The Madonnas of Echo Park, by Brando Skyhorse

1439170800

Free Press, 2010

224 pp.

This book came to me from the First Editions book club at Book Passage -- it's an excellent program that puts the newest literary works in your hands each month.

In a small slice of Los Angeles, outside the small neighborhood mercado called El Guanaco, Friday afternoons belonged to a group of women and their daughters.  The girls would dress in "Madonna-style outfits," turn on a portable cassette deck and dance, while their moms would clap their hands and provide encouragement. They did this because El Guanaco was the on-location film site of rock star Madonna's video for her song "Borderline,"  and also because this  was their small gesture aimed at taking back one of the most violent corners of the neighborhood, if only for a while. On one particular day, years ago, the mother of Aurora Esperanza wanted a picture, so the girls lined up. Aurora argued with her mother Felicia about kneeling with the little girls, wanting instead to stand with the women, and as they argued, a series of gunshots went off, leaving little 3 year old Alma Guerrero dead. The paper the next day would have a headline that read "Baby Madonna Murdered by Heartless Thugs."  This one incident serves as the focal point of this novel, which is really more of a collection of short narratives told by several characters over several years. The rest of the novel is about people in this community left to deal with the incident in some way, especially Aurora and Felicia.  The stories intersect as do the characters, who move in and out of the other characters' lives as some point as time goes on.

The characters are varied, but their stories have all have several points in common -- the themes of identity, place and dislocation running through the entire book. For example, there's the story of a former gang member, whose gang "used to own these streets," and  who now sits with his son Juan at an upscale coffee shop on Sunset eating a "grilled cheese and soy bacon sandwich, made on seven-grain bread with organic, grass-fed, raw-milk cheddar." They keep coming back because "it's in the neighborhood." Or the story of Freddy Blas, coming back to Echo Park after being away in prison, and finding a different world when he returns.  Or Felicia, whose early life had been uprooted at the same time as her grandmother lost her home in Chavez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium and now makes her living as a cleaning lady, only to be uprooted once more. Or my favorite story about Efren Mendoza. He's a city bus driver who goes by the rules and who knows where people will be safe getting off of his bus, depending on their ethnic backgrounds. Efren has nothing but scorn and contempt for illegal immigrants  because he's convinced they make problems for the hard-working Mexican-Americans like himself. He also singlehandedly causes a major riot by what he does when a fight breaks out on his bus.

It's amazing to think that Madonnas of Echo Park is Skyhorse's first novel. His characters are believable and real. There's also an overarching aura of humanity and dignity in every narrative and in the overall book as a whole.  And he pulls off all of this without being preachy. And his choice of Echo Park as the setting for Madonnas is excellent, considering what's going on there lately regarding gentrification, higher rents, and the edging out of some of the members Latino community who've been there all of their lives. This is happening everywhere, not just in Echo Park.

I hope more people read this novel. I've heard something about Oprah touting it as a good summer read, but it goes well beyond just a light, easygoing book that you may want to read while laying out at the beach.  While some of the story may have a bit more sentimentality than I  normally like, it's definitely a book I'm happy to have read.  And don't brush it off merely because of the subject matter -- I don't care which side of the political fence you are on, this is a book about the fate of a group of human beings. Bottom line.

as an aside: If you're interested, there's a really good video called "Gentrification Nation" at youtube that captures some of the current problems of Echo Park.

Alleviating the symptoms of shiny book syndrome, or SBS

Weekly Geeks this week tackles ways in which a person might alleviate the symptoms of Shiny Book Syndrome, in which

"a person only wants to read their newest book and leave piles of poor unread books on their shelves to collect dust."

I must say that I have suffered greatly from SBS over the years and thus I literally have rooms filled with old paperbacks and hardcover books. I've tried everything, including  not buying books until I've read 10 I already own (that never works, because I have been known to cheat), reading 5 brand new ones, then 5 the next year down, etc. etc., but that doesn't work either. As a last-ditch attempt, I even tried guilting myself into reading the not so glossy-covered books, but guilt works better on me if someone else does it to me.  So finally, after stacks beginning to grow on the floor of my office between myself and my computer, 2 years ago I hit on a great way to get through my books without leaving the old ones behind -- I began to give myself mini-challenges each month.

I ultimately found Listology.com, where I have been working constantly on getting my library organized because frankly, I still don't know what I have on my shelves.  This is an ongoing project -- and so far, I have managed to compile my own "librarius domesticus" in five parts. You can click here: example to see one of those lists. Of course, I often get behind trying to keep up with adding books, but they'll all get there, eventually.  The second part of my attempt at beating SBS is to create my own little mini-challenges each month -- if you look at my "books finished in 2010" page at Listology, you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.   After deciding on a mini-challenge topic each month, I then go to my online library, look through the books, and purposefully choose some older ones from yesteryear to throw into the mix. This system works SO well that I'm reading stuff I didn't even know I owned AND the Shiny Books at the same time! 

I also participate in a few reading challenges hosted by other bloggers, and I can't resist reading an entire shortlist if there's a book award I'm interested in (like right now, I've just finished all of the International Dagger Award shortlist books). The next two months are pretty much all Shiny Books, because I'm reading the Booker Prize longlist, but I'm already pulling out a few older ones to read in between.

This is my own tried and true method of not glomming on to the brand new, gorgeous books that a) I can't resist buying at my local bookstore, or b) come in the mail weekly.  I tell you, this works! And each month when I'm finished with my own little mini-challenge, I give at least 1/2 of those books away. Of course I just buy more, but now I know how to overcome Shiny Book Syndrome, so I'm finally under control.

Third Girl, by Agatha Christie

0002318075

HarperCollins, 2002

originally published 1966

Hercule Poirot is now in his 35th adventure; after this one, he has only three more contemporary appearances -- in Hallow'een Party, Elephants Can Remember, and Curtain.

Third Girl is set smack in the mid-sixties.  It's a time when men are wearing such clothes as  "elaborate velvet waistcoat[s], skin-tight pants," and wearing their hair long in "rich curls of chestnut," while women were wearing

"the clothes of their generation: black high leather boots, white open-work stockings of doubtful cleanliness, a skimpy skirt and a long and sloppy pullover of heavy wool".

The Beatles proclaim in 1966 that they're more popular than Jesus. The younger generation is experimenting with drugs and getting high. Girls aren't staying at home much after leaving school, going off to the cities to find jobs and live in apartments, often doubling up or adding a "third" girl to help with the rent.  It is just such a "third girl," Norma Restarick, who early one morning finds herself with Hercule Poirot, to tell him that she might have committed a murder, but then proclaims Poirot too old, and disappears. He's obviously intrigued, and finds out the girl's identity only when Ariadne Oliver, the mystery novelist, begins discussing a party she'd been to earlier where she'd met this young woman. From that point, the two begin investigating Norma's past and present, trying to discover if she's unbalanced, or if there's someone that might mean her harm. Poirot looks for patterns & death, and Ariadne tries methods that her detective, Sven Hjerson, might use in her popular mystery books.

As usual, there are plenty of suspects and red herrings throughout the novel, and this time Christie puts a secret up her sleeve that she doesn't reveal until the end -- a bit of duplicity on her part which wasn't really fair, but worked.  I thought the final solution was well done and although the clues were there all along, I still managed to be surprised by the ending,  which a) I felt was quite satisfying and b) I should have figured out after the breadcrumb trail of clues Christie left behind. And while the story may seem a bit muddled from time to time, it's still well worth the read. 

Poirot, without a doubt, is one of my favorite detectives ever, with his fastidious mannerisms and personality.  Even toward the end of his career his little grey cells are as busy and sharp as ever; Miss Lemon,  the secretary par excellence,  makes an appearance, always a step ahead of Poirot, and then there's Ariadne Oliver, a rather unique character, often living off of her intuition or using her mystery novelist skills to offer help in Poirot's investigation.  While she does provide some comic relief and comes off as a bit of a bumbler from time to time, she actually manages to also provide a few valuable clues to Poirot from time to time. 

At first I was a bit unsure as to whether or not I would enjoy this novel, but it ended up being a treat. This must be one that either I read eons ago and have totally forgotten, or that somehow I managed to miss until now. I can recommend it, definitely, BUT ... if you're looking for the recently televised Third Girl, you'll find that there's quite a difference between page and screen.

fiction from England

Badfellas, by Tonino Benacquista

 

9781904738435

Bitter Lemon Press

2010

Original French title: Malavita, 2004

Translated by Emily Read

Cholong-sur-Avre in Normandy is the setting of this rather unconventional and darkly humorous tale.  The Blake family moves into an old Norman brick-and-stone villa during the middle of the night. They had already lived  in France for six years, first in Paris, then on the Cote D'Azur in Cagnes-sur-Mer. There's Fred, the head of the clan, Maggie his wife, and two teenagers, Belle and Warren.  Just your typical American family relocating to the French countryside, right? Wrong. Fred is actually Mafioso Giovanni Manzoni from New Jersey, and he and his family are in the witness protection program after he testifies against against another crime boss, Mimino.  Along with them are a team of FBI men, assigned to them for protection against anyone wanting to claim the huge bounty put on Manzoni's head by Mimino. All of they have to do is lay low, pretend to be a normal family and get on with their lives.  But for someone like Fred, or for the rest of the family for that matter, being normal in any sense of the word is impossible.

Benaquista's characters are well drawn. In this particular witness protection incarnation, Fred has decided to tout himself as an author writing about the landing at Normandy, while all the time writing his own memoirs about his life in organized crime.  Fred is not a likable person at all and has no redeeming qualities, but he does have principles:  he always takes responsibility for his actions, he wouldn't do anything different over his lifetime if he had it all to do again, and the word he hates most in the world is sorry. Maggie is busy with volunteer work, but hangs out with the FBI team to get the latest on her neighbors, who are under constant surveillance by the feds. Belle, the daughter, is one of those people who makes lemonade with the lemons life has handed her, and Warren has handled the witness protection situation by watching, learning and becoming the mini Godfather-figure of his school.

There are some truly funny moments in this book, especially the story of how a school magazine traveled from France to Thailand to Los Angeles to New York and started a particularly nasty chain of events. That whole little story within a story is laugh-out-loud funny. There's also a great scene where by mistake a local cinema club gets sent the Scorsese film Goodfellas instead of the scheduled program of Some Came Running, the story of a WWII veteran who returns home.  However, As much as I liked this book, I did have a couple of niggling and minor issues with it. First, I kept waiting for the "crime fiction" part to begin, but it never materialized. I might have labeled it more of a "dark comedy" -- there's no central mystery plotline, very little crime and it's really more of a look at the lives and fortunes of this Witness-Protected family while in exile and at times the people guarding them.  And this leads me to my second point: when a plumber meets up with an unfortunate incident at the Blake home, how is it that the FBI surveillance team overseeing the Blake family's every move knows nothing about it? And how is that Fred's nephew in the US is allowed to get a call from France when the family is virtually in lockdown?  There are a couple of places like this where the storyline falters a bit, creating distractions that really annoyed me at times.


If you're looking for a typical crime fiction novel, I wouldn't start with this one, but the book is actually quite good overall -- more of a fun read than a serious crime read. It has been nominated for this year's International Dagger Award, and at the award's website, the judges have noted that "Crime fiction that makes you chuckle is rare and this is an exceptional example of the species." There's enough satire here to satisfy anyone's  snarky and sardonic side, a bit of underworld darkness, and I would most definitely recommend it.  And finally, as one cover blurb notes:

Benaquista's story explores what would happen if, say, the Soprano family were to move to Normandy...

and I'd say that's about hit the nail on the head.

I do hope his other books are a bit more crime oriented, however, because I've got a stack of them sitting here waiting to be read.

 crime fiction from France

Kraken, by China Mieville

034549749X

Del Rey

June 2010

528 pp.

On a normal day in an alternative London, it's Darwin Centre curator Billy Harrow's turn to do the public tour. The Darwin Centre is part of the Natural History Museum, but Billy knows why these people are really there: it's in anticipation of seeing the Architeuthis dux, or as it's more commonly known, the giant squid. The museum's specimen is 8.62 meters long, found in 2004 off the Falkland Islands.  But when the crowning moment arrives, and Billy opens the exhibit room door,  the squid, complete with its 9 meter brine-formalin filled tank, has vanished. It is totally, impossibly just gone.  And with it went any semblance of normalcy in the life of Billy Harrow, who sets out to find the missing architeuthis.  Along the way he learns that finding the squid is of utmost importance, not just so it might be returned to the museum, but because the squidnapping has triggered a series of events that are destined to lead to the end of the world, for real this time.

It is from this juncture that  Kraken takes off as the race is on to find the squid. Billy finds himself smack in the middle of a war  happening in the secret and magic London.  That city is the home of rival gods, whose cult members can be found duking it out from time to time (for example, the Brood, who worship a wargod polecat ferret),  Londonmancers, memory angels who guard old London in the face of the new, Chaos Nazis, familiars who go on strike in accordance with their union, a crime boss named the Tattoo whose face was imprisoned in the back of an innocent man and who runs a pair of psychopathic assassins, as well as a host of thug types like the Knuckleheads, who have men's bodies but fists for heads.  Overseeing crimes in this fantastical London is the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit (the FSRC), a branch of the police, complete with informants.  Billy has the tremendous task of sorting out who can be trusted and who can't as events head toward a final cataclysm.

While the last few chapters slow down the screaming pace of the rest of the novel, Kraken is one of the better works of speculative fiction I've read in a long time. There are parts that are laugh-out-loud funny, for example, with riffs on Star Trek and old police television shows. It's also filled with tongue-in-cheek satire focusing on religious differences and conflicts. Good speculative fiction demands that the writer's alternate world is believable, and Mieville goes above and beyond with his creativity and imagination. He gets the message through quite clearly that London is a very magical and special place -- and that there is definitely a bridge somewhere between reality and fantasy.

I can definitely recommend this novel to readers of speculative fiction, to those people who enjoy novels such as Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere or even Simon R. Green's Nightside series, and to anyone looking for something incredibly imaginative and different.  It's fun, appeals to my quirky, snarky and sarcastic sides, and although it turns out to be over 500 pages long,  goes by incredibly quickly. My first Mieville novel, but definitely not my last. 

fiction from England

A Caribbean Mystery, by Agatha Christie

0007120915
HarperCollins
2002
Originally published 1964
224 pp.

"Like to see the picture of a murderer?"

Major Palgrave was the man with a million stories, and everyone vacationing at the lovely Golden Palm Hotel on the Caribbean island of St. Honoré tried to avoid him like the plague. Once he got started, he never stopped. His latest victim, so to speak, was Jane Marple, who had come to the Golden Palm to recuperate after a serious bout of pneumonia. Knitting bag in hand, Miss Marple was sitting, half listening and making polite replies once in a while, until Major Palgrave started speaking about her favorite topic: murder.  He begins to tell her a rather unusual story about a man who got away with murder more than once, and when Palgrave asks her if she wanted to see a picture of a murderer, the knitting stops and she's all eyes and ears.  But after he fishes through his wallet for the photo, he suddenly stops and changes the subject rather abruptly and rather loudly. Taken aback, Miss Marple looks up to see why and sees several people nearby.  Although curious, she goes right back to her knitting. The next day, when one of the maids finds Major Palgrave dead in his room, apparently from natural causes, Miss Marple can't help but wonder if all is as it seems.  When she creates a clever story to retrieve the photograph Palgrave was about to show her, it's gone, and now she's interested.

Miss Marple is the perfect detective. When people look at her they see "all knitting wool and tittle-tattle," and she becomes more or less invisible that way, easily dismissed by most of the players. But one man, wealthy businessman Jason Rafiel, sees right through her. And since Jane is not in St. Mary Mead at the moment, with no help from the likes of Sir Henry Clithering, it is Rafiel to whom she turns in hopes of preventing more death.

 A Caribbean Mystery is lighter in tone than some of her other Marple mysteries, slowly paced and there are spots where my interest definitely flagged.  The mystery plotline was good, although a bit predictable. The ocean, the sand, the palms and the steel band music definitely brought the Caribbean to mind while reading, since I've been there a number of times.   And although this isn't one of my favorites in the Marple series, I couldn't help but enjoy watching her brain at work.

My advice to potential Christie readers: put this one somewhere in the middle of your reading schedule and start with some of the other Marple stories.  

as an aside:
This book has been adapted for television twice:
1) with Joan Hickson as Miss Marple
2) with Helen Hayes as Miss Marple

fiction from England

It's Monday! What am I reading?

Where has July gone? Sheesh! The days are just whizzing by --  it's already Monday, and that means that once again it's time to mark my reading progress. I want to thank Sheila at her reading-packed blog Book Journey. Take a moment and go visit!

I promised myself it was only going to be light reading this month. 
 Last week I started two new crime fiction/mystery series. The first one featured Inspector Montalbano from Sicily in The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri.  Then it was off to France for the second, The Chalk Circle Man, by Fred Vargas.  Johan Theorin's book The Darkest Room was up next -- a most amazing and atmospheric novel, one of my favorites for 2010.  And an old favorite, Agatha Christie, made the list with A Caribbean Mystery.  Leaving Europe, I went off to Japan for The Master Key, which was written in the 1960s -- an oldie but still very much a goodie.   Read but not yet reviewed is Kraken, by China Mieville, which was at times laugh-out-loud funny. 

Currently I'm reading Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista, a finalist on the shortlist for the CWA International Dagger Award. 

In the reading plans for the week:  
Thirteen Hours, by Deon Meyer
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge, by Patricia Duncker
The Madonnas of Echo Park, by Brando Skyhorse
and whatever

so that's that. Happy reading

The Darkest Room, by Johan Theorin

9780385342223

Delta/Random House, 2009
Original Swedish title: Nattfåk, 2008
438 pp.
translated by Marlaine Delargy

Joakim and Katrine Westin, along with their two small children, have decided to leave Stockholm to buy and renovate an old manor house at Eel Point on the island of Öland.  Along with its two lighthouses, this area has a long history of shipwrecks and drownings, and it is said that the voices of the dead can still be heard. But for Joakim and Katrine, Eel Point offers a new beginning. For their children there are meadows and forests to play in, a definite change from urban life in Stockholm. But after only a couple of months, the idyllic setting becomes a place of dread after a terrible tragedy, which leaves Joakim shaken and inconsolable, unable to deal with his grief.  He begins to become more interested in Eel Point's haunted history, wondering indeed if the dead inhabit the area, and the house begins to act on his damaged soul. He meets Tilda Davidsson, a newly-recruited police officer who has moved to the area to escape from the gossip involved with her affair with a married policeman, and because she has family there.  Tilda's great-uncle is Gerlof Davidsson, who was a major character in Theorin's first novel, Echoes From the Dead, and she spends a lot of time with him, putting his memories of his life on Öland down on tape.

But there's more. As the Westin family is coping with its grief, the two Serelius brothers and their cohort in crime Henrik Jansson are busy breaking into vacation homes where the owners are away, stealing valuables and causing general mayhem. It's not long until their forays escalate and they start breaking into occupied houses and becoming violent, hopped up on meth before each job. Their activities have been reported to the police, but it isn't until Gerlof suggests to Tilda that she talk to a few of his old friends that anything really happens with the case.

These two plotlines, along with Gerlof's oral history of his family and of life on Öland, also combined with excerpts from a book written by Katrine's mother Mirja Rambe, all weave together into a perfectly-crafted thriller with a slight hint of gothic thrown into the mix.  The sense of place is unbelievably eerie and helps to keep the tension and suspense from ebbing at any point in the story. The characters are meticulously and well constructed, especially in the cases of Katrine and Joakim, whose lives Theorin discloses in only small bits and pieces at a time. The pacing of the novel is just a little slow to begin with, but when it picks up, there is no way anyone can possibly put this book down until it's over.

I have to admit to being put off at first by the hint of the supernatural that figures into the story, but as all came to be revealed, my worries were put to rest and Theorin didn't let me down. It is tough to label The Darkest Room as simply a mystery or a novel of crime fiction, because it's also an examination of loss, grief and human nature in its most vulnerable and exposed state. And as in his earlier Echoes of the Dead, Theorin has created a story in which the past has meaning for and acts on the present -- one of my favorite types of novels. I highly recommend this one and considering I read it in 90+ degree heat with a near equal level of humidity, it made me shiver throughout.  The Darkest Room is simply stellar.

fiction from Sweden