May 2008 Archives

Reviewed by John Glover, Reference Librarian for the Humanities

The 1992 death of the wanderer Christopher McCandless was a strange one. He died of starvation, alone in the Alaskan bush, with few possessions. With a little more preparedness for his surroundings—a compass, a map—he might have left his campsite and traveled to a nearby cabin, or the few dozens miles to civilization. Instead he wasted away, his body eventually found by moose hunters. This story makes for a gripping, thought-provoking read. It's difficult not to wonder what one would have done under similar circumstances, what choices one would have made and what the result would have been.

Jon Krakauer, an experienced outdoorsman, went north to learn about McCandless, publishing an article in Outside the next year that became the basis for Into the Wild. The book explores McCandless' life and wanderings, as well as those of others who have traveled into the American wilderness to find themselves, or solitude, or escape from society. Krakauer spent much time with McCandless' journal and correspondence, interviewing his family and other people who knew him, and learning whatever could be reconstructed of his travels. Along the way, Krakauer recounts his own outdoor experiences under harsh conditions, musing over how close he himself might have come to death.

Cabell Library CT9971.M35 K73 1996

Reviewed by Renée Bosman, Reference Librarian for Government and Public Affairs and Reference Collection Coordinator

Not for the faint of heart, The Savage Detectives is a dreamlike and gritty tale of the fictional Visceral Realism poetry movement in 1970s Mexico City. The story follows the elusive ringleaders of this motley group of young writers – Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima – on their quixotic mission to find Cesárea Tinajero, the first true Visceral Realist. By turns ponderous and gripping, The Savage Detectives is an absorbing novel that is not to be missed, if only to experience Bolaño’s style and Wimmer’s superb translation.

Told through the voice of a seventeen-year-old law school dropout and newly-minted member of the group, Juan García Madero, the novel begins with an account of the events leading up New Year’s Eve 1975, when he, Arturo, and Ulises flee Mexico City under inauspicious circumstances. At this point the story changes abruptly to a series of narratives from over fifty characters, spanning more than twenty years and several continents. Ostensibly about what happens to Arturo and Ulises after that fateful New Year’s Eve, these pieces also function as haunting, intimate portraits of the narrators themselves. The shortest part of the novel then returns to New Year’s Day 1976, with García Madero’s diary entries chronicling their fateful trip into the Sonora Desert and to the conclusion of their literary quest.

PQ8098.12.O38 D4813 2007

Reviewed by John Glover, Reference Librarian for the Humanities

In this debut novel, Austin Grossman writes of the lives, loves, and traumas of superheroes. The story doesn't take place in the well-worn worlds of Marvel or DC, but the characters are all types (or combinations thereof) recognizable to anyone who knows comics: the near-invulnerable man, the mythological figure, the half-man/half-machine, the feral fighter, and so on. And what would a novel of heroes be without supervillains? The two viewpoint characters are Dr. Impossible, evil mastermind par excellence, and Fatale, a female cyborg with a cloudy past who has been asked to join The Champions, a super-group analogous to the JLA or the Avengers.

This rousing yet thoughtful novel is a beautiful counterpoint between the main characters. On one page the reader encounters Fatale's frustrations over not being able to sit in chairs that won't support her armor, and on the next Dr. Impossible is lamenting his tendency to leave crucial details of his doomsday devices unplanned until the last minute. Grossman plays his characters' agonies straight, exploring the psychology and lives of people set forever apart from the rest of humanity. Serious takes on the world of comics have been done before, in fiction and in comics themselves, but the author brings a deft hand at characterization to the project.

As much as this is a story about super-powered people, it's a story about humans in opposition, forced to live out their lives in circumstances they believe they don't deserve, or in other cases circumstances they believe is their due as the best of society. Grossman's style is economical and transparent, aside from occasional rhetorical flourishes that neatly match the action of the story. This novel will be a thrill for you if you enjoy comics and a fast-paced story that still takes time to explore the lives of its characters.

Cabell Library PS3607.R666 S66 2007

Reviewed by John Glover, Reference Librarian for the Humanities

Hank Thompson, protagonist of Charlie Huston's slam-bang neo-noir, has not had an easy life. From a baseball accident that ended a promising career to a car crash that left him unable to drive to the bottles of booze that fill his apartment, this strangely gentle man never really caught a break. He was doing OK, though, until his neighbor left town and gave Hank his cat to watch... and the key hidden at the bottom of the cat's litter box. Various people come looking for the key, and that's when the fun begins.

The novel stands up next to James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia or Scott Smith's A Simple Plan, in both the dark settings and the violence. The seedy world of the characters includes beatings, shootings, robbery, torture, and worse yet. In this environment, it's not a question of whether a good man will go bad, but the manner in which it will happen, and how bad he'll go. Huston's narration and use of the first-person viewpoint is gripping, conveying the thoughts and fears of Hank Thompson very well. The plot twists and turns to some extent, but the action and violence of this story are what will keep you reading until 2 a.m.

Cabell Library PS3608.U855 C38 2004