The Department of Speculation
By Jenny Offill
The Three Body Problem
By Cixin Liu
The basic plot is that, in the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government set up a secret base with a radio telescope to search for alien life. One day, it receives a message from near the star Alpha Centauri. The scientist who receives the message, Ye Wenjie, tries to keep it under wraps. Then she receives a second message, warning her not to reply to the first one. Doing so, it says, will allow the alien civilization to find earth and conquer it. Wenjie, who just saw her father beaten to death by the Red Guard among other horrors of the Cultural Revolution, has lost faith in humanity. So she replies in the hopes that the invading aliens will not just conquer but also reform human civilization.
Wenjie does not keep her secret to herself. She befriends an heir to an oil company fortune who is spending his time reforesting clear cut sections of the woods in the hopes of saving endangered songbirds. He, too, has lost faith in humanity and welcomes the idea of an alien force not just conquering but destroying humanity in the hopes that it will save other life forms on earth.
The two form a movement devoted to aiding the aliens, known as the Trisolarians because their planet has three suns (which dooms them to eventual destruction). One of their strategies is to foil human scientists so they cannot develop the technology to repel the invading aliens when the time comes, which, even with the Trisolarians' advanced science, is still 450 years in the future.
Enter Wang Miao. He is a scientist working on nanotechnology that could allow humans to venture farther into space than ever before. He is recruited by a group of generals from multiple nations who have learned of the alien plot and are working to stop it. Wang enters a game called the Three Body Problem, which simulates the Trisolarian's solar system. There are three suns, whose erratic orbit cause unpredictable periods of calm and of either fiery destruction or chilling cold. The point of the game is to help the civilization develop a model to predict these periods. Ultimately, it proves impossible.
This novel, which is the first in a trilogy, ends with the Trisolarians developing some kind of electron technology that will allow them to reach earth, Wenjie captured and her co-conspirator dead. Is earth doomed? I guess you have to read on to find out.
I can't say I loved this book. I appreciated the plot, but some of the science was over my head. Multiple dimensions folded within a single proton? Huh? I guess I'm not super excited to pick up the next book.
Swampladia!
By Karen Russell
I picked this up a few weeks ago because it is set in the brackish swamp near the Everglades, which we
The book tells the story of the Bigtree family who operate a theme park, Swamplandia!, on an island, or hammock, in the Everglades area of Florida. Everything is going swimmingly until the star of the family, Hiolia, dies. She had been the main attraction of Swamplandia!; her act involved diving into a gator-filled pool and swimming around it unscathed. After her death, visitors stop coming, which is compounded by the opening of a nearby rival theme park, The World of Darkness. Or, just The World.
All of this pulls the rest of the Bigtree family -- Osceola, 16; Kiwi, 17; Ava, 13; and Chief, middle aged -- to the breaking point. Kiwi is the first to leave. He heads to the mainland to work at The World, both to scout its features but also to try to make some money that might get Swamplandia!'s creditors off the family's back. Next is the Chief, who goes on one of his semi-annual but mysterious business trips (which turns out to be emceeing at a depressing strip club). Osceola (Ossie), meanwhile, seems to have something of a psychotic break and begins spending her time with a Spiritualist book that, she believes, allows her to commune with the dead. She goes through a series of ghost boyfriends before deciding to elope with one of them, a former dredge boat worker who takes her deep into the swamp to a portal to the underworld that will allow them to marry. Ava, now alone, is distraught. She shares her story with an itinerant "bird man", whose "job" is to scare away buzzards from area businesses and homes. The bird man says he knows all about the underworld, and promises to take Ava there in an attempt to save Osceoloa.
The thing about the Bigtree family is that they've always lived in a fantasy world. Their last name, Bigtree, is, in fact, made up, designed to associate Swamplandia! with vague Native American roots. The Chief isn't a chief of anything. This idea is reinforced by a "museum" at the theme park that preserves various "artifacts" of the Bigtree story. They are, in fact, simply mementos from the family's life, trumped up to fill a kind of grand story.
And so it is easy to believe that Ava believes in this underworld, especially given the author's lovely description of the environment in which the Bigtree's live. It starts to make sense that there would be a portal to the underworld out there, and I was totally ready for this book to be about the magic that exists in the most special places in our world, in nature. It seemed like it would be, even more than 250 pages in.
But that was not to be. The Birdman is not who Ava thinks he is. As a reader, I wanted to see him like Ava did. Looking back, though, it was clear: this is a shady character. In a scene that shocked me, that seemed to rip me from the charming and, many times, funny, tale I had bought into, Ava is raped. It still turns my stomach thinking about it. Ava is very violently torn from her fantasy world.
And so it goes with the other Bigtrees. Kiwi learns that he cannot single-handedly save the family's home. He learns, too, that his sense of himself as a scholar -- no schools at Swamplandia!, only homeschool -- is misguided. He has a lot to learn. Osceola's ghost leaves her, just in the nick of time, the noose that would serve as a "portal" swinging in the background when she is rescued. And the Chief accepts that he will have to become a mainlander after all. The silver lining: when the fantasy bubble is burst, the family realizes that they are far stronger together than they are apart.
This was certainly an engrossing book. I found the ending jarring, to say the least. The rape scene made me feel a little betrayed by the author and, after looking at some online reviews, others have felt similarly. I still wonder whether it was necessary. I wonder whether Ava could have gotten away and the story would have been the same.
Buckeye
By Patrick Ryan
Still, it works out okay for him. He meets a girl, Becky, who soon becomes his wife. Becky's dad runs a local hardware store and offers him a job that is a good sight better than his work at a local cement factory. His father-in-law pays for a house. A child comes. Life is good.
But, then, trouble. Becky is...quirky, some might say. She reads. She works at a stationary store. She wears a beret. She says things. Oh, and she might be able to commune with the spirit world. What else can explain how she was able to locate the body of a man who went missing and wound up dead in his car on the side of the road? With war in full swing, Becky uses her gift to help the many people hoping to reconnect with their loved ones.
But Cal doesn't believe.
Which is fine, for a while, until one day, when Cal, at the behest of his father-in-law, runs out of town a quack author who is ostensibly writing a book about spirit mediums but apparently just wants to get into Becky's pants. Becky is not amused -- she can handle herself. And then it comes out: Cal really doesn't believe. The two move into separate bedrooms.
So when the woman who came into the basement of the hardware store to listen to the radio and kiss him on what turned out to be VE day reappears and seems to suggest that perhaps they could do more than kiss, Cal is in a rough enough place emotionally to accept.
The woman, Margaret, has a husband overseas. But their marriage isn't what Margaret had hoped for. She's said yes to Felix's proposal because, frankly, she didn't know better. She'd grown up in an orphanage, and was looking for stable ground. Plus, Felix was handsome. That said, he seemed far less interested in sex than the men Margaret had been seeing casually, and his libido didn't seem to pick up in matrimony. Felix, it turned out, was gay, though she didn't know it. Two things filled her with dread: Felix dying and Felix returning home.
He does return home after his ship is torpedoed and the man he had fallen in love with dies. He comes back an even more broken and confused man than he was when he left. He is able to make love to Margaret on the first night of his homecoming. So the baby that comes could be his. But it isn't. Which is when the lies begin.
Felix is able to find peace through Becky, who is able to contact Augie, Felix's love, from beyond the grave. The message: live -- for both of them. But in connecting with Augie, Felix inadvertently introduces his son-not-son to Becky and Cal's son, Skip. So things become complicated. Especially when Margaret learns of Felix's affair and Felix learns of Margaret's affair and Margaret tells Becky about her affair -- and then Margaret, overwhelmed (or something else) leaves town.
The news she leaves, and her departure itself, is like a bomb for the two families. But eventually they heal. And it is in the telling of this healing -- even after Skip dies in Vietnam and Tom, his half brother, distances himself from everyone after learning the truth -- that the beauty of this novel lies. It is sweet, and tender, and sad, and uplifting all at the same time. I loved it.
Mother Night
By Kurt Vonnegut
Like all Vonnegut, it's an absurd tale. The main character, Howard Campbell Jr., was born in the United States but moved to Germany soon after with his family. By the time the Nazis took over, he had built a life there as a playwright and had married a German woman. So while his parents moved back to upstate New York, he stayed. Since his wife was a well-known actress and he a well-known author, his social circle included the upper echelon of Nazi leadership, and soon he was recruited as a propagandist.
But he was also recruited by the Americans, who convinced him to use well-timed pauses in his broadcasts to convey secret information to their leadership. He never knew what information he was passing along, and no one ever suspected his involvement. And, after the war, no one on the American side would acknowledge it, either. They kept him out of jail through behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Still, Nazi hunters still regarded him as an enemy that needed to be brought to justice.
They came knocking on his door one day after Howard's new friend, who himself was an agent of the Russians, learned of his true identity and tipped off a group of neo-Nazis, who published a celebration of news of Campbell's being alive and well, which, in turn, tipped off Nazi hunters. Fleeing for his life, he is embraced by a rag-tag but rich group of neo-Nazis, which include the "Black Fuhrer" and a former priest defrocked for his bigotry (and drunkenness).
It's all told as a memoir written in an Israeli jail as Campbell waits for his trial. So the whole book, we, the reader, are wondering: How did he get there? The twist -- spoiler alert -- it was Campbell who turned himself in. When he receives a letter from the American who recruited him as a spy saying he will testify at the trial and save him, Campbell holds himself accountable for his misdeeds with a rope.
Ah, Vonnegut. It was all so much more humorous than I related above. Somehow, he still seems so radical in his absurdity. We need another Vonnegut for these times.
The British are Coming
By Rick Atkinson
This is a detailed -- and I mean detailed -- account of the first two years of the war, beginning with Lexington and Concord and ending with American victories at Trenton and Princeton.
Those successes were badly needed. One of my takeaways from the book is just how tenuous the American situation was in those early years. I knew it, but forgot it. After Bunker Hill and an eventual successful siege of Boston, there was a long stretch of blunders that, in many instances, nearly crushed the army. There was disaster in Quebec and in New York. Meanwhile troops lived what seemed like awful lives with not enough food. No wonder many of them went back to their farms when their enlistments were up.
Luckily for the Americans, the British were pretty blundery too. Howe had several chances to obliterate the rebellion, but just couldn't seem to make the decisive move that would do it. The arrogance of British officers led them to underestimate the colonists, with deadly results.
This is the first nonfiction book I've read in a while. My ability to keep with it, at 564 pages, owed much to Atkinson's writing. He does know how to turn a phrase. Not sure yet whether I'll pick up the next volume when 2027 rolls around.
Paradais
By Fernanda Melchor
It takes place in Mexico on the grounds of a gated community called Paradais -- Paradise, though the day laborers who work there can't pronounce it. It tells of the connection between the haves, who live in the community, and the have-nots, who work at the place.
Representing the latter is a teenager named Polo. He has dropped out of school and wants desperately to drop out of the life that has followed. He hates his work as a gardener at Paradais as well as the residents there. And yet he forms a "friendship" with who he refers to as Fatboy so often that I can't actually remember his name. Fatboy is rich. He lives with his grandparents, away from his abusive, lawyer father. Polo and Fatboy take to bouts of drinking after Polo's shift. Not only does Polo love drinking, he desperately wants to avoid arriving at home while his mother and cousin are up.
That's because his cousin is pregnant. For the first two thirds of the book, we are led to believe that the father could be anyone; "everyone" knows she sleeps around. But then we learn that it is probably Polo's, though he won't admit it was his "fault" because his cousin kept following him around and "begging" for it. Polo is searching for any way out. He tries to contact his older cousin, Milton, who has been abducted by the local drug cartel, asking him to vouch for him in the group, but he receives only sermons about how that life is no life for anyone.
Fatboy's problems are more internal. He is addicted to porn, as well as to one of his neighbors, the glamorous wife of a television personality. During their drinking sessions, he goes on and on and on about what he wants to "do" to this woman. And then one day, a plan forms. The family, Fatboy discovers, does not lock their house. So why don't they go in there and kill the husband. Fatboy can rape the wife while Polo robs them of their riches. It is unclear exactly what Polo thinks of this plan. But, nevertheless, he finds himself at Walmart buying face masks, condoms, and "kidnapper's" (ie duct) tape.
Next thing you know, they are in the house. The husband is dead. The children are bound and gagged. Polo is sampling the high-end booze, and Fatboy is desperately trying to get it up so he can fulfill his fantasy. He ends up with fatal knife wounds that don't kill him until he is able to shoot the wife. It is a grisly scene, and Polo runs, swimming the river that separates the gated community from the real community Polo lives in. The river is symbolic for Polo: it's the one place that holds positive memories for him. He used to fish the river with his grandfather, had spoken of building a boat together one day.
Polo goes to sleep. Wakes up. Heads back to work like every day. Everything is normal. No one has noticed -- because no one behind the gate can fathom that their paradise could be lost. Turns out, it was gone way before they knew it.
