Category: Book Reviews

Dare Me by Megan Abbott

Posted November 19, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary, Pulp / 0 Comments

Title: Dare Me (Goodreads)
Author: Megan Abbott
Published: Picador, 2012
Pages: 325
Genres: Contemporary, Pulp
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Beneath the glitz and glamour of this high school cheerleading squad is something dark. Beth Cassidy is the head cheerleader, her best friend Addy Hanlon is her right hand woman. While Beth calls the shots, Abby enforces; this has been the long established hierarchy. But when the new coach arrives, the order is disrupted. While coach draws the girls in and establishes a new regime, a suspicious suicide will put the team under investigation.

This is my first Megan Abbott read and I was excited to see a fresh take on the noir genre into what has often been called suburban noir. It combines the elements I love about noir and places it into a modern setting. You get a glimpse of the dark heartedness of teenage girls in a competitive cheerleading squad, all wanting to be the best and to be popular; but how far will they take it?

When I think of noir, I think of an atmosphere which is dark and grey, but I was really pleased to see just how well it translates into the bright suburban setting. Think of this as Mean Girls to the extreme; you have the bitchness of the girls, the struggle for popularity, and the angst but this is all turned upside down due to the shake-up caused by the new coach and the mystery surrounding their lives.

This is a well-paced, easy to read, modern, edge of your seat mystery that was a pure joy to read. I went and brought some older Megan Abbott novels before I even finished this one. The only thing that I didn’t like about this book was the cover. It looks like it’s a chick-lit or YA novel but I knew it would be a noir novel. I’m not sure if the cover works; now that I’ve read the book I don’t mind the cover too much but for someone that has never read Megan Abbott, what message is the cover sending? Also there is a little gripe I want to mention about this book on Goodreads; just because this book has teenagers as the main characters, does not make this book YA!

Apart from those minor issues I have with the cover and the classification of the book on Goodreads, I would say Dare Me by Megan Abbott is a beautifully disturbing book to read. I had so much fun reading this novel and I think it might be a good introduction to her work. Cheerleaders can be mean and it’s scary to think what lengths they will go to to be the leader and popular one. I’m looking forward to trying some of Abbott’s older books which seem to be more of a traditional noir novels but I also want to read some more of suburban noir as well. As a fan of noir, it pleases me that her modern take of the genre worked this well.

The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman

Posted November 16, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: The Teleportation Accident (Goodreads)
Author: Ned Beauman
Published: Sceptre, 2012
Pages: 357
Genres: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Egon Loeser is an avant garde theatre set designer on a quest to recreate the perfect stage trick. A trick the great Lavacini’s called the Almost Instantaneous Transport of Persons from Place to Place or to the masses, the Teleportation Device. Aside from his obsessive quest, there are his very dull friends and over course there is the girl who he is equally obsessed with. This is a hard book to sum up in one paragraph so I think I’ll borrow the blurb on the back of the book;

A historical novel that doesn’t know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can’t remember what ‘isotope’ means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.

Let’s face it; Egon Loeser is a complete obsessed prick who you are probably going to hate; you’ll most likely hate his friends as well. They are all obsessed with sex and feel like they are sex staved and spend most of them time talking about getting laid. Something most guys often do but something I’ve never really seen done to this degree in a book set in the 1930’s. I’m kind of reminded of the Picture of Dorian Gray; Lord Wotton in particular. They are extremely witty, but they are lustful, egotistical pricks.

But hating the characters is actually part of the enjoyment of this book; I wanted to rage so many times but that just added to the experience. You can’t help but feel invested in the story when you want to slap some sense into the main protagonist. I don’t know what was so special about Adele Hitler, sure she was beautiful but Loeser was really obsessed with sleeping with her.

This is not just a novel about lust and time travel; this is more a novel about the disconnection between imagination and reality. Part of the beauty with in the book is the way Ned Beauman takes you in one direction and then unexpectedly you find yourself somewhere else; reading historical fiction turns into realism, science fiction and some other genres.

This is a book you can’t really predict and this is why I didn’t focus on the plot too much. You are taken on a journey of the unexpected and I don’t want to ruin that trip for any of the people planning on reading this book. You will hate this book and you will adore this book; it will leave you with very mixed emotions but there is a certain elegance and beauty within this book that will stay with you well after you’ve finished hating the characters.

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Posted November 10, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Abdication (Goodreads)
Author: Juliet Nicolson
Published: Bloomsbury, 2012
Pages: 344
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: ARC from Publisher

Buy: Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

England, 1936. The beloved king has died and a charismatic new monarch has been crowned; he is young, sympathetic to the needs of the working class, glamorous and single. By the end of the year England will be surprised to see him give up the throne for love and the lead up to World War II. Abdication follows the story of May Thomas, a wise-beyond-her-nineteen-year old who secures a position as secretary and driver to Sir Philip Blunt. This opens her eyes to British high society and falling in love with a man well beyond her reach.

I’m always interested in the time period from the 1920’s to the 1960’s, but I think that was my love for hard boiled crime novels and Mad Men. But a book about high society in the 1930’s England sounded really interesting. Abdication by Juliet Nicolson started off as a slow burn; developing characters, showing how they fit with the history at the time but I never really felt like the book took off in any way. I was waiting to be engaged with the story but it never really happened.

It is possible the author really stuck to one story arc and this book could have really benefited with some more characters to keep the book interesting. Some witting and exciting characters to spice things up would have helped as well. This book just felt slow moving and in the end boring; the character development was decent but there weren’t enough interesting characters to push me through this book.

Also the prose in the novel were only average, there was no beauty or elegance in the writing or the scenery. It was just focused on one element, which it did a decent job with but one decent element does not make a great read. Abdication just ended up being a non-fiction writer trying to attempt fiction.

Juliet Nicolson knows her history and she managed to fit fictional characters in with historical characters but I think she is trying to do what Hilary Mantel did with Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies. While this period of time was interesting, (I think The Kings Speech did a decent job telling us about this period of history) Abdication just ended up feeling like another attempt at the same formula. This was a big disappointment for me, I really wanted to like this book but I didn’t.

Goodbye Lullaby by Jan Murray

Posted November 6, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Goodbye Lullaby (Goodreads)
Author: Jan Murray
Published: Hachette, 2012
Pages: 320
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: ARC from Publisher

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Goodbye Lullaby tells the story of Miki, a sixteen year old who finds herself pregnant, who at the advice of her best friend, Jade, decides to raise her baby. Two decades later, Miki is an anti-war activist on the run trying to avoid the federal police and protect her son from the conscription lottery. When Jade comes back into Miki’s life they will stop at nothing to try and save her son going to war.

This is a multi-layered story, full of very real issues ranging from religion, parenthood, friendship, war and so much more. This novel is written in two different perspectives, life as a sixteen year old in the 1950’s and then being a parent during the Vietnam War. While this seems to work pretty well in this book, I think there were elements that didn’t work. I felt like author Jan Murray wanted to convey too many issues, instead of just a few. This resulted in a glossing over effect with some of the story and no real focus with the most serious issues in the novel.

I really enjoyed the coming of age style of Miki and Jade’s life in the 1950’s; at times it felt very much like trying to be Puberty Blues and at other times it was trying to make a thoughtful plot; but I found a little hard to tell if the author wanted me to have fun reading this or take it seriously. The other narrative didn’t seem to have that same issue, it felt very serious and often bordering into a very dry plot. The constant switching between the two narratives help avoid making this a boring read but it felt too clunky switching between the two.

I did enjoy young Miki and Jade; they were wonderful characters, full of life, mischief and big dreams, but what happened to them when they grew up? It felt like they grew into one dimensional characters; I never really felt like they were the same people, just completely new. As adults they had real issues to deal with but getting pregnant at sixteen is a big issue and that didn’t stop them from being larger than life, so I’m not sure what happened in the twenty years between but I’m a little curious to know what shrunk them back to size.

Overall this was a feel good cosy read, which tries to hit on some important issues but if you gloss over that you just have a light frivolous novel. The writing really wasn’t the best, I think the author loved saying each character’s names; because she does it a lot. But as a whole this book was enjoyable to read without holding any real depth. For someone looking for a summer read about a woman and her love for her son, maybe give this book a go.

Return of the Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Posted November 4, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Pulp / 0 Comments

Title: Return of the Thin Man (Goodreads)
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Series: The Thin Man #2
Published: Mysterious Press, 2012
Pages: 320
Genres: Pulp
My Copy: ARC from Netgalley

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Dashiell Hammett is often referred to as one of the ‘Big Three’ when it comes to pulp fiction along with Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. He is known for his hard-boiled novels turned film noir classics including The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man. Return of the Thin man is a collection of two previously unreleased novellas featuring Nick & Nora Charles from The Thin Man.

While “After the Thin Man” and “Another Thin Man” have been promoted as two never before published novellas, these are basically glorified screen plays by the pulp legend. The cynical ex-detective is back along with his very cleaver wife for some more drinking, flirting and crimes. But you really need to have read or seen The Thin Man before reading this because they are sequels that relay heavily on the character development that has already taken place.

The main problem is there are no stories here; nothing to demonstrate the power of Hammett’s pulp styles. These are just scripts for cashing in on the success of The Thin Man film adaptation. I think they would have worked a lot better if they were made into movies in the 1930’s. It reminds me of the recent movie release of Taken 2; all the plot and character development was in its predecessor, it is just cashing in on the success by trying to continue the story.

As a pulp fan I was looking forward to reading this and I really wanted to love it, but I was very disappointed. This is a gimmick release, not recommended for people new to Dashiell Hammett and Nick & Nora Charles. But if you loved The Thin Man there is a slight pleasure in seeing what Hammett had planned for these characters. The Thin Man was never a favourite of mine, I do really like Nora but for someone interested in trying the author I would recommend The Maltese Falcon or my personal favourite, Red Harvest.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Posted October 30, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Book of the Month, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism / 0 Comments

Title: The Satanic Verses (Goodreads)
Author: Salman Rushdie
Published: Picador, 1988
Pages: 561
Genres: Literary Fiction, Magical Realism
My Copy: Personal Copy

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To celebrate Banned Book Week, the book club decided to read The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. For those who don’t know, the book tells the story of two Indian actors falling to earth, transformed into living symbols of angelic and evil. Both actors struggle to piece their lives together and this novel tries to put it all together from the terrorist hijacking that leads to them falling to earth and surviving to their live their struggles. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar and Chamcha is a voiceover artist in England but The Satanic Verses is a clash between Eastern and Western culture and the effects it has on their Hindu faith.

I started off really enjoying this book; it was bizarre and I had no idea where this book would take me but after the millionth dream sequence I did feel very lost. I don’t begin to understand the religious aspects of this book or the life of Muhammad so I felt like I was missing a lot from this novel. I did end up asking a friend about life as a Muslim and the issues she faced with religion in western society which did lead to her fully venting and while it was great to get her opinion, I was left with more questions than answers. I finally had to try and accept that Rushdie is just trying to vent his own issues about his personal dilemmas about faith and being disillusioned with both cultures.

While this book is considered to be both controversial and acclaimed, I found it hard to see this book as either. Of course I understand if people take issues with this book but for me it felt more like Salman Rushdie needed to express his concerns and it was more a personal problem than a stab at the entire religion. As for the critically acclaimed aspect, sure the books was beautifully written but the magical realism was probably turned up to the extreme in this novel and it was difficult to piece together. Also if you want to understand this book fully you may need to study theology and migrate to a place that clashes with your cultural ideals.

Overall this book was confusing and made my brain feel like it was melting; there is so much weirdness and depth to the book I have a feeling I will never grasp it in a way I would like to. The amount of dream sequences didn’t help this book as made it a lot harder to keep up with. I would love to know what someone that has a similar issue with religion and culture butting heads thinks of this book.

I would be interested in reading this book again, maybe when I have a degree in literature and have the tools to fully analyse everything in this book. But for now it was too intense for me to get full enjoyment out of it. I’ve heard Salman Rushdie is not an easy author to read and I can see why. This book’s final rating is not a reflection of my enjoyment of the book but more of the proses and the fact that it has stuck with me well after I’ve finished it. I don’t fully understand it but I now appreciate what he did with The Satanic Verse.

The Cocktail Waitress by James M. Cain

Posted October 28, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Pulp / 0 Comments

Title: The Cocktail Waitress (Goodreads)
Author: James M. Cain
Series: Hard Case Crime #109
Published: Hard Case Crime, 2012
Pages: 270
Genres: Pulp
My Copy: Hardcover

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Joan Medford is a young beautiful woman in an unhealthy marriage, but when her husband dies in a suspicious car accident, does that mean her life will improve? No, she now has to take a job as a cocktail waitress to make ends meet and somehow make enough money to finally be able to take her son back from her mother in law. On the job, two men take a special interest in her, one really gets Joan’s blood racing and the other is a very wealthy older man who tips very generously if she gives him her attention.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge James M. Cain fan; The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity are two classic noir novels that I highly recommend but there is another side to this author. Cain wrote a very emotionally charged noir novel called Mildred Pierce which makes up the top three essential Cain novels. The Cocktail Waitress really reminds me of Mildred Pierce, you have all the noir elements plus the female protagonist not to mention the emotionally charged plot. This is a previously unfinished novel by Cain but don’t let that worry you, he did finish the novel but he had not finished the revisions before he died, but it took over thirty years for this book to finally come out. The editor, Charles Ardai used Cain’s notes to finish the revisions of this book and it still reads and feels very much what you expect from a book by this Noir master. He was even quoted in saying; “Together with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain is universally considered one of the three greatest writers of noir crime fiction who ever lived, and for fans of the genre, The Cocktail Waitress is the Holy Grail. It’s like finding a lost manuscript by Hemingway or a lost score by Gershwin – that’s how big a deal this is.”

Joan is everything you want from the protagonist; strong, witty and beautiful. She knows what she want (her son back) and she is determined to make her life better on her own. But the drama of working in a cocktail lounge might be a little too much for her. Her mother in law is now convinced that cocktail waitress is just code from something more. Joan’s on a mission and won’t let anyone or anything stand in her way; which makes her a great femme fatale.

The Cocktail Waitress is a fast paced, hard hitting novel with complexity; a well-crafted book that was just a joy to read. I loved the sinister elements that transported this from just an emotional journey to a classic James M. Cain style noir novel. I’m so glad that Charles Ardai took the time and effort in finishing this book so we can all enjoy it. If you liked Mildred Piece then you are going to love reading The Cocktail Waitress.

“Here, long after anyone would have expected it, is the voice of James M. Cain, as fresh and as relevant as ever. The Cocktail Waitress will involve you, and then shock you with an ending you’ll never forget. This is a true rarity: a reader’s novel that’s also a literary event.” – Stephen King

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Posted October 26, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Crime / 0 Comments

Title: Mystic River (Goodreads)
Author: Dennis Lehane
Published: William Morrow, 2001
Pages: 401
Genres: Crime
My Copy: Personal Copy

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Dave, Sean and Jimmy where childhood friends, but things changed when Dave gets into a stranger’s car and the others don’t. Twenty five years later all three are completely differently people. Sean is a detective, Jimmy is an ex-convict and Dave is just a shell of a man; never quite recovering from the emotionally scarring events of his past. Their lives come together again when Jimmy’s daughter is found brutally murdered, Dave returns home covered in blood and Sean is put on the case to find who killed Jimmy’s daughter.

Mystic River is a psychological thriller that never really felt right. Not to take anything away from Dennis Lehane; while this is the first book of his that I’ve read I think he has the talent to write dark, noir-ish psychological thrillers but maybe this is a bad example of his ability. The book opens with the childhood and Dave being abducted by the child molester, which while a terrible thing to happen it didn’t feel like Lehane hit the mark with the attempt to be dark and disturbing with this situation. Then the book seemed to drag on and on until the book finally started to pick up pace about half way through.

When it comes to the crime, I found it rather weird that they would assign the case to someone that knows the victim’s father. Sure it was twenty five years ago but to me it still felt like a conflict. Sure I don’t know too much about police procedure but to me that just doesn’t seem right. Overall, this book didn’t feel dark enough, the writer did seem to make it a dark thriller but I felt like it never got there and fell more into the area of predictable. When I read a psychological thriller, I expect a complicated and twisted story and I don’t think I got it here.

The book was entertaining and I’m glad to have read it but it wasn’t something I would recommend anyone else read. I hope Dennis Lehane’s other books are a lot better because while I can see what Mystic River is trying to achieve I think it fell too short. I think the emotions within this novel were too flat and this was the overall problem. I’ve not seen the movie but I wonder if the tension and emotion worked within it since this adaptation was well received.

Redshirts by John Scalzi

Posted October 24, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Humour, Science Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Redshirts (Goodreads)
Author: John Scalzi
Narrator: Wil Wheaton
Published: Tor, 2012
Pages: 320
Genres: Humour, Science Fiction
My Copy: Audiobook

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

When people talk about a book being “meta”, I have to admit that I often wonder what they are talking about because it really doesn’t say anything about the book itself but it is a good way to sound pretentious. John Scalzi’s Redshirts is so meta; I think the author must have had a lot of fun writing this novel and playing with the red shirt concept. For those people that don’t know what a Red shirt is; it’s a concept made famous by Star Trek in which the character wearing the red shirt on a mission was always the one that died for dramatic effect.

The book Redshirts follows a copy of characters who decided why there was a high mortality rate for the people on missions with high ranking officers. Through their research they found that the only other ship with the same mortality rate was the USS Enterprise. This drives the story in a comedic dig at science fiction television shows.

This book starts off so strong, it has an interesting premises but it turns out all downhill from there. I really think this book would have worked a lot better as a short story and I think Scalzi was just adding filler in to make the book longer. I did enjoy the meta elements of this book and I found it was an entertaining look at the Star Trek storylines but once you hit the halfway point you might as well stop reading. Think of it as Star Trek parody meets Stranger then Fiction jammed together in a very sloppy way.

I listened to the audiobook version of this book and I think that was one of the best parts of my experience of this book. The audio version was read by Wil Weaton adding a whole new element of meta to this book. As a geek, I’m a fan of Wil Weaton and this was the main reason why I read this book. Redshirts could have been an entertaining book, but I don’t think it really came together as well as I was hoping for. Luckily it was a very short book; which could have been shorter. The comedy and meta elements of the novel were worth checking out but the rest of the book didn’t work.

The Dead of Winter by Lee Collins

Posted October 22, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Fantasy, Western / 0 Comments

Title: The Dead of Winter (Goodreads)
Author: Lee Collins
Series: Cora Oglesby #1
Published: Angry Robot, 2012
Pages: 384
Genres: Fantasy, Western
My Copy: ARC from Netgalley

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I didn’t know much about this book apart from the tag on the front of the book ‘True Grit meets True Blood’. This was enough to get my attention and I felt like a western paranormal urban fantasy novel might be a fun read. Cora and her husband Ben are hunters, but for things that should not exist in the world. When the Marshall of Leadville, Colorado calls her in to help with a series of mysterious deaths, Cora feels she may have finally met her match.

I’m not sure how to classify the novel; is it a Western, paranormal, dark fantasy or even urban fantasy novel? The Dark of Winter seems to mash all these elements into the one book, and it does a decent job at doing that. I was hoping that Cora would be as sassy as Mattie Ross in True Grit but she was just a bitch, plain and simple. In fact the only True Grit element in the book was that this book is a western. I felt a little disappointed in that, I wanted sassy, but I got bitchy. I did get over that pretty quickly and was able to settle in to enjoy the plot. The characters never seemed to be developed enough for me, but this may have been due to my expectations.

On the whole, I felt that there was just something missing from the book; the characters just didn’t come together properly, but there was some chemistry between Cora and the English hunter. The writing of this book was good and the pacing of the plot was decent enough but for some reason I still think the book needed something else to improve the story. I’m not sure if it needed the sass, or maybe some wit or humour but I think adding an extra element like these would have helped the book overall.

A Vampire Western novel seems very unique and there was a sense of mystery throughout the novel but there was always some cliches which counteracted the good parts. Its adventure elements were let down by the dialogue between the characters. It just felt like for every good element of this book, I had an issue with something else. I’m sure some people will really enjoy this book I just felt like the pros and cons of this book just equalled out to make it feel like an average read. I’m not sure if I’ll read the sequel when it comes out but I know I won’t be rushing out to get it.