richardrbecker's reviews
497 reviews

The world is a metaphor. You might be disappointed if you’re looking for any other answer inside Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. The beautifully written story of a 15-year-old runaway (Kafka) and an aging, disabled man (Nakata) touches on complex subjects like metaphysics, dreams, fate, and the subconscious by following two separate but interrelated plots. 

The odd-numbered chapters belong to Kafka, who is on a quest to find his mother and sister and escape an Oedipal curse. The even-numbered chapters belong to Nakata, who is on a quest of his own but driven by an unknown force. Both of them head toward Takamatsu but do not connect with each other beyond sharing riddles that Murakami says may provide a different solution to each reader (because there are no solutions). 

The net result is an adventure most readers enjoy, but they must also work for a payoff if they want to find one. Suffice it to say that the journey may be the destination, which is why I consider the book a favorite but decided against giving it five stars. I enjoyed it, but some are too elusive to formulate any retained meaning. Obscurity is an art form. 

Douglas Preston is a masterful writer, one who can keep your attention whether he is recanting something mysterious or mundane. At times, The Lost City of the Monkey God swings from one extreme to the other and somehow manages to keep your attention anyway because the story being told is real. 

This book recounts Preston's expedition into the Honduran rainforest to find the legendary White City. His adventure includes rickety planes, old helicopters, Lidar mapping technology, snakes, insects, and pathogens. Where the book wins is in delivering all of these things as Preston and company discovered the ruins of a vanished culture. Where the book falls slightly short is that the story is interesting but never feels harrowing as an adventure story. 

Still, one must give Preston credit. His narrative style provides a swift, easy read. Not only does he share an adventure on the ground but through history — covering everything from the accidental conquest of the Americas to research being done by the medical community on various deadly and incurable diseases. 

All in all, it's an interesting and informative book that leaves you a little smarter than when you began, even if you don't learn anything definitive about the people who once inhabited this remote jungle valley (the research is still being down, but no longer in person). And yet, somehow, Preston shares his addiction for adventure in such a way that you secretly wish archeology what part of your daily purview. 

Of the Farm is a story about Joey Robinson and his relationship with his widowed mother, who lives on an unarmed farm in rural Pennsylvania. The relationship is explored during a visit to the farm, with Joey — a thirty-five-year-old Manhattan advertising consultant — bringing his new wife, Peggy, and her son, Richard.

Updike uses his new wife as a catalyst for his mother to reject not only Peggy but many decisions he had made in his life since childhood. What stands out is Updike's ability to navigate the complicated layers of a relationship between a mother and son within such a short span of space. With all of the characters equally flawed as the main character in their ways and own lanes, he presents a realistic view of how families interact with other from sometimes startingly different viewpoints.

Often overlooked by reviewers, Richard is surprisingly fluid — providing a bridge between the three adults working on the same problem from different directions. Despite missing her grandson Charlie from the first marriage, Joey's mother seems especially engaged in the 11-year-old boy, who is curious about the farm, birds, and plants in the area. 

By the novel's end, readers are left with an interesting sense of self-awareness, perhaps a greater understanding of how people complicate relationships. This fits exceptionally well with Joey, who is as conflicted about his new marriage as his life in the city.  

After a reasonably strong start, Freida McFadden lost me along the way. I was largely entertained by this psychological thriller but struggled to find any characters someone could relate to, even Millie, the principal protagonist (until a second act perspective shift).

The story is mainly about Millie, a young woman with a criminal past, who grasps at anything to keep her new live-in housekeeper job, even after finding out her primary employer, Nina, suffers from mental health conditions (and has no problem taking her issues out on the hired help). Nina's daughter isn't much better — a rude little pest who could use a timeout.

From the start, some of the micro-aggressions and abuses don't make a lot of sense, let alone Millie's willingness to grin and take it. But, they are interesting enough to enjoy the ride for a while, right up until McFadden changes the point of view, leaving Millie behind in favor of her employer, Nina, because it's Nina who knows precisely what is going on (even if Millie's inability to figure out it is what keep us going to begin with).

The revelation in the second act brings everything into focus but not necessarily in any enjoyable way. It's mostly a rehash of everything that went on before Millie arrived and after, but this time from the one person with all the answers. The epiphanies can feel a bit forced, although we never really find out why the daughter is a brat despite an attempt to have us forgive her past transgressions because of what Nina knows. Yeah, I'm not buying. The kid is a brat because she wasn't privy to her mother's plans. 

Still, there is something likable about a page-turning story, even one that never reaches its true potential. Many people rave about act three and the foreshadow it ends on. But mostly, it made everybody a little less human.

Sometimes popular books don't connect with certain readers. And unfortunately, this one didn't connect with me. A Deadly Education was supposed to be a cutthroat version of Harry Potter, with a female protagonist who is half-Welsh and half-Indian.

That said, racism is frequently bandied about in book reviews. Really, the racism issue is a nonissue, masking some other problems with the story. Frankly, the first-person narrative is overwritten and rather rambling, a point made worse when Novik unleashes an infodump about her otherwise decent world-building skills. She also does a splendid job blending some real-world issues into fantasy, but she asks the reader to dig them out of a stream-of-conscious prose that makes Galadriel-El too annoying to be likable. And, aside from that, she is too self-centered to allow anybody else to be liked either. 

Suffice it to say that El is your typical prophesied outcast, expected to become the end of her domain. In this book, her job is to figure out what is wrong with the school and then enlist a few students to help her fix the problem, specifically her one-off, sort-of, boyfriend. Her primary plus is her sarcasm and not magic, but like so much of everything else in the book, it takes a long time for it to play out.

As I said, most people seem to be taken in by this interdimensional magic school falling apart around its reluctant (and over-eager) heroes. But for me, after listening to El prattle on endlessly, I was more tempted to tell them to let it fall apart if it meant a quicker end. Sorry if you liked it.

Lanny is a quick-read fable that is delightfully atmospheric and addictive. It's the story of a quirky little boy who doesn't fit in with his rural village outside London — as we are told by Dead Papa Toothwort, an ancient forest spirit who sits as a witness to all the happenings inside the town (and has since the beginning or time or darn near close to it). 

The one place Lanny does fit in is with an aging, once-famous, and always eccentric artist. And that's a pity for "Mad Pete" when something happens with Lanny during the course of Porter's long-form poetic prose. The story feels like a spell, one cast to raise our awareness about the environment, parenthood, growing up, and a few other devilishly served-up treats regarding humans in general. Porter frequently points to our predilection to be foolish fools predestined for folly. Who can argue?

Reminiscent of True Grit, Joe Lansdale delivers a coming-of-age story set in turn-of-the-century East Texas. Protagonist Jack Parker takes up after a gang of desperadoes after one of them kills his grandfather and kidnaps his kid sister.

He enlists a pose of odd characters to track them, including a gravedigger with an angry hog, a gun-shooting dwarf, a former bounty-hunting sheriff, and a brothel courtesan. Along the way, this charismatic collection of misfits share stories torn from the American West. Many of the stories lend a dark humor and believable banter that will easily draw in any reader as the supporting cast is fantastic, worthy of their own dime novel stories. 

The plot might be a simple revenge story, but Lansdale tells it in an addictive, memorable way that is enduring, sometimes touching, despite the brutal circumstances of their quest to save Jack's sister. Lansdale has written a winner in The Thicket, one found very fitting to add to my favorites. 

If Brothers of the Gun by Marwan Hisham captures anything, it's the futility of trying to understand the Middle East. It's a place where revolutions are hijacked by secular extremists and/or terrorists, and those caught in the crosshairs are forced to choose sides — all of them wrong.

Take up arms and become terrorists. Defend their homes and become terrorist sympathizers. Leave the country and become rootless cowards. 

In some ways, it's virtually the same story once told by T. E. Lawrence. His objective was always to make them stand on their own feet, but he could never influence them in peace as he could in war. Hisham says much the same thing. Once Syria followed the popular protests sweeping the Arba world, there was no turning back. 

Somehow Hisham personally managed to strike a balance between these three options despite the danger of doing so. The would-be college student stayed home (aside from traveling to Turkey and Iraq) and covered the unrest for European media outlets. Most of his friends made other choices. Most of them were buried and left behind. A few die a different way, becoming unrecognizable from their once youthful dispositions.  

Hisham covers it all. From the early protests to the ISIS takeover, and right up to a crumbling end as simultaneous confrontations with three rival coalitions became too much to overcome. Kurdish forces and their American allies, pro-Assad Syrian forces supported by Iran and Russia, and a Turkish-backed coalition of rebel groups. Except, there is no end to the conflict in Syria. 

As Hisham notes: too many Syrians pick up the gun in the name of Islam, even if it means giving up their humanity. And in giving it up, there is nothing left to get back. The lesson makes it much more than someone's account of history. It's a warning for all of us.

Michael Connelly's Fair Warning is an intriguing and cautionary thriller that revolves around the misuse of DNA testing, a service that continues to flourish despite having very little government oversight. This time it is journalist Jack McEvoy who is thrust into a contemporary thriller involving a man who uses pirated DNA to identify potential victims based on specific traits attributed to their genetic makeup. 

While working for a consumer watchdog nonprofit, McEvoy becomes a person of interest because he happened to have a one-night stand with a murder victim more than a year ago. Despite believing the hookup was mutually inconsequential, the victim felt differently — keeping McEvoy in her contacts and having his books by her bedside. Add to these facts that one of the investigating officers holds a grudge against McEvoy; it's plainly apparent McEvoy will have to use his latent serial killer reporting skills to prove his innocence.

After convincing his boss to let him follow (and support) an investigative story despite his conflict of interest, McEvoy pulls out all the stops to search for the killer and how this ruthless murderer acquires his targets. Add in some interesting commentary about the state of journalism today, and Connelly delivers a brisk and entertaining but not-all-the-deep blend of a police (journalist) procedural and light-weight thriller with only a few flat spots.

Isak Dinesen's Shadows on the Grass provides a near-seamless continuation of Out of Africa, which I previously described as a love story between her and the land (and people) of Africa. Together, they provide a moving conclusion to her memoirs and her life, stories that reflect her warmth and humanity. 

In some ways more reflective and coherent in their presentation, Dinesen revisits some stories and fills in some gaps that she missed in the original novel. Reading this immediately after finishing Out of Africa will feel more like an extension of the work than another book. The last chapters were even written in her seventies, making them all the more moving as she continued to long for Africa.