The Ancient Minstrel by Jim Harrison

Published by Grove Press on March 1, 2016

One of the characters in The Ancient Minstrel mentions that editors want big, sprawling stories that smack readers in the face. Jim Harrison doesn’t do a lot of smacking. He writes meandering stories that observe foibles and failures, that pry into the ordinary, that tell stories within stories and make readers pause and grin and perhaps indulge in a knowing chuckle. His characters enjoy sex and food and rivers but they are usually uncertain about the other things in life, if any, that might give them pleasure. The three novellas collected here are emblematic of Harrison’s work.

Typical of Jim Harrison’s recent fiction, “The Ancient Minstrel” is about an aging man who drinks too much, sleeps around (a habit that is impaired by aging and drinking too much), lies habitually, and copes with “imagined monsters” as well as all of life’s “deep injustices” (such as the death of a pet). The story’s protagonist, a 70-year-old writer/poet, is melancholy but his thoughts of suicide have always been interrupted by hunger before he could act upon them. The writer is semi-separated from his surprisingly tolerant wife. Whether that tolerance will extend to harboring the pregnant pig he impulsively purchases for their Montana ranch is one of many situations that showcases Harrison’s wry humor.

The point of “The Ancient Minstrel” (I think) is that there are always reasons to continue living, unexpected moments of pure joy that, even if fleeting, make it all worthwhile. A brief epilog, written in the first person, discusses the craft of writing in very personal terms.

The second entry, “Eggs,” tells the story of Catherine, whose grandparents owned the Montana farm where her mother (a London transplant) desperately wanted to live. The story explores different periods of Catherine’s life: London during the Blitz, Palm Beach after the war, wrong men everywhere, including an incarcerated brother. Through it all, her affinity for chickens never abates. The title refers not just to chickens but to Catherine’s own eggs and the difficulty of finding someone worthwhile to fertilize them. The point of the story might be that chickens are better for your mental health than parents or partners. But the more meaningful theme is that the past is always part of the present. Life is “a constant whirl in which people often behave horribly,” yet “the past lives on in all of us” and we need to find a way to make peace with it.

“The Case of the Howling Buddhas” features Sunderson, a retired cop and current private investigator who is familiar to Harrison fans. The story, in fact, is almost a continuation of the last Sunderson novel, with frequent references to past events. Sunderson’s behavior is rather scandalous (it usually involves females who are barely, or not yet, old enough to vote), which makes him either endearing or disgusting to readers (opinions are sharply divided, judging from Amazon reviews). This story comes the closest of the three to having a plot (Sunderson is hired to track down a wealthy man’s daughter who has run off with a Zen teacher) but its focus is on Sunderson’s lust for a girl who is a half century younger than Sunderson. The ending comes as a shock.

I like Jim Harrison for many reasons. One is that he makes a point of writing about characters who go out of their way to play with dogs. Another is his ability to capture all of the anxieties, regrets, vanities, and emotional frailties of aging men. Another is that his characters are, like all of us, “trying to figure out life,” although the theories they derive are funnier than most of us manage to conjure. Another is his honest depiction of rural life, in counterpoint to the “literary tradition” that buries rural America “in honeysuckle and lilacs, hardworking and noble yokels.” Another is his recognition that big events can have small consequences that compound over a lifetime. Another is the amount of wisdom he manages to impart in throwaway sentences as the story meanders along. Another is the deep love of nature that his characters express. And another is the way he manages to give a folksy quality to literary prose (or a literary quality to folksy prose). All of that is present in these three novellas, which I recommend as must reading to Jim Harrison fans.

RECOMMENDED

The Winter Girl by Matt Marinovich

Published by Doubleday on January 19, 2016

The Winter Girl tells a creative suspense story that builds on family secrets. Scott is a laid-off photographer of Asian newlyweds, staying in the home of his hospitalized father-in-law, who calls Scott multiple times a day to berate him via answering machine messages. The father eventually comes home to live his last days with Scott and Elise, while doing his best to burden their lives. Elise’s brother is serving a sentence, adding to the family’s dysfunctionality.

Intrigued by lights that turn on an off at the same time every night in a neighboring house, Scott succumbs to an impulse of trespass. Finding an unlocked door, he explores the house while his wife is visiting her father. Later he persuades Elise to experience the pleasure of sex in a stranger’s home. It all seems like harmless fun -- the last gasp of a desperately unhappy marriage -- until they find the blood. That’s when the story really begins.

The neighbor’s house contains secrets. The reader learns something about them halfway into the novel. Eventually more secrets are revealed that have a profound impact on Scott and Elise, who have secrets of their own. Without divulging the nature of those secrets, I can say that they are all presented in a way that makes them believable.

The plot is far from predictable. It builds and sustains suspense due, in part, to the fact that it is so difficult to anticipate what might happen next. Some violent moments qualify as gruesome, so sensitive readers might want to give the novel a pass. And since these are some of the most messed up characters you’ll ever meet, readers who do not like fiction unless they like the main characters should probably stay away from The Winter Girl. Scott is the most “normal” of the bunch, but he is a passive observer with little moral strength. He’s hardly anyone’s idea of virtuous.

The ending is disappointing, if only because it’s a surprise ending that has been done before and therefore doesn’t have the power the author intends. Still, Matt Marinovich won me over by wielding strong prose, crafting realistic (albeit miserable) characters, and maintaining an atmosphere of suspense. Despite feeling a bit cheated at the end, I enjoyed the novel as a whole.

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Condor in the Stacks by James Grady and The Little Men by Megan Abbott

MysteriousPress.com is publishing (in digital form) a series of stand-alone stories by popular crime authors in which books, bookstores, libraries, or manuscripts play a central role.  I don't usually review individual short stories, but I'm making an exception for the Bibliomysteries series because the concept is interesting and the authors are well known.

"Condor in the Stacks" by James Grady was published digitally on February 23, 2016.

Condor fans know from reading Last Days of the Condor that the Condor, sometimes known as Vin, was heavily medicated and given a (supposedly) safe and undemanding job at the Library of Congress, sorting books into bins for reshelving and recycling. Vin thinks pretty much all books should be saved. That attitude makes him well suited for the Bibliomysteries series.

Vin tries to kick back his sedation long enough to help a library employee named Kim who thinks she is being stalked. Meanwhile, he tries to solve the puzzle of why he packed seven coffins full of books for recycling but nine coffins are being hauled away.

The plot is beyond far-fetched and it isn’t fully developed. I'm not sure it even makes sense. Still, it entertained me. I liked the story, but not nearly as much as I liked the last Condor novel, which had a depth of character and intricacy of plot that can be difficult to achieve in a short story. I probably would not recommend this story to readers who did not read and enjoy Last Days of the Condor.

The text of the story mentions or alludes to about a dozen authors. James Grady acknowledges them at the end, which is helpful for readers who recognize, but can’t quite place, an allusion. I am one of the readers who benefitted from reading the acknowledgements.

Judging from Amazon reviews, some readers are turned off by Grady’s writing style, which is far from conventional. Odd punctuation, sentence fragments, and stream of consciousness sometimes take over the narrative. The frenzied, off-kilter style reflects Vin’s shaky mental status. I like it for that reason but I realize that it puts off readers who are looking for straight-forward prose. If you are one of those, be warned that this might not be the story for you.

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"The Little Men" by Megan Abbott was published digitally on September 15, 2015

In 1953, Penny went to Hollywood to pursue her dream of fame. Like most wannabe actresses, she found a less satisfying life that the one she pursued. At night, she consoles herself with the books that came with a surprisingly affordable bungalow that she rents in the canyon. Her neighbors soon reveal that the rent is affordable because nobody wants to rent the bungalow where the bookseller killed himself. Or did he?

This is a story of bad dreams and spooky nocturnal noises and shadows on the walls. A mystery with the flavor of a horror story. Like Psycho, the story asks the reader to divine the secrets of a spooky place. Are the horrors that Penny experiences real or imagined?

A well-crafted story, “Little Men” creates a visceral atmosphere and gives flesh to its characters. The story resolves with a couple of unexpected twists. Most of the stories in this series have been quite good, and this one is no exception.

RECOMMENDED

Youngblood by Matt Gallagher

Published by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster  on February 2, 2016

Youngblood is not a conventional war story. It is a war story for people who appreciate Yeats, who think beyond clichés about duty.

Told in the first person by Lt. Jack Porter, Youngblood takes place after the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. The time is post-Surge. Porter’s platoon conducts joint missions with the Iraqi military, surveys neighborhoods to ask how often they have electricity, and tries to gather intelligence while dodging IEDs during endless patrols.

Porter is stuck with a sergeant who has earned a reputation among Iraqis for killing civilians. The sergeant’s attitude, which only makes Porter’s job more difficult, motivates Porter to get the sergeant out of his platoon.

The plot has Porter trying to figure out which intelligence sources are telling the truth, a difficult task in an environment where truth is flexible and all sources (American and Iraqi) are unreliable. Usually the plot in a war novel takes place against the background of war, but the plot almost recedes into the background in Youngblood. This is more the story of a soldier’s life than a novel with a strong plot. Eventually, however, the story focuses on Porter’s attempt to help the mother of two children who helped his platoon, and on Porter’s conflict with the sergeant.

The story emphasizes the failure of America’s stated mission to “win the hearts and minds” of Iraqis, in conflict with a strategy of “let’s show them who’s boss.” Thoughtless destruction and the killing of innocents, based on rumor or conjecture or whim or mistake, made it impossible to win anything but hatred. Americans put their boots on the ground and their lives at risk to accomplish little of value to American interests. Getting soldiers home alive eventually becomes Porter’s only purpose.

Porter is a likable character He has a nuanced view of the impossible situation that the occupation of Iraq created for the occupiers and the occupied. He doesn’t stereotype Arabs. He sympathizes with the families of the innocent Iraqis who are killed and with the soldiers who killed them. He questions why higher officers accept intelligence reports that are clearly unfounded. He is, in short, smart and compassionate. I also like Porter’s analysis of the military’s cliques -- fobbits versus infantry versus Rangers, each group viewing the others with a degree of contempt, and everyone hating the officers who give orders from safe locations without regard to their consequences.

Matt Gallagher brings a refreshing complexity to Porter’s character. Porter’s brother, to whom he turns for advice, won the Silver Star, but behaves like a jerk while spouting self-serving clichés about leadership and duty that gloss over the moral concerns that trouble Porter. It’s easy to justify bad acts when you call yourself one of the “good guys,” a realization that, to Porter, makes “leadership” seem like a bad joke. Much of the novel’s strength comes from Porter’s struggle to recognize that his brother’s commitment to “moral courage” is too simplistic to be a useful guidepost in a complex world.

Gallagher’s writing style is sometimes a little clunky -- his metaphors don’t always work -- but for the most part his prose flows smoothly. He creates moments of genuine tension without relying on melodrama. The story builds slowly but by the end, it is quite powerful. That makes Youngblood one of the better contributions to the literature of Middle East war.

RECOMMENDED

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

Published digitally by Open Road Media on July 14, 2015

Wylding Hall is sort of a gentle horror story, if that’s possible. What kind of horror? Demons? Ghosts? Witches? Monsters? All I will say is that this is neither a zombie novel nor a “space aliens who look like lizards” novel. Which is fine because the world has too many of those already.

Wylding Hall combines a supernatural/horror novel with a band story. The band (Windhollow Faire) became famous after their Wylding Hall album but it was once a bunch of kids playing folk songs in London pubs for fun. We learn early on from Lesley, the American singer who joined the band as Arianna’s replacement, that Arianna, after being replaced, fell to her death from guitar player Julian’s window. The producer decided the band should recover from her death by spending the summer in the country recording their second album at Wylding Hall, an old Tudor full of strange rooms, surrounded by spooky woods. In retrospect, it is one of the most influential albums in the history of progressive folk, or so the producer claims.

The novel is told in the form of a documentary. Band members, the producer, and occasional outsiders talk to a documentarian about the summer that the Wylding Hall album was made (and, to a lesser extent, about the backgrounds of the band members).

During the first half of Wylding Hall, characters mention, without actually describing, an event that occurred during the band’s stay. They also make references to dead birds, the disembodied voice of a child singing, an occasional apparition, warnings from a local farmer to stay out of the woods, and other foreshadowing of a horror to come. But most of the time, the characters are talking about themselves, their relationships, and the process of making music. It is in the second half that something unexpected and unexplained occurs.

I called this a gentle horror novel because no people are torn to shreds, or turned inside out, or have their blood sucked out. If violence is what you want, Wylding Hall will probably bore you. If you’re looking for a good band story, the kind of story that allows relationships to develop among people who are forced by circumstances to spend a lot of time together, you’ll probably like Wylding Hall. I don’t know that the supernatural element adds much -- it isn’t particularly frightening -- but it does provide the glue that holds the story together.

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