State of Wonder [First Read 2011] by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett is one of those authors whose new books are automatically sent to the “top of the list” as a must read.  She’s an academic author.  She spends a lot of time perfecting plot and characters, so we only see a new work every two or three years.

This is an amazing story and a compelling read.  It’s all I can do to hold back from just reading it straight through, from cover to cover.  However, like a good Armagnac, the reading is best, when one savors it over time without guzzling.

Marina Singh is a Minnesotan medical doctor with an eastern Indian father, who abandoned her, returning to India.  She has nightmares about her childhood visits to Calcutta.  She gave up her surgical career because of a common mistake when in residency (she never watched Dr. House or Grey’s Anatomy).  At the opening, she is a lab tech with a partner, Eckman; and a quiet sexual relationship with her 20-years-older boss.  The boss sends Eckman to the Amazon; Marina’s old surgery professor reports Eckman’s death after three months.  Marina bonds with Eckman’s wife, who has every thing Marina really wants: kids, acceptance, and a stimulating life.  Marina travels to the Amazon to pick up the pieces.  She finds all those things she has been missing in her life.

 

Ann Patchett normally puts most of her attention on people and their psychology, motivations, and back-stories.  As a change of pace, Patchett has written an action thriller here, not much psychoanalysis. 

So, she has channeled Homer, using all the adventure devices we love in “The Odyssey.”  We have the Lotus-Eaters, who forget their mission preferring somatic drugs [Rapps].  We have the cannibalistic Laestrygonians [Hummocca] with yellow heads and poison darts.  We have the protective drug “moly” to resist Circe [malaria].  And of course, there’s an encounter with Scylla, the six-headed monster [Anaconda].  Marina exhibits growing strength and commitment as the story unfolds.

Patchett’s writing is tight: no meandering, no wasted words on fluff.  I appreciate the time and effort that went into scores of revisions; they were worth it.  There is never any hint of what’s going to happen next.

Marina blossoms when dropped in the Amazon jungle.  Life will never be the same.  Patchett explores the boundaries of love: for children, for a child, of a friend, and mentors; and not unlike Odysseus, the story ends when they get home.

There will be considerable temptation on the part of the movie director to turn this script into something like “Anaconda” or “Arachnophobia,” or even Tarzan.  This is not what the book is all about and it would be a shame to have the movie miss the point, while in search of some teenager-appeasing computer graphics.

New Earth by Ben Bova

O.K., # 1,  I have to come clean and state that I am, and have always been (since age 11), a SciFi devotee. 

Over the last half-century, I would go back periodically and try again, whoever was the flavor of the decade.  I read all of the new sub-genres.  I am a believer in the future.  I was a “Dune” freak until Herbert’s stuff was strung out too far.  Poul Anderson kept to the classic genre, but grew stale.  He was no E.E. Doc Smith, nor Heinlein.  Frederik Pohl raised the bar with the HeeChe Saga, but he, too, had just a single innovation, moving beyond Asimov, but which eventually ran dry.  Carl Sagan was the type of author that didn’t over-reach: not a SciFi writer, he wrote a great book and didn’t milk it.  Michael Crichton was another of these guys, a professional writer who takes a great stab at moving SciFi forward.  My current voice of the future is William Gibson, who may only go forward ten to twenty years, but that’s the equivalent of decades for those 30’s-50’s SciFi writers.

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Bova is a middle of the road author who has ground out over 50 books in the SciFi genre.  His ideas aren’t new, the primary premise of the book is a warning about global warming.  His secondary thrust is a plea to move away from violent solutions to the problems of humanity: no war, no hatred, no guns. 

The first half of the novel pays homage to Lost Horizon, a 1933 novel by English writer James Hilton. The book was turned into a movie, also called Lost Horizon, in 1937 by director Frank Capra. It is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La, a fictional utopian lamasery high in the mountains of Tibet.   Hugh Conway, a veteran member of the diplomatic service, finds inner peace, love, and a sense of purpose in Shangri-La, whose inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity.  As in the book and movie, the others in the research expedition to “New Earth” don’t initially agree with the diplomat.  They view things from their commitments to the seven deadly sins.

The second half of the story starts with the lessons of Carl Sagan’s “Contact”.  .

A small crew of Earthlings has arrived at an impossible world after traveling 8.6 light years.  It was all a ruse their hominoid hosts admit, “just to pique your interest enough to come and have tea with us.”  “and, by the way, while you’re digging into that scrumptious scone, I’d like to also remind you and you kind that peace and serenity is good and that war and hatred is bad: so much so that your entire civilization may be destroyed if you don’t change your ways, and that’s why we’re having this little chat.

There’s an unacknowledged co-author with an undeveloped sub-plot that could lead to “New Earth II”.  All good writing – no surprises.

Two MisAccusals Compared - Lee Child / Andrew Gross

My sister sent me a popular author’s book recently and I started reading it at the same time as I began reading another NYT Bestselling Author.!  The titles matched so neatly, as well as the attempted plot lines, that I thought I would review them in comparison (both 2013 pubs; sizes: 339 pgs vs. 400 pgs).

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Lee Child has done many of these Jack Reacher novels, so the opening can be slow, with an assumption that 60% of the readership is simply familiarizing themselves with his character traits.  It’s much like an opening to another Bourne novel adaptation starring Matt Damon would be, should there be such a thing.  Reacher is the archetypal white knight, modernized: 6’4” 240, a solid six-pack, and the epitome of a modern fighter.  He is impervious to pain, fearless in battle, and knows exactly the right moves to do whatever is the necessary damage called for.

He, and his heroine, are mis-accused of various crimes, which the unfolding of the plot will clear them of.  In this book, the plot builds inexorably, up to the end.  There are fight scenes with our hero, and they get better and better.  There are sex scenes with our heroine, and they get steamier and she gets sexier.

 

 

I’ve highlighted above, several of the differences between the approaches each of these authors have taken. 

The Gross book moves at a relentless speed for 30-40 pages.  The reader can’t believe this pace can be sustained: and it can’t.  The pace drops off to, .. plodding – but, fear not, the pace rockets to a welcomed and well-deserved high again at the end.

In the meantime, there’s the poor-writer filler of research material that, alas, couldn’t be fitted into dialogue.

There’s the plot-line development that was inadvertently disclosed too early;  which, in turn, caused the reader to go into “skim-mode” periodically, for 4-8 page skims, to keep the reader’s attention sustained enough to keep going. 

We did, however, continue, because this was a good book; not a great book, but these are not loveable characters. 

I’d enjoy the company of Reacher & Turner (left) at Thanksgiving Dinner; but not Bachman and Gould, each from suspect roots.