The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon

Published by Scribner on February 22, 2022

The Berlin Exchange gives readers a different take on the spy thriller. The protagonist is a failed spy, an American physicist who passed secrets to the Russians while America was developing the atomic bomb. He served about ten years in a British prison before a prisoner exchange sent him to East Germany, reuniting him with his ex-wife and son. The novel begins with the exchange as the tense steps across the border are followed by gunfire and a crashed ambulance.

Martin Keller taught physics in Germany. When he met Sabine at a party, she told him she was a Communist “in her head,” but not openly because the Nazis did not tolerate Communists. She also told him that she wanted to leave Germany before a war started and that an American would be positioned to make that happen. Martin married her, brought her to America, and — like Sabine — became a spy for ideological reasons. He believed that America’s quest to be the sole nation with nuclear weapons would hinder the cause of world peace.

Martin got caught while he was in England. To maintain her cover, Sabine denounced and divorced him, then returned to the country that had become East Germany, where she took up residence. She married Kurt Thiele, a lawyer who arranges prisoner exchanges with the help of a priest and some black marketeers. Thiele raised Martin’s son Peter as is own, although Peter has always known Martin is his father. At Sabine’s request, Kurt arranges the prisoner exchange that brings Martin to East Germany, a place Martin views as little better than the prison in which he had been serving time.

Peter plays a starring role in an East German television show that is a propaganda vehicle for East Germany’s brand of communism. Peter has been raised in an environment of propaganda and views his father as a hero for betraying the West. Peter believes what he has been taught — communism is fairness, everyone in East Germany has everything they need. Given the status of Peter and his father, Peter has it better than most, making it easier to swallow the lie.

Against that background, a plot unfolds. Martin has abandoned his ideological respect for communism because of how it is practiced in Russia and East Germany. He doesn’t like the oppressive society that he has been forced to join. He doesn’t like the return of his former Russian handler to his life or the expectation that he will spy on a friend and former colleague. He doesn’t like Kurt. But he cares about Sabine (despite having good reason to hate her) and he loves his son. The story follows Martin as he masterminds a plan to save Peter, Sabine, and himself.

Joseph Kanon doesn’t try to make Martin particularly likeable, but he does craft Martin as a decent man who earns the reader’s sympathy. Martin is trying to make the best of an impossible situation and is willing to take risks to overcome his mistakes. His relationship with Sabine is complicated but he doesn’t let anger prevent him from doing the right thing.

Martin’s plan is complex and clever, designed to stay a step ahead of his adversaries, but the story always feels real. Kanon sets up a meticulous plot but doesn’t bog it down in unnecessary detail. Every scene has a purpose, setting up a suspenseful ending that could have a variety of outcomes. Until the final pages arrived, I had no idea how the book would end.

Kanon writes some of the smartest thrillers on the market, and some of the best suspense novels that are set in post-war, Cold War era. The Berlin Exchange meets the high bar that Kanon has set for novels in that genre.

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The Selfless Act of Breathing by JJ Bola

Published by Atria Books on February 15, 2022

“You ever wish that you could die … but without all the dying?” Michael Kabongo needs a therapist but he speaks that question to a prostitute, who wisely tells him she’s not a therapist. Prostitutes and bartenders are fated to listen to their customers’ woes. In any event, Michael tells the reader that he doesn’t want to die but to “cease to exist, disappear, be invisible, every trace of your life, even the memories of you in other people’s hearts and minds, all gone.” That can’t happen so Michael’s only alternative is to end his life, perhaps by jumping off a cliff. The novel follows Michael as he works to spend all his money before he dies because, well, he can’t take it with him.

In chapters that tell us the backstory, we learn that Michael grew up poor and black in London. His family traveled to England from the Congo to avoid a war when he was a child. For reasons Michael does not understand, his father returned to the Congo and died during Michael’s childhood.

When he decides to die, he is teaching eighth grade. I suspect most eighth grade teachers feel the same way. In London, Michael has few friends. One is Sandra, the co-worker Michael calls his “work wife.” Another is Jalil. Part of the story follows Jalil’s response to his father’s insistence that it is time for Jalil to marry. That subplot doesn’t amount to much, but it gives Michael the chance to advise Jalil that he “can’t just go around letting life happen to you,” advice that Michael realizes he’s not following.

When Michael decides that he no longer desires to live, he has about $9,000 in the bank. He travels to San Francisco (a city where it’s easy to spend money), visits City Lights bookstore (again, an easy place to spend money, but always worth it), meets a young woman named Sara, treats her to a weekend in LA, and eventually travels to New York where a friendly taxi driver takes him to a strip club. There Michael meets a friendly prostitute named Belle. At the end of each chapter or after significant events, we see Michael’s remaining funds. The money disappears quickly — perhaps a bit too quickly as Michael ponders reasons to extend his end-of-life adventure.

About a quarter of the way into The Selfless Act of Breathing, Michael explains the history and cause of his fixation on his own death. That history includes a failed relationship, mixed results as he tries to reach self-destructive students, his displeasure with his mother’s marital plans, and conflicted emotions about a co-worker whose beating he witnessed. He also spends significant time describing his classic symptoms of depression.

The path that the novel will follow seems obvious once Michael meets Belle. The discuss their different views of life — he’s a fatalist, she doesn’t believe anything was “meant to be”; he’s almost a nihilist, she seems more like a Buddhist — and their discussion might provide the kind of spark that would make Michael rethink his life. Will the stripper redeem the jaded Londoner? Fortunately, the novel isn’t quite as predictable as a Netflix romance.

Still, the story is filled with clichés, from the prostitute with a heart of gold to a homeless man who quotes philosophers about the purpose of suffering. Collateral characters occasionally deliver trite affirmances about the importance of persevering and overcoming obstacles. The sermonizing in the final pages is a bit much. In addition, JJ Bola failed to win my emotional investment in Michael, who sometimes comes across as a self-pitying whiner whose problems are, on the whole, considerably less than he would have experienced in the Congo. I understand that depression causes people to fixate on their troubles and possibly develop a suicidal ideation that others cannot understand, but that reality didn’t make me root for Michael as a reader is clearly meant to do. I just didn’t care whether he kills himself. I was more interested in the entertaining moments provided by Michael’s spending spree.

The story proceeds at a good pace. Some of the scenes are unexpected. At least one aspect of the ending comes as a surprise. Another aspect is darkly ambiguous, unless I’m imagining an ambiguity that Bola did not intend. The Selfless Act of Breathing has its faults, but it is not a failure. Readers who appreciate clichés about the purpose of life might even find it inspiring.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 15, 2022

Mickey7 is the kind of book that science fiction readers don’t often see — an intelligent story of alien contact that suggests diplomacy is preferable to war. Edward Ashton assembles several familiar science fiction components (colonization of new worlds, storing consciousness and transferring it to an artificially created body, aliens that have a distributed intelligence) and assembles them into an entertaining story that seems fresh despite its familiarity.

The future Diaspora is a recurring theme in science fiction — the idea that humanity will develop the technology to colonize other planets and that (as history shows) plenty of people will be willing to risk danger for the chance to make a new life in a new place. In this version of the future, humans have little choice but to flee from Earth after nearly destroying the planet. Mickey7 takes a deeper-than-average dive into likely reality of colonization. It’s possible to identify planets in the Goldilocks zone that show evidence of having an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, but it’s impossible to know whether those planets will support human life, even after a hundred years of terraforming, until humans try to establish a colony. Occasionally colonies thrive. Usually colonists manage to get by or everyone dies.

The plot is fairly simple, with only a few significant characters and a straightforward storyline. In this case, simplicity is a virtue. Mickey got into some trouble and needed to get off a planet. He joined a colony ship in the only available position — as an expendable. His memories are downloaded and his DNA is recorded. When he dies — and that’s part of the job, because some jobs require human exposure to radiation or other deadly environments — a new body will be printed, his last-recorded memories will be uploaded to his new brain, and he’ll be good to go. Except for the dying part, which is usually quite unpleasant.

During one of his trips outside the dome, Mickey’s seventh incarnation falls down a hole and into a labyrinth of tunnels. His friend assumes that Mickey will soon be eaten by indigenous creatures called creepers. By the time Mickey makes his way out of the tunnels, Mickey8 has been printed. Having two versions in existence at the same time creates all sorts of problems with food rations, so at least one of them will have to go. When neither volunteers, they try to keep their dual existence a secret. That’s an entertaining premise for a story that explores the complications of two identical guys canoodling with two different women while each tries to make do on half the usual rations.

The story eventually leads to a confrontation between the Mickeys and their boss, as well as between the Mickeys and the indigenous life forms. The resolution suggests that creative people can solve problems without killing everyone in sight. I might recommend Mickey7 for that alone, but I also recommend it because the story as a whole is fun and the characters are likeable.

RECOMMENDED

Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

Published by ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux on February 15, 2022

Pure Colour is a patchwork of philosophical essays dressed up as a novel. Long passages consist of a character’s internal monologue. One chapter features of a character living inside a leaf discussing existence with her dead father. In another chapter, that character is living at the end of the world, the end of the first draft of humanity. The theme that binds the chapters is the character’s understanding of human existence as a first draft and the expectation that God or the gods will do better next time.

Mira is the narrator and one of the novel’s two characters unless you count her dead father. The other character is Annie, who might or might not have loved Mira at some point. Mira believes she was “sent into the world” to answer the question, “What is the distance of love?” Pure Colour left me pondering the distance that readers should stand apart from books that ask incomprehensible questions.

When she isn’t writing nonsense, Sheila Heti proves her capacity to express intelligent thoughts in vivid prose. The second part of Pure Colour is a meditation on death and loss, on whether death is loss or something else. When Mira’s father dies, she feels his soul entering her body, an experience that motivates her to consider the nature of life and death. She realizes that she failed to understand the important things — connecting, touching, seeing — while her father was still alive. Those thoughts are expressed in prose that is precise, elegant, and compelling. The story becomes less meaningful after Mira enters the leaf, which leads to a long contemplation of the nature of human existence and love and television. Mira apparently needs to be a leaf in the first draft of humanity to understand her place in the universe, which for most people would be a real bummer. On the other hand, existing as a leaf might be peaceful until the fires and beetles arrive.

Among other tidbits of wisdom, Mira tells us that viruses are “a swarm of invading gods” and that “what’s so exhausting about being ill is that you have been invaded by gods. They are using your body to watch someone near you to see what humans are like in this draft of the world, so they can make them better in the next one.” Rude of us, I suppose, to try so hard to kill the gods that invade our body, but it’s them or us so I’m still taking my god-destroying medications.

Mira also talks about how birds are like artists and cannot be expected to love well because they apply their love to a surface, unlike bears that “join with other creatures much more directly” (presumably by eating them). Mira is undecided about fish. Her observations relate back to earlier musings about differences between birds and bears and fish and the art they will create in the second draft of life, none of which made the slightest bit of sense to me. Mira also explains why God doesn’t want people to fix the first draft of the world so he makes fixers tired. I wonder if God makes reviewers tired when they try to explain books they don’t understand.

In the age of postmodernism, novels no longer need plots. Perhaps we have entered the age of post-postmodernism, in which writers are free to string scattered thoughts together and call it a novel. I appreciated some of Mira’s thoughts, including her suggestion that children are never who parents expect them to be, and “must not be” because that is “how the world changes, how values and criticisms evolve.” She riffs on that thought for several paragraphs without adding value before she decides to be a leaf again, but only for a moment, thanks to Annie who keeps pulling her out of her leafiness. Heti’s prose and some of her thoughts have sufficient strength to earn my recommendation, but only for readers who prefer lush prose and abstract ideas to traditional plots. I think Pure Colour would have worked better as a book of essays but disguising the book as a novel at least induced me (and probably others) to read it.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

Published by Bloomsbury on February 8, 2022

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a New York City domestic drama. Boy meets girl, girl shags boy’s best friend, boy marries girl, boy thinks about shagging someone new, girl shags boy’s best friend again, boy dyes his graying chest hair after losing girl, and so on. I won’t spoil the ending, not that it is difficult to predict. All of that happens in the context of a New York City novel — boy and girl rag about New York while living with the certainty that every other American city is worse — and an older man, younger woman relationship. So yes, you’ve read this book before. Fortunately, Coco Mellors crafts an enjoyable story, even if she can’t make it fresh.

Frank and Cleo have recently married. Frank is in his forties, Jewish on his father’s side and Catholic on his mother’s, a New Yorker who started his own advertising agency. Cleo is a British artist in her twenties. Her student visa was about to expire when she married Frank. The marriage was convenient for Cleo but they love each other, despite being less than perfectly matched. Cleo is bothered by Frank’s alpha-male competitiveness, by his drinking, by his desire to live for the purpose of accumulating stories about his life. Frank is bothered by Cleo’s unceasing demands for attention and by her efforts to change him. Both suffer from a constant need to prove to the world that they are interesting, worthy of notice, perhaps worthy of love.

Nineteen-year-old Zoe is Frank’s half-sister. Frank believes she was the product of “a last ditch effort to create a shared interest with [his mother’s] second husband.” Zoe is an actor. Strangers do not believe they are siblings because Frank looks like a “vaguely Jewish” white guy and Zoe is dark and breathtaking. Zoe is broke but financially dependent on Frank for rent and tuition, although she’d like to find a way to be self-sufficient without actually making an effort that would get in the way of nightly partying and random hookups.

Cleo’s father is Peter, a man so wrapped up in his new family that he barely recalls he has a daughter. Cleo lost her mother to suicide after her divorce from Peter. Cleo’s stepmother is Miriam, who teaches workshops on healing the inner child. During a lunch at Grand Central Station’s Oyster Bar, it becomes clear that Cleo’s relationship with Peter and Miriam needs healing. It’s easy to understand why Cleo is such a mess.

Frank’s best friends are Santiago (a Peruvian chef whose wife apparently died from a heroin overdose) and Anders (a Scandinavian former model who quit working for Frank to take over the art department of a women’s fashion magazine). Whether they are good friends or the sort of people who betray each other or both is a question that adds to the domestic drama. Cleo’s best friend (before meeting Frank) is Quentin, who broke up with Johnny and sporadically dates Alex. Every woman in a modern domestic drama needs a gay friend and confidant; Quentin fills that role.

After a third of the story has been told, Eleanor Rosenthal appears. Eleanor is in her late thirties. After getting fired as a screenwriter in LA, she moved to New York to live with her mother (her father is in a home for people with Alzheimer’s). Eleanor took a temp job as a copywriter in New York at Frank’s agency. She sits next to an editor named Myke, who tells her about Frank’s hot young British wife. Eleanor googles Cleo because Eleanor is insecure. Seeing Cleo’s picture doesn’t improve her confidence.

Coco Mellors takes her deepest dive into Eleanor. Or perhaps, not being obsessed with New Yorkiness, Eleanor’s personality is less superficial than the other characters. Her insecurity is almost endearing. Eleanor deals with feelings of loss, unfulfilled desires, and an inability to decide which desires she really wants to fulfill. A late chapter devoted to Eleanor provides the novel’s funniest moments. Her mother offers the book’s greatest insight: The space between the words “so what” holds the key to “a free and happy life.”

Cleo and Frank offer ordinary insights into why relationships fail. They blame each other for their faults. Frank uses Cleo as an excuse for his drinking. Cleo uses Frank as an excuse for her self-harm. Each blames the other for being self-pitying and in that regard, they each have a point. They are about equally self-centered. Ultimately, each wants the other to be someone else, although each knew exactly what they were getting when they chose to marry. Cleo resents that “the onus is on her to fix” Frank but it’s not. The onus is on her to accept Frank or to encourage his better tendencies, not to change him into the person she wants him to be. Just as the onus is on Frank to listen to Cleo rather than putting words in her mouth. The story offers typical insights into the inability of self-centered people to sustain relationships.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein checks all the boxes of a New York domestic drama, from Quentin’s desire to be a female to marital infidelity to alcohol and drug abuse to unresolved resentment of parents living and dead to unlovable characters moaning that no one loves them to friends who are collected as accessories. And, of course, New Yorkers making fun of LA. Like many New Yorkers, the characters seem to think that living in New York is enough to make them superior to other Americans. To her credit, however, Mellors makes it clear that leaving New York behind is the best thing that could happen to Cleo.

A chapter that recounts Frank and Eleanor’s “getting to know each other” period is filled with amusing sentences. I particularly enjoyed “We go to an Irish bar around the corner that smells of salted nuts and disappointment.” The characters trade the kind of witty dialog that is effortless to imaginary people.They are never inarticulate, never at a loss for words. In uglier times, Frank and Cleo scream at each other in scenes that might make a reader cringe. They left me feeling exhausted, as if I had been in the fight. It is a tribute to Mellors that her prose drew me so intimately into the story.

A reader’s reaction to a domestic drama may depend on whether the reader relates to, or at least cheers for, any of the significant characters. I liked Eleanor and eventually developed a reader’s fondness for Frank and Cleo, perhaps because they are both on the road to overcoming their selfish tendencies as the novel nears its end. Still, the characters are all walking clichés. A “talk it all out” chapter at the end is predictable, as is the ending. Mellors contributes nothing new to the stale genre of New York domestic drama. Fans of the genre will probably love Cleopatra and Frankenstein. Despite the familiar story. I’m recommending it for Mellors’ prose and her ability to make tiresome characters interesting.

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