New fiction

And our summer marches on!

I've been curious about Joe Hill's books for a few months now, so I checked out The Heart-Shaped Box and Horns and clipped through them in a single weekend; they're that quick and easy to read. They aren't small books, though -- they're full-fledged novels with really terrific characters and absorbing plots.

The Heart-Shaped Box was essentially Hill's debut novel, and it made major waves when it came out last year. This is because it's supremely creepy and doesn't spare any ultraviolence. An aging rock star named Judas Coyne -- a combination of Elvis, Mick Jagger, Ozzy Osbourne, and anyone from ZZ Top -- is a gothy sort who lives with a young lady half his age in a farmhouse somewhere in New York. He collects creepy things, like a human skull belonging to someone who was trepanned (a process where a hole is drilled in the skull of a live person to cure ills -- not as widely practiced these days), coffins, and a dead man's suit.

The dead man's suit, in particular, is the basic premise of the novel. The rock star's assistant gets an e-mail telling him about the suit, which is up for auction online, and of course, Coyne can't resist, especially when he finds out that there's a ghost attached.

Unfortunately, it turns out to be true. And it's done in a disturbing way that still makes me nervous. The night after he gets the suit (wrapped in a heart-shaped box, hence the title), he wakes up in the middle of the night, thinking he heard something. He walks down the hall, past an old man sitting in a rocking chair, goes downstairs and looks around a little bit, but nothing's out of order. He goes back up the stairs, walks past the old man sitting in the rocking chair, and goes into his room. Then something strikes him as odd, and he looks back into the hall, which has become very cold, but there's nothing -- and nobody -- there. And so it begins ...

Horns is a little more straightforward. It's less creepy and more of a surrealist revenge fantasy. This guy goes on a major bender, completely blacks out a full night, and wakes up the next morning in his own bed, much the worse for wear. He goes into the bathroom, glances at himself in the mirror, and discovers that he's grown a pair of small horns for no apparent reason. He discovers a few new talents he's picked up with the horns: first, nobody notices that he has horns -- and they always forget he was ever there after the conversation ends. Second, when he talks to people, the horns make them confess all of their most secret sins, and he can make them do things. Third, when he touches someone, he picks up their entire past, including some of the darkest things they've ever done. And snakes really, really like him.

Of course, I still haven't mentioned the most important part, other than the horns: His girlfriend was violently murdered a year previously, and he's the main suspect. All the evidence that might have cleared his name was destroyed in a mysterious fire, and his girlfriend was beloved by their hometown, so he's nearly universally hated. I was expecting this to be almost a mystery, the main character spending most of the novel trying to find the killer's name and then facing off with him in an apocalyptic showdown. However, he discovers the real murderer's name within the first couple of chapters, and the rest of the novel is concerned chiefly with hunting down and cornering the killer and exacting vengeance. All throughout the book, the horns keep growing and his skin begins to change ...

Well, read the book. It's a fantastic read, possibly (slightly) better than The Heart-Shaped Box.

Anyway,I've spent most of this week locked up in my office working on stuff, which I will explain more about later in the summer, I promise. I've also been planning for the American Library Association's big, giant annual conference, which is here in DC in a couple of weeks. I'm excited; I've been a bona-fide librarian for two years now and I'm finally going to the conference. I'll skip that week's post (Friday, June 25) and report to you all the following week! In the meantime, here's a list of fun new fiction that's come in over the last couple months to hold you over until I can focus on something more substantive!

The Infinities
A most decidedly unusual book, this novel tells the story of a dying mathematician (hence, the title -- partly) and his family, who are holding vigil over him on a hot summer afternoon. However, his family is not alone in participating in the end of his life; all around them are little gods, in the classical Greek sense (the other part of the title's meaning), who move around and through the family seen and unseen and wickedly stir up a seething cauldron of trouble.

Portrait of the Writer as a Domesticated Animal
The title takes things a bit literally; the author/narrator spends some time with the Hamburger King, one of the most influential businessmen on the planet, while he machinates his way through his empire, subordinates, friends, and relatives. Funny, eccentric, and highly satirical, this novel, translated from French, sort of makes you think about all the ways in which we all endure servitude and even, in some cases, enjoy it.

Beatrice and Virgil
Yann Martel, author of the bestselling Life of Pi, brings us another animal-themed novel; Beatrice, a donkey, and Virgil, a howler monkey, are the centers of a play-within-a-novel written by a taxidermist. The main character is an author who seems rather similar to Martel, sucked into the taxidermist's bizarre inner life as he assists in writing the play.

Let the Great World Spin
The 1974 feat of Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker who walked between the towers of the World Trade Center, 110 stories up, becomes the focal point of several different Manhattan stories that intersect at the end of the novel. It's one of those books, but the author pulls it off with such grace you're guaranteed to be thinking about it for weeks afterward.

The November Criminals
This novel pulls off the triple distinction of being a funny stoner novel set in DC. A small-time drug dealer in high school decides to investigate his classmate's murder, but he has a weakness for his own product, which throws a few wrenches in his clever, clever plan. The book can be a little hard to follow, but that's just because the main character is stoned all the time, so is easily distracted by interesting tangents.

Dog Boy
One of those fascinating feral-child stories, a young Russian boy is abandoned by his mother, and he falls in with a pack of stray dogs, which enables him to survive for another two years. The author follows his progress from the hairless outsider of the pack to a trusted alpha dog until his capture by a scientist who hopes to make his name based on the young boy's life. Strange, but it's a wonderful read and avoids the drippy sentimentality one sometimes gets from boy-and-his-dog stories.

The Last Surgeon
A hospital thriller, this novel takes everyone in the operating room during a nastily-botched surgery and kills them off one by one. The survivors -- a nurse, a physician, and the last remaining surgeon -- have to team up and hunt down a hired killer who has a singular talent for making a murder resemble a suicide. Taut and suspenseful, this makes for great light reading.

The Sheen on the Silk
A fascinating historical novel that takes place in the late-13th-Century Byzantine Empire, this book follows Anna, who must investigate the circumstances under which her twin brother was exiled. He's innocent, but is the center of a mysterious conspiracy; Anna dresses up as a eunuch and spends much of the book maneuvering herself closer and closer to the central figures of the story.

Wench
Another historical novel, this one is set in antebellum America, at a resort in Ohio known for its clientele of rich white slave-owners with their slave-mistresses. The novel follows three women who are regulars at the resort and the upheaval in their lives following the arrival of a fourth, who does not hold back from wondering about freedom. That the resort is in Ohio, a free state, complicates matters, as does the fact that one of the slaves is in love with her master and thinks the feeling is mutual. It's a complicated, psychological book.

The Book of Spies
Ivan the Terrible is a legendary figure in Russian -- and indeed global -- history. What few people know is that he was an avid collector of books, one of many characteristics I share with him. Unfortunately, his collection was lost, and since he owned many rare, one-of-a-kind books, those stories were lost as well. Now they've begun to emerge, and are at the center of a sort of worldwide book club composed of a cabal of incredibly wealthy men. Then the CIA finds a link to a bank account associated with terrorism and gets involved ...

That takes care of this week. We got a fantastically good crop of books this year, and I'm very pleased with the results. Next week, we'll take a look at the rest of the collection and some of the more unusual books we have here.

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Question of the Week
I saw a bunch of librarians cleaning out the VHS shelves. What's going on? Are you getting rid of all the movies?
We're clearing out the VHS shelves, but we're not getting rid of all the movies, just many of the videotapes. Part of it is because those things are old, rarely checked out, and obsolete. Most of them have degraded significantly since they arrived -- normal for VHS tapes -- and because the format is so outdated, most people end up watching them here in the Library, where there are still VCRs. Another part is just that our collection of Deaf DVDs is expanding, and they need room! That's the life of a library -- over time, some things elbow their way in and other things get pushed out. We're not getting rid of stuff, we're making room for new things. It's been an exciting summer so far!