Setting the Bar

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson is the second in the Millenium trilogy (the First was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). In this novel, we again are dealing with Michal Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salandar. Michal had made his fortune and fame with Lisbeth’s help by bringing down a top financial firm in the last novel.  He’s made his name exposing corruption so when Dag Svensson, a young freelance reporter, approaches him with an idea for a book and an issue for the magazine in which he exposes the sex trade industry, Blomkvist’s interest is immediately piqued. This novel takes place about one year after the events in the first novel and Blomkvist has had no contact with Lisbeth Salander since their last project together, even though Lisbeth maintains contact with him by checking his hard drive on occasion.

She is drawn to the investigation that Blomkvist and his new reporter are conducting because she herself is a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her court appointed guardian as well as the social services system in Sweden.  She’s actually a kick ass feminist who is obsessed with ridding Sweden at least from misogynists, of whom there are many in this novel.  She actually begins to plot the destruction of the people that are listed in Blomkvists’ files but before she actually does anything, three people die and she’s accused of the murders. To avoid capture by the Swedish police, who have jumped to a conclusion about Salander, Salander disappears. The media have a field day with her while Blomkvist tries to clear her name.

I really enjoyed the critique of misogynistic women and the women that they exploited. These men are portrayed as violent, perverted, corrupt, and protected by high-ranking officials in Swedish society – so Larsson is posing questions about the abuse of power. He shows how easy it is for those in high places to cover up their misdeeds.  It was a fast paced and quick read and the translation from Swedish to English was actually quite good.

This was a good book - not just your run of the mill mystery.

When I was in college, I was very interested in all things Chinese. I didn’t take a language course because at the time, meeting for a class that is that intensive (it met five mornings a week for two hours and you had extensive labs) seemed more of a time commitment than I could handle (kicking myself now, I instead took Spanish for two years). As a history major, I took a Chinese history course - the survey course- as part of my BA requirement and fell in love with Ancient Chinese history. However, the Maoist regime and Cultural Revolution were also fascinating and that is where the Vagrants  by Yiyun Li really comes into play.

The Vagrants is Li’s first novel (she published a collection of Short Stories previously). The setting is Communist China in 1979 - three years after Chairman Mao’s death and ten years before the Tiananmen Square Massacre .  Li introduces us to and follows a group of people that seemingly don’t have anything in common with one another. She follows them over a period of three months in their industrial town of Muddy River, which isn’t really a city but is big enough to make some money for the province and to be noted by the government. In Beijing, a Democratic Wall has been set up - the precursor for the aforementioned revolution in 1989 - and news of the wall has reached Muddy River. Provincial leaders in Muddy River are very nervous that the news of the Wall will cause a lot of unrest and protests. The story begins with the day on which a young woman, Gu Shan, is to be executed after spending ten years in prison for being a counterrevolutionary and not being reformed/re-educated. Her new capital crime is denouncing the Communist regime in her prison journals. A number of the major characters gather to see her executed - Nini (a severely deformed girl), Kai (a seemingly model citizen who married into a good family, had a son and reads the morning news), Bashi (a young man whose father was a commemorated war hero), and Tong (a young boy that has moved to the city recently).

Kai learns that Gu Shan’s execution was pushed through hurriedly so that her kidneys could be harvested and transplanted into the body of a mid level Communist party member. Because of this, she organizes a peaceful revolution that includes Gu Shan’s parents and many town members. I didn’t want to give too much away, so I felt that I had to be pretty barebones in describing the basic premise of the novel.

I loved this novel. Even though the writing is sparse in some places and very simple, you get a rich image of what it was like to live in Muddy River in 1979, during this time.  Li paints a stark picture of the hunger, poverty and competitiveness as well as the stresses of constantly having to look over your shoulder and mind what words you say (or risk being arrested as a political prisoner and maybe executed!). It’s very disturbing when the best advice that a parent can give her 8 year old son is “Follow what you’ve been taught, say what you’ve been taught and sing what you’ve been taught and you will be ok.” The mistrust is enough to cause someone to die of a heart attack because of the stressors on their lives.

This chilling novel is a powerful novel and a requiem to the people that lost their lives in trying to make their country a better place.

Book 74/100

I’ve read a lot of Terry Brooks. I was fascinated and even, some would say, obssessed with the Shannara books (although they seemed to be an updated version of the Lord of the Rings books).  I read them for the first time when I was a 12 year old geek in sixth grade, with nothing better to do on a Friday night and I’ve recently re-discovered them as an adult. So I decided I would try the Landover books, in part because I was fascinated by the premise and in part because I’m a Brooks fan.

In this book, the first of the series, we meet 40-something year old Ben Holiday. Ben’s real life is a shell of his former life. While he is a successful, much respected and wealthy attorney, he is hopelessly in despair. He’s alone more often than not and his wife, Annie, died in a tragic car accident two years before the events in this book while she was 12 weeks pregnant with their first child. Ben hasn’t ever really gotten over the loss and has withdrawn into himself and his work. He doesn’t seem to feel that he has much to live for - as his wife has died and he doesn’t get a whole lot of satisfaction from his job, even though he’s disgustingly successful. While thumbing through a holiday catalog that arrives at his home addressed to his wife, Ben sees an advertisement for a magic kingdom for sale for a mere million dollars. Ben has the money and decides to make the purchase because he’s got nothing to lose except money (of which he apparently has a lot) and the catalog itself comes from a reputable company. Ben is whisked away to Landover by the broker, a wizard himself. Ben finds that the kingdom was once beautiful, but is now in steep decline, having been without a true king for 20 years.  The Blight is slowly killing the kingdom and the castle, Sterling Silver, that he is to live in. Ben learns that in the 20 years since the previous king died, scores of people just like him have attempted to ascend to the throne, but have failed and have actually, mysteriously disappeared upon their renunciation of the throne.

Ben sets off, with the help of Questor (the court magician), Abernathy (the court scribe), Bunion and Parnsip (a pair of kobolds), Willow (a sylph) and a pair of gnomes to try to convince the various groups of subjects to pledge their allegiance to him. This wasn’t the best book generally that I’ve read and it wasn’t particularly good fantasy either.  My two year old probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it either, even though it seems more appropriate for a group of people other than adults.  I just couldn’t get into it, even though I liked the writing style very much. There just isn’t a whole lot of creativity going on either. For someone that had such rich names for places and descriptions in the Shannara books, names like the Wastelands and Ben Holiday just didn’t quite raise to the challenge.

The plot was utterly devoid of any turns that I couldn’t see coming at me miles in advance. It was almost like driving through the flat lands in the midwest and being able to see everything coming at you for miles and trailing behind you for miles. There were no surprises or plot twists that left you breathless or savoring the moment or wanting to read more.  It was just plain boring.

If you’re going to have a lawyer as your main character, don’t make them some boring big firm litigation type.  Make them a public defender with some spunk for crying out loud.  Ben Holiday was BORING too and didn’t really learn anything during the 300 plus pages of this novel. He was flat, just like the rest of this book. I had no connection with him at all and he could failed or succeeded, but I honestly didn’t care which. I just wanted it to end.

I was embarassed that Terry Brooks wrote this and that it was actually published because it was absolute garbage. Sorry Mr. Brooks - I liked some of your other stuff, but this wasn’t your most shining of moments.

Book Number 73/100

I find books about the Middle East, and Iran in particular, fascinating.  This book was very illuminating. Pasha, the main character, is a 17 year old young adult in Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s tyrannical regime.  He and his best friend, Ahmed, fall in love with their neighbors - Ahmed with Faheema and Pasah with Zari. Pasha is in his senior year of high school and is well along the path towards attending school in the United States, where he will study engineering. Pasha has a crush on his next door neighbor Zari, but from the beginning, things seem stacked against them. She is engaged to a progressive University student that Pasha admires greatly. Doctor is also involved in revolutionary activities and leaves town for some time in order to engage in his activities. While Doctor is away, Ahmed, Faheema and Pasha meet at Zari’s home to keep her company. When Doctor returns home, tragedies mount and mount and mount. They seem to beget each other.

This was a first book by Seraji, who came to the United States from Iran when he was 19 to study film.  It was a very good first novel and I felt like I learned a lot from it.  At times it was very lyrical. At the same time, however, there were parts where the writing was very jerky.  The young people that he wrote about were very well developed and faced so much in their very short lives.  The relationships are wonderful and very well developed. The dialogue is just as rich as the descriptions and they balance each other out very well. This is a very realistic and beautifully done first novel in general.