Fiction, Reviews

Minder, by Duncan MacMaster

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A while back, I reviewed Joe Average, a satiric superhero story written by Duncan MacMaster, of the Furious D Show blog. I liked the book quite a bit.

I liked his recent novella, Minder, even better.

This is a dark and gritty story, suitable for a movie starring Liam Neeson. A crime boss in an unnamed city learns that a contract has been put out on a local woman cop. He doesn’t want a cop killing in his town. It’s bad for business. So he hires “Fitz,” a professional killer and IRA veteran, to protect her.

The story is well-written, the characters believable, the dialogue excellent. It’s simply a workmanlike hard-boiled story, entirely satisfying to the fan of the genre. The sort of thing Jack Higgins would have written before he ran out of steam. I wished it longer.

Recommended.

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It Isn’t Writing, It’s Coding the Computer to Write

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With NaNoWriMo coming to a close, let’s look at November again as National Novel Generation Month. It’s the month in which you write code that will spew forth a 50,000 word composition when you’re done and work out the bugs. “Reading an entire generated novel is more a feat of endurance than a testament to the quality of the story, which tends to be choppy, flat, or incoherent by the standards of human writing,” remarks the guy who came up with NaNoGenMo last year. You might read a few pages here and there, but really, this isn’t Raymond Chandler. It’s not even on the same city block.

Authors

Recommending ‘The New World’

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Observant film critic Jeffrey Overstreet recommends Terrence Malick’s The New World for our Thanksgiving viewing. He shares his insights into the extended cut version and a personal encounter with Malick’s father.

The New World is an extravagant achievement in historical recreation. It’s also the most refined example of Malick’s visual poetry, which he developed through Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. He has a meditative style all his own that will aggravate many viewers who prefer straightforward narrative and conventional Hollywood flourishes. He’s not an entertainer so much as he is a poet who uses pictures instead of words. Creation itself pours forth speech, as the psalmist says, and Malick invites those with eyes to see to look closer and listen carefully.

Writing

The Lizards of Storytelling

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Author Jeff Vandermeer, a three-time Fantasy World Award-winning novelist who co-directs the Shared Worlds teen writing camp, says, “The way we’re taught to analyze fiction is to break down and do a kind of autopsy. But I think writers need to be more like naturalists or zoologists when they study story because then you’re looking at how all the elements fit together.”

See infographics illustrating this idea and more from Wonderbook: The Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction.

Authors

P. D. James Dies, 94

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Crime novelist Phyllis Dorothy James, also Baroness James of Holland Park, died today in her home. She was 94.

Her publisher states, “This is a very sad day for us at Faber. It is difficult to express our profound sadness at losing P. D. James, one of the world’s great writers and a Faber author since her first publication in 1962. She was so very remarkable in every aspect of her life, an inspiration and great friend to us all. It is a privilege to publish her extraordinary books. Working with her was always the best of times, full of joy. We will miss her hugely.”

In this interview last year, Lady James talked about growing old with this, “All things rather close down eventually. I was waiting for the old brain to shut down, but I do hope that is the last thing to go.”

Authors, Fiction

Glimmerglass

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“Some years ago,” writes John Wilson, “I described the novelist and poet Marly Youmans as “the best-kept secret among contemporary American writers.” That’s still true today (so I think), and if you haven’t tried Youmans yet, her new novel, Glimmerglass, is a very good place to start.” (via Prufrock)

Authors, Fiction

Faber’s Book of Loss and Strange New Things

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Michel Faber has a fascinating story behind his novel, The Book of Strange New Things, as well as a curious story in the novel itself. The novel tells the story of an intergalactic missionary to works to translate the Bible to aliens who are not just a little different. They aren’t beautiful Martian queens. They are completely foreign to human beings, and they want to know about Jesus and “the book of strange new things.”

Steve Paulson of TTBOOK interviews Faber here as part of a show on science fiction.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Joy Cometh with the Mourning,’ by Dave Freer

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Dave Freer is best known as a science fiction writer. I don’t know him personally, but we have several mutual friends. One of those friends sent me a free copy of Joy Cometh with the Mourning for review.

Reviewing this book is problematical for me, because of fundamental presuppositions. The main character is a female pastor, and most of you know I consider that unscriptural. Still, I read the book and found it appealing on its own terms.

Rev. Joy Norton, the protagonist, is a young pastor newly installed in a remote parish in Australia. She’s insecure about the call, as she’s never served in a rural church before, or on her own. The situation is complicated by the fact that her much-loved predecessor’s cause of death is unknown. What makes it worse is that she begins to suspect that there were improprieties in his conduct, which might have given one of her parishioners a motive to murder him.

Unlike the mysteries I usually review, Joy Cometh with the Mourning is a “cozy” mystery. Instead of turning over spiritual rocks and discovering evil, Rev. Joy looks into human hearts and finds goodness there. Even that particularly maligned species of humanity, the Church Lady, is treated with respect and affection in this story.

I enjoyed reading Joy Cometh with the Mourning. If you’re more tolerant than I am of egalitarianism in the church, you’ll probably enjoy it very much.

Authors, Music

The Reason Lecrae Changed His Tune

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Musician Lacrae has taken some heat for switching from writing explicitly Christian songs to writing songs on themes with broader appeal. He has appeared with artists and on shows that have drawn criticism from those who think the right thing to do is stick with people who claim to follow Christ.

But Lacrae says another believer, Andy Crouch, changed his mind a few years ago. Jemar Tisby explains, “Crouch says in his book, Culture Making, ‘If culture is to change, it will be because of some new tangible (or audible or visible or olfactory) thing is presented to a wide enough public that it begins to reshape their world.’ He proposes that instead of condemning, critiquing, copying, or uncritically consuming culture, something new has to displace the old. It appears Lecrae has been making new music in an attempt to do just that.”

The tension point for this idea will be at the place where those who want to change people apply their cultural creations. I’m sure many will continue to create things that won’t get anywhere near the people they want to influence, and they will say they are making new culture, but it isn’t changing anyone. They’re making Halloween candy in hopes of changing Christmas.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture