One Sentence Reviews: July

Well, dear readers, your resident grump has skated across the 100-book threshold--little more than halfway through 2015! As I mentioned back in April, almost all of these books are new--if not in terms of release date, at least to me. This has certainly been the year for discovering new treasures. Thanks to all of you who have emailed me book recommendations. I've found a lot of new favorites, and only two or three worth throwing against the wall.

As a side note, I don't count reading a book multiple times on these lists. So the relatively small number (for me) of "books read" this month doesn't reflect reading Mary Doria Russell's Doc for the third time, or Mary Renault's The Charioteer for the second. (Or the... three? total times which I have read The Goblin Emperor since January of this year, after the two readings of last summer.)

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July 2015

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• Under A Painted Sky by Stacey Lee (2015, YA historical)
• A Chinese orphan and a runaway slave become unlikely friends as they make their way to hopeful refuge on the Oregon Trail, dressed as men for their safety. -- A limping start, but a fun adventure full of humor and grit, toothsome turns of phrase, and a unique perspective of the dangers of cross-country travel in the 1800s. 3/5 stars.
• Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral by Mary Doria Russell (2015, historical)
• Tombstone, Arizona suffers cattle rustling rings, fires, floods, and the epic showdowns between famous figures of the Old West. -- It lacks the emotive heart of its predecessor, "Doc," and the vague threads of plot are too tangled to follow. 3/5 stars. (Full review here!)
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (2014, contemporary mystery)
• Investigations into drowning death of a mixed-race girl provokes contemplation throughout the family tree. -- This would be a good "book club" book, full of thought-provoking revelations about ordinary family life and social pressures. 3.5/5 stars.
• We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962, thriller)
• Orphaned sisters suspected of poisoning their entire family protect each other and the family estate from hostile neighbors. -- A hands-down perfect book. 5/5 stars. (Full review here!)
• Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters (1998, historical)
• Lovestruck village girl follows dazzling male impersonator to London, cycles through varying alternative lifestyles and means of supporting herself before becoming a socialist. -- I was charmed by the start, then sickened, then bored. 3/5 stars.
• The Charioteer by Mary Renault (1953, historical)
• After Dunkirk evacuation, crippled British soldier wrestles with his integrity as he falls in love with a conscientious objector working at the hospital. -- This book strikes me differently on each reread, but every time I am dazzled and can't think of anything else for days but its subtle intensity. 5/5 stars.
• Memoirs of an Invisible Man by H.F. Saint (1987, thriller)
• Average businessman rendered invisible after lab accident, struggles with daily survival and the requisite interested government agencies. -- If you can stomach the casual amorality of the protagonist, this offers a complex and engaging look at the pros and cons of invisibility, plus heart-pounding hunt/escape sequences. 3/5 stars. (Full review here!)
• Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman (2007, contemporary)
• Son of Italian resort owner develops crush on summer guest, waxes poetic. -- When I wasn't rolling my eyes over the histrionic narration, I was revolted by the characters. 1/5 stars.
• As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann (2001, historical)
• Murdering servant boy escapes justice by joining the English Civil War, falls in love with a fellow soldier, and continues to be a murderer. After the previous book, I couldn't stomach another several hundred pages with a protagonist I disliked so much--so this is one of the very rare books I didn't even finish reading. 1/5 stars.
• The Best Of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord (2013, sci-fi)
• After the destruction of their own planet, post-human refugees interview other post-human settlements for potential future spouses. -- Only rarely could I understand what was happening in this story, much less why. 2/5 stars.
• The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (2012, postapocalyptic survival)
• Ragged survivor of apocalyptic flu, his dog, and his gun-happy survivalist neighbor eke out a living in the abandoned Colorado countryside. -- A slow and methodical book about finding what one needs to survive, both in terms of physical needs and emotional ones. 4/5 stars.
• Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George (1997, YA adventure)
• Half-Inuit girl flees underage marriage into the Alaskan wilderness, is adopted into a wolf pack. -- A revisited childhood favorite was nothing at all like I remembered. 3/5 stars.
• H Is For Hawk by Helen MacDonald (2014, memoir)
• Inspired by T.H. White, the author undertakes to train a goshawk to sublimate her grief over her father's death. -- Rich in insight and uncommon in subject. 4/5 stars. (Full review here!)

Review: "Rose Madder" by Stephen King

In an instant of mad courage, Rose Daniels walks out of the house she has shared with her abusive husband for fourteen years. Fearful, unprepared, and desperate, she sets off for a place where Norman will never find her, where she can be Rosie McClendon once again.

With the support of other battered women, Rosie finds her footing. For the first time since her teenage years, she is free: to have a cup of coffee with her friends, to earn her own money, to close the door of her own home at night... even to carefully examine the idea of love and romance, and its place in her future.

But if the world is kinder than Rosie knew, it is more dangerous as well. Norman, a police detective, takes his wife's abandonment of him as an insult--and he is determined to repay. Every day that Rosie becomes stronger, Norman gets closer to finding her.

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Rose Madder by Stephen King (1996)

4.5 out of 5 stars 

Complexity of Writing: 3/5
Quality of Writing: 5/5
Strength of Characterization: 5/5
Logic of Plot Development: 5/5
Evocation of Setting: 4/5
Effectiveness of Pacing: 5/5
Resolution of Conflict: 4/5
Emotional Engagement: 5/5
Mental Engagement: 4/5
Memorability: 5/5
Bechdel Test: pass
Diverse Cast: pass
Content Warning: graphic descriptions of physical and sexual abuse; miscarriage; stalking; racist, sexist, and homophobic slurs; murder of women
Overall Response: Half affirming, half screaming heebie-jeebies... in other words, King at his best.

***

More Thoughts: Of all the Stephen King novels I've read, Rose Madder is hands-down the scariest. No monster in the King of Horror's supernatural bestiary is as terrifying as an abusive husband hunting down his fugitive wife. The reader doesn't have to use their imagination for this one: the horror comes from our own everyday world.

Two-For-One Review: "Doc" and "Epitaph" by Mary Doria Russell

"He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle. The disease took fifteen years to hollow out his lungs so completely they could no longer keep him alive. In all that time, he was allowed a single season of something like happiness.

"When he arrived in Dodge City in 1878, Dr. John Henry Holliday was a frail twenty-six-year-old dentist who wanted nothing grander than to practice his profession in a prosperous Kansas cow town. Hope--cruelest of the evils that escaped Pandora's box--smiled on him gently all that summer. While he lived in Dodge, the quiet life he yearned for seemed to lie within his grasp.

"At thirty, he would be famous for his part in the gunfight at the O.K. Corrall in Tombstone, Arizona. A year later, he would become infamous when he rode at Wyatt Earp's side to avenge the murder of Wyatt's brother. To sell newspapers, the journalists of his day embellished slim fact with fat rumor and rank fiction; it was they who invented the iconic frontier gambler and gunman Doc Holliday. That unwanted notoriety added misery to John Henry Holliday's final year, when illness and exile had made of him a lonely and destitute alcoholic, dying by awful inches and living off charity.

"The wonder is how long and how well he fought his destiny. He was meant to die at birth. The Fates pursued him from the day he first drew breath, howling for his delayed demise."

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Doc by Mary Doria Russell (2011)

4 out of 5 stars 

Complexity of Writing: 3/5
Quality of Writing: 5/5
Strength of Characterization: 5/5
Logic of Plot Development: 3/5
Evocation of Setting: 5/5
Effectiveness of Pacing: 3/5
Resolution of Conflict: 3/5
Emotional Engagement: 5/5
Mental Engagement: 4/5
Memorability: 5/5
Bechdel Test: pass
Diverse Cast: pass
Content Warning: character deaths, racism, misogyny, mention of child abuse, mention of sexual assault, chronic illness

Overall Response: I bought a copy immediately.

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More Thoughts: Here I break my rule about writing my own summaries. Russell's opening paragraphs convey the sense of the novel better than anything I could scribble. Doc doesn't follow the classic novel format with a central conflict, confrontations, and all the rest; instead, it is a character piece. And not just one about Doc Holliday. It is a portrait of a time and a place, and about the types of characters that inhabited it.

The words "character piece," uttered about a lesser book, would ordinarily make me run in the opposite direction. Trust me, dear reader. Presumably, I have been right about a book a time or two before, or you wouldn't still be here.

Review: "Memoirs of an Invisible Man"

When Nick Halloway accompanies Anne Epstein to the MicroMagnetics lab, he isn't interested in either their cutting-edge research or on the anti-nuclear protesters demonstrating outside: only in a day out with a beautiful woman. It is only by the merest chance Nick is still inside the lab when the bomb goes off. But instead of being obliterated, Nick--as well as a small spherical chunk of New Jersey--is rendered invisible.

The novelty of being undetectable to the human eye quickly wears off. Ogling women unseen is one thing, but he can hardly show up to work and draw a paycheck these days. Procuring food is no longer as simple as walking out of a grocery store, bags in hand. Cars clip him at seemingly empty crosswalks.  And, of course, the shadowy government agency investigating the MicroMagnetics accident is very interested in talking to him.

Perhaps Nick shouldn't have lit the invisible lab on fire when he fled. Or shot one of the investigators with the invisible gun, however accidentally. Colonel Jenkins is convinced that Nick must be captured, for public safety as well as scientific inquiry. And unlike the rest of New York City, Jenkins and his people know what they're (not) looking for.

***

Memoirs of an Invisible Man by H.F. Saint (1987)

3 out of 5 stars 

Complexity of Writing: 3/5
Quality of Writing: 3/5
Strength of Characterization: 2/5
Logic of Plot Development: 4/5
Evocation of Setting: 3/5
Effectiveness of Pacing: 4/5
Resolution of Conflict: 3/5
Emotional Engagement: 1/5
Mental Engagement: 5/5
Memorability: 4/5
Bechdel Test: fail
Diverse Cast: fail
Content Warning: animal cruelty, sexual assault, misogyny

Overall Response: A creative thriller, if you can stomach the loathsome protagonist.

***

More Thoughts: Although H.F. Saint's Memoirs of an Invisible Man is not a good book, and deserves no more than the three stars I grant it, I recommend it to those looking for a fun and unusual thriller for the summer.

Review: "We Have Always Lived In The Castle" by Shirley Jackson

Five years ago, an arsenic-filled sugarbowl claimed the lives of the Blackwood family. The three survivors have found peace in their shared isolation: Constance, acquitted of the murder by the courts but not in the minds of the neighbors; her imaginative and slightly feral sister Mary Katherine, called Merricat; and their uncle Julian, crippled in mind and body by the poison that killed the others.

Merricat, a creature of habit and ritual, views herself as the guardian of her troubled family and the groundskeeper of the Blackwood estate. Change is a threat, and any visitor an invader. When a long-estranged Blackwood cousin makes himself at home, and Constance begins to talk of rejoining society, Merricat determines to restore order and expel the intruder by any means necessary. But Constance may no longer be her ally.

***

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962)

5 out of 5 stars 

Complexity of Writing: 4/5
Quality of Writing: 5/5
Strength of Characterization: 5/5
Logic of Plot Development: 5/5
Evocation of Setting: 5/5
Effectiveness of Pacing: 5/5
Resolution of Conflict: 5/5
Emotional Engagement: 5/5
Mental Engagement: 4/5
Memorability: 4/5
Bechdel Test: pass
Diverse Cast: fail
Content Warning: character deaths

Overall Response: I say this very rarely, so listen up: this is a perfect book.

***

More Thoughts: I've mentioned this before: when someone recommends a book, nine times out of ten, I will put it on hold at the library without even pausing to read the synopsis. (I only write summaries for you, dear reader; on my own, I would go straight into opinionating.) Some long-ago Wikipedia binge left the impression that  We Have Always Lived In The Castle was about murder, but no more than that. When a friend praised Shirley Jackson's writing, it reminded me that I had never followed up on the book. That was all the preface that I had.

From the first page, I was hooked.