re:mote voices: literature

Title: Shooting At Midnight
Author: Greg Rucka
Publisher: Bantam

As far as I can gather this is the fourth novel by Greg Rucka, a writer I am more familiar with from his comics work. Which is probably why I found this in a comics shop. It seems his previous novels have dealt with a character called Atticus Kodiak, though with this piece he has decided to spin off. Bridgett Logan we learn is a private investigator and an ex-junkie, along with which she is the estranged lover of the afore mentioned Kodiak. The book is split into three sections, the first and last being from Logan's perspective. Through the first section Kodiak is a message, a phone conversation, a background character that isn't met. In the second section he takes over the narration and that carries into the third where Logan comes to the fore once more and the two characters are reconciled.

One morning Bridget receives a phone call from Lisa, a fellow ex-junkie she hasn't heard from in years. Both have put their old lives behind them, never becoming a cop as she had originally planned, Bridget has become a private investigator and none of her new friends know about her past. But Lisa and Bridget were close in rehab, giving them ties regardless of the gap years. In that time Lisa hasn't done quite as well, struggling as a single mother to get through college, while dancing in a peep club to pay her way. Unfortunately Lisa's old dealer has found her and as far as he is concerned she owes him big time. Word on the street is he is in with the big boys and having survived on the street for so long it's clear he is a bad bastard. Lisa feels the only to be free of him is to kill him, she wants Bridget's help. As much as Bridget wants to help she doesn't feel murder is the answer. But they set the dealer up, beat the shit out of him and dump him bloody and broken on the street - sorted! They guy is in trouble anyway and has been looking for an easy solution, this beating makes it clear that this isn't it.

Life goes back to normal, until the police turn up on Bridget's door step looking for Lisa who is wanted for the dealer's murder. This sets everything in a spin - why is the dealer dead, how did the police track Lisa to it. As witnesses add to the case it looks like Lisa's case is worsening, especially as it increasingly looks like she actually did do it. Bridget gets involved as an investigator and friend, getting deeper into a drug culture that she is daily trying to avoid.

Rucka tells his story well, working the characters in to the overall structure and supplying details about them as we go. With this the characters take on dimensions and their actions make some sense within the context of the book. Along with that you also get the impression of history and of a scope that goes out with the restrictions of this story - helping to provide the impression that these people existed before and will continue to lead their lives after. I guess that this falls into the category of crime novel, and is certainly the most straight forward of the genre I've read to date. Given that most of the stuff I've read that might be considered crime is more likely to be considered to be from another genre first.

RVWR: PTR
September 2001

Title: Invisible Monsters
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Vintage

I would like to be able to say that I had found Chuck's work before, but I didn't. Fight Club was my first clue that he existed and with that it was also the first of his books that I read. With the publication of his fourth novel Choke I've got round to going back to his earlier work. I had nearly picked up Invisible Monsters before so it was my choice this time.

Invisible Monsters is the story of a model who has been mutilated in an "accident". From a model with a potentially promising career she has lost half her face and now people can't bear to look at her, becoming treated like an "invisible monster". In the hospital she is befriended by a gorgeous trans-sexual, something of a cult of personality. At the same time she is presented with her ex-best friend and her ex-fiancé, who have been sleeping together behind her back and either one could be responsible for her current condition.

The story is told in jump cuts, allowing confusion to be established while at the same time slowly piecing together events in an order designed to allow the truth of situations to have the maximum impact. The story starts with the culmination of events and then flashes variously between events. In this way we learn about narrator - her brother who died of aids and how she hated him, how this affected her relations with her parents, and how her past relates to her relations with her boyfriend and best friend. Sequentially there is then the aftermath of her disfigurement - her options of extensive surgery and how she interacts with the world. How she then ends up this long road trip around America with the cult of Brandy Alexander - the woman to be who redefines the lives of her and the man that is with them at every stop.

This is a mad, drug heavy journey where the characters seem to be striving towards a self-destructive future, revenge and rejection. The style of the novel is to a degree intended to be disorientating. So that when the author drops a substantial nugget of information on you it takes you by surprise, but to the same extent the clues have been there already. The author plays us along from start to end and through all the jumps along the way, with his well toned, witty writing and his attacks on expectation. There are some great scenes in here, leaving the reader being both shocked and amused - prime examples being the explicit conversations regarding gay sex the narrator's parents have at family get together in response to the death of their son. A work that has set me up just nicely for picking up Choke.

RVWR: PTR
September 2001

Title: The Secret Of Life
Author: Paul McAuley
Publisher: Voyager

Both the Chinese and Americans have been exploring Mars to try and find signs that life may have existed there, or in fact may still somehow survive there. However past some fossil evidence there has been no evidence of more recent life; at least that is what the Chinese claimed. Reality seems to contradict this and when an act of industrial espionage goes wrong there is something "foreign" growing in our oceans, and expanding at a frightening rate. As a prominent biologist who has been studying the beginning of life, Mariella is recruited by NASA for a new trip to Mars, though NASA's corporate backers aren't particularly happy about her inclusion. Against a background of corporate informational blackout Mariella spends the time running up to the launch trying to find out the truth behind the expanding slick and the possibility that life may actually have been found on Mars. Especially when that life may back up her theories about the origins of life on Earth and when the slick may threaten life on Earth.

The Secret Of Life is told in three sections - the run up to Mars launch, the time on Mars and the return from Mars. During each, Mariella is pit against the way in which things should be done, a fact that becomes increasingly evident as each section progresses. At first this doesn't seem obviously the work of McAuley, giving a more straight-ahead approach, with its scientists and politicians. There are more impressions of Greg Bear or Bruce Sterling coming across - with a quote from Bear on the cover and references to the first born crisis that is comparable to herod's disease in Darwin's Radio, or the environmental impact and political jockeying that reminds of Distraction/Heavy Weather. The nature of Mariella is that she is against this background but has some counter-culture leanings, which tends more towards Sterling than Bear, and less McAuley with the likes of Fairyland as an example. However as the book progresses there is more to tie this back to the McAuley paradigm, Mariella going into the underground and using her counter culture links disappears into the "invisible country" (references to a short story and short story collection by McAuley) described as the real America. In particular the recurring character Darlajane B pops up long enough to get a laugh from me and to reinforce the links back to Fairyland and the likes. To me this seems to be detached from that kind of work, though it is interesting to know that the events of this books are not exclusive, especially when the first American trip to mars actually took place as a back drop in Fairyland.

The Secret Of Life is for the most part enjoyable, tying in nicely with the likes of Fairyland, Invisible Country and the return to Mars following Red Dust. Though as much as I enjoy his work this has some of the weaknesses that I have come across in the past, so that parts do not entirely convince. Certain long dialogues from the lead character come across as being too preachy, so that while the idea of corporate interference in science and society as a whole comes across as a nice sub-text it is overplayed in some of these sections. In turn the ending and the decisions that it reflects do not sit entirely well and I'm not sure that they really reflect the choices of the character.

RVWR: PTR
September 2001

Title: American Gods
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Headline Feature

Shadow is finishing off his three years in prison. Looking forward to getting out, being reunited with the wife he has missed so much and rebuilding his life after the foolish incident that put him here. As the time passes it seems to do so painfully slowly, but it comes too soon. Mere days before he is due to be released his wife is killed in a car crash and "compassionately" Shadow is released early. Heading back to the old town, things aren't going well, so when he meets a mysterious stranger it doesn't really make a lot of sense to him. But with his life turned around it's not long before he is convinced to take the job this Mr. Wednesday offers him. This is the beginning of the story as Shadow joins Wednesday in his preparations, meeting old immigrants who have been in America for a long time now and whose lives are fading. It becomes clear however that these people are American gods, where gods are created and maintained by belief. Brought to America with each influx of foreigners over the millennia these gods have been birthed and flourished as long as their was belief in them, with that gone it looks like their time may well be up.

As a writer Gaiman has always filled his work with references to legend, most obviously this gained him a cult status with his work on Sandman. With that I suspect it is fair to say that American Gods extends as much from Sandman as it does from his first novel Neverwhere. Legends of creatures and gods are woven into American Gods, taking from a multitude of cultures and allowing them to interact and clash. For the most part American Gods is delivered in a "straight-forward" fashion, Shadow is presented as a real person with a real life, and the complications that entails. To begin with the idea of gods is conveyed more as short bridge pieces between chapters, the "coming to America" sections being historical flashes of people coming to America for the first time or other sections where we witness "gods" reduced to ekeing out a poor existence as the likes of taxi drivers or prostitutes. As it continues the characters that Shadow and Wednesday encounter become more clearly what they are, but still they are made human with their concerns. With that as mystery increases Shadow remains our link to the action, even while it is suggested that there is something different about him and he is increasingly haunted by strange dreams.

While not especially a fan of the cult attention that Gaiman receives, or more accurately the Sandman product and the way it continues to be exploited by some, I do have a certain degree of respect for his writing ability. Having read Neverwhere before this and enjoying that as a novel it seemed likely that American Gods could have some potential. Which it does, meaning that I found it to be quite an enjoyable read and it kept me going for the couple of days it took me to work through it.

RVWR: PTR
September 2001