Shakedown

Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A., again brings his experiences in Army intelligence and the Secret Service to bear in a crime thriller, this one set in Las Vegas. It is compulsively readable and entertaining, with some astute characterizations, particularly the deadweight clock-watcher in a crime task force who has put in his 20 years and is just taking up space.

They Want to Kill Americans

Malcolm Nance's examination of far right groups and their appeal has the feel of a data dump but nonetheless is a useful introduction to the factions attempting to overthrow the government. The danger is real, Nance warns, and there is no hopeful ending in sight.

All That Is

James Salter's final novel is a big-hearted and wistful tale of a man's life starting with his service in the Navy in World War II and running through a career in publishing in New York, a marriage, and several relationships. Ultimately the character, Bowman, looks down at a his legs, which "seemed to belong to an older man." That is one theme: that life, snap, is over quickly. But here as with the rest of the novel, themes are struck in minor key; there is no sledgehammer. Salter writes with a reticence and an elegance that propels the characters through the decades almost magically. The world goes by, but we almost never are subjected to it: Vietnam makes a passing appearance, Picasso and Francis Bacon show up, but the world of the characters is mostly stripped clean, leaving a lean and compulsively readable novel. A lesser writer would have labored and elaborated with greater might to lesser effect.

Elizabeth Finch

This short novel by Julian Barnes highlights what is best about the author: his impeccable prose style. It is a style that is neither fussy, nor showoffy, nor needlessly obscurantist, but rather flowing and calm (like a river with some shallows and a few depths). The title refers to an instructor the narrator, Neil, encountered in an adult education class on culture and civilization and who left an indelible mark on him. As in his novel about Shostakovich, I find Barnes does better with obscure and specific storylines – here it is Julian the Apostate at center – than he does with "love stories," which tend to fall into that English trap of being hopelessly trite. 

Who Killed My Father

Note the lack of a question mark in the title of this slim volume by the French writer Edouard Louis about his father. It is a scathing indictment of successive governments of France, starting with Chirac and running through Macron, for their treatment of the underclass. Louis's father, injured and disabled in his factory job, was made to travel dozens of miles to sweep streets to qualify for his pittance of disability. Louis here adds depth to the tough story of his upbringing that appeared in fictionalized form in The End of Eddy. The father, like many others in his position, blamed immigrants for his problems but now believes France needs a revolution. Louis deftly blends tenderness for his father with an unflinching look at his family's dysfunctions. His new book, about his mother, I expect will be as good.

The Last Days of Roger Federer

I am a fan of Geoff Dyer's novels, but his nonfiction has become a series of self-indulgent trips up the author's own ass. I am tired of reading about Dyer's tennis injuries, about taking drugs, about Burning Man. There is a footnote in this volume on his anxiety upon seeing a roll of toilet paper with only a few sheets left, for God's sake. Making connections is a sign of intelligence, and learning about them can make for enjoyable reading, but when the connections are obscure, tenuous and ingrown, the book needs to be thrown against a wall. There is a small amount of value here, directing a reader to other books and bits about Nietzsche and Beethoven, but much more that is unrewarding and tedious.

Down the Rabbit Hole

This work, a mere 70 pages, has been showered with praise but left me utterly cold. The first, and main, problem is the narration by a clever child. To me, such narrators are always just short of unendurable, Holden Caulfield being the prime example. To this unpleasant child, who has a penchant for denigrating "faggots," add a wisp of a plot that lacks any hook, and you're left with a dirty, grubby little thing and a reason to forget the name Juan Pablo Villalobos.

The Glass Hotel

Emily St. John Mandel proves again to be an engaging novelist with a fluid, transparent style. In trying to categorize her, I find the term "old-fashioned" comes to mind – as a compliment, not an epithet. This, like her previous Station Eleven, is well-plotted and not especially concerned with "big ideas," although there are enough smaller ideas to keep the pot bubbling. The use of supernatural elements never feels artificial, which is hard to pull off, and cameo appearances by characters from the previous novel are satisfying. Again, Mandel constructs a tight, propulsive, and believable plot (despite its fantastic elements). Old-fashioned, then, in the sense that the popular novels published by, say, Alfred A. Knopf in the 1920s were somewhat challenging but mostly just fun to read. 

Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel reveals herself in this post-apocalyptic novel to be a writer with a pleasing prose style and the ability to construct intricate and interesting plotlines that contain surprises and address weighty issues of civilization's fragility. There is the sense that Mandel is writing to be read, not writing for her own sake, or to show off.