The Circle, revisited

If you're a movie hound, then maybe you've heard that David Eggers' The Circle will be hitting the big screen on April 28. Starring Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, Bill Paxton, and more, it promises to be an entertaining way to pass two hours or so. But have you read the book? I wrote about it a few years back, but if you've forgotten, well, read on.

Have you ever wanted to just grab someone by the shoulders and shake them awake because they seemed oblivious to the seriousness of the things happening around them--or worse, the things happening to them?  If not, allow me to introduce you to Mae Holland (Emma Watson), the naïve young protagonist of The Circle. Trust me, you'll want to do more than just shake her by the book's end.

Truthfully, I really liked Mae at first. I especially enjoyed her excitement and wide-eyed wonder at landing a dream job at one of the world's most powerful tech companies, the Circle. Like most new employees, Mae is eager to please her superiors, including her friend Annie (Karen Gillan), who pulled strings to get her the job, but in doing so she seems almost as eager to give herself away in the process. For example, all Circle employees are expected to participate in various company activities (there are hundreds to choose from) and contribute to the company's social-network feeds (Zing, InnerCircle, OuterCircle, etc.), all of which is taken into account when calculating an employee's "Participation Rank." Okay, whatever: The food in the cafeteria today was excellent. Zing! But when Mae is dressed down for spending a weekend at home rather than staying on campus and "participating," not to mention having the gall to go kayaking without documenting any of it on her social feeds, I was bothered by her acceptance of these criticisms as valid. Unfortunately, Mae telling her supervisors that what she does on her own time is her own business would have been useless, because at the Circle, everything you do is the Circle's business. Rather than rebel, Mae acquiesces, and in doing so, she begins to lose herself.

By the time we reach the second act of the story, Orwellian slogans are being trotted out at a company pep-rally--SECRETS ARE LIES, SHARING IS CARING, and PRIVACY IS THEFT. (Seriously, didn't any of these people read 1984?) Mae finds herself rising quickly through the company ranks and becoming a star both inside and outside the Circle--and, of course, chief rival to Annie for the attention of their social-network overlords. The price is Mae's sense of self and any remaining scrap of privacy she might have held onto, as well as her friendship with Annie. Admittedly, much of what happens in this half of the book is so over the top that I found it silly, but with the ever-growing reach of surveillance, it may not be beyond the realm of possibility.

So there you have it. I can't promise that the movie will do the book justice (they almost never do, understandably), but if your interest is piqued, give it a shot. And by all means, read the book!

  

The Suicide Motor Club

She saw them with true eyes, saw what they were. Saw the catlike reflection in their eyes, saw the driver’s smile, his foxlike canines, the wolfish teeth on the one wrestling with her. Saw the sharp red hole that was the woman’s mouth, the teeth in it the teeth of biting gar.

They like fast cars. They like the nighttime. They prowl the lonely highways of America, headlights off, hunting. Always hunting. They are the Suicide Motor Club, and you should pray very hard that you never meet them.

Judith Lamb wasn’t so lucky. She first met the Suicide Motor Club one night in 1967, on the road to Amarillo with her husband and her son. One minute, things were normal, the next, a carful of monsters with human faces pulled up out of nowhere and dragged her boy right out of the car. Then, to leave no witnesses, they ran Judith and her husband off the road and vanished into the night.

The dead ride quickly, indeed.

Flash forward two years. Judith is the sole survivor, her husband dead from his injuries, her son’s whereabouts unknown. Only she can tell the tale of what happened that night in 1967, but who would believe that monsters with shining eyes had ambushed them and taken her son? No one save a clandestine group calling themselves the Bereaved. And they offer her the one thing no police officer, therapist, or holy order can: revenge.  
Good luck, Judith.

Fasten your seatbelt, dear reader, because The Suicide Motor Club is a ride to hell and back you won’t soon forget. Christopher Buehlman (Those Across the River, The Lesser Dead) continues to impress as a top-caliber horror writer, so if horror is your preferred genre, do yourself a favor and add him to your reading list right now.

And stay off the road at night.

The Book Thief

Imagine a story in which the words the characters speak—and write—are living things. They sit with you, walk alongside you, murmur you to sleep or keep you awake with their chatter. They poison. They heal. They haunt. Yes, I’m thinking of a particular story, one that is both heartbreaking and beautiful in its telling. One passage may make you cry, while the next might coax a smile, and you may even laugh out loud from time to time. Make no mistake, you will feel something, and you’ll fall in love with a girl coming of age in Nazi Germany. Her name is Liesel Meminger, but you may know her as The Book Thief.

Liesel is just nine years old at the beginning of this story, and already her life is stained with grief. The loss of both her brother and mother (one has died, the other has given her away) haunt her when she comes to stay with Hans and Rosa Hubermann on Himmel Street in Molching. Rosa is stern and sharp-tongued, quick with insults and wooden spoons and feared by children and adults alike, while Hans is gentle and nurturing, a painter by trade and passable player of the accordion. It’s no surprise that Liesel grows close to Hans as he sits with her through the night during her nightmares, and he teaches her how to read using, of all things, a book she stole at her brother’s burial, The Gravedigger’s Handbook. He is the one who instills in her a lifelong love of words. Next door lives a boy with hair the color of lemons, Rudy Steiner, and as he and Liesel become fast friends, she slowly adjusts to her new life, a life that, for a time, just might be normal.

Of course, the Nazi Party has other plans, and as it begins to make its presence felt even more in Molching, things change. Heil, Hitler. Hitler Youth. Book burning. Liesel steals another book, one that survives the fire, but there are witnesses and consequences. And then there is this: a long-ago promise that comes calling in the form of a Jew named Max Vandenburg. These are perilous times for Jews and anyone who doesn’t march lock-step with Nazism, but the Hubermanns rise to the occasion and hide Max in their basement, and Liesel makes another friend. But as the noose of Hitler’s war tightens around Germany, the lives of Liesel and those she loves are changed forever.

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is pure poetry. When you’ve finished reading your usual summer fluff, give this one a try. I think it just might give you an entirely new appreciation for the beauty, power, and life of words, particularly during dark times.  

Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind

The first time I read Supernatural:Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind by Graham Hancock, my mind was sufficiently blown by the theories he put forth. That was several years ago. I decided to dust off my copy and read it again, and yep, you guessed it: mind blown all over again. This is an amazing book, and even if you don’t believe a word of it, I guarantee it'll make your head spin. Heck, you might even find yourself questioning the very nature of reality. 

Hancock begins by stating that even though humans had achieved “full anatomical modernity” by 196,000 years ago, they displayed no evidence of symbolic thought until 100,000 years ago. What caused this symbolic revolution? What caused “humans with identical brains, looks, and genes to ours” to exist in a symbolic and artistic vacuum for roughly 100,000 years before rather quickly becoming “innovative and artistic, symbolic and cultured, religious and self-aware?” Hancock’s theory? In a nutshell: hallucinations. Specifically, “the first notions of the existence of supernatural realms and beings, the first ‘religious’ ideas about them, the first art representing them, and the first mythologies concerning them, were all derived from the experiences of hallucinating shamans.” Interesting theory, and one with which growing numbers of scholars around the world concur, but Hancock takes the theory further. What if the hallucinations our ancestors experienced weren’t just “silly illusions” of nonexistent places and beings, but were in fact visions of other dimensions that were, and are, every bit as real as the material world around them? Hancock’s investigations take him into the mysterious world of shamanism and put him on the path to meet these ancient teachers of mankind face-to-face.  

Supernatural is a trip (pun definitely intended) in and of itself! The information Hancock reveals through his extensive research is simply fascinating as biology, anthropology, folklore, and more converge to create a provocative page-turner unlike anything you’ve probably ever read before. Hancock’s ideas are certainly persuasive, but are they believable? I’ve been reading him for a while, so I’m a fan, but I’ll allow you to draw your own conclusions.  

The Great and Secret Show

 

Memory, prophecy and fantasy—

the past, the future and
the dreaming moment between—
are all one country,
living one immortal day

To know that is Wisdom

To use it is the Art.

Who would have thought that Armageddon would begin in the dead letter office of the Omaha Central Post Office? A downtrodden nobody named Randolph Jaffe is assigned to sort an entire room filled to bursting with undeliverable mail and set aside anything of importance, but he finds something far more valuable than an uncashed check. No, in the deep undercurrents of American life revealed in the letters he reads, he discovers a secret wholly unknown to the ignorant masses: a powerful legacy called the Art that seems to belong to a mysterious group known as the Shoal. To a man like Jaffe, who suffers from delusions of grandeur coupled with bad intentions, this is dangerous information. And when he finds in yet another envelope a strange medallion etched with primal symbols, his quest to find and possess the Art and all it encompasses begins. With a murder. And a fire.

Jaffe does not go unopposed, though. As he gains more knowledge and power, others are conscripted to fight him in an epic battle between good and evil that unfolds over decades. There is, however, a third party in this conflict, a cosmic evil that intends to exploit the destruction the opposing armies have created for its own malevolent ends—complete domination of the Earth.

This, in a teeny-tiny nutshell, is the gist of Clive Barker’s epic The Great and Secret Show. Trust me, folks, there’s so much more to this story than what you’ve just read above, and it will bend and stretch your imagination in ways you’ve never thought possible. But (hint, hint) if graphic novels are more your speed, you’re in luck, for The Great and Secret Show was given an excellent adaptation in comic-book form by Chris Ryall, released in twelve parts and eventually gathered into one awesome volume: The Complete Clive Barker’s The Great and Secret Show. The artwork, by Gabriel Rodriguez (Locke & Key), is superb. So if you’re looking for a darkly fantastic graphic novel with a literary bent, give this one a try. And if you've actually read Barker's novel, I think you'll be very pleased with what Ryall and Rodriguez have created from it.   

Mr. Vandy's Travelin' Soft Shoe Show

I think it’s pretty safe to say that the world loves Dick Van Dyke. He’s been entertaining us for decades, from the Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie to The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and beyond. I remember watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang countless times as a kid, and I’m also pretty sure I’ve seen every episode of Diagnosis: Murder. Despite celebrating his 90^th birthday back in December, Van Dyke is still finding new ways to make people smile, and he has no intention of stopping. In fact, whenever he’s asked the secret to staying young, he says, “Keep moving.” That bit of sage advice is also the title of his book: Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging. In it, you’ll find out all sorts of interesting things about Van Dyke, like how he spends his day, how he met his wife, Arlene, and why he’ll never stop dancing. Did you know he sings in an a capella quartet called the Vantastix? Did you know he tends to dance up and down the aisles while out shopping? Did you know he has an ice cream sundae every night? Now one might think that this book is strictly for the older crowd, but all you “youngins” out there can learn a thing or two from it as well. (Seriously, "Mr. Vandy" is probably younger at heart than you are!) Take, for example, Van Dyke’s list of what things truly matter in life and what things are simply a waste of time. Family and friends tops the list, but you’ll also find things like staying curious about the world and having a sense of humor. In one chapter in the book, Carl Reiner, creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show and longtime collaborator and friend, gives his own advice to young people, saying, “Be who you are. If you can, if you can afford to, do only the things that please you. If you can’t do what you love in order to make a living, find a hobby that you can’t wait to get to after work. You need passion and joy in your life. Family. Love. Passion. And joy.” And that, as Cary Grant would say, is good stuff.

But Keep Moving is chock full of good stuff. It’ll make you smile. You may even laugh out loud. And if you didn’t know already, by the time you’re finished you’ll understand why the world loves Dick Van Dyke. I highly recommend it.   

Finders Keepers

When we last left retired detective Bill Hodges and his friends Jerome Robinson and Holly Gibney in Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes, they’d just put the wraps on murderous nutjob Brady Hartsfield (a.k.a., the Mercedes Killer), preventing him from detonating a bomb (and himself in the process) at a music concert. Despite suffering a heart attack during the final pages of Mr. Mercedes, Hodges recovers with a new outlook on life and opens his own private detective agency, which brings us to the second book in the Bill Hodges Trilogy, appropriately titled Finders Keepers. This one involves the thirty-year-old unsolved murder of famed (and reclusive) writer John Rothstein, author of the famous Runner trilogy, at the hands of his number-one fan, Morris Bellamy. That’s not a spoiler, by the way, as this crime takes place in the first chapter. No, it’s the long-reaching consequences of this crime that drive the plot of Finder Keepers.

See, Mr. Bellamy not only got away with murder (he was incarcerated for something else, mind you), he also got away with some very extremely valuable items filched from Rothstein’s house, items a collector would pay a fortune for. Unfortunately, decades after Bellamy stashed them near the house he grew up in, a good kid named Pete Saubers (now living in that same house) stumbles upon their hiding place and seizes an opportunity to help his struggling family out of a rough spot. But with Bellamy recently released from prison, it’s only a matter a time before the rabid old wolf comes sniffing around his hidey hole, and when he discovers his ill-gotten gains missing, he won’t stop until he finds them, no matter who he has to kill to reclaim them.

Unless Hodges can stop him first.

Just like Mr. Mercedes before it, Finders Keepers is the kind of wild ride only Stephen King can give you. I enjoyed this book immensely, and I loved the slapstick chemistry between Hodges, Jerome, and Holly as they worked together to stop Bellamy. My only criticism would be that it was sometimes frustrating waiting for Hodges and the gang to catch up with what’s already been revealed to the reader, but that aside, the story—particularly Bellamy’s backstory—makes for some serious page turning. And, King lays out a few unsettling hints (of the supernatural variety) about what to expect in book 3 of the Bill Hodges Trilogy. Next summer can’t get here soon enough. 

Go Set a Watchman

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve probably heard the news about the publication of a “new” novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, and while it has gone on to become one of the most beloved books in American literature, Lee never had another book published—until now, that is. Go Set a Watchman hit the bookshelves and the bestsellers lists last month, generating lots of controversy in the process (did Lee truly give her consent to have it published, for example). Go Set a Watchman is not Harper Lee’s second novel, it’s actually her first. After submitting it to her agent, Maurice Crain, who in turn submitted a revised version to publishing company J. B. Lippincott, it was rewritten numerous times until three years later, To Kill a Mockingbird was the result. One might say that Go Set a Watchman gave birth to To Kill a Mockingbird, as pieces of it (the anecdotes involving the narrator’s childhood in the fictional town of Maycomb) were extracted and expanded into the novel we know and love today.

That said, you may have heard that Go Set a Watchman is a sequel of sorts. Indeed, the narrative takes place twenty years after the events of To Kill a Mockingbird, but it’s certainly not a “Further Adventures of Scout and the Gang” follow-up. If that’s what you’re expecting or what you’ve been led to believe, forget it. Scout’s all grown up now (call her Jean Louise, thank you) and living in New York, but her homecoming to Maycomb quickly falls apart when she begins to see her hometown—and her beloved father, Atticus—not through the idyllic lens of childhood but with the critical eyes of an adult. Needless to say, she doesn’t like what she sees. Some of the citizens of Maycomb (Atticus included, it seems) appear to be mobilizing for war against an invasion of “outside agitators” (namely the government and the NAACP) and their progressive agenda (desegregation, equal voting rights, etc.), and in Jean’s eyes, they are standing on the wrong side of history. This, of course, puts her directly at odds with Atticus, the one person she felt she could always count on to do and say the right things, culminating in a fierce confrontation between the two.

But I’m sure what you’re really wondering is this: is Go Set a Watchman worth reading? I believe it is. In fact, I really enjoyed it. Reading it just underscored to me what an incredibly gifted writer Harper Lee is (or was, given her lack of output over the years). Some will say that because it’s a first draft, it’s more of an academic curiosity and not worth the general reading public’s time. I disagree. Could it use a bit more polish in places? Sure, but I would argue that a first draft from Harper Lee is in many ways far better than the final drafts I’ve read from some of today’s writers. Others might say that if you loved To Kill a Mockingbird, you’ll hate Go Set a Watchman. Maybe, but I suppose that’s more a matter of personal taste. It’s not a breezy summer read. Given the milieu of the book and the issues it debates, some of the passages may make you cringe a bit, so you should certainly keep this in mind. I will also say that, having read it, I understand why Lee’s original editors really zeroed in on those passages dealing with Jean Louise's childhood, for it’s in those recollections that the story truly shines. 

Ultimately, the choice to read Go Set a Watchman—or not—is up to you, but I think you’d be missing out on something truly special if you decide to pass it by. 

No One Gets Out Alive

For the past six months, nineteen-year-old Stephanie Booth’s just been scraping by, bouncing from one demeaning and low-paying temp job to another and just shy of being homeless altogether. But going home to her psycho stepmother is not an option, nor is running back to her ex-boyfriend, Ryan, which would just be awkward considering she dumped him. So it’s a stroke of badly needed luck when she finds a cheap room for rent in an old Victorian at 82 Edgehill Road in North Birmingham, England. Sure, the landlord, Mr. “Knacker” McGuire, with his age-inappropriate attire and odd manner of speech, seems harmless enough, eccentric even. Evasive though, that Knacker, regarding his stewardship of his “muvver’s house.” But this is only temporary, Stephanie tells herself, pushing aside the bad vibes scratching at the back of her mind. The minute she makes enough money to move herself into a better situation, she’s gone. 

Oh, how quickly things go wrong.

First, the voices. Strange voices coming from strange places—behind the fireplace, beneath the shower, across the hall—saying nonsensical things. Are these the voices of other tenants? Stephanie has yet to see any. Then, the noises: the scratching on the floorboards beneath her bed, the crinkling of polythene, the clomping of clumsy feet up the stairs and down the hall. What on earth is going on here? And what of the cryptic advice Knacker’s “cousin” and business partner, a six-foot-seven brute named Fergal, gives Stephanie? “Don’t worry about them. They can’t hurt you.” Mm, okay. It’s only after the arrival of two new tenants, Svetlana and Margaret, that Stephanie realizes too late why Knacker only “rents” rooms to women, and now she’s expected to perform. But if you think things are bad for Stephanie now, they’re about to get a whole lot worse.

Let me just get this out of the way: author Adam Nevill can write. Seriously. This guy’s like the literary lovechild of Stephen King and Peter Straub, and he just seems to get better and better with each book he writes (The Ritual, The House of Small Shadows). No One Gets Out Alive is no exception. Yes, it’s got the heft of a classic King novel, but you won’t be skipping past any pages. Warning: this is not a book for the squeamish. It’s dark. It’s violent. It may make you flinch as you read it. It may even give you bad dreams. But it is good, and if you’re a horror-lover, this one needs to be at the top of your reading list. Truthfully, I think Adam Nevill has just become my favorite horror writer.

The Scarlet Gospels

Since the early nineties, there have been rumors, mere whisperings perhaps, that a mysterious tome known as The Scarlet Gospels was being written. It’s author? Well, there could only be one author of such a thing: Clive Barker. But what exactly would comprise these other gospels? At one point, erotic poetry. At another, a collection of dark fiction. And then this: a sequel to the novella that birthed the Hellraiser movies, The Hellbound Heart. Ah, what reader of The Hellbound Heart can easily forget it? The Lemarchand box. The Order of the Gash. The Cenobites. Pinhead. This is what Clive Barker fans have been waiting for, a sequel, and that is exactly what you’ll find when you read The Scarlet Gospels. This time, though, Pinhead (a moniker the Hellpriest despises, by the way) shares the stage with that beleaguered, demon-killing detective of the dark arts, Harry d’Amour, and when these two meet, it won’t be pretty. No punches are pulled here. There will be blood. There will be a harrowing journey through the bowels of hell. And there will be a final showdown between good and evil. Like The Hellbound Heart, this story doesn’t sit still, it moves. But, disappointingly, it lacks the poetic eloquence of its predecessor and the depth of Barker’s earlier imaginative masterpieces. (If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: there is nothing in the canon of dark fantasy that can top Barker's Imajica.) Regardless, if you’ve been reading Clive Barker for as long as I have, The Scarlet Gospels is well worth your time. 

So tell me, are you ready to take a trip to hell? Mr. Barker has such sights to show you.