The cataclysmic events that bridge these two existences emerge slowly as Kay dodges back and forth in time and style, sometimes phonetic, sometimes poetic, challenging the reader to keep up. Lulu grows up on the run, scavenging, meeting kind or thoughtless folk, working a range of jobs in various towns, living in substandard housing, sometimes suicidal. But a sudden windfall frees her to achieve her dream of visiting Africa, where she will find more threats but also friends and a kind of release. A wild, sometimes disorienting but impressively crafted novel.
ICE FIRE
Lyons, David Atria (304 pp.) $24.00 | May 1, 2012 978-1-4516-2929-3 Introducing Jock Boucher, black Cajun federal district judge, who may be young and recently appointed but isn’t afraid of ruffling feathers in his hometown of New Orleans. Rejecting pointed advice from on high, he investigates corruption charges leveled against the indisposed senior judge whose cases he has taken on. Twenty years ago, says scientist Bob Palmetto, powerful Rexcon Energy bribed that judge to allow the company to steal Palmetto’s designs for tapping a new source of energy, methane hydrate, from the ocean floor. Held in contempt, Palmetto became a fugitive. Finally apprehended, the haggard genius pleads his case to Boucher, who determines that his lawyer was, indeed, killed to keep him from spilling the beans to the FBI. When another lawyer connected to the case turns up dead outside Boucher’s house, the Cajun goes renegade, pretending to sell secrets from Palmetto’s cloud files to Rexcon. With help from Fitch, a New Orleans cop, and Dawn, a Rexcon employee whose attraction to Jock is greater than her loyalty to the company, Boucher survives threats on his life and thwarts ruthless company CEO John Perry. Much like Donna Leon’s mystery novels featuring beloved Venetian detective Guido Brunetti, this book derives its appeal from the protagonist’s unflappability, casual charm and devotion to his city. The case takes him up to Boston, where Palmetto is briefly held; New York, where Jock’s aloof girlfriend Malika declares her independence; and the Carolina Trough, site of some tense submarine diving. Though music is surprisingly absent here, Boucher will always make time for Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine’s or beignets and chicory coffee in Jackson Square. Lousy title notwithstanding, this is an auspicious beginning for a mystery series featuring one of the most agreeably easygoing heroes on this side of the Atlantic.
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THE LIFE OF AN UNKNOWN MAN
Makine, Andreï Translated by Strachan, Geoffrey Graywolf (192 pp.) $15.00 paperback | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-55597-614-9 Makine presents a story within a story and thus winds up focusing on the lives of two “unknown men.” Ivan Shutov has been living in Paris for 20 years but has had only desultory success as a writer. Three years after he wrote a novel about Afghanistan, tensions flared up again in the region, so he was flattered to be invited as a guest on a television show, but his performance there left much to be desired. Meanwhile, his personal life is in shambles, for his girlfriend Léa, half the age of the 50-year-old Shutov, is calling it quits. (As a parting, sarcastic shot she points out that his name in Russian means “clown,” a move Shutov determines is not helpful for his self-esteem.) He had tried to capture some romance in the relationship by comparing their love to that found in Chekhov, but a nice irony is that the Chekhov story that he keeps alluding to is entitled “A Little Joke.” Shutov decides to return to St. Petersburg, in part to find his former lover, Yana, in the hope of rekindling the old flame. Instead, he gets much more than he expected by meeting Georgy Volsky in the boardinghouse where he’s staying. Volsky is an old man who lived through the siege of Leningrad and is now primarily known for being mute, but he opens up to Shutov, spinning out a tale of war, trauma, love and terrible beauty. He survived the siege both because of his devotion to his art (he’s a singer) and to his love, Mila, though in the Stalinist era they were both arrested on trumped charges of crimes against the Soviet state. Volsky’s quiet dignity ultimately helps Shutov see some of the superficiality of his own life. A lyrical little novel about hope triumphing over adversity.
ALL MEN ARE LIARS
Manguel, Alberto Riverhead (224 pp.) $16.00 paperback | Jun. 5, 2012 978-1-5944-8835-1 A beguiling exercise in metafiction, one that tells an engrossing story from various perspectives while undermining the possibility of truth in storytelling. Toward the beginning of this literary subversion, the bare bones of the plot would seem beyond dispute. A journalist attempts to write a coherent profile of Alejandro Bevilacqua, an Argentinian living in Madrid, who suffered a fatal fall from a balcony upon the celebration of the publication of his esteemed, controversial novel, In Praise of Lying. By the novel’s end, everything is up for grabs, from the quality and authorship of the novel to the cause of death. (Accident? Suicide? Murder?) The Argentine-born Manguel (A Dictionary of Imaginary Places, 1980, etc.) not only shares some biographical background with
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