I have had a crush on Sam Shepard since I saw him in the movie Frances in 1982. Then I fell in love when he played Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. So, when I discovered his books, full of prose and poetry, I became a die-hard reading fan as well. I’m pretty sure you don’t want me gushing all over the blog about an old heart throb of mine, so, on to the book - Day out of Days by Sam Shepard.
Just know this - Sam Shepard is one of the most honest writers I have ever read. I will compare him to one of my all time favourite authors and successful short story writers Annie Proulx. Shepard is a little rougher but there is a sincerity in that roughness that makes his stories all the more authentic. I like my men, writers and otherwise, rugged and flawed. Sam Shepard fits the bill. I think that most short story writers polish a piece to within an inch of its life. Shepard lets the scuffs and scratches lay where they are.
It is not really fair to call this collection a book of short stories. Shepard has written pieces – 4 or 5 page stories, 2 page essays, 1 page thoughts, and poems. I can picture him sitting in a rundown cafe out the back of nowhere writing a thought on a napkin or a scrap of paper and sticking it in his flannel shirt pocket, which then became a short piece in this collection of thoughts. I’m sure there was some editing, but the magic of that original writing, the rawness of a first draft, still flavours these pieces.
Something I love about Shepard’s writing is that it causes a physical response from me. I smile, I frown, my eyes widen and my mouth twists. I love the fact that I feel I am part of each little story, mentally and physically, and that he has invited me in so thoughtfully.
I am smitten enough to read all of his pieces and I know, that if he was with me while I read, that he would start off by offering me a cup of coffee and we would get down to a good whiskey by the end. And because I know his voice and gestures so well from the movies I can hear him talking to me as I read. I’m sure that you don’t need Shepard’s actual voice in your ear while you read this to fall in love, just like me.
I have lived in the places he writes about and I can feel the bleakness and the richness of his sets. I have met people who have lived on the land in a small country town all their lives and I can hear their voices in his writing. I have walked along the same rivers and driven the same long stretches of road. He assumes we are there with him right from the beginning of each piece whether you have lived there or not, and he’s right. I could feel the cold, smell the coffee, taste the dust and the tears as I read.
I have read all of his collections and plays and Day out of Days is one of his best. If you haven’t read any of Shepard’s works this is a good place to start.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Bleed for Me by Michael Robotham
I haven’t read a crime novel for years, but in the midst of studying for uni exams I decided that I needed something light to read myself to sleep at night. So off I went to the box of 50 books I wouldn’t be able to put down that was so kindly sent to me by the ABC and I picked up the first mystery book that was in the pile.
Now, like I said, I’m not a big mystery or detective fiction reader. And now that I am writing this I realize that it’s not for any particular reason. I think I just read a few crime novels that were too alike and I got bored. I have friends that can’t wait to pre-order the next to-be-published Ruth Rendell or Barbara Vine or whatever she calls herself? I have one friend who chats constantly about the latest Val McDermid and I have enjoyed watching the Blood in the Wire series on TV (a little gruesome sometimes, but good). But, I had never even heard of Michael Robotham. Nevertheless, I picked up Bleed for Me and began to read it.
Well, for two days I couldn’t put the damned thing down. Stuff the studying, I wanted to find out who done it! Hah! I hear you die hard crime novel readers smugly smirking at me right now. Yes, OK, it was great. There, are you happy now?
Robotham is good! He is clever, witty, thorough and devilishly teasing. Bleed for Me has the iconic flawed detective (who is actually a psychologist who can’t help himself), the seemingly innocent who is accused of a crime, the greedy, the suspicious, the mean and the downright despicable characters. But Robotham gets in to all of his characters psyches in way that is so intriguing you feel like you know them far better than any other character in the book does. Very clever! He sets a tone and a pace that is just fast enough to keep you off balance but not too fast to run you over. He stays in a constant style (I’m not sure how to say that in literary theory terms but I will look it up) which is difficult when you have many personalities to keep track of and a lot of seemingly random events all happening at once. He twists and turns but by the middle of the book you have fallen under Robotham’s spell and you start to just trust the process. Well into the story, as he added more characters and the plots thickened, as they say, I was ready – Bring It On! I trusted Robotham to take care of me, as the reader, by that point, and I knew he would not leave me hanging once I was sick of hanging.
If you don’t like reading about the seedier side of humanity then you don’t read crime fiction and you won’t really care that some of the characters in this book are the dregs of the worst. Even Miss Marple and Agatha Raisin had to deal with the darker side of human kind, but in the end of their stories everyone went back to being just how they were before the tragedy. Michael Robotham doesn’t insult his readers by making believe that everything is OK for the characters in this book after the crime has been solved. I fact, I believe that he builds on the residual wounds of his main characters in subsequent books. I like that.
I believed this book. I couldn’t stop reading it. I stayed up late into the night to finish it. I gave it to a fellow serious reader. I did all the things that signal to me that this book is a good book. I have faith in Michael Robotham now, and I will read another of his novels.
Rhonda
Now, like I said, I’m not a big mystery or detective fiction reader. And now that I am writing this I realize that it’s not for any particular reason. I think I just read a few crime novels that were too alike and I got bored. I have friends that can’t wait to pre-order the next to-be-published Ruth Rendell or Barbara Vine or whatever she calls herself? I have one friend who chats constantly about the latest Val McDermid and I have enjoyed watching the Blood in the Wire series on TV (a little gruesome sometimes, but good). But, I had never even heard of Michael Robotham. Nevertheless, I picked up Bleed for Me and began to read it.
Well, for two days I couldn’t put the damned thing down. Stuff the studying, I wanted to find out who done it! Hah! I hear you die hard crime novel readers smugly smirking at me right now. Yes, OK, it was great. There, are you happy now?
Robotham is good! He is clever, witty, thorough and devilishly teasing. Bleed for Me has the iconic flawed detective (who is actually a psychologist who can’t help himself), the seemingly innocent who is accused of a crime, the greedy, the suspicious, the mean and the downright despicable characters. But Robotham gets in to all of his characters psyches in way that is so intriguing you feel like you know them far better than any other character in the book does. Very clever! He sets a tone and a pace that is just fast enough to keep you off balance but not too fast to run you over. He stays in a constant style (I’m not sure how to say that in literary theory terms but I will look it up) which is difficult when you have many personalities to keep track of and a lot of seemingly random events all happening at once. He twists and turns but by the middle of the book you have fallen under Robotham’s spell and you start to just trust the process. Well into the story, as he added more characters and the plots thickened, as they say, I was ready – Bring It On! I trusted Robotham to take care of me, as the reader, by that point, and I knew he would not leave me hanging once I was sick of hanging.
If you don’t like reading about the seedier side of humanity then you don’t read crime fiction and you won’t really care that some of the characters in this book are the dregs of the worst. Even Miss Marple and Agatha Raisin had to deal with the darker side of human kind, but in the end of their stories everyone went back to being just how they were before the tragedy. Michael Robotham doesn’t insult his readers by making believe that everything is OK for the characters in this book after the crime has been solved. I fact, I believe that he builds on the residual wounds of his main characters in subsequent books. I like that.
I believed this book. I couldn’t stop reading it. I stayed up late into the night to finish it. I gave it to a fellow serious reader. I did all the things that signal to me that this book is a good book. I have faith in Michael Robotham now, and I will read another of his novels.
Rhonda
Sunday, December 5, 2010
The Passage by Justin Cronin
If you like your vamp lit endings all tied up in a neat blood-stained bow, then The Passage might not be your cup of True Blood. On the other hand, if you are sick of the same-o same-o vampire love stories and want something with a bit more true grit, then this might just be the book for you. I am happy to say it was the book for me – albeit a bit too long (again!).
Alert: This is the first part of a trilogy.
I have two big bugbears when it comes to books. Wait, wait, stop the wedding! Where did that word ‘bugbear’ come from? I think my mother-in-law used to say it. It is a word for a bogeyman according to Wikipedia, but is also mean something that is annoying or a pet peeve. I like the word a lot. It is a word that conveys the fact that it refers to something you don’t like but it has softness to it as well, so it isn’t something that you will go to a doctor to get removed. It’s just a little thing that gives you the shits.
Bugbear number one: my old fiend the under-edited novel. Seriously, I can think of 4 chapters in The Passage, just off the top of my head, that didn’t need to be in this story. They didn’t add to the plot, story line or develop the characters. So why does this book have to be 784 pages? It seems to me that novels are going the same way as movies – the longer the better. I like a big meaty book I can spend a bit of time living in. But I could live happily in this book if it was pared down to 500 pages or so. But, hey, it’s my very own bugbear.
Bugbear number two has nothing to do with this book so I will be saving that for another time.
This novel sits on the border between Fantasy Land and that literary nation of many states – Fiction. Now, fantasy readers wear many different hats. Some like Fairy-tale type fantasy books where there is a beginning and a satisfying ending with a moral in between. Some pretend to be intellectuals and have long involved conversations about the meaning of life according to Robert Jordan. I have met each of these. The Passage is a different kettle of fantasy altogether.
This is an intriguing book. It is half vampire fantasy and half adventure thriller novel. The story revolves around a young girl, Amy, an adolescent when it starts and early teens when it ends over 100 years later. A kind of no-life has been imposed upon her for a reason that is not clear. There are people who desperately care about her but they seem to be controlled by either her or another outside source. And there are people who want to use her for some pretty evil reasons. No one who comes in any kind of contact with her is ever the same. Sometimes they do everything they can to rescue her and sometimes they kill themselves. It’s a little confusing here but it is a testament to Cronin’s fine writing skills that it does not seem very odd at all, in the book.
The other characters in the book are interesting individuals but they are all just playing their parts in the story of Amy. They are driven by forces that have been set in place long ago but they are totally unaware of them. The beginning of the book is set in current time and is quite disturbing due to the fact that ‘it could happen!” Yes, I know that it won’t happen, that it couldn’t happen and you squints out there will explain it all to us later. But, ‘it could happen!” This part of the story comes to its conclusion and then the timeline skips to a place 100 years or so into the future. Life is completely different due to a catastrophe of epic proportions. But the people alive now have never known any other life.
There are problems in this time period though, that have no solutions, like long-term battery life slowly dying, food sources for both sides are dwindling and dissatisfaction of the human condition setting in. I don’t want to give too much away but there is a definite ‘us versus them’ quandary in this novel. Humans v Virals. The 12 v the One. Love v Duty.
All in all this is a thoughtful novel about the human condition, about the thoughtlessness of the advance of technology, about loyalty, courage, faith and hope. It is also a Vampire Story, which makes it all a lot more fun than just a story about all that other stuff. If you are drawn to doomsday sagas with heroes and villains, love stories and triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity then read this book.
Happy Reading, Rhonda
Alert: This is the first part of a trilogy.
I have two big bugbears when it comes to books. Wait, wait, stop the wedding! Where did that word ‘bugbear’ come from? I think my mother-in-law used to say it. It is a word for a bogeyman according to Wikipedia, but is also mean something that is annoying or a pet peeve. I like the word a lot. It is a word that conveys the fact that it refers to something you don’t like but it has softness to it as well, so it isn’t something that you will go to a doctor to get removed. It’s just a little thing that gives you the shits.
Bugbear number one: my old fiend the under-edited novel. Seriously, I can think of 4 chapters in The Passage, just off the top of my head, that didn’t need to be in this story. They didn’t add to the plot, story line or develop the characters. So why does this book have to be 784 pages? It seems to me that novels are going the same way as movies – the longer the better. I like a big meaty book I can spend a bit of time living in. But I could live happily in this book if it was pared down to 500 pages or so. But, hey, it’s my very own bugbear.
Bugbear number two has nothing to do with this book so I will be saving that for another time.
This novel sits on the border between Fantasy Land and that literary nation of many states – Fiction. Now, fantasy readers wear many different hats. Some like Fairy-tale type fantasy books where there is a beginning and a satisfying ending with a moral in between. Some pretend to be intellectuals and have long involved conversations about the meaning of life according to Robert Jordan. I have met each of these. The Passage is a different kettle of fantasy altogether.
This is an intriguing book. It is half vampire fantasy and half adventure thriller novel. The story revolves around a young girl, Amy, an adolescent when it starts and early teens when it ends over 100 years later. A kind of no-life has been imposed upon her for a reason that is not clear. There are people who desperately care about her but they seem to be controlled by either her or another outside source. And there are people who want to use her for some pretty evil reasons. No one who comes in any kind of contact with her is ever the same. Sometimes they do everything they can to rescue her and sometimes they kill themselves. It’s a little confusing here but it is a testament to Cronin’s fine writing skills that it does not seem very odd at all, in the book.
The other characters in the book are interesting individuals but they are all just playing their parts in the story of Amy. They are driven by forces that have been set in place long ago but they are totally unaware of them. The beginning of the book is set in current time and is quite disturbing due to the fact that ‘it could happen!” Yes, I know that it won’t happen, that it couldn’t happen and you squints out there will explain it all to us later. But, ‘it could happen!” This part of the story comes to its conclusion and then the timeline skips to a place 100 years or so into the future. Life is completely different due to a catastrophe of epic proportions. But the people alive now have never known any other life.
There are problems in this time period though, that have no solutions, like long-term battery life slowly dying, food sources for both sides are dwindling and dissatisfaction of the human condition setting in. I don’t want to give too much away but there is a definite ‘us versus them’ quandary in this novel. Humans v Virals. The 12 v the One. Love v Duty.
All in all this is a thoughtful novel about the human condition, about the thoughtlessness of the advance of technology, about loyalty, courage, faith and hope. It is also a Vampire Story, which makes it all a lot more fun than just a story about all that other stuff. If you are drawn to doomsday sagas with heroes and villains, love stories and triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity then read this book.
Happy Reading, Rhonda
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