The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott

Published in Australia in 2020; published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG Originals) on February 9, 2021

A central character in The Rain Heron believes she brought a myth to life and comes to regret her actions. Robbie Arnott creates a myth and brings a novel to life as he tells the story of two women whose lives the myth changes.

The Rain Heron opens with a fable about a heron that brings prosperity to an unlucky farmer until a jealous neighbor kills it and brings misfortune to everyone. The heron is nearly transparent, a bird made of water. Later in the story, we learn that the rain heron (or perhaps a different one) actually exists and that it is capable of changing the climate in its immediate vicinity by breathing steam or frost.

The main story takes place in an unnamed country in troubled times. The country has experienced a coup. The weather is extreme and unpredictable. Jobs have disappeared. Schools are closed and crime is rampant.

When the main story starts, we know only that a woman named Ren is living on her own on a mountain, using a cave for shelter, trapping animals and foraging for mushrooms. She meets weekly with a man named Barlow, who trades goods from the village for her animal skins. Barlow warns her that soldiers have come to the village but we don’t know why. Ren shows no interest in news of the soldiers until she meets one, a female lieutenant named Zoe Harker who wants her help searching for the mythical heron. Her methods to gain Ren’s assistance are cruel but effective. Harker pays a price for disturbing the heron, just as Ren pays a price for resisting Harker.

The novel’s second part tells Harker’s backstory, although most of that story concerns Harker’s mother, who uses her blood to coax squid into releasing their ink, and the foreigner who tries to learn her secret. The squid, like the rain heron, have mythological qualities that become apparent during the ink-releasing ritual.

The third part returns to the present, focusing largely on a medic named Daniel as Harker’s soldiers turn to the next phase of their mission. When Daniel asks Harker why the generals want the rain heron, she responds, “Men want things. They hear about something and pretty soon they’re convinced it belongs to them.” Harker's jaded view of men may change before the novel ends.

Harker’s story, in fact, is one of a constantly changing life, a life of apparent self-discovery followed by her discovery that she cannot abide the person she has become. Daniel’s story is a struggle to retain the sense of hope and empathy that has sustained his young life in the face of the horrors he has seen.

In the novel’s concluding part, a worker at a wildlife sanctuary tells Harker that he believed in rain herons as a child, because children believe everything that they are told, but later stopped believing in impossible things. After the coup, when things stopped making sense, he found it possible to believe in the impossible again. The worker, Alec, was a terrible soldier who was finally assigned to the sanctuary as a research assistant. Now he’s alone and forgotten, a condition that suits him. It seems a good place for Harker to join him in a brooding reflection on the lessons we might learn from myths. At least until the past catches up with the present, leading to a final dramatic moment that will change Harker’s life again.

Arnott balances a harsh story with soothing prose that carries the plot in the grip of its steady currents. His characters are decent people who live in indecent times, people who might behave indecently without losing their humanity. The novel’s ending combines the myth of the rain heron with the myth of the squid to make something new and wondrous.

If myths teach lessons, one lesson taught by The Rain Heron is that reality does its best to crush mythology, yet we can learn from both. We can learn from our mistakes. We can crawl up from the depths of our despair. And if we can’t change the past, we can at least make amends.

Myths are meant to tell us something about where we came from and who we are. They help us see ourselves with sharper clarity. By blending the motifs of mythology with the dangers that confront inhabitants of the modern world (unstable government, global warming), The Rain Heron reminds us that we can be better than we have been, that we possess the power to transform ourselves and our world, to make the impossible possible.

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The Delivery by Peter Mendelsund

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on February 9, 2021

Over the course of The Delivery, we learn that the character known only as the delivery boy came from another country, a nation ruled by a leader he calls “the Stongman.” The delivery boy was smuggled to the United States and must eventually repay the cost of his passage and bicycle repairs and rent for the bunk on which he sleeps. He knows his debt will never be paid but he dutifully makes bicycle deliveries while he learns English and the ways of American consumers, one delivery after another, each described to varying degrees, some routine, others an adventure.

This delivery boy, like all the others, is known only as the delivery boy, just as Supervisor is known only as Supervisor and the manager is known only as Uncle. It seems that people who are smuggled into the country are not entitled to an invidual identity, but are part of an amorphous mass. The delivery boy lives in fear of the Supervisor, who controls his fate. If customers make too many complaints, the delivery boy might be fired and lose his only means of survival as an undocumented alien. He also has a not-so-secret crush on N., the dispatcher from his native country who also controls his fate by giving him easier or more difficult assignments. For the most part, N. acts if the delivery does not exist apart from his job, although he assigns deep meaning to her occasional acts of kindness.

The delivery boy seems to have accepted his life and does not feel much sorrow when, for example, he loses his lighter, because it is just another hardship, “another lost article in a long list of lost articles.” He accepts rude drivers and rule doormen and rude customers as if they are his due, but he feels a sense of wonder when he receives a good tip or a kind word, the same wonder he feels when he pauses during the day to look around, to appreciate beauty and to marvel at the way other people live.

The Delivery is a charming novel. The simplicity of the story hides its depth. Many background details are omitted — in what city does the delivery boy make his deliveries? what is his country of origin? — because they don’t really matter. The delivery boy is an every-delivery-boy, an undocumented worker who is readily exploited, performing unrewarding labor that leaves him unnoticed, unable to image a better life for himself (beyond imagining that N. might one day like him) because his life, unsatisfying though it might be, is better than the lives his parents face under the rule of the Strongman.

The delivery boy’s hopes and aspirations, small though they might be, are touching. Like all immigrants, his ultimate yearning is to be free — free from the Strongman, free from the Supervisor, free from those who would exploit or control the vulnerable. The novel’shopeful ending suggests the possibility that by taking a chance — another chance, apart from being smuggled into a free country — the delivery boy might ultimately attain his dream.

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All Fall Down by James Brabazon

First published in the UK in 2020; published by Berkley on February 2, 2021

It is the nature of espionage that things are not always as they appear. That is also the basis for many espionage novels, including All Fall Down.

Frank Knight gives Max McLean what seems to be an easy assignment. Travel to a cottage in “the wild country of Donegal” and kill “an Old IRA man” named Chappie Connor. After two days of surveillance, Max enters the cottage and pulls the trigger, only to make three discoveries: first, his victim is already dead; second, the dead man is holding a hundred-dollar bill bearing the word Archangel written in Cyrillic; and third, whoever killed Connor is now trying to kill Max. One shootout and explosion later, Max is swimming for his life.

Max doesn’t know what’s up, but he pretends to have lost the C-note while swimming. That swim and the preceding shootout is the first of many action scenes in All Fall Down. I often think that action scenes work better in movies than novels, but James Brabazon writes them with such cinematic detail that the shootouts, explosions, and chases — culminating with a shootout during a chase while riding a racehorse in the midst of explosions — are just as exciting as they would be on a big screen.

Max decides to check in with his oldest friend, Doc Levy. What he finds haunts him for the rest of the novel. When Knight calls Max in Levy’s house and tells him to run, Max barely has time to wonder how Knight knew his whereabouts before he’s engaged in the novel’s second high-action scene.

Max quickly determines that the British, the Russians, the Americans, and the Israelis all want to get their hands on the hundred-dollar bill. They’re willing to shoot up a bar and kill everyone in it (and each other) to get a chance to go through Max’s pockets.

There’s nothing for it but to investigate the provenance of the bill and the Russian word Archangel. That investigation brings him to a forger, to an information broker, and to a young math genius named Bhavneet (“Baaz”) Singh. Max has a momentary moral dilemma after he saves Baaz from the novel’s fourth or fifth shootout (this one in the Catacombs beneath Paris), only to come close to killing him before deciding that Baaz’s math skills might be useful.

Max isn’t necessarily a deep thinker, but he at least reflects (when time permits) before he kills, which elevates him above the average thriller protagonist. He spends most of the novel wondering why so many people are trying to kill him over a hundred-dollar bill, only to learn that some of the players are not who he believed them to be. In the meantime, he learns something about quantum computers and algorithms and a lot of jargon that sounded good to me, as someone who vaguely grasps the concept of anything that begins with the word “quantum” but soon gets lost in the details.

If you can believe that Max can survive an endless series of shootouts and explosions — and you need to believe that to enjoy most action novels — then All Fall Down tells a reasonably credible story. The plot twists are surprising, as befits a spy novel. The world hopping (Ireland, Paris, Israel, Russia) is interesting and the characters are developed with all the personality they need. As spy novels of the action variety go, All Fall Down offers more thrills than most.

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The Unwilling by John Hart

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 2, 2021

The best thriller I’ve read in this young year will certainly be among the best of the full year. The Unwilling mixes the strong characterization of fine literature with an absorbing plot and the escalating tension that thriller fans crave.

The story is set during the Vietnam War. It focuses on two brothers. A third brother, Robert, was killed in the war. Robert’s death prompted his twin, Jason, to join the Marines. He became something of a legend but the military made him a scapegoat. Dishonorably discharged and addicted to heroin, Jason soon did a stint in prison, where his fighting skills caught the attention of X, a serial killer on death row who uses wealth and fear to control the warden and everyone who comes within his orbit. X employs killers of his own, including Reeves, who has a taste for young women.

Jason’s younger brother is Gibby. His father is a police detective and his mother, who has lost two sons (having written off Jason), is unbearably protective. Gibby is still coming of age and isn’t sure who he wants to be. When Jason comes back into his life after his release from prison, their parents fear that Gibby wants to become Jason. While Jason repeatedly tells Gibby not to follow in his path, he sends mixed signals, including bringing Gibby along to spend a raucous day with two young women, Tyra and Sara. Tyra teases prisoners on a bus during that trip, rude behavior that eventually brings Jason back to X’s attention.

When one of the women is tortured and murdered, Jason becomes the prime suspect, setting up the rest of the story. After the other woman disappears, some police detectives suspect Gibby’s involvement. Jason’s father is torn between his duty to the police and his love of his sons. Gibby never falters in his refusal to believe that Jason committed the murder. As Gibby and his loyal friend Chance begin a search for evidence to clear Jason, they face danger from the police and from the killer. Gibby’s father is then torn between his love of Jason and his need to protect Gibby from the man he fears Jason has become.

The story seems like it might be far-fetched, but John Hart makes every page seem real. This is a textured story, filled with small moments that evoke a variety of responses. The horror of discovering a woman who has been tortured and hung from chains is seen from the perspective of cops (and we’ve seen that before), but the aftermath is seen from the perspective of a troubled child who first discovered the body — a discovery that will likely shape his life. Those small moments help make the story memorable.

Hart’s ability to create conflict through the interaction of characters while avoiding melodrama is one of his strengths. The growing desperation felt by Gibby’s father, coupled with his growing realization that he’s not been a supportive father to Jason, is emotionally agonizing. Gibby’s internal struggle with his feeling about Jason and Chance’s struggle against life-defining fear are captivating. Hart deftly balances atmosphere and characterization with a plot that builds pace and tension until it races to a conclusion.

John Hart has grown as a writer over the years. Of the Hart novels I’ve read, The Unwilling stands as his best effort.

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Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

Published by Scribner on February 2, 2021

Milk Fed begins as a light novel about a woman struggling with an eating disorder. It becomes heavier and darker as it transforms into an exploration of sexual and religious identity. Add the eating issue and the novel is about self-acceptance in the face of societal or parental judgment.

Rachel works for a talent agency. She also performs one evening a week at a comedy club. In her dreams she receives wisdom from a rabbi. In her waking hours she sees a therapist to address her mother issues.

To her mother’s displeasure, Rachel indulged her sweet tooth as a young girl and got chubby. At sixteen, she compensated by eating too little and nearly becoming anorexic. Eventually she saw a nutritionist who balanced her so that she ate the right amount of healthy food. Now she counts calories obsessively. She also thinks about food (particularly sweets) obsessively. And she frets about her mother obsessively. Her therapist wants her to detox from her relationship with her mother because it is “emotionally unsafe.” That’s easier said than done.

Also to her mother’s displeasure, Rachel is either bisexual or a lesbian. She’s never had a sexual relationship with either gender that was completely satisfying. Early in the novel, Rachel develops a friendship with Miriam, who works in a yogurt shop. She’s not sure whether Miriam shares her interest in a physical relationship, but she allows Miriam to feed her decadent yogurt sundaes and high-calorie Chinese food. Rachel also consumes Shabbat meals at the home of Miriam’s parents. She thus experiences the pleasure of flavor but the frustration of weight gain, mixed with the pleasure of friendship and the fear of trying to move that friendship to a more intimate level.

Miriam is not by nature averse to having sex with a woman, but she resists her desire because her Orthodox parents will be less than pleased at her choice of partners. The relationship does eventually change. The later chapters are rather graphic in their description of that change, which I report not so much as a warning as an endorsement for readers who might enjoy graphic titillation. But Rachel eventually gets it on with a male client in violation of her employment agreement. That scene also leaves little to the imagination.

Sexual uncertainty might be a lesser conflict in the Rachel/Miriam relationship than religion. Rachel enjoys the time she spends with Miriam’s family, which seems more accepting of her than her own mother, but she also feels the need to avoid their judgment. She does not share their uncritical embrace of Israel and the occupation. When Rachel politely suggests that Palestinians might have legitimate grievances, Rachel’s mother reacts with knee-jerk hostility, accusing Rachel of self-hatred and betrayal. Rachel wonders what it means “to love a version of something that might not really exist — not as you saw it. Does this negate the love?” While she asks that question about Israel, it might also be asked about Rachel’s love of Miriam, a love that must be kept secret to avoid the judgment of Miriam’s mother.

Despite the novel’s exploration of self-image, sexuality, intolerance, and parental judgment, the story doesn’t bear an oppressive weight. This is journey of discovery. Rachel learns about herself by tasting the forbidden flavors of chocolate and sex. She lets down her barriers and becomes less uptight, less fearful of her desires. She doesn’t know if this new feeling is “surrender, freedom, or a total delusion that was ultimately going to hurt me.” It is certainly not without consequences, but experiencing consequences is a necessary condition of growth. The period of Rachel’s life that we see in Milk Fed is one of difficult change, but the Rachel who emerges is more confident and less fearful of the choices she will need to confront in the future.

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