Dan Simmons Rappels The Abominable

The fastest controlled descent down a steep rock face might be to rappel (abseil) but Dan Simmons uses this technique in fiction too. It's the fastest way to become lost in The Abominable: A Novel. All you have to do is grab hold of a rope that feels real and then descend into his alternative reality.

The telling of this tale might start in the present, but the story takes place in 1925. It purportedly comes from a collection of journals kept by Jacob "Jake" Perry, a travelogue author whom Simmons professes to have interviewed before writing The Terror in 2007.

Perry, apparently impressed with Simmons' handling of The Terror, willed Simmons his personal journals in the hope the author might find a new story to tell. Simmons claims to have obliged him, polishing them up before pushing the manuscript onto his skeptical publisher.

And if it were true? Then everything written about the historic expeditions to Mount Everest would have to be revised, including who the first climbers were to reach the summit well before 1953.

The Abominable is an epic mountain adventure thriller. 

In more ways than one, the most unfortunate aspect of the novel is the title. In calling it The Abominable, many readers pick it up with the expectation of finding yeti. So let's clear it up. 

This isn't a novel about yeti. And while the yeti have their place in the book, they are not cast as adversaries for the young protagonist Jake Perry. He has plenty of other challenges to worry about. 

Instead, this is a novel about an unrecorded expedition that took place between the Mallory-Irvine expedition in 1924 and Ruttledge in 1933. It is organized by Richard "the Deacon" Davis as a recovery mission to find the body of Lord Percival Bromley, a British nobleman who has gone missing on the mountain. American Perry and Frenchman Jean-Claude Clairoux are invited to join him. 

Funded by his grieving mother Lady Elizabeth Marion Bromley, the objective of the alpine-style assault proposed by the Deacon is not meant to shoot for the summit. It's meant to recover the body or personal effects of her missing son and provide closure. And yet, it seems intentionally unspoken and painfully clear that the Deacon has a secondary objective. If he and his two friends find themselves and their porters or sherpas within reach of the summit, they will ascend it.

As massive as the mountain, the novel plays out in 672 pages and three acts. But that's not what makes it long. The first two acts are especially detailed, informative, and frequently repetitive in order to lend credibility to this found fiction thread as the polished writings of a travelogue writer.

In sum, you can see what Perry sees, know what he thinks, and understand what he does. But it really isn't until the third act, when the author shifts his writing style to capture a never-before-recorded conclusion, that you experience it with him (outside of a few tenuous exceptions prior to the third act). Is the long wait worth it? Not if you expect Simmons to slide into the supernatural. This novel is an intriguing thriller of another kind, with consequences that eventually intersect with the fate of the world.

A few graphs about author Dan Simmons. 

Dan Simmons is best known for his science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels, with the Hyperion Cantos being among his most mentioned work. But even before the Hyperion Cantos, his work had been recognized. His first novel Song Of Kali was a World of Fantasy Award Winner. Carrion Comfort earned him several awards, including the Bram Stoker Award in 1989. 

One of the most interesting aspects of his career was the break that came at the hands of Harlan Ellison. The short story The River Styx Runs Upstream won first prize in a Twilight Zone Magazine story competition in 1982. Prior, Simmons had worked in elementary education (and continued to do so until 1989).

The Abominable By Dan Simmons Scales 6.6 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

The Abominable is one of those rare books that is sometimes difficult to appreciate until the last page. There are times it feel tedious in its detail and plodding in its pace. But looking back on it after its completion, it feels impossibly complete and as real, if not more real, than any historic account. 

The Abominable: A Novel by Dan Simmons can be found on Amazon. You can also download it for iBooks or order the novel from Barnes & Noble. The audiobook is narrated by Kevin T. Collins. The ride will change any preconception you might have about mountain climbing, especially historic climbs before technology made doing the impossible more plausible.

An Unexpected Guest Comes Calling

Most people have done something in their past that they regret, at least until they find resolution. For American-born Clare Moorhouse, it was falling in love with a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the things she did with him. But that was about 20 years ago.

Since, she had met an ambitious protocol-cautious British diplomat, married, had two children, and saw the world as her husband advanced to become a British minister in Paris, the de facto deputy head of the embassy in France. Her brief time in Ireland was a distant but not unforgotten memory.

That is, it was distant until the ambassador is diagnosed with viral pneumonia and Edward is asked to host a dinner for the permanent under-secretary and twelve guests. The dinner is not without an alternative agenda either. The under-secretary is in charge of ambassadorial appointments and the ambassadorship in Dublin will soon be vacant.

An Unexpected Guest is a story about regret, resolution, and redemption. 

With Edward having his hands full dealing with the repercussions of the London bombings (2005), Clare is asked to make all the arrangements for the last minute dinner. As the wife of a diplomat, her performance in preparing the extravagantly-detailed dinner would be just as likely to be scrutinized as Edward would be for the position.

Never mind that Dublin is the last place on earth that Clare would want her husband to be stationed. Even after all their years together, she had purposefully and meticulously avoided visiting Ireland again. But now, she was faced with a choice. Either she could pull off the dinner or she could come clean and tell her husband a secret that she has always kept to herself.

If the decision were not difficult enough for Clare, she is a beset by steadily growing series of distractions. Her youngest son at a boarding school in the U.K. has been suspended. She runs into a Turkish man, later identified as the primary suspect in an assassination, during her errands in preparation for the dinner. And, even though she believed him to be dead, she continually sees passing glances of Niall, the IRA terrorist she fell in love with so many years ago.

Author Anne Korkeakivi slowly weaves in clarity about Clare's relationship with Niall in between the tedious details of preparing the dinner with the help of staff. While never fully realized, there is an underlying contrast to the calculated and analytical diplomat's wife she has become and the doe-eyed Irish American abroad.

Korkeakivi scratches at identity; who we are instead of what we are. 

After 20 years, she has undoubtedly adsorbed all the trappings of proper protocol that comes with her station. Enough so that some readers will likely find the Moorhouses' half-Swiss and half-Scottish cook Mathilde more endearing as a crotchety curmudgeon in the kitchen or outside of it. But that is part of the story.

Clare has become so comfortable in her costume of etiquette that she never addressed the guilt or decades of deceit related to her darker past. It was easier to shrug it off as the naivety of youth until faced with it again. It is especially painful for her as she learns her son's suspension could possibly be linked to a parallel path to the one she took.

The very best of the book revolves around how people identity with heritage, position, and status as they contort themselves to fit the roles they are either born with or acquire. The most troubling aspect of the work is how passive the protagonist can be. Things happen to her more than she makes anything happen, until the very end. But even then, the transformation leads to moral acuity as opposed any thrilling conformation or conflict, which is what she primes readers to want.

A bit about first-time novelist Anne Korkeakivi.

There is no doubt that this book by Anne Korkeakivi is an excellent start to a promising career beyond her short fiction. She has talent in weaving words together, enough to be accepted by Atlantic, the Yale Review and other magazines. She currently lives in Switzerland with her husband and two daughters but was raised in New York City and Massachusetts.

She has been fascinated by the amount of attention given to the dinner party, she says, as opposed to issues of revolving around the past and present, privacy and public, and changes that have occurred in a post 9-11 world. But that may be par for the course. Her dinner party details are so crystalizing, it makes sense that some readers would be transfixed. The rest of it, you have to bring with you.

An Unexpected Guest By Anne Korkeakivi Plates 4.2 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

The novel is well worth the read, but don't mistake it as a thriller. It's also a tall order to compare the book to Mrs. Dolloway by Virginia Woolf as some misguided critics have done. Sure, some can make the case, but it does An Unexpected Guest a disservice laying out an unrelated direction.

An Unexpected Guest: A Novel by Anne Korkeakivi is available from Amazon. You can also find the book on Barnes & Noble or download it from iBooks. The audiobook, which is available at iTunes, is narrated by Ellen Archer, who brings a particular panache to the story by handling some of the harder transition between the present and past and breathing life into all of the supporting characters.

Donoghue's Room Has Some Trappings

There comes a point in the first few chapters of Room by Emma Donoghue when readers have to make a choice. Either they allow the narration of a five-year-old boy to annoy them or they can roll along with it as his voice matures and more adult dialogue helps move the story along.

For some readers, it won't be an easy decision to make. But the longer they take to make it, the harder it will be to enjoy the subtitles and substance of the Room, a novel about perspective as much as anything else. Jack and his mother have two very different world views. 

Room is a story about captivity, perspective, maternal bond, and hope.

Jack isn't an ordinary boy. His entire world is nothing more than a space measuring 11 feet by 11 feet. His only connection to the outside world comes from the grated skylight in the ceiling, a handful of programs on television, and the man who brings them food, supplies, and a Sunday surprise.

Even then, Jack never interacts with Old Nick. It's one of the rules his mother invented to protect him. 

For the last five years, "Ma" has made it her mission to keep him safe as her world view is so very different. She remembers her life before the Room well enough. She was abducted seven years ago after being baited to help a man who said his dog was throwing a fit. The mistake cost her her freedom.

As a result, while the author's decision to make the narrator a child is a gamble, it pays off in that Jack's sheltered innocence makes the story bearable. He doesn't see their imprisonment as something out of the ordinary. He finds comfort in the routines that he and his mother share daily. He doesn't know how life could be different, and expresses exuberance and joy over the smallest of things. 

That's not to say there isn't a chronic sense of claustrophobia, interrupted by sudden bursts of trepidation, tension, and fear. Even when Jack doesn't grasp the situation, his interaction with his mother makes it real and ever present. 

Ma lives one day at a time, and some days are better than others. She is just as likely to check out as she is to be his best friend, tutor, or playmate. And for her, Old Nick is a dangerous and life-threatening wild card.

The Room is written as two halves, both frightening in their own way.

"I always saw the novel as having two halves, each would shed a different light on the other," says Donoghue. "As always happens with a book in two parts, reviewers tend to prefer one over the other: many find the second half more ordinary, but a few find relief after the claustrophobia of the first."

While some may have a favorite half, Donoghue is right. Neither can exist without the other. It is Jack's ability to compare two very different worlds that completes the book. It also reinforces the haunting justification of their captor — that somehow they should have been grateful to be isolated from it. 

Inside, it's the physical space that confines the mother and son. Outside, it is the social mores that can feel suffocating. While the author never suggests the former is better than the latter, she does make a statement about how petty, judgmental, and restrictive that society can be, especially the media. 

Once they are free, the mother-son protagonists find that the outside world can be both kind and cruel. For them, everything becomes a dangerous and life-threatening wild card.

Emma Donoghue draws upon a variety of cases, especially one. 

While Donoghue calls journalists who describe it as "a book about Josef Fritzl" lazy, she does say that the notion of a woman bearing the child of her captor and then sheltering the child came from that case. In comparing the real case to the novel, there are other similarities and differences — some too similar to be coincidental.

Even so, those similarities ought not to detract from the originality of the work. Unlike Elisabeth Fritzl, Ma bears no relation to her captor. She isn't imprisoned for 24 years. And the added terror of their prison being a converted underground cellar is absent. 

In fact, much like her decision to use the young boy as a narrator, Donoghue does a fine job in creating a marginally comfortable environment that almost fools you into believing it might be bearable. It isn't. It is, however, a harrowing tale of survival in captivity and, at times, a thrilling page turner that is difficult to put down.

Room: A Novel By Emma Donohue Traps 4.2 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

The best thing about Room: A Novel is when the story moves beyond the opening routines and settles in on their plans of escape. The most challenging parts of the story are in attempting to reconcile the size of the room (overtly cramped, as illustrated above) and the attitudes of some adults once they are out. Empathy is surprisingly rare among most of them.

Room: A Novel is available on Amazon and you can find the book at Barnes & Noble. Room can also be downloaded for iBooks or as an audiobook from iTunes. The audiobook is played by a cast of characters, especially Michal Friedman as Jack. Personally, I found it was easier to read the broken narration than listen to it, but anyone could easily feel differently. 

Keith Richards Makes A Life Worth Living And Reading

There have been dozens of books written about the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Not one of them is as engaging as Life, Richards' autobiography written with James Fox (author of White Mischief). Not one.

If you think of Richards as a brilliant guitar player whose brain has otherwise been fried, you’d be wrong. He is a man who is entirely aware of the image that is Keith Richards while still remaining true to himself, the real Keith Richards.

He is far from the burnout he often pretends to be. He’s smart, lucid and very aware.

The New Yorker called Life “half book, half brand extension,” and that’s probably true. After all, the publisher paid Richards $7 million to write this book (which took five years to complete). It seems pretty clear that in order to do so, he dictated tape after tape of recollections, packing them with stories and wisdom.

All of it was culled together into a mostly cohesive story by the talented and able writer Fox, who also took the time to interview Richards’ friends and associates to make sure the human riff was recollecting the facts. In short, this story is vetted.

From his earliest beginnings to whatever might come next.

Richards tells of growing up in Dartford, the only child of a mother he adored and a father who was working all the time. He then shares his first encounter with Jagger, a pairing that proved to be fortuitous, even if their eventual tight friendship would erode as they achieved astounding success as a band.

Richards gives away insights into the deal behind the late Brian Jones, a founding member of The Rolling Stones. Richards doesn't parse words, referring to Jones as a “vicious motherfucker.”

There is no sadness in tone as Jones dies in a swimming pool. Richards doesn't hide his contempt or possible relief. There is, however, guilt and regret as he describes how he learned that his infant son, Tara, died in his crib while Richards was away.

These revealing glimpses are only the beginning. Richards’ insight into his passion for the guitar and his love for the Stones are among the strongest aspects of his story, as is his recollection of life on the road and the desperation of being a heroin addict. It offers a sobering reality that even the very rich are willing to do anything for that next fix, just like any other guy.

Likewise, it seems there is some sadness and bitterness over Richards’ relationship with the narcissistic and power-hungry Jagger. The Glimmer Twins may have been joined at the hip and then they were (and maybe still are) mostly cordial colleagues, but Jagger’s lack of loyalty to the band is one that Richards may never get over. It's his sticking point.

Life by Keith Richards Rolls In With A 7.3 On the Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

It's the best of the books about Richards, but sometimes it reads much the same way. It rambles at times, but remains charming throughout. If you think of Richards as the coolest, most likeable Stone, then his elegantly wasted rock and roll persona and frankness will win you over forever. He paints a smile on life with his humor, even when it feels pained.

Life by Keith Richards is available on Amazon. The only thing that would make Life even better would be to hear Richards read it. It won't happen, but we can dream as the Rolling Stones are on the verge of their 50th anniversary.