Faithful Ruslan by Georgi Vladimov

First published in Russian in 1975; published in translation by Melville House on September 27, 2011

The prison camp is empty; only Ruslan and his master remain. Ruslan is confused. Has there been a mass escape? Where are the other guards? Why aren't the other dogs on patrol? Why are the gates wide open? When his master lets him off his leash, Ruslan senses that he no longer has a purpose, that his days are at an end. Indeed, Ruslan is prepared to accept his fate when his master unslings his machine gun, but instead his master tells him to leave the camp, a future Ruslan regards as worse than death before it dawns on him that he's being sent on a mission: to wait at the train station for the return of the captured prisoners. Eventually Ruslan is joined there by other guard dogs. When passing trains fail to stop, the confused dogs begin to live in the town, some living better than others, while Ruslan, steadfast in his duty to the Service, patiently awaits his absent master's orders. Only after a long period of hunger and hopelessness does Ruslan find himself with an unexpected companion: a former prisoner known only as "the Shabby Man" who, to Ruslan's way of thinking, needs to be escorted in his travels so that he can be returned to the prison camp when Ruslan is finally called back to the Service.

From this premise -- a story (first published in 1975) told from a dog's eyes -- we see the Soviet Union in transition. Stalin is gone, Khrushchev has freed the political prisoners, former guards and former inmates are sharing bottles of vodka and lamenting their lack of purpose. Even Ruslan has no purpose, although he does his best to keep the past alive by guarding the Shabby Man.

Ruslan has lived his life by a set of rules; to deviate was to be punished and he expected no less. In contrast to Ruslan is the dog Ingus: every bit as smart and capable as Ruslan, but a dreamy, free spirited dog who doesn't share Ruslan's love of duty, who doesn't understand the point of rules that interfere with life's simple pleasures, like rolling in the grass. Georgi Vladimov seems to be saying that dogs, like people, do not adapt equally well to the roles they are assigned in life -- and that a failure to play the role required by the Soviet state can lead to harsh and unjust consequences for man and dog alike. Dogs, like people, are abused without explanation; they don't need to understand why, they just need to endure the pain. Neither Ingus nor the prisoners can escape their fate, as much as they long for freedom.

But what is freedom? Imprisonment takes many forms; freedom from confinement does not assure the ability to live free. To Ruslan's way of thinking, the Shabby Man had a better life behind the prison camp's fence: he had work, he ate regularly, he didn't drink himself into a stupor every night. Perhaps freedom means nothing left to lose, but how free can a man be when he has lost everything? The Shabby Man must face that question toward the novel's end as he confronts his future.

Although in some respects Faithful Ruslan might be difficult for dog lovers to read, it is written with a deep understanding of and intense affection for dogs -- as opposed to humans, who "stank of cruelty and treachery." Ruslan and the other dogs in the novel are superior in many ways to the humans they serve. They are motivated by love rather than malice, by loyalty rather than selfishness, by sharp-eyed reality rather than delusion or deception. Unfortunately, they are also true to their training. Ruslan's sense of duty never waivers; the world has changed but Ruslan hasn't, setting him up for a tragic destiny. In the end, unswerving devotion to mindless duty leads to Ruslan's downfall, as it has for so many. The Soviet political regime may change, Vladimov seems to be saying, but behavior does not.

As difficult as it is to read this story, it's worth the pain.

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The Secret in Their Eyes by Eduardo Sacheri

First published in Spanish in 2005; published in translation by Other Press on October 18, 2011

I wouldn't call The Secret in Their Eyes a thriller (although it develops some thrills toward the end), or even a mystery. The novel tells a very personal story of one man's role in the Argentinean system of criminal justice, his mild obsession with an unsolved murder, and the difficulty of pursuing the truth in a corrupt political regime.

Facing a lonely, dreaded retirement from his life as a deputy court clerk, Benjamín Chaparro decides to fill his time writing the story of Ricardo Morales. When they first meet (in the 1960s), Chaparro is overseeing the investigation of Morales' pregnant wife's rape and murder. The two men form a bond. Morales is, like Chaparro, a morose man who prefers rainy days to sunshine, who looks at photographs and feels a sense of loss for the "vanished paradise" they depict. Yet Chaparro envies Morales because Morales has experienced true love, while Morales drifts through relationships, marrying and divorcing, never content.

Chaparro harbors a secret love for a former co-worker named Irene, a judge who, thanks to his retirement, is no longer part of his daily life. Writing of unrequited love is, I think, a South American specialty, and Eduardo Sacheri does it masterfully. I could feel Chaparro's fears and regrets, his heartache -- "the ache of stifled feelings" -- in my bones. As Chaparro compares his life to Morales', the contrast is between a love kept hidden and a love lost: each tragic in its own way. Neither man knows how to live the rest of his life: Morales without the wife he loved, Chaparro without the joy of seeing Irene every day.

The murder investigation, such as it is, drags on for years, spurred forward by Chaparro's intuition and later by a fortuitous confrontation between a railroad conductor and the murder suspect. A third of the novel remains when the crime is solved, another sign that the investigation is secondary to the real story; a happy ending would not be true to the lives of either Chaparro or Morales. The novel then raises an intriguing moral question -- how much self-sacrifice should be expected from Chaparro to save Morales from harm? -- and concludes with a satisfying (if not entirely unexpected) twist as the secret of Morales' life is revealed.

I like the way the story is structured, the story within a story: Chaparro ponders the book he's writing (what scenes should he include or omit, whether the book is about Morales or himself), a story that Sacheri wraps around the novel that Chaparro actually writes; the reader benefits from reading both Chaparro's novel and the story of its creation. Sacheri indulges in a bit of political commentary (he has little good to say about Organía's military regime) but the novel isn't a polemic. It is instead a subtle, nuanced, absorbing look at the intersection of two lives and the difficult choices made by two decent men, with the addition of a beautifully unresolved romance (a story carefully designed to continue in the reader's mind after the novel ends).

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Cain by José Saramago

First published in Portuguese in 2009; published in translation by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on October 4, 2011

There is little need to summarize the plot of Cain because anyone with a passing knowledge of Genesis is familiar with much of it, although perhaps not with José Saramago's twisted (and infinitely more entertaining) version. Saramago imparts all sorts of useful information omitted from the original, including why people have navels and how the battle of the sexes began. We do learn more about Cain's life after the death of Abel than Genesis explains, including Cain's affair with Lilith, his intervention in Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, and his visits to Sodom, Jericho, and the Tower of Babel. Cain becomes a sort of time traveler, bouncing from bible story to bible story and witnessing the obvious truth that god "can't bear to see anyone happy" before concluding that "The history of mankind is the history of misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him."

Some readers might be put off by Saramago's unconventional writing style -- the absence of normal punctuation and capitalization -- but those who stick with it will find it easy to adapt. It's a quirky style that befits a quirky book. Cain's various conversations are nothing short of hilarious; punctuation would only get in the way of the rapid-fire exchanges.

Readers who don't appreciate irreverent humor might want to avoid this book. This is literature, not a guidebook to -- or a serious retelling of -- Genesis. Saramago's humor derives from the wicked application of common sense to familiar biblical lore, a technique that had me laughing from the first page, but one that might offend the more devout. In this version of biblical history, characters feel entitled to talk back to a capricious creator who deserves a good scolding. The god of this novel sometimes agrees that he's fallible, but doesn't want others to know of his faults. God knows he can't stop the sun but wants Joshua to pretend he did; angels show up late (a mechanical defect in the left wing throws one off course); the easiest way to deal with Satan is to throw him an occasional victim.

For those readers who have difficulty reconciling the notion of a wise and caring god with the petulant deity who turns a woman into a pillar of salt because she's curious, who tests loyalty by asking people to slay their children, who rains fire down upon the innocent, encourages the mass destruction of cities, and floods the earth because he's disappointed with his creation, this is the novel for you. Saramago's Cain is wholly unimpressed with the creator's sense of justice. He argues that the lord's ways aren't just mysterious but abhorrent. Viewed from the standpoint of a mere mortal, his argument makes good sense -- although Cain's moral authority to complain about god's murderous ways is dubious, at best. In the end, both the creator and the creation are deeply flawed.  Those flaws make for a wonderfully funny novel.

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Mule by Tony D'Souza

Published by Mariner Books on September 27, 2011

James Lasseter and his soon-to-be-wife Kate are living the good life in Austin when Kate, newly pregnant, is fired from her job. The economy has gone south and James, a freelance writer, can't get an assignment. James and Kate move to a mountain in Northern California where they can stretch their meager savings while deciding what to do next. As Kate shares a joint with a friend from Austin who raves about its quality, James soon realizes that he can earn serious cash by selling NoCal weed in Austin and elsewhere. Thus begins James' career as a mule: a runner of drugs between California and Florida.

For a bright guy, James does some remarkably stupid things, like continually booking one way flights from Florida to California and renting cars for the return trip. He might as well have stamped DRUG MULE on his forehead. He also does a deal that screams "trouble." I suppose the moral is "Greed will make you do stupid things." True enough, but that tale has been told many times before, often more convincingly than D'Souza tells it here.

Had this been a true story, a memoir of a life of crime, I would probably have found it more interesting. As a work of fiction, it lacks pizzazz. Tony D'Souza's writing style is bland and part one of the story he tells is surprisingly dull. James speaks of feeling both nervous and elated while driving drugs cross-country, but D'Souza failed to make me feel James' emotions (to his credit, that changed in part two). When a fairly predictable moment of drama finally arrives (about midway through the novel, toward the end of part one), the dramatic boost it gives to the story is too little, too late. The dramatic tension is stronger in part two as James' drug business begins to unravel, but never reaches a state I would describe as gripping.

On the other hand, D'Souza does some things well. He writes movingly of the toll an economic downturn takes on the lives of the working poor. He captures the marital conflict that results when one spouse wants the other to be home more but doesn't want to give up the income he's earning -- although that aspect of the novel becomes tedious in its frequent repetition. He persuasively portrays the perniciousness of a moneyed lifestyle: it's easy to say "I'll just do this once or twice," not so easy to give up the benefits of steady cash flow. Of course, all that has been done in other novels, often in more scintillating prose.

Although I liked the ending -- it isn't credible, but it's satisfying -- this is ultimately a novel about whiny characters who make a soap opera of their lives while playing at the game of drug dealing. The serious dealers are caricatures, Hollywood versions of what heavy-handed dealers are supposed to be like. The novel isn't awful by any means, but it rarely rises above ordinary.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond

First published in the UK in 1984; published by Melville House on October 4, 2011

A nameless police sergeant is assigned to investigate the violent death of Charlie Staniland, a 51 year old nobody. The sergeant is a dedicated cop stuck in Unexplained Deaths, a division that specializes in crimes committed against London's downtrodden and, for that reason, lacks the respect given to the divisions that specialize is more newsworthy crimes. The sergeant's blunt nature likely assures he will never be promoted; in the belief that "murder outranks rank," he regularly mouths off to uncooperative superiors who take no interest in the unglamorous cases he pursues.

As the sergeant listens to tapes Staniland recorded before his death, he discovers that Staniland became involved (rather impotently) with a woman named Barbara Spark after his wife left him. The sergeant talks with Staniland's brother, his ex-wife, his stepson, his former employers and co-workers, a bank manager, a bartender, Barbara's ex-husband -- all colorful, sharply rendered characters -- as he reconstructs the dead man's life. When he finally meets Barbara, his investigative approach is unconventional -- one might even say unprofessional. The plot eventually takes a turn toward the bizarre as we learn more about one of the characters than we might comfortably want to know.

This is a dark novel. Some of the characters want to be dead; some might as well be. Life has beaten them down. Crime is only a secondary source of darkness in the novel; life itself is the real culprit, life and its treachery, its false hopes, its broken promises. The sergeant is far from being a source of light in the surrounding gloom, although he has a degree of compassion that the other characters tend to lack. He is an uncommonly philosophical law enforcement officer, one who wonders "what the value of truth really was, if getting at it entailed so many lies." Although he doesn't stand out in the world of noir crime fighters, he's a solid entry.

Derek Raymond's prose style is efficient, biting, bleak, as hard and chilly as granite -- in other words, well-suited to the story he tells. Originally published in 1984, this is the first of Raymond's "Factory" novels and the first I've read. It won't be the last.

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