Water for Elephants

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (Sara Gruen) - Four Stars

What facts I know about the circus I've learned simply from my study of circus marches. This book (which I keep accidentally calling "Like Water for Elephants" ...ha!) is so well-researched you will learn a lot about the train-circuses of the early 20th century without even trying.

This is beside the point, since the story is really a love triangle slash murder mystery, and the circus is merely the setting. But it's the vibrancy of the characters (not just the main characters, but all the background and auxiliary characters) that really drives the story. The story is told in flashbacks by the (now) nearly 100-year-old main character. The alternating chapters also detail his current life in a nursing home, and the horrible indignities of grow old, in very poignant fashion.

The book is not without its flaws. Towards the denouement Gruen gets a little melodramatic with her description of the action (I could almost envision characters raising the back of their hands to their foreheads before speaking) and the ending, while heart-warming and "feel-good," requires a bit more of a suspension of disbelief than the rest of the story.

Still, wonderful characters, vibrant settings, and good plot pacing; there's not more you can ask for from an enjoyable, "light" read.

Under the Volcano

UNDER THE VOLCANO (Malcolm Lowry) - One Star

A truck carrying a load of thesauri collided with a train full of commas, killing 115 people. However, you don't care about any of them because all you read in the first hundred pages is flavor text and irrelevant tangential fantasies.

There are twenty commas on the first half-page of the novel (six sentences). Let me choose a page at random... page 170. Okay. Counting. 28 commas on this page (and four semi-colons). It's fucking ridiculous.

After the first hundred pages of this novel all I knew was that Geoffrey Firmin (The Consul) was an alcoholic who was going to die, and his wife (Yvonne) had left and returned for reasons unknown. THAT'S IT. Two minor details about two characters. No plot, no story, nothing. They say "write what you know." Thus, John Grisham, a lawyer, writes law thrillers. Malcolm Lowry, a drunk, wrote about a drunk. BUT HE FORGOT TO INCLUDE A FUCKING STORY.

I've been bored to tears after a hundred pages of a story, but never have I been so angry and felt like I've completely wasted my time. And this on a supposed "great novel" of the 20th Century.

At least Hemingway could still write decently when he was soused. Fuck you, Lowry, you fucking drunk asshole.

Mendoza in Hollywood

MENDOZA IN HOLLYWOOD (Kage Baker) - Three Stars

Mendoza in Hollywood wasn't quite at the level of the first two books in "The Company" series, but it wasn't too far behind. The characters/concept still fascinate me, and if the narration in this story had been a little less repetitive this novel would have been four stars, too.

The novel is told in past-tense and, evidently, as part of a criminal interrogation. Mendoza is the narrator, and she recounts the life and times of early 1860s southern California. Most of this is amusing, but after a while it becomes a little tedious. The main heart of the novel doesn't happen until Mendoza meets a spitting image of her long-dead lover from In the Garden of Iden (which occurred 300 years prior); but this doesn't happen until page 250. Then begins a short but fascinating plot arc about the supposed strategic importance of Catalina Island of the California coast, and how (supposedly) the United States and Britain were engaged in a cloak-and-dagger game for the island for hundreds of years. The last 80 pages were some of the most interesting in the book, and I think this section deserved to be expanded in much greater detail (Mendoza's fugue, in particular, deserved a bit more than a paragraph; although leaving it up to the reader's imagination was pretty effective, too).

At the end of the novel, Mendoza has been subjected to a rather unique punishment, and of course I'll be getting the next novel in the series to see what happens.