So You Don't get Lost in the Neighborhood by Patrick Modiano

In his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in 2014, Patrick Modiano has spun an absorbing tale of mystery and suspense.  He is a French novelist who also won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2012 and the 2010 Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca from the Institute of France for lifetime achievement.  His other prestigious awards include the Prix Goncourt  The Street of Obscure Boutiques in 1978 and the 1972 Grand Prix du Roman de L’Académie for Ring Road.  His work has been translated into more than 30 languages.  Most of his novels had not been translated into English until he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Jean Daragane is a novelist who is in a funk and living as a recluse in Paris.  One day he discovers he has lost his address book, and he receives a phone call from a stranger, who found the book in a train station.  His first thought is blackmail, but he agrees to meet the caller, Gilles Ottolini, who brings a woman friend, Chantel Grippay.  Jean retrieves the book and leaves.  The next day, Gilles calls again, and wants to talk about an entry in the address book – Guy Torstell.  Jean has no memory of who this man is or even why he is in his address book.  Gilles reveals Jean also used the name in his first novel, 30 years ago.  The mystery thickens when Jean receives a call from Chantell and reveals several apparently coincidental items, which connect Gilles and Jean.  The next day, Chantel calls Jean, and ask him to meet at her apartment.  Modiano writes, “She leant over to him, and her face was so close to his that he noticed a tiny scar on her left cheek.  Le Tremblay.  Chantel.  Square de Graisvaudan.  These words had traveled a long way.  An insect bite, , very slight to begin with, and it causes you an increasingly sharp pain, and very soon a feeling of being torn apart.  The present and the past merge together, and that seems quite natural because they were only separated by a cellophane partition.  An insect bite was all it took to pierce the cellophane.  He could not be sure of the year, but he was very young, in a room as small as this one with a girl called Chantel – a fairly common name at the time.  The husband of this Chantel, on Paul, and other friends of theirs had set off as they always did on Saturdays to gamble in the casinos on the outskirts of Paris: […] and they came back the following day with a bit of money.  He, Daragane, and this Chantel, spent the entire night together in this room in square du Graisvaudan until the others returned.  Paul, the husband, also used to go to race meetings.  A gambler.  With him it was not merely a matter of doubling up on your losses” (31-32). 

As Modiano expands on this peculiar web of coincidences, the suspense rises.  Chantel gives Jean copies of notes for an article about Tostel.  It is not apparent that she had permission to do so.  Later, Jean examines the copies, and notices a passage from his first novel, Summer Night.  Modiano reads from his novel, “In the Galeris de Beaujolais, there was indeed a bookshop behind whose window some art books were displayed.  He went in.  S dark-haired woman was sitting at her desk. //.  ‘I should like to talk to Monsieur Morihien.’ // Monsieur Morihien is away,’ She told him.  “But would you like to speak to Monsieur Torstel?’” (41).  The tenuous threads, which hold this story together, create a tale of mystery and suspense, which you can finish in a day.

The more clues Patrick Modiano supplies, the more mysterious the story becomes.  So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood is a good introduction to a writer for those interested in a good mystery mixed with fine literary fiction.  5 stars

--Chiron, 12/29/15

The Painter by Peter Heller

About two years ago, I read a first novel by Peter Heller.  The dystopian landscape he painted in The Dog Stars, captured my imagination immediately.  I met Heller at a library conference and was further intrigued by the author himself.  He has an impressive resume of non-fiction work, as well as duties on NPR.  Earlier this year, my wife surprised me with a copy of his latest novel, The Painter. 

Jim Stegner is a painter with a checkered past.  He shot a man in a bar, and spent some time in prison.  He has a passion for fly fishing, which he did with his daughter Alce (sic), until she got involved in a drug deal which went bad.  The perp stabbed her numerous times and left her in an alley.  As often happens, this led to the breakup of his marriage.  Now paroled, he has settled in Colorado, established himself with a trendy gallery, and his paintings sell in the middle to high five figures.  On a routine drive to a fishing hole, he finds the road blocked by horse trailer.  Two men attempt to wrangle a horse into the trailer.  One of the men gets a 2x4 from his truck and begins beating the horse.  Jim’s temper gets the better of him, and he attacks the man, breaks his nose, and pushes him into a ditch.  The other man attacks Jim, and he ends up on the ground.  The two horse-beaters leave Jim with the horse.

This apparently innocuous event begins to form a maelstrom sweeping Jim into a mess of enormous proportions.  prose is so intense, I felt myself beside him in the dark woods.  I walked with him, the branches scraped my arms, shadows followed me, I saw figures moving in the brush.  The sense someone was after me overpowered me, and forced me to take breaks from reading parts of the novel.

One particularly intense scene occurs during the end of the novel.  Jim calmly fishes a stream.  Suddenly, “‘OW!’ // Hard pressed under my jaw the cold prod.  Steel.  I knew without a thought that it was a gun. // ‘Prince nymph, good choice.  What I’d use probably.’ // I couldn’t see him.  He was behind me with the handgun held out and up against my throat.  His voice was graveled, as if he hadn’t spoken in a while. // ‘Can’t lose tonight.  Nobody feeding up top, all gathered up in the deeper pools, idling, just waiting for that thing to tumble by.’ // His voice in the back of my ear.  Could smell the chew on his breath, not a bad smell, Copenhagen.  Couldn’t look though, couldn’t turn my head, because there was the cold muzzle hard against the bone.  The quickening of my heart. // ‘Hi, Jason.’ // A long silence while the snout of the handgun held pressure against my head” (353-354).  This encounter continues for a terrifying and tense 10 more pages.  I read the conclusion to this novel in about 4 chunks.  The intensity prevented me from stopping, but I needed the breather.  I expected something terrible to happen almost from the time Jim pushed the man into the ditch.  Things did happen, but not the way I expected.  You will have to figure out the ending for yourself.

This roller-coaster novel swings between pleasant peaceful experiences and terrifying car chases, fly fishing in a mountain stream, scary moments in the woods, and shots fired at a house Jim visited to complete a portrait commission.  I am anxiously awaiting the next novel by the talented author, Peter Heller.  I hope he can top his latest, The Painter.  5 stars

--Chiron, 7/11/15

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

Despite numerous friends and strangers touting the wonderful novel, All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, I never could get much past the first 15-20 pages.  This doesn’t happen that often, but when it does I must invoke the rule of 50.  Then I read The Road and really enjoyed it.  No Country for Old Men soon followed along with Blood Meridian.  I decided to take at look at some of his earlier works, and I started with Child of God.  This tense novel fits in nicely with the others I have read.

Lester Ballard has been falsely accused of rape for a woman he sees in the woods while hunting.  The sheriff arrests him, but it soon becomes obvious he is innocent and released.  The experience seems to have an effect on Lester, and he begins a slow spiral into bizarre behavior and insanity.  The novel starts off gently, innocently, but as events unfold, the tension mounts.  Sometimes – especially early on – I laughed at and with Lester, as he roamed the forested mountains of Eastern Tennessee.

Lester’s farm is about to be sold at auction.  He protests, and someone hits him over the head.  Lester is dazed, and blood trickles from his ears.  This injury became a major factor in the rest of the novel.

McCarthy has a talent for setting his characters precisely where they belong.  He writes, “Ballard descended by giant stone stairs to the dry floor of the quarry.  The great rock walls with their cannelured faces and featherdrill holes composed  about him an enormous amphitheatre.  The ruins of an old truck lay rusting in the honeysuckle.  He crossed the corrugated stone floor among chips and spalls of stone.  The truck looked like it had been machine gunned.  At the far end of the quarry was a rubble tip and Ballard stopped to search for artifacts, tilting old stoves and water heaters, inspecting bicycle parts and corroded buckets.  He salvaged a worn kitchen knife with a chewed handle.  He called the dog, his voice relaying from rock to rock and back again.  //  When he came out to the road again a wind had come up.  A door somewhere was banging, an eerie sound in the empty wood.  Ballard walked up the road.  He passed a rusted tin shed and beyond it a wooden tower.  He looked up.  High up on the tower a door creaked open and clapped shut.  Ballard looked around.  Sheets of roofing tin clattered and banged and a white dust was blowing off the barren yard by the quarry shed.  Ballard squinted in the dust going up the road.  By the time he got to the county road it had begun to spit rain.  He called the dog once more and he waited and then he went on (38-39).

This vivid writing is so intense, I expected something odd, or strange, or bizarre to happen at any moment.  So early in the novel, I am lulled into the belief this was a story about a poor, unemployed mountain man trying to scratch out a meager existence.  He was that, but as the novel unfolds, he becomes so much more. 

Most definitely an adult novel, Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, will make the hair stand to attention.  The ending I imagined to be inevitable did not happen.  I read this brief novel in a little over two afternoons.  I did not sleep well that night.  5 stars.

--Chiron, 5/10/15

The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson

I frequently judge books by the cover and sometimes simply by the title.  How could I possibly ignore Cynthia Swanson’s novel, The Bookseller. I rely on the “Rule of 50” to protect me.  Kitty Miller, the main character does run a book store with her long-time friend, Frieda.  But the story takes twists and turns which stimulate the imagination.  While, I did figure out what was going on in the novel pretty early on, I kept reading, because the story was that gripping.

The book jacket reveals Cynthia Swanson is a writer and a designer of mid-century style.  She has published a number of short stories, one of which garnered a Pushcart Prize nomination.  She lives in Denver with her husband and three children.  The Bookseller is her first novel.

Kitty Miller is a single, 30-something woman who shares the running of Sisters Bookshop on Pearl Street in Denver.  The city had recently diverted a streetcar route which had passed in front of Sisters.  Now, without the foot traffic, business has fallen off, and Frieda and Kitty are trying to decide what to do.  Frieda wants to move to a strip mall in a busy shopping district, but Kitty wants to keep going in the hope things will turn around soon.

Years before, Kitty placed a personal ad in a Denver newspaper, but all the responses seem to be duds – except for one: Lars Andersson.  He impressed Kitty as a quiet, sensitive, kind man, with a number of interests shared with Kitty.  They agree to meet for coffee in a couple of days.  She is excited and gussies herself up for the date.  However, Lars never appears.  Kitty is really disappointed, and she gives up the quest for a husband and devotes her energies to the shop.

Then the dreams begin.  Swanson writes, “This is not my bedroom. // Where am I?  Gasping and pulling unfamiliar bedcovers up to my chin, I strain to collect my senses.  But no explanation for my whereabouts comes to mind. // The last thing I remember, it was Wednesday evening and I was painting my bedroom a bright, saturated yellow.  Frieda, who had offered to help, was appraising my color choice.  ‘Too much sunniness for a bedroom,’ she pronounced, in that Miss Know-It-All tone of hers.  ‘How will you ever sleep in on gloomy days with a room like this?’” (1).  However, Kitty cannot recall anything further of that day.  She assumes she is still asleep, Swanson again, “This dream bedroom is quite a bit larger and swankier than my actual bedroom.  The walls are sage green, nothing like the deep yellow I chose for home.  The furniture is a matched set, sleek and modern.  The bedspread is neatly folded at the foot of the bed; soft, coordinating linens encase my body.  It’s delightful, in a too-put together sort of way” (2).

As the novel progresses, Kitty swings back and forth between her life as Kitty, friend of Frieda and co-proprietor of Sisters.  She begins to fear sleeping.  Kathryn, as she is called by a bewildering number of people who know her, but she has no clue who any of these people are.  She learns she is married to Lars Andersson, they have three children, triplets, and they live an idyllic life in a ritzy suburb of Denver.

As the dream world deepens, Kitty becomes more and more concerned.  Some characters from her life at the bookstore are in the dream, and some are not.  Aslan, her beloved cat, occupies both realms.

An interesting and gripping tale of a woman trying to deal with two different worlds and vastly different sets of problems, Cynthia Swanson’s debut novel, The Bookseller, certainly merits    5 stars.

--Chiron, 5/14/15

Sister by Rosamund Lupton

During my younger days, I had a passion for genre fiction – fantasy and science fiction – but mysteries and detective fiction never held my attention.  A good friend picked Sister by Rosamund Lupton for our March Book Club, so I read with a slight sense of "I won't like this!"  As it turned out, it was not so much a detective novel as a psychological exploration of a family torn apart following the death of a child, a divorce, the scattering of siblings, and finally the disappearance of a young woman, Tess -- an art student with quite a free spirit.  Much to the dismay of her mother and sister, she had a bit too much of a free spirit.

Bea and Tess, as they called each other, had developed an extremely close relationship, even though Bea had left London for a design job in New York.  She spoke frequently with Tess, and as Bea mentioned several times, “they had no secrets.”  Bea boards the next flight to London and moves into her sister’s flat, hoping to reconnect with Tess.  The police seem oddly unconcerned about the disappearance of Tess, and Bea convinces herself she is alive and will soon turn up.  The novel takes a dark turn when a cast of characters begin to appear.

When her body turns up in a crusty, disgusting public toilet, Bea begins formulating all sorts of scenarios to explain her death.  The police firmly belief the death resulted from suicide.  I won’t say why, because those details are all part of the plot.  I searched for a quote to exemplify Lupton’s tight, suspenseful prose, but most of them revealed plot details, which are full of cleverly placed red herrings.  For example, three men are mentioned as have a Labrador retriever for a pet.  The author fooled me, because they had nothing to do with the crime.  So, I settled on the first paragraph.  Lupton writes, “Sunday Evening.  Dearest Tess, I’d do anything to be with you, right now, right this moment, so I could hold your hand, look at your face, listen to your voice.  How can touching and seeing and hearing – all those sensory receptors and optic nerves and vibrating eardrums – be substituted by a letter?  But we’ve managed to use words as go-betweens before, haven’t we?  When I went off to boarding school and we had to replace games and laughter and low-voiced confidences for letters to each other.  I can’t remember what I said in my first letter, just that I used a jigsaw, broken up, to avoid the prying eyes of my house mistress.  (I guessed correctly that her jigsaw-making inner child had left years ago).  But I remember word for word your seven-year-old reply to my fragmented homesickness and that your writing was invisible until I shone a flashlight onto the paper.  Ever since, kindness has smelled of lemons” (1).  

Believe it or not, several phrases and images in this first paragraph connect directly to numerous points in the plot.  I love a psychological novel, and the bond these two sisters had revealed them both to be interesting characters, with a complex relationship to each other, their mother and absent father, their dead brother, Leo, and numerous other characters in the novel.

Sister, by Rosamund Lupton, will draw you into this complex web, and wonder at their strengths and weaknesses.  To fans and non-fans of suspense I highly recommend this debut novel by a young British writer.  5 stars

--Chiron, 3/26/15