Book Buzz

CHESTER BROWN

Strange book. I’m uncertain why it was written in graphic novel form other than the author is a noted graphic author, he wrote and drew a well reviewed biography of Louie Riel. However the graphics add little to the story line. But the story line: a man tires of romantic love so choose to believe that romantic relationships are inherently destructive. Brown chooses to pay for sex rather than deal with the difficulties of an intimate relationship. He presents his case for the decriminalization of the profession to his friends and family, which makes for interesting discussion but not interesting graphics.

As I said strange book. Definitely worth  a look.

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P D JAMES

When Venetia Aldridge, QC, defended Garry Ashe of murdering his prostitute aunt, she never thought that her daughter would later fall in love Ashe once she got him acquitted. Four weeks later  Aldridge is found dead in her office; she was wearing a court wig and her head was covered in blood. Ashe is immediately considered to be a suspect as is anyone who had keys to the law offices. As often happens in murder mysteries one murder leads to several others. And of course Adam Dalgliesh and his team are called in to solve them.

I liked the ending to this book. Not everything is wrapped up neat and clean as in most mysteries. A good read.

MICHAEL TURNER

The Canadian Michael Turner has a knack for titles. Just as children’s books with the word “chocolate” in the title sell unusually well, Turner’s three novels seduce you with their promise of grown-up delights: alcohol, debauchery, sex. Hard Core Logo , his experimental novel about a punk band of the same name, is now a movie, a radio play and a comic book; American Whiskey Bar was picked up for television; and now The Pornographer’s Poem has won him huge critical acclaim and an award in British Columbia.

Happily, the book justifies its hype: it’s more generous with the porn than with the poems. Turner himself has called it “The Catcher in the Rye with a strap-on”, and the Salinger bit is important, for the novel is at heart a coming-of-age story. It is 1978 and the nameless narrator is 16 when an unorthodox teacher introduces him to the techniques of Super-8 film. Disillusioned and frustrated by what he sees as almost universal hypocrisy, our boy keeps only one of his projects: a blurry home movie of his swinging neighbours having sex with their dog. The short is a hit on the Vancouver underground scene and he drifts into semiprofessional porn.

We’re given the pornographer’s story as he tells it, complete with exaggerations, half-truths and justifications. Turner’s hero will not tolerate hypocrisy, in himself or in others, yet he does things our society considers morally unjustifiable: underage porn, hard drugs, abandoning friends. How would such a man justify himself? This is the fascinating riddle that weaves in and out of the narrative. Turner sets up a vague authority figure to interrogate the narrator about his misspent life; there’s no process of judgment, just questions and statements. It is up to us, and our prejudices, to work out whether this is a life worth living.

The novel is pornographic in more ways than one. The erotic scenes are offered up to us without passion: we watch from a distance, as though through a camera lens. When The Pornographer’s Poem is made into a film – as it almost certainly will be – it will be closer to that other unrelenting portrait of 1970s suburban sleaze, The Ice Storm, than to Boogie Nights. Like both films, though, it has its moments of humour. Turner has an especially good time with the narrator’s early adolescence, when sex is still an escape, an exploration – something to be marvelled at.

A masturbatory photo found in a neighbour’s drawer provides a brilliant passage on the feelings of a child forced to acknowledge and accommodate the fact of sexuality. “I remember the moment so well,” recalls the narrator, “if only because of the way the photo seemed to animate that garbage, how each item – the Vaseline, the beer sausage, the tissues, the magazines – came to life, leapt from the page, how they danced about my neighbour like something from Fantasia.” Disturbing, but, like the rest of this excellent novel, somehow disturbingly true.

This review borrowed from The Guardian, Saturday 2 December 2000.

BILLIE LIVINGSTON

Going Down Swinging is a novel of despair. It is seen through the eyes of Eilleen Hoffman, her seven-year-old daughter Grace, and indirectly, Grace’s teenage sister, Charlie. Eilleen was an elementary school teacher but is on the road to rock bottom. There are times when she can pull herself out of the morass of alcoholism through AA meetings. But when she falls of the wagon she lands hard. She even prostitutes herself for extra money. She puts her young daughter Grace at risk by bringing home unknown men. And of course Child Protection and Welfare are involved.

The writing is uneven but it is still worth the read.

ABDELLAH TAIA

“Salvation Army” by Abdellah Taia is not  complicated on the surface. It tells the story of a young gay Moroccan boy who grows up in large family and later comes to Europe in the pursuit of sexual and intellectual freedom. When his friend does not show up at the airport in Geneva to pick him up, he is forced to seek shelter at the Salvation Army. It is not your average coming of age story.  Taia puts together an amazingly sobering story about growing up in a culture in which your freedom to make choices is not considered. He is in love with his brother and has erotic fantasies about him and the brother doesn’t seem to notice. The fact of having eleven siblings can leave anyone feeling lost in their own family, but Taia retains a distinct personality through and through. He gets mixed up with Swiss sex tourists — one who helps him achieve his dreams of leaving Morocco to study further.

Whether he is writing about North Africa or Western Europe, Taia seems to have found a way to put things in perspective — at least for himself. He finds North African lovers be warm, passionate and full of love for life. On the other hand, his Western European affairs tend to leave him yearning for more. And while he finds laughter and the exotic bliss of life in his family, it is Western Europe where yearns to find the peace and happiness one finds in freedom.

Taia’s autobiographical novel is an engaging read.

HARI KUNZRU

The Impressionist tells the story of a man creating his life in many different ways. Pran Nath who later recreates himself as Robert and as Jonathan, is the son of a Indian girl and an Englishman. But he was raised as a light skinned Indian boy. His family praised and loved him for his light skin, seeing his skin colour as a sign of their high rank. When his true birth was discovered he was thrown out of his Indian father’s house with nothing. He goes from a brothel to the home of an English missionary learning lessons that help him pass as an Englishman. When he has a chance to go to England he takes it.

I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the novel but the last big change to Africa lost me. If you only read the first sections it is a great read. But skip the last part.

MATTHEW RETTENMUND

Would have been better named Hustler Culture. What happens when a hustler falls in love. The narrator is a fussy prostitute; fussy because he is very selective about his “dates”. He also has two room mates. Joe lusts after him. He lusts for Andrew. Andrew  is interested in the narrator but doesn’t like the hustling. But selling his body is all that he knows.

Boy has many funny parts, especially the “sexual index” at the back of the book.

PATTI SMITH

AKA: Portrait of the Artists As A Young Couple

If you like reading about art, artists and the sixties this book is for you. I hadn’t realized that Patti Smith was an author and visual artist as well as her career in music. Smith and the celebrated photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe,  were a young couple exploring life, love and art in New York. They were “roommates, soul mates, friends, lovers and muses.”  “We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed.” Smith’s supportive family is the opposite of Mapplethorpe’s. Taking Smith to meet his parents, “His father barely looked at me, and said nothing to Robert except, “You should cut your hair. You look like a girl.” When Smith met Allen Ginsberg the beat poet he bought her a sandwich then asked, “Are you a girl? I took you for a very pretty boy.” He let her keep the sandwich.

“Robert took areas of dark human consent and made them into art. He invested the homosexual with grandeur, masculinity, and enviable nobility. He created a presence that was wholly male without sacrificing feminine grace. He sought to elevate aspects of male experience, to imbue homosexuality with mysticism.”

Thankfully pictures are sprinkled through the book; many of them Mapplethorpe’s.

A great book depicting art and life in an interest time in history.

SEBASTIAN HORSLEY

A difficult book to read but wonderfully written. Horsley uses very pretty turns of phrase to describe very ugly events, memories and thoughts. He is a multi-sexual (bisexual is too limiting), narcissistic drug addict. Some parts are laugh aloud funny not for content but for the style of writing. One reviewer called it “a masterpiece of filth.”

Describing Sid Vicious: “he went to the university of life and graduated with extinction.”  Himself: “A solipsist basically mean someone with no friends.” His diet: “Homoeopathies for pathetic homos.” His friend’s father: “He had an aneurysm and now wanders around the house like a clockwork toy whose spring has gone slack. The wheel was still going around but the gerbil had died.”

“Always make a molehill out of a mountain. Shoot up and shut up. Those are my mottos.”

“Self pity is the most destructive of all narcotics.”

Whether alone in his studio smearing himself in his own excrement, shooting up heroin and cocaine or visiting a prostitute in Soho before dinner at the Ritz, the details of his expensive bohemian life are told with honesty and humour.

He went to the Philippines  so he could make a movie of his crucifixion in the Easter celebrations.

Horsely died in 2010 from a drug overdose.

A great read but definitely not for the weak of heart.

PHILIP PULLMAN

Pullman is a self-declared atheist so this is an interesting theme for him to tackle. He is known for his dislike of organised religion and the unflattering portrait of the Church in his trilogy His Dark Materials. In his book, Jesus and Christ are twins. Jesus, the first born, is strong and heathy at birth while the second born was weak and sickly, destined to become a mama’s boy. Durning childhood Christ had the ability to perform miracles as well as his older brother. When Jesus starts his preaching, Christ has dreams of an organization to spread the word so that everyone can share world peace. “[Jesus] does things out of passion, and I (Christ) do them out of calculation. I can see further than he can: I can see the consequences of things that he doesn’t think about twice.”  Jesus doesn’t want his brother around. Christ stays in the background recording the words of Jesus. He has one of the disciples report on times that Christ wasn’t there. He believes written scriptures are important for a future organization. A stranger is interested in Christ’s writing and encourages him to continue. Later the stranger is identified as an Angel sent from God. He explains that the Kingdom could never come about on earth. “The true Kingdom would blind human beings like the sun. But they need an image of it … that is what the church will be.’ Jesus’ belief was that if the Church came about the “devil” would take hold. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. A fascinating turn on the story of Jesus.

Good read.

GREG HERRON

Set in New Orleans before Katrina, Rue Dauphine is a trashy gay murder mystery. But why are all the characters totally gorgeous? Life isn’t like that. It gets boring reading descriptions of the same looking men. But sometimes trashy is what I want to read. Chanse McLeod, Private Eye and ex-cop, discovers his latest client dead. “Faggots Die” was written in blood staining the wall. The client claims his closeted boy friend is being blackmailed. But how does the organization GRN, Gay Rights Now, fund raise so much money?

SARAH DUNANT

What attracted me to this book was that I thought the author also wrote The Red Tent  a novel that tells the story of Dinah, which is found in the Biblical book of Genesis. However I was mistaken. Anita Diamant wrote that excellent novel. Courtesan is a historical fiction of Venice. Fiammentta and her dwarf partner, housekeeper, bookkeeper and pimp flee the sacking of Rome in 1527. They leave a successful business with nothing and start over with nothing in the city of islands.

A light and humorous read but it needed heavy editing.

JEFFREY ROUND

Time for a trashy, light mystery.  P-town is the story of Brad Bradford an undercover detective. When Brad receives an anonymous tip that his former lover has been killed in Province Town, Brad goes to deal with the body. He leaves his assignment of stopping a possible assassination of the Dali Lama in New York.  P-Town is portrait as heaven on earth. Especially for gay people. But more people are dieing in P-Town on a daily basis. Brad stays to solve the crime. The book is a campy look as the under world of gay life and death. Fun read.

Vikas Swarup

This is the book that the movie Slumdog Millionaire was based on. And the book is completely different than the movie except for the basic theme and structure. Ram Mohammad Thomas is a contestant for a billion rupees. The book highlights an excerpt from his life that explains how he knew the answer. And what a life! Poverty, desertion, murder, prostitution, abuse, it is all in his life. But there was always some fascit that mattered most. I find it astounding, and if it’s typical of the things she’s asked, no wte of his life that he remembered thas that mattered most. I find it astounding, and if it’s typical of the things she’s asked, no ws that mattered most. I find it astounding, and if it’s typical of the things she’s asked, no wt provided an answer. The neighbour naming the pet Pluto because the kitten is tiny and Pluto is the smallest planet in the solar system. Despite the torture and abuse it is aThis is the book that the movie Slumdog Millionaire was based on. And the book is completely different than the movie except for the basic theme and structure. Ram Mohammad Thomas is a contestant for a billion rupees. The book highlights an excerpt from his life that explains how he knew the answer. And what a life! Poverty, desertion, murder, prostitution, abuse, it is all in his life. But there was always some fascite of his life that he remembered that provided an answer. The neighbour naming the pet Pluto because the kitten is tiny and Pluto is the smallest planet in the solar system. Despite the torture and abuse it is actually a light read. Fun. Now I would like to revisit the DVD.ctually a light read. Fun. Now I would like to revisit the DVD.

STEIG LARSSON

A rousing read. Quite a page turner. GIRL is a continuation of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Set in Sweden, Michael Blomkvist ,the journalist, writer and publisher, is trying to help his friend and one time lover Lisbeth Salander.  Salander is wanted for three counts of murder. No one beside Blomkvist is looking for other leads. The murdered couple had researched and written an expose of human trafficking and prostitution. Some powerful people will be named when the book is published by Blomkvist. Salander was severly abused as a child. She trusts no one. Not even a friend.

Again a horrible cover in Canada. I borrowed this pic from Culture Witch.