Woman With a Blue Pencil - Gordon McAlpine

My review of Woman With a Blue Pencil first appeared as a starred review in Shelf Awareness for Readers. I am posting it today with their permission. Hope you enjoy...

First line: "On the evening of December 6, 1941, Sam Sumida shifted in his seat at the crowded Rialto Movie House in downtown Los Angeles."

In this refreshingly innovative detective novel, Hammett Unwritten author Gordon McAlpine follows the life of a character cut--via the vicious blue editing pencil--from a novel.

Takumi Sato is a Japanese-American in the Manzanar relocation camp during World War II who has written a novel featuring Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American sleuth investigating his wife's murder. In order for the book to be published, Sato has to agree to change his own name, his protagonist's ethnicity and various other elements of the work. But Sumida has come to life and simply will not die.

Sumida walks into a movie theater on December 6, 1941 to watch The Maltese Falcon and emerges to find his world in complete chaos. No one knows who he is--in fact, there's no evidence he ever even existed--but every one is hostile toward him. With nowhere to go and a million baffling questions, Sumida sets to work unraveling this isolating conundrum.

Woman with a Blue Pencil is the intricate plaiting of excerpts from Sato's novel, The Orchid and the Secret Agent, published as William Thorne; correspondence from Sato's editor, the woman with the blue pencil; and a novella merely labeled The Revised. McAlpine ingeniously blends the three plots to create a multi-dimensional, absorbing mystery, simultaneously bringing out the mortifying miscarriage of justice occurring in the United States. He also takes hilarious, yet subtle, jabs at the tropes of "commercial" fiction.

McAlpine's creative talent is rare and this novel is an exceptional literary treat.

Woman With a Blue Pencil is available in trade paperback (ISBN: 9781633880887) from Seventh Street Books. You can find a copy at your favorite independent bookstore or the following retailers:

  

  

Roosevelt's Beast - Louis Bayard

First line: "After all these years, his best friend is malaria."

Using Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt's famed 1914 exploration of the River of Doubt in Brazil as his foundation, Louis Bayard shifts his imagination into overdrive and creates a thrilling adventure that would make today's action heroes envious.

The Roosevelt-Rondon expedition was moving slowly down the South American river. Their rations were running low and disease was running high. Due to dangerous rapids and currents in the water, the group would often have to carry the boats on land until they passed the hazardous areas. During one of these forays, Teddy and Kermit are kidnapped by the Cinta Larga, a Amazonian tribe.

Communication would have been impossible for the Roosevelt's among this strange group of people were it not for a young woman named Luz. Luz spoke Portuguese--as did Kermit; she wasn't born into the Cinta Larga tribe, but rather was absorbed by them when her family perished in the jungle. 

Teddy and Kermit are determined that they will not remain with the Cinta Larga, nor will they die at their hands. Luz informs them both that the tribe will release them if they perform a special task on their behalf. They must find and kill the Beast, the monster that has been tormenting the tribe. It has killed man and animal alike, gutting its prey and yet leaving no tracks.

Left with no alternative, the Roosevelts--sick and malnourished--set off with two rifles, Luz and Luz's young son Thiago in search of the elusive Beast.

Reading a new novel by Louis Bayard is akin to a midnight ride on Santa's sleigh: it's magical, breath-taking and unforgettable. He gives you a view of the world you can't get anywhere else. Roosevelt's Beast continues his string of exceptional stories and incredible worlds.

Kermit Roosevelt is the "hero" of this story. The reader learns through his eyes and experiences. The expedition was not one he had any interest in joining--he had just become engaged and was wrapped up in wedding planning--but he was pressured to go along by his mother who worried about Teddy. Despite being an accomplished, talented young man in his own right, Kermit perpetually lived in the shadow of his presidential father. He's complex and troubled. Bayard uses this condition of his hero to re-create, re-shape and give voice to an engaging, compassionate and flawed adventurer.

Equally fascinating is the voice that Teddy then has in the novel as experienced through Kermit's eyes. The hodge-podge mixture of greatness and humor, yet vulnerability. Kermit's a son who looks up to his father, yet has to take care of him and protect him at the same time.

Bayard's firm understanding and knowledge of, not only the trip itself, but the entire Roosevelt family, is obvious in his approach to the historical elements as well as his manipulation of them. He brings the Amazonian world to life on his pages, leaving the reader swatting at bugs and hearing the whining call of the spider monkeys.

Roosevelt's Beast is multi-layered and definitely a book meant for re-reading. Forget all of technology's flashy special effects and enhancements, Bayard uses good old-fashioned imagination and creativity to haunt, engage, grip, tickle and entertain. It doesn't get more effective--or more magical--than that.

Roosevelt's Beast releases to the world in hardcover (ISBN: 978-0-8050-9070-3) this Tuesday. It is also available as an unabridged audiobook (ISBN: 978-1629234489), narrated by John Pruden from Dreamscape Audio.

Tomorrow Louis Bayard returns to the Five on Friday seat, so be sure to check back. In the meantime, enjoy his mock book trailer:

The Shadow of the Wind - Carolos Ruiz Zafon

In 1945 Barcelona when Daniel Sempere is ten years old, his father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Here Daniel is allowed to find one book, and he chooses The Shadow of the Wind, written by Julian Carax. The book so excites the young reader that he begins to search for anything he can find about this mysterious author.

When Daniel is approached by a dark figure who calls himself Lain Coubert, he rushes to hide the precious book. Daniel had previously learned that a man calling himself Coubert had combed the country finding copies of Carax's books to destroy them. Lain Coubert also happens to be a character in The Shadow of the Wind; the character who portrays the devil.

Zafon's novel spans approximately eleven years (with a short chapter at the end another 10 years later). Throughout that eleven years, Daniel searches to solve the mystery of Julian Carax. Along the way he befriends a beggar, Fermin Romero de Torres; he suffers his first heart break; becomes a target for the evil Inspector Fumero; and he falls in love with his best friends' sister, Bea.

The writing in this book is pure poetry. The translation was done by Lucia Graves, and it is a fantastic job to say the least. There were several sections where I said, "really, an American idiom exists in Spanish like that?" Another section stood out to me as well when a distinction was made between the words "lie" and "fib." The language is just extraordinary.

And of course, a book that begins in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books is bound to have at least SOME magic to it. I was pulled into a new world when I read the description of the Cemetery:

A labyrinth of passageways and crammed bookshelves rose from base to pinnacle like a beehive woven with tunnels, steps, platforms, and bridges that presaged an immense library of seemingly impossible geometry.

And once I was pulled in, I didn't escape until I turned the last page of the book. Daniel had that very same experience when he read Carax's novel:

As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections. The minutes and hours glided by as in a dream. When the cathedral bells tolled midnight, I barely heard them. Under the warm light cast by the reading lamp, I was plunged into a new world of images and sensations, peopled by characters who seemed as real to me as my room. Page after page I let the spell of the story and its world take me over, until the breath of dawn touched my window and my tired eyes slid over the last page.

The Shadow of the Wind's plot seemed like a Russian doll to Daniel, but the irony is that Zafon created even more dolls outside the plot of Carax's novel. Carax's journey is the next layer, followed by Daniel's experiences and finally the outer doll I believe is the reader. The final layer to this nesting doll, the one who carries the story on beyond Daniel. But, as Daniel explains to Jorge Aldaya, "'Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.'" Hopefully there are many readers who have enough inside themselves to see and appreciate the enormity of this book.

The characters that inhabit this saga are amazing. But the element of characterization that truly makes them what they are is the depth of the relationships that are developed throughout the novel. Fermin is absolutely hysterical, but he wouldn't be nearly so without his ties of devotion to Daniel and Daniel's father. And his relationship with Bernarda adds a kind of contradictory layer to his character, but that layer helps to make him even more real, more human. Fumero is an ideal villain because of his connections to the characters he is pursuing. And his development through his relationships with Carax and his friends only intensifies the hatred that consumes his character.

I found the plot to be very unique. It is crafted in such a way that the reader is able to start putting pieces together on his/her own, BUT don't become too confident in your investigative powers. Chances are excellent that you're going to have a curve thrown your way. I found it very easy to get caught up in all in the language and the characters only to miss the clues Zafon was feeding me. I LOVE that in a plot.

I devoured this novel, but I have to admit that the end did let me down a bit. I'll try to explain this without providing any spoilers. My thoughts are that Zafon simply created too many characters for the book. I didn't find them hard to keep track of because each was so distinct. But the novel is 487 pages long, and I finished it wondering about several characters who didn't seem to have their roles wrapped up. At least I felt there were loose ends that needed more conclusion. And I didn't feel like they were the type of loose ends that are "left to your imagination." These were loose ends that needed to be answered - at least I thought they did.

However, that fact would not keep me from highly recommending this novel. Stephen King has a blurb on the cover: "One gorgeous read." I concur!