Ball by Tara Ison

Stories about women afraid of love

The stories in this collection, for the most part, concerned women who are afraid of loving someone so much they must break the tension in a horrifically transgressive way. The stories are about women with nutty obsessions. The bass line is sex and the release from the sex is a betrayal. I liked the title story, Ball. About a young woman and her little dog. I also liked Staples – like many of the other stories, it concerns a young woman in a sick relationship with a not very nice man. Many of the stories are funny with unexpected crazy details. Fish was another good one about an older woman waiting impatiently, again, nuttily and impatiently, for the death of her elderly uncle.

The prose was wonderful, pitch perfect, and vivid. And really the point of most of the stories is the very compelling voice drawing the reader in unquestioningly to that point of view. At the beginning, the characters seem normal, possibly neurotic, then the characters, not completely out of the blue, do shockingly bad things. I’m not quite sure, however, that all these stories lumped together like this work as a collection. The stories are so thematically similar that a little of this (the sudden turn to shock and gore) goes a long way.

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

Stories of ambitious men, held together by the journey of a young woman wanting to be an artist

The unnamed narrator, an aspiring artist from Nevada, arrives in 1970’s New York knowing no one, but is soon pursued by the handsome Italian expatriate Sandro who makes art from metal boxes and who introduces her to major figures in the art scene. Sandro, heir to the Valera industrial fortune, reluctantly assists the narrator in her artistic quest to race the Bonneville Salt Flats by getting her the latest Valera motorcycle. Soon afterwards, she is invited to Italy to promote the Valera brand. Again reluctantly, Sandro accompanies her to his family estate, where his aristocratic family is simply nasty to her. Our narrator flees to Rome, which happens to be convulsed with proletarian riots. Somehow she gets involved in something secret, mysterious and revolutionary and the novel concludes with her keeping watch over the white snowy face of Mont Blanc. Her story is interspersed with the stories of daring men who don’t care what people say about them. Revolutionaries perhaps.

There is a series of certain repetitive images in this novel; one is that of blank spaces – the unbroken snow, the expanse of salt flats, unmarked spaces that the young woman plans to mark as her artistic project, with her will. She is an artist of the blank space. Sandro’s father, Valera Sr., the fascist industrialist, is also an artist. An artist of destruction. And Ronnie, Sandro’s intriguing friend, is another sort of artist – his art is never specified but here he is an artist of the spoken word perhaps.

The unhappy love story of the narrator and Sandro is interspersed with glimpses into gangs of violent men, the Arditti, the Motherfuckers, the Red Brigades. Men believing they understand the future of humanity.

The book is structured with a number of bravura set pieces – beautifully detailed highly ambitious scenes critiquing war, greed, human nature and artistic endeavor. This magnificent tapestry is held together in key spots with Scotch tape/gimmicks, specifically, the romance between her and Sandro. She becomes a completely passive woman, dependent on him for her identity/wellbeing. It’s hard to believe this tough competitive girl falters when she visits the evil mother in law and I didn’t buy her diffidence. The scenes after she goes to Italy are static and dull, probably because she is completely an observer. Is that deliberate?

Also, the photos embedded in the text feel a little gimmicky, not moving or eerie like in the Sebald novels. I liked how at the end the chronology gets mixed up. Mystery helps. I loved the behind the green door metaphor, and the cake box girls.

The Five Acts of Diego Leon by Alex Espinoza

A Mexican boy comes to Hollywood to become a movie star

Diego Leon, an orphaned half Indian boy, is sent away to his rich grandparents’ house during the time of the Mexican Revolution.  After being groomed to take over his patrician grandfather’s legal business and becoming engaged to a devout young heiress, Diego chucks this preordained life away and leaves for Hollywood to pursue his love of acting.  Once in Hollywood, he is looked down upon because he is Mexican.  Diego sweeps floors, then get a few roles as an extra, then meets a handsome producer.  Suddenly he starts getting bigger parts.  The producer grows tired of him, but eventually Diego, in his final film, perhaps learns to act at last.

The structure is simple – five big chunks. Diego the mestizo living in the Indian village, Diego the young bourgeois living in the city, Diego the immigrant sweeping the floor of a LA café, Diego the struggling actor, and Diego the quasi movie star. The opening part of the novel, set in the Indian village, was truly compelling, and I was gripped wondering what would happen to the boy.  However, after that, the plotting is pretty much nonexistent, the scenes lined up like train cars one after the other, rather than having the events in one scene trigger the next.  The dialogue is expository.  The main problem is that Diego Leon is a robot being pushed along the path of his life.  Is he gay or straight – that seems to be a conflict every so often he encounterse.  He doesn’t seem to consistently feel any lust (either for bodies or for achievements) and I’m not so sure that conforms to real life.  Also, his prime motivation is to be a famous actor, but again, I’m not sure why.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Glimpses of California in the Sixties

In this collection of magazine essays, Joan Didion turns her cool gaze on some California phenomena: a young Joan Baez, hippies in Haight Ashbury, a fishy San Bernardino murder and her childhood memories of the "original” California. Even though Joan Didion is a native, there’s something a little condescending here, a bit East Coasty – oh those nutty West Coasters, with their pomposity about silly things. There’s a Jeremiah flavor going on as well, poetic, completely authoritative, and warning of imminent disaster.

Joan Didion must be one of America’s finest prose stylists.  She also seems like a true conservative, preferring John Wayne to LSD taking toddlers. In the essay, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” she has no sympathy for the earnest hippies, in fact, oozes disapproval. Near the end, the perceptions felt repetitive. After the passage of time, the celebrity pieces, the Joan Baez and John Wayne stuff are essentially slight. But she certainly knows how to dramatically end a scene.

Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

Eccentrics live on houseboats by the River Thames

Led by Richard, the upper class skipper of Lord Jim, the various houseboat owners in Battersea, maintain not very fixed lives. Nenna, an abandoned wife with two small daughters, lives on the Grace. Maurice, a charmer involved with various criminal enterprises, lives on the Maurice (name changed from the Dondeschiepolschuygen IV) and Willis, an optimistic retired painter, lives on the Dreadnought. Much of the nominal plot concerns a leak on the Dreadnought. The community rallies around Willis when he is injured, and Richard and Nenna form a closer bond when Nenna tracks down her loserish husband. The book ends inconclusively, as all the inhabitants appear headed for new destinies.

Exquisite is the operative word here (however condescending and sexist that term might be). However, this novel definitely is exquisite, packing a dozen characters into a slight number of pages, and composed of miniature scenes which deliver outsize pleasure. The tidal flows of the Thames are the real stars of this book, lifting flotsam and jetsam, moving the plot along, and providing a subject for beautiful flights of prose. The best part of this novel is the dialogue between Nenna’s daughters, the preternaturally responsible Martha and the irrepressible Tilda. Although only six, Tilda knows how to live.

The Age of Dreaming by Nina Revoyr

A man ponders his wasted life

Jun Nakayama, a Japanese actor who possessed a smoldering eroticism on the silent film screens of the past, is invited to audition for a movie. But much has happened in the forty years since his last role, including the wartime interment of the Japanese and the mysterious brutal murder of a popular director. The highlights of Jun’s elderly life are his mountain hikes and studious avoidance of regret. As Jun considers whether to take the part, he revisits the long ago incident which caused him to quit acting. As part of the process of remembering, he meets with his former colleagues, the silent film stars of the past.

Now I’ve had two books in a row with people driving around a specific landscape interviewing people who were witnesses to a traumatic event. Nominally, Jun is trying to find out the chances that his “secret” will leak; the reader is trying to find out what this secret is. The reader is also trying to find out why Jun quit not only his career, but quit on life. That question is never fully answered. Was it racism? Was it sexual fear? Is he afraid of his own emotions? The problem for me was that I didn’t care what happened to Jun – his voice is so restrained and passionless I find it hard to buy that he was a successful actor. And the violent murder at the core of the novel lacks emotional resonance or motivation.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

A traumatized young woman tries to solve the mystery of her family’s murder

The carefully coached testimony of seven year old Libby Day, who barely escaped the night her mother and two sisters were brutally murdered, sends her devil worshipper brother to life in prison. Now an adult, ornery, short of funds, she gets involved with a club of nerdy mass murder enthusiasts who convince her, by means of cash infusions, to ask questions of key figures in the case. After talking to some witnesses, Libby starts to doubt her prior beliefs, and is spurred to continue the search. Eventually she comes to conclusions of her own, conclusions which upset a few people.

I’m not sure if this type of brutally violent murder mystery is my cup of tea. I read this because I loved Gone Girl, and this book happily contains the same kind of pointed social commentary, but this plot and these characters felt a bit more “gimmicky.” Also the solution to the mystery seemed implausible. Not just logically implausible or emotionally implausible, but mechanically implausible. I guess that it usually is. I admired the different points of view, especially the brother’s, which successfully evoked the terror of being guilty of a little thing but getting accused of a much bigger thing.