Five Reasons I Did Not Make It Past Page 35 (Melissa Bank – The Wonder Spot)

Page 1: “She turned to Jack now and said, ‘Is your jacket small?’
If it was, I didn’t see it, but my mother had already worked herself into what she called a tizzy. ‘How is it possible for a person to outgrow a suit in a matter of weeks?’ she wondered aloud, as though we had an unsolvable mystery or a miracle before us, instead of the result of Jack lifting weights and running all summer. He’d lost his blubber and added muscles where once there had been none; about once a day I’d put my hand around his bicep, and he’d flex it for me.”

Page 2: “When my mother tried to coax the dog out of the car, Robert said, ‘He wants to come with us.’
‘The dog will be more comfortable here,’ she said.
I thought, We’d all be more comfortable here.
Robert said, ‘Please don’t call Albert “the dog.”‘
My father said, ‘Never mind, Joyce,’ and my mother said, ‘Fine,’ in the tone of, I give up.”

Page 8: “Maybe she’d learned how to pronounce the Hebrew words, but you could tell she had no idea what they meant. She read with zero expression, as though reciting the Hebrew translation of a phone book or soup label, the only semblance of an intonation a pause at the end of a listing or ingredient.
In contrast, my mother, who was no more fluent in Hebrew than I, appeared utterly enthralled; she even nodded occasionally as though finding this or that passage especially insightful and moving.”

Page 12: “The bandleader was singing, ‘Put your right foot in, and shake it all about,’ and the three of them did it along with everyong else, without thinking, as I did, Why? Why would you put your right foot in and shake it all about?“

Page 31: “When he answered, his voice was so quiet I didn’t think he wanted me to hear him: ‘I wasn’t going to get to play.’
‘Why not?’
He raised his voice to normal volume, but it sounded louder because of how quiet it had been. ‘ “Why?” ‘ he said. ‘Because I’m not good enough.’
I was about to say, That’s not true, but I realized that it was true; he wouldn’t have said it otherwise. I waited a minute, and then I said, ‘That sucks.’”

The Perils of Political Fiction (Shalimar the Clown – Salman Rushdie)

Conveying a political message through quality fiction is a difficult task. Salman Rushdie’s latest offering, Shalimar the Clown, highlights some of the challenges. At times, the book shows us the writer whose passionate, urgent voice earned him death threats and exile. But at others, the political focus takes away from the story. As a result, Shalimar is good, but not as good as it could have been.

Unsurprisingly, some of the best parts of Shalimar take place in Kashmir, in the past. Fables and tales of children growing up in an idyllic past provide the backdrop and the meaning for the contemporary part of the story. Here, Rushdie is in his element. The travails of a village of traveling chefs feel comfortably familiar and homey without draining them of their authenticity. The experience is exciting, enlightening, and enjoyable all at once.

The other great parts of the story also take place in Kashmir in the modern day. The idyllic past is charming, but it quickly becomes consumed by the struggles that have since torn Kashmir apart. Rushdie’s righteous anger is ably communicated, and the menace of the Islamic terrorists and the Indian military occupiers is vividly drawn with fascinating, frightening magical realism.

The modern American frame story that tries to draw everything together is distinctly less interesting. Part of the problem is that Rushdie’s musings about the culture of Los Angeles lack the exotic foreignness of Kashmir. A larger issue, though, is that the frame story is heavy-handed and inhuman. The pointed symbolism of the life of a girl named Kashmira lacks any semblance of subtlety or the authenticity that makes some of Shalimar so good.

That’s a shame, because the failure of the outer story really weakens the overall impact of the book. We’re left with a mostly enjoyable, at times disconnected story combined with some political anger. The reading experience is not bad, but when you put Shalimar down, don’t expect to take away a lasting message.

Not Stale Yet (Paul Auster – City of Glass)

Experimental novels fail more often as novels than as experiments. When one succeeds, then, it’s worthwhile to look deeper than the trick. City of Glass, the first novel of Paul Auster’s New York trilogy, deserves its popularity and acclaim, and not just because there’s a character named Paul Auster.

The cover of my copy of the trilogy has an Escheresque cover: a hand holding a pen, and three books, one of which has a cover picturing the hand holding the pen. That’s about how the narration works in City of Glass: it’s a detective novel about a detective novelist, and without giving too much away, let’s just say that there’s Quinn and Paul Auster and “I” and we’re definitely meant to puzzle over exactly how they relate to each other. I was shocked, though, to feel that technique engaging me and drawing me into the narrative. Pointing to meta is rarely anything other than a stale joke; it doesn’t thrill us to see sitcom characters watching a sitcom any more than it shocks us to see the word damn. Escher’s been dead, after all, for 35 years.

City of Glass isn’t just well-storyboarded. It’s cool, and full of sharp prose and curious characters. Auster plays with the detective-novel form–you’ll just have to trust me, because I don’t feel comfortable giving any spoiler more detailed than what’s implicitly between these dashes­­‑-but retains the vigor. The obsessive protagonist, the creepy villain, and the extreme situations they find themselves in are all well-executed and fun to read. In an early scene Quinn intends to discover his man and stumbles on two in the same building who fit the description perfectly. It’s a meaningful counterpoint to the aforementioned narrative jumble, and it’s also expert characterization set in an accurate, vibrant New York City.

If you want an intricate, robust plot and want to see it resolved, City of Glass will disappoint you. But intrigue, good dialogue, surprise, and consequence are all here, as Auster brings to life not just characters but an aging form.