A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

Published by Crown Publishing/Hogarth on November 13, 2018

A Ladder to the Sky is a novel about writers, some real but most imagined, which means it is a book about people with frail egos who spend much of their time sniping at each other. I enjoyed that. The story raises issues of karma and justice, and I liked that even more than the sniping.

A word of caution, however, to readers who do not like novels unless the characters are likable. The protagonist, Maurice Swift, is a talented wordsmith but is incapable of contriving plots, a deficiency he overcomes by stealing them. Even worse, while Maurice is charming and clever, he is also despicable: an ambitious, narcissistic sociopath who advances his career without regard to how he harms the people in his life. He is, in fact, one of the vilest characters ever to play a starring role in a literary novel.

Many of the other characters are writers and while they are typically portrayed as self-involved and somewhat pitiable, none approach Maurice’s malevolence. I enjoyed being appalled by Maurice. Evil characters tend to be more interesting than icons of virtue and Maurice is a fascinating train wreck of a person. Other readers might not be able to stomach an unlikable protagonist.

Point of view shifts throughout the novel. The story is only sometimes narrated by Maurice. As the novel begins, Maurice appears to be a secondary character, a young man worming his way into the life of Erich Ackerman, a literature professor at Cambridge who left his home in Germany at the war’s end, and who hoped to leave his secrets in the Fatherland. Ackerman achieved literary recognition at the age of 66 with the publication of his sixth novel. Ackerman meets Maurice in Berlin on a book tour, then makes Maurice the sole member of his entourage. Ackerman is gay and feels an unspoken yearning for Maurice, who claims not to have given his sexuality much thought.

Maurice longs for literary fame of his own. Ackerman, acting as his mentor, honestly appraises Maurice as an excellent technician who fails to tell compelling stories. Maurice finds his way to literary fame by betraying Ackerman in a way that will put an end to his mentor’s literary career. Perhaps Ackerman deserves that fate — whether Ackerman merits harsh judgment is one of the book’s important questions — but Ackerman has balanced his youthful misdeeds with an adult life that is exemplary. Many readers will feel sympathy for Ackerman, although other readers probably won’t.

Maurice uses another gay writer, Dash Hardy, in much the same way, leading to an intriguing literary interval involving an acerbic but perceptive Gore Vidal before the book moves to Maurice’s marriage and the next stage of his life. One dramatic section of the book involves Maurice’s wife; another involves his son, although the nature of the latter dramatic episode is hidden until the story nears its end. Under other circumstances, a reader would feel compassion for Maurice given the pain an ordinary person would endure in a tragic life, but Maurice is no ordinary person.

Maurice meets a young man near the novel’s end who reminds him of his lost son and their interaction suggests that Maurice may be capable of feeling well-deserved guilt, if only at a subconscious level. While many of the characters are distasteful, Boyne balances the pack with a few sympathetic characters, including Maurice’s wife, who play key roles. In any event, karma makes the novel likable even if the protagonist is not.

A Ladder to the Sky is a compelling novel, not because it creates empathy for its protagonist (John Boyne does quite the opposite) but because the story is absorbing and truth-telling. The novel’s theme is that some talented people cannot be happy with success on its own terms but wish to rise above their peers, to be seen as the best, even if they must tear down their peers to achieve that end. The story advances the quotation that is generally attributed to Gore Vidal (and that Vidal attributed to himself): “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” Stated differently, the notion is that ambition is a pointless waste of energy, like setting a ladder to the sky. The book is honest and provocative. It is also immensely satisfying.

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Blood Feud by Mike Lupica

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on November 27, 2018

Mike Lupica wrote Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud so it really isn’t Robert B. Parker’s, although Parker created the key characters before he died. The Robert B. Parker factory has assembled a bunch of novels this year. Lupika is a capable techniian, but Blood Feud comes across as an assembly line product.

Someone shot Richie Burke, Sunny Randall’s separated-with-benefits husband. The shooter apparently wanted to send a message to Richie’s mobster father. Sunny has been brooding about her need for a distraction from loneliness and the attempted murder gives her something to do, so she spends a few chapters talking to her cop father and dangerous friends about Boston’s colorful gangsters.

Eventually Richie’s other relatives are attacked. Is this an escalation of a gang war involving Richie’s father or something more personal? Sunny considers the possibilities over martinis with her friend Spike, shots of Jameson with Richie, and coffee with the cops. Eventually the murders are solved and there is a mild twist at the end. In other words, the factory followed the formula for a crime novel with all the parts welded together just a little too neatly.

Blood Feud is entertaining because of the characters that Parker created and the snappy dialog that Lupica gives them. The plot is a pleasant vehicle to contain the characters but it offers little in the way of drama and builds no tension. Maybe that isn’t required in a book that is probably meant to keep characters alive without altering them in ways that a series fan might dislike. The novel has no glaring faults, but it is also devoid of obvious strengths, such as a compelling plot or an insightful examination of challenges that characters must overcome. It has the feel of a novel assembled by a writer who didn’t really have his heart in it.

Reader reviews of Blood Feud will inevitably appear on Amazon complaining that some of the characters have a negative opinion of Donald Trump and that Sunny isn’t in love with guns (although Sunny carries a gun and her only gripe is that unregistered guns end up in the hand of criminals and nutcases). If you can’t stomach characters who disagree with your political views, and if you are pro-Trump, you might want to give Blood Feud and a good many other books a pass. Most readers, I suspect, will be undisturbed by the small amount of political commentary in which characters indulge.

Politics aside, you might want to give Blood Feud a pass unless you are a fan of the series and miss the characters. It is a lightweight, easy-to-read thriller, but there are better crime novels to stack up on your nightstand. There is just too little reason to choose this one over all it competitors.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Halcyon by Rio Youers

Published by St. Martin's Press on July 10, 2018

Martin and Laura Lovegrove have two daughters, Shirley (15) and Edith (10). Edith used to suffer from night terrors, but a therapist helped her put that in her past. Until now, when she has a vision — a premonition — that she somehow projects to her sister, of an explosion that kills hundreds of people. Three days later, a young man who has apparently been brainwashed drives a homemade bomb into a nightclub, causing the scene that Edith saw. A woman who suffers from the same affliction, psychic signals crossing over into the realm of perception, teaches Edith to cope.

Martin is recruited to join Halcyon, which Nolan, the recruiter, defines as a better and safer America, a self-sustaining community with no crime, no poverty, no discrimination, no tech, and no clocks. Its founder, Mother Moon, is its spiritual leader, but Nolan denies that the community is a religious group, a cult, or a hippy commune (although it sounds like a combination of all those). Halcyon is on an island and, for reasons I won’t reveal, what happens in Halcyon stays in Halcyon. It’s like Hotel California: you can check out, but you can never leave. Except for Mother Moon, who apparently spends some of her time at a mysterious place called Glam Moon, which may or may not be an imaginary world.

Mother Moon is Valerie Kemp, who sold her body for drugs in Manhattan until she found the Society of Pain. The Society teaches that pain is the path to enlightenment, although its members prefer to witness the pain of others than to experience their own.

Eventually this all ties together but I cannot say that the connections are seamless. The novel feels like it was compiled from three related stories, each of which are more interesting than the story they create when assembled. That’s partly because it just takes too long for Halcyon to get where it’s going. Halcyon’s The novel’s pace too often lags. Perhaps a less ambitious story would have been tighter and more compelling.

Halcyon benefits from moments of strong writing, particularly when Edith discovers that she can’t suppress or hide from a nightmare premonition. The story has supernatural elements, or at least psychic themes and the suggestion of a hellacious afterlife, but it isn’t sufficiently frightening to be classified as a horror novel. It’s just a little too strange to be scary, unless readers are frightened by malicious roosters.

Nor is Halcyon sufficiently thrilling to be classified as a thriller, although it does feature elements of crime and mystery. The story addresses terrorism in an abstract way that divorces terrorism from its political roots, which divorces the story from the realm of terrorism-based thrillers. I’m not so anal that I need to classify every novel — some of my favorite books defy classification — but it is difficult to know just what to make of Halcyon.

Notwithstanding its faults, Halcyon introduces the reader to sympathetic characters and occasionally builds tension by placing those characters at risk. School shootings and other acts of mass violence are an early theme of Halcyon, but they are not sensationalized. The story is not pro-gun or anti-gun; it is pro-empathy for families touched by violence. While Halcyon might be predominantly a horror story, the novel recognizes that there is plenty of horror in the earthbound world, and that horror must be balanced with compassion. The story struggles to follow a consistent theme as it moves from cults to sadists to mass killings to domestic drama to interdimensional portals, but it has something worthwhile to say about how victims can become monsters. That earns Halcyon a guarded recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Rust & Stardust by T. Greenwood

Published by St. Martin's Press on August 7, 2018

The first thing a potential reader should know about Rust & Stardust is that it addresses the sexual abuse of a preteen girl. Scenes in which the abuse occurs are far from graphic, but sensitive readers who would be severely distressed by the subject matter itself might want to avoid the novel.

The story is based on a young girl’s kidnapping that Nabokov read about while he was writing Lolita and to which he referred in the text. In fact, the title Rust and Stardust echoes a line from Lolita. That is where the comparison ends. Nabokov portrayed Lolita as a seductress who is far from innocent, while Rust & Stardust portrays the sexual assault of a clear victim.

Rust & Stardust begins in 1948. At age 11, Sally Horner is plump and friendless. A cruel trick by her classmates — a “single act of careless unkindness” — changes Sally’s life by placing her in the hands of a man who is posing as an FBI agent. Believing she’s about to be taken to FBI headquarters, Sally tells her mother she’s been invited to go with her friend on a vacation to Atlantic City, a story the man confirms in a telephone call. The man who calls himself Frank (his last names vary) holds Sally in Atlantic City for a month before Sally’s mother learns that Sally isn’t staying with her friend.

Frank eventually takes Sally to a string of cities, adopting new identities, sometimes enrolling her in school, and eventually tiring of her as she enters puberty. The police are slow to follow, despite prodding from Sally’s sister and her sister’s husband Al, who plays amateur detective. Sally’s mother frets and feels guilty but is otherwise useless. Sally makes friends along the way, but people who suspect she is in some sort of trouble do nothing to confirm their suspicions until Sally is gone.

Various characters, including Sally’s mother, feel guilt while the predator feels none at all. To a large extent, their guilt is the force that drives the narrative. The classmates who trick Sally eventually come to understand that their prank set the stage for the predator to kidnap her. They must live with that guilt as they get older. Sally blames herself, as children often do, for being a bad daughter who has earned the abuse she suffers. The predator’s friends facilitate his crime, only to feel remorse when it is too late to undo the harm. Sally’s mother has more than enough reason to blame herself for failing to prevent the kidnapping and for waiting so long before contacting the police.

While Rust & Stardust revolves around Frank’s abuse of Sally, T. Greenwood makes clear that Sally is also the victim of poor parenting, tabloid journalists, and a criminal justice system that (in the novel’s time frame) treated child victims as if they deserved to be incarcerated. The story covers all of those issues in convincing detail.

The story is disturbing because life is disturbing, including the life of Sally Horner as Greenwood imagines it to have been. But Rust & Stardust disturbs for the sake of offering insights into how victims and families handle trauma, not for the sake of sensationalizing a horrific crime. Most “every parent’s nightmare” stories overplay the melodrama that is inherent in stories about victimized children. Those that don’t too often read like a documentary, presenting just the facts in order to avoid obvious manipulation of the reader’s emotions. Neither a weepfest nor a clinical report constitutes good fiction. Greenwood manages to get the balance right, creating sympathy when characters deserve it without exploiting trauma for the sake of creating a spectacle.

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All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy

First published in Great Britain in 2018; published by Atria Books on November 20, 2018

Abhay Chan, known to most as Myshkin Rozario, finds trees and dogs to be better companions than humans. He is an old man who faces ridicule, yet the reader comes to understand him as eccentric in the best way, shaped by good intentions and disappointment with the human condition. Like everyone, has been shaped by his past. Unlike most, the details of his past have been concealed from him. Only later in life does he appreciate his need to fill in the missing pages.

Myshkin tells the story of his youth, but it is really the story of his mother, Gayatri, who (unlike most Indian women of her time) was raised not to catch a husband but to nurture her gifts for art and music. Gayatri’s father traveled abroad with her until, after his death, her brothers began the task of finding her a husband who was willing to tolerate a sharp-tongued woman who had wasted her youth by crossing oceans. Finding Gayatri a husband meant exhibiting her as livestock while suitors and their families drank tea in the drawing room and inspected her hair. The family’s choice boiled down to the only man who would have her, a Northern Indian twice her age whose scandalous contempt for caste and religion did not overcome the family’s desire to rid themselves of Gayatri.

It is in chapters like those narrating Gayatri’s arranged marriage that Anuradha Roy captures the India so familiar to readers of UK fiction and that so often wins (or is shortlisted for) Booker prizes. It is an India that awards only such freedom to women as self-congratulatory men choose to give them, that refuses to abandon a caste system even as it rebels from British colonizers with grand speeches about the importance of equality and self-determination.

Myshkin recalls a German writer/artist/musician named Walter Spies who appeared in search of Gayatri, having met her years earlier in Bali. Spies is accompanied by Beryl de Zoete, a scholar of dance who once rescued Jewish dancers from Germany and now sees Gayatri as worthy of rescue. Gayatri has felt stifled since Myshkin’s birth, as if the beginning of his life put a stop to the rest of the world, and it is knowledge of that fact that shapes Myshkin’s memories of his childhood.

Indian history is central to the novel in other respects, as well. While mostly hiding in the shadows, Myshkin’s father claims to follow the spiritual leader Mukti Devi in her nonviolent resistance to British rule. Myshkin’s father views Mukti Devi as an exemplar of women’s liberation. Gayatri can only wonder why his enlightened view of women’s role in society does not extend to his own home. Later, Myshkin can only wonder about the fated moment when his mother leaves home without him. From her perspective, Gayatri had no choice: obedience and propriety were the top entries on her personal list of deadly sins.

The novel’s first half sets up Myshkin’s life as a child abandoned by his mother. The story then moves through his father’s efforts to cope with his loss of Gayatri, the impact of World War II on India and on Myshkin’s father, the evil nature of governments that define protest as sedition or homosexuality as a crime, the different attitudes toward women in Indian and Balinese society, and Myshkin’s evolving understanding of his mother. The novel invites a sympathetic response both to Myshkin (who yearns for a lost mother) and Gayatri (who abandons a child to avoid going mad but must live with the maddening consequences of that decision).

A couple of lengthy sections comprised of Gayatri’s letters home create a lull that is the novel’s only misstep. The letters illustrate Gayatri’s growth and they add new insight into Gayatri’s decision to leave her husband, but Gayatri’s anxiety-filled travelogue lacks the immediacy of the narrative that precedes and follows the letters.

One letter accuses someone in Gayatri’s past of “feckless self-indulgence,” a criticism that might seem hypocritical given the choices that Gayatri made. The novel’s value is that it invites the reader to weigh Gayatri’s choice and to consider whether, on balance, it was the right choice to make. I appreciate Roy’s decision to allow the reader to judge Gayatri, or not, rather than insisting that only one judgment is possible.

In any event, judgment is not the point of All The Lives We Never Lived. As the title suggests, all lives involve choices. Each choice sends us on a path that forecloses other paths. With graceful prose and compelling characters, Roy reminds us how the same choices can be both liberating and confining as they lead to unknowable futures and cause unforeseeable consequences.

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