COUNTRY PEOPLE, latest Daniel Mason book after North Woods

COUNTRY PEOPLE
DANIEL MASON
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A rollicking work of lyricism and humor, about one family’s tumble into the unknown, from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of North Woods

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales, and increasingly haunted by a sense that he's become a disappointment to his family. So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be his year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, one who possesses, in Kate’s words, “a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere.” And no sooner does he arrive than he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as any of his folktales, from a ghostly tree surgeon to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress and a photographer of snowflakes obsessed with chronicling, on thousands of index cards, the world’s delusions in a “Inventory of Wrong Ideas.”

The new friends, the enchanted woods, the sure, no PhD, but all good fun. Until Miles stumbles upon a bizarre—perhaps ridiculous—local legend, which, he soon suspects, might not be just a legend after all.

Joyous, absurd, and life-affirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.

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My Review: Absurd, overstuffed storytelling with the effect of making fun of tropey stories by being one.

California sophisticates uprooting themselves to follow the academic goldmine of research funding, tenure, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...all of these ideas are really the same...and encountering wacky neighbors sound familiar? Put New York in for Cali, and it's Newhart; putthe 1960s in for today, it's Green Acres; it's not the structure that makes the tale fresh it's the characters. We're going to care about them, or the book falls flat.

I myownself wasn't terribly excited by the cast.

Kate the breadwinner, was longsuffering, Miles the dreamer was impractical, the kids (Olive and Wesley) were precocious, and will you look at the time? Suddenly it's 1980! I gave it the full four stars because there are loads of lines like: "But what was he to do, stay out of the woods? Then he met a man in camouflage in a tree who told him that if he didn’t get some blaze orange on him and his dog, their heads were going to end up together on someone’s wall," and set-pieces like the truffle-hunting dog in the weird national park no one's ever heard of that Miles the dreamer makes sure they visit.

It's a book version of a superior sitcom from pre-social media/reality TV days. I chuckled, even laughed out loud. Now that it's been a week since I finished the read, I remember literally nothing from it. If I had no notes I'd've sworn an oath I'd never opened the thing at all. It's not poor, it's not substandard on a craft level, it's just that it's doing something I do not care about.

I'd be glad to find this book in my summer rental's scanty bookshelf. I'd even be fine with checking it out of the library. If you want one for Yule I'll be happy to give it to you.

I won't ever re-read it, and if I recommend it to you it will be because you've asked for ideas for gentle, unchallenging reads.

THE TUXEDO SOCIETY: A Novel, excellent fifteen years ago, moderately fun now

THE TUXEDO SOCIETY: A Novel
PAUL RUDNICK
Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: If Guy Ritchie directed an episode of Queer Eye, it might look something like this hilarious and action-packed spy thriller by Paul Rudnick, acclaimed screenwriter and author of Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, that blends espionage and social commentary, with an elite, gay secret society.

They are fierce patriots. They are licensed to kill. And they are really, really gay. Welcome to democracy’s secret weapon, the Tuxedo Society.

When Andrew Birnbaum, a struggling actor making ends meet by working in a candle shop, gets invited to have dinner with the exclusive Tuxedo Society by his best friend, Brock, his life takes an unexpected turn. What seems like a group of wealthy socialites gathering for gossip and cocktails quickly spirals into a world of espionage, danger, and hilarity.

Andrew soon meets Reggie O’Malley, a Navy SEAL with a penchant for black tie, who recruits Andrew to join the society’s covert mission to protect national security. Armed with gadgets like an inflatable life raft backpack, a yoga mat that doubles as an assault rifle, and, of course, an AMEX Black Card, Andrew quickly finds himself tackling spies, thwarting assassinations, and facing a host of unexpected threats in settings from the White House to the Vatican to the Summer Olympic Games.

The stakes escalate when Andrew and his comrades are sent on a jet-setting mission to uncover the truth about an ancient artifact. Along the way, they clash with oligarchs, crooked senators, and a smarmy televangelist with sinister plans for world domination.

Packed with Paul Rudnick’s signature wit, The Tuxedo Society is a wild ride through decadence, danger, and unexpected heroism, as Andrew discovers that saving the world might just be the role he’s been waiting for.

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My Review: Take all the silliness of a Bond flick and sprinkle fairy-dust on it, detomate a glitter bomb in a 1979 bath house, pipe in Bette Midler and Streisand and Cher interspersed with Romanovsky and Phillips, and...for the five of you still reading...and here's you a read. The trappings of the twenty-first century feel like they're set dressing. Like, this cisqueer white man cabal of queens sounds like Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Pastiche of the ways and words of the Good Old Days, fun for a while but...wears thin.

I'm the target audience for this book. I liked it. I really laughed, in pleasure, at the jokes. It gave me the happy nostalgia of knowing someone out there still remembers my heyday.

But it's twenty-fuckin'-twenty-six, y'all. Plug your hearing aid into the charger. Suicide bombers are fiendishly hard to track down using modern data analysis...gaydar shit-sure got no chance. I think we're past this kind of spying being used for humor because we're past this kind of spying being usable in real-world settings, which is always the fun of an espionage novel. It's not realistic or the CIA/NSA/MI{numeral} folk would be on the publisher, the writer, and the writer's mama with every resource they possess; but we-the-reader need to feel it *could* be and that it *could* happen like this.

But there are some lines that truly glitter like well-cut diamonds. Can't quote them because no really good examples don't also spoil stuff, annd if you don't live in fear of the Spoiler Stasi, you haven't been nastygrammed by any of 'em yet. Spoiled things.

Still a fun read, but one I'll send you to the library to check out, not your Bookshop.org cart.

PRESTIGE DRAMA, debut novel from a stellar storyteller

PRESTIGE DRAMA
SÉMAS O'REILLY
Grand Central Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Derry is already abuzz with news that famous American actor, Monica Logue, has flown to the city and will be starring in a new series set during the Troubles. And then she goes missing...

All eyes are on Diarmuid, the flaky scriptwriter who was the last to see Monica alive. From budding young actors hoping for a role to grieving parent whose story forms the backbone of the narrative; newspaper editors covering the mystery to taxi drivers hearing all the news from their clients, The Dogs in the Street follows the city's cast as they all try to locate themselves in Monica's disappearance.

Séamas O'Reilly's debut novel is a comedy about dramatising tragedy, and the responsibilities of a teller to a tale. It brings to life the voices of a city, the people, families and communities who find themselves obsessed with, and terrified of, interrogating their past.

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

My Review: Author of the poignant, hilarious memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? delivers a novel of The Troubles™...this seems to be a rite of passage for Irish writers born after 1950...via a lens I found mostly successful. A TV production hub in factual reality, Northern Ireland was a violent and terrifying place not that long ago. A multi-part limited series being made there is a welcome boost to the economy, and to the good image the country badly needs to project into the world.

But a film being made about The Troubles™ is a different proposition altogether. That topic is quite sensitive. So when Monica Logue starts researching her starring role in this prestige drama, the mere act of talking to people about the past..."How do you talk about the past as a person still living it, in a place that barely survived it?" the author has a character muse...sets off explosions of the same emotions that threatened to destroy the societal fabric of the place. Is it any wonder she just vanishes? The real question is "how." Did she run away from threats and intimidation, was she kidnapped by people she frightened with her research, was this another ugly political assassination to silence a voice digging in dirt some powerful people buried bodies in?

A very short read of under 200pp ought not to offer satisfying conclusions to these questions, that's just too little space. "Hold my beer" says Author Séamas, and delivers a series of tight storytelling-heavy chapters from multiple points of view. The only one you see more than once is, unsurprisingly, Diarmuid the writer of the television series. Each of them flows into the next, not always seamlessly, but that did not jar me out of the narrative flow. All the chapters are, as mentioned, storytelling-heavy...focused on making your idea of what's happening in that moment illuminate the journey to the resolution of the plot.

As a debut novel, this is the cream of the crop. Author Séamas is an experienced storyteller, his writing-craft chops are well-exercised from prior work done. In the places I was less that ecstatic, it was down to my feelings about the choice he made to have the novel mirror a screenplay in its tightness, its use of the delightful discursiveness of his characters mainly in dialogue. I'd've enjoyed more "Irishness" throughout. I found his memoir so very delighful because it had observations expressed in the same voice as the dialogue. That, of course, works better in personal and factual contexts. It adds distance in that setting, allowing truly horrendously painful memories to be seen as past, not immediate and awful...which is why I found their relative absence odd here.

I'm in no way trying to put you off the read, please understand that. It was a delight, well mostly a delight to learn why Monica was treated as she was. I want the pleasures of this read to be the main take-away you have for this story. I have a minor few cavils, none of which made me think I should move on to the next DRC on the Kindle.

A debut novel from a stellar storyteller that's a treasure of time to read.

SMOKING KILLS, deeply French story made accessible to Anglophone readers

SMOKING KILLS
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Louise Rogers Lalaurie)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, preorder for delivery on 5 May 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this cozy crime novel with a witty, Parisian black-comedy twist, anti-hero Fabrice can only make smoking pleasurable by committing the ultimate crime

How far would you go to enjoy a cigarette?

When headhunter Fabrice Valantine faces a smoking ban at work, he decides to undertake a course of hypnotherapy to rid himself of the habit. At first the treatment works, but his stress levels begin to rise when he is passed over for an important promotion and he finds himself lighting up again—but with none of his previous enjoyment.

Then he discovers something terrible: he accidentally causes a man’s death, and, needing a cigarette to calm his nerves, he enjoys it more than any other previous smoke. What if he now needs to kill someone every time he wants to properly appreciate his next Benson and Hedges?

Unwilling to return to the numbness of a life without pleasurable smoking, Fabrice launches into a life of crime, finding ever more original murder methods—including the use of a poisonous Ecuadorean frog.

A blackly comic story of addiction and transgression, this is also an exploration of the human need for fulfillment, and the lengths we will go to in order to find it. In the end the book provokes us to question the limits we place on ourselves, and the true definition of joy.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Fabrice Valantine is in prison. He is so an unrepentant smoker, as the title implies, that he sees the joy of smoking as superseding others' right to life. Not quite the spin on the title you expected, eh what?

How a professional headhunter (noun Wiktionary serves three senses of the word:
A savage who cuts off the heads of his enemies, and preserves them as trophies.
One who recruits senior personnel for a company.
A pitcher who throws at the batter's head.)
Of these three I think the fairest to apply here is the third; the author intends the second; and implicit in all three is the first) with a genuine love affair with/oral fixation on the dick-shaped tubes of chemicals that, when ignited, provide particulate delivery directly into one's mucous membranes...and those of hundreds of others who happen to be passing by. When absolutely, as a condition of employment, required to stop smoking, Fabrice resorts to hypnotism. It works.

Sort of.

Fabrice loses the pleasure of smoking ("I faced these painful hours with no solace whatsoever, just the dusty taste of my cigarettes and the utter ineffectiveness of the nicotine"), not the need to smoke. Until after an awful, awful accident where someone loses their future to death due to his carelessness, the frisson of smoking returns. So it wasn't permanently removed by hypnosis, only recalibrated to require extreme stimulation to experience it. Being a smoker therefore selfish and self-obsessed, this shows a path forward into pleasure that Fabrice, narrating his story from prison, chooses to follow. But he's careful! He only kills those whose loss won't matter! Isn't he due a reward for, as I often say, cleanin' the gene pool?

A fantastical noir-tinged laugh-out-loud satire of capitalism is one way to see this story. So is a comedy of manners, replete with stock characters (Fabrice as Gordon Gekko leaps to mind). Most of all, though, I want you to read this pinnacle of the translator's art. Louise Rogers Lalaurie has rendered into high-level, delightfully readable English one of the most vibe-dependent reads from the very French pen of Author Laurain. It's not this team's first collaboration...I do not know if the author and the translator worked together to create their magic, but I'm inclined to view the evidence as supporting that interpretation...as the current rush of Pushkin Press's republications attests. I'm a fan because I think Author Laurain chooses his targets well. I'm a fan because the translator understands on a deep level the targets, their cultural position in France, and the sense of the language the author chooses to use and renders it into a different culture recognizably. Her skill is to make this extremely French book humorous in the extremely different cultural valences of English. That is a tremendous skill.

A book to savor like one's last cigarette.

ON EARTH AS IT IS ON TELEVISION, weirdly funny first-contact debut novel

ON EARTH AS IT IS ON TELEVISION
EMILY JANE
Hyperion Avenue (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In Emily Jane’s rollicking debut, when spaceships arrive and then depart suddenly without a word, the certainty that we are not alone in the universe turns to intense uncertainty as to our place within it.

Since long before the spaceships’ fleeting presence, Blaine has been content to go along with the whims of his supermom wife and half-feral, television-addicted children. But when the kids blithely ponder skinning people to see if they’re aliens, and his wife drags them all on a surprise road trip to Disney World, even steady Blaine begins to crack.

Half a continent away, Heather floats in a Malibu pool and watches the massive ships hover overhead. Maybe her life is finally going to start. For her, the arrival heralds a quest to understand herself, her accomplished (and oh-so-annoying) stepfamily, and why she feels so alone in a universe teeming with life.

Suddenly conscious and alert after twenty catatonic years, Oliver struggles to piece together his fragmented, disco-infused memories and make sense of his desire to follow a strange cat on a westward journey.

Embracing the strangeness that is life in the twenty-first century, On Earth as It Is on Television is a rollicking, heartfelt tale of first contact that practically leaps off the planet.

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My Review: I think laughing is a gift I'll never take for granted again. 2025 has given me few reasons to laugh. This 2023 title was one that got to be more and more fun as I read along.

Despite the c-a-ts being the first-contacting aliens' favorite Earthlings. No way could this climb past four stars after that extremely bad authorial decision.

Though playing the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic for laffs, like they commissioned Michael Zadoorian to observe the results of the visit for a report, is *almost* enough, as the aliens arrive, depart, and pretty much act like indifferent tourists on a cruise. The Earthlings left in their wake are befuddled, asking all sorts of questions, but none the wiser as to the aliens' purpose in visiting Earth.

It sorta doesn't matter. The point of humor is to look at things that seem absurd, but are genuinely important...sometimes profound. This story isn't quite profound, but it's important: We need a perspective check. Maybe aliens exist, maybe they're too far away in time and/or space to "hear" us, or maybe they're fully aware of us and just don't care.

That hurts a lot of peoples' feelings, but if aliens exist (I think spacefaring ones don't), I'll be completely unsurprised if they, like Jane's aliens, aren't much interested in humanity as it acts the fool, messes up its room, defies reason in the name of spurious "personal autonomy," and generally behaves like spoiled, perspectiveless adolescents with too much free time.

A summertime read with enough interesting ideas to make it more than empty reading calories while delivering the sugar rush of humor to keep your mind from processing the nutritious stuff in the moment.

IF I STOPPED HAUNTING YOU by COLBY WILKENS

IF I STOPPED HAUNTING YOU
COLBY WILKENS
St. Martin's Griffin Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: An enemies to lovers romance with a spooky twist where two feuding writers end up on a writers retreat together at a haunted castle in Scotland

It's been months since horror author Penelope Skinner threw a book at Neil Storm. But he was so infuriating, with his sparkling green eyes and his bestselling horror novels that claimed to break Native stereotypes. And now she’s a publishing pariah and hasn’t been able to write a word since. So when her friend invites her on a too-good-to-be-true writers retreat in a supposedly haunted Scottish castle, she seizes the opportunity. Of course, some things really are too good to be true.

Neil wants nothing less than to be trapped in a castle with the frustratingly adorable woman who threw a book at him. She drew blood! Worse still, she unleashed a serious case of self-doubt! Neil is terrified to write another bestselling “book without a soul,” as Pen called it. All Neil wants is to find inspiration, while completely avoiding her.

But as the retreat begins, Pen and Neil are stunned to find themselves trapped in a real-life ghost story. Even more horrifying, they’re stuck together and a truly shocking (extremely hot) almost-kiss has left them rethinking their feelings, and… maybe they shouldn’t have been enemies at all? But if they can’t stop the ghosts pursuing them, they may never have the chance to find out.

Full of spooky chills and even more sexy thrills, If I Stopped Haunting You by Colby Wilkens is the funny, fast-paced romp romance readers have been waiting for!

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My Review: Spooky castle...enemies forced into proximity...sparks flying left and right...bingo! #Deathtober read card filled.

One star off for heterosexualizing a perfectly good plot.

Author Wilkens does a fine job of entertaining her readers with a ghost story inside Gothic-novel trappings. Her domestic-violence opening...the woman throws a book at the man hard enough for the injury to bleed, and to leave a scar, and it's...somehow okay...? Like, a woman injuring a man isn't a problem but if he'd done the same to her the howling banshees would be all over it!


I was not thrilled by this.

I just barely got to a three-star rating because Author Wilkens made me chuckle many times *in*spite*of* my existing irritation. That is some serious talent! Causing an irked old curmudgeon to chuckle is a feat!

I really don't know what to tell you about the violence. You know your own tolerance for the abuse passed off as humor trope.

KILL FOR LOVE, is Tiffany the new Patrick Bateman?

KILL FOR LOVE
LAURA PICKLESIMER
The Unnamed Press
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The boys on the row are only after one thing, but that bullshit’s for pledges. Tiffany’s on the hunt for something more.

Kill for Love is a searing satirical thriller about Tiffany, a privileged Los Angeles sorority sister who is struggling to keep her sadistic impulses—and haunting nightmares of fire and destruction—at bay. After a frat party hookup devolves into a bloody, fatal affair, Tiffany realizes something within her has awoken: the insatiable desire to kill attractive young men.

As Tiffany’s bloodlust deepens and the bodies pile up, she must contend with mounting legal scrutiny, social media-fueled competing murders, and her growing relationship with Weston, who she thinks could be the perfect boyfriend. A female-driven, modern-day American Psycho, Kill for Love exposes modern toxic plasticity with dark comedy and propulsive plot.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: If you have a trigger, this book will trip it. Shop elsewhere.

Is the best way to satirize something to stand it on its head, replicating beat-for-beat its abuses on those usually perpetrating them?

By my definition of "best," this time the answer's yes. Like the 2019 delight that was Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer, this book posits a vicious and cruel woman enacting sexual violence on the men...pretty, vapid young men in this case...who irritate her. We're in Tiffany's head this time, unlike Braithwaite's story of an appalled sister's responses to the aftermath of violence. It's a much more awful place to be. Not that she's unjusified in targeting her victims, you understand. It's just the glorious release and the bloody reveling in her newfound freedom to be the perpetrator, not the victim, of violence is...a bit unpleasant. A lot like the experience of reading the very accurate publisher's comp title American Psycho is. Being inside an unhinged person's head as they perpetrate unspeakable sexualized violence for their own gratification is very, very unsettling...to me at least. Thank goodness it is, or I'd be worried about myself.

What Author Picklesimer does that wasn't done in American Psycho is leave her character on the surfaces of things, people, thoughts...she has, and sees, and needs no depth in, to, of anything. Her world is flat and glossy with a few stark shadows and fewer ideas. Patrick Bateman reveled in what he was doing but had pseudoprofound thoughts about it. Tiffany is utterly without nuance. It works much better than some out-of-character philosophizing would have done to poke a satirical finger in the chest of the rampant blatant ever-uglier misogyny in the use of sexualized violence against women as entertainment. Women are victims and foils, you say? asks Author Picklesimer. What drove this man to do all these awful things to women, as though that was the important part because, one is led to understand, *HE* is then the main character, not his victim.

Her response to this sexist, misogynistic bullshit is to give the world Tiffany, pretty, shallow, privileged Tiffany. She revels in her bloody dispatchings of men because it feels good...no woman on a mission, no abused-become-abuser mealymouthing. She gets off on it.

It's probably more unsettling to me that she finds Weston so lovable than that she commits the awful acts she does. The randomness of her choice, the indistinguishability of Weston from the victims, is so completely arbitrary that it gives me the heebie-jeebies when I contemplate how much of my own continued existence is down to not meeting a Tiffany when their bloodlust was up.

There were problems in the read for me. One was Tiffany's peculiarly empathetic response to her roommate, whom she professes to dislike, experiencing rape. Why would Tiffany care? She's got no empathy in her or the oceans of awfulness wouldn't happen. I wasn't entirely sure that California, where we set our scene, was meant to be satirical or reportorial. Its wasteland-of-violence presentation was deadpan enough that it didn't read as exaggerated for effect to me. That meant I was left wondering how this has only now created a Tiffany...and how it is that Authority in such a hellscape overlooked her as a potential perpetrator without her using a whole lot of effort to mislead them. I suppose that's a commentary on sexism's immensely stupidifying effect on men.

Even Tiffany has a family, though you'd barely know it. Her sister is window-dressed into one scene I can remember, which means there was either no need for her at all or there's a missed opportunity here. Weston's bestie, Dean, had a tiny role that I'd've liked more of, but the bit he was in certainly ramped up the tension so read that as a bleat of dissatisfaction not a criticism.

I've got this to say about the read: It suited me down to the ground for what I wanted it to do. It entertained me as I thought of the thousands of hours of girls (term used advisedly) breasting boobily across stage, page, and screen to titillate with their sexuality before being punished in violent awful ways for it.

How's it feel when the tables are turned, gents?

BLACK BUCK, savagely funny & supremely fun send-up/roast/take-down of US business culture

BLACK BUCK
MATEO ASKARIPOUR
Mariner Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$26.00 hardcover, available now

AN ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY BUZZIEST WORKPLACE BOOK OF 2021!

The Young Lions Fiction Award shortlist has the author on it! The New York Public Library will announce the winner on 16 June 2022.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: There’s nothing like a Black salesman on a mission.

An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor.

After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.

Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce; it is a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream.

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

My Review: Please, please, someone in Black Hollywood make this into a movie! I can't think of a better time, or a better story, to use this terrific twist on The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit to skewer the shrinking opportunity pool! The Economist cites statistics that show that white bros are more eager than BIPoC employees to return to the office, stop remote working. Reading this book will give you a visceral, intense sense of why that most likely is true...and what the grim consequences for diversity in the workplace could turn out to be.

Not, however, if Author Askaripour has anything to say about it.

You see, there's some truth to the old adages "be careful what you wish for, lest the answer be 'yes'" and "you get back what you give out." Darren, twenty-two and a barista with a pretty good life (he thinks; his mom disagrees), sees one of his regulars ordering the same boring thing every morning. He does what a good sales person always does: suggests an alternative, a different and more interesting drink. Without being crappy about it, he persists until the customer agrees to try the new item. Which he loves.

Darren's brewed his last latte. He upsold the founder of SumWun and now he has a high-powered sales job waiting for him. That maybe he doesn't want...or isn't sure he wants...but let me tell you, when someone who's got what it takes to grab enough money to found a viable tech company wants you, it would do you best to get your stuff out of your locker and go with him right then. There will be no rest until your onboarding process is complete and your world revolves around Selling the Widget.

Author Askaripour chose to frame this narrative as one of those metastatic "positivity/self-help/I succeeded you can too" memoirs recrudescing all over bookstores like lesions on a cancer patient. It was, I thought for about two chapters, going to make me a crazy person. "I have to bail," I whimpered to my Young Gentleman Caller. "I might get seriously ill, this is reminding me of all those years selling!"

"Read me some," he said, "just enter {position number} and let's go."

“Ain’ no Black people need no therapists, ’cause we don’ be havin’ those mental issues. OCD, ADD, PTSD, and all those other acronyms they be comin’ up with every day. I’m tellin’ you, the only acronyms Black folk need help with is the NYPD, FBI, CIA, KKK, and KFC, ’cause I know they be puttin’ shit in those twelve-piece bucket meals to make us addicted to them.”

"That was funny! You haven't got that far yet, you have to find out why that's there," I was ordered.

You rock, Rob. I took the ride, I enjoyed the whole ride, and you're the one who made it happen.

It was sometimes cringe to me how close Author Askaripour sailed to the winds of snottiness. It was often the case, however, that he found my ticklish spot right after that. I am not going to say I think everyone should read the book because the humor-deficient will be blankly confused why it's supposed to be funny or outraged that their demographic is being scored off ("He reeked of privilege, Rohypnol, and tax breaks" is one of the most memorable snorts of derision). For me, possibly for you, there's an aesthetic hill to climb in the format being parodied; but there is something so very good to gain by persevering: Belly laughs at the sheer inventive snark leveled at targets who could use some dings and scratches on their cheap veneer.

Recommended for some good, cathartic belly laughs.

ROBBY RIVERTON: MAIL ORDER BRIDE, a classic 1940s comedy Western with a gay couple for once

ROBBY RIVERTON: MAIL ORDER BRIDE
ELI EASTON
Pinkerton Road LLC (non-affiliate Amazon link)
99¢ Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Being a fugitive in the old west shouldn’t be this much fun.

The year is 1860. Robby Riverton is a rising star on the New York stage. But he witnesses a murder by a famous crime boss and is forced to go on the run--all the way to Santa Fe. When he still hasn't ditched his pursuers, he disguises himself as a mail order bride he meets on the wagon train. Caught between gangsters that want to kill him, and the crazy, uncouth family of his "intended", Robby's only ally is a lazy sheriff who sees exactly who Robby is -- and can't resist him.

Trace Crabtree took the job as sheriff of Flat Bottom because there was never a thing going on. And then Robby Riverton showed up. Disguised as a woman. And betrothed to Trace’s brother. If that wasn’t complication enough, Trace had to find the man as appealing as blueberry pie. He urges Robby to stay undercover until the danger has passed. But a few weeks of having Robby-Rowena at the ranch, and the Crabtree family will never be the same again.

My Review: One entire star off for four uses of the dreadful, icky, overused-in-MM-romances w-verb. It's lazy and it's bad writing. *tsk*

The story itself sparkles and fizzes with excitement. The murder Robby witnesses in New York City is chilling and makes his terror and his addlepated decision to run away make perfect sense. I'd be terrified and addled as well! Robby's wagon train trip west isn't very detailed but it's got the sense of urgency that a more thorough explanation wouldn't serve. And the real Rowena Fairchild is a major pill, despite her perfect depiction:

She was statuesque, well-bred, and finely dressed. She had light-brown hair that flirted with the idea of being red and a starry sky’s worth of freckles on her nose and cheeks.

Oh my. I can see her. I've known ladies who fit this description to a T. Author Easton makes them appear before my mind's eye.

The way Robby and Trace Crabtree get entangled on Rowena/Robby's arrival in Santa Fe is farcical fun. I loved that they knew right off the other was attracted to their real selves. It makes the sexual tension so much more delicious, like Jack Lemmon finding out Joe E. Brown knew he was in drag all along in Some Like It Hot.

"God, I need one hour without skirts wrapping around my knees every time I move—and this blasted bonnet! I swear it was designed by Satan himself. I will be in heaven the day I can set fire to the cursed thing.”

The Crabtree family secret was a little out of left field, but made me laugh out loud when it was discovered by a stunned Robby. Their antics were just so innocent to cause all the angst they did, but I could believe them in this context. I sure as hell would laugh at the Crabtrees for doing what they do.

{Pa-Pa} pointed a finger around the table.

“Ya need to be on your best behavior for two whole weeks. And no you-know-what!”

Robby blinked. That wasn’t ominous at all. No what? Dancing naked in the living room? Cooking human body parts? Smacking around the wives?

Robby's ability to talk Pa-Pa Crabtree around to being sweet on him in no time flat was a little bit of a stretch, but I could see the dramatic need. I know Robby would've talked anyone around in the end, so I went with it. I loved the way Robby dug out the big family secret and made the whole troop of men confront their fears and pain without judgment. That was a lovely touch.

Trace felt a pang of warmth at Pa’s praise. It was so rare. And goddamn but he hated that he could still want the old man’s approval.

The events leading to the ending had me clenched in tense anticipation and I was saved from nervous collapse by the fact that this is a happily-ever-after genre. I do declare I'd've been prostrated if it wasn't. I was gnawing my knuckles for the last 20% of the book! The tension was skillfully ratcheted up and the stakes as high as they get for everyone. Trace shines in his focused obsessive need to fix what's broken throughout the book.

The idea that Robby might find that someday, with someone else, caused such an awful, crushing feeling that Trace had to stop that line of thought dead.

The others' reactions to Trace and Robby after the game is revealed are...well...I don't know, maybe some more conversations around the subject? I was a little left out, it seemed, of the consequences of Robby's deception to the Crabtrees, with the exception of Clovis the defrauded groom.

“There ain’t a person alive who could cast you into shadow, Robby Riverton. I can’t imagine you’re ever in a room where ya ain’t the most fascinatin’ thing in it. I can’t keep my eyes off ya. Guess that’s what they call charisma. No wonder you were a star in New York.”
–and–
“I just want you to know,” Robby said, his voice thick. “That I love you, Trace. I really do. And I know that doesn’t change the way things are. But I just...wanted you to have that to keep. However you want to keep it. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me.”

Also...1860, when the story was ostensibly set, was President Buchanan's term in office. I think the year Trace ran off is more like 1865 or he wouldn't have joined the army as a sharpshooter. Either he fought in the Civil War, at the tail end of it, or joined up and fought in the Plains Wars against the Comanche or Apache that hotted up around 1867. "President Hayes" is mentioned, making the earliest date for the story 1877; all in all, I think 1880 works, and that'd also explain the railroad fever mentioned at the end of the story.

As an experience of storytelling, this was a solid hit for me. I need to escape reality right now. I make no bones about it. Serious and weighty things are happening in the bigger world and in my own stretch of it. My reading needs to soothe me, not challenge me. And this story was just what the escapist ordered.

“Honey, I’m just as happy to sit in this here town with you until we grow old.” And so . . . that’s what they did.

MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER delivers appalled laughs, existential shivers, and great hopes for her next work

MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER
OYINKAN BRAITHWAITE
Doubleday (non-affiliate Amazon link
$11.99 ebooks, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker—and more difficult to get out of the carpet—than water...

When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other...

AUGUST 2019 UPDATE Oyinkan Braithwaite talks about How to Make Multiple Stabbings Funny! Interesting podcast.

I BORROWED THIS BOOK FROM MY LOCAL LIBRARY. THANK YOU!

My Review:

It takes a lot longer to dispose of a body than to dispose of a soul, especially if you don't want to leave any evidence of foul play.

And just like *that* I'm totally hooked. Second book this month set in Lagos; and second informed by a special Nigerian magical realism. (The other is David Mogo, Godhunter. Excellent as well.) This is a light entertainment, a shiny pretty costume-jewelry of a story that sets your readerly mood in its most attractive and colorful light. It's fun. It's got the Double Indemnityesque delight of a love triangle detonated by jealousy, the In Cold Bloodness of a crime spree done for the sheer hell of it, and that utterly madcap Thelma and Louisely sanitized violence and death.

Yes, sanitized. Korede reports, doesn't narrate, the aftermath of Ayoola's kills. She keeps the details sparse enough to inform but not nauseate. Korede stands between us and Ayoola the serial killer. (Thank goodness. I don't think I could've read a whole novel from Ayoola's PoV!) So we're safe, we're not going to the places Korede has seen, we needn't do what Korede does.

Those things that she must do in the name of Family, of keeping her sister from suffering the consequences of her actions, weigh on Korede. Naturally, I hear you snort, they would on anyone! It's a lot to carry. Korede needs a confessor and, since she's a hospital nurse, she is in the path of the perfect confessor-cum-confidant: Muhtar, a comatose patient with a neglectful family. She tells him Everything: details of the killings, the things she's had to do to cover them up, the awful sick feeling of being accessory to a serial killer...she talks it out to his vacant-but-breathing ears. How good it feels! Confession truly is good for the soul.

Not so much for the body...Muhtar wakes up. He's delighted to meet the nurse whose voice, in its daily presence, gave him the will to live and return. And yes, he remembers all. He's quite sure of what he heard Korede say. And do you know, he simply doesn't care because:

"...we are hardwired to protect and remain loyal to the people we love. Besides, no one is innocent in this world. Why, go up to your maternity ward! All those smiling parents and their newborns? Murderers and victims. Every one of them. 'The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.'"

"That's quite..." I can't complete the sentence. The words trouble me.

"It's a quote by Jim Morrison. I cannot lay claim to such wisdom."

Again, Author Braithwaite sweeps me away on her word-tide. She quotes Jim Morrison and does it well. She creates a full-fledged memorable character out of a comatose guy. This is a writer with chops. (You should forgive.) She has done the best for Korede that she can in giving her a sage and caring counselor, especially as the hospital is well-stocked with people she must not and cannot trust:

She smiles, hoping to put me at ease, but the expression does not sit comfortably on her face. ... I would be more at ease if the Joker were to smile at me.

Korede is, in that moment, trying to keep her cool as the Lagos police are returning her car to her possession after running tests for Ayoola's latest victim's blood on it. Her nosy colleague, trying to get the dirt, is doomed to failure as Korede does what she's best at: Stays mum. Protects Ayoola. Pretends she is doing a good thing, being loyal to and as always protecting her younger sister. Family first!

Besides, it's what Korede doesn't do...what in the end she chooses to allow to occur to someone over whom she rhapsodizes, "Is there anything more beautiful than a man with a voice like an ocean?"...that defines her as a moral actor. I disagree with her choice, and I would've liked a chance to convince her to change her mind. With a two-by-four to the knees if necessary. But Korede, as written, really couldn't have made a different choice, so here we are.

Overall, the story's pluses...new-to-me setting, cultural differences that kept me on my Google-fu, and an authorial style I found engaging...got me to a shade over four stars. It wasn't hard to get there. Where I just can't get to, though, is the place where this entertainment got itself onto the Booker Prize 2019 longlist! That makes no sense to me, because there are wonderful and delicious moments in this book to savor but it does nothing that's particularly innovative. At least not in my eyes. Many will disagree, I don't doubt.

As a read, this is a superior summer entertainment. It won, deservedly, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Mystery/Thriller in 2018. But it isn't High Art, and I don't think it set out to be. It is a first novel of great promise and I want to see Oyinkan Braithwaite's second one with great anticipatory glee.

AMERICANISATION, academia-set picaresque immigrant comedy

AMERICANISATION: Lessons in American Culture and Language
ANGUS WOODWARD
Livingston Press
$8.50 trade paper at the link above, $4.95 Kindle edition

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Biti Namoeteri, an enterprising young man from "South America's Lichtenstein," comes to the US to get a graduate degree in Spiritual Geography, never expecting to become a multi-level marketer or to fall in love with a woman named Janet Broccoli. But he does just that, and then discovers that personal injury lawsuits can be the keys to both success and failure. Woodward's narrative strategy is both accessible and experimental in this comic novel posing as a textbook.

My Review: The son of goatherds from a country described only as "South America's Liechtenstein" comes to an unnamed American university in an unnamed American city to get a Master's degree in "Spiritual Geography." (Now I want a degree in Spiritual Geography, but not a one of the local universities seems to have such a major. Blast and damn it all!) He arrives, Candide-like, with nothing but a few clothes and a shaky grasp of English. Soon he falls (literally) afoul of the predatory and transactional nature of capitalist society's definitions of intimacy...falling in love (?) with the dreadful and materialistic Janet Broccoli; becoming a mule for smarmy, unctuous Paul Roasted's Amway equivalent Ponzi scheme; providing the memorably named slimy lawyer, Angelo Tongue, with several personal injury cases. But even without Dr. Pangloss, all comes out for the best in this best of all possible profit machines...but at what cost? You are never told...but you can guess.

I fear Angus Woodward. He sees too much. He's the one-eyed man in the country of the blind, and it's very hard not to flinch and squirm as he reports his visions to us docile, dimmed-down drudges.

This book, his first novel after a collection of short fiction set in South Louisiana, Down at the End of the River, appeared in 2008, is written in the vein of a foreign-language textbook, with "Dialogues" and "Vocabularies" and "Activities" that illustrate the author's caustic disdain for what is shown to be a hollow, anti-nurturing culture Americans have allowed to be created in their name. It's scathing. It's abrasively angry. It's impossible not to laugh at lines like "Lobster Shell: Crack!" which pepper the Dialogues, reminding the reader that the author is letting you in on a joke, not simply hollering at you to PAY ATTENTION FOR ONCE and notice the lack of spiritual value in the fake friendliness that we've allowed to kudzu its way into the place once held for friendship.

Seriously y'all...pay attention...or Angus Woodward will be forced to write again...and that's gonna be uncomfortable, yet memorable.

ELLA MINNOW PEA, Mark Dunn's progressively lipogrammatic send-up of rigidity

ELLA MINNOW PEA
MARK DUNN
Anchor Books
$15.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.9* of five

The Publisher Says: There are two book descriptions, both good; this first is for the hardcover, published by MacAdam/Cage, that I read years ago:

Ella Minnow Pea is an epistolary novel set in the fictional island of Nollop situated off the coast of South Carolina and home to the inventor of the pangram The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. Now deceased, the islanders have erected a monument to honor their hero, but one day a tile with the letter �z� falls from the statue. The leaders interpret the falling tile as a message from beyond the grave and the letter is banned from use. On an island where the residents pride themselves on their love of language, this is seen as a tragedy. They are still reeling from the shock, when another tile falls and then another.... Mark Dunn takes us on a journey against time through the eyes of Ella Minnow Pea and her family as they race to find another phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet to save them from being unable to communicate. Eventually, the only letters remaining are LMNOP, when Ella finally discovers the phrase that will save their language.

The second is for Anchor's trade paper edition, which seems to me to give a better flavor of the book:

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet

My Review: This novel is about the unintended bad, and ridiculous, consequences of a very good idea. Nollop, an island off the American mainland, is a society rational and reasonable in its organization and actions. Its usage of the English language rests on the existence of the pangram, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The founder of Nollop invested the pangram with great significance.

And now, in Ella's time, the letters of the pangram start falling off the founder's statue! And the leaders say, "It's a sign! A sign! Whatever letters have fallen may no longer be used, in writing or in speech! An omen, a sign!"

And the people nodded, smiled, and did nothing to stop the madness. After all, it's the leaders' job to lead, right? And why would the leaders want bad things for us? After all, we all want the best and the brightest to flourish, right?

Of course! Now, take your Soma. Dr. Orwell will be along soon.

Delight. Dialogue, description, the lot. It's fun to read the book because the story is so very absurd. Imagine an entire country that's established around the veneration of a weirdo who invented a sentence to exercise your typing skills with! And imagine further the populace of such a place, held in thrall to language, ruled by a council of puritans who do their damnedest to make sure the entire island respects the gift of the English language...to the exclusion of all other considerations, personal, practical, political.

The book was published in 2001. That was, for those of failing memory, the year (in my never-humble opinion) Shrub Bush stole the presidential election for the first time. It was clear to anyone not conservative and/or christian that there was a bad set of rapids ahead, and a lot of it would turn on public and private discourse, its nature and its tenor. The novel foretold the increasing gag effect imposed from Above on reporting and discussing the various wars, the various and nefarious doings in and around the Oval Office, and on and on. Dunn could see it coming, and he pointed and hollered the best way he could, via a highbrow high-concept novel that would fly above heads and under radars.

I lapped it up like it was the dust on the mirror and began begging people I knew to read it, even buying several of them copies. (I had a good job in those days.) And to my increasing despair, not ONE of them so much as read it until poked; after reading it, not one of them was even lukewarm.

Ella and her family living like Anne Frank and her family, Ella making the discovery of a new pangram, Ella obeying the lipogrammatic tyranny of the Council in her letters to those who have left, escaped, the madness engulfing Nollop...this was sunshine and I was heliotropic in following it wherever it led. And not one soul to keep me company.

And now, eleven years on, someone reviews it, and I am all back in the fray. Please, do everyone involved a favor and get a copy so you can revel in the pleasures of an honorable woman telling a surreal, Dali-and-Kafka-have-a-baby kind of story and, in the end, revel with her in the joy of open and free speech.

Okay, I lied. Review of COOKING WITH FERNET BRANCA

COOKING WITH FERNET BRANCA
JAMES HAMILTON-PATERSON
Europa Editions
$18.00 trade paper, $10.99 ebook platforms, reissue available now

COOKING WITH FERNET BRANCA also appears in Literary Fiction & Story Collections

I was reminded of this review of a 2019 reissue by a stray comment, and I loved the book so much I decided to tart up the review and post it here. I so so wish someone would go get John Barrowman by the sleeve and gently but firmly make him understand that a movie of this book starring his beautiful self would be dynamite!

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany, where he wiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions-including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur of the book's title. Gerald's idyll is shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former Soviet republic. A series of hilarious misunderstandings brings this odd couple into ever closer and more disastrous proximity.

James Hamilton-Paterson's first novel, Gerontius, won the Whitbread Award. He is an acclaimed author of nonfiction books, including Seven-Tenths, Three Miles Down, and Playing with Water, He currently lives in Italy.

My Review: Cooking With Fernet Branca is part of oddball publisher Europa Editions's sinister plot to make Murrikins like me aware of the strange and sinister world of lit'rachoor published beyond our shores. Muriel Barbery owes her Murrikin presence to them, too. We all know how *that* turned out....

Well, before moving any farther along in this review process, let me send out the call: Does anyone know how to get hold of (wicked double entendre optional) actor John Barrowman? You know, Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood fame? He is literally missing the key to Murrikin stardom by not reading, optioning, and making this book into a Netflix movie. It suits every single national prejudice we have: Eastern Europeans as sinister lawbreaking peasants who eat strangely shaped, colored, and named things and call them foods (like Twinkies, Cheetos, and Mountain Dew are *normal*); Englishmen as dudis (you'll have to read the book for that translation) who do eccentric off-the-wall things with food that are repulsively named and gruesomely concocted (spotted dick? bubble-and-squeak?); and Italians as supercilious effete cognoscenti of world culture, who possess the strangest *need* for vulgarity.

The characters in this hilarious romp are the most dysfunctional group of misfits and ignoramuses and stereotypes ever deployed by an English-language author. They do predictable things, yet Hamilton-Paterson's deftly ironic, cruelly flensing eye and word processor cause readerly glee instead of readerly ennui to ensue. The whole bizarre crew...the lumpenproletariat ex-Soviet composer, the Italian superdirector long past his prime, the English snob who refers to Tuscany's glory as "Chiantishire" and "Tuscminster"...gyrates and shudders and clumps towards a completely foreseeable climactic explosion (heeheehee). And all the time, snarking and judging and learning to depend on each other. In the end, the end is nigh for all the established relationships and the dim, Fernet Branca-hangover-hazed outlines of the new configurations are, well, the English say it best...dire.

Read it. Really, do. And I dare you not to laugh at these idiots! Don't be put off by the sheer hideousness of the American edition's cover, in all its shades-of-purple garish grisliness. The charm of reading the book is that one needn't look at that...that...illustration...on the cover, but inflict it on those not yet In The Know enough to be reading it themselves.

And seriously...John Barrowman needs to know about this. Pass it on!