The Cue Card

This week I was sad to read of the death of acclaimed author Ivan Doig of cancer at 75. Most of his books are set in Montana where my brother lives and he was one of my brother’s favorite writers. Doig was known for such novels as “Dancing at the Rascal Fair” from 1987 and the memoir “This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind” from 1979. He was referred to as “the dean of Western writers,” but he didn’t like being limited as a regional author. There’s still a slew of his novels that I want to read. Have you read any of his books, and if so, what did you think?

Also this past week congrats to author Atticus Lish for winning the 2015 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his novel “Preparation for the Next Life.” I had not heard of this book before — it’s from the small press Tyrant Books — but I’m very glad to be introduced to it. Set in New York City, the novel follows the unlikely love story between a Chinese Muslim immigrant and a traumatized Iraq War veteran. It’s been called a stunning debut, so I’m eager to check it out. Have you read or come across this title yet?

Meanwhile we’ve had some spring-like weather here and I was able to go for a few bike rides this week (see attached photo). I love it! Bicycling the backcountry is tough to beat. Now I’ve got the Masters golf tournament on and will tune in on Sunday to see if youngster Jordan Spieth will be able to hold on to his lead despite the various other contenders knocking on the door. It should be tense and fun to watch. Moreover it’s always nice to see the azaleas blooming in Augusta.

This week I finished Heather O’Neill’s 2014 novel “The Girl Who Was Saturday Night,” which was discussed at our book club. It’s about a brother and sister who are 19-year-old twins, navigating the mean streets of Montreal in 1995. They were raised by their decrepit grandfather since their young mother left and their father, a famous folksinger, wasn’t around much. Hence the Tremblay twins are both a bit hellions with no money to spare. The girl is trying to straighten her life out (she finds love, marriage, and is taking classes to go to university), while the boy is sliding into more trouble. It’s the time of Quebec’s 1995 referendum, which asked voters whether the province should proclaim its national sovereignty and separate from Canada. The twins and their relatives are all in favor of Quebec’s separation, but when the vote loses by a minuscule margin, it seems at the same time there are consequences in all the characters’ lives.

I thought “The Girl Who Was Saturday Night” was quite a wonderful novel, vibrantly told from the twin sister’s point of view. I read its 403 pages quickly in three days. It’s compulsively readable, and as my friend in the book club said, its story “gets under your skin.” It seems to paint Montreal at the time to the core. Set among the poor and grubby, the twins are trying to find themselves and pave their ways. It’s a coming-of-age story that is a bit of a different take. I found it to be darkly funny with some terrific sentences that I wanted to underline throughout. However a few in our book club said they didn’t care for the author’s writing style. For one thing, she uses an overabundance of similes (as well as metaphors and cats) to get her descriptions across, which can get a bit taxing along the way, but despite that I thought her writing on the whole to be lively, fresh, and noteworthy. I don’t know much about Montreal but definitely got an interesting flavor for it in this homage to the author’s home city.

I’m quite certain the novel will make the short list for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) when it’s announced this Monday. So far there are 20 books on the long list, which will be cut to 6 books for the short list. From those, the winner will be announced on June 3. I’d be very surprised if “The Girl Who Was Saturday Night” doesn’t make the cut on Monday. If I were a gambler, I’d bet on it, but what do I know?

How about you — have you read this novel or author before? If so, what did you think? Or what are you up to or reading this Sunday?

Laird Hunt’s acclaimed 2014 novel “Neverhome” starts off simple enough. It’s narrated by a housewife and farmer named Constance from Indiana, who in 1862 decides to disguise herself as a man to enlist in the Union Army. She takes the name Ash Thompson and leaves behind her meek husband, Bartholomew, to care for the farm. The story follows her journey as she endures soldier life and harrowing battles of the war while trying not to be found out as a woman.

The novel’s prose is simple and stark but rich in its descriptions, especially of the battle scenes, and the syntax takes on the vernacular of the times, which seems a bit awkward at first, but gives a vivid feeling of being in the Civil War era and its settings.

The character Ash proves to be an excellent shot and sure fighter. She seems heroic and able to outmaneuver and shoot her way out of trouble. But there’s also baggage from her past that comes to her in dreams: her mother’s death haunts her, as well as the death, we learn in time, of her newborn son. There’s also letters from Bartholomew hoping for her return and fearing that she will not.

Along the way, Ash witnesses horrific bloodshed and is injured in battle. A nurse heals her, only later to give her over to authorities who chain her up in a prison, where she’s abused. The book is a bit of a page-turner as you wonder whether Ash will make it back home alive and what unfinished business will be awaiting for her once she gets there.

At first glimpse “Neverhome” appears to be a straightforward heroic story about a strong woman who overcomes great odds but not too far into it you become aware that Ash is carrying around secrets, which she doles out only here and there, and is talking to ghosts. Amid the war, her mind starts to unravel, too, and what is real or not real becomes hazy. She seems to undergo a transformation, and you have to wonder whether she’s telling the truth. The dark ending brings everything home, so to speak.

Judging by comments on Goodreads, quite a few readers thought the story’s ending went off the deep end, or they didn’t get it. I was one of those who had to reread it a few times to understand what it all suggested. I think I was lulled into the story going a certain way, and then it took a turn quite other than that, which left me a bit puzzled and not pleased. Ash is a character who definitely is more complex than she seems. Though I might not have wanted the story to go in that direction, I thought the novel’s writing was quite visual and beautiful in places. For a slim book, “Neverhome” wields a large takeaway.

It also makes me want to read more books about the Civil War, including last year’s nonfiction book by Karen Abbott called “Liar, Temptress, Soldier Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War.”

How about you — have you read “Neverhome” and if so what did you think? Or what books set in the Civil War era are your favorites?

I picked up Lili Anolik’s debut novel “Dark Rooms” at the library for a quick suspense read, a transition after a couple of denser books. I didn’t really know anything about it other than it appeared to be among the popular genre of crime novels set at private high schools. The publisher touted it as Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” meets Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects” with twists of Megan Abbott’s “Dare Me” along the way. Okay, okay, I think I get the picture?! I snapped it up and read it quickly this past week ready for something a little berserk.

“Dark Rooms” takes place at a private high school in Hartford, Connecticut, where one morning student Nica Baker, age 16, is found murdered in a nearby field. Her parents, both teachers at the school, and older sister Grace, who recently graduated, are grief-stricken and foggy amid the media circus that follows. The police though are able to close the case quickly when a student commits suicide a couple weeks later, leaving what appears to be a confessional note to the crime. Grace though begins to have her doubts about it. She puts college on hold, stays at home, and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth about her sister’s murder. Though in the process, she opens a can full of worms about her family, herself, and those who knew her sister.

Nica, it turns out, was no angel; she was beautiful and also promiscuous — different than Grace, who sets out to tackle a long list of Nica’s admirers to find out what really happened. Meanwhile Grace finds herself pregnant after a drunken grief-laden escapade and with little time left to solve the murder. Oh my. One thing’s for sure: There’s considerable sleeping around going on at this high school: among the faculty, the kids, you name it. It’s a high school on hormones. The so-called adults or parents in the book aren’t exactly role models either; a few are downright creepy, so Grace must make her away through some pretty messed up, disturbing stuff to find out the truth. She’s a Nancy Drew of sorts. I can’t say much more though I’m sure I’d like to.

Admittedly the book held me till the very end. The author did a good job painting the scenes, giving vivid details, and moving the story along. It’s the kind of suspense story I was looking for when I picked it up. It’s done well, both the writing and plot as well as the twists kept me guessing, although there were a couple times I had to suspend my disbelief and I’m still wondering if the ending fizzled just a bit. Still if you’re on a flight from L.A. to New York, or even on a beach this summer, I’d say this is a suspenseful, well-done novel to hold your attention and pass your time with. Who knows, it might even make you a bit more grateful for the folks and family you have.

How about you — have you read “Dark Rooms” and if so, what did you think? Or what if any are your favorites in the genre of high school/crime novels?

“Us Conductors” is one of the more unusual novels I’ve read in a long while. It follows the true life story of a Russian scientist (Lev Termen) who I’d never heard of, who made among other inventions a strange musical instrument (the theremin), which I’d also never heard of. Lev came to the U.S. in the 1920s and 30s and was a big hit, especially in New York, and then he returned to Russia where he was imprisoned in various gulags till 1957. It’s not a book I think I would’ve picked up on my own, but I was curious since the author had won the Giller Prize for it last November for $100,000 — not too bad for a debut novelist.

In the first half, I struggled with “Us Conductors” as I didn’t feel very invested in the character of the scientist Lev. The novel jumps around, too, to different places in time — in flash backs as he’s telling the woman he loves about his life in two letters. The novel though is quite readable. The pages go by quickly as Lev at first arrives in New York and is the toast of the town with his patented musical box — the theremin.

Have you heard this instrument’s sound? Its eerie high-pitched notes make it seem straight from The Munsters or Star Trek. No one even touches the box to play it but uses their wavering hands in the air to manipulate the electrical field between its two antennas to make a shrill sound. Check out this example.

Strange but true, I think companies once had big plans for making the theremin a popular instrument in homes everywhere, though in the end that didn’t really pan out.

Somewhere along the line “Us Conductors” crept up on me. As the book goes on there’s so much of this scientist’s life that turns out to be incredible — his successful inventions and work with U.S. companies, how he gets involved in being a Russian spy, his marriages and the one unrequited love of his life, and his imprisonment in the Soviet gulags. Wow. His life story encompasses the Bolshevik Revolution, the swinging night life and music of New York City in the 20s and 30s, and later the Soviet gulags under Stalin.

It’s quite a riches to bust story with an amazing scope that made me rush online the minute I finished it to find out if indeed certain parts of Lev’s life story were true. I especially found his involvement in espionage and the whole Cold War era to be quite captivating, as well as his lifelong love for this woman Clara (an expert theremin player) who he’s addressing throughout the book. Eventually I wanted to know everything about what really happened, which obviously is a sign of an engaging book.

Apparently, the author Sean Michaels kept to the actual biographical sketch of what happened in the scientist’s life, but then reimagined it by filling in the scenes, details, conversations, and people Lev came in contact with. As Michaels said on a radio show, he filled in Lev’s “emotional progress.” It’s not unlike other recent novels have done with the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway’s spouse, or Frank Lloyd Wright’s spouse.

It’s a bit weird because I’m not usually enticed by novels that use actual historical figures to put words in their mouths, but for “Us Conductors” I actually think it served a worthy or interesting purpose.

Not only does it bring life to the era, places, feelings of this scientist who has long since been forgotten by many (Lev only just died in 1993, at the age of 97), but I also liked how the espionage in the book raised questions of Lev’s patriotism, duty, and responsibility, which Michaels talked about on a radio program as being relevant today in such places as Russia and in America’s NSA/Snowden case.

It’s cool, too, that the musical instrument the theremin can be seen sort of as a metaphor in the book. As the theremin uses invisible forces to make players or listeners feel a particular way, so too does Lev feel an invisible force working, for instance, through Clara and him. He writes letters to her in his mind over time and distance as if it’s almost telepathy.

I was struck by the novel especially during the second half of the book. There’s a lot of different things at work in it, such as: love, music, inventing, spying, and surviving the gulags. The story of this scientist’s life is rather remarkable — he went through so much — and that’s what ultimately won me over. The book’s research into bringing his story to light is quite compellingly done and left me wanting to know what was fact or fiction about the scientist Lev Termin and the theremin long after its last pages.

What about you have you read Sean Michael’s book and what did you think? Or have you ever heard of a theremin before this novel?

I was glad to fall into Sadie Jones’s 2012 novel “The Uninvited Guests” for my book club read this month as it’s a far cry from the mayhem of “American Sniper,” which I had just read before it. Alas, I found “The Uninvited Guests” to be a good remedy and a quick escape from today’s world.

It’s set in the early years of the twentieth century at a grand old manor house in the English countryside. (Think Downton Abbey era.) The lady of the household, who’s remarried after the death of her first husband, resides there with her new husband and three children, the oldest of whom (Emerald) is celebrating her twentieth birthday with a couple of friends on a rainy evening. But then a terrible train wreck nearby propels a group of survivors from the train’s third class to seek shelter at the house, throwing the household into chaos and mischief. The uninvited guests turn Emerald’s birthday upside down as well as her younger sister who decides it’s time for a dubious undertaking and a mysterious male survivor from the train wreck who divulges a shocking secret from their mother’s past. Shenanigans at the rickety old manor ensues with a touch of the supernatural thrown in.

What starts as a tale quite stuffy and amusing comes splattering down like the rooms and wall at the manor. The characters undergo a reckoning that although harsh seemingly does some good, shaking them from their lofty pedestals.

The writing reminded me of a Dickens tale and I found it quite enjoyable. “The Uninvited Guests” definitely makes me want to read other titles by the talented British author Sadie Jones in the future. Apparently Jones’s first novel “The Outcast” from 2008 is coming out as a television drama on the BBC sometime this year. I likely will have to pick up that novel before then.

It made me wonder what other recent novels take place in big spooky houses and I’m thinking perhaps of Sarah Waters’s novel “The Paying Guests” and Garth Stein’s novel “A Sudden Light.” Both of which are from last year and are ones I still have to read. Are there others? It seems spooky old houses are popular settings once again.

How about you have you read “The Uninvited Guests” or any others by Sadie Jones? And if so, what did you think?