Month: September 2021

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King & Owen King – Book Review

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Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King & Owen King – Book Cover

I’ll admit, among all kinds of books, I’m particularly drawn to the hefty ones. Luckily for me, one of my favorite authors, Stephen King, has a bit of a reputation for being verbose, so he often treats us to some heavy-weight works. In Sleeping Beauties, the master storyteller, with the help of his eager son Owen, explores what might happen if all women suddenly fell asleep. Permanently.

Even just imagining it is terrifying!

Who would cook? Who would do the laundry? Who would clean up after that? I sure wouldn’t, that’s for damn sure. Not to mention, lesbian porn as a standalone art form would simply cease to exist!!!

Sleeping Beauties Is a Bit Bland

King (and diligent Owen) don’t explore this traumatic aspect of the premise in their joint work, Sleeping Beauties. Instead, they paint a broad, sweeping picture, centering the events around a small town and its women’s prison. It kicks off with a massive cast of characters, much like Under the Dome, and as in that novel, the story’s strength seems to dissipate and slowly leak away among all these characters. (Except, let’s face it, Under the Dome becomes a total snoozefest around page 70. This book, thankfully, doesn’t reach that level.)

Seasoned King readers, however, will likely feel that Sleeping Beauties falls below the usual standard. It’s as if Stephen King had his diligent son Owen subtracted from him by some mathematical equation. What’s left feels slightly sterile, stripped of the intense energy and deep characterizations typical of King. It’s almost as bare as a screenplay – if you were to turn it into a series, it wouldn’t take too much effort.

Uh, And Where’s the EVIL?!

In The Stand, the transition from normalcy to the post-apocalypse happens right at the beginning of the book. Here, the whole book is about that transition, the gradual slipping away into sleep. I won’t say that the highlighted characters (the upstanding Norcross family members) don’t carry it somewhat, but I also can’t say that all this drama (with some spousal squabbling and a complete lack of capital-letter EVIL) is particularly exciting or gripping.

One thing that does stand out, though, is how much calmer life on Earth would be if women took charge of everything from here on out. No arms race, no war, no worries—maybe just a bit more gossip, and that’s all. (Okay, by that logic, it would be great if the entire government packed up and left immediately, leaving only Kamala Harris and the other chicks behind! Hmm, wait a second. Never mind. Never mind!)

And locked away, yet still carefree,
Beams Eve, offspring of a big tree.

Wait, what?

No Need to Get Excited

Indeed, the catalyst of Sleeping Beauties, the Wooden Lady, aka Evie Black, enters the scene as an Omniscient Bee, an infallible oracle & Terminator, instantly removing any stakes from the start. So there’s no true dramatic clash, or if there is, it’s minuscule and entirely predictable from a mile away. (In case you still don’t get the hint, Evie helpfully spells it out halfway through the book for Dr. Norcross – and thus, for you, too – what the whole game is about. Thanks a lot, Owen, that was a brilliant idea of yours, saving us from any unnecessary suspense or thrills.)

Sleeping Beauties Is a Decent Piece of Craftsmanship

However, before completely ruining everyone’s appetite for this decent piece of work, let’s acknowledge that scene by scene, the book actually works. Despite the overwritten bits, the dragging pace, and the excess of unnecessary characters, Sleeping Beauties manages to keep you hooked because it’s packed with tiny conflicts, mini-stories within the story that, out of sheer curiosity, you just have to know the answers to, or that are simply engaging. What’s more, they’re mixed and paced so skillfully that they carry you through to the big finale – which, interestingly enough, turns out much blander and more boring than the drawn-out buildup.

The same paradox is present in the most unnecessary subplot – the Griner brothers’ antics, which add absolutely nothing meaningful to the whole, yet they’re the most entertaining and most “King-like” part of the book. It really seems like Dad pitched in the most here – if he didn’t write these few, darkly humorous scenes by himself. Plus, of course, he slapped his name on the cover, boosting sales for his kid’s benefit. The rest of the book was likely churned out by young Owen.

Let’s Paint the Whole Thing Green!

And Owen King is clearly a harbinger of new times. You’re not sure right away if his work is a feminist manifesto or more of a Greenpeace-style warning finger. But whichever it may be, you can’t deny there’s a need for it.

Therefore, the blog editorial team hereby awards Sleeping Beauties the Green Piece Prize, newly established this very minute (complete with a Gaia Theory Medal). Winning these is an impressive feat on its own, but if reading this book prevents even one single tough guy from giving his missus a well-deserved smack, or… oh, never mind, let’s leave it at that.

Rating: 7.7/10

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King & Owen King
702 pages, Hardcover
Published in 2017 by Scribner
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You also may be interested:
Fairy Tale by Stephen King
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UPDATE:
The Green Piece Award is being retroactively granted to
Gun Island and
Earthly Remains as well.

Lancelot by Giles Kristian – Book Review

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Lancelot by Giles Kristian – Book Cover

Giles Kristian deftly plucks Lancelot from the famous Arthurian legends and makes him the star of his own story. And why not? Lancelot is the bravest knight of the cycle, so he fits well at the heart of numerous battles, and, not to mention, he even wins the heart of King Arthur’s queen, guaranteeing both romantic drama and other conflicts.

Pure Emotions and a Dirty Dark Ages

Kristian devotes a surprisingly large portion of the book to Lancelot’s childhood, and you’d think it would make for a yawn-fest since, really, what excitement could there be in a future hero’s early years? But it completely proves you wrong. The early chapters are no less captivating than his more significant adult years. In fact, it’s the opposite. The thrill is there right from the beginning, as Guinevere appears on the island where Lancelot is raised, sparking feelings, followed by Merlin, the most renowned of druids, who amps up the tension.

Kristian skillfully brings the legend down to earth, stripping away almost all its mysticism and magic. (If there is any enchantment, it’s likely just a clever sleight of hand.) The legendary figures (or at least their names) do make an appearance, but in a much more grounded, human way, surrounded by all the filth and grime of the medieval world.

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The Silence of the White City by Eva García Sáenz De Urturi – Book Review

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The Silence of the White City by Eva García Sáenz De Urturi – Book Cover

If you’ve read tons of crime novels, you’re well aware that American, British, Scandinavian, etc., detectives work their guts out when there’s a case. They know that as time goes by, it only gets harder to catch a criminal. But what do the Basque cops do in comparison? At least, if we’re going by The Silence of the White City. Well, they just don’t give a good goddamn about the whole thing.

They take it easy over the weekend—even if Spain’s most brutal serial killer in history is massacring half the city. They head to the countryside for a little gardening, plan their upcoming weddings, that sort of thing. Meanwhile, the bodies are piling up like nobody’s business.

Something’s Off with The Silence of the White City

Eva García Sáenz De Urturi’s book feels a bit… off. The foundations are mostly solid, but the quality fluctuates wildly. There’s nothing catastrophically wrong with it, but the constant little irritations keep it from rising above average.

Like what?

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Mad by Chloé Esposito – Book Review

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Mad by Chloé Esposito – Book Cover

Chloé Esposito’s book screams “girly nonsense” from a mile away. “Chick lit”— it gently implies that we’re not exactly dealing with the pinnacles of literary achievement here. So, what’s it doing on this SOPHISTICATED blog, you ask? That is mad! Fate must have had it in for me when the second volume of this esteemed trilogy landed in my hands. I skimmed through, and bam!—a line popped out at me: something, well, very sexual. Alas, I can’t remember a single word of it.

So, Mad promises an unusual and unpredictable adventure (since I don’t normally read this kind of nonsense) in my frenzied search for that lucky sentence—a quest that doubles as an opportunity to write a nice, snarky review. Let’s go!

Chloé Esposito: Grandmaster of Character Building!

Then, what happens? Right from the start of Mad, you’re face-to-face with a MASTERCLASS in character building! In the first two chapters, here’s what we learn about our heroine, the lovely Alvina: she’s lazy, messy, irresponsible, shallow, jealous, greedy, selfish, a drunk, and promiscuous. Oh, and she’s a pyromaniac too! On the other side of the scales? Just two lonely items: she likes to read and writes haikus. Truly a joy, this kind of protagonist.

One more surprise awaits you with Esposito’s book: humor. I’m not really the laugh-out-loud type, but I laughed out loud three times while reading the first two chapters. And twice more in the third. It’s all like a stand-up comedy mixed with a big dose of silliness.

A Romance Novel with a Sociopathic Heroine

That’s about where the good news ends. And where the intro of Mad wraps up. After that, I didn’t laugh anymore, and you probably won’t either, even though similar jokes pop up here and there. The main reason is that it becomes glaringly obvious that Alvina, besides her lovely attributes listed above, is also a sociopath, with the emotional intelligence of a nine-year-old. Armed with this mindset and a 28-centimeter vibrator, affectionately called “Mr. Dick,” she arrives in Taormina to see her rich, successful twin sister. Who promptly asks her to switch identities with her. Wow, never saw that twist coming!

From this point on, Mad is just another airy trifle. Longing for luxury items and charming Italian men. Obligatory sex scenes with partners’ growing penis sizes. (Thankfully, at least, there’s some restraint shown here—not in terms of sizes, but in that there are only about four or five of these scenes, and they’re not overwritten.)

Is Killing Fun? Sure Thing

Then another element enters the mix and takes over: the completely implausible thriller aspect (Cosa Nostra & murders), whose impact dissolves in seconds due to Alvina’s kindergarten-level approach to events. At one point in the plot, our noble heroine decides she wants to be a hitman because it sounds like fun.

And what do you think about a romantic novel whose main character is a sociopath? If you think sociopaths aren’t exactly the romantic type, you’d be spot-on! This is how you write a book that’s also an unintentionally bad parody of itself.

So why stick it out to the end?

1, Damned curiosity.

2, The author constantly tries to explain why Mad’s protagonist, Alvina is the way she is, and at the beginning, to your surprise, it sort of works, and you feel a bit of sympathy for her. But not for very long…

So, why did she turn out the way she did? Why?! Mostly because of that lousy baby formula!

Rating: 6/10

Mad (Mad Trilogy #1) by Chloé Esposito
336 pages, Hardcover
Published in 2017 by Dutton
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UPDATE:
Curiosity got the better of me, and I skimmed the second book, Bad, which immediately demolishes any trace of coherence left in the story with a twist that renders the previous book’s ending meaningless. The quality dips further (5/10), so I never did find out what that intriguing sentence was. If anyone has plowed through the sequel and still has usable brain cells, kindly post the book’s SEXIEST line here for me.

Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh – Book Review

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Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh – Book Cover

Here we go, Gun Island is one of those truly engaging reads that you can really get lost in—it’s not every day you come across a book like this. Though Amitav Ghosh’s style feels a bit reserved and occasionally odd, as if he’s only 99% comfortable with the language he’s using, the interwoven stories soon become captivating. Whenever a new character appears, you can bet the plot will immediately take a turn and wander off. Yet these digressions aren’t true detours, because sooner or later, it becomes clear that everything is connected.

The mysterious and the everyday India

Deen Datta, a New York-based bookseller, stumbles upon an Indian legend. Deen is an unlikely protagonist (okay, not quite as much as the charming Alvina in Mad by Chloé Esposito), and sometimes you’d just love to give him a smack, he’s that hopeless. It’s a peculiar authorial choice to place such an inept character at the center of events. But, to Deen’s credit, he’s a lovable loser.

And just like Deen, the reader gets swept up in the events. The story begins in India, a land of exotic appeal—though here it mostly shows its everyday face, where profound poverty meets modernity (even the poorest souls seem to have a cell phone). Human trafficking and mass migration are as much a part of daily life as the centuries-old legends, not to mention the rampant environmental pollution.

A Thoroughly Cultural-Historical Investigation

The story of Gun Island is complex, and the Ghosh’s thoroughness is impressive across all themes he touches. It’s a curious feeling (at least for us here*) to read about love for language and homeland in a way that’s jingoistic but rather like the simple, joyful thrill of meeting a fellow countryman abroad, who, incidentally, speaks to you in the dialect your grandmother used half a century ago.

The author is just as well-versed in global warming as he is in Venice’s distant past, where our hero finally winds up in his journey across cultures—a journey that’s at times heartwarming, other times eerie.

(It’s a fascinating coincidence that, two books ago, in an entirely different genre [see Donna Leon’s Earthly Remains], the same problems came up in this identical setting.) Venice was built on wooden foundations, and believe it or not, these are now being devoured by shipworms that have appeared due to global warming. So, if you’ve yet to visit the Queen of the Seas, which is slowly sinking into herself, it’s time to hurry.

The essence of the book:

We live in a new world. No one knows where they belong anymore—neither people nor animals.

The Gunpowder Runs Out by the End

The lines of Gun Island and the fate of its characters mirror each other; the trader fleeing from the wrath of Manasa Devi, the goddess of snakes, and the Indian migrants setting out in hope of a better life share numerous parallels. However, as the story unfolds, the legend’s unraveling is increasingly overshadowed by the issue of migration, depicted with Ghosh’s empathetic understanding. (It’s worth noting that Ghosh also presents a fact-based background, tracing these events back to the colonial era.) This is Gun Island’s alpha and omega, where everything leads. But—regardless of your stance on mass migration—this is also where the book begins to lose steam.

By the end, you’ve learned all there is to know about the gun merchant, and the remaining afterthoughts simply lack impact. Deen’s romantic developments feel forced, Cinta’s fate is storybook-like, and the ultimate “grand miracle” is simply dull, despite the author’s intent to make it universally significant. But that’s only the last 50 pages; until then, everything is pretty much on point.

Rating: 7.8/10

Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh
288 pages, Hardcover
Published in 2019 by Hamish Hamilton
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You may also be interested in:
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado – Book Review

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Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado - Book

Award-Winning Tribute to the Female Body

Why was this book nominated for a billion awards? Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties has won several accolades, including the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, which sounds like a significant recognition at first glance. Oh, and it also won the Lambada Literary Award. Alright, enough with the jokes—it’s actually the Lambda Award, which honors the best LGBTQ-themed books.

And here, I’d like to quickly advise the conservative and religious readers of this blog to skip this piece for the sake of their mental well-being!

Her Body and Other Parties (and Carmen Maria Machado) might just be onto something. They certainly know how to title a book.

Surreal Stories

The title, the blurb, and other elements like the Lambda Award promise a dense mix of surrealism, erotica, and sex. Predominantly lesbian sex. Surrealism is present in all but one of the stories, while overt erotica is mostly found in the first one, and the amount of lesbian sex decreases as you progress through the book, eventually fading away completely.

Everyday Female Desires and Strange Mysteries

What you do find in the stories of “Her Body and Other Parties” are the unvarnished depictions of everyday female desires, but even more so, various trauma situations (abuse, body image issues, depression), which are always accompanied by some sort of bizarre mystery that keeps you hooked on the stories: What will happen if the ribbon around the woman’s neck is removed? Will the girl survive the apocalypse? Whose child is that, anyway? And so on. The most interesting thing is that these bizarre situations often serve as a mere framework for the story, but the reasons or meanings behind them are almost never revealed. So, after finishing a story, it continues to linger in your mind. Very clever.

Mostly. There are also some stories that are just strange in a head-scratching way. Except for the pseudo-Special Victims Unit one (Especially Heinous), starring the ghost-seeing Stabler and the unstable Benson. This creation, being a collage of story fragments and casually thrown-in half-sentences, is nearly impossible to interpret within the confines of the known universe.

Beauty and Female Sensitivity

Carmen Maria Machado’s writing is, however, undeniably beautiful and consistently high-quality. I’d even add that it’s written with a female sensitivity, which usually doesn’t imply a positive trait, often leading to excessive sentimentality. But that’s not the case here. And there you have it—an explanation for all the awards and nominations.

The two exceptions that break the overall smoothness of Her Body and Other Parties interestingly disrupt the two most powerful stories: The Resident, which exudes a Stephen King-like ominousness from start to finish—possibly a reflection of the author’s childhood trauma, as she deliberately places her monogram in the text—is ruined by an overdone, out-of-place ending.

And The Husband Stitch contains some forced authorial instructions on how it should be read: “If you are reading this story out loud, make the sound of the bed under the tension of train travel and lovemaking by straining a metal folding chair against its hinges…”

Certainly, dear Carmen! Certainly!

Rating: 7.6/10

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado
248 pages, Paperback
Published in 2017 by Graywolf Press

Earthly Remains by Donna Leon – Book Review

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Earthly Remains by Donna Leon – Book Cover

Average Crime in an Enjoyable Style

The American author lived in Venice for thirty years and began writing her crime series set in the city and its surroundings, featuring Inspector Brunetti, in 2003. The series is now at its 30th installment. Maria Vergine!* The cruel Hungarian** publisher, for some reason, skipped over more than half of the books in the translation process—sometimes leaving out as many as five in a row! So, for example, you might be surprised to learn that by the time Earthly Remains was published, Guido Brunetti had already been promoted to Chief Inspector! And you missed it! And how on earth did Vice-Questore Patta***, Brunetti’s utterly unbearable boss, not manage to block this promotion? Perhaps Signorina Elettra, the charming but mysterious secretary with her own connections, had a hand in it? We’ll never know!

What we do know is that Donna Leon’s novels can be placed in the same category as Simenon’s Maigret stories. (Though they are much more enjoyable.) Mostly, they involve average crimes with everyday culprits, nothing particularly flashy. However, they provide a thorough depiction of the environment and society, offering deep insights into Italian daily life, national character, and cuisine! (Yum—here’s yet another book series that will leave you constantly hungry while reading.) And, of course, Venice.

Let Me Move in With the Brunettis!

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