FLUX, a hard-to-believe-it's-a-debut novel about identity, grief, and Otherness

FLUX
JINWOO CHONG
Melville House (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his employers have inadvertently discovered time travel and are covering up a string of violent crimes.

Combining elements of neo-noir, speculative fiction, and '80s detective shows, FLUX is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.

In FLUX, a brilliant debut in the vein of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Ling Ma’s Severance, Jinwoo Chong introduces us to three characters —Bo, Brandon and Blue— who are tortured by these questions as their lives spin out of control.

* After 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, his white father, attempting to hold their lives together, begins to gradually retreat from the family.

* 28-year-old Brandon loses his job at a legacy magazine publisher and is offered a new position. Confused to find himself in an apartment he does not recognize, and an office he sometimes cannot remember leaving, he comes to suspect that something far more sinister is happening behind the walls.

* 48-year-old Blue participates in a television exposé of Flux, a failed bioelectric tech startup whose fraudulent activity eventually claimed the lives of three people and nearly killed him. Blue, who can only speak with the aid of cybernetic implants, stalks his old manager while holding his estranged family at arms-length.

Intertwined with the saga of a once-iconic '80s detective show, Raider, whose star has fallen after decades of concealed abuse, the lives of Bo, Brandon and Blue intersect with each other, to the extent that it becomes clear that their lives are more interconnected and interdependent than the reader could have ever imagined.

Can we ever really change the past, or the future? What truth do we owe our families? What truth do we owe ourselves?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Creative uses of the time-travel plot don't grow on trees. This one, with its interesting way of weaving Eighties pop cultural touchstones...not, I hasten to say, specifics...lends the proceedings an air of cyberpunk coolth, removed from the moist, sweaty realities of Life.

I suspect that the air of remove was meant to aid in the project of obscuring a fact that was blindingly obvious to me from the off: These three people are one person, albeit the kind of one-person idea that a time-travel-adjacent story produces. It's a good use of the overdone time-travel trope. I was not, however, in any doubt about the fact. I don't know of my own personal knowledge that one is meant not to see this, though the clues point to that being the author's intent.

If I have a gripe about the storytelling, it's Brandon addressing the hero of Raider in the satanic second person. I hate that. It was acceptable...barely...because it wasn't ambiguous who was being addressed, therefore it never ran afoul of my loathing for having an authorial finger poked in my chest.

As a record of how one man integrates the pain of a past that was marred by loss into a present that is ruled by betrayal, the story fires on all cylinders. As a story about the way we anchor ourselves in the ever-shifting emotional landscape of our life, it stands out from the crowd. As a gentle admonition for men to do the work of coming to terms with the emotional baggage they, we, all carry it is effective in its use of pop-culture tropes and constructs to embody the risks of not doing so.

Ambitious and clever and emotionally literate, it was a fine experiment in telling a story about the cost to a man of failing to connect with his own feelings as well as the roots of his identity as a man. Fathers are routinely absent from sons' lives in every way possible in fiction. It's not new territory broken here, either. It's not much explored, more reported, so there's little emotional heft in this take. I wasn't surprised by this though the structure of the time-travel bits made me think this was a missed opportunity. In a story that focuses on pains from loss, why not get into it?

The fact that the betrayal plot I've alluded to comes from Brandon's job being among the tech scum was *chef's kiss* to me. It enabled Author Chong to deal with the orientalism surrounding a lot of tech-centered fiction. It's largely unreflective, most tech narrative use, simply making characters from East or south Asian backgrounds. Here we delve into that identity and its costs more than usual, adding to the mix the character's queerness. That aspect alone wins Author Chong a major reprieve from chastisement for minor amounts of failure to explore satisfyingly some paths he starts down.

I hope all y'all will give this ambitious, quite successful, debut novel of identity, grieving for selves and lives not lived, and coming to terms with one's actual life through fiction, a whirl.

TAKING DOWN TRUMP: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did It Successfully

TAKING DOWN TRUMP: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did It Successfully
TRISTAN SNELL
Melville House
$27.99 hardcover, available tomorrow

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A former prosecutor provides an essential guide to ensuring that Donald Trump—and other oligarchs of his ilk—no longer beat the rap and face serious jail time for their crimes.

For a half-century Donald Trump has evaded justice. Now he finally faces trials for his lies, cons, and misdeeds—but many fear Trump will never face any real consequences. Can prosecutors and litigants ever hold the powerful accountable? Or is our system so broken that some people are now above the law?

In TAKING DOWN TRUMP Tristan Snell argues that Donald Trump can be defeated—and shares the secrets for how to beat him.This is the first book ever from a prosecutor who defeated Snell led the prosecution of Trump University, resulting in a game-changing $25 million settlement that was Trump’s first major legal loss and still the largest ever, getting thousands of victims their money back.

Here you’ll learn the 12 rules for how to beat Trump—and how some prosecutors and litigators are following this playbook, while others failed, can voters and activists hold prosecutors accountable? How do you persevere against all the stonewalling and counterattacks? How do you get a key figure to cooperate and cough up critical evidence?

Snell faced this problem with Trump University, but with one question, he got the evidence and broke open the case. How did he do it? Whether you’re a concerned citizen, a lawyer or prosecutor, or an activist or advocate, Snell shows how America’s systems can still work to bring even the richest and most powerful to justice, and why those systems are worth preserving and improving. Ultimately, this is a roadmap for how America can begin to escape Trump’s wilderness of fraud and fascism.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I have seldom wanted to read a book more than I wanted to read this one. It is no secret that, since 2016, I have opposed 45 and his MAGAt cultists being in power, dismantling and corrupting the systems of justice...flawed as they unquestionably are...in pursuit of permanent power for their repugnant, regressive, evil system of oligarchic fascism.

What I hoped to find was a source of hope for our collective future. What I got was a roadmap for getting to the better, more just future I believe we all deserve. So this read overdelivered on my expectations.

The rules themselves are not so much the focus of the read, for me personally, anyway. I needed this read as a reminder that, in spite of triumphalist media coverage (The New York Times newsletter last week headlining what 45’s second-term agenda *is*, not would be, is my latest example), there are those in position to defeat the horrible wretch at his con-man worst, using legal, honest, above-board means to do it.

At every step, every rule, I paused to appreciate Author Snell’s clarity, concision, and fervor. No words wasted in self-congratulation. No fancy rhetorical flourishes to show off his cleverness. The author must, of necessity, throw at you a large legal vocabulary. No one can tell this story without doing that very thing. What he does is explain it as we go along: Simple, direct prose clarifications, telling what his methods were that he used to hand the rotter whose vile education scam he took down entirely his first-ever serious, consequential legal defeat. I was blissed out as I read his repeatable roadmap to defeating the entire edifice of illegality that prior prosecutors had failed to do.

Since it worked before, I am heartened when I see similar steps being taken now by other prosecutors. I cringe when I see evidence that they have fallen into the traps Author Snell points out. I pray like Hell that this book, or at least its ideas, have made it onto the radar of each and every prosecutor pursuig justice against 45 and his MAGAt followers in each and every dark, unswept corner of US democracy where we know they are.

As citizens and as readers, we should all take in these clear-eyed, aphorism-ready rules, and run with them...most especially Rule #6, Play the Long Game: Fight the Fight on Statutes of Limitations. The analysis of the largely successful strategy 45 has used to run down the clock on everything he possibly can, can be fought. Author Snell explains how.

This information should be of interest to all of us as we watch the same playbook being used right this minute. It should also be of interest to all of us who resist the status quo as abused by the very rich and very powerful to get their profits ever higher. The techniques Author Snell used are repeatable, expandable, and very usable in all our advocacy efforts.

I know most do not like to think about hard subjects, but they will be there whether one thinks about them or not. The question you can affect is not whether they are there, but how you can best resolve, or partly resolve, or contribute to resolving them. Reading TAKING DOWN TRUMP: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did It Successfully will equip you to make a positive contribution to resolving them, not merely enduring the results of inattention and inaction.

THE TALENTED RIBKINS, Hubbard's debut novel & THE RIB KING, its prequel...very interesting!

THE RIB KING
LADEE HUBBARD
Amistad (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$11.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five...truly on sentimental grounds

A BOOKRIOT BEST BOOK OF 2021!

The Publisher Says: Upstairs, Downstairs meets Parasite: The acclaimed author of The Talented Ribkins deconstructs painful African American stereotypes and offers a fresh and searing critique on race, class, privilege, ambition, exploitation, and the seeds of rage in America in this intricately woven and masterfully executed historical novel, set in the early twentieth century that centers around the black servants of a down-on-its heels upper-class white family.

For fifteen years August Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job. The groundskeeper is part of the household’s all-black staff, along with “Miss Mamie,” the talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen apprentices—the latest orphan boys Mr. Barclay has taken in to "civilize" boys like August.

But the Barclays' fortunes have fallen, and their money is almost gone. When a prospective business associate proposes selling Miss Mamie’s delicious rib sauce to local markets under the brand name “The Rib King”—using a caricature of a wildly grinning August wearing a jewel-encrusted crown on the label—Mr. Barclay, desperate for cash, agrees. Yet neither Miss Mamie nor August will see a dime. Humiliated, August grows increasingly distraught, his anger building to a rage that explodes in shocking tragedy.

Elegantly written and exhaustively researched, The Rib King is an unsparing examination of America’s fascination with black iconography and exploitation that redefines African American stereotypes in literature. In this powerful, disturbing, and timely novel, Ladee Hubbard reveals who people actually are, and most importantly, who and what they are not.

I RECEIVED THIS AS A YULE GIFT FROM MY DELIGHTFUL YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. YOU'RE TOO KIND, ROB.

My Review: A book of two halves...Mr. Sitwell, the risen-through-the-ranks butler of the Barclay family, has a fascinating tale to tell about how he becomes The Rib King™ and, in an access of passionate rage, pivots from a man who knows his worth, and protects it at all costs, into a, well, talented person set on revenge for some nasty wrongs. I myownself was quite invested in this story and would give it four stars were it the only one here.

Part two follows Jennie, who was another servant in the Barclay household, as she does what needs doing in New Orleans. She has a daughter and she is the only one who can look out for the young lady's future. This would seem to be well-trodden territory. It is. I don't want you to think there was nothing to say for it, and there are definitely reasons to follow Jennie and her child. But the process was three-star territory for sure.

What made me think and fuss about how to fix this reading experience in my memory is the fact that I read The Talented Ribkins (see below) before I read this book. It led me down the garden path a bit. I was expecting to get more of the reasons and the wherefores of the earlier book's characters. It didn't really fulfill that desire in me.

But the prose flowed over my eyes, the stories felt very *real* in their outlines and very relatable to the world we saw in The Talented Ribkins; so surely four stars, after all? And that, plus the verve of Mr. Sitwell's half of the story, gave me the nudge to go from the more-grounded-in-the-object three-and-a-half up to four stars.

I got four stars'-worth of pleasure from Ladee Hubbard's unique and entertaining characters. I expect most who read my reviews will, too. I do caution y'all to get and read The Talented Ribkins first. They make a better whole-story experience that way, and they're each well worth your eyeblinks.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE TALENTED RIBKINS
LADEE HUBBARD
Melville House
$13.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five...but barely...when it should've been five

WINNER OF THE 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Novel

The Publisher Says: At seventy-two, Johnny Ribkins shouldn’t have such problems: He’s got one week to come up with the money he stole from his mobster boss or it’s curtains.

What may or may not be useful to Johnny as he flees is that he comes from an African-American family that has been gifted with super powers that are a bit, well, odd. Okay, very odd. For example, Johnny's father could see colors no one else could see. His brother could scale perfectly flat walls. His cousin belches fire. And Johnny himself can make precise maps of any space you name, whether he's been there or not.

In the old days, the Ribkins family tried to apply their gifts to the civil rights effort, calling themselves The Justice Committee. But when their, eh, superpowers proved insufficient, the group fell apart. Out of frustration Johnny and his brother used their talents to stage a series of burglaries, each more daring than the last.

Fast forward a couple decades and Johnny’s on a race against the clock to dig up loot he's stashed all over Florida. His brother is gone, but he has an unexpected sidekick: his brother's daughter, Eloise, who has a special superpower of her own.

Inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois’s famous essay “The Talented Tenth” and fuelled by Ladee Hubbard’s marvelously original imagination, The Talented Ribkins is a big-hearted debut novel about race, class, politics, and the unique gifts that, while they may cause some problems from time to time, bind a family together.

A big-hearted novel about a family with special gifts who sometimes stumble in their efforts to succeed in life, The Talented Ribkins draws on such novels as Toni Morrison’s Sula and Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist to weave themes of race, class, and politics into a wonderfully accomplished and engaging novel.

THIS WAS A YULE GIFT TO ME FROM MY DELIGHTFUL YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. YOU ROCK, ROB!

My Review: First, read this:

“Johnny Ribkins, there was a time when you could've been anything you wanted to be, a doctor, lawyer or an Indian chief...instead all you are is a damn shame.”
–and–
"It’s not your job to try and compensate other people’s lack of vision. You’ve got enough to do just trying to be true to your own."

I'm not sure what you like in terms of first novels. I hope you're willing to run around on your usual genres with a superhero-adjacent tale of the, um, strange descendents of the yahoo who lost the rights to The Rib King™—the miracle delicious barbecue sauce of all time. Johnny Ribkins is the dishonest remaining scion of the line that's made its business to get in on that amazing concoction, rightfully theirs.

But Johnny and his line were, if not superpowered, at the least gifted in some peculiar ways other mortals aren't. He, for example, can map places. And they don't have to be real yet. His maps enable him to, when his time aiding "the Justice Committee" during the 1960s Civil Rights struggle (and sinful wicked shame on our country for allowing it to be dismantled while we watch), use his unique talent to hide in undiscoverable places the money he just knows he will need in the future. (Don't expect to go too deep into how and why that should be...it's not a huge piece of this book.)

Now that he's got the need for his funds, he and his teenaged niece (with a really, really cool "talent" that utterly eludes me, personally) travel from pillar to post together literally digging the future out of the muck and dirt of the past, while he shares with his brother's daughter all the stuff he wishes he'd said, the people he knew and their effects on him and the world, with the family's latest and last survivor.

So, that four star rating up there? That's all about the Ribkins not really getting into it, about the told-not-lived nature of a reflection and road novel. It isn't bad, it's got lovely sentences that say a lot about what it means to be Othered among others, and how very sad it is to leave so few things other people care about behind for them to enjoy.

But as a first novel being the same as a first at-bat, it swings for the fences and gets an RBI though not a home run. That's still a hell of an achievement.

THE DEEP SEA DIVER'S SYNDROME, first Serge Brussolo novel translated into English...at last!

THE DEEP SEA DIVER'S SYNDROME
SERGE BRUSSOLO (tr. Edward Gauvin)
Melville House (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$17.54 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: They call them “mediums”—professional dreamers who “dive” into the dream world to retrieve items that are converted into valuable artworks in the waking world. What’s more, the more dangerous the dream, the more valuable that artwork becomes.

In David Sarella’s dreams, he’s a professional jewel thief. With the help of his beautiful accomplice, Nadia, he breaks into jewelry stores and museums, lifts diamond necklaces and priceless art, and escapes into the night on a motorcycle—often, with the police shooting at them.

But the pressure is always on David to dream up more audaciously dangerous heists. And meanwhile, the dives are taking their toll, both physically and mentally. David is beyond the point at which this “syndrome” forces most mediums to retire or face insanity or even death . . . and yet he can’t imagine full-time life in the waking world, a world with no Nadia . . .

And so he decides to go down one more time—on the deepest dream-dive he’s ever attempted—to settle his doubts and pull off one last spectacular job . . .

I RECEIVED A READING COPY FROM MELVILLE HOUSE VIA EDELWEISS. THANK YOU.

My Review: Author Serge Brussolo has finally appeared in English! His series of novels about David Sarella is extensive, and this is not the first of that series, but it's a very deep (haw) and involving tale. First things first: This is a charming urban fantasy. To market it as science fiction is to court disappointed readers. A man who deep-dives into his own brain to produce Art is not a usual SFnal conceit. The action, such as it is, isn't SFnal. It's a beautifully made interior novel set in a fantastical urban world, so buy it with that in mind.

I strongly urge you to buy it, mind, especially if you like Ursula K. LeGuin's work. It's the same sort of appreciate-on-several-levels story. In the mood for escapism? Focus on David's journeys into his head, and the way he searches for meaning when he's forced to remain in "reality." Want a brainy story about the nature of reality, its discontents and escapes? Focus on the relationships David has with every living woman he's around. Brussolo layers his myth-making like fine mille-feuille pastry dough, creating the crispest and richest napoleons you'll eat this year.

In the end, my problem with this book came down to something I suspect is in the original French but that I wish the translator had used his artistic license to change: No one simply says anything, they murmur or grate or coo. Fine, fine, I get that sometimes a word like that can act as a spicy overnote. But too many times and it becomes the only thing one experiences, the fine and full flavors under the spice get obscured and that really is a shame. Author Brussolo has collected fine ingredients and made them into a full-bodied potage; a quarter cup of Tabasco reduces his ideas to mere chunks of heavier stuff in a mouth-burning stew.

There are dozens more Brussolo titles untranslated in multiple genres. It is a shame you're not already gobbling them down. Show the publisher that there are buyers with sophisticated tastes that need sophisticated tales to sate them. Resist the widespread US-market apathy for words written by those not from our culture! Treat yourself to your first Brussolo, then you'll need more and soon.

THE PRESIDENT, a non-Inspector Maigret Simenon novel...damn good, too

THE PRESIDENT
GEORGES SIMENON translated by Daphne Woodward
The Neversink Library
$10.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.8* of five

The Publisher Says: Restored to print for the first time in more than forty years, The President was hailed by the New York Times as a “tour de force.”

At 82, the former premier lives in alert and suspicious retirement—self exile—on the Normandy coast, writing his anxiously anticipated memoirs and receiving visits from statesman and biographers. In his library is the self-condemning, handwritten confession of the premier’s former attaché, Chalamont, hidden between the pages of a sumptuously produced work of privately printed pornography—a confession that the premier himself had dictated and forced Chalamont to sign. Now the long-thwarted Chalamont has been summoned to form a new coalition in the wake of the government’s collapse. The premier alone possesses the secret of Chalamont’s guilt, of his true character—and has publicly vowed: “He’ll never be Premier as long as I’m alive... Nor when I’m dead, either.” Inspired by French Premier Georges Clemenceau, The President is a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a probing account of the decline of power.

My Review: I got a CARE package from one of my old pals from Texas, filled to the brim with Simenon works...but not the Maigret stories, to my relief (read 'em all) and delight (I've never read any of the non-Maigret books)! The President is a delicate and careful autopsy of a once-powerful man's reluctant and relieved laying down his armaments. His life always consisted of public service, unmarried and childless and grasping for the levers of power to make his isolation into welcome solitude.

Simenon's Maigret novels are, as murder mysteries must be, formulaic. Simenon's gift came from creating a rich and satisfying story from these commonly available materials. It's a bit like watching Meryl Streep in a movie: She IS the role, she can't be more than glancingly perceived as the actress who starred in any other movie. Chameleons have that talent...so do cuttlefish...yet to find the gift of remodeling one's self in our smelly, sweaty human selves amazes and delights us every time.

This 152-page tale is a welcome surprise in this era of bloated, dull series books that could and should have been short stories. In my view, the less an author says, the more s/he has to focus and deliver a high-quality experience. Simenon wrote what was necessary to illuminate the long career of the eponymous president and place it in an historical setting. The impact of the actions taken by the president become, by design but still of necessity, quiet bombshells...silent even in their death throes.

This is a book to savor, to sip and ponder the complex flavors mixed in exacting proportions. A simple story, made well, translated carefully, and presented without hype. It is a treat in a literary landscape as pillowy-soft and cloyingly sweet as today's is simply to be told that great hearts still beat faster in pursuit of desired items and outcomes. And they remain great hearts, giving their all and making no excuses.

THE HEART OF A DOG: Even before THE MASTER & MARGARITA, Bulgakov's imagination was unstoppable

THE HEART OF A DOG
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV translated by Michael Glenny
Melville House
$15.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A new edition of Bulgakov’s fantastical precursor to The Master and Margarita, part of Melville House’s reissue of the Bulgakov backlist in Michael Glenny’s celebrated translations.

A key work of early modernism, this is the superbly comic story of a Soviet scientist and a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Attempting a medical first, the scientist transplants the glands of a petty criminal into the dog and, with that, turns a distinctly worryingly human animal loose on the city. The new, lecherous, vulgar, Engels-spouting Sharik soon finds his niche in governmental bureaucracy as the official in charge of purging the city of cats.

A Frankenstein fable that’s as funny as it is terrifying, The Heart of a Dog has also been read as a fierce parable of the Russian Revolution. It was rejected for publication by the censors in 1925, and circulated in samizdat for years until Michael Glenny translated it into English in 1968—long before it was allowed to be officially published in the Soviet Union. That happened only in 1987, although till this day the book remains one of Mikhail Bulgakov’s most controversial novels in his native country.

My Review: Anyone who's ever read The Master and Margarita already knows that Bulgakov is a rebel, an anarchist, and damn good and funny with it. His thoughts were, based on the novels I've read, contrarian in the extreme as well as profoundly sensitive to practical concerns:

“The rule apparently is – once a social revolution takes place there’s no need to stoke the boiler. But I ask you: why, when this whole business started, should everybody suddenly start clumping up and down the marble staircase in dirty galoshes and felt boots? Why must we now keep our galoshes under lock and key? And put a soldier on guard over them to prevent them from being stolen? Why has the carpet been removed from the front staircase? Did Marx forbid people to keep their staircases carpeted? Did Karl Marx say anywhere that the front door of No. 2 Kalabukhov House in Prechistenka Street must be boarded up so that people have to go round and come in by the back door? What good does it do anybody? Why can’t the proletarians leave their galoshes downstairs instead of dirtying the staircase?’
‘But the proletarians don’t have any galoshes, Philip Philipovich,’ stammered the doctor.”

And the simple truth about revolution that probably contributed heavily to the book's suppression in the Soviet era:

“People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour—white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.”

He saw the terror around him, saw the results, and distilled a response into a short phrase. That's writing that's a joy to read.

But we can't leave revolutionary-era Moscow without hearing from the eponymous heart-haver. Early in the book, we're told the sad tale of an unwanted dog whose people-savvy beats that of most of the humans I've ever met:

Eyes mean a lot. Like a barometer. They tell you everything—they tell you who has a heart of stone, who would poke the toe of his boot in your ribs as soon as look at you—and who’s afraid of you. The cowards—they’re the ones whose ankles I like to snap at. If they’re scared, I go for them. Serve them right...grrr...bow-wow…”

All hail Michael Glenny, of blessed memory since dying in 1990. Without him, Bulgakov's banned and suppressed works might remain out of the English-speaker's reach.