“Hollowpoint” by Rob Reuland (Random House, 2010)

The first novel from the Brooklyn assistant district attorney, Hollowpoint is about the murder of a fourteen year-old girl in the slums of Brooklyn.  The question is who is the killer?  The case is left to be solved by the main character (also an assistant district attorney) Andy Giobberti.

Though the language is somewhat lacking in structure, drive, and colorful imager, the book maintains the important issue of remaining realistic.  That is what makes this book readable; the reader is constantly telling themselves that this is a story and nothing else, except they keep questioning the validity of this thought.

Reuland has been associated with John Grisham in writing Hollowpoint and though the personal events may be similar (Grisham was a lawyer, then he began writing books about lawyers), the writing styles are totally different.  The language is amateurish and almost annoying in some cases, but the book remains true and that is what spurs the story along.

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally published on September 4th 2001 ©Alex C. Telander.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

“Being Dead” by Jim Crace (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000)

“‘It’s not as if . . . ,’” she said.  And then her scalp hung open like a fish’s mouth.  The white roots of her crown were stoplight red.”  A couple suffers a horrific fate at the hands of a granite-club-wielding  murderer, while they enjoy each other on the beach of Baritone Bay, where they first met.  This is the premise of Being Dead, from English novelist Jim Crace, author of Quarantine and Signals of Distress.  “Crace is a writer of hallucinatory skill,” says John Updike.

The novel begins with the two bodies lying in the sand, his hand latched on to her shin, a symbol of their unbreakable love passing into eternity.  From there the novel takes three directions.  One is the incidents that lead up to their deaths; another is how they first met, then fell in love, married, and spent the following thirty years together; the last is the succeeding days of their corpses suffering the wear and teat of nature and the weather, as their bodies remain undiscovered.

Who would have thought it possible that a novel about the death of the main characters would be published?  Being Dead cannot be locked into one specific genre, but seems to flitter over them all, one minute taking you to the horrors of their deaths and decay, the next dabbling in the moving love story that kept them together for so long.  Crace has a writing style that is truly unlike any other.

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally published on September 4th 2001 ©Alex C. Telander.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

“LT’s Theory of Pets” by Stephen King (Simon and Schuster Audio, 2001)

Stephen King brings us a surprise publication with LT’s Theory of Pets, a new audiobook from Simon and Schuster audio.  This is Kin’s latest audiobook release since Blood and Smoke.  LT’s Theory of Pets is a short story read by the author, recorded at London’s Royal Festival Hall, and therefore a sure Stephen King rarity.

LT is the narrator of the story, telling the story to the other main character.  The story he recounts is one that he tells to many people and as often as possible.  In this story he reveals his theory of pets.

The story is about his relationship with his wife, and how one day she just isn’t there with his wife, and how one day she just isn’t there anymore.  All that remains is a long, detailed note and the cat.  The cat that LT bought for her years before, but instead of fixating on his wife, the cat immediately attaches itself to LT and a bond is formed; as for the relationship between cat and wife, it borders on cruel and evil.  Then there is the dog that Lt’s wife bought for LT, because he liked the dog on Frasier.  Once again a strange, almost supernatural situation takes place, where the dog attaches itself to LT’s wife, while it and LT become nemeses.

And so the story is told, from beginning to end.  But then you think the tape is coming to an end, a change takes place.  LT’s Theory of Pets takes a turn for the dark and horrific, creating a cold feeling within you, leaving you ill at ease.

With this unique recording, for the first time, you are listening to Stephen King with an audience; you laugh along with them when he tells his funny and sometimes obscene jokes, and then become scared and a chill runs down your spine as you hear a dead silence, punctuated by Stephen King’s nasally voice, and you realize that everyone is just as scared as you.

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally published on September 10th 2001 ©Alex C. Telander.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

“The Inhuman Condition” by Clive Barker (Pocket Books, 2001)

The Dark Weaveworld of Clive Barker,
Part 1 of 3: “The Inhuman Condition”

In the mid-to-late eighties, after the first three successful installments of the Books of Blood, the next three in the series were released under the same title.  Earlier this year, these three books were re-released in paperback from Pocket books.  The Books of Blood IV and V were published under the names of the first short story in each respective book: The Inhuman Condition and In the Flesh.  The Books of Blood VI was published differently: joined with the novel Cabal, the four stories are added on after the novel, providing a very nice anthology for fans of Clive Barker.

“The Inhuman Condition”: Two thieves decide to vent their anger on a hapless hobo, while the other sees little use in this and decides to wait at the side while the other two reduce the vagabond to a bloody pulp.  Karney, while he impatiently waits, finds a piece of rope with three knots in it, belonging to the now bloody hobo.  Taking the line of knots home, he furiously begins to attempt to untie one.  It takes him days, but finally it is complete and a supernatural beast is released.

The same occurs with the other two knots.  However, the hobo wants the knots and its beasts back, for they are very much a part of him in a way that the reader cannot possibly imagine.

“The Body Politic”: A story where one’s hands attain their independence and seek out a way to separate themselves from the unwanted body they are connected to.  Like some nightmarish disease, this spreads to many people, and scenes are revealed in amazing imagery by Barker’s skilled pen, of hands detaching themselves from their respective bodies and then strangling and strangling until there is not longer any movement in the husk that the hands were once connected to.

Only one man is able to devise a plan that will lead to the extinction of this army of protesting hands, though he carries it out at the sacrifice of his own life.  Nevertheless, the world is safe again, for the moment.  In another place, a new horror animates itself in rebellion.

“Revelations”: Two of the characters in this story have been dead for twenty years (he from a bullet shot by his wife for cheating on her; she from the electric chair after being tried and convicted for the murder of her husband).  They return to the scene of the crime in an effort to understand what went wrong.

At the same time there is another couple, he an annoying Bible-thumping evangelist, she submissive and unquestioning.  But this night will be different.  This time she will no longer submit to his whim and that of God; she will stick up for herself for the first time.  It will end in bloodshed and death, in a grand finale where shots will be fired.  The end is already determined.  And then again, not.

“Down, Satan!”: A man loses his belief in God, his new plan is to find Satan and deny him, proving to God how faithful he is.  To bring Satan to him, the billionaire creates a pseudo-Hell in North Africa: “There were ovens large enough to cremate familiars; pools deep enough to drown generations.  The new Hell was an atrocity waiting to happen; a celebration of inhumanity that only lacked its first cause.”  Though he is unsuccessful in ensnaring Satan, the many pain-inflicting tools of this New Hell begin to work, seemingly of their own accord.

“The Age of Desire”: A new drug has been invented, one which turns on the libido to its full potential and lets it rule the body over the brain and the heart.  The first time it is administered to a human, he rapes and kills the doctor then escapes.  The other doctor disappears into hiding.  The police arrive and pick up the pieces and try to understand what is going on.  Meanwhile the infected human, possessed by what he considers an all-consuming fire on his skin, attacks the nearest person (be they male or female) and proceeds to abuse them in every sexual way possible.  His desires rise to such a crescendo that he proceeds to find a sexual interest in inanimate objects, such as brick and stone.

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally published on September 10th 2001 ©Alex C. Telander.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

“The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm” Selected and Edited by Jack Zipes (Norton, 2000)

Tales of Them Fairies

In a new text from W. W. Norton and Company (publisher of many of your textbooks) comes the latest compendium of the founding yet moving stories of Europe that are fairy tales.  The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, selected and edited by Jack Zipes, has just about every fairy tale you could want.  The book has also been published in the Norton tradition, with thin-leaf pages that hold a large number of words, making the book smaller than the thousand pages insinuates, and therefore lowering the price.

Some of the more familiar fairy tales in this anthology include: “Puss in Boots,” “Rapunzel,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Beauty and the Beast.”  The difference here is that the fairy tales are in their complete original form (albeit translated), just as the author originally wrote them.  This is a book that anyone with an affection for fairy tales could do with.

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally published on September 4th 2001 ©Alex C. Telander.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.