Dr De Marr, Paul Theroux

I chose Paul Theroux for The Great Library Challenge T author because he's one of those authors you hear about but (in my case anyway) have never read. 

Dr De Marr is an eerie novella with a very creepy cover and several even more creepy illustrations throughout.

The story is about very short identical twins, George and Gerold De Marr, who are bound to each other by intense hatred and a desire for the other's death. When their parents pass away, they finally sever the invisible umbilical cord between them and live their lives free of each other for decades, until one day, George suddenly appears on Gerald's doorstep out of the blue. 

Shortly after, Gerald finds George dead in a chair upstairs and soon begins to unravel the seams of his mysterious secret life. He finds that George has been posing as a wealthy doctor, and soon enough, he assumes this false identity to enjoy its benefits. But of course, the very things that George was running from catch up with Gerald and he finds himself very quickly out of his depth.

Theroux writes with an eerie absence of emotion that casts shadows on every page. The handful of characters that appear in the pantomime are hard to read as they all seem to have their own agenda, of which you're constantly left in the dark.

It's quite a horrid story, adeptly told, with the punchy circular logic of a good short story. But personally, I like my stories with a little more light.

I Am Legend, Richard Matheson (graphic novel) book review

The graphic novel version of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend borrows heavily from the original novel and follows the plot practically scene for scene. It's a little wordier than your average graphic novel, but that's understandable considering there isn't a lot of conversation, and most of the story is told by a third person narrator.

The text sounded to me like a dumbed-down version of the book, although I discovered rather to my surprise that apparently most of it is taken word for word from the novel. It sounds like they only took the most obvious sentences though: 'Robert Neville is inside the house. The zombies are outside moaning for him to come out.' (Okay, this is my interpretation and not a direct quote, but seriously the narration was just like that).

What's particularly disappointing about the graphic novel is that the images, which I think have a responsibility to add to the drama and read between the lines of the text, do nothing of the sort. If the text says, 'Robert Neville drinks a whole bottle of whiskey', the image shows him actually drinking a bottle of whiskey. Come on.

The best graphic novels, like the best children's books, have illustrations that add a new dimension to the story using layers and sub-text, but there's no attempt to do that here. There's nothing slick or sophisticated in the illustrations, and Ruth, the only other seemingly proper human being apart from the protagonist, is drawn very differently in different scenes. The first time they meet she's quite attractive, but when they meet a second time, she looks like a completely different person with a bulging forehead and bloated face, and there's no reasonable explanation for this fact. Did she suddenly contract down syndrome?

I think the only people who would really enjoy this are the ones who can't be bothered to read the original novel and want the story told in a simple format or young teenage boys. Actually scratch that last one, I think I may not be giving young teenage guys enough credit.

Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

The third book in my Vampire Fiction series:

Interview with the Vampire begins with an intriguing and gripping premise: Louis, a 200 year old vampire from New Orleans, permits an interview with a young journalist, retelling the story of his life. The nerves and fascination of the reporter fuel our own, as we hear Louis's story of his 'making' by Lestat, the vampire who created him in order to share his wealth and plantation.

Despite his newfound vampire status and appetite, Louis never quite lets go of his human nature, which makes for a fascination and haunting tale of internal struggle and external strife. Louis and Lestat, locked in an unsatisfying relationship of co-dependency, mutually create Claudia (against Louis's desire to inflict vampirism on anyone), a young girl who grows into a deadly and intelligent young woman trapped in a little girl's body, and eventually incites Louis's betrayal of Lestat.

Claudia and Louis travel the world to find others of their kind, discovering them finally in Paris at the Theatre des Vampire. Louis finds his soul mate in Armand, and from this point, the novel becomes extremely homo-erotic despite the absence of actual physical sex (except when he feels the 'hard sex' of Armand's slave boy press against his body as he offers himself to Louis. For bloodsucking, not for sex - get your mind out of the gutter).

Partway through the book, the story starts to lose steam and Louis's philosophical who-am-I becomes quite tedious, as I'm sure it must have been for him after 200 years. Rice poses a lot of big questions (Is there a God? Who created vampires? Are they inherently evil?) that are never really answered (except the last question, where Rice tends toward no - they've just grown bored and detached through the years and lose the human ability to empathise or love), and in the end we become even more confused about the whys and wheres and hows of vampirism.

The website annerice.com explains that Interview with the Vampire started as a short story which Rice turned later into a full novel. That explains a bit for me, because the pace of the novel is certainly not as good as it could have or should have been, considering the calibre of the writing. Well, most of it anyway. At times it becomes all too flowery and dramatic, but for the most part, it's quite beautifully penned.

Back to the pacing issues: Rice spends way too long dwelling on the early years in New Orleans with Lestat, which in the scheme of things was not as important a chapter in Louis's life as the latter years, when he meets Armand and goes through what appears to be the vampire equivalent of a nervous breakdown. Also, she never answers the obvious question of whether his family has noticed his vampirism (pale skin, aversion to sunlight, sleeping in a coffin... any of it ring a bell?) and the sudden addition of another pale-skinned, sunlight-averse, coffin-sleeping male in the household.

The revelation of what sets Louis apart from other vampires comes late in the book, and Lestat's degeneration leads only to more questions. Why did he set himself apart from the other vampires, when he obviously knew of their existence? Why does he follow them to Paris and desperately ask to talk to Louis and then say nothing of significance to him? And why do I keep imagining him as a badly made-up Tom Cruise?

Overall, I found the book a very intriguing read, but certainly flawed. I'm told the second and third books (The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned are better, but I'm not sure whether I'll read them yet. I only planned my Vampire Fiction series to be a three-part thing, but I'm of two minds whether to read Dracula as well... anyone out there read it yet? Is it better than Interview?

Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris

My vampire fiction journey began well with The Radleys, but it's taken a real nosedive with this clunker.

Dead Until Dark is the first of the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris, which spawned the True Blood television series. Apparently True Blood is masterful. Having read this book, I can say that must have been quite a feat for the producers.

Okay, let's overlook the ridiculous names. Sookie is a telepathic barmaid who sees her mind-reading powers as a disability and acts like a deer in headlights when others treat her as odd. Bill (Bill! Has there ever been a less sexy name?) is a vampire who's just returned to the small town of Bon Temps to integrate with the humans. Sookie saves his life and promptly falls in love with him. It seems his only attraction is the fact that she can't read his mind, because otherwise he's pretty boring. Laconic, no appreciable sense of humour and not particularly high up in the vampire hierarchy.

The story is told from Sookie's perspective but one can't help but hear a middle-aged author indulging herself a little too much. Sookie is beautiful, has big boobs, is tough but soft, and is desirable to everyone (humans, vampires and everything in between). Oh and did I mention she has an orgasm every time? Like every time. 

The plot itself is surprisingly decent, which leads me to believe that Charlaine Harris is a good story-creator, but not a particularly good storyteller or author. The writing is clumsy and cringe-inducing and the climax is left so far into the plot that when you get to it, you don't care too much. I actually put the book down to do something right in the middle of the climax and didn't pick it up again for another two days. That's unheard of for me; usually I have to know what's going to happen next, but all the eyeball rolling and cringing left me rather untouched by the end. Particularly cringe-inducing was the appearance of an extremely famous now-dead singer incarnated as the vampire Bubba. Seriously.

The characters were one-dimensional and never develop very much, but presumably this is because Ms Harris is busy setting up the following books that have since built her Southern Vampire empire.

If you're a fan, don't hate me. Obviously I'm voicing the opinions of a minority, because this book has received glowing reviews, and not even just from the publishers.

If you want a bit of a thriller with human-vampire sexy scenes thrown in, this might be for you. If you want something you won't be embarrassed to read on the train, then maybe give this a miss.

Sleep No More, Greg Iles (The Great Library Challenge author I)

I had a hard time choosing an I author for my Great Library Challenge because I'd read most of the ones suggested to me (thanks for the suggestions LO and FB) and my local library had only a single shelf of I authored books. So I simply chose the author most represented in that section (with 4 books, Greg Iles had 30% of the shelf space market at Surry Hills Library) and chose the book that sounded most interesting.

Although it's not the sort of book I'd normally choose, the case for Sleep No More was strengthened by Stephen King's recommendation on the cover: 'a thriller that really thrills, a shocker that really shocks'.

Was it really? I tentatively read the first few chapters, prepared to swap the book for another I author if I didn't enjoy it, but the next thing you know, I was halfway into the story with no intention of stopping. It really was a thriller that thrilled.

The premise is that John Waters, an oil well driller with a good business and generally happy family, is suddenly approached by a strange woman who purports to be imbued with the spirit of his ex-lover, an obsessed fatal-attraction type who was raped and murdered 10 years ago. She claims that through the act of sex, a portal is created whereby she can overtake the use of her 'host's' body through orgasm (I know the temptation to laugh is strong, but resist. It gets chilling.).

His incredulousness turns to fear when she starts to prove that it's really her - it took her 10 years to make her way to him (like a game of 6 degrees to Kevin Bacon) from the man who raped and murdered her all the way into the body of an attractive young woman in his hometown in Mississippi, but now she's back and she still wants him all to herself.

Sleep No More combines horror and suspense with elements of supernatural fantasy to make a very compelling read. There were only two points in the book when I fell out of the spell, through an overused cliché or lame turn of phrase, but otherwise I was pretty engrossed.

It's a shame that the climax was rather unsatisfactory and lets down the build up that Iles achieves, but a plot like this is understandably difficult to resolve. It's just unfortunate that the final pages (which still manage to elicit a certain number of chills) takes it from a cinema-worthy psycho-sexual thriller (of the chilling rather than titillating kind) to a midday movie.

The Third Twin, Ken Follett (The Great Library Challenge author F)

With around 20 books under his belt, Ken Follett is one heck of a prolific writer, so I thought I'd see what the bother was all about.

The Third Twin is a thriller about the genetic cloning debate and the dangerous mystery that its feisty (and of course attractive) protagonist, university researcher Dr Jeannie Ferrami, stumbles upon.

At the risk of sounding like a pretentious literary wanker, based on this novel alone I have to say that Ken Follett is a great storyteller but not a great writer. The Third Twin is a very fast-paced and absorbing novel, but the narrative voice isn't always believable, and is at times downright awkward.

Firstly, the good bits. It's a hefty book but easy to read, and I couldn't put it down. The story races very quickly (and not at all believably) in the course of a single week or so, in which Dr Jeanne discovers a major cover-up, gets her life threatened several times and takes down the big powerful bad guys.

But the bad bit is that the characters are extremely one-dimensional and while it has a whip-cracking pace, it has no emotional depth whatsoever. The story of Jeannie's raped friend was particularly unmoving and unconvincing. The dialogue is sparse at best and awkward at worst, and the narrative has some major holes and employs a lot of cliches.

To be kind, I'd say it's probably a story for its time. Being published in 1996, it was possibly even ahead of its time. But now, in light of all the more sophisticated and polished stories of a similar vein, it smacks of amateurishness. We've become accustomed to authors who research their topics in depth to maintain narrative integrity, but it feels like this book was written in a hurry with nothing but the broadest ideas about the complex topic it's based on.

Ken Follett paved the story for writers like John Grisham – great airport novelists, but Pulitzer Prize material they ain't. As long you know what to expect, I think you can enjoy his extensive range of published novels, because after all, we all need a good airport novel sometimes.

The Great Library Challenge: Eco, Umberto The Name of the Rose

Wow - finishing this book was quite a feat. This very dense and complex mystery is set in a Benedictine monastery in the 14th century before the complete power separation of state and church. The main protagonists are William of Baskerville, a Sherlock Holmes-esque character who is sent with his sidekick novice Adso (the narrator) to investigate some mysterious deaths occurring in the abbey.

The narrative is filled with gothic religious imagery, set in the confines of a cloistered and esoteric sect, and backgrounded by the religious power struggle that defined the church of the day.

The book is dense and multi-faceted - laid simply, these layers are:

• the mystery that William attempts to unravel with every clue: how and why are the monks dying in such strange circumstances;
• the theme of the danger of seeking and/or suppressing knowledge. All the clues lead to the mysterious and closely guarded library - the centre of knowledge;
• social commentary on the atmosphere of the 14th century, the power struggle between the emperor and the pope, and the thinly veiled political machinations that joust in the sphere of religious theology.

In one respect, this is like a high-brow literary version of Sherlock Holmes, although I'm not impressed by the fact that Umberto Eco has apparently never even acknowledged the debt of inspiration (or straight out plagiarism) he owes to Arthur Conan Doyle for the characters and the plot. William and Adso have great chemistry - one the sage, learned and experienced detective, and the other a naiive and innocent novice. There are some great moments of humour in the way Adso faithfully recaptures William's speech, sometimes unaware of the sarcasm or wit it accompanies:

I never understood when he was jesting. In my country, when you joke you say something and then you laugh very noisily, so everyone shares in the joke. But William laughed only when he said serious things, and remained very serious when he was presumably joking.
(The Name of the Rose: Sixth Day; Prime)

Whilst the events of the novel take place within a single week, the plot moves at a snail's pace. Entire chapters are taken up describing things that have no bearing to the plot (like the carvings on a door), and there are more red herrings than a fisherman's basket.

When you finally get to the end, it comes quite quickly and is rather climactic and powerful. However, I do have a bone to pick with Mr Eco. I won't spoil the plot, but suffice (though confusing) to say that the basis of the mystery boiled down to the belief by a single and powerful monk that humour and laughter were a blight on the honour of the church, and that fear is the basis of Godly faith:

But laughter is weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh... but law is imposed by fear, whose true name is fear of God.
(The Name of the Rose: Seventh Day; Night)

But anyone who knows their Bible will know that it preaches the complete opposite of that:

He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy. (Job 8: 21)

A merry heart does good like medicine (Proverbs 17:22)

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but love, power and a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

So how is it that so pious a monk believes in a completely opposite doctrine to the Bible? Christian dogma may have changed throughout the ages but the Bible hasn't. Are you telling me that this monk, who knows even the most mysterious books inside out, hasn't read it yet? This kinda ruined the mystery for me because all the work Eco put into making the story so believable unwinds on the hinge of such a trivial detail - much like the apple business at the end of the Da Vinci Code (so wrong of me to even mention that book in this post). Lame.

I know this book is considered a major classic, but I'd only recommend it to the hardcore because it's quite a slog to read, although it is ultimately rewarding. I'd write more about the whole theme on knowledge because it's a fascinating topic, but I've got to mull over it a bit more first, and it's time to move on to F in my Great Library Challenge.

Off the library's F section I go!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish movie)

From the first shot of middle aged, saggy jowled, pockmark-faced Mikael Blomqvist, I was disabused of my idea of Swedes as healthy looking, shiny-haired blondes twinkling in the sun. The great thing about this movie is that it's so devoid of Hollywood gloss. The Swedish film industry dares to hire actors for their abilities over their looks, and they certainly don't pull the punches when depicting the violent and often sexual episodes which are key to the story, but not dwelt on in the book. It makes for a gripping movie but not necessarily an aesthetic one. I mean, I really could have lived without watching the scene of Lisbeth forced to give head to her 'guardian', and the image of his naked 60 year old body (minus the rudie bits) is now forever burned into my retina. Yuck.

The movie was bound to be violent because the story is so very gritty, but  bringing these scenes to the screen is far more in-your-face than reading them on the page. It's a well made movie for its genre (the music was only jarring in one scene for me) and generally well-casted, but I couldn't help but be disappointed by Noomi Rapace's depiction of the enigmatic Lisbeth Salander. The essence of Lisbeth, and her very strangeness, is in the fact that she doesn't react to situations like normal people. She's not emotional and seems to border on the edges of autism. Rapace's Salander is more sullen and volatile – more human, so to speak. This is a shame because ironically, the magic of Larsson's creation is in her very inhumanness. They kept the gothic look and tattoos, but lost a vital part of her core. Rapace is a fine actor and I'm certain it was more a directorial decision than her own, but personally I think they missed out on something key here.

Watching the story play out on screen, I was aware of some holes in the novel that I hadn't noticed while reading it. SPOILER ALERT: For example, when Harriet Vanger is restored, I couldn't help but wonder why the hell she didn't tell someone – anyone – about the abuse her brother put her through, instead allowing him to continue playing out his homicidal fantasies on dozens of other victims. Reading the book, you're so caught up in the action you don't really question the story. Well I didn't anyway. You might.

Book vs Movie: the verdict

The book. It's always the book, isn't it? Except for Mansfield Park, with Frances O'Connor's charming depiction of a much more feisty Fanny that Austen's wimpy creation. Books always give you more than a movie can squeeze into the usual two hours, and allow your imagination to dwell or flit from scene to scene at will, and not remain captive to another person's vision of the story. In my imagination, Mikael Blomqvist was a bit better looking (perhaps this is borne from years of Hollywood leading men, also the fact that he's sex on legs in the book version) and Lisbeth is more in control. The only one who really fit the bill is her hacker friend Plague, who is meant to be as fat and ugly as portrayed (my apologies to the actor). I loved the scene where he's trying to get her attention while sitting on the toilet.

Word has it that George Clooney is being considered for the role of the American Blomqvist. He fits the right age group and certainly fits the sex on legs bit, but I'm not sold on that idea. Do you have an opinion?

Read the book review

The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson - the girl who gripped me

It's been a long time since I've come across a story so gripping that every time I open the page, I end up so absorbed that I miss my bus stop, come in late for work bleary-eyed from reading late into the night, or miss dinner completely because I just can't put the book down. With The Millennium Trilogy, Stieg Larsson has written a literary version of crack cocaine. It's absolutely un-put-downable.

Starting with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we're introduced to Mikael Blomqvist, a crusading journalist, and Lisbeth Salander, a possibly mildly autistic, brilliant researcher whose deep-seated mistrust of authorities has very good basis. Blomqvist has been disgraced in the media and is now privately hired to look into the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, an heiress to the wealthy Vanger dynasty. During the course of his investigations, he recruits Lisbeth Salander, who proves to be far more resourceful than her strange gothic-punk image would betray.

Parts two (The Girl who Played with Fire) and three (The Girl who Stirred the Hornet's Nest) are not self-contained stories, but an ongoing mystery that places Lisbeth firmly in the centre of an unfolding criminal cover-up of the highest order among Sweden's secret police. While intrigue and vested interests aim to put her away as a menace to society, Blomqvist is convinced of her innocence and begins digging to uncover the truth of her tragic background.

The Millennium Trilogy contains all the elements of a great crime mystery (violence, power, thrills and vengeance, to name a few) but it's in no way formulaic. These books are bestsellers with good reason: they're unique, incredibly interesting, absorbing and utterly utterly compelling. Unlike other best-seller The Da Vinci Code, Larsson's writing doesn't get in the way of telling a good story, and predictability is kept to a minimum. You're kept so busy in the action of the now that you have no time to guess what will happen next. Besides, Lisbeth Salander is anything if predictable.

Larsson gets the most from the whip-cracking storylines by the evenness of his writing, never trying to show off his literary abilities but letting the story tell itself. His journalistic background is evident, as is the depth of his research, in the ability to make such a sensational story seem so realistic. His characters are also fleshed-out so there's nothing one-dimensional about them - we get to know everything from their sexual preferences down to the groceries they buy. Apparently Lisbeth's character was partially inspired by the children's classic Pippi Longstocking. A colleague of Larsson's said in an interview that they were discussing how characters from children's books might behave had they grown up, and Larsson was influenced by the idea of dysfunctional adult Pippi Longstocking in the real world. It's a truly fascinating notion.

Over 22 million copies have been sold worldwide in just over two years, a Swedish version of the film has grossed over $100 million before even being released in the States, and an American adaptation has just been picked up by Sony. It's an absolute tragedy that the author died before the books were published and never saw the phenomenon they would become.

When was the last time you stayed up late to read a great book? If it's been too long, try this series. You won't regret it.

The Number 23

This movie takes itself too seriously throughout and then ends too neatly. Starring Jim Carrey, it falls into the psycho-thriller category and while it’s not actually extremely scary, it manages to keep suspense levels fairly high as the story unfolds.

The plot is based around the parellel lives of Walter Sparrow, an ordinary family man, and the story of Fingerling, the hard-bitten detective character in a book Sparrow’s wife purchases for him. The book spookily resembles Sparrow’s life, leading him to the uncovering of a murder and an obsession with the number 23 (Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times; Charles Manson was born Nov. 12 (11 + 12 = 23); The Mayans believed the world would end on Dec. 23, 2012 (20 + 1 + 2 = 23) etc).

The parallel sections of the movie where the narrative (book story) unfolds is filmed in a grainy, overexposed E6-style wash that lent it a stylistic and dreamy feel. However, the mystery of the number 23 ultimately failed to intrigue me to high fervour, which meant that the movie had to rely on the plot and characters rather than the mystifying numerology. What I found was less than inspiring but more than insipid. It’s a decent DVD movie for a night in, but not great.

Rating: 6.5/10

Perfume

This is a really good and very faithful adaptation of the book by Patrick Suskind. The only unfortunate thing is that while the book draws you right into the story, watching it on the big screen creates a sense of detachment, so when the story becomes more and more fable-like, on the big screen it verges on the ridiculous and unbelievable.

It’s a pretty foreboding tale of Jean Baptiste, a boy with an incredibly heightened olfactory sense that enables him to re-create the most intricate of perfumes perfectly after just one sniff. Smell becomes his beauty and his obsession, and he begins murdering beautiful young women in order to preserve their scent and create the world’s best perfume (don’t worry, I’m not giving anything away here as the movie is titled Perfume: the story of a murderer or something like that).

You quickly understand that Jean Baptiste is not quite human, so it’s impossible to feel empathy for him. Death follows him around, leaving a trail of tragedy behind him that he is not even aware of, let alone responsible for, so you begin to wonder whether murder is a choice or his destiny. The film doesn’t dramatise the content or try to exploit the story, as it could have done. Instead, the story is treated quite respectfully so it doesn’t feel like a cheap Hollywood thriller.

The fable-like quality of the story comes from the narration and the unbelievable events that unfold, like a massive town orgy (yes, of the sexual kind) and cannibalistic suicide, both induced by the perfume he created from the dead girls. There was a good deal of snickering from the people sitting next to us during the orgy scene, but for the informed (those who have read the book or can see beyond the fact that masses of people are fornicating in public, which is admittedly a little hard to see beyond), there’s a sense of wonder and sadness and beauty all mingled together in this tale.

The redheads are gorgeous and while it was a surprise to see Alan Rickman in the movie (a bit jarring to tell the truth), it was an intriguing two and a bit hours.