Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Published by MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux on Sept. 5, 2017

Sourdough is partly about connections that join the past, present and future. The novel explores food as a connecting force, in the form of cultural migration of foods and recipes that are handed down through generations. The novel suggests “food is history of the deepest kind,” a record of both tradition and evolution as tastes and mechanisms of production have changed from decade to decade, stretching back to "the dawn of hunger." Food also connects people and cultures in the present, at least for those who are gastronomically adventurous and open to the world.

The way we eat has also evolved (changes in packaging and the development of interstate highways created fast food in the 1950s) and that evolution continues as consumers embrace (for example) organic alternatives to processed foods. But evolution can bring about drastic change. Robin Sloan imagines a food product called Slurry that provides all of the body’s nutritional needs. It’s all anyone needs to eat and it’s so much healthier than potato chips. It can feed the world if people don’t mind eating goo, and it is inexpensive to produce. Feeding the world is undeniably a worthy goal, but nutrition without pleasure is a tough choice to make.

Sourdough’s central character, Lois Clary, is a programmer in a robotic industry who is on a mission to replace manual workers, but the demanding work ties her stomach in knots. Only a specific soup and sandwich combo from a delivery service can relax her, but the place operates illegally and is soon out of business. Luckily for Lois, however, the owners have dubbed her their “number one eater” and make a gift to her of their special starter for sourdough bread. It is, they say, a part of their culture (they are Mazg from some mysterious part of the world that Lois cannot identify). Unlike any other starter, this one carves a recognizable face into the crust of each loaf. The face depends on the music that is playing as the bread rises.

Lois lives in ultramodern San Francisco, doing an ultramodern high tech job, but her newfound ability to make sourdough, her “serendipity bread,” provides her with a connection to a task that countless people have performed for generations. She also finds a connection to the bread itself when she ponders the living organism that changes flour into bread. The story’s point might be that Lois, who as a programmer is working to make repetitive labor obsolete, finds greater satisfaction in the repetitive labor of baking bread.

Yet Sourdough does not reject the inevitability of change. The novel is also an appreciation of imaginative, science-based food. Lois joins a cross between a farmer’s market and a food fair that hosts people who take an experimental, edgy approach to food production. The chapter that describes “Lembas cakes manufactured whole by living organisms” and “algorithmically optimized bagels” and cookies made from bugs made me want to visit the place.

But the novel might also send the message that technology is no match for nature. I thoroughly enjoyed Sloan’s descriptions of the wars that bacteria fight, the extent to which they work together to defeat enemies and achieve common goals, and the ability of humans to benefit from those wars when they bake bread. The descriptions of bacteria engaged in a clash of civilizations might seem fanciful at first blush, but the novel opens up a microscopic world to the reader’s imagination in a way that rings true.

There are people who embrace the past and fear the future. There are people who embrace the future and reject the past. The ultimate point of Sourdough might be that the past and future coexist, that it is possible to embrace them both in the present. All by thinking about bread.

The novel’s plot is engaging, its characters are fittingly quirky, and its ending is endearingly whimsical. As a work of philosophy, food history, or just entertainment, I cannot find any fault in Sourdough.

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Modern Gods by Nick Laird

Published by Viking on June 27, 2017

In addition to its subordinate themes, Modern Gods is a story about religious conflict, told from two perspectives. One involves the ongoing consequences of the violent clash between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The other involves a violent clash between Christianity and an emerging religion.

Liz Donnelly isn’t happy teaching in America, particularly when she catches her latest boyfriend in bed with another man. She accepts an invitation to work on a documentary about a new religious movement in the South Pacific, but first she returns to her hometown in Ulster for her sister’s wedding.

The first third of the novel introduces Liz’ family. Her brother Spencer is having an affair with Trish Hutchinson, whose husband is probably having his own affairs when he’s not golfing with Spencer. Liz’ sister Alison frets about motherhood and her mother Judith frets about her empty nest. At least her father Kenneth, who is in poor health and has reason to fret, keeps his anxieties about himself to himself.

The early drama involves Alison’s marriage to Stephen McLean, who seems an improvement on her abusive ex-husband despite his mysterious past. Only after the wedding does the family learn — by reading it in a newspaper — the truth about McLean’s actions as a member of the Ulster Freedom Fighters during the Troubles twenty years earlier.

The story then shifts settings as it follows Liz to an island called New Ulster off the coast of Papau New Guinea. She is with a documentary team that wants to tell the story of a woman who has founded a new religion. The best part of that plot thread focuses on the megalomania of the alt-religious leader, the destructive influence she has on the weak minds that follow her teachings, and the mainstream Christian missionaries who are scarcely better.

In some respects, the story in New Ulster seems contrived, particularly when Liz takes a more participatory role in tribal life than is appropriate for a documentarian. Still, I like the message the story sends about the threat that mainstream religions feel from emerging religions, particularly when they coexist in a community and are competing for members. That story ends tragically, and I like the questions the novel asks about whether such tragedies are inevitable and how blame for them should be shared.

The novel’s best moments come when Stephen tells his story. He makes it easy to understand why people who consider themselves to be the victims of injustice take unjust actions, even if those actions are inexcusable. His story also makes clear that there was plenty of injustice on both sides in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Stephen’s recollections lead to a powerful confrontation that reveals the needless cruelty caused by religious conflict.

The story of violence in Ulster echoes a moment of violence in New Ulster, honing the theme that religious conflict in all parts of the globe is ultimately pointless, regardless of the religious beliefs that compel one person to treat another as unworthy of life. Perhaps that parallel is a bit obvious, and I’m not sure why it was illustrated with a fictional religion in a fictional place when the reality of religious strife is everywhere, but the parallel stories nevertheless serve to make a compelling point.

The small stories of the Donnelly family, their way of talking without communicating, their reliance on familiar conversations about the past as a way of avoiding the present, root the novel in a sense of reality that makes the larger stories seem plausible. The small stories about family members battling loneliness and their desperation for love balance the larger stories of religious conflict.

Nick Laird writes with the graceful assurance that reflects his training as a poet. There is a lot going on Modern Gods, and if the story is a bit uneven, its best moments truly shine.

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The State Counsellor by Boris Akunin

First published in Russia in 1998; published in translation in Great Britain in 1999; published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on July 4, 2017

The State Counsellor is a man named Erast Petrovich Fandorin. The novel, set in Tsarist Russia, is the sixth in a series by Boris Akunin.

Fandorin has been assigned responsibility for the safety of General Khrapov in Moscow. The revolutionaries blame Khrapov for the brutal flogging and suicide of a young woman before he was made the Governor of Siberia. Khrapov, who claims it wasn’t his fault and doesn’t understand all the fuss about “an ordinary bourgeois girl,” has been hidden away in Siberia for his own protection, but the time has come to return him to Moscow. His return is brief, however, as a revolutionary assassin who goes by the name Green enters the train, posing as Fandorin, and dispatches Khrapov in the opening pages.

The real Fandorin is briefly arrested, but it soon becomes clear that the murderer was in imposter. It then becomes Fandorin’s duty to find the villain who killed the villain. Only a few people in various security roles knew that Fandorin was assigned to protect Khrapov, so Fandorin begins his inquiry by asking whether any of those might have leaked the information.

A seductress named Diana becomes a key character. She adds flavor to the novel by expounding on the weaknesses of men and the various ways in which women can exploit those weaknesses. A seductress named Esfir, clearly sympathetic to the revolution, wastes no time in taking Fandorin to bed. Modern women are a true mystery to poor Fandorin, but they are considered outrageous by high society women (even as they are admired by high society men).

The novel explores the utility of terrorism as an instrument of revolution — in this case, to spark a revolution that will overthrow Tsarist rule. Green is the novel’s philosopher of terror. But the plot explores the corruption of power and the ruthlessness of people who seize it. The mystery involves the identity of the person who is betraying the police by helping Green, and while the truth is telegraphed in a way that makes it easy to guess the betrayer’s identity before it is revealed, I prefer that to mystery stories that plant no clues at all.

Fandorin is an interesting, stuttering detective who is forced to cope with a doomed political structure that hampers his ability to do his job. The story is cerebral, but it has spurts of action that keep it lively. Life in Tsarist Russia is well imagined. I haven’t read other entries in the series but it is easy to enjoy The State Counsellor as a stand-alone mystery novel.

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The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross

Published by Macmillan/Tor.com on July 11, 2017

As a necromancer working for the government’s occult secret service, Bob “Eater of Souls” Howard is not a happy guy. His agency is no longer a secret. He’s been given a new title — Departmental Public Relations Officer — and his first assignment is an interview on Newsnight. His objective is to make his job at the Laundry sound boring. As series readers know, Bob’s job is far from boring. But much to Bob’s consternation, the Laundry is about to be disbanded in order to pave the way for an evil alien takeover, disguised a privatization.

The American Postal Service has been privatized in a conspiracy orchestrated by Nazgûl (a/k/a the Black Chamber a/k/a the Operational Phenomenology Agency) to shut down the Postal Inspector’s Occult Texts Division. The scheme calls for the Laundry to be the next victim of privatization, a plan that is embraced by the Prime Minister, who blames the Laundry for bringing ridicule upon his administration. Of course, it isn’t entirely Howard’s fault that the fight against occult horrors, once largely hidden from public view, gained public attention in The Nightmare Stacks.

After an attempted snatch-and-grab by the entity who calls himself Raymond Schiller — whose mind is now occupied by the sleeping god he awakened — Bob realizes he’s in more danger than usual. Bob’s new mission is to find out what Schiller is up to and to stop him, all without the official help of the Laundry, which on paper no longer exists.

The story turns Bob’s world upside down, forcing him to join forces with the sort of people he usually locks up, including a vampire and the Mandate. When he isn’t preoccupied by evil, he’s preoccupied by love, trying to find a way to stay married to Mo without inadvertently eating her soul. Which, I think, is pretty much a metaphor for marriage.

Eventually the story turns into a furious occult action novel, as various entities wield their various powers while trying to ward off the powers of other entities, all in an effort (depending on the entity’s perspective) to take over the British government or to prevent that from happening. The scheme involves an orgy (the evil worms that take control of Cabinet members are sexually impregnated in their victims), adding some extra chuckles to the novel’s dark humor. But darkness reigns in a world that is very different at the novel’s end, setting up a new and unpleasant reality with which Bob will need to contend in the next installment. That darkness, I suspect, can be taken as a commentary on Brexit.

Charles Stross’ tongue-in-cheek Laundry Files novels are always fun. Stross loves to mock bureaucrats, and The Delirium Brief pokes fun at politicians who supposedly oversee government agencies while doing as little as possible to provide actual oversight. There is more complexity to Laundry novels than is typical of the action-fantasy-horror genre, and Stross’ prose is well above the genre’s standard. The Delirium Brief is another strong entry in an entertaining series.

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Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan

Published by Scribner on June 13, 2017

It isn’t surprising that books are central to Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. In addition to the bookstore, a library plays a role in the novel, as does a character who maintains his own library of books nobody wants, a home full of crowded shelves where books go to die. The plot features a way to communicate via books, a communication of messages that is more intimate those communicated by the books themselves.

Joey hung himself in the history section of the Bright Ideas Bookstore. Lydia finds Joey’s dangling body near midnight, at closing time. She also finds a picture of herself, taken in her childhood, poking out of Joey’s pocket. It is a picture she had never seen before, taken at her birthday party 20 years earlier.

Joey was one of the store’s BookFrogs, the anonymous men who roam the aisles or sit in the chairs, reading or staring, perhaps homeless or seeking respite from home. Joey had a criminal history but a (mostly) gentle soul. Joey was inevitably accompanied by his friend and mentor Lyle, but Lyle was not present at Joey’s death. Joey left everything he owned, consisting primarily of books, to Lydia.

A deepening mystery surrounds the books. Seemingly random holes are cut from the pages; price tag labels have been swapped with other books. With the help of her friends Raj (who still holds a childhood crush on Lydia) and David (her boyfriend), Lydia tries to make sense of the holes in the books, as well as the holes in her life.

Lydia’s backstory involves an unsolved murder, leaving the reader to wonder how it will fit into Lydia’s present. It quickly becomes evident that Lydia, like some of the BookFrogs, is concealing herself in the bookstore, using it as a place to hide from life. In that regard, she may be replicating a traumatic moment from her childhood, one that the mystery of Joey’s death forces her to reexamine. The mystery also forces Lydia to reconsider her voluntary estrangement from her father.

The plot initially struck me as being a bit contrived, but mysteries are often based on contrivances and I found it easy to suspend disbelief given the novel’s other virtues. In fact, by the novel’s end, the central events in the story were so carefully woven together that the plot didn’t seem contrived at all.

The novel is, in part, a tribute to the power of books. It’s also about making connections with people who are isolated, about caring for people nobody else cares about. Lydia is almost saintly in her kindness to the unfortunate, but her compassion is credible and it makes her a very likable character.

Sympathizing and empathizing with the characters is easy because Matthew Sullivan pushes the right emotional buttons. He does that honestly, not in an overtly manipulative way but because the story is naturally full of emotional triggers. The novel starts out telling a light and amusing story, then gradually becomes a dark and tragic story. Humor and tragedy are skillfully balanced. The is a good novel for crime story fans, but its emphasis of books makes it an easy novel for any book lover to enjoy.

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