The Paperbark Shoe by Goldie Goldbloom

Published by Picador on March 29, 2011

I knew Gin Toad was a character I would like when, newly arrived in Wyalkatchem, she meets a woman who pats her shoulder, telling her that it's good luck to touch an albino, and Gin responds by tapping the woman and saying "Maybe it's good luck to touch an idiot." Gin doesn't often give voice to her sharp humor but she's nobody's fool, despite being committed to an institution before Toad married her. Toad can barely look at Gin and rarely touches her. Although they feel no passion for each other, she bears his children (losing one to diphtheria) while wondering whether Toad views her as just one more sheep to be bred.

Gin and Toad live on a remote farm in Western Australia. Their hard lives are made more difficult by the shortages created by World War II. Toad is ugly, coarse, uncommunicative, lacking education and refinement, yet he is fundamentally decent, possessed of a hidden depth and secrets that, like Gin's, are deeply buried. Both characters are isolated not just in their location but in their personalities. Both yearn for something they cannot have and dare not dream about.

Gin's stultifying life is transformed by two Italian prisoners of war, placed in Toad's custody as farmhands. The boisterous nature of the Italians is in sharp contrast to the withdrawn silence and studied indifference that defined Toad before their arrival, and it is inevitable that one of them awakens urges in Gin that have long been buried. At one point in the novel the Italian Antonio has to remind Gin that he is a prisoner, but he seems less a prisoner than Gin, who is imprisoned by her appearance and her past, caged by the expectations and perceptions of others. Gin's albino eyes are nearly blind in bright sunlight, but her emotional blindness is a greater disability.

The Paperbark Shoe is a remarkable novel, a multifaceted story of love and desire, war and prejudice. Townspeople are cruel to Toad because of his appearance and unschooled behavior, to Gin because of her albinism, to the Italians because of their heritage. Moments of unexpected humor keep the story's heartbreaking sorrow from becoming overwhelming. Goldbloom's sentences flow in an exquisite rhythm. Her word choice is impeccable. Each character speaks with a distinctive voice. It was clear as the novel progressed that the Italians would change the lives of Gin and Toad, but even knowing that, their lives changed in ways I didn't see coming. Although I didn't want the novel to end, the powerful ending is satisfying, rich with feeling, offering the hope of redemption as a respite from despair. Because of the story it tells, the characters it brings to life, and the beauty of its prose, this is a book I highly recommend. It apparently did well in Australia; it deserves a worldwide audience. 

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Embedded by Dan Abnett

Published by Angry Robot on March 29, 2011

I don’t go out of my way to read military science fiction because it is so often unimaginative.  John Scalzi is an admirable exception to that rule, an inventive storyteller who gives complete personalities to credible characters.  Like Scalzi, Dan Abnett has a loyal following so I thought I would try one of his novels.  Perhaps I picked the wrong one.

Lex Falk is a journalist who describes himself as an arrogant jerk (“jerk” being a euphemism because I’m writing this for a family audience).  He’s on a world known by its number (86) covering an armed dispute.  The planet is being developed for mineral extraction.  The most productive settlements on 86 belong to the “United Status” (a little too cute, that) which wants to add 86 as a new state.  The official story -- the one Falk is investigating -- is that “anti-corporate paramilitary forces are staging armed resistance” to US activities on 86.  The truth is more complicated and appears to pit the US against the Bloc (whose soldiers speak Russian).  The Settlement Office Military Directorate (sort of the United Nations of interplanetary land claims) has been charged with containing the dispute.  Falk is embedded with the SOMD to gain a reporter’s view of the conflict, but the SOMD prevents him from seeing anything worthwhile.  Fortunately for Falk (and for the plot), a public relations consultant employed by a corporate entity with a vested interest in the dispute decides Falk should know what’s really happening.  At that point Falk is embedded by means of a virtual connection to a soldier (he sees what the soldier sees) and the action finally begins.

And quite a lot of action there is.  Once it starts, the action is nonstop and some of the combat scenes create real tension.  Although Abnett’s writing too often seems designed to titillate preteens, the plot has some entertainment value once he gets the story in gear.  As a result of the embedding, Falk finds himself wrestling with a moral dilemma that is well conceived.  Some of the story is quite funny, although I doubt that the humor is always intentional.  A few of Abnett’s ideas about life on frontier worlds are innovative.  The timeless conflict between the governmental desire for secrecy and the media’s desire to expose those secrets is an effective storyline that provides a reasonable excuse for all the descriptions of battle, although the mystery of the cause for all the fighting turns out to be anti-climactic.

Abnett relies heavily on dialog to carry the story but the dialog sounds a bit too 2011-hip to be credible.  He tries hard to be gritty but it’s like listening to a one-note song.  While I am a big fan of the F-word when it’s employed effectively, its frequent use in Embedded seems contrived, an easy way to demonstrate that the characters are rough and tough.  When nearly every character drops an F-bomb in nearly every sentence, it becomes difficult to distinguish one character from another.  (They make equally opportunistic use of nearly all the other words that can’t be uttered on network television; readers who frown on foul language will want to stay far away from this novel.)  I did think the use of “freeking” as a “sponsored expletive” was clever; when characters who are likely to be televised use the F-word a “ling patch” converts the word to “freek” as they utter it, thus promoting a soft drink called NoCal Freek.  If Embedded had demonstrated that level of originality more frequently, I would be more enthused about it.

In short, Embedded isn’t a bad effort, but it’s far from the finest example of military science fiction.  I suspect that Abnett devotees and true military sf junkies will appreciate this novel more than I did, but I would hesitate to recommend it to the average sf fan.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming

Published by St. Martin's Press on March 15, 2011

Of all the Charles Cumming novels, my favorite remains The Hidden Man, a novel that -- like a Hitchcock movie -- generates suspense by placing unwitting individuals in unforeseen peril.  Cumming tries to do that again in The Trinity Six by sending Professor Sam Gaddis on a quest to identify the sixth and final member of the Cambridge spy ring that included the infamous Kim Philby.  While The Trinity Six is an enjoyable novel, it fails to create the same atmosphere of danger that makes The Hidden Man Cumming’s reigning masterpiece.

The identity of the sixth spy is never in doubt; Cumming reveals it on the first page.  Gaddis learns of it after a journalist friend asks him to co-author a book based on a story she plans to write that will reveal the spy’s name to the public.  The journalist dies soon after that conversation, leaving Gaddis to pursue the truth on his own.  His investigation leads him to an elderly man named Thomas Neame who provides either valuable information or calculated disinformation.  For much of the novel, Gaddis remains credibly clueless as he is played by one intelligence agency and stalked by another.  Eventually his search takes him country hopping and, as is typical in espionage thrillers, when he unearths individuals who can bring him closer to the truth they tend to die.

As he does in his other novels, Cumming derives excitement from intellectual challenge rather than shootouts and chases.  The difficult task of separating truth from falsehood animates the story.  That technique worked well in Cumming’s last Alec Milius novel, The Spanish Game, but it is less successful here.  The palpable tension and riveting suspense that characterizes Cumming’s best work never materializes in The Trinity Six.  This is not to say that the story is dull or not well told; Cumming is a fine writer with a literary style that sets him apart from typical espionage novelists.  Gaddis and the supporting cast are interesting characters and the plot unfolds at a steady but unrushed pace.  Ultimately, however, the novel lacks the heft of Cumming’s most enjoyable novels.  I recommend The Trinity Six to fans of espionage fiction, but with the warning that they might be disappointed if they expect it to live up to the standard Cumming set in some of his earlier novels.

RECOMMENDED

Seven Years by Peter Stamm

Published by Other Press on March 22, 2011

Peter Stamm's Seven Years focuses on a German architect named Alex and, to a significantly lesser extent, on his wife (Sonia) and his paramour (Ivona). Told in the first person from the perspective of Alex, Seven Years chronicles Alex's relationship with Ivona from the time he meets her (before he starts dating Sonia) through the seventh year of his marriage. It is in essence a character study rather than a plot-driven novel.

When Alex first meets Ivona (a Polish Catholic who lives in a dorm and works in a book store) he isn't attracted to her. He thinks she's dumpy and boring, but as he walks her home he begins to feel an intense desire for her. Ivona is instantly in love with Alex but won't permit their relationship to become intimate until much later. Alex sees Ivona again during his engagement to Sonia and again after they marry. The lives of Alex, Sonia, and Ivona become complicated in another respect, but I don't want to provide any further details for fear of giving away the story.

While Seven Years held my interest, I failed to form either an emotional or an intellectual connection with the story or characters. The puzzle in Seven Years is Alex's seemingly uncontrollable desire for Ivona, a woman who in many ways repulses him. Since Sonia shows little passion for Alex it might be understandable if he turned to Ivona to meet that need, but Ivona displays even less passion than Sonia. What Ivona provides is unconditional devotion. Alex derives a feeling "of freedom and protectedness" from Ivona; she expects nothing from him, relieving him of the pressure to meet another person's needs. His life with her is an alternate reality, one that he can visit or leave as he chooses. Somehow he convinces himself that he is ennobled by this relationship, that it would be sordid if they were using each other for casual pleasure. Ivona's friend Eva might have the best explanation for Alex's inexplicable behavior: "Men are like that." Maybe, but it isn't a very insightful or satisfying analysis of Alex's involvement with Ivona.

As hard as it is to understand Alex, it's even more difficult to know what Ivona feels (or Sonia for that matter) because the point of view is exclusively Alex's. While Alex's analysis of his life and actions often struck me as the stuff of pop psychology rather than a meaningful internal examination, his understanding of Ivova and Sonia was even less insightful.

Readers who don't like books that feature unlikable characters should probably give this novel a pass. The characters are realistic but awfully self-absorbed. Ultimately reading the novel felt like listening to a casual acquaintance yammer on endlessly about his life, telling stories that have no real point. I don't need to like characters in order to enjoy a novel but I do want the story to make me feel something. Seven Years left me feeling drained. I admired Peter Stamm's prose style but I can't say I gained anything by reading about these characters.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Cold Wind by C.J. Box

Published by Putnam on March 22, 2011

Cold Wind gets off to a promising start as Joe Pickett discovers the body of his mother-in-law's most recent husband chained to the spinning blade of a wind-powered turbine. The plot begins to deteriorate when his mother-in-law, Missy, is arrested for the crime, the murder weapon having been found in the back of her car. The prosecutor, although allegedly a bright woman, believes she has a strong case because one of her ex-husbands claims that she tried to hire him to kill her husband. It apparently never occurs to the prosecutor to wonder (1) how she is going to prove that an elderly woman managed to climb a turbine tower and chain a dead body to a spinning blade, (2) how she will convince the jury that Missy would even want to display his body that way, or (3) why a jury would view the unsubstantiated story told by an embittered ex-husband as credible. The prosecutor seems to be counting on the jury to convict Missy because they resent her wealth and arrogance, but that attitude is inconsistent with what Pickett tells us about her professionalism.

A second storyline is just silly. Joe's buddy Nate Romanowski is living in a cave, hiding from five former members of a "rogue branch" of Special Forces who now work for Homeland Security. An attempt is made on his life, not by the rogues, but by a woman who hires two nitwits to shoot at his cave with a rocket launcher. How the woman acquired the weapon never seems to concern the nitwits and apparently it isn't supposed to concern the reader either, since the explanation eventually provided is laughable. That storyline turns into a fairly pedestrian tale of vigilante justice.

Few of the characters in Cold Wind have enough brain cells to rub together to produce a spark of intelligence. Only Missy's lawyer, Marcus Hand (clearly modeled after Gerry Spence, right down to the description of his hair and attire and the location and nature of his law practice) has any personality, but he is oddly ignorant of criminal procedure (making no protest, for instance, when a Justice of the Peace bases an adverse decision largely on the fact that Missy shops out-of-state instead of buying goods from the JP's feed store). Just as ignorant is the prosecutor, who repeatedly claims it would be "inappropriate" for her to listen to Pickett, a law enforcement officer who has information that might cast doubt on Missy's guilt, when in fact it is her ethical duty to do so. Box's fanciful description of legal proceedings (there are more howlers than those I've described) makes it impossible to take the novel seriously.

On the positive side, the story proceeds at a brisk pace, slowed only by occasional lectures on wind-generated energy that are meant to educate Pickett. Box's writing style is competent: not stirring but not awful. Pickett stumbles upon a crime that, while not terribly relevant to the plot, is inventive (I don't think it would work in the real world, but at least it's interesting). The ending contains a twist that saves it from being as anti-climactic as it initially appeared to be, although the twist was a bit predictable. Overall, Box did enough things right to keep me reading to the end, but not enough to make me encourage others to buy the novel.

A final warning: Some of the characters engage in a fair amount of pontificating about the evils of government support for wind energy. I don't care one way or another about opinions expressed by fictional characters (I don't pick up a thriller expecting to find an accurate, balanced view of energy policy) but some readers prefer their thrillers to remain entirely free of politics. Those readers might want to avoid this novel.

NOT RECOMMENDED