Blogcritics Author: Superfast Reader

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Book Review: The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares

Superfast Reader — Tue, 5 Jun 2007 00:26:35 EDT

Ann Brashares is the author of the beloved young adult novel The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and its sequels, so it’s not a surprise that in her first novel for grown-ups her adult characters seem reluctant to leave adolescence behind. In The Last Summer (of You and Me), recent college graduate Alice returns for yet another idyllic summer on Fire Island, only to discover that life, in its inevitable way, is moving out - with or without her.Alice, her older sister Riley, and next-door neighbor Paul have grown up together, barefoot on the splintery boardwalks of the kind of resort town where nobody locks the door or carries a wallet. As a teen, Riley was the youngest of the lifeguards; now, at 24, she’s the oldest, still content to stare out over the ocean in the hopes of catching sight of a dolphin. Alice worries that both of them are aiming too low in the journey towards adulthood, hence Alice’s decision to go to law school, where she hopes she’ll learn to be a grown up. Paul’s reaction to Alice’s plans is disappointment. He’s always wanted more for Alice, with whom he’s been in love as long as he can remember. To his surprise and delight, Alice reciprocates his affections, and, for a moment as fleeting as the midnight tide pools that so delight Alice, the past and the future converge.When tragedy strikes, Alice finds herself filled with fear that she and Paul are betraying Riley by turning a threesome into a couple plus third wheel. Technically, Paul is Riley’s best friend, and they’ve always “shared” Alice as a little sister. For Alice to claim a greater stake in Paul than Riley is more than she feels entitled to allow herself.While these are appealing characters grappling with real life issues, the plot of The Last Summer (of You and Me) founders upon a contrived plot point that diminishes the emotional depth of the story by emphasizing Alice’s essential passivity. As Alice withdraws from her life, the story itself seems to fade to gray, and the second half of the book founders. Fans of Brashares (and they are legion, indeed) will forgive the book its flaws, and enjoy it for its considerable charms. In particular, Brashares is adept at conveying the nuances of being 22, grown up without knowing what that really means. She’s a beautiful writer, and her evocations of summer life on the ocean make it easy to understand why Alice, Paul, and Riley are finding it so hard to move on.

The Superfast Reader has read all of the books.

Book Review: Longleaf by Roger Reid

Superfast Reader — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:18:05 EDT

Documentary producer Roger Reid makes his debut as a novelist with Longleaf, a young adult adventure thriller with a strong message about environmental preservation.Jason Caldwell and his parents have planned a camping trip in Alabama’s Conecuh National Forest so that his mother can study frogs. On the plane coming in, however, Jason spots some mysterious activity out the window. Convinced he’s witnessed a crime in the offing, he reports his suspicions to the police upon landing, and the family trip is delayed by the investigation. Jason teams up with Leah, a savvy forest-lover who knows all the ins and outs of local politics, and soon the two are wandering among the longleaf pines in search of the truth.Reid writes beautifully about nature, and this book will certainly lead many of its readers to learn more about ecosystems and the environment. The first time Jason sees the longleaf pines up close he says, That emerald green carpet I had seen from the sky was still in the sky. I mean, those trees had no limbs and no pine needles near the bottom or even the middle of the tree. All of the limbs, all of the needles, all of the green didn't even start until about three fourths of the way up. And every single tree was tall and straight... Each tree seemed to have its own personal space a respectful distance from every other tree. Maybe it was this space between them that made each one different from the rest.Reid’s crafted a well-plotted thriller that will keep his audience engaged while they are being educated, starting by hooking the readers at the beginning with Jason speculating that he's about to die. The book is a wild ride that might have the added benefit of opening kids' eyes to the natural beauty the world holds for them.

The Superfast Reader has read all of the books.

Book Review: Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand

Superfast Reader — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:07:52 EDT

How Cass Neary, the protagonist of Elizabeth Hand’s latest novel Generation Loss, has stayed alive this long is anyone’s guess. Super-young, super-talented and super-stoned at the birth of punk below 14th Street in the 1970s, Cass started taking photographs of her friends and ended up publishing a briefly sensational book called Dead Girls. Now it’s 30 years later and Cass has never managed to make more of her life than a shambles. Now she’s been summoned to a remote island off the coast of Maine to interview an aging recluse named Aphrodite Kamestos, a photographer whose enigmatic work inspired Cass when she was young and passionate. Trouble is, Aphrodite didn’t have any idea Cass was coming - and when a young girl who spoke briefly to Cass disappears, she finds herself unable to leave an island that’s becoming very unfriendly. Fueled by Jack Daniels and whatever prescription drugs she can pocket, Cass tries to find the girl and answer a very real question: why am I here?Part crime thriller, part existential exploration, and all punk rock attitude, Generation Loss manages to make an extremely porcupiny main character compelling and even sympathetic. Hand’s real accomplishment, however, is in her descriptions of the very different types of photographic work that play a part in the story. From Cass’s Cindy Sherman-esque self-portraits to Aphrodite’s audacious experiments with color, the images come to life and dance before the eyes. Generation Loss, for all its words, is practically a picture book.Generation Loss occupies the same hipster territory as Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet, but Hand has aspirations of genre as well, bringing in forensics and unsolved mysteries that make this book feel more than just literary. Hand’s authentic evocations of the birth and quick death of punk make for a hardcore rock ‘n’ roll ending, and the rest of the book maintains the same energy that the author experienced firsthand.

The Superfast Reader has read all of the books.

Book Review: Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert

Superfast Reader — Mon, 7 May 2007 02:06:33 EDT

It’s tough to make intellectuals sexy, but Natasha Mostert, a London-based South African novelist, pulls it off in Season of the Witch, her newest novel and a tour de force of Gothic eroticism that seduces from start to finish without reprieve. Gabriel Blackstone is a hacker specializing in information piracy. A wireless network is as good as an open window - and it certainly doesn’t hurt that he’s just a little bit psychic. Recruited while at university for a government organization called Eyestorm, Gabriel was groomed as a “remote viewer,” able to tap into the consciousness of another person and literally see inside their brains. Gabriel’s power eclipsed that of all the other recruits, but he quit in ignominy after an investigation resulted in a murder.Now, Gabriel spends his days on corporate jobs and his nights yearning for something more. When an old girlfriend asks him to use his remote viewing abilities to find her husband’s son, his investigation leads him to Monk House, the home of sisters Minnaloushe, a romantic intellectual, and Morrighan, a daring adventurer. His remote viewing showed that one of the sisters murdered the young man, but the details are hazy. Gabriel hacks into the sisters’ computer and discovers a diary in which the author, going only by “M,” describes her growing attraction to Gabriel and reveals a lust for knowledge and experience that captivates Gabriel. He’s falling in love - but is the writer of the diary the murderer? And which sister is which?As Gabriel falls deeper into the sisters’ thralldom, he uncovers a world of alchemy, sensuality, and magic. Mostert builds her story on an inspired foundation, one steeped in medieval mysticism, and manages to avoid the pitfalls of high-mindedness and pretension by crafting a suspenseful plot rooted in compelling characters. Season of the Witch, now available in the U.S. and the U.K., is a beautifully written, thoroughly entrancing novel with fire burning through every page.

The Superfast Reader has read all of the books.

Book Review: On Becoming Fearless... in Love, Work, and Life by Arianna Huffington

Superfast Reader — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 04:35:33 EDT

Now in paperback, Arianna Huffington’s On Becoming Fearless ...in Love, Work, and Life identifies the top areas in which women need to conquer their fears: the body, love, parenting, work, money, aging and illness, God and death, leadership and speaking out, and changing the world - and offers solutions for each and every one. That’s no small task for a book that weighs in at a slight 228 pages, but Huffington and her guest contributors (including former head of Paramount Sherry Lansing, Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton, and Huffington’s own sister) aren’t interested in process or even in proscription. Rather, they’re here to convince you that you can pull it off — whatever it is — if you just believe in yourself. It’s the big sister school of self-help.Not that this is a bad thing, per se. In fact, while reading On Becoming Fearless I was reminded of the years I spent in an all-girls school, where each morning we sat together as a school, all 250 of us from 5th-12th grade on the floor of the cafeteria for morning prayers. We didn’t pray, we listened: to our teachers, to older girls, and to alumnae. Once a week we had chapel, which was a longer talk, and which often involved guest speakers, such as Congresswomen, successful professionals, and artists. Each woman who stepped up to the podium had a different story, yet the underlying message was the same: you can. You will. You have already. Much of On Becoming Fearless read like those speeches I soaked up during the seven years I sat on that floor in my striped skirt and brown shoes, inspirational, motivational, and anecdotal. Huffington draws on a wellspring of life experience and resources from literature, philosophy, and the lives of other women, and the best passages in the book offer good advice on keeping priorities straight and not letting the inner critic get a foothold. On Becoming Fearless is least successful when Huffington talks about herself, which tends to sound self-congratulatory instead of inspiring. Overall, this isn’t the deepest book in the world, but as self-help books go it’s got a strong message that could actually inspire change in the lives of readers.

The Superfast Reader has read all of the books.

Book Review: Winterwood by Patrick McCabe

Superfast Reader — Sun, 8 Apr 2007 09:27:11 EDT

When he was young, Redmond Hatch came down from Slievenageeha up in the mountains, leaving his country ways behind him. Now, he's returned, entranced by the folk tales told him by old Ned Strange, about days gone by and ways left behind. Each time Redmond returns home to his doting wife Catherine and beloved daughter Immy, he brings a little of Ned back with him -- until he finds himself with no choice but to bring them with him to the winterwood in Slievenageeha.I was upset by the way Winterwood seduced me. I did not want to be reeled in by Redmond and his elliptical storytelling because I knew that, between the lines, he was telling me stories I didn’t want him to be able to tell. I wanted to believe the surface of Redmond’s life, that he and his Catherine (and, later, his Casey) were blissfully happy, with no hand ever raised from husband to wife. I wanted to believe that winterwood was an impenetrable castle where loving parents and daughter Imogene barricaded themselves against the attackers without. Perhaps Redmond would have lost his life in the battle, but such a death would be preferable to the slow drip of madness that leaked out from every sentence Redmond spoke to me.McCabe’s writing is frantically obtuse, whizzing past key story elements while returning to haunting images that seem to stop the narrative dead in its tracks. As Redmond stopped to puzzle over these recurring memories, so did I join him, and momentarily stopped trying to solve the mystery. There’s a scent – what is the scent? – and Portobello – when did he live there? – and, most enigmatic of all, there’s Ned Strange, mountain man, storyteller, demon. None of Redmond’s dealings with Ned make any sense at all on the surface, because McCabe masterfully manipulates the space between reality and fantasy and confuses the living with the dead. Ned stalks Redmond at every turn, and drives Redmond’s telling of his own story, infusing it with his own.Winterwood asks to be read quickly. It’s a slim volume, with few words on the page, interspersed with songs and poetry in English and in Gaelic. And that’s how it tricks you, forcing itself bonelessly down. Read it quickly and pretend that every page does not foretell the indigestion you’ll have later, the nightmares and the screaming.

The Superfast Reader has read all of the books.