Jackson Coppley's Blog, page 11

Florida by Lauren Groff

I’ve been a fan of the writing of Lauren Groff ever since I read Arcadia. She weaves words into tapestries that make this writer smile. So, I finally got around to reading her latest work, Florida, a collection of stories connected to the sunshine state. The writing did not disappoint. Here is an example from the first story: “Jude couldn’t look at his father. The space in the air where he existed was too heavy and dark.” Further on in the same story, “Something shifted between them, and they fell asleep to a silence that was softer at its edges.”

Beautiful.

A common theme throughout the stories: Florida is hot. It’s often said in different ways. The stories are as somber as the humidity. The first story, the one mentioned above, is about the only male lead in the story, save for two little children, one of which is a boy, abandoned on an island to fend for themselves. That cheery little tale is followed by a woman descending from a solid middle-class life into homelessness. The descent is gradual, and you see it all from her eyes. There are no external forces at play, no drug addiction, no abuse, just an internal collapse.

The last story takes a woman from Florida to a subsistence vacation in a small town in Brazil. The woman has let her best years pass by as she takes care of her mother. It is the antithesis of a How Stella Got Her Groove Back story.

The book maintains the excellent prose I expected from Groff, but with moribund circumstances that left me wanting. Yet, there’s the writing. I recommend the book for that alone.

The Ocean Raiders - Writer's Digest Review

Reading The Ocean Raiders, the reader can easily picture the story as it happens, playing out like a movie – action sequences, cutting away to different characters in other locations and time periods, backstabbing characters, murders and thefts to solve…it’s all connected together in a way that makes sense, moves the plot along, and is exciting to read. I found it hard to put down and thoroughly enjoyed the tale. There were a couple of small mistakes that needed editing – a misspelling or punctuation mistake here and there, but they were small and didn’t hinder the tale much. This was a very enjoyable tale, with the plot and characters well-thought-out and intriguing plot twists. Even though I haven’t read the first book, I didn’t feel like I was missing out by starting with this, though I’m sure I would enjoy the background information from book one, the relevant details to enjoy this sequel were provided in the dialogue and plot throughout the book and made sense. The Omni is a fascinating plot point that I look forward to learning more about in the next book in the series. I will definitely be recommending this book to others.

Judge, 8th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published eBook Awards

Hamnet

Hamnet

Maggie O’Farrell

A Historical Note prefacing Hamnet states the circumstances of the story best:

“In the 1580s, a couple living on Henley Street, Stratford, had three children: Susanna, then Hamnet and Judith, who were twins. The boy, Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called Hamlet.”

With that, we have the entire summary of known facts. Shakespeare’s life was not well documented, freeing authors over time to spin fanciful yarns of their own (e.g., Shakespeare in Love). That is what Maggie O’Farrell has done, and done well.

The story opens with a third person narrative in which the young Hamnet is walking through his home and the family property and does not see anyone. It is as if the boy is dreaming, and the dreamlike tone of the narrative flows on throughout the book.

But we quickly learn this book should be named Agnes, after Hamnet’s mother, because, more than Hamnet, this story is hers. In fact, the name ‘Shakespeare’ is never seen in the story's text. There are side references to the teenage ‘Latin Tutor,’ who eventually marries Agnes. Agnes’ husband moves to London, returning to Stratford and his wife infrequently, but eventually becomes a prosperous playwright.

Good writing propels the story, but the author is playing a game with us. She bounces around in time for the first half of the book. Even the name Agnes is confusing. William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. Who is this Agnes? The author doesn’t tell us why she varied the name until her note at the end.

Early in the book, we have passages that read like a folk tale until the reader realizes it is about Agnes. The following passage represents the style of writing throughout the book:

“If asked, the girl—a woman, now—would remove the falconer’s glove and hold your hand, just for a moment, pressing the flesh between thumb and forefinger where all your hand’s strength lay, and tell you what she felt. The sensation, some said, was dizzying, draining, as if she was drawing all the strength out of you: others said it was invigorating, enlivening, like a shower of rain. Her bird circled the sky above, feathers spread, calling out, as if in warning. People said the girl’s name was Agnes.”

The copy I read was clearly for the US market, with its use of double-quote marks rather than single ones. But words remain spelled using the UK standard, which adds to the feeling of the old English of the time. Plus, there are several words that have fallen out of use. I constantly pressed words in my Kindle version for their definition.

Eventually, Hamnet dies. The author follows that event with more pages describing morning than this reader needed. But once we have Agnes finding that her husband has his theatre troupe performing a play using his dead son’s name, we are headed for action that leaves you wondering what happens next, as the incensed Agnes heads to London to confront her husband. The ending is charming and thoughtful, and very satisfying.

All’s well that ends well.

Caste - The Origins of Our Discontents

In Caste, Isabel Wilkerson takes a fresh approach to an important issue. When one hears the word ‘caste,’ they are likely to think of India, and it is true that country defined it thousands of years ago and it is alive today. But Wilkerson shows how it has applied to America for hundreds of years, and to Nazi Germany for two decades.

It might surprise the reader to see Nazi Germany added to the comparison until, as the author points out, the Nazis looked to the United States and studied its Jim Crow laws of the 1930s in establishing their own laws separating Jews from society.

The book goes through several phases. It begins with a gentle, literary touch with well-crafted prose speaking in metaphors about a house’s foundation, one that may have unrealized cracks. Then it delves into the horrors of slavery and how the subjugation of a caste continued after the civil war. Finally, it leads to reader to consider how much caste distinction is built into each member of our society. Most of this section is from the point of view of today, least we think we’ve outgrown caste thinking, and much of that is from the author’s own personal experience.

The central section of the book depicts individual horrors we’ve read before. It is worth reading again, but the book doesn’t depend on those events to make a point, and the sections beyond that are worth wading through the center.

Although the author leads the reader into the book gently, it is not a light read. But it is important.

MasterClass

I was featured on the web site for MasterClass as one of nine authors who have benefitted from the service. Read all about it here:

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-aspiring-writers-used-masterclass-to-write-their-novels

Mongkok Station

Needham, Jake. MONGKOK STATION (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 6) (p. 72). Half Penny Ltd (P. Needham). Kindle Edition.

Mongkok Station returns the reader to the world of Inspector Samuel Tay, the quirky Singaporean curmudgeon. This time the setting is Hong Kong at the height of the democracy protests. I see the book divided into three main story arcs:

Sam Tay facing a life-threatening situation of his own making.

The city of Hong Kong itself and the demonstrations.

The case of a missing girl.

I listed the above in the order of importance to the book. For a mystery, one might think the case of a missing girl would be paramount. However, it takes a back seat to Sam Tay’s quirks and personal drama. So, if you have invested in Sam Tay from the previous books in the series, you’ll want to join him again. If you have not, you will wonder how this little man who chain smokes and has little interests other than reading could be a hero.

Tay stoically fears many things, and frequently they are humorously portrayed. When he’s driven through a tunnel under the Hong Kong bay, the tile reminds him of a men’s toilet, while he considers the possibility of a freighter above him ramming into the tunnel and tons of water drowning him. If he were to die, he didn’t want it to be “in something that looked like a men’s toilet.”

The book is supported by fine writing and descriptions of Hong Kong that puts you there. Jake Needham is a master of fresh metaphors. For example:

“Doris Lau's eyes hardened and she cocked her head like a dog trying to decide where to bite.”

“He slowly turned his head and looked at Tay the way he might have looked at a duck that had started singing an aria from Carmen.”

“…he had a quality of wear to him, like an old leather suitcase someone had dragged through a lot of airports.”

“It began to rain then, a light mist that seemed to be less falling rain than moisture squeezing out the humid air and trying to escape.”

The strengths of the book are the immersion into Hong Kong, it’s culture, and, of course, Sam Tay, the man and his foibles.

Unmasked

Since the genre for my Nicholas Foxe series is Technothriller, I am always interested in the latest Technothriller hit and Unmasked does not disappoint. L.T. Ryan and Gregory Scott have created a fine read blending action and cutting-edge technology. It is a perfect fit for a crisp 222 pages providing the reader with a quick page-turner for a couple of enjoyable evenings.

Ryan and Scott serve up a good story introducing a new hero that every action fan will enjoy. They add to that some technical intrigue some readers may want to pass over. As a former IBMer, I chose to study it. I don’t know much about blockchain and cryptocurrency more than a Wired Magazine article could provide, and those technologies are the essence of the plot. But I know that Ryan and Scott are opening themselves up to some techies picking apart those elements.

For example, here is a passage from the book: “Blake monitored his laptop as the device connected to Beck’s computer wirelessly transmitted every bit of data on his hard drive and RAM to Blake’s system.” That stopped me. Just how fast was the WIFI in that coffee shop? Even if the two laptops were hard-wired connected port to port, we are talking at least more than an hour to transmit the contents of the average hard disk.

So, put that aside and enjoy the writing and the plot. Ryan and Scott do a good job, starting from the first few pages, in revealing how a robbery gets more and more odd and, yes, creepy.

To sum it up, read for the plot, enjoy the tech parts if you can, but get this book.

Project MOSE

When I was developing The Ocean Raiders: A Nicholas Foxe Adventure, Ellen and I headed to Venice to do research. Central to the story was a fictional account using a very real project, MOSE, which is Italian for Mose, who parted the Red Sea. This MOSE was to hold the tides back from Venice.

We met with the engineering team at MOSE and they subsequently helped me with making the climax of the book (in which MOSE plays a part) not only exciting, but feasible.

MOSE made the news lately. I reprinted the article below, but you can access it, along with photos, from this web site:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/venice-flood-barrier/index.html

Venice, Italy (CNN) — Sebastian Fagarazzi is used to moving his belongings around. As a Venetian who lives on the ground floor, every time the city faces acqua alta -- the regular flooding caused by high tides -- he must raise everything off the floor, including furniture and appliances, or risk losing it.

But on October 3, with a 135-centimeter (53-inch) high tide forecast -- which would normally see around half the city under various levels of water -- when the flood sirens went off, he did nothing. "I had faith," he says.

Saturday was the first acqua alta of the season for Venice. It was also the day when, after decades of delays, controversy and corruption, the city finally trialled its long-awaited flood barriers against the tide.

A previous trial in July, overseen by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, had gone well -- but that was in good weather, at low tide. Earlier trials had not managed to raise all 78 gates in the barriers that have been installed in the Venetian lagoon.

Against all the odds, it worked.

At 12.05 p.m., high tide, St Mark's Square -- which starts flooding at just 90 centimeters, and should have been knee-deep -- was pretty much dry, with only large puddles welling up around the drains.

The square's cafes and shops, which often have to close for hours on end, remained open.

And in the northern district of Cannaregio, Sebastian Fagarazzi's home stayed dry.

"I'd heard the [warning] sirens in the morning but I didn't raise any of my furniture this time because the barrier lifted on the last test, and I had faith that it would work," Fagarazzi, co-founder of social initiative Venezia Autentica, says. "This is historic."

The defense system is called MOSE, the Italian for Moses, a name derived from the more functional Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, meaning Experimental Electromechanical Module. It consists of 78 flood barriers installed in the seabed at the lagoon's three main entrance points.

When the high tide arrives, they can rise to form a dam, stopping the Adriatic Sea surging into the lagoon and flooding the city.

Venice's acque alte ("high waters") are normally seen between October and March, and last a couple of hours, predominantly affecting the two lowest (and most visited) areas of the city: San Marco and the area around the Rialto. The phenomenon is usually caused by a combination of exceptionally high tides, low atmospheric pressure and the presence of a southern sirocco wind.

In recent years, their frequency and severity have been increasing due to climate change. On November 12, 2019, the city was devastated by an acqua alta that reached 187 centimeters, with almost 90% of the city flooding. Businesses have struggled to recover since, with a sharp dip in tourist numbers on top of damage costs. The destruction, followed by the pandemic, has brought locals to their knees.

The MOSE project has been in the works since 1984, but has been so beset by delays and corruption that many Venetians never believed it would work.

"It doesn't seem true," says Serena Nalon, at the Bottega del Mondo shop in Cannaregio. Her business -- a fair trade co-operative -- suffered major damages in last year's floods.

"I was very skeptical -- not least because they've spent so much money, without any result until now, so this morning I had minimal expectations," she says.

"I was worried when I saw the tide predictions, then somewhere between incredulous and happy when it worked. You appreciate things more when you don't expect it."

Nearby, Federica Michielan, owner of bar Ae Bricoe, felt the same. "It's great -- it's finally been resolved," she says. "At least, I hope it has, because if it breaks, we'll be under water."

A test in poor weather conditions had been the next step for the MOSE, which is not yet completed. And on Friday, when a full moon and high winds were predicted for the following morning, the city council asked permission to raise the barriers.

The usual flood sirens rang throughout the city at around 8 a.m. Saturday, while the test started half an hour later. By 10.10, the barriers were fully raised -- and while the water level rose to 132 centimeters outside the MOSE, inside the lagoon, it remained at 70 centimeters -- enough to keep San Marco dry.

"This was a historic day for Venice," Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, who had watched the raising of the barriers with MOSE special commissioner Elisabetta Spitz, later told journalists.

"There's a huge satisfaction, having spent decades watching helplessly as the water arrived everywhere in the city, causing vast amounts of damage.

"We have shown, not only with a tide that would have flooded the city but also with a sirocco wind of 19 knots, that it works."

n the city, Venetians -- many of whom had barricaded their property against the incoming water -- could hardly believe their luck. At El Fornareto bakery in Cannaregio, locals grinned as they queued for bread in sneakers instead of the gumboots they'd usually be wearing. In the church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli in the southern Dorsoduro district -- which normally floods at 130 centimeters -- the priest, don Paolo Bellio even referred to the success in his evening sermon.

"Today we were saved," he said afterward. "We didn't have to use the pumps. It was a surprise, but I'm happy it worked -- especially as it has been so criticized. This is a day of joy for everyone."

Calling it a "clear success," commissioner Spitz underlined on Saturday that this is "only a fundamental step towards protecting the city and the lagoon." The project -- which also involves raising pavements in the lowest areas of the city to 110 centimeters, and permanent defense walls near the flood barriers -- is due to be completed December 2021, when it will be handed over to the city.

Until then, it has been agreed that from now on, the barrier will be raised each time the tide hits 130 centimeters, meaning devastating floods such as last year's should be a thing of the past (at least, in the medium term. Climate change means MOSE will not hold back the water indefinitely). However, once the city takes over, the barriers will go up earlier, at 110 centimeters.

What it does mean, however, is that acqua alta in St Mark's Square -- which floods at 90 centimeters -- will continue. And indeed, on Sunday, just 24 hours after the MOSE triumph, the city's iconic piazza was calf-deep in water, with a sea level of 106 centimeters.

As tourists snapped selfies and danced in the water, an air of resignation hung over the shops and cafes that had had to close -- again.

At Quadri, one of the square's most famous cafes, where everyone from Proust to Brangelina have sat beneath the mirrored walls, manager Roberto Pepe was beginning the clean-up operation.

Although high tide was at 12.25 p.m., he had kept the café closed all morning, to pile velvet chairs on raised tables and blockade the entrances. Not that it helped; even an hour after high tide, the odd napkin and coaster was still swimming on the green mosaic floors.

"As a Venetian I'm happy about yesterday, but as someone who works in Piazza San Marco, it changes nothing, and leaves a sour taste," he says.

"We have the solution. Yesterday the piazza was dry. This is the day after the test, and look at it. We just want to work -- this is the heart of the city, it provides so much work for so many people.

"We always approached acqua alta with resignation, but now it's with disappointment because we know there's a solution. We've waited 30 years -- now let's make it work."

Mayor Brugnaro told CNN that MOSE's success was a "comeback," not just for Venice but for Italy as well, after the country's heavy suffering during the pandemic. "Giving the sense of an easier, more normal city, even with a bit of acqua alta -- because a few centimeters is nothing compared to devastation -- I think it could show to the world that we have technology here, and it could become another economy to balance out tourism."

Fagarazzi, meanwhile, is just relieved for now. "Last year was traumatic -- you'd hear the sirens and it was unstoppable. I think we still haven't comprehended how amazing the news is. This is a new day for Venice because it's the first time in 1,200 years [since the seat of power moved to St Mark's Square] that a high tide didn't cause the city to be flooded.

"For Venetians, this feels like the first step of Armstrong on the moon."

The Enigma Strain

Folks that buy my Nicholas Foxe adventures like The Code Hunters also buy Harvey Bennett Thrillers by Nick Thacker, and for a good reason. They’re page turners.

The first Harvey Bennett book I read was The Enigma Strain. I have Nick Foxe, Thacker has Harvey Bennett. They are much different people. Harvey (goes by Ben) is a ranger at Yellowstone. His quirks include not liking to fly. His challenge is a virus that might spread like wildfire through volcanic activity in his beloved park. So, as if volcanoes in Yellowstone are not enough, how about mixing in a deadly virus made by a mysterious and evil company?

Ben is joined by Julie in the adventure and, they might take their affair further were it not for the above-mentioned volcano / virus thing. They must keep alive and stop the outbreak.

The Centers for Disease Control gets involved (and they are far more functional than in today’s political environment.) This microscopic beast is far more deadly than the coronavirus. You might enjoy this adventure to see how much worse a pandemic could be.

Thacker serves up fast-paced adventure with a hero we can identify with. It’s a fun read.

The Doomsday Testament

When I look at my Amazon page for The Code Hunters and see one book frequently bought by the readers who bought The Code Hunters, I pay attention. One of those books is The Doomsday Testament by James Douglas. I had to read it.

What I found was a decent adventure, with a commonly done premise inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Full disclosure: Readers mention Indiana Jones comparisons to my books as well.) But what I really enjoyed was the writing. It delves into a location and takes you there with rich prose. When the hero of the story finds his beloved grandfather at the bottom of steps to the basement, a fall that happened several days earlier, his description of the scene and of his grandfather’s contorted body were excellent.

Douglas’ hero is an art expert named Jamie Saintclair. (His grandfather was named Sinclair. It’s a twist that makes Jamie’s departed mother more interesting. So, we have a hero who is hardly a superman, but more of an everyman. That’s a good reason for the reader to better identify with the man.

Note to my American fans, James Douglas is Scottish and the book uses the conventions of an publisher in the UK. Not to worry. You get used to different spelling and single quote marks quickly. From time to time, it becomes apparent the writer may not be familiar with the US. He has a character with a ma in ‘Pittsburg.’ I believe he means ‘Pittsburgh.’

Bottom line: If you want a very well written adventure book, The Doomsday Testament is for you.