Collected Miscellany

A week or so ago I promised as a service to my readers to referee the dueling New York Times reviews of  Angelology by Danielle Trussoni. Put aside the fact that one was technically in the New York Times Review of Books and the other in the paper – or the fact that they were not really side by side reviews – and focus instead on the very different reaction the book produced.

But first, let’s allow the publisher to introduce the book:

Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late mother superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.

For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.

This was in fact the blurb that intrigued me enough to read the book (generously provided by the publisher in this case). But the same book produced two very different reactions.

Janet Maslin calls it “a class-obsessed, scholarship-spouting, minutiae-strewn thrill ride that follows the ‘Da Vinci Code’ model as loftily as it can.”

In contrast, Susan Cokal: “Sensual and intellectual, “Angelology” is a terrifically clever thriller — more Eco than Brown, without the cloudy sentimentalism of New Age encomiums or Catholic treatises.”

So if I had to choose side in this debate who would I declare the winner? I would have to side with Cokal but I can understand where Maslin is coming from to a degree.

More below.

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Frame Up by John F. Dobbyn

Description

The Devil’s Star Jo Nesbo

Publishers Weekly

A serial killer taunts Harry Hole in Nesbø’s searing third crime novel to feature the Oslo police detective to be made available in the U.S. (after Nemesis). Still suffering from alcohol-fueled demons and obsessed with hunting for evidence against a clearly dirty cop, Hole grudgingly agrees to help look into the murder of a woman whose finger has been amputated and a red diamond stuck under her eyelid. More bodies follow, with the murderer leaving identical five-pointed diamonds (the titular devil’s star) at each crime scene. At first the killings appear to be random, but Hole soon discovers an ominous pattern. Nesbø brilliantly incorporates threads from earlier novels, including Hole’s often tumultuous relationship with his lover, Rakel, without ever losing the current story’s rhythm. Even with—or perhaps because of—his flaws, Hole is arguably one of today’s most fascinating fictional detectives.

The Spellmans Strike Again Lisa Lutz

Publishers Weekly

In Edgar-finalist Lutz’s entertaining fourth and final novel about the eccentric Spellman PI clan (after Revenge of the Spellmans), Isabel “Izzy” Spellman juggles the usual family drama—her mother tries to sabotage Izzy’s relationship with her Irish bartender boyfriend and younger sister Rae throws herself into freeing a wrongly convicted man—while helping to drum up business in a dreary economy. While Rae works on her “Free Schmidt” campaign, Izzy investigates the whereabouts of a missing valet with a checkered past and sifts through garbage for a screenwriter client. Older brother David, the only Spellman not involved in the family business, grows closer to his defense attorney girlfriend. On the sly, Izzy is also tailing Rick Harkey, a rival San Francisco PI, and discovers that Harkey left behind a trail of suspicious arrests and conveniently misplaced evidence in his career as a cop. Narrator Izzy’s biting wit—mixed with a refreshing dose of humility and sadness—easily carries the story.

Susan Cokal in the NYTBR:

Sensual and intellectual, “Angelology” is a terrifically clever thriller — more Eco than Brown, without the cloudy sentimentalism of New Age encomiums or Catholic treatises. It makes no apologies for its devices, and none are necessary. How else would it be possible to bring together the angels of the Bible and Apocrypha, the myth of Orpheus, Bulgarian geography, medieval monastics, the Rockefellers, ­Nazis, nuns and musicology? And how splendid that it has happened.

And Janet Maslin in the NYT:

These details are brought to mind by Ms. Trussoni’s first novel, “Angelology,” a class-obsessed, scholarship-spouting, minutiae-strewn thrill ride that follows the “Da Vinci Code” model as loftily as it can. In fathoming the grandiosity of Ms. Trussoni’s escapism, maybe it helps to recall the world from which she had to escape.

[...]

This novel is neck deep in mumbo jumbo and will do its tireless best to conflate fact and fiction. Obscure theories? Nonexistent historical events? Exact anatomical details about otherworldly beings? Complaints about the naysayers who have “distorted angelic reality”? Yes, “Angelology” has them all.

Confused? Never fear, dear reader, Angelology is in the TBR pile. In the not too distant future I will offer what I am sure will be the definitive take on this polarizing novel …

Dangerous radicalism? Subversive? Ironic commentary?

The Family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Overcloseness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works toward sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity.  What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed society. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is the most likely to be misinterpreted.  What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.

– Don De Lillo, White Noise (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editio)

I was inspired by Wild Magic to check out more books by Cat Weatherill so I started with Barkbelly. I am not sure if it was my mood or the style of this particular work but it didn’t have quite the same – ahem – magic as I had hoped.

It is creative and again clearly influenced by oral storytelling but if feels a bit more like episodes tied together rather than a seamless story. The hook – an orphaned wooden boy seeking to find his place in the world – was interesting, and the story has some well done ingredients, but it just never quite “took off” for me.

Here is the teaser from the publisher:

One silver-starry night, a shiny, wooden egg falls from a flying machine high in the air . . . down, down, down through the midnight sky . . . down to the small village of Pumbleditch, where Barkbelly is born. Where he’s the only wooden boy. And where he’s the cause of a tragic accident.

Suddenly, Barkbelly’s only choice is to flee for his life—to run. As he tries to escape his haunting past, he faces extraordinary adventures and dangers. Every wooden step leads Barkbelly toward the dark and startling truth about where he comes from and the burning question of where he really belongs. With deliciously imaginative storytelling, Cat Weatherill creates an utterly magical world—and one wooden boy who’s sure to melt readers’ hearts.

More of my take below. (Some spoilers involved)

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