Day of the Oprichnik

Vladimir Sorokin has created a horrifying and all-too-plausible Russia of the near future in which an all-powerful king uses a cadre of enforcers, the oprichnina, combined with technology to rule and crush dissent. The combination of Middle Ages religiousity, killing squads, and surveillance is a potent one for keeping the population in check. The day of the oprichnik may not have arrived, but this 2006 novel, translated into English in 2011 and set in 2024, appears to have judged the timing about right.

We Had to Remove This Post

Hanna Bervoets's short and ultimately half-baked novel is ostensibly about the trauma created in people whose work as content moderators exposes them to the worst of humanity. But that theme, rich in possibilities for drama and philosophizing, gets shunted aside for a romantic crisis and an abrupt ending.

Inspector Cadaver

A middling Maigret with a somewhat obvious core mystery. 

A Woman's Battles and Transformations

Édouard Louis's account of his mother's 20 years in a terrible marriage is short, bitter and ultimately sweet. It takes on value beyond its length, just 100 pages, by the universality of its themes: the plight of the underclass, alcoholism and domestic violence. Louis's mother, whom he was once ashamed to be seen with in public, made a break for it and landed, at least partway, on her feet.

Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama

Bob Odenkirk's memoir reveals him to be supremely arrogant and – by his own admission – mostly clueless about acting. I stopped counting the number of times he mentioned how he and some of his "comedy nerd" friends were smarter, sharper, hipper – in all ways superior to mainstream comedy of the time. I can't remember him describing a single sketch bombing, but if I missed one, it must have been because he thought the audience was stupid. The memoir becomes less repugnant in the final third, which deals with Breaking Bad and some of the movies Odenkirk acted in or directed. 

Thrust

This novel by Lidia Yuknavitch is a mess. There are plenty of themes – the destruction of the environment, the exploitation of workers, the meaning of childhood, the role of women – plus time travel and a talking worm and turtle. But despite some effective passages, the whole does not hang together. There is a didactic tone in parts that evokes someone who just learned something and can't stop talking about it. In other sections, alternatively, it is dreamy and diffuse, reminiscent of a teenager smoking his first joint and being fascinated by the worlds contained in his fingertip. A firmer editorial hand was desperately needed.

Bad City

Paul Pringle of the L.A. Times has written an account that has all the elements of potboiling cinema, except it is real. What is most unsettling is not that the head of the USC medical school was smoking methamphetamine with young people and supplying them with drugs, but that Pringle's superiors at the newspaper blocked publication of the story for more than a year. When corruption reaches into the leadership of newspapers to this extent, democracy is not sustainable. Thankfully, the doggedness of Pringle and his colleagues at the Times led to a housecleaning at the top.

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.