November 2015 Reading List

A slow month.  Must be the Holidays.

1. The Dinner by Herman Koch
2. Half Way Home by Hugh Howey
3. Wilderness by Lance Weller
4. Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

The Dinner is a great book.  As the reader starts in on it there are amusing stabs that Paul, the narrator,  makes towards his brother who is in line for Prime Minister at the next election, at a dinner in a suave restaurant.  You might ask yourself how Koch will be able to keep this up for an entire novel.  By the "main course" Koch has peeled away various layers of narrative dead ends to reveal the true dilemma.  The two brothers' sons have committed a heinous crime and the moral dilemma is what the brothers and their wives are going to do about it.  I must say that I found it hard to go along with the outcome.  I agree somewhat with the reasoning but something in me abhors the result.  And perhaps that is Koch's power -- perhaps this was intended.  After all, what better outcome could there be in thinking about a moral issue that affects most of us than to be thinking about it much later than if there was a nice neat result?

Half Way Home is, I think, not Mr Howey's best work.  A quick tale describing the situation that a bunch of premature, tank-grown adolescents find themselves in on a strange pre-colonized world.  There is some imaginative descriptions of this hostile planet but the outcome is somewhat predictable.  Perhaps this is YA fiction and my expectations are too high.

Wilderness is my favorite book for this month.  Weller is a marvel in his writing. Vivid and evocative prose makes every sentence a joy to consume.  A Civil War veteran's life is examined both during that War and thirty years later when he is nearly done with it.  Weller goes back and forth those two time periods telling two stories of the quiet strength and unspeakable pain this veteran has endured.  We might visualize what it is like to experience hand to hand combat through realistic battle scenes like those seen in Saving Private Ryan or Patriot or scores of other movies.  But Weller, to me, brings another dimension to the inevitability, hopelessness and pointlessness of it all.  I have more books on my shelf to read concerning the American Civil War and if they're anything like this I'm in for a harrowing time.  In the meantime I look forward to Weller's second novel, American Marchlands.

It's only as I set to writing this summary that I learned that Brilliance if the first of a trilogy. Huh.  I thought the ending was nicely tied up.  Sure there are questions in my mind about what happened to the community of brilliants in Wyoming but I had that Hollywood feeling that it was all going to work out.  Apparently not.  Will I read the other two books? Maybe -- I haven't completely decided.  So what's it about? Since the 1980s some kids are being born with exceptional talents that the rest of us might consider savant-ish.  As they grow up there arises the inevitable tensions between the "haves" and the fearful.  One government agent, a brilliant himself, goes undercover to get his man.  But what he learns along the way brings everything he believes into question.  Yada yada.  The trip is entertaining but... I'm still deciding.

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