Books Coming Out in March — Great Expectations!

I have such a towering stack of books I am not sure where there's room for new material — yet I must make room because there's some great-sounding stuff coming out this month.

First of all, I can't wait for Ariana Franklin's newest novel, Grave Goods. I have enjoyed both Mistress of the Art of Death and The Serpent's Tale, and I doubt that I will be disappointed with this new book.

Then there's the new book by the gifted novelist Keith Donohue. I read The Stolen Child when it first came out and even now, when I think about it years later, I still find it unsettling, imaginative and very satisfactory. His latest novel, Angels of Destruction, hearkens the same great potential, and I must pick it up soon. (Definitely before his local reading.)

I'm frightfully behind on my February novels, with Drood sitting heavily in the wings — but Carole is a few pages in front of me, and I have to catch up so we can discuss it. I know Carole is eyeing Fool with great interest, and I can't wait for her to read it so she can tell me how much she enjoyed it. (I have a non-fiction book in the wings titled Traffic; maybe as the month progresses, we can graduate to titles with more than one word....)

What do you have on your nightstand?

A Spot of Bother — Review by Carole

I would love to have a dinner party and invite Mark Haddon, Christopher Moore, and Jasper Fforde. I would just sit back, serve the food and the wine, while witty banter would just fly around my dining room. Christopher would eat anything, I think, and Mark would want something spicy, but Jasper would be more circumspect about what he ate, but I don’t think he would create a spot of bother. I would want to create a menu that put everyone at their ease, perhaps a nice Spaghetti Carbonara in huge quantities.

As they talked about their latest projects, the nightmares of dealing with book tours, what their craziest fans have done (of which I would not be one, but rather a close personal friend of each of them), I would bask in the knowledge that here sat three authors who have never disappointed me. While that is a subject to blog about in itself, my list of names on that topic is quite brief. When I mentally cross reference that list with the list of authors who have made me laugh out loud, these three make the very short list.

Reading Haddon’s A Spot of Bother brought to mind this dinner party scenario. This was my second Haddon novel—The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was an amazing, poignant story that has stayed with me. In the couple of weeks since I read A Spot of Bother, I’ve found myself reflecting on it as well. Haddon’s characters are ordinary people living their lives as best they can. They are not perfect by any means; they screw up; they hurt people they love; and they don’t just neatly learn from their mistakes and fix everything by the end of the book. They remain their endearingly messed-up selves to the end and beyond.

In Bother, George, who is relatively new to the world of retirement, thinks he is dying of cancer. He doesn’t bother to confirm this—he just knows it. He then proceeds to quietly start falling apart, but he doesn’t want to cause, you guessed it, a spot of bother. This happens amidst the preparations for his daughter’s wedding to man that no one in the family can stand, but as I read the story, I found myself liking him more and more and them less and less. George’s wife is having an affair and George’s turn of mind and his constantly being underfoot is cramping her style and she doesn’t know what to do about it. George’s gay son is having his own relationship troubles because he won’t invite his boyfriend to the wedding and thereby admit that he loves him.

One of the charming aspects of this book is that it makes your own life seems relatively uncomplicated in comparison. I was more amused than horrified at the characters’ actions, and that is due entirely to Haddon’s deft handling of character, dialogue, and story.

We’ve blogged about Moore and Fforde—check out our posts and read these authors. See if you wouldn’t want me to add you to the guest list of my dinner party with the guys!

Practical Demonkeeping — Review by Chris

Reading Christopher Moore's first novel, Practical Demonkeeping, is like climbing into a car having no idea where you are going but knowing you're going to have a great trip.

Moore has a gift for weaving a whole bunch of disparate characters into the fabric of the story and allowing them to unfold with wry wit. I found myself marking page after page for great lines and humorous observations.

Travis as spent a deceptively long lifetime dealing with the demon Catch, a short, stout, scaly demon whose countenance changes when he feeds — and who remains invisible until that time.

Jenny is a 29-year-old a waitress who has just left her husband, Robert, a sorry besotted lovesick waif.

Robert is staying with The Breeze, a drug dealer whose actual face time is shorter than his story arc, and encountering way too many new faces — including the face of a man in his dreams, a man making love with his wife.

Then there's Augustus Brine, the elderly owner of a tackle and convenience store who knows his true calling is that of a madam, who encounters Gian Hen Gian, a small Arabic man who consumes his weight in salt every day.

Effrom, a World War I vet, is lost without his wife Amanda, who chose this week to visit their daughter and leave him to deal with insurance salesmen looking for her.

Billy Winston lives a double life, one of which includes red high heels and motel accounting.

Howard is convinced that aliens walk among us, and just happens to be fluent in Greek (which comes in handy).

Rivera wants to nail The Breeze or he will have to trade in his policeman's badge for the smock of a Slurpy-server at the local 7-Eleven.

Rachael is the high priestess of Pagan Vegetarians for Peace, beautiful and dangerous, with a past no one could imagine.

Mavis runs the Head of the Slug, keeps an eye on the downtrodden around her town and, thankfully, can handle a firearm.

Author Christopher Moore has a way with people. Fictional people, that is. Each of these characters is lovingly described with a candor many authors cannot sustain. Each has a role to in this passion play, only it never is what the reader expects. Flour bombs? Suitcases? Telephoto lenses? Computer conversations? All this and more are woven into this tale.

One night, the dogs won’t stop barking. The next day, Travis and Catch limp into town with a broken radiator and the uncanny ability to play pool better than the town expert. Robert, who is spending his last dollars drowning his sorrows, encounters the man of his dreams, so to speak, and is flabbergasted when the man’s car winds up in his — well, Jenny’s driveway.

Meanwhile, the enlightened Augustus Brine encounters someone who tells him what will happen in Pine Cove if he doesn’t act to change the course of the town’s future.

As night falls and the people of Pine Cove discover just how terrible the night can be, all hell breaks loose. It’s not just Robert’s unfortunate choice of luggage, or Augustus forgetting that fuses of different lengths detonate at different times. It’s not just Jenny’s first date in a decade and Travis’ first in a lifetime. It’s not Mavis with her tape recorder, or Rachel with her discovery of what she thinks is an invisible earth god. It’s not just Billy seeing Catch (which is never a good thing) or Augustus learning about demons, Djinn and Solomon. It’s all that and more.

I laughed, I cheered, I gasped, I chuckled, I was surprised and delighted. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and heartily recommend it to readers with a sense of humor and affection for the slapstick and the far-fetched. I can’t wait to read Fluke and Lamb (both of which Carole recommends and the latter of which, if I remember correctly from my quick glance, involved Jesus resurrecting a lizard killed repeatedly by his little brother — how can I lose?).

Fluke — A Review by Carole

Christopher Moore's Fluke, Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings explores the world of whales and those who study them. At least the world of whales as seen through Moore's eyes and imagination. Those who have read any of Moore's books, such as Lamb, know that Moore's view of the world is quite unique.

Before I read the book, I knew that a fluke was an odd quirk of chance, but I didn't know that it was also the y-shaped fins at the end of a whale's tale. Moore explains this up front, so I figured I would learn a few things as I read this one. When the main character, who studies whales to learn why they sing, encounters one who is getting ready to dive, he can hardly believe his eyes. Clearly written across the whale's fluke are the words "Bite Me."

"Okay," I say to myself, "Maybe I won't learn anything — maybe I'm just in for an interesting ride and read." The book takes off from there with an exploration and explanation of an entire world beneath the sea of which most humans are completely unaware.

Oddly enought, the characters in Fluke seem real whether she is a mermaid-like hottie who mysteriously appears to help with the underfunded whale study in Hawaii or the eccentric benefactress to doesn't go near the water but hears the whales when they speak to her, particularly the one who repeatedly asks her to tell the whale researchers to bring a hot pastrami on rye sandwich with them.

I had enjoyed reading Moore's Lamb (the story of Biff, Christ's childhood pal) so much that I avoided reading Fluke for over a year. I was worried about "author repeatitis," a condition I suffer from. Symptoms include feelings of euphoria after reading a book by an author, and wanting to repeat the "high," strong desire to go out and read other books by the same author only to suffer feelings of crushing disappointment when the story just doesn't measure up to my expectations.

I'm happy to report that I experienced no such symptoms reading Fluke. Moore delivers an original story and creates a world I was happy to inhabit for a brief time.