Book Report: Clay

Book Report: Clay
By David Almond

'Almond revisits the English north country of his youth to spin this metaphysical tale of boys in conflict. Davie and his friend Geordie are altar boys, but are beginning to doubt the value of their long-held religious beliefs. They live in fear of the bullying Mouldy, a hulking, drunken lout from a neighboring village whom they're sure is out to kill them. Enter Stephen, a slightly older boy whose father is dead, whose mother is mad, and who was reputedly kicked out of priestly training for some kind of trouble related to devil worship and performing a Black Mass. A talented sculptor, he proceeds to scare Davie silly with his talk of creating life, of creating, in fact, a monster that will wreak revenge on Mouldy. Davie sees Stephen's clay figures move. Is it hypnotism, faith, or madness?'
-Schools Library Journals


First paragraph:
"He arrived in Felling on a bright and icy February morning. Not so long ago, but I was a different age. I was with Geordie Craggs, like I always was back then. We were swaggering along like always, laughing and joking like always. We passed a Players back and forward between us and blew long strings of smoke into the air. We'd just been on the altar."


Clay caught my attention because the spine reads (from top to bottom) 'almond clay' and I couldn't decide which was the title. The cover intrigued me with the ghostly, featureless face, so I read the back and was rather proud by my find. Plus, it's got a reader's guide in the back so I knew it would be worthy of discussion. The only drawback: Another teen fic. *sigh*

I read Clay in two days. It is rather simple and straightforward, but the issues are deep and thought-provoking. The tone is that of a ghost story--a Catholic ghost story--interwoven with a Secret Life of Boys type theme. Through Davie's well-balanced persona, we are introduced to Stephen, the new boy who seems innocent enough at first but quickly becomes one of the scariest characters I've met. He holds a quiet, haunting malice:

"The moon was huge, right at the middle of my window. It was round as a communion host. I lay there in its light. I stared into its face. I made out its craters, its waterless seas. I heard a voice.
"Davie! Davie!"
Was I hearing things?
"Davie! Davie!"
A rattle at my window like tiny pebbles, grit.
"Davie! Davie! Davie!"
I went to the window and stared out and there he was. Stephen Rose, face like wax, reflecting the moon. He raised his hand. He beckoned me. I shivered. I drew the curtains. I went back to my bed."

But aside from his creepiness, Stephan has a talent. He can, with a magic not of this earth, give life to the lifeless:

"Watch this," he said.
The figure was tiny, delicate, half formed, not like the other formless soulless lumps, but like a baby, half made. He lifted it to his lips.
"Move," he whispered to it. "Move, my little one."
He sighed and smiled.
"There. Did you see, Davie?"
"See what?"
He breathed the words again.
"Move. Live, little one. See?"
I moved closer, gazed down. There was nothing.
Stephen held the child in one hand, and stared at me. He passed his other hand before my eyes once, twice, then again.
"Look again," he whispered. I looked down into his hands, to the baby lying there. "Move," he whispered. "Live!"
He sighed with pleasure.
"Look, Davie," he said. "Look deep. Look with the eyes of the spirit, Davie. When I say you'll see it move, you will see it move."
He lifted the child towards me. He passed his hands before my eyes again.
"Now, Davie," he whispered. "You will see it move."
And I did see, and I nearly cried out with fright, but he stopped it dead. He dropped the child onto the bench, clapped his hand across my mouth.
"You got to tell nobody, Davie," he said. "You got to promise. Promise me now."

One of Davie's biggest sources for character development is the very minor character, Prat, the art teacher. After seeing Stephen's incredibly lifelike and beautiful sculptures, he encourages the class to try their hand at sculpting. Davie perceives Prat as being exactly that, a 'prat'--too grandiose and serious for the children to relate to or even like. But as Davie matures over the course of this story, he talks with Prat in code:

"Last lesson of the day, and Prat's all blather again. Clay and creavitiy and striding about the classroom and closing his eyes and staring at the sky and clay pellets and jelly babies flying about his head...
"You can go too far," I say when he's in midstream.
He blinks and looks at me.
"Sorry, Davie?" he says.
"You can go too far. You can create too much."
He comes to my table, leans over me, delighted.
"For example, Davie?"
"Well..." I look down. I stumble over the thoughts, the words. "Some of the things that we create are..."
"Are?" he prompts me.
"Some of the things that we create are... destructive."
"Exactly!" He punches the air and spins away. "The things that we create--some of them, many of them!--are themselves destructive!"
He looks around the room, scans the faces.
"Such as?" he says.
"Guns," he is told.
"Bullets," he is told.
"Poisons."
"Nerve gas."
"Bombs."
"The nuclear bomb."
"War itself."
"Exactly!" says Prat. "Exactly! Exactly! Exactly!"
He closes his eyes. He taps his forehead. We know he's about to tell us something he thinks is dead profound.
"It is the human paradox," he says. "We are creative beings. But our passion to create goes hand in hand with our passion to destroy." He claps his hands together, makes a double fist. "And the passions are linked as tight as this."

Again, this book it not too hard to figure out or understand the deeper meanings. It is written for teens, and written well. Not too much attention to detail, but the story is soaked with fun to read Irish dialect:

"You know that Stephen Rose, don't you?" she said.
"Aye."
"He went away, didn't he?"
"Aye."
"There's tales about him, aren't there? Are they true?"
"Dunno."
"People are full of blather, aren't they?"
"Aye," I said.
"Is he friendly?"
"No."
"Is he weird?"
"Aye."
"Nice weird or creepy weird?"
I thought about it.
"Both," I said.

Overall, I thought this book was great. Almond totally immerses the reader in the Irish Catholic culture, and Davie is a very level-headed and likable character. His personal growth is profound and complete. The reoccurring Angel motifs won me over, as well as the Irish dialect and the hint of spooky magic that provokes the imagination. While the look of the book is deceptively simple, the weighty content of the plot and its accompanying themes are chilling, indeed.
Five out of five stars

Book Report: It's What He Would Have Wanted

Book Report: It's What He Would Have Wanted
By Sean Hughes

'Shea Hickson's father, a TV weatherman, commits suicide, and when Shea discovers the body along with a series of diaries, his life, for the first time, has direction. He must decipher his father's meteorologically encrypted diaries and unfold the complicated and painful story leading up to his suicide. But this is no ordinary grief observed. Shea confronts every crisis in his life with an unhealthy dose of glib sarcasm, and his discoveries about his father are often as funny as they are tragic (he sleeps with his father's mistress, for instance). Young Hickson also must confront impending fatherhood, following a one-night stand with his hairdresser, and perform one final task for the shady leftist organization for which he has worked for several years.'
-Booklist

First paragraph:
"I wish I'd been born to different parents. They are decent enough folk, but...I guess it was the way they were raised. No, let me go further: I wish I'd been their parents. Let me introduce myself."

This is the story of one man's self-discovery, as he tries to piece together the motives behind his father's suicide. Shea is a slacker without any motivations of his own, and is prone to (especially after his father's death) dark and suicidal thoughts. Frequently, entire days are summed up on one sentence: 'I stayed in bed and slept.'

"Home to my stale life. I open the windows to freshen the air in the flat. If only I could open a window in my heart. I love the sanctuary of home. The chance to be completely at ease, the chance to be a cunt without anyone finding out. Time to have a chat with myself. I'm sure it is a pleasure to come home to loved ones but you can't really be yourself. It intrigues me that we can never fully be ourselves, that chance is lost at birth. There is a split second of realization of pure self but from that moment on we are influenced by others."

I could understand and thought it a realistic (if not tricky) personality trait, but as the story wore on, I couldn't quite be as empathetic as I wanted.

This book starts out grandly enough and within pages we learn that Shea loves blow-jobs. Shallow, but okay, I'll give him that. I just don't care to read paragraphs on the subject, especially when it was never a plot point. But the writing is good, if not long-winded. When Hughes is 'on', he's on, and with impressive perception. Some sentences ring more loudly than others:

"I don't know what she saw in me, a bone-snapping moodist sauntering along in a layabout's body whose social skills amount to being on nodding terms with the rest of the race."

*giggle* How... me. I love it.

The subject matter and banter slowly dried up in this story, and towards the end I was struggling to finish. Shea's 'secret' life eclipsed the hunt for his father's past--although the two did eventually join. But in the meantime, I was bored. I kept hoping for more from the subplot involving Orwell, Shea's little brother. Shea recently lost his lover to Orwell and that is partly why their relationship is dissolving.

"When we split, Orwell tried to comfort the two of us, except he didn't try to fuck me. He had done nothing wrong and yet he had crossed an unmentionable line that only your brother has access to. We've never talked about it. I'll give him that--he understands my pain, even if he did cause it. She seems different when she's with him. She's certainly no one I ever knew. I wish I could be happy for them but I can't. I want to break them up. I want her to have an affair with my father, then the hurt would bring my brother back and I do want him back."

This longing for his brother grabbed my heartstrings. I wanted Shea to try harder, instead of being passive and watching his brother slip away.

Another bit of reflection I appreciated, from that dark, tabooed voice deep inside:

"It was also around this time I promised myself I would visit art galleries and museums and catch the occasional play. It was obviously one of those fragile moments when you pretend to yourself that you're a better person than you really are, to get through a rough time. I went as far as doing all these cultural exercises but found myself bored senseless, which, in turn, made me feel stupid. I then began to question what it was I actually liked about life and couldn't quite but my finger on it, there being no gun handy. I guess in truth my life really just amount to moments of spontaneity but they were happening less frequently now. I rarely left the house. I think I missed my soap opera friends. I wanted to know what they'd been up to. In my heart I know that this is my level of culture."

And another passage I may have taken too personally:

"The lamp that had mellowed the room earlier was now harsh and I knew I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. The only time I'm frightened for no reason is when I wake in the middle of the night. It's total confirmation that you're off kilter with the rest of the race. Just you and the bogeyman for company; you can't think straight because your head's in a vice; the tiredness is given free rein and determined to fuck up the rest of your body, toying with your nervous system; your gaggle of niggling worries transformed into a devouring host. I pray for a companion but know that it would feel alien. I become mistrustful of touch."

Hughes gives Shea a lot of time to reflect, and most of this story is internal and slow. But several times I did find a particularly good point:

"It seems so simple, but the complication comes with the fact that happiness is dependent on other people. This leaves you with no control, knowing that everything can be taken from you at a moment's notice. But then again, aren't all the lonely people either waiting in anticipation of this person coming along or getting over the break-up of that relationship? Aren't all other emotions a pure smokescreen? Without that smokescreen wouldn't we still be sitting in caves picking nits out of each other's hair? Mistrust of the human race had brought about medical breakthroughs and catalogue shopping."

And towards the end, I particularly liked this rant:

"It struck me the amount of time we waste trying to create good impressions for strangers, the mediocrity of wanting all to think you are pleasant enough, this pathetic need to falsely create an affable fellow. That energy could be put to good use elsewhere. Why are people so frightened of not being liked? 'He was liked by everyone' is a slur on a person's character, not a testament."

Seems I've found a lot to quote from a book I was glad to finish. *grin* 'It's What He Would Have Wanted' was a long story with loads of introspection and self-loathing, and a dash of humor. I particularly loved the imagery where Shea finds his father, and some of the random characters he bumps into left me shaking my head at the strangeness of it all. In a good way. I just wish the pace would have been a little faster, the emotional arc a little more complete.

Overall, I give this book two out of five stars for meaningful introspection.

Book Report: Tearjerker

Book Report: Tearjerker

By: Daniel Hayes




From Booklist:
'Evan Ulmer, a struggling writer, finds himself doing the unthinkable. He buys a gun, abducts a book editor named Robert Partnow, and keeps him locked in the basement of his home in upstate New York. Ulmer creates for Partnow a fortress-prison equipped with a TV, portable toilet, and treadmill, but it becomes increasingly evident to captor and captive alike that Ulmer has no real plans for his abductee. Evan is a self-absorbed writer who seems only to write for the possibility of fame. He shares these dreams and his career disappointments with Bob, and he finds they have more in common than expected. A burgeoning romance with a plucky girl, also a writer, whom he meets at the public library forces Evan to face the enormity of the crime he has undertaken: What was he thinking?'

First sentence:
"Until I bought one, I'd never touched a gun, never stood in front of a full-length mirror pointing a gun at myself. Bang, bang."

This story, once I found the rhythm of the rapid-fire POV changes, was addictive. Every few paragraphs rotate between Evan at the library, Evan with his captive, and Evan thinking to himself. It was confusing for the first few pages, until I realized that the author picks up each change with the last sentence of the rotation before. A placeholder, if you will. A memory jogger.

Also, in current literary fashion, there is no punctuation for dialogue. That took some getting used to, but luckily this first-time novelist had a good handle on it. It still slowed my reading, but it was still enjoyable.

I was able to identify a lot with Evan. I have never 'abducted' someone and held them in my basement (I don't even have a basement), but certain passages really resonated with me.

"Who do you envy, Evan?
Whom, I said.
Do you envy me?
No. No offense, but no.
Then who?
I envy the other guy, I said. The one named Evan Ulmer, the one who caught a break or managed to kick aside a small little piece of dust in his imagination and write something that floored an agent, an editor. That's the one I envy. Motherfucker."

Promise, Evan's crush and fellow writer, is the only friend he seems to have. She is not afraid of him despite his... oddities, but he also withholds a lot of his true self. They talk about all aspects of being writers, and much of it I found to be true.

"OK, so here's what it is, Promise said--suddenly breathless. Sooner or later you realize it's entirely up to you. For all intents and purposes there's no one else. It's just you and this awful, tediously fucking task of reassuring yourself. And so if you're lucky, you've got this little person sitting up on your shoulder whispering words of encouragement.
...What I'm wondering, Evan, is how this works. Maybe you have to believe in yourself to get anywhere. And probably this is obvious, but it's sort of a revelation to me, the way it works backwards. The way you can't do anything without believing in yourself, and that's when it's hard to believe in yourself, if you haven't done anything. Which makes me think that maybe you can't really believe in yourself without deluding yourself."

Evan, despite his actions and their unclear motivations, is a writer from start to finish. He embraces it, even when the consequences and retribution are looming on the horizon.

"Only writers understand the ruthlessness with which anything and everything, at any moment, could be twisted, turned, and translated into words. We were like magicians who couldn't resist fiddling with the change in our pockets, making coins disappear with or without an audience."

This story does not have much action, but it explores human reality with a darkly humorous and matter-of-fact manner. Without ruining the ending, I will say that Evan gets his just desserts for what he did, and the pain of it was all too real to imagine.

"There's no escaping the fray. Orchestrate a little, channel a few voices, stare in bewilderment at what you've managed to scribble on the page, and wipe that sweat from your brow. Declare yourself a lucky son of a bitch if you can get anything down on paper.
"All of it happens, if it happens, in spite of you, with barely a polite nod to any of your so-called mysterious powers. It's not a rabbit pulled from a hat--more of a cat out of the bag."

Four out of Five stars for a quick read that kept me guessing, and for letting events play out true to the characters.

Book Report: About the Author

By John Colapinto

'About the Author'

From Publisher's Weekly:
'Cal Cunningham, the engaging, "panther-thin" protagonist of Colapinto's intrepid first foray into fiction (after his nonfictional debut As Nature Made Him) is an author with writer's block, struggling to acquire the "monastic absorption" needed to pen his autobiography and be freed from a meager existence as a bookstore stock boy. His dreams of success are further dashed when reclusive law student-roommate Stewart presents a brilliant short story he's written, and after some digging on the sly, Cal discovers a scandalous, novel-length manuscript recounting the sordid details of his own womanizing life. When Stewart is killed in a biking accident, a resentful, envious Cal adopts the manuscript, Almost Like Suicide, as his own and courts Stewart's old girlfriend Janet, too. Aided by flawlessly rendered literary agent Blackie Yeager, who sells the novel for millions, Cal lands a monetary and media windfall. Eventually moving to New Halcyon, Vt., to marry Janet, his perfect if duplicitous life is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger claiming to have Stewart's laptop computer containing the original manuscript; Cal's messy, disastrous comeuppance, involving blackmail and murder, takes over the second half of the novel.'


First sentence:
"For reasons that will become obvious, I find it difficult to write about Stewart. Well, I find it difficult to write about anything, God knows. But Stewart presents special problems."

For some unknown reason, I misled myself into believing that this book would be like 'Secret Window', so for the first one third of the story, I believed that temporary antagonist 'Stewart' was only Cal's imaginary friend. But as the story spiraled deeper and deeper into Cal's guilt and good fortune, I re-read the blurbs on the back and realized there were no mind-games. This story is a straight and colorful adventure including drunken binges, lesbian foreplay, blackmail and murderous intentions. In the course of over a year, Cal goes from being a poor, lowly want-to-be writer to owning a house in the country, with millions in the bank and movie deals pending. It's all come to him because he stole his dead roommate's unpublished novel--but he rationalizes the plagiarism by telling himself that the story is ultimately his; events that happened to him, merely transcribed by Stewart. And because no one knew Stewart had even written it, the script was free for the taking.

Except one person did know--the morning he died, Stewart mailed a copy of the book to his old girlfriend, asking her to critique it. In a panic, Cal races to Vermont and easily--TOO easily--lifts the package before Janet even knows she had it. High on his successful criminal-ism, Cal now sees no hurry to rush back to his cramped apartment. He asks out the lovely Janet, to which she agrees, and soon they fall in love and marry.

Just when everything seems picture-perfect, Les shows up--a one night stand from months ago who has in her possession the laptop she stole from Stewart before vanishing into thin air. And what should be saved on said laptop, but a copy of 'Almost Like Suicide', written by Stewart. Cal, desperate to save his reputation, marriage, and humility, caves to Les and gives her the money she demands, riding on very thin hope that they can live as parasite and host for the rest of their lives, peacefully.

But as Les demands more and Cal becomes more and more desperate, things fall apart. Unfortunate for Cal, but great reading for the audience!

I liked this book. Cal has a sense of humor, though not overly so. He is a worrier but cunning, always trying to stay one step ahead. For everything that happens to him, he calculates a way out. Most of all, I loved how he justified every single unjust thing he did. Nothing was his fault, he did nothing wrong, he could and would live happily ever after. These were thin delusions of course, but exactly what guilty parties cling to so they can sleep at night.

This was written in first person and at about the three-forths mark, things become present-tense as everything beforehand has been written by Cal as a memoir. It takes on more of a diary-type tone, hurried and insecure as the pressure becomes tight. After the climax, the pace slows again and we learn that the entire book, 'About the Author' was written as-is by the protag as a memoir.

And there are movie deals pending.

Colapinto did an outstanding job creating a smooth story out of what could have easily been disjointed and confusing. I even noticed that as the story progressed, 'Cal's' writing improved--conveying ever-so-subtlety that if he'd only sat down and wrote, instead of scheming up ways to not write, all his troubles could have been avoided. Very good lesson.

The only problem I had was that I felt that at any point, I could have set this down and forgotten about it. I'm not sure why I felt that way. The events were tense and logical, always escalating. The characters (well, Cal, anyway) was interesting and honest. The writing style, while starting off bland, developed and became quite good. The imagery was clear. The dialogue real. This was just a long story, perhaps too long for my tiny attention span to grasp. But that is no fault of the author's.

Three and a half stars out of five for plotting and accurately portraying the insane, eff*ed up psychology of a writer.

Book Report

Curves and Bends and Cars That Wont Come Fast
by Brian Fleming

This is the first collection of short stories I've read, despite my interest in writing them. I'm unable to think of an idea that provides any feeling of completion in two thousand words--and, I have nothing of interest to even start with.

But Brian Fleming showed me how it was done. 'Curves' is a collection of stories with one common theme: the search for happiness. Each story revealed a different character in a very different sort of journey, most of them left unhappy at the end of their exploration. The book opens with an incestuous story of three children left to their own devices during a long summer of hormones and lake-side talks--leaving a lasting impression and an incredibly high standard for all the following pages. Then there was the story of the slut who left her one-night stand alone in the apartment, then, after returning to find him gone and the place untouched, emptied the house herself and dumped every possession on the curb out front. There were stories of fathers and sons, lovers and fighters, all of varying race, religion and temperament. Each was unique, each felt authentic and lived, and for each, the pain was real.

Morals and lessons are not spelled out in this book. As with all rich food, you must read slowly and take time to reflect and digest. I'm not even sure what some of these stories were trying to say, if anything at all. The words capture flashes in time, usually at some monumental or debilitating time in the character's life. Although glossy and broken into bite-sized bits, each page is drenched in emotion and Fleming proves that incredibly good things can come in small packages.

Four out of Five stars for gritty, moving storytelling and characters who never find happiness.