Shelter in Place by David Leavitt

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing on October 13, 2020

Shelter in Place is a novel of first world problems. The kind of problems shared by prosperous New Yorkers who have a weekend home in Connecticut. Sex in the City problems. In fact, when Sandra Brook, Min Marable, and Rachel Weisenstein get together, their dialog would fit nicely into a Sex in the City episode. Mostly they gossip about people who aren’t present, including Matt Pierce, who has been crashing on couches since he broke up with his boyfriend after resisting pressure to participate in three-ways.

Matt used to cook for Eva Lindquist until he made the mistake of asking her for advice about his relationship problems. Eva’s friends wonder where she finds so many handsome gay men who get paid to cook and to “keep her company, lose at cards, and agree with everything she says.”

Eva is in the process of buying an apartment in Italy, a project that annoys her husband Bruce, who works as a wealth manager. Bruce is annoyed in part because of the legal snafus Eva keeps encountering and the bribes that are required to untangle them. Eva wants to live in Italy as a response to Trump’s election. She also wants her friend Jake Lovett, a well-known interior designer, to decorate the apartment. Jake is on the fence about that request, one of many sources of tension that permeate the lives of the characters. Jake’s business partner adds some additional tension, or at least snark, concerning Jake’s career path.

Min is a magazine editor who worked at Self before moving to Entfilade, a magazine that focuses on shelter. She’s encouraging Jake to decorate Eva’s Italian apartment by promising him a magazine cover. Whether she will be able to keep that promise is an open question for much of the novel.

The plot is largely the stuff of soap opera. Bruce is secretly funding his secretary’s battle against cancer. Rachel mistakenly suspects her husband of having an affair with Sandra, who recently left her husband and is busy sorting herself out by having an affair with Bruce. Jake’s reluctance to travel to Venice relates to his memories of a tragic relationship. It is to David Leavitt’s credit that none of this becomes melodramatic. Still, all of the characters make their own problems, a common affliction of financially comfortable first world inhabitants. It’s difficult to generate sympathy for any of them, although sympathy might not be expected or intended.

Shelter in Place is grounded in shallow people making witty conversation. The characters spend a good bit of time discussing literature although it’s not clear that they spend much time reading. One of them attacks Barbara Kingsolver as “the embodiment of liberal piety as its most middlebrow and tendentious” without having read much of her work (he claims to have “dipped in”). The characters either love or hate (mostly hate) Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, and Jonathan Safran Foer, perhaps because those authors all write more deeply than the characters are capable of feeling.

The novel lampoons political correctness as practiced by people who care more about how they are perceived than about political or social issues. Rachel stops wearing her pussyhat, for example, when another character tells her that the hat is racist because it’s pink and “not every woman’s . . . you know . . . is pink.” Characters make a point of letting their friends know that they oppose Trump but never engage in the slightest degree of liberal activism. A conservative character argues that liberals pretend to like things they actually detest (like sorrel soup) because they’re expected to like them. I’m a liberal but I think there’s some truth in that observation. On the other hand, the conservative character delights in expressing abrasive opinions, presumably because modern conservatives relish being offensive.

Bloomsbury explains that Shelter in Place is a “slyly comic look at the shelter industry.” Apart from featuring two interior designers and a magazine editor who are apparently part of the “shelter industry,” the novel has little to say about housing, apart from the difficulty of acquiring clear title in Venice. The comedy is too sly to be noticeable, although the erudite wit in the characters’ conversations is probably meant to deliver low-key amusement. In that regard, the novel at least partially succeeds.

Not surprisingly in a “sly” story about empty characters, the story itself feels a bit empty. The reader follows the characters as they interact with each other for a few days, determinedly showing off their intellect and political sensibilities, but to what end? I suppose there is value in showcasing empty lives that purport to be good lives and perhaps that is the story’s purpose. In the end, the narrative trails off, leaving every conflict, such as they are, unresolved.

Notwithstanding the negative tone of this review, I thought the dialog actually does reflect a certain degree of wit. I enjoyed the precision of David Leavitt's prose. While I would have enjoyed the book more if the characters had all jumped off a bridge in Venice (we learn about but never meet someone who did that), I can guardedly recommend it to readers who don’t mind plotless novels about disagreeable characters.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Revenger by Alastair Reynolds

Published by Orbit/ Victor Gollancz Ltd on January 1, 2016

Revenger is a space opera with some unexplained elements that border on fantasy. It’s a good story for young adults. I didn’t know it was YA fiction when I started it but the story held my interest so I stayed with it. The third novel in the series came out this year, which is why I decided to read the first one. I doubt that  I’ll read the next two because, like most YA fiction, the novel explores themes that appeal to young adults. I'm not young. Revenger lacks the complexity that appeals to more mature readers.I was also bothered by story’s failure to explain so much of the universe in which it exists. That’s common in fantasy and in YA fiction but adult science fiction fans demand to know why things are the way they are.

The story takes place in a future characterized by at least a dozen epochs that historians characterized as Occupations. There was a major war between the Second and Third Occupation, perhaps a war between aliens. A good bit of knowledge and technology from the past has been lost. Many worlds were settled during the Occupations. Some of them are artificial habitats. They are collectively known as the Congregation. Various editions of the Book of Worlds have cataloged them but books are in short supply when Revenger begins.

Laced among the habitats are worlds called Baubles. The Baubles are only accessible at certain times; they “open” for certain periods. Scavengers can find all kinds of treasure from past Occupations behind locked doors inside Baubles, but they need to get in and out before the Bauble closes or they’ll be stuck there, fated to die when their oxygen is depleted.

To find and exploit Baubles, scavengers need a specialized crew. One member needs to read the signs to predict when a Bauble will open. Another needs to open the doors they find in the Bauble. An assessor decides what’s valuable. Then there’s a captain and pilot and someone who deploys the sunsails. The most difficult position to fill is that of Sympathetic, also known as a bone reader. The bone reader plugs headphones into a skull and is able to communicate with other ships. Most people can’t read the skulls and those who can lose the ability as they enter their twenties. The skulls are ancient technology and are getting difficult to find.

Against that background, two teenage sisters are given the opportunity to become bone readers. Adrana and Arafura Ness are looking for adventure. They seem to find it on Captain Rackamore’s ship. When they encounter a future version of a pirate, a legendary and seemingly long-lived woman named Bosa Sennen, the girls become separated. Fura spends the rest of the novel trying to get back onto a ship and to find Adrana. But both girls change over the course of the novel; by the end, neither is what the other expects her to be.

The background is interesting and, to the extent that it isn’t always well explained, perhaps there’s no reason it should be. Fura narrates the story and she has no way to explain things she doesn’t understand, like why Baubles exist or how they operate, or why communications devices are made from skulls, or what “ghosty” technology is all about. On the other hand, I suspect that Alastair Reynolds didn’t bother to invent explanations because he knew that a young audience wouldn’t demand them.

The simple themes of good versus evil, sisters separated but still devoted to each other, and young people who are eager to leave home and make their own lives will appear to a YA audience. I think Alastair Reynolds is a much better writer when he markets his fiction to adults, but I’m recommending Revenger to the YA audience for which it is intended.

RECOMMENDED

Eddie's Boy by Thomas Perry

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on December 1, 2020

Eddie’s Boy is the fourth book in Thomas Perry’s Butcher’s Boy series. It should probably be the last. Perry coasts through this one because the series has run out of gas.

Some thugs travel to England where they try to kill Michael Schaeffer but Schaeffer kills the assailants first. Schaeffer reasonably concludes that his life is in danger so he leaves his lady love in England and travels to Australia where more thugs try to kill him (multiple times) before he kills them first (multiple times). To get to the bottom of the assassination attempts, Schaeffer returns to the US, taking time to recount memories of and life lessons supplied by Eddie, the mentor who adopted him and taught him how to be a contract killer. Some of the memories seem random and disconnected from the story (particularly the women who seduced him as he was delivering their meat).

Most of the life lessons involve killing people, survival, and killing people to survive. Eddie was a butcher so Schaeffer also learned how to sharpen knives. Eddie had a buddy teach Schaeffer to assemble a gun while blindfolded, an important thriller world skill that comes in handy if an adversary blindfolds the thriller hero and leaves a dissembled gun within his reach. That must happen surprisingly often since every thriller hero learns how to assemble guns while blindfolded. I guess readers are supposed to be impressed.

Schaeffer easily figures out who wants him dead. In fact, everything comes easily to Schaeffer, from killing multiple people at a time to breaking into houses (in one case, by reaching through a dog door to unlock the door latch — how long are this guy’s arms?) to hiding in an unidentified spot that keeps him from being discovered during the (apparently cursory) search of a barn. Even bringing Schaeffer’s plan to fruition is remarkably easy. The plot builds little tension because Schaeffer is never challenged.

Some of the flashbacks are tedious. Let’s face it: every gun range story is the same gun range story. Other stories involve killing lots of people. Those are tedious only because the killings aren’t terribly original. Even the descriptions of shagging housewives while making meat deliveries are a bit lackluster.

Part of the problem with Eddie’s Boy and Thomas Perry novels in general is that Perry writes in a journalistic style that has no flair. His prose is clear but the narrative has a plodding quality. The novel lacks energy. In a story that’s filled with murders and memories of murders, it feels like nothing happens. That’s not a good sign in a thriller.

Despite Perry’s writing style, I like his novels when he delivers a clever and credible plot. He doesn’t do that in Eddie’s Boy. The reason the evil guy has for ordering Schaffer’s death is unconvincing. The plot holds no surprises. I’m on the fence about making this a “Not Recommended,” but the story moves quickly and has some mildly interesting moments. Still, it isn’t a book I would put high on a TBR list.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Take a Look at the Five and Ten by Connie Willis

Published by Subterranean Press on November 30, 2020

Take a Look at the Five and Ten is both a Christmas story and a love story. I’m not a fan of either genre but I’m a huge fan of Connie Willis. She is known for her science fiction, typically involving time travel or an historical setting. Take a Look at the Five and Ten involves science and history but it’s more of a mystery than science fiction.

The mystery resides in an old woman’s memory of a seasonal job she held at Woolworth’s when she was nineteen. The woman is Grandma Elving, who is actually the grandmother of Dave’s fourth wife. Dave likes to host holiday dinners. In addition to Elving, this year's attendees include Dave's current wife Jillian, Jillian's daughter Sloane, Aunt Mildred, who is related to Dave’s second wife, and Ori, whose mother was briefly married to Dave at some point in his chain of failed marriages. Ori narrates the story. Dave seems like a decent fellow, Ori is meek but pleasant, and Elving is sweet, although nobody wants to listen to her talk about Woolworth’s. Sloan, Jillian, and Mildred are all the kind of relatives who make people dread holiday dinners.

Grandma Elving has spent years boring her relatives with stories about Woolworth’s. It’s all she ever talks about. Everything reminds her of it. When Sloan brings her boyfriend Lassiter to Thanksgiving dinner, Lassiter is fascinated by the Woolworth’s story. He’s researching a phenomenon called Traumatic Flashbulb Memory. He’s sure that Elving suffered a trauma that caused her brain to capture all the surrounding circumstances while repressing the traumatic event. Lassiter wants to test his theory by testing Elving as she recounts all the details of her memory, which Elving is only too happy to do. Ori is only too happy to help Lassiter, despite her lack of interest in the Woolworth’s stories, because she quickly develops a thing for Lassiter.

The mystery surrounds the nature of the trauma that triggered Elving’s flashbulb memory. Whenever Elving seems to get close to recalling it, the memory slips away, leaving her to talk about Woolworth’s Christmas decorations and the perfume counter and her co-workers and whatever other Woolworth’s-related stories pop into her head. She happily goes on field trips with Ori and Lassiter (or sends them off to look for the nativity figures she’s always talking about) as they try to prompt her repressed memory.

Lassiter’s research eventually takes him in an unexpected direction that he can’t easily accept. That’s human nature. When data isn’t consistent with our theories, we cling to the theories and blame the data. But scientists need to be better than that. They need to abandon bad theories or revise them to account for nonconforming data. That ongoing process is what science is all about. (It should be what thinking is all about, yet a large body of people prefer to dismiss reliable data as “fake news” when it disproves a false conclusion that they find comforting.) Using the tools of a masterful storyteller, Willis makes that point without ever saying it out loud.

The novella-length story touches upon issues that engender debate among philosophers and neuroscientists. Are negative emotions (such as fear and distress) stronger than positive emotions (such as joy)? Is there a difference between happiness and joy and, if so, is the difference only one of degree? Yet this is ultimately the story of two people who, while coping with annoying relatives, are drawn to each other as Christmas approaches. It doesn’t necessarily need to be read on a deeper level — as a Christmas love story, it’s sweet enough to star Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in their younger days — but Willis offers greater depth for readers who want it.

RECOMMENDED

Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen

First published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Algonquin Books on December 1, 2020

Majella O’Neill is the big girl in the title. Aghybogey in Northern Ireland is the small town. It’s a gossipy town that children who have means or scholarship-worthy smarts leave as soon as they reach adulthood. Having neither, Majella is still there, working the counter at a fish and chips takeaway. The novel follows her during a few days of her uneventful life — deadening days that are enlivened only by Majella’s snark and Michelle Gallen’s gift for capturing the essence of the villagers and the place and time in which they live.

Majella isn’t particularly happy but she makes a point of not being overly sad. People occasionally upset her but, after she calms down, she’s stoic. Her life is boring. She has the same conversations with the same people, listens to and repeats the same jokes, takes the same orders from the same customers, day after day. She relieves her boredom by sleeping as much as she can. On Sunday nights she goes the pub and drinks alone, accepting such offers to shag as might come along. She doesn’t get excited about birthdays but she’s happy to have turned 27 because she likes the number. She has a long list (with subdivisions) of things she doesn’t like and a much shorter list of things, including sex, that she does like. List entries serve as chapter subheadings. The text that follows each entry illustrates why she likes or dislikes the listed item.

Majella is widely regarded as a spinster. She lives with her mother, whose fondness for whiskey and pain pills makes Majella the family wage earner. Her father has disappeared and her Uncle Bobby is said to have blown himself up while planting a booby trap for the IRA. She works with a gossipy married man and occasionally has sex with him because why not? Majella’s sex partner choices are limited but after she learned how to masturbate, she didn’t have much use for men anyway.

Majella’s life might not be the life she wants, but she has learned to cope because she sees no alternative and she doesn’t want to become the people she dislikes. As best she can, she avoids interaction with most people and tries not to make eye contact with anyone. What Majella lacks in ambition she makes up for with attitude and unspoken opinions. She doesn’t like the new doctor because, unlike the old doctor, the new one tries to diagnose problems rather than dispensing pain pills. She has little use for the police or drunks or townspeople who express their sympathy for the loss of her recently deceased grandmother. She dislikes flirting, hypocrisy, telephone calls, nicknames, and a variety of other things. Her daily illustrations of the things she dislikes range from amusing to hilarious.

Gallen’s rendition of the local dialect (“What canna get chew?” “But sure it’s wild hard these days tae find steady work, y’know.”) is a joy to read. She captures the atmosphere of Northern Ireland and the tension between Catholics and Protestants without ever taking it on directly. That narrative decision is true to the story, as Majella accepts the world in which she lives — the border guards who bothered her father when she was young, the arrests that villagers don’t talk about, the revered Cause that she doesn’t really understand — without giving it much thought. The novel is ultimately a snapshot of a few days in Majella’s life. The focus is on Majella and, as one would expect from a snapshot, everything in the background is just a bit blurred.

The murder of an elderly woman lurks in the novel’s background, as do arrests of Majella’s neighbors and customers. Speculation about the whereabouts of Majella’s missing father and the contents of her grandmother’s will contribute to the plot. Still, Big Girl, Small Town is the kind of novel that doesn’t need an identifiable plot. Learning how Majella lives her life, watching her move from one dreary day to the next, tells a story of its own. While the last third of the novel brings some change to Majella’s life, it isn’t clear that Majella is ready for change. An epiphany on the final page suggests she might have learned something from all the episodes of Dallas she watched, but the story brings no firm resolution. Majella has a good bit of life yet to live and the reader will just have to wonder what she might make of it. She is such a sympathetic character that the reader can’t help but root for her to make a wise choice.

RECOMMENDED