Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

‘Beast,’ by Paul Kingsnorth

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I want to like Paul Kingsnorth, the critically acclaimed English author who has recently converted to Romanian Orthodox Christianity. So I have read and reviewed the first novel of his trilogy, The Wake. And I have now read Beast, the second book. I’ll be honest – it’s a challenge.

In my not-critically-acclaimed novel, Troll Valley, I created (and killed off) a pretentious young novelist who insisted on reading aloud his manuscript, in which the main character describes being in darkness and silence, doing nothing, for pages on end. I was reminded of that character as I read Beast. I’ll admit more happened here than in my parody story, but still it was a challenge for a middle-brow reader.

This book, unlike the first of the trilogy, is set in the present (apparently). The main character, who we learn is named Edward Buckmaster (thus probably a descendent of Buccmaster, the hero of The Wake), has apparently run away from his wife and daughter to spend time living in a shack in the wilderness, pursuing a spiritual quest for meaning.

A storm damages the hut and leaves Edward with amnesia. And probably delusional. Through a stream of consciousness narrative, we follow him trying to find out where he is and who he is, and hunting for the only other living thing he can find in his world, a black panther.

I have some vague idea what this book is about, but I couldn’t really say for sure. I’m not sure I’m supposed to.

I’m going to finish the third book of the trilogy, Alexandria. Maybe it will illuminate its forerunners. If not, I’ll admire Kingsnorth as one of those authors who’s too smart for me.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Echo from the Past,’ by Hervey Copeland

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I figured I’d need to download at least one extra book so I’d have reading material during my Norway trip. As it was, I didn’t have a lot of time for reading, and the book I was on, The Wake (reviewed yesterday) was pretty slow going. But I got to The Echo from the Past on my trip home. It was nice to read a book that featured places I’d visited just days before. But beyond that, this was a disappointing read.

Craig McMillan is an unemployed English journalist and hobby sailor. He’s running out of cash, so he’s interested when an acquaintance tells him he can earn a good amount of money transporting a passenger to Norway. The passenger plans to enter the country unofficially, but Craig is assured that he’s not carrying drugs or wanted by the police. Still, anyone who’s ever watched a Noir film knows that no good can come from a deal like this.

As it turns out, the weather in the North Sea turns tempestuous, and Craig wants to turn back. At that point his passenger, who’s been affable up till now, pulls a gun on him and tells him to sail on. They barely make it to Norway, and the passenger sails away in a rubber inflatable boat. Craig plans on staying in the country for a while and sightseeing, in order to establish his cover story for the police.

But then he learns that his passenger has turned up dead, his throat cut. Then a man with a gunshot wound shows up on his deck. Craig wants to take him to the hospital, but the man says no. He needs to get out of the country as soon as possible. He tells Craig an incredible story about Nazi gold and modern corruption and betrayal.

Craig’s investigative instincts are aroused, but he will find himself up against powerful and ruthless enemies.

The problem with The Echo from the Past was amateurish writing. The author talks too much. He tries to lay everything out for the reader, not trusting their intelligence. Take a sentence like: “It meant that there wouldn’t be any prying eyes sticking their noses in things that were of no concern to them.” Aside from the mixed metaphor, that sentence could be reduced by half and be much more effective. This is a book by someone who has never learned to prune his prose.

Also I found the ending implausible. I don’t recommend The Echo from the Past.

I might mention, however, that the language was pretty subdued. Not much profanity. I’ll say that in its defense.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cocktail Time’: A Novel about the Novel ‘Cocktail Time’

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“There’s nothing like getting married. It’s the only life, as Brigham Young and King Solomon would tell you, if they were still with us.”

When Lord Frederick Ickenham is inspired to humble his friend, barrister Sir Raymond Bastable, by knocking off his hat with a Brazil nut, he cannot know Bastable will go on to write the best-selling novel Cocktail Time in response. But then he does suggest the idea to him the next day in the vein of, “This would be the thing to do, but you could never do it, could you? Of course not.”

Bastable takes that suggestion as a gauntlet thrown and channels all of his anger about modern young men of mid-1950s English society into a novel bitterly entitled “Cocktail Time,” because that’s all today’s youth are good for. And, boy, does he put passion into it. He compares it to Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, a romance banned as pornography in fourteen U.S. states. If the voting public knew he had written a novel like this, his hopes for a political would be over, so it has to go out under a pseudonym.

As soon as you start hiding things in a Wodehouse novel, you’re in for trouble. Cocktail Time is the third of four books starring the fifth Earl of Ickenham, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, or Pongo Twistleton’s Uncle Fred. It’s jolly fun. Will the world learn who really wrote Cocktail Time? Will Bastable’s sister Pheobe be able to do anything with her social blight of a son? Will Johnny Pearce, owner of Hammer Lodge, work out his money troubles, particularly being able to show his housekeeper the door? You’ll have to find out yourself.

It helps to have read more about Uncle Fred prior to this, because while this gently aged fellow takes up a slingshot (or “catapult” as the English say it) and knocks off the hat of a proud, old stuffed shirt he has long known in chapter one, without having read previous stories, you wouldn’t know how Uncle Fred is capable of impersonating just about any type of person alive and perhaps also parrots.

At the start of chapter eight, after introducing Carlisle, a con artist who would cause trouble for the weaker minded of the cast, Uncle Fred shares a cab with him on their way to the same residence, and I immediately felt the marvelous potential of the two professional impersonators together. The sparks flew.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Wake,’ by Paul Kingsnorth

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now in this small holt by bacstune locan at the treows i was thincan that these frenc they wolde gif all these things other names. i was locan at an ac treow and i put my hand on its great stocc and i was thincan the ingengas will haf another name for this treow, it had seemed to me that this treow was anglisc as the ground it is grown from anglisc as we who is grown also from that ground. but if the frenc cums and tacs this land and gifs these treows sum frenc name they will not be the same treows no mor. it colde be that to erce this treow will be the same that it will haf the same leafs the same rind but to me it will be sum other thing that is not mine sum thing ingenga of what i can no longer spec

If the snippet above, from Paul Kingsnorth’s eccentric novel, The Wake, seems difficult to read, rest assured it’s supposed to be difficult. The author has made the decision to write in something like the language and orthography of an actual 11th Century document. This provides a sense of authenticity at the expense of comprehension. If you’ve studied a Germanic language, as I have, reading it will be a little easier. But I suppose any English reader can comprehend most of it with a little work.

Buccmaster of Holland (a place in England, not the Netherlands) is a stubborn and self-willed English peasant farmer at the time of the Norman conquest. He’s jealous of his status (a socman with three oxgangs), brooks no contradiction from his wife or sons, and holds tenaciously to the old, pre-Christian English heathenism.

When the wapontake is raised to recruit men to fight, first King Harald Hardrada in York, and later William the Conqueror in the south, he refuses to go himself, because he sees nothing in it for him. This leads, ultimately to the loss of everything he has. So he flees into the wilderness to be a “green man,” a rebel and an outlaw, to fight the invaders. He gathers a small group of fellow outcasts, and lords it over them as if he were the great man he believes himself to be. And all the while he is listening to the voices of the old gods, whose messages are infuriatingly vague.

Ultimately, we will learn Buccmaster’s secrets, which are ugly and tragic and make the story a rather different one from what he – and the reader – have believed it to be.

The Wake is a book that requires some wrestling, in various ways. I’m not sure if I’d go on to read the second book, but I already paid for the third one, so I guess I’d better see it through. The author has recently converted to Christianity, and it will be interesting to see what effect that pilgrimage may have had on this unusual trilogy.

Fiction

Coming in November: The Fall of NÚMENOR

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“HarperCollins is proud to announce the publication in November 2022 of THE FALL OF NÚMENOR by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by writer and Tolkien expert, Brian Sibley, and illustrated by acclaimed artist, Alan Lee with new pencil drawings and colour paintings.”

The above is from the press release. The Tolkien Society has a few more details. (via @TeawithTolkien)

Fiction, Reviews

That Hideous Strength – ‘The Educated Reader Can Be Gulled’

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That Hideous Strength is the third of C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, the first two books being Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. One of my friends recommended it as a suitable stand-alone, and we read it together as a group. I have since listened to Out of the Silent Planet and understand the gist of Perelandra, but while they expand and explain That Hideous Strength, they each have somewhat self-contained stories. In fact, one of us noted you could strip this story of its fantasy gods and planetary symbolism and it would remain intact, lacking only a magical framework for the weird stuff. That framework is explored in the first two books and brought to bear in the third.

The story develops slowly to give us time to understand our central characters, Mark and Jane Studdock, both educated, progressively minded people. Mark wants to be an insider, an opinion-maker or influential voice within Bracton College. Jane wants to be her own woman–married, of course, but equal to and independent of her husband. In chapter one, we see her chafe at what her life, marriage, and career had become. Mark doesn’t begin to chafe at his circumstances until much later, when it appears his wife is a hinderance to his career as a high ranking official of the NICE (National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments).

If you know anything about the story, you know something of the trouble caused by NICE. They aim to rewrite the world. They bring Mark in initially to write stories for distribution in diverse publications in order to smooth the way for them, and it takes him a while to understand the point.

PanBooks cover of "That Hideous Strength"

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”

In his preface, Lewis frames his story as a “fairy tale,” and “a ‘tall story’ about devilry”–a fictional take on the thinking that went into another of his books, The Abolition of Man. If you have not read that book, taking it up before reading That Hideous Strength will likely help draw out its meaning and dramatic imagery.

You could say this book is about marriage, because that tension between Mark and Jane runs throughout. You could say it’s a book on the gloriously mythological roots of Great Britain; Arthur, Merlin, and Atlantis all figure in heavily. But the main theme begins with the quote above–that educated people will believe anything.

Experts, who may be rather immature human beings while still highly skilled in their field, can and do cause great harm to society. They acquire authority and use it for their own ends, perhaps compassionately to a point, perhaps with good intentions, but those ‘who know best’ will eventually force the best down our throats in the name of progress.

This danger could come from many sides; many people and institutions undermine the values they profess. Every one of us must seek the light while it can still be found.

Photo by Niklas Weiss on Unsplash

Fiction

Listening to ‘The Eye of the World’ (Wheel of Time) – DNF

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The other day I mentioned my ignorance of The Wheel of Time series and what I was seeing in reviews. Many YouTubers have recorded their thoughts on each book or the whole series, and many have explained the problems in the Amazon adaptation.

After that post, I found a YouTube recording of The Eye of the World read by Rosamond Pike, who depicts Moiraine in the adaptation. Her voice is marvelously smooth, and the drama she brings to every character could ruin a guy on listening to any other audiobook narrator. (A quick Audible search turns up several titles Pike has recorded, including a couple of Jane Austen’s.)

Even when I feel the story lagging in the beginning, her voice has carried it forward. Now that I’ve listened through chapter 25 or so, lack of interest in the story has bogged me down. It’s cool that Perrin has a connection with wolves, but weak that it’s something he was born with and would never have discovered had he not fled his home village. A few other things are interesting too, but I’m put off by the fact that the three women in the main cast of characters are all of a type. One of them hits most of the marks of being a villain. I don’t believe she becomes one later on, but she accuses and rages and lacks an ounce of humility. She’s the kind of person who gets herself or half of the party killed in other stories.

That’s the main thing. Add to that a few small things and a lack of other things, and I’m going to give it full pass. (DNF = did not finish)

Fiction, Non-fiction

How Reading Christian Fiction Shaped Evangelicals

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I read Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness and the sequel Piercing the Darkness as part of my high school Bible class in the 80s. I’m sure we talked about them in class at some point, but I don’t remember anything any of us may have said. I’m sure we thought it was a good depiction of spiritual warfare.

This Present Darkness is one of the five novels Daniel Silliman uses to analyze Christian imagination in his book Reading Evangelicals: How Christian Fiction Shaped a Culture and a Faith. The others are Love Comes Softly, Left Behind, The Shunning, and The Shack.

In her review, Gina Dalfonzo sums up the book with this question, “Ever wonder about the enduring popularity of Amish fiction, or how The Shack grabbed an audience that once went for much more theologically conservative books?”

“He traces an ideological line through these books that helps us understand how the evangelical community got to where it is, spiritually, ideologically, and politically.”

Someone should have written a parody of The Shack, like The Shed. Just make it funny, theologically sound, and feature a conversation in a shed and you can do anything else you want with it. Left Behind had a few parodies written, one of which we reviewed here, Re:raptured.

Fiction

What Makes a Murderer Tick?

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Evil Explored in ‘Pattern of Wounds’

In the second of three crime novels, Pattern of Wounds, J. Mark Bertrand’s homicide detective, Roland March, tries to capture the inner-work of his suspect. He lingers at the hideout, trying to get a feel for the thoughts behind the crimes. He looks forward to the interrogation, hoping to find out what makes him tick, but his superior officer offers another line of thought.

“Maybe you can’t put a label on him. Maybe it’s not enough to say he was insane or evil or a product of a bad environment. But in this case, there’s one thing you do know. He’s guilty.”

The question March wants answered is what produces a dedicated murderer. Many stories depict the wages of hatred as murder. The loving husband, who worries over his troubled marriage, discovers his wife’s infidelity and disdain for him, so in jealous rage he lashes out at her. Most people just walk out; some lose control.

“You have heard that it was said to those of old,” Jesus taught, “‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council…” (Matthew 5:21-22). This raises the bar very high, equating hatred with murder. Despite this warning, many of us still get angry with each other. Some of us hate certain people, even if we don’t actually kill them.

What would provoke us to murder, or are you and I immune by our natures? Bertrand gives us a few clues.

“If Only There Were Evil People”

When the murderer is gradually revealed, we get to read some of the backstory: abusive behavior, broken home, sociopathic trends, etc. We get an explanation for what drove this one person to act, but what goes untold are the many things absent from the final portrait: healthy love, constructive discipline, selflessness, respect for family and outsiders, to list a few. All of these things work together to produce the kind of disturbed person who believes murder is a good exercise.

Is the murderer crying out for a father’s love? Has he been spoiled by permissiveness, by being protected from natural consequences through family or money? Was he abused? Is he just twisted? Yes, maybe all of those things, and together they work to motivate him to choose murder.

So when someone accuses violent video games, for example, of provoking murder, he may have a good point about desensitization and training to kill, but he takes it too far when he implies the games alone bring a player the violence. It can only be one of many factors.

“The Line Dividing Good and Evil”

Detective March does not have a spotless reputation. In the first book, Back on Murder, he works in the Houston Police’s Homicide Department, but he doesn’t work on regular homicide cases. He works the standard procedure cases no one else wants. He earned that position from a long line of disappointing decisions, “letting things drop” and “cutting corners” as he would say. Because of that, his old partner believes he is completely corrupt, and his superiors don’t trust him to follow through with things.

March swears he has changed, and we see the contrast between who he is and who he could be in a Louisianan cop named Fontenot. Both are veteran cops. Both are zealous for justice. Both have been tempted to take matters into their own hands, and both have. But one of them has begun to hold back.

Continue reading What Makes a Murderer Tick? →
Fiction, Reviews

‘Poor Dead Cricket,’ by W. Glenn Duncan

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W. Glenn Duncan’s Rafferty series, about a tough Dallas private eye back before the turn of this century, is not my favorite hard-boiled series by far. Think of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, then move him to Dallas, give him a gun-happy cowboy buddy instead of a black gangster type, and reduce his intelligence and wit by about 25%, and you’ve got Rafferty. But the books are entertaining enough to keep me interested, and refreshingly un-Woke.

In Poor Dead Cricket, Rafferty is hired by an obscure environmentalist group to investigate the death of one of their informants, Sandra “Cricket” Dawes. Cricket was apparently killed by a mugger in her apartment’s parking lot. Crime of opportunity, no arrest likely. But the environmentalists insist she was in the process of delivering secret files she stole from a nuclear power company employer, documents that could blow the lid off dangerous practices in handling fissionable materials. They think the company killed her. They also want those files, if Rafferty can find them.

Rafferty isn’t much impressed with the environmentalists, whom he considers shallow headline-chasers, and he doesn’t even like much what he learns about Cricket. But she’s dead, and nobody seems very concerned about her as a person. So Rafferty gets to work.

Lots of switches and surprises, a couple gunfights, and a pretty neat final twist. I enjoyed Poor Dead Cricket, and recommend it for light reading. Only minor cautions for language.