There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Published in translation by Penguin Books on January 29, 2013 

"There was nothing but pain in store for her, yet she cried with happiness and couldn't stop." That sentence, from Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's "A Murky Fate," encapsulates the desperately conflicted women who haunt her bittersweet stories. A woman in Moscow dresses up for New Year's Eve but has nowhere to go. A woman tries to commit suicide after a man she picks up in a bar pees the bed. A woman grows up in such a tormented household that, after leaving, no amount of adversity can cast a shadow upon her happiness. A girl walks like a soldier with her arms down at her sides to hide the sweat stains in the armpits of her mother's hand-me-down dress. A few minutes of "half-naked passion on the cramped kitchen sofa" lead to childbirth and a "grim foreboding" about a "softhearted boy without will or ambition."

Nearly all the stories in this volume are about women. A few of the women (usually friends or relatives of the main character) are shrews. Some are emotionally or mentally stunted. Most are victims -- of abuse or poverty or incest or unfaithful lovers. Nearly all of them persevere; they have no choice. Some of the stories are dark comedies, others are just dark. Occasionally the stories are about women in full but, in many cases, we see only small, eventful slices of their lives. Some of the stories left me wanting more, some are more insightful than others, a couple seem pointless, but the best ones are a powerful indictment of a society that places little value on impoverished women, and a wry examination of women who do not adequately value themselves. If the stories have a shared message, it isn't "love conquers all" -- for Petrushevskaya's women, love simply conquers.  It defeats them.

My favorite story, "Tamara's Baby," is about an arrogant, parasitic man and the elderly woman who treats him like a child. Two other standouts are "Young Berries," which tells of a girl who survives the cruelty of her fellow students and gains the appreciation of a boy, and the ironically titled "A Happy Ending," about a woman who has a plan to leave the husband (she calls him "Clapper") who gave her gonorrhea.

Petrushevskaya tells her stories in prose that derives power from its simplicity and shrewdness. She is an eloquent spokeswoman for the Russian women who suffered the horrors of totalitarian oppression, drunken husbands, indifferent employers, and uncaring families.

RECOMMENDED

Follow Her Home by Steph Cha

Published by Minotaur Books on April 16, 2013

Lucas Cook suspects his wealthy father is having an affair with a young Korean woman named Lori. Lucas' best friend, Juniper Song, agrees to snoop around. She's a long-time Philip Marlowe fan and relishes the chance to play detective. Before long there's a corpse in her trunk and she's receiving death threats. All in a day's work for Marlowe, but not much fun for Juniper. A new complication arises when Juniper meets a real private investigator whose sister suspects that her husband is sleeping with Lori. The dead guy in the trunk also had a thing for Lori. Is Lori a butterfly who flits from man to man, or does she play a more sinister role in the killings that occur as the story unfolds?

A subplot, told in flashbacks, concerns Juniper's sister Iris, who became involved with an older teacher with a fetish for young Asian girls. Its primary interest lies in the way Juniper's experience with Iris shapes her response to Lori's suspected affair with Lucas' father.

Steph Cha is no Raymond Chandler -- she doesn't achieve the level of suspense for which she was striving -- but she tells a good story. I didn't get the impression that Juniper ever felt endangered or disturbed, although she tells us about feeling rattled and afraid. She's just too glib, too nonchalant, to convey the sense that she's really fearful. Even when Cha darkens the story with unexpected death, Follow Her Home is missing the grittiness and fatalism of true noir.

It may be that, Raymond Chandler references notwithstanding, Cha wasn't aiming for noir. As Juniper notes, Philip Marlowe lived in a world that broke his heart every day. Juniper is (and wants to be) a sunnier person than Marlowe. Tellingly, Juniper comments that the mystery genre is "too shiny, fake, and cardboard, with implausible plots and ciphers for people." I suspect Cha set out to write a mystery that would defy that description, and she largely succeeded. Cha doesn't overreach. The plot stays within the boundaries of credibility and (except for Juniper's bland reaction whenever she's facing death), the characters react in believable ways. Mildly surprising revelations toward the novel's end bring the story to a satisfying resolution. While I would like to experience a greater sense of urgency in a novel entitled Follow Her Home, the story accomplishes Cha's goal, despite the muted suspense: the plot is clever without becoming shiny, fake, or cardboard, and the characters are easy to understand.

RECOMMENDED

A Map of Tulsa by Benjamin Lytal

Published by Penguin Books on March 26, 2013

A Map of Tulsa is both a love story and a coming of age novel. The former is more successful than the latter.

Jim Praley is back in Tulsa for the summer, having finished his freshman year of college. He soon finds himself hanging out with Adrienne, the sexually adventurous daughter of a wealthy family. Having dropped out of high school, Adrienne wants to be an artist (an avocation Jim encourages by sharing the knowledge he gained in the art history class he took during his freshman year) or a singer.

Jim is an odd duck, sometimes too odd to believe. He tells us that buying condoms is an "embarrassment that was endemic to my heart." Apart from his questionable use of the word "endemic," this story isn't set in the 1950s when buyers had to ask a pharmacist for condoms that were kept behind the counter. I find it hard to believe he couldn't go to Target (his favorite store in Tulsa) and toss a package of condoms into his shopping cart without upsetting his heart. Jim can't take Adrienne to Target because Target reminds him of his childhood and he "kept certain parts of myself back," including -- for reasons I can't begin to fathom -- shopping at Target. Jim seems to think that's deep, but I thought it was a little silly.  Too many instances of silliness masquerading as depth mar this novel.

Part one establishes Jim's relationship with Adrienne. Part two begins with Jim's return to Tulsa five years later. Adrienne's life has changed drastically, while Jim (despite living and working in New York) hasn't changed in any meaningful way. In a conventional coming of age novel, the protagonist makes a life-altering decision, faces a moral crisis, or in some other way loses innocence, gains wisdom, or takes a significant step toward maturity. True to the convention, Jim does learn something about himself in part two, although I'm not sure he's any more "adult" at the end of the novel than he was at the beginning. More significantly, he learns something about the meaning and nature of love,.  While the lesson isn't terribly enlightening, it is the novel's strength.

Benjamin Lytal conveys honest emotion when he writes about Jim's feelings for Adrienne. In other respects, his prose is troubling. A writing style that seems determined to be witty or ironic or profound too often comes across as childish. I had the impression that Lytal was striving for the voice of an eloquent Holden Caulfield. The result is discordant and occasionally jarring. In his apparent determination to be literary, Lytal produces sentences like "She was unconscious, but her lips were grim and full of knowledge." Whatever does that mean? Her lips were ready to take their SATs? I was equally puzzled when, referring to the exhaust from cars on the highway, Jim says "I took in the fumes like sea air." Poisonous gasses are like sea air? Literary prose should seem effortless, while too many of Lytal's sentences are forced. He has some skill as a writer; I hope his next effort is more consistent.

Lytal makes some noteworthy observations about the nature of friendship, particularly the American tendency to abandon old friends and seek out new ones as we move on with our lives. Jim's reflections on his time with Adrienne seem genuine, although they're never as moving Lytal must have intended them to be. I can't say that A Map of Tulsa is a successful novel, but it has its moments.   There are just too few of them.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins

Published by Orbit on March 26, 2013 

Wolfhound Century leaves the reader with a bucketful of unanswered questions. I imagine a sequel is in the works. Until it arrives, I'm not sure whether to call Wolfhound Century fantasy or science fiction. The strong elements of fantasy may turn out to have a science-based explanation -- there are some hints of that -- but for the moment, they have no explanation at all.

Angels have been at war for four hundred years. Some have fallen to Earth (or an alternate version of Earth), landing in the Vlast (an alternative version of Russia). When Archangel fell, he became stuck in the planetary crust. His goal is to escape from his prison and return to the stars as the dominant force in the universe. Before that can happen, he must destroy the Pollandore.  What is the Pollandore?  That's one of the unanswered questions.

Josef Kantor, like his father before him, is a rebel who supports a free and independent Lezarye. He is plotting a coup to bring down the Vlast's leadership. But does Kantor have a hidden agenda?

The hero of Wolfhound Century (to the extent that one exists) is Vissarion Lom, a police investigator stuck in the provinces who has been denied promotion for eleven years due to an "attitude problem." Lom is summoned to the Ministry of Vlast Security in Mirgorod and tasked with finding Kantor. He is bedeviled in that duty by ... well, perhaps they are best described as "unseen forces." But Lom is different from most police officers. For that matter, he's different from most people, for reasons that only start to be revealed toward the novel's end.

Wolfhound Century is full of characters, and they are all bestowed with unique and detailed personalities. They make the novel worth reading. Lom's friend, Vishnik, roams Mirgorod, documenting its decay with his camera. Vishnik is one of the few with knowledge of the Pollandore. The only people who can set the Pollandore free are Maroussia Shaumain and her batty mother, while Kantor and Lavrantina Chazia, the evil Commander of Vlast's Secret Police, would like to destroy it (if only they knew how).

Initially, I had my doubts about reading yet another book featuring warring angels. I soon became absorbed in the story. This isn't just another book about warring angels (whether, in fact, they are angels in the usual sense of the word is one of the many questions left unanswered). Despite the angels and some giants and various evil forces that populate the story, Wolfhound Century isn't clearly grounded in the supernatural, although it might be. Fortunately, the focus is rarely on angels. Ultimately, the novel is about humans reacting to adversity.

Peter Higgins' writing style is impressive. His prose is lively and rich. The story maintains a brisk pace without sacrificing characterization. My most significant reservation about Wolfhound Century is that, upon reaching the end, I wondered what I had just read. It's frustrating to know that I'll need to read the next book to find out.

RECOMMENDED

The Stud Book by Monica Drake

Published by Hogarth on April 9, 2013

It's difficult to know what to make of The Stud Book. Most of the story is breezy, light comedy, good for a few chuckles, perhaps with the not-fully-realized intent to make some serious points along the way. The novel's ironic ending takes a dark turn. I understand (I think) the point the story is trying to make, but the plot twist is contrived and incongruous. What is supposed to provide a cathartic moment for certain characters results in a "what was that?" moment for the reader. The novel's message -- "everybody matters" -- is expressly stated for readers who might not otherwise get it, but the message is too obvious to be meaningful.

The middle-aged women in The Stud Book are preoccupied, if not obsessed, with babies. They spend much of the novel thinking and talking about babies, although their thoughts and words tend to be the well-worn output of new mommies, non-mommies, and wannabe-mommies. Fortunately, the characters are more interesting than their conversations about babies. As you'd expect in a novel like this, each woman is struggling (although not always believably) with the drama of life.

Georgie and her husband Humble have a new baby, but given that Georgie uses a bottle of Oxycodone as a rattle, she might not be cut out for parenting, her PhD notwithstanding. Her best friend Sarah has no baby but, despite a history of miscarriages, has been working hard to make one (usually with her husband Ben). Dulcet, who teaches high school kids how to avoid pregnancy and generally believes that humanity is a disease, doesn't want a baby. Nyla is a widow; her daughter, Arena, is already in high school.

With the exception of Sarah (who is a bit over-the-top), the female characters -- particularly Arena -- are reasonably convincing. Monica Drake weaves humor into their lives and careers. Sarah works in a zoo, where she can make jokes about animal husbandry while envying the ease with which animals procreate. Arena's expulsion for something she may or may not have done gives Drake a chance to lampoon public school bureaucrats. Nyla's eco-friendly store reflects Portland's acceptance of an amusing counter-culture, while Dulcet gets high and photographs nude women when she isn't teaching students about their bodies.

The male characters are little more than window-dressing, unrealistic stereotypes who exist only to give the women a chance to complain about masculine behavior. Ben fantasizes about his former girlfriend (realistic enough) but what he does in a men's room in his office building is something real guys just don't do in that setting. Humble plays drinking games in a bar instead of hanging out at home with his new baby. Ben joins Humble in the bar instead of staying home with Sarah when she's experiencing a serious health problem. Is there something about Portland that turns men into shameful, insensitive louts?

At times, The Stud Book comes across as a book that follows a recipe: one new mommy, one veteran mommy, one woman striving to be a mommy, one woman who doesn't want to be a mommy, stir together and wait for fun to emerge. The contrivance of four friends representing four contrasting views of motherhood is more forgivable in a comedy than it would be in a book that poses as serious drama, which is one reason why the dramatic moments in the final pages just didn't work for me. To the extent that the novel tries to be Sex and the City (of Portland), it follows a reliable comedic formula. Sometimes the laughs seem forced, but more often they come from genuinely funny situations -- as, for instance, when Nyla uses her kickboxing routine against an unskilled robber, much to her daughter's dismay. It is when the novel becomes ironic and dark that it also becomes unsatisfying.

NOT RECOMMENDED