Micro Mention "Breakfast At Tiffany's"

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Truman Capote is one of those short classics that I didn't know if I liked it initially, which is probably intentional. There is something about Capote's gossamer writing that keeps you invested and it's narrated brilliantly by Michael C. Hall—it got to me at the end.

I think what kept me invested beyond Capote's writing is the manic energy he infused in every character, even the narrator. They're all out to do—something, even if they're not sure what. It's like watching ambitious twenty-somethings all ping-ponging off of each other, not sure where they're going or what they want, but they know they want to get there fast. Also, and I talk about this more in my full review, which you can find here, but a lot of the characters feel like archetypical people you meet throughout life.

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Micro Mention "The Force"

If he had just predicted the pandemic, Don Winslow might have been a prophet with this book, “The Force.” The sheer passion and drive in this novel is like a clenched fist, nails driving into the palms until blood is drawn.

This book is all momentum and the characters in it never stop unless they're stopped, and that's always violent. Winslow captures the whole tension with policing in America right now and renders it in vibrant jagged relief for us as the reader. To sum it up, it's a very aptly named novel about corrupt cops.

If you'd like to read my full review of it, you can find it here.

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Author's Website: http://don-winslow.com/

"Breakfast at Tiffany's," by Truman Capote--Fiction Review

This week let’s head back in time with an old classic. Take in that old New York feel of the 1940s with Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” 

***The Non-Spoiler part of this review***

What I love about this book:

How Capote constructs this story, from a technical perspective, is ingenious. It’s written in the first person from the POV of a character who isn’t the story’s protagonist. Not only that, but his name is never given. That’s a hard trick to pull off and could go wrong in several ways. I believe that’s also why this story is a relatively short novella.

Holly Golightly, the true protagonist of this story—the character in which the plot pivots around—initially is an unlikeable protagonist. By the end, I softened on her. Here’s the thing, though, not because she learns anything or even significantly changes her ways. Holly is just that compelling in how firm she holds to her character.

Capote also captures the feeling of a New York of yesteryear and crystalizes it in his prose. All of the principal characters in this story are complex creations that often express conflicting values, which I feel is emblematic of the war years of WW2.

What I don’t love about this book:

On the flip side, this is definitely a story that dates itself in an unpleasant way regarding race and sexuality—hint, it’s got that cavalier use of derogatory terms, which was all the rage in the 1950s. I’m not suggesting that Capote was a racist or homophobic. After all, he was an openly gay man at a tough time to be a gay man. My impression of him, which comes across in this story, is that he was very preoccupied with the sensational. If a little offense was needed to get that shock value, so be it.      

Without spoiling too much here in the non-spoiler part, but there is a bit with Holly’s cat that I found incredibly sad. It doesn’t get hurt or anything—nothing like that—it’s just that I am especially prone to sad animal moments. 

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***The Spoiler part of this review***

***Ye be warned to turn back now***

The quick and dirty synopsis:

The story begins with our unnamed narrator, a writer, having a conversation with a bartender about a mutual—friend—love? It’s hard to tell with how they talk about Holly. What’s clear is they miss her, and she seems to have fled the country.

"The Force," by Don Winslow--Fiction Review

For today’s review, let’s talk about something soothing—just kidding, let’s dive into Don Winslow’s ultra fast-paced crime thriller “The Force.”

***The Non-Spoiler part of this review***

What I love about this book:

There is an energy to Winslow’s writing, a momentum that doesn’t just propel you forward through the plot of this novel, but rather it feels like it flings you bodily. It’s in everything, in the punchiness of the writing, the structure of the story, the settings described, and especially in the manic characters who inhabit Winslow’s version of New York. I found myself still thinking of this book days after having finished it.

I like that this story isn’t a rehashing of the concept of watching the main character struggle with the best intentions but gets corrupted by certain choices and circumstances. No, that shit is all in the past—Detective Malone and his crew are dirty cops from page one. And right there, on that first page, is where the crumbling of their world starts to crescendo—implied by the first sentence! The pacing from there only barely takes little breathers, and sometimes I like an ultra fast-paced narrative. I like this book for that.

With this subgenre of police thriller/suspense, the world’s authenticity and believability are the book’s lifeblood, and Winslow doesn’t disappoint in that regard. In fact, with everything going on with protests and whatnot, I’ve said before that if Winslow had just managed to predict a global pandemic in the next few years when this book came out in 2017, he’d be a god damn prophet. So it feels believable.

What I don’t love about this book:

I don’t like Detective Denny Malone. I know, weird thing to say about a story I said I like that pivots around the character of Denny Malone. He’s vital for this story’s narrative—no argument there—but I still don’t like him. It’s not that I can’t stomach a protagonist who is a bad person. After all, I thoroughly enjoyed “The Godfather,” which I’ve seen this book described as “The Godfather” for corrupt cops. What I don’t like are characters who delude themselves into thinking of themselves as somehow justified, especially people in positions of power within society—like corrupt cops.

Speaking as a liberal snowflake myself—in more than one way given my lily-white complexion—this was an incredibly awkward book to listen to right now. I’ll give you an example, but first, as you might have read before in my earlier reviews, I’m an audiobook person. That’s important to my story. Quick aside, Dion Graham did an amazing job narrating. Anyway, back to the story, whilst grocery shopping, I listened to this book, on high, because grocery stores are noisy places. This means that if you are, say, in the same aisle as me, you might hear my audiobook blasting in my head. Especially when Dion Graham starts scream-singing “F the Police,” not that song’s actual title, by N.W.A. because that’s what the characters are doing in the story—looks were had.

But other than that, it’s just an odd book—a perspective from corrupt cops—to be reading while the public eye intensely focuses on how there is a problem with policing in America. It’s uncomfortable, and I don’t love feeling uncomfortable. I think that’s Winslow’s point though, there IS a problem, and we SHOULD feel uncomfortable. He uses his deeply flawed characters to illuminate those problems through their eyes.

This preview is an Amazon Affiliate link; 

as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Author's Website: http://don-winslow.com/

***The Spoiler part of this review***

***Ye be warned to turn back now***

The quick and dirty synopsis:

Like I said above, right off, we’re told that Detective Denny Malone is a corrupt cop, and other authorities than himself have just caught up with him.

"Invisible Man," by Ralph Ellison--Fiction Review

Today’s review is on “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison—ah-ha! You all read this review’s title and thought ole Kevin was losing his marbles, reviewing the same book twice. But no—this is another book about invisibility, metaphorical invisibility, where Ellison tries to capture the black experience through fiction. 

***The Non-Spoiler part of this review***

What I love about this book:

This book is really a series of stories, loosely strung together by our unnamed protagonist, a young black man. Because of circumstances mostly out of his control, he leads several lives that make him an excellent everyman character—who is black. I say he’s an everyman character, but part of the novel’s point is he’s also no one because of his persistent anonymity. The whole device of never properly naming the protagonist of the story is clever in supporting this theme.

Sometimes funny, “Invisible Man,” for the most part, is rather poignant. I believe its most salient point is that—despite how society acts—black people aren’t all a homogenous group. They are people, some good, some bad, some apathetic, and others deeply caring and loving. They don’t all think the same, they don’t all value the same things, but they all have the shared experience of being black, which in America, historically and today, is a mixed bag—often negative. All that, plus the marginalization and being robbed of agency in one’s own life, is what I believe Ellison was trying to capture with this novel.

Ellison had to have known he would ruffle some feathers with this novel because he takes an unsparing examination of all society. Not just with what you might expect—topics such as racism and how violence tends to only accomplish more violence, but his critiques also wither things that are nearly universally considered virtues. His point, I believe, is that under the right circumstances, even good things can be corrupted—and that’s a brave and subtle point to make.   

What I don’t love about this book:

The whole medical experiment scene, while creepy, and I like creepy, just ends awkwardly. I get the spirit of what Ellison was driving at—a sort of Tuskegee Experiment vibe—but plotwise, it’s an episode somewhere in the middle of the story that feels out of place. After the protagonist is injured “accidentally” at the paint factory he is working at, he’s taken to the company doctor to be treated. And sure, that was a popular thing back in the day and relevant to the black experience. If you’ve ever read “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” you’ll know that the medical profession has had some troubling track records with black people. But why it doesn’t work for me is it doesn’t add or take away anything in the novel. It happens, the protagonist has an odd conversation with the doctor, and then he leaves. But other than suffering from feeling faint for a bit, he has no further complications, and it’s as if nothing happened.  

Narratively speaking, occasionally, the transition from one scene to the next got a little foggy for me. I’ve considered that might be an intentional move by Ellison to further the novel’s surreal atmosphere, but, for me, any time I miss a mental gear change as I did several times in this book, it just annoys me.

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as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

***The Spoiler part of this review***

***Ye be warned to turn back now***

"Down the River unto the Sea," by Walter Mosley--Fiction Review

It’s Friday gumshoes, and today’s review is of a noir-style detective mystery, “Down the River unto the Sea” by Walter Mosley.  

***The Non-Spoiler part of this review***

What I love about this book:

First, the gritty uncompromising detail of this novel, it’s a noir-style mystery, so that’s appropriate. Also, the main character, Joe King Oliver, who was formerly NYPD and was framed and disgraced by dirty cops in the department and sent to Rikers Island, has the added dimension of being an ex-cop in prison and being black. So it doesn’t go well—would be a massive understatement. Mosley captures the horrors of being a black man on the wrong side of the law and the unique terror of being simultaneously a fallen paragon of said law.

It’s no secret here if you’re a return reader of this blog, but I’m a big audiobook fan. So a big reason I like this book is that the narrator, Dion Graham, perfectly captures the voice of the world-weary PI. Something about his performance makes Walter Mosley’s already polished but blunt—straightforward but educated—prose sparkle. There is a quality to the writing that without coming right out and saying it, that this is what the real lived-in world is like, and it sweeps you up in its narrative and doesn’t stop until it’s over.     

There are references to jazz, and Thelonious Monk in the narrative, which are appropriate because if a book could capture the spirit of a jazzy improvisational style without being a book specifically about jazz music—it’s this one. Mosley’s writing above all else to me is musical, lyrical even. 

What I don’t love about this book:

A lot of criminal mystery novel clichés are packed into this plot. The twists and turns in the plot are all rote and barely caused me anything resembling shock. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, and this doesn’t make it a bad novel, it’s just a little predictable. 

You know how I just said this novel two paragraphs ago, captures the spirit of jazzy improvisation? Yeah, I meant that purely in how Mosley writes, the actual writing stylistically ebbs and flows, changes, and experiments. The plotting doesn’t do that. Nearly every chapter of the book has a sandwich quality. What I mean by this is: the critical information comes at the beginnings and ends of each chapter. The in-between bits are where the character work happens, which is enjoyable, since Mosley’s characters are all flawed, and interesting, multifaceted people.

There is one thing though about the main character that I don’t like: he has a troublesome relationship with women, in general. He doesn’t hate them or hit them, nothing like that, but you could say he loves them a little too much, which includes his daughter. Some of his comments and observations are creepy.    

Every time I read a detective mystery, or a police procedural, where there is someone seemingly in the inner circle of the detective who is probably a traitor, I play a game. And the game is called: is the traitor the detective's best friend/long time partner/trusted mentor?  

 

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as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Author's Website: http://www.waltermosley.com/

***The Spoiler part of this review***

***Ye be warned to turn back now***