Disturbing and a little disappointing

Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay

Paperback: 288 pages

Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (Sep 19 2006)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0307277887

ISBN-13: 978-0307277886

 

 

 

SPOILER ALERT—If you haven’t seen the first season of Dexter, go do that. Then come  back. Not watching it just isn’t an option.

If you have seen it, and plan to read the book, go do that. Then come back.

If you have read the book, or aren’t planning to, continue reading.

Normally I wouldn’t start off a post directed at people who either have read the book or aren’t planning to, but this is a unique situation. Dexter fans are die-hards and purists (fans of the TV series, that is) and I know more than a few who won’t touch the books because of it.

And while I’m obviously a huge book worm and proponent of reading the book over seeing the movie/TV series/miniseries (and btw, any fans of Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett should watch the miniseries. I haven’t quite finished it but it’s excellent!) there are a few exceptions to that rule, including anything that Nicholas Sparks ever wrote that was made into a movie (The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, etc.)

I’m a huge Dexter fan who was curious about the books that started it all. Dexter is a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department. He spends his free time with his foster sister, Deborah, or his girlfriend, Rita, and her two children. He enjoys his work. He’s also a serial killer with a strict code of ethics about who he can and cannot kill, meaning he disposes of murderers and the occasional pedophile. He enjoys this work also.

The Dexter of Lindsay’s book is a little darker and less in control of his urges, if that’s possible. I found him less likable and more volatile. In the book, Deb doesn’t date the Ice Truck Killer, which was an awesome plot twist in the TV series, but the killer does kidnap her. Dexter finds her in one of the shipping containers we know so well from the show as the scene of Dexter’s mother’s demise. When the Ice Truck Killer, here known as Brian (I can’t remember what his name was on the show) has Deb tied up on the table and is asking Dex to kill her and strengthen their bond as brothers, Dexter is actually TORN. This isn’t the Dexter I know and love! His urges to kill people don’t extend beyond jailbird scum, torturers, rapists and men who kill innocent people!

So while Dexter’s standing over his sister’s body, debating with himself about whether or not to kill her, the chapter ends. The last chapter opens with a funeral with Dexter lamenting having treated his sister so terribly, leaving the reader to believe he’s actually killed her (hey, I’d read that the plot diverged from the TV show, but didn’t think it’d go THAT far) when we find out it’s actually Lieutenant LaGuerta who’s died, the same one we know and hate from the TV series. The one in the book is still beautiful, well-dressed and ambitious, but made out to be more sexually-charged (and attracted to Dexter??) and not a great detective.

I do love Dexter’s little musings to himself and the fact that the alliteration of the letter D continues throughout the book. That shouldn’t be so important, but it works. His constant perkiness and attempts at behaving “normally” are amusing. I think, though, if I’d read the book without knowing anything beforehand, I’d probably assume Dexter was an alien or some other foreign life form, so insistent is he that he isn’t human and must learn how to act human. I would have thought, what are you then?

All in all, it didn’t really leave me wanting more. I think I’ll stick with the TV show, thanks. Kudos to Jeff Lindsay for creating such a unique and fascinating character though. Maybe in the future I’ll read the next one, once I get down to the bottom of my to-be-read pile (HA!).

Books make the best gifts

The Book of Tomorrow, by Cecilia Ahern

Paperback: 336 pages

Publisher: UK General Books (Oct 26 2009)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0007326343

ISBN-13: 978-0007326341

 

 

 

 

This lovely little book was sent to me via a Twitter book exchange by @ConstansFidei in Ottawa, whom you should all follow because she’s wonderful. She sends me all my guilty pleasures, my favourite of which so far having been The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes.

But back to the book in question! An extremely unlikable teenager has lost her father, whom, it is revealed, died owing a lot of money. Tamara and her mother are forced to move from their posh Dublin mansion into a poky little cottage in the Irish countryside with her aunt and uncle. Her mother, practically comatose, provides no companionship, and without a computer, cellphone or internet, she feels completely alone. While she mourns her father, she is suffering a great deal of boredom and meets not one, but two local boys who help her pass the time. Marcus is the keeper of a travelling library in which Tamara finds a mysterious, locked book—enter the book of tomorrow. Once she and her unlikely friend, a nun at nearby convent, figure out how to open it, Tamara discovers that the book contains only the blank pages of a diary which foretell the future by revealing to her what she will write the following day. Around about this time, Tamara begins to notice a series of curious events that cause her to question her family history.

Tamara has sort of a Scarlet O’Hara quality about her, being a spoiled and selfish teenager that you can’t help but root for by the end of the book. She begins to show real personal growth, cutting out old friends who have proven themselves to be shallow and false.

My only real criticism is that the story includes a number of details that seem unnecessary: a girl from school who gives Tamara a book (not THE book) when her father dies, and the diary, which, while a cute idea, turns the novel into fantasy fiction when the plot is strong enough to stand on its own, without it. The book only causes Tamara to alter one or two actions, which could easily have been edited.

Perhaps it’s just jealousy though. I wish I had a diary that told the future!

(Almost) Modern-day America

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Paperback: 562 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins (Aug 1 2010)

ISBN-10: 0374532575

ISBN-13: 978-0374532574

 

 

 

 

 

Have you ever finished a book and regretted it, feeling like you already miss the characters? It happens to me all the time…but not with Freedom. I can honestly say I didn’t like any of the characters in the book. They’re all self-centered, rude and hypocritical. I suppose the only one who’s not completely self-centered is Walter Berglund, the environmental activist, but it’s hard to admire his shutting out his family for the sake of his work.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The book is about an American nuclear family; but the college-educated parents (I figure I’d better use American terminology) and kids, a big renovated house and upper-middle class neighbourhood (I refuse to remove that “u”) don’t hide the mountain of issues these people have.

The timeline jumps all over the place. It starts with a detailed summary of the family’s first years together, including the tensions between father Walter and son Joey. Next is an autobiography written by mother Patty for supposedly therapeutic reasons, a text which makes a play in the plot near the end of the book. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: an unfortunate first sexual experience, being a basketball star who doesn’t matter to her arts-obsessed family and becoming best friends with her stalker. And Patty reveals just what any child wants to hear–that it is possible and does occasionally happen that a parent loves one kid more than another.

Then comes an account of Walter’s life told in the third person since, as I mentioned earlier, he’s the least self-involved person in the book. Even if he weren’t, it could be forgiven, knowing his background as the hard-working and determined son of a layabout alcoholic.

Finally, a focus on Joey’s life, screwed up as it might be. Having been inadvertently tied at a young age to his indomitable soul mate, also known as Connie, the girl next door, and written off by his father, he sets off to make his own way in the world. Hypocrisy is evident when Joey, who always hated being dependent on his father and is determined to make is own fortune, has no problem taking cash from his doting mother.

The only member of the family who plays a minor role in the novel is daughter Jessica, presumably because she’s the most “normal” and, therefore, boring. Her space is filled by Walter’s best friend and roommate from university, Richard. The unwilling rock star is beset by fans and fame late in life but can’t forget Patty, the one he pushed away and who married his best friend.

Franzen makes no secret of taking his inspiration from Tolstoy’s War and Peace, referencing it in the novel to make a statement about how art influences life. Patty, wanting to better educate herself, reads it at a critical point and lets it manipulate her towards a decision about the torch she’s carried for Richard for years.

Franzen shys away from nothing. Every dirty fact of life, sex, love and psychology is in there to make the reader uncomfortable. Every thought you wish had never occurred to you is in there with others that never did. Monogamy is a joke in this society, to these people and, in some cases, they aren’t afraid to admit it.

The beginning of the book is much better than the end, if you ask me. I loved the extended monologues by the Berglund family and their neighbours as the author introduces us to the cultural and political setting. At that point, it’s hard to see where the story is going and I liked it.

Lessons from an English butler

Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

Paperback: 245 pages

Publisher: Key Porter Books; 1 edition (May 9 2002)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1550135325

ISBN-13: 978-1550135329

 

 

 

 

This month’s selection was courtesy of Book Club Member Erin, who’d recently seen Never Let Me Go at the Toronto Film Festival with Melissa and I. Remains of the Day is a novel by the same author, who left us wondering how a Japanese man could write such a British novel.

The story’s narrator and protagonist is a repressed, humourless, traditional-to-a-fault English butler; one of a dying breed. His role as the head of the household staff is one from which he never falters. Or so he would like us to believe.

The plot consists of a roadtrip undertaken by Stevens during some extremely rare time off. His new employer (I keep wanting to say “owner”—very revealing) has lent him his car and Stevens decides to use the time to visit a former employee, “Miss Kenton,” who left to get married over twenty years earlier. She’d written to him recently expressing discontent with her marriage and he thinks she might be amenable to returning to work.

The account of the trip is overshadowed by the narrator’s frequent and lengthy reminiscences about the past, especially his glory years spent in the service of one Lord Darlington, with whom Stevens is blissfully disillusioned. The reader learns of his feelings about the history of his profession, how a perfect butler should behave, the importance of silver polishing and how to converse with other staff. While his passion for his job and devotion to his employers is spelled out clearly, his personal relations with other people fall depressingly short.

Book Club Member Michelle pointed out that Stevens never mentions a mother—he seems to have forgotten that he had one—but idolizes his father. He  believes that a butler should not step out of his role when in the presence of others meaning he never manages to cultivate a romantic relationship of any kind. On the other hand, his father did manage to sire a child, meaning he must have had a dalliance or romance of some kind, and making him less than perfect, but Stevens seems to forget that as well.

While she worked in his household, poor Miss Kenton did everything she could conceive of to coax Stevens out of his self-imposed solitude, from picking fights to invading his personal space and threatening to quit. His feelings for her are subtly revealing his reading of her letter, which becomes more and more despairing with each evaluation, and in his insistence on calling her by her maiden name.  Stevens is one of the most unreliable narrators I’ve ever read, as evidenced by the fact that eighty per cent of the book is told in the past, where he can easily edit the events and tell us what he wants us to know.

The meaning I took from the book was that the author wanted to stress not only how important it is to devote our lives to something, but to make sure that we choose the object of our devotion carefully. There’s nothing worse than getting to the end of the race and realizing you were running in the wrong direction.

Starting with an old favourite

Fall of Giants, by Ken Follett

Hardcover: 985 pages

Publisher: Dutton (Sep 28 2010)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0525951652

ISBN-13: 978-0525951650

 

Featured in my first post on SailBooks is the newest release of one of my favourite authors. Whatever his faults and despite some arguments from his critics, Ken Follett remains one of the best selling and most entertaining authors alive.

I read this one on the Kobo eReader I just purchased. The release of the new Kobo Wifi dropped the price of the original eReader to one I could afford and had been waiting for. Fortunately, my acquisition coincided with the release of this nearly 1000-page book, giving me the chance to gloat over eReader-naysayers and purists who insist on lugging it around. As a woman who doesn’t buy a purse unless it’s big enough to fit a book in it, this is a revolution.

To be fair, I was a little daunted upon reading the list of characters at the beginning, knowing that I couldn’t easily flip to it if needed. There do appear to be quite a few characters to keep straight. I didn’t have any trouble with this, however.

Espionage. Forbidden romance. Questionable politics. Revolutionary yearning. True historical figures…yeah, I’m definitely stealing this line from The Princess Bride (the movie) and making it work for me. The point is, this book has it all.

What I love about Ken Follett is that it’s obvious he’s done mountains of research before beginning to write and I always finish his books feeling like I’ve learned something. By the third or fourth chapter, I was thinking that there was even more sex than he usually includes (hard to imagine, I know) but by the end of the novel, the characters have matured and it isn’t quite so frequent or explicit.

I can’t remember having studied World War I to any great depth in school, or if I did, it was quite a while ago. Although I knew vaguely how it ended, it was fun to read a detailed account, fictionalized though it may be. Follett doesn’t betray any obvious bias toward either lower class or upper class, and his accounts of the events in England, France, Germany and Russia are well-balanced. The author is a Brit who isn’t afraid to criticize the actions of his country.

I loved the portrayal of Winston Churchill, one of the most often quoted British politicians, who seemed “more interested in coining phrases than making a difference.” Or something like that. (I’m paraphrasing. I wish the Kobo had a search option.)

The only good part of finishing this book is knowing there are two more to come. I’m guessing the focus of the second will be on the Dirty Thirties and the third will feature World War II (how did our ancestors let it happen TWICE? I guess we’ll find out!)