Talking Animals by Joni Murphy

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/FSG Originals on August 4, 2020

Fables about animals who behave as humans are often intended to provide insight into human nature. In part, Talking Animals can be seen as revealing the prejudices that people of different cultures or skin colors must overcome when they try to live together. Substitute herbivores for vegetarians and fur color for skin color to get a flavor of the story. The story burdens animals with other human problems, including global warming, political corruption, inequitable wealth distribution, immigration woes, and the poisoning of the food supply. There is even a version of the animal rights movement that seeks better treatment of fish and other inhabitants of the sea. The characters are just as frustrated as powerless humans by their inability to make fundamental changes to policies that are killing them.

Joni Murphy has some amusing takes on New York City, a city taken over by invasive species that immediately began to mythologize themselves. They laid out Manhattan in a grid because grids create the illusion that everything is under control, but the story of every city is one of brutality that has been “retold as one of heroism.” Wealthy animals get their wool “shorn by skillful barbers who specialize in fades” while less fortunate animals haul away the trash.

The protagonist, Alfonso, is an alpaca from Queens whose parents are Peruvian immigrants. Alfonso regards himself as a “waste of wool” after his 1,500-page dissertation is rejected as unfocused. Alfonso dreamed of transcending the “dumb cartoon version of who we are as a species” but Mitchell, a llama who is Alfonso's beset friend, reminds him that alpacas and llamas have a proud heritage as consensus builders. Mitchell believes camelids, meek by reputation, have the power to rise up against politicians who are trying to turn the city into a “mall prison.”

Alfonso works in a meaningless clerical job in City Hall. He regrets his failed relationship with a vicuna named Vivi and wonders whether his life can have any meaning as a failed academic. Mitchell is caught in the bureaucracy of the city’s Office of Affordable Housing. The mayor is a horse who, like many human politicians, is dedicated to the principle that resources should be channeled to the wealthy and that less fortunate animals should feed off the waste products that trickle down from the top. Global warming will soon leave mammals living underwater with sea dwellers, but the rich will be the last to get wet.

Another of Alfonso’s friends, a lemur named Pamella, is a supporter of the sea dwellers’ rights movement. Pamella laments that voting for the mayor’s opponent will install “pig problems as a solution to horse problems.” Change won’t come by continuing to run in the hamster wheel, even for hamsters. She looks to the sea “not for politics, but for its hard-stinging spray. What we do isn’t good enough, but the alternative is ceasing to exist.”

If people are true to their natures, so are the mammals in Talking Animals. When Alfonso tags along as Mitchell investigates a complaint about housing conditions, Alfonso ponders the nature of cats: “they liked mixing signals without acknowledging the tension between warmth and aggression. A cat might spend ten minutes glaring from across the bar, then buy you a drink.” Alfonso recognizes the “need to accept others as they are, in all their weirdness” and believes he should not judge animals for acting in conformity with their nature, but when a seemingly friendly cat suddenly bites his ear and scampers away, Alfonso has difficulty avoiding judgment. Mitchell is more sanguine: “Everybody bites sometimes,” he reminds Alfonso. So it is with humans.

Notwithstanding their natures, the mammals in Talking Animals seem to coexist more peacefully than humans. Rambunctious raccoons tell jokes to complacent goats; cows and llamas bond over their multiple stomachs and endless chewing. Except for a large heist of maple syrup by a gang of bears, there doesn’t seem to be much street crime. The ravages of unregulated capitalism, on the other hand, are just as harmful in the fable as they are in the human world.

The first half of the novel, setting up Alfonso’s failures as a doctoral candidate and as a file clerk are engaging. While I agree with its message of hope and empowerment, the second half becomes a bit preachy as Alfonso, Mitchell, and Pamella embark on an ambiguous quest to fight the good fight for social, environmental, and economic justice. Despite the plot’s unfortunate loss of focus, Talking Animals succeeds both as an illustration of human foibles and as an entertaining romp through the animal kingdom.

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The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

First published in Japan in 1946; published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo on August 4, 2020

The Honjin Murders is a classic Japanese locked room mystery, first serialized in a Japanese magazine in 1946. When the mystery baffles the local police, a brilliant young detective is called to the scene and promptly solves the puzzle. The novel marks the detective's first of more than seventy appearances in Seishi Yokomizo's work. The detective is also a character in five Japanese films.

The story is set in 1937. Kenzo is the current master of the house of Ichiyanagi. Before the shogun was overthrown and the imperial government restored, the house was an inn for travelers who belonged to the nobility (a honjin). Nothing is more important to the Ichiyanagi family than being descendants of the owners of a honjin.

Kenzo and Katsuko were married in Kenzo’s home. Kenzo was about 40. His bride was about 25 and (to her shame) not a virgin, a confession she made just before the wedding. A scarred man with three fingers on his right hand inquired about Kenzo while passing through the village on Kenzo’s wedding day.

The post-wedding sake ceremony lasted all night. It was after midnight before Kenzo could take his new bride to their bedroom. Two hours later, a blood-curdling scream is heard. Kenzo’s family broke into the locked room and discovered that both had been hacked to death, apparently with a sword. The murder weapon disappeared with the killer, but how did the killer enter or leave a room that was locked from the inside?

Bloody three finger handprints point three fingers of guilt at a possible culprit, but that doesn’t solve the mystery of the locked room. Other characters who might be murder suspects are primarily Kenzo’s family members, including his mother and four siblings. His youngest brother is the family’s black sheep while his youngest sister is a bit simple. The sister has just buried a dead cat, which is apparently an ominous circumstance in Japanese mythology.

The stringed instrument known in Japan as the koto figures into the plot, in part because “the eerie strains of a koto being plucked with wild abandon” are heard just after the scream. A letter and a photo album that contain the words “My Mortal Enemy” provide another potential clue. Deciding which clues are real and which are red herrings adds to the fun, but to Seishi Yokomizo’s credit, none of the potential clues are completely extraneous to the story. Everything fits together and contributes to the mystery’s solution.

The police inspector, unable to make headway, summons Kosuke Kindaichi from Tokyo. Kosuke is unkempt and speaks with a stammer, but in the tradition of eccentric detectives, he pieces together obscure clues with ease. When Kosuke notices that the home’s library is filled with detective novels, he offers some literary criticism, expressing a preference for locked room mysteries that do not rely on a mechanical trick over those that do. Kosuke is a particular fan of Leroux’s Mystery of the Yellow Room and the locked room murder mysteries of John Dickson Carr.

The story is clever and complex, as good locked room mysteries tend to be. I probably miss the nuances of Japanese mysteries, having not grown up in the culture, but the unfamiliarity of the setting is part of the appeal of Japanese fiction. I doubt anyone will guess how the murder was committed. It may be possible for astute readers (and I’m not one of those) to puzzle out why it occurred. Whether the novel surprises the reader or not, following Kosuke’s deductive chain as he assembles the clues is fun. The Honjin Murders would be a perfect addition to the shelf of any devoted fan of locked room murder mysteries.

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F*ckface by Leah Hampton

Published by Henry Holt and Co. on July 14, 2020

The stories collected in F*ckface are set in the South, primarily in mountain communities in Appalachia. While the stories resist stereotyping characters as hillbillies (the protagonist in “Sparkle” tells a man that she grew up with indoor plumbing and “even read a few books when I was a kid, when I wasn’t losing my teeth”), many of the characters view outsiders with suspicion. At the same time, outsiders — such as the guide who gives visitors an environmental tour through a nature preserve in “Frogs” — tend to view locals with condescension. The guide admonishes the protagonist for damaging the ecosystem when she falls from the path and lands in the water, crushing some frogs’ eggs, because she didn’t wear the expensive hiking shoes that all the visitors are wearing. Only her twin brother understands that locals aren’t the problem.

The stories generally focus on relationships. The protagonist in “Sparkle” takes her husband’s friend to Dollywood and propositions him because of her long-standing crush and because her husband hasn’t touched her since she started complaining about the sameness in their life. A woman who has been sexting a married man in “Wireless” decides she’s willing to give him whatever he wants, even if she thinks it’s a bit kinky, because she views herself as invisible and doesn’t know when another opportunity will arrive.

Leah Hampton’s characters are a product of their environment and, like the environment, are too often misused. A woman who is approaching menopause fears that the work she once did at “Eastman” Chemical might have caused the lump in her breast. She can’t say anything bad about the company, despite the proliferation of cancer among its employees, because her husband was the company’s director of planning. A woman in “Mingo” argues with her husband about mountaintop removal and wonders if, in thirty years, he’ll look like her father-in-law, who makes her laugh by exposing his naked body in the hospital when she refuses to hand him his pants.

In “Boomer,” a forest fire raging toward Kentucky leaves a firefighter with no time to deal with the woman who is moving out of his life — but then, he never had time and that’s why she’s leaving. He feels like the world is ending, not entirely because of the approaching fire. A park ranger in “Parkway,” having grown tired of finding dead bodies, decides to find a new job while his family still knows his name.

Both home and work relationships are at the heart of “F*ckface,” a story that involves employees of Food Country wondering how their manager (you can guess what the employees call him) will deal with the dead bear in the parking lot. “Queen” uses bees as a metaphor for families; hives break apart and its members scatter or die for reasons that are not always apparent, leaving the person tending the hive to wonder whether she is to blame.

The woman narrating “Saint” in the second person recalls childhood memories of a brother who, when the memories are formed, has not yet died. The memories have turned him into a saint, and make his death a sort of martyrdom that she always anticipated, although she cannot prove that her memories are true. A young woman in “Meat” attends a funeral and thinks about a barn fire that killed hundreds of pigs during her college internship, prompting her to change her major.

My favorite story, “Devil,” describes a visit home by a 32-year-old Air Force tech sergeant shortly before his post-9/11 deployment to Bagram. Remembering the harsh discipline imposed by his Bible-quoting father, the tech sergeant still cringes, as he did when he was a child, at his father’s flashes of anger. Both parents condemn their child for his failure to live up to their Christian standards. The story suggests that the damage done to a child by parents who mistake discipline for love can never be undone.

F*ckface is a solid collection of stories, each managing to address Appalachian living and relationships in a different way. Other than “Devil,” none of the stories struck me as being special, but none of the stories struck me as being a waste of time, which sets the book ahead of most short story collections. I appreciated the complexity of the conflict between eco-friendly characters and those who need jobs, the kind of conflict that pits Appalachian residents against “outsiders” while sometimes tearing families or couples apart. I also appreciated the recognition that religion is a force that holds some Appalachian families together while destroying others.

Leah Hampton writes with a sure hand, seemingly certain of the story she wants to tell. She tells the story without a wasted word. That clarity of purpose adds power to stories that showcase large issues through small moments in ordinary lives.

RECOMMENDED

Bottled Goods by Sophie van Llewyn

First published in the UK in 2018; published by Harper Perennial on July 28, 2020

I would not classify Bottled Goods as magical realism or absurdist fiction, although the novel has surprising elements of both. Most the novel tells a straightforward story of a Romanian woman living under the reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu. She desires freedom — from her mother, from an oppressive political system, and eventually from her husband — but comes to understand that freedom is not an automatic guarantor of happiness.

In 1967, Alina Mungio is living with her mother. Alina’s Aunt Theresa regards Alina’s mother as one of the “low people” in the family but maintains a good relationship with Alina. Theresa’s husband and sons hold significant positions in the Party, giving Theresa more opportunity and less scrutiny than is typical for those who lack her connections. Theresa believes in and practices mystic rituals that been handed down for generations. Theresa’s mother shrunk Theresa’s father to hide him from the authorities after the Communists came into power. Alina’s mother wanted nothing to do with Theresa and once threatened to reveal where her father was hidden. Suffice it to say that Alina’s mother earns little sympathy during the course of the novel and, in the minds of many, will get what she deserves.

Two years later, Alina is working as a tour guide and translator for German tourists at a luxury resort. There she meets Liviu, another German-speaking guide. Their marriage gets off to a rough start on her wedding night and goes downhill from there. Life becomes even more difficult when Liviu’s brother defects to France, a decision that taints Liviu and Alina by association.

Alina and Liviu make their own plan to defect, but during much of the novel, they are fending off interrogations and trying (not always successfully) to stay out of jail. Alina also has to worry about her mother, whose betrayal of Alina’s grandfather is a small step from betraying Alina. Much of the novel’s dramatic tension focuses on whether the couple will be allowed to cross the border into Germany on what they claim is a trip in support of Liviu’s archeology research.

The final chapters breeze through several years of Alina’s life. Most of those years take place after the fall of Ceaușescu. The chapters seem like an afterthought, although they do add a sense of symmetry to a novel that might be seen as the story of Alina’s life. The most effective scenes occur while Alina is still in Romania, as she submits to interrogation and worse to avoid imprisonment. Alina’s fear and sense of helplessness gives the novel a harsh realism that counterbalances its mystical moments.

As is true of The Tiger’s Wife and other novels that assume the reality of local mystical beliefs and rituals, the reader will need to accept the reality of magic (or something similar to magic that allows the laws of physics to be bent) to appreciate all aspects of the story. Since the story is set in a country that routinely serves as a background for vampire fiction, it isn’t difficult to accept the story’s mystical elements. They certainly don’t overwhelm the larger story of a woman’s desire for freedom and her uncertainty about what to do with it. What does freedom mean to a woman who is never really free from the unwanted attention of men, no matter where she lives? When one finally has the freedom to make choices, will life necessarily be better than it was when choices were dictated?

Sophie van Llewyn has won awards for flash fiction, a literary form that doesn’t appeal to me. The flash fiction style is evident in the book’s construction. Chapters are short, each telling a brief segment of the story before moving on. Fortunately, Bottled Goods isn’t a collection of related flash fiction stories. Each chapter builds a foundation upon which subsequent chapters rest. The chapters integrate into a solid novel about the perils of living without freedom and the competing perils of living with it.

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The Last Human by Zack Jordan

Published by Del Rey on March 24, 2020

The Last Human tries to fit together a story of computer networks that interface with minds and a story of an organization of alien races that gives order to the galaxy. In a typical mind-network interface story, the minds are human, but in this one, only one human is known to exist. In most organization of species stories, humans are a significant part of the organization. In this one, the organization is more of a hierarchy, ranking species from smartest to dimmest. Humans would apparently be in the dim category if there were enough humans to count as part of the hierarchy. But humans have two qualities that set them apart — violence and selfishness.

For reasons that are eventually made clear (although not entirely clear), humans have disappeared from the future that is the novel’s setting. Countless other intelligent species inhabit the galaxy. More than a million of those have joined the Network, an association that allows member races to benefit from shared knowledge, but at the cost of obedience to certain rules. Humans, as we all know, are not good at obedience. Some will follow authoritarians but others reject authority on principle. Even when rules make sense — like wearing maks in a pandemic — a considerable number of humans will do as they please. Even if humans were still around, they would not be suited for the Network because following rules is not their best talent. The Network apparently learned this the hard way, although the details are again unclear.

Sarya the Daughter is a human who, for unconvincing reasons, is raised by Shenya the Widow, a member of a race whose children typically hatch and immediately battle each other to the death. Sarya is unhappy not to have a network implant — she uses an external device for connectivity — a fact that handicaps her almost as much as her Tier 1.8 intelligence. Sarya is also handicapped by being a human (everyone hates humans for reasons that are eventually revealed) although nobody recognizes her as one because nobody has ever seen a human. The only entity on Watertower Station that seems to know Sarya is human, apart from her mother, is a multi-bodied alien with hive intelligence called Observer.

The orbital Watertower Station is home to Shenya, Sarya, and 24,000 other entities from a multitude of species that have joined the Network. The Network invites species to join when they evolve sufficient (Tier 1.8) intelligence. Species with less intelligence are protected without being networked, although they sometimes provide useful services. The Network provides a common language and shared information that protects against disease, war, famine, “and other such inconveniences.”

It the Network a good thing? Order has value, but Observer views the Network as trading freedom for order. During the course of the novel, Sarya waffles between viewing the Network as good and viewing it as evil. Where she will come to rest in the end is the question that drives the plot after it is finally set in motion.

What does it mean to be human? Many believe that to be human is to be free, to make the choices that suit us. Humans believe that’s a good thing, but since humans often make harmful choices, nonhumans might disagree. The human tendency to choose conquest, to take what they want, to care about themselves and dislike anyone or anything different, makes humanity a species that doesn't play well with others. When Sarya journeys to something she perceives as a planet, she experiences being human on a primal level: walking on grass, breathing unrecycled air, seeing the sky instead of a ceiling, eating meat instead of bland but nutritious food bars, getting buzzed on alcohol, listening and dancing to music (which few Network species define as art).

It takes the plot some time to set up. Circumstances eventually take Sarya on a journey of discovery, which initially involves finding the surviving members of the human race and then forces her to decide whether she should kill them all.

How Sarya acquires and wields the vast power at her disposal near the novel’s end (can she really hold the universe in the palm of her hand?) is unclear, at least to me. In fact, I found it difficult to wrap my head around key plot points. I set aside confusion during much of the novel with the expectation that it would all be clarified at the end. Some things were made clear, some weren’t, and I was still mildly confused by the last page.

Maybe the confusion is my fault. With so many crises brewing in the world, I find myself easily distracted unless a book is particularly gripping. I wouldn’t put The Last Human in that category. There are times when the story zips along and times when it meanders, seemingly searching for a way to recover the plot. The novel has the sense of “I’m making this up as I go along.” Sometimes that works, but sometimes it’s helpful to start out with a map. The Last Human makes some detours that left me lost.

Was Zack Jordan trying to write a comedy or a serious story into which some laughs were injected? Again, I’m not sure that an overall vision existed for this book before it came into being. Chapters that present the Network as a user’s manual are clearly meant to be funny (and some of them are), but the story’s tone suddenly changes, without transition, from whimsical and silly to dark and apocalyptic.

This is Jordan’s first novel. His ambition may have exceeded his ability to deliver. Yet the characters of Sarya and Shenya are engaging, the background is interesting, and the book shows promise, even if it doesn’t fully succeed.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS