Blitz by David Trueba

Published in Spain in 2015; published in translation by Other Press on August 30, 2016

Beto Sanz is an unsuccessful landscape architect from Madrid. He is currently the sole member of his firm, although he appreciates the suggestions made by Marta, his lover and roommate. The economy is bad and Beto is entering European competitions, attempting to attract attention with fanciful ideas. At a competition in Munich, Beto submits the idea of an urban park that is filled with large hourglasses that will encourage people to reflect on how they will use their passing time.

Unfortunately, Beto's relationship with Marta comes to an abrupt end, which puts Beto in a funk early in the novel. He later finds himself attracted to an older woman he meets at the Munich conference. It is an attraction he cannot explain and that he finds vaguely embarrassing, at least when he sees himself through the eyes of others. In conversation with the woman, Beto explores the nature of failed relationships. Much of the novel, in fact, consists of Beto’s reaction to his breakup, as Beto shares his thoughts with the reader or converses with friends in Spain via text or Skype.

Blitz features some interesting discussions about the competing philosophies of landscape architecture, particularly parks: should the architect try to give people a comfortable place in which they can rediscover themselves by rediscovering organic life, or is it the mission of the architect to shake people up, to challenge them with discomfort? Beto muses about the importance of parks (what would a city be without them?) and how park development is nevertheless the first item to be cut from a municipal budget during an economic downturn. The discussions are wide-ranging, as characters debate competing philosophies of industrial design and cosmetic surgery.

The second part of this short novel is shorter than the first. It is told in a series of brief recaps of Beto’s life, month-by-month, after he leaves Germany. It eventually ties into the first part in a way that provides a satisfying (if somewhat predictable) resolution to Beto’s growing frustration.

The beauty, appreciation, and meaning of life, as reflected in relationships with people and parks and objects, are an important subject of Blitz. The novel is also about self-discovery, but its strongest theme is the discovery of improbable love in unlikely ways and the heart’s defiance of social conventions. Illustrations and reproductions of paintings give a visual boost to the story. In the end, Blitz is like a pleasant story that an old friend might tell to explain what happened during his absent years.

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Waking Up Dead by Nigel Williams

Published in the UK as R.I.P. in 2015; published by St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books on August 23, 2016

Waking Up Dead is a murder mystery told from the perspective of one of the victims. That’s been done before, but the “dead victim solves his own murder” plot has probably never produced as many laughs as Nigel Williams conjures in this novel. This murder mystery, told as a tongue-in-cheek ghost story, is surprisingly funny.

George Pearmain, a retired banker, has little interest in getting out of bed, even when his shrieking wife proclaims the death of his mother. George rarely has an interest in getting out of bed -- his post-retirement life isn’t thrilling -- but on this occasion, he seems physically incapable of moving. The novel’s title explains George’s problem, although, while perhaps not in peak condition at his age, George doesn’t feel dead. He thinks, therefore he is, but what is he? Dead, as it turns out.

Still, death is a refreshing relief from responsibility, a state George embraces with equanimity. Death gives George the freedom to say whatever he likes, even if he cannot be heard. On the other hand, George can also hear what people are saying about him, most of which is less than flattering.

Why George might be dead is no mystery to him (65, drank too much, exercised too little). A greater mystery is the suggestion that his mother might have been murdered on the day she turned 99. She is found in the kitchen with a fractured skull next to a broken window. But the suggestion that George might have been murdered leads to a comical coroner’s inquest, where George learns how many of his family members might have welcomed his death.

George’s demise comes during a family gathering to celebrate his mother’s birthday, giving Williams ample opportunity to develop odd and entertaining characters, including George’s sons and siblings and grandchildren. A New Age believer in the healing power of herbs, an interviewer who hosts a popular radio program, a wife who dedicated herself to arguing with George, an incompetent doctor, a nosy caregiver, and a detective inspector who emulates Sherlock are among the many characters who enliven the novel.

Most of the characters are eccentric, some are batty, and a few of them might indeed be murderous. Those who seem relatively normal are shallow or self-absorbed. Perhaps the funniest character is George’s dead dog, the only character who can see dead George. But as the story turns into a murder-fest, the reader is challenged to decide which character(s) did away with George and/or his mother and/or later victims. As the police attempt to answer those questions, George provides commentary that is rich with sarcasm, satire, irony, and every other literary device that can be counted on to provoke laughter.

Waking Up Dead brought to mind a blend of Kingsley Amis and Monty Python. The novel has its share of slapstick (a triple funeral provoked several laugh-out-loud moments) but most of the humor has the restrained quality for which the British are justly famous. A consistent stream of throw-away phrases like “her brief and unsuccessful attempt at childhood” assures frequent chuckles. Williams pokes fun at racism, nationalism, smartphones, officious police detectives, squabbling families, ambition, greed, lust, envy, and other deadly sins while delivering a fun, offbeat mystery. The ending is both sweet and sad, a nice counterpoint to the humor that precedes it.

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Millennium by Ben Bova

First published in 1976; published digitally by Endeavour Press/Venture Press on June 19, 2016

The prolific Ben Bova wrote four novels featuring Chet Kinsman (and eventually combined two of them into a fifth novel). Millennium (1976) is the second of those, although the first, published in 1967, has little in common with the next three. The title has been released in digital format by Endeavour in the UK.

In Millennium, Kinsman is stationed on the moon, where Russians and Americans occupy separate but neighboring bases that are known collectively as Selene. Kinsman, in fact, is the military commander of the American base. His superiors think he is too cozy with the Russians and therefore unreliable, so they send Frank Colt to keep an eye on him.

Novels have to be read in the context of their time (it isn’t fair to judge a 1976 novel by 2016 standards) but even with that in mind, I didn’t buy the character of Frank Colt. He represents a stereotypical view of the Militant Black Man, exemplified by his inexplicable hostility to characters he calls “whitey.” Colt flip-flops in his allegiances throughout the novel, rather too easily and conveniently to make him a convincing character.

The novel’s paranoid view of Russia and a heated-up Cold War is more forgivable, given the political climate of the time, but readers in the current century should be aware that the story will seem dated. As you would expect, the technology is wrong (the USA and Russia have a moon base by 1999 but they are still using the kind of computer terminals that are now found in museums). The political reality at the end of the 20th century was also far removed from the future that Bova envisioned. But this is a work of fiction, and not making an accurate prediction of the future is not a reason to criticize the book (in retrospect, after all, a reader can make the inaccurate predictions unimportant by viewing this as an alternate history). Still, the sense of reading a dated novel is stronger here than it is when reading some other older works of sf.

On Earth, nasty Russians are shooting down America’s ABM “Star Wars” satellites faster that replacements can be launched and faster than America is shooting down Russia’s ABM satellites. The puzzled president -- Bova makes him a bit soft-headed, easily manipulated by his hawkish military advisers -- doesn’t understand that America is in an undeclared war. The military wants to take steps that would probably lead to actual war while assuring the president that war isn’t an inevitable outcome of blowing a manned Russian command center out of the sky. Yeah, right. Kinsman knows better.

Kinsman decides to lead a revolution that will turn Selene into an independent nation, but Heinlein already did that in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, so Bova had to tell a similar story in a different way. He does that with reasonable success. While Heinlein premised his revolution on his trademark libertarian perspective, Bova’s revolution is based both on utopianism (one world, make war no more) and practicality (if nations of the Earth destroy each other, who will be left to ship food to the moon?). Both are interesting, but Millennium still feels like a shadow of Heinlein’s novel. It is nevertheless a good story. It’s not Bova’s best, but it is better than his most recent work.

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The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock

Published by Doubleday on July 12, 2016

Readers who are familiar with Donald Ray Pollock expect his characters to be defined by a combination of hardship, violence, and ignorance, softened by occasional moments of compassion and wisdom. In The Heavenly Table, Pollock focuses on impoverished characters in the World War I era who are struggling with life’s unfairness as they search for self-worth or redemption or something that will give purpose to their lives.

Pearl Jewett has three sons: Cob, Cane, and Chimney, all named in fits of drunkenness. He loses his farm in a futile effort to keep his wife alive and confronts a crisis of faith as he struggles to feed his children. He tells them that good fortune awaits -- they will all dine at the heavenly table when they go to meet their maker. Their more immediate fortune is uncertain as they try to make their way in the world, guided by a pulp western that chronicles the adventures of an outlaw named Bloody Bill.

Other characters play out their own dramas as the Jewetts emulate Bloody Bill. Vincent Bovard, in despair after his fiancé leaves him, decides to join the Army and die on the Western Front. Serving as a lieutenant in Ohio who is still far from the front, he struggles with his sexual identity.

Ellsworth Fiddler, a farmer, has been swindled out of his life’s savings. Jasper Cone inspects outhouses in a town where indoor plumbing is considered a Socialist threat. Sugar Milford is a black man who can’t get ahead in a white world -- although his idea of progress is to find a new woman who will support him.

Pollock stretches his literary legs in The Heavenly Table without departing from this strength -- the ability to make readers understand, and relate to, the troubles of people who are disadvantaged by a lack of education, opportunity, and positive parental role models. Many of the characters are desperate -- for money, for friendship, for a woman’s touch, for a peaceful existence. There is greater depth in Pollock’s characters than in his past work, no small feat for a writer whose characters have always been strong.

Pollock uses chance and geography to tie the story threads together. Although The Heavenly Table story is not entirely bleak, Pollock doesn’t contrive the kind of happy endings that appeal to lovers of cozy mysteries, On the other hand, readers who like gritty stories about desperate characters will find much to admire in The Heavenly Table. Pollock's prose, his plot, and his characters are all exceptional.

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The Big Sheep by Robert Kroese

Published by Thomas Dunne Books on June 28, 2016

A biotech company hires a phenomenological inquisitor (a fancy title for a private detective) named Erasmus Keane to help it find a missing sheep. Keane works with the novel’s narrator, Blake Fowler, who is Watson to Keane’s Sherlock. In addition to the sheep (science fiction’s traditional farm animal), a beautiful television star named Priya Mistry wants to hire Keane because she thinks someone is trying to kill her. But soon there seem to be multiple Priya Mistrys and they aren’t all on the same page.

The novel takes place post-Collapse. A portion of Los Angeles exists as an underground, off-the-books community known as the Disincorporated Zone. Yes, Compton is part of it. City officials decided that walling it off would be easier than restoring it to order, which is fine with most of the DZ residents, and with Keane, who had something to do with its creation.

The story is built on the separation of a person from a persona. Owning a person is illegal but owning a persona, at least in the future imagined here, is not. The characters debate the morality of that arrangement; readers can decide for themselves. From the standpoint of Keane and Fowler, the larger question is how a person and her persona can be duplicated with any degree of precision. The solution to that problem is convoluted but clever.

Since the story of chasing a sheep around futuristic Los Angeles is told with tongue-in-cheek, its implausibility didn’t bother me. The story is amusing and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Lively prose, fast-paced action, and quirky characters add to the story’s charm. The Big Sheep isn’t a deep book, but it is a fun book.

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