Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

 

This is listed as a novel but it's really more like three sequential novellas, the time skips between them make it hard for me to pitch this thing as a really cohesive novel. The novellas are really, really good, and there are things about Harlem and the Black experience there (and arguably elsewhere in America, though NYC is very much the focus). I'm not a huge fan of stories about low-level crooks way out of their criminal depth, and that's kinda what these novellas all are--though to be fair it's the main's cousin who keeps doing the really ill-considered things. While Harlem is the canvas for this novel and street-level crime is the paint, I think family is really the main subject, here: Not only is the main doing progressively more desperate things to try to protect his cousin, he's also working to make a life for his family as the neighborhoods he knows are basically ripped out from under him (and of course as much of the legal and social and governmental structure is substantially tilted against him). Obviously the racism of that parenthetical is also an important layer of what's going on, here, and it's both personal and systemic. Whitehead's actual writing is a joy, his voice dances and sings and growls and screams as needed. I am really happy to have read this book.

The Fold by Peter Clines

 

This is a thriller novel at its heart, though it does have a strong whiff of SF about it--more even than most technothrillers, which this really mostly isn't. The science here is whack enough that I'm inclined to call this more like SF-flavored Fantasy, but I'm not sure trying to nail genre down so hard is particularly helpful. The main character is a weird genius with a functionally eidetic memory; he's arguably a freak, but Clines does a pretty decent job of humanizing him. The writing here is solid, the prose sparkles and shines and has some nifty and amusing turns of phrase; the pacing of the story is pretty taut and the the characters all feel remarkably plausible (even the freakish main). It's a bit jarring to jump to a new POV for the first time somewhere in the last fifth of the novel, that's a choice I'm not sure I like, but I guess Clines needed to show some things he couldn't any other way, it doesn't break the flow of the novel too badly. There's a biggish reveal about two-thirds of the way through that's pretty well-foreshadowed, but no stupid twists. Second good novel I've read from Clines, I'm not interested in his series for my own reasons, but I'll see if I can't find more of his standalones. (This ends as though he was thinking about writing more with some of the characters, but I don't think he ever did.)

Playworld by Adam Ross

 

Started this yesterday in a coffeeshop, finished it tonight--last night ended up being unexpectedly social. It's ... really not a horrible book: The prose itself is solid; the characters all feel plausible, even if some are kinda obvious to the point of cliche, the fact the novel's set in like 1980s makes it reasonable for the characters in the novel, including the first-person POV, not to figure out what's going on with them; the place and time feel right, consistent with my memories of at least the latter. There's plenty of wit and sparkle in the writing, and humor and joy--as well as grit and grime and teenagers (and the adults they're still depending on) behaving badly. The story, though (and given that it seems like an intentional *bildungsroman*, "story* is probably not the primary goal) is kinda bland, fragmented (picaresque seems also intentional, maybe connected to the *bildungsroman* thing) and mostly doesn't so much resolve as just stop. Given that the novel is like 500 pages, that's a lot of reading for so little real impact, it goes a long way to make a very small point.

Down Here by Andrew Vachss

 

Sometimes you just want as dark a novel as you can find that doesn't involve demons or whatever, this is about that. The goodguys aren't exactly nice, and the badguys are either unhinged or complete sociopaths (or plausibly some combination). This is from like 2003 or thereabouts--someone in the novel mentions it being about two years after 9/11--so some of the countermeasures the mostly-altruistic criminals take are a bit dated, but other than that the novel has aged pretty well. There are still people who abuse those weaker than them, and there are still people who work to stop that from happening. Vachss wrote with passion and skill about that, and this novel is a fine example of his strengths. There are occasional flickers of humor like whistling past a graveyard, the dialogue carries character and narrative, the pace is brisk and snappy.Down

The Risen by Ron Rash

 

Ron Rash writing about Appalachian backcountry pain is one of the best bittersweet pleasures I find in relatively recent fiction. There's tension and sometimes agony, but often very little violence. This novel is a really good example of what Rash does really well. It has a historical thread, this time in 1969 with all the countercultural stress that comes with the time, though in a place about as connected to the rest of the US then as Mayberry. The novel has a lot to say about family--both how the elder generations abuse the younger and about the resentments and regrets of brotherhood. This is arguably another novel where someone is willing to set their family on fire rather than lose control of it, which seems a very human attitude, and sadly not uncommon., The dialogue here captures regionalism without trying to nail down accent/s, which I think it probably the way to do it, and it serves to drive the story and differentiate characters. Speaking of: The characters are all eminently believable. The pacing is quick like a knife to the ribs, and the ending is just an open space the reader can fill in or fall into, a beautiful void. Superb.

Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League et al. A Compendium of Evils by E. M. Rauch

 

Whatever magic there is in the Buckaroo Banzai movie, Rauch (one of the screenwriters) has none of it left. This is taking a charming 1980s thing and smearing it with secondhand Burroughs and Pynchon. It's utter shit, I tapped out after almost 100 pages and that was at least twice as much as I should have read.

The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones

 

This is a kinda strange little horror novel, very much a Bad Place novel--there are ghosts galore, but they're being held by the house for ... reasons, I guess--Jones never explains any of the why, which is defensible enough since all of the characters basically seem to have come to be held by the house and found it more or less as it is, without reason or explanation. It does make for a kinda unsatisfying novel, though, since the rules of reality (in the context of the novel) feel as though they're always in a state of flux. There's clearly no escape for the titular baby sitter, even though she's arguably alive, and there's not much chance for several others, either--and there are apparently going to be ramifications on the "real world" outside the house (the world in the house is arguably supposed to be real, but it always feels too dreamlike to really buy as real). It's not as though Stephen Graham Jones suddenly forgot how to write a horror novel--the writing here is mostly good--it's just that this one doesn't work as well as much of his more recent stuff. Oh, well.