A Hero of France by Alan Furst

Published by Random House on May 31, 2016

A Hero of France is not as meaty as Alan Furst’s best works, but at least he didn’t pad the story as do so many best-selling authors. The hero to whom the title refers is Mathieu. He is in the French resistance, working to return British flyers to England after they parachute from crashing bombers.

The first two-thirds of the novel introduces a few British aviators who are spirited out of France with Mathieu’s help. I formed no attachment to any of those characters because they didn’t stay around long enough to warm my heart. Other people who assist Mathieu’s operation of the escape line make occasional appearances, but none of them are given great substance. A British official tries to pressure Mathieu to expand his efforts by engaging in espionage, but the Brit plays such a limited role that it is difficult to view him as villainous or to care about him one way or another.

That leaves Mathieu, the novel’s constant, but we know more about what Mathieu does than who he is. Mathieu’s motivation is obvious -- he doesn’t like Germans, at least not after they’ve taken control of his country, and he doesn’t like collaborators, including the French government -- but all of that is fairly superficial. It isn’t the sort of character development that readers have come to expect from Alan Furst.

The early stages of the novel foreshadow trouble for Mathieu and his small band of conspirators. A member of the German military police named Breum spends the last third of the novel trying to catch everyone associated with escape-lines. Breum, who wants to save himself from the consequences of an unfavorable performance review, is probably the most carefully developed character in the novel.

My difficulty investing in the episodic plot and bland characters was enhanced by the detached voice in which the story is written. The narrative is interesting but it lacks passion and drama. On the other hand, the background and setting of A Hero of France are up to Furst’s typical standard of excellence. The story wraps up neatly, but perhaps too neatly. There are no surprises. I enjoyed the story, such as it is, but this is one of Furst’s weaker novels.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Girl with all the Gifts by M.R. Carey

Published by Orbit on June 10, 2014

There's been a worldwide infection. You're thinking zombie, right? Got it in one. The Girl with All the Gifts gives more attention than most zombie novels to the nature of the infection that creates a zombie plague, although why zombie infections always produce shambling has yet to be convincingly explained. Still.

A young girl named Melanie lives in a cell in a locked facility. She only leaves it after her jailers have strapped her to a wheelchair. They take her to a classroom with she and others like her learn random facts that are no longer relevant. All she knows of the real world is that a devastated place called London is not far away and a place called Beacon, on the sea and surrounded by moats and minefields, is safe from hungries. Other cities are as empty as London. Burn patrols do their best to keep her region free from hungries. Hungries shamble and eat people ... a zombie by any other name ....

Some of the hungries, particularly Melanie and her friends, are "high functioning." Meaning they are really really really smart zombies. They seem like normal kids until they start salivating at the scent of human flesh, but it that any reason to dissect them? Opinions differ.

Dr. Caroline Caldwell thinks of Melanie as a test subject. Sergeant Parks thinks of Melanie as a dangerous monster. Melanie's teacher, Helen Justineau thinks of her as a sweet little girl. Melanie isn't quite sure what to think of herself but she loves Miss Justineau.

Although The Girl with all the Gifts follows the standard run-and-fight-and-try-not-to-be-eaten plot of zombie fiction, it is a more interesting story than most. M.R. Carey creates clever images and scenarios that are a step above typical zombie fiction. The writing is surprisingly strong. In constructing a science-based zombie novel that has some literary value, The Girl with all the Gifts is like Parasite, although The Girl is a better book.

The hook that truly differentiates The Girl With All the Gifts from other zombie fiction is that Melanie is a likable, sympathetic zombie. Yes, she enjoys an occasional munch on human flesh, but only if the humans are bad, not like Helen Justineau, whom she really really does not want to eat even though she might be tasty. The reader is meant to cheer for Melanie and Justineau and even for a couple of soldiers, although not so much for Dr. Caldwell, who likes to dissect zombie children, especially if they are whizzes at math.

Carey walked a delicate line between writing a "feel good" story and a scary one. Melanie and Justineau couldn't be nicer, which means they aren't particularly realistic (not that a zombie novel is all that realistic). The darker characters at least benefit from greater complexity. In any event, the novel races to an ending that, if not surprising given its inevitably, is more satisfying than the climax of a typical zombie novel.

RECOMMENDED

Isaac Asimov's I Robot: To Preserve by Mickey Zucker Reichert

Published by Penguin/ Roc on February 2, 2016

Isaac Asimov made me care about robots. In Isaac Asimov’s I Robot: To Preserve, Mickey Zucher Reichert didn’t make me care about anything. Particularly not robots. The only robot to play a central role spends most of his time standing (or being rolled around) in the background, contributing nothing to the plot.

The plot, by the way, involves an accusation that Nate (the robot N8-C) murdered someone. That suspicion derives from the fact that he’s found holding a bloody pry bar and standing next to the bloody body of a dead researcher. Nate confesses (sort of) which persuades an overzealous police detective to arrest Lawrence Robertson, Nate’s creator/programmer, for murder. That this happens without questioning Nate more completely is a bit eye-rolling, as is the notion that Robertson could be arrested in the absence of even slight evidence that he programmed Nate to kill the researcher. Those are lapses of logic that Asimov would never have made.

Of course, every Asimov fan knows that it is impossible for a robot to deliberately harm humans, but the plot depends on an arrest that sends the current incarnation of Susan Calvin on an obvious mission -- to find the real killer. Enlisting the help of a hunky ex-Marine who saves her in a shootout, Susan (granddaughter of the original) goes about the business of solving the murder.

Susan’s speeches fill in background for readers who may have missed Reichert’s previous two robot novels in this series. That background is essential to understanding the plot, but given the filling-in, this book can probably be read as a stand-alone.

Susan actually has two hunks in her life, the other being homicide detective Jake Carson. One or both may or may not be on Susan’s side. Most of the plot surrounds Susan’s interaction with one or both of the hunks, and occasionally (although infrequently) Nate.

The hunks provide the excuse to add a love triangle subplot that is even clunkier than one that Asimov might have penned. Certainly, Asimov would not have written the scenes that read like outtakes from a trashy romance novel, complete with Susan swooning over a bare-chested man’s “tousled hair.” Has a trashy romance novel ever been written that didn’t use the phrase “tousled hair”?

There is a lot more touchy-feelyness and a lot less intellect in this book than a reader would find in any of Asimov’s robot stories. More to the point, there is a lot less emphasis on robots, which sort of misses the point of a robot novel. For that reason, the story, while mildly interesting, doesn’t come close to being as absorbing as an Asimov robot story. There are certainly many science fiction novels far worse than this one, but as a continuation of a seminal sf series, the novel is a disappointment.

NOT RECOMMENDED

H.G. Wells: The Dover Reader

Published by Dover on February 17, 2016

H.G. Wells is rightly regarded as a pioneer of science fiction. The four novels/novellas collected in this edition have all been filmed, some more than once, which attests to Wells’ skill as a story-teller. As a prose stylist, Wells created rambling, ponderous sentences that require the reader to engage in a good amount of labor before reaching the end. It is nevertheless a style that tends to grow on readers, contributing to the continued popularity of his books. But Wells’ popularity is primarily due to his imaginative creation of themes that modern science fiction writers continue to embrace.

The novellas in this Dover edition are:

The Time Machine (1895) - Probably the most “literary” of Wells’ works, The Time Machine is important in the history of science fiction as one of the first widely-read time travel stories. The distant future Wells imagines, populated by above-ground Eloi and underground Morlocks, is a forerunner of novels that depict a dystopian future. The novel might best be seen as an allegory of class struggle, although scholars have blessed it with a variety of academic interpretations. The Time Machine is probably the most discussed of Wells’ works, and it might be his most popular, given the number of times it has been adapted to film, television, and comics, as well as the number of books and stories that have been derived from it or paid tribute to it.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) - Wells ventured into horror with this story of a biologist who is stranded on a remote island with a doctor and a “mad scientist” whose experiments have transformed animals into man-like beasts. A forerunner of modern novels that address genetic experimentation, The Island of Dr. Moreau is notable for its exploration of the difference (and more importantly, the similarity) between man and beast.

The Invisible Man (1897) - A scientist experimenting with optics figures out how to bend light in a way that makes him invisible. While largely an adventure story, the novella has a moral lesson, as the scientist, who uses his discovery for nefarious purposes, comes to a bad end. The novella’s literary value comes from the sympathy that Wells creates for the scientist, even as Wells makes it clear that the Invisible Man is responsible for his own undoing.

War of the Worlds (1898) - One of the first popular stories to imagine contact between humans and aliens, War of the Worlds was famously adapted as a radio play that shook up the nation, and has been filmed repeatedly. In addition to working as an adventure story, the novel touches on important issues of imperialism, evolution, and religion. War of the Worlds is one of the most influential works in the history of science fiction, having inspired an entire subgenre of “alien invasion” stories, most of which (the ones in which aliens are imagined as evil lizards) are quite awful in comparison to Wells’ story.

Wells wrote some or all of these works as serials, so they overlapped a bit, but the fact that he was able to produce four of the most important works of science fiction in roughly four years is stunning. No literature class that covers science fiction would be complete without including at least one of Wells’ novels.

The Dover collection also includes five short stories of varying quality: “The Stolen Bacillus,” “The Country of the Blind,” “The Purple Pileus,” “The Crystal Egg,” and “The Door in the Wall.” They are all entertaining, but readers will get more bang for their buck from Wells’ longer works.

RECOMMENDED

The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks by Igort

First published in separate volumes in Italy in 2010 and 2011; published in translation in a combined volume by Simon & Schuster on April 26, 2016

The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks is a collection of brief stories about Russia and Ukraine. Some are the stories of individuals. Some are the stories of eras. One is the story of land. Another is the story of radioactive land. The volume combines two separate notebooks, one devoted to Ukraine, one to Russia, but the stories necessarily overlap.

Some of the stories told in The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks are almost like recordings of oral histories related by elderly survivors. An old woman talks about the Famine. An old man describes the hardships of his life during World War II and after Stalin. The stories combine to form a graphic modern history of two countries and their peoples told from deeply personal perspectives.

The notebook entries jump around in time and place. Some are repetitive. I suppose that’s the nature of a “notebook” format, so I don’t see the lack of organization or conciseness as a significant failing.

Both of the notebooks address the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 (one of the worst acts of genocide in modern history) and the earlier relocation/deportation of kulaks (property owners). Stalin regarded Ukrainian kulaks as class enemies, even if they only owned a couple of cows. Viewing self-sufficient farms as a threat to collectivist ideals, Stalin used the military to block the borders of Ukraine and to confiscate food, animals, and property. Millions people died of starvation or related disease during the forced famine. The exact number is both disputed and unknowable, and depends upon whether indirect deaths are counted (Igort adopts one of the highest estimates), but there is no dispute that the Ukrainian population suffered immensely as a result of Stalin’s policies.

Some stories of the famine are told by its survivors but other entries, less personal but all the more chilling because of their detachment, reproduce excerpts from official reports. The reports contain stark accounts of illness caused by eating rotting food and animal carcasses. Instances of cannibalism, the living eating the dead, are itemized by district.

A variety of perspectives capture life during the Second World War, during the reign of Khrushchev, and after the fall of communism. Interestingly, some of the people who tell their stories view life under Khrushchev as the high point of their national history, and view the fall of communism as a disaster. In the absence of a planned transition, prices skyrocketed, jobs were lost, and once productive fields were abandoned. Production was replaced by destitution. The fantasy that western nations have constructed around the fall of communism is far removed from the reality that Russians and Ukrainians have endured.

Igort describes the present Russia as a brutal “sham democracy.” He illustrates that belief with several entries that revolve around Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006 for (in Igort’s view) speaking the truth about Chechnya. Igort writes of journalists and activists who have been gunned down, of Chechens who have been tortured and who have turned to terrorism in support of their cause, of Russian military violence that might well be defined as state-sponsored terrorism.

The art accompanying the texts is bleak. It gives the impression of an artist’s sketchbook. The art is well-suited to illustrate the stories that Igort tells. The best images are leafless trees, footprints in vast stretches of snow, symbolic expressions of lost hope.

The Notebooks are ambitious, perhaps too ambitious. When Igort writes about the scope of Russian history and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky he strays from the personal stories that he does best. I appreciate the desire to provide context, but the book seems scattered when Igort tries to look at the bigger picture. Still, as a graphic reminder of the suffering of Russians, Ukrainians, and Chechens in an oppressive system, Igort succeeds admirably.

RECOMMENDED