Lucky Alan by Jonathan Lethem

Published by Doubleday on February 24, 2015

Jonathan Lethem pushes the boundaries of the short story in this innovative collection. Some stories take a conventional form, others are more experimental. Many are quite funny. Not all the stories are successful but I admire Lethem's vivid imagination and his willingness to take chances.

Two conventional stories are the least interesting in the collection. "Lucky Alan" is about the growth and decline of a New York friendship and its impact on a director's ability to stage manage his life. An empty room in his parents' house is the focal point of "The Empty Room" as a young man returns home with his girlfriend for a visit. While both stories are weaker than others in the collection, the characters are sharply drawn.

"Procedure in Plain Air" is a story only Lethem could write -- other than, maybe, Franz Kafka. Workers dig a hole, drop a bound man into it, cover the hole loosely with boards, and give an umbrella to the narrator with instructions to keep the man in the hole dry if it rains. This wonderfully absurd story suggests that people behave ridiculously because "someone has to step up" and, in stepping up, feel compelled to defend the indefensible.

"The King of Sentences" is an ode to books and the "astonishingly unprecedented and charming sentences" they contain. Lethem write plenty of those, including "I saw him the other day in the pharmacy, buying one of those inflatable doughnuts for sitting on when you've got anal discomfort."

Two stories in particular made me smile. The narrator of "Pending Vegan" is "pending" because he fears his children will accuse him of "childlike moral absolutism" if he commits. That's part of the biting humor in this very funny story about a man bewildered by life and the dog he once abandoned. "The Porn Critic" is about a porn shop clerk whose apartment is cluttered with the movies he reviews for the shop's newsletter. The story's humor comes from the reaction that women have to his living environment and reputation, "his life a site where others came to test their readiness for what they feared were their disallowed yearnings."

The narrator of "The Salivating Ear" killed a man at the entrance to his blog. The story suggests that bloggers will take extreme measures to protect their blog and its one or two readers from haters. It is a charming look at lonely bloggers who dream of the day when busloads of tourists will visit their blogs.

Two other stories didn't quite work for me. "Traveler Home" is written as an internal monologue (despite its third person voice) in an abbreviated style, stripped of definite articles and other nonessential words. The story, of wolves that deliver a baby in a basket, is interesting although I'm not quite sure that I caught the point of it. Similarly, I don't know what to make of "The Back Pages," a tale of characters "who live on the margins of cartoon lore." Their plane has crashed on an island, stranding them. The story is told in panels, journal entries, notes to the artist, silly songs and poems, and traditional narrative. It's sort of Lost meets Lord of the Flies meets Pogo and Prince Valiant. I like the concept but I think it works better as a concept than it does as an actual story.

RECOMMENDED

Scarred by Thomas Enger

Published in Norway in 2013; published in translation in Great Britain in 2014; published digitally by Atria Books on November 4, 2014

Ole Christian Sund works in an eldercare home where his young son discovers that a resident has been murdered and mutilated. Journalist Henning Juul covers the story. Oslo Police Detective Bjarne Brogeland conducts the police investigation. Early chapters of Scarred develop the plot by focusing on either Juul or Brogeland.

The third primary character is Juul's sister, Trine Juul-Osmundsen, who is Norway's Secretary of State for Justice. She merits chapters of her own as she deals with an alleged sex scandal that is both personal and political. Other chapters focus on a killer and his victims.

As is often true of crime novels involving multiple murders, the detective's challenge (and the reader's) is to deduce the factor that links the victims. In addition to that plot thread, part of the story focuses on Juul's efforts to learn about the fire that killed his son (about which a source promised to divulge information before being killed in prison). The fire presumably occurred in an earlier novel, but this is the first in the series that I've read.

Another plot thread, of course, has the reader wondering if someone is setting up Juul-Osmundsen, who clearly did something that she wants to conceal but perhaps not what she is accused of doing. The behavior of which she is accused struck me as too improbable for the public to take seriously, but perhaps the public in Norway is just as eager as in America to read scandalous accusations from anonymous sources that no respectable news organization would report.

Thomas Enger's depiction of Norway's political system is filled with the back-stabbing and pettiness that probably characterizes political systems everywhere. It is also describes irresponsible news media that are familiar features of many countries. I enjoyed the setting and background of Scarred. The characters are reasonably interesting although the evolution of the novel's serial killer is disappointingly familiar.

This isn't the kind of novel that lets the reader guess the killer's identity (at least, not until shortly before it is revealed) so if that's the kind of whodunit you like, Scarred might not be the right book for you. The reader is, however, challenged to guess the identity of Juul-Osmundsen's nemesis. Not every plot thread is tied off in this novel and, as in many series, it is probably better to read the books in order rather than starting with this one. Scarred can nevertheless be read as an entertaining stand-alone. Plot twists are creative and unexpected, characters are well-developed, and the translated prose is smooth.

RECOMMENDED

Last Days of the Condor by James Grady

Published by Forge Books on February 17, 2015

James Grady introduced the Condor in 1974. The Condor should be enjoying a quiet retirement but life as a thriller hero isn't that simple.

Homeland Security is keeping an eye on Vin, the heavily medicated man formerly known as Condor, a CIA agent put to pasture with a variety of stress-related mental health diagnoses. Although Vin's keepers see him as a "crazy old burnout," Vin correctly suspects that he's being followed by people who are not known to his keepers. One of the two agents tasked with checking up on Vin, Faye Dozier, believes his concerns have merit. The other doesn't give a hoot (although he uses a more colorful word than hoot).

Vin finds himself the object of a rather ingenious plot that plays out during the last three-quarters of the novel. The ultimate mystery -- who is trying to kill Condor? -- is brilliantly and chillingly resolved. Chilling, because what Grady imagines could well be real or could soon become the new reality of "homeland security."

Grady writes in an urgent style that wastes no words, yet his characterizations are surprisingly complete. Condor is the central character but Faye is equally important. She carries physical and emotional scars from an incident in which she messed up (which is why she's assigned to low level surveillance of has-been terrorists and crazy old burnouts). As you might expect of a spy, she has trust issues, but her impermissible involvement with a Congressional lawyer is helping her cope with them. Or not.

Last Days of the Condor is crafted with the assurance of a veteran writer who is at home with his characters and with the changing world. Grady plays with technology and data in ways that are mind-boggling. Apart from being an excellent action novel with a strong plot, Last Days of the Condor is smart, sophisticated, appropriately cynical, and utterly convincing. Last Days doesn't quite have the depth of the very best espionage novels but it works perfectly as a fast-moving thriller that is spiced with tradecraft. It provides an intelligent view of the intelligence game that is thoroughly entertaining.

RECOMMENDED

The Big Seven by Jim Harrison

Published by Grove Press on January 27, 2015

Sex and violence are frequent partners in fiction as in life. They are both improbably plentiful in the life of 66-year-old Sunderson, a retired police detective last seen in The Great Leader. Violence in particular is the theme of The Big Seven. Sunderson thinks violence should be the eighth deadly sin and blames its prevalence in the world's history, or more precisely his awareness of it, for making him "an alcoholic and a late-blooming sex maniac."

The book's first instance of violence follows Sunderson's impulsive plan to save his adopted daughter Mona, who has disappeared from Ann Arbor with a rock band that is headed for Paris. Later in the novel, Sunderson spends his time fishing and studying the Ames family, a "human junk pile" except for the female members, including the free-spirited Monica. Sunderson takes on another impulsive rescue mission concerning Monica while most of the Ames clan makes it their mission to kill Sunderson when they aren't killing each other. Elements of a murder mystery appear as Sunderson wonders why the trigger-happy family members are dropping dead from poison, although the "faux mystery" subtitle makes clear that this really isn't a mystery novel.

Sunderson is not a role model but he is a believable guy. He drinks too much. He lusts after young women, including his adopted daughter. He spies on naked women. He vows "to limit the amount of messiness" in his life but still sets a new "all-around record for sloppy behavior." He regularly engages in about half of the deadly sins.

Harrison's books typically wander, emphasizing the randomness of life. The Big Seven is no exception. While that might put off readers who prefer fiction that has a straightforward plot, Harrison's point is that life is rarely straightforward -- and how could it be, given that "the world is a madhouse"? I suspect that many older people, like Sunderson, are "puzzled by how in the sweep of life we end up where we do," tied in "peculiar knots that lack the clarity of our original intentions." We cannot "walk around the corner without tripping on a toad." In his unique way, Harrison reminds us that life's journey is an adventure, sometimes exciting, sometimes cruel, but almost always unexpected, even if you prefer to spend it fishing.

It takes time to adjust to Harrison's writing style but the time is well spent. He doesn't waste words. Even seemingly inconsequential sentences develop the reader's understanding of the story or a character or the human condition. Sunderson muses about life, death, the afterlife (acknowledging that he has "no talent for theology"), sex, the galaxy, and much else, including, of course, the deadly sins. Now and then his musings made me bust out a laugh.

I like Harrison's daring exploration of the American attitude toward relationships between old men and young women. In some cultures, age-gap relationships are common, accepted, and meaningful. Sunderson feels no guilt about the lust and affection he feels for a 19-year-old but he knows he will be judged (particularly by the ex-wife he still adores). Sunderson is old enough to be thinking about death and I can't blame him for wanting to think about pleasant ways to have a heart attack.

The Big Seven is less purposeful than Harrison's best fiction, including The Great Leader, although Harrison still crams more meaningful sentences into an average page than most writers produce in an entire novel. Sunderson complains that an Ames brother who is writing a crime novel created prose that "was absolutely devoid of any charm, one of the main reasons you read." Harrison writes with an abundance of charm and that's reason enough to recommend The Big Seven.

RECOMMENDED

For They Have Sown the Wind by Alessandro Perissinotto

First published in Italy in 2011; published in translation by Piemme on September 16, 2014

Fools always need an enemy to feel powerful. That is why they are always defining and deriding enemies, urging their exclusion from society. Such is the lesson of For They Have Sown the Wind, a novel that takes an unfortunate amount of time to make a meaningful point.

Di Stefano does not know whether his client, Giacomo Musso, is innocent or guilty of the crime for which he has been jailed. He gives Musso some photographs to jog his memory and asks Musso to write down what happened. Instead of getting to the point, Musso puts the pictures in chronological order and writes about each one. The result is a detailed historical account of Musso's relationship with his wife.

Musso, trained as a teacher but employed as a curator of children's exhibits in a science museum, met Shirin while he was working as a part-time bartender in Paris. Shirin was born in France to wealthy Iranian parents. Musso describes their life together, first in France and then in Italy. Musso's love of Shirin forces him to confront his view of modern Iran as a land of "nuclear power plants, weapons, and bloodthirsty scientists with long beards" rather than a country of ski lifts, cell phones, and television game shows.

Racial and religious hatred is the prevalent theme in Musso's account of his experience with Shirin in Italy and France. Although the novel's first half is slow-moving and dry, the story gains interest when Musso explains how, while teaching at a Catholic school in Italy, his marriage to Shirin became a serious career impediment. Religious persecution becomes even more apparent when the town's mayor seeks the exclusion of Shirin from the town's festival on the ground that a Muslim should not wear the town's traditional costumes or pollute its songs. Shirin's atheism makes her no less Islamic in the town's eyes.

In a pivotol scene, Shirin stands up for a Tunisian woman enjoying a beach who refuses to expose the amount of skin demanded by a local ordinance. Alessandro Perissinotto writes with extraordinary insight into the conflict between western feminists who oppose religious traditions that require women to hide their bodies and Muslim women who are comfortable with their cultural traditions and do not view them as instruments of oppression. The novel also engages in an interesting debate about the value of tradition versus the harms that traditions perpetuate.

As much as I found parts of the novel to be compelling, I was put off by an underlying story that struck me as forced and melodramatic. Shirin's evolving attitude toward her relationship with Musso (as opposed to her evolving sense of self) lacks the development needed to make it convincing. Worse than that, when the novel isn't brilliant, it drags. The crime around which the plot is organized is all but lost for most of the story. When it is finally revealed in the closing pages, I thought it was preposterous. The crime exists only to shock the reader in the novel's closing pages, but the motivation for the crime is unconvincing at best. I disliked about half of this novel but absolutely loved the parts that engaged me. My decision to recommend the novel with reservations is a compromise verdict.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS