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Cat Acree

FictionLiterary Fiction

The Harder They Fall

Review by Cat Acree

The men of the American Wild West called it the “shining times,” when the law held no sway over any place beyond the Mississippi. The new novel from T.C. Boyle takes this tradition of renegades and focuses on the violence.

Twenty-five-year-old Adam worships one of these survivalist mountain men, even renaming himself after him: Colter. He’s manic, raging and growing his own stash of opium poppies, and he easily falls in with 40-something Sara, a hardcore member of an extremist anti-government movement. Together they are citizen soldiers, making war (not love) and defiantly, desperately searching for something to burn down—and burn they do. Adam is also the son of ex-Marine Sten, the epitome of claustrophobic rage and frustration, who kills someone with his bare hands while on vacation in Costa Rica.

As these three stubborn minds draw together like fire and kindling, violence becomes more than an inherited trait within one family but rather a syndrome of a nation built on revolution and stoicism, distorted by fear and hysteria. It may be a stroke of genius that the characters themselves are maddening in their own right, leaving readers with a pounding pulse not only from suspense but from infuriation.

The bestselling, unbelievably prolific Boyle has described The Harder They Fall as a counterpoint to his historical novel San Miguel (2012), which unfolded through the perspectives of three women who sought refuge and sanctuary on an island off the coast of California. San Miguel was a departure for Boyle, and now the pendulum swings back to high-adrenaline zaniness and pertinacious, destructive misfits. Individualism remains central, but unlike San Miguel, it’s far from contemplative. It is a juggernaut, twisted to its breaking point.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The men of the American Wild West called it the “shining times,” when the law held no sway over any place beyond the Mississippi. The new novel from T.C. Boyle takes this tradition of renegades and focuses on the violence.
Science Fiction & FantasyFiction

Robots on the rise

Review by Cat Acree

Robotics engineer Daniel H. Wilson’s 2011 debut, Robopocalypse, blurred the line between man and machine in a world on the brink of human extermination. In the second act, the line threatens to disappear altogether.

With the help of freeborn robot Nine Oh Two, an extraordinary girl with prosthetic robot eyes and an army from the Osage Nation, the New War was won. The powerful artificial intelligence Archos R-14 was decimated, and his legions were left orphaned. But in the months following the New War’s end, a new battle takes its place—the True War. This time, the remnants of Archos may be humanity’s best hope.

Like Robopocalypse, Robogenesis is pieced together in postwar vignettes. A narrator named Arayt Shah shares stories pulled from the minds of Robopocalypse survivors to recount how he won the True War. But there’s something off about our storyteller, and as in so many post-apocalyptic thrillers, humankind has a tendency to become its own worst enemy.

As the stage resets for even bigger problems, Wilson’s imagination gains new heights. His new creations recall the biomechanical designs that might be found in H.R. Giger’s garden of twisted delights, and an army of zombie human-robot hybrids rivals the ice zombies of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. In the wreckage of our former society, beauty hides among the growing horrors—a necessary foil to our gleeful fascination with the grotesque.

While lacking some of the intensity of Wilson’s blockbuster debut, Robogenesis is rife with promises we can’t wait for Wilson to keep.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Robotics engineer Daniel H. Wilson’s 2011 debut, Robopocalypse, blurred the line between man and machine in a world on the brink of human extermination. In the second act, the line threatens to disappear altogether.
FictionWorld FictionLiterary Fiction

Kinder Than Solitude

Review by Cat Acree

The death that launches Yiyun Li’s second novel, Kinder Than Solitude, has been a long time coming. Twenty years before, Shaoai was mysteriously poisoned by someone close to her, leaving her crippled and diminished. Her death comes as a great relief for the novel’s three main characters, Moran, Ruyu and Boyang—once childhood friends in China, but now estranged. But with that sigh of relief comes the truth.

The story unfolds in flashes of past and present, dipping between the storylines of the three distant friends to reveal how they have been transformed by the poisoning of Shaoai. Orphan Ruyu, who “defied being known” and avoids interpersonal connections, now lives in California and works as a glorified assistant for a local woman. Moran, who lives in Wisconsin, goes from relishing life’s ideal moments to removing herself from all moments, past or present. Solitude is clarity; connection is clutter. But it is a tenuous insouciance, and news of Shaoai’s death, immediately followed by her ex-husband’s own terminal illness, sends her out of the shadows. “Sugar daddy” Boyang, the only one still living in Beijing, cared for Shaoai up until the end. He is the only one able to recognize the existence of the past, but even then, his recollection is lacking any sense of nostalgia.

Chinese-American Li, who was born in Beijing and moved to the U.S. in 1996, is a MacArthur Fellow and was named one of the New Yorker’s top 20 writers under 40. Her new novel is penetrating and emotionally tasking, but there’s something compulsive about it—something that hooks a nerve and tugs again and again.

Kinder Than Solitude promises a mystery at its heart, but solving the crime is far from this story’s point. It’s about forcing memory to the surface. The greatest reprieve from all this repression and melancholy is the subdued prose, which unfolds with immense grace and astonishing insight. This is an intense and elegant book, a dark tale with great reverence for the depth of the human heart.

This is an intense and elegant book, a dark tale with great reverence for the depth of the human heart.
Fiction

Dissident Gardens

Review by Cat Acree

With the epic Dissident Gardens, Jonathan Lethem remains to the realm of New York borough fiction but turns his merciless humor and judgment to the fall of American Communism and the search for the “new” American political ideal.

Spanning a complex history from Communist discussions in 1930s parlor rooms to the Civil Rights movement and beyond, Dissident Gardens hinges on tyrannical matriarch Rose Zimmer. She is the Last Communist, the “Red Queen” of Sunnyside Gardens, who is ousted from the party in 1955 for taking a black cop as a lover but continues to impress her ideals upon everyone within range. Her daughter, Miriam, attempts to escape to Greenwich Village and goes searching for her German Jewish father. Miriam’s son, Sergius, scrabbles for some sense of his grandmother. Cicero Lookins, the son of Rose’s lover, becomes Rose’s greatest beneficiary as a “black brain” in academia. Others who cannot escape Rose’s grasp include cousin Lenny Angrush, named for Lenin, and Tommy Gogan, Miriam’s phony folk-singing husband.

As the novel moves back and forth through time, generations remain mired in the legacy of the Party and Rose’s efforts to keep “the intellectual apparatus alive.” In a lecture to a class, Cicero says, “The deep fate of each human is to begin with their mother and father as the whole of reality, and to have to forge a journey to break into the wider world.” Rose is the whole of reality, even to those who can claim no familial obligation. She is the icon to rally against, the impetus to self-definition, so each of these characters does his or her best to leave her behind, but Rose’s influence is not limited by distance or time.

This is a beautifully constructed, highly complex story of social realism and the transformation of radical American politics, but it is also a hilarious satire and a sympathetic portrayal of family. Dissident Gardens is one of Lethem’s finest, most ambitious works to date.

A family epic of American Communism
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Maggot Moon

Review by Cat Acree

The young adult genre can be as repetitive as it is inventive, so the popularity of the dystopian YA subgenre guarantees some familiar storylines. It seems unfair, then, to classify Sally Gardner’s new novel, Maggot Moon, as dystopian YA, as it defies comparison to all of its shelfmates. Rather than looking ahead to a bleak future, Gardner imagines what the 1950s would have been like if the Allies had lost World War II. In the Motherland, “impurities” are “rubbed out,” citizens snitch or starve, and sheep have the best chance for survival.

Fifteen-year-old Standish Treadwell is no sheep. He is dyslexic (like the author)—“Can’t read, can’t write, Standish Treadwell isn’t bright”—and therefore an impurity, an easy target both at school and in the Motherland. His dyslexia, however, is more a power than a hindrance. It keeps his eyes up and his ears open, and through his wry, incisive and original voice, he creates a narrative that is not quite linear, resembling instead the colorful mind of a daydreamer.

Standish escapes his circumstances by retreating into his one remaining vestige of independence, his imagination. He and his best friend Hector dream of the free world, “Croca-Colas” and Cadillacs. They build a rocket ship to take them to Juniper, an imagined utopian planet with a name that feels within the realm of possibility, yet is obviously unobtainable. They are not alone in their dreams of reaching the stars, as the Motherland takes strides each day to be the first nation to land a man on the moon.

When Hector and his family are taken away just before the moon launch, Standish finds himself uniquely positioned to risk all and unveil the Motherland’s elaborate ruse to its citizens and the rest of the world. He is the wolf among the sheep.

In Maggot Moon, hope lies in truth. This is a small victory, but an achievable one, especially for a clear-eyed boy driven by friendship.

The young adult genre can be as repetitive as it is inventive, so the popularity of the dystopian YA subgenre guarantees some familiar storylines. It seems unfair, then, to classify Sally Gardner’s new novel, Maggot Moon, as dystopian YA, as it defies comparison to all of its shelfmates. Rather than looking ahead to a bleak […]
FictionHistorical Fiction

San Miguel

Review by Cat Acree

Few authors so easily disassemble the American dream as T.C. Boyle. Over the course of 13 novels, he has made it a signature move to take the core tenets of our identity—the right to define your sense of place, to own and control the land beneath your feet—and dissect them, move the pieces around and put them back together however he likes. This theme returns in his new novel, the surprisingly restrained San Miguel.

Boyle first wrote about California’s Channel Islands in his novel When the Killing’s Done (2011), a contentious story of environmentalists battling over the lives of animals. The backdrop might be similar, but San Miguel is driven less by conflict and more by the emotions of three real historical women.

In 1888, Marantha’s husband Will brings her to the island with the promise of warm Californian air to help soothe her violent consumption. What she finds instead is a moldy house that smells of sheep, terrible storms and the interminable ennui of forced exile. Two years later, Marantha’s adopted teenage daughter, Edith, desperately seeks a way off the island and will stop at nothing to return to civilization. In 1930, the care of the sheep falls to newlyweds Elise and Herbie, who find romance and freedom in their seclusion. However, World War II is a constant, growing threat to their 12 peaceful years as King and Queen of San Miguel.

If Boyle’s past works have chuckled and made glib asides—he was once dubbed an “adventurer among the potholes and pratfalls of the American language” by the L.A. Times—San Miguel simply breathes. Stripped of Boyle’s characteristic irony and comedy, San Miguel allows human frailty to stand, Ahab-like, in stark contrast to a hostile environment. Readers will find within San Miguel a gentler touch, a reticent style capable of rendering a reader speechless with its quiet beauty.

Few authors so easily disassemble the American dream as T.C. Boyle. Over the course of 13 novels, he has made it a signature move to take the core tenets of our identity—the right to define your sense of place, to own and control the land beneath your feet—and dissect them, move the pieces around and […]
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Just one piece of a wonderful world

Review by Cat Acree

A young boy named Baz longs to see the world beyond his dusty village, so when he is apprenticed as a weaver, he believes his life has finally begun. However, it is when his cruel master trades him for a sword that his life gains meaning. Baz becomes an apprentice to a magician named Tadis, who takes him on a journey through desert, water and mountains to discover the depths of his own soul and his place in the universe. They face starvation, loneliness, peril and uncertainty, but as they traverse the earth, Baz begins to open his eyes to the mysteries of life and discovers the magic behind the journey itself. Just as a river twists and transforms, Baz grows into a young man who understands that he is just one small—but still significant—part of a wide, wonderful world.

Author Kate Banks, whose past works include Max’s Castle and Dillon Dillon, crafts a powerful story of enlightenment with sparse yet rich prose, vibrant images and simple, touching characters. Caldecott winner Peter Sís punctuates the story with delicate, medallion-sized illustrations that look much like ancient etchings. With their gentle tale, Banks and Sís become philosopher kings to children, imparting to them the quiet beauty of all things.

The excitement and adventure of a children’s book can captivate a young reader, but it is the deeper meaning that can make a book a lifelong favorite. The Magician’s Apprentice will enchant children with its danger and magic, but its brilliant philosophy, reminiscent of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, will fascinate more mature readers. This is a story to be rediscovered again and again.

A young boy named Baz longs to see the world beyond his dusty village, so when he is apprenticed as a weaver, he believes his life has finally begun. However, it is when his cruel master trades him for a sword that his life gains meaning. Baz becomes an apprentice to a magician named Tadis, […]
Children's & YAPicture Book

A small bunny with a big heart

Review by Cat Acree

It is no surprise that David Petersen (creator of the Eisner Award-winning comic book series Mouse Guard) attributes his inspiration to cartoons, comics and tree-climbing. Readers of his debut picture book, Snowy Valentine, could easily believe this author/illustrator spends much of his time perched in trees, watching the daily lives of woodland creatures. In the spirit of The Wind in the Willows, Petersen offers a charming portrayal of the sweet, subtle relationships among the animals in a snow-covered forest.

On Valentine’s Day, Jasper Bunny heads out in search of a gift for Lilly. He seems undeterred by how small he is (even in relation to his own impossibly large ears) as he seeks gift recommendations from his neighbors. However, he can’t knit like the porcupines, Mrs. Frog’s chocolate-covered flies won’t do and the raccoon’s flowers have wilted in the cold. Jasper narrowly escapes Teagan Fox’s gift for his vixen—a rabbit stew swirling with potatoes, onions and (oh, irony!) carrots.

When Jasper is about to give up, his ears drooping and his red coat dripping, he exclaims, “I have nothing for Lilly.” High above, Spalding the cardinal sees Jasper’s true gift—an enormous heart tracked in the snow. Lilly steps out of her burrow to see “the heart he had made for her . . . and she loved it.”

Petersen’s ink and digitally colored illustrations are full of personality, movement and light. Their precision in capturing the temperatures and textures of winter is unmatched, from the low-hanging sun leaking through the skeletal trees to the contrast of a fire’s glow with the purples and blues of the forest. Breathtaking bird’s-eye spreads make Jasper seem so very small, yet when he is just about to give up, the illustrations reveal his power to do great things.

Young readers, no matter how small, will enjoy seeing just how big the gift of love can be, as well as their own ability to give it.

It is no surprise that David Petersen (creator of the Eisner Award-winning comic book series Mouse Guard) attributes his inspiration to cartoons, comics and tree-climbing. Readers of his debut picture book, Snowy Valentine, could easily believe this author/illustrator spends much of his time perched in trees, watching the daily lives of woodland creatures. In the […]
Fiction

Ready Player One

Review by Cat Acree

Haijin is a Japanese word that colloquially refers to gamers who spend so much time playing that their alternate realities take precedence over the real world. Imagine a world where this is the norm. After all, virtual weddings and virtual funerals have existed in role-playing games such as World of Warcraft for years. Take this premise, add in an impressive knowledge of 1980s pop culture factoids and an apocalyptic setting, and you have Ready Player One, the debut from Fanboys screenwriter Ernest Cline.

It’s the year 2044. Wade Watts’ life is beyond desolate, and he has little hope of rising above his poverty. Faced with such a bleak reality, nearly everyone spends their days logged into OASIS, the massive online paradise created by billionaire James Halliday. However, when Halliday died, he announced the beginning of the ultimate quest: somewhere deep within OASIS are clues that will lead one player to the entirety of Halliday’s estate. Five years have gone by, and no one seems to have gotten anywhere—until one day, Wade stumbles over the first puzzle. Immediately, the race is on, and while several other gamers are hot on Wade’s trail, the greatest threat is from the Sixers, those who are willing to kill to gain control of the OASIS.

Ready Player One is a fantastic YA crossover, with a massive wealth of ’80s facts and jokes, barebones prose, pubescent love and simplified outlines of the political and economic state of the world. However, readers who grew up in the era and are able to appreciate the devotion Cline poured into his homage (much like James Halliday’s game itself) will find this novel to be endlessly entertaining. The puzzles are pure, unadulterated fun, and the arc of the story mirrors many of the movies referenced in the book. Best of all, there is a lovable nerdy undercurrent—after all, it turns out that the key to success is reading absolutely everything. Not to mention the subtle suggestion that while games and movies are awesome, it is also a good idea to go outside every once in a while.

Haijin is a Japanese word that colloquially refers to gamers who spend so much time playing that their alternate realities take precedence over the real world. Imagine a world where this is the norm. After all, virtual weddings and virtual funerals have existed in role-playing games such as World of Warcraft for years. Take this […]
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

The Hugo Movie Companion

Review by Cat Acree

All the magic of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the Caldecott Medal-winning story of the little boy who lives in the walls of a Paris train station, comes alive in The Hugo Movie Companion. Brian Selznick takes readers behind the scenes of Hugo, the 3D movie directed by Martin Scorsese, through pictures, essays and interviews with cast and crew. Supplemented with full-color photographs from Hugo and illustrations from the original book, the movie companion reveals the scaffolding behind the film while providing a fascinating view of Hugo’s world, both real and imaginary.

The Hugo Movie Companion includes essays on the history of automatons, Paris in the 1930s, the life of French film pioneer George Méliès and more—plus a piece by Scorsese titled “The Birth of Cinema,” which elaborates on the early French films by Méliès and the Lumière brothers. Méliès’ films helped to inspire The Invention of Hugo Cabret’s unique format, as the mixture of text and illustrations allows parts of Hugo’s story to become visual, like a movie.

The cinematographer, researcher, costume designer and many more—plus screenwriter John Logan, composer Howard Shore and actors Sir Ben Kinsley and Sir Christopher Lee—all share what inspired their love of movies and how their talents contributed to the creation of Hugo. Selznick brings these interviews together in the last chapter, where the final two minutes of the film are deconstructed to reveal the work behind it—from the intricacy of the scene’s long take (one continuous shot) to the after-effects. Selznick even reveals a surprise about his own participation during that day of filming.

The vast history that inspired Selznick’s novel and the many people who contributed to its cinematic debut never detract from the magic of Hugo’s tale. Instead, The Hugo Movie Companion transforms the story into a piece of film history, one that children and adults alike will cherish.

All the magic of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the Caldecott Medal-winning story of the little boy who lives in the walls of a Paris train station, comes alive in The Hugo Movie Companion. Brian Selznick takes readers behind the scenes of Hugo, the 3D movie directed by Martin Scorsese, through pictures, essays and interviews […]
Children's & YAYA Fiction

How to Save a Life

Review by Cat Acree

Pain makes us human, and the acceptance of this harsh reality makes us a family—that is the idea behind How to Save a Life. Author Sara Zarr captures real, unsentimental emotions as two teen girls from opposite worlds are thrust together at the cusp of womanhood.

Harsh, punky Jill MacSweeney is mourning the death of her father—and not doing a great job of it. She has alienated everyone in her life, finding it easiest to be cold to those she loves the most. Her mother, in an effort to fill the void left by her husband, decides to adopt a baby. Timid, dolled-up Mandy Kalinowski from Omaha answers her plea and travels across the country to stay with Jill and her mom until the baby comes. She has plenty of secrets, but her greatest concern is finding a better life for her child than her own.

As the two girls come face to face, something begins to change within them. Mandy’s attempts to escape her past and Jill’s search for a future just might have a common ground. But first, both must redefine their ideas of family—not to mention redefine themselves.

How to Save a Life feels vulnerable and powerful all at once. With interchanging perspectives—one terrified and innocent, the other enraged and confused—that move fluidly back and forth in a mournful, desperate dance, the book gets right down to the hearts of these two girls. Their stories are brutally emotional, but as in Zarr’s National Book Award finalist, Story of a Girl, their lives unfold with a genuine tenderness. No matter how flawed their reactions are to their situations, Zarr suspends all judgment and provides the girls with endless opportunities to grow as young women. The result is a raw yet warm tale that gives new meaning to the concept of home.

RELATED CONTENT

Sara Zarr shares with BookPage a little about How to Save a Life at ALA 2011.

Pain makes us human, and the acceptance of this harsh reality makes us a family—that is the idea behind How to Save a Life. Author Sara Zarr captures real, unsentimental emotions as two teen girls from opposite worlds are thrust together at the cusp of womanhood. Harsh, punky Jill MacSweeney is mourning the death of […]
FictionWorld Fiction

Last Man in Tower

Review by Cat Acree

Aravind Adiga emerged as a powerful new voice in literature with his debut, The White Tiger, a tale of the terrible lengths to which one poor Indian man will go to rise above his station, which went on to win the Man Booker Prize. Adiga’s third novel, Last Man in Tower, delves into the streets of Mumbai to reveal the city through the eyes of the middle class.

It focuses on a battle between an old teacher, Masterji, who refuses to sell his apartment, and a developer, Mr. Shah, who is making an inarguably generous offer to buy the building. On the sidelines are Masterji’s 20-some neighbors from Vishram Society Tower A, depicted with precision and humor. Each member of the Society has been offered a substantial selling price for their portion of the crumbling building, but without Masterji’s signature, no one will get any money.

Masterji and Mr. Shah’s battle is ultimately over the caste system: Masterji is traditional, a believer in “the idea of being respectable and living among similar people,” while Mr. Shah has built his success on change. Each is absolute in his belief. Adiga heightens the intrigue by making neither man’s narration trustworthy, as Masterji is delusional and Mr. Shah has a builder’s reputation for unreliability.

Last Man in Tower races along with unstoppable suspense, going beyond the gaze of The White Tiger to explore even more of the rapidly changing India. The result is as compelling as it is complex.

Aravind Adiga emerged as a powerful new voice in literature with his debut, The White Tiger, a tale of the terrible lengths to which one poor Indian man will go to rise above his station, which went on to win the Man Booker Prize. Adiga’s third novel, Last Man in Tower, delves into the streets […]
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Shelter

Review by Cat Acree

Harlan Coben’s young adult debut might be a new direction for the internationally best-selling author, but Shelter treads familiar and much-loved terrain. Coben has written 10 books on wisecracking sports agent Myron Bolitar, and the end of the latest, Live Wire, left the Bolitar legacy in the hands of Myron’s nephew, Mickey Bolitar.

Mickey resembles his uncle in many ways, including his 6-foot stature and basketball wizardry. Unfortunately, the two don’t get along—but after Mickey’s parents vanish from his life (his father dies in a car accident; his junkie mom admits herself to rehab), he’s stuck with Uncle Myron as a guardian.

Despite Myron’s experience in digging himself out of danger, Mickey has no interest in seeking help from his uncle when things start to get weird at his new high school. His sort-of-girlfriend vanishes and the crazy Bat Lady who lives in a dilapidated mansion sends him a disturbing message: His father is not dead. Mickey is soon sneaking into strip bars, questioning tattoo artists and chasing down the suited man who seems to be following him—all in search of the truth.

In true Coben spirit, Mickey acquires two ragtag sidekicks in the course of his search: Ema, a sharp-tongued Goth girl, and Spoon, a geeky guy whose easy access to security tapes and personnel files secures his place on the team.

Shelter has all the twists and turns of a Coben classic, but on a teen scale—including run-ins with the hottest girl in school and confrontations with a brutish bully. Full of mystery that stretches back through Mickey’s and Myron’s past, Shelter will turn more than a few young readers into excited Coben fans.

Bolitar adventures hit high school.

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