Before, After, and Somebody In Between

Before, After, and Somebody In Between
by Jeannine Garsee
(4/5 stars)

In terms of wicked mothers, Martha Kowalski's might not be in the same league as the mom in "Carrie" or Joan Crawford in "Mommy Dearest" but she's close. Martha's mother is more often than not drunk or high, and very often emotionally abusive if not physically abusive. The sort of men she hangs out with, like redneck slum lord Wayne, are just as bad.

Like a lot of books of this type, it begins with Martha and her mother moving into Wayne's house in inner-city Cleveland. Martha's upstairs neighbors are the Lindseys and she forms an attachment to Jerome, who is about her age and dreams of being a nuclear physicist.

Martha goes to the public high school, where an older girl named Chardonnay makes her life a living hell. When Martha finally snaps under the strain and her mom's addictions take a turn for the worse, Martha winds up in a foster home.

Then in a Dickensian twist Martha winds up with the affluent Brinkman family. She adopts the name Gina and most everything seems to be going her way, except for the Brinkman's annoying daughter Nikki. But it doesn't stay that way forever...

Anyway, it's hard to say I could "enjoy" a book like this. It's not exactly a happy story of hope and redemption or anything like that. But there are some valuable lessons to be learned from it. The writing is solid and while the pace lags a bit at times, it generally held my interest.

That is all.

Blood Song

Blood Song
by Cat Adams
(4/5 stars)

I've never been a fan of vampires or werewolves or any of that of that paranormal stuff.  "Blood Song" really didn't change my opinion of that.  I have to say upfront, though, that if you are into that I think you'll find this book enjoyable enough.

In the world of this story there are vampires, werewolves, mages, and ghosts all living amongst us.  Unlike say, "Twilight," the vampires are not very nice; mostly they're evil fiends who feast on the living.  One night while working for a prince of fictional Rusland (which was also called Ruslund a couple of times) professional bodyguard Celia Graves is ambushed by the bloodsuckers and bitten.

She's not fully turned, so like "Blade" she's only half-vampire.  She doesn't need to drink blood but she can't eat solid food.  She can go out in the daylight, but it smarts after not long in the sun.  She can heal quickly, but not as quickly as a vampire.

After that the story focuses on Celia trying to adjust to life as an "abomination" and avoiding various attempts on her life.  There's also unraveling who was behind the ambush that nearly killed her.

The latter is not brought to a very satisfactory conclusion.  Especially the subplot about her "sire" or the one who turned her, which is dealt with in an extremely offhanded fashion.  I found most of the story very plodding and slow, really about 100 pages longer than it needed to be.  A lot of it seemed to be setting up characters for future books, which didn't help to make this first book all that memorable for me.

But I'm still going to give it 4 stars because it's capable enough and as I said at the beginning, if you're into vampires and werewolves and such without the "Twilight" teen angst then you'll probably enjoy this more than me.

That is all.

Sunset Park

Sunset Park
By Paul Auster
(4/5 stars)

Previously I had only read Auster's "Book of Illusions" and didn't really care for it.  But since this was free, I decided to give it a try.  For some reason I can't explain, I really liked the book and when I wasn't reading it, I wanted to be.

My best guess is because the focal character Miles Heller is near 30, a baseball fan, and had an annoying brother.  So we have some things in common there.  That usually helps to like someone, as various scientific studies have pointed out.  (Other studies probably say the opposite, but that's neither here nor there.)

When the book begins, Miles is living in Florida.  It's 2008, in the middle of housing bubble collapse and Wall Street collapse.  Miles works cleaning out houses of those who have been evicted from their homes.  The love Miles's life is a Cuban girl named Pilar, who is only 17, 11 years his junior.  Miles plans on marrying her once she turns eighteen.  Then Pilar's sister gets involved and Miles has to flee.  Unlike Humbert Humbert, he doesn't take his Lolita with him.

Instead, he goes alone to New York.  Specifically to Brooklyn and a house in the neighborhood known as Sunset Park.  A college chum and two of his friends are living there already, rent-free because the house belongs to the city after its former residents were evicted.  (Irony, anyone?)  So Miles and the others squat there for a few months, waiting for the police to lower the boom on them.

As much as I really wanted to like this book and give it five stars, I can't overlook the fatal flaw.  There are too many characters and too many things going on.  There are the four housemates, Miles's parents, and his stepparents, all of whom except Miles's stepparents get a turn at narrating.  With so much going on in a book that comes in at less than 350 pages, there just isn't time for Auster to deal with everything.  So it comes off as shallow, the characters, situations, and conversations as sketches instead of fully-formed. 

While I enjoyed Auster's writing, I think the story would have been vastly improved if he had just picked one or maybe two narrators (like Miles and his father) and focused on them.  That or make the book about 300 pages longer.  Because as it stands, while the housemates Bing, Alice, and Ellen are interesting, their potential is squandered.  Just as squandered are the interactions between the housemates during the squatting in Sunset Park.  Really you get more drama from an episode of "The Real World" or "Jersey Shore" or any "reality" show where people are cooped up together than you get from these four.

So in the end it's a good book and I really liked it, but it could have been a lot more.  While I liked it more than "The Book of Illusions" I doubt it's his best effort.

That is all.