THE CHALK ARTIST by Allegra Goodman

At its heart, this book is a love story, and it is almost as addictive as the immersive video games described in it.  You can somewhat predict what happens when a very talented artistic young man named Collin---meets the daughter—Nina—of a mogul who owns a video game empire called Arkadia.  This book predates Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by years, and I liked this one much better, although I have to say that the gaming sections were not my favorites.  A side plot involves two sibling students at the high school where Nina teaches English lit.  One of those student’s schoolwork is suffering, since he sometimes games all night, aided and abetted by a female Arkadia employee—Daphne.  She has a dark allure that even Collin falls victim to, jeopardizing his relationship with Nina.  I felt that Arkadia was the villain here, somewhat personified by Daphne, replacing real life with a soul-grabbing fantasy world and preying on teenagers.  However, novels can be immersive as well, and one could argue that some of us are addicted to books, so who am I to judge gamers for their obsession or, for that matter, gaming companies for giving them what they want?  Then again, I don’t know any compulsive readers whose personal lives suffer because of books, do I?

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISLAND by Allegra Goodman

I did not realize until after I had finished this book that it was intended for a young audience.  No matter.  Also, it’s even more relevant now than it was when it came out seventeen years ago.  Climate change is an increasingly bigger problem, and kudos to Allegra Goodman for writing about it in language accessible to all.  Honor is a 10-year-old girl in a dystopian society, and her parents are not conforming to the will of Earth Mother, a corporate entity that makes the rules.  The school system is molding the students into Stepford children, who are punished for any infraction that defies or questions the government’s restrictions.  Everyone knows that non-compliant parents will be “disappeared,” and their children will become orphans who have to board at the school.  Honor is terrified that her parents will meet this fate if they don’t start behaving in the manner expected of them.  This reversal of who is rebelling—the parent rather than the child—begs the question of whether or not safety is in obedience or in refusing to be subject to the constraints of a repressive society.

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by Mariana Enriquez

When I think of horror stories, I think of Stephen King, but this book is not on a par with his stuff at all.  In fact, it is Dull with a capital D and totally lacks suspense.  Maybe some of its punch was lost in translation, but I doubt it.  The first part of the book is about Juan Peterson, whose parents sold him as a child to the Order—a privileged group of sorcerers.  Juan is a medium who can summon the Darkness—a supernatural presence which supposedly has the power to grant immortality.  The Darkness, however, gets hungry, and the members of the Order are happy to supply the Darkness with human sacrifices.  Yep.  Also, anyone who ventures too close to the Darkness is likely to lose a limb.  Summoning the Darkness takes its toll on Juan’s fragile physical health, and the Order wants his son Gaspar to take over his duties.  Juan does everything in his power to protect Gaspar from becoming the Order’s puppet, and sometimes his protection techniques are violently abusive, causing Gaspar to be quite conflicted about his relationship with his father.  The dynamic between Gaspar and Juan was, for me, what gave the novel some heart, but otherwise it’s just a long and unpleasant slog through cemeteries, mass graves, and houses that are bigger on the inside than on the outside.

BLACKOUTS by Justin Torres

This is my first exposure to erasure poetry, which I had never even heard of until now.  Chunks of an existing text—in this case, a real study of homosexuals from the 1930s called Sex Variants—are blacked out, so that the visible text forms something new.  Photos abound in this book, including those of the erasure poetry, which were definitely above my pay grade.  Suffice it to say that the non-traditional format of this book rendered it too cerebral for me.  Basically, an unnamed gay narrator is trading stories with an elderly gay man named Juan, who is dying.  These two men met in a mental institution, and now they are swapping stories, sometimes describing events as if describing a movie—a clever way to set the scene more vividly.  The book is a mixture of fact and fiction and may be semi-autobiographical, but one of my chief beefs is that I found it difficult to decipher who was talking—Juan or the narrator, whom Juan calls “nene.”  There are pages and pages of dialog with no identification as to who is saying what, except that occasionally the speaker addresses Juan or nene, so that we know that the other character is speaking.  There is some fascinating history here, particularly with regard to homosexuality as a mental health condition, but if this book was a test, I failed.

WELLNESS by Nathan Hill

I am giving this book four stars, but I may have more negatives than positives to say about it.  On the positive side, the opening chapter and the ending are marvelous.  However, the middle sections sink into the tedium of a marriage that has lost its luster with a tantrum-prone child who refuses to eat anything but mac and cheese.  The wife/mother, Elizabeth, is a behavioral scientist of sorts who administers a psychological test to Jack on their first date—unbeknownst to Jack.  She also tries a behavioral modification experiment on her son, but she realizes that the test is flawed when her son explains why he failed.  I found this kind of stuff fascinating.  Also, in an effort to spice up their marriage, Elizabeth convinces Jack to attend an event where spouse-swapping may occur.  This possibility perked up my interest, but the whole scene fizzles.  Even more annoying are multiple chapters describing various algorithms ostensibly used by facebook.  Ugh.  A major tragedy that took place during Jack’s childhood is not revealed until very late in the book, and I didn’t really understand the reason for this delay.  Plus, I don’t know if Jack ever tells Elizabeth about it.  Both Jack and Elizabeth are estranged from their parents who are seriously flawed—envious of their own children.  Jack reunites briefly with his father over social media, trying unsuccessfully to deter his father from buying into conspiracy theories.  Given their lack of good relationship role models, it’s a wonder Jack and Elizabeth’s marriage is not a bigger mess than it is.

HOLLY by Stephen King

The title character is a private investigator who has been hired by the mother of a missing young woman named Bonnie.  We readers know that Bonnie was abducted by two conniving and depraved elderly professors—Emily and Rodney Harris.  In other words, this is a thriller but not a mystery, or at least not a whodunnit.  We also know that Bonnie is not the first abductee whom the Harrises have locked in a cage and forced to eat putrid raw liver.  What?  In fact, we get to know all of the victims, so that the grisly fate that befalls them is all the more heartbreaking.  Holly is diligent in her quest to find out not only what happened to Bonnie but to determine if a serial killer is at work, as she becomes aware of one disappearance after another.   What these victims have in common, besides being acquainted with the Harrises, is that their disappearance is not deemed strange enough to warrant investigation, at least until Bonnie comes along.  Even in Bonnie’s case, the police are not entirely convinced that a crime has taken place.  If gruesome stories are not your thing, then you are probably not going to pick up a Stephen King book anyway, but be warned that he pulls no punches here.  Holly as our intrepid sleuth has no idea what motive is behind these abductions, but we readers learn soon enough and can only hope that Holly will prevent any further abductions.

FAIRY TALE by Stephen King

“The past is history.  The future is a mystery.”  I had never heard this saying before reading this book, but I plan to quote it often.  Seventeen-year-old Charlie Reade loses his mother to an accident and then is basically losing his father to alcoholism.  He attributes his father’s eventual recovery to a bargain Charlie made in a prayer and then goes out of his way to perform good deeds, including befriending and taking care of his grumpy, reclusive neighbor, Mr. Bowditch.  The reason for the title does not become apparent until about two hundred pages in.  Then Charlie embarks on a magical but dangerous adventure in an effort to rejuvenate Bowditch’s dog.  OK, I think we need a more pressing motive here, but then Charlie finds a kingdom in need of a superhero.  Whether or not Charlie fits the bill remains to be seen, but the author goes wild with the fairy tale references, plus some homage to the movies Star Wars and Gladiator.  I actually found the first part of the book more engaging and something of a feel-good story while Charlie was repaying the gratitude he felt for his father’s sobriety.  The fantasy that follows is a swashbuckling kind of thrill ride but also very predictable.

COLORED TELEVISION by Danzy Senna

Jane, a novelist, and her husband, Lenny, a visual artist, are house-sitting for Jane’s friend Brett in his opulent L.A. home while Brett is in Australia.  Jane is writing a sprawling novel about mulattos, like herself, and Lenny is working on paintings for a show in Japan.  Their credit card debt is mounting, but they are treating Brett’s possessions as their own, even drinking all of his very expensive vintage wines.  When Jane finishes her novel and her editor tells her that it will tank Jane’s career if published, Jane decides to take a page out of Brett’s book, so to speak, and get work in television.  Lying to her husband and to Brett about the fate of her novel, among other things, Jane soon finds that she has spun a tangled web of lies that is probably going to unravel at some point and cause her life to spiral out of control.  The first one hundred pages or so of this book fell completely flat for me, and then it became a book about a woman doing incredibly stupid and dishonest things.  I just totally ran out of sympathy for Jane, who aspires to Brett’s lifestyle but is going about it all wrong.  Eventually we discover that she is not even the most deceitful character in the book, nor does she have the gumption to confront that person, perhaps because she is just as guilty herself.  There is some karma in the stealing-of-intellectual-property department, but, other than that, everyone here gets off the hook too easily.