Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I’m loving the recent pace of AICN Books columns. Frank Bascombe’s been at it for a while, but Adam Balm’s been working hard lately, and I’ve been posting my own book reviews for the first time in a while. I’ve got a good stack I’ve been working at for my next column, including Austin Grossman’s great debut book, David Gunn’s equally great debut, and a very special AICN BOOKS exclusive that will be the first-of-a-kind for us, and something I’m really excited by.

For now, I’m going to leave this in the always-capable hands of the great Frank Bascombe, who sounds like he’s living a life a lot like mine these days...

So far this summer I’ve been busy with my own writing, fatherhood, and being a homeowner, etc, etc, etc, dot, dot, dot.

But I have been doing some reading. Things are good on this coast, baseball is in full swing, and I’ve even had time to put together a photo blog of my own work.

Rules for Saying Goodbye by Katherine Taylor
FSG

It’s a colossal mistake to open handedly slap the taste out of a debut novel’s mouth, and I’ll try not to stumble into that buzz saw as karma can be a bitch. But I’m going to have to show some professional restraint in this review. When I heard about this book the rough outline immediately made me think of Bright Lights Big City, or even Less than Zero and that perhaps this author might be able to capture the high pitched whirl of New York City through the eyes of a struggling writer. Then I was told this was going to be (possibly) the next Starbucks selection, (and what’s with non book retailers starting book clubs? What’s next, the Wal-Mart book club selection of Dale Earnhardt’s biography?). So I found a way to get an advance reading copy and sat down with great anticipation. Turns out I was sold a bill of goods. Katherine Taylor has written a casual story about being a twenty something in New York City, circa the late nineties early 00’s. Well, it is that, sort of, but Katherine Taylor’s alter ego, err…thinly-veiled, tortured image of herself which is just about as bland a character as I’ve found wandering around the pages of a novel in some time. What’s more shocking is this is billed as a coming-of-age story.

‘This Boy’s Life’; that’s a coming-of-age story. Period, end of story, that’s it and that’s all. Ms. Taylor has written a comfortably banal version of her own life, without regrets, without warts, and sans any magnetic attraction in the details (oh…she calls off a wedding, but who hasn’t done that…once?) But, and this is a big BUT, she does it very, very well. There is a lazy malaise that is prevalent in people who were in their mid twenties in the late nineties and it certainly is captured in this book, and they could be found in excess in and around New York City during that time. Dare I say she’s nailed that time right in the center of its heart? Katherine Taylor expects love to waltz in, marriage to come naturally, and a novel to spring up like crab grass in her lap. She writes with such polished ease, a sort of whispering offhandedness, that it’s almost impossible to get a pulse out her characters, especially her heroine, who’s clearly the author.

The story starts with Ms. Taylor getting shipped from Fresno by her occasionally entertaining mother to a boarding school, where she meets emotionally remote man-haters who pollute the story the rest of the way. Some get their just rewards; some just realize that life sucks, all while Ms. Taylor tags along taking notes. Each day is filled with lazy bouts of sleeping, a visiting sibling, or a mother who comes and goes with great ease only to needle her daughter with her own psychosis. All the while she gets a degree from Columbia, and works the bar at night where the most excitement in the book takes place – the occasional spotting of a celebrity. This is a blazingly quick tour of the pre-teen years, some early twenties horsing around, (never any serious talk of paying the bills, making ends meet, or getting a career going, which smacks of old money tucked away somewhere) and then finally heads off to Rome where the author seems to have fallen in love. But she can only complain about Rome, it’s too hot, there are too many bugs, well, it is the summertime Ms. Taylor, what did you expect…the lingerie department at Macy’s mid July? She even says how much she likes the lighting on the streets of Rome, and does so in a slightly offense and casual fashion. How can you spend time in Rome and only comment on a few restaurants and the gelato? Wasn’t it life changing for you Ms. Taylor? Didn’t you come back with a buzz?

The scenes from New York City are very standard; travel through the bars, go to bookstores, sleep all day. But when 9-11 is mentioned it barely garners a sentence and then is forgotten. If these characters are that callous towards the world, would they be affected even mildly by that event …and register some slight amount of shock, concern, or at least express some annoyance at the inconvenience?

The trouble with this book is that I really, really, really didn’t like the main character, I wouldn’t follow her anywhere unless it was to watch her fall off a cliff, and she’s generally a pretty girl whose cruising on her looks, waiting for success to find her, not the other way around. And for that Ms. Taylor has delivered a very good book, you know, if that’s the kind of thing you like. It’s not a poorly written but it is tough to write this kind of thing and make it look so easy. Ms. Taylor is making a comment on her generation and it sounds like she’s telling her peers to pull their panties up and get with it. She does it with a sly and smooth style of writing that is impressive, even if the results are boring.

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
Grove Press

Michael Stipe said that aluminum tastes like fear. I’m not sure if Richard Flanagan agrees because his take on fear is far more complex and he feels it’s blossoming from a society gone completely haywire with paranoia. Where does this unnatural fear come from? Well…it’s personified in ‘The Unknown Terrorist’, a book so carefully detailed and filled with breathtaking moments of clarity that I was sorry when it was over. (A man eating a steak pulls a piece of meat from his teeth; Flanagan describes it so perfectly, referring to the pesky chunk as “recalcitrant.”). Once upon a time I was in possession of a galley of this authors book ‘Gould’s Book of Fish’ and sidestepped it for close to three years and then gave it away….I sure am sorry about that now.

On the tip of everyone’s tongue is what might happen in regards to the actions of known terrorist organizations the world over, here and in Europe, plus places less publicized, like Australia. I’ve read very little about Australia, actually this is the only book I’ve read about that part of the world, and if this were the only book ever written about that country, then I’d be happy, as I don’t think there is a better primer for Australia than Flanagan’s gritty and fantastically textured portrait.

We’re involved from the start with The Doll, a pole dancer; we twist beside her as she collects money from men with unsuitable appetites for human flesh. The Doll’s real name is Gina Davies and through her eyes we discover she’s as materialistic and obsessed with making money as the men who pay to watch her dance. Skipping around like a nomadic feline she brings us into the lives of her best friend, a handicapped client who isn’t who he says he is, a cop, a lecherous television tabloid journalist and a city that’s ablaze in an anti-terrorist campaign that’s targeting everyone and everything that moves. Terrorism isn’t the only thing that Flanagan is weaving into the story, as also partially presenting his countries xenophobia, and a culture that is so profoundly depraved, sexually and morally bankrupt, not to mention culturally vacant.

The Doll meets a man on a beach, its sun drenched, like a dream or a nightmare, it’s crowded, suddenly her girlfriend’s son is having trouble staying afloat and this man comes to the rescue. He’s handsomely attractive and a physically fit man who gets The Dolls attention. But then he disappears only to re-appear chapters later at a street fair and in no time has The Doll in bed, and what creative trip to the sack it is. The book reaches the top of its narrative arc at this point and then suddenly drifts over a hill and begins a downward spiral that is nothing short of incredible to witness. The man she beds could possibly be a terrorist, the morning after he disappears she sees herself on the news as his accomplice. She ignores this and goes on her way, and very quickly this becomes the worst decision she’ll ever have the misfortune to make. Every single person in story has a direct hand in the outcome. There are no blind alleys, no red herrings, and absolutely no flights of narrative fancy that lead to dead ends or have no meaning. The Doll is nothing if not intimately ground in her desires, fears and her need to survive. Sadly she can’t seem to overcome the earth shattering devastation she feels when she understands that there is nothing she can do to change what the public has made her into; which is, The Unknown Terrorist.

You can reach me, as always, via e-mail if you think here’s something I should read.