The Shortest Day by Colm Tóibín

Published digitally by Amazon on November 3, 2020

“The Shortest Day” is a short story that is easily consumed in less than an hour. The story is available through Amazon as a “Kindle edition.”

Professor O’Kelly, an archeologist, has spent his career investigating an ancient burial chamber at Newgrange. As a scholar, O’Kelly focuses on facts supported by evidence. He does not speculate about things he cannot prove. When people ask him about spirits of the dead people who were buried in the tomb, he reminds them that spirits are beyond the remit of an archeologist.

What O’Kelly does not know is that spirits do dwell within the chamber. The spend their afterlives telling each other stories. Only one spirit, a woman named Dalc, is able to add new information to their collective knowledge because only she can leave the tomb and roam around in the world.

Once a year, on the winter solstice, a beam of light illuminates the chamber. The spirits are sustained by the light — it renews their energy — but they do not want the outside world to invade their resting place. “We need to be separate from the mortal world,” a spirit argues. “No one ever planned that this sacred space might be shared with anyone.”

In her only contact with a mortal, motivated by fear that archeologists would discover the beam of light, Dalc told a villager that the annual illumination of the chamber is a secret “that does not belong to the world.” Dalc explained that “we must all know our place in the great scheme of things. We respect mystery and silence and spirit.”

Dalc made the villager swear to keep people away from the tomb on the solstice. The villager took her vow seriously. While current villagers are aware that the winter solstice is the one day the tomb is not to be disturbed, the secret has not spread beyond the community. Until, that is, a drunken villager rambled about it while O’Kelly was visiting a local tavern.

When O’Kelly chooses the solstice for one of his visits, the villagers fret that the spirits will be disturbed. By the story’s end, the reader will be invited to ponder the impact of O’Kelly’s discovery.

The foundation of this story is true, in that Michael O’Kelly did discover the phenomenon in 1967. Why the tomb was designed to illuminate on the shortest day of the year is unknown. The illumination clearly required careful planning and ingenious design. According to the Newgrange website (the place is a tourist attraction now), locals did tell stories about the annual lighting of the chamber, although they didn’t reveal exactly when it would happen.

I always admire Colm Tóibín’s prose and his ability to create atmosphere. Like all of Tóibín’s work, the story is interesting and thought provoking. What thoughts Tóibín intended to provoke is something of a mystery to me. Perhaps, as an Irish writer, he couldn’t resist writing a ghost story and that’s all there is to it. But I have struggled to reconcile the spirits’ fear with the story’s ending, which seems to suggest that the fears were groundless. If the lesson learned by the fretful spirits is supposed to teach a larger lesson, it eludes me. Surely not all fears are groundless.

O’Kelly’s lucky discovery enriched the living by revealing an amazing bit of ancient engineering. I suspect Tóibín’s point is that unscientific fears harbored by villagers should give way to the revelations of science. That interpretation might permit the light illuminating the chamber to be seen as light that chases away the dark fears of superstition. But maybe not. Maybe I’m only projecting my own frustration with people who reject reason and science. In any event, I like the story. Maybe it’s my dimness that prevents me from fully appreciating it, but the fact that a story is challenging isn’t a reason not to recommend it.

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Make Russia Great Again by Christopher Buckley

Published by Simon & Schuster on July 14, 2020

I hurried to finish Make Russia Great Again because after the election it might lose its relevance entirely. While other novels have taken shots at a fictional Trump, it seems doubtful that any of them will be remembered after Trump is gone. Making fun of Trump is the nightly sport of talk show hosts, but they’ll move on in January if Biden wins. I suspect readers will do the same. Nobody wants to revisit a nightmare.

As the (not so failing) New York Times noted, the difficulty with satirizing the Trump administration is that reality outpaces fiction. By the time this book made it to market, Trump had found new ways to self-destruct that even the most masterful satirist would have been unable to imagine.

Make Russia Great Again takes place shortly before the 2020 election. Some characters (like Trump and Pompeo) are real, others are thinly disguised. Sean Hannity is Seamus Colonnity, Ivanka is Ivunka and she’s married to Jored, Pence is Pants, Graham is Biskitt, etc.

The novel’s narrator is Herbert K. Nutterman, who rose through the management ranks at various Trump properties before Trump tapped him to become the new chief of staff. Two storylines, other than the upcoming election, drive the plot. First, an American computer program called Placid Reflex autonomously hacked the Russian election and gave the Communist candidate a landslide victory in the first round of voting. Putin isn’t pleased but doesn’t immediately suspect Trump who is, after all, in Putin’s pocket.

Second, a Russian oligarch and Trump buddy named Oleg Pishinsky is widely suspected of causing the demise of an American journalist who investigated his molybdenum empire and other shady endeavors. Responding to those suspicions, Congress passed a law that disadvantages Oleg’s desire to sell molybdenum to the United States. Oleg wants Trump to get it rescinded. If Trump says no, Oleg will release videos of Trump having sex with each contestant of Miss Universe 2013 after promising each the crown. Oleg also did away with a contestant who wasn’t satisfied with being paid off, a crime that might look bad for Trump. Unfortunately for Trump, Congress isn’t buying his pitch that the US has a desperate need for molybdenum, an element that Trump can’t pronounce.

There are moments of genuine humor in the novel. I particularly enjoyed Trump’s response when the videos begin to leak. He changes “Make America Great Again” to “Make America Hard Again,” an improvement that his loyal base embraces. The Evangelicals, of course, look away without wavering in their support.

While the story is fun, some of Nutterman’s observations — about, for example, the “liberal mainstream media” obsession with reporting true facts rather than alternative facts — fall flat because they really aren’t satirical at all. Much of the book depicts Trump as he is, without the exaggeration that defines satire. Trump and his echo chamber entourage might be clownish but they aren’t all that funny.

The book does have a prescient quality, if only because Trump is predictable. Without knowing who the Democratic nominees would be, Buckley has the president condemning them as socialists, a label that Trump and uninformed inhabitants of the fringe have tried without success to pin on Biden. Since Buckley didn’t know who the candidates would be, Buckley has Trump calling them Loser One and Loser Two — which is admittedly Trumpish.

The book was written before the pandemic (which, Trump just assured us, is over), a fact that detracts from both its relevance and its satirical punch. Trump’s real sins are much worse than the sins Buckley imagines, a reality that compromises the ability to laugh at Trump’s foibles.

Having said that, Make Russia Great Again does deliver a steady diet of chuckles and an occasional full-bellied laugh. Trump’s fans won’t like it and might even hold a book burning, although that would require them to actually buy the book, which seems unlikely. If Trump wins reelection, readers who want to laugh after they finish crying might want to spend time with it. If Trump is defeated, the book might have value as nostalgia. As political satire, however, it is only a mild success.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos

Published in France in 2016; published in translation by Pushkin Press on September 1, 2020

“It is wise to be wary of anyone who loves books” cautions Madeleine, the widow of Henri Pick. Yet The Mystery of Henri Pick is a book for booklovers. The plot revolves around writers and critics and libraries and books, published and unpublished. The novel asks whether literary success has more to do with the story of a book than the story the book tells.

People who loves books and even some who rarely read harbor the belief that they have a story to tell. An unwritten book languishes in many souls. A small percentage actually take the trouble to write it, only to have the manuscript rejected by multiple publishers until they stop shopping it around. What happens to all those unpublished manuscripts?

Richard Brautigan conceived the notion of a Library of Rejected Books in his novel The Abortion. One of Brautigan’s fans brought it to life in the form of the Brautigan Library, which now resides in Vancouver. David Foenkinos imagines a librarian in a French village who, tickled by Brautigan’s idea, dedicates part of the library to unpublished manuscripts. Jean-Pierre Gourvec welcomes all rejected novels, provided their authors drop them off in person. By the time he dies, the library has accumulated thousands of manuscripts.

After Gourvec dies, Magali Croze assumes stewardship of the library. The unpublished manuscripts became covered with dust. An editor named Delphine Despero happens to spend an afternoon in the library with her boyfriend, Frédéric Koskas. There she discovers a novel called The Last Hours of a Love Affair. The book blends a love story with the death throes of Pushkin. The author was Henri Pick. Or that, at least, is what the public is told.

Henri Pick owed a pizza shop before his death. His wife had no idea that he had written a book. Henri showed no interest in literature, although his widow discovers a volume of Pushkin among his belongings.

Delphine’s discovery of Pick’s book sets the literary world on fire. The idea of a man pursuing a secret project that can be promoted as a masterpiece assures that the novel will be a best seller. The discovery changes the lives of Henri’s widow Madeleine and his daughter Joséphine. Journalists hound them for information about Henri in their hope of feeding more tidbits to the novel’s admirers.

Jean Michel Rouche, formerly an influential book critic who has become undone by his professional disappointments, suspects that Pick did not actually write the mysterious book. His effort to unmask its true author wakes him from his depression and gives him a reason to live. The mystery also drives the plot that brings the cast of characters together. Did or didn’t Pick write the amazing book?

The truth is revealed in an epilogue but is the truth really all that important? The Last Hours of a Love Affair brings joy or contentment to people who imagine that it might have been written for or about them. After all, readers “always find themselves in a book, in one way or another. Reading is a completely egotistical pleasure.” Perhaps the novel’s true origin is unimportant because “life has an inner dimension, with stories that have no basis in reality, but which are truly lived all the same.”

While the novel illustrates the ways in which people value form over substance — if conventionally published, The Last Hours of a Love Affair would probably have had a small readership — it also asks whether form and substance might sometimes have equal merit. If a book is meant to capture hearts, why are the heart-capturing circumstances of its discovery and publication of any less value than its content? Perhaps the story of artistic creation can be just as important (even if just as fictional) as the art itself.

Books about books are always fun for booklovers. The Mystery of Henri Pick explores the nature of books while revealing the hidden natures of its characters. With deceptive simplicity, the novel weaves together the lives of seemingly unremarkable people who, like most people who read, are more remarkable than they appear. Foenkinos even tells a couple of low-key love stories. The Mystery of Henri Pick is a charming addition to the literature of literature.

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The Nightworkers by Brian Selfon

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on October 6, 2020

Crime novels that focus on criminals are almost always more interesting than crime novels that focus on cops. Where unimaginative crime fiction portrays cops as righteous protectors of the helpless who are preyed upon by evil villains, writers who create empathy for criminals understand that good and evil lurk in every heart. The path one follows is often dictated by circumstance as much as choice.

Shecky Keenan, Keresha Brown (Shecky's niece), and Henry Vek (the son of Shecky's cousin) have made themselves into a family. Shecky operates a money laundering business. Henry supervises the runners, the people who pick up illicit cash and send it to foreign accounts through various money transfer services. Keresha is a 23-year-old former addict who helps Shecky and Henry with her sharp eyes and a talent for burglary.

Shecky is getting older. Nothing matters to him as much as Henry and Keresha. He knows they won’t stay in his house forever. He “fears a silent house above all else.” Yet he’ll cross any line to protect them, even if he might lose their affection by crossing lines against their will.

Shecky probably identifies with Keresha because his parents were less than nurturing. Keresha’s mother cared more about heroin than she cared about her daughter. Keresha is on probation and obsessed with her court-ordered therapist, who isn’t pleased when she breaks into his home at night to share her problems. Keresha struggles with bad lifestyle choices because that’s what people do, but the fact that she continues to struggle sends a message of hope.

Henry enjoys making art and admires the murals and other work of a young man he befriends named Emil Scott. Against Shecky’s advice, Henry takes on Emil as a runner. Emil seems to be unusually honest and reliable until the day Henry assigns him to pick up a large bag of cash. Both Emil and the cash disappear. Henry worries that he misplaced his trust while Shecky worries that the owner of the cash, an unsavory customer named Vasya, will make his displeasure known with violence.

Shecky’s problems are compounded by his fear that the police are closing in. “Suspicious transaction” notices are leading to closed accounts. A police surveillance camera seems to be focused on his house. Bad things are likely to happen. The questions that loom are why they are happening and whether anything bad will happen to characters the reader cares about.

The other two key characters are Zera and Lipz. Zera is part of the Human Trafficking Task Force, a woman from Montenegro who “was born of evil and had known evil all her life.” The goals she wants to accomplish are not within the ambit of conventional police work. Lipz is Henry’s long-time friend. She’s a heroin dealer who helps Henry and Shecky find new customers but engages in dangerous behavior in her quest for a share of the profits.

The plot is smart and focused. Brian Selfon delivers graceful prose that is stripped of redundancy and unnecessary explanations. The story is sufficiently complex that it keeps the reader guessing but not so convoluted that the reader will become lost.

While the story is entertaining, Selfon’s characters form the heart of the novel. Central characters evolve as the story progresses. Some of them are casting aside the defenses they created to respond to adversity and are opening themselves to a feeling of self-worth. At the very least, they may come to appreciate the importance of friendship and family. Being there for another person will always help you feel better about yourself, will make you feel less alone in an alienating world. These are the kind of sympathetic characters who make me extoll the virtues of crime fiction that focuses on criminals.

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Machine by Elizabeth Bear

Published by Simon & Schuster/Saga Press on October 20, 2020

Machine is a space opera infused with a mystery. The setting — a hospital in space — is fresh, allowing Elizabeth Bear to breathe new life into familiar science fiction themes.

Brookllyn Jens is a human trauma doctor who zips around the galaxy in a super-fast medical vessel that is the spacefaring equivalent of an ambulance or rescue vehicle. One might expect most space accidents to end with a quick death but Jens tells us that she regularly saves lives. Perhaps ships are so rugged that they routinely sustain enough damage to need a tow and a doctor without coming apart. In any event, Jens’ anecdotal tales of lifesaving aren’t so important to the plot that the reader needs to buy into them.

Jens’ rescue vehicle is crewed by two other Terrans, a couple of aliens, and an autonomous Artificial Intelligence named Sally that runs the ship. The galaxy, it turns out, is a crowded place. Humans have taken their place with syster races and AIs in the Synarche. Conflict is largely avoided by “rightminding,” a form of education and brain tinkering that reduces aggression and inclines disparate beings toward cooperation.

A distress signal brings Jens to a generation ship that left Earth a long time ago. Jens finds a ship of methane breathers attached to the generation ship. There are life signs on both ships but no obvious activity. Jens investigates and discovers that the generation ship’s crew members are in cold storage. They are guarded by an AI who has occupied a peripheral in the shape of a female humanoid. The ship is also infested with mechanical blocks that seem to be eating the hull. The methane breathers are sound asleep in their own ship. All of this is ominous but Jens’ duty is to save life when she can so she brings some of the sleeping humans and aliens back to the hospital (Core General, much to the chagrin of the humanoid AI (whose name is Helen Alloy) who isn’t sure the rescuers can be trusted.

The rescue mission is plagued by technical glitches that Sally can’t explain. Back at Core General, even more glitches are occurring, perhaps as the result of sabotage. The hospital administrator, who happens to be a tree, wants Jens to investigate because (a) she has clearance to see medical files and (b) she used to be a cop. Jens discovers a mysterious wing in the hospital that nobody will talk about and wonders whether it is connected to the sabotage.

Getting to the bottom of the mystery is a long but pleasant walk. The reveal is a bit disappointing — it hinges on an overused science fiction theme, the kind that makes readers think “not another one of those stories” — but the mild disappointment is tempered by Bear’s ability to pull the reader into the story. The book is set in Bear’s White Space universe, a fully realized background that is interesting in itself, but the real fun is in Bear’s imaginative look at how a hospital designed as a space station might minister to the needs of various races that require different atmospheres and diets and gravitational settings to survive.

Agency is a popular theme in current science fiction — the notion that individuals have the power to make independent choices (actually, it’s always been a theme, but sf writers have only recently turned to the label “agency” to describe it). Jens felt she had no agency as a child. Her character development, as is customary in science fiction, focuses on her ability to find creative solutions to problems. One of her problems is unexplained pain that has gripped her throughout her life, pain she endures with the help of an exoskeleton that aids her movement. At more than one point in the novel, Jens thinks about surrendering to a pain-free existence, but in the science fiction tradition, sacrifice is the definition of heroism.

Bear’s aliens are assembled with the kind of convincing detail that makes it easy to suspend disbelief in their existence. Their conflicts, rightminding notwithstanding, add to the story’s interest. A number of action scenes contribute excitement to the story, but Machine doesn’t rely on the conventions of shoot-em-up science fiction. The story might have been a bit tighter — Jens’ struggles after the reveal go on a bit too long — but that’s a small complaint about a book that gives us another of Bear’s smart takes on the subgenre of space opera.

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