...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Finally, I have the feeling that there's some revving up in terms of good books coming my way as I have read numerous of them these past weeks. I'm really trying, but also struggling a little bit to balance all the new publications with the book group and buddy reads with my many challenges and back list. No need to stress, though, I guess the tbr list is something never ending, and once you accept that truth it gets easier to accept I'll never be able to read everything, sigh....

Enjoy my short reviews on that melancholy note!

Walking Practice by Dolki Min

Your spaceship crashed in the middle of nowhere and you, as the sole survivor of your species, land on this bloody planet Earth where people are divided into two categories and are expected to act according to certain labels. You need to feed, of course, at some point and as a shapeshifting hunter who attracts its delicious human prey through tinder dates, there are like a billion subtle and stupid rules you need to memorize but don’t really understand at all. Least of all how to walk. Laborious… Wouldn’t you be inevitably depressed at some point? Mumu does get depressed and ultimately ends up in a full blown, very understandable existential crisis. And humanity will be “humanity” as usual.

Mumu was one of the best main characters I have read about lately. Their reactions, feelings, affections, fears, annoyances made perfect sense to me and I could even relate to this wary “alien” in a way.

Dolki Min does something very clever, very quirky in this book, looking at gender and human relationships through the lens of an “alien” who doesn’t fit in with society and succeeds in giving a 100% believable and personable point of view. Loved this read!

I want to add that I listened to this as an audiobook and I need to praise narrator Nicki Endres emphatically! The ups and downs of their voice, their fun and unexpected stresses and intonations do add a different level of enjoyment to this story, which is great to begin with and becomes excellent thanks to Endres’ performance.

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede

Unfortunately, Maeve Fly by CJ Leede was a little bit a missed opportunity in my eyes as I think the blurb/synopsis gives away a major point, the mention of Patrick Bateman, main character of Brett Easton Ellis' iconic thriller American Psycho, which otherwise would have made a smashing turning point in the plot. So it was the fault of wrong marketing, I guess. There are still many many elements I enjoyed immensely to even the rating out, still I somehow lament the joy I would have had if American Psycho had been mentioned inside the book only. The parallels between the two works are eminent!

Maeve does all kinds of crazy things – she impersonates the sister of a certain ice queen at a theme park for a living, attends LA parties only to sit in a corner with a book, ruins people’s lives by initiating shitstorms, watches movies nobody else wants to see, has the craziest sexual relations, and has deep inside her a deep darkness, a bloodthirst. When she meets her best friend’s brother Gideon, she firstly feels put off by him but soon sees in him the potential to find her match.

It is rare that such a complex, likable in her unlikability a character comes along. Although Maeve as a character was in parts seriously over the top, a little too edgy and extreme, radical almost, I personally understood where she comes from and felt amused by her little stunts. There is nothing more relatable and natural than looking for, yearning for someone who can suit and match the darkness inside one's self. Additionally, I felt she was smart and creative and I like the books she reads, I made a little list out of them for myself.

There is one thing though, that drives me crazy in movies/books and I moaned in frustration when CJ Leede decided to end her book on that maddening note: Look away if you mind a small spoiler Two people are confronted at some point in a story, preferably with a gun at hand, and one of these two has the knowledge to solve the conflict between them, and instead of just blurting it out so nobody gets injured, they just keep saying “I can explain, please wait” for so long that they get killed because they didn’t explain when they had the time and the killing person, too late, realizes that this whole situation was a misunderstanding and could have ended good. End of small spoiler I absolutely hate when that happens, and it happens here.

My highlight was what Maeve does to film director Dereck’s eyeball with the cocaine spoon. I liked that.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

I ended up reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? because of the book bingo challenge, which challenged me to read a book that reminded me of my favorite song. I don’t believe in favorite songs but decided to settle with a song I like well enough, "A Warm Place" by NIN, which, for some reason that's too long to explain here, but has more to do with the album the song is on than the book, reminds me of Blade Runner. So first there was a song, then a movie, then a book. I don’t know if I can still say now, after finishing the book, that the song reminds me of the book, it probably doesn’t, but how can you know before reading the book anyway?

So naturally I have been comparing Blade Runner to Androids in my head, which isn’t really fair to both works because they both work on different levels, focus on different things. Take for instance, the title Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which I always thought in terms of counting sheep at night, but it actually bears quite a literal meaning as well as a religious one, both aspects the film lacks (but which doesn’t mean it is a less rich or worthwhile work).

I was amused by the animal subplot, main character Deckard’s wish to own a real, living animal. I was amazed by their literal use in contrast to androids who don’t profit from the same social esteem as the living status symbol, establishing all the while a parallel to groups of people which have been historically oppressed and deemed worth less than animals. Another part I didn’t recognize from the movie was a weird god-like figure called Mercer who would appear as a vision in certain situations and give weird religious speeches, of whose I personally couldn’t make much sense.

As with most works from that time, there’s unfortunately some casual misogyny which always annoys. I especially hate it when male authors describe the woman some character is going to have sex with as "childlike" as if it's fucking great to sleep with children and Dick does that here. The writing isn’t all that brilliant either, but I nevertheless enjoyed reading it. Between us, I think I prefer the movie, but both are definitely worth your time. Reminds me it’s time for a refresh, it’s been years since I last watched Blade Runner.

Wolf Country by Tünde Farrand

A while ago I reviewed a book with the opening line “I never thought I'd write one of those reviews that start with 'I wanted to like this book so much, but...' and here we are.”

Well, here we are again. I'm not very happy about it but there is no other way to say it – I found Tünde Farrand's Wolf Country unexciting, to put it mildly, and its characters bland. It was a long and tiresome slog through wolf country and there aren't even wolves around. It was a dystopia with no real dystopic elements, only an amplified version of today's consumer society, of course set in a future London, of course it is. A commentary on said society unexpectedly dissolves into an individual “happy” ending where characters ascend into financial security but the rest of the society is as miserable as ever. There were pretty big plot holes. Even the halfway exciting parts in the last 10% of the story managed to be unexciting. But for some curious reason it somehow kept me reading. Props for the mention of snuff movies but that's about it.

Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality: Stories by Lindsay Wong

Quite the surprise pleasure, I didn't know what to expect from this Chinese-immigrant supernatural stories at all. I have to say though, even though collections usually are a mixed bag, sometimes funny, sometimes cruel, sometimes sad, I clearly preferred the first few stories which were also much more lighthearted than the ones that come next and have a rather grave tone.

My highlights;

Happy Birthday!
Hilarious story of a family gathering for family father's birthday, but there's an unwanted guest who turns everything upside down. The perfect way to open a story collection, very enthralling, shocking and funny.

Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality
The titular story is also an amusing account of China's oldest person, who attained the title through a sort of curse by eating a certain flower and is meanwhile literally falling apart.

The Ugliest Girl
The “ugliest” girls in China are being collected and taken to a place where they are being exploited for the one thing they can offer better than anyone else; their sorrow. This was so touching, really, and the social commentary on class society and the treatment of women really pungent.

The Noodley Delight
A despotic and crazy grandma does her grandchildren one last (maybe even first?) favor after dying.

Furniture
Gregor Samsa was yesterday, you can actually turn into a piece of furniture instead of an insect! A couch like the guy in this story maybe?

I did enjoy Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality, but have to admit that it starts much more promising than it ends up to be.