Perfume by Patrick Suskind
Born with an acute sense of smell but no biologically produced body odor of his own, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille experiences the world through his nose. He knows every person, animal, shop, and street in Paris by their unique scent.
This peculiar gift drives Father Terrier, the monk under whose guardianship Grenouille was placed as an infant, to turn him over to Madame Gaillard who runs a boarding house for abandoned children, fearing if he does not rid himself of Grenuouille the boy will sniff out all of his sins. It is what leads Madame Gaillard, after years of caring for all Grenouille’s physical needs, to sell him to a tanner named Grimal as a child laborer, sensing that there is something not quite right about him. It is what convinces local perfumer Giuseppe Baldini to hire him away from Grimal so that he may use Grenouille’s talents for his own gain.
Grenouille’s entire identity is built upon his ability to mentally catalogue and re-create scents. He remembers each and every smell he has ever encountered. He dissects them, reducing each complex odor to its individual components. Without a home or even a compassionate guardian Grenouille’s sense of smell is the only thing he can truly rely on. It anchors him in an increasingly unpredictable world. But it isn’t enough for Grenouille to experience every scent in existence. He wants to be loved and admired for his talent, and vows to earn that admiration by creating the most irresistible perfume ever.
This allegorical tale about the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler is hypnotic in its
depravity. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of allegory. I think it is easier and more enjoyable to probe a text when the subject matter is clear. Perfume, however, is so deftly written it can be enjoyed as the allegory that it is, or simply as a story of suspense. There are depths to mine if the reader wishes to, but it is not cricual to do so.
Grenouille is your run of the mill sociopath. He hates everyone and hasn’t an ounce of love or compassion in him. He values people for what they can do to help him reach his ultimate goal, that’s all. I can’t say I liked Grenouille, but even so, I wanted to know what would happen to him. I found his heartlessness and single-minded determination fascinating.
The book is full of people just as despicable as Grenouille. Madame Gaillard treats the children under her care with cool indifference, her only goal in life to save up enough money to buy an annuity so she might grow old and die in private rather than in the cramped Hotel-Deu as her husband did. Grimal purposely leaves the most hazardous tasks to child laborers as they are more disposable than skilled workers. Baldini, a master perfumer though he is, is barely competent and owes most of his success to the ingenuity of others. None of them are the least bit likable, yet I could not put the book down. I had to know what happened to them.
And what happens is grusome. Every life that Grenouille touches comes to a bad end. Madame Gaillard dies of old age in the Hotel-Deu just as she feared she would. Grimal drowns in a river after passing out drunk on the shore. Baldini’s house collapses while he’s asleep inside. Each is destroyed by their obsessions and punished for their sins. Call him Grenouille or call him Hitler, either way he can be seen as the personification of our worst human impulses. His behavior and the way others react to it shed light on aspects of the human psyche we’d rather ignore.
Suskind’s decision to tell the story in a dramatic third person voice distances the reader from the story. I never felt as if I were in the story or observing it like a fly on the wall. I was always very aware of being spoken to. This deliberate stylistic choice allows Suskind to manipulate the reader, making him feel emotionally removed from the story as it grows ever more bizarre and disturbing.
It wasn’t until the explosive finale that I realized what Suskind was up to. He made me enjoy a story full of morally corrupt people, told it in a way that made me feel indifferent to behaviors that should have repelled me. He drew me in and, in doing so, made me an accomplice to the depravity. He turned me into a witness who did nothing to stop the crime. I got the feeling Suskind wanted me to feel guilty for having enjoyed the book, just as all of Germany continues to be made to feel guilty for allowing the rise of Nazism.
Though I was unable to emotionally invest in the novel, and that reduced the amount of enjoyment I got out of it, Perfume is worth reading, if only to admire the masterful technique with which Suskind weaves his tale and manipulates the reader.
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Like everything else that appears on a book cover, from art work to jacket copy, the title of Beth Hoffman’s debut novel Saving CeeCee Honeycutt sets certain expectations. First, that the reader will learn about the title character, and second, that the story will primarily concern itself with how CeeCee was saved and why she needed saving in the first place. So, I was a bit confused when Saving CeeCee Honeycutt lived up to its title within the first forty pages.
Twelve year old CeeCee is a social outcast, thanks to her crazy mother who often wanders around town dressed in a second hand prom dress and tiara, attempting to relive her glory days as a Georgia State pageant queen. With CeeCee’s traveling salesman father always out of town, it’s up to CeeCee to care for her mother; to make sure she eats and bathes when she’s depressed, and doesn’t break all of the plates in the house when she falls into a fit of rage. When Mrs. Honeycutt is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee’s heretofore unknown Great-Aunt Tootie swoops in, claims custody of CeeCee, and takes her down to Georgia to live in the family mansion, essentially saving her from her wretched life. With half of my expectations so quickly fulfilled I wasn’t sure what to expect from the rest of the novel. What followed was little more than a recounting of all the little adventures CeeCee has during her first summer in Georgia, a narrative that fails to create dramatic tension or coalesce into an identifiable plot.
Hoffman might as well have named CeeCee Cinderella. She has about as much personality as the fairytale princess who is defined entirely by her personal hardships. CeeCee has no strong desires, opinions, or hobbies. Though she is an avid reader Hoffman doesn’t ever show her relating to books in a passionate way. Children who turn to books to escape difficult home lives tend to develop a strong relationship to reading in general. They experience books on a deep emotional level, often coming to view them as friends. Yet, the most CeeCee ever says about her involvement with books is “I like to read.” Though books are supposedly her refuge CeeCee does not seem to have any strong feelings about or attachment to books.
Despite the fact that the story is told in first person by CeeCee herself, Hoffman never bothers to take the reader inside CeeCee’s head. CeeCee tells her own story with the emotional distance of a third person narrator which made me wonder at Hoffman’s choice to write in first person. The whole point of writing in first person is to give the reader access to the narrator’s thoughts, emotions, and biases. But CeeCee never tells the reader how she feels about the events unfolding around her. She doesn’t have any strong reaction to her mother’s death, no lasting worries about moving in with a relative she’s never met, and no problem adjusting to her new life.
Though CeeCee admits she deals with difficult issues by putting them out of her mind, as someone who often utilizes the “I’m not going to think about it” method of coping myself, I can say from experience that it takes effort to ignore things you don’t want to deal with. It’s a constant struggle that takes a mental and emotional toll. For CeeCee, however, there’s nothing hard about it. She finds it easy to ignore her mother’s death, her father’s absence, and cruises through the novel hardly suffering a moment of anguish. Her lack of character combined with the unrealistic way she so easily deals with loss made it impossible for me to care about or relate to CeeCee.
If CeeCee is Cinderella then Georgia is the Magic Kingdom. Everyone who lives there is kind, problems magically work themselves out, the good guys always win, and the bad guys are always punished. The story skips along from one minor complication to another, all of which are resolved before they have time to turn into a major plot point that might force the characters to work at finding a solution. Hoffman could have written a very complex story about grief, racism, and the ways we cope with circumstances we can’t change. Instead, she created a fairytale world where bad experiences are easy to put behind you and there’s always a happy ending. It’s a choice that saves Hoffman from having to create three dimensional characters, deal with difficult subjects, or build a truly engaging plot.
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is an easy novel. It does not require a lot of thought power on the part of the reader. If you’re not all that concerned about plot or character development and you’re looking for a simple read, this is the book for you. But, though I enjoy escapist literature as much as the next gal, to really get into a book I need to have fully fleshed characters to connect with. Without them there is no story, and Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is an example that proves the rule.
Best and Worst of 2009
It’s that time of the year again. Time to call out the five best and five worst books of the year. Though I only posted eight reviews in 2009, I actually read eighty-three books. My excuse for my low output is the same as last year: I spent more time working on my own personal writing projects than blogging. Even so, that eight is five more than I wrote in 2008 so I am improving, and hope to post more reviews in the coming year.
Despite my low output reader response was much louder this year. I received more thank you emails from authors whose books I’ve positively reviewed, and that’s quite gratifying. There’s nothing like hearing someone you admire say that you’ve made their day. This is the first year I received threats of physical violence from enraged readers who disagreed with me. The post that seems to draw the most ire is a negative review I wrote on a book about bullying. Ah, the irony. Though I originally felt obligated to publish and respond to abusive comments and emails, I eventually realized that, not only do I not have to tolerate such abuse, I don’t have to give abusive individuals their own forum. I’ve since stopped publishing comments containing profanity, personal attacks, threats of violence, rants that have nothing to do with the content of the book in question, or any other form of harassment.
Returning to the topic at hand, the reason I split my year end top ten into a five best and five worst list is because normally I only end up reading five outstandingly good books and five unbearably awful ones. But, this year I read a truck load of books by authors with a talent for storytelling, world building, and character creation, and it made assembling my best of list really difficult. Thankfully, I didn’t have the same problem with the worst of list. As in previous years I only read five cringe-worthy books in 2009.
In the past I’ve been more inclined to review books I enjoyed. This year, however, I was more inclined to write about books I did not like. I only wrote two positive reviews this year. For the first time ever it became more important to me to keep people away from bad books as oppose to attracting them to good ones. Because I did read so many good books in 2009 I think the bad ones stood out in my mind, and I tend to write reviews about books that stand out in one way or another.
All right, enough year end babble. Here are the five best and worst books of 2009. As usual, the lists consist of books I read this year, not necessarily ones that were published this year.
The Best:
1) Heal Pelvic Pain by Amy Stein – In Heal Pelvic Pain Stein lays out the benefits of physical therapy to those living with pelvic pain syndromes. She offers laymen a clear and comprehensible lesson in pelvic anatomy, as well as exercises designed to stretch and loosen the muscles of the pelvic floor. I suffer from a chronic pelvic pain syndrome. I was so amazed by the immediate relief I experienced after using the stretches suggested in the book, I went and got myself a physical therapist the next week. I didn’t really need to though. Stein’s recommendations would have served just fine on their own. But here I am, seven months later living almost entirely pain free and I’ve Amy Stein to thank for it. I can say that Heal Pelvic Pain literally changed my life and that’s why it tops the list this year.
2) Dirty by Megan Hart – I’m not a fan of romance novels, the work of Megan Hart being an exception. Hart is deft at creating realistic relationships, and no other book showcases her talent better than Dirty. Elle is a deeply withdrawn woman, and it isn’t until Dan starts picking at the emotional scars she has ignored for years that the secrets from her past begin bleeding out. Everything about this book is perfect: the characterization is flawless, it is beautifully paced, the romance between Elle and Dan is completely earned, and the sex scenes actually *gasp* advance the plot!
3) Silk by Caitlin R. Kiernan – Kiernan has an unbelievable way with words. Her use of language is so evocative it’s practically a form of teleportation. From the very first sentence I felt like I was in this dark fantasy about how fear shapes our perception of reality.
4) Unclean Spirits by H. L. N. Hanover – How refreshing to read an urban fantasy in which the heroine does not have all her shit together, doesn’t always have the answer, and isn’t always a strong leader. The joy of this novel is in watching the heroine, Jayne, grow into herself. She is a different woman at the beginning of the book than she is at the end, and that character growth is what distinguishes Unclean Spirits from the rest of the urban fantasy herd.
5) Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead – The first book in the Georgina Kincaid series is a perfect combination of all the preceding books. It’s urban fantasy with strong characters, crisp writing, an intricate story, and a believable romance.
The Worst:
1) Key to Conspiracy (Gillian Key, book 1) by Talia Gryphon
2) Key to Redemption (Gillian Key, book 3) by Talia Gryphon
3) Key to Conspiracy (Gillian Key, book 2) by Talia Gryphon
In my review of Key to Conflict I said I would not continue on to the next book in the series. However, the Gillian Key series turned out to be a train wreck I could not look away from. Key to Conspiracy was so atrocious I had to find out if the series could get any worse. The second and third books may not be worse, but they’re not much better either. All three are poorly plotted, contain sloppy writing, and revolve around a completely unlikable heroine.
4) Norse Code by Greg Van Eekhout - This modern day re-telling of the Norse myth of Ragnarok should have been interesting, but a plodding pace, mediocre writing, and hollow characters make it a real snooze fest.
5) Eve of Darkness by S. J. Day -This lackluster debut contains every bad urban fantasy cliche imaginable. Let’s go down the check-list: Generic sassy, sarcastic, caffeine addicted female protagonist? Check. Not just one, but two romances that turn into true love within 24 hours? Check. A “kick ass” heroine who spends more time sleeping with the heroes than actually kicking ass? Check.
Big in Japan by M. Thomas Gammarino
Big in Japan was the second book I managed to snag from Library Thing’s Early Reviewers Program. Considering how I felt about the first one, I did not have high hopes for M. Thomas Gammarino’s debut. But this character driven rumination on the relationship between physical desire and spirituality was a delicious surprise. At turns crass and cerebral, Big in Japan captures the distinctive blend of ambivalence and desperation that characterizes the transition from childhood to adulthood.
Big in Japan follows the exploits of twenty-four year old Brain Tedesco, guitarist for the Philadelphia based progressive rock band Agenbite. When the group realizes their independently released debut album is selling
slightly better in Japan than in the States they convince their manager to send them on a promotional tour of Japan to boost sales. As the band tours Tokyo, playing venue after empty venue, they are forced to admit the tour is a failure. But having fallen in love with a Japanese sex-worker named Miho, Brain is too distracted to care. When Brain suddenly quits the band, deciding to stay behind and marry Miho rather than return to Philadelphia, the story kicks into high gear.
It’s risky to place an emotionally stunted character at the apex of a novel, and Brain Tedesco is nothing if not stunted. At the start of the story he is still living with his parents and working a crappy minimum wage job stocking shelves at a local pharmacy. He has never had a girlfriend, his deep anxiety, insecurity, and social awkwardness having paved the way for rejection after rejection.
The problem with emotionally stunted characters is they’re incredibly difficult to render sympathetically. All too often they’re immaturity and lack of self-awareness make them come off as whiny and annoying. And even though Brain is whiny at times, I never found him annoying. Gammarino imbues him with a naked vulnerability that is endearing and relatable. Even when Brain’s behavior crosses the line from self-defeating into selfish and cruel, I couldn’t write him off as just another man behaving badly. His motivations were far too complex and his psyche too broken for me to turn on him, and that says a lot coming from a person who is always prepared to turn on a character she feels is acting like an idiot. Gammarino deserves a world of credit for creating a character whose humanity is never eclipsed by his moronic behavior.
Brain is also kind of OCD. He is obsessed with order and routine; the kind of guy who has a place for everything and insists everything remain in its place. Initially, Brain is not happy about going to Japan. The trip is a major deviation from his normal routine; a disruption on par with leaving a magazine that belongs on the coffee table laying haphazardly on the couch.
But Brain’s desire for order also translates into a taste for purity. Brain is a virgin, and a typical one at that. He is a total horn dog consumed by sexual thoughts, yet reveres the idea of love. He believes love and sex to be neatly and inextricably linked, one following naturally on the heels of the other. So, it’s no surprise that Brain is automatically taken by the pristine beauty of Japanese women – women so physically and behaviorally different from women back in the States. On page 19 as his band mates discuss the pros and cons of sleeping with easy women, Brain thinks, “Horniness dried you out, made you haggard and ugly. These japanese girls weren’t that. They were so pure.” Drawn in by what he perceives as the unsullied beauty of the natives, Brain begins to view his trip to Japan, its alien language and culture, not as a disruption but as a coming home of sorts. He sees it as a place where his hunger for purity and order can be adequately satisfied.
Early in the story Brain visits the Tokyo National Museum where he comes across a series of scroll paintings of “hungry ghosts.” They are described on page 67 as “…[D]enizens of one of the Buddhist Hell realms. They had mountainous bellies and needle-thin necks that made it physiologically impossible for them to sate their hunger. In each of the scrolls, the ghosts…could be found squatting in latrines, trying and failing to gorge themselves on human waste.”
It quickly becomes apparent that Brain himself is a hungry ghost. His insatiable desire to do and be something more than the anxious, insecure, angry boy that he is leads him to a life of debauchery. He gluts himself on sex until the activity becomes toxic; a mechanical act that he no longer enjoys but can’t bring himself to stop.
This compulsion to internalize that which is poisonous stands in stark contrast to his search for the pristine, though both spring from the same well of insecurity and both shield him in some way. By accepting only perfection Brain kept himself from having to engage the material world, whereas consuming only the profane prevents him from having to fully engage others on an emotional level. It is only as Brain learns to balance the needs of the body with the needs of the mind and spirit that he begins to grow up.
Gammarino’s writing is strong and evocative, if a little self-conscious at times. Big in Japan maintained a sense of urgency throughout that had me rushing to turn each page.
Normally, I’m a serial reader. I finish one book and dive straight into another. I couldn’t do that with Big in Japan. I had to take two days to emotionally process the story before I could bring myself to start a new book, that’s how much it got to me.
Haunting, sad, and unflinchingly honest Big in Japan will leave your mouth watering.
Living With the Dead by Kelley Armstrong
Living with the Dead is the ninth book in Kelley Armstrong’s wildly popular Women of the Otherworld series. In it, we’re introduced to Robyn Peltier, a recently widowed public relations consultant still trying to come to terms with her husband’s senseless death. Luckily, keeping her demanding boss, “celebutante” Portia Kane, out of the tabloids is a great distraction. But when Portia is murdered police zero in on Robyn as their primary suspect. With the help of her best friend, tabloid reporter Hope Adams, Robyn must track down the real killer and clear her name.
Readers of Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld books expect certain things from the series. For one, they expect the books to be written in first person and told from the point of view of a single character. They expect the story to be told by one of “the good guys.” They also expect a developing romance to play a key role in the story.
In Living with the Dead Armstrong tosses reader expectations to the wind. Rather than tell the story in first person, she tells it in third. And instead of telling the story from the point of view of a single character she rotates between six characters. That’s right, you heard me.
I don’t have any problem with third person in general, but it bothered me in this case because it stood in such stark contrast to the other books in the series. The structure of the previous books are all so similar a reader can pick up any one of them and immediately recognize it as part of the Women of the Otherworld series. Not so with Living with the Dead. Writing this book in the third person is such an unexpected deviation it’s difficult for a tried and true fan to get lost in the story.
Likewise, I don’t generally mind stories told through multiple narrators. I loved the eighth book in the series, Personal Demon, which is narrated by Hope Adams and Lucas Cortez. But, in the case of Living With the Dead, shifting the focus between six different characters does nothing to enrich the narrative. The chapters are short and Armstrong shifts point of view from chapter to chapter. So, we follow Hope for one chapter, then Robyn for the next, and Adele for the one after. The reader is never allowed to stay with any one character long enough to get to know him or her. As a result it’s hard to care about any of them.
The shifting point of view enables the reader to view some scenes through the eyes of more than one character. Unfortunately, having to read the same scene more than once slows the pace and rarely provides any new information or perspective.
Two of the four rotating points of view belong to the villains. Readers know right from the get go what motivates them to commit the crime Robyn is later accused of, and get to follow them as they run from the law. The problem with incorporating the POV of the villains in a thriller is that it kills the mystery. Half the fun of reading a mystery is trying to puzzle out the who, what, and why of a crime along with the heroes. While it is possible to write from the POV of a villain without spoiling that fun, Armstrong simply can’t pull off that gentle balancing act. Within the first few pages we know why Adele and Colm do what they do, and that makes watching Hope, Robyn, Karl and the rest of the crew figure it out something of a bore.
Armstrong has been writing this series for five years. I can understand her desire to shake things up a bit by trying something new, but the risk just doesn’t pay off. Overloaded with characters it’s virtually impossible to become emotionally invested in, Living With the Dead is out of synch with the rest of the books in the series. Devoted fans should not expect fireworks out of this one, and new readers would be better served by starting out with one of the previous books in the series.
Ordering the Storm edited by Susan Grimm
I don’t think it’s too far out to say that most emerging poets have no idea what to take into consideration when putting together a full length or chapbook sized collection of poetry. It’s not a topic most undergraduate or graduate creative writing programs cover. By the time a young poet has enough material to constitute a first collection chances are he or she will still have never met anyone who has published a book. They themselves may have only a vague concept of what they want to say, how they want to say it, or how to draw a particular response out of a reader. Sensing the need for direction in these matters, Susan Grimm asked a number of published poets to write about their experiences putting together collections of poetry. The result, Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems, offers insight, suggestions, direction, and the shared camaraderie poets so desperately need when trying to assemble a book.
Ordering the Stormis a quick read. At 97 pages I was able to breeze through it in a day. The eleven essays range from the esoteric to the practical. In the opening essay, “Best Foot Forward: Arranging a Poetry Manuscript,” Bonnie Jacobson examines the themes and structures used to organize books by Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, and John Donoghue among others, and how those structures maximize the emotional impact of the manuscript. In “It’s Simple Really: Just Sit Down at the Desk…” Jeff Gundy describes his own circuitous process of putting together a book.
All of the contributors toss out ideas on how to go about arranging a book of poetry. There’s the classic method of fanning all your poems out on the floor, and crawling around on your hands and knees until the pattern of the book begins to take shape. Some suggest grouping poems with similar themes, subjects, images, or turns of phrase into individual sections. Others suggest weaving poems with seemingly disparate tones or subjects together throughout the book. Above all, they remind the reader that no size fits all. Each manuscript is its own entity and will require its own individual tending. What worked for your first book may not work for your second.
What really struck me was how many of the contributors spoke of creating a dramatic arc, building tension, and moving the action along; terms more often heard when speaking of prose. But it makes sense that a poet would have to take those things into consideration when assembling a book. After all you want to keep the reader riveted and you want them to walk away from the book having gained something. It goes to show how green I am that I’d never thought of a book of poetry in those terms before.
Though reading about each contributors individual process gave me ideas of how I might want to approach the puzzle of assembling a collection one day, the essays themselves, their organization and presentation also provided insight into my own preferences. For instance, I found the essays presented in a straight forward and linear fashion the most helpful. I also preferred the essays where contributors talked specifically about their own process to those in which the contributors discussed the process of poets other than themselves. I like personal stories and I like writing that follows a linear path. As I was reading it occurred to me that if I were to assemble a collection of poetry the work would have to be intensely personal and it would have to flow in a linear manner, poem to poem in a kind of narrative that was no interrupted by sections. That would be my preference.
Ordering the Storm is a must have for any poet with aspirations of putting together a book of poetry. It offers poets a number of ways to look at and approach the task of assembling a book; of disassembling, re-arranging, and rebuilding a problematic manuscript. Most of all it provides new poets with a sense of comfort. Knowing that there are other poets in the world, even highly successful ones, who are just as confounded by the task of writing a book as you are makes the green poet feel a little less alone in the struggle.
Silk by Caitlin R. Kiernan
After writing four negative reviews in a row, I promised myself I wouldn’t write another until I found a book I could say something nice about. I wasn’t expecting Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Silk to be that book. Once perched at the top of my “to read” pile, months of unhampered spending pushed Silk to the middle of the stack as I heaped new purchases on top of it. After being disappointed by my latest urban fantasy / paranormal romance / sci-fi adventure reads I decided I needed something different and Silk fit the bill. I hauled it from the heap and discovered a diamond.
Birmingham’s grunge and goth scene may be flooded with posers, but Spyder Baxter is the real deal. A schizophrenic loner with her own novelty shop, Spyder is the definition of “eccentric.” Young scensters follow at her heels whenever she steps out with her girlfriend Robin and best friend Byron. She may be the unofficial patron saint of alienated youth, but Spyder has a secret. There is something evil lurking in her basement and she is the only person who can keep it from getting loose and destroying everything she loves.
After months of bitching and moaning about flat characters it was refreshing to read a book over flowing with fully fleshed out, three dimensional characters. Kiernan is well aware that showing trumps telling when it comes to characterization. Instead of telling the reader that her heroine Daria Parker has a bad temper, she offers several scenes in which Daria goes off on her junkie boyfriend. Instead of telling the reader Spyder is mentally ill we get to watch her down her meds every morning.
Character is everywhere in Silk,from the exposed brick facades on the run down buildings of downtown Birmingham to the contents of each characters pockets. Kiernan knows that people are built out of details. On page 7 Kiernan introduces us to Daria Parker. The first two paragraphs tell us worlds about the town itself as well as Daria’s place within it.
“Daria sat by herself on the sidewalk, fat spiral-bound notebook open across her lap, back pressed firmly against the raw brick, pretentiously raw brick sand-blasted for effect, for higher rent and the illusion of renewal, the luxury of history. The cobblestone street was lined with old warehouse and factory buildings, most dating back to the first two decades of the century or before and sacrificed years ago for office suites; sterile, track-lit spaces for architects and lawyers, design firms and advertising agencies.
The felt-tip business end of her pen hovered uselessly over the page, over the verse she’d begun almost a week ago now. A solid hour staring stupidly at her own cursive scrawl, red ink too bright for blood, and she was no closer to finishing, and the cold – real Christmas weather – was beginning to numb her fingers, working its way in through her clothes. Daria closed the notebook, snapped the cap back on her pen, returned both to the army-surplus knapsack lying on the concrete.”
Kiernan manages to paint a vivid picture of the Birmingham that exists within the novel, a town well on its way to gentrification that still hasn’t lost its sense of history or its seedy under belly. She also uses location as a way of developing character. Seeing Daria sitting alone on the sidewalk outside of a warehouse, the reader automatically identifies her as an outsider. By watching her try, and fail, to write new song lyrics we discover she is an artistic type – a singer and musician. Her hovering pen and her decision to quit writing for the day hint at her own precarious place in the world; an inability to move forward that is echoed by the pretentiously down-trodden buildings around her that can’t quite decide if they want to be upscale lofts or run-down squats. By the end of the first scene I felt such a kinship with Daria Parker that I would have followed her into any story. Kiernan gives all her characters the same thorough and honest rendering, creating an intimate world of complex people.
As you can see, Kiernan has a way with words. Her language is so evocative it’s practically a form of teleportation. From the very first sentence I felt like I was in the story; I could hear the streetlights as they flickered to life and see the cracks in the sidewalk.
Silk is littered with intriguing descriptions and turns of phrase. On page 171 she describes a character who has been slapped as having “palm-print impressions framing his face like the tailfeathers of kindergarten turkeys.” On page 180, as Byron struggles to find the right key on an over-burdened keyring to fit a particular lock, when he finds it Kiernan says it slides in “cocksmooth.” I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t think to associate sex with the physical act of unlocking a door. It’s that unexpectedness coupled with Kiernan’s insight that makes her comparisons so remarkable.
Published in 1998, Silk has a distinctly post-grunge, Generation X vibe to it. Daria, Spyder, and Niki trip through the novel on a wave of uppers and downers that make the reader wonder how much of the story is real and how much is imagined. Though Kiernan builds great tension throughout the book, it ends with a sigh rather than the bang I was hoping for, and that’s my only complaint.
Silk is hypnotic. Kiernan’s engaging characters, evocative language, and Southern Gothic flavor will suck you in faster than the baddies in Spyder’s basement. You can bet I will be running out and buying the rest of her books ASAP, and this time I’ll make sure they stay at the top of my “to read” pile.
