Richard Crawford's World: Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Academy” by Bentley Little

The Academy
by Bentley Little
ISBN: 978-0451224675
Published August 2008 by Signet Books
Rating:

I’ve been a fan of Bentley Little’s for years now; whenever I’m in the horror section at Borders, I check to see if there’s a new Little book out that I haven’t read yet. Some writers have compared Little to King, Straub, Barker, and other greats in the horror fiction field. One blurb on one of his books, from Stephen King, describes Little as “A Master of the Macabre”; and on Little’s latest book, The Academy, there’s a blurb from King that describes Little as “Horror’s poet laureate”.

The first book of Bentley Little’s book that I read was The Ignored. That book is, in my opinion, Little’s best; not only is it a fine horror novel, but I think it could stand on its own as a respectable mainstream novel, with the likes of Upton Sinclair or John Updike. It’s the rather hokey supernatural stuff at the end of that novel, in fact, that are its biggest undoing.

Likewise with his 1998 novel, The Store. That novel can be read as a great condemnation of the influence that major “big box” retailers such as WalMart have on small towns in America. It’s great satire, another brilliant novel unfortunately done in by overly dramatic supernatural influences at the end.

Most of Little’s books are like that: unfettered and unbridled condemnations of large institutions and their dehumanizing effects over regular people. I’ve never met the man (I did have the opportunity to chat with him online once), but I have this image of Little as a card-holding NRA member, secluded on his property in Arizona and probably voting Libertarian. The dehumanization in Little’s books are usually shown as an institutional supernatural horror, which often brings people, particularly those in authority, to their absolute worst, in brutal and quite often sexually explicit ways. In The Association, we get a glimpse of how a home-owner’s association can drive a typical homeowner to utter ruin. The Policy shows a family devastated by an evil insurance corporation, sort of Michael Moore meets Freddy Kreuger.

In his more recent books, however, it feels to me that Little is scraping the bottom of the barrel in his search for ways in which he can demonstrate the inhumanizing effects that large institutions can have on people, and his supernatural elements are becoming more and more banal. In Dispatch, which I believe is Little’s strongest novel since The Ignored, the “big bad” at the end turns out to be just another misshapen, evil beast. And to be honest, I’m not even sure I got the point of The Vanishing, his 2006 novel.

In his newest novel, The Academy, Little takes on charter schools, and the result is, unfortunately, disappointing. While he handles the trope of a haunted school much more adeptly than Michael Paine did in The Night School, there’s still quite a bit that’s lacking. The dehumanized victims of the supernatural forces are brutal and vicious in typical Little ways, and in typical Little fashion we witness most of it through the eyes of people who are on the periphery, affected by the forces but not altered by them. But here the causes of the events are given such short shrift that it almost feels like Little uses the novel more as an excuse to showcase brutality and depravity, rather than examine its effects. I went through too many scenes wincing, rather than wondering what was going on. And when the forces behind the events in the novel are finally revealed, I found myself disappointed. It’s an interesting villain behind it all, but given so little face time that it’s barely seen at all. Most of Little’s villains are faceless and operate entirely through intermediaries, but the villain here seems mishandled, even clumsily written.

In general, I enjoy Bentley Little’s novels, and I recommend him. The Academy, however, is not his strongest novel, and I can’t recommend it to anyone.

Book Review: “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
ISBN: 978-1400032716
Published May 2004 by Vintage
Rating:

I first saw this book on the shelves when Jennifer and I visited Ireland in May 2006. When we got back I started seeing it on the shelves in America as well. Everybody kept recommending it to me. “Have you read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time yet?” they’d ask me, and each time I’d have to hang my head in shame as I answered “No”. Then I’d try to perk up and say, “But I’ve seen it on the shelves, and I fully intend to read it!” to which they’d reply, “Yes, that’s what you said last time, Richard.” So finally I went out and bought this book.

I wasn’t disappointed.

I’d like to call this book whimsical, but that isn’t quite right. It is funny at times, and there were a few times when I laughed out loud as I read it. But it is at its core about an autistic teenager who is desperately trying to make sense of the world around him. When Christopher Boone decides, at the suggestion of one of his teachers, to write a book, he decides to write a mystery novel based on the murder of his neighbor’s dog; but as he investigates the mystery, what seems to be a fairly straightforward mystery gets to the heart of who Chris thinks he is and some of the incidents that have defined his whole life.

Where Haddon really succeeds, though, is in presenting Chris’s thought processes and ideas. We get to see Chris figure out the best way of solving a mystery, try to comprehend human behavior when he doesn’t really have the tools to do so, and get into topics of mathematics and logic. Some of these forays into mathematics — such as his explanation of prime numbers and how to figure out which numbers are prime, or certain logic puzzles — may seem irrelevant to the overall story, but they reveal Chris in a way that simple narrative can’t. In spite of Chris’s unusual ways of being in the world, the reader gets caught up in him, and sympathizes deeply with him.

Haddon has been justly praised for his sympathetic and thoughtful treatment of an autistic main character. He has also been praised for his accuracy in presenting an autistic person’s thoughts. While I agree that his characterization of Chris is sympathetic and thoughtful, I’m not sure I can speak to the second point. I’ve only read one book by an autistic person — Nobody Nowhere by Donna Williams — and the way she wrote about her experiences differed greatly than the experiences that Haddon wrote for Chris.

Still, realistic or not, Chris comes across as realistic and sympathetic.

Highly recommended.

Book Review: “Infected” by Scott Sigler

Infected by Scott Sigler
ISBN: 978-0307406101
Published April 2008 by Crown Books

Rating:

I picked up this book with some pretty high expectations. I’d listened to two of Sigler’s podcast novels, Earthcore and Ancestor, and thoroughly enjoyed them both. They made my daily commute not just tolerable, but something I actually looked forward to. I knew that actually reading Infected rather than listening to it in podcast form would be a different experience, and it was. For one thing, I pretty much devoured it, reading it in a few hours, while listening to it in podcast form would have taken several days.

In Infected, a mysterious disease has cropped up in the town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Victims become psychotic and exhibit strange growths on their bodies. As the CIA and the CDC rush to bring the plague under control and keep it from becoming general knowledge, former college football player Perry Dawson becomes its latest victim. We get to go deep into Dawson’s head as he comes to grips with a disease that seems to be trying to control him, and witness his genuinely frightening slide into insanity.

On the whole, I enjoyed Infected. Its fast pace and graphic descriptions are almost cinematic. Sigler has a gift for conveying paranoia in a way that from within the character’s head seems very genuine, but his strength really lies in his effective portrayal of gore. Make no mistake, Sigler is a very gory writer; the other novels of his that I’ve read have been full of violence, graphically described. The level of gore, compared with the high concepts that Sigler employs, have earned him comparisons with Stephen King and Chuck Palahniuk.

Nevertheless, there were some weaknesses to this novel. Many characters felt like stock material, almost trite: the coldly efficient CIA operative, the methodical and overworked government scientist, and so on. This contributed to the fast pace of the book, though, which is part of its appeal. These characters have easily understood motives and behavior patterns. On the other hand, they won’t necessarily stand out as identifiable and sympathetic.

In short: if you want a quick, bloody read full of violence and gore, with plenty of science on the side, I would strongly recommend Infected. It’s a fun read, and there are plenty of times when that’s exactly what you need.

The Night School (by Michael Paine)

The Night School by Michael Paine
Publication: Berkeley (2006), Paperback, 336 pages
Date: 2006
ISBN:  0425209164 / 9780425209165
Buy it at Amazon.com

Rating:

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Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom

Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom by A. L. Haskett
Publication: Jonlin Books (2000), Paperback, 180 pages
Date: 2000
ISBN: 096788330X
Buy it at Amazon.com

This novel starts when the titular character’s mother encounters her son, her son’s best friend, and her boyfriend involved in what appears to be a bloody, evil murder. After that, things get weird.

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The New Lovecraft Circle (edited by Robert M. Price)

The New Lovecraft Circle
Editor: Robert M. Price
Publication: Del Rey (2004), Edition: Reprint, Paperback
Date: 1996
ISBN: 034544406X
Buy it at Amazon.com

H. P. Lovecraft’s name is virtually synonymous with American style horror fiction; his writing, particularly his so-called “Cthulhu Mythos”, has influenced fiction authors worldwide, and Lovecraftian elements can be seen in novels, movies, comic books, even cartoons. Batman’s nemesis “The Joker”, for example, is said to be incarcerated at Arkham Asylum; and Arkham was an invention of Lovecraft’s. Many modern horror writers — such as Stephen King, Bentley Little, Joe R. Lansdale, to name just a few — have cited Lovecraft as one of their primary influences.

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Horrors Beyond (edited by William Jones)

Horrors Beyond
Edited by William Jones
Elder Signs Press, Inc. (2005), Paperback
ISBN: 0975922920 / 9780975922927
Buy it at Amazon.com

I picked up this book at Dragon*Con 2006 and read it on the airplane. On the whole, the stories are of decent quality; the first few in particular were engaging and very well-written. I particularly enjoyed “One Way Conversation”; I was forced to stop reading this one halfway through because our plane landed in Denver, and I was rushing to our next gate just so I could pick it up again and finish it.

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Talk to the Hand

Lynne Truss is famous, of course, for having written Eats, Shoots & Leaves, though I have never read that particular book (though I’ve been told by many people that, as a Writer, I really ought to). This book is subtitled, #?*! The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. And what it really boils down to is a moralistic rant about the utterly appalling state of polite behavior, civility, and manners in society today. Or, rather, the appalling lack thereof.

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The Matrix and Philosophy

The Matrix and Philosophy edited by William Irwin

My bachelor’s degree is in Philosophy (UC Davis, 1992), and The Matrix is one of my favorite science fiction films ever; and so this book seems like it would be a perfect match for me, doesn’t it? It’s part of the same Philosophy and Popular Culture series which includes other books such as The Simpsons and Philosophy, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Philosophy (which I have and which is a surprisingly entertaining read, save for the very last essay), and the forthcoming The Undead and Philosophy, which I need to get just because the title sounds so impressive. There’s another book out now called Superheroes and Philosophy which I want to read, even though I have never been much of a fan of the superhero genre.

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Bloodsucking Fiends

Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore
Publication: Harper Paperbacks (2004), Paperback
Date: 1995
ISBN: 0060735414 / 9780060735418
Buy it at Amazon.com

Review updated February 27, 2007

Christopher Moore is regarded as one of the better American humorists writing today, and the popularity of his novels Lamb and Fluke seem to support that. Bloodsucking Fiends is the first book of his that I’ve read.

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The Problem of Pain

The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis

Though my study of philosophy included a few courses in the philosophy of religion, I don’t feel qualified to really discuss the theology that C. S. Lewis presented with any competence. I can offer a few observations, though. So here they are.

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More Short and Shivery: Thirty Terrifying Tales

More Short and Shivery: Thirty Terrifying Tales by Robert D. San Souci

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve enjoyed reading scary stories; and now as an adult, I still do. In fact, I have Alvin Schwartz’s trilogy, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, read by George Irving, on my MP3 player, and I still listen to it from time to time.

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Anansi Boys

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

You’d think that the premise of Anansi Boys — that the old gods are still alive and interacting with humanity in unusual ways — would be tired, and that several of the plot elements in this novel (I won’t give them away) would be clichéd. However, Gaiman, in his usual way, manages to breathe fresh life into these elements and the premise and create a mythology which is relevant and entertaining, while telling a story which is essentially about identity, brotherhood, and about finding one’s father. The pace of the novel is quick, but I didn’t feel cheated at the end in any way. Gaiman’s use of humor — some of the passages I laughed out loud at and shared with my wife — is, in some ways, very typically British and reminiscent of Terry Pratchett. Bill Bryson, and Douglas Adams (I was, at times, reminded of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul).

Strongly recommended.

Guns, Germs, and Steel

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, historian Jared Diamond attempts to answer the question of why some societies succeed over others. More specifically, he sets out to discover why the European civilization apparently managed to spread out over most of the globe, conquering along its way, while the societies and civilizations on other continents — the civilizations of Africa or the New World or Australia, for example — did not. The perennial example that Diamond uses in his book is the fall of the Incan empire to the Spanish Conquistadores: the Conquistadores brought about the fall of the Incas in a decisive battle where thousands of Native American warriors died, but not a single Spanish soldier did, even though the Spanish were vastly outnumbered. Diamond suggests that the Spanish victory was due to their superior weaponry and their superior political organization.

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Dispatch

Dispatch by Bentley Little

Many of Bentley Little’s novels contain some element of high satire; in The Store, for example, he pokes fun at America’s obsession with more goods at continuously low prices, and at the willingness of various communities to sacrifice their character and local economies for the spurious good of a “Big Box Store”. In The Policy he takes a swipe at the pervasiveness of the insurance industry in our lives. And in Dispatch, his target is the person who cheats by continually writing letters of complaint and those whose sense of power outweighs their sense of right and wrong. In this book, the main character is a man whose correspondence not only gets him free French fries and passes to a local amusement park, but also influences global politics in good and bad ways.

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