****Four out of Five Stars. Review by Mark Palm. Let me start by saying that this is the twenty-second book in the Reacher series. That is a lot of books, to put it lightly. Even so, there might be some folks out there who haven’t read one of the books or seen one of the two films based on the books, so I will give you a quick primer; Jack Reacher is a former MP who served in the US. Army. Physically. At six-five and two-hundred and fifty pounds, he is a bruiser. Mentally, however, is a master at inductive reasoning. Which is a high-faulting way to say that he notices things, pays attention, and thinks them through to a logical conclusion. It’s the same thing that Sherlock Holmes does, though for some reason people keep saying that Holmes uses deductive reasoning, which is an entirely different thing. Basically, Reacher wanders around America, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a toothbrush in his pocket, looking for things that grab his attention. Usually, it turns out that the things that grab his attention are some smelly injustice that his sense of honor demand that he step up and take action. Then the story takes off. It seems . on the face, like a basic premise. Lee Child has managed to take this basic premise, and keep me not only interested, but fascinated for a very long time. And he does it again in The Midnight Line, with a few significant differences. This story starts with Reacher feeling down because Michelle Chang, from Make Me has left. So he takes a stroll, and stops at a pawn shop, where he sees a ring in the window. It’s a graduation ring from West Point, and it’s very small, certainly from a woman who was barely big enough to have attended West Point. Curious as to what hardships must have happened to this woman that would make her give up a ring that is so hard to obtain, Reacher starts on a journey, to trace the provenance of the ring. This entails calling in favors from the Academy and beating up bad guys. He ends up in Rapid City , South Dakota, working with a local cop, Gloria Nakamura, trying to take a down a local bad guy , Arthur Scorpio, who has his fingers in plenty of bad pies. They discover that the ring belongs to an ex-Army Major, Serena Rose Sanderson, who was injured in Afghanistan. His investigations leads him to Terry Bramhall, a private detective, who leads Reacher to Jane Mackenzie, the twin sister of of Rose. After several plot turns I won’t disclose it turns out that Rose received a grievous facial injury from an IED in Afghanistan, and became addicted to Meth. Reacher and the rest must find a way to circumvent Scorpio’s drug ring to get enough Meth to Rose so she can move in with her sister and slowly wean herself off of drugs, without getting caught by the bad guys or the DEA. The Midnight Line has all of the thrills and action you expect out of Lee Child, but this time there is a lot more compassion and heart than is usual. Rose is a fascinating character, and the arc of her story, as a wounded vet who turns to opioids, is touching and all-too common, and Child tells it with heart and compassion. All of the rest of the things you expect to find in a Reacher book, like the taut plotting and the realistic and clever dialogue, are all here, so get this book. *****Five out of Five Stars. Review by Mark Palm It’s no surprise to anyone who follows the publishing business that the series has become a juggernaut. Like cinema, sequels and reboots have become ubiquitous, and I would argue, often at the expense of quality. However, when a series of books are written for artistic rather than financial reasons,and they work, they can have an impact that is staggering. I’m not saying that bigger is always better; but when big is great it packs one hell of a punch. Which brings me to Hunger Moon, which is the fifth installment of the FBI/Huntress series by Alexandra Sokoloff. I’ve been reading and reviewing this series since the first book, Huntress Moon, and been enthralled the entire way. Each book has been exceptional, each one has been different, and when read together the sum total is greater that each individual part. So while these books stand alone I strongly encourage you to read the entire series, from beginning to end. To briefly sum it up, this series is the story of Cara Lindstrom, who was the sole member of her family to survive an attack by a famed serial killer. This event causes her to become an avenging angel who kills men who prey upon women and children. FBI Agent and former Criminal Profiler Matthew Roarke discovers Cara and become enthralled with the anomaly of what appears to be the first female serial killer. The previous novel, Bitter Moon, deals with Cara’s life after the attack on her family, when, as a teenager she is forced to kill or be killed by a serial rapist and murderer, and Roarke's investigation of those same crimes years later to help solve crimes in the present. There were a lot of great things in Bitter Moon, but what I found most compelling was the dual narrative of Cara and Roarke. As they followed the same story, in different times, with different skills and attitudes, it was always thrilling; but what gave this tale a sense of depth that you rarely find was the sense of intimacy that these two shared, tinged with a sadness that was almost heart-breaking. Hunger Moon, the latest installment, is different, but just as good. The story starts with Cara off of the grid on a Native American reservation, in hiding, but still dispatching predators attempting to take advantage of legal loopholes to rape Native girls. After discovering that Detective Ortiz, who had stalked her as a teenager has created online forums to place a bounty on her, Cara leaves, looking to stop him. Meanwhile Roarke is back at the FBI, pitching his idea to create a task force to enable the Bureau to improve its ability to prosecute serial abuser, rapists and human traffickers. To his shock the Bureau suggests instead that he look into a vandalism case, perhaps backed by Bitch, the feminist organization introduced earlier in the series, where someone defaced a Berkeley fraternity who had many members facing accusations of rape, although no charges have yet been filed. Considering the assignment a dead end, Roarke and his partner Epps do their duty, and begin to suspect that the fraternity is deeply steeped in rape culture. When two of the frat boys are abducted, his investigation takes a more serious turn. Jade Lauren plays an important role as well. Having left the Bitch group home upon hearing about the incident in Berkeley returns, and passing as a student she meets a woman who tells her that her sister was raped a a fraternity party. Jade convinces the woman that they must take matters into their own hands, and emulating Cara they do. The other story-line features Agent Singh. While monitoring Ortiz’s forums trying to discover his plans for Cara, she is discovered, and finds herself in danger from the group. I was particularly impressed, and very moved, with the arc of Singh’s character. She has always had an exceptional supporting role, but in in this case she almost steals the book, no small feat in a novel with so many strong and vivid characters. These four disparate plots, Cara and Roarke, Jade and Singh, become tightly interwoven as the novel races toward its end, and the fact they dovetail so well is a testament to the astounding story-telling skills of Ms. Sokoloff. I am not dropping spoilers, but trust me when I say that this novel left me breathless by the time it came to an end. Hunger Moon is not an easy novel to read; nor should it be. It deals with rape, rape culture and human trafficking. This time, however, it also deals with the current administration's attempts to roll back all of the progress made in the past dealing with these issues. Ms. Sokoloff pulls no punches and takes on the new political landscape in which we find our-self; an America where one’s life can be in danger, simply because of your gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. A lot of people think that politics should play no place in fiction. I disagree. While a work of fiction Hunger Moon takes place in the modern world, in a very dark time in our history. The Huntress series has never shied away from difficult issues in the real world, and Ms. Sokoloff has always faced those issues straight on. She does it again here, and I cannot praise her enough, not only for her bravery and honesty, but for writing an excellent thriller. Read this book. **** Four out of Five Stars. Review by Mark Palm. Unless I am mistaken this is a first for me. I have never written a review of the second book in a series without reviewing the first, but that is exactly what I am going to do here, because I read Sleeping Giants, by Sylvain Neuvel, on my own and was so impressed that I decided to review the sequel, Waking Gods. The first novel is basically the story of Rose Franklin, a young girl who falls into a hole near her home and is found soon after atop a giant mechanical hand that appears to be of extraterrestrial origin. The story than shoots forward to Rose as an adult, now a physicist, who is tasked, along with an Army pilot Kara Resnik, and a linguist, Vincent Couture, with finding the rest of the pieces of the robot, assembling it and figuring out why and how it works. Once they assemble and manage to make the robot, called Themis, how to work they discover is awesome power. Then they must deal with when and how it should be used. Mr. Neuvel does away with conventional narrative and instead uses a mix of journal entries, mission logs, news articles and interviews to tell the story, and this approach works in spades, giving the fantastic concepts a realistic feel. It also shows Mr. Neuvel’s great grasp of dialogue and moves the story along with a brisk pace. Because while the author does not shy away from big ideas and ethical issues, this book is primarily a thriller. Now there is a lot more to this book, but remember, I am just setting the stage for Waking Gods. The sequel begins nine years after the end of the first book, and a lot has changed. The difficulty for me, is in explaining the complexity of this book while trying to avoid spoilers for not one, but two separate novels. I will gamely try. As big as things were in Sleeping Giants they get much bigger, and darker in Waking Gods. Rose who disappeared in the first book returns, under circumstances that border on the miraculous. The shadowy nameless figure that provides a lot of the narration and exposition comes into clearer focus, and most disturbing is the sudden appearance, in London, of another robot, similar to Themis, but with some differences. After the new robot, called Kronos, destroys London, causing massive casualties, Themis is called into action to battle Kronos. Now if this sounds like the plot to a low-budget Anime TV show, know that I am aware of that. And also know that I have only barely scratched the surface of the scale of events of Waking Gods, which approaches Armageddon levels of disaster. I am also stinting on the story-lines of multiple characters, many of whom I have not even mentioned, evolve and grow, and become more complex and vivid. As I said earlier, I am in new territory here. What keeps this all together is the deft touch of Mr. Neuvel. Despite all of the giant robots and global cataclysms this novel is kept grittily realistic by the depth and complexity of the characters, the surety of the plotting, and the author’s pitch-perfect ear for dialogue. The action may recall the big-budget stories of the silver screen, but the heart of this book, of both books, is grounded in the quotidian reality of character and story. Quite an achievement in a novel about giant robots fighting. I can’t wait for book three. ***** Five out of Five Stars Review by Mark Palm I don’t think that I am going out on a limb when I state that America is a country that is deeply steeped in a culture that is fixated on guns. It’s not a political or moral statement, but simply a matter of fact. The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley: A Novel is a story about many things, but at it’s core it is a work that uses that idea, that particular shared identity to tell a tale of a father and his daughter whose lives are both brought together and at the same time, severed, by the use of guns. The novel actually starts on Loo’s 12th birthday. The two are living in Massachusetts, and Hawley figures that it is time to teach her to shoot. During the lesson the two talk about Loo’s mother, Lily, who accidentally drowned in a lake in Minnesota when Loo was very young. Although Lily only appears in flashbacks in many ways she is the emotional heart of the story. She means so much to Hawley that wherever they live he creates a makeshift shrine to her in the bathroom, displaying photos along with her clothing and toiletries. This level of dedication is particularly striking because the two mo0ve frequently, and often with little or no notice, because Hawley is a criminal. His arsenal of guns are used as tools. Hawley is a freelance outlaw, working for other criminals and using his physical prowess and his skill with guns to fulfill his assignments. He steals, injures people, and sometimes kills, to stay alive and get the job done, all the time posing as a fisherman or a house-painter, and keeping his vocation a secret from Loo. After the first chapter the novel tells, in alternating chapters, the story of Loo and Hawley in the present as she grows from an adolescent into a young woman, and the past, as we see how Hawley became a criminal, and how he met and fell in love with Lily, and their life with Loo as a young girl. The twelve lives referenced in the novel’s title refer to the twelve separate times that Hawley has been shot, and although I hate symbolism, I think they also serve for a metaphor for the pain that Hawley has both suffered and caused; in losing his wife and in endangering the life of his daughter by the choices he has made. That may make this book sound like it’s a ponderous heavy read but nothing could be further from the truth. Ms. Tinti moves the story along at a quick pace with a strong grasp of plot and structure. There is a lot of strong subplots at play that I have not mentioned because the do not want to spoil the surprises for anyone. All of the characters are original and fully realized, but this story is about Hawley and Loo, and they are head and shoulders above the rest. Did I mention that Ms. Tinti writes like an angel? Usually in novels as full of action as this one is, a transparent prose works best. But Ms. Tinti is having none of that.Her prose absolutely sings, and I found myself reading passages aloud, particularly the final scene that closes the novel, to wife, even though she had not read the book. It’s very seldom that I come across a novel that does so many things so well, so read this book now. I can’t be any clearer than that. The Family Plot by: Cherie Priest Review by: Stacy Palm 4 out of 5 Stars I'm continually on the hunt for a satisfying "ghost story." I'm not one for the in your face horror novels or ones that are so intensely graphic that they are too disturbing to read; just a classic story that haunts you long after you have put the book to rest. One that makes you question what you believe you know about life and death. Many times, my hunt has lead me to disastrously unsatisfying reads, but sometimes I hit upon a gem, as is the case with Cherie Priest's The Family Plot. This is the first novel I have read by Cherie Priest. My husband is a fan of her writing having come across Maplecroft a couple years earlier. This Father's Day I purchased her collection of books for him because books is what he likes best for presents. So this book was found to be sitting on our mantle one day and I decided to give it try. I'm so thrilled that it crossed my path! This is a subtle book, it does not come out a grab you, it may not keep you from sleeping on days on end, and it my not terrify you into taking refuge under covers, but what it will do is give you genuine eerie and creepy sense, as if you inadvertently glimpsed something you were not suppose to have seen or known. It is that quality that I find so endearing to books of this type. At first you may not think there is too much going on, but then the pieces align to bring together a tale of another time and another life that you should not be aware of at all. The Family Plot begins with a salvage company being hired to dismantle and strip away any valued items from an inhabited estate that it about to be leveled. For the salvage company this is a "dream to good to be true" prospect, and they bank the whole company on the gamble of that payout. A crew is assembled to spend a few days camping at the house while they systematically decide what is worth excavating and what should be left to be demolished. The crew has some more vivid characters than others, but I personally enjoyed the focused attention on the otherworldly characters that soon come into play. This is not a long story, but it is a great rainy day read. It is both haunting and memorable, making it a book I would recommend to readers who typically do not enjoy "scary books." Again, this is subtle creepy-ness and I greatly admire it for not going overboard. It reminds me classic ghost stories that leave you with an unknowing sense of what really took place. This will not be the last Cherie Priest book that I read and I hope that you check this one out, as I hope to come across more novels of this nature. If you know of any that you recommend, please leave a comment below. **** Four out of Five Stars. Review by Mark Palm. Right off of the bat I have to tell you that I am wary of the siren song of Nostalgia. It’s been said that that the music you listened to as a teeenager will always have a special hold over you, and that the way you dressed in high school is more or less the way that you will dress the rest of your life. ( I kind of hope not on both fronts, but I understand the sentiment.) The reason I bring this up is not to just continue blathering about myself, but because The Impossible Fortress, by Jason Rekulak, is not just a novel set in the past, the 1980’s to be exact, but it is a novel about nostalgia. Since I was a teenager in the 1980’s the nostalgia angle has a bit more significance for me than it might have for others. It’s 1987 and 14-year old Billy Marvin and his best friends, Alf and Clark are living in Westbridge New Jersey and spend all of their time revelling in the pop-cultural tropes of the time. They are three happy nerds that seem to have stepped right from a Steven Spielberg movie, and everything seems just fine, until Playboy magazine publishes its famous issue with nude photos of Wheel of Fortune hostess Vanna White. The boys decide they absolutely must have this magazine. Unfortunately, and rather improbably, only one store in town sells Playboy; Zelinsky’s Typewriters and Office Supplies. After several bumbling attempts to secure the magazine fail, they believe that they have finally found a plan that will work. Billy spends all his spare time creating video games on his Commodore 64, and it turns out that Mary Zelinsky, the daughter of the owner who works in the store, is also a computer nerd who is a better coder than Billy. So the three decide that Billy will woo Mary, who think call “chubby” until she gives him the information that they will need to procure their Holy Grail. So Billy, who is developing a Game called The Impossible Fortress for a contest judged by one of Billy’s video game developer heroes. Goes to Mary and the two decide to work together to bring The Impossible Fortress to life. Without divulging any spoilers I can tell you what happens next. Most of the rest of the story is about the tension between Billy and Mary’s relationship, and the pressure he faces from his friends to continue his undercover job. As you would expect this becomes difficult for Billy because as he comes to know Mary he discovers a kindred spirit and this distances him from his friends. I won’t drop any spoilers, but there are a bunch of twists and turns that eventually leads to a ending that is satisfying and happy without being too sweet. Here and there along the way some characters behave in ways that make them seem like they were being shoe-horned into place to advance the plot, but Mr.Rekulak’s assured prose mainly smooths those problems over. The author is equally as skillful when it comes to his characters. Billy and Mary are wonder apart and together, and they, with most of the other major characters always seem real and true, and this more than anything is what gives this story such warmth and heart. And here I thought that I was too cynical to enjoy a story that makes you really want to stand up and cheer. PS: my wife Stacy, who knows about programming tells me that the pages of programming, which are used to introduce each chapter, are exceptionally clever in the way they work with the story. I’ll take her word for it. ****Four out of Five Stars Review by Mark Palm A lot of folks are very excited by Wonder Woman, the first major film about a female superhero directed by a woman. I agree that is a fine moment for cinema, but there have been tons of books over the years written by women featuring kick-ass heroines, and a lot of them have been some of my very favorite books, from The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman, to Jane Steele, by Lyndsay Faye, to The Huntress Series by Alexandra Sokoloff. If you are a fan of YA I would direct you to the Bloody Jack series by L.A. Meyer. All of this brings me to Lola: A Novel:, by Melissa Scrivner Love. Lola is a small, quiet Latina living in a ghetto neighborhood in Los Angeles. From the outside she appears to be merely the girlfriend of Garcia, a member of a small drug-dealing gang, The Crenshaw Six. In fact she is the leader of the gang, a fact kept hidden from all but the gang themselves. Lola is singularly fixed upon guaranteeing the survival of herself and her gang, including her eighteen-year-old brother, Hector, by keeping their heads down and showing a low profile. However, a member of the Los Liones Cartel. who controls their turf shows up and has an assignment for the gang; one of the Cartel’s main pushers, Darrel King, is buying drugs from another supplier, and if the Crenshaw Six can find out who, and disrupt that connection, they will move up the chain. Lola jumps at the chance but that same evening Lola, whose mother was a junkie who made her have sex with dealers for a fix since Lola was a young girl, discovers that a neighbor’s grand-daughter, Lucy is suffering the same fate. Lola makes it her goal to complete the cartel’s mission and save Lucy from the same horrors that she has improbably survived. The Six undertake the mission but Hector fails to do his job and the whole plan fails horribly. The Six lose four million dollars in cash and heroin, but do manage to catch the courier, Darrel King’s girlfriend. The Cartel gives the Gang three days to find the cash and the drugs or they will execute the leader of the gang, Lola. Now this is just the first few chapters of the book. From here things escalate and we see Lola step from the shadows and take charge, trying to unravel a complex plot involving a district attorney, a narcotics officer and a rehab center whom are all part of where King gets his supplies. At the same time Hector is causing more and more problems, Lola is hiding Lucy from her mother, a death threat is hanging over her head. Saying more would involve more spoiler than I would like, but I can tell you that Lola: A Novel is almost unbearably tense. The pace is unrelenting, and the tension starts high and just keeps climbing. The plot twist and turns like a snake but it never felt contrived or staged. The world of this novel is violent, and Ms. Love does an exceptional job of showing how casual it is without lessening its horror. There are a few scenes were the details are a bit sketchy, and sometimes things felt a bit rushed, but the stories sheer forward momentum most smoothed over those moments. The character are solid, but the women in the story are particularly well-drawn, especially Lola. She absolutely steps off of the page from the beginning and dominates the story. Ms. Love doesn't sugar-coat Lola either. She is fiercely loyal to those she cares for but is capable of acts of shocking violence, but I wouldn’t have been so invested in this story if the author had taken a different path. I chose to mention Wonder Woman earlier for a specific reason. With its depiction of poverty and abuse, with its moral ambiguity and violence I would be hard-pressed to find a bowl so different in it’s tone and tenor from the cinematic blockbuster. At its heart though, Lola: A Novel shares one thing with the movie; a true heroine stands at it’s heart. Review by: Mark Palm 4 out of 5 stars I have read more than my fair share of military biographies, and most of them are so-so, with the most notable exceptions being those of Ulysses Grant, Winston Churchill, and T.E. Lawrence. Mary Jennings Hegar’s Shoot Like A Girl: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and the Home Front may not quite be as good but it’s damn close. In fact, in some ways it is better. This book may not be a work of literature equal to the ones that I have just mentioned, but Ms. Hegar is fighting two battles here; she is documenting her life as a soldier, and a warrior, and also telling the tale of her battle with the entrenched biases against women serving in the military, and particularly against women serving in combat. Ms. Hegar takes us through her life from before high school up until the end of her career, and she does not stint or gloss over the personal ups and downs she experienced. After being commissioned into the U.S. Air Force, Ms. Hegar was selected for pilot training by the Air National Guard, finishing at the top of her class. Eventually she served three tours in Afghanistan, flying search-and rescue missions, culminating with an extremely dangerous mission that ended with her winning a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Flying Cross. Through all of this Ms. Hegar’s prose style is transparent in the best way, giving equal insight into her relationships with friends and family, and also into the nuts and bolts reality of being a soldier. From the humdrum down time to the nerve-wracking realities of combat Ms. Hegar never overplays her hand. It all feels as solid and real as a brick. Not surprisingly the scenes involving flight are so vivid that I felt that I was right there in the cockpit. The author also shows a real knack for describing complex processes and procedures in a clear way, without over-simplification. What gives this book an extra lift is that the author takes the same approach in dealing with her personal and emotional life. Whether dealing with sexual harassment or her first turbulent marriage, or times when her drive to be the best actually became an impediment to the success of a particular mission, Ms. Hegar lets the moment speak for itself. Rare is the writer who can accomplish that without putting their thumb on the scale. Let me make clear that that does not mean that she tells her story without passion or feeling. There are plenty of moments that made want to cry, or stand up and cheer, but Ms. Hegar is first and foremost a soldier, and ir shows in her matter-of fact approach to even the most difficult parts of her life. Shoot Like A Girl is a tight, taut gripping book by and about a kick-ass woman warrior. ANd one of the most intriguing aspects of the book is when Ms. Hegar shows us that she sees her role not only a duty, but a joy. When things are their most perilous Ms. Hegar seems to bloom, and she shows this time and again, without ever dismissing the fact that her life, and the lives of her comrades are on the line. Heroic is a word that is often tossed around lightly, but I really think cannot think of a word that fits better here. As always I have tried not to drop any spoilers, but I will give you one teaser, in the hopes that if my review isn’t enough to make you read this book may this will; the title is not an insult, but a compliment. If you want to know how and why, well, read this book. You won’t regret it. ***** Five out of Five Stars. Review by Mark Palm If you have read my reviews before you should know by now that the categorization of books drives me crazy. I know that it is a necessity for bookstores and libraries, and it makes it much easier to find what you want when looking for something to read. On the other hand it creates “ghettos”, where works placed in a certain category can never reach an audience any wider than the one the marketing department decided was the best fit. Now and again a book comes along that straddles categories, like the Colossus of Rhodes. By Gaslight by Steven Price is just such a work. An audacious comparison, you might think, but how else can I describe a 700-plus page historic thriller that spans fifty years and three continents and is written in spare poetic prose that completely eschews quotation marks for all of the dialogue? Basically By Gaslight is the story of two men; William Pinkerton, son of Allan, who founded the world-famous Pinkerton’s Agency, for some time the largest private security and detective agency that once had more employees and operatives that the standing U.S. Army, and Adam Foole, who seemingly has no past, and is living a life of secretive thievery for two equally mysterious comrades, Japheth and Molly. Pinkerton is in London, investigating the presumed death of Mary Reckitt, who was the partner of Edward Shade, the infamous thief that William’s father had been pursuing for decades. Foole is also obsessively searching for Mary, and the paths of the two,as well as their pasts collide. From there the story jumps forward and backward decades as Mr. Price deftly teases out the winding plot, that however complex it may get never manages to lose its tension. Bear in mind that this is no fast and loose thriller, but a massive book about spies , (the Pinkerton agency was responsible for almost all of the espionage work done for the Union during the Civil War), and secrets. Mr. Price delves into the pasts of both men and the events that made them and haunt them as the story unspools, while also touching upon such subjects as the nature of the self, and identity, all the while never stinting on the suspense. As I mentioned earlier the prose is poetic, but in a sharp spare way that beautifully evokes place and time, from the slums and mansions of Victorian London to the battlefields of the American Civil War. The descriptions are deft and made me want to linger over them, even as the mesmerizing story pulled me along. . The author completely jettisons quotation marks, a risky move that I have read some find an annoyance, but for me, the gamble pays off in spades. The lack of quotation marks forced me to read more slowly, and also made me more aware of the the dialogue and the prose, and never once seemed to me like an affectation. Both Pinkerton and Foole are complex and realized characters, and they dominate the story, and all of the side characters ring true as well. Of particular interest was Mary Reckitt, the pivot upon whom so much of the story turns. In a story full of haunting characters, and the memories they carry, Mary stands out. As we learn more and more about the two men Mary remains a mystery, seen only from without and physically absent for much of the story. When she is present she is an elemental force. For all of it’s size and depth when I got to the finish of By Gaslight I wished that there was more to go. If you want to know how much I thought of this book, I think that that says a lot. ****Four out of Five Stars Review by Mark Palm. As I grow old, ( I am not going to bullshit you by saying older), I wonder if I am starting to lose my edge. It’s inevitable, right? First you’re reading Milan Kundera in a noisy bar , sipping whiskey with an pack of unfiltered Camels on the table while you argue with your friends about who is Postmodernist and who is Post-Postmodernist, then someone pulls the rug out and it’s a couple of decades later and it’s all tea and naps and Agatha Christie. Well, maybe it’s not that bad. But when I heard about Nicotine, by Zell Fink, I felt like I was being issued a challenge. The buzz was that it was weird. Well, it is weird, but not Finnegan’s Wake or The Dictionary of the Khazars weird. It has some unusual situations, and some odd characters, but it’s quite accessible, and most importantly, it’s also very good. To peel away the complications, and to let you discover Ms. Zink’s gift for invention for yourself, I’ll break down the plot. Penny is a young college graduate who is coming to terms with the death of her father, whom she nursed for months thru his long sickness. Her very unusual family is struggling to divide up her father’s possessions, and Penny, recently evicted from her NYC apartment, decides to look after her father’s run-down childhood home in New Jersey. To her surprise she finds that the house is not empty, but is occupied by a varied group of friendly anarchist squatters, all of whom use tobacco. They have dubbed the house Nicotine. Penny quickly befriends this unusual group, and becomes a part of their larger community, a large ragtag group of protesters, activists and free spirits, all content , or seemingly content, to live off of the grid and go their own way outside of the usual system. As Penny becomes more involved with this fringe society she finds herself entangled in a myriad of relationships, especially Rob, an asexual man with whom she fall in love. There is fair amount of plot in the book, particularly dealing with Penny’s psychopathic brother Matt’s attempts to take over the house and use it to make money, but the crux of Nicotine is in the interaction between the characters, and it is in this that Ms. Zink really shines. Often reviewers praise authors for creating characters that are likable or memorable, but Nicotine is stocked with characters that step right off of the page. Penny, Rob, Matt, Sorry, Amalia, and Jazz all come to life, in such a way that I laughed with them one minute, (except for Matt), and wanted to grab them by the shirt and shake the snot out of them the next. For me the most intriguing was Jazz, a true free spirit, sensuous one moment and destructive the next, she was a force of nature that almost overtook the book. Nicotine is Penny’s book, however. The power of her story as she makes her way through the sorrow of her father’s death to a eventually find her place in the world is all the stronger for me because it develops within and around all of the complications a swirl in her life. The nonlinear flow made it resonate more for me. I also enjoyed Ms. Zink’s prose. It was quirky, offhand, and yet often oddly precise. I found that I like it most when it addressed a subject indirectly. Which is how I found my way into this book, and how I ended up liking it so much. Don’t over-analyse it. Just get in there, and if you are like me, will find it a bit like home. |
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