Reviews

  • The Simpsons Movie (2007)

    The Simpsons Movie (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) Longest. Episode. Ever. Not that this is a bad thing if you’re a Simpsons fan: The movie faithfully replicates the feel and humour of the TV show, and seldom lags despite the length. A few concessions are made to the big-screen format: some context-specific jokes are hilarious, the animation is quite a bit better (including several CGI-boosted sequences) and the jokes are slightly more risqué than usual. (Nothing much: some nudity, rude gestures and less-mild swearwords barely bring this to a PG-13.) Otherwise, the usual plot tangents just take longer to resolve and the stakes are significantly higher than usual. Was it necessarily worth seeing in theatres? Well, you probably answered that question by yourself by the time you read this, but yeah: I had a good time despite the most annoying talk-backer ever heard in a theatre, and that’s almost all you need to know about it.

  • Under my Roof, Nick Mamatas

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Soft Skull, 2007, 151 pages, C$15.95 tpb, ISBN 978-1-933368-43-6

    Nick Mamatas has long been known for being an iconoclastic Internet personality, and his fiction is no different. Would you , for instance, expect his latest novel to be a young adult novel promoting the joys of home-built nuclear weaponry and secession from the United States?

    Well, maybe. After all, Mamatas’ first novel-length book was Move Under Ground, a horror-story retelling of Kerouac’s On The Road featuring elements of the Cthulhu mythos. After that, no one can really predict what Mamatas will write next.

    Suffice to say that the subject matter isn’t the only difference between Move Under Ground and this new book. From the dense Kerouac pastiche, Mamatas switches gears to deliver a chatty first-person narration from a telepathic twelve year-old (he’s not smart; he just reads smart people’s minds). The first chapter is a little gem as young Herbert Weinberg describes how his father manages to build a home-made atomic bomb from dumpster-diving and mail-order material. (I’ve been lucky enough to hear Mamatas read the first chapter at a Chicago event; it was hard not to imagine his voice narrating the rest of the novel.)

    It’s a good start, but the rest of the book quickly heads in meatier territory. Now equipped with a nuclear deterrent, the Weinbergian household declares independence from the US and, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, eventually finds traction for its claims. The US government, not to mention Herbert’s mom, don’t find this funny or acceptable: the rest of the novel is concerned about Weinbergia’s attempts to remain independent, Herbert’s efforts in making sense of the situation and the reader’s delight in finding where Mamatas is taking the novel.

    To say that it’s meant as satire is to understate the tone of the novel. But there’s a real message under each joke, and Under My Roof goes much farther than expected in its exploitation of its theme. Nationhood, suggests Mamatas, is a consensual illusion. It just takes a few denials to put it at risk. And if that’s subversive, well, why not?

    Still, it’s possible to read through the novel and not think about the deeper issues: the prose is deceptively easy, and the pacing just keeps going. I’m not so fond of the last act (which seems to diffuse the narrative build-up and then scatter in multiple directions), but Mamatas is a writer who seems to spend a lot more time thinking about prose than about plot: complaining about the structure of the book is missing the point of it.

    It’s not as if there isn’t much more to enjoy. Mamatas credibly describes the mechanics of nuclear secession, imagining the media circus, practical issues and political repercussions of such an event with wonderful small details and plenty of quick jokes. Much like the Atkins diet, secession quickly becomes a popular fad and narrator Herbert is in the middle of the attention storm. Given everything else going on, will he have time to grow up?

    There’s a lot to like about Under My Roof, from the narrator to the satire to the understanding that Mamatas can write whatever he wants and it’s going to be worth reading. What are you waiting for? Under My Roof is short enough to be read in one lazy sitting, and it’s going to stick in your mind. If you’re really smart, you’ll even lend it to the brightest twelve-year old you know, and see what he does with it. Just don’t lend him your credit card, and start paying attention if he goes out and purchases a garden gnome.

  • Ratatouille (2007)

    Ratatouille (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) After a temporary half-eclipse with Cars, the Pixar team returns in full force with an unbelievably slick film about a gourmet rat and the pleasures of gastronomy. An unlikely mixture, but one that works well: through a mis-matched pair of protagonist who each need something from the other, we’re able to explore the inner workings of a French restaurant. But as usual for Pixar’s best offerings, there’s a lot more under the surface here: Terrific comedy, strong details, sweet romance, superb action scenes, heartfelt moments (including a number of epiphanies, a rare-enough emotion in movies) and exceptional characterization. None of it would be possible without a solid script that allows itself third-act curveballs (it’s not over until it’s really over) and some of the best computer animation ever seen so far. Pixar takes pain to make it appear as easy as they can, but there’s a lot of sophistication under the surface. Witness, for instance, the cleverness in which the photo-perfect food and backgrounds are integrated with the more stylized human and rodent characters: It allows identification and sympathy for the cartoons, while immediately exploiting all we know about food and the physical world. There’s a neat bit of synesthesia at play during some of the sequences, and very clever use of imaginary characters as an expository device. But the mechanics are there for a good reason, and the result is nothing short of a movie-long delight. Funny, thrilling and effortlessly accessible, Ratatouille, like director Brad Bird’s previous The Incredibles, immediately vaults to the top of this year’s list of films.

    (Second viewing, In theatres, July 2007) Worth seeing a second time? Certainly! Freed from the constraints of the story, I’m left to enjoy the flawless slapstick animation, the details of the photo-realistic backgrounds, the way the filmmakers set up the shots and the reaction of the crowd around me. A few flaws appear (I’m not too thrilled at who says the line “That’s bad juju”, or the dumb line “I hate to be rude –but we’re French”. After all, you seldom hear “I hate to be the immature product of a delusional capitalistic imperialist society –but we’re American”), but they’re really minor things: The film holds up in every aspect, sign of the meticulous care in which it was fashioned. Ratatouille confirms its place in the yearly Top-10 list, and makes a serious contender for best-of-the-year honours.

  • Nitro (2007)

    Nitro (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) You can make a film that deals with touchy ethical issues and you can make fun action movies. Just don’t try to blend them together, otherwise you’ll piss off the audience that’s there for what the marketing campaign promises. The problem with Nitro, surprisingly enough, isn’t with the action scenes: Despite the typically minuscule budget of French-Canadian films, the filmmakers work wonders with what they’ve got, and know how to move the camera for a decent amount of tension. An underground racing sequence inspired by The Fast And The Furious is the film’s best moment, complete with a brutally enjoyable fight with nitro bottles. Other chase sequences later in the film do well, including a spectacular parkour sequence through a low-rent Montréal neighbourhood. Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge more than holds his own as a credible action hero with believable emotional depth. But the film fatally missteps in the dramatic structure that holds the action scenes together: a bad ethical choice by the lead character forever erases any sympathy we would hold for him, and the web of issues surrounding him does little to raise the stakes. It doesn’t help that the script goes awry in other various ways. The strongest female character, wonderfully played by Lucie Laurier, is relegated to a stand-in who lives only for the hero: a sad simplification for a character who could have stolen the protagonist’s mantle at any moment. Martin Matte is another issue: though he has a strong screen presence, it’s not that of an underworld boss. Ultimately, the small and big script mistake accumulate and rob the film of any enjoyment we may have gotten from the action scenes, leaving us with a grim conclusion and the sentiment of having been manipulated in gratuitous pathos. You can forgive even the worst mistake if it leads to a happy ending, but even the slightest mistake will make nuanced endings just feel cheap.

  • I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

    I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) There was a time where I would have moved mountains to see a film in which Linsey Lohan plays a stripper. Alas, that time has passed, because seeing Lohan pole-dancing in I Know Who Killed Me is an endurance contest in the middle of a deeply ludicrous experience. Setting itself up as a thriller but truly belonging to a weak form of supernatural horror (Oops, was that a spoiler? You’ll thank me.) I Know Who Killed Me is bad from the first few frames, but quickly makes things worse for itself by pretending to be a piece of art. A striking colour scheme is the least of the film’s aspirations to art, but it doesn’t take Art Bell’s appearance as a reliable Exposition Device to realize that this film has jumped the rails of even B-movie cinema. Lohan is irritating, the film feels exploitative, the plot drags on and the resolution of the entire mystery is a cheap device. Thriller fans will be furious at how the film doesn’t play fair, and everyone else will just wonder when it will end. There’s always a lot of competition for the title of worst movie of the year, but I Know Who Killed Me makes a strong case for the honour.

  • Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (2007)

    Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) Clearly, the Potter film team knows that it doesn’t really have to cater to the non-reading public: This fifth entry in the Potter saga holds up well to those who are familiar with the story, but earns a few blank stares from those who haven’t read the source book. By now in the series, the elements are familiar: Potter, friends, dark lord, bla-bla-bla. But as the series gets darker and darker with each volume, so does this film treading into adult matters as Hogwarts is taken over by a power-mad busybody who does her best to dismantle schooling standards. No Wizard Left Behind? Surely I can’t be the only one making that joke. I certainly could feel the collective slash-mind wobbling when Snapes told Harry “I will attempt to penetrate your mind and you will attempt to resit me”: Sheesh, the stuff practically writes itself, doesn’t it? But slash-spotting is something I only do during dull films, and as this Potter 5 moves to the conclusion, there seems to be less and less connecting material left on-screen. Suddenly, our heroes are in a big room of glass balls. Suddenly, our heroes are fighting evil. Suddenly, someone’s gone: Dead or Out for lunch? Suddenly… well, suddenly everyone needs the book to make sense of what’s happening. But since we will all end up reading it anyway, does it really matter?

  • In the Hall of the Martian King, John Barnes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Aspect, 2003, 294 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-61083-6

    Well, it had to happen. After two books of generally likable action and adventure featuring young adult protagonist Jak Jinnaka, Barnes finally drops the hammer on his characters in the second half of In the Hall of the Martian King. Happy Barnes characters are generally an anomaly: sooner or later, the real world comes calling.

    If you’re familiar with the rebellious, rabble-rousing Jak Jinnaka, the first few pages of this third volume are a bit of a shock: Jak seems to have settled down and is using his skills for a good cause. He’s now a capable bureaucrat stationed in Martian orbit, tasked with the mission of keeping things together just as his boss goes away on an extended holiday. From an undisciplined teen, Jak has now embraced responsibility and supervisory duties. All is well, except for one small archaeological discovery.

    One tiny, insignificant unearthing of the all-encompassing “lifelog” of a major religious figure. An object that everyone wants, regardless of political authority. Before the end of the fourth chapter, Jak is already making end-runs around his own bureaucracy, setting plans in motion to capture the log for his true employers. If he could just be left alone, things would unfold smoothly. Alas, before even realizing it, Jak is surrounded by a menagerie of friends, fools, enemies and ex-lovers. His capabilities as a bureaucrat are taxed as he’s got to spend more time protecting an ignorant aristocrat against his worst instincts than successfully leading the diplomatic negotiations required to secure the artifact.

    This first half of the novel is very, very enjoyable. It’s easily one of the highlights of the series so far: There’s a pleasant “lone competent man against the universe” feel to this section, one that brings to mind Keith Laumer’s “Retief” series of adventures. Barnes takes on the tone of a farce, and seeing Jak trying to keep all the spinning plates from crashing into the ground is hilarious. Nearly all of the series’ recurring characters are brought together in a tiny space, and the various plots and counter-plots are a delight to follow.

    But pretty soon, even the fanciest diplomatic footwork can’t substitute for direct action. And this is where, true to the series’ structure so far, things change. Every book of the Jak Jinnaka series so far has been divided in two distinct sections, and the division in this third volume is more dramatic than most: The action spins out of control, and even a satisfying victory turns to a nightmare when one recurring character is killed.

    This also marks he shift in tone from a lighthearted farce to a steely-eyed political thriller. Jak has to deal with his grief, settle a few unresolved issues, face down the web of manipulation in which he’s been snared and look at a world that’s much meaner than he expected. The conclusion of the entire story has resonance with John Le Carré’s implacable tales of realpolitik in which bad things happen to people who are worth more dead than alive. This leads Jak ready to face more adventures (as yet unwritten), but those are likely to be a touch darker in tone.

    Fortunately, it’s not all gloom and depression for most of the book’s duration. Barnes’ strong narrative skills keep the book rolling along, and the verve of his prose once again bring to mind the usual comparisons with Heinlein. Barnes, though, has a stronger grasp of socio-political issues, and In The Hall of the Martian King is just as adept as its predecessors at integrating cool ideas with the flow of the story. The “Wager” of Jak’s universe is finally explained, with potentially wide-reaching consequences for upcoming books in the series.

    Despite the abrupt turns in tone, and the growing darkness of the universe, the Jak Jinnaka series has been a terrific trilogy so far, and shows ample potential for further volumes. Barnes just has to write them; I’ll be there to buy them.

  • Hairspray (2007)

    Hairspray (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2007) I’m a really easy audience for musical comedy, so it’s almost inevitable that I’d enjoy Hairspray as much as I did. Fifties/Sixties rock, dance numbers and a bunch of laughs: What else could one want? What further distinguish this film from the norm, though, are its slightly-sarcastic lyrics and a deep love for the underdog. For those who haven’t paid attention to the film’s pedigree, this is where John Waters’ original influence comes through. (Waters himself appears in a split-second cameo as a flasher. Still, you can’t miss him.) One aspect of the film’s promotion leaves me frowning, though: For a film where racial equality is the backbone of the plot, Hairspray‘s trailer seemed a bit… light in this matter. Does it matter? Not really… but it’s still curious. In other related areas, it’s fun to see Hairspray take up where Far From Heaven and Dreamgirls lefts off in recasting black music as the good music of its period: There’s some interesting cultural reinvention here, but I’ll wait a bit later down the trend to think about it. In any case, thinking seems almost irrelevant in a film where John Travolta dancing in fat-suit drag can almost seem cool. Bubbly Nikki Blonsky makes a heck of a debut appearance; I wonder what’s next for her.

  • A Good Year (2006)

    A Good Year (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2007) Trying to identify with a rich materialistic bastard as he inherits a magnificent property in Provence isn’t exactly an easy proposition. So the first few minutes of the film are sometimes obnoxious, as we’re asked to contemplate the rich workaholic man’s burden of a multi-million dollars estate. Play tiny violins, especially when we can all guess the dramatic arc that the character is going to take. But the film eventually warms up: It’s hard to stay mad at the beautiful cinematography, or at Russell Crowe’s rough charm. Pretty much everything unfolds as predicted, but it does so at a satisfying pace, slow enough to reflect the quiet French countryside. A Good Year often mis-steps and never quite reaches the level it aims for (a number of silly “fast-forward” comedic scenes detract from the rest of the film, for instance): in retrospect, Crowe and director Ridley Scott seem too rough for the light touch that the material requires. For a romantic comedy, the laughs are few and the romance seems like an afterthought. Oh well; at least there’s the scenery, and a number of performances to enjoy. One could do much, much worse: misguided films are usually preferable to terrible ones.

  • Void Moon, Michal Connelly

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Little Brown, 2000, 391 pages, C$34.00 hc, ISBN 0-316-15406-7

    Every other book, Michael Connelly takes a break from his best-known protagonist Harry Bosch and does something else. Often, those “off books” end up being some of his best work: The Poet, featuring a journalist stuck in a serial murderer investigation, was widely hailed as one of Connelly’s best work. Blood Work, about an FBI profiler recovering from a heart transplant, was adapted to the big screen by Clint Eastwood and ended up becoming one of Connelly’s best-known books. At a time where repetition is the biggest artistic enemy of the best-selling author, Connelly is playing it smart and stretching creative muscles on his own schedule.

    Now, with Void Moon, Connelly steps away from procedural investigations and tackles both a very different character, and a slightly different style. For the first time, he features a female protagonist and tackles a story that feels like a thriller. Better yet: This time, the characters are not on the right side of the law.

    First up is Cassie Black, an ex-con who’s trying to rebuild a good life in Los Angeles after a few years inside. But living above ground isn’t easy, especially when something she holds dear is about to leave forever. Pushed by desperation, Cassie goes back to her former handler and volunteers for one last job. Just one more score, for the money. It turns out that there is such a job available to her: a simple casino client robbery in Las Vegas. Routine stuff for Cassie, who knows more about robbery than entire police departments. But this being a Connelly novel, things don’t go as planned, and the first part of Void Moon ends with her raising a gun at her victim…

    Only to cut to another character: Jack Karch, a Las Vegas native who has made such a routine out of burying people in the desert that they call him the “Jack of Spades”. Jack is a casino executioner: he’ll handle whatever needs to be handled. So when a murdered clients is discovered in his hotel, he’s put on the case. Pretty soon, he realizes that his client was no simple client, and that powerful people really want to recover the briefcase that we was carrying around.

    As it happens, Cassie and Jack know each other: Years before, it’s in no small part thanks to Jack that Cassie’s life was destroyed. As Jack tracks down Cassie again, the question arises: Is this time for Cassie’s revenge, or for Jack to finish what he started? Desperate, cut off from the legal world and hunted down step by step, Cassie will have to be resourceful in order to set things right… that is, if she opts for doing the right thing.

    The morally tainted protagonist and utterly ruthless antagonist are part of what make Void Moon different from the author’s other books, but it’s more interesting to look at what still makes it a Connelly novel. Nobody will be surprised to learn that his prose is just as compelling here than in his earlier books: Void Moon starts rapidly and keeps roaring along, carrying readers well past their bed-times. Connelly’s gift for procedural descriptions is just as good here than ever before: Not only does he detail how Cassie is able to get and deploy high-tech gadgets to perform her robbery (“All surveillance technology described in the book actually exists and is available to the public” adds Connelly in his acknowledgements), but he follows Jack as he tracks down the clues leading to Cassie. This PI-turned-bad sequence works just as well as Cassie’s segments, and leads to good confrontations between the two lead characters. Cassie may not be the purest of characters, but she’s more than sympathetic enough to make for a terrific protagonist: There is seldom a doubt as to where our sympathies must belong.

    And so it all amounts to a well-handled thriller. Though Void Moon doesn’t carry the extra kick of Connelly’s best novels, it’s a good reading experience and it does little to tarnish the Connelly brand name. Fans will be pleased to find a subtle link to the novel Trunk Music, suggesting that Bosch himself is not too far way.

    A minor but pleasant interlude in my Michael Connelly Reading Project (“One book per month, every month, until I’m caught up”), Void Moon is another proof that Connelly is one of the top crime writers in America right now. Even on holidays, he’s still as good as other writers at the top of their game. I don’t expect Cassie to disappear from the Connellyverse.

  • Brasyl, Ian McDonald

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pyr, 2007, 357 pages, C$31.00 hc, ISBN 978-1-59102-543-6

    It’s hard to over-state the impact that River of Gods has had on Ian McDonald’s career. A solid, but generally under-appreciated veteran author, McDonald suddenly became one of Science-Fiction’s hottest authors: The book was nominated for the Hugo Awards, earned effusive critical praise and was snapped up by Pyr for republication in the United States, rejuvenating McDonald’s American career years after Bantam Spectra’s unsuccessful efforts. Pyr and McDonald benefited a great deal from each other, which may serve to explain why his follow-up Brasyl ended up published in the United States by Pyr, to significant critical expectations.

    Like River of Gods, Brasyl is partly an attempt to recast familiar SF elements in new cultural environments. Surfing on the SF globalization wave first anticipated decades ago by Bruce Sterling’s Islands in the Net (and his own earlier books such as Evolution’s Shore), McDonald imagined a sprawling SF novel in India for River of Gods and now does the same for Brazil with his latest. In doing so, he takes conventional SF ideas and restates them in a setting that is different in time and culture. The impact is more profound that one could think: River of Gods felt fresh and invigorating because it looked at familiar SF clichés from a different angle of interest, a particularity that added to McDonald’s usually strong narrative and characterization skills.

    Brasyl is not River of Gods Part 2, but it’s definitely in the same vein. Here, somber quantum mechanics conspiracies unite three different sub-plots, taking place at three different eras in Brazil’s history. But whereas River of Gods was massive and sprawling, Brasyl is dynamic and sprightly. This is not the same country, this is not the same culture, and this is not even the same prose: Brasyl‘s McDonald is nervy, fast and not particularly concerned by good grammatical form: He gets away with fragmented sentences that mix Brazilian speech with hi-tech slang and dispenses with commas. Reading Brasyl is, at times, like being stuck in a whirlwind of cultural and technical references that all accumulate to give the prose a dense texture that has a unique quality of its own. Beautifully written, Brasyl is another one of those contemporary SF novels that proves without discussion that cool techno stuff isn’t necessarily incompatible with fantastic prose.

    But even that prose style deliberately varies throughout the book: Divided in three temporal streams, Brasyl simultaneously takes place in Brazil’s past, present and future. The current subplot concerns a reality-TV show producer who comes to realize that a Doppelgänger is ruining her life. Meanwhile in the eighteenth century, a Jesuit operative must go up the Amazon to find a renegade priest. Finally, a small-time hustler in 2032 São Paulo gets romantically involved with a dangerous woman who meets a violent end… only to re-appear a short while later. All of this comes together thanks to the magic of quantum mechanics and parallel universes, but not before a wild ride of sword-fights, superhero fetish sex and a present-day plot that seems even stranger than either Brazil’s history or its possible future.

    As a sustained narrative, Brasyl is not quite as successful as River of Gods for a few reasons: Not all three plot-lines are created equal, for instance: After the tornado-like intensity of the present and future segments, the historical subplot can seem like a lull in the action. And while the middle of the book is filled with intriguing mysteries, the resolution of the entire arc can feel like a more conventional let-down. McDonald’s usual knack for describing conventional scenes with unconventional prose can often feel like a distancing mechanism when the book’s action set-pieces occur.

    But even with those slight flaws, Brasyl still ends up feeling like one of 2007’s most vital Science Fiction novels. It’s fresh, slick and exciting. It feels, simply put, like no other SF novel to date. When the pieces finally come together, the unusual nature of the plot and the prose lead readers straight to serious kick-ass coolness that wouldn’t feel out of place in a big Hollywood blockbuster film. McDonald takes a serious option on award nominations with this book, and proves that his career renaissance is well-founded: Everyone who discovered (or rediscovered) the McDonald oeuvre thanks to River of Gods now have something new to enjoy, and Brasyl easily satisfies expectations.

  • McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #13, Ed. Chris Ware

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    McSweeney’s, 2003, 316 pages, C$36.00 hc, ISBN 1-932416-08-0

    I took years, but I finally snagged a copy of the quasi-legendary “McSweeney’s 13”, the “comics issue” of the relentlessly innovative fiction periodical from the fine folks at McSweeney’s. Whoever says “periodical”, after all, suggests a limited availability, followed by endless trips to used-bookstores in the hope of finding a copy.

    But McSweeney’s isn’t a disposable sort of periodical, and so you may still have some luck, years later, finding latter printings shelved in the “literature” section of your neighbourhood monster bookstore. Don’t look for a brightly-coloured onion-paged digest: Look for a massive saran-wrapped hardcover with a strange cover featuring muted iconic drawings. If you know Chris Ware’s work, just look for his signature style: Not only has he edited the content of the issue, he also designed it –including the beautiful wrap-around cover.

    It’s impossible to review McSweeney’s 13 without spending some time discussing its design. It’s no accident if it costs more than the average hardcover novel: not only is the book solidly bound in a slightly bigger format than most hardcovers, it sports full-color pages and a dust jacket that is much more than a dust jacket. Unwrap it and you will find not only two bonus comic-books hidden within the folds, but also a full-colour, two-sided, newspaper-sized (gilded!) comic by Chris Ware.

    The biting, cynical, nihilist, self-referential, vaguely historical nature of Ware’s work sets the tone for what’s inside McSweeney’s 13: In assembling a special comics issue for one of the foremost literary periodical of our times, Ware has decided to play on two themes. First, that comics are good and literary and worthy of respect –a familiar tune for long-time fans. Second, that the type of comics showcased here would be almost absurdly literary in an autobiographical vein. If you’re looking for good superhero comics, or even accessible genre adventures in a graphical format, well, look elsewhere: McSweeney’s 13 won’t allow such populist riff-raff to sully its pages. Peanuts gets a pass on account of being old and respectable, but otherwise the only time you ‘ll hear about superheroes is through the nostalgic prose essays scattered throughout the periodical.

    That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. I’m coming to McSweeney’s 13 through the comic-sized door, but an equal if not superior number of readers must be picking it up because it’s the newest McSweeney’s and it happens to talk about comics. This is the audience that has to be convinced, not the existing comic fans.

    On the other hand, it leads straight to a theme anthology where you get your pick between a sad autobiographical tales of everyday life, and another dozen so-called edgy pieces whose meaning lurks out of context. Your choices: Be baffled or depressed.

    If you’re not happy with the newer material, you can always gawk at the perfect reproductions of historical pieces, from the first American comic book, to an early Mutt and Jeff, to sketches seemingly stolen from Charles Schultz’s trashcan, to other pieces of American comicana. Also; a handful of essays from such notables as Michael Chabon, Chip Kidd or John Updike. (I suppose that I won’t be the only one surprised to learn that Updike can sketch relatively well.) All of this material accumulates to leave the impression of an affectionate tribute to the art form, of a memento of interest to comic book enthusiasts with long memories.

    Alas, despite the tremendous labour of love that this edition represents, many (most?) of the pieces are not original to McSweeney’s 13 and can’t even stand on their own. Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers is quoted here, as is Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, to cite only two work with which I’m immediately familiar. Some other pieces leave us hanging, deprived of both context and resolution. McSweeney’s 13 is least satisfying when it’s acting as a sampler than an homage or a polemic.

    But it’s hard to truly being critical of this book. I have mentioned the design a couple of time, but McSweeney’s 13 is truly that rarest of literary object: One that feels as if no effort was spared in order to make it as realized at possible. Time and time again, small touches remind us that several people have agonized over this as an object, not a disposable pop culture artifact. The sampler approach can work at driving newer readers to other works, introducing new and little-known artists to the McSweeney’s readership. One can quibble with part of it, but the whole is much greater than the sum of its part. As a entity, McSweeney’s 13 is close to its own kind of perfection.

    It’s not an accident if I can see myself pulling this book from my shelves the next time some one visits and say “You have to take a look at this…”

  • Rant, Chuck Palahniuk

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday Canada, 2007, 336 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-385-66349-6

    It’s done. Chuck Palahniuk has finally turned to Science Fiction after years of teasing us with the possibility. The promotional material remains hush-hush on the issue and many reviewers will tiptoe around the evidence, but Rant is the novel where Palahniuk finally crosses the border into unarguable Science Fiction. After teasing us with a research-heavy writing style that often felt as hard-SF, after revelling in social extrapolations only one step away from SF satire, Palahniuk finally owes up to the genre.

    Everyone saw it coming, of course. Palahniuk’s stock in trade, from Fight Club onward, has always been to imagine the possible. The “What if?” so beloved of SF writers. It doesn’t matter how unlikely it is, if it is possible. Not many people actually like beating up other people and getting beaten up in return, but it is possible, in today’s world, in much the same way bodily modifications can twist a narrator’s identity or how someone can fake choking for a twisted con game. Reading Palahniuk’s fiction is already an exercise is suspension of disbelief.

    It helps that Palahniuk has never been a rigorously mainstream writer. His last three novels, from Lullaby to Haunted, more or less dealt with fantastical concepts. Haunted even included two short stories that, squinting the right way, could be read as classic fifties-style SF. Rant, despite tackling the very science-fictional trope of time travel, is not such a big stretch: Palahniuk can’t be bothered by technological or scientific explanation and reaches straight for the woo-woo bag of tricks. Time travel via the wish fulfilment of Jack Finney rather than the machine-aided rationality of H.G. Wells.

    (I’m not spoiling much: A close reading of the first thirty pages of Rant pretty much give the game away.)

    So this new infatuation with another genre may not be as interesting than it seems at first glance: This is just Palahniuk going further in one of his usual directions, after all. Far more interesting is the way he tells the story: Rant is written as an oral biography, a style of writing that allows Palahniuk to have some serious fun with the way he structures the novel. Nominally a way to present different perspective on a same subject, oral biography is here twisted to serve Palahniuk’s style: He uses the “different voices” motif to create a collage of perspectives that each describe an aspect of the character and the world. The cacophony of voices acquires a pleasant montage-like effect, every bit player whispering something worthwhile in our ear, even if we can’t recognize it at first.

    Rant Casey himself ends up being a side player in his own “biography”: From a strong Trickster-like presence at the beginning of the novel, Rant fades against the lively background that Palahniuk puts together as the book unfolds. Progressively, we’re made aware that the world in which Rant exists is not our own: that substantial social differences exist, and that they mask something even more hideous lurking under the surface. In a way, that’s always been one characteristic of Palahniuk’s oeuvre: presenting a society that may superficially look like ours, but is really not. In this case, though, no amount of rationalization will manage to take in account the radically different world in which Rant exists, even if most of the concepts (party-crashing cars in each other, for instance, in an acknowledge nod to Fight Club‘s main conceit) are at least theoretically possible.

    Those used to Palahniuk’s style won’t be shocked to find that Rant is once again all about, well, shock. Disgust, decency and logic are the three virtues one must learn to ignore in order to read a Palahniuk novel and this one is no exception. It doesn’t always add up, naturally, but Palahniuk’s books are rides more than they’re sustained arguments. Part of the thrill of Rant is in seeing unfamiliar words, concepts and icons gradually become clearer and clearer as the book unfolds. Besides the SF elements, this is another sign of Rant‘s belonging to the Science-Fiction genre: Palahniuks wields exposition like a master and often lets slip strange blips before we’re ready to understand them.

    But also like a Science Fiction novel, the world of the novel eventually overpowers the main character. Rant, after our promising expectations, eventually become a shell of a character in a far more intriguing world. The repetitive ending grates a bit as it goes back to Rant to back-fill obvious parts of his back-story.

    Yet it doesn’t matter much: Rant is easily one of Palahniuk’s most enjoyable piece of writing in a while. The acknowledged SF influence seems to allow him a bit more freedom that usual (which is saying a lot), and the oral biography form shakes up some of Palahniuk’s stylistic quirk. A strong entry… but not for everyone.

  • Angels Flight, Michael Connelly

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1999, 454 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60727-4

    One of the known problem of my Michael Connelly reading project (one book per month, in order of publication, until I’m caught up) is that I have already read many of the high points of Connelly’s career. After The Last Coyote, for instance, I could skip over The Poet, Trunk Music and Blood Work. This landed me three novels later in Angel’s Flights, with a slightly different Harry Bosch now re-integrated with the police force and struggling through a marriage I barely remembered. Having read Trunk Music nearly eight years ago, it took me a while to get back up to speed with the latest developments.

    Fortunately, Connelly makes it easy to get back into Bosch’s mind: his best-known protagonist is still as taciturn, still as clever, and just as likely to find himself at the centre of a complicated investigation. This time, Bosch is chosen by the LAPD’s high management as the lead inspector on a case with the potential to revive racial riots: the murder of a black attorney who specialized in cases against the police. Worse: the victim was killed in a way that suggests a policeman with a score to settle. Already marginalized by his colleagues, Bosch finds himself stuck with investigators he can’t trust and a mystery some people don’t want to see resolved.

    As the clock starts ticking, the investigation roars into gear. Bosch doesn’t have much time: Already, the media is driven to a frenzy of speculation by the killer-cop angle. Before long, Bosch realizes that the investigation is a poisoned gift: No one inside the LAPD particularly wants it to succeed, and even Bosch’s team may not be entirely trustworthy. As if that wasn’t enough, it seems that the deceased attorney had a source deep inside the police force…

    But it gets worse. Seemingly impartial people turn out to have a web of connections to the victim, including one of Bosch’s ex-partners. Pulling on all the threads revealed by his investigation, Bosch starts paying renewed attention to a case that everyone thought closed, a sordid child murder that may not be as simple as everyone had figured. The title of the book eventually acquires another meaning as Bosch is forced to investigate something he’d rather leave to others…

    This may not be among Connelly’s best novels, but it’s certainly up to his usual standards. The writing is clean and immediately absorbing. The characters are efficiently introduced and developed, which is of even bigger importance here as the cast seems much larger than in previous books. The plot keeps moving forward relentlessly, making it hard to stop reading once it gets going.

    This technical proficiency makes it easy to forget about the thick density of issues tackled through the novel. Angels Flight is, first and foremost, a novel about Los Angeles in the nineties, as it recovered from the scars left by the 1992 riots. But it also weaves in themes of lost innocence, of police violence, of what makes good people go bad. Bosch has never been a happy character and Angels Flight seems grimmer than most, especially given how it really doesn’t solve any of Bosch’s romantic problems.

    What doesn’t work so well are some of the technical details: Written in 1998, Angels Flight still has a gosh-wow approach to the then-Internet, and some of the vocabulary used to describe the investigation as it move on-line is just wrong. Not a big deal for most, but frustrating to the knowledgeable readers in the context of a police procedural where details should sound right.

    The other nagging element of the novel is the ending, which manages to be predictable and frustrating. Twenty pages before the end, you can practically predict what will happen to who, based on nothing but the situation and the knowledge that American crime fiction would rather kill a villain than punish him through the course of law.

    But these are small issues in such a successful novel. While Angels Flight doesn’t have the extra boost to propel it among Connelly’s best novels (of which there have been more than a few), it holds its own as another decent entry in his oeuvre. The Michael Connelly Reader Project continues at a good clip with nary a misfire in sight.

  • The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Gollancz, 2006, 505 pages, C$24.95 tpb, ISBN 0-575-07802-2

    Hype is two-edged sword: If it’s true that I wouldn’t have read Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora had it not been lauded on-line, it’s also true that it made it impossible to pick up the novel as “just another fantasy book”. This is, after all, the novel that touched off the Great Blog Critic-Payoff Crisis of 2006, which contributed to the end of Emerald City and megabytes of bitter debate about the nature of on-line criticism.

    It almost makes me want to avoid reviewing the book.

    But I’ve got a monthly quota to fill, and The Lies of Locke Lamora has spent more than its fair share of time on my bedside table. So here goes.

    The most intriguing thing about Scott Lynch’s debut is how it marries the conventions of caper thrillers with the environment of a fantasy novel. Our titular hero is a master con artist, a man able to fool just about everyone into handing over their money. Locke Lamora isn’t particularly smart or handsome, but he’s got what it takes to be a gifted con artist: a gift for gab, a murderously effective education and a strong circle of friends with unique areas of expertise. The Lies of Locke Lamora is built around a structure that follows Lamora during a particularly stressful period, and interleaves that story with interlude that explain who Locke Lamora and his friends are, and what has made them the way they are.

    This is where, as an infrequent (and, frankly, generally uninterested) fantasy reader, my impressions part ways with the critical consensus. While many have lauded the completeness of Lynch’s vision of Lamora and the city he lives in, I found myself skipping ahead whenever I hit another historical interlude –which is to say every other chapter.

    I have no major problems with the bulk of the novel’s plot: As Locke thinks he’s pulling off a grand coup by defrauding a rich merchant, troubles comes looking for him as a mysterious “Gray King” decimates the local criminal power structure. Blackmailed into doing the Grey King’s bidding against his own boss, Locke has little time to figure out how to pull his own skin out of the fire. If he does manage to do so, it’s not certain that he’ll be able to do the same for his friends… Before the book is over, Locke finds himself rediscovering his conscience, using his illicit skills for the greater good and doing things he would never had imagined doing pro bono.

    If The Lies of Locke Lamora had just been about that plot thread, chances are that I would have been far more upbeat about the book: the fusion between caper plotting and fantasy setting is interesting, and the low-key nature of the fantasy (save for the magicians, one could almost squint and imagine Locke running around a slightly different version of medieval Venice) doesn’t overwhelm the particular nature of Locke’s story.

    But the constant flashbacks do drag down the story every couple of pages. They alone explain why the book spent nearly three months on my bedside table, even as I was tearing through other books: Though I was enjoying myself in Locke Lamora’s world, I would close the book every time I’d hit another flashback, and feel no particular impulsion to pick it up again.

    I can only hope that the further volumes in the Gentleman Bastard sequence are finished with the flashbacks and will proceed at a faster clip. The richness of Lynch’s prose is satisfying, and the inclusion of modern sensibilities in the dialogue (which is to say: frank Anglo-Saxon swearing) is pleasantly honest in a sub-genre that often tiptoes around harsh expletives.

    Not being much of a fantasy reader, there are definitely limits to how much I can like the book, but that’s all right: such reactions come along with the Hype, and fantasy readers who somehow happen to read this review are far more likely to like this book than I did. I see with some satisfaction the The Lies of Locke Lamora landed Scott Lynch on the Campbell award shortlist: a fitting achievement for a novel that, despite its length, is already reasonably successful.

    Not entirely successful, but if all it takes is a bit of selective skimming… the hype may have a solid basis to it.