THE FERAL DETECTIVE by Jonathan Lethem

Being a big fan of Lethem, I always enjoy his latest offering. The Feral Detective is not, you might say, typical Lethem, but what does that even mean? If anything, he's proven that he can write around diverse landscapes of genres with great skill. Like Woody Allen movies, I always associate my favorite Lethem novels with a NYC setting (Motherless Brooklyn, Fortress of Solitude, Chronic City), and this story, set on the edge of the Mojave desert in California, is about as far from that world as you can get (but then again, so is the alien planet of Girl with Landscape).  There is a NYC connection here, and it comes unexpectedly in  person of the narrator, 30-something, neurotic and female Phoebe. The plot revolves, at least in the first half, around a road trip complete with a noir-ish beat-up P.I. named Charles Heist and the ostensible quest to find the missing daughter of a friend. That plot gets played out but a new one takes its place in the second half, as Phoebe goes back to "rescue" Charles from the "Bears", one of the post-hippie tribes (the other being the "Rabbits") as he is mixed up in a deep association with the area and its feral inhabitants. I'm not sure Lethem completely pulls off his female narrator believably, but the book is enjoyable and does work as a kind of hybrid detective novel-noir piece-psychodrama.

A review of the book from the New York Times can be found at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/books/review/feral-detective-jonathan-lethem.html

THE SELLOUT, by Paul Beatty

Part ironic rant, part brilliant satire, Paul Beatty's The Sellout is a very funny and profound "statement" on the issue of race relations in contemporary America. The novel won the Booker Prize last year and deserved it. The actual plot is inventive to say the least, but the asides and digressions are the most fun. Beatty has a caustic wit and spares no one in his attempt to rip assumptions and PC attitudes about race to shreds. There are many laugh-out-loud passages but all-in-all, the "message" is serious and thought-provoking...how the hell can we "make sense" of the mess of racial identity and race relations in 21st century America?

for a review of the book from the Guardian, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/04/the-sellout-by-paul-beatty-review-galvanizing-satire-post-racial-america

RESERVOIR 13 by Jon McGregor

Reservoir 13 is ostensibly a book about the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl in a rural English village. It is told in an unexpected way, exploring what the author calls "the beauty of the non sequitur".  The book consists of 13 chapters that each cover a single year, starting at the time of the girl's disappearance and ending 13 years later. The chapters start in January and end in December and trace the entire year, "listing" natural and human/social actions in no apparent order. The narration is omniscient and there is a total absence of explanatory information. The technique is reminiscent of the "cut-ups" of William S. Boroughs, but as he experimented with truly random reconstruction to make the narrative, McGregor uses a carefully-crafted technique that only has the appearance of randomness. It's a strangely moving novel of great beauty, a reflection on loss and the passage of time without any philosophizing at all.

For a review of the book by the Guardian, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/15/reservoir-13-by-jon-mcgregor-review

THE MILKMAN IN THE NIGHT, by Andrei Kurkov

Written in the tradition of Soviet magical realism, (e.g.,  Bulgakov's classic The Master and Margarita), The Milkman in the Night offers a wacky and sometimes rather incoherent and at times genuinely funny journey through the world of post-Soviet Ukraine, including a sleepwalker who has a nocturnal affair and unknowingly joins a cult, a murder, a taxidermied dead man , and a "killer" cat addicted to anti-fear medication. It is true that characterization is rather flat, but three families are followed as their fates unexpectedly intersect in unpredictable ways. The ending is satisfying if a bit pat. For some reason, lactation is a central theme. Not a masterpiece but good fun and an engaging read.

For a review of the book from Financial Times, click here: https://www.ft.com/content/eb94d60c-b6b3-11e0-ae1f-00144feabdc0

THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES by Roberto Bolano

Having worked my way through Bolano's posthumously-published 2666 some time ago, I was curious to read the book that kickstarted his international fame, the equally complex and almost as long The Savage Detectives. I found that the book was written in a familar style with some differences. Detectives is somewhat autobiographical, at least in its broad outline. Also, Detectives uses multiple narration to an extreme in order to paint a picture (?) of the characters, major and minor, as well as the avant-guard literary milieu mirroring Bolano's own involvement ("viseral-realists" vs. real-life "intra-realists"). There are even a few crossovers, such as the trip to Sonora (Sta Theresa) and mention of the fictional author Arcimboldi.

The Savage Detectives solidified Bolano's position as a South American writer of great power as the new generation took the mantle from the "Boom" generation of Latin American literary legends such as Garcia Marquez, Vargas-Llosa, Borges, Puig, etc. I have yet to read other writers in this new generation and am looking forward to doing so if they are even remotely as gifted and engaging as Bolano.

See a review of the book from New Yorker      at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/26/vagabonds

KNOWN AND STRANGE THINGS, by Teju Cole

Having read the quiet yet deep novel Open City, I already respected the articulate intellectual ability of Teju Cole. Although the book Known and Strange Things is a completely different book, being a number of short critical pieces previously published in The New Yorker, many about photography, different writers and their works, and interesting personalities and experiences, it reinforces my respect for him. I found some of the entries more interesting than others, and it did take me quite a long time to get through. Like many similar compilations, it is a book you can browse through in no particular order, which makes it enjoyable in a different way.

For a review of the book from The Guardian, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/07/known-and-strange-things-teju-cole-review-essays

THE RED-HAIRED WOMAN, by Orhan Pamuk

A new book from Orhan Pamuk....one of the joys in life. His 10th novel, The Red-Haired Woman, published in 2017, is an interesting read. Heavily intertwined with twin Oedipus themed tales (from the Greek & Persian traditions), the story traces the narrator's young adulthood, centering on an unusual occurrence when he was working as a well-digger's apprentice during his teen years. Although the ending of the novel had some degree of predictability, the interweaving of the Oedipus themes with the personal narrative was clever and worked. The red-haired woman, while not exactly central to the main narrative, was certainly central to the way the theme played out.

Click here to read a review of the book from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/03/the-red-haired-woman-by-orhan-pamuk-review-secrets-of-fatherhood