The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma

Published by Viking on March 21, 2013

Whether The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is a novel (as the title advertises) or ten connected short stories (plus versions of a preface and epilog) isn’t entirely clear -- the structure (each story has its own title and is complete within itself) and the changing names of the characters suggest the latter, while the unitary themes (and a wristwatch that appears in nearly every story) imply the former -- but I don’t think it matters.  Kristopher Jansma plays with form in a way that reminds us he’s writing about creators of fiction, inventers who shape and reshape reality to suit their own ends.

Although Jansma pokes fun at the writer’s life and at literary criticism, his stories are serious dissections of recurring characters at various stages of their lives.  The stories share the same narrator, a writer who rarely writes, and who has lost every book he’s ever written.  The first story describes a seminal event in the narrator’s young life, one to which he often returns in subsequent stories, although a key detail eventually changes.  What begins as a cornball tale of class-defying love becomes an insightful story about fleeting moments and the impact they make on our lives.  The next four stories revolve around the narrator’s friendship with two other characters.  The narrator meets Julian in Freshman English and they bond over their mutual love of writing.  Julian eventually finds success that eludes the narrator.  Julian’s friend, a beautiful girl who becomes a successful actress, also bonds with the narrator, although not in the way the narrator would like.

Jansma uses those friendships to explore the role of a writer.  One story asks how much literal truth a writer should reveal in a work of fiction -- a vexing question that results from his decision to base a story upon his relationship with the actress.  Another poses the flip side of that question:  how does a writer, intent upon the creation of illusion, avoid hiding from the truth?  One story, purportedly the only story the narrator managed to get published, casts the narrator as a character in his own fiction.  The fifth story, in which the narrator contemplates ruining the actress’ wedding, asks whether he is motivated by love or by the desire to control her like a character in a story.

If the first five stories (collected under the subtitle “What Was Lost”) highlight the hope, promise, and angst of youth, the second five (subtitled “What Was Found”) display the down slope of life’s arc.  The narrator is now a failed writer who has managed to find a job teaching at a second-rate university by assuming his more successful friend’s identity -- the latest in a series of lies the narrator tells about his name.  The narrator’s approach to teaching journalism is to teach the art of writing fiction -- the art of lying.  By arguing against the notion that art contains truth, he hopes to convince himself of the opposite.  Yet whether the narrator is capable of discerning the difference between truth and fiction -- whether, in the end, there is a difference -- is one of the book's central questions.

The narrator moves from his teaching job to ghostwriting term papers to writing the unauthorized biography of his successful friend, all the while making faltering steps to write meaningful fiction of his own.  His friend (Julian of the earlier stories becomes Jeffrey in the later ones) has disappeared (doing “a full-Salinger”) after producing a single novel, a work of genius that is both popular and critically acclaimed.  As he explores his friend’s life, the narrator begins to wonder whether he is his friend’s doppelgänger, but the reader suspects that the friend is the narrator’s alter ego (or vice versa).

The narrator visits Africa and Iceland in stories eight and nine, but the last story takes place in Luxembourg, a country that excites no expectations and therefore deprives the characters of the pleasure of feeling let down.  Perhaps that is a metaphor for the narrator’s life -- full of expectations and disappointment -- but it might be Luxembourg’s national motto that sums him up:  “We wish to remain what we are.”  For much of the book, the narrator is in motion, but he isn’t moving forward, while his friend is often moving in reverse.  The last story asks whether that’s something they can change -- whether they can find themselves.

Viewed individually, Jansma’s stories are fun and insightful and occasionally brilliant.  Viewed collectively, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards has the heft of a serious novel, one that builds characters word by word until they become whole, then knocks them apart and rebuilds them -- as does life.  It is one of the best fictional explorations of what it means to be a writer that I’ve encountered.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Savage Boy by Nick Cole

Published by Harper Voyager on February 26, 2013

The Savage Boy is set in the same post-apocalyptic future as The Old Man and the Wasteland. We learn a bit more about the cause of the apocalypse than the first novel reveals, but that's secondary to the very personal stories that occupy the heart of these novels.

Before he died from radiation poisoning, Staff Sergeant Presley told Boy to go west, to find the Army, to tell them there's nothing left. But it's been more than twenty years since Presley set out from Oakland to search for the remnants of a government in Washington, D.C. Boy carries Presley's map, the word "Gone" written next to many cities, others marked with "slavers" and "plague" and "white supremacists." San Francisco and Reno belong to the Chinese. As Boy makes his way west, he hears Presley's advising voice as if accompanied by a ghost. Presley was his teacher, his mentor, the closest thing he had to a father.

During his journey, Boy meets a gang led by Rock Star and an army of salvagers led by MacRaven. Both leaders want Boy to help them fight the Chinese. Boy's own agenda is to carry out Presley's mission, although he wonders whether anything could be left of the American Army.

Boy's past, his life before Presley, is cloudy. The journey he takes is largely a search for his own identity, a search for meaning. The war that destroyed the country is long over and Presley is gone. It's time for Boy to pick his own battles, to choose his own allies, to make a life that is his own. It might even be time for Boy to think for himself, to reject some of Presley's teachings.

Although The Savage Boy lacks the degree of pathos that makes The Old Man and the Wasteland so compelling, in part because it is easier to relate to the Old Man than to the mostly silent Boy, the story is not without emotion. The last third of the novel develops an odd love story that isn't entirely convincing (although after an apocalypse, an exchange of glances might be all it takes to fall in love). I did, however, like the theme: to find his identity, the disabled Boy needs to find someone who makes him complete. The last several chapters send the story in an entirely different direction as Boy's life again changes course. Although I didn't feel the same affection for Boy that I felt for the Old Man, the unpredictable plot consistently held my attention.

The Savage Boy is written in the same stark, straightforward, fast moving style that characterizes The Old Man and the Wasteland. Like the first novel, this one blends action and philosophy. I think the first novel delivers a stronger message, but The Savage Boy has enough depth to set it apart from most post-apocalyptic fiction. Although it works nicely as a stand-alone story, the ending ties the second novel in with the first. The last few paragraphs will therefore be more meaningful to readers who are familiar with the first novel.

RECOMMENDED

Bear is Broken by Lachlan Smith

Published by Mysterious Press on February 5, 2013 

Bear is Broken opens with Leo Maxwell describing the scene as someone shoots Leo's brother, Teddy, in the back of the head. Teddy is a successful criminal defense attorney in San Francisco and Leo, having recently passed the bar, hopes to follow in his footsteps. True to form, the police make clear their hatred of criminal lawyers -- particularly Teddy, who successfully defended a man who killed a police officer -- and show little sympathy for Leo. Fed up with the police (and wondering whether they have something to do with his shooting) and with self-righteous prosecutors, Leo decides to conduct his own investigation of his brother's death. He also has the chance to step into Teddy's shoes, to be a "real lawyer" for the first time. As much as Bear is Broken is a legal thriller, it is also the story of Leo's evolution, his entry into adulthood, his transition from student to practitioner.

The unexplained shooting of Teddy may or may not be related to Leo's father, who is serving a sentence for killing Leo's mother, a crime that Teddy always insisted their father didn't commit. Leo's reaction to the shooting is further complicated by his feelings about Teddy, a mixture of love and resentment, and by his growing fear that Teddy was a supremely unethical lawyer. Teddy may have wronged a former client, providing a motive for murder. But there's no shortage of suspects, including the mysterious young woman who shoots Leo with a Taser and her mysterious brother and her mysterious father, and Teddy's mysterious investigator and his mysterious secretary, and a mysterious hooker ....

The plot isn't so much complex or convoluted as it is filled with red herrings, multiple suspects who may or may not have had anything to do with Teddy's shooting. Leo changes his mind about who shot his brother more often than most people change their underwear. In the end, although a couple of plot threads are left dangling, the story works its way to a satisfying conclusion.

Leo finds himself with multiple conflicts of interest as he (1) sleeps with a woman who might have shot his brother and (2) represents a man charged with shooting his brother (although only at an arraignment), even though (3) the principle witness against the charged assailant is Leo's father. I'm not sure I bought any of that, and I'm confident I wouldn't want to hire a lawyer who demonstrates such poor judgment, but it makes for a reasonably good story.

Lachlan Smith has a clear understanding of the dynamics of criminal trials and of the psychology of lawyers and juries. The trial scenes (of which there are few) are some of the best in the novel. At times the writing style is a little trashy ("I gave a cry of pain and astonishment. ... This cannot be. This simply cannot be."), indicative of a first time novelist. For the most part, however, Smith is a capable writer. The novel's pace is steady and his characters are believable. Bear is Broken is a reasonably good second-tier legal thriller from a writer who shows promise.

RECOMMENDED

Dark Tide by Elizabeth Haynes

Published by Harper Paperbacks on March 12, 2013 

Having quit her jobs in software sales and pole dancing, Genevieve Shipley lives on a barge in a marina on the River Medway, a lifestyle that is more sedate than the one she left behind in London. She throws a party on her barge to show off the current stage of its renovation and wonders why her friend Caddy doesn't make it. Later that night, she finds Caddy's body in the water, bumping up against her boat. Genevieve calls her former lover, Dylan, who has been absent for months, leaving Genevieve in charge of a mysterious package that he promised to reclaim. The contents of the package and the reason for Caddy's death supply the twin mysteries that are meant to supply the novel's suspense.

While we're waiting for the main story to advance, Genevieve fills us in on her backstory, her relationships, and her part-time work in the lucrative field of exotic dance. Genevieve's background is constructed carefully and credibly. The buildup is, in fact, the best part of the novel.

Suspense, however, is in short supply. Genevieve is threatened from time to time, but never in a way that suggests her life is actually at risk. She interacts with characters who may be not be what they seem -- a helpful neighbor, a police officer she takes to bed -- but the story lacks the element of surprise.

Although Genevieve is blindingly naïve for a woman who is often described as smart, it's easy to feel sympathy for her predicament. (Some readers might have difficulty feeling sympathy for an exotic dancer; if you're one of those, this probably isn't the book for you.) While it's easy to sympathize with Genevieve, it's less easy to care about her. She spends most of the novel in a gloomy fog, doing nothing to make her situation better. When she's not mooning over Dylan she's mooning over the police officer who becomes bedroom Dylan's substitute. Instead of being proactive, Genevieve makes unanswered phone calls and waits for a man to come along and rescue her.

In the end, a sentence that begins "Eventually his hand between my thighs made me forget everything ..." tells you everything you need to know about Genevieve. She forgets her common sense. She forgets to question obvious lies. She forgets to be smart. She forgets to be resourceful. She spends most of the novel longing for a hand between her thighs. In that sense, Dark Tide tries to be a romance as much as a suspense novel, and doesn't fully succeed at being either one.

The resolution of the mysteries is anticlimactic. There isn't much of a mystery at all, which makes the story, after a strong start, disappointingly dull. Genevieve finally shows some initiative toward the novel's end in a reasonably tense action scene. Unfortunately, a romantic triangle, rather than suspense, remains the novel's focus. Perhaps the triangle is meant to be suspenseful -- will Genevieve end up with Dylan or the cop? -- but I just didn't care. In the end, although I liked the setup, the suspense fizzles out. Fans of chick lit might like it more than I did.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Fever by Mary Beth Keane

Published by Scribner on March 12, 2013 

Fever reads like a well-written biography. In fact, had Fever been written as nonfiction rather than a novel, I would be more enthusiastic about it. Despite her fluid prose and her ability to create atmospheric scenes, Mary Beth Keane's attempt to dramatize the life of Typhoid Mary falls flat. Perhaps that's because the novel remains true to the figure upon which it is based, a stubborn woman whose disagreeable personality makes it difficult to summon the empathy that the most memorable novels inspire.

In 1907, a doctor in Manhattan investigating typhoid outbreaks noticed a common link that joined many of the afflicted families: Mary Mallon had been their cook. Although Mary appears to be healthy, she is forced into the typhoid ward of a hospital. She refuses to believe that she could be a carrier of the disease. When doctors try to coerce her into consenting to the removal of her gallbladder, she reacts with understandable hostility. The authorities respond by quarantining Mary in Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island. She eventually seeks her freedom in court, loses, and spends three years on the island, steadfast in her belief that she is not a typhoid carrier.

At its best, Mary's story becomes one of an isolated woman who is on the losing side of class warfare, a headstrong worker who refused to accept the moralistic piety of her employers, who protested the ill-treatment of cooks, who dared to wear a hat identical to one owned by the lady of the house. Certainly, if Mary had been a well-educated daughter of a prosperous family rather than an Irish immigrant who lived with a man to whom she was not married, her treatment by the public health authorities and by the courts would have been less callous. The impact of class and social identity on public health decisions is one of the novel's important themes. Another is the conflict between the need to protect society from disease and the obligation to protect the liberty of American citizens. The evidence that Mary was a typhoid carrier is convincing, but the same evidence suggests that she only transmitted the disease by cooking for others. It clearly wasn't fair to Mary to hold her in quarantine when other carriers were allowed to retain their freedom.

Mary was released in 1910 on the condition that she work in a laundry, a position that Mary regarded as a backward step in her life. Given her denial that she made anyone ill, it isn't surprising that Mary abandoned the laundry for a job in a bakery, a job that she kept until health authorities found her. Fearing arrest, Mary changed her name, stopped checking in with the Department of Health, and found a job as a cook in a maternity hospital. Taken into custody after a typhoid outbreak in the hospital, Mary was quarantined at North Brother Island again in 1915.

Although Keane appears to be meticulous in her devotion to historical accuracy, she tells Mary's story with a curious absence of passion. There are moments of drama in Fever (a devastating fire is one of the best) but they are collateral to Mary's plight. The legal proceedings that took place after Mary had been quarantined for more than two years are reported with the dispassion of a journalist, as are Mary's experiences in quarantine.

The fault undoubtedly lies with the character Keane chose to write about. Mary is stubborn and abrasive, qualities that do not endear her to the reader. Part of the novel involves Mary's on-again/off-again love affair with Alfred, but Alfred is no prize. While it's no surprise that such miserable creatures were drawn together, reading about their relationship is almost painful.

It's difficult to make an emotional investment in such a depressing character. It's equally difficult to generate sympathy for someone who doomed herself by refusing for so long to accept the obvious truth about her condition, and by failing to follow the simple rule that would have assured her continued freedom: don't work as a cook. Still, Keane gave me the sense of knowing Mary, of understanding her as a person, and she makes an effort to humanize Mary in the final chapters. Had the novel been written with less detachment, Keane might have been able to make me care more about Mary. Perhaps understanding her is enough (it would be in a work of nonfiction), but a truly great novel would have made me feel more empathy for Mary, despite her disagreeable nature.

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