Quarantine by John Smolens

Published by Pegasus on September 5, 2012 

In the summer of 1796, Newburyport's harbormaster recruits Giles Wiggins to perform a medical inspection of the Miranda, newly arrived from France. Wiggins discovers that most members of the crew are dead or dying. Although the doctor quarantines the ship, several crewmen row into Newburyport. Soon the fever spreads through the town. Since Newburyport's doctors have no clue as to the cause of the disease and no effective means to treat it, it becomes necessary to quarantine the town.

Although the plot involves drugs that have been stolen from the town's apothecaries -- drugs that cannot be used to treat the ill unless town leaders pay an extortionate price to reclaim them -- the story revolves around a prominent Newburyport family, one that has replaced family spirit with murderous intent. Enoch Sumner owns the Miranda, a ship he named after his matriarchal mother, who is also the mother of Giles Wiggins, Enoch's half-brother. Enoch's son, Samuel, is a ne'er-do-well spendthrift who, returning from France on the Miranda, joined the crew members who escaped from the ship in a rowboat. Marie de Monpellier, a French girl who was a passenger on the Miranda before she swam ashore, becomes a guest of the family after Leander Hatch saves her from drowning. Leander eventually joins the family's staff as a stable hand, although (unlike the reader) Leander won't understand his true relationship to the family until the novel's end.

Quarantine often has the flavor of a melodrama as characters and storylines intersect in coincidental and improbable ways. At times I was reminded of Dickens, particularly when a character named Uriah entered the mix. There is, however, considerably more sex in Quarantine than you'll find in Dickens, making this, I suppose, a modern form of melodrama. As is typically true of melodrama, the story is far from subtle. Quarantine is often more interesting for its background details -- the belief that the fever sweeping the town is retribution for the town's sinful ways, the arguments about appropriate medical care, the role played by privateers who made their fortunes seizing British ships during the war -- than for the family drama that occupies the foreground.

Despite being melodramatic and a bit scattered, Quarantine is engaging. John Smolens' prose is lively and his characters have enough personality to make up for their lack of depth. The period and place are convincing. I had difficulty believing Miranda's motivation to engage in certain nefarious behavior that is central to the story, and I was less than enthralled by the uninspired love stories (Giles is the focus of one, Leander of the other). Given the emphasis that melodrama places on emotion, the love stories -- particularly Leander's -- seem surprisingly hollow. For the most part, however, Quarantine is entertaining and, like any good melodrama, it leads to a satisfying conclusion.

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My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl

First published in 1979; republished by Penguin Books on August 28, 2012 

Oswald Cornelius takes pride in telling us that he is the greatest Lothario of all time. Portions of his "diary" are finally being published by Oswald's nephew, who appears in My Uncle Oswald only long enough to introduce volume XX of Oswald's diary. Oswald made his first fortune at age 17 by selling an early version of Viagra to men and women, his second by creating a forerunner of the sperm bank. His plan for stocking the sperm bank is both cunning and wicked.

As these delightful tales unfold, Oswald occasionally boasts of his sexual prowess. With rare exceptions, Oswald follows the self-made principle of "no-woman-more-than-once," a rule he commends "to all men of action who enjoy variety." More often, however, we follow the efforts of the woman he recruited to gather sperm (using a powerful aphrodisiac) from the kings, artists, writers, musicians, and scientists of Oswald's time, including (among many others) Einstein, Monet, Joyce, and Puccini. Unsurprisingly, Picasso proves to be a troublesome subject, but the episode involving Proust is the funniest.

Roald Dahl is acclaimed for his children's stories. Perhaps he found a need to balance his life by adding this decidedly adult novel (and two "Uncle Oswald" short stories that were published in Playboy and reprinted in Switch Bitch) to his oeuvre. Despite the subject matter, however, My Uncle Oswald is far from pornographic. The stories are ribald but restrained. Most of all, they are hilarious. My Uncle Oswald is a novel that deserves to be on any reader's shelf of comedy classics.

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Fires of London by Janice Law

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on September 4, 2012 

Fires of London follows a classic thriller formula:  a falsely accused man must avoid the police long enough to prove his own innocence.  In addition to its plot, Fires of London shares other attributes of memorable thrillers:  strong writing, solid characters, and a swift pace.  Yet in its protagonist and milieu, Fires of London departs from the classic formula to achieve a result that is fresh and fascinating.

To support his painting and gambling, Francis Bacon works as a “gentleman’s companion.”  His preference, however, is for “rough trade” -- clandestine meetings with strangers under circumstances that carry a hint of danger.  One of the men he meets, a man he believes to be Chief Inspector John Mordren, roughs him up during their encounter in a park.  Soon thereafter, a young man Bacon vaguely knows from gay bars is found beaten to death in Hyde Park.  Bacon wonders whether Mordren might be responsible. After Bacon stumbles over the dead body of an RAF pilot while making his way down a dark street, Mordren recruits Bacon to assist him in finding the serial killer.  Does Mordren really want Bacon’s help, or is Mordren setting up Bacon as the fall guy?  When Bacon finds a third murder victim after a bombing raid, Mordren has reason to identify Bacon as a suspect in all three murders.  Bacon, of course, must find the killer on his own while he tries to avoid arrest.

Francis Bacon is an unlikely thriller hero.  That’s consistent with the convention of the “innocent man” formula -- the innocent man is usually an ordinary guy thrust into a sinister world, relying on wits rather than training to solve the mystery -- but Bacon is truly a unique thriller protagonist.  Bacon describes himself as “a connoisseur of extremity, of excess emotion and extraordinary sensation,” for whom there exists only pain and pleasure.  He likes to live on the edge -- both in his sex life and in his nighttime work as a warden, enforcing blackout regulations and helping Londoners find shelters -- but he balances a life that is “dark and full of violence” with the brightness of art and the joy of celebration.

Bacon’s personality is carefully developed, but even minor characters are made real and complex with a few well-chosen words.  Wee Jimmy, for instance, is a criminal and thug, but he pitches in to help rescue crews clear rubble left by the Blitz, doing his part to help his countrymen in wartime.  From Bacon’s resourceful (and thieving) grandmother to his hard-drinking companions, every character is full of vitality.

Janice Law based the fictional Francis Bacon on the British painter of the same name, who (according to Wikipedia) is “known for his bold, graphic and emotionally raw imagery.”  The same adjectives could be used to describe Law’s prose.  Law writes in a style that is both elegant and playfully lurid.  She recreates the climate of a weary London as pub crawlers carry gas masks, blackouts lead to traffic accidents, and everyone waits for the first bombs to fall.  Her description of the fiery aftermath of the air raids that finally come is just as vivid.  You can smell the smoke, hear the dogs howling at death.

Fires of London is a quick but engrossing read.  The plot is simple yet elegant, spiced with the addition of a tangentially related blackmail scheme, and leads to a satisfying (if slightly ambiguous) conclusion.  While the novel works as a mystery/thriller (although the identity of the killer isn’t difficult to guess), it is even better as a character study, a portrait of an artist who is drawn to more than one kind of peril in the dark nights of wartime London.

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The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson

First published in 1956 

Scott Carey is dwindling to nothingness. Having been sprayed by insecticide and then irradiated, Scott loses an inch a week until his former self is all but lost. Although the movie version of The Shrinking Man and some later editions of the book add the word "Incredible" to the title, Scott finds his loss of stature to be humiliating and ultimately dehumanizing. The story might be incredible in the sense of "not credible" (how do Scott's organs, particularly his brain, continue to function normally when he is less than a half inch tall?), but Scott is no Ray Palmer. To the extent he demonstrates any heroism, it is in his dogged determination to survive.

Through much of the story, Scott finds himself trapped in the basement being chased by a spider. In Scott's mind, the spider comes to represent "every anxiety, insecurity, and fear in his life given a hideous, night-black form." Scott survives on soggy crackers and water collected in a thimble, although reaching the water becomes a challenge when he shrinks to less than half the thimble's height.

As Scott goes about the daily business of survival, he flashes back to the days that preceded his perilous life in the basement. Scott is 6 feet tall before he starts to shrink. When he sees his mother (at 5'3"), she is in denial. When he's down to 4 feet, his wife starts to treat him like a child (it doesn't occur to her that he might still want sex). At 3'6" he attracts a pedophile. At an inch under 3 feet, he feels despair because his wife pities him. At 21 inches, he fantasizes about a teenage babysitter but she, like his wife, is unattainable. Later he needs to be protected from his daughter, who comes to view him as a doll rather than a father. Pride prevents him from cashing in on his story; he refuses to be treated as a freak, even though his family desperately needs the money. He achieves a respite from the destruction of his self-image when he meets a female circus midget, but he knows the relationship will not last. Nothing can stop him from shrinking.

Richard Matheson fully imagines the physical dangers and difficulties of being less than an inch tall, but the story is more interesting for the emotional toll that Scott experiences. "Awareness of the shrinking was the curse, not the shrinking." Matheson creates a convincing psychological profile of a man who can't readily cope with the loss of everything he values: his job, his wife, and chiefly, his self-respect. Experiencing "a complete negation of spirit," he feels like "a pathetic fraction of a shadow," drained of purpose, unable to meet his basic needs, dependent upon others for survival. In the end, however, trapped in the basement and too small to be noticed by others, he can only depend on himself.

An ineffable sadness pervades the story. As Sam reclines on a dollhouse bed and says to the doll beside him "Why aren't you real?," the trauma of his vanishing life is palpable. There are many such moments in The Shrinking Man. Yet, in the end, this isn't a sad novel. The human spirit triumphs. Life endures. There is meaning to be found in even the smallest existence. This is Sam's ultimate discovery, and it is a metaphorical lesson for all who feel themselves shrinking, diminishing in importance, as their lives unfold.

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The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom

Published by Hyperion on September 4, 2012 

The measurement of time, Mitch Albom’s parable tells us, distinguishes man from other animals.  Man alone measures time, and man alone fears time running out.  Every parable has a moral, and Albom’s is this:  we should replace fear of losing time with an appreciation of the time we have.  It is a worthy lesson, even if the parable flounders as it makes its way there.

The Time Keeper imagines Father Time as a real person, a man immune to the ravages of time.  In biblical times, Father Time’s name was Dor.  While his childhood friend Nim was building the Tower of Babel, Dor was learning how to measure time.  When Dor’s wife becomes ill, Dor tries to climb the tower in the hope that by reaching the heavens, he can make time stop.  When the tower falls, Dor is banished to a cave and cursed with immortality because he offended God.  By teaching man to count time, “the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”

Alternating with Dor’s story are those of two other characters.  Victor Delamonte, the fourteenth-richest man in the world, has a tumor on his liver.  At the age of 86, he is running out of time.  He resolves to buy more time.  Sarah Lemon is a smart but unattractive seventeen-year-old who falls in love with an insensitive hunk named Ethan.  When he rejects her, she doesn’t know if she wants to keep living -- she wants less time than she has been allotted.  Dor’s penance -- his chance to atone for the sin of inventing clocks -- requires him to intervene in the lives of Victor and Sarah.

The Time Keeper is easily read in one or two sittings (depending upon how long you sit).  Albom uses simple sentences to tell a simple story.  As is generally true of parables, simplicity is The Time Keeper’s defining characteristic.  The proposition it initially advances -- that counting moments leads to misery, that we should lead simple and grateful lives -- isn’t particularly profound, but the nature of a parable is to illustrate an obvious lesson.

But is it an honest lesson?  Dor was punished (or readjusted) because he wasn’t content to live his life without counting its moments, but inquiry and invention are arguably a better use of a life than sitting still and being grateful.  There is much to be said for the human capacity to plan and to inquire, traits that inevitably lead to an understanding of time.  Albom’s point -- that we need to spend our life appreciating the time we have rather than fretting about the time we don’t have -- is a good one, but it’s also a half-truth.  The downside of measuring time is balanced by countless upsides, a reality that Albom’s story chooses to ignore.  The sense of urgency, the race to accomplish something before the clock runs out, has led to better medicine, longer lives, greater comfort, and a host of other worthy accomplishments that would never have been achieved if everyone were content to tend sheep and feel grateful for a quiet, uneventful life.

Albom’s expressly stated notion that life was more satisfying before the invention of time measurement is unsupportable.  Time measurement actually began with prehistoric man, long before Dor, and cave dwelling isn’t my idea of a fulfilling life.  There’s an undertone in Albom’s story -- simplicity is good, progress is bad -- that is reflected in Albom’s vision of a future in which people have “forgotten how to feel.”  A few hundred years from now, Albom posits, people will long for “a simpler, more satisfying world.”  Albom’s peek at the future is a denial of history:  life might have been simpler in biblical times, but it was also shorter and more difficult.  Lives were consumed by the struggle to survive.  The slaves who were building the Tower of Babel had little opportunity to feel grateful for their existence.  The ensuing millennia haven’t made people any less capable of “feeling,” and it’s difficult to believe that people will lose that innate ability as time marches on.  People are fond of believing that everything was better in the past, but as Woody Allen recently demonstrated, the present is a better place in which to live.

Of course, parables aren’t meant to be taken literally, and if one reads the story solely as a reminder of the need to appreciate whatever time we have, the message resonates.  There are conventional novels that make the same point with greater depth and more subtlety (The Chequer Board is a favorite), but parables aren’t meant to be subtle or deep.  Nor are the gaps in internal logic as important in a parable as they would be in a different kind of story.  At its root, The Time Keeper tells a good story, has a sweet ending, and delivers at least half of a universal truth.

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