8 minute read
THE NATURE BOOK by Tom Comitta
saturated with moral scrutiny and propulsive plotting as 19thcentury greats; it’s a twisty thriller via Charles Dickens, only with drones. But where Dickens, say, revels in exposing moral bankruptcy, Catton is more interested in the ways everyone is cloudy-eyed with their own hubris in different ways. The result is a story that’s suspended on a tightrope just above nihilism, and readers will hold their breath until the last page to see whether Catton will fall.
This blistering look at the horrors of late capitalism manages to also be a wildly fun read.
THE NATURE BOOK
Comitta, Tom Coffee House (272 pp.) $17.95 paper | March 14, 2023 9781566896634
A magnum opus about the planet using only found text. In a preface, Comitta describes their methodology for creating this dizzying environmental collage: “I have gathered nature descriptions from three hundred novels and arranged them into a single novel.” At the end, Comitta lists the 300 novels they scavenge, which range from Philip K. Dick’s Maze of Death to William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! The book is divided into four parts along thematic lines—“The Four Seasons,” “The Deep Blue Sea,” “The Void,” and “The Endless Summer.” Initially, the descriptions of the natural world read like a kind of Creation story: “At about the same time, the days grew short and the nights grew long. The light a little less each time. Dark at half past seven. Dark at quarter past seven, dark at seven.” Occasionally, these scenes of nature are punctuated by conflict: sometimes conflict between animals, such as a beaver and an otter, while at other times the environment itself turns hostile—an early sequence in which a storm leaves several pheasants injured or dead is especially haunting. This is also, notably, a landscape without humans. The narrative voice is both omniscient and prone to metaphor, as in this evocative description of the onset of winter: “It was happening again: the end of the world.” Footnotes change the tone and allow for moments of wry humor: “The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it.” This novel sometimes feels like a work of installation art, and Comitta’s author’s note describing their methodology in assembling it is fascinating, revealing the patterns and processes underlying the book.
A dynamic and singular reading experience.
VENCO
Dimaline, Cherie Morrow/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 7, 2023 9780063054899
A coven of diverse modern-day witches must band together to discover their seventh and final member before they’re hunted down. Lucky St. James’ life has been anything but lucky. Born to the wildly iconoclastic and troubled Arnya, a member of Canada’s Indigenous Métis people, Lucky was largely raised by her paternal grandmother, Stella, after her mother’s early death and her father’s disappearance “down an opioid drain hole.” Now in her late 20s, she’s trying to hold a job, manage Stella’s increasing dementia, and stare down her and Stella’s impending eviction from their Toronto apartment. Lucky’s life seems impossible—and then she finds the spoon. Tiny, ornamental, adorned with a witch
caricature and labeled SALEM, the spoon seems nothing more than a curio, but, unbeknownst to Lucky, it marks her as the sixth and penultimate member of a coven of contemporary witches who are about to change her life forever. Meena, the descendent of one of the original Salem witches; Wendy, an Anishinaabe woman who has outgrown reservation life; Morticia, a goth terrified of aging into suburban femininity; Lettie, a young Creole mother fleeing an abusive relationship; and Freya, a trans girl from a fundamentalist Christian family, are ready to welcome both Lucky and Stella into their unconventional family circle, but there’s a catch. There’s a seventh witch who must be located before the circle can be completed—but no one knows who she is, she could be anywhere in North America, and Lucky and Stella must find her within 17 days. As if this weren’t enough pressure for the bemused but hopeful Lucky and her relentlessly sprightly grandma, there’s the added wrinkle of Jay Christos, a ruthless member of the ancient witch-hunting brotherhood the Benandanti who is hot on their tail. A propulsive read full of intriguing detail, this novel is well written, engaging, and, more than anything, enjoyable. If the dichotomy between the feminine (good) and masculine (bad) is a bit stark, this is made up for by the genuine affection the reader will feel for Dimaline’s irreverent, badass witches as they battle for the future of their family and the future of the world, one and the same in Dimaline’s inclusive vision.
Fast, fun, and full of charm(s).
DEVICE FREE WEEKEND
Doolittle, Sean Grand Central Publishing (288 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 28, 2023 9781538706596
A social media mogul invites six old college friends to his private island for a tech-free reunion. What could go wrong? Stephen Rollins is puzzled when he receives a fancy invitation from Ryan Cloverhill, his awkward Bardsley College ex-roommate and now founder and CEO of a popular Facebooklike social networking platform. It’s been almost 20 years since any of the seven friends have seen each other. Why has Ryan now asked them—Stephen, who’s never been married; his former love Emma, who’s divorced; straight, married social media influencers Beau and Lainie; and gay married couple Will and Perry—to spend an all-expenses-paid Labor Day weekend with him on remote Sham Rock near Puget Sound? After a joyous first evening of reminiscing over dinner and drinks, the group members wake up, hungover, to find the host gone. Also missing are the phones that they handed to Ryan before entering his house. Left in their place is a tablet with the words “Unlock Me!” on the screen. The first half of Doolittle’s latest thriller neatly sets up an intriguing Agatha Christie–like premise (think And Then There Were None); but as the friends (and the reader) discover Ryan’s true intentions, the plot begins to unravel as quickly as Ryan’s dark scheme. Although the novel touches on the addictive, damaging nature of technology and social media, the author ironically relies too much on techie bells and whistles, and not enough on character development and motivation, to propel his not very believable storyline. A device-free weekend indeed!
Clever concept, disappointing execution.
A MOST INTRIGUING LADY
Ferguson, Sarah Avon/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $27.99 | March 7, 2023 9780063216822
Against a backdrop of upper-class Victorian life, a quiet young woman turns out to be a talented sleuth.
A second collaboration between the Duchess of York and historical romance writer Marguerite Kaye focuses on the
hourglass
younger sister of their original creation, again a real person about whom very little is known. The book proceeds in a series of episodes set between 1872 and 1877, over which time the romance between Lady Mary Montagu Douglas Scott, age 21 at the outset, and one Col. Walter Trefusis, is sparked and proceeds to its real-life outcome. This time out, the imaginary nature of these episodes seems more noticeable. The plot hinges on Lady Mary’s unusual ability to sense the character and thoughts of others, enabling her to solve domestic mysteries of one sort and another. The most well-developed and believable of these incidents is the first, in which Lady Mary, with Col. Trefusis’ support, finds a noblewoman’s missing brooch, presumed stolen. Though Trefusis and she clearly begin to fall in love, stubborn obstacles in their own personalities will (of course) keep them apart. A woman as out of kilter with the conventions of her time as was her older sister, Mary is determined to avoid matrimony in any case. “Can’t you understand, Mama? I don’t want to be a dutiful wife. I don’t want to have to love, honour and obey a husband at any price. I don’t wish to be an—an appendage to my husband. I want to be something more than simply a wife.” She will get her chance. In a final incident, Lady Mary gets theatrical training and goes undercover to solve a theft of documents of national importance lost by her friend the colonel in the course of his mysterious employment. This giddy episode includes some fun moments with a Victorian girl gang and its scar-faced, carrot-topped leader, Queenie Divers.
Richly evokes the estates, house parties, and diversions of the Victorian period.
HOURGLASS
Goddard, Keiran Europa Editions (208 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 14, 2023 9781609458171
A story for fans of Jenny Offill and Marguerite Duras. The narrator of British poet Goddard’s debut novel is a writer who falls in love with an editor who publishes one of his quirky essays. The book highlights the way they meet and marry, and the contours of their relationship, through fragmented narrative. It is a tantalizing concept decently executed. For every lovely flourish of language, there is an odd moment that goes on a beat too long, such as early in the courtship, when the protagonist asks his lover to “push a bit of chewed-up potato into [his] mouth as if [he] were a baby bird,” and she does. To each their own when it comes to intimacy—and at the very least the vulnerability is admirable, as is the poetic gambit of the second person. Goddard’s use of the “you” address as a device throughout the book, as if the narrator is writing an extended letter to his beloved, works until it doesn’t. It makes sense to clarify the writer’s thoughts and feelings in certain moments, to show him understanding parts of their love story anew in hindsight, but it wears thin when he narrates events for the sake of the reader that the beloved would have been aware of as a participant, as in that time at the cafe, that other time at the bar, at dinner, at the party, at the pub. It does, however, offer readers the immediacy of a voyeuristic gaze. As a result, the story moves swiftly and elliptically in and out of reverie. Eventually the narrator slips into a malaise that reads as both idiosyncratic and relatable and touches on everything from the nature of labor and class to the role of media in our lives to living in an aging body. A funny and smart, insightful and strange story about time, memory, and grief.
This is a lyrical meditation on love as well as storytelling itself.
