Saturday, July 31, 2010

Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2 stars)

This is my 9th Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. It seems that when reading a Pulitzer Prize winner you are guaranteed excellent writing, but excellent plot, as in this case, is optional.

Russo creates excellent characters, and gave me a real sense of knowing Empire Falls, a dying small town in Maine that lost its spirit with the closure of various mills owned by the Whiting family. Russo's skillful depiction of Miles' inability to escape from the dying town, the simultaneous death of his mother and her dream for him to go to college, and the constant bullying of John Voss, all made for quite a depressing read.

Unfortunately the skill of the writing and good character development doesn't make up for the plodding pace (483 pages in small font) and lack of interesting plot for most of the book. There is a flurry of excitement towards the end, and quite a good climax, but it seems rushed after the slow pace of the rest of the novel.

The book was made into a 2-part HBO miniseries, which I intend to watch. It could be quite good, since with only two parts most of the boring set-up can be condensed. If it flowed at the same pace of the book it would probably have to be a 26-part series...

2 stars.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (4.5 stars)

Ever since I read The Road, Cormac McCarthy's other works have been on my list. It had been some time since I'd seen the movie when I picked up this book, but the image of Chigurh walking around with that gas cylinder brought it back.

I loved this book, but it is definitely not easy reading. The dialogue is frequently confusing - it is often difficult to determine who is saying what without any 'he-said' 'she-said'. This sparse, but emotion-loaded dialogue reminded me a lot of The Road. Chigurh is a great character; he is ruthless, true to his word, and a great philosopher and student of human emotion and behaviour.

I love the charged emotion in this scene where an unwitting gas station attendant finds himself flipping a coin for his life:
You know what date is on this coin?

No.

It's nineteen fifty-eight. It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And I'm here. And I've got my hand over it. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to say. Call it.

I don't know what it is I stand to win.

In the blue light the man's face was beaded thinly with sweat. He licked his upper lip.

You stand to win everything, Chigurh said. Everything.

Sheriff Bell has a brilliant, world-weary, beaten down sense of humour:
It's a mess, aint it Sheriff?
If it aint it'll do till a mess gets here.

Moss, despite some obvious very bad choices, is a smart guy. The way he hides and later retrieves the satchel from the airconditioning duct in the hotel is ingenious. I was surprised McCarthy chose to leave Moss's fate to a retrospective look from Sheriff Bell. I would have thought the encounter between Moss and Chigurh after so much cat-and-mouse would have been the climax.

A great read.  Now I need to read Blood Meridian.

4.5 stars

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (4.5 stars)

I've read quite a few books about Iraq lately, so it was with some reluctance I picked up another, however I was intrigued given this book was the basis for the movie Green Zone. I'm glad I did - this is one of the best accounts of the war and reconstruction I have read. It takes a different tack and focuses not on the military aspects, but on the reconstruction efforts of the 'Coalition Provisional Authority' (CPA).

The narrative is characterised by the CPA's incompetence, cultural insensitivity, and cronyism. Every one of the staffers appointed to the CPA was vetted for their loyalty to the President and the Republican Party - answers to questions such as "Where do you stand on Roe vs. Wade?" were deemed much more important than experience in post-war reconstruction, or indeed any experience, since staffers in their early to mid 20s were handed hugely complex tasks, such as rebuilding the stock exchange.

John Agresto was handed the daunting task of of rehabilitating Iraq's university system (375,000 students, 22 campuses), he:

...had no background in post-conflict reconstruction and no experience in the Middle East. The institution he ran, St. John's College in Santa Fe, had fewer than five hundred students. But Agresto was connected: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's wife had been on the St. John's board...

This is particularly appalling since the US had a vast talent pool to draw from - many Arab experts, post-conflict experts and experienced diplomats from the State Department were ignored. In fact, State was seen as the enemy since it was inhabited by too many Democrats.

Little cultural sensitivity or desire to involve Iraqis in their countries' reconstruction was shown by the CPA. Hundreds of Iraqi secretaries and translators were forced to eat in the dining hall, which was:

a bottomless barrel of pork: sausage for breakfast, hot dogs for lunch, pork chops for dinner.

CPA staffers mistakenly took their translators, who had good paying jobs with the CPA and plenty of good things to say about the occupation, as being representative of all Iraqis. Staffers lived in their own world inside the Green Zone where the power was reliable, the buffet full of American comfort food, and drinking was the main after-work activity:

Scores of CPA staffers, including women who had had the foresight to pack hot pants and four-inch heels, danced on an illuminated Baath Party star embedded in the floor.

The CPA made some major mistakes: Overzealous De-Baathification removed most of the educated and experienced people in Iraq from their jobs, including thousands of teachers. Standing down the army made thousands of trained soldiers instantly unemployed, which quickly resulted in the creation of a disenfranchised insurgent army. And a general approach of focusing on the minutae (such as a traffic code and patent law), when basic needs for safety, electricity, food and water had not been met, was greeted with understandable incredulity from the Iraqis.

I'm not sure how you go about making this book into an action movie with Matt Damon, but I'll let you know once I have seen it.

4.5 stars.