Bitter Eden by Tatamkhulu Afrika

First published in the UK in 2002; published by Picador on February 25, 2014

A letter and a mysterious package arrive for Thomas Smith, an aging, long-married man living in South Africa. The letter forces unwanted memories to surface, memories of Tom's capture and imprisonment, first by Italians and then by Germans, while serving as an intelligence officer in the North Africa Campaign during World War II. That brief introductory scene is followed by a captivating examination of a man who is bound not just by the fences and razor wire of prison camps (bitter Edens policed by fallen angels), but by unwanted and uncontrollable emotions.

In the context of confinement, Bitter Eden centers on Tom's struggle to define love and to separate his love for another man from sexual desire. As grim days pass in the Italian camp, Tom reluctantly forms relationships with two men. One is a friendship with a mothering gay man named Douglas to whom he feels no attraction but comes to regard with affection. The other involves an attraction (and eventual devotion) to a married man named Danny who is (for much of the novel) hostile to openly gay men. Tom and Danny bond naturally, having both been victims of paternal abuse. Tom does his best to deny his feelings for Danny, or to define them as nonsexual, a challenging task when Danny sleeps next to him in a platonic but naked embrace. Jealousies are aroused and magnified when a gay artist paints Tom in the nude and when Tom begins to perform with the openly gay cast of the prison theater.

Bitter Eden deals with a subject that might discomfort some readers, but does so with sensitivity and compassion and gorgeously descriptive prose. Yet no reader should be made uncomfortable by a story that is ultimately about love, "an emotion too often threatened by ennui to attain to the grand passion for which I have long since ceased to hope." Tatamkhulu Afrika (who was, like Tom, a POW in Italy and Germany) vividly conveys the drudgery and deprivation and fear that pervades life in a prison camp, as well as the uncertain life that follows liberation, "the now's new ambiences, changed circumstances, grown alien strictures and codes." The story is dramatic and eventful but most of the events are small and the story's power resides in their accumulative impact on Tom. The extreme circumstances that give rise to Tom's self-examination raise profound questions about the nature of love and bonding under trying circumstances.

RECOMMENDED

The Troop by Nick Cutter

Published by Gallery Books on February 25, 2014

This is the second tapeworm novel I’ve read in the last few months. As trends go, I doubt that tapeworms are likely to replace zombies, but they are sufficiently creepy and disgusting to lend themselves to thriller/horror novels. The Troop gives the tapeworm theme an interesting spin. The story involves a bunch of boys stranded on an island. It’s sort of like Lord of the Flies … with tapeworms.

Scoutmaster Tim Riggs had taken his troop of 14-year-olds to Falstaff Island for a camping trip. They believe they are the only humans on the island until Tim encounters Tom Padgett: a seriously thin man who is driven to eat, constantly and insatiably. And he’ll eat anything. Tim, a doctor, is disturbed to notice that something seems to be moving under the man’s skin. He doesn’t know that Padgett (known in the press as The Hungry Man or Typhoid Tom) is “a runaway biological weapon,” the product of an experiment gone wrong. Or maybe it hasn’t.

Fortunately, Boy Scouts know they need to Be Prepared, even for monster tapeworms. The Scouts are a diverse bunch. Three of the five are nice enough, one is a typical alpha pack bully, and the fifth is almost as monstrous as the killer tapeworms. Teachers expect to see Shelley’s “slack and pallid moon-face staring up at them from an oil-change pit at Mr. Lube” but Shelley seems destined for a crueler life.

True horror lies not in external threats but in the darkness that lives within us. True horror is reflected in the way people behave under extreme circumstances and in the extreme behavior of people who have been entrusted with leadership. Nick Cutter occasionally moves away from events on the island to reveal the cause of Padgett’s tapeworm infection and the government’s response to it through a series of journal entries, hearing transcripts, and magazine articles. Those passages remind us that not all monsters are artificially created.

Cutter has a flair for the truly vile, which is what readers generally want in horror fiction. His description of an unorthodox surgical procedure and its aftermath is vivid and intense. Death permeates the novel but the story is ultimately about the tenacity of life. Cutter uses the plot to address difficult moral questions but, in the end, a depressing story is enjoyable because those questions are presented through well drawn characters.

RECOMMENDED

Red 1-2-3 by John Katzenbach

Published by Mysterious Press on January 7, 2014

Red 1-2-3 is built on a clever premise. An undistinguished writer of crime fiction who happens to be a serial killer decides to write an instruction manual for serial killers. He has selected three redheads as victims to illustrate his methods. He intends to commit and memorialize the perfect crime because, well, he's getting old and feels the need for a legacy. By killing three women within hours of each other, each in a different way and after warning them of their fate, the writer believes he will take his place in the annals of serial killer history and launch his book to bestseller status.

Each Red receives a letter in the mail that begins with the opening of Little Red Riding Hood and ends with "You have been selected to die." One Red is a lonely doctor who performs remarkably unfunny standup comedy routines as a hobby. One is a former teacher and current lush whose husband and daughter died in an accident. The third is an angry high school student. They could form a support group for distressed redheads (which is sort of what they do). The would-be killer, of course, is the Big Bad Wolf. His wife, who is blissfully ignorant of her husband's hobby during most of their marriage (or perhaps she's willfully stupid), is Mrs. Big Bad Wolf.

John Katzenbach creates a strong psychological profile of the killer, making him a more substantial character than any of the Reds, who tend to be stereotypes. The sullen teenager is the most competent of the three Reds, but her notion of how to deal with an anonymous letter is an eye-roller. The simplest solution would be for each intended victim to change her hair color, thus screwing up the killer's theme and perhaps sending the killer in search of a new plan, but that never occurs to them. They instead contrive a plan that only the looniest residents of Thrillerworld would attempt. I guess going to the police (only one of the three does so, and only once) would be less interesting but it would certainly be more sensible than the plan the Reds hatch. Fortunately, they aren't dealing with a killer or is particularly energetic or even particularly bright. He is convinced that the police will not connect the three killings as long as he commits each murder in a different way. Even if he had not sent each Red a threatening letter and You Tube video, would the police really not connect the apparently unmotivated slayings of three redheads in the same city at roughly the same time?

Unfortunately, this is a thriller without many thrills. For most of the novel, the plot lacks action and builds little tension. I spent quite a bit of my reading time wondering when the killer would get out of his writing chair and actually kill someone. You know the story is getting dull when you start rooting for the killer just so something will happen. The ending is a huge anti-climax. Despite Katzenbach's fluid writing and the novel's interesting premise, the story didn't grab me. The fundamental problems is that Katzenbach didn't make me care what happened to the redheads. That's a serious interest-killer in a novel that pits intended victims against a serial killer.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Deep Winter by Samuel W. Gailey

Published by Blue Rider Press on February 20, 2014

Deep Winter is a character-driven crime novel. The crime is secondary to the impact it has on the characters. The story has a Cormac McCarthy feel in its exploration of troubled and isolated lives. Few of the characters feel they have any ability to control their destinies. Events overtake them and they don't cope well. The plot is simple but filled with tension that elevates sharply as the story nears its conclusion. A significant amount of killing takes place, yet the story acts as a reminder of the value of life -- and of living it without judgment, pride, or selfishness.

Now middle-aged, Danny Bedford and Mindy Knolls have known each other since their childhood in Wyalusing, a town they never left. Deep Winter begins with Danny standing in Mindy's trailer looking down at her dead body. The narrative then moves back a few weeks, allowing the reader to follow the events that precede Mindy's death.

Danny suffered brain damage as a child. While the book is written in the third person, the chapters that follow Danny tend to use simple declarative sentences and language when echoing Danny's thoughts. The thoughts of the other small town characters are far from eloquent but the prose becomes more interesting in the chapters that do not focus on Danny.

Some chapters follow Deputy Sheriff Mike Sokowski, a redneck jerk who spends his days belittling Danny, using Mindy, and dealing weed. We meet additional characters in the novel's second half, most involved with law enforcement, who help carry the novel beyond Mindy's death. Whether justice will be done, or whether injustice will prevail, is the question that drives the plot. Yet what constitutes "justice" is often unclear, a point Deep Winter makes with force.

Whether people can change is another strong theme of Deep Winter. Some can, some can't, some won't. Many of the characters are torn apart by guilt. Other characters don't let themselves feel guilt. Key characters reach a point that requires them to make a choice about something that is fundamental to their lives, a choice about the kind of person they want to be. Some choose wisely. Others refuse to recognize the ability to choose. Diversity in character development and a recognition that different people respond to a moral crisis in different ways is the novel's strength. Readers looking for likable characters will find some in Deep Winter, as well as a truly despicable character and some who are flawed but worth rooting for. Samuel Gailey juggles the characters with more skill, and gives them greater depth, than is common in a first novel. He deserves an audience for his debut effort.

RECOMMENDED

The Martian by Andy Weir

Self-published digitially in 2011; published by Crown on February 11, 2014

The Martian is written in a lively voice that I can easily imagine belonging to a frustrated engineer. It isn't an eloquent voice but it isn't meant to be. Mark Watney has a right to feel frustrated as he narrates his story, having been (understandably) left for dead on the surface of Mars by a crew escaping from a hellacious sandstorm. The base in which the crew planned to live is intact but the communications dish Watney needs to contact Earth is destroyed in the storm. Another crew is scheduled to land (although far from his current location) in four years. Watney has enough food to survive for about a year. Seems like the poor guy should starve to death if he doesn't choose a more peaceful death by morphine, but Watney turns out to be a resourceful scientist who doesn't easily give up on life.

New characters are eventually introduced as the action shifts to Earth and to NASA, which eventually notices that the Rover left behind on Mars seems to have moved. The parts of the story that take place on Earth are surprisingly strong in their own way, and a sharp contrast to the individualistic story that Watney tells. Like the rest of the novel, the Earthbound story seems realistic, from the distress that people feel about Watney to the distress they feel at managing a public relations nightmare.

On one level, The Martian is a survival story, sort of an updated Robinson Crusoe on Mars without the monkey. But it's also a pure science fiction story, with a refreshing emphasis on science. There are no zombies here. At the same time, explaining the science doesn't bog down the story, as science-heavy sf too often does. This is fundamentally a story about people and crisis management. Andy Weir put an enormous amount of thought into The Martian, from commemorative stamps honoring Watney that need to be recalled to overtime funding for NASA scientists who work desperately to save his life.

The Martian strikes me as a novel that should have broad appeal. Fans of geek-speak who think science and technical innovation are the most important aspects of sf will find loads to enjoy. Readers who think sf needs to have human interest to differentiate it from a technical manual will find it here in plentiful supply. Readers who only want to spend time with likable characters will love Watney (he's a funny guy). Even readers who like action-filled plots should be happy. The action doesn't consist of battles with aliens using laser swords but the struggle for survival creates a fair amount of tension and keeps the story moving at a good pace. Readers who crave zombies will be disappointed but I suspect most sf fans will be as happy with The Martian as I was.

The Martian ends with a discussion of human nature. Humans can be truly awful to each other, but most of us have an instinctive desire to help one another, even to help complete strangers when lives are at risk, and to risk our own lives to do it. Through Mark Watney, Weir reminds us of our better natures. According to Watney, people who care about other human beings "massively outnumber" people who don't. I think that's probably true. It's a great reminder, movingly illustrated in an emotionally enriching story. I suspect The Martian is destined to be regarded as a classic work of sf. That's pretty remarkable for a book that was originally self-published.

RECOMMENDED