The Lost Saints of Tennessee by Amy Franklin-Willis

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on February 7, 2012

In 1985, Ezekial Cooper is 42 and sufficiently depressed about his failed life to contemplate ending it. Having dropped out of the college life he loved and its promise of a rewarding future, Zeke returned to grunt work near his hometown in Tennessee. Years later, Zeke is experiencing something more serious than a midlife crisis. His ex-wife, Jackie, has recently remarried. He feels distant from his daughters. His mother has lung cancer. His twin brother Carter is nearly ten years dead and Zeke can't recover from the loss -- he wonders "how can there be me without him?" To show us why Zeke's life has gone so terribly wrong, Amy Franklin-Willis takes the story back to 1946, introducing Zeke and Carter as children. The story then alternates between past and present.

The chapters outlining Zeke's past focus on his relationship with Jackie and Carter. Zeke is bright enough to win a scholarship to UVA, which his mother pressures him to accept for her own vicarious pleasure, even though Zeke would be more comfortable attending UT. Carter is slow; he won't make it past eighth grade. Part one reveals little else about the past.

The 1985 Zeke is so in love with his old mangy dog Tucker that he's an easy character to like. His sister Rosie is equally easy to like: she's perceptive and sassy (his other sister is less endearing). Zeke's elderly cousin Georgia and her husband Osborne are hard-working and kind-hearted, although Osborne's poor health is affecting his behavior. Zeke eventually embarks on a trip to their Virginia home, where he stayed while attending UVA, a time when "life offered a thousand possible destinations." Journeying toward self-awareness by escaping to the past is a novelistic convention that's been done to death, but Willis offers a fresh take on a familiar plot.

The reader learns more about Carter in part two, which is told from the perspective of Zeke's dying mother Lillian, a woman who has experienced more than enough trouble to fill two lifetimes. Her tale of regret is often told in fiction: childhood dreams pushed aside by the consequences of poor choices, the burden of unwanted responsibilities, coping mechanisms that lead to equal parts of relief and grief, self-assigned guilt for tragedies beyond her control. Like her son, Lillian is ready to die. Her story is written in a distinctive voice that sets it apart from Zeke's, but -- perhaps because it lacks the immediacy of part one -- I found it less compelling.

Part two is merely a lengthy interlude, however, as part three returns the focus to Zeke. The novel has by that point lost some of its momentum, and the story of Zeke's present has lost some of its urgency, as well. The story of his past moves to the forefront in part three. It is dramatic and occasionally gut-wrenching. The flashbacks to Zeke's college years give meaningful context to Zeke's present. By the time the story brings us back to the present, when Zeke's potential new love interest (Elle) tells Zeke that "everybody's got a closet full of hurt tucked away somewhere," we are close to understanding the contents of Zeke's closet; we understand why Zeke might be just as incapable of growing his love for Elle as he was of sustaining his love for Jackie. We also understand why he rejects his mother's love, why he tells her "The way you love is like sucking all the air out of a person's lungs and then telling him you'll breathe for him."

The story of Zeke's present eventually turns into a fairly conventional portrayal of a man confronting (and coming to terms with) the demons that have tormented him for most of his adult life. The emotions displayed by Zeke and his family members come across as honest, the story isn't overtly manipulative or weepy, but it's the sort of family drama that has been written many times before. The novel builds to a climax -- the revelation of what really happened on the day Carter died -- that disappointed me; it isn't much of a revelation, and it certainly isn't climactic. Given the buildup, I expected a more powerful finish. It all wraps up too neatly and all the warm fuzziness in the last chapters is a bit much. For its strong characters and high points, this is a novel I recommend, but given its weak ending, I wouldn't put it at the top of anyone's reading list.

RECOMMENDED

Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt

First published in 1997 by HarperCollins

In the year 306 of the post-apocalyptic world as Silas Glote knows it, few things are as valuable as the only surviving copy of a Mark Twain novel.  How Karik Endine acquired A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and why he kept its acquisition a secret, is a mystery.  An even greater mystery is why Karik bequeathed it to Chaka Milana, a young woman he barely knew, just before he killed himself.

Eternity Road is Jack McDevitt’s contribution to the enormous body of post-apocalyptic fiction.  The apocalyptic event, identified only as “the plague” until an epilogue sheds a bit more light upon it, occurred in the distant past.  Among the other legends and rumors that captivate the imaginations of those who live in the Mississippi Valley is the existence of a place called Haven, a repository of knowledge somewhere to the east.  Karik once led an expedition to find Haven; he returned alone.  Years later, shortly after Karik’s death, a new expedition is mounted.  This one includes Silas, Chaka, Karik’s son, a woman who renounced her priesthood, a woodsman, and a couple of others.  They confront danger and hardship, encounter wondrous remnants of the forgotten technology left behind by “the Roadmakers,” meet people who are friendly and some who are not, and generally experience the sort of adventures that are common in quest stories.

McDevitt is one of the best storytellers in science fiction so all of this is interesting and entertaining, but the story isn’t nearly as exciting and the characters not nearly so compelling as those in his Academy or Alex Benedict novels.  Character development seems half-hearted and the obstacles the characters encounter on their journey lack the imaginative brilliance that characterizes McDevitt’s best work.

A minor gripe but one that bothered me:  Everyone of importance in the novel is able to read English.  They have no difficulty, for instance, understanding A Connecticut Yankee.  They can even read a translation of Tacitus.  It is difficult for me to believe that the ability to read and write survived for so many generations but an understanding of science and technology did not.  It seems to me that literacy would vanish at least as quickly as the knowledge required to repair an internal combustion engine or to build a steam locomotive.  If books on paper did not survive the centuries, why were parents passing along to their children the ability to read but not the ability to generate electricity?  Did the plague wipe out engineers but spare English majors?

Illogic notwithstanding, a weak McDevitt novel is still a better effort than many sf writers can produce:  the writing is fluid, the pace is swift, and the story is capably crafted.  The novel’s best moments require the reader to puzzle out where the characters are and what they’re seeing, provoking fun little “aha” experiences (as in, “aha, they’re looking at a satellite dish!”).  Eternity Road should appeal to fans of quest and adventure novels and post-apocalyptic fiction, although readers familiar with McDevitt’s better novels may be disappointed.

RECOMMENDED

Ragnarök: The End of the Gods by A.S. Byatt

First published in Great Britain in 2011; published by Grove Press on February 7, 2012

How does something come out of nothing? A thin girl in England during World War II compares creation myths as she ponders the question. Her church teaches her of a "grandfatherly figure" who created everything from the sun to the peacock in six days. Her reading of Asgard and the Gods introduces her to a more appealing explanation. In the empty gulf between the cold mists of the north and the hot flames of the south known as Ginnungagap, a giant named Ymir is formed in the steam of melting icebergs. Ymir becomes the father of "the frost-giants, who budded from his bulk" before he is slaughtered by the first gods: Odin, Wili, and We. The gods make the world from the flesh, blood, and bones of the dismembered giant. Yet nothing lasts forever; even gods must die. Ragnorök refers to the Norse end-times, the judgment of the gods, the twilight of their reign. The gods do not go down gently; as befits a myth, their battle to survive is epic.

The thin girl does not want to consider the possibility that the creation myths are related -- that, for instance, a flood in Asgard might be "an echo of the story of Noah and the Flood" -- because she likes to believe the Asgard stories have an independent foundation. She nonetheless sees similarities between biblical stories and those of Asgard, comparisons that are insightful yet plausibly within the ken of a bright child. The thin girl enjoys but does not believe the stories of Asgard, any more than she believes Greek myths, fairy tales, or the stories told by the vicar at her church. Reading the stories gives her reason to ponder the nature of belief and to ask herself not just why she doesn't believe, but why she doesn't want to believe.

Using the thin girl as a focal point, A.S. Byatt selectively retells the tale of the gods of Asgard from their beginning to their end. Unlike some other entries in the Cannongate/Grove series of books in which contemporary writers reimagine a myth, Byatt does not modernize the myth but uses the character of the thin girl to suggest the ancient tale's relevance to the modern world. The child, familiar with the news of the war that is killing and maiming her countrymen, finds it easy to relate to the brutality of the Norse gods. As the thin girl listens at night to "doom droning in the sky," she imagines Odin's warriors and hunters charging through the heavens. Byatt also analyzes the nature of storytelling as the thin girl anticipates events that are demanded by the conventions of fiction. For instance, a promise that a god will never be harmed assures the opposite: "the shape of the story means that he must be harmed."

The Norse myth of Yggdrasil -- an immense ash tree that is "a world in itself" -- will be familiar to dedicated science fiction fans as the inspiration for various worlds and vessels that share its name. Other familiar figures from the myth include the shapeshifter Loki ("a being who was neither this nor that"), and, of course, the thunder god Thor, complete with hammer. Less familiar (to me) are the goddess Frigg and her not-so-invulnerable son Baldur, whose story illustrates the mischief that gods can make.

Byatt's prismatic prose, sparkling and colorful, transforms the mundane -- mushrooms sprouting near a tree, fish carried by ocean currents -- into something glorious. As lovely as the prose is, however, a few lengthy descriptive sections of the text (particularly those concerning Jörmungandr the snake) are a bit too ponderous. And while Ragnorök: The End of the Gods is a solid and enjoyable retelling of the Norse myth, it is just that: as a retelling rather than a modernization, it offers little that is new, despite the thin girl's apt comparisons of the mythical warriors to the war that rages around her. (In a lengthy essay appended as an afterword, Byatt explains in greater detail than necessary why she wrote the story as she did.)

A final, post-war chapter addressing the thin girl's adjustment to peacetime seems uncomfortably out of place. Still, the retold Norse myths are enough. Norse gods, like nearly all gods, are petty and vengeful, qualities that lend themselves to entertaining drama, as well as lessons about how mere mortals might live richer lives than gods.

RECOMMENDED

The Third Coincidence by David Bishop

Published by Oceanview Publishing on February 6, 2012

A Justice of the Supreme Court is murdered. Inexplicably, the Supreme Court Police fail to enhance their protection of the remaining Justices, making it easy for a second Justice to be assassinated. Then a Federal Reserve Governor is killed, followed by more targets from the Court and the Fed. Despite the absence of evidence that a foreign power is responsible for the assassination, the president asks a CIA agent to assemble a task force to find the killer. In the real world, every available FBI and Secret Service agent would be investigating the murders, plus the local police, the U.S. Marshal's Office, the Supreme Court Police, and any other law enforcement agency that could reasonably justify sharing in the glory of finding the killer. In the world of The Third Coincidence, the crime is solved by Jack McCall and a handful of people who spend most of their time eating meals together and thinking lustful thoughts about each other.

Finding the killer should take all of thirty seconds given that he's a crackpot whose political grievances are inconsistent and laughable, but the novel posits this loony toon as a serious threat to governmental institutions. Frankly, if it were that easy for deranged individuals with screwy political beliefs to kill important members of government, we wouldn't have a government. That murders of highly placed officials would continue to occur when those officials are under constant surveillance requires more credulity than I was able to muster.

I'm tired of thrillers that imagine the hero to be a personal friend of the president, particularly when they lead to inane dialog like this: "`I often think about those nights we spent in embassy kitchens eating your homemade ice cream,' the president said .... `Do you still make those Grand Marnier bonbons?'" Friendship or not, it is impossible to believe that McCall would be given a leading role in the investigation. A president who puts his buddy in charge of the investigation despite his buddy's lack of law enforcement experience and who publicizes his idiocy by having the buddy give a televised news conference, would be committing political suicide.

I'm also tired of unoriginal supporting characters, including killers who taunt their hunters. McCall assembles a stereotypical "task force" that includes a sexy FBI agent who wants Jack to desire her so she can reject him, a gifted computer whiz, local cops who think the feds are snobs but love McCall anyway, and a former military sniper whose job is to sit around in case the task force decides someone needs to be shot from a distance. Of course, McCall, the hacker, and the sniper have no law enforcement experience, which makes it even less likely that real cops would take direction from the task force.

We're told that McCall is a stud who has had "flings" with women all over D.C.; if so, they must like his looks because he has no personality with which to wow them. The other characters are just as thin, but McCall is laughably one-dimensional. He pictures himself as a boulder "standing strong against the forces of evil." Sadly for the reader, McCall is about as interesting as a boulder. He is given to self-righteous platitudes and apparently views himself as more patriotic than other Americans because he works for the CIA -- as if patriotism has anything to do with catching a nutbag killer. My impression is that The Third Coincidence is intended as a message novel -- the message being "true patriots risk their lives for their country" -- but a message is no substitute for good storytelling. To the extent that a few paragraphs deliver a more salient message about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court's function as a guardian of constitutional rights, it gets lost in the morass that precedes and follows it.

In one or two chapters, David Bishop manufactures a high level of tension. Those are unfortunately offset by chapters in which characters sit around a table stating the obvious. They spend most of their time praising each other as government officials continue to die. By the end I was thinking "Just catch the guy already." I have no problem with Bishop's prose -- he is a capable writer -- but it takes more than a clean writing style to make a novel work. Dull characters and a silly plot make The Third Coincidence unworthy of attention.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker

First published in German in 2002; first published in translation in 2006; published by Other Press on January 31, 2012

The first third of The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is enthralling.  The remainder of the novel is problematic; it sustained my interest but not my enthusiasm.

After telling her that he was leaving for an appointment in Boston, Julia Win’s father takes a flight to Thailand and disappears.  The Times described him as “an influential Wall Street lawyer” but the police suspect he had a hidden past.  Burmese by birth, Tin Win became an American citizen in 1959.  Julia, a recent law school graduate, viewed her father as staid, reliable, out-of-date -- not the sort of person whose life is filled with mystery or who takes an unannounced trip to Thailand.  Four years after his disappearance, Julia finds a letter he wrote to a woman named Mi Mi.  Julia travels to Kalaw, determined to find Mi Mi, the only clue to her father’s past.  There she meets U Ba, who has been waiting to tell her the story Tin Win told him, a story from which “a life emerged, revealing its power and its magic.”

Just as we’re settling into Julia’s quest, the story shifts to the one told by U Ba.  It starts with Mya Mya, a young Burmese woman who regards the birth of Tin Win as a calamity.  An astrologer’s prediction that he will lose his sight is soon fulfilled.  After his parents die, Tin is taken to a monastery.  It is there that he first meets Mi Mi -- or, more precisely, that he first hears her heartbeat.  Mi Mi was born with “crippled feet”; their disabilities draw Tin and Mi Mi together.

Hearts and heartbeats are frequent images in the novel.  Jan-Philipp Sendker also makes good use of the imagery of balance:  Mi Mi, for instance, is emotionally well balanced even though she is incapable of balancing on her misshapen feet.  Tin balances his blindness with exceptional hearing.  Mi Mi and Tin balance each other:  when Tin carries Mi Mi on his back, her eyes provide their twinned vision, his feet set them in unitary motion.  Julia, despite having all the advantages of a stable, upper class family and western education, finds that she needs to bring her life into balance:   understanding her father becomes a necessary condition of understanding herself.

As related by U Ba, Tin Win’s tale is a love story that too often shares the characteristics of a well written fairy-tale.  There are times when the descriptions of Mi Mi’s blossoming love are a little too obvious, too melodramatic, too much like Barry Manilow with punchier prose.  Moreover, the description of their developing love creates a dull lull in the story arc.  After Tin leaves Mi Mi to meet his uncle in Rangoon the novel regains some of its force, particularly after it circles back to Julia and her uncertainty about her father’s love (understandable given his abandonment of her).  At that point a different and more original love story emerges, one that addresses a child’s love for a parent.  U Ba sums it up:  “Love has so many different faces that our imagination is not prepared to see them all.”

As the novel winds down, we learn the rest of Tin’s story.  It comes to a predictable finish but (despite its greater length) it seems less important than Julia’s.  To the extent that Tin’s story is about the purity of devotion shared by two separated lovers, I tend to agree with one of the characters who observes that love is a form of madness and hopes it isn’t contagious.  And as much as I would like to believe in the strength of heart displayed by Tin and (especially) Mi Mi, I found it incongruous that Tin couldn’t give the same unconditional love to his daughter, and I was disappointed that Sendker didn’t address that incongruity in greater depth.

It’s difficult to introduce an element of mysticism in a book that isn’t wholly a fantasy.  The best writers (Haruki Murakami comes to mind) manage to convince the reader that the mystical is real.  That Sendker doesn’t quite pull it off is my largest reservation about The Art of Hearing Heartbeats.  Its fine prose and entertaining moments nonetheless make the novel worth reading, and an unanticipated twist at the end pays a rewarding dividend.

RECOMMENDED