Fiction Reviews

Short reviews of recent fiction books.

Who would have guessed that the author of 2002's 800-plus-page monsterpiece The Crimson Petal and the White could write short stories so devoted to leaving stones unturned? But indeed that's the case; Michel Faber takes great pains delivering the opening moves in the stories of Vanilla Bright Like Eminem — artfully inserting very sympathetic people into unexpected, sometimes unreal scenarios — and then walks away from the chessboard. In "The Eyes of the Soul," we meet single mum Jeanette on the day somebody shows up at her door selling an HDTV-like device to replace the bleak urban view out her front window with live images from more blissful corners of the world. You're probably curious as to what impact such a thing would have on the life of Jeanette and her son. Sorry, the story ends with the purchase. And that kind of let's-beat-the-traffic stunting happens to otherwise intriguing situations — from the dying dictator whose life can only be saved by a surgeon he once imprisoned to the guy who comes out of a coma after five years for no reason — it makes you wonder. Why does Faber invent these contraptions without letting the readers or the characters take them out for a spin? Is it an abhorrence for definitive (satisfying) endings, because we should all just bugger off and read genre fiction if we care so much about arcs? Does he believe the stalemate is somehow nobler than the endgame? If you're looking for answers, you bought the wrong book.

—Patrick Rapa

You might expect a book with the title of The Stylist to be a chick-lit-infused bubble of a novel involving lots of girl gab, a romance or two and a happy ending wrapped up in a neat and very pink bow. But the title of Cai Emmons' second novel is misleading. The Stylist is a serious work of fiction about a young woman who runs away from a family she never really understood.

Hayden Risley works as a stylist in a little shop in Hoboken. She left her family and a Harvard education after her mother's death and hasn't been back since, except to send postcards letting her father and sisters know she's all right. In Hoboken, she meets Emory Bellew, a new stylist in the salon who isn't quite a woman and isn't quite a man either. An unlikely friendship forms, one that carries Hayden through a reunion with her father.

A lot of themes run through The Stylist, but the most intriguing one is the quality and accuracy of memory. Hayden made a lot of decisions based on what she remembered her family was like, only to have her life flipped around when her younger sister says that events were not as she remembered. While the pace of The Stylist is sometimes uneven, and the ending chapters' Costa Rica locale a bit farfetched, it's an interesting look at family and the repercussions of actions based only on memory.

—Jen A. Miller

Madison Cross, the plucky Crime Scene Unit investigator taking her first bow in 2006's Body Trace, returns a little older, a little wiser but no less resourceful in how she turns open-and-shut cases into far more labyrinthine investigations. This time she focuses her crime-solving energies on the death of Derek Grant, found slumped in his chair and certified a possible overdose suicide — especially when a note is discovered in his house a few days later. Derek's grieving, wheelchair-bound father, Horace, seems to strike all the right parental notes, earning Madison's sympathy straight away. But as Dublin (the pen name for Philadelphia writer Jon McGoran) demonstrates with a dash of wit and the fruits of his forensic-related research, too many loose strands make for nagging doubts and just as before, Madison's brand of investigative arithmetic has the murderer setting sights on herself. Body Trace, like its predecessor, is an entertaining look at a somewhat idealized version of Philadelphia's crime lab officers, with at least one scientific blunder. Dublin's fiscal comparison of mitochondrial DNA versus "nuclear DNA" extraction will seem confusing to those who know that traditional DNA analyses also require nuclear DNA extraction. It's a small point mainly of concern to science geeks in a book that should please mystery fans with its generally strong balance of storytelling and science.

—Sarah Weinman

More words than what are available here are required to describe the backstory of Suite Francaise, the smash posthumous hit by Franco-Russian Jewish novelist Irène Némirovsky and how it found its way to publication and near-classic status. Knopf looks to repeat the feat with this novella, which was recently discovered amidst Némirovsky's papers and archives. Written between 1938 and 1941 (a year before the author perished at Auschwitz), Blood is less fiery and narrower in scope than its unfinished epic predecessor, but is no less poignant for the amount of substance crammed into so few pages and for its glimpse into a French society soon to be decimated by the Nazis. Our guide is Silvio, wishing only to age quietly and in solitude but forced to reckon with the dying embers of a love lost to him decades ago. The prose, if occasionally overheated, more often sings with the cadence of Némirovsky's unusual turns of phrase and her keen observations of the characters who populate her small-town setting. A minor work it may be, but Blood is an excellent aperitif for the upcoming Everyman Library edition of her earliest writing.

—Sarah Weinman

The afterword says Michael Chabon's working title for this new novel was Jews with Swords. That's exactly the story Gentlemen of the Road delivers.

The heroes of this old-fashioned adventure tale, set more than a thousand years ago in the Caucasus mountains, are a giant, graying, dark-skinned, world-weary Abyssinian Jew named Amram and a skinny, blond, pale, depression-prone French Jew named Zelikman. Writing in the purple prose of the genre, Chabon follows the pair as they become entangled with a foulmouthed boy named Filaq, a deposed prince being chased by the soldiers of the man who killed his father and assumed the throne. From here, the unlikely duo and their revenge-obsessed young charge find a seemingly endless stream of bloody battles, hair-raising chases, clandestine raids, shocking revelations, chance encounters and double-crosses. The giant, the scarecrow and the would-be prince make their way through Christian and Muslim towns towards the boy's home in a fabled Jewish kingdom called Khazaria, improbably raising an army along the way

Roughly a dozen full-page illustrations bring authenticity to this piece of genre fiction. It's an even quicker read than the low page count suggests, with twists and turns piled on densely enough to encourage a reader to finish in a single afternoon. Gentlemen of the Road won't win the author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay a second Pulitzer, but it nearly overflows with joyous, nonstop action while paying pitch-perfect tribute to the pulpy, swashbuckling adventure stories its author clearly loves.

—Matt Hotz

Ruth Ramsey has made a lot of mistakes in her life, but none so publicly debated as one of her classroom comments. She teaches human sexuality at the local high school (very Haddonfield, Moorestown or Radnor — take your pick) and says that some people happen to like oral sex. A crime? In the eyes of the growing faction of right-wing Christians in town, it certainly is, and this one comment (in response to a ridiculous question relating oral sex to French-kissing a toilet) sets off a chain reaction that leads to Ramsey being forced to teach abstinence in a public high school (hence the book's title).

But this book really isn't about Ruth Ramsey. It's about Tim Mason, a former stoner and recovering alcoholic who finally rights his ship with the help of the same Christian sect that is burning Ramsey at the stake. The novel mainly follows Mason's journey of faith and doubt — about whether he hasn't simply traded one addiction for another, and whether this Jesus thing will stick.

While Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children, is a skillful satirist, Ramsey's story is too pared-down. Perrotta could have done more with her struggle with the school district, and her own convictions. This blond, busty self-proclaimed (and probably surgically enhanced) virgin in charge of teaching abstinence is ripe for a satirical run-down that never happens. It's still a funny book, but one that falls just short of reaching its full comic potential.

—Jen A. Miller

Joe Schreiber's sophomore effort after last year's great Chasing the Dead is a triumph in paranoia and terror. At only a little more than 200 pages, there is just no bloat or dead space.

The plot is simple. On the closing night of a Pennsylvania hospital, one last patient appears: Convicted serial killer Frank Snow needs an MRI. The remaining staff is tiny, but they don't expect any trouble, especially since Snow is escorted by several armed police officers.

So naturally, Snow escapes and cuts the power, stalking each staff member and two civilians down one by one and giving them odd and seemingly pointless choices to win their survival. It would be criminal to spoil anything that happens within these pages; I went in unprepared and was absolutely delighted with each surprise. Schreiber takes his cues from horror masters like Carpenter — most of the kills are left to the imagination — so when a graphic slaying does go down, it heightens the horror all the more.

Schreiber teases information out slowly, telling you only the most important details about Snow and the superbly layered cast of characters. It is the rarest of things, horror that actually scares, but not at the expense of great writing.

—Cameron Hughes