Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Published by Scribner on September 28, 2021

Anthony Doerr tells this story in multiple time frames. Each chapter begins with fragments of a story written by Antonius Diogenes, a second century storyteller. The title of Diogenes’ story translates as Cloud Cuckoo Land. The rest of the book bounces around in time. The segments are connected by Diogenes’ story. That connection reminds us of the importance of books and the ease with which, in the long stretch of time, knowledge is lost. We believe that everything will last “but that is only because of the extreme brevity of our own lives.” Cities “come and go like anthills.” “The houses of the rich burn as quick as any other.” From ancient works and the ruins of the past, we might discover lost knowledge that will help us understand how our present came into existence. We might also learn something about the universality of human experience.

Diogenes’ story tells of Aethon’s “journey to a utopian city in the sky.” The story was supposedly written on wooden slates that Diogenes discovered in Aethon’s tomb. Diogenes claimed to have transcribed the slates onto papyrus and had the transcripts delivered to his ailing niece, an entertainment designed to encourage her recovery.

Centuries later, as the Saracens prepare to sack Constantinople, a girl named Anna is ransacking a hidden trove of manuscripts, delivering them to monks who hope to find a book that contains the entire world. Anna believes Diogenes’ codex fits that description when it speaks of “a place of golden towers stacked on clouds, redshanks, quails, moorhens, and cuckoos, where rivers of broth gushed from spigots.”

North of Constantinople, Omeir was born with a facial deformity that makes his village regard him as a djinn. His grandfather cannot find it in himself to leave the baby to die. Omeir turns into a gentle child who raises and loves two oxen before he and his oxen are drafted to attack Constantinople. Omeir’s path eventually intersects Anna’s. Diogenes’ book, once important only to Anna, now becomes important to Omeir.

Zeno Ninis is a prisoner of war in Korea during the early 1950s, where he meets and falls in love with a scholar named Rex. Zeno learns root words in Greek from Rex, including a particularly telling phrase that translates as: “That’s what the gods do. They spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make a song for generations to come.”

Seymour Stuhlman is a child in Lakeport, Idaho in the mid-2010s. Birds are losing their Lakeport habitat to developers who replace forests with parking lots. One of those birds was an owl Seymour knew as Trustyfriend. Medication is the adult answer to Seymour’s perception of the doomed world in which he lives, but Seymour has a bent for subversion that neither medication nor prison will change. His eventual purpose in life is to undo the lies that corporate America tells people who prefer a clean and cheerful world to the one they have created.

Zeno’s story collides with Seymour’s in 2020. Seymour is apparently prepared to blow up the Lakeport library as Zeno is upstairs, directing a children’s play.

Konstance lives on a generation ship making its way to a distant planet after Earth has succumbed to environmental disaster. Konstance loses herself in the generation ship’s computer, discovering Earth’s history, before she is forced into isolation to avoid a rapidly spreading contagion. Konstance’s father had a book called Cloud Cuckoo Land, translated from the Greek by Zeno Ninis. In the ship’s virtual library, she searches for information about Zeno and begins to guess the truth about her isolated existence.

Diogenes’ tale links all the characters, illustrating the reality that history has unforeseeable impacts on the future, that people who history does not recall have played their role in shaping our present. The novel’s characters are imbued with the same qualities as Aethon. They persist. They take wrong turns but eventually right their course. They stand in awe of a world they don’t understand, but they strive to gain knowledge of their place within it. They might get lost, they might lose things, but they come to understand that “sometimes the things we think are lost are only hidden, waiting to be rediscovered.” The characters are fighting not just to make sense of the world but to make sense of themselves.

Like his characters, Doerr’s prose is lively and surprising. He asks important questions: “Why is it so hard to transcend the identities assigned to us when we are young?” Why do we find it so hard to accept reality? Why do people want to conquer others when what they have is enough? Doerr gives the reader nutritious thoughts to chew upon, but he does so in the context of a story that gradually evolves from bewildering to astonishing.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Escape from Yokai Land by Charles Stross

Published by Tordotcom on March 1, 2022

Escape from Yokai Land (originally titled Escape from Puroland) is a novella set in Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series. The events in the story take place just before the novel The Delerium Brief. Bob Howard is the featured character. Readers who are unfamiliar with the series will probably want to start elsewhere, as the story might otherwise be unendurably puzzling.

The Laundry Files series is set in an alternate universe in which magic is a function of mathematical equations. Between the two world wars, Great Britain (and eventually other countries) developed clandestine departments to protect their countries from incursions of various demons and monsters that are entering the universe through portals or bridges created by computational pollution. Great Britain’s organization is called the Laundry.

Different characters are featured in different novels, but Bob Howard is the first series protagonist and still my favorite. At this point in the series, Howard has risen through the bureaucracy and inherited the powers and duties of his deceased boss James Angleton, including Angleton’s status as the Eater of Souls. Howard is dispatched to Japan, where the counterpart to Howard’s agency viewed Angleton as less than woke in his interaction with the Japanese. Howard tries to do better.

The story is basic. An unusual number of threats have been entering Japan. Howard deals with them while maintaining diplomatic relations with the Japanese. As is often the case, the story’s primary interest lies in the observations that Stross makes as the story unfolds. I particularly liked the notion that Howard doesn’t go to church because he knows that gods are real, far from benign, and gain their power from worship. An amusement park in Japan has become the epicenter of extradimensional intrusions because children worship Hello Kitty, allowing the evil intruders to feed on their quasi-prayer.

The novella isn’t essential to series readers — nothing happens that advances the overall story — but it’s fun. I would recommend it to Stross fans for that reason. Readers who are intrigued by the concept of magic as computational fallout might want to start with the first novel and work their way forward.

RECOMMENDED

Silent Parade by Keigo Higashino

Published in Japan in 2018; published in translation by Minotaur Books on December 14, 2021

American mysteries tend to feature outlandish plots or brilliant but unrealistic forensic scientists or tough guys who solve the mysteries with their fighting skills or self-aggrandizing protagonists who can’t stop reminding the reader how much they care about victims. The age of clever but plausible plots and deduction that doesn’t depend on CSI gadgetry has largely passed. Fortunately, readers who enjoy the challenge of puzzling out the solution to a complex mystery can turn to Japanese mystery writers. Whodunit and how’d-he-do-it plots are plentiful in Japan, where fictional detectives use their wits rather than their weapons or crime labs to solve mysteries.

Saori Namiki is a teenager working as a waitress in her parents’ restaurant when she begins taking voice lessons from Naoki Niikura. His wife Rumi encourages Saori to pursue a career in music. Saori sees the appeal of pursuing stardom, but she also enjoys being pursued by one of the restaurant’s customers, Tomoya Takagaki.

Saori disappears one evening without explanation. Three years later, a house burns to the ground. Saori’s body is discovered in the rubble. The body of the old woman who owns the house is also discovered, but she died years before Saori, who died soon after she disappeared.

The old woman’s son, Kanichi Hasunuma, was a customer at the Namiki restaurant who took an unwholesome interest in Saori. Hasunuma’s ties to the house and to Saori make him the prime murder suspect. Two decades earlier, Hasunuma was suspected of killing a 12-year-old girl. Despite abundant circumstantial evidence, Hasunuma resisted the cultural urge to confess, having learned from his cop father that convictions are difficult to win without the suspect’s confession. True to his father’s teachings, Hasunuma avoided a conviction and even received compensation for his detention.

The investigation of Saori’s murder is led by Detective Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Toykyo Metropolitan Police. Kusanagi was a young detective when he worked on the first case against Hasunuma. Kusanagi hopes he can bring Hasunuma to justice this time. The novel’s true star, however, is Kusanagi’s college friend, Professor Manabu Yukawa, a/k/a Professor Galileo, a character who first appeared in The Devotion of Suspect X and has solved crimes in three other novels, including Silent Parade.

While Saori’s death is the novel’s initial focus, the fun starts with Hasunuma’s death. Was he murdered? If so, how? He appears to have died from natural causes, but Yukawa isn’t so sure. If he was killed, how did it happen? Yukawa propounds one hypothesis after another. Kusanagi dutifully sends officers to look for evidence that confirms or refutes the evolving theory. Many of the obvious suspects have an alibi involving a parade, complete with helium balloons, that the entire community attended.

Once the police settle on a likely means of Hasunuma's death, the mystery requires the killer to be identified. Revenge is the obvious motive, but Saori was beloved by her family, their friends, her lover, and pretty much the entire neighborhood. Just when it seems that the police have identified a killer, Yukawa mentions a fact that isn’t consistent with their theory and forces the investigation to reboot. By the novel’s end, everything the police (and reader) think they know is cast into doubt. The truth is out there, but like any good scientist, Yukawa knows that the truth is found by accounting for every fact rather than jumping to conclusions that are consistent with only some of the facts.

Keigo Higashino’s complex plots are among the best in modern mysteries. Nearly every character in Silent Parade, apart from Yukawa and the cops, is a potential suspect. Higashino gives each character, from Hasunuma to Saori to the various suspects, a sufficiently detailed background to explain why they behave as they do. The unfailing politeness of everyone except Hasunuma makes Silent Parade a relaxing departure from American crime fiction. Mystery fans who appreciate a challenge should appreciate Higashino's work.

RECOMMENDED

Creative Types by Tom Bissell

Publsihed by ‎ Pantheon on December 14, 2021

It is difficult to identify a unifying theme in this volume of Tom Bissell stories. That’s one of the pleasures of reading the seven diverse stories in the collection. No story is similar to any other story. If they have anything in common, it is the suggestion that the choices we make about living our lives always merit examination.

My favorite story, “The Fifth Category,” is rooted in recent history. A man named John wakes up on a flight and discovers he is the only person on board the darkened plane. The man is a former government lawyer who wrote memos justifying the torture of American prisoners who were arbitrarily classified as enemy combatants, a lawyer who refuses to acknowledge his role in crimes against humanity. We aren’t told his last name but the character is obviously modeled upon John Yoo. The flight forces him to confront a reality that he had only considered in the abstract. The story is nuanced and somewhat sympathetic to Yoo without whitewashing his willful failure to anticipate the foreseeably ugly consequences of his work.

Four of the stories are, like “The Fifth Category,” smart and provocative:

The Jewish women who want to worship in an Italian synagogue are allowed to sit in a cage “if there’s room.” A tourist protests religiously inspired social injustice by removing his yarmulke, provoking a confrontation with the tour guide.

A writer whose older brother was killed while trying to prevent a crime eventually writes a critical article about a New York City vigilante who calls himself the Avenger. When the Avenger agrees to be interviewed, it is the writer who must answer questions about his failure to engage with his brother’s death.

Two men who were high school bullies together in the Midwest reunite in New York City. One of the men, now working as an editor, has changed. His visiting friend is still an ignorant, bullying bigot, a fact that triggers the editor as he’s forced to remember the person he once was.

An American makes friends with a Greyhound that attacks him in Estonia, then invites the Greyhound’s owner (the wealthy daughter of a criminal) to do coke. The daughter expects to make out with the American, but he’s more interested in discussing the philosophy of existence, an interest that forces the woman to think about the emptiness of her life and encourages a non-sexual bond of friendship.

The final two stories were less interesting to me, although they might resonate with (in the first case) couples with young children or (in the second) fans of Hollywood celebrities:

A hooker talks about her life with a Hollywood couple that hires her to spice up their post-baby sex life. The reality of life intrudes on the fantasy of spice.

An assistant to James (obviously James Franco) ponders his life before and after he makes an innocent mistake as Seth (obviously Seth Rogen) and James wrestle with a Saturday Night Live monologue.

The diversity of subject matter and the qualify of Bissell’s writing assures that most readers will find something to like in this collection. I found nothing to dislike. Five of the seven appealed to me, a pretty good batting average for any writer.

RECOMMENDED

Her Second Death by Melinda Leigh

Published by Amazon Original Stories on December 7, 2021

“Her Second Death” is part of the Amazon original short story series. It is billed as a prequel to the Bree Taggert series. The story has the feel of something that was dashed off in a couple of hours.

Detective Bree Taggert, newly assigned to homicide, investigates a shooting death. The victim was found in his car. When she contacts the victim’s wife, she learns that the wife was living apart from the victim and that he had their daughter for an overnight visitation. The missing child is a little blonde girl because of course it is.

Bree has empathy for the little girl because she hid under the porch during her parents’ murder-suicide. Because of course she did.

The police perform a bit of obvious police work that leads them to an obvious conclusion. The story generates no suspense because of course a little blonde girl isn’t going to be harmed in a story like this. Melinda Leigh makes no effort to make the reader feel she’s even at risk.

Nor is Bree ever at much risk, although weapons are pulled on her a couple of times. Her complete absence of situational awareness would be distressing if she were a real cop.

Like most missing child stories, this is a lazy effort at storytelling. If you really want to read about a missing kid, check out the review before this one. Winter Water tells a clever story. “Her Second Death” just isn’t interesting.

NOT RECOMMENDED