NOT FOREVER BUT FOR NOW by Chuck Palahniuk

I think the author had a lot more fun writing this book than I had reading it.  It’s either darkly comic or comically dark; in any case, it is cheekily macabre—sort of like the Addams Family on steroids.  It took me a few chapters to thoroughly digest what’s going on here, but two brothers, Otto and Cecil, are more than just mischievous boys.  In fact, they are grown men still being bathed and dressed by their nanny.  Otto in particular has a soft spot for animals but thinks nothing of bumping off said nannies, tutors, governesses, and all of the household employees in general.  Some of Otto’s murderous behavior stems from the fact that the family is in the business of contract killing, but both boys use nature films to inspire them to be predators rather than prey.  To make this story even more disgusting, Otto and Cecil are sex partners with each other and everyone/everything else—blowup dolls, taxidermy, etc.  Is this a satire, and, if so, what is the author satirizing exactly?  The writing style is semi-entertaining, but the plot and characters are just not.  Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon & Schuster for the free copy for review.

THE WHISTLING SEASON by Ivan Doig

Ivan Doig died eight years ago and left a body of work about the West--more in the vein of Mark Twain than, say, Cormac McCarthy.  This has got to be the most wholesome, G-rated book I have read in a long time and is a nice departure from the bleak stuff I’ve been reading lately.  It’s basically a coming-of-age story that takes place in the early 1900s in rural Montana.  The Milliron family consists of a widower father and his three young sons—Paul, Damon, and Toby. No one in the family has culinary skills, but, nonetheless, the father, Oliver, is intrigued by a newspaper ad whose headline reads, “Can’t Cook But Doesn’t Bite.”  He decides to hire the woman, Rose, who arrives some weeks later by train, along with her uninvited brother, Morrie.  There’s obviously something fishy about this pair, but Rose turns out to be a very capable housekeeper, although she wasn’t joking about the “can’t cook” statement.  The erudite Morrie makes himself useful by chopping wood and the like until he is offered the job of teacher at the one-room school attended by the Milliron boys.  The schoolhouse is, in fact, the setting for most of the adventures in this novel, and Morrie has a knack for making sure the students learn more than just the 3 R’s.  Paul, the oldest son in the Milliron family, is the first person narrator, who has to grapple with some adult-sized dilemmas, and his after-school tutelage in Latin contrasts sharply with his feisty encounters with the school bully, whom he comes to pity rather than fear.  Rose obviously doesn’t bite and this novel lacks bite as well, but it definitely does not cruise along uneventfully, either.  The once-every-75-year appearance of Halley’s comet is an occurrence that captures the attention of the earthbound inhabitants of this novel, which doesn’t reach celestial heights but certainly provides a welcome breath of fresh Montana air.

FOOLSCAP by Michael Malone

Theo Ryan is a drama professor at a well-respected university in North Carolina.  He has written several plays but knows that only “Foolscap” has any merit.  His friend and renowned playwright Ford Rexford reads the play and helps Theo iron out a few kinks.  From here, things take off in some weird directions.  I don’t mind reading a madcap adventure now and then, but this book gets bogged down in university politics and petty bickering that I just found to be annoying and not pertinent to the plot.  Theo has all the necessary qualities for being a good leading man, and Ford is the stereotypical charismatic literary genius with a drinking problem and a short attention span when it comes to women.  The female characters are merely bit players, but my beef is more with the plot than the characters.  It’s almost like a comic version of a Dan Brown novel with Sir Walter Raleigh as the historical figure around whom much of the plot revolves.  King James I, who ordered the beheading of Sir Walter, is the only dastardly villain here, but even Theo is not immune to the occasional ethical lapse.  Ford is certainly not a good role model, but he dominates the narrative with his unpredictable antics, and he’s not part of the whining and gossipy university faculty.  He is sort of a modern-day incarnation of Sir Walter Raleigh, although Sir Walter’s vice seems to have been tobacco, not booze.

HELL OF A BOOK by Jason Mott

The “Hell” part of this book’s title is certainly appropriate, and the subject matter is very timely.  Jason Mott makes crystal clear the life-and-death hazards of being a Black man, or even a Black boy for that matter, in this country.  Even white people like myself are now aware that parents of Black boys must have “the Talk” with their sons about possible confrontations with the police.  These days armed citizens are just as much as threat, as they have been known to gun down Black men out for a run or Black teenagers who ring the wrong doorbell.  This novel was invaluable to me from an educational standpoint in reinforcing the dangers that Black citizens have to navigate, but I was not wild about the two (or three?) confusing storylines here.  “Soot” is the nickname that a bully gives a young boy whose skin color is particularly dark.  Soot’s third-person narrative alternates with the first-person narrative of an unnamed author whose first novel is wildly successful.  Because he is Black, the author is expected to be somewhat of a civil rights advocate—a role which he resists—during his whirlwind book tour.  My problem with this book is that Soot and the author could be the same person, or Soot could be the same child as The Kid, whom the author encounters from time to time but no one else can see.  The author knows that he has difficulty distinguishing the real from the imagined, but then Soot develops a similar problem.  And as for The Kid being invisible to other people, Soot believes that it is possible to make himself invisible.  In other words, the boundaries between these three characters’ stories are fuzzy, and I was somewhat put off by these blurred lines.  In any case, if you can look past this indecipherable overlap within the novel, there’s a vital message there.

THE RETURNED by Jason Mott

I honestly have never pondered what it would be like if the dead returned to life, completely intact.  In this novel, that is what happens, and the “Returned” person may show up on the opposite side of the world from where they died.  Harold and Lucille’s son Jacob died fifty years prior, when he was eight years old.  Now he’s back at just that age, but his parents are now elderly.  Harold is wary, but Lucille is all in, ecstatic that her son is back.  Then more and more people return from the dead, and they will soon perhaps outnumber the living.  A federal bureau starts setting up internment camps, including one in Arcadia, NC, where Harold and Lucille live.  When Jacob is sent to the camp, Harold accompanies him.  Meanwhile, one of their neighbors, whose wife is dead but has not returned, becomes enraged at how the internment camp is taking over the town and starts protesting the existence of the Returned, although he does not seem to have a concrete plan for getting rid of them.  I guess I’m just too pragmatic, but this plot was too absurd for me.  I don’t even know what genre applies to this book.  Fantasy?  It is not a horror story, as the Returned are not zombies with an evil agenda.  I like the author’s writing style and the fact that Lucille is a person who likes fancy words.  Apparently, the book’s message is about love and having a second chance to communicate with a departed loved one.  However, I felt that there is possibly a metaphor here about immigration and how difficult a problem it is for this country to solve, with more incoming than outgoing.

THE FUTURE by Naomi Alderman

Lai Zhen, an expertise on survival, finds herself under attack at a shopping mall.  She squeezes through ductwork as her assailant draws closer.  Then an unknown app called AUGR becomes active on her phone and gives her some timely advice on how to escape.  The source of the app seems to be Martha Einkorn, the assistant to the head of the world’s largest social network, with whom Zhen had a brief love affair.  Martha’s boss and two other technology moguls are preparing for the apocalypse.  They have stocked bunkers in out-of-the-way places, in case of a worldwide plague or nuclear disaster and made plans for quick getaway.  Martha is the only character with real-life survival skills, which she developed as the child of a fundamentalist cult leader.  Her role, as well as the major theme of the novel, are late revelations.  Clues lie in the parable of the Rabbit and the Fox, which formed the basis for one of Martha’s father’s sermons.  Even more telling is the recounting of the Biblical tale of Lot, in which Abraham asks God how many good people would there need to be in Sodom in order for God to save it. The plot of this novel is twisty and intriguing, but the characters are a bit flat.  Zhen is the heroine who becomes either a pawn in the machinations of the three head honchos or an accidental wrench thrown into their plans, and we’re not sure which, until the end.  This is probably one of many apocalyptic novels that the Covid-19 pandemic has spawned.  However, this novel is largely about preparedness, and we could have used more of that before 2020.  Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon & Schuster for the free copy for review.