Illegal Liaisons by Grażyna Plebanek

First published in Poland in 2010; published in translation by New Europe Books on August 13, 2013

Illegal Liaisons is a novel of characters who stand on "the threshold of happiness and scruples, sexual fulfillment and moral trembling." Jonathan (born Januszek) abandoned his plan to live as a citizen of the world when he married Magda (nicknamed Megi), took a job in Poland as a journalist, had children, and wrote some moderately successful children's fairy tales. As the novel opens, Jonathan is moving to Brussels where Megi has taken a job. There gets his own job, teaching a writing class. Living in Brussels restores Jonathan's sense that the world is his home, a home that is "large, sunny, and full of love" -- large enough, at any rate, to hold both his wife and his new mistress. Frustrated with "the smallness of his family life," including his role as homemaker, Jonathan is renewed by his affair with Andrea. He loves Megi but in a different way he loves Andrea. When a friend tells him he'll never leave Megi and asks "What would you do without her?" Jonathan responds "Which one?" Frustrated both by his inability to choose and by the choices he has made, Jonathan's dilemmas become more worrisome as the story unfolds.

Illegal Liaisons follows the arc of a fairly common domestic drama -- the ordinariness of the story is the novel's only serious weakness -- but the characters are sharp and the writing is lively. Sentences like "Megi fell silent, and Jonathan thought how uncomfortable he felt with his backside sticking out in front of an embittered woman" encourage the reader to keep turning the pages. Jonathan's complimentary description of a writing student who had "no fear of thinking and a resistance to haste" applies equally to Grażyna Plebanek's construction of Illegal Liaisons. Some of the narrative is erotic, and while I thought it was tasteful, the descriptive language might be too graphic for some readers.

Jonathan is an amusingly opinionated character. He is locked in an identity crisis, not sure if he is a serious author or a dabbler in children's books, an idealist or an empty vessel. He doesn't know why he needs Andrea or why she needs him (which raises the broader question of why people need each other, why spouses in a happy marriage have affairs). Jonathan is sex-obsessed to a degree that is almost comical but not altogether unrealistic. A typical sentence in the book will say something like "He wondered if she was wearing panties," a thought that is entirely removed from whatever conversation Jonathan is having (and to which he is likely paying no attention). Readers who seek out admirable protagonists will want to avoid Illegal Liaisons, while readers who appreciate nuanced characters, who want to learn something about human nature from Jonathan's conflict, will consider their time with this likable cad well spent.

Occasional sections of the novel, always brief and italicized, focus on Megi. Despite their brevity, they are the most revealing and surprising passages in the novel. Another couple, spouses "condemned to each other," adds an additional dimension to Plebanek's exploration of marital relationships.

Pondering an apparently unfinished story written by one of Jonathan's students, a character asks "What happened next?" The response he receives is "That's the best question possible." Meaning, I suppose, it's best for the story to continue in the reader's imagination. Although Illegal Liaisons reaches a resolution of sorts, it leaves ample room for the reader to imagine what's next.

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The Paris Lawyer by Sylvie Granotier

First published in France in 2011; published in translation by Le French Book on July 2, 2012

Catherine Monsigny, a young lawyer, takes on the defense of Myriam Villetreix who is accused of poisoning Gaston, the man who apparently saved her from deportation by marrying her. Catherine sees the case as her springboard to fame, although she wonders how she will interest Parisian reporters in the murder of a farmer in a rural community in central France. It happens to be the same community where Catherine's mother was murdered when Catherine was only four years old. Catherine's mother was killed in a park where Catherine was found crying in a stroller. The killer was never identified.

As Catherine was growing up, her bottled-up father refused to talk to her about her mother. Her father always tried to replace the reality of her mother's death with a myth, casting her mother as a princess struck down by evil witches, and Catherine as a girl who is protected by fairies. Her memories of that day -- someone handing her the piece of cloth she had dropped -- might be false. She may have been too young to remember anything, as her father has always insisted.

Catherine is an introspective character. She is young and naïve. "She believes in everything she has not experienced." Yet she is also rebellious and adventurous, as she proves by bedding one of her clients early the novel, shortly after she gets him acquitted. She wonders whether she is (like some of the people she sees accused of sex crimes) a mere "consumer of flesh," unable to see her partners as anything other than objects of her desire. As the novel progresses, Catherine undergoes a maturation process, feeling by the end of the story that, at the age of twenty-six, she is "older than the rest of the world."

In part, The Paris Lawyer is a family drama. The primary focus is on Catherine as she discovers her mother's secrets, but it is also on Catherine's father, who coped with his wife's death as best he could (although not in the way that Catherine wanted) and lives in fear that his daughter no longer needs him. To a lesser extent, the story involves a different family drama, that of Myriam and Gaston, "two people mistreated by life" who either loved or despised each other, depending on the observer's viewpoint. More fundamentally, The Paris Lawyer is a thriller, cleverly woven from various plot threads in ways that are both obvious and subtle. Title notwithstanding, it is a psychological thriller rather than a legal thriller. Myriam's trial remains in the background for much of the novel, serving as a framework for the larger story.

Sylvie Granotier slowly builds a suspenseful atmosphere from a series of ambiguous incidents and flashes of buried memories. Through much of the novel, I was puzzled about where the plot was taking me, a pleasant departure from the stacks of predictable thrillers that substitute silliness for depth. The Paris Lawyer is ultimately a contemplation of guilt in all its different guises, but it is also a good story that ends with surprising revelations about the killers of Gaston and of Catherine's mother. Its only flaws (small ones, I think) are that the novel's denouement borders on melodrama and the story is more intellectually than emotionally engaging.

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& Sons by David Gilbert

Published by Random House on July 23, 2013

We meet Philip at the funeral of his father, Charlie Topping. Also present is Charlie's childhood friend, the renowned novelist A.N. Dyer, now nearing the age of eighty. Philip gives us lengthy introductions to A.N.'s older sons: recovering miscreant Richard, a screenwriter noticed in Hollywood only because of his family name; and stoner Jamie, whose videos (including daily shots of a former girlfriend while she was dying and after her death) reflect his "almost incandescent urge for the dreadful thing." Philip was the fifth grade teacher of A.N.'s third son, Andy, whose existence came as a surprise to A.N.'s wife and prompted a divorce. At seventeen, Andy is significantly younger than his middle-aged brothers. Andy views his famous father as annoyingly needy while his older brothers have always thought A.N. to be so distant as to approach nonexistence.

Philip provides the novel's narrative framework, telling each son's story, occasionally A.N.'s, and sometimes his own. Philip has current knowledge of the sons because, needing a place to live after his indiscretions cause him to lose his job, he has accepted A.N.'s offer to take up temporary residence in A.N.'s home. A.N. is dying (or perhaps it's just wishful thinking on his part) and the occasion of his impending death gives him reason to insist that his three sons come together. The family gathering will give A.N. a chance to meet Richard's teenage grandchildren, and Richard a chance to meet Andy, for the first time. It also gives A.N. a chance to reveal an improbable secret to his older sons. As A.N.'s ex-wife acidly tells him, the secret "takes narcissism to a whole new level, even for you."

We learn about A.N. Dyer through his own eyes (he describes himself as a "self-pitying writer" who is "easily overwhelmed by the basics of how to live") and those of others, but also through the books he wrote, books that echo his own life. The lead character in Tiro's Corruption has an acerbic view of anyone who lives beyond the boundaries of Manhattan, while Dyer's alter-ego in Eastern Time is a "secret pervert" (albeit a tame one). When A.N. advises Andy not to be "a ghost haunting your own life," he seems to be teaching a lesson learned by the protagonist in The Bend of Light, a "tin man" with an illusory heart who dies alone. Ampersand, A.N.'s celebrated novel about the cruelty of privileged adolescents, imparts critical facts about A.N.'s friendship with Charlie Topping. The use of books within a book to shed light upon A.N. is a clever device that will make & Sons linger in my memory.

To a small extent, & Sons is a typical New York literary novel, the kind that skewers the pretentious while itself being a bit pretentious. A scene depicting a snobbish book party is familiar, but it is enlivened by the attendance of anti-snobs Andy and Emmett (Richard's son), a pair of ultra-cool teenagers who add a healthy dose of comedy to the novel's mix. The novel's best comic moment, however, comes from poor A.N.'s confusion (and mortification) when he appears to meet his best known fictional character at the same party.

More importantly, and as the title implies, & Sons is about fathers and sons, about the distance that grows between them until it is impossible to "reach across the divide." Philip comes to understand his father only in death -- and that (the novel seems to say) is the only time a life can be truly understood. There are aspects of the way Philip tells this story (is he a reliable narrator?) that I found troubling, and an out-of-the-blue event near the novel's end seemed like a bad choice, but it does lead to some poignant moments in the closing pages. Unlike Ampersand, & Sons is never "emotionally claustrophobic" but neither is it melodramatic. While you wouldn't expect a novel about people's lives to wrap up neatly -- because complex lives never do -- & Sons at least ends on a moving and satisfying note.

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Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson

Published by Orbit on September 3, 2013

Kim Stanley Robinson is full of ideas. The danger in a KSR novel is that he will develop his ideas with enthusiasm while relegating the plot and characters to the status of afterthoughts. When -- as in Shaman -- KSR decides to tell a story rather than disguising a series of essays as a work of fiction, he is a talented writer. In Shaman, KSR avoids pedantic lectures while achieving a blend of humor and poignancy in a solid, enjoyable novel.

In a departure from the work for which KSR is best known, Shaman looks at the past rather than the future, probing prehistoric characters to reveal the essential and enduring features of humanity. The novel begins with a rite of passage as adolescent Loon, sent naked into the woods on the night of the new moon, begins a wander from which he must not return until the full moon rises. Loon eventually ingests some mushrooms to induce a vision, a necessary step if he is to follow Thorn's teachings and become a shaman. Raised by Heather and Thorn after his parents died, Loon is restless (and like all young men, hormone-driven). He is an unwilling apprentice with little interest in becoming a shaman, although he admires Thorn's cave paintings. Thorn teaches him songs and poems that recall the past but Loon is focused on the future. He looks forward to the pack's summer trek and the festival at which a score of packs gather, in part because it provides his only opportunity to meet new girls.

The plot meanders a bit but it is largely the story of Loon's young life, and since lives meander, it isn't surprising that the plot does. At the novel's midway point, however, a story breaks loose when someone close to Loon disappears, sending Loon on a search to distant northern lands. At some point the story becomes one of hunter and prey; at another point it is a tale of wilderness survival. It's a good (but not a great) coming-of-age story that offers few surprises. Character development is strong and the plot is credible. To create an interesting change of pace, KSR occasionally departs from the main characters to focus on an outsider. Now and then KSR gives us an anthropomorphic look at the world through the eyes of a cat or a wolverine.

Robinson leaves it to the reader to give meaning to the poems of the past, a refreshing change from novels in which he spells out the past and present in excruciating detail. That's not to say that Shaman lacks detail. Robinson is known for his world-building, and his ability to create an imagined Earth of the distant past is just as impressive as his construction of an inhabited Mars of the relatively near future. This is a familiar world of rivers and onions and pine needles, a world abundantly populated by ravens and trout, lions and bears, all having symbolic significance to the tribal people who share the land with them. It is in fact the people -- their social organizations, customs, behaviors, and folklore, the hardship of survival and the joy of friendship -- that make Shaman memorable. From mating to domestic discord, behavior is recognizable, but dissimilar enough to be a convincing account of a distant time. The differences between northern and southern tribal peoples are akin to differing political philosophies: competition versus cooperation (perhaps the forerunners of capitalism versus socialism). Like all of KSR's work, Shaman is a book of ideas, here drawn from anthropology, sociology, ecology, and economics. Unlike some of KSR's novels, however, the ideas are expressed with subtlety, are carefully integrated into the story, and never get in the way of the plot that conveys them.

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The Beginning (Berlin Gothic) by Jonas Winner

First published in Germany in 2011; published in translation by AmazonCrossing on August 27, 2013

Berlin Gothic was released as a seven-part serial in Germany. In translation, it has been divided into two parts, of which The Beginning is the first.

For reasons that are initially murky, young Till Anschütz runs away from a mysterious place called Brackenfelde. A car driven by Julia Bentheim strikes him, but Till resists being taken to a hospital for fear that he'll be returned to Brackenfelde. Julia takes him home, where Till meets her son Max and daughters Lisa and Claire. Max lives in fear of his inability to meet the expectations of Xavier, his domineering father, a writer whose books are so horrifying he can't talk about them with his children. In some unspecified way, Xavier is in the clutches of his wealthy new publisher, Felix von Quitzow.

A dozen years later, a dying woman is found in a pit at a construction site, the victim of an apparent crime. Konstantin Butz investigates. While Butz is exploring a shaft in the pit, he thinks he sees ... something ... before the walls collapse, burying him beneath the muddy earth.

The two timelines are linked by Claire, who has become Butz' girlfriend. Yet Claire is a conflicted woman, inexplicably drawn to a boxer named Frederik, who seems obsessed with her.

Where will the story go? I haven't a clue, which makes The Beginning interesting but difficult to review. Maybe it will go nowhere. Maybe it will be great. What I can say about The Beginning is that it's a good beginning. Jonas Winner generates genuine tension, a sense of foreboding that pervades both plot threads. He creates a strong atmosphere of creepiness and he writes fast-moving, minimalist prose. If nothing else, The Beginning makes me look forward to the ending.

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