Ten White Geese by Gerbrand Bakker

Published in the Netherlands in 2010; published in translation by Penguin Books on February 26, 2013 

A Dutch woman who introduces herself to people as Emilie rents an isolated house near Caernarfon, Wales, where she ponders Emily Dickinson. She looks out the window at night, recalling a former lover. She thinks about the uncle who once wandered off into a pond and just stood there, half submerged. She wonders about the geese in the field next to the house; some have gone missing. She fears meeting the owner of the black sheep that have wandered onto her property. Every now and then she is overcome by tears. Why is she in Wales? Perhaps, as Dickinson might have done by writing poetry, Emilie is trying "to hold back time, to make it bearable." Something has clearly gone wrong in Emilie's life, something from which she is fleeing. Soon enough, the story shifts to Holland and we begin to learn what might have prompted her reclusive behavior. It takes some time, however, for an explanation to come into focus, as Gerbrand Bakker teases the reader with bits of the truth, never quite revealing Emilie's story in its entirety.

Although the scenes of Emilie in isolation are somber, those in which characters interact with one another -- Emilie and an inquisitive couple who own a bakery; Emilie and a doctor who doesn't believe her (no one does) when she explains that a badger bit her foot; Emilie's husband, Rutger, and her bickering parents; Rutger and the enigmatic police officer who befriends him -- are almost whimsical. As the novel unfolds, the reader wonders whether Emile will begin to let people into her life. She meets the sheep farmer as well as a student who is mapping a hiking path that runs through her property. Whether she will make a meaningful connection with either of them is a question that contributes much of the novel's dramatic tension.

Ten White Geese is not a plot-heavy story, but it does have some surprises. Although the story is realistic, it has a surrealistic quality. As is true of Dickinson's poetry, Ten White Geese is ambiguous, open to diverse interpretations. How much of the novel is unvarnished truth, how much is perspective (truth told slant, as Dickinson would say), is unclear. A reader who is so inclined will probably be able to discern symbolism in the vulnerable geese, in the foot injuries that two characters suffer, in the black sheep and in a stone circle that occupies Emilie's attention.

Although Emilie, before coming to Wales, was writing about the "all-too-eager canonization" of Dickinson, Bakker is clearly a fan. Ten White Geese quotes lines from Dickinson's poetry, quarrels with Dickinson's biographer, and makes references to the poems that assume the reader's familiarity with at least her best known work. Bees and roses show up in Dickinson's poetry and in Emilie's life. Some of Dickinson's recurring themes (death, pain, separation) are echoed in the story. There are obvious parallels between Emilie and Dickinson. Emilie describes Dickinson as a "puling woman who hid herself away in her house and garden, wordlessly insisting with everything she did or did not do that people should just ignore her, yet fishing for validation like a whimpering child, scared to death that the affection she showed others ... would remain unanswered." She could be describing herself.

While I wouldn't necessarily characterize Bakker's prose as lyrical, there is a poetic sensibility in his careful word choices, in the rhythm of his sentences, and in the novel's hidden meanings. This melancholy novel invites rereading (alongside an anthology of Dickinson's poetry), with each new investigation of the text yielding a new way of understanding the story.

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Perfect Hatred by Leighton Gage

Published by Soho Crime on February 19, 2013

Perfect Hatred is the sixth in a series of police procedurals featuring Mario Silva, Chief Inspector for Brazil's Federal Police. He would like to be investigating an act of terrorism in São Paulo, where a baby carriage, pushed by a Muslim man disguised as a woman, explodes in front of the American consulate, killing dozens. For political reasons, that investigation is left to Hector Costa, who heads the São Paulo field office of the Federal Police, while Silva is sent to Curitiba, where Plínio Saldana, a political candidate for a governorship, has been assassinated by a man who seems to have no motive. Shortly after the candidate's bodyguard kills the assassin, the bodyguard is murdered. A third storyline involves a wealthy landowner named Orlando Muniz. Having killed a priest, Muniz needs to eliminate the prosecutor as well as the primary witness (who happens to be Mario Silva) if he wants to avoid prison.

The assassination story is couched in political and family intrigue. It seems unlikely that the incumbent governor would have orchestrated the killing, given the probability that Saldana's wife would step into his candidacy and ride the sympathy vote to an easy victory. Could Saldana's father or brother, who resented Saldana's anti-corruption platform, have hired the killer? Could his wife or his lover be the culprit? Perhaps a staff member? As in any good police procedural, the list of suspects grows as the novel progresses. The reader will suspect a connection between Saldana's death and the terrorist bombing (on the ground that interweaving plotlines always grow together), but what could it be? The answer is both surprising and satisfying.

An interesting issue arises from a character's belief that terrorism suspects forfeit their right to a fair trial by engaging in acts of terrorism (a view that, of course, assumes the authorities never err in their identification of terrorists). When a Mossad agent commits a double murder (in a fashion that echoes an act of terrorism), nobody who might be regarded as a "good guy" seems particularly troubled. Silva's sensible position (in the abstract, at least) is that the police should try harder to find the evidence needed to prove guilt rather than fretting that the guilty might go free. Yet, when a murder suspect is in a life-threatening situation, Silva must make a difficult choice whether to save him. Whether Silva makes the right decision is the kind of moral question that spells the difference between a thriller that is ordinary and one that makes the reader think.

A number of characters (many of them police investigators) circulate through the novel. Except for Muniz, who is "a psychopath with the morals of a feral cat," the characters don't have much personality. Still, this is a plot-driven novel, and the plot is entertaining if unlikely. The twin investigations are methodical, but they move the story forward at a steady pace. Occasional scenes of violence are written in vivid language, heightening the drama, and the South American settings are described in colorful detail. Despite the plotline involving terrorism, Leighton Gage is careful to avoid stereotyping or denigrating Muslims. The terrorism story is nevertheless unoriginal, featuring caricatures of terrorists, while the effort Muniz makes to kill Silva is uninspired. The best parts of Perfect Hatred kept me guessing and, since that's what a police procedural should do, I recommend it to fans of the genre.

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The Burning Air by Erin Kelly

Published by Pamela Dorman Books on February 21, 2013 

I was prepared to abandon The Burning Air in its early stages, thinking the story was the sort of clichéd family drama that just doesn't appeal to me. I'm glad I stuck with it. The plot is anything but clichéd, and the drama is both powerful and convincing.

Lydia has a tumor and expects to die soon, a fact she has concealed from her husband and children. She has been keeping journals all her life, and now feels compelled to write about the shameful event she has long kept hidden. This device is a familiar start to a novel, a suspense builder that leaves the reader wondering about Lydia's dark secret. The next sections follow Sophie, Lydia's daughter, as she copes with Lydia's hospitalization and death. Lydia's secret lurks in the background -- or has it disappeared altogether? -- as the story evolves into the saga of the MacBride family.

The first quarter of The Burning Air seems to foreshadow a mundane story about a dysfunctional family, complete with resentments and infidelity and Sophie's mental health issues. All of this is familiar territory, but the story takes on a new dimension when Sophie's baby goes missing, along with her brother's new girlfriend. The missing child energizes the story while giving the reader cause to feel sympathy for Sophie, whose litany of woes threatened to make her too tedious to bear. But how, the reader wonders, does this missing child relate to Lydia and her terrible secret?

Erin Kelly leaves the reader with a bit of a cliffhanger as the focus suddenly shifts from the present to the past and from Sophie to a new character, Darcy Kellaway, whose story is told in the first person. It is an engrossing psychological study of a life gone wrong. The characterization of homeschooled Darcy and of Darcy's domineering mother is detailed and convincing. Kelly makes it easy to understand why Darcy develops a twisted, life-dominating obsession, and watching him dedicate his life to revenge is fascinating. Kelly teases the reader with occasional reminders of Lydia's secret and rather dramatically reconfirms its existence, even dropping a hint as to what it involves, but it remains a mystery as the story circles back to Sophie's missing baby. The final sections of Darcy's story make it possible for the reader to reinterpret seemingly inconsequential events that take place earlier in the novel.

Just when the plot seems to be coming to a climax, the story again changes point of view, this time focusing on Lydia's husband, Rowan. Picking up with the discovery of the missing child, the story moves forward at a furious pace, ending only after another shift of perspective, this time to the person responsible for the baby's disappearance (and for whom it is impossible not to feel sympathy). We finally learn Lydia's secret, and it ties up a dangling plot thread in a satisfying conclusion to a skillfully crafted story.

In short, a book I nearly quit reading in its early stages became increasingly intense as the story neared its midpoint and absorbed my attention in its second half. The Burning Air is a family drama but there's nothing mundane about it. The characters are believable and Kelly's prose is elegant. The story takes unexpected turns but never strays from the path of plausibility. In fact, it's the "this could really happen" vibe that makes the story so chilling. After a slow start, The Burning Air turned out to be an intelligent thriller.

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Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines

First published in 2010; republished by Broadway Books on February 26, 2013

Ex-Heroes was originally published in 2010 by Permuted Press, an independent publisher specializing in zombie apocalypse fiction. The novel developed something of a cult following, leading to its republication by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, which is a subsidiary of the world's largest publisher, Random House. That's quite a step up the literary ladder.

In the crowded house of zombie apocalypse novels, Ex-Heroes adds a twist. The apocalypse is set in a universe where superheroes live (with a demon thrown in for good measure). George Bailey was the first superhero, and he's conventional: super strength, bulletproof skin, the ability to fly (or, more accurately, to glide), coughs fire. He called himself the Mighty Dragon, a bit weenie as heroic names go. After the Mighty Dragon appeared, superheroes started to pop up regularly. Gorgon transfixes people with his gaze and steals their strength. Zzzap enters an energy state that makes him sizzle like a sparkler. Cerberus is your basic armored warrior, a female Iron Man. Beauty pageant winner Stealth is a heavily armed version of The Batman. Cairax is a demon with questionable judgment. Banzai is a female Jackie Chan. Midknight does something with an EMP field. I never quite figured out what Lady Bee is all about.

The zombies (known as exes, for ex-humans, because it isn't politically correct to call them zombies) control Los Angeles. The superheroes protect the apocalypse survivors, who take refuge in a Hollywood movie studio. Some superheroes die fighting zombies. Some become zombies. Josh Garcetti, once known as the Regenerator, lost his ability to heal others at the start of the apocalypse. This forces him to do his doctoring the old fashioned way, but he's nonetheless integral to the story.

When the superheroes aren't fighting zombies, they're battling the Seventeens (a gang of bad guys) and the Boss of Los Angeles. Things go from bad to worse when zombies appear who seem to have retained their intelligence, allied (of course) with the Seventeens. As one of the heroes observes, "just when you thought the walking dead couldn't get any creepier," they do.

Peter Clines writes in a breezy style that lends itself to a fast pace and nonstop action. Yet Clines mixes action with emotion, never forgetting that stories are about characters, not just the things characters do. For a zombie apocalypse novel, the writing is impressively intelligent. Clines even supplies an explanation for the zombie apocalypse, and it's credible ... at least, it's credible if you accept the premise of superheroes. And zombies. And demons.

Clines' sense of humor assures that the story doesn't take itself too seriously. The way the studio's guards brag about the celebrity zombies they've killed, and compete for the biggest celebrity, is hilarious (they consider zombie Alex Trebek to be a huge score). It's necessary to overlook some gaps in logic and the absence of explanation for certain things that happen during the course of the story, but that's acceptable in a novel that isn't logic-based.

As you'd expect in a superhero story, there are superhero clichés, including George's moral reservations about killing evil people (the ones who aren't already dead) because that's what separates the good guys from the bad. In a story that depends on action and humor, however, clichés aren't terribly disturbing. In fact, George's idealism -- a throwback to the early versions of DC's heroes, before they became dark and gloomy and self-loathing -- is refreshing. It is without irony that George comes to be known as St. George. The return to idealism was one reason I enjoyed Ex-Heroes, despite my general befuddlement about the ever-expanding zombie apocalypse phenomenon.

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The Office of Mercy by Ariel Djanikian

Published by Viking on February 21, 2013 

Although the protagonist of The Office of Mercy is twenty-four, the writing style, themes, and plot are characteristic of Young Adult fiction. That's neither good nor bad, in my view, but it surprised me since the novel doesn't seem to be marketed as YA. (In that regard, the promotional comparisons to Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro are unwarranted, although Suzanne Collins is more apt.)

Natasha Wiley works for the Office of Mercy, stationed in a wing attached to the Dome atop the underground settlement known as America-Five. The settlement is dedicated to "World Peace, Eternal Life, and All Suffering Ended," at least for those residing within its walls. Outside the utopian settlement live the (supposedly) starving and disease-ridden Tribespeople. Natasha's job is to monitor the nomadic Tribespeople who come within fifty miles of America-Five, using an array of cameras and sensors. Killing them (preferably with missile strikes) is the work of her colleagues in the Office of Mercy.

The Alphas, the generation that orchestrated the Storm (a genocidal extermination of nearly everyone not living underground), have the status of gods within the settlement. Why and how the Storm happened, and how the Alphas managed to convert underground bunkers into settlements, are largely unanswered questions, despite a cursory discussion of a failed past that seems to have been based on Marxism. In any event, Natasha is part of generation Epsilon; Jeffrey, her immediate supervisor (and romantic interest), is a Gamma. For reasons that are never adequately explained, new generations are grown on a schedule created by the Office of Reproduction. Cell replacement has all but conquered death while other technological advances assure an ample food supply for the settlement's inhabitants.

Like the other underground settlements, America-Five is governed by the Ethical Code, a book that has supplanted the Bible. Over the course of the novel, without the expository information dump that is prevalent in dystopian fiction, we learn how people like Natasha have been trained to think: their disdain for nature's beauty, their need to guard against empathy, their belief that those who live outside the Dome are not people but animals enduring hollow lives of suffering. As is common in dystopian novels, those who stray from correct thoughts are subjected to coercive "reeducation."

The novel's initial phases seem to set it on a predictable path, as Natasha struggles to cope with her hidden and forbidden doubts about the Ethical Code, particularly its insistence that, for the Tribespeople, death is better than pain. Like the plot, Natasha's immaturity, her insecurity about her abilities and her anxiety about whether Jeffrey reciprocates her romantic feelings, reminded me of YA fiction. Natasha's starry-eyed approach to Jeffrey is more indicative of a fourteen-year-old girl than a twenty-four-year old woman.

Midway through the book, a contrived plot twist that forces Natasha to redefine herself while forcing the reader to sympathize with Jeffrey left me rolling my eyes. Natasha's naiveté when dealing with the Tribespeople is flabbergasting. When the story reached a climactic moment that inexplicably shocks Natasha, I was muttering, "Well, what did you think was going to happen?"

Only the final chapter saves The Office of Mercy from mediocrity and predictability. For much of the novel, I thought the story would be about Natasha's moral growth, the story of a young woman in an insular society learning to think for herself. She seemed to be learning simplistic lessons like "killing the innocent is bad" and "empathy is good." In an unexpected twist, the story turns out to be something quite different. If The Office of Mercy is meant to teach a lesson -- and I think it is -- the teacher isn't Natasha at all, and the lesson is refreshingly ambiguous. I'm not sure every reader will appreciate the bleakness and uncertainty of the novel's last chapter, but I admired Ariel Djanikian's courage in telling a dystopian tale that has a dystopian ending. Perhaps that's why the novel isn't classified as YA when everything else about it, from the unchallenging writing style to the relatively unsophisticated characters, screams YA. In the end, I would recommend this to young adults (and, with some reservations, to older readers as well) just for its unconventional take on dystopian fiction.

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