Everything I had ever heard about Cormac MacCarthy’s The Road: “Prepare to be depressed.” That’s it.  Though it feels like dozens of people gave me that warning. The Road tells the story of a man who is traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape with a single but very explicit goal - to protect his young son from the dangers of this barren and cruel world.  

Exactly what has put the land we know in this horrible state is a mystery to us.  What wars occurred?  What natural disasters took place?  These things we don’t know.  Things have taken place that have ravaged civilization and turned one man against another.  We are given no background on how this place got to this state. And we don’t need it. Because there’s one thing that we do know.  And it’s that, more than anything else, this man loves his son, and will do anything to ensure his safety.  

The story isn’t about disasters or the destruction of civilization, it’s about the lengths this man will go to in order to protect his boy. In between the action of their quests and series of escapes, there is a very effective dialogue between the father and son.  There’s something very real about the boy’s thoughts and ideas.  MacCarthy never falls into the trap of writing the kid as kids are normally written, either so sweet and cutesy, or so wise for their years that they’re no longer believable.  When the boy is scared, he says so.  When the father makes a decision that the boy doesn’t understand, he doesn’t yell out in dramatic defiance.  Instead, he becomes quiet.  Often, it takes a bit of time before feelings come to the surface and can work toward resolution.  It’s moments like this that make this relationship work so well in the story.

When I finished the book, I was almost surprised that I wasn’t depressed.  The story is indeed bleak and dark.  But the characters of the father and the son, and their drive to survive, protect, and live was actually kind of uplifting to me.

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While the classics The Shining and Salem's Lot are two of my favorites, much of Stephen King's more recent output has left me a little underwhelmed.  King's latest release, Under the Dome, doesn't really do much to reverse this trend for me.

The novel tells the story of a small town that becomes quite suddenly encased beneath a giant invisible dome.  Of course, it's a mystery as to exactly what the dome is and how it got there.  The sudden appearance (installation? dropping?) of the dome is quite gruesome, as many animals, vehicles, and even people find their collective parts on different sides of the walls.

The tension of the story builds as the inhabitants of the town realize that they're on their own.  While government agents are working on breaking through the dome, they have no control over what's going on inside.  This leaves room for someone to step up to a leadership role, and in this case, naturally the corrupt and power hungry are perfectly happy to assume the position. Big Jim Rennie, the town's Second Selectman, is a used car salesman/politician with a very strong agenda: have every one do every thing his way.  

Big Jim thinks himself righteous, and considers all of his actions to be God's work.  The problem with his philosophy is that his actions include running the largest meth lab on the East Coast, among other crimes.  Rennie is arrogant, holier-than-thou, and delusional, and I'm not sure I have ever despised a character in a book more than Big Jim Rennie.  If that was King's goal, then I'll have to toast his success here.

The novel is very long (1000+ pages), and much of it is spent describing many, many citizens of the town.  It's great to feel like a town in a book is established and has a history, where the various people have lives that matter, but King's ongoing descriptions and histories become excessive.  It gets to the point where reading more and more about how someone used to drive a tractor or has a pointy head feels like a chore.  There were times where I felt I had read chapters and chapters of words without the story moving forward. The book isn't altogether unenjoyable, but is far too long for the story being told.  I'll definitely be looking for something that can manage a good story in a shorter length for my next read.

I've received many recommendations on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, so I finally picked it up and met the challenge of finishing it before Peter Jackson's film adaptation comes out this week. The novel tells the story of 15 year old Susie Salmon.  She's the oldest of 3 children and is an average teenager in 1973 Pennsylvania.  That is, until her murder.  There's no mystery to the reader regarding who the killer is.  It's addressed directly from the moment the act begins.  Instead, the mysteries in the story revolve around the actions of her family and friends in their grief, the police investigation, and the experiences Susie has in her afterlife. Much is written to describe the relationships between Susie, her mother and father, and her younger sister and brother, both before her death and after.  Susie watches over her family from her heaven, realizing that her mother gave up many dreams when she had a family, that her sister would struggle to be seen in her own identity, and that her father's grief and anger would not allow him to rest until Susie's murder was solved. As the police investigation begins, Sebold paints colorful descriptions of the neighbors in the town.  Ruana Singh, wife and mother of an Indian family on the Salmon's street, is exotic and mysterious.  The traits follow in her son, Ray, who becomes a suspect before a solid alibi clears him.  Classmate Ruth Connors, an outcast due to her intelligence and lack of social skills,  is touched by Susie's spirit and becomes fascinated with her experience. This brings me to George Harvey.  Harvey is the villain in the story who robs the town of Susie.  Harvey is described in creepy detail, and from the moment you start reading about him, you can't help but picture an amalgamation of every creepy weirdo you've ever known.  It's appalling when you discover the things Harvey has gotten away with.  It's painful when Susie's father knows Harvey is the murderer and is unable to prove it. Sebold does a great job of delivering the story.  She never tiptoes around painful, dark, or awkward moments, and the murder and investigation is described in grisly detail. It's interesting to see the trials the Salmon family faces as they grieve for the child they lost.  No one in the family is perfect, and as expected, everyone has moments where they nearly go off the deep end.  It's admirable when sister Lindsay manages to stop being the sister of the girl who died, and grows into a strong woman determined to support herself and her family.  It's disappointing when mother Abigail goes to drastic measures to escape her suffering.  Young brother Buckley grows up knowing the pain of losing his sister better than he ever knew her living.  All of this is told through Susie's eyes, and she watches them from Heaven. While I'm not wild about some of the casting, I'm anxious to see the movie adaptation.  Peter Jackson has done some amazing work (Lord of the Rings, Beautiful Creatures) and it will be interesting to see how he translates the novel. See more book reviews

First of all, I'm aware that Dan Brown is often regarded with a high degree of snobbery from many readers.  As a writer, he doesn't really have a discernible style, and he's often chided for being unoriginal.  However, each of his previous books in his Robert Langdon series have flown off the shelves and been wildly successful. In Angels and Demons, as well as The Da Vinci Code, Brown takes an established conspiracy theory (and by established, I mean established by someone else), and creates a fast-paced adventure story to bring this theory to mainstream audiences.  Papal elections are mysterious, and have always fascinated people everywhere.  Brown uses this to his advantage in Angels and Demons.  In The Da Vinci Code, his exploration of the true holy grail gained the notice of  Christian groups, which only increased his exposure.  What makes these books entertaining isn't the writing, it's the ideas that Brown has borrowed. Brown's latest book, The Lost Symbol, once again borrows some ideas as a basis for its story.  This time, Freemasons finally get center stage after mentions in both previous books.  The story sticks to Brown's formula of running from location to location, this time in Washington, D.C., running across various puzzles, solving each one before progressing to the next level.  The lines between science and religion team with the secrecy of the Freemasons to serve as a foundation for Robert Langdon's adventure. In the first two books of the Robert Langdon series, there was a pretty obvious formula to the layout of the stories.  In The Lost Symbol, this same formula is back, and is painfully obvious.  It's almost as if Brown has a standard outline, and just changes the names of the locations and characters in order to suit his latest conspiracy theory. Perhaps the most annoying thing about The Lost Symbol is Robert Langdon himself.  In the earlier books, Langdon is non-judgemental and encourages everyone he comes across to view every new idea or puzzle with an open mind.  In the latest installment, Langdon seems to regard the Freemasons as old kooks and is resistant to every new idea presented to him.  He's the exact opposite of his incarnation in the previous books.  There is no explanation for this in the story. Finally, where The Lost Symbol fails, is that the idea that provides the basis for the story just isn't all that interesting or groundbreaking.  Each revelation that is offered left me disappointed, and hoping that the next revelation would be better.  Unfortunately, that never happened, and once everything was revealed, it just wasn't satisfying.

After a recent second viewing of the film adaptation of Michal Chabon's novel Wonder Boys, I was inspired to read the novel itself.  I tend to do this often; while many people read the book first, then see the movie once it's adapted, on several occasions I've found myself reading the source material after checking out the movie.  Maybe it's a product of not reading enough when I was younger. The novel (and subsequently, the film) tells the story of Grady Tripp, a quickly aging writer who has worked as a professor for a Pittsburgh university for the past 7 years.  This is also the amount of time he has spent writing his book (also called Wonder Boys, thus the title of the novel).  While Tripp has taught student writers of varying degrees of skill and output, his own novel has ballooned to a 2,000 plus page behemoth.  As the story opens, Tripp's editor Terry Crabtree (portrayed vividly in the film by Robert Downey, Jr.) pays a visit for the university's annual WordFest, and expects an update on the state of Tripp's latest masterwork.  Tripp also discovers that his mistress (the university's chancellor) is pregnant with his child.  All of this takes place on the very day that Tripp's wife, Emily, leaves him. To complicate matters further for our hero, he experiences a string of misadventures with an alienated but talented student, James Leer.  James is a bit of an outcast.  Instead of bonding with fellow students or other writers, he identifies with 40's era cinema in order to escape from his sheltered upbringing.  The comic escapades begin when Leer crashes a party at the chancellor's house, and in an attempt to rescue an assaulted Tripp, he shoots the chancellor's husband's blind dog.  Tripp assumes responsibility and the two of them escape before the dog's murder is detected.  Ultimately, Tripp decides to allow Leer to accompany him on a quest to have a discussion with his estranged wife on their future, while discovered that shooting the dog is not Leer's only crime. Once I began reading, I was surprised to discover just how closely the film follows the novel.  The timeline, many of the character descriptions, even a good amount of the dialogue are taken directly from the source.  This has been a rarity in many of the film adaptations I've seen.  The story sticks very close, until branching out when Tripp and Leer travel to the home of Emily's parents to celebrate Passover.  This makes a large portion of the story arc in the novel.  It's altered and greatly condensed in the film, and while the film doesn't suffer from the changes, it makes for wonderful reading in the novel.  These chapters tell you much more about Tripp's relationship with his wife and her family, and inject Leer into a family atmosphere that, while still dysfunctional, is much warmer than the oppressive family dynamic he's known. Ultimately, it's a story of life, love, loss, drugs, treasured memorabilia, and even transvestitism.  Each character is likable, even when it's revealed that most of them have committed some despicable actions.  Chabon's writing style is fairly straight forward, but he also adds a bit of flavor with injections of colorful descriptions and wit that doesn't become pretentious.  Whether or not you've seen the film, I'd definitely recommend the novel for a fun and interesting read. See more book reviews. Image courtesy of Access Hollywood

LiteraryReflections has a new book review posted by Siobhan.

I previously read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold two years ago and really, really enjoyed it, so I decided to give her another chance and picked up (or rather borrowed from my mother) The Almost Moon.

From beginning to end the book covers a span of 24 hours, during which the main character, Helen, murders her elderly mother by suffocating her with a hand towel on the back porch of her childhood home and then trying to deal with the consequences...

Read the full article here:  The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold « Literary Reflections.

Even though I had seen it several times in book stores, I never had much interest in reading Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.  Sure, it has a somewhat captivating cover, featuring a small girl standing next to a pair of empty men’s shoes.  And of course, there was also the “national bestseller” seal stamped at the top.  But something about the title just screamed “Nicholas Sparks” at me. I mean no offense to Mr. Sparks, nor his legions of fans.  I just mean that I was given the impression that this was a novel geared mainly towards women.  I got a definite “Lifetime Original Movie” feel from it.

Another strike against the book was how tired I had become of time-travel stories.  It seemed that over the past couple of years, time-travel was everywhere.  Several movies and TV series were doing it (Heroes, Lost, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Timecrimes, etc.), and several of them were doing it badly.  So I was very burned out on the idea of time travel in a story.

I began to reconsider my stance on The Time Traveler’s Wife after a conversation I had with my friend, Siobhan.  She’s a huge fan of the book (read her review on her website, Literary Reflections), and assured me that this was by no means a “chick book”.  Since we’ve had similar views on other books in the past, I considered her strong recommendation and graciously borrowed her copy of the book.  I’m glad that I did.

The story opens with 20 year old Clare Abshire staking out the Newberry Library waiting for her opportunity to meet 28 year old Henry DeTamble.  28 year old Henry DeTamble has no idea who Clare is.  Not yet.  But Clare knows him.  She’s known Henry since she was 6 years old.  Of course it wasn’t 14 year old Henry that she met.  It was actually 36 year old Henry, who has suffered from a chrono-impairment (he unwillingly travels through time) since the age of 5. This brings me to the first great thing about the book.  Each instance of time travel is detailed in a clear and logical way (very much unlike my cumbersome previous paragraph).  Naturally it’s mysterious, but each trip feels like a well-crafted piece of a puzzle that you assemble as you go along. As I grew accustomed to the utilization and execution of Henry’s time travel, I quickly became enamored with the story. 

After Clare spends her youth meeting and falling in love with older Henry, she finally meets present Henry in real time and eagerly begins her life with him.  The two are exposed to many unique challenges, as to be expected.  Clare is justified in worrying whenever Henry disappears for what may be a very short or very long amount of time.  Henry ponders jealousy at the thought of Clare spending time with an older or younger version of himself.  This factors are what you would expect to see when injecting an element of science fiction into a love story. What came less expected to me however, was the dark tone and sometimes almost sinister nature of some of Henry and Clare’s experiences.  This is where Niffenegger shines, and what sets this book apart from other love stories. As it turns out, time travel can be quite a violent and sometimes bloody affair.  Since Henry’s travels are often brought on by moments of tense stress, he’s often returned to periods in his life of great darkness, causing him to relive the most harrowing parts of his life.  And since Henry cannot take along any physical materials on his travels, witnesses often react with great shock to the sudden appearance of a naked man in their midst.  Henry gets in fights -- often.  He routinely appears in the middle of dangerous and life-threatening situations. Niffenegger doesn’t make light of these situations, and she doesn’t shy away from graphic detail in her descriptions of them.  At the most tragic of events in the lives of Henry and Clare, Niffenegger plunges the reader into the story directly, explicitly, and vividly.  In chapters describing their journey to have a child, rather than keeping things light-hearted and sweeping the ugly details under the rug, she dives right in with no fear of being dark, or even macabre at times.  It’s gritty, it’s sometimes ugly, and it’s realistic.

While Henry is not without some serious faults, he and Clare are quite likable.  It’s easy to sympathize with both characters, and to cheer for them when times are hard.  It’s an unlikely romance, and it’s hard to fathom that it can actually work, but at the times that it works, it’s satisfying.  Their story is equal parts beautiful and tragic, and it’s a fun read to accompany them on their journey.