Vampires in the Lemon Grove

My first impression of the title story in Karen Russell's Vampires in the Lemon Grove was something approaching awe -- this was a novel premise, beautifully executed, well-written. Russell uses the backdrop of vampires who've settled in a small town in Italy to show a couple falling out of love. It's a great story, and probably the best in the collection.

Of the other stories in the collection, "Reeling for the Empire" is nearly as good, and "Proving Up" is truly creepy. "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" are both coming-of-age stories set amidst unsettling conceits. "The Barn at the End of Our Term" seems a little aimless and "Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating" has its funny moments but doesn't really rise to a point. "The New Veterans" has an interesting premise, but really lags in the middle. And the pre-middle. And the post-middle.

This made me want to seek out more of Karen Russell's work -- she puts her characters in odd environments, gives them fantastic (in the literal sense) stimuli, and in that she almost reminds me of Ray Bradbury.

The Burning Plain

The Burning Plain is a classic of Mexican literature, and I can certainly see why. These short stories are all sparse, yet powerful.

Each is short -- some are practically anecdotes. Others are apparently internal monologues. Others are dialogues that read like one person is imagining what the other would say. They build and slowly reveal.

In "The Hill of the Comadres", the narrator opens the story by stating that two of his friends are dead. As he continues, he eventually confesses to killing one of them, but even that seems almost tangential to his recollections. It's about despair, loneliness, deterioration of a community.

"We're Very Poor" is summed up in its first sentence: "Everything is going from bad to worse here."

"Luvina" almost seems like it doesn't fit here. Not that it's a bad story, but it seems tinged with fantasy, like a bad dream. It reminded me of Roberto Bolaño, although if I'd done my homework Bolaño would remind me of Rulfo.

"Anacleto Morones" is the longest in the collection,  and almost seems like an extended setup for a dirty joke.

My favorite story in the collection? Probably "The Burning Plain", which is also the most straightforward, I think. Least straightforward? "The Man."

This is something to revisit, although probably not all at once.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Other Writings

I couldn't find a picture of my particular copy of this book on Google, so I had to take a picture and upload it. Personally, I think that this cover is much more interesting than many of the other cover designs out there.

This particular edition contains Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Suspiria de Profundis, The English Mail Coach, and three essays: "On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts", "On the Knocking on the Gate in Macbeth", and "The Literature of Knowledge, the Literature of Power." It's quite a bit to digest in reading straight through, but taken separately, each section is worth the read.

As might be expected in such a narrative, Confessions of an English Opium Eater has DeQuincey repeatedly emphasizing his station in life, the fact that he is a learned scholar, and that he came to opium for relief of pain only, and resorted to more frequent usage again for pain relief, before the drug finally put its hooks into him. However, despite his occasionally too frequent protestations, this is a very strong section of the work, and well worth revisiting. A criticism frequently leveled at the Confessions are that they glorify and condone the use of opium, that they encourage addiction, but I didn't quite get that; given the subject matter, DeQuincey's praise of opium is less full-throated than I had expected.

Suspiria de Profundis is nominally a sequel to the Confessions, but is a much more abstract work. After an expansion on his childhood and a digression on the human brain, DeQuincey moves into what can only be assumed to be dreams/visions while under the influence of opium. These are, as might be expected, unreal and extravagant. I would recommend "The Dark Interpreter" and "Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow."

The English Mail Coach begins with a very straightforward section, called "The Glory of Motion", extolling the virtues of being a passenger on a Royal Mail Coach. We then have a meditation on sudden death, a retelling of an incident that DeQuincey observed as a passenger on the Mail, and finally, opium dreams about said incident. A very well done essay.

"On Murder" is the highlight of the essays, and is more of a description of some crimes rather than an exaltation of them, which is fine, but a slight disappointment given (again) the author's protestations that this is really a satire, totally, and how could you indict him for it?

Recommended, although more individually than straight through.

Stand on Zanzibar

The first chapter of Stand on Zanzibar is an introduction to a newsmagazine-type program that will recur throughout the novel. The second is titled "Read the Directions" and intersperses bare bones characterization (such as: "Donald Hogan is a spy") with excerpts from in-universe books, newscasts, advertisements, corporate mottoes, gossip, and recruitment. Every character introduced in that chapter is featured in the novel, some more prominently than others. It's a device designed to simulate the information overload that's prevalent in the setting of this novel -- Earth, 40 years from time of writing (that is, 2010, with the novel written in 1969).

The remainder of the novel is like an expanded version of the first chapter; the main plot is interwoven with ads, snippets of talk shows, and the like. It can be a bit jarring. Additionally, of all the characters introduced in the first chapter, some get an expanded look, while others only get one or two -- an intro chapter that sets up their conflict, and the resolution chapter. However, due to the cutting in, introducing the new characters isn't too distracting, and we're left wondering if any of them are going to join the main plot (most of them wind up tangential to it), or even what the main plot is.

While the plot is the engine that drives the book, I would recommend picking this up for the structure, as the ending is pretty facile, even if the big reveal is a bit unusual.

The Song of the Dodo

Although the narrative in David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo is sprawling and peripatetic, the author's focus is not. While Quammen jumps between focusing on others' research (either in the field, in their offices, or in scientific journals), visiting sites himself (both with and not in conjunction with field biologists) and generally waxing on the topic, he's always engaging, and is always able to relate what that particular tidbit has to do with island biogeography.

The Song of the Dodo isn't focused on the dodo at all. Sure, our favorite wacky looking fowl does make a few appearances, but really, this is a paean to Alfred Russell Wallace. The book begins and closes with an account of Wallace's journeys to the South Pacific, with the ending of the author retracing Wallace's footsteps. Between those bookends, we have discussion of conservation, the pressures that isolated habitats (such as islands) exert on evolution (here we have many examples, from insects to birds to mammals to reptiles, covering island gigantism, insular dwarfism, species evolving to fill niches that are typically filled by other species, and much more), how the theory of island biogeography can be used to inform the design of nature reserves (and if this is a proper use for the theory), the treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia, the "right" amount of species for a particular island (and how this is achieved through migrations and extinctions), and much more.

I would recommend this unreservedly to anyone interested in natural history or biology in general.

Murder City

Murder City isn't quite what I expected. Rather than a sober overview of Mexico's troubles, this is a depressing narrative that skips between scenes and characters, like a bad dream. Murders without motive, seemingly without reason, without explanations, and certainly without consequences for the killers.

Throughout Murder City, Bowden uses jump cuts -- he describes a murder, a threat, an incident, in a paragraph and then flashes to another, and another, before returning (or moving) to a something else. The referenced instances may recur, or may not. One thread that runs through nearly all of them, though, is that witnesses or neighbors saw or noticed nothing, or saw men "dressed as commandos."

Bowden has several people and settings he returns to again and again, but the three most prevalent are the story of a former beauty queen who came to the city to party, was gang-raped for days and lost her mind (Miss Sinaloa), a killer for one of the cartels (Murder Artist), and the intimidation and silencing of the Mexican press by both the cartels and the government (Dead Reporter Driving). These are the only chapters that are titled, others are merely denoted by the page breaks.

Overall, this book doesn't give a sense of perspective on the violence in Ciudad Juarez, but underscores the senselessness of it all. And that is precisely the point.

The Man-Eaters of Tsavo

This book could be more accurately titled East African Adventures, Including that Time I Killed Two Man-Eating Lions, but that might be too conversational (and not nearly Victorian enough) for Col. Patterson. There are twenty-seven chapters in this book, and the ninth one is titled "The Death of the Second Man-Eater", so the majority of this book is clearly the other East African adventures. Luckily, Patterson's writing style is engaging enough that even without the excitement of the lions, it's not bad going.

I doubt that Patterson saw this work getting the audience that it eventually would -- in the brief preface, he states that he wrote this for the benefit of the friends who kept insisting that he put his escapades down on paper. The most famous (and interesting) of Patterson's adventures in Africa is his time building a railway in Kenya (then British East Africa) which was set upon by maneless lions (the man-eaters of the title) who dragged off many workers, to the point where the laborers refused to work on the railway, and many deserted. Patterson devoted much of his time at night to waiting for the lions, progressing to hunting them, finally having one stalk him. He eventually kills them and eliminates the threat, although not before many of his men are eaten. It's a fascinating, terrifyingly primal story, and Patterson renders it laconically, not really conveying the fear or sense of urgency, even though he himself lived it.

The remainder of the book is railway engineering, hunting in East Africa (rhino, hippo, many other lions, antelope, elephant, giraffe, etc). It's never all that boring, because it's easy to digest, but it does get a tad repetitive. The story of the lions is worth reading. The rest? Eh.