March Book Reviews

I post reviews to Twitter, Instagram and Literal within a day of finishing a book. Here are the books I read in March.

Big Dark Hole by Jeffrey Ford

I really dig the dark blend of domesticity, humor, and flat-out weird shit in this collection. Even the spookiest stories have funny moments, and everything strange that happens kind of unfurls from this lovingly rendered mundane everydayness. Ford’s straightforward, loose style really makes the speculative elements pop. The writing never gets in the way of the ideas, but also doesn’t shy away from the poetic. There’s a tenderness to these stories that sets them apart from the more bleak work in this vein.

My favorite stories here feel the most personal — the autobiographical(ish) ones that begin with a long-married couple in their Ohio farmhouse. They’re self-aware without being meta, and interweave a meditation on aging and marriage with ghosts and monsters. I don’t usually like this kind of comparison, but if you put it to me this way I would definitely want to see what’s up: this is like George Saunders meets Brian Evenson. Dry whimsy and a heavy dose of dread. That’s a tough jazz to pull off but Ford has serious chops.

I had never read Ford’s work before I picked this up in last year’s big Small Beer Press sale. Small Beer is batting 1000 on genre-bending literary fiction collections I go into blind and end up loving, and the streak remains intact. Bless this Press.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

I started reading this on a whim this morning and didn’t put it down until I finished it. I don’t make a habit of reading YA novels, but if they were all this great I don’t think I could help myself. I kind of always knew it was going to be good — I love the Miyazaki film and had always heard good things about Jones’ work — but I didn’t expect it to be crush-it-in-a-day good. It’s so imaginative and interesting, with touches of humor and weirdness that I really enjoyed.

It’s really fascinating to read Howl as a fan of the movie, which dead-on nails so many things from the book while also telling a very different story. The novel has a much deeper focus on relationships, and it’s clear how the adaptation was shaped by Miyazaki’s interest in war. There’s also a really interesting relationship between the world of this story and our own world — like Ingary is the place all our fairy tales come from, but that door swings both ways, with bits of Shakespeare or Donne or Carroll sneaking back through.

Outside of Le Guin, I don’t think I’ve ever read a story for young readers with such rich, complex characterization. Sophie and Howl are fantastic, flawed, and deeply human in a way that even the best literary fiction struggles to achieve. I need more of this in my life.

The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories by Saki

I don’t typically read a lot of pre-WWII fiction about rich white people, but I’ll make an exception when the writing is this clever and funny and the rich are universally depicted as idiots.

I kind of resent having never read Saki in 10+ years of writing classes. Though I can see why Edwardian social comedy doesn’t make it onto a lot of modern syllabi, these stories have so much to teach about economy of language and concise plotting. Like, there are 26 stories in this book and it doesn’t even tip 200 pages. Each story has exactly enough setup for each satisfying payoff, with no flashbacks, no long descriptive passages, no exposition. I wish more contemporary fiction took this all-killer-no-filler approach.

And I guess brevity really is the soul of wit, because every story here is a sharp skewer ready to impale just about anything. They’re funny, of course, but also brutal — the kind of jokes you’re not sure you should laugh at. They’re not just clever, but searing. I love it.

This NYRB edition includes some really great illustrations from Edward Gorey, whose antiquated visual aesthetic and deadpan, macabre sense of humor is a perfect fit for these stories. Great book.