Paradise Rot, by Jenny Hval. Verson, 2018

Norwegian college girl Jo arrives in Australia to spend a year studying. Looking for a place to live, she comes across Carral’s ad for shared space in a “converted” brewery. I have quotes around ‘converted’ because it’s not really made fit for human dwelling. There are few walls put in. The bathroom is on the ground floor, and it has no ceiling- awkward when you consider that the place is two or three stories tall. Everything is just a jumble of coming apart steel. It smells of its former life, as well as of urine. Urine is a theme in this story; it comes up with discomforting frequency. But Jo settles in. Carral brings home a huge number of apples, which they can’t eat fast enough, and so start to rot all over the brewery. Slowly, a relationship develops between Jo and Carral. Mushrooms appear on the bathroom wall. The apples mark the fall of this smelly Garden of Eden.

This story has the feel of a horror novel without ever quite going there. I kept expecting the mushrooms to start growing on Jo or something. I found it extremely creepy, especially how Carral descends into a sort of human rot. I wasn’t sure if some of the descriptions were actually happening, or hallucinations brought on by how gross the brewery was. It’s totally surreal, rather like Lovecraft brought into the modern age. Three stars.

I got this book from the Amazon Vine Program in return for an honest review. This did not effect my opinions. 

Never Anyone But You, by Rupert Thomson. Other Press, 2018

In the years right before World War One, two teenaged girls meet. Suzanne Malherbe and Lucie Schwob fall in love, which of course they must hide. Then in an odd twist of fate, one’s mother marries the other’s father, making them step-sisters. Now they are free to live together, to put their arms around each other. If this was in a work of fiction I would think it was too much; but this is not fiction, these were real people. After they leave school, they move to Paris where, as part of the Surrealist movement, they fit in, one an artist the other a writer, both adopting male names (Marcel Moore and the gender-fluid Claude Cahun). Their best known works are photographs they collaborated on.

As anti-Semitism penetrates Paris, they move to the Channel Island of Jersey. Now middle aged, no one pays them much attention. When the Nazis occupy the island, they set about their greatest Surrealistic project: subverting the Nazis. As “old women” (barely in their 50s!) they were pretty invisible to the soldiers. They would type up subversive leaflets and sneak them into pockets and cigarette packs. This went on for quite a while before the Nazis figured out it was them. They spent a good amount of time imprisoned by the Nazis, held in solitary, refusing to cooperate. Amazingly, they both survived the war. The Nazis never did believe that the two women were working alone; they felt there *had* to be a network of Resistance fighters behind them!

Thomson tells the story from Marcel’s point of view; she outlived Claude and was the more well-grounded of the pair- Claude seems to have inherited some of her mother’s mental illnesses. The prose is clear and simple, but I felt that Marcel was a somewhat distant narrator. The part of the women’s lives where they are living in Paris, mingling with all the famous people, seemed almost brushed over, as if it were an unimportant interlude, a list of famous names. Things only come to life once they begin their undercover work. Marcel’s focus was always on her beloved Claude, and so other people, no matter how famous, get short shrift. Four stars. 

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I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program in return for an honest review. 

Neither of these things influenced my review. 

Glass Soup, by Jonathon Carroll. Tor, 2005

This book is a sequel to “White Apples”, which I did not know before I started reading. Apparently it doesn’t much matter; the gist of it is that Vincent and Isabelle fell in love, Vincent died, and Isabell did the whole Orpheus thing and went to the land of the dead and brought him back to life. “Glass Soup” takes place very shortly after that. Isabelle is pregnant, and her child is a very important one: the fate of the universe hinges on whether he is born in the land of the living or of the dead. This novel is Order fighting against Chaos, with Isabelle’s child representing Order.

The story actually starts when Simon Haden wakes up into a world where he is a tour guide (it takes place in Vienna). The bus is driven by an octopus; one passenger is made of butter; another is a really bored bag of caramels. A 6” tall man named Broximon hangs out with him. It turns out that AC/DC was right: there is literally a multilane highway to Hell. Simon, as he finally figures out, is dead. The afterlife is made of every single dream and nightmare a person has had in their life. Ugh.

The plot has various beings- one of them a shape-shifting, womanizing, serial killer- trying to get Isabelle on one side of life or death or the other. I really liked it, and I’m not even sure why. I disliked pretty much all the characters. But overall the book as fascinating. It’s a love story, and a story of friendships, despite God being a polar bear. Four stars out of five. 

the above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents. 

This did not influence my review.  

The Children’s Home, by Charles Lambert. Scribner, 2016

Morgan, acid scarred son of wealth, lives alone in a mansion. He spends his days cataloging the maps and books collected by his wandering grandfather. Morgan has had a troubled life; a mother ill both physically and mentally and an isolated childhood have left him ill-equipped to deal with the outside world he has never seen.

Then children start to arrive at the estate. The youngest are infants; the oldest is five year old David. Where they come from and how they get there is a mystery. They just are. They are preternaturally well behaved, quiet, and smarter than normal for their ages. David is their leader; he talks and acts like a small adult. They provide needed company for Morgan. They simply accept his scarred face as he accepts them. When one of the children becomes ill, the housekeeper calls in a medical man, Dr. Crane, who accepts both Morgan and the children just as they are. He completes their family odd little family.

The children obviously have a purpose, but Morgan cannot figure out what it is. They learn from his books and instruction. They disappear into the many rooms of the house for hours, sometimes finding truly odd and rather macabre items.

Outside the estate, a dystopian world lies. When it intrudes in the form of officials who say he cannot be harboring children, Morgan must face the outside world- and his family’s place in it- for the first time. What he finds is grim and bizarre.

I’m not sure what to call this novel. It’s like a dystopian fairy tale, a fable written by Kafka. After a ways into the story, I would not have been surprised if Morgan had turned into a giant cockroach. The story is uneven; the first part is very good but as it heads into the ending it changes tone completely, and, frankly, I am left thinking “WTH was that about?!?!” If I could, I’d give the first part of the book a 4-star rating and the ending a 2-star rating. 

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- Amazon will give me a few cents. 

I received my copy of this book free from Net Galley in return for an honest review. 

Neither of these things changed my review.  

Understories, by Tim Horvath. Bellevue Literary Press, 2014

Brief and surreal, these tiny stories (some are only three or four pages long) vary from a deep study of human character to speculative tales of different types of cities. My favorite was ‘Circulation’, about a man on his death bed and what his son does for him- it’s one of the longest stories and there is time to build up the thousand and one nights relationship that develops. Some of the shorter pieces have no real plot; they are almost like exercises built on writer’s prompts. Most of the stories have a distinct weirdness to them- a city where they decide it’s not allowed to rain anymore; another city that is nothing but restaurants; another where the people are addicted to movies and every place, even the outside walls of buildings, is used to project films on. I enjoyed most of the book but wasn’t in love with it.

The above is an affiliate link. If you click on it and buy something, Amazon will give me a few cents. This in no way altered my review.