All posts by Lars Walker

Fiction, Reviews

‘Fool Me Once,’ by Harlan Coben

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Wow. What a book. Harlan Coben is one of the best thriller writers around, but Fool Me Once is unlike anything he’s written before.

I might have been inclined to pass this one over, because it involves a woman in combat, a subject that troubles me. But I trust Coben, so I went ahead and read it, and I’m glad I did. You could make an argument that the story supports my views, but I doubt that’s what Coben had in mind. Whatever his intentions, he’s written a fine, taut, explosive story.

Maya Stern Burkett is a veteran helicopter pilot from the Middle East war. She was briefly famous when video of her killing civilians during a rescue mission was leaked by a whistleblower web site. That ended her military career. Now she’s an aviation instructor. Some people say that death follows her, and it seems as if it might be true. Her sister was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered while she was overseas, and now her husband, Joe Burkett, scion of a rich and powerful family and the father of her two-year-old daughter, has been murdered.

After the funeral, Maya’s sister-in-law gives her an unexpected gift – a nanny camera. Maya trusts her nanny, and doesn’t understand the gift, but she uses it… and one day she sees something that can’t possibly be real on its daily recording. Maya starts asking questions and begins to learn that very little in her world is what it seems to be. Her life, and her daughter’s, may be at stake.

Coben does a splendid job of describing the world of a soldier dealing with PTSD. And I don’t often say that a book’s ending shocks me, but this one did. It worked, though, and I won’t soon forget it.

Highly recommended. No sex, language fairly mild (as with all Coben’s books), and the violence isn’t overwhelming.

Music, Religion

A private confession, just between you and me.

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My name is Lars, and I’m an addict.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

I’m more… obsessed. Or compulsed. Compulsively obsessed.

With a music video.

No, not a music video. They didn’t exist back in 1965, when this was recorded. It’s a clip from a TV show called Hullabaloo, which I vaguely recall from my teenage years. We didn’t watch it very much.

And I wasn’t actually much aware of this song when it rose to Number Two on the Billboard chart. When I first noticed it, it was already an oldie. What it actually is, is an arrangement of the Minuet in G Major, which was long attributed to Bach but actually appears to have been first composed by a guy named Christian Petzold. The arrangers changed the time signature from 3/4 to 4/4, gave it lyrics and a Motown arrangement, and handed it over to a girl group called The Toys. And this is the result:

Continue reading A private confession, just between you and me. →

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My equestrian weekend

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I wanted to upload a picture, but I’m having connection problems tonight, and anyway I didn’t take any photos this weekend that were much better than pedestrian (and you can’t have pedestrian at a horse show). The perfect thing would have been to get someone to snap me with an Icelandic horse, wearing my Viking gear, but that obvious idea never occurred to me at the time.

Anyway, it was a good weekend. In fact, although there were difficult parts, I’d say it was the best time I’ve had in a couple years. The first fling of my freedom, you might say, if you were in alliterative mood.

I’d been to the Minnesota Horse Expo at the state fairgrounds once before, years back. At that point, we were able to get a parking spot in the lot even though we weren’t bright and early. This year, although the horse barns and Coliseum are at the west end of the park, I had to park back near the east entrance. It’s gotten to be a big deal. There was no handicapped parking section. It was a long trek from my parking spot for someone with a recent hip replacement, but I made it, and I wasn’t even terribly stiff the next day. Continue reading My equestrian weekend →

Fiction, Reviews

‘Fin Gall,’ by James L. Nelson

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Well, I actually finished this book, which is more than I can say for a lot of Viking novels I’ve started reading. And there was evidence of some research in it – it’s certainly way more historically accurate than the History Channel series, which we hates, we does.

But I’m not greatly impressed with James L. Nelson’s Fin Gall: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland.

The date is given as 852 AD. Our hero is a Norwegian named Thorgrim Night Wolf. Thorolf is reputed to be a shape-shifter, a werewolf, but the descriptions make it difficult to figure out exactly what happens when he goes out on his nocturnal excursions. Sometimes he only dreams of roaming as a wolf, but he still comes back with useful real-world information. Thorolf is the son-in-law of Jarl Ornolf the Restless, and the father of a son named Harald. They sail to Ireland for booty, and then happen onto a treasure, the Crown of the Three Kingdoms, which was being sent to one of the Irish kings. The crown is to give him symbolic dominion over the other Irish petty kings, so that they can fight the Danes, who have recently driven the Norwegians out of the Viking town of Dubh-lin.

Thereafter the characters and the plot wander about the Irish countryside, getting captured and escaping, losing the crown and a couple hostages to one another like basketball players bobbling a ball. There are some clever moments, especially in the use of ships (author Nelson is an experienced sailor on square sailed vessels), but I personally found it all a little contrived.

As I said, there’s some evidence of historical research here, but the errors are many. Two of the characters are named Snorri and Magnus, names not invented until the 10th and 11th Centuries. The author thinks Viking houses had windows (windows were extremely rare). He thinks Viking ships kept the warriors’ shields up on the rails while at sea (they didn’t). He thinks Norwegians knew nothing of burning peat (they did). In one regard author Nelson praises the Irish Christians for virtues even I, an openly sectarian author, wouldn’t claim – he thinks they weren’t superstitious. The subsequent history of Ireland makes it very clear that whatever good Christianity did for that country, it didn’t eradicate superstition.

I suppose it’s unreasonable to expect an author who hasn’t spent a lifetime in obsessive study of the Vikings, as I have, to know all these things. I expect, after all, that there are even greater compulsives out there who find as many errors in my own novels.

Nelson does do a good job in dramatizing the great irony of Viking Age Ireland – that the Irish hated each other just as much as the Scandinavians, and were as brutal – or more brutal – with each other than the Vikings were with them.

So my final judgment is fairly neutral. The writing is OK (though the author needs to learn where to use “like” and “as”). There are a couple mildly explicit sex scenes, and of course there’s lots of fighting and blood and guts. You could do worse for a Viking novel, but you could also do better. I’m not personally impressed enough to buy the second book in the series.

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Norse horse

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Icelandic horses at the beginning of summer. Photo credit: Guillame Calas. Creative Commons license.

Fair warning: There won’t be a post on Friday. I have faith in you; somehow you’ll endure.

I’ll be playing Viking at an odd venue on Friday and through the weekend, the Minnesota Horse Expo at the state fairgrounds in St. Paul. The Viking Age Club & Society has been asked to provide context for the Icelandic horse exhibit this year. There will even be fight shows in the arena, though sadly the fighters will be old guys (not me; I’m still not up to that), as our young Vikings aren’t available. In real life, the Vikings would have probably had the stallions themselves fight, using goads on them. It was the Vikings’ favorite sport.

Things I’ve learned about Icelandic horses, mostly through internet research:

• It’s illegal to import any horse into Iceland, even an Icelandic horse. Once an Icelandic horse leaves the island, it must stay away forever. They’re afraid of bringing in exotic diseases or parasites.

• Icelandic horses have two extra gaits, which other horses can’t do (and only some Icelandics can do). One is called the tölt, a “four-beat lateral ambling gait” said to be “comfortable and ground-covering.” The other is the skeið, the “flying pace,” “fast and smooth” according to Wikipedia, a “two-beat lateral gait.” (Skeið was also the name of a kind of Viking ship; Erling Skjalgsson owned one of those.)

• Breeders of Icelandic horses consider them the purest of the northern breeds.

Author and artist William Morris (1834-1896) made a tour of Iceland with friends in 1871, producing a journal which I consulted (through a kind loan by Dale Nelson) in my research for West Oversea. He grew very fond of the horse he rode on that tour, and planned to bring it home with him. However it went lame before embarkation, so he took another horse instead. It lived to a good old age and grew very fat on his estate in England.

I shall tell you more about Icelandic horses next week.

Writing

Brooks on inspiration

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At the New York Times, David Brooks writes a thoughtful article on artistic inspiration, especially for writers:

Well, moments of inspiration don’t quite make sense by normal logic. They feel transcendent, uncontrollable and irresistible. When one is inspired, time disappears or alters its pace. The senses are amplified. There may be goose bumps or shivers down the spine, or a sense of being overawed by some beauty.

Inspiration is always more active than mere appreciation. There’s a thrilling feeling of elevation, a burst of energy, an awareness of enlarged possibilities. The person in the grip of inspiration has received, as if by magic, some new perception, some holistic understanding, along with the feeling that she is capable of more than she thought.

My own experience? True inspiration is a rare but heady experience. Just as a fisherman is willing to wait long, boring hours before his catch strikes at the bait, the writers churns out reams of verbiage on pure discipline, but that occasional moment of bliss when Inspiration hits releases emotional adrenalin that sends you back to work with fresh motivation.

Thanks to Brad Day for the link.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Crossword Mystery,’ by E. R. Punshon

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I am, alas, rapidly losing my enthusiasm for E. R. Punshon’s Bobby Owen series of detective stories. I was delighted with the first entry in this classic 1930s English series, featuring young policeman Bobby Owen who, under the wry mentorship of his superior, Superintendent Mitchell, finds within himself the makings of a good crime solver.

What I liked about the first book, Information Received, was the emphasis on the characters of Bobby and Supt. Mitchell, an interesting and amusing interplay of minds. Sadly, the second book, which I reviewed further down the page here, had less of that. And this one, Crossword Mystery, though better in that regard, is still less a character story than a puzzle story. And the motivations and behavior of the criminals, as in previous books, are more like melodrama than a modern mystery story.

In this story, Bobby is sent to the majestic seaside home of Mr. George Winterton, an economic eccentric who’s writing a book on the Gold Standard. His brother, who lived across the bay from him, drowned recently under suspicious circumstances, and Mr. Winterton fears that it was murder, and that he himself is next. In between writing sessions, he’s working on a crossword puzzle about which he’s very secretive, and which proves to be the key to the mystery in the end.

The book’s all right. Well enough written, and nothing objectionable. But the story dragged for me, and the climactic scene was not very credible in a realistic story. I’m not sure I’ll continue following Bobby Owen’s career.

Goofing

Spontaneous reaction

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US Department of Spontaneity

Dear Friend:

We have received your application for a Spontaneity Grant. Please fill out the enclosed forms in triplicate, and return them to us complete before the specified date. In addition, you are required to provide a detailed timeline of your plans for spontaneous acts, along with an estimated budget and certified copies of applicable local permits.

Thank you for your support for the Spontaneity Initiative.

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Taking up space

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Disabled parking permit
Photo credit, Tony Webster, Creative Commons

Let me sing you the song of my ethical struggles.

One of the nice things that came from my last hip surgery, aside from rapidly diminishing pain, was my temporary disabled parking tag (it’s like the one pictured above, but red). When I asked my doctor about getting one, during my pre-surgery examination, he said, “Sure, I’ll fill out the form for you. How much time you want on it?”

I said, “I think the last time I got about three months.”

He said, “Ah, I can do better than that for you. I’ll give you one that goes till August.”

And thence comes my ethical dilemma. Barring complications, I can’t foresee needing such a permit anywhere near that long. In fact I’m relatively sure that I won’t be able to justify using it (to myself) much past next month.

And yet there is a voice, somewhere inside, that cries, “You earned it! You paid your five bucks for it! Use it as long as you can!”

I am ashamed of that voice. I once knew someone who obtained a disabled parking permit he didn’t deserve, “through a friend,” and used it regularly. I judged him pretty harshly for it.

I’m even a bit ashamed to use the permit right now. Objectively speaking, I’m in a lot less pain than I was for years before the surgery, when I had to park with the cis-abled folks. I can make an argument that I should destroy the permit now, that I’m cheating on a moral level.

My evil inner voice replies, “Even more reason to use the thing as long as you can! Society owes it to you! Don’t you deserve something for your suffering?”

No, I don’t really think so. There are people with genuine, serious disabilities who need those parking spots. I can easily imagine someone who uses a wheelchair circling the lot, unable to find a space because posers like me are taking them up.

I got groceries tonight, and used a convenient disabled spot in front of the Cub store. When I was done, as I was driving out of the lot and thinking about writing this very blog post, I saw a young man walking toward the store. He was painfully thin, and he leaned heavily on his cane. “He can’t even drive,” I thought. “He walked here from home.”

Was that a sign? I think that was a sign.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Styrbiorn the Strong,’ by E. R. Eddison

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Styrbiorn the Strong

The hood of her cloak was fallen backward, baring the flame-like splendour of her hair above the smooth brow and stately and lovely face of her. There was in her face, as she gazed south with haughty lip and level chin, so much beauty as the Gods might throw up hands and strive no more to better it were they to frame the world anew; and so much gentleness and womanish pity and softness as a man shall find in the rain-cold rock of the sea.

I’d heard of E. R. Eddison’s novel Styrbiorn the Strong for years, but never actually saw a copy. And I was a little reluctant to read it because I’m not a big fan of the author’s most famous work, The Worm Ouroboros. Although that book has its virtues (Lewis and Tolkien both admired it), I disliked its amorality, along with its ending, which in my view rendered the whole tale pointless.

But Styrbiorn (I prefer to spell it Styrbjorn, but this is a review) himself gets an interesting scene in The Long Ships, which I reviewed a few inches down. And that whetted my curiosity. So I got the Kindle version.

Having finished it, I find myself floundering to make a judgment on it. There are elements I dislike – that same amorality, some Nietzchean concept that the truly great are above mere kindness to their “inferiors.” And I generally don’t care for affected antique diction. But Eddison was a master of affected antique diction, and when he’s got the wind in his sails he soars to the level of real poetry, and can carry you along with him. This book is very effective and even moving, in its way.

Styrbiorn the Strong is a character whose own saga has not survived, but he gets mentions in various sagas and historical sources. Some scholars nevertheless dispute whether he ever existed in the real world. As portrayed by Eddison, he’s a character beyond realism, the mightiest of warriors, almost a demigod. The son of a joint king of Sweden, his loving uncle promises, in all sincerity, to give Styrbiorn his father’s half of the domain as soon as he reaches 16 years. Styrbiorn, with the madness of a man doomed before birth, manages to throw these prospects away through impetuosity and passion.

Another saga character whose existence has been questioned is Sigrid the Haughty, who also plays a major role in the book. She appears (to me) to be inspired by Gudrun Osvifsdatter of Laxdaela Saga, who famously says in her old age that, of all the men she knew in her life, “I treated him worst whom I loved best.” Eddison pictures Sigrid as a kind of Gudrun on stilts, a woman apparently void of tender feelings, motivated wholly by pride and vengeance. I almost said that she’s at fault for Styrbiorn’s tragedy, but that’s not fair. He brings his defeat and death on himself.

Styrbiorn the Strong is not an easy book, but it’s highly effective of its kind (which it’s pretty much the only one of) and difficult to forget. Recommended, if you’re up for this sort of thing.