Author: Andres Kabel

Fount of excellent indie band The Mountain Goats, John Darnielle startled the world with one of the most amazing debut novels, Wolf in White Van,” back in 2014. Mysterious, literate, human, it haunts me still. Follow-up Universal Harvester, in 2017, also intrigued. Plenty of hype built up for his new “Devil House,” and it is justly deserved. Somewhat misleadingly cast as a mashup of “gripping” storytelling and experimentation, it is fair to say the novel is much more the latter.

Revolving around the methods and ethics of an established true crime writer investigating an unsolved, mid-1980s “satanic” double homicide in a small town north of Los Angeles, the storyline begins conventionally but then veers into a strange medieval tale, a retelling (in the unusual second person present tense) of an earlier double killing, a letter from a victim’s mother, and in a final twist, the perspective of the writer’s childhood friend, covering the final write-up of the book and featuring a devious twist easily forecast by the reader. Darnielle is brilliant at conveying inner thoughts and locations, and is never rushed, so that the final result is an unapologetic, experimental discourse on the pleasures, pitfalls, and morality of true crime writing.

John Darnielle is a fascinating novelist indeed and Devil House only adds to his growing reputation.

“Five Decembers” has just won the Edgar Award and within a few pages of the start, one can see why. Author James Kestrel (a pseudonym) writes in commanding prose that places the reader in the depths of every scene. Always in control, never in a rush to progress a plot. In December 1941, Hawaii detective Joe McGrady, his mind full of love, is dispatched to a gruesome murder scene. Before long he is on a plane to Guam and thence to Tokyo, just as World War II comes to Asia. Beginning as a straightforward police procedural, the novel morphs into a wartime hell chronicle, before emerging postwar into a tale of revenge and justice. McGrady is a superb hero, resolute, practical, yet full of yearning. With its expanding canvas and its Cormac-McCarthy-style thematic backdrop and its stylistic surety, Five Decembers is a worthy award winner and will surely surface in the year’s lists.

In “Detransition, Baby: A Novel,” Reese, a trans woman who longs to raise a child, is asked by her ex, Amy, who is now Ames, a detransitioned man, to consider a complicated three-way family arrangement to bring up the upcoming baby of Katrina, Ames’s girlfriend and a cis woman. The novel is a wonderfully complex hybrid of a relationship drama and a roaring polemic on the trials of modern trans people, and it’s the latter aspect that makes for a fascinating read, especially for someone like me who longs for a world with full rights for and acceptance of the LGBTQ community, but who has only a shallow knowledge of it. The author accorded me a gratefully absorbed education. The underlying story, of the complex motivations of the key three people and their evolving reactions to Katrina’s approaching birth, was, I consider, less successful. The information dump, interesting as it is, overwhelms any plotline, so that, despite the author’s best efforts to skillfully inject humor and drama, the end result feels like a series of investigative journalism pieces enlivened by modern narrative techniques. Of all the three characters, Ames/Amy is the one who comes closest to springing to life on the page. The plot itself is enjoyable if thin. The dialogue collapses under the need to pontificate. Overall, Detransition, Baby is an enjoyable read but more for content than style or story.

A novel of set-piece scenes involving two families with longstanding connections, plus flashbacks, “The Paper Palace” turns its pages effortlessly, with the author being particularly agile with hectic dialogue. I can’t fault the artful scenes. But the story—a woman having to choose between her longest-lived love and her equally loved husband—veers dangerously close to sentimental romance cliché. Even the nominally harrowing flashback scenes involving abuse seem artificially grafted onto a seemingly never-ending “will she, won’t she” seesaw. The central narrator, the alluring yet secretive Elle, is sharply drawn with the aid of a close-up present-tense first-person voice, but the two male characters remain constructs. Elle’s mother is a crucial secondary character but never cohered to me. All up, The Paper Palace is a sprightly read that many readers may enjoy, but, at least to this reviewer, is quickly forgotten.

The most impactful ten books so far this year are not representative of my overall reading, which was filled with pacey mysteries/thrillers and “deep and meaningful” literary novels. The eclectic list below looks like a magpie’s bookshelf: four nonfiction books, four very different literary tales, and two genre offerings. You can’t go wrong with any of them.

The links below take you to my review.

Bedtime Story (10/10) by Chloe Hooper—a short memoir of illness, children, and literature/stories, told in a pacey yet lyrical style that is wondrous to read on every page. The most impressive book of the year so far. Moving and illuminating.

Journalist Frank Bruni’s “graceful and profound” memoir of eyesight loss, The Beauty of Dusk (9/10). Very different in style and approach to Chloe Hooper’s memoir, it also lingers long after reading.

Simon Mundey’s eyewitness-to-climate-crisis tour de force, Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis 9(/10) will lift off any remaining scales on your eyes.

Frank Kennedy is unwinding the longest, most complex, most involving space opera saga in years, and fourth in the series, The Heartless Hinds (9/10), is my favorite so far. Of course, you’ll need to begin at Book 1, but treat yourself, why don’t you?

Forgive me if the roster of excellence so far this year tilts toward the serious, but the times are serious indeed. John Doerr’s Speed & Scale: A Global Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now (9/10) is “a timely, brilliantly conceived and superbly written treat.” Has roughly the same ambit as Bill Gates’s similarly targeted book but is so much more germane.

The Books of Jacob (8/10) by Olga Tokarczuk is a thousand-page-plus “avalanche of a book” that requires readerly persistence that more than rewards.

Don Winslow’s City on Fire (8/10) is a bluntly written crime gang thriller, the first in a trilogy, that whooshes from start to end. If you’re looking for raw human plot, look no further.

A History of Dreams (8/10) by Jane Rawson is at once a deep, quirky literary novel that addresses today’s headlines and also a counterfactual modern historical novel. Very different to my normal reading but most memorable.

Lavie Tidhar’s Maror (8/10) reads like a feverish, violent James Ellroy thriller. Pell-mell yet profound, it looks at the hidden history of the modern state of Israel.

Fight Night (8/10) by Miriam Toews is an immersive, brilliantly written coming-of-age story involving three generations of females.