaiman about audiobooks, including an interview audiobook reader extraordinaire David Sedaris. Speaking as an owner of the David Sedaris audio box set, I say: nifty. Also, just for the record, Gaiman wrote one of my absolute favorite books of last year, The Graveyard Book. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but it's brilliant. When it was awarded the Newbery Medal, I was all kinds of psyched.

So, there you go. Now back to Drood!

Reading the OED by Ammon Shea

Lectory (n.) A place for reading.

Although I am firmly of the opinion that a book can, and should, be brought along and read anywhere, there can be something almost infinitely pleasing about having a specific place that is designed solely for reading. If you agree with this sentiment you very likely have your own lectory somewhere. If you disagree with this sentiment, you are probably not reading this book.

-Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

I have never read a dictionary - okay, a few years ago I attempted to read James Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage*, but I lost steam quite early into A. (I still have the page marked.) All the same, when I stumbled upon a review of Ammon Shea's Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, I knew I would love it. The review was sprinkled with a few of the words Shea collected in the course of reading the entirety of the Oxford English Dictionary in one year. Words like vicambulist (one who walks about in the street) won my heart.

I had a feeling I had found a literary kindred spirit, which is always a wonderful experience. I remember when I first read Sarah Vowell, and how delighted I was every time I discovered something we had in common: She majored in art history? She can't drive? She loves Lincoln? She knows a song about German prepositions?** There is something so marvelous about that sort of connection with an author, I think.

Reading the OED was similar in a lot of ways. Despite the fact that Shea and I are diametrically opposed on summer and television (I am staunchly pro, he is con), anyone who has such a keen love of words is someone with whom I feel a kinship. Plus, he wrote things like this:

Coffee has long since transcended its role as "the thing that wakes me up" and now has comfortably settled into the role of "the thing that brings me joy."

I was thinking the same thing recently, but with considerably less eloquence. Love coffee.

But I digress. It would be tempting to fill the remainder of this review with words that Shea included - the book is divided A-Z, with each section containing some thoughts on his experience as well as definitions of and commentaries on selected words. I am itching to use a word like all-overish (feeling an undefined sense of unwell that extends to the whole body), for example. But I'll spare you that, and instead try to get back to my NaNoWriMo work. Another brief review, I'm afraid, but I hope I've conveyed my love for this book.

Further reading:

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester: About the writing of the OED. And if that description doesn't sound totally intriguing, don't dismiss the titular madman. It's been a little while since I read it, but I remember liking it a lot.

The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs: One man sets out to read the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Said reading encourages Jacobs to do everything from attend a Mensa convention to audition for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Pretty much a must for the voraciously curious and otherwise nerdy. It's also a go-to book for me when I'm stressed.

Up next: Drood by Dan Simmons. I'm about 45 pages in and I'm totally engrossed. It weighs a ton, though. Reading the OED was scarcely over 200 pages; Drood is more than 3 times that long. It's still coming with me on the subway every day, though.



*Is reading a grammar dictionary nerdier than reading a regular dictionary? Discuss. Also, it was totally interesting, you guys! Maybe I should dig it back out.

**You can sing the dative prepositions to the tune of "The Blue Danube." Fun fact - and probably why I still know my dative prepositions five years after having taken German.

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

This is how depressed people behave, she suddenly thought, taking a mental step back to scrutinize the cross-legged person in the center of her slovenly nest. But the thought of being depressed made her smile again. She had never thought of herself as a depressive person. Depressive people rent their garments and howled in grief and took to their beds...well, like this. But had she ever felt, actually, depressed? She was a contained person, that was all. Even-keeled. Perhaps a little judgmental, but who could fault her for that? She judged for a living, didn't she, and it was ingrained, and she was a responsible representative of whatever it was she represented.

-Admission

Another short review coming up, seeing as I should get to the NaNoWriMo halfway mark (25,000 words) today, but I have about 2,500 words to go to get there - I inevitably fall behind midweek and have to spend the weekend catching up. Still, I'm kind of amazed that I've gotten so far.

Anyway: Admission. The story centers on Portia Nathan, an employee in the Office of Admission at Princeton University. Portia's job requires her to travel all over New England and meet with up-and-coming potential Princetonians, then to hunker back down in New Jersey to read application after application. During this particular academic season, she also copes with the end of her sixteen-year relationship and tries to come to terms with an event from her past.

Does that sound rather boring? It's not, really, and it's well written, but I'm having trouble mustering up a lot of enthusiasm. To put it simply, I just didn't like Portia. I can't think of one thing I liked about her. She mopes her way through the story - it's understandable, considering her circumstances, but still rather tiring for the reader slogging through nearly 500 pages with her. When she gets energetic, she just gets strident.

Then there's that mystery from her past. To author Korelitz's credit, I didn't figure it out exactly. However, when the entire story was laid bare, I thought it strained credulity a bit.

I was also disappointed (if I may nitpick, and I think I may) with some sloppiness I noticed. On page 399, Portia is meeting with her colleagues to discuss candidates. It is mentioned that a minor character named Jordan is out of town due to a family emergency; a character specifically mentions something he will tell her "when she gets back tomorrow." Two paragraphs later, on page 400, the characters are still in the same meeting - yet one reads the line "Jordan shook his head and laughed." Buh? So either there are two tertiary characters named Jordan, which is not implausible, but certainly confusing, or someone made a fairly glaring error. Unfortunate, either way.

Up next: I'm enjoying the delightfully nerdy Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea. True story: Shea owns 7 different editions of the OED. I love it.

Can't Get Enough Hamlet?

Apparently I cannot tire of Hamlet. Thus, I was quite excited to see this new preview of David Tennant's production, airing in the UK on Christmas Day (those lucky Brits!) and here in the spring.

David Tennant in Hamlet (via Blogtor Who)

Thoughts:

a) I am quite unused to seeing Tennant without his trademark brainy specs and wild hair.

b) Brilliant!

I've realized already that it's going to be quite tricky to compare Law and Tennant. The nature of a television production allows the viewer to see so much detail; every flicker of emotion is going to be visible on an actor's face. This is nothing new, of course, but I hadn't fully considered it before. I was imagining the BBC production as a more bare-bones filming of the version performed on the West End, but clearly it's more ambitious than I'd anticipated. Exciting times for literature nerds, Doctor Who nerds, and Anglophiles! (I am pretty sure it goes without saying that I am all three.)

From McSweeney's: "Famous Authors Narrate the Funny Pages"

I am a total sucker for jokes that apply a well-known author's style to something wholly different from what he or she ever wrote.

Here's a recent example: "Famous Authors Narrate the Funny Pages"

I'm more familiar with the concept as it applies to the improv game "Authors," as seen on the British Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which I watched religiously as a senior in high school.* Here's an example of that (probably not safe for work), and there are plenty of clips on YouTube if you're so inclined. Tony Slattery was pretty much my favorite in any game, but I must admit that John Sessions is rather impressive in "Authors" (though he does come off as a bit of a showoff).

Still plugging away at NaNoWriMo. I've just reached the 10,000-word mark - which actually means I'm about 1600 words behind, but never mind that. Still longer than anything I've ever written before.

*The show used to come on every day at 3:00 on Comedy Central. Since I never got home form school earlier than 3:20ish, I used to set my VCR to record episodes whenever I had a blank videotape. I was pretty hardcore.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

As for those who hate me because they hate Charlie, hate me by extension, I am curious of this: At what point, in their opinion, should I have done something, and what should that something have been? Should I not have married him? Should I not have discouraged his drinking ("Jim Beam and me, have us both" - is that what I ought to have said?) When he told me he wanted to run for governor and I told him I'd prefer he didn't (though I foolishly thought at least it was better than congressman or senator, at least it would keep us in Wisconsin) - when he decided that in spite of my stated preference, he was indeed going to run, should I have left him? Should I have stayed with him but not campaigned for him? Should I have stated explicitly to the public when my views differed from his? Should I have left him when he decided, also against my wishes, to run for president? Anyone who has been married, and especially anyone married for several decades, knows the union is a series of compromises; to judge the compromises I have made is, I take it, easy to do from far away.

-American Wife

I'm going to try to keep this fairly brief, because NaNoWriMo has commenced, and I've already done a fair amount of writing today (haven't fallen behind yet, hurrah). This is perhaps unfair to Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, which is an excellent novel deserving of more attention than I have time to offer it.

American Wife is a fictionalization of the life of Laura Bush. I've never regarded Mrs. Bush as a kindred spirit, but reading American Wife has made me, perhaps, a bit more understanding of her situation. Her fictional stand-in, Alice Blackwell, is very much like her in many publicly verifiable ways: both studied education in college and became librarians, both were involved in tragic car accidents, both married privileged men who, against all odds, became president. It's very easy to move from those similarities to think that Alice's interior life, which Sittenfeld creates with seeming ease, is representative of Laura's. Maybe that's not true - Sittenfeld's no psychic, after all, just a writer who did a fair amount of research and is skilled at creating a sympathetic, believable narrator. I quite liked Alice, though, so I rather hope that Sittenfeld is right. It certainly makes the world more interesting when people aren't exactly what you would expect.

I'm not a political buff by any means, but I found American Wife quite absorbing. It's a fairly long read - a bit over 500 pages - but as I kept going I found that I only read faster, which is certainly one of the hallmarks of a good book. One element I particularly liked was Sittenfeld's talent for giving the reader little nuggets of information that pay off much later in the story - for example, mentioning that Alice won't see a character again until 30 years have passed. It's a great device, because, even as other parts of the plot progress, there's a certain part of the reader's brain that is left waiting for that now-anticipated reunion and wondering what its circumstances will be. Quite enjoyable for the reader, I think.

Up next: I picked up Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz at the library earlier. I remember reading a good review awhile back; let's hope it holds true. I dig the ivy on the cover, if nothing else.