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Thane Tierney

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

A troubled inheritance

Review by Thane Tierney

Take Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, King Lear, “The Jewel in the Crown,” “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Wounded Civilization; pass them along to DJ Danger Mouse for a bit of a mashup; and you’d have a sense of the shape and scope of Preti Taneja’s debut novel, We That Are Young.

Impressive in its heft (literally, as it clocks in at nearly 500 pages, and figuratively, as it won the 2018 Desmond Elliott Prize for first-time novelists), We That Are Young chronicles the changing of the guard within a family-owned multinational conglomerate, set against the backdrop of the Indian anti-corruption riots of 2011-12.

Much like some of the most thrilling novels of the past decade, We That Are Young relies on individual narratives that are self-serving and suspect. One central element is clear: Its patriarch, Devraj Bapuji, a former prince and founder of the largest business empire in India, is an unsympathetic lunatic. All the central characters—Devraj’s three daughters who stand to be potential heirs (Sita, Radha and Gargi), plus his right-hand man’s two sons (Jeet and Jivan)—are deeply flawed, so it’s a bit difficult to pick a side. Factor in the casual and untranslated bits of Hindi, and this epic novel announces itself from the outset as no beach read or airplane book; it demands (and rewards) one’s full attention.

Like India itself, the novel is beset with contradictions, as impossible wealth and crushing poverty huddle with one another in an uneasy embrace. And while the setting is uniquely Indian, hints of the rising tide of global income inequality are impossible to ignore.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald noted of the rich nearly a hundred years ago, “Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.” And yet, when the rich are turned loose against one another as they are in We That Are Young, they are still beleaguered by, and often powerless against, the same forces of human nature that bring out our best and basest selves.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Take Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, King Lear, “The Jewel in the Crown,” “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Wounded Civilization; pass them along to DJ Danger Mouse for a bit of a mashup; and you’d have a sense of the shape and scope of Preti Taneja’s debut novel, We That Are Young.

FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

A love story in the midst of horror

Review by Thane Tierney

Perhaps the three scariest words in the history of human imagination were cast in iron atop a gate leading directly into the closest approximation of hell ever erected on earth: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. “Work sets you free.” The banal words that were nothing more than a cruel and tragic joke for thousands turned out to have a deeper meaning for Lale Sokolov, an Auschwitz survivor and the real-life hero of Heather Morris’ extraordinary debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

Like the Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel’s Night, Morris’ work takes us inside the day-to-day workings of the most notorious German death camp. Over the course of three years, Morris interviewed Lale, teasing out his memories and weaving them into her heart-rending narrative of a Jew whose unlikely forced occupation as a tattooist put him in a position to act with kindness and humanity in a place where both were nearly extinct. While Lale’s story is told at one remove—he held his recollections inside for more than half a century, fearing he might be branded as a collaborator—it is no less moving, no less horrifying, no less true.

Just as a flower can grow through a sidewalk’s crack, so too can love spring and flourish in the midst of unspeakable horror, and so it is that Lale meets his lifelong love, Gita, when he inscribes the number 34902 on her arm. With the same level of inventiveness, dedication and adoration displayed by Roberto Benigni in Life Is Beautiful, Lale endeavors to preserve their love (and safety) amid the horrors.

Make no mistake—horrors abound. At one point, Lale is called to identify two corpses seemingly marked with the same number, which is anathema to the camp’s meticulous record keepers. Upon emerging from the crematorium, Lale is greeted by his Nazi handler, Baretski: “You know something, Tätowierer? I bet you are the only Jew who ever walked into an oven and then walked back out of it.”

For decade upon decade, Lale’s story was one that desperately needed to be told. And now, as the number of those who witnessed the terror that was Nazi Germany dwindles, it is a story that desperately needs to be read. The disgraceful words that once stood over Auschwitz must be replaced with others: Never forget. Never again.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Perhaps the three scariest words in the history of human imagination were cast in iron atop a gate leading directly into the closest approximation of hell ever erected on earth: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. “Work sets you free.” The banal words that were nothing more than a cruel and tragic joke for thousands turned out to have a deeper meaning for Lale Sokolov, an Auschwitz survivor and the real-life hero of Heather Morris’ extraordinary debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

FictionFamily Drama

A long finish, with notes of horror and love

Review by Thane Tierney

Quick quiz: Which group is larger—Americans who have Nobel Prizes or Americans who have passed the Masters of Wine test? Is that your final answer? At press time, the U.S. sported a mere 47 of the latter, fewer than the number of Americans who have won the Nobel in the last decade. The Masters of Wine roster is the very definition of “elite.”

At the beginning of Ann Mah’s second novel, The Lost Vintage, protagonist Kate Elliott has committed to an extended visit with extended family in Meursault, France, in the hopes of shoring up her knowledge of French wines in advance of her third—and final—sitting for the test. To earn her keep during her excursion, Kate helps her cousin reclaim a cellar storage space that contains several surprises, not the least of which is a World War II-era diary from a great half-aunt named Hélène who has been more or less expunged from the family history. As Kate digs deeper, it appears that her relative may have been a collaborator during WWII, which is a bitter pill to swallow, but she’s determined to uncover the truth nonetheless.

Meanwhile, her erstwhile French paramour Jean-Luc has drops back into her life, and it’s unclear whether his presence will turn out to be boon or bane.

Any of these circumstances could break the concentration—even the will—of a lesser human, but Kate proves to be made of stern stuff, and she delves into the formal, informal and secret history of her family to try to make sense out of Hélène’s narrative, and perhaps to find the key to recovering her family’s pride and fortunes.

Mah’s scholarship and knowledge of French history and viticulture figure significantly in the novel’s storyline, but The Lost Vintage never feels forced or heavy-handed, and her vivid prose unlocks the musty aromatics of a long-abandoned cellar full of secrets for even the least sophisticated of palates. Drink deep.

 

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and writes about food and wine (and occasionally France) in his blog, templeofthetongue.wordpress.com.

Quick quiz: Which group is larger—Americans who have Nobel Prizes or who have passed the Masters of Wine test? Is that your final answer? At press time, the U.S. sported a mere 47 of the latter, fewer than the number of Americans who have won the Nobel in the last decade. The Masters of Wine roster is the very definition of “elite.”

Mystery & SuspenseFiction

Still Lives

Review by Thane Tierney

It’s hard to know where an artist’s persona ends and her art begins, and this has never been truer than in the case of the mysteriously disappeared Kim Lord, the central figure in Maria Hummel’s spellbinding new novel, Still Lives. It’s also somewhat true of Hummel herself: The award-winning poet (her collection House and Fire won the APR/Honickman Prize in 2013 for best first book) worked at the perpetually cash-strapped Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and her novel’s protagonist, Maggie Richter, finds herself in a similar job at a similarly underfunded museum.

When Lord goes missing on the biggest night of her life—an A-list museum opening featuring her photographs, in which she portrays famous murder victims—speculation runs wild. Is it a publicity stunt? Or are more serious forces at foot? When Maggie’s ex-boyfriend (now Lord’s lover) falls under suspicion, Maggie’s journalistic instincts kick in, taking her places the cops can’t go and unwittingly putting her life in peril.

No doubt comparisons to Raymond Chandler’s best work will rain down upon Still Lives, dotted as it is with trenchant observations of LA and the human condition. Like Chandler, Hummel is capable of limning out a ripping yarn replete with high fashion, high finance and high society. These are the mean streets through which our heroine travels, though slightly removed from the glitter and the nastiness. And not unlike another master of the mystery, Erle Stanley Gardner, Hummel includes an intellectually satisfying Perry Mason moment that also provides an interesting twist.

It would be damning with faint praise to call Still Lives a contender for best beach read of the year—like calling Pablo Picasso a really good painter—but Still Lives is both that and so much more.

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and is a member in good standing at several American and international museums.

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Comparisons to Raymond Chandler’s best work will rain down upon Still Lives, dotted as it is with trenchant observations of LA and the human condition.
FictionPopular Fiction

Lifestyles of the rich and somewhat famous

Review by Thane Tierney

In the 1966 introduction to the paperback edition of his novel Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” These are wise words for any of us to follow, but especially for TV actors Josie Lamar and Charlie Outlaw, the protagonists of Leah Stewart’s What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw.

And what exactly don’t we know about Charlie? At the outset, tons, but we get to join him on his journey of self-discovery and psychic rehab after a magazine interview goes sideways, provoking a breakup with longtime partner Josie. Unlike most of us who nurse our romantic wounds more locally, Charlie has traveled to a tropical island, which sets the backdrop for not only soul-searching but also kidnapping. While his fame has not preceded him, his American citizenship has, making him an attractive target for The Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight.

Meanwhile, back on the mainland, Josie is struggling to find her place in the world as an actor and a woman in that prickly hammock between ingénue and “a certain age.” The cult hit she starred in 20 years earlier (the aptly titled show “Alter Ego”) is about to be fêted at a fan convention, and she’s feeling the disconnect between her heroic character and her present-day hot mess.

Stewart, the critically acclaimed author of The Myth of You and Me, toggles back and forth between the two star-crossed lovers, both of whom are keen to attempt fence-mending but are kept apart by circumstance until a dramatic and (dare we say it?) heroic gesture dramatically flips the script. Stewart’s copious research brings the less exotic elements of stardom (insecurity, on-set tedium, lack of privacy, fluctuating finances) into sharp relief, and her characters are far more believable than most who share the small screen with Charlie and Josie.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the 1966 introduction to the paperback edition of his novel Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” These are wise words for any of us to follow, but especially for TV actors Josie Lamar and Charlie Outlaw, the protagonists of Leah Stewart’s What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw.

FictionPopular Fiction

A groovy kind of love

Review by Thane Tierney

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, January 2018

After Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, is there any other book written by any other Brit about the intersection of love and vinyl records that’s worth reading?

Why, yes, there is. And Rachel Joyce’s magnificent The Music Shop is it. Joyce, whose 2012 bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, digs deep in the crates and finds her groove in this novel of loves lost and found.

Frank—we never find out his last name, but we don’t need to, because he’s so indelible a character—is the sort of “music whisperer” that every serious record store geek aspires to be. As Frank correctly intuits, the man looking for Chopin is actually in desperate need of an Aretha Franklin infusion, while the unexpected “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber perfectly patches the Def Leppard-loving customer with a hole in her soul. It speaks volumes that Frank files Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” next to Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” and Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” After all, they’re all concept albums.

But Frank has some emotional damage himself, and his potential salvation shows up not in the stacks of wax, but unbidden one day in a green coat, passed out in front of his shop. Clearly Joyce has taken Holland-Dozier-Holland’s multimillion-selling song to heart: “You can’t hurry love / No, you just have to wait / She said love don’t come easy / It’s a game of give and take.”

Without giving away more of the plot, it’s worth noting that Joyce’s novel is intellectually and emotionally satisfying on every possible level. If you love words, if you love music, if you love love, this is 2018’s first must-read, and it will be without question one of the year’s best.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

After Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, is there any other book written by any other Brit about the intersection of love and vinyl records that’s worth reading? Why, yes, there is. And Rachel Joyce’s magnificent The Music Shop is it.

FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Home is a long way from here

Review by Thane Tierney

The Scots didn’t invent stubbornness, but they perfected it, raised it to a high art where irresistible force and immovable object are sometimes locked like two neutron stars in a perilous dance. So it is with American immigrant Johnny MacKinnon and his Scottish son, Corran, in Laura Lee Smith’s second novel, The Ice House.

The elder MacKinnon is the COO of Bold City Ice in Jacksonville; his son is a recovering heroin addict and oil rig worker living near Loch Lomond. And while an actual ocean separates father and son, a more treacherous emotional ocean—strewn with a fair bit of ice—separates the two as well. On top of that, Johnny’s business is facing a potential bankruptcy due to a suspicious industrial accident, and he has been diagnosed with what might either be a benign cyst or a life-threatening tumor in his brain. Against his wife’s wishes and his doctor’s advice, MacKinnon decides to hit the road to the auld sod in order to—make amends? Find closure with his estranged son? Elicit a long-overdue apology? All of the above?

As the famous Scots poet Robert Burns noted, the best-laid schemes . . . well, you know. Not only were MacKinnon’s plans far from the best laid to begin with, but he’s also left his wife (who is the firm’s CEO) across the sea with a full slate of emotional, legal and financial calamities of her own. What could possibly go wrong?

Smith has a flair for creating three-dimensional characters who are flawed and heroic in the small ways that most of us are, and while her literary milieu is more chamber music than symphony, she is able to rivet the reader for more than 400 pages, which is no wee accomplishment.

 

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and is descended from Scots who once lived on the Isle of Muck in the Inner Hebrides.

The Scots didn’t invent stubbornness, but they perfected it, raised it to a high art where irresistible force and immovable object are sometimes locked like two neutron stars in a perilous dance. So it is with American immigrant Johnny MacKinnon and his Scottish son, Corran, in Laura Lee Smith’s second novel, The Ice House.

FictionLiterary Fiction

Down these mean streaks a man must go

Review by Thane Tierney

One sunny morning in 2010, a man streaks—quite literally—against morning drive-time traffic on Los Angeles’ 110 Freeway, the gray scar etched into the left side of the city’s face. Talk about a Kodak moment, and it’s witnessed by multiple characters in the latest novel by Ivy Pochoda (The Art of Disappearing, Visitation Street), who then backtracks from this freeze frame to uncover the forces that have impelled these human molecules to coagulate in this space.

Toggling back and forth between 2006 and 2010, Pochoda tugs on each character’s strand, disentangling it from the knot of LA traffic and the knot of interconnection to reveal a tapestry that is more gritty than pretty. It spans a landscape that stretches from the upper-middle class to the destitute, from Skid Row tents and Beverlywood McMansions to desiccated cabins in the high desert’s dystopian Wonder Valley.

We encounter good people who have done bad things, bad people who have done bad things (but occasionally can’t help doing good, if perhaps accidentally) and a whole bunch of folks looking for, if not necessarily redemption, at least a moment of grace. Pochoda is a master at homing in on the details of both exterior and interior landscapes and crafting characters so palpable that you can feel blood throbbing in their temples and rivulets of sweat evaporating off their necks.

It’s not a far stretch to consider Pochoda to be in the company of James Ellroy, Michael Connelly and T. Jefferson Parker, but the two novelists that most often leap to mind as peers are Walter Mosley and National Book Award finalist Kem Nunn. It wouldn’t be a big surprise to find Wonder Valley on the short list for several awards itself.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Ivy Pochoda for Wonder Valley.

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and spent several years commuting daily on the 110 from his home in Inglewood to his office at Warner Bros. Records in Burbank. He never saw a naked guy jogging on it.

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

One sunny morning in 2010, a man streaks—quite literally—against morning drive-time traffic on Los Angeles’ 110 Freeway, the gray scar etched into the left side of the city’s face. Talk about a Kodak moment, and it’s witnessed by multiple characters in the latest novel by Ivy Pochoda (The Art of Disappearing, Visitation Street), who then backtracks from this freeze frame to uncover the forces that have impelled these human molecules to coagulate in this space.

FictionDebut Fiction

What’s the buzz?

Review by Thane Tierney

Most of us don’t think about bees that much. Few of us know that there are over 20,000 species, and that fewer than 10 of these species produce honey. Or that one out of every three bites of food that we consume relies on them for pollination, and that without our apian friends, blueberries and cherries would more or less cease to exist.

So it might come as a bit of a surprise that Norwegian author and screenwriter Maja Lunde would choose the humble insect as an organizing principle for The History of Bees, her first novel for adults. But here’s the head fake: This book is about bees the same way Moby-Dick is a book about whales or The Moviegoer is about movies.

In some ways, her novel is reminiscent of the 1998 art film The Red Violin, in that it weaves together three fairly disparate stories spread across the better part of two and a half centuries, their only common touch point being the hives that brought honey, economic uncertainty and the possibility of ecological redemption.

Chapters shuttle back and forth between a 19th-century British biologist, a millennial-era American beekeeper and a Chinese hand-pollinator on the cusp of a dystopian 22nd century. At the outset, the connections between the three are opaque, but Lunde’s compelling narrative draws the reader in—more like a spider than a bee, actually. Much as in Ray Bradbury’s famed story “A Sound of Thunder,” the “butterfly effect” is in full effect, as decisions made long ago and far away influence outcomes in unpredictable but realistic ways.

And while it might be putting too fine a point on it, Lunde demonstrates how our social order mirrors that of the bees: Some of us are workers, some drones and a lucky few queens, but each contributes to the upkeep of the hive in ways we may never understand.

 

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, CA, and spent several hundred dollars earlier this year to have a hive humanely removed from his home.

It might come as a bit of a surprise that Norwegian author and screenwriter Maja Lunde would choose the humble insect as an organizing principle for The History of Bees, her first novel for adults. But here’s the head fake: This book is about bees the same way Moby-Dick is a book about whales or The Moviegoer is about movies.

FictionComic Fiction

Looking for love in all the wrong places

Review by Thane Tierney

There’s a joke that pretty much encapsulates the central Weltanschauung (outlook) of Alissa Nutting’s latest novel, Made for Love: “Tell someone you love them today, because life is short. But shout it at them in German, because life is also terrifying and confusing.”

Nutting, the award-winning author of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, drops us in the middle of a mildly dystopian near-future (2019), in which her ensemble cast resembles a box of emotionally damaged (and delightfully neurotic) misfit toys. Hazel Green is trying to escape a loveless marriage to high-tech magnate Byron Gogol, whose character combines elements of Steve Jobs, Svengali and Humbert Humbert. In order to put some distance between herself and her cyber-stalking soon-to-be-ex, she unexpectedly moves into her widower father’s double-wide, where he is residing with Diane, a disturbingly lifelike sex doll. Meanwhile, Jasper Kesper’s accidental amorous encounter with a dolphin has turned him from a con artist and gigolo into an unwitting cetophile.

What could possibly go wrong?

Turns out that William Congreve got it wrong when he opined back in 1697 that “Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.” All Hazel wants is to get away from a seemingly omnipotent husband who has planted a chip in her head (so as to effect a digital mind meld). It’s Byron who is filled with a sort of low-affect fury, because Hazel’s defiance represents a personal and professional setback, both of which he finds unacceptable.

All these madcap threads weave into a tapestry worthy of such surreal comic authors as Christopher Moore or Dave Barry, but the novel is underpinned by a profound meditation on the nature of love, and how it not only comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, but also materials and species.

 

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and likes dolphins, but draws the line there.

There’s a joke that pretty much encapsulates the central Weltanschauung (outlook) of Alissa Nutting’s latest novel, Made for Love: “Tell someone you love them today, because life is short. But shout it at them in German, because life is also terrifying and confusing.”

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionScience Fiction

The first days of a stranger nation

Review by Thane Tierney

Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Nicholas Espinoza—better known as Hubert, Etc, and later still as Etcetera—is something of a head fake in Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow’s utopian futurist novel, Walkaway. With a name like that, it’s not a wild bet that he’d be the axis around which the novel spins.

But it’s a sucker’s bet. The novel rotates around twin axes, one being a dissection and critique of capitalism in a world that has an excess of unequally distributed resources, the other being Natalie Redwater (aka “Iceweasel”), the daughter of a “zottarich” mover and shaker.

Though Doctorow cites Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century as an influence, Walkaway’s paternal grandparents are Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange; on its mom’s side, they’re Stranger from a Strange Land and Walden Two. Like all of those (and the rather less admirable Atlas Shrugged), it can get a little mansplainy as it trots out philosophy.

To wit: Hubert, Etc, dismissively appraises meritocracy by arguing, “‘We’re the best people we know, we’re on top, therefore we have a meritocracy. How do we know we’re the best? Because we’re on top. QED.’ The most amazing thing about ‘meritocracy’ is that so many brilliant captains of industry haven’t noticed that it’s made of such radioactively obvious bullshit you could spot it in orbit.”

The bohemian dropouts in this society, the “walkaways,” (of which Hubert, Etc, and Natalie are two) march off the grid into abandoned hinterlands in search of their own new world order, and when it appears that they may have solved the riddle of death, the stakes for flipping the bird at the establishment rise dramatically.

It may take a beat or two for the non-Wired reader to spool up to speed, but Doctorow has crafted the sexiest egalitarian radical hacktivist squatter-culture philosophical techno-thriller of the year, if not the decade.

 

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and has a mere two middle names.

Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Nicholas Espinoza—better known as Hubert, Etc, and later still as Etcetera—is something of a head fake in Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow’s utopian futurist novel, Walkaway. With a name like that, it’s not a wild bet that he’d be the axis around which the novel spins.

FictionLiterary Fiction

Rebuilding from the rubble

Review by Thane Tierney

It may not be your biggest fear, but it’s probably in the top five: being buried alive. As a rule, we don’t really celebrate our miners much while they’re around, but when a disaster happens, we’re all over them: the movie The 33, about the San José Mine disaster in Chile; the folk song “The Ballad of Springhill,” about the 1958 Nova Scotia cave-in; the Bee Gees’ first pop hit, “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” about an imaginary tragedy; Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John.”

Inspired by the notorious Sunshine Mine fire of 1972, novelist Kevin Canty’s The Underworld imagines life in the town from shortly before the disaster to right around the time the real healing begins. 

Somehow it seems particularly appropriate for this book to come along at a point in our national history when miners and their livelihoods are often near the center of public debate. Mining is not glamorous work, but Canty drills beneath the surface stereotype to uncover a rich vein of subterranean complexity.

David Wright, the book’s primary protagonist among a vivid ensemble cast, comes from a mining family that feels the impact of the disaster keenly. Like many from the company town, he’s ambivalent about his home, but he’s taking his first tentative steps to break its gravitational bonds, distinguishing him from most of his peers. It would be easy—and wrong—to portray him as either victor or victim, and Canty does here what he did so well in earlier novels such as Winslow in Love and Everything: He plants himself at the corner of Human and Hero and describes what he sees, a journalist of the soul. 

Canty’s publisher cites Russell Banks and Richard Ford as his esteemed literary antecedents, but Canty’s care with prose recalls Raymond Carver, and his empathy for the common man extends a bloodline that reaches back to the likes of John Steinbeck and William Saroyan. Like his New Yorker colleague John McPhee, Canty has a gift for turning the commonplace into the extraordinary by asking the right questions and allowing the truth to unfold.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It may not be your biggest fear, but it’s probably in the top five: being buried alive. As a rule, we don’t really celebrate our miners much while they’re around, but when a disaster happens, we’re all over them: the movie The 33, about the San José Mine disaster in Chile; the folk song “The Ballad of Springhill,” about the 1958 Nova Scotia cave-in; the Bee Gees’ first pop hit, “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” about an imaginary tragedy; Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John.”

FictionLiterary FictionHorror

The tale of the tape

Review by Thane Tierney

About midway through his latest novel, Universal Harvester, author John Darnielle drops a potent clue to a larger reveal, but in typical Midwest fashion, it’s unadorned, unheralded, that one massive bass lurking beneath the deceptively calm waters of an otherwise unassuming lake.

Here it is: “You have to get inside to see anything worth seeing, you have to listen long enough to hear the music. Or possibly that’s just a thing you tell yourself when it becomes clear you won’t be leaving. Sometimes that seems more likely. It’s hard to say for sure.”

Darnielle, who is probably best known in pop culture as the prime mover behind the celebrated lo-fi indie band The Mountain Goats, was also nominated for the National Book Award with his NY Times bestselling debut novel, Wolf in White Van. In Universal Harvester, he explores the role of novelist as tarot card reader; as he uncovers each scene, he seems to say, “This could mean X, or it could mean the opposite of X. Let’s flip over the next card to see what it reveals.” The plot springs from a series of unexplained and vaguely disturbing scenes that continue to show up on videotapes rented from an indie store in the hamlet of Nevada (pronounced Ne-VAY-dah), Iowa. Slacker clerk Jeremy Heldt gradually—and a little reluctantly—immerses himself in attempting to unravel the mysteries of what the footage is, where it came from, and what it means.

The spirit of the Under Toad from John Irving’s The World According to Garp hangs heavy over this novel. Corn fields that appear benign under the noonday sun turn sinister after dark, basements and barns conceal clandestine confrontations, shadow and substance play tag in imagination and reality. One almost expects Rod Serling to step out in an epilogue, wrapping everything up with a neat bow, but Darnielle refuses to make it that easy for the reader. Universal Harvester both demands one’s attention and rewards it, but ambiguity is interwoven throughout its warp and weft. Out there on the lit-fic frontier where horror meets mystery and reaches for something beyond, that’s the ultimate achievement.

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, CA, and has actually driven through Nevada, Iowa.

About midway through his latest novel, Universal Harvester, author John Darnielle drops a potent clue to a larger reveal, but in typical Midwest fashion, it’s unadorned, unheralded, that one massive bass lurking beneath the deceptively calm waters of an otherwise unassuming lake.

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