"Hearing about how great your new novels are! Bob downloaded the free download and liked it so much, had to buy the next one." Anonymous in Idaho.
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WHEN THE KILLING IS DONE is a captivating book, and well written. T.C. Boyle has an uncanny knack for presenting a story that seems entirely factual. He gets you to say “That guy’s really done his research. He knows what he is talking about.” Boyle h...more
WHEN THE KILLING IS DONE is a captivating book, and well written. T.C. Boyle has an uncanny knack for presenting a story that seems entirely factual. He gets you to say “That guy’s really done his research. He knows what he is talking about.” Boyle had me believing, abandoning my innate skepticism. Then he went a bridge too far and wrote some stuff that happens to be up my professional alley.
Here's the set-up:
Dave is charged with a crime along with Wilson. Wilson cops a plea and gets a very light sentence. No explanation for the deal is provided. It seemed to me the government had a pretty strong case. But why would the government want to give one co-conspirator a light sentence while still having to go to trial on the other guy ⎯Dave goes to trial⎯ unless you had an agreement for his testimony? Wilson doesn't testify. Not bloody likely, I say, to this plotting. I’ve been a trial lawyer for more than forty years. I’m not buying one bit of it. So a really important scene in the overall story is flawed. And it affects, or infects everything that follows. I'm not going to be a spoiler. The verdict is irrelevant to my point. Boyle is working his credibility angle with his account of a trial and he lost points with me.
That scene shook my out of my “oh, interesting, I’ve learned something” mindset and I put on a critical thinking cap, diminishing my enjoyment of the novel, I think. I was happier with the belief that I was learning things I could take to the bank. And so I began to wonder. “Could all of the rats on Anacapa Island be accounted for in one shipwreck? Boyle tells us that every vessel has rats. Anacapa looks like a place where more than one ship would have wrecked over the last three hundred years. And are we to believe his premise that absolutely no rats survive on Anacapa? I can't image getting them all. They'd survive a nuclear war.
As I was pondering these questions, Boyle committed his second legal delict ⎯ his account of the eviction of the sheep ranchers. I’m sorry. This kind of verbal, draconian "you've got two weeks to pack up and git" edict might have been credible in the nineteenth century but it is off the charts fanciful for what would have happened in the nineteen eighties or nineties. A real-life el patron swooping down to evict hard-working sheepherders by killing off their lambs! Selling the opportunity to kill your tenants’ animals to hunters! My God. This would have been big news. There would have been lawyers up and down the coast vying to take this case pro bono and spin it into a landlord-tenant, farmers versus hunters, end-of-an-era lamenters political outrage du jour. To adopt Boyle’s point of view, it would have provoked a cause, a lawsuit, publicity, a nice settlement, and an all expense paid expatriation of the flock. I’m not suggesting any plot. I’m not writing his book. But as I reader I have the right to ask Boyle to maintain quality control. You can’t pass this grossly illegal as well as unjust eviction off as just a circumstance. Not in the context of the way you chose to write this book.
Unfortunately, I responded to this second insult by delving into quibbling. Experienced sailors don't call anchor rode rope once it's been attached to an anchor. A knife is carried in a sheath, not a sheaf.
Then Boyle threw out another net and re-captured my interest with a creative, portrayal of Dave LaJoy. A wealthy merchant who deals in electronics and who is an unbearably nasty creature in all ways, Dave puts his entire energy into saving the lives of rats and pigs, under the banner of animal rights. This is his “cause.” But he goes about it in ways that make it certain he will lose. You get the sense that if the deal were offered, “We’ll only kill fifty percent” he’d appoint himself to negotiate in the name of the rats, and he’d say “No. All or nothing.” But then all the rats would die. I wonder whether, if rats could vote, he’d get elected to negotiate for them.
Anise is Dave’s girlfriend. What she sees in him, I can’t tell. There must be other animal rights hetero males in Santa Barbara who are also humanists, who don’t take up the cause as an outlet for pathological urges. I’m for giving her a break. She had a crummy childhood and it looks like she didn’t get around people much, so her judgment is impaired. You can feel the tragedy in her character.
And then Boyle, for no discernible benefit to the story, commits another round of legal mayhem, attempting to convince us that Alma, the government scientist could get arrested on the complaint of the lawyer for Dave LaJoy, that he’d been detained illegally on an island where he was a trespasser, in possession of a dead body to boot. Boyle should know well enough that it requires a charge by a D.A. and a warrant by a judge to make an arrest not committed in the presence of the police, or victim, and no D.A. is going to go after a criminal charge and get an arrest warrant on the facts Boyle presents. Much less would they require Alma to post a bond for her release from custody on Dave LaJoy’s complaint! All the good work goes down the drain when Boyle fuels his narrative with crap cloaked in ersatz legalize. I’ve had all I can swallow.
What I wanted, at the end, alas did not come to pass. After nearly turning Dave and Alma, his two prime characters, intensely antagonistic to one another, into caricatures as they spar throughout most of the novel’s dramatic curve, Boyle fails to deliver the final conflict between them. There is no “Battle of the Titans.” Instead we are served up something disappointingly maudlin and also too conveniently symmetrical. Yes, LaJoy turns out to be the dumb fuck, screw-up he takes everyone else to be. But I get no reward as a reader, no gratification, no relief from the wrap-up.
“When The Killing Is Done” presents an opportunity to underscore the fact that even excellent writers should consult real lawyers, who have relevant experience, before they plunge into courtroom scenes or legal plot points. This probably goes for a lot of other kinds of expertise too. Boyle, no doubt, has done some thorough research in this book, but it is interspersed with dubious propositions. He describes a courtroom well. Unfortunately, he is a three-time loser when it comes to legal issues and ought to be put on some kind of writer’s probation for lending credence to legal absurdities. Perhaps this sounds extreme, but he is exploiting his credibility in areas where he has no business being left alone unattended and after turning the last page, it is clear that all of these improbable scenes should be redacted.
Boyle writes an enjoyable book. But don’t fall for his stories. I have a nagging suspicion that once you unwrap the packaging you’ll find lot of contents, presented as facts, to be defective. Stick to the fiction aspect. Don’t count on learning anything. That’s the way to enjoy this book.(less)
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" Barrywilldorf@gmail.com
I was wondering about that.
Have you found any Yahoo groups? I got bounced for a1969 novel from the Historical Novel Society....more
Barrywilldorf@gmail.com
I was wondering about that.
Have you found any Yahoo groups? I got bounced for a1969 novel from the Historical Novel Society. Their rule is 50 years. I told them I'd be back In 2019.(less)
"
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The Tiger's Wife
by
Téa Obreht (Goodreads Author)
recommended for:
anybody who likes novels, history and politics
read in May, 2012
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THE TIGER’S WIFE
By Tea Obreht
There is this saying: “It’s a jungle out there.” And there is a Jungle Book. It is pledged to the deathless man. In Tea Obreht’s brilliant book, The Tiger’s Wife we come to realize that despite our pretenses, we do inhabi...more
THE TIGER’S WIFE
By Tea Obreht
There is this saying: “It’s a jungle out there.” And there is a Jungle Book. It is pledged to the deathless man. In Tea Obreht’s brilliant book, The Tiger’s Wife we come to realize that despite our pretenses, we do inhabit a jungle. We will do so as long as we perceive the tiger through the lens of our ignorance and fear it. And no matter how adept at killing we may be we will die trying to kill it. Then, our progeny will take up the same cudgels, and meet similar fates for ignorance is our destiny and fear our motivator. At times Obreht’s writing was so good, it made me want to quit trying to write novels. It was humbling. And the plot, the narrative, was all I could ask for.
Okay, I am a sucker for historical and political novels, so it was right up my alley. It also took me right into the hearts and minds of the trench warriors in the Balkan conflicts that are at least a millennia old. Here are the peasants, with their divisive and destructive superstitions, their prejudices and their rudimentary common sense. They grovel. They languish. They spit venom. They are at once frustrating and infuriating whenever they are forced to confront the different and the unknown. And in them Obreht forces us to see our own faults and failings. By giving us such a rich account of the people who commit atrocity after atrocity, never seeming to learn from their behavior, Obreht delivers an explanation not only for the interminable Balkan wars but for all wars, all horrific injustice that we humans inflict upon one another. Their insanity is ours, a human condition, for if we peal off the patina of civil gentility in which we cloak ourselves, we get down to the brutal peasant in all of us. We have an explanation for how we can go to work every morning dressed in finely tailored suits while our boiling blood justifies waterboarding, inflicting death from above on those who see the world differently, and advocating mayhem on one level or another. We can more fully comprehend bullying, racial profiling, gun violence. Obreht helps us understand that the commonality that supersedes all of our supposed differences is our capacity for destructiveness.
Obreht couches her story within a moving narrative of a granddaughter’s loving relationship with her grandfather⎯ a story that would be good enough for most authors⎯but her story resonates on more than this one level. Her novel is a testament to the folly of ignorance. And our willingness to destroy those who do not chose to fear. I don’t want to be gushing or belabor how good a book this is, but if I were asked to make a wager on which of the books I have reviewed in the last two years stands the best chance of becoming a classic, I would bet on this one.(less)
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A Visit from the Goon Squad
by
Jennifer Egan (Goodreads Author)
recommended for:
readers who want to read a collection of well-written, connected cross-generational stories
read in April, 2012
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A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD
Jennifer Egan
I was of two minds with this best seller. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to give it four stars or five. I was leaning toward five but then I read something that was an easy five and I had to go with four.
Jenni...more
A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD
Jennifer Egan
I was of two minds with this best seller. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to give it four stars or five. I was leaning toward five but then I read something that was an easy five and I had to go with four.
Jennifer Egan is a fine writer with a terrific eye. She gets body language. Facial expressions. The unspoken thoughts that we all guard as we mouth other words. Her descriptions of characters are finely crafted, but she hasn’t been able to make me care what happens to any of them. In retrospect, I have come to realize that I never saw them as whole beings. Somehow, there was incompleteness in each of them, and I can’t say what was missing. It is as if Egan knew them so well, she assumed that we would too. And, I have to say, there are way too many of them for my taste. I know there are some people, women especially, who can remember inexhaustible details in infinite numbers of relationships in dimensions way beyond time and space. I personally don’t think men do such a good job in that milieu. I certainly don’t. I spent a lot of time trying to remember who was who. Who they were related to. Who they were divorced from. Why they came to the state of affairs the current page found them to be in. I am not sure I have it all right. I could have used a chart.
I am also cognizant of her efforts to play with time, to move back and forth and play out intergenerational conflicts. It is clever and creative, but for my tastes, a bit too clever by half. I’m an old guy. I’m not as old as Egan’s oldest character, Lou, but I’m older than Bennie, who appears to be the thread that weaves through a series of related but disparate vignettes about people who I would like to care about, but don’t. I feel nothing as Lou languishes on his deathbed. I’m not involved in Bennie’s divorces or in his inability to make Sasha. I don’t find myself caring whether Rob sinks or swims. Or whether Sasha controls her kleptomania. I am amused by the general and starlet, but I find myself hungering for more.
What I look for in a novel, besides captivating writing is a story I can relate to. A story I can learn something from. I look for take-away. Now I am convinced that some readers have and will achieve take away from Goon Squad. An imagining of Naples thirty years ago. The recording industry in the ‘80s. A contemporary club scene. Different perspectives and means of expression based upon one’s generation. But that’s not what I mean by take away. What I want is the author’s insights, experience and research into subjects that mean something to me in my incipient dotage. And in that respect, Egan’s observations have not provided me with something I don’t know viscerally. She got a lot of things right, but scored low on profundity. But maybe that’s a jaded me, and she is telling readers and critics who inhabit a later generation things they didn’t know or haven’t considered. The truth, we come to learn over time, is that there is really very little that is new in human behavior. The tools may be different, but the goals are the same, as are the motivations. We fool ourselves to think otherwise because of advanced technology. In the end we’re still nothing more than cavemen, but with electronic clubs. So I got no take away from this book. I didn’t learn something that will open a new vista for me.
Beyond that, I don’t think Egan dished out a full plate. I wanted to know the how and why of several relationships, beginning and ending. There was plenty of foreplay and titillation, but I got no bang for my buck. Egan had something else on her mind than completing a story. I’m not sure what it was.
So all in all, we have an excellent writer with great observation/narration skills, able to tell short stories. And the stories seem to have been put together for a purpose but other than playing with concepts that purpose escapes me. Many readers and critics found more meaning in this work than I did. Some books work for you while others do not. I want to be fair. It’s a very good book and most people will find it entertaining, worth their time. I did. But it’s not worth the time to get into a big discussion about. It’s not a book that I’d put on a list of “must reads.” So it’s a four.(less)
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"Wow! Are you a tough grader! 4 stars to Goethe, Dickens, Huxley, Bradbury and Austen. 3 to Tolkien. You take no prisoners. LOL
"
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" Hi Shomeret,
I gave Hypatia characteristics and dialogue that I thought would benefit the story. I know that very little exists about Hypatia and all o...more
Hi Shomeret,
I gave Hypatia characteristics and dialogue that I thought would benefit the story. I know that very little exists about Hypatia and all of it is hearsay. The reliability of the reporters have their agendas. I am not impugning the Dzielska bio, but that's her version of Hypatia, in the end. Hypatia was prohibited from teaching religion because it was forbidden to teach religion other than Catholicism. That's not the issue. I take license and imagine that there comes a moment when she gets pissed off.(less)
"
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Wolves Eat Dogs (Arkady Renko, #5)
by
Martin Cruz Smith
recommended to Barry Willdorf by:
my wife
recommended for:
lovers of mystery, thriller, suspense, noir
read in March, 2012
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This is another in the Arkady Renko series of detective novels, a sort of modern Russian noir. And it’s right up my alley when it comes to entertainment. There’s a murder of an oligarch that seems inscrutable. He was extremely cautious and well—prote...more
This is another in the Arkady Renko series of detective novels, a sort of modern Russian noir. And it’s right up my alley when it comes to entertainment. There’s a murder of an oligarch that seems inscrutable. He was extremely cautious and well—protected. No one can figure out how he was killed ⎯and as is often the case in this genre, no one but our intrepid detective hero with flaws really wants to find out. The more you can sweep this kind of stuff under the rug, the higher you get in the bureaucracy, apparently.
Renko, of course, must go against the tide. What self-respecting protagonist detective doesn’t? So he gets sent off to Chernobyl to investigate how this oligarch bit the dust, so to speak. As you may guess, radioactivity has something to do with it. But in the process we meet a cast of nuclear-contaminated Russians who know they’re going to die sooner or later, so they might just as well live it up occupying the facilities abandoned when the power plant blew its top.
Never having been to Russia, but knowing a number of recent immigrants, I found the characters to be credible and a lot of fun. Elderly babushkas, vodka-addled cops, gun-toting thugs, a kid with big emotional problems and an aging B-grade ingénue round out the colorful cast. I particularly liked the guy the government put in charge of securing all the radioactive motor vehicles within a thirty-kilometer radius when he goes into business selling hot nuke car parts all over Europe. For me it rings very true Russian.
Smith is a fine writer though and knows how to keep the reader engaged. This is not great literature but it’s a hard book to put aside and I’m glad I have DVR, otherwise I’d have missed a lot of TV as part of the price of reading Wolves Eat Dogs.(less)
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" If you go in for Latin American mystical writing then you will like it. There is, I believe, a book for every reader under heaven. I am so often in th...more
If you go in for Latin American mystical writing then you will like it. There is, I believe, a book for every reader under heaven. I am so often in the minority on matters of taste that I think I would flunk focus group. Thanks for reaffirming my reaction to Solitude of Prime Numbers.(less)
"
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4.08 avg rating — 13 ratings
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published
2010
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4 editions
4.00 avg rating — 1 rating
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published
2011
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3 editions
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