We Begin Our Ascent by Joe Mungo Reed

Published by Simon & Schuster on June 19, 2018

In part, We Begin Our Ascent is about wanting things we can’t have precisely because we can’t have them. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be the best, but the desire for the unattainable pushes good people to make bad choices.

We Begin Our Ascent is also about recognizing and celebrating the things that are more important than accomplishment. Being alive and in good health. Loving and being loved. Living with honor and acquiring wisdom.

To frame those themes, Joe Mungo Reed wrote We Begin Our Ascent as the Inside Baseball of bicycle racing. Without becoming a racing manual, the story integrates information about how racers prepare, how they work as a team, how they decide which performance enhancing drugs are best. The novel conveys an understanding that the sport of bicycle racing at the professional level is more than a game, that “the dedication, the logic and attention applied make it vivid, real and meaningful.”

Solomon is part of a bicycle racing team that is sponsored by a poultry company. His job is to help Fabrice, the strongest mountain rider, win. Sol’s job is not to win; he knows he cannot win. But the longer he can sustain the pace while riding in front of Fabrice, the more energy Fabrice will conserve, and the better will be Fabrice’s chance of powering up the mountain ahead of everyone else at the end of the toughest stretches in the race. The crowds cheer for each rider without realizing that most of them are not trying to win as individuals, but as a team.

Sol is happiest when he is part of the peloton, the mass of bicycles that race in a clump until the best riders pull out and compete for victory. Sol knows his place in the universe, and his place is in the peloton. At the same time, he learns that helping the team will require him to engage in the rampant doping that gives his competitors an edge.

Sol’s wife studies the genetics of zebra fish. She admires Sol’s dedication, while her mother wonders what kind of career can be made of riding a bicycle. They are balancing recent parenthood with their dedication to busy careers that keep them apart for much of the year.

Part of the novel’s drama comes from pressure to involve Sol’s wife in the transportation of performance enhancing drugs and the oxygen-rich blood that riders use to restore their vigor.

Of course, the race itself delivers the inherent drama of competition. Riding down mountains at speed is both exhilarating and dangerous. Joe Mungo Reed makes sure the reader is always conscious of the risk that a rider takes.

Both racing and doping carry risks, and those risks generate a surprising amount of suspense. The reader’s anticipation of the novel’s climax makes it even more powerful.

We Begin Our Ascent is a quiet and elegant novel. The story is interesting and entertaining until, like a bicycle racer who has found his rhythm, it shifts gears and reaches another level. The novel raises profound questions about balancing competition against our other drives, balancing winning against integrity, balancing success against loss. The novel spotlights the difficulty of making life-changing choices (not just deciding what is morally right, but what is right for our lives) and illustrates both the profound consequences of making the wrong choice and the randomness that might determine whether a choice is right or wrong.

In a climax that is deeply moving, We Begin Our Ascent reminds us that our lives are different from the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. Discovering what is at the root of our lives, the things that are truly important, is an even bigger struggle than peddling up a mountain. Few novels have made that argument as persuasively as We Begin Our Ascent.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 7, 2018

The Third Hotel is about the transitions in life that relate to death and loss. Clare is 37 and alone in Havana. She had planned to go there with her husband Richard to attend the screening of a zombie apocalypse movie, but Richard (a horror film scholar) died in an accident five weeks earlier. As will the reader, Clare finds herself wondering why she came to Havana without him. She seems to think she will see him in Havana, and from time to time she does.

Richard was carrying a wrapped box at the time of his death that Clare brings to Havana but refuses to open. Instead, she wanders the streets, visits tourist attractions, and remembers Richard’s theories about horror films, all the while keeping an eye out for Richard. She also thinks about how Richard changed during their marriage. From her description of his new self, she might be better off without him, although the novel encourages the reader to wonder whether Richard might have thought that Clare was the one who changed.

The story draws a parallel between the “undead” movies that Richard analyzed and Clare’s perception of her suddenly “undead” husband. The undead have power over the living precisely because they cannot be killed; they are “free to rage and rage.” In Clare’s case, the ghost of her undead husband has power over her because he will not let her move on with her life — unless his undead presence is telling her that she needs to move on.

Clare also ponders the horror film tradition of killing “bad girls” while the virginal good girl survives, and compares it to her own experience. She talks to a professor about explanations of death that appear to reject death as a concept, given the multiverse theory that all things are simultaneously possible (e.g., death and undeath coexist). Bizarre things happen in Cuba, apart from Clare’s stalking of her dead husband. Yet if all things are possible, Clare might not be a reliable narrator, even as she remembers events from a past that seem real to her.

Later in the novel, when Clare interacts more fully with her dead husband — chatting with him in a hotel room and in a cave — it isn’t clear whether her mind is taking a break from reality or whether, as she believes, an event has occurred that cannot be explained by the laws of the familiar world. Since Richard lectures her on the dangers of grieving and talks to her about how strange her behavior had been in the months before he died, one might think all of this happens inside Clare’s head, but perhaps all things are possible, so readers can draw their own conclusions.

Clare’s contemplation of death extends to her still-living father, who has asked her to do something when he nears death that his growing dementia will not allow him to do himself. She considers his request an unfair burden. Whether we are chasing ghosts of the people we love or are dreading their demise, death is a burden to the living, and that is the novel’s theme.

A good bit of ambiguity remains at the novel’s end (particularly concerning the contents of the mysterious box and Richard’s actions at the time of his death), but the novel emphasizes that life and death are necessarily ambiguous, that we are all on a journey that may end at any time or that may continue for eternity. Maybe Richard is alive and Clare is dead. Maybe we are all simultaneously dead and undead. The story is unsettling but it is told in such effortless prose that it is easy to be swept along before pausing to wonder about its hidden depths. Readers who hate ambiguous literature will hate The Third Hotel, but readers who wonder about the wonder of existence will enjoy the novel’s challenges.

RECOMMENDED

The Woman in the Woods by John Connolly

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on June 12, 2018

Few writers of suspense novels care more about language than John Connolly. He marries eloquent prose to the poetry of the street. He also imbues his characters with extraordinary depth, and imbues the (relatively speaking) good characters with extraordinary humanity. Or maybe he simply gives them ordinary humanity, which seems extraordinary in a time when so many people have forgotten how to care about members of the human race who differ in race or ethnicity or religion or sexuality or politics.

A fellow named Dobey who shelters troubled women in a dismal place called Cadillac, Indiana receives a visit from Quayle, accompanied by a woman who goes by the name Padilla Mors, her real name having been lost to history. Mors is “death’s personification,” as she demonstrates repeatedly during the course of the novel.

Quayle is searching for Karis Lamb, one of the unfortunate women Dobey has assisted, who told Dobey she was running from the devil himself. Meanwhile, Karis (who happens to be dead) is talking to a kid named Daniel Weaver on Daniel’s toy phone. She wants Daniel to join her in the woods. Daniel understandably believes that’s not a good plan, as does Charlie Parker’s dead daughter Jennifer, who hopes to guide him on a safer path.

As readers know from other novels in the series, Quayle is trying to reconstruct something called the Fractured Atlas, which will “reorder the world in its image,” beginning with the return of the Not-Gods. Quayle is at odds with a powerful group of men who support the Buried God in what they perceive to be an upcoming clash with the Not-Gods, because reconstructing the Fractured Atlas is likely to turn the world to fire and ash, which isn’t good for anyone, except possibly the Not-Gods. I’m not sure what any of that means, but it’s pretty spooky.

As that plot unfolds, Parker deals with the aftermath of his buddy Louis’ decision to blow up a pickup truck that was decorated with Confederate flags (in Maine, of all places). Blowing it up might have been an overreaction, but Louis’ lover Angel is facing death and Louis was having a bad day. The scenes in which Louis contemplates and dreads the loss of Angel are deeply moving. They are some of Connolly’s finest work although really, it’s all good. Connolly is incapable of writing a graceless sentence.

I’m generally not a fan of supernatural themes, but Connolly always ties his fiction to the corporeal world — in this book, to abused women, a more tangible horror than ghosts and demons. In a time when (as Parker observes) rage, intolerance, and ignorance are worn as a badge of pride, reading a Charlie Parker novel is a civilizing experience. Evil plagues Parker, not just in supernatural manifestations, but in humans who believe that their skin color or sexual identity or religious affiliations are a mark of moral superiority. A good many Americans agree with Parker’s belief in tolerance and equality, but too many others pollute the nation with their ignorant remarks and vile actions.

I wouldn’t recommend The Woman in the Woods to readers who haven’t read the last few Charlie Parker novels, because they work together as a continuing story. I recommend the series as a whole to fans of exquisite prose who can deal with disturbing themes, because each one is better than the last.

RECOMMENDED

The Pharaoh Key by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Published by Grand Central Publishing on June 12, 2018

Gideon Crew, for reasons explained in earlier books in this series, has only two months to live. Gideon and his co-workers are fired from their operative-adventurer gigs for reasons that also relate to earlier books. Gideon is cleaning out his desk with co-worker Garza when a computer pings with the solution to a decoding problem it’s been working on for five years. After futzing around to figure out what the solution means, Gideon and Garza head to the Hala’ib Triangle in Egypt, one of the world’s most desolate spots, where the secret of the Phaistos Disk is hidden.

To get to the world’s most desolate spot, Gideon and Garza share camels with a British woman who may or may not be the geologist/anthropologist that she claims to be. The story then lurches from one adventure to another, as our dynamic duo plus one deal with water shortages, sandstorms, captivity, trials by fire, fistfights, knife fights, gun fights, tigers, fights with tigers, and other ordeals (including a tribal custom that involving wedding a teen virgin, which might not be an ordeal but isn’t on Garza’s bucket list).

There is a certain familiarity/predictability to the storyline. Preston and Child mention H. Rider Haggard, perhaps as a hat-tip for Haggard’s pioneering work in the Lost World genre, from which The Pharaoh Key heavily borrows. The novel is also like an Indiana Jones movie without the special effects: life-threatening situation, followed by narrow escape, followed by another life-threatening situation, followed by another narrow escape, and so on. The life-threatening situations give Gideon multiple opportunities to fret that he expected to die soon but not in quite the way he anticipates dying before the next narrow escape comes along, sparing him until a new threat causes him to fret about the way he is about to die.

The plot is like popcorn; each kernel is tasty but eating to the bottom of the bag isn’t filling or nutritious, in part because Preston and Child fail to bring much imagination to the pattern in which they plow the ground. The ending is not nearly as surprising as the authors intended; it seemed to be to the most likely outcome.

I did, however, like the way Preston and Child used the theoretical link between Pharaoh Akhenaten (one of the first adherents of a monotheistic religion) and Moses, who may have been inspired by Akhenaten to champion Israelite monotheism. And while the adventure story is ordinary, it does have entertaining moments. I can’t recommend The Pharaoh Key with enthusiasm, but Preston and Child fans will want to read it just to find out what happens next in the adventurous life of Gideon Crew.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea

Published by Little, Brown and Company on March 6, 2018

Big Angel de La Cruz is almost 70 and he knows he will die soon. He lives in San Diego, where he was the director of a computer center for Pacific Gas & Electric, despite having long ago entered the country without papers. He has always seen America as filled with “possibilities and opportunities,” where a humble house would become his palace. Over the years, Big Angel became not just the family patriarch but a legend, a fearless protector of family and friends.

Big Angel is no longer big, “carved down to the size of child” by the tumors in his abdomen and lungs, perhaps a week away from death, the end of an era. His mother has died and he is late for her funeral, another failing for his mother to criticize, this time from beyond the grave. Big Angel is joined at the funeral by his half-brother, Little Angel, who long ago moved to Seattle to avoid the family drama.

Family drama doesn’t begin to describe The House of Broken Angels. Clashes among family members are a daily occurrence and grudges attain mythical status. Love and lust are common in the family, with some family members keeping lust in their hearts for years after the objects of their desire chose other relatives.

Big Angel’s son Braulio has been dead for ten years. His son Lalo has a drug problem that began after he returned from Iraq with a leg injury and a missing testicle. An Army recruiter told Braulio and Lalo that they would be citizens when they left the Army. The “least we can do” as a reward for service turned out to be a lie (at least they weren’t deported, the government’s current version of “thank you for your service”). Lalo’s older brother Yndio is not traditionally gendered and, as a matter of mutual choice, hasn’t seen his parents for a decade.

Only Big Angel’s wife, Perla, and his daughter, Minnie, seem to have Big Angel’s complete approval, although the reader eventually learns why Braulio and Yndio have a complicated relationship with the family. The novel moves back in time to develop the charming story of Big Angel’s young love/lust for Perla and their extended, disrupted courtship. Some of novel’s dramatic impact comes from the anguish that Perla feels, wondering if the family will at last come together, grievances set aside, for the sake of celebrating Big Angel’s last birthday.

Big Angel is convinced at times that he will get better. He wants to “charge at death and knock the hell out of it.” He wants to do all the things he regrets not doing. Some members of his family are convinced that Big Angel will recover because he has always been invincible. At the same time, Big Angel is bargaining with God. He at least wants to make it to his 70th birthday, a celebration that no one will ever forget. He’s also making a list of things that are important to him (“banana slices in fideo soup with lots of lime”) that he will pass on to his kids as a legacy.

Small details bring The House of Broken Angels to life. The Hello Kitty parasol that Big Angel holds as Lalo directs his wheelchair to his mother’s grave. The perfume of wet dirt in California rain. The parrot that flies to freedom as it escapes from a woman’s bosom while crossing the border. Big Angel’s memory of lying on a beach and seeing, for the first time, the buttocks of the girl he would marry.

The story has moments of sweetness that are genuinely touching. Many involve Big Angel and Perla, who made a full life together, defined by unfaltering love and unabashed desire. Other characters come to their own realizations about life during the story (Lalo, for example, finds himself reconsidering the concept of “payback”), but the big question, the question that torments Big Angel, is how to face a death that seems unfair, regardless of its inevitability. The answer — at least in a large and unruly Mexican family, but probably for everyone — is found in love. That sounds trite, but the sprawling and multifaceted story told in The House of Broken Angels recognizes the complexity that overlays simple truths. The novel is rich and honest and poignant and sad and very, very funny. Family dramas don’t get much better.

RECOMMENDED