“Gordon’s collection of stories is an offbeat mix of absurdist violence, sexual fantasy, literary experimentation and self-effacing humor.” from from white tiger on snow mountain
THE HUMAN BODY
the nurse’s legs and desperately hoping she smiles at me.” “We Happy Few” plays with the clichés of writerly stardom, as a former wunderkind takes a job as drug counselor and babysitter for a troubled but gifted young novelist. There’s something of a triptych about childhood in the middle section, opening with the poetic “Vampire of Queens” and continuing with the one-two punch of “Matinee” and “I Think of Demons.” These stories find a man recalling the secret language and common touchstones of his childhood with remembrances of a friend who would eventually succumb to his own demons. Some stories don’t walk the fine line that the author has managed before. “What I’ve Been Trying to Do All This Time” is a cloying bit of hipster metafiction in which an Argentinean student becomes obsessed with “David Gordon,” and the story just happens to feature a cameo appearance by one of Gordon’s real-life friends, novelist Rivka Galchen. Two strong stories help close the book—the title story finds a man trying to get his life back into balance by quitting smoking, balancing his chi and polishing his writing by chatting with girls on X-rated websites. The most mainstream story, “The Amateur,” is easily found as an e-book, but is nevertheless a nifty portrait of an aging wiseguy in Paris. A bit of stylish enjoyment for readers willing to poke a bit of fun at both icons and iconoclasts.
Giordano, Paolo Translated by Appel, Anne Milano Pamela Dorman/Viking (336 pp.) $27.95 | Oct. 2, 2014 978-0-670-01564-1 Giordano’s (The Solitude of Prime Numbers, 2010) unorthodox Afghanistan war novel is short on action but rich in psychological insight. In a post outside Afghanistan, a team of Italian soldiers copes with boredom, fear and barely human living conditions. This is no typical group of heroes: Medical officer Egitto is a former male prostitute who’s just learned that one client is pregnant with his child; Cpl. Ietri is a naïve 20-yearold who’s still attached to his mother. One officer gets into an online relationship that turns abusive. Another is a bully who singles out one subordinate for mistreatment, Full Metal Jacket style. And two female officers drift into unhealthy relationships with their colleagues. For much of the book, the closest thing they see to action is an epidemic of food poisoning. Military engagement finally arrives in the form of an ill-advised plan to transport local truck drivers away from the reach of bloodthirsty insurgents. As some in the company predict, the mission is a disaster, with many of the major characters wiped out in an instant. There’s no easy resolution, but all the survivors are transformed as they return to their former lives. Giordano tells the story with economical language and a few memorable images, most notably that of the convoy getting overrun with sheep just before the carnage erupts. As the title suggests, the book is less about military heroism than the devastating human impact of combat. Wellobserved and compassionate, this is a memorable look at imperfect people in extreme circumstances.
GRAY MOUNTAIN
Grisham, John Doubleday (384 pp.) $28.95 | Oct. 21, 2014 978-0-385-53714-8
“I want all the boys to sit up straight and notice, and not just my ass.” Yup, there’s a new sheriff in town, and she’s come to bring down Big Coal—and maybe strut her stuff, too. Grisham (Sycamore Row, 2013, etc.) has long proved himself to be a trustworthy provider of legal thrillers—formulaic, to be sure, and tossed-off, yes, but delivering the goods if you’re not too particular about the niceties of style. He is also uncommonly timely and topical. This book’s no exception: Our heroine is a bright young Ivy Leaguer newly furloughed, in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse, from Big Law up on Wall Street. The deal: The company might call her back in a year if she uses the time to be a do-gooder somewhere in the real world. The real world turns out to be a hardscrabble coal patch in Appalachia, where traditions count, big dogs rule and, as Grisham portentously writes, “there was no hurry in burying the dead.” Not in cold weather, anyway, and the little town where Samantha finds herself is appropriately chilly and gloomy, the kind of place where black lung disease floats in the air along with the bullets from the goon squad. The good guys are few, the bad guys many, and those baddies are busily doing bad things wherever they can: poisoning streams and wells, killing teenage girls with their big trucks, murdering folks who get in their way. Can Samantha save the day? Sure, if she can only disentangle herself from the arms of the requisite dreamboat
WHITE TIGER ON SNOW MOUNTAIN Stories
Gordon, David Little A/New Harvest (304 pp.) $25.00 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-544-34374-0 Thirteen carefully crafted short stories from Gordon (Mystery Girl, 2013, etc.) about writers, renegades and other beautiful losers. Much like his two previous novels, Gordon’s collection of stories is an offbeat mix of absurdist violence, sexual fantasy, literary experimentation and self-effacing humor. The opener, “Man-Boob Summer,” is the comic tale of a washed-up grad student who wastes his summer lusting after a lifeguard—but also a story that drifts into introspection. “That’s when I realized: It never stops, this nonsense,” muses the narrator. “We are fools to the end. On my own deathbed, no doubt, I’ll be peeking at 16
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1 october 2014
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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