Book Review: Dr. Brinkley's Tower by Robert Hough

Robert Hough's vivid, lusty, and wildly imaginative new novel takes us to 1931 Mexico and Corazon de la Fuente, a war-ravaged border twon where the only enterprise is a brothel in which every girl is named Maria. Enter Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, inventor of a miraculous "goat gland operation" said to cure male impotence. When Brinkley decides to build a gargantuan new radio tower to broadcast his services, he chooses none other than Corazon de la Fuente for its site.
The town's fortunes change over night, though not all to the good -- word of the new prosperity spreads, and Corazon is overrun with desperadoes and mercenaries itching to reopen old wounds, Worst of all, Dr. Brinkley has attracted the affections of the town's most beautiful citizen, Violeta Cruz. But with the help of a motley but impassioned band of allies, including an octogenarian Casanova, a brooding Spanish nobelman, and th much-despised village witch, Violeta's spurned finace, Franciso, decides to fight back.

What attracted me to this book...

-I want to learn how to write humour.
Dr. Brinkley's Tower was a Governor General's literary awards finalist

-I enjoy reading books written by authors whose authors' voices are markedly different than my own.

-As a resident of a small community, I was intrigued by the blurb.

Favourite Quotes...

'the sky above were losing patience with the sun and on the verge of telling it to go warm some other planet.' (p. 216)

Robert Hough taught me how to use 'and' effectively
'Volita stepped out before a huge pink stucco mansion with turrets and fountains and rose gardens and tennis courts and marble Roman columns and a swimming pool the size of a Corazon de la Fuente city block' (p. 24 - 25)

Reading experience...

As a fan of old-time music, I chuckled at the conclusion of Chapter 18.

I, as a reader, felt removed from the story by the storyteller voice and the use of some Mexican words. As someone who has little knowledge of the Mexican language, I would have benefited greatly from the inclusion of a Mexican to English language glossary.

I enjoyed how the reader is led mouthful by mouthful to the conclusion of page 299. Excellent use of suspense. 

I appreciated the inclusion of thought-provoking questions at the end of the book.



Dr. Brinkley's Tower reminded me of Animal Farm.

Themes...
At what price progress...
How easily the weak can be victimized by the powerful...
You don't know what you've got until it's gone...



Author Robert Hough's interview

Book Review Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

Paris, 1940. A brilliant jazz musician, Hiero, is arrested by the Nazis and never heard from again. He is twenty years old. He is a German citizen. And he is black.

Fifty years later, his friend and fellow musician, Sid, must relive that unforgettable time, revealing the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that sealed Hiero's fate. From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris--where the legendary Louis Armstrong makes an appearance--Sid, with his distinctive and rhythmic German-American slang, leads the reader through a fascinating world alive with passion, music and the spirit of the Resistance.

My thoughts...

-Half-Blood Blues is like smooth, mournful jazz. So rich, so full, so mellow with a subtle longing for hope.

-Esi Edugyan captured the language, the culture, the promise of an era.

-it's a study on how to develop a character's voice

-it isn't an easy book to read. Some of the imaginary. The slang. But it is worth it.

-The mystery leads the reader on:  what did Sid do? Why can't he forgive himself?

-I admire the power of the words bookmarked between 'It wasn't a dream' on page 303 to 304.
She takes us right there and doesn't let us go until we've seen everything.

Favourite quotes...

'My mind swum back through its fog.' (p. 121)

'Her voice thrummed like a muscle. It was low and rich, with the quiver of something mustering its strength.' (p. 122)

'She swung the thick, strong rope of her voice round the words, coming down hard on them, cinching them together. Then she flung the notes bold up in the air, high and horn-like. But her voice was at its core a sailor's voice, rough and mannish. Her low notes bitter croaks, filled with muddy regret.' (p. 122)

This story has residence beyond the book.
The kid's last words to Sid:  'I see you like it was fifty years ago.' 
(p. 309)

Questions that remain...

If I was Sid, what decision would I have made?

If I was "the kid", would have I forgiven?


***
I'm thrilled to write that I've finished writing No, Smoke The Other End. It is now with my first reader. 
And I've been preparing The Sweater Curse:  a novel for submission to publishing houses.

Yes, everything was going along swimmingly until...a flue bug found a cozy, new home. It's wiped me out. So I can only spend short periods on the keyboard. Thankfully I am able to do a lot of reading. : )
***
Next post:  Please welcome Johnny Ray

Book Review: Inside by Alix Ohlin

I've said it before. I'll say it again. I like cleverly crafted books. And so I loved Inside.

From the dust jacket:  When Grace, an exceedingly competent and devoted therapist in Montreal, stumbles across a man who has just failed to hang himself, her instinct to help kicks in immediately. Before long, however, she realizes that her feelings for this charismatic, extremely guarded stranger are far from straightforward. In the meantime, her troubled teenage patient, Annie, runs away from home and soon will reinvent herself in New York as an aspiring and ruthless actress, as unencumbered as humanly possible by any personal attachments. And Mitch, Grace's ex-husband, who is a therapist as well, leaves the woman he's desperately in love with to attend to a struggling native community in the bleak Arctic. We follow these four compelling, complex characters from Montreal and New York to Hollywood and Rwanda, each of them with a consciousness that is utterly distinct and urgently convincing. With razor-sharp emotional intelligence, Inside poignantly explores the many dangers as well as the imperative of making ourselves available to -- and responsible for -- those dearest to us.

By its very nature, this book could be disjointed. We follow the stories of three distinctly different, well-developed characters. (see above) And, on top of everything, as the novel unfolds, we jump forward and backward through time. But, in the hands of master storyteller Alix Ohlin, this story flows seamlessly. She bends and twists the separate threads of each character's story. Sometimes the threads marry and sometimes they part. However, throughout it all, the reader remains engaged. No wonder Inside was short-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2012. 


Three sentences that caught me... 'People like Hilary and Alan were only temporary runaways. They would always go home; they belonged to the place they came from. Other people were destined to keep leaving, over and over again.' (p. 229)

I bought Inside from Chapters Indigo

Book Review: Our Lady of the Lost and Found by Diane Schoemperlen

I enjoy reading award winning literature. This book won the Governor-general's award for fiction in 1998. 

I read this book, for the first time, approximately ten years. After reading it, I placed it on my bookshelf. There it waited until, one day, it called to me. 

"Re-read me," it said.

And, so, I did.

From the dust jacket:  'On an apparently typical Monday morning in April, a middle-aged writer goes into her living room to water the plants and finds a woman standing in front of the fig tree. The woman is wearing a navy blue trench coat and white Nikes. She has a white shawl draped over her hair and she is holding a large leather purse and a small black suitcase on wheels. She is the Virgin Mary. Invited to stay for lunch, Mary explains that, after 2,000 years of petition, adoration, and travelling, she is tired and needs some R&R. She ends up staying for one extraordinary and illuminating week.

So begins Diane Schoemperlen's profound and original novel.'

Our Lady Of The Lost and Found is about Jesus' mother Mary but much more than that. It's about the recounting of history—the fuzzy line between fact and fiction.

'[T]here is more to history than facts, more to truth than reality... [T]his is a piece of knowledge that will change your life if you let it.' (p. 118)

And more.

'I finally understand that my uncertainty and my doubt were gifts that made me the perfect candidate for faith... When faced with all these mysteries and questions, I wanted to be able to admit that I did not know how to make sense of it all that, in the end, my not knowing did not matter.' (p. 253)

It's about the writing process.

'Although I had written these lines just twenty-four hours earlier, they now made no sense to me at all. I remember being excited by them. But now I could not remember where I had imagined they might be leading, what I had thought they might eventually amount to.' (p. 276)

Possibly this book is like a wading pool. Kneel down, peer in--what you see depends on where you direct your eyes.
***
Work in progress
I'm still working on revisions for The Sweater Curse:  a novel. But I've also made some headway on some of my other projects...

A Woman Like Her (sequel to A Long Way From Her)
Goal:  50 k words
Current word count:  1,149 words

No, Smoke the Other End (mystery/comedy)
Goal:  12 - 20 k words
Current word count:  1,797 words

Baby steps. : )

***
Next post:  Please welcome author Joan Boswell

Book Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly close we follow nine-year-old Oskar Schell as he seeks to live on after his dad's sudden death.

Thoughts...

theme:  the power of the brain to develop strategies to cope with the emotional overpowering events.

character development:  the first thing we experience about Oskar is his mind. Throughout the entire book, we continue to be impressed by his intellect.

Written in such a way that you don't read the book--you live it. It becomes part of you.

Haunting quotes: 
'Even though I knew that there were 161, 999, 999 locks in New York it didn't open, I still felt like it opened everything.' (p. 200)
'She said, "I know about this building because I love this building."...
"What is it about this building?" Mr. Black asked.
She said. "If I had an answer, it wouldn't really be love, would it?" '

Impression:  I cried on page 291. Did you? Will you?

Final thoughts:  Some readers have been upset with the writing style--lack of traditional paragraph structure, etc. However, I think that this treatment is appropriate. It shouldn't be easy to read this book because it wasn't easy for the narrator to tell his tale.