Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism by David Nickle

Published by ChiZine Publications on April 15, 2011

Eutopia is divided into two parts: nurture and nature. The first section (nurture) sets up what appears to be a terrific horror story, one with dynamic characters, a strong sense of place, and a variety of interesting but disquieting conflicts. The second section veers a bit off track with plot developments that are more silly than horrific, yet the story held my attention even when I was questioning its premise.

The setup creates the perfect atmosphere for a horror novel. Set in the fictional town of Eliada, Idaho, Eutopia begins in 1911 with the attempted hanging of Juke, a person (or perhaps a thing) with intensely black eyes. Juke survives the noose and Eliada's private police arrive in time to save Dr. Andrew Waggoner, the only black physician at Eliada Hospital, from the second half of the intended double lynching. The hangmen are wearing KKK garb and at least one is the brother of Maryanne Leonard, a seemingly deranged patient who died while Waggoner was trying to save her from injuries that apparently resulted from a botched outhouse abortion.

Joining the population of Eliada are Jason Thistledown, the only survivor of a mysterious epidemic that wiped out the town of Cracked Wheel, and Germaine Frost, a gatherer of information for the Eugenics Records Office. Jason and Waggoner soon discover that Maryanne isn't the only woman who suffered a grizzly death in the vicinity of Eliada. The other victims had similar injuries, but not all of them were pregnant.

Eliada's founder is Garrison Harper. His intent was to create a "stern Paradise," a "community devoid of strife and class warfare where men happily lifted their tools at sunrise and set them down again at sunset, not once tempted by Bolshevism or bad morals" -- in short, a 1911 version of Utopia. All the residents share common traits: the men are tall and strong, the women are "lean and comely," and none seem to suffer from a physical or mental infirmity. In contrast to Eliada's residents, many of those who live in the nearby woods are far from prime specimens of humanity. Neither is Juke, who lives in the hospital's quarantine building. Juke is a project of Dr. Bergstrom, who claims Juke is "beset by idiocy and infirmity. And certain -- irregularities in his anatomy." And then there are the mysterious Feegers, who seem to linger in the woods while worshipping ... something.

David Nickle's weaving of two real world horrors -- eugenics and racism -- into the novel's twin mysteries (the deaths near Eliada and the epidemic in Cracked Wheel) is ingenious. Nickle's writing style is at least a step above the ordinary. His prose is efficient; Nickle uses a few carefully selected words to set scenes that some writers would have wasted pages developing, a skill that allows the story to develop at a brisk pace. The mood and atmosphere are perfect for a tale of the supernatural. Nickle's writing, and particularly the sense of characters rooted to a particular place and time, reminded me of Joe Lansdale.

Much of the time, Eutopia has the feel of a conspiracy thriller: characters don't immediately realize they are in danger, and when they do, they don't understand why; puzzling out the "why" is the key to their survival. The nature of the threat is revealed about halfway through the novel, and (unfortunately) the story loses some of its zest at that point. The explanation (and the abilities manifested by Juke and his ilk) struck me as a little too silly to be truly chilling. In fact, the book might have been better without the supernatural element, although it probably wouldn't qualify as a horror novel at that point. Still, my dissatisfaction with the Juke/Feeger aspect of the plot didn't stop me from following the story to its surprising (and satisfying) conclusion. Nickle's strong writing and the carefully fashioned characters are reason enough to read and enjoy this novel.

RECOMMENDED

A Thousand Times More Fair by Kenji Yoshino

Published by Ecco on April 12, 2011

Law Professor Kenji Yoshino majored in English at Harvard before attending Yale Law School. Unsurprisingly, he never lost his love of Shakespeare. In A Thousand Times More Fair, Yoshino explores the oft-considered relationship between beauty and justice -- specifically, what Shakespeare's beautifully written plays can teach us about justice.

Reading Shakespeare is like reading the Bible (or, for that matter, the Constitution): there is much of value to be mined, but the reader must be wary of fanciful interpretations. Fortunately, Yoshino's legal scholarship compels him to base his conclusions on evidence. Yoshino engages in a careful reading of the plays, liberally quoting lines and citing a variety of external sources to divine their meaning. Readers who are more interested in the plays than the law will appreciate this book for its nuanced understanding of Shakespeare. Indeed, this is not a book just (or even primarily) for legal scholars. Although Yoshino's discussion of the plays is informed by a lawyer's perspective, the legal principles that he elucidates almost become secondary to his broader reading of the plays. Nearly everyone should learn something new, or see a play or two in a different way, after reading this book.

Yoshino argues that Titus Andronicus teaches audiences that the rule of law is preferable to vengeance; that retribution must be left to the public (i.e., government) rather than the private individual because, as the play demonstrates, private revenge "necessarily dooms the avenger and his society." Although Hamlet also centers upon a desire for vengeance, Yoshino uses it to discuss the concept of perfect (or poetic) justice.

The Merchant of Venice would be an ideal vehicle for addressing the difference between law and justice; contract law entitles Shylock to a pound of Antonio's flesh, but mercy (the quality of which "is not strain'd") would produce a more just result. Yoshino instead uses the play to discuss a more subtle point: how the language of the law is manipulated (the daily task of lawyers), as exemplified by Portia's skillful use of rhetoric to deny enforcement of Shylock's contract.

In Measure for Measure, Yoshino finds support the argument that good judging is not solely about "empathy" (to use President Obama's term) or a "strict construction" of the law (to use a phrase favored by conservatives). Rather, the phrases represent "competing values that must each be honored." Shakespeare agreed, according to Yoshino, as demonstrated by the ability of Escalus finds a middle ground between ignoring a bad law and enforcing it unjustly.

Yoshino turns to four historical dramas to explore the legitimacy of a ruler's authority and to ask whether "just rule is nothing more than what power calls itself." In a related discussion of political authority, Yoshino argues that The Tempest champions the notion that wise rulers eventually relinquish their power voluntarily (just as Prospero puts aside his magic at the play's end). Of course, the notion of a political leader giving up power in the absence of scandal is virtually unknown to modern politics; perhaps our political leaders should spend more time studying Shakespeare.

Yoshino's take on King Lear is insightful but his argument that Lear's madness allows him to see beyond the law to a higher form of "immortal justice" and then to surrender justice for love is interesting but a bit of a stretch. While well argued, Yoshino's least interesting point (to me) concerns one of Shakespeare's most interesting plays: Yoshino uses Macbeth to exemplify the concept of "natural justice," an antiquated notion that is widely rejected in the modern world.

Yoshino is least convincing in his discussion of Othello, both in his assertion that the play tells us much about the legal art of factfinding and in his comparison of Desdemona's handkerchief to O.J. Simpson's glove. Just as Othello was misled by the handkerchief, Yoshino says, Simpson's jury was misled by the glove. But Othello was misled by Iago's lies about the handkerchief, not by the handkerchief itself, and the Simpson jury based its acquittal on a host of evidence suggesting that prosecution witnesses had planted evidence and had perjured themselves while testifying -- all of which presumably created (in their minds) a reasonable doubt: the critical legal standard that Yoshino neglects to mention and that played no role in Othello.

In addition to discussing the Simpson trial, Yoshino relies on recent political history to illustrate certain legal principles, including the American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 and Bill Clinton's unsuccessful attempt to manipulate language by positing multiple definitions of the word "is." Readers with strong political opinions who are unwilling to entertain ideas that disagree with their own might be put off by those discussions. I emphasize again, however, that there is much to learn about Shakespeare's plays from this engaging book -- politics notwithstanding.

Yoshino doesn't bog down his lively writing with legal jargon; most of the legal concepts he discusses are familiar to nonlawyers and he carefully explains those that are not. If you like Shakespeare (and who doesn't?), you will likely enjoy (and benefit from reading) A Thousand Times More Fair.

RECOMMENDED

The Fund by H.T. Narea

Published by Forge Books on May 10, 2011

Although The Fund seems to be marketed as a financial thriller, the plot is driven by terrorist bombings. The Shari'ah-complaint fund that gives the novel its title is less important to the story than the terrorist attacks. Narea serves up a smorgasbord of culprits, including the Venezuelan and Cuban governments, al-Qaeda terrorists, Basque separatists, and suicide bombers who are energized by a secret serum that makes cats chase dogs. The chief bad guy, Nebibi Hasehm, controls the fund. Its structure assures that it will do well if certain sectors of the economy are distressed -- the kind of distress that might follow a significant terrorist attack directed at Wall Street. The chief good guy, Kate Molares, an analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, happens to have been Hasehm's lover six years earlier -- one of several coincidences (including Kate's father's involvement with the fund) that are a bit difficult to accept.

Narea deserves credit for weaving these threads into a coherent whole. Still, there is at least one plot thread too many. The storyline involving the serum that makes cats chase dogs is both central to the plot and unnecessary. It is too James Bond-ish to integrate well with the sophisticated financial thriller that the book sometimes tries to be. For all the emphasis Narea places on the serum, its existence does little to advance the story. My sense is that Narea intends this novel as a warning; if so, the threat of dirty bombs accomplishes that task without trying to make the reader fret about drug-fueled suicide bombers. (Frankly, if terrorists were given the serum, we'd all be better off. The serum seems to have the same effects as meth. How many meth addicts are capable of following instructions?)

Putting aside the serum and the financing (neither of which make a substantial contribution to the plot) and viewing The Fund as a conventional thriller about terrorists and dirty bombs and the like, the novel is entertaining, although it rarely achieves and never sustains the level of tension that the best thrillers produce. It's important to create a sense of atmosphere but at times The Fund reads more like a travelogue than a thriller. Narea's writing style is what a reader might expect to encounter in a first novel: sometimes stilted or awkward, a bit wordy, but for the most part serviceable. Dialog is too frequently used to explain things for the reader's benefit that the characters would already know. And while it might be beneficial to translate the phrases "Allahu Akbar" and "insha'allah" once for the benefit of readers who haven't encountered them before, it isn't necessary to repeat the translation every single time one of the phrases appears in the text.

On the positive side, The Fund tells its story with vigor and the characters are likable if not particularly deep. To his credit, Narea didn't create a superhero to rush in like Jack Ryan and save the world from evil.  On the other hand, Molares waltzes through the novel without doing much of anything other than (too predictably) renewing her romantic entanglement with Hasehm. By the novel's end, the primary characters are all but forgotten in a rush to finalize the story. Narea ends the novel with an excess of exposition: this happened here, then that happened there, and it all changed the world. Like much of the rest of the novel, the ending lacks punch.

The Fund is in many respects a worthy effort that suffers from too little originality and an insufficiently tight plot. Had the focus been more on the funding mechanism for terrorism and less on the terrorist plot itself, this would have been a better novel.  Hardcore fans of novels about terrorism will enjoy it; for others the novel is a mixed bag.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Embassytown by China Miéville

Published by Del Rey on May 17, 2011

China Miéville is a master of the strange tale. Fortunately, the madness that drives his stories is shaped by purpose. I could be completely wrong (and not for the first time), but I think Miéville's last novel, The City & The City, illustrates the point Ralph Ellison made more directly in Invisible Man: that we pretend not to see those we identify as "the other," those we deem unworthy of our attention because they are different. I read Embassytown as another parable: a demonstration of the power of language, both as an instrument of control and as an instrument of change.

Human communication with the Areikei is difficult because the Areikei form words by making two different sounds simultaneously with their two mouths. Since humans have only one mouth, Ambassadors to the Areikei are cloned twins who are trained to speak the Areikei language together. Language is power, but one pair of Ambassadors, Ez and Ra (collectively EzRa), find that the power they wield is a destructive force that threatens Areikei society. From that creative view of language Miéville's story flows.

We learn in school that language is symbolic, that a word is a symbol that stands for a thought. To Miéville's Areikei, however, language is inseparable from thought: a word is only a sound that has no meaning unless it is spoken with the intent to communicate. The Areikei have no written language. They do not understand words synthesized by computers because absent a mind to create the words as they are spoken, the sounds lack content. Because the Areikei do not use words as symbols they cannot easily lie, although they delight in the human ability to claim that something is red when everyone can see that it is blue. They also feel enriched when humans become identified with similes (when the Areikei do what they are told to do, they are "like the girl who ate what she was given"). For humans, it is a small step from simile to metaphor, from "I am like a rock" to "I am a rock." For the Areikei, it is a nearly impossible leap. It is unnatural for the Areikei to understand that something can be true yet untrue -- literally false yet metaphorically true. As a writer of fiction, Miéville tells lies for a living, yet the untrue stories he tells reveal truths. Through the Areikei, Miéville explores the relationship between language and truth, between language and understanding -- and perhaps more importantly, between language and free thought.

Of course, it isn't necessary to read the novel as a parable; it works on a simpler level, as the story of a human who struggles against danger on an alien planet. Miéville is a capable craftsman who uses language effectively to entertain. His aliens are unique, although his human characters are a bit thin. While conflict pervades the story, the novel isn't filled with conventional "human versus alien" battle scenes; much of the action takes place offstage. If daring feats executed by exciting characters are what you crave, you won't find it here. None of that disturbed me given the nature of the story.

Miéville's novel encourages us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, of our personal and cultural relationship with language. The desire not just to entertain but to make the reader think is Miéville's signature. It is for that reason that Miéville's novels are (with apologies to Spock) fascinating. If you read Embassytown not just for the story it tells but for the ideas with which it plays, your time will be well spent.

RECOMMENDED

The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert

Published by Unbridled Books on April 19, 2011

The Coffins of Little Hope adds an interesting twist to the "missing child" story. Lenore has disappeared from Daisy's farm, apparently abducted by an aerial photographer who resembles (and thus comes to be known as) Elvis. But as the story gains worldwide attention (attracting reporters, psychics, and the merely curious), people start to wonder whether Lenore actually existed ... and if she did, whether Daisy is responsible for her disappearance. The townspeople don't much care about the truth; the legend of Lenore holds the hope of keeping their dying town alive. A cult-like group (the "Lenorians") begins to gather on Daisy's farm, never searching for Lenore but attesting to the reality of her existence.

The story swivels around twin fulcrums. Lenore is one. The other is a book: the eleventh and last Miranda-and-Desiree book, a popular children's series that (to maintain security) is secretly printed by the newspaper in the small Nebraska town where the novel takes place. The newspaper that does the printing is The County Paragraph; its obituary writer, 83-year-old Essie, is the novel's narrator. Wilton Muscatine, the author of the Miranda-and-Desiree series, has been corresponding for some time with Essie and eventually plays a role in the story. So does Essie's grandson, "Doc," who inherited the newspaper and now acts as its editor/publisher, a job to which he is unsuited.

Doc's sister Ivy and Ivy's daughter Tiff round out the list of important characters, all of whom are quite believable. Timothy Schaffert gives life even to his minor characters, including a Lutheran minister who is too fire-and-brimstone for his staid congregation. The rural community in which the story takes place may, like Lenore, disappear, leaving others to wonder whether it ever existed.  When the newspaper is gone, there will be no record of the townspeople's quiet lives.  When Essie is gone, there will be nobody to write the town's obituary.

As an elderly obituary writer, Essie has an interesting perspective on aging and death. One of her thoughts on the subject gives a nice taste of Schaffert's writing: "A sophisticated civilization wouldn't ridicule senility, it would elevate it, worship it, wouldn't it? We would train ourselves to see poetry in the nonsense of dementia, to actually look forward to becoming so untethered from the world. We'd make a ceremony of casting off our material goods and confining ourselves to a single room, leaving all our old, abandoned space to someone new, someone young, so that we could die alone, indifferent to our own decay and lost beauty." A bit gloomy, perhaps, but Essie's thoughts about aging are a bit more upbeat by the novel's end.  (I loved the last paragraph.  To avoid spoilers, I won't reveal its contents, but it is worth reading the novel just to appreciate that paragraph.)

I enjoyed The Coffins of Little Hope for the characters it brings to life more than the story it tells. By the end of the novel, the story feels like an afterthought, like something not quite finished. But that's life and maybe that's Schaffert's point; sometimes questions aren't resolved, sometimes life just moves on without providing a neat ending. Sometimes it's enough just to know the people we meet along the way. Schaffert's characters are worth meeting.

RECOMMENDED